Guys, we were playing down a man to the World Champions for the majority of the game. We were fighting clawing, running our hearts out.............and quite simply ran out of gas. Go back and just follow Michael Bradley during this game. I don't know how many miles that kid ran over the course of the match, but he was ridiculous. We can overanalyze every play down the stretch over and over again, but the truth is we were just exhausted. Not just tired physically, but mentally. This is what happens throughout world soccer when you're playing a superior team........down a man. And Jozy completely lacks confidence and match-fitness. But he was also one of the reasons we were in the game at all. Serie A quality defenders were having a terrible time with him.
What we saw yesterday was why Rossi starts for Villareal and why Jozy only get playing time every now and then. Rossi's goal was class. Jozy and MB will finish those chances in the future because of what they learned yesterday.
That replay is difficult to see. They showed a close up of the play, but I can't find it on youtube. Anyway, it was a foul, from behind. How is it exactly that Benny ends up on the ground on that play? Rossi came up behind him, kicked him on the inside of his right foot while pushing him from behind. I'm not saying that it's a foul that gets called more than 50% of the time, but with the benefit of replay you can see that it's a foul. I'm not missing your point, I'm merely pointing out that the great play by Rossi just so happened to be a foul. I fully acknowledge that he hit a world class strike. But he got into that position by fouling, not by some wonderful play.
That was the mistake of an exhausted player. A defender who'd had to defend non-stop for an hour. If you give a team the quality of Italy enough chances.........eventually a defense will break.
I think this sounds great, and is even true to a certain extent, but isn't this oversimplifying the problems the USMNT has on the attack? To test this "2 seconds theory", just look at the highlights from the Spain-NZ match and the Brazil-Egypt match. How many of those were transition goals, and how many were just great plays, based on creativity, timing, and ingenuity (for lack of a better word). These three things cause the defense to open up, to go off-balance. These things are what cause *danger* in the backfield. I know this is a common criticism of the USMNT, but I really feel we lack these creative, dangerous players. Over the years, I have really only seen this danger from Altidore, Adu, and Donovan (and Reyna, with his passing, in his heyday). As a South American who loves the beautiful passing and creativity of that continent, we just don't have that. But we also don't have that overpowering air attack of the English or Germans. We are just somewhere in the middle. Nice passing, once in a while. Nice headers once in a while. But mostly just blah on the attack. ps. One question, who made that pass to Altidore from way in the backfield, when Altidore got that pk? That was a nice pass! And Altidore's move was one of the few moments of brilliance/danger in the game! (I still need to watch the whole game, though.)
I watched Spanish TV. They showed Rossi putting his foot through Feilhaber's legs and Benny struggled to turn*. He made contact with Feilhaber but got his foot on the ball and stripped him legitimately. If that's a foul, it's of the softest variety and rarely called in high levels of soccer. In reality, it was a heads up play followed by more heads up play and a beautiful goal. I wish our guys would foul, transition, and finish like that more often. *Benny's turn = bad. I believe it was Matrim55 who called it dead on - the kid has a tendency to dawdle. Sometimes dawdling's great - see Pirlo's move on DeMerit at the end line, where even if he had been dispossessed, it would have been OK. But dawdling at the midfield stripe with nothing but the back four behind you = bad. Kljestan played him an easy square and made a diagonal run Benny should have one time passed to. Instead Benny got pretty, and game over. Now I dislike Bob's "the more worker bees the better" mentality. I want guys who will try things, and Benny can be one of those guys. Hopefully this game was a good hard lesson. There are times to be pretty, and there are times when the prettiest thing you can do is touch it once and move on.
meh...2 seconds is 2 seconds. what about the other 89 minutes 58 seconds. Sincerely, a soccer scout for a major european club
The couple had two sons, Jordan (named after Andriy's idol, Michael Jordan) who was born on October 29, 2004 and Christian, who was born on November 10, 2006. Wonder if they declared for the US yet...
God, this tired shit is the same shit we heard in 2001 when morons defended our style of play and clamored we simply couldn't live without worker bees like Chris Armas. Then O'brien, Donovan, and Beasley came along and said "f#ck you" to Figo, who was also, BTW, better than any US player..... EVER. This is a thread about one aspect of the game, players who are good at it, and players who are not. Contribute to that discussion, please.
Your description above is completely false in absolutely every regard. Mike Bradley intercepted an Italian pass and the ball bounced to Dempsey. Dempsey one-timed it in the air to Benny, who was being closed down by Rossi. Benny handled a very difficult pass in a textbook manner. He quickly settled the ball, turned and shielded it from Rossi. Rossi then fouled him from behind, knocking him over and dispossessing him. Benny did NOTHING wrong on that play. I will concede that the contact by Rossi was slight, but in my experience a foul generally gets called when a player is knocked down from behind and dispossessed, especially in that part of the field, no matter how slight the contact.
You're right - I rewatched the play. It was Dempsey who played the ball and made the run, and Bradley got in the way of that with an inexplicable run that clogged the area and made Benny turn. I was wrong. The foul, if you want to call it that, however, was soft. Almost always uncalled, and a heads up play by Rossi, IMO. We may just have to agree to disagree and move on there. Back to the point - I've been looking for highlights of Donovan's transitions and haven't come up with anything great. If anyone knows of any, please point me to them.
We can move on from whether or not it was a foul. Reasonable minds can certainly disagree on that. But do you still think Benny "dawdled" on that play? I can't think of anything he did wrong there. Is there something he should have done differently? A difficult ball was played to him in the air with a man closing him down. He settles it to the ground and turns to shield the ball. Assuming he was fouled (which we have established is my view), then it's hard to find fault with him. But even if he wasn't fouled, what should he have done differently? If it wasn't a foul, then it was simply a perfect steal on a bang-bang play. If anything, Dempsey shouldn't have put Benny in that position, but I don't see what Benny did wrong.
No, I agree with you. It was a tough pass from Dempsey, and Bradley running directly in front of Benny clogged the area leaving Benny with no options. His best play was to turn, shield, and try to find an open man.
The most likely outcome of that game was that Italy was going to kill us. That didn't happen, because we put players out there who played their guts out for us. The same players that are being thrown under the bus in these threads. The reason we lost that game is because we have players like Charlie Davies coming off the bench, who missed a wide open header in the last 5 minutes. Does Andrea Pirlo or Daniele Rossi miss the chance that Michael Bradley had in the first half? I doubt it. Does Rossi miss the chance that Altidore had in the first half? I doubt it. Our players aren't good enough right now. There was a talent gap. We can argue all we want about the coaching, it doesn't matter if our players aren't good enough to score when they have the opportunities to do so. In WC02 our players put away our chances. Our coach then wasn't some tactical genius. He put the best players out there and said-"go take care of business." We had better players in 02 than we do now. Brian McBride of 02 was signifantly better than Altidore 09. John O'Brien 02 was significantly better than Michael Bradley or Ricardo Clark 09. And sadly, Donovan and Beasley 02 were better than Donovan and Beasley 09. And people massively under-rate how good guys like Eddie Pope and Claudio Reyna were. You see Claudio Reyna getting thrown under the bus all over these USMNT boards, but he made the 02 WC All-Star team because he was a fantastic player. Beasley right now to me, is done at this level. He's a speed player who's lost his speed. If our WC02 squad played our Confed Cup 09 team, I think our WC02 squad wins 2-0. And that has to do with talent. Period.
No, the replay is really easy to see. Rossi reaches his left foot through Benny's legs, kicks the ball cleanly towards US goal (which is why he was off so fast), follow through catches Benny's right leg somewhat. He also gives him a bit of a push in the back with his left hand but it's minimal and only effective because Benny is leaning forward having lost the ball in his feet. That's almost never called a foul at this level, maybe at pub level. The kick just wasn't a foul, the hand is arguable at best. (edit: sorry to pile on, i'm seeing this late)
This is from BBC studio, nicely condensed version of first half. There's really just the two Donovan ones before the break, also showing Bradley getting in the transition. From 2:45 and on: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLIc6iMsmU4"]YouTube - USA V Italy 15.06.09 Highlights Fifa Confederations Cup 2009[/ame] The downside of this confidence from Bradley - before Italy's first it's Bradley who tries to pop forward after winning the ball to Dempsey. Dempsey plays a poor ball back to ... somebody. Bradley seems to be in position to take it down but whiffs or pulls back - I can only speculate he might have gotten called off by Benny behind him. Then Bradley is out of position and doesn't recover. I blame Benny a less on review than I did in real time, but he can't be dawdling (that is the word) if Bradley just pushed up, and he was oblivious to the danger of Rossi right behind him. He wasn't fouled. Dempsey and Bradley share the blame.
Good one! I think people understand what I was trying to say there. We have some young and inexperienced players out there. We started a 19 year-old forward in a confederations cup opener against the World Champs. A player who only played in 6 games last year. And while someday he could be one of the best USMNT to ever play, right now he's inferior to Brian McBride. We started Benny Feilhaber, who was a bench player for a mid-table Danish team. We started a central defender from the second division in England. I love our players more than anybody, but against Italy there's a talent gap. That doesn't mean Italy will always beat us. If we played 20 times, we'd probably win 4-5. There's a reason they're World Champs, and we struggle to beat Cuba on the road. They're better, more experienced pros. They started a large number of players who've won both the World Cup AND the Champions League (Gattuso, Pirlo, Gilardino, etc.) And almost all of them have been on Serie A winning teams. And we played this team toe-to-toe for a large part of that match despite being down a man. We have a lot to be proud of despite the fact that we lost.
Not even close to what I was saying. I wasn't talking about Jozy "looking good" I was talking about his decision to cross instead of shoot not having anything to do with him not playing for his club. I don't buy that he'll shoot against T&T despite not playing for his club but his decision not shoot against Italy was because he wasn't seeing action with his club.
I think something was lost in translation, because it sounds like they judge players by how they play on offense, on defense, and when the ball changes possession. What else is there, how they stand during the national anthems? In the "midfield" thread I talk about youth coaching. When I coached U7 and U8 we worked aLOT on this. In part because I think at that level you're coaching life more than coaching soccer, so I was coaching them to be confident and quick in their decisions. Good for EOG testing. But also because at that level, it's a winning tactic. So to me it was the best of both worlds, it was good for inside the sport and outside the sport. And one reason we succeeded is that the other coaches were spending their practices dribbling around cones and making sure the kids knew how to stay organized. Our opponents couldn't react for shit. I think adults coaching U-littles underestimate their kids. Make 'em play under pressure, not have them dribble in a circle. Soccer is a game of problem solving, but it's not coached like that. Even at higher levels, from what I've seen, it's not coached as a game of problem solving.
The level of opposition plays into the decision to shoot or cross in my opinion. Taking the shot against T&T versus taking the shot against Italy are two different things in my mind.
I think we're nit-picking a little. We had a bunch of exhausted players out there who made some mistakes. And despite being a man down for most of the game.................we still had our opportunities to get a result. I really do think that was a penalty in the 2nd half when Legrotallia (spelling?) took down Donovan in the box.