Tiffany Milbrett on the beautiful game

Discussion in 'Soccer in the USA' started by appoo, Feb 17, 2004.

  1. appoo

    appoo Member+

    Jul 30, 2001
    USA
    http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/soccer/02/16/milbrett.quits.sa/

    Yes I know she is a girl, and yes I know that this probably belongs in USA Women, but bear with me. Soccer is still Soccer and I thought she had a lot of great things to say about how a player should approach the game in general. This is the part that struck me the most

    I thought this was a great quote. I wonder, do any of our players think like this? Or are they also brought up into too much of a structure?

    this almost flys directly against Bruce Arena's philosophy of having the most versatile players on the field. In Bruce's system you always see his forwards dropping back to defend, and his defenders coming forward to attack. But who has the better approach? I mean Tiffany Milbrett is basically the best female soccer player in the world and she's a striker. Anyway, I thought this stuff was pretty thought provoking
     
  2. dcrpoop

    dcrpoop BigSoccer Yellow Card

    Dec 15, 2000
    Hell'sKitchen is my
    Tiffany who? Didn't she write a song or something?
     
  3. appoo

    appoo Member+

    Jul 30, 2001
    USA
    you know, if you don't care then don't comment
     
  4. sch2383

    sch2383 New Member

    Feb 14, 2003
    Northern Virginia
    Re: Re: Tiffany Milbrett on the beautiful game

    Who gives a fvck what this midget thinks?
     
  5. Noah Dahl

    Noah Dahl New Member

    Nov 1, 2001
    Pottersville
    She was brilliant, these are interesting comments and I hear ya.
     
  6. striker

    striker Member+

    Aug 4, 1999
    Re: Re: Re: Tiffany Milbrett on the beautiful game

    Apparently, you did!!
     
  7. Kaiser

    Kaiser New Member

    Nov 12, 2000
    dark side of the moo
    milly and CP were our most dangerous duo up front just before miss LPGA took over and blew the WC at home, I'm glad to hear milly speaking out. I love her can someone out there hook me up?
     
  8. dcrpoop

    dcrpoop BigSoccer Yellow Card

    Dec 15, 2000
    Hell'sKitchen is my
    This thread is as much of a waste of time as wymns soccer, later. Can we keep all of these posts in woymns soccer or in wusa or some other dead flatliner post that no cares about and that we're not bothered by.
     
  9. nancyb

    nancyb Member

    Jun 30, 2000
    Falls Church, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    How about Soccer in the US?

    A couple of nits:

    It's Tiffeny. And she's what, 27? Not a girl anymore. I always point Tiffeny as role model for my daughter since Tiffeny is only 5'1" and my daughter will be lucky to top 5'.
     
  10. ur_land

    ur_land New Member

    Aug 1, 2002
    Boulder, CO
    Ok, great, you don't like women's soccer. Fine. Stop posting and go read about shoes in the players forum or something. But I think that this thread is appropriate for this forum, given how apoo related it to Arena's coaching philosophy.

    I think that Arena is looking for a happy medium between fully static positions (what Milbrett may have been advocating) and total football (whch woked/works great for the dutch. I don't think the US has the players (yet) to be great at either a fully static system where we rely on our forwards to score all our goals and our mids to do all of the possession and creating. As long as we rely on set pieces and the counterateck to do a lot of our damage, we will need mids and defenders who can overlap. Personally, I'd love to see us develop towards a possession/total football kind of style where our defenders attack and then defend and switch fluidly with all of our other positions. But I think that that's a loooong way away (requiring several structural changes in MLS and especcialy youth soccer).

    But interesting words from a good striker. Good thread.
     
  11. Noah Dahl

    Noah Dahl New Member

    Nov 1, 2001
    Pottersville
    well it sounds like she's speaking from frustration, but it would've come across more legit 4 years ago.

    Regardless, I recognize the comparison to Arena. We've been discussing Mathis on another board - you know, how he's been torching the Bundesliga and stuff - and he's a bit like a Milbrett. Too bad he was just another tool on our World Cup team, but I can't argue too much with our success.
     
  12. appoo

    appoo Member+

    Jul 30, 2001
    USA
    yea but I think a lot of our success in WC02 came from our combination of better than average athletecism and average skill. We simply wore down Mexico in the Quarterfinal. But I thought from ConFed Cup that our forwards were concentrating waay to much on dropping back into the midfield to play defense. I don't have many problems with Arena, but one of them is that he sacrifices skill for versatility. He won't put in Gregg Vanney for left back because he doesn't attack well enough, so he sacrifices Bobby's attacking prowess out of the midfield so he can play Leftback.
     
  13. appoo

    appoo Member+

    Jul 30, 2001
    USA
    Re: Re: Tiffany Milbrett on the beautiful game

    well this is what I think is the aim. But will it sacrifice a tremendous attacking midfielder with poor defending skills, for a guy with decent defending skills and only average attacking skill?
     
  14. miked9

    miked9 Member+

    May 4, 2000
    Philadelphia
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Re: Re: Tiffany Milbrett on the beautiful game

    I would agree with this in any of our positive results vs Mexico (particularly the WCQ win in columbus); and any of our good results in the wc...any but the WC quarter win. That game was played with a lot more emphasis on conserving energy, since Mexico had the advantage of an extra day's rest. We absorbed a lot of pressure in that game, while traditionally against Mexico we pressure every ball and try to force mistakes to counter with speed.

    Milbrett's comments are valid. I'd venture to say she knows the game as good or better than any of us BigSoccer knuckleheads. Flexibility is important but it's equally important to understand what your players do best and put them in the position to do that for you. I think Bruce does well in this.
     
  15. appoo

    appoo Member+

    Jul 30, 2001
    USA
    Re: Re: Re: Tiffany Milbrett on the beautiful game

    Which is the reason I initially posted this in USA Men. I wanted to get a discussion going about how our own strikers think and how Bruce likes to set his team up. There's a theory out there that some of our attackers are much to used to a structured environment.
     

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