Lichaj is basically ready to take over for Dolo. Just needs a little more seasoning. I'm a little worried about our wide midfielder pipeline though. Seems like we need Gatt and/or Gyau to pan out. A lot can happen in two years though.
We are in trouble. In the 1st half only 4 shots in 40 minutes. Repeating one of the two major weaknesses, too few shots on goal (the other is not moving the ball out of the back fast enough) in the Antigua match. Don't think Edu is working out paired with Jones and Bradley and shouldn't be used against Jamaica. Torres would be much better? Our attack in the box is crippled by the new JK-inspired extra pass. Couldn't Bradley just have taken the shot instead of passing the ball that last time? We know the refereeing is always bogus and ridiculous in away matches. We could be as nasty as the enemy but we'd be carded.
Obviously you don't have any previous experience with CONCACRAP qualifying. It's always a roller coaster. A point in Guatamala is a point toward the next round. How many games have we won in Guatemala prior to this in the last 20+ years? I think it's one. You can gnash your teeth and beat your head all you want about an inferior opponent, but the resulst are what they are. There is a reason we dropped from top 15 to top 30 in the world - we really aren't all that awesome. We should qualify from here - but it will take some work.
We learned tonight that Fabian Johnson is a better offensive left back than defensive left back. He got turned more than a few times.
It weird. I really felt like it was a different team the second half. The first half we felt relatively in control, keeping our head when fouled, seemed to have the ref a bit on our side - or at least fairly even. The we came out of the tunnel in the 2nd half like we the USMNT circa 1990. No touch. No guile on the ball. No control of the flow. I had a lousy feed, so it was hard to really read what happened, but it felt a complete tilt of the field. Nerves maybe? Or fatigue? Or just "one of those things?" A tie is no disaster on the road, but what felt like a lack of confidence in the second half is a bit troubling.
Modern mass communications and global entertainment tends to have that effect on a lot of people... oop:
Does it count towards qualifying? That is what I think was the first poster's intent [the answer is NO]
Reading this post is hilarious...90% of the posters are damn fanatics and treat the USMNT like if it was Brazil or a top 10 team in the world (w/ comments like 3rd world country, Guatemalan divings, the same 'superiority' shenanigans, etc)...wake up people, please see the environment Mexico (los padres de la region) had to face in playing ES in getting bombarded with water pellets and huge damn laser and coming out with a 2-1 result...crap I'm half Guatemalan and this is one of the worst Guatemalan generations if I compare it to the 2006 or 2002 group...btw the 2002 we took you to Mazatenango which was a close proximity stadium which believe me would had made Klinsi and the German boys sh#@ their pants!
Honestly the only real negative I see is our in/near the box play. It looked like it was the first time Dempsey, Gomez, Bradley, Altidore, Donovan, and Edu ever met EVER up there. It takes something special and basically zero margin to make that final short pass etc and it just didn't exist - the channels were all there but either were not passed to or were not run to.
That's not apples to apples because of home vs away. Point that everyone was making was that Guatemala at Guatemala was probably going to be our toughest game. I don't know why that's suddenly being argued against now; no one seemed to have a problem with that idea before this game.