US-Mexico, the defense (R)

I was very impressed with Alvarado in his individual defending and clean up play. He's a player to watch for sure... Omar is still a hot mess multiple times per game, but makes up for it with his strength and solid tackling ability. The Shea project is coming along nicely and this was a good match for confidence building.

 

Thought Alvarado was all over the place. Impressive.

 

Best tackling I have EVER seen from him.
Granted Mexico wasn't at its best, but our D was solid. 1-2 real mistakes the whole game in our defensive third?
Really impressed with Ventura Alvarado. I like him to start in the Gold Cup.

 

that was the best cb performance since the world cup omar just put in. and alvarados might be the second best.

and he was fine, but man- yarbrough loves falling on the ball like hejduk loved a diving header

 

Best it has been in a while.

 

Diskerud has made it his mission to play both sides of the field. He is getting better and better at it. He is our best ball winner in the midfield hands down.

 

Alvarado from around the 30th minute on was really solid and in the second half I thought he was the better of the two CBs. Gonzo was great in the first. He got out of position some in the second.

 

Brek Shea is playing so strongly and with confidence. He looks more and more like a lock at left back.

 

I thought he was pretty bad in the first half offensively, but very good defensively. I feel like he picked it up a bit in the second half going forward. He had some nice sequences with Mix.

 

I thought it his best defensive game in awhile and that's where I need to see him improve, so I was happy.

 

I thought Yedlin was impressive over the course of 90 mins, ran as much in injury time as he did in the first minute. sloppy with his first touch, and a little slow to recognize sometimes, but a very promising performance. He was definitely more solid than he has been defensively, the incisive touch/pass/dribble didn't seem to be there for him though, especially in the first half.

garza was solid if not unspectacular, mexico didn't challenge him too much, although alvarado had to bail him out once or twice. legolas showed some promise, if he can continue to make his trademark runs, and shore up defensively a little bit, it's conceivable he could be a long-term answer at lb

 

It was just a friendly against Mexico's B team, but I'd have to say that Gonzalez and Alvarado earned another start together. Shea should also be our starting LB

 

Nervous about his positioning. Still seems to overly rely on his speed to catch up to the play, which makes me nervous against higher quality opposition.

 

I put this in the JK thread, but hopefully the performance of our CBs eliminates the Jones at CB experiment.

 

Just where the heck does Geoff Cameron fit it now though. Different thread I suppose.

 

Not on the Gold Cup roster if we were being fair.

 

No way. He's far too valuable as a utility man, if nothing else. He can play CB, RB, DM, CM. If he's healthy, he's on the roster. Period.

 

It's always hard to rate the centerbacks on the first viewing, but in my mind Gonzalez was dominant in the air and Alvarado was extremely mobile, sliding over to cover for Yedling/Garza/Shea repeatedly.

I thought Yedlin was a beast down the right, and on a clean playing surface he surely would have looked even better.

 

Yedlin had good periods of disciplined positional play, but started to drift midway in the second half until Evans came in. Personally, I would like to see a pure positional performance from Yedlin before he gains my full confidence. There was a moment where he was found missing by a Mexican long ball and that left a winger versus Omar in open space - not a good situation.

Evans did about as much as you can in a defensive substitute appearance with a nice tackle and intelligence in assimilating quickly.

 

The backline looked like a cohesive unit tonight, something we haven't seen since...well a long time. Yedlin is still too positionally unsound for me to rate him as the savior of our defense. He's fast, but often uses that speed to make up for being out of place. He will have to improve that in the very near future. Both LB and RB are kind of "experimental" right now, and that concerned me coming into the match, but they were solid facing a very mediocre Mexico.

 

Was that the one where the guy crossed it and yedlin was behind gonzo and cleared it out?

 

Both center backs looked good, Shea looks like he's developing into a solid left back. For me Garza is on a bit of a downward slide. When he first got calls, I thought he looked solid, but his last couple games have been worrying and you can see teams targeting his side out there. Yedlin still looks raw, hopefully he will get more polished over the next year or two. He's had some real experience by now, needs to get beyond potential and physical tools and turn into an automatic for us.

I'm actually worried about our goalkeeping. With Howard taking off and Guzan unavailable, the guys we have left are pretty poor in my estimation. Rimando almost gifted a goal playing around back there and had otherwise nothing to do. Yarbrough only had to make one play and he punched it into the ground and then ran way out of his goal for no reason and got lucky not to be punished. Both misplayed passes out of the back more than once. After Howard and Guzan I see nothing in the pipeline that inspires confidence.

 

If we had an important match tomorrow, I'd have him starting at RB. He is consistently starting in the premier league at that spot. Chandler is a bit shaky, but at least he is getting minutes consistently well.