You and my husband would get along, as he also downplays Arena's accomplishments, and gets frustrated with the Galaxy's play a lot - like over the last two games where they bunkered down hard in the second half. What you're saying about these two coaches is that they aren't perfect and their teams don't play perfectly. Bruce has his flaws. Nothing matters to him except positioning for and preparing for the playoffs. Other competitions and regular league games, especially early in the season, are certainly secondary, and as fans that can be tough to watch. Bradley's big flaw is his stoic demeanor - he's not charismatic and a salesman for the game. I think we should have a new coach as well. But we should be so lucky as to have the quality and the positive results that we experienced under Bruce and Bob. Really, it's a long shot. I hope we get lucky.
Great points. "Against the run of play" is closer to it. I think the "fluke" part is that he has three international goals: game winner against netherlands in Amsterdam, game winner against Germany in Germany, and the tying goal here. Not only can he finish, but he picks his moments brilliantly!
The free kick taken by Michael Bradley was also very good. I know he plays in lowly MLS and wasn't born in Mighty Europe, but com'on, give the guy some credit for that.
Assuming you are talking about the one that got parried away from the lower corner: That was a fantastic free kick. The goalie actually made a pretty good save.
Phil is in his 2nd year, 70 years old, and now in the GM/president role, not coach anymore. He never was putting rosters together, just managing personalities and putting players in positions to succeed after they were there. Hard to argue he didn't do those things well to win championships as efficiently as they did. Spoelstra went 2 of 4 with the Big 3 in Miami, and had a losing record afterward with Wade, Bosh, Dragic, Whiteside, etc. cycling in and out and in a weak east. Phil did still win pretty big in Chicago when Jordan went on hiatus. Bruce was hardly bereft of talent with the U.S., DCU, and LA. But that's partly to his credit, he won multiple titles with both clubs, he won the biggest anyone ever has with the U.S. over an extended period, and he is still winning this year without Donovan. He still has his stars, but Bruce did an excellent job of identifying Lletget's talent and putting him in position to succeed. Found/developed Zardes, and put him on the wing where his lack of touch, quick reads, and creativity can be hidden more. Gave Rogers a 2nd chance and employed him at LB where he can use his speed and has the spaces trailing the play or overlapping where his tunnel vision doesn't hurt as much. He identified Omar. He identified Juninho and Leonardo as youngish guys not playing in Brazil and he's leaned on them for years. The academy is strong. Romney has done well for a rook. Lassiter, McBean, Jamison, and Villarreal show promise. For the most part these are Americans he's identifying and putting in positions to succeed. Like when he played Donovan at his best position of CAM, found Beasley early, found Mastroeni, Clint Mathis, Sanneh played his best ever ball under him, he played a 3-5-2 against the Germans where we could use our speed and connect on the counter with 3 attackers but still be balanced in defending responsibly. Klinsmann wouldn't have done most of that with his policy of only calling new MLS players in January camp if at all, seeing Cameron look as great as he did at CDM and the team without Jones vs. Panama in '13 but then still removing Cameron and spamming Jones until he's super old, seeing the team look good in the 3-5-2 at Chile the start of this year but going away from it after the 1st half and never seeing it again even though it also theoretically fits our pool and tactics against better opposition, and only playing 1 or 2 attackers max against better opposition and with little width. And I hardly think it wouldn't signal progress going back to Bruce at this time. It took Bruce 7-8 years to start failing due to the loyalties to players like Reyna. But who would he be loyal to now 9-10 years later, and for the next 2-3? There's little that is remaining now, let alone that could be in 2018. Who is he going to be irrationally loyal to - a 28-31 year old (barely) LWB/LB in Robbie Rogers? That wouldn't be so bad, when we were starting Jonathan Bornstein a few years ago, and are starting a 33 year old Beasley now. You don't worry about those loyalties developing much to speak of in those 2-3 years. Plus his belief in MLS and the player who grew up in the States nicely complements Klinsmann's previous opposite philosophy to take full advantage of the player pool. While he'd allow us time to actually evaluate new coaches like Marsch, Pareja, and Kreis properly. If we went in another direction now it'd have to be Vermes almost. Hiring Bruce for the next 2-3 years I think would prove to be a great move for the present and future of the U.S. program.
I've already jumped on wixon for this, but seriously? The level of Mexico was very good, but the US was terrible. Sorry, you don't know soccer if you think the level of play of the US was good in this game.
Wow that was rather rude. I am well aware of the fact that we were drastically outplayed. But I was referring to the goals scored, all of Mexico's and Yedlin's assist/Wood's finish were all very pretty goals. We were completely overrun in the midfield, absolutely lacking in creativity, clumsy in possession (especially in the final third when we were lucky enough to actually get there), and generally unable to hold possession for sustained periods. My point was that the fans got what they wanted in terms of the quantity and quality of the goals. In that sense the level of play was on par with any rivalry in world soccer. I admit that was quite ambiguous.
Um. Some people wish it were even, but no. Olympics, Gold Cup, Confederation Cup, loss streak at home... No, Klinnsmann is plowing new ground. You have to go back decades to find some coach who has failed at the rate he has failed.
Given what he had to work with, Klinsmann is in the running for the worst US manager every...going right back to the 19th Century. Now if that doesn't make him The One I don't know what would.....
Stu Holden also pretty much confirmed what Lahm said, although he tried to make it seem as nice as possible. It was easy to decipher that he was saying Klinsmann is a cheerleader not a coach. Cameron has consistently been outplayed at CB by Besler and Gonzalez over the last few years. Does every thread need to become anti-MLS?
First we didn't...you cherry picked which games were important. Second we didn't...they each had different players they could use and different opponents Third we didn't...Bob took a team that bombed out of the World Cup and improved; JK took a team that was at a level and kept it to the same level for 3 years (and suddenly this year is dropping like a stone)
Because Cam wasn't playing cb for club and we always said JK was making a mistake playing him at cb for that reason.
There were some folks who didn't want to include the Confederations Cup for Bob. Don't think that was you though. Thinking about it, while ignoring Juergen's performances during Qualifying and the World Cup would be unfair, his recent important matches are telling because he had a while after the World Cup to change out players and fix some issues he may have noticed. But over a year after the Ghana game, our team was almost the exact same and didn't look any better. That, for me, shouts that Juergen didn't make the most of the friendlies leading up to the Gold Cup and afterwards. Bob had similar issues when we were using the same outdated 4-4-2/4-2-2-2 and ended up losing to Panama. His only changes were a new youngster in the backline with Tim Ream and one up front in Juan Agudelo. The counter argument is that our pool just doesn't have the players. I fundamentally believe that's a load of crap. I'd love to see Brucey back in action. I agree on that point about the 3-5-2. Both the goals we scored in that game were well worked and well finished. We needed to tighten things up along the backline, sure, but I think the biggest change that needed to be made was obviously removing Jermaine Jones. Geoff Cameron would have been absolutely perfect or that sweeper role, possibly transitioning us from a back three to a back four with movement from between the centerbacks. We lack a steady RCB if Geoff is the middle of the three, but THATS what experimentation is for. Not Alejandro Bedoya as a holder before the biggest game of the year.
JK not going anywhere: http://www.sounderatheart.com/2015/10/16/9557281/brad-evans-on-usmnt-were-gonna-find-another-peak Jurgen Klinsmann told USMNT players 'I'm not leaving' "Jurgen's message was, 'I'm not leaving when things aren't going well, I'm not going to leave this team because things aren't going my way or our way,'" Evans recounted. "That was the last message to the group, that he's going to continue to fight and he's going to continue to push with us. It was a positive message moving forward that I think resonated with the guys, that he's got our full backing even though the two results didn't go our way. I think moving forward, we're going to find another peak. That's the bottom line." ---- Told ya. We're stuck with the guy. Who knows until when.
He's a good player. I just don't think he's been better over the course of his international career. If he was playing full-time at DM, I think that would've been very good.
That's a good message to give to the team, and I like that he included himself in the team. Unfortunately, if he didn't take any reflection on his individual errors, anyone that already was on the fence about him I don't see getting warm fuzzies and likely rolled their eyes at this. Kinda reads like, "more of the same." Also, he said this to the team but it's in contradiction to the "youth movement" that is now being mentioned in several articles. As in the "us" that he's talking about here isn't really "us" as he's likely to jettison several players, and we'll see how they feel about the "us" when some players won't be called into the next camp. Then again, what he says in the press is sometimes outright misleading, so there is that.
Your post was actually one of the worst posts I've seen in the history of big soccer. And I have been on here since the 1990s. You claimed the confed cup final vs Brazil was a match that didn't count. You claimed continental cup matches against our rival Mexico were matches that didn't count. You claimed matches in qualifying after we were already qualified counted. I was wondering if a monkey was pressing random letters and it just happened to come out coherent because no person with an IQ above 50 could honestly believe your criteria were matching criteria in any way shape or form it was just cherry picked crap. Welcome to school, come back tomorrow to learn more.
Funny - arena said the same thing. Any game but a qualifier or wc match has too many variables to be consistent. B team players, Howard on requestrd sabbatical, Cameron on requested sabbatical The best pure marches to judge performancr are World Cup related. So my challenge remains - name one . I think you're acting like a child simply because you can't. That's ok. You'll recover