Kudos to the US team. Professional display; they had great energy, initiative and game management for 85 minutes! Them, decided to do a cardio stress test of American fans. Iran didn't show energy or urgency for most of the game IMO. Too technically limited to get a result agains a high intensity US. US vs NED should be an interesting game.
There's no reason why the Saudis can't beat Mexico. Mexico has been atrocious and hasn't even scored a goal, and the Saudis will have the crowd behind them. I can easily see the Saudis winning....
World cup is definately not good for your cardiovascular health. It's a taxing to the system we enjoy putting ourselves through.
Since I began to follow soccer in 1990, I've been stressed when Côte d'Ivoire plays a match, Africa Cup of Nations and FIFA World Cup especially.
#USA next focus should be a striker. Sargent and Wright is this team biggest let down. Going to be difficult for the USA to find a up and coming striker. They had Jonathan Davids but he seem set for Canada for a while. Now til 2026 for a striker is on. #FIFAWorldCup— Ray (@RayD322) November 29, 2022
It was a game of 2 halves. Iran had more dangerous chances. But USA deserved the win, because typically the better team attacks earlier and scores first. After that USA defended in the 2nd half after getting their goal. But USA did a bit of small team mentality, after they were up 1-0 they time wasted a bit, even though a single goal could have eliminated them... typically that time wasting like passing back to the keeper is normal and justified but if you do it in a game where a draw gives the opponent the edge over you and you need to win (not just draw) to survive and you are only up by 1 goal that is a bit of a small team mentality and shows you respect your opponent a bit too much, and also USA bunkered in the last 20 mins or so again when they were only 1-0 up, so that these reasons showed it was a close match, so it is a bit silly to say it should have ended 2-0 or 3-0.. But if it was a draw it would have been fair as well. Unfortunately we played the first half with 10 men unnecessarily due to CQs horrible choice to keep a useless injured Azmoun on the pitch (after he already made the same mistake against Wales, but Wales are weaker than USA so we were still able to get somthing out of that match regardless), and as soon as he dropped him we began to play in the 2nd half and had a 2-3 chances that could have easily been goals, but it was too late. Overall 1-0 is reflective of the game and I can't say the US didn't deserve it, but it wouldn't have been that unreasonable for it to have finished as a draw either.
Not again. You had just 1 shot on goal the entire match. Iranians have been saying the above for three decades whenever they lose.
Not that Iran under CQ would do any better, but USA is not going to do anything against Netherlands. It's not impossible to draw and advance on penalties, but Netherlands will most likely win. This US team is fast and passes well but they are not that good at finishing and don't have the best defense either, and this simply won't be good enough against a team like Netherlands.
Holland has been poor in the opening rounds, unless they can up their game I favor the US in that match.
I go back to the September window when the USMNT really looked poor. At the time, in terms of players, the US didn't have Pulisic but it had Reyna in his place. The US didn't have Mussah but had Adams and McKennie. The US had Dest as a fullback but Ream wasn't one the CBs (I wasn't even aware of him TBH). What I saw from those who did play + the actual ratings these players were getting when they played for their clubs + the overall US record in qualifying, made me genuinely feel America's young players were so over-hyped. I had occasionally seen Pulisic be a handful in other contexts so I wasn't ready to dismiss him and I had heard good things about Mussah without actually seeing enough of him so I didn't write off the possibility he might be good too. But overall, until this tournament got underway, I was convinced the only way Iran couldn't get out of its group was for the off-the-field issues to torpedo its chances. In this context, the biggest surprises for me were how much incomparably better and more interesting McKennie (who was awful in September), Adams (who wasn't anything like the nearly world class midfielder he showed in these games) and Dest (who went from a dime-a-dozen fullback with defensive weaknesses to being quite a handful in Qatar) were showing. Add Pulisic and Mussah whom I had not dismissed a priori (and had showed their worth in the first 2 games already), despite doing my best to look for confirmation of my earlier views, I kind realized that even with just a draw being enough for Iran, there was a very good chance we wouldn't get that draw. That said, some real objective analysis of why the US has looked more like its September self when Pulisic in particular has come out of its lineup might be in order.
Sargent does a great job at pressure, hold up, an ok job at distribution of the ball. He makes runs, but gets little service.
I think the Aussie's have a shot and Portugal is already in & could rest players. A result vs Spain is gonna be tough for Japan.
The one thing Iranian players don't lack is technical ability. What Iran does lack is speed among its CBs and d-mids. That forces Iran to usually play very compact in the back or risk being severely punished at the counter when it doesn't. It also means Iran's players are usually isolated and out-numbered when they get the ball outside their own box. Otherwise, give the ball to these players and almost any opponent on a small pitch where speed doesn't count as much, and you will quickly discover how absolutely clueless your comment is. You don't need to take my word for it either: ask any of the legion of foreign coaches who have worked in Iran and who have previously coached even some of the very best players in the world elsewhere, and they will tell you the same thing. In fact, in football's poor cousins played on small pitches like futsal or beach soccer, Iran is among the very best in the world for precisely that reason.
I couldn't find stats for dribbling but I didn't see any Iranian player consistently beating down opponents one on one. We do have pass accuracy and for three games IRN was very poor. Game----------Passes-----Pass Accuracy IRN x ENG-----215---------------66% IRN x WAL-----298---------------66% IRN x USA-----466---------------77% You improved against USA but still bellow 80%. Low passing accuracy shows limited technical skills, IMHO. Beyond that, I didn't see any consistent dribbling, above average first touch or off the ball runs. IRN did disrupt US passing a bit but US reached 474 passes (83%), so even in defense I wouldn't consider IRN technically gifted.
Passing accuracy often reflects not skills but team tactics (ratio of high to low ratio passes attempted, with teams that play directly as opposed to those using build up from the back relying on more low percentage passes; available outlets depending on whether you are using a low or high block, etc). Otherwise, in other teams using different tactics, Iran's players show very high passing accuracy percentages. For instance, check the passing accuracy percentages for Iranian players featured in the UCL or Eropa league and compare their stats to when they play for Iran. Since I have compared the stats for Iran's other right back (Sadegh Moharrami, who didn't start in our last 2 games but did in our first against Dest, the USMNT fullback in the same UCL group, I will repost them here. Dest, incidentally has had an excellent tournament). Sergiño Dest Milan Defender Key stats 4 Matches played 0 Goals Tackles 0.25 avg. per match Balls recovered 2 avg. per match Top speed (km/h) 32.46 avg. per match Distance covered (km) 6.28 avg. per match Distribution 82.5 (%) Passing accuracy ... Overall Ranking: 545 Sadegh Moharrami Dinamo Zagreb Defender Key stats 6 Matches played 0 Goals Tackles 1.67 avg. per match Balls recovered 2 avg. per match Top speed (km/h) 31.57 avg. per match Distance covered (km) 7.91 avg. per match ... Distribution 86.7 (%) Passing accuracy ... Overall Ranking: 381
You can do the same for the respective left flank forwards for the 2 teams, Taremi and Pulisic. Pulisic had an excellent game; Taremi didn't. But that is not because Taremi's technical skills are "limited"!
US was pretty exciting, fast explosive attacks. It’s obviously a very athletic team, the game against the Netherlands should be a good one! Hope the US is at full strength because losing Pulisic and McKennie would be rough