I agree that O'Brien could push Donovan out of the Amid spot and possibly out of the midfield, but Reyna's not going to do it.
The more I think about this, no frigging way. The guy proposes a central midfield that has 151 career caps, 8 goals. Ain't going to happen. No contending team in the World Cup will field a central midfield that is anywhere near so toothless. That type of approach is for USA circa 1990 losers. A Reyna/O'Brien duo would probably have enough juice, but how likely is that to be a possibility.
There are alot of lineup problems that crop up if you assume someone is about to start sucking. EJ emerged as a legit MLS and then Nats star, and then he got hurt, and now he's recovered. He didn't get his leg amputated and he's having to re-learn how to walk.
I think most folks on here would agree that LD played a better 2nd half than he played in the first half. With the substitution of a quality dmid acting as the link between the d and o he was able to receive the ball in more dangerous positions and make runs at the defense. I was impressed with ld in the 2nd half - after the pablo substition. All these calls for ld to forward becuase he cant cut it are a bit overreactionist. This is big soccer so that is expected but if we put reyna in the dmid slot or pablo in there, there would be no reason for us to bump ld up to forward. LD has said before he gets more pleasure out of creating. Let him create, we need him at 10. he is not a winger, or a 2 way mid. he is an amid, give him good support (i.e. not kerry zevagnin) and we will all see his quality come out
I disagree with Galacrep's assertion that LD must move forward. What LD must do is play Amid with a decent Dmid behind him. When Pablo came in, suddenly LD was making runs; when Convey arrived we looked even more dangerous. KZ's lack of step-up opens up possibilities for Olsen, and yes, Armas, should he recover. They both have bite and play quickly when on their games. But what we'd really like to see is... ---DMB/Convey---------------LD--- ---------Mastroe/JOB------Reyna---- ...and a freeform modified box, in which one of the dmids can go forward and the other slide over/back as cover. -SJB
I totally agree with this. The idea is not that we play the same exact formation by sliding LD to forward w/BMB and have Reyna play in the CM role. By doing this, we have a fundamentaly different squad on the field and our entire approach to the game will be different (please notice I'm not saying it's better or worse, just that it's different). I believe that you play either with LD behind 2 forwards or you play like we did vs Portugal in '02 a sort of hybrid 4-5-1 /4-2-3-1 where the 3 advanced MF stretch a line across the field and behind the lone true forward and attack the opposition at speed. You use those outside MF almost as pure wingers to stretch the opposing D. None of our forwards (including LD) are good enough in a pure soccer sense to create for themselves, especially vs Nesta/Cannavaro. We need to be fast, crisp and execute well to have a chance vs the likes of CR and Italy. Having Reyna play behind LD and BMB won't generate that super fast tempo through the center of the field to take advantage of our best qualities. Even in a decidedely poor game Wed, LD had 3-4 times where he got the ball in mF and burst through at speed. Throw in the 2-3 times he quickly transitioned to an overlapping Dolo on the right and this is what I'm talking about. We did have 1 goal, 3 dangerous free kicks and an EJ scoring chance, so we did create something. We just weren't crisp and our execution was poor.
Already defeated. God, I loved playing guys like you. One foot in the grave already. We ain't Italy, but we aren't chopped liver either. A little faith Francis.
Interesting article. Some good points. I am not 100% ready to give up on EJ Twellman or LD or Dempsey though. But it is a good question he put out there. I never was on the Zavagnin bus although I did not think he looked any worse than he did against Norway or Japan. Landon may be are best option at forward and that would allow Reyna Demps convey/beaz and Mastro to all be in the midfield together.
He didn't bother to mention that, in effect, the US played with a man down for over half the game. I never saw DMB show up, although the lineup had him in the game, supposedly. Lack of an effective left midfielder hurts a bit. In addition, Galarcep overlooked the fact that many balls were effectively played to the feet of both Twellman and Johnson and, with few exceptions, the Poland defenders simply stepped or reached around them to intercept or knock the ball away. Give me a break! In any reasonably high level game, the back to the goal attacker has to take some initiative and block the defender's access to the ball. There were some real problems in the game, to be sure, but they by no means stem from whether LD plays attacking midfield or forward.
...we won the freakin' game. Honestly what is the issue here? We beat a European World Cup team on European soil and everyone is treating it like it was some sort of disaster. The midfield, sans Beasley, did just fine. Beasley played awful and Kerry Zavagnin was out there, and we still played well enough to come closest to scoring in the 1st half. Then we controlled the run of play throughout the 2nd half. I just don't understand this hand wringing after what was a very nice win against a very good team.
Right. But given this problem with our forwards, who partners with McBride? That's partly the argument for moving Donovan to forward--not necessarily that he's the absolute best up there, but he's better than our other options, and it allows one of our otherwise-benched mids on the field instead of Johnson, Twellman, or Wolff.
It looked to me, in the first half mainly, that the entire US team was underestimating the Poland reaction time to movement. Dempsey, to name one, seemed to be attempting passes that were in the range of the Polish players, instead of just outside. The forwards seemed to think they had that one more step before they had to cut off the defender to get the ball. I believe Dempsey mentioned afterward that the game was yet another step up in speed from the previous ones, and that it took him a while to adjust. Fair enough, that's what these games are for. The US did seem to get better as the game went on. Any number of factors, but adjusting, once again, may have been one.
Agreed, Beasley didn't do as well, and Convey with Mastro changed the game. LD was starting to run once we were able to control some quality possesion in the midfield. Our midfield will be very important, and I think with JOB and Reyna in there, we'll be fine. Or Mastro btw.
He kisses his knuckles, points them at the sky and yells 'hallelujah!" while the scene fades to the end credits. In all honesty I think Donovan will be fine as an attacking midfielder or directly behind the strikers as long as he has a Reyna/O'Brien/Mastroeni behind him. He's still a young player and has plenty to learn, but their roles are different and having them behind him releives quite a bit of pressure.
If Galarcep really wanted to write a worthwhile article on questions raised in this match he should have addressed Beasley's poor play and Convey's good showing. He could have looked at each players club situation and how that might effect their form coming into the world cup. Maybe that was too much work for Ives. Donovan's play at forward against Mexico and TnT sure did dispute this "need" but Ives forgot about these games. It's anoying that a reporter who gets paid to write about soccer comes up with something that reads like a bad post on a message board, especially that last paragraph. "finding a way to win" will be enough come June, it means the Nats won. He's getting us to read and post about his articles so I guess he is doing his job, even if they are pretty much crap.
I think part of what drove the article was a perception that we need better performances from our forwards, and one way to get it is have Donovan play there. Anyway one thing we lack in the midfield is someone who shoots the ball well enough to score from 18 to 35 yards out. Mathis provided that to us before as a forward. I think Eddie Lewis has that capability but the left back position makes it harder. Donovan provides that. He is very dangerous from around the top of the box, but not if he plays forward. Olsen had a goal like that against the Guats, but we don't see it very often on the USMNT. Another reason I like Donovan as an A-Mid.
This was a like a pre-season win in the NFL... looks nice on a resume but ultimately meaningless resultwise. All that matters is how your players looked and some of them looked like crap. Here's further area for concern. On their "homestand", the offense looked fine, the defense was a little underwhelming. Then, after one away game vs. a semi-decent Euro squad, the offense virtually disappears. What does it say about the "barrage of goals" vs. Norway, Japan and Guatemala?
What it says is that the Defenders couldn't pass that day. And like Bruce said, we "had some guys who weren't comfortable enough on the ball and gave away possession too easily." Those guys were the back four and Beasley - ironically all Euros. I swear that Galarcep article was nothing more than a collection of BS chicken little posts. Huss needs to get his rights money from Ives.
Lewis assisted, or at least served a ball for the only score. 'Dolo was very active in the first half. Clearly, the two of them are far more potent offensively than Dunivant and Hejduk. But all of a sudden, Zavagnin had no time on the ball and ooops .....
I think Dolo played well. I think Lewis played very CCC. This means never ever passing the ball to a central midfielder in the first half, but always dangerous on the cross. Granted he doesn't do this normally with the USMNT, but he did Wed. I don't quite understand the last statement re: Zav.
And some didn't, and all and all we played well enough to win a game against a team good enough to qualify for the World Cup out of Europe. I mean I know the results don't matter per se, but they are a good general indication of how well the team as a whole played. The team played well enough to beat a good team under difficult circumstances. The reactions I've seen have behaved as if this was some sort of epic disaster and we were lucky they didn't boo us stright out of the country. I don't get it.
"Now he's recovered"--no, he HASN'T. That's just it--he's nowhere near where he was a year ago. It's still an open question whether EJ will get that back before June. What about that fact don't you understand? On current form, EJ doesn't start in the World Cup.