I am currently watching France and China in a Friendly, and after watching Cisse go down with what looked like a broken leg (tough break for the French) (Ask me if I care) I think Bruce's "Gestalt" strategy has always been to start the tournament as healthy as possible. The send-off series was meaningless, other to evaluate a few players (such as EJ who proved he is in ascoring drought). Funny how all of the smart managers of Europe </sarcasm off>, who scheduled all of these tough pre-cup tournament opponents, have serious injury problems. What the hell was Bruce thinking? Dumb American.
i think injuries can happen whomever you play... did england lose anyone against jamaica... I think arena was more concerned getting the squad cohesive over time, and didn't want to do want mexico did, go to europe 10 days earlier than the usa did.... also, most of the final 23 have had big time experience against quality sides, so having a marginally better send off series might not have yielded an aprecciably measureable improvement in the squad...
Send off series was to build confidence, get in playing shape and also to make money for the federation. The reason so many European coaches have injury problems is there players have all been playing since last August. It's bound to happen, we're helped in that Reyna got hurt earlier, JOB timed it just right and that the MLS players are just hitting mid season stride.
Friendlies Scheduling After seeing many of the other teams play through their friendlies it seems that Bruce decided to go his own way as far a scheduling friendlies. Our serious friendlies were much earlier than most teams and we played at home instead of going over there earlier and playing matches there as most non-Euro participants did. Of course there was the Angola match but that was supposedly a practice. Will this affect match fitness? Or will it set us up to be healthier and better rested? Was this because of the tight security and they didn't want to live in that bubble for more than they had to? Is this part of the Bruce secrecy campaign? Naturally there are risks in any friendly but is seems also that there have been more injuries in friendlies leading up to the cup than other years. Maybe there were in the past but I just didn't follow it closely enough. It will be interesting to see how the friendly scheduling pans out for us and other teams.
Re: Friendlies Scheduling I agree, it will be interesting, particularly if we think a clear lesson can be drawn. I'll go out on a limb now and predict that at least a small handful of BS posters will be giving us such a lesson long before the WC has even concluded. Don't blink next week or you might miss it. If you haven't already done so, you might want to check out the thread 'stuck' at the top of the N&A page, which included some comments about 'friendly' scheduling. There was also a lot of comment on certain threads right before the Morocco game, but you would have to do some digging - those threads are long gone now.
US Warm-up Confusion I know there must be people with some insight into the US friendly, warm-up strategy. As I see how these teams playing their final warm-up this week, something comes to mind. While all the other teams have played 4 or 5 warm up games, the US only played 3. Those 3 were weak teams. The other teams are playing against other qualified teams or teams that just missed. Now Bruce said something about a bad calendar. How come the other teams do not have the same bad calendar? Bruce and analyst state half the US team is newbie’s that must be better incorporated. This is all the more reason there should be more warm ups. Bruce is still tinkering with the line up. Since many of these guys have not played together extensively, then when is that supposed to happen ? In the lead up to Korea, Bruce used a team that had played together a lot in qualifying. Yet, they still had several warm ups against club and good international teams. It always makes me nervous when I hear excuses. Knowledgeable people, please share what was the US plan or problem.
Re: US Warm-up Confusion I thought we had the same number of run up games and then lost to the Charleston Battery before the '02 cup.... We beat the hell out of the battery this year.
Re: US Warm-up Confusion Please see USMN&A over the past 6 months for a thorough, if annoying, explanation.
Re: US Warm-up Confusion Sure, you could say that the Angola match was intended for both teams to get in match practice while avoiding injury - I'm sure both we and the Angolans were at least as concerned with not getting hurt as with winning the game. However, the overall argument falls apart as follows: all three of our Send-Off Series opponents were very physical - Morocco going all-out to win (they certainly outworked us), but Venezuela and Latvia simply hacking us down left and right. We lost Cory Gibbs as a result of something that happened vs. Morocco, and I think we were lucky to get out of the Venezuela and Latvia games without another injury.
As far as US friendlies, the choice of opponents was limited by the fact the World Cup is in Europe this year. Arena (and USSF) wanted the 3 games in US so players could train and prepare here at home. None of the teams in Europe who are qualified was going to fly over here, play, and fly back to Europe. For Korea/japan, teams were willing to play in US because it was on the way to the WC. I think this limited some of the options of US opponents.