First lets thank good for Donovan. Noonan looks like he can finish some, Beasily can Finish some, Johnson can definately finish, McBride can finish. It would be nice to fine one more but Finishers our hard to find if noonan turns out to be one that would be good.
Keller -- 5.5 -- no problems. Not that much to do. Cherundolo -- 6.5 -- plays right back both ways like we've watned for years. He's turned a position that was once "Can we move blank there?" into a strength. Pope -- 4 -- We didn't pay for any of his choppy play -- letting Occean get to a header, letting players in behind -- but settled in after a while and played a little better. But man is he a shadow of his former self. Onyewu -- 7.5 -- When you see a man his size run out to cover a guy on the wing, body him, dispoossess him, create a little space with a nice touch or two and hit a solid pass upfield, there's not much you can say. Dominated the backline today. Did have a dicy moment or two with a quicker guy running at him, namely Simpson in the first half. Vanney - 3.5 -- Hit some nice crosses and cross-field balls to switch the point of attack. Still the weakest link out there on D because of slow-footedness. It's not going to get better. He's going to be right around the 23rd or 24th player next year. Especially with Spector's loan. Pablo -- 5 -- Not as noticeably dominating as early in the year, but he adds passing vision to the defensive midfiled. Hit a nice little ball to JOB that turned into the goal. JOB -- 5.5 -- quiet, feeling it out first half led to a strong run in the second half. Hit some beautiful passes out of the back. Goal was fluky, but came from a dangerous ball. Welcome back. Ralston -- 5 -- a solid player at this level. Beautiful cross to Noonan's head. A decent stopgap for us. Landon -- 6 -- got the goal, had our other best scoring chance.But probably not the best 90 he'll ever play. Kind of a wandering 90 like much of the team. Noonan -- 4 in first half, 5.5 in second -- nice vision on the chip, Nice job to get free on the header, bu you gotta bury that. If he had, we'd all be talking about his emergence right now. Wolff -- 5 -- There was a debate in the game thread about whether his flick to Landon was a sweet play or whether he should have tried to rip his own shot, and that not doing so shows a lack of aggressive play on his part. The truth is that they're both right. Wolff is moving and playing better than he has in a while. But he needs to be more aggressive on goal. He's playing too much like he's trying to be Valderrama at the moment. DMB -- 5 -- great ball on the goal. Didn't pull up on his runs as much as against Cuba. Conrad -- 5 -- looked good in individual situations, but our defense gave up some ground with him on. A hard player to rate. Credit to Canada. Frank has them playing a hard-charging, tough-tackling game with good defensive organization. But they need better play in the attacking midfield.
Some times own goals happen because of offensive pressure put on them by the opponent. Don't disregard that it can mean goals for our team.
Just for a little Canadian perspective, I felt we were a little hard done by the ref. Landon prima-Donavon should have been red-carded for the bitch slap at the end of the 1st half (please don't argue that a slap isn't as bad as a punch, or that he was provoked, that's no excuse, a player has to show restraint no matter what). The U.S. did play better than Canada, but you didn't dominate us like I was expecting (this was not a repeat of the 2002 Gold Cup). Finally, it was nice to watch a game that didn't involve excessive diving, rolling-on-the-floor-like-I'm-dying, cheating teams. Good luck in Germany next year guys!
It may be that A) the Ralston Line has moved and is now in international territory or B) Ralston has actually crossed the Ralston Line himself (if that can actually happen).
I enjoyed the game. Pardon the comparison, but I thought we had a Latin touch at times ... played too slowly, but prettily done near the box with chips, flick ons, etc. I'll take watching that style of soccer any day, month, or year over the back pass to a defender, then boot & home approach used vs. Cuba. All that said, we were too cute for large stretches -- not direct enough. (Imagine that, a U.S. team insufficiently direct.) Also, we need to work on our defense against counterattacks. We were badly exposed several times during the last 20 minutes of the match, and a better opponent than Canada would have finished one of those chances. If we're up 1-0 against an overmatched opponent, we simply have gotta be tighter in the back. I'm not complaining. Against Cuba, I turned off the game against halftime. In this game, I was quite looking forward to watching the second half.
Alternatively, the Canadian defender who chest-bumped him out of nowhere and then took a dive when Landon pushed, not slapped, him, really should have gotten a yellow.
the part i particularly enjoyed about the goal - the moment wolff(?)hit the ball out wide to beasley, you could see that donovan and beasley knew exactly what was going to happen. donovan ran straight ahead for a couple steps, then swung out wider to create space, and was just waiting for the cross, which came perfectly. beasley has three assists in two games, which IIRC is approximately one more assist than in his entire USMNT career before the gold cup. i know it hasn't been against top notch opposition, but i'm still pleased to see him getting assists (with both feet). my feeling is that if DMB can pass and especially cross the ball very well, we will be several degrees more dangerous. beasley to the end line... cross to EJ/dempsey/mcbride/donovan... goals.
Geez....I used to have endless discussions last year after the Jamaica game- about how you could not judge Gooch (1) based on a wet field and (2) in one of his first (the first?) game for the Nats. We had a number- at least a dozen- posters saying how he sucked, wasn't ready, doubted he would even start in MLS. I urged that there is no way the reports on him were wrong. We had many, many independent observers talk to the quality of his game. I was told: "You've never seen him play. How can you know? I just saw him against Jamaica, and he sucked". Just another example why watching a player ONE TIME is relatively meaningless (to the wrong eyes), and can even be deceiving (wrong impression) Also, it is clear to me that players get nervous sometimes in their first Nat game(s) + wet field. Why it wasn't to these others, I'll never know. Nice to see logic win out. Gooch is an absolute monster of a man and player. He is the future in the middle. End of story.
Yeah, but this time obviously wasn't one of them. If Atiba lets the ball go past him no harm would have resulted at all. It was one of the more un-earned own goals, hardly resulting out of a dangerous play. You guys simply got lucky on that play. Perhaps that made up for the somewhat lucky clearance we got off the line by Gervais in the first half, but even so it wasn't until that goal that I felt the US started to dominate us, for about a 15 minute period. Until Frank finally made some subs, which seemed to work for the next 10 minutes until we shot outselves in the foot by getting yet another player sent off. Its too bad for young Atiba as he's not a regular central defender but was outstanding for the rest of the match.
Good day sirs, I was wondering if perhaps you did have a left back who could run with Monsieur Ronaldo. If this is so, then we shall do lunch and then, as you say, talk business. Regards, Arsene Wenger, Esq.
If you look at the strike rate of all the current US forwards in the pool, excluding EJ, its piss poor. As most would agree, McBride brings additional strengths to offset his less than stellar finishing. We need better finishing in our forwards. Third, fourth, fifth strikers is all up for grabs. Depending on how McBride ages over the next year, second striker may be too. And although this is BS heresy, lets not forget that EJ has not been tested against high quality opponents yet and ANY striker can run hot/cold or get hurt. Depth at striker we have...quality ? Not sure about that.
I've been to more exciting games. That said, my thoughts. The good: Pablo was very good in the middle. I wasn't exactly tracking touches from the stands, but he had a great presence and defensive bite. He was also extremely composed on offense, made his marks look silly at times, and kept things running. His spot to lose. Oguchi is huge. In the air, there is just no way his mark (as long as the name isn't Borgetti) beats him. I think he looks a little shaky sometimes with his feet, and I thought he got caught upfield a little too much on some of the Canadian counters in the 2nd half. I was on the other side in front of the Hawk's nest, though. Could be wrong. Eddie was very good in the 1st half. Hope he's OK. Steve Cherundolo earned my MOTM. No doubt. All over the place, making things happen, defending, attacking - everything. Good to see JOB back. The guy is silk on the ball. Nothing seems to ruffle him - he just keeps his composure and makes things happen. At the game, though, it was clear that he was laboring to keep his positioning. Still not 100% fit. The OK: Ralston was OK. One nice service that Noonan should have put away. But he had a lot of touches, time, and space on the ball, and I wasn't overly impressed with the results. Seems like if a guy is going to be so much the focus of our attack, he should produce more. Donovan was a lot better after DaMarcus came in. Before that, he drifted. This is a game he should have asserted himself more. The bad: Noonan is slow. OK, maybe it's better to say that he's "not fast." But he can't stretch defenses. The couple of times he had the chance to to, he had to pull back and drop off the ball because his mark had caught up to him. We need Eddie Johnson, or Bruce needs to start looking at some other not to be named very fast forwards in MLS. Speed kills. Lack of it does, too. Vanney is unbelievably slow. I hate watching this guy in a US jersey. The space he was given by Canada was ridiculous. Insane. He was given the entire 3rd of the field. He could do nothing with it. Canada conceded the space knowing that Vanney can't run by them and has no attacking skill besides crossing to two forwards they can outjump. I know you're desparate for a left back, Bruce. But look at the game tape. You had no presence on the left today because you tried (again) to force a round peg into the square hole. Knock it off.
My simple conclusions on the blurry feed: Ralston is simply too slow. Noonan is too slow. Brian McBride has a bright future the WC as only he, Johnson and LD can score goals on this team. I miss Eddie Lewis.
This is why strikers worldwide are generally paid the biggest $$$. They're SOOOO hard to find. I still maintain that a lot of the poor finishing by U.S. players is simply the long-term cumulative result of poor technique. I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, but how many U.S. players have fundamentally sound technique, more specifically, sound striking technique? Oh yeah, I know, you can continue to work on technique, yadda, yadda, yadda. But why is it that we see so many shots not even get on frame? And, BTW, I think Pat Noonan actually has better basic ball striking technique than many of the others. A foot lower, and we'd be saying what a cheeky little chip he scored on.
Absolutely true about the chip. How many times do we see US players even think about a shot like that ? Can we really call it "cheeky" or is that reserved only for back heels ? The truth about Noonan specifically, though, is he does not have great technique on his shooting and, with the Revs, is known to mis-hit quite a number of shots. Yet he's one of those players that just seems to score. If you were putting togther the "perfect striker" it wouldn't look like Pat. He is not fast and he has a below average shot. He is not a great header. He can dibble, though, and has a fantastic cut-back move that he uses in the box to create space. And he has that striker-thing going...he knows where to be and just seems to know how to score.
I thought it was kind of a boring game, myself. Played good: Gooch, Donovan, Mastro, Cherundolo, Beas, Keller and Conrad Played okay: Wolff, O'Brien Played bad: Vanney, Ralston, Noonan, Pope MOTM: Gooch Thank God for Beasley/Donovan combination. This is their team. Really wish Bruce would have subbed in Dempsey for Noonan instead of Armas!!
Those down on the US performance should at least give some props to the Canadian defense. The Canuck defenders (who numbered 8-9 at most times) played well, and it's damn hard to break down that kind of bunker. Ultimately, pleased with another win, though it's clear the US will have to raise their level if they're going to have a shot to win this tournament.