I hope that's ambiguous enough for the silly no results in titles rule... anyway... Though I am not a Bob Bradley fan I will say this, at least we went for the tie at the end of the game instead of playing in a shell and going for goal differential. This game was essentially a 2-1 loss for the US and in hockey terms, we gave up the equivalent of an empty-netter. Many teams in the world, especially in tournament play, would have resigned themselves to a 2-1 loss and and shelled it up for the last 5-8 minutes of the match and accepted their fate. But not the US in this game, and I'm quite pleased about that fact. In the last few minutes we saw a group of exhausted guys trying to get forward to somehow eek out an equalizer. We were unsuccessful and Italy streamed down and got a few guys mildly out of position and put in a really nice 3rd goal. Fair play to them on that. For me though, 100 times out of 100, I will prefer my team to lose 3-1 while looking to score than losing 2-1 and tucking tails. So for just one brief second, Mr. Bob Bradley, I will say good job to you sir.
Nice thought. Problem is, there's a reasonable chance that our going through (though I'm not very optimistic about it) could come down to goal differential. In which case this two goal loss could be beaten by Egypt's one goal loss. That's the reason you don't go for it.
While in the World Cup, I agree. But for this, a tune-up tournament that nobody gets too excited for (though all the players will want to win every game) it was a good call. This tournament is about finding where our team is at in relation to what we need to do for the World Cup next year. While I would love to take second and advance to play Spain, I would much rather see our team put every effort into getting results in these three games. These three games are what truly matters because next year, we only have three games that truly matter. We need to build a team that can, in 3 games, get enough results to further on their Cup. This was a good building block lesson for this group of guys I believe, and the experience now will prove much more fruitful in the future.
yeah, well I was disappointed not to see the one player on the bench who can hold the ball under pressure (and help relieve the defense) and create a goal out of thin air...
I think we all were, especially with how low I rate Sasha and DMB. Actually, I don't even rate Sasha, because, besides a good shot, his game does not translate at all to the international stage right now. Would Adu have changed the result, probably not, but he would have been a much better sub than those two.