In the time-honored tradition of being Basque, I thought it time we open up an underground thread. Basque fans of the US National Team (to be fair, there is a lot of crossover). Purpose: Discuss the US Team, and more specifically, talk soccer. I wanted a place where we could talk about the team free and clear of the biases and baggage so prevalent in the US forums. Hopefully our friends find us here and come to talk soccer intelligently. And hopefully the moderators do not shut us down.
To kick things off, I was able to re-watch the US Belgium game courtesy of ESPN3. Here is an analysis of both team's Goal Scoring Opportunities: USA: 5th minute: Clint Dempsey skips free kick into keeper, who cannot handle it cleanly. Jozy comes in for rebound, and is hacked from behind by Belgium defender. Absolutely should’ve been a PK. And this is directly after Fellaini took out Shea, which should've been a yellow. Bad sequence for the ref. Tough luck for the US. 17th minute: Rogers is fouled on the outside of the area. Torres takes the ensuing free kick and goes for a tweener. Whether a shot or a cross, the ball goes just over the far corner of the goal. Good idea just missed. 47th minute: Shea beats Ciman with a nice move and gets off a cross from the left. The cross is knocked down to Beckerman, who shoots over the goal. 60th minute: Dempsey finds Chandler with space wide left. Chandler dribbles forward and puts hard cross on the ground into Agudelo. Kompany slides in to deflect shot out. Not a great final chance, but nice movement and combination to build up the opportunity. 70th minute: The US has had a long spell of possession but cannot cut open the Belgium defense. Shea finally breaks wide on the left side, putting in a cross Kompany cuts out for a corner. On the ensuing play, Dempsey breaks into Belgium area with a nice move past Ciman. and puts a hard shot low on goal. Nicely smothered by Mignolet to prevent any rebound. 86th minute: Cherundolo plays a free kick into the box. Goodson heads it down, and Edu scores. Incorrectly called back for offside. Game should be 1-1. 89th minute: Shea beats Ciman on the left. Cuts it back to Dempsey who tries a difficult shot from outside the area. Shot is deflected by Kompany. Belgium: 16th minute: Hazard opens up the US defense with a nice pass to the left after a US turnover. Bocanegra does a nice job of getting in front of the cross. Nothing comes of the first good sequence for Belgium. 19th minute: Merteens puts a great chip over the defense, isolating Lombaerts against Rogers, who is called for a questionable foul outside the area. In truth, Lombaerts ran out of ideas and dove. Free kick from Merteens comes to nothing. 26th minute: Witsel and Merteens work a combination down the US right side. Cross reaches Fellaini, who plays it back to trailing midfielders. Edu deflects the drop off but it falls to Simons who hits a rocket through traffic. Saved by Howard. First very clear chance for Belgium. 28th minute: US long ball is immediately recovered by Belgium. US spacing is poor, leaving Belgium wide gaps to attack. Fellaini plays ball to Merteens, who cuts inside Cherundolo and shoots into the side netting. 30th minute: Torres goes for a lazy slide tackle instead of doing the hard work of running back to maintain team defense. Coaches will let him have it for that. He leaves Edu to try to cover Fellaini and Merteens in the midfield. They easily move it past him and again work the US’s right side. Hazard cuts it behind Cherundolo and shoots, but Howard has the near post covered for an easy save. Cherundolo lets Rogers have it for lazy help on defense. 34th minute: US spacing again poor, with Maurice Edu left alone to try and cover 40 yards of space between 5 US players pressing high and 4 US defenders sitting back. Belgium moves through the midfield quickly. Witsel plays ball to Merteens on left side, Merteens crosses to Fellaini, who is unmarked. Fellaini’s sidefooter at point blank range is stopped by a nice Howard save. Unacceptable spacing from the US. 45th minute: Merteens again finds space between Cherundolo and Rogers, working a 1-2 to put a shot wide of Howard’s net. Merteens is easily the 1st half’s best player. 49th minute: Hazard isolated against Cherundolo, beats him by cutting into the penalty area. Beckerman collapses to cover and blocks Hazard’s shot. 55th minute: Ciman with a long throw-in to Fellaini. Edu clears it, but falls to Lombaerts, who shoots it hard past Howard. Goal Belgium. 81st minute: Kompany finds Lukaku with a nice long ball. Lukaku cuts back and leaves Bocanegra behind, passes to Witsel who shoots. Witsel’s shot is deflected wide. 90th+ minute: Goodson slips and Lukaku gets by him.
So, overall analysis after watching in-person and online: Brek Shea is going to be a good player for the US. He is still finding his confidence and learning a slightly different role. On top of that Chandler did not provide much overlap for him this game. Yet he was still dangerous. Clarence Goodson is a problem. He has incredibly slow feet. Because he knows he is vulnerable to speed, he plays a very deep line. This breaks down the team spacing overall. Particularly after 20 minutes in the first half, I was amazed at how far back he stayed. The US attackers would try to press the ball high, but the defense could not follow because Goodson was afraid of getting beat with speed. The team was stretched thin, leaving Edu to cover a wide patch of space. Goodson should not play for the US. Belgium is a nightmare matchup for the US. Two very good wingers going at fullbacks. Yet the US did pretty well. Chandler shut down Hazard and gets my MOTM for his work. Cherundolo struggled with Merteens, but that has as much to do with Rogers not understanding support defense. The second half opened up for the US. They created many more opportunities and ran the play overall. I think Beckerman helped. But the US is one good attacker short of being able to play in tight space. It will be interesting to see if that remains a problem when Donovan and Dempsey finally play together in Klinsmann's system. Beckerman is the best defensive midfielder the US has. I think he is Klinsmann starter going into World Cup Qualification.
I'm in. Thought Chandler wasn't very effective going forward. So while he handled Hazard and we can use him against a strong right winger, I'd still like to see a better attacking left back. I don't think Klinsmann is done with Castillo.
I agree. Chandler was very good defensively, but could not offer as much on the left as he can on the right. It was interesting to see Cherundolo being the full back who struggled more on the night. I am not sure that has been the case since I started watching the US Team. I will send out some invites to people to join in the discussion. People dropping in should feel welcome to discuss as well.
I started a Nutmeg style moment by moment for Torres but got sidetracked. What did you guys think of his play? I keep reading elsewhere that because he does not make "incisive" passes or because he does not directly "create" opportunities, he doesn't seem to be worth the risk. The argument goes on to focus on his size, speed and poor defense. That said, I keep trying to imagine Michael Bradley or Edu or Clark or any of our other central midfielders not named Holden would bring in those realms. There always seems to be, imo, some tradeoff...some difficulty measuring the positive attributes he brings versus his perceived shortcomings. What I was looking for was how he handled the speed and physicality of a solid Euro team on Euro soil and from that stand point, he seemed to do better than I'd expected. Though I, too, noted the unwise tackle he made at the 30 minute mark. I guess I am so accustomed to our other bigger/stronger/faster central mids making their share of positioning mistakes and decision making blunders that I do not view a Torres v. Bradley/CLark et al exchange as an automatic defensive upgrade. Anyway, sort of rambling here.
Hey everybody. I really hope this thread works out. There's so much going on right now and it will be interesting to see what people think about where we are right now and what we might or might not be able to do by the time WCQ rolls around without the knee-jerk reactions of the "political factions" on the regular USA boards. My overall observations at this point: Compared to team that Bradley coached over his final few months, Klinsmann's team is already significantly more organized defensively. Obvious, but important. I attribute that mostly to the way he's deployed a "designated destroyer" of a DM more than anything. In the same vein, we're significantly improved holding possession. We even managed a good share of the ball in Belgium, which I think says a lot about where we are on that front already. Again, I think Klinsmann's use of a "designated destroyer" has had a lot to do with this, in that it's more consistently provided a passing outlet on the ground for the back four, and to a slightly lesser extent I think Torres has proven an able pivot with the ball. Thirdly, we still can't finish very well (no surprises there, no savior forward has yet cropped up), and at this point in time we're looking even less incisive in the final third than we did even in the final, mostly frustrating months under Bradley. However, this observation comes with one big caveat: Klinsmann has not yet had both Donovan and Dempsey available on the same day. I think we need to hold off on making any prognosis there until he gets them on the field together. Finally, we've generally come out with all guns blazing, only to peter out towards the end, a pattern which is radically different from a "typical" game under Bradley. Clearly, one of the issues we're going to have to contend with is how to pace ourselves, and what Klinsmann can do tactically to help the players speed up and slow down the game as necessary. Even as the European contingent gets closer to mid-season game fitness, I do not think it's going to be possible for us to successfully play a full 90 minutes of high-pressure, high-tempo possession soccer the way we have in stretches, and I think Klinsmann will have to address this tactically.
Regarding my last point, it seems to me that Klinsmann has been mindful of this, and that would explain why he hasn't been using his full 6 subs, even at the cost of being able to evaluate everybody in game situations. It seems that Klinsmann wanted to establish early on how long over the course of a game he could expect us to keep up a full-throttle pace, and after 3 games I feel pretty confident that he has his answer: about 30 minutes or so. Looking ahead, it will be very important for Klinsmann to decide how he wants us to manage those other 60 minutes.
Good point on pacing. There are two things you know will happen when a team tries to transition to a more possession-oriented game: Chances created will go down at first. Goals probably will, too. Almost invariably the first instinct of a team moving towards possession is to overdo it. When they should push, they hold. When they have chances to play in transition, they instead pull back. Creating opportunities against set defenses is hard. Even Barcelona or Arsenal will gladly take transition chances when they come (see RVP's goal for Arsenal today). So for now, and I expect for the next few months, we should expect chances to go down. I agree having Donovan and Dempsey together will help. I also think Holden can help, and I think Bradley - if he gets into form - will help as well. The team will run itself into a wall. I use the boxer analogy. The team spends its energy without realizing it. They punch themselves tired and become vulnerable about 30-35 minutes into a half. I do not fully understand why it happens, but it does. I guess when you are defending, you know you are running. So you pace yourself naturally. When you are attacking, you are having fun. The adrenaline is pumping. So maybe you do not realize how hard you are working.
The pacing is more problematic the longer it takes to score. If we keep going and going and going because we need that goal, we are going to get tired. Once a goal (or more!) goes in, the team will not have to press as much and as quickly with every possession. My hope with Klinsmann's team is that once the early attacks pay off, his teams pace themselves by being able to maintain the ball and attacking when the opportunity presents. No more auto-bunkering after scoring, but rather thoughtful possession with the threat of dynamic attack. Being able to do this would be a huge step forward.
So glad I found this thread! On the pacing question, someone in one of the N&A threads made the distinction of maintaining focus, so I would introduce the concept here of: 1. Physical exhaustion vs. 2. Mental/emotional exhaustion leading to loss of focus Klinsmann has mentioned the importance of that 90 minute focus a couple of times in interviews, and I think that part of that is trainable. Susaeta, you said you weren't sure why it happened, and I understand what you mean: It wasn't like they ran more... on the contrary, one would expect that with that much possession they would have run less. On that note, I would love to see heatmaps and get the distance covered stats they had in South Africa for these matches. I suspect one factor in the breakdown right now is the mental exhaustion that comes from "keeping faith" in moving the ball up the field in a controlled manner. I think it's very likely Klinsmann is doing this on purpose, to expose the players to the kind of pressure they can expect when the real games start.
Welcome aboard, orcrist. I do think focus is part of the equation. Teams tend to get frustrated and lose patience. You see them try to force their way through defenses instead of drawing back, recouping, and trying a different approach. I hope we get to see the US score early sometime soon. I would like to see if they are better at holding possession to control the game defensively. On another topic, I think Teal Bunbury is one of the more important elements in the US pool. When he is playing well, he is a good partner to both Agudelo and Altidore. With him Klinsmann can introduce more flexibility in his formation, moving to a two striker system when it makes sense. Since about the end of July he looks like he has recovered his form. Good development for the US Team.
Speaking of player selection, how important do you think that the Olympics is going to be regarding the building of our squad? I have a feeling that Klinsmann is looking to make use of that route heavily next year, and he's already mentioned it a few times. I don't mean the Olympics specifically as a competition, of course, but the U23 squad. With the possible exception of a couple of guys like Shea, Chandler and Agudelo (young players in positions of dire need who have already been called in to the senior team early and often), it seems like a lot of guys that we'd thought were getting very close to the senior pool are going to be brought up via the U23 roster. I'm talking most specifically about Mix, Adu, and Gatt, particularly Mix, whose exclusion thus far has raised question marks.
Hi guys. I think what I am going to do is start using the blog feature. I am a little hesitant because I cannot commit to being a regular contributor. What I am hoping is there is some way for multiple people to contribute to one blog here. What do you think?
Technically I'm not sure it's feasible. I know DarkKnight is one of the head mods. Anybody know who the others are? Also, I think only the featured bloggers need to post regularly. There are a lot of other bloggers on the site who update their blog as they feel like it.
Ok, with Torres injured and Holden (re-) injured, what does Klinsmann do now? Does he continue with the same sort of 4231 that he was attempting to build on, which would involve essentially shoe-horning someone (ie Bradley) into the role Torres was playing, or does he adjust and come up with a different system using the players he has on hand? (If we were playing for keeps next month, I'd roast him for lack of pragmatism if he stuck to his preferred system, but given that we're still about 9 months away from real matches, I could understand there are pros and cons with trying to continue to build.)
Whose checking out the lineage history of the members on the list? Papers please, I guess I will have to open up an Andaluces who live in America and who are Beticos and support the USMNT and the Furia Roja, which I believe would be listed as AWLIAAWABASUSMNTATFR; Pat can I buy a vowel for 200 please! You guys have fun now and I hope the the BUUSA forum doesn't go south (no pun intended) like the current USMNT forum! Ese Beti Oe!!
Does 1/16th Basque count? I know my brother despises the other 15/16ths For what it's worth, I thought we acquitted ourselves well in France, I just worry about our individual match ups at CB and the lack of crossing.