With the way CR packed the middle, the open spaces were out wide. Rodman got a few chances down the right but her passes into the box were horrible. On the other side, Dunn played high and had chances to take the ball down wide but she rarely even tried . When she got the ball , she just played it back most of the time. Such waste!
Smith and Swanson's first touches in the box failed them most of the time today and they couldn't decide when to shoot or pass. And we had Horan's soft headers which couldn't possibly beat a 12 year old keeper .
ZZzzzzzzz Boring .... Tired of seeing Smith MISS....Rodman out .... Williams in....Horan is slooooow . We will npt make it out of the grout stage at this rate
Their bunker worked but we helped them accomplishing that by playing so slow, allowing all 10 field players to drop back.
3/4 of the game the USA played too slow. Hope they figure out to attack better than just play the ball back. The only attacker on the field was Trinity. The other side winger, which turned out to be the defender Crystal, just played it back. Never attacked. Why wasn't Swanson far outside to attack like Trinity? No clue. Felt like corners were generic as well. No tipping any Olympic opponent off to anything fancy, or worse USWNT is just that bad at corners. This game reminded me of a preseason NFL game.
Four score and seven shots -- and we have a 0-0 tie. Costa Rica is what? Number 47 in the world? You have to give credit to a gritty defense by the Ticas. They must be exhausted. They were there for the whole 90.
We started with 4 backs but we kept Fox back with the center backs and sent Dunn forward. In second half commentators said we played 3-5-2 so Dunn stayed up even more. Smith pinched in a lot more while Rodman stayed outside on the right.
Uh-oh. Really hope Emma was just not showing anything special and didn’t care about result at all— treating it as an exercise. Otherwise yikes. The lack of ability in the final third was scary.
Stop you pretentious bothsidesism of being civil. Low IQ, low self-reflection, ignorance of the tactical and historical aspect of this sport and brazeness to post your gibberish are your problems and reflect poorly of your character. Bashing you and people like you is doing public service to our society. Please tell me now how great Mal is after this game? How Rodman and Smiths is the problem of our frontline? You got owned and should shut up if you have any sense of self-respect.
Swanson drifted inside a lot and sometimes even played on the right lane together with Rodman to overload the opponent's left lane. This is largely due to there's no genuine attack midfielder in today's starting line up, and Swanson and Horan shared this role. The result is Dunn has a role that well exceeds her current capability.
Zambia taking a lot of notes. A new coach and a changed -- even if it's not a ground-up rebuilt -- system can require adjustment time. I hope that's why we've looked so labored over the last couple of matches. They've got nine days to bring back a little bit of the spark/creativity/etc.
With Crystal not going endline except for once, which ended in a weak cross that went over the end line, my take is that she does not have confidence in her left-footed cross (unless Emma had her intentionally hiding it). That is a huge difference between her and Nighswonger, who is a lefty. I do not remember having seen this as such an obvious issue. Other than that, I do not have a problem with how the team played. The upside potential is far higher than the 2021 Olympics team had and also than the 2023 World Cup team had, and the downside risk seems lower.
You are hysterical. Your fake outrage is gold! Much more entertaining than the game!! Mal was bad. Worse than Smith or Rodman. Which is saying something. Of course it would be hard to give any of them a gold star after that. I’m impressed by your willingness to bitch at me for having criticized your favorite players on the back of zero goals against Costa Rica, though. You’ve got the message board jerk-face thing down.
A team that looks no better than the one that flamed out in the World Cup. Inept in the final 3rd against a bad team: bad shooting, bad first touches, bad crossing, bad passing, bad decisions, bad headers, and bad set pieces! A team that's a long way from a gold-medal, and which might not be capable of medaling at all…
Costa Rica can be stingy. Canada needed extra time to score against them in the Gold Cup knockouts. They kept it respectable against Spain and Japan at the WC despite being under the gun the entire match. Zambia can score some goals and they can give up a lot of goals. They defend higher and you can get behind them more easily. It'll be a different type of game.