Giving up a goal in the beginning of every match (aside from Algeria who hit the crossbar)

*****This is not a post to bash on Bob. I think Bob has been just fine. But I do need to make one point*****

Bob mentioned SEVERAL times about how the first 15 minutes was a "feeling out" process. Well, while we were busy feeling out other teams, they were busy scoring on us.

I think a new attitude needed to be adopted for the first 15 minutes.

 

It was bizarre and disappointing a true black mark on any team. Lets just hope its not a long term trend and they can shake it, I expect the defense to be completely rebuilt the next cycle, so hopefully that fixes it.

 

Lippi said it best:

U.S. clearly had some mental thing going on where they came out terrified. Part of a coach's job is to make sure that doesn't happen, and Bob failed on that account.

 

I don't think we came out terrified in the first 15 minutes. In all three of those games, we pretty much gave up one good opportunity and the opponent converted. We had 5 or 6 opportunities that were as good as Ghana's 5th minute chance, and we didn't even come close to scoring. I think THAT says more about us than their goals.

 

Give me a 100% healthy Gooch, and this thread wouldn't have existed.

 

Actually, it *has* been a long-term trend. We had a lot of issues with this last year during qualifying. Early goals were conceded at El Salvador, at Costa Rica, home to Honduras, home to El Salvador and home to Costa Rica, plus an early equalizer at Mexico. It's probably the most consistent large problem we've had under Bob. This Cup was just a continuation of a trend, not the start of one.

 

QFT. Brazil heaping it on Italy at the Confederations Cup masked the problem because the result vs. Spain and then the Brazil game took the focus off of our struggles in starting games in the Hex.

 

These are both true, and they're both clearly related.

Honestly, I suspect the long term trend was not lost on our WC opponents. They suspected we'd be vulnerable at the beginning of the game and they all planned to take advantage of that. And they pretty much all did.

 

Ghana did it twice to us in the same game.

 

2009 Confederations Cup:

Brazil 3 - 0 USA
Italy 3 - 1 USa


you are sure about that?

 

and that is ultimately a shortcoming in the coach. The amount of times history repeated itself on that front is shocking. It must have happend 10 times over the duration of this cycle.

 

If it's true that coaches are responsible for things like drive and preparedness, then it should also be attributed to the coach that we have the heart and fitness to come back to score so many goals in the last ten minutes.

 

one of bob's strengths, im not saying everything is wrong with the guy. Those were some attributes that few coaches in the world can replicate. I hope we can find a coach that instills half the heart in our players he did. Gotta give credit where it is due.

but the basic stuff like roster selection, game readiness, and player favoritism certainly deserve to be called out.

 

Drive, preparedness, and correcting major problems like this are all coach's resposibilities, to my mind. I don't think Bob would disagree. I would hope not.

 

Absolutely agree that Bob is imperfect and should be criticized when it's warranted. It's just that in this particular aspect, everyone is piling on him for not getting the team ready to start games--which is probably a legit point--but no one seems to be giving him credit for having the team ready to finish games.

 

That is because his team gave up early goals. This is not the way soccer is played. You just don't give up early goals all the time and then hope to come back. His team has a lot of heart but needs to play basic soccer better.

 

Do you leak goals?

Do you leak goals more than you used to?

Do you find yourself waking up in the middle of the night to leak goals?

I wish there were a magic pill for this.


Next time around, in all probability we'll have a new coach and a new batch of defenders. Hopefully, fixing this problem will be a top priority.

 

the reason we allow early goals is simple, WE DO NOT CONTROL EARLY POSSESSION, and then possession for long periods is none existent. In the game vs Algeria the cross bar saved us.

 

I do not understand this "feeling out process." I have been playing for 35 years and I have been coaching for 20 years. I have never heard of this or even felt like that. The ref blows the whistle and the game is on. Period.

This is a clear indicator into Bobs mentality as a coach and it is a weakness all of our opponents identified. We let our opponents take the game to us in the beginning of every match and we paid a heavy price.

The players clearly bear some culpability but not having the team ready to play time and time again shows this coaching staff never figured out how to fix the problem.

 

that's so stupid though. it's the quality of the players that does that. we started every game playing against the other team, and our coach's retarded tactics and selections.

only when the tactics became insanely obvious (score a goal at all cost) did we look like we deserved to be there at all. it was completely unacceptable.

 

One other thing here:

You have to expend much more energy chasing a game than defending a lead. By going down a goal early in so many games, we basically negated any conditioning advantage we might have had. The other team could sit back and defend while we ran ourselves into exhaustion. Over a few games, that'll really take its toll. And it did.

 

Very true. Also, I don't think at all that our team came out "terrified" in our World Cup games, but I think they were rather tentative or too casual about the whole affair. The only game we scored first in the first half recently, was our last warm-up against Australia. If we had better depth on our team, we could have rested more players at the start of games and brought them on as subs.

 

We had a golden opportunity to score in the first minute of the game. Donovan broke down the wing, sent a perfect cross across the face of the goal to Jozy, who was a 1/2 step slow. If he connects there, we're up 1-0 at the 1:14 mark.

Game of inches.

 

My theory is that is takes the US players about 15-20 mins to get used to the speed of the game. Most of these players aren't facing this speed of the game normally other then Dempsey, Donovan and Altidore.