Just to add a little nuance, I think half of what killed them was aging, a good chunk of that core came together during the Euro '96-WC '06 era, and so yeah, they were at the end of their primes, for the most part. But I don't think that mattered as much as Baros getting hurt before the tournament and Koller getting knocked out in the opening match against us. Baros lead all goal scorers at Euro 2004, and the pair of them were responsible for 7 of the 10 goals the Czech's scored in Euro '04. In WC Qualifying for 2006 Koller was 2nd in all of UEFA in goals scored, and the two of them combined scored 14 of the 35 goals the Czech's scored. Consider Baros was out for our match, and only healthy enough to be rolled out, still injured, for the finale against Italy while Koller was knocked out of the tournament during our match after killing us in that first half. That left them with just Rosicky alone as a capable goal scorer, and basically 2/3's of their attack denuded for the rest of the group stage. That's really what killed them more than anything. Do we beat them if we face them 2nd or 3rd? Probably not, but we have more of a chance if they're as weakened as they were for the Ghana and Italy matches.
No doubt, and you hit on it well. The only guys that stick out as not being at their best in that tournament were Mathis, who had a golden moment, played great, but was even better in 2001 and 2000 before his knee injury, Agoos, the poor guy after all the trauma and misery of '94 and '98, finally gets on the field, and has a horror show performance (probably in no small part because he was just 8 years older than he was in '94), anyone else. Its wild to think about because I never rated Lewis, but he had a pinpoint cross, Mathis, who we think of in only smashes, scored a beauty against S. Korea, hit a post against S. Korea and served up what should've been the equalizer if Sanneh had directed the free header better, against Germany....that's a helluvalot of impact in not many minutes. They really genuinely were spectacular in that tournament. Donovan was fabulous, Beasley was good (was probably better later), Reyna, OBrien were lights out, Stewart was fine but missed a clear chance against Portugal, McBride was great, even Wolff, post knee injury, still provided an assist against Mexico...It was so damn good. I give Bruce credit for a ton. He put his players in positions of strength, had them ready and game planned well for four of five matches and was more unlucky than anything in a 5th, had chemistry perfect, only one issue at all (Keller frustrated having to watch it). People underrate him a lot because they think we could have done better in '06 (not really) and they're angry about Couva (understandable, but again, mostly not his fault). Consider that first cycle: After the disaster of France '98, his guys beat Germany TWICE the following year, including in the Confed Cup, and even made a semifinal run in that. His guys got their backs against the wall due to suspect reffing in SF round qualifying, and he held them together so they just managed it. In the hex they'd lose all of their attackers to injury: Mathis, McBride, Reyna, Wolff (which is why they lost 3 in a row (Mexico July '01, Costa Rica and Honduras in September '01) and still find a way to qualify post 9/11, Honduras shot themselves in the foot which also helped. He built a team that peaked in '02, winning the Gold Cup, and then killing it in the tune ups, and looking great at WC '02.....It was fantastic. '06 was disappointing but again, we were the only team in our group that played a mostly healthy Czech team which was why we got smashed. Czech's didn't have Baros or Koller, both of their star strikers for the Ghana game, hence their defeat. We tied Italy and the ref helped hose us against Ghana (interesting that Arena still teases Gooch about it, and Gooch, like me, views that as a dive). How much of that was Arena's fault? I don't know. If Reyna's ball goes in instead of against the post, if Koller is out against us, instead of in, and running rampant, if Rosicky doesn't score a wundergoal? I agree that Arena seemed more afraid of the Czechs than he was of Portugal four years earlier, but honestly, I think that's because he realized, without healthy Mathis, and O'Brien, Eddie Johnson post knee injury, McBride four years older, we were just an older, and more injured team, and pulling off a steal in that game always seemed unlikely, and it does seem like he looked at those 2 matches as: Lets get a result in one, and then beat Ghana, and if not for a terrible call in my book and a bad mistake by Boca, we have a legit fighting chance to win that match.... '17, he screwed up for sure, but that to me was always about, could he hold it together, sew the room back together, and get some luck? And he did 2 of the 3, and then bad luck the final two windows killed us. I also think he probably should've turned the page sooner, flipped starters for T&T etc....there's clear coach errors, but I'm more forgiving because I feel he had the least chance of any of the cycles of pulling it off in '17, and he still nearly did, window 2, 3, went perfectly, but post Gold Cup, the injuries to Morris and Brooks really hurt us, and then it just fell apart, but for me, I was mostly angry at Bruce simply for his attitude after the game, for not realizing what could have been done better, but from that interview it seems clear, he's not big on the "reflection" piece of learning lol. Whereas that's all we do on this board.
Wait, where's the incessant Jack Warner Memorial Cashgrab Gold Cups, constantly held safely at home? Any time they need to gin up cash by playing the Aaron Longs and the other B team fodder, there's another one, just around the corner! Or the "Nations League," always safely held at home? The US is the back-to-back champeens of that vital, crucial, and historic tournament, whose outcomes will be held in our hearts and in our minds, forevermore. I think you're selling short these barnburners of tournaments.
It’s always better to win than lose, but no, Gold Cups and Nations Leagues aren’t going to make the grade. Maybe the one Berhalter won with a B team against others’ A teams would make the top 10.
If that's the case, then why wait a WHOLE TWO YEARS between Jack Warner Memorial Cashgrab Gold Cups? Why not grab that sweet, sweet cash from stoopid American soccer fans EVERY YEAR, just like the Nations League?
Unfortunately we have some limitations from being in CONCACAF that we can’t do anything about. And the Confederations Cup no longer exists or we’d be regular participants. Ideally Copa America participation becomes a regular thing. And thankfully we have the Olympics this year and are automatically qualified for 2028.
Meanwhile https://www.espn.com/soccer/insider...lemma-start-mls-sit-bench-europe-copa-america Twenty First Group has a player-rating model that looks at how many minutes a player plays, how good his team is and how much he contributes to defense and attack. So, it's accounting for the quality of the teams the Americans are playing for but also how much they're playing. Per that system, the top 25 USMNT players comprise the 30th-best national team pool in the world. The U.S. is No. 1 in Concacaf and is the fifth best from all the teams in the Copa América field -- behind Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia.
Yeah, I guess you're right: 1. Gotta have each and every tournament [Jack Warner Memorial Gold Cup, and Nations League], safely inside the US of A, because, like, reasons. 2. Gotta have each and every tournament more frequently than the big boy Confederations, 'cause, like, reasons. I mean, who WANTS to see a competitive tournament on the road? Who wants to have to wait, like, a long time or something for the continental champeenship? We GOTTA see the B Teamers take on, like, Barbados or something, and Canada's B team, too. Aaron Long and Jordan Morris aren't gunna pad their cap count by themselves, ya know?
None of these are decisions made by USSF. CONCACAF more than anything cares about generating as much revenue as possible which is why the tournaments are always in the US and why they happen so often. Ideally they’d rotate and we wouldn’t have more than one Gold Cup and one Nations League per cycle. But we are only one of 41 countries in CONCACAF. We can’t just dictate these things.
And ya never, ever hear anyone at USSF say anything negative about grabbin' that sweet, sweet cash, biennially or annually, at home. If they gave a flying fvkc about the sport or the value of a continental championship, they would. But, they don't. They're happy to get the average American soccer consumer to open up their wallets at every turn, instead of working to lift all boats in CONCACAF, the US included.
I mean CONCACAF is getting the bulk of that money not USSF. If you look at the USSF financial statements we aren’t getting rich off the Gold Cup and Nations League.
And they could, refuse to host, right? [But they don't.] USSF allows the American soccer consumer to be abused and to fund the corruption of CONCACAF officials by hosting these things. Shyte like this is what debases and devalues international football. What once was "appointment television" is now just another bit of Saturday programming.
[Its irony. I really, really HATE The Gold Cup and Nations League with the FIRE of 10,000 Arabian Suns.] By extension, all this has made the USMNT less compelling, for myself, and most of my soccer-watching peers.
Hey, if you wanna go blow your cash on tickets to a B Team match, or use your finite time on Earth watching it, by all means, go right ahead. For me, I'd rather level fair critique at USSF and CONCACAF.
The US soccer consumer has agency. No one is mandating they attend or don’t attend these events and they certainly don’t take their marching orders from USSF. People like having tournaments in the US because we’re a wealthy country and because we have large diaspora communities. And as a free society we shouldn’t be in the business of telling people who should or shouldn’t be allowed to host a soccer tournament. People have the right to not attend or watch if they aren’t interested.
Interesting, I definitely think the '02 was the best team and I think it's obvious. The consistency of performance was really quite strong. The only dip they had was summer '01 when they had a billion injuries to attackers, and so lost at Azteca, at Costa Rica and at home against Honduras in a 3 game stretch before righting the ship. Quite good and kept getting better but injuries and age and form kept that window really narrow. I think its obvious the current team is by far the most talented, but the most accomplished were the OG's of '94-'95, and the '02 group. The 1930 tournament can be entirely tossed into a trash heap. It was not a serious tournament then, though saying that may anger Uruguay fans, it's true. Theringer did a great, great, great World Cup greatest goals of the WC series in 2022, and I think it opened with the very first goal scored at the tournament which included a breakdown of why the 1930 WC was such a mess: "... There are reasons why. My pledge to you is that I will never explain them to you or expect you to know what they are. I will throw my body in front of the bus of your ever having to remember details of century-old bureaucratic disputes among soccer administrators. The point is that England would have been the obvious first choice to host the first men’s World Cup. But they can’t, because they’re too busy not being in FIFA. So the planners have to turn to the next most obvious choice to host the tournament. The small South American nation of Uruguay. That’s right. The first-ever World Cup kicks off, not in London, not in Paris, not in Rome, but in Montevideo. And the thing is, this is not a joke. Uruguay is a small country, but in the late ’20s, it’s a soccer powerhouse. Uruguay has won the Olympics twice. It has a very legitimate case to host the tournament. It’s also, crucially, the only country that wants to host the tournament. Possibly because the Uruguayan economy is booming, and the rest of the world is not looking so hot after the 1929 U.S. stock market crash did a Devastating Emily to most of the global economy. The thing you have to realize about the first World Cup is that it’s not clear to anyone whether this idea has legs. People aren’t terribly excited about it. There are 16 slots for teams, and only 14 even bother to enter. There are no qualifying rounds, because not enough teams even want to play in the tournament. The tournament eventually kicks off with 13 teams, because Egypt literally misses their boat and sends a telegram saying they can’t make it. I did exactly the same thing last time we had a neighborhood barbecue. By the standards of modern soccer, the first World Cup is scrappy, low-budget, experimental, and largely ignored—at least at first—even in Uruguay. Only four teams from Europe enter, and they have to travel by sea. Which is tough for the players, because most of them are not making a living playing soccer—they have jobs, and to leave their jobs for over a month to spend two weeks sailing to Uruguay and two weeks playing soccer is a big ask in an era that predates the concept of the weekend. The king of Romania has to intervene personally to make sure the Romanian players will still have jobs when they get back. Everything is very funny and also very sad...." Lucien Laurent, the Unlikely Protagonist in the World Cup Origin Story - The Ringer So for me, I don't pay it much mind. It's not a different era, it's not a remotely organized tournament, it was a total ---- show. Probably the best team won, but who knows, really? It wasn't a serious competition really until probably 1934, or 1938 or 1950, pick which one. So for me, great that the US did well, but its like winning a Confed Cup from like 1963 that half the qualified teams didn't choose to participate in. Who gives a ----? Not me. Anyway, what I think these arguments come down to is performance vs talent, and 1994-1995, and 2002 are the best. I think it's obviously so. For 2009 and 2010, I just don't agree, at all. That team was a mess to me. It had a nice group of attackers for a tiny window of time: Dempsey/Donovan, and Altidore and Davies, that made them capable of truly great things, but that ended in that car wreck of September '09 that nearly killed Davies. After that the attack never functioned as well again, especially when Altidore wasn't fit. Now where you might have me, is if Jermaine Jones was healthy enough for '10, and Davies never is in the car wreck. Just how good is that WC team then? Well, for one, we don't have to have manic come backs against the refs and Slovenia and the refs and Algeria just to make it exhausted (kind of like '22 in terms of exhausted) for the Ghana match, and then, yes, I think we do beat Ghana and wow, we're in the QF's again, and there's an argument. But as is: Jones is out injured for WC '10, and Davies international career is wrecked by a car accident, and we bring a bunch of hapless replacements, Herc on a heater (and he was alright) and the utterly idiotic decision to try to replace Davies with the similarly speedy but totally ineffectual robbie findlay. So for me, '09-'10 is about might have beens and could have beens, much like 2006: 2006 was ruined by injuries, and so was 2010. 2002 was a perfect moment in time where you had the perfect build (strong kiddos, a big fat set of players in their prime and at the top of their game, and then a nice veneer of aging vets who had one last great tourney in them) and the performance came with it, 2006 and 2010 were wrecked to differing degrees by catastrophic injury issues that capped the possibilities (2010) and utterly ruined them (2006).
If we make copa america a priority, period, as Mexico has, then we're fine. Participating every cycle in a major tournament that features 2 top 8 teams in the world, and typically 3-4 top 15 teams, well, you aren't gonna do better than that between WC's, that's fine. We just can't have the bull---- Arena attitude (and I actually really like him) of "whatev's", we're not in conmebol, and we can't fit in our schedule. Cycle to cycle going forward, w/o a replacement for the Confed Cup, unless we can leave Concacrap, the Copa America is the only tournament that matters to us. The region we play in is total --- and always has been, but it didn't matter in the past because we were just pesky, tough minded team that aimed to be a top 20 side in the world, but now, we legit are a top 10 to top 20 side in the world, and nobody else in our region is even close to that right now. Not Mexico whod struggle to beat any legit top 30 side on a neutral these days, not Canada, who we can't quite figure out if they're in disaray or not, yet, and certainly not the in decline Costa Rica, or Honduras and Panama, both of whom struggle bussed matches they should have dominated yesterday. It's a terrible region that does a terrible job of prepping us for the caliber and style of play we could face at the WC. So the Copa America matters far more than trophies that have become as meaningful as the Oceania Championships Australia used to bag cycle after cycle until they got frustrated and moved into the AFC. It seems like NL is moving to a title schedule for March going forward, so hopefully it will leave June/July's every fourth year open, with the Gold Cups in odd # years. If it plays out that way, we'll know that our fed is serious if they make sure to lock in participation at Copa America '28, '32 and beyond.
We knew those first two games were going to be a problem before the hex draw was even made. I don't recall the exact dynamics, but we knew there was a scenario where we could be going to CR and hosting Mexico and that there was a decent chance we could have dropped both of those fixtures which was going to get this team off on the wrong foot, but qualifying wasn't insurmountable by any measure considering that there were 3.5 spots available for CONCACAF. We played some abysmal soccer under Bruce and still got to Couva with a chance to take 3rd place and 4th which was a playoff should have been a slam dunk. Klinsmann has not covered himself in managerial glory since US Soccer fired him, but leading Germany to 3rd place was a good showing, regardless of a home WC in 2006 or not. His results with the US were similarly impressive. His methods weren't the best, he completely derailed our youth program and missed back to back Olympics, but he got us prepared to compete in 2014. That's a team that held Portugal with near peak CR7, vanquished a long standing bogey team in Ghana and showed well vs Germany & Belgium which were games we had a shot of winning. We didn't look that good in Qatar with a lot more talent.
Ouch. Seems pretty harsh, I definitely think we're top 20, but its worth noting just how many good teams there are in Europe who flat out miss out on WC's, even at times, the Euro's. I do agree 100% with their ranking of us compared to Conmebol, I see 4 teams I think are clearly better based upon performance in Conmebol, and they are the same, though I rank Uruguay ahead of Brazil and Argentina.