which one of these players is a deffender : a) Mia Hamm b) Tiffeny Milbrett c) Brandi Chastain d) Shannon Mac Millan e) Heather O'Reilly
The answer is ... All of the above! Defense begins as soon as the ball goes into possession of the other team and, at that point, EVERY player defends. Once the ball is in our possession everyone becomes an attacker. That is part of the total soccer concept that made the US great and it is the only way that we will retain/regain our greatness. Pigeonholing players and discouraging creative two way play, like April seems to want to do, makes the team less effective and results in less hustle and less scoring as we are currently seeing. The US used to be able to score against all but the very best defenses but now we seem unable to score much at all agains even weak teams unless they colapse and give up. The forwards do not often try to quickly win the ball and the other teams get the chance to both possess and find better passes than they used to after the US looses the ball.
Yes, and a good U15 girl's team could score 4 or 5 against the painfully pathetic Panamanian players.(Alliteration intended) They fail to score over and over against any kind of half way decent defense. Except for a VERY few exceptions the US simply has lost its scoring drive under April and one of the main reasons is that she has the ladies playing soft defense. Of course, maybe, April is right and the US no longer has the talent to dominate the middle to low level teams like Japan and Mexico. Possession means NOTHING if it does not result in goals and wins.
i think US team has all kind of fire powers up front so its up to the ball passers from midfield to activate them !, the last match against Japan was the prove that without the good midfielders there was nothing they could do about it.
re. I think that there are four fundimental issues with regards to why the Ladies don't seem to be playing as well. 1.) a rotating roster....I do not feel that switching personel in and out of the line up is conducive to good team chemistry. I think it only seems to confuse the players. Rythem is disrupted and play becomes disorganized. 2.)I think we are still going after the ball, but; arguably we have been missing our best diffensive forward that often disrupts the rythem of the opponents defense and Mid-field. Preasuring players, and forcing them to either cough up the ball or make a bad pass. And that player is Mia Hamm. Lil also is a disruptive presence for any apponent. So alot of the issues are related to missing veteran leadership, coupled with alot of youth and inexperience. 3.)The final pass has been lacking timing and efficiancy. We are not distributing the ball well in particular in the final third of the field. And we are frankly not hitting our forwards as often as we need to be. 4.) despite our final pass issues...we have managed to out shoot our apponents. But; we are not getting those shots on frame. Our ladies do not look calm on their efforts. But rather rushed. They are not settling the ball when they have the time before taking the shot..and they are leaning back to much and not getting over the ball. with all this said..I can't wait until feb. when all the veterans are back on the field again. I think you will then see a more stable team, and a more patient one.
ok maybe, just maybe the coach has something to do w/ it, as far as i remember when Tony was the coach, US team was like scoring machine, they seems to score so easily and beautifuly and set pieces were excecuted perfectly capitalizing on most of the passes in the box, they looked very clinical and beautiful to watch, and if wasn't for all of that i don't think i watch woman soccer at all now.
Having been at the Japan game and later on video I can't help but wonder why the forwards never preasured the ball. This not only gave the Japanese confidence it also eliminated the chance mistake by their defence. It was not hard to notice that the Japanese defenders played everything over the top thereby minimizing touches by the US middies. If you want to be criticle of the midfield what would anyone say of our forwards. They never held the ball, they never played it back and worked off the ball, they certainly never played off each other and as stated earlier they never preasured the ball in the attacking third until the subs came in. Some of our best scoring opportunities came from the midfielders and keep in mind that the japanese were playing with 5 midfielders. I believe our defenders needed to assert themselves more offensively and perhaps could have had we not played so low preasure on the forward line.