Very upbeat analysis, but what else would you expect. Interesting how he singled out Ned Grabavoy as being a key substitute in the midfield. I agree, and although I wish he were a little bigger and quicker, he'll turn out to be a very good pro with his generally excellent distribution and good tactical sense. However, I wonder about his having enough athleticism to make it to the full nat'l team.
yes, these reviews are usually self-serving, but rongen needs to be given credit by all those of us who have been critical of him previously. he had the team play attacking football - not the scared version of previous usmnt teams at many levels made the right changes after that 15 minute debacle against the germans. (remember, the german goalie tested positive for drugs, so in some tournaments that result would be overturned, tho it doesn't make much of a difference). i still didn't like the moor change tho. he seemed to give the ball away too many times. in the biggest game of their lives, he had the team playing up to and (some say) better than a south american powerhouse. i have never seen us take it to a brazilian or argentinian team like that before - at any level in a meaningful game. and he did all this without too much time to get the team together and work on chemistry and other stuff coaches like to work on before tournaments. lets give him credit.
This is becoming a trueism on BS and I just want to say I disagree with the CW on this one. I think Drew did a much better job with passing out of the back and apparently so does Rongen: Drew first caught my eye playing centerback behind Clark at Furman. When Clark would go forward, Drew would step in to fill. Drew busted up a lot of counters and played the ball forward better than Clark. Drew weighted his passes well which is something other backs (and Clark) have trouble doing. Most just whack at the ball. This is not to say that Drew is perfect, far from it, but for a player that only recently became a regular in the national pool and didn't even start the first game for the U20's, he is coming along well. Word to the wise US defenders: It matters just as much what you do with the ball after you win it as it does winning the ball in the first place.
Not bad if we want to be a perenial quarter finalist None of this Thomas Rongen is bad if we want to be a perenial quarterfinalist, nice guy, not too bad, he made it to the quarter finals. We can rationalize all day about the subject but the bare truth is that we need to go to the next level of coaching if we want to see the USA on the golden pedestal of world soccer, meanwhile my fellow Bigsoccer posters lets be happy and satisfy with our four place....