I covered that 08 team. Ah, the good old days of Freddy Adu being a legitimately good player who could play the Netherlands and twist then into knots. But yeah - a lack of composure cost them. They had an opportunity to make a good run.
+ El Wafi (CB,Lugano), Begraoui (FW,23, Praia), El Ouazzani (FW, 23, Braga), Driouech (RW, 22, PSV) and Taha (AM, 22, Twente). But to be fair only Riad, Saibari and El Wafi would have been in the starting 11. The others would have been good bench options.
Shameful game by the ref - both of those penalties were extremely soft at best. That said, this was a really poor performance by the team and the coach. Mitrovic made the exact same mistakes Berhalter made in the 2022 World Cup -- trotting out virtually the same starting XI every game and then wondering why we played extremely flat in the Round of 16. Why was their no squad rotation from Mitrovic this whole tournament? Guys like Taylor Booth and Caleb Wiley wasted away on the bench. Very disappointing result. There's not such a talent gap that we should be getting blitzed 4-0 in games like this. I think I'm a pretty forgiving USMNT fan (usually not bombastic or overly critical of our coaches), but this should not be considered acceptable. Rough summer to be a US supporter.
Can you explain how "our soccer program" is responsible for team USA's performance cross like a hundred different Olympic events? How are the US soccer players infecting the rest of the team with their loser's mentality when they're not even at the Olympic village in Paris?? Even your new hero Zimmerman said they're completely isolated from the rest of the Olympics?? Looking forward to what will no doubt be a brilliant analysis, thanks in advance
The implication of my.semi-sarcastic comment was that maybe the US isn't as good at sports in general as we tend to think.
We're awesome at sports, with the most medals won in the Olympics than anyone else. We're just not that good at soccer. For half the planet it's an obsession, for the USA it's one of many sports.
Scally is a 21 year old with more than 100 games for Gladbach. It's hard to argue that he doesn't raise the level of the national team program, especially since he's not even first choice.
What has the USSF proclaimed? One of the problems I have with USSF is they don't share much, particularly about the work they're doing to increase the opportunity to play and learn soccer at grass roots level. For instance I read an article about the work USSF is doing with the FFA around coaching education and the increase in the number of qualified coaches in the US. My problem is that that article is about 8 years old and I've heard nothing since. I realize the personnel have changed, we've had Covid and that various lawsuits have gobbled up a lot of time and money but still, just let us know what's happening.
I don't know if anyone corrected you but the '08 Men's Olympic team: Beat Japan to open the tournament. Were beating the Netherlands 2-1 in the 93rd minute with the ref about to blow the whistle. Basically if not for the moronic foul in the final seconds by Holden we're in first place heading into the group stage finale by tiebreaker with Nigeria. Instead, The Dutch equalizer on basically the last kick of the game, and then we open the group finale with a red card in the 5th minute by Orozco and that's all she wrote (even w/all that, they still played Nigeria tough, losing 2-1 down a man for 85 minutes to a Nigeria team that took Silver losing to Messi in the final). The Dutch who we'd essentially beaten would go on to push Messi's gold medal squad to Extra time before falling, while as previously mentioned, the Nigeria team we played well with finished Silver. The '08's did all that despite having a colossal idiot as the coach who got nearly everything wrong. One stupid foul away from the knockouts (admittedly at that point they'd get Ivory Coast or Messi's Argentina in the QF's).
The '08 Olympic team absolutely would have killed this U23 team, especially if the coach got the 11 and pool right, the coach didn't which was part of the problem. He had Adu, Bradley and Altidore, who had combined to beat Brazil and Cavani and Suarez's Uruguay the summer before. The core of that team was: Edu Bradley Holden Szetela Kljestan Feilhaber Adu Altidore Davies The defense was a bit thin which was a problem. But goalkeeper was covered by Guzan. That team was FAR FAR FAR better than the '24 team, but they were drawn into a group of death, had an idiot coach, and made 2 catastrophic mistakes total which sabotaged everything (stupid Holden foul in the 93rd minute and dumb red card in 5th minute the following game).
Going thru it, I'd have had 7 different players on the roster, 5 starters, in the end. Starters: Neal, Gutierrez, Sands, Jones, Downs (over Cowell at the last as I recalled) Subs: Sullivan, Luna And they'd have been set up in a 352 or 4231, w/ Paredes on the left. So obviously this could have looked a lot different in performance & perceived future potential under another manager.
Sands would have made a big difference though he is over age and probably would have been suspended for yellow card accumulation as he's been a savage since returning from Rangers. In an ideal world we'd have fielded Musah, Scally, Reyna, Pepi, Tillman, Aidan Morris, Johnny Futbol and Lund.
Yeah, I know, I was responding to someone who detailed it as well. My point wasn't that this team was better than '08 (which I said in my post) or that '08 was poor; it's that the idea that making the Olympics or making it out of the group is an accomplishment so simple that it should be disregarded completely or assumed to happen is silly. People are trying to position the loss to Morocco as some kind of debacle that signals massive long term implications, blah, blah, blah, and no, actually making it out of the group is progress. Especially since this team wasn't that talented. We haven't even BEEN to the Olympics since '08, much less made it out of a group. Like it or not, for the US, that is actual progress. And to do it with a B team is something of a backhanded compliment (insult?). I watched the first sixty or so minutes as well, as we didn't play nearly as poorly as people are making out. We weren't the better team at all, but I expected a massacre and did not see that at all.
We’d obviously lose to the first choice Spain, France, and Argentina U23 teams even if we had our top guys but that’s true at the senior level. I don’t think that’s clear when it comes to Morocco if you give us our top U23 players and overage players like Pulisic (or take Hakimi off their team).
Spain, Morocco, France were the favorites in that order. We got hammered by two of them. I hoped we could give the North Africans a fight, after all we didn't look terrible against France. Morocco dominated us harder than France did though.
Circling back to say ... Morocco rolled up the score on Egypt today, 6-0, to earn the Bronze medal. France v Spain tomorrow will determine the Gold and Silver medals.