That's not exactly true. Johnson is on the 23-man roster, but four of those players (Johnson being one) are just on injury stand-by. As I understand it he'll be in Chicago for the tournament unless one of Hume, DeRosario or Occéan get hurt. Canada is bringing an inexperienced, somewhat experimental team same as everyone else. We left some of the quality with their new clubs (Stalteri, DeGuzman, Klukowski, etc). I now return you to your regularly scheduled US camp talk. cheers, hobbes
Got a little time here at work so let's see if I have any tidbits that I've overlooked. Skip scans the wasteland of his mind. - One thing I found myself wondering is which one of these players is especially good at workiuts and practices and which go through the motions. For instance I've said very little of LD and truth be told, I've noticed him only rarely. I noticed him when he had an open shot at goal in the scrimmage but managed not to get a shot off (and the crowd groaned.) Normally in a game, he shoots and usually scores in such situations. On the other hand he was the first in line for the team going through the various obstacle courses in warm-ups. But then he was very quiet in scrimages. So I don't know what to think there. Mastroeni OTOH was last in those lines but was very vocal both sessions I watched especially in the scrimmages. Probably the most vocal player. -I couldn't tell if any player was outclassed by his surroundings. Then again I'm not used to seeing them in these situations. These situations however entailed faster play then in almost all MLS games and so it was good to see the newer members of the squad (Davis, Conrad, Quaranta) and older guys (Sanneh, Pope, Conrad again, and yes, Armas) all keep up the pace. Maybe if I saw tape of the scrimmages I'd see something... - About Onyewu. He's a brick house (cue the music). In the scrimmage in the 1st half he was called twice for using his hands on different players when a long ball was hit by the keeper. the second time he expressed frustration a bit, but he was right in front of me and he did foul. He has no need at all to do that and hopefully he has a quick learning curve here. - This second day, if I had to say who I was least impressed with, I'd go with..... Wolff. I normally like Josh but in the scrimmage he just didn't stand out, get himself open enough for me. The other forwards all did more. But, again, that's just one practice. - Both offenses tried several diagional passes from deep midfield to forwards and out of say 15 of them, maybe 2 got through. Dolo, as I said above, ruled his corner. So did Hedjuk (who did have a very impressive day in practice.) So did Conrad (who I came away with wanting to see more- he definitely showed he was as good as the other central defenders- all of whom played well IMO. - Vanney though I didn't notice too much. -It will be interesting to see what Arena does with his defenders, particularly on the outside in the GC. I'd say dolo and Vanney start at first with Hedjuk being the mnain reserve. I'm not sure if Sanneh and/or JOB fit into this. I see no indication that Brad davis is being though of as anything other than a left winger. (DMB's understudy in this competition and a big chance for him. I've warmed to him also.) - Other positional things: Quaranta is a forward here. Olsen's a central mid it seems though he might go wide right as ralston's backup. Armas is a target forward. ha ha. Just checking if you're asleep as there will be a test later! Noonan's a forward too. Gotta go and needle someone. Back later. Hope the spelling's adequate.
ursula, is the team practicing in Portland or Eugene? If portland, I'd like to go to a few practices. Thanks
At Nike. As far as I know, the team leaves for Seattle on July 3 and I don't know where they will practice when they get there.
I wish it was Eugene then I would be able to stop by and see them. Enjoy it while you can. Someday maybe I will be heading that direction for mls games. I can't give anymore rep, but thanks again for the report. Paks
Any ideas on how much practice time the boys put in there? Is Bruce making them into two-a-day sessions, all soccer and soccer drills with no separate conditioning work to speak of? About 2 1/2 hrs each day total?
The morning sessions are 1 1/2 to 2 hours depending on how long the warm-ups abnd coll-downs take. I know they do stuff in the pm- Arena said yesterday that they were to meet again at 1pm- but as I haven't seen it I don't know what they do there. I'll try to find out today. Then there are other meeting times.
I think that most likely have gotten more than enough posi-rep for the reports so instead of that (I'll save it for another thread/informational post) I will just go on record as saying thanks so much for the updates. It is all great information that we nut-jobs love to hear. Thanks, and keep up the great work.
Saturday morning practice My last report to you all. Fun last training. I was joined in spectating by Barra Brava's best, Red&Black who's out visiting family. He introduced me to Quaranta and Olsen and a good time was had by all. For the rest of this report I will sometime add in his comments where appropriate... The morning was solely devoted to an 11v11 scrimmage after warm-ups. Injury note: [/u] Pat Noonan didn't play. He arrived late to the field, did some stretches, had his ankle iced and in general looked unhappy that he wasn't out there with his teammates. He wasn't limping so hopefully he's recovering fast and he'll get some playing time in the real games. Otherwise the only player I saw iced at the end of play was Chris Armas on a knee. No doubt just a precaution. Okay. The game. First the keepers. Keller played the whole game and stayed at one goal even after the teams switched at half-time. Hannehman (first half) and Reis (second half) split time at the other end. Blues vs Reds today. Blues: Cherundolo---Pope---Onyewu---Vanney -----------------Mastroeni Ralston---------JOB--------Beasley -----------------Donovan -----------------Wolff Notes: Dempsey was all over the field, front to back. I'm tempted to write in LD as a forward but he played more withdrawn than Wolff. Might this be Arena's first choice team? Time will tell. Reds: Hedjuk-----Sanneh----Conrad-----High School kid -------------Olsen----------Armas ---------------Dempsey----------Davis -------------Quaranta -------------------Casey Notes: Yes, there was a high school kid @ left back. He did okay. Sort of like LD, Tino played withdrawn. Final score: 2-1 Reds win. The game was just plain fascinating to watch. On one hand you had DMB and Hedjuk matching speed on the wing. On the other you had Casey going up against Gooch and Pope for some serious jostling for position. (When elephants fight, it's the grass that loses.) Then you had Olsen and Armas doing everything to keep that very talented blue attack at bay. Let's recap some highlights: - The first goal was by Wolff about 15 minutes in to a 30 minute half. Before then I hadn't been aware of him much at all. Wolff's task was to stretch the defense, constantly making runs. As a midfield target he's not bad at all despite his normal height. He battled hard all game. - Again the loudest player on the field was Mastroeni. R&B noted that even in the front row at DCU's RFK you don't hear the players much, but in this game, as all week, Pablo was constantly talking and directing. He's a clear #1 d-mid. Both teams talked of course. For example, if a player had just been passed to and he was open, several players would yell, "turn! turn!" to let him know that he had room to dribble forward. Thinks like that. Still Pablo's voice was above all other's; the de facto captain regardless of if he wears the armband or not. - Landon, as I said yesterday, is pretty quiet. This game he started slow, sort of on cruise control. But before the first half was done he started putting on these sprints... Then in half two he really started mixing in lot's of sprints that would leave the defenders grasping for him. He just has a couple of gears that most of the other's don't. Just watching the game, I'm sure opposing coaches in defensing our Nats, start with defensing him, he's that dangerous. He had a couple of nice shots and crosses, including the best to Wolff for a point blank snapping header (a beaut) on goal that Keller just nonchalantly blocked. - Looking at Keller, you'd think he was reading a newspaper at his local coffee shop, he looks to unflappable. Total, "been there, done that" attitude. As R&B said, when you start your career @ Millwall all those years ago and gone on from there, you truly have seen it all and a nasty little header from Wolff is nothing to get excited about. - While LD changes gears and goes in deadly spurts, Clint Dempsey just brings pressure to bear. Very active body, Clint is and he just loves to mix it up. I can see why Arena doesn't have him so much as an a-mid or a forward as he plays naturally so deep, at times deeper than Mastroeni. Then he'd go forward and interchange with Quaranta. The second red goal was in fact scored by Dempsey. A ball had been flighted wide right that tino ran down. Quaranta then dribbled closer to goal and sent a hard low cross to an open Dempsey. What happened then I didn't get a good shot of since it was at the far goal, but somehow Clint touched it with his toe and it went straight up, over Keller's head, and bounced into goal. Effective but one of a kind. - Quaranta again showed he belonged. For those who don't know, he isn't the fastest guy around but he does distribute well. He had that assist to Clint and, I'm not sure, but he may have had an assist on the first red goal. I'm not sure because it wasn't a real goal as two players were waaaaay offsides and everybody stopped and the ball went into the net. I guess you can have worse linesmen than MLS employs! -JOB is just class. He had this hellacious fake forward pass leading to a back heel to Beasley. In general he was excellent at forward distribution. Arena may differ, but IMO JOB's back folks. - Dolo had his normal solid game. Not much to say.... oh yeah- he successfully challenged Casey in the air on one play. Got some air that time. - Hedjuk and Beasley were entertaining but the canceled each other out. - Sanneh tended to play in front of Jimmy Conrad and thus Conrad was the last guy back on his side and he did his job well. All week I've been impressed with him. Very calm defending; the calmest defender out there. He definitely belongs and a case can be made that he has the most skills of all our central defenders. - Gooch is definitely less skilled than Conrad. He's still very much a work in progress but he's quite a work! His body just screams, "NFL tight end". Like I said yesterday, he needs to learn about hand usage still. He had quite a few tussles in the air with Casey. Serious body slamming there. Gooch won them all though. -So did Pope though Casey mailed his stomach one time, causing Pope to stop for a minute. That seemed to wake His Holiness up and thereafter it was game on between Pope and Gooch vs Casey. Pope just stepped up a level. - Casey though he lost the air battles was a constant irritant to the blue defense, playing the offsides line and having a couple of nice dribbles. It just feels like once he scores one time, then he'll be a holy terror. On the other hand, until he scores, he may be just that tantalizing talent that doesn't quite make it. Hope it's the former. He's the most physical presence the US has ever had (yes including McBride). - Olsen and Armas are nice to have on the depth chart. They are tenacious as hell, and clog up things. Olsen has some nice runs forward also. Like on DCU, he's a complimentary player and he made the red offense more dangerous. Armas isn't so effective offensively but he's not the back hole that's said about him so often here. - In looking at this team one can see that the central midfield back to the central defense is by far deeper than the wings. Ralston and Vanney had solid games but....they aren't so exciting. At the most one hopes that Vanney doesn't make a big mistake and to his credit, he rarely does. Ralston has more offensive responsibilities and he's good at slipping free of his defenders on attack. Somehow he can hide from the opposing defense while being all by himself on the wing. -Davis showed that he belonged also, but not more than that. I think he could get into a serious competition for backing up Beasley with Lewis and Convey. His lefty foot has a PhD degree in precision. Still he didn't stand out and make you say, "oh my god!" - Hahnemann wasn't tested much but Reis had two nice saves. Well that's all for the moment. If I can think of anything else I'll spew it down here. Hopefully someone in Seattle can locate the team and give more reports. I'm going to the Canada game next week and it will be interesting to see what I saw in practice translate into a game.
Re: Saturday morning practice Won't let me rep you again, but thanks for all the reports. Much appreciated!
a million thanx again ursula. and now since i've "seen" all these practices, here's my first team. ------------------keller---------------------------- dolo--------gooch-----------conrad-----------hejduk -----------------mastro------------------------- ralston------------job--------------------dmb -------------donovan-------casey----------- this is the best i can do. but i still don't like this team. it has a thrown together feel to it. conrad instead of pope because "he's our most skilled central defender". i'd like to have job at left back (hejduk is just a stop gap) and somebody else at right wing (maybe quaranta, not ld. he's a waste on the wing). ralston is still too molasses for me. then i'd put ld at amid and wolff at forward. that might make the team a little better, but still kind of makeshift.
Re: Saturday morning practice 'High School kid'??? You mean Bruce grabbed some bored high school kid and said, "Hey, you want to play left back in practice?"??? Seriously, who was he? You just messing with us? Sounds kinda bizarre to me.
Bruce: Someone must carry the burden of playing left back as we have no other options. Silence. Bruce (sadly): Is there none among you who would accept this great task? Fro(do): I will take it!
Re: Saturday morning practice I was wondering if someone was gonna comment on that. No, I kid you not. And it wasn't Fro. There were actually two high schoolers there but only one played. The other looked a little like Eddie Gaven, but he wasn't. I have no idea who the one who played was. And one thing the kid wasn't and that was bored. 1st half his eyes were huge in dealing with Steve Ralston making runs at him and all. Several giveaways. Early in the second half he tried to dribble the blue team, somehow was dispossessed and all the time Olsen was (politely) yelling at him to pass the damn ball. Thereafter he played simple and waaaay back. The kid has professional size, I'd say 6' or so. Decent speed too. I presume he's highly regarded around these parts and Nike is in the middle geographically of some serious youth ball. Yeah, I'm saying he has potential. I'm sure they didn't pick anyone off the streets to play. I guess we now have a definitive answer to the question, "Tells us Bruce about the quality of the left back prospects?" In a sort-of related topic, I was wondering all week if Arena thinks Sanneh is capable of playing right back still. The answer seems to be no, but at times Sanneh was playing fairly far forward, more like a midfielder than a center half. So I don't have my answer there either.
Re: Saturday morning practice I always felt that Conor from Star Kick was going to make the nats some day!