There's mine so far, after watching the first half. I'm sick of watching it already. Who knows if I'll bother with the second.
Upon review, our lefts side attacking flank was absolutley non-existant in this game and virtualy constricted our possesion on the ball. Convey and Corrales rarely got forward or created any good combonation play from the left. In fact numeroous times Bradley and/or Clark had to cover to those sidelines to pick up the ball and make something happen. Also, it was to be said that this team needs to work on set piece defence, i thought Timmy was going to rip the heads off his teamates. For some reason they failed to set walls and mark like he asked them too, and not just on the 2 goals we gave up but on almost every set piece.
Do you really think we would have had a better chance to win attempting to play more possession out of the back with Corrales and Moor? Seriously?? You force either one of those guys to take more time with the ball and we are giving up more than two goals for damn sure. I think the idea of maintaining more possession as opposed to "clearing the puck" is generally good but you can't be completely ignorant of your personnel. Without Dolo, Simek, Spector or even Bornstein, our fullback situation was bleak. The idea of a gameplan requiring these fullbacks who were clearly out of their depth anyway to take more time on the ball seems foolish to me.
The second half was worse. I'm not as angry as you are, nor as certain that Bob is at fault, but I certainly share your central point: This is bad soccer. Whatever the score might be. I'll share my perspective. The 14 year old comes by, watches for about 20 minutes, what was actually our very best stretch of the game, the second part of the first half. At halftime he says, "Those guys are bad, Mexico is pretty good though." He had no interest in watching further. He said, "I play better than that." Of course this means nothing like he is better than the players on USMNT, or ever will be better than the players on USMNT, or anything stupid like that. Even he knows that is not the case. But what he meant was factually true ... against his own age group, he plays better than that. He doesn't give away cheap possession. He passes forward, and completes a good percentage of those passes. He can hold the ball under pressure and find a teammate. The same holds true for his stronger teammates. As a result, the team strings together a lot more passes than the USMNT did against Mexico, and creates many more attractive attacking opportunities. More slowly, of course. But it's still better soccer. He feels that way about the weaker EPL teams, too, which is why I can't get him to watch Wigan - West Ham for long, even if an American is in the match. It's not as if we are incapable of playing differently against Mexico. Remember the Cotton Bowl, 2004? The 1-0 victory when Landon ran rampant up the middle? Watched the tape of that recently. The kid loved it. He respects that type of soccer. So that's my standard, play well enough so that the kid wants to watch. Last night, the team failed to meet that standard.
[R] Ireland - Brazil [RESULT]The only bright point for me was to consider the Ireland-Brazil game being broadcast prior to the USMNT. I was laughing out loud at the sheer audaciousness of Brazil's game. There was some beautiful football there. But it ended only 1-0 Brazil. After 10 minutes I figured on a 4-0 blowout. but Corrales still sucked.[/RESULT]
One thing I know is it is completely unnecessary and a complete waste of my time to watch that mess again.
Last night was the first time this thought crossed my mind in the Hardworkin' Bob era .... Do I have to watch this crap for two more years? Even if we are winning, I don't want to.
I'll do it, as well probably pretty much everybody else on these boards, but the audience will never expand past its niche market of Sam's Army types if the USMNT keeps playing this brand of ball.
Again, on this topic I agree with your recognition of the problem, but disagree with the notion that someone Bradley can fix this. Do our back pass horribly out of the back? Yes. Can a national team coach, who spends limited time with these guy, be expected to fix this when their club coaches who work with them day in and day out can't? Nope. Watch Bocanegra play for Fulham, for one example, and you will see the same thing in his play. He basically just knocks the ball forward in hope someone will be able to latch on and gets rid of it like a hot potato when pressured. Bob Bradley is not telling our backs to knock aimless balls forward and preventing them from passing with style and finesse up the field. Our current backs are incapable. I wish that were not the case, but I fear it is. And, watching these guys in a variety of environments seems to support the notion. Maybe he could try out some other players. But, we simply have very few if any center backs with top notch ball skills. Out outside backs suck as well for the most part. But, at least our center backs showed some ability to defend and break things up.
Well there you have it boys, the 14 year old said it, therefore it shall be considered gospel. What team is he signing with? EDIT: nvm, read the next paragraph after posting this. =)
From the mouth of babes. FYI, his club plays Tigres next month. I am hoping that match is not a repeat of the U.S.-Mexico senior game, stylistically. If so, I think I'll have to support Tigres ...
But he can select players that compliment each other well. Bob doesn't. That's why the team doesn't mesh.
The father/son matching haircuts were nice, the rest of the match -- not so much. Why didn't Landon play? Is he hurt? We are really weak when he and Beasley are both missing. ;>)
what's your idea of players who would mesh? not saying that it was a good soccer. it was not. but it's easy to criticize.
Well, I would have played Feilhaber and/or Adu to start. Not to hark to the olden days but back in the 60's and into the 70's, it was well accepted that the defenders - including fullbacks - stayed in defense and the midfielders and forwards did all the attacking. If you had the situaiton where you're stuck with Moor and Corrales, you may as well keep them in the back and play another attacker. A Diamond or a Y would have sufficed. I also may have tried Clark at right fullback. At least, Rico has the speed to stay with Vela.
I do remember that game. And I loved watching it as well, many times off tape. I can see Hejduk's nutmeg in my mind's eye even now. But that game always makes me nervous because, until the fluke set piece goal at the death, our dominance led to nothing on the scoreline. On the other hand, with a pair of decent outside backs yesterday, even our ugly tactics would've gotten us a win. And I'm conflicted on this point. Win or draw ugly... or play pretty but take your chances win-lose-draw? Most international managers favor the former. The purist in me wants the latter (I hear you, Ghost). But the competitor wants to go as deep in South Africa as possible.
This is why I don't understand how Parkhurst continues to get so few chances. He's clearly on Bradley's radar and involved in the setup. But he he's gotten only 3 caps total so far (2 as a starter). Everyone is well aware of his playing style by now: comfortable on the ball, great vision and distribution, rarely fouls, etc. We all know by now what we're going to get with the Gooch-Boca pairing. So why don't we take advantage of these opportunities -- in friendlies! -- to get Parkhurst blooded for the serious games?
Agreed. Parkhurst, especially with Cherundolo and Bornstein hurt and Spector out for some kind of deal (not to play this match in exchange for Olympic games later), seems like the most skilled back remaining. It was just a friendly, so why not give Parkhurst a try, at least in the second half. The things I least understood about Bradley's moves were: not playing Parkhurst; bringing in Adu so late; and that he brought in Lewis at all. The other decisions were more or less reasonable given that this was a friendly rather than a qualifier.
nobody, as others have said, I'm not expecting Bradley to coach the bad distribution out of players. I'm expecting him to select players in part because they are decent in distribution. By the way, Moor, Boca, and Corrales were all awful in distribution. Gooch was actually very good and plays a mean ball over the top (see Dempsey's "goal" for an example). Moor's cross to Altidore concerns me only because it will reinforce doing something he's statistically terrible at doing.
Was that the game were Arena experimented with the "box" midfield? Two holding mids and two attacking mids who had freedom to roam? There was a mini-fad for that back then, I think. Who were the starters for that one?