Jack bell (NYT) player ratings http://goal.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/player-ratings-italy-0-vs-u-s-1/
True, considering no other player was going forward with him. I think there is still great potential for this guy, even in the very near future. This was by far the biggest match this kid has played in. He hasn't seen any play higher than the 4th division in Germany. I think JK rushed him a bit. I also think he could figure into some of the qualifiers this year. Probably, would had been better off with Herculez in this camp.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZR48Cnn9FU"]Clint Dempsey wonder goal Vs. Juventus - YouTube[/ame] 'Clint Dempsey. Making Juventus Goalkeepers look bad since 2010.'
He coughed the ball up in our own half as well. Even if you cough it up at midfield you can get hurt (Dempsey Honduras, Clark Ghana, etc.). When you have the lead and are trying to kill the match if you come in as a sub you just have to make smart, low risk decisions. Boyd did not. it was his only job and he didn't do it. Yes he is young and inexperienced so we should take it with a grain of salt and call him up some more, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he had a job to do and didn't do it.
How on God's green earth is a player of his quality still languishing at Fulham? I know I've brought this up many times before, but he is class.
Yes, We would be singing a different story. But that is JK, he is a ballsy coach willing to take chances to gain the faith of guys. He sees him as a future player and is giving him a run out vs. italy before he has even stepped up to first team minutes in his pro career! I applaud him, but also see the flaws in doing such. A smarter move would be putting in buddle... but agian it is a friendly.... a serious one... but still...
Regardless of what people say there is still a heavy anti-american bias in the soccer world. Fulham certainly values him highly and they aren't going to give him away. That bias may be preventing a bigger club from pulling the trigger on what would be a pretty big price on him. Not only that, but he's going to want to be with a club where he isn't going to be relegated to the bench.
Right. On one hand it's good to bleed these guys in friendlies. On the other you don't want to give up a result like that because it can be valuable to team morale as we move forward. JK rolled the dice with Boyd, Kljestan, and Spector and won. He gets credit for that.
Kljestan though isn't 19 and brought weakness as soon as he was brought in. Many many dangerous chances if it wasn't for luck/ bocanegra... would have been their tying goal. Caught ball watchng too much. Spector and his head was a good sub. Boyd didn't mess up and just ran alot which worked out.
For the same reason Hageland is still there. Sometimes players can't find that right move. Now if Clint spoke with Freidel's accent, he'd be on Spurs by now.
"M Clint Dempsey, 6.5 -- Played decently in the first half, but wasn't particularly impactful aside from one bullet of a free kick in the first half. He needed to put more pressure on Andrea Pirlo as well. Dempsey kept to his task, though, and made the play that mattered, scoring the game's only goal." Seems kind of low for a game winner. But besides that, I can't point to many instances when I thought he faulted. Other than Bradley, he was our best player on the field.
It seemed to me that any time we moved the ball foreward at all, it was going through Clint. Either dribbling out of pressure or switching to the opposite winger. I read that Italy has 60% of possession. A huge chunk of our 40% was due to Dempsey. If there is going to be mark down for our lack of possession & scarce opportunities, mark down every player *but* Dempsey. I shudder to think what would have happened if he hadn't been available.
The general consensus has been that our MOTM was Bradley. It's hard to argue with that, imo, and it makes your comment rather odd. Not a knock on Clint, but it takes more than one guy, and MB was probably just as (or more) responsible for the level of possession we achieved. Either way, somebody had to do this, so that Brek Shea would have the opportunity to give the ball away.
I only saw the highlights, but the US beating Italy...even though it was just a friendly...is a good win considering we've never beat Italy. Do you think this victory was due to Klinsmann's strategy, luck, player(s) or some combination of the three?
l look at it this way: if Donovan had played the way Dempsey did, he would have been accused of disappearing/being invisible, especially in the first half, and of not having done much else beside scoring the goal. And would have received at most a 6.5, more probably a 6.
Point taken, but (believe it or not) we expect Landon and Clint to do different things for this team. That's why we are so much more effective when they both play. (My way of saying that it's a more valid criticism of Landon's play)
he is a really good player but he wouldnt be a star with a larger club like he is with Fulham and to be honest i think he is a little bit of a diva which might scare away a larger club.
dempsey gets a bad rap because of being american remember the US soccer culture and history is not long so players from the US face a stigma from the beginning that is hard to shake.. if he was brasilian or argentinian it would be the other way around he would be thought of as one of the best in the world
A great lad on my Spurs board will make player performance compilations by request. Yesterday I asked him to throw together one for Bradley against Italy. Unfortunately the quality is sort of limited by the quality of the video. It's still good top work and he always does a great job editing but the camera man was poor and he had to cut out some of the logos and what not. Still it's good quality and the music is appropriate. Watch it now before Youtube Nazis take it down! [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5MjF59i0EE"]Michael Bradley vs Italy - YouTube[/ame] P.S. I'm posting this in the USMNT and Yanks abroad section, just in case anyone asks.
Does anyone have a link to Dempsey's goal vs Italy that includes the buildup out of the back? With Bradley's turn and pass? Geez, there's only one freakin goal and the highlights only show 4-5 seconds of the run of play. Grrrrrr.... (SoCalYid, I don't know if it's the Nazis or just my iPads limitations, but I can't see the above. Thx, though.)
espn3.com still has the whole game available for re-watching The buildup to the goal goes like this. Edu draws a free kick in the US end. Ball played to the right to Cherundolo. Forward pass to Williams. Williams takes it up the wing. Pulls it back to Cherundolo. Centering back pass to Edu. Back pass to Goodson. Square pass to Boca. Pass to Bradley. Nicely weighted chip to Johnson. Right footed cross to Altidore. Nicely controlled by Altidore with his left foot and played into Dempsey's path. Every US player except Howard and Shea touched the ball during the sequence. And Shea contributed too by tucking in and drawing a defender, which allowed Johnson room for his run.
Fair points and I was already reconsidering that Bradley in the deeper role and Torres more free might be worth a new look. Though, I think it is a bit much to say that Bradley is a "whole different player" and the pre-World Cup Turkey game is utterly useless as a reference point as that game was a joke. The flaw with these two arguments is that Italy of last night is much closer in quality to Slovenia, Switzerland or Poland than it is to Spain. Like I said before, I am now convinced that the talk about possession is more than just talk, but it's a long way to go to be able to do better than the USMNT did in the Confed Cup against a team of Spain's caliber. Which Italy was not, and any arguments based on the assumption that it is, are worthless. Truth.