Clint was our best player in possession, by a long shot. Hell, he was comparable to Pirlo in influence for our team. Take Clint out of the equation in the first half (or second) and you get a completely dismal attack, followed by a complete defensive breakdown. Seriously, watch the man closely. He is miles better than everyone else in our squad (including Donovan ) at their positions, besides Howard. Dempsey holds and moves possession, in tight and open space, like no other player we have going forward. This includes Donovan. What I fear about Donovan, is that, while he is certainty talented I do not think playing in MLS as he ages is going to be an advantage. Even Friedel criticized Donovan for not pushing his career to a higher level while he had the chance. Now he has been out for a lot of matches. I hope JK benches Donovan to begin with; just so he get fired up for the first match that means something.
Thanks Maximum for the recap, which somewhat supports Martin's point, I think. There's much more to the goal than the crappy highlights showed. Smart of Williams to make the right choice of pulling back, resetting and playing to Cherundolo. Too often, our players make poor choices and give the ball away needlessly. Maybe JK is not in a position to improve our players' skill. He is in a position to help improve their decision-making. Oh, and: "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Maximum Optimal again."
I think the really smart play on the goal sequence was Johnson's decision to start moving up the field once he saw the right back move inside with Shea. He could have just stayed home and given Bradley an easy target for a backpass. But that would have posed no problems to the Italian defense and probably would have required a new round of circulation going back the other direction. Instead he looked up the field and made a run that was almost simultaneous with the right back moving to follow Shea. Johnson really has shown an impressive soccer IQ in the two matches he has started. And Bradley showed great composure and patience in taking a couple touches to allow Johnson time to finish his run.
I thought everyone looked great except for Shea and Goodson. I was especially impressed by Bradley. I thought it was a statement game from him, he was tremendous in this formation. The spine was the strongest, with Howard, Boca, Bradley, Dempsey, and Altidore all looking sharp. Edu was decent, he had a few bad turnovers and didn't close down well near the top of the box. Dolo was solid, as were the two other Germans.
Ths reason they were overun on the left was because Klejstan does not know how to play a defensive shift and shut people down.
Edu always shines playing just in front of centerbacks It does appear that fans at Birmingham are right: Spector is a disaster on wing but good in the centre. Our left was overrun at the end because Italy were throwing the kitchen sink and, like I try telling people all the time, teams learn fast that you don't mess with the Dolo. Shea: When you think about, who do we have who can power run up the middle of the field? Dempsey is a lurker. Jozy falls down midfield and prefers tiki taki closer to goal. Donovan likes to sweep from sides. I'd like to see us try Shea in the bull role but, like many say, Shea is reluctant to run at people. Was it Gian who took the ball away from Clark and ran straight at us in the World Cup to end our run? here you go Brek: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/26/asamoah-gyan-goal-video-g_n_626715.html
When I get into the argument about how one guy who isn't up to snuff (like a Clark, Findley, or Bornstein) disrupts the entire balance and overall talent level of a team I'm going to bring up this example. This. IMO the gulf in talent between that Spain team we played was greater than the gulf in talent with this Italian team. That being said we didn't play Spain on their turf and we also had Gooch, Donovan, and Davies for that game. So there is that to consider I don't disagree with this. However, I think that putting Kljestan, Boyd, and Spector on the field had an affect on our possession.
No kidding. To save you the click, Graham Parker's other four are: USA 1-0 England, 1950 World Cup USA 2-1 Colombia, 1994 World Cup USA 3-2 Portugal, 2002 World Cup USA 2-0 Spain, 2009 Confederations Cup Commenters there correctly, in my view, cite the following results as more "all-time top" than USA 1-0 Italy: USA 1-0 Trinidad and Tobago, 1989 World Cup qualifying match USA 3-0 Argentina, 1995 Copa América USA 1-0 Brazil, 1998 Gold Cup semifinal USA 2-0 Mexico, 2001 World Cup qualifying match USA 2-0 Mexico, 2002 World Cup USA 1-0 Algeria, 2010 World Cup Nor do I think that list is exhaustive (one example of a missing result is USA 3-0 Egypt, 2009 Confederations Cup.) I'm less sure about the other results cited there by commenters: USA 3-0 Belgium, 1930 World Cup (surely USA 3-0 Paraguay, 1930 World Cup, was a better result in the context of 1930) USA 1-1 Italy, 2006 World Cup USA 2-2 Slovenia, 2010 World Cup (but the "true" 3-2 scoreline would qualify)
That's not how I remember it. Turkey came out attacking very very strong in the first half, and Feilhaber did nothing, and was just playing terrible. Bradley and Torres were both in the middle and possession, quick 1 touch passing happened, and Bradley stayed more defensively also t hat game. I would like to see how they can do this time around again together. Said the same thing. Agree with ya. Yep. Kljestan was in over his head, and Spector... isn't Fabian Johnson with touch, control, or confidence in his dribble. What he DID do that was great, is block many shots and play very defensively well. With that said, He still isn't all that, and is B team at best. Kljestan too. Boyd... U23, but good experience for him.
Spector is a very good fullback as long as he is allowed to stay in the box. When he has someone outside applying even token pressure, his length and the way he uses it, is a huge asset. He blocks tons of passes using his length. If he has someone going at him on the dribble in space, he's toast. So, the fact that Klejstan was out there applying, basically, token pressure was a huge help to Johnny Specs. If he'd had to actually go out and defend wide, in space - or, if the Italians had been able to go at him one v. one in the box, he'd likely have been torched. It was set up to make Spector look good (and that's not a bad thing). It was a replay of his Confed Cup vs. Spain. Stay just inside the box, the opposing player, for whatever reason won't dribble into the box, so Spector gets to head, foot stab, and slide to knock balls out of danger. Be Hero Guy (He's a hero! He's a guy! - a little Sesame Street reference for ya) . If he'd had to cross that line, or if the guy w/ the ball crossed the line, it would be another story.
I stand by what I said. The bolded part can be said about Donovan for game after game after game of his career. Without LD, there was no attack. He had direct influence in our play all over the field. Also food for thought: in my original post, it says nothing about whether I agree or disagree with the assessment. In fact, I saw the influence Dempsey had throughout the game; when we got into attack even in the first half, I saw the combination plays, etc., and knew at some point we could/should break them down. I saw the value of Dempsey's play thoughout the game. My point is that Donovan has done that time and time and time again with the subtle plays, influence on the match that Dempsey was having, and yet he would be accused of being invisible, having a "quiet" game - and his ratings would suffer because most people don't see/understand how his play (and Dempsey's in this game) influenced the game. I was, therefore, explaining how I thought Dempsey's rating was lower than some folks thought it should be. As for your comments about Friedel, playing in MLS, etc., etc., I'm not going to derail this thread but will say one thing: Donovan just finished a superb 2 months with Everton, stepping on the field straight from a month layoff and having a tremendous influence on Everton's play from day 1. (Head to head, Fulham vs. Everton - who influenced their teams the most in that game?) Donovan is adapting his style of play as he ages and playing in MLS hasn't hurt him one bit. He is an extremely intelligent player, very underrated in his intelligence and reading of the game. And he doesn't need to be benched to light a fire under him.
Derail: The fact that Spain refused to take on our outside backs 1 v 1 was shocking to me. They played right into Bob's gameplan by hitting crosses into the box all day. Italy was a bit of the same. Early on they were playing balls over the top (which did trouble us a bit), but when they started attacking our outside backs and getting to the endline it was more problematic for us. Dolo in particular got toasted a few times. Mexico knew EXACTLY what to do in the Gold Cup final when Bornstein came on. Punish him all day off the dribble. And they did.
This wasn't even the best result ever against Italy. The 1-1 game, (which arguably should have been 2-1, someone try and convince me that the second goal was offside, I digress) was a much bigger result.
That performance gets lost, because for how good it was, our performance against Ghana and the Czechs was twice as horrible.
Not on me. That was a great game by the US. On topic: Looked good against Italy: Howard, Cherundolo, Boca, Goodson (save a couple of near offside busts), Johnson, Bradley, Dempsey Looked passable, or not enough data from that game: Altidore, Spector, Boyd Looked not-so-good and we need some help here: Sacha K. (I was disappointed in this), Williams, (only mildly surprised), Shea (did a few nice things, but was a dead end too often and was half-hearted on D too often).
Spector may be the exact CB that El Kapitain is looking for. He can certainly pass, his defense is pretty good (central defense, he gets beat to the corer and gets juked easily out wide), he is faster than Goodson and his attacking instincts are darn good. I feel sorry for Specs. He has played RM, RB, CM, DM, CB, LB for club and country and cant seem to get any to stick. A center back might be exactly what the US should cast him as. He also might have teh BEST right cross on the team. Better than Chandler or Donovan.
huh? I don't know what his current club form is but that was never his strong point. Now that Eddie is retired, the best right cross is Dolo, has been for years.
You need to watch some matches. Dolo best cross? It has gotten a bit better, but review tapes going back to WC 2006 where Dolo was as poor a crosser as a RB can be. He was SWP poor. In turn review Spector's crossing from the Confed Cup or on current team. He is a very good passer as well.
Spector has a better cross than Cherundolo and I don't think it's close. The issue is that Cherundolo is better at just about everything else.
My memories are of seeing Spector the most at the 2009 Confederations Cup. To my untrained eye, his most memorable contributions were "here's yet another dangerous cross from Spector into the box."
To me, Spector is a good "deep crosser" - when he's pumping them into the box from closer to the mid line than the end line. When he gets into regular crossing area, he he's not accurate and tends to hit them long. Way long.
Don't know if this has been posted elsewhere, but this win made the Conan monologue. The punch line was "America hasn't embarrassed Italy this badly since the first Olive Garden opened" It's not a big deal, but it's always good to see soccer make it's way into our popular culture, especially when the game isn't the butt of the joke. We got beat out by Bieber's birthday, but you can go to :45 for the funny.