I’m kind of with him. I’d rather see us play good football. Which, even with these scrubs, I know we are capable of.
US out shot 17-6. XG 2 v 0.9. When you have this kind of break down, including a flukey missed penalty and Qatar slicing through the US defense like butter only to be denied by fingernail saves, claims that this team has a solid defense are a bit of a joke.
You aren't wrong about the value/need for a creative player with the ability to beat opponents on the dribble or make the incisive pass. I do believe you misunderstand my stance a bit. There is no real substitute for creativity and, unfortunately, creativity (and the vision to see a pass) are hard to come by, but the right runs can make it much easier to be creative. Having time and players around you that make it more difficult to press allow players to have more time and makes it easier to be creative. All these things and more can combine to help elevate a player's creativity on the field. It won't turn Arriola into Iniesta but it will make any player look a little better. Until we get that one player that can do everything by himself, we will need to be sure he gets help. I don't think it is a coincidence that Reyna has had quite a few assists at Dortmund (More than with the US if I am not mistaken....correct me if I am wrong). At Dortmund he has the support that comes with being on a top team and he has Haaland making fantastic runs and finishing his chances. With the US, where we do not have a world class creative force (at least not yet), we need to give our best creative players (Reyna is one of them), the support and time to pick/see a pass by controlling the midfield (the job of Adams and McKennie) and making the right runs. Playing together will help Reyna (and others) learn the tendencies of the forwards and the forwards will learn better what types of runs will be rewarded in Berhalter's system.
I think he is trying to redefine himself as a guy who adapts to his talent pool, rather than the other way around. I just wish he viewed the talent pool a little differently.
I agree with the general theory that the more squads train together the better they will play together. Unfortunately international squads just don't get enough time together, with the exceptions I previously cited, that it makes meaningful difference. This tournament is one of the longest time period that an international squad will train together, have you seen the theoretical synergy that you are describing overcoming the lack of individual 1v1 skill by some of the players selected?
Thank you for your reply. You have always been a thoughtful poster. I am constantly amazed at some of the information/data that you post. Regardless of whether I disagree (sometimes) or whether I agree, your posts are very high quality and well thought out. As to your first question about this tournament being relatively long, that is true, but it is counteracted by the extreme lack of familiarity and experience that the players had with each other and with the system. I would be very surprised to hear of any significant soccer nation entering a federation tournament with this level of inexperience and familiarity. With that considered, I think they have already done quite well in that regard. The first two games were completely different squads and did little to help with familiarity on the field (yes, I know there is practice), the third game against Canada was then formed based upon the results of the first game and creating on field understanding, in many ways, began there. I believe we have improved each and every game but still have a ways to go. I am hoping that Sunday shows another improvement and that we again do just barely enough to beat Mexico. (of course I'll be happy with a dominating win too!) As to the second part of that question, I don't see it as over coming lack of 1v1 skill....or more important vision and creativity. I see it as a boost. The answer to your question is a qualified yes. I don't believe you can completely overcome individual skills at the national team level (or any level for that matter). It is what it is. At the club level, you can buy a new player. At the NT level, all you can do is wait and hope that a new player matures into the role, or emerges. In the meantime, what you can do is work with what you have and do the most with what you can. That is achieved, primarily, with teamwork, selflessness, and attitude/fortitude. I do believe that repeated short camps (qualifying etc) give a good start/introduction and I am confident that we can get through qualifying against CONCACAF teams. the initial argument stating that we did not have enough creativity was for when we face non CONCACAF teams (that would be the WC). Prior to the world cup, there is an extended camp and combined with qualifying experience, I think that will go a long way towards building chemistry on the field. (off the field chemistry is being built as we speak and guys like McKennie and others have been leaders in building it with the first team as well). All that being said, I think one thing that this tournament has shown us is that our competition may be tougher this time around and Canada in particular will be much more difficult than they have been in the past. Obviously, we can't be overconfident, but we should be able to qualify.
I was astounded (but not really) at the myriad of times the camera showed most/all of the US field players standing still when one of our defenders had the ball in the first half. Movement off the ball has always been one of our biggest problems over the course of the past 20 years. Very reactive rather than proactive.
I think you missed the most important changes. As soon as Roldan in for Busio and Cannon in for Moore we suddenly destroyed their left side up our right side. We had dangerous play after dangerous play up that side. Zardes had nothing to do with that (even though he did improve the forward spot and made plays Dike failed to do) and Arriola was still in while this was happening. I found the Arriola change interesting, because we were killing them up that side when he got pulled. I liked the outcome because Roldan moved up to his spot Andy Williamson came into Roldan’s spot. We continued to get up that side, but Williamson gave us more central play.
That was freaking awesome. Yeah yeah yeah we didn't play that well but it's our B-team against a well-drilled sneaky-good opponent in a semifinal, and we smash-and-grabbed a win with guile and heart and great goalkeeping and no small measure of luck. If you didn't enjoy that, you should go ask God why you were born without a soul. Any good drama requires an effective setup, and now in retrospect the first half made the story juicier by lowering our expectations. I admit it: I underestimated Qatar. Whatever they've been doing for the past however long not to be embarrassed in WC22 has worked quite well. They were not only creative on the counter but had a simple and frustratingly effective strategy to stymie what offense we could try to muster--shut down Acosta and force play down the wings. It doesn't fill me with confidence that we couldn't find a way around that but this group is not long on creative skill going forward. Much has been made of the effectiveness of the subs in the second half, but this underestimates how gassed Qatar looked even early in that half. I was surprised by this, figured that with all their NT training they should be insanely fit. But for whatever reason, fatigue seemed to play a huge role in the game, in tandem of course with the fresh and speedy subs. W/r/t Dike, the dude has to be injured right? He just did not look right and did seem to be favoring one side. I imagine an injury like that can throw off your whole game. But the puzzle that raises for me is then why did Gagg start him? I can see the logic of starting a struggling young forward to give him confidence and hoping he recaptures his form. But starting an injured player seems to undermine the whole point of that plan--he's likely to get reinjured and play like crap, hurting his confidence. This all assumes Dike was injured, which seems likely but I haven't seen confirmed. My old ass has been watching Gold Cups since we shockingly beat Costa Rica in the 2002 final (that was a full strength CR squad that had just won the hex and set a record for most points in qualifying). I've always enjoyed the hell out of the GC. When else can you see the MNT play, and likely win, 5-6 meaningful games in a couple-week span? And in those couple of decades, I've always been impressed that whatever team we bring--A-team playing well, A-team playing like crap, B-team--we almost always manage to scrape our way to the final. This year I must admit I did not think they'd do it. The competition seemed much stronger than usual, and we brought a much weaker team than usual. The fact that they made it to the final despite that is a fantastic accomplishment, and I've loved watching them do it. Now all that remains is to upset Mexico and make it a perfect tournament.
I wonder if fans of UEFA and CONMEBOL national teams are watching and thinking it's unfair that Concacaf and AFC combine to get 9 World Cup spots including Qatar. In the FIFA Rankings, UEFA has 13 spots and 31 teams above the ninth best Concacaf or AFC team, and CONMEBOL has 4.5 spots and 9 teams above the ninth best Concacaf or AFC team. He's tied for fourteenth in career goals with 14. Among players who debuted in the 2010s, he's second to Pulisic, who has 16. The others in double-digits are Bobby Wood with 13, Wondolowski with 11, and Morris with 10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_men's_international_soccer_players doesn't call Altidore and Bradley active, and if they're not active then the third highest active player is Arriola with 8. Using Wikipedia's definition of active, our active leader in caps is DeAndre Yedlin with 64, and Zardes is second with 61. WCQs start on September 2, which is his 30th birthday. Only seven of our top 100 in caps are active. 23 of our top 100 were active in 2017.
Can anyone give an authoritative summary of how the whole thing works w/r/t naturalized citizens and FIFA matches? Can only play a certain number of naturalized citizens in: a) one match; b) one tournament; c) one calendar year; d) no limit e) ? Thanks.
My strongest Gold Cup memory is Feilhaber's golazo! It's rare I jump off the coach but I did for that goal. So...um, what's the point of having both the Concacaf Nations League and the Gold Cup? Besides the GC played in a tournament format (set number of games in a 2 weeks-ish time frame), versus the CNL matches being spread out over months, there really doesn't seem much difference. The winner of each can declare themselves the best in Concacaf. So why have both tournaments? What am I missing?
Nothing about limits in naturalized as fas as I know except: they can’t have represented another nation in an official competition. Now I don’t know the exact rule but Qatar was handing out citizenship to any decent player who wanted to become Qatari. FIFA warmed them so this must violate the spirit if not the letter of the law. Of course FIFA sold them the WC in the first place.
The guy who just got called up? By Gregg? Please understand this. It is mean spirited to just toss players into the deep end. He appears to be breaking Williamson in gradually. How that translates into what you said, I don’t get. Secondly, Lletget is pretty skillful. Not particularly fast but he has solid skills.
Possessing and moving the ball is only helpful if it creates mismatches and overloads which create opportunities. It seems as though our perennial problem offensively is connecting or attacking through the middle. And that seems to be a question of who we put in the center of the field. And just because everybody tries to stop attacks up the middle doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing, or trying to do well. Personally, I think that if we play Musah as a starting midfielder, we get a lot more of that speed and vision and passing ability and creativity that we need. For all the great things they do, neither Adams nor McKennie is ever going to give us that. (And I am sick of attacking up the wings all the time and dumping crosses into the middle.) But if we’re not going to start Musah, then how about Reyna or Sargent as a #10? Both are good in traffic, and both are used to playing under lots of ball pressure. Both pass well. Reyna has been lobbying for that role pretty much constantly for the last few years.