Halftime changes: 🔛 @trinity_rodman ↩️ @sophsssmith 🔛 @CaseyKrueger ↩️ @kelleymohara 🔛 @ash_hatch33 ↩️ @alexmorgan13 🔛@julieertz↩️ @sunshine_sully pic.twitter.com/FWApWpDOif— U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (@USWNT) April 12, 2023
22 mins to go. No goals from any attacking player. vs Ireland at home. Our best attacking moments consist of balls in behind and chasing. Ireland have done a good job of taking that away for the most part and the response has been what? The best matchups for the USA now are the teams who try and dominate the ball - Spain, England etc. gives the US the space in behind for player like Smith, Rodman etc to run into. If we play a low block team that has any pace on the counter....watch out. this is VAs master plan.
Oh, I am not "worried" at all. My complaint is that we are playing a bad team and we are looking just a very little better than them. If we play like this against a good team we could lose by 4 or 5. Fortunately the USA is still at about #4 or 5 in the world even playing this badly.
At what point do you accept that this is who the USA are? Foudy acting like we have levels to go to that we have not yet seen. When are we going to see them? We are a vertical pace driven team who rarely let the ball do the work. We dont shift low blocks by moving it fast enough. We dribble a lot and we need space to perform at our best. Denise O'Sullivan is a joy to watch
Well a 1-0 win against #22 in the world is not excessively horrible. In fact it is kind of good. However I think the only positive from these two games is the return of Ertz. And, yes for me, Ertz is showing enough to regain a spot on the team. But nothing else new was learned except for the loss of Swanson. But at least Vlatko Andonovski will not have access enough to ruin this group of ladies any further before the WWC.
Foudy jumps from savior to savior. Its a team game. WHY is one player responsible for the offense? Clueless
The defensive midfielder position is Ertz's to lose. She looked good. Sanchez solidified her position as Lavelle's understudy. Rodman is spectacular to watch. My big take away from both matches with Ireland is that none of our forwards scored. Ireland's defense was always crowding them -- and our only two goals from the field were by opportunistic defenders. Other teams will take note. A five back and a low block against the U.S. works. If anything, Ireland was better in this match than the first one, certainly better in the second half. The best midfielder on the field for either team was Denise O'Sullivan for Ireland. Ireland was a well-conditioned team.
You actually pay attention to Foudy's commentary? When I am watching soccer lately I have been able to simply (or maybe not so simply) make her voice blend in with the rest of the chanting fools. I finally have myself trained to ignore the unimportant, much of the time.
Yes, because its voices like hers that should be educating us. Helping those who are switching on for the first time understand the game. Instead you get a bunch of anecdotes, most of which are irrelevant. If we want to get better we need better analysis.
Did anyone notice that when Thompson went out, Vlatko got the team together to talk to them? When play re-started, they were in a relatively low block. Apparently, they decided to use the situation to practice what to do when a goal up and a player down. Unlike many, I did not think Julie looked particularly good. I expect she will be on the team, if she signs with an NWSL team, but she looks very rusty. Overall, an ugly game, which is what you get when a team plays like Ireland did.
You should give him a little more credit, apparently, I thought it was very obvious what his instructions were. If you go back and look at time after the injury, I think you will see what I am referring to. Either that, or the players themselves decided what to practice. In which case, definitely FIRE VLATKO!
I have no doubt you are correct. I just see that as so low on the priority list and she came back on the field.
There's room for criticism, always (I still maintain that Vlatko coaches this team too cautiously), but it was obvious, before the match even started, that the point of this friendly was for players on the bubble to get game minutes to play their way on to the WWC roster. And, I'm sure they wanted to practice some game situations. Hopefully, the coaching staff saw what they wanted to see, and if so, this match gets a check mark. All that said, if Sauerbrunn had scored that goal, I would not care that this game was a friendly; I would have cheered like it was WWC-winning goal.
I love JJ, too, but I didn't see what many people on Twitter said they saw, that the US immediately become much better. Hell,after Ertz came in we couldn't even score a goal from the midfield line!! (tee-hee!) But unlike most teams that play a low-block against us, Ireland tried to break out when they regained possession and they did pretty well. They advanced the ball past midfield. Ireland played well. They weren't without courage. And as others have noted, tiny Denise O'Sullivan is a lion (or lioness) out there Horan and Lavelle, along with the two fullbacks, Fox and Dunn, brought more attack in the first game, along with Hatch when she came on in place of Morgan. Today, the US team should have had the added advantage of more rested legs as the US rotated more of its starting lineup than Ireland is able to. McCabe, the Irish winger, was out of gas today but she had to stay in because she's so much better than her replacements. O'Sullivan, despite the demands placed on her, was one of the few players on either side to play back-to-back full 90s
I also thought Ertz was not good today. Understandable, of course having not played 90 minutes in a couple of years. She is rusty for sure. I do think she will make the roster and could be a starter IF she gets several games in with NWSL. I also think Sanchez has faded from her early opportunities a year ago, and she should worry a bit about her roster spot. Our offense was so limited and she does not show enough in pockets, demanding the ball. She has too few touches for the 10 position and our lack of offense has to fall on the shoulders of the 10 to a large degree, especially when the opponent is in a 5 back marking our forwards. Tierna looked good. Casey Krueger intrigued me. Huerta had a quiet night. O'Hara looks healthy.
We I asked too, but got the no real answer/smug response by one of the regular posters. Some good news for you (though not yet 100% confirmed) French legend Amandine Henry purported to sign with Angel City! didn't get to watch, but apparently this game was nearly even steven according to the stats US 10 shots, 2 on target/Ireland 9 shots 2, on target US 53% possession/Ireland 47% & most surprising of all' US 12 fouls/Ireland 7 completely different stats in the first game where US dominated but vice versa with the fouls usa vs ireland soccer april 8th 2023 - Google Search so maybe Vlatko told his team to be more assertive but still badly out coached by the more experienced Pauw? didn't know Ireland was ranked that high, they failed to qualify for the 16 team Euros last summer but won an wild card berth to the WC by beating the more heralded Scotland, Read that 40% of their team was foreign born(mostly US & UK)..
Smug? Maybe a bit of poking fun at your typo, but it was a joke. Did i have to add a smiley to make that clear?