after watching all the US games, I’ve come to believe their biggest saving grace is their goalie, he makes tons of great saves while the defence gets burned. Not to mention the 2 PKs he saved in the 1st round.
GO USA Bring on Germany!!
Freidel is pretty darned good and has made some amazing saves, but you are seriously shortchanging the team if you chalk it up to him. After all, he has yet to score a goal or hold the midfield. Look at players like Reyna, O’Brien, McBride, Pope, Donavon, Beasley, and Sanneh for guys that are finishing opportunities, marking the other squads top stars, patrolling the midfield, leading the counteratack with solid passing, or fighting and winning the air battle.
He’s a big reason, but not the only reason. Keep in mind that the USA have scored 7 goals thus far in this tournament, none of them by Friedel. Friedel has been having an excellent run, but many would consider Kasey Keller his equal. It’s quite lucky to have two very good keepers on your squad. Also, Bruce Arena has done a very good job of switching his lineup to the task. He moved Claudio Reyna to right half in the Mexico game which worked out nicely, and started four new players (Mastroeni, Berhalter, Lewis and Wolff). Landon Donovan, barely 20 years old, has scored 2 clear goals, caused an own goal by Portugal with a solid cross, and had another goal disallowed against Poland on a questionable call. Compare to Michael Owen who so far has only 1 goal for England (Note to England supporters, Owen is my favorite England player, not saying Donovan is yet his equal, just making a point). DeMarcus Beasley, another young 20 year old has caused his opponents fits with his speed and ability to hold the ball. Brian McBride has scored a brace of goals and also helped to put pressure on in the counterattack.
So, no, Friedel isn’t the only reason that they are doing well, although he has arguably been having the strongest tournament of an individual so far.
Part of the reason it seems so, in my opinion, is that our weakness is our defenders. All our best players (except our goalies) are forwards and midfielders. So Arena is playing a slight dangerous game in playing back a bit, so there are extra people to help the defense, and then allow our goalies to make saves. (Which they excel at)
Offensively he’s playing a pretty quick strike game… wait for the right moment… get in… create a good shot and get back. Which works because we have pretty talented midfielders/forwards.
I thought we had problems with posession, but I noticed in both the Portugal and Mexico game when we needed posession in the last ten minutes we really got it more consistently. We weren’t able to do it as well against Korea, but Korea played a GREAT game.
Its good, its making the other team really get frustrated and not play up to their own ability. but it is a bit risky and heartwrenching. But, USA’s two best players are probably Keller and Friedel. So it seems like a pretty good risk.
(High risk High reward… right?)
Friedel has saved our bacon more than once, but the whole team has worked together well. The US won’t blow any team off the field through talent, so they have worked at team defense and sticking to a game plan.
Our defense is a prime example of why we are doing well. In the group games Tony Sanneh played right back, but he’s really a converted midfielder. When Hejduk was suspended, they stuck O’Brien at the back. But neither Sanneh nor O’Brien are out there alone. The midfield has helped out a lot on defense.
Arena has made lineup changes when necessary and adjusted strategy as necessary. Since the US is still a developing soccer team, we’ve relied on soaking up pressure and then launching counterattacks. That’s worked with varying success in the tournament. But that is an example of good coaching and an adaptable team. I think that’s a key to the success along with Friedel’s great play.
Actually, one has to point out that the defense has improved vastly since the moment that Agoos went off the field. This may not be entirely a matter of Agoos being a poor defender; sometimes a lineup shakeup forces players to actually think about what they have to do, rather than do what they do by rote, “comfortable” in their roles.
Today’s 5-3-2 was an excellent lineup, and one has to hand it to the three inside defenders who managed a solid game without yielding too many chances to the Mexican front line. I personally thought we would have trouble handling Borgetti, who had played quite well in the previous games, but we shut him down fairly well. Mexico did have some chances, but they managed to squander them, and frankly at this level, ALL teams get their chances.
Another phenomenon that is encouraging is that the US are slowly getting comfortable with possession ball-handling. This is a tremendous development, because I can remember watching a game between the US and Russia back in '90 or '91 at Stanford Stadium where the US was totally unable to control the ball and pass it up through the midfield. Even in France '98, we had difficulty with possession. But now, especially in later stages of the game, we seem quite able to get into a possession flow. This means our players have developed both a good tactical sense, and an improving touch on the ball. Mind you, players like Berhalter and Pope show that we still have our hit and miss players, who as often as not are most comfortable sending the ball a long way without much finesse, but the fact we can create a kid as good as O’Brien, who ends up being taken into the Ajax system, is a great sign.
Let us not overestimate or underestimate the importance of MLS. The primary value of the league is to provide the sort of experience that forces development of skills and tactics, because of repetitive play. As someone else pointed out, it beats being second team or reserve player for a third division team in Europe. But there is a limit to the value of the league, and our best players are those who use it as a springboard to better things. As good as Donovan is, think how polished he’ll be after three or four years in England or Italy.
Speaking of which, how many transfer requests do you think MLS is ringing up today? 
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO USA!!!
The point of course being that Owen attracts 2 or more defenders, whereas Donovan only gets one. 
Donovan’s a good striker, with a lot of potential, don’t get me wrong. But he’s no Owen, and the reason he scored more than Owen is because he is considered less dangerous, paradoxically enough.
Friedel is doing a good job, but I prefer Keller myself. Friedel has great reflexes, but a lot of his reflexes result in the ball being stomped or kicked back into the field, into the vicinity of the enemy. C’mon Friedel, would it kill you to try and move the ball sideways when you save it?
Of course, as long as all goes well, who’s complaining?
Kinda along the same lines, so I decide to post it here. As a hockey fan, but only casual soccer fan, I’m thinking of the games in terms of scoring chances. Now a scoring chance is kind of a vague stat. Not all shots are scoring chances, and you can have have a scoring chance without ever taking a shot. It’s just kind of a situation where scoring a goal seems like a decent probability. Now I’m curious why the US seems to have a much higher percentage of scoring chances converted. Especially against Korea and Mexico. They both probably beat us in scoring chances 5-1, but we beat one and tied the other. Are we just getting lucky in the offensive end? In the defensive end? is Friedel playing that well, or have we actually mastered the art of saving energy only for the best situations? What do expert soccer fans think of what the US team has done along those lines?
Well, scoring chances are much easier to convert when the opposition isn’t sitting 8 or 9 or 10 men behind the ball, like the US is doing most of the time. You’ll notice we aren’t scoring from slow patient build-up in the midfield, but instead from quick striking forays into the opponent’s defense when they don’t have time to set up the defense. A team with a well ordered defense can soak up a large number of scoring chances by the opposition without conceding a goal, especially if they don’t commit large numbers of midfielders to quick transition to offensive play.