Well, that piece of moldering, festering, stinking feces should hopefully serve notice to the powers that be that the United States of America has a really poor national team. Much as I grow weary of the comparisons endlessly made by Lalas and Harkes to the golden days of yore (when they happened to be on the field; to hear them talk about it, we must have won two or three really important tournaments back then!), I have to agree with them that this team lacks character and characters. With very few exceptions, this group of players simply plays, without much passion, without much energy, and without much dedication to their jobs. I think that’s why Frankie Hejduk stands out so much, despite his definite deficiencies: he actually plays with energy, passion and dedication.
Connor Casey is an excellent example. He had some good chances in the second half. He combined neatly with Altidore on a one-two early on to create on of our few chances. He was generally involved in play around the opposing third, and he did at times track back to help provide outlets for the midfielders and fullbacks when they had obtained the ball in our defensive third. Having said that, he’s totally listless when he’s not directly involved in the play of the game. He jogs around, paying little attention to what is going on. He made ZERO effort to disrupt the interpassing of the Brazilian fullbacks, and applied nothing that could be considered “high pressure” as Brazil organized its attacks from the back. He has no passion, little energy, and zero dedication. It’s like he figures he’s on the field for one purpose only: to get involved in attacks.
He SUCKS. (That’s the very precise soccer term for his play) :mad:
Now, not everyone falls into that category. Landon Donovan is a very energetic, working forward/center mid. Of course, he’s long since become absent from our scorelines (except when the letters PK show up next to his name). But he is often involved in our most potent buildups and he seems not to mind where he has to go to fit into the strategic scheme of a game (left, center, right, top, mid, deep, it doesn’t matter to him). For my money, Benny Feilhaber shows much of these characteristics also, and you will notice he’s one of the few who actually reacted to missing the goal (when he struck the underside of the crossbar and had it come back out into play). All too often our players act like a missed chance is no big deal, so it’s nice to see if they get pissed at a miss. And I suppose Jonathan Spector isn’t too bad; he at least attempted to get back on that breakaway goal and was the player who forced the pass off to the wide-open Robinho.
Beyond that, we got NOTHING. A bunch of robotic, passionless, unenergetic spoiled brats who don’t seem to care about what happens when they play. That second goal demonstrated EVERYTHING that is wrong with our game. Lackadaisical play from Beasley, who lets the short corner go entirely under his foot, and then instead of hustling back to cover, simply grimaces and watches. Failure to challenge with a tackle when the ball is pushed up to midfield by the Brazilian defense. Failure of anyone other than Spector to flat out RUN back to cover on the breakaway. We are the United States; do you really mean to say that we don’t have the speed on the field to track back and cover a breakaway??? And then to top it off, our goalkeeper doesn’t come out and make it at all difficult for Robinho, who is for my money one of the most over-hyped players on the Brazilian squad (notice he’s been damn near invisible this tournament).
Compare Brazil’s effort. Mind you, this is a team which pushes it’s outside fullbacks up into the attack on a regular basis. You are as likely to see someone like Maicon or Santos taking the shot (note, not just providing a cross, but actually SHOOTING) as you are one of the forwards or center mids. And how many effective breakaways did we manage? None. Why? Because the rest of the team knows how to cover when their backs are up in the box. Because when they need to, they RUN to get back. And when all else fails, they make sure to tackle the outlet player with a foul if need be, to make sure the counter gets stopped. They will gladly take a yellow for it, if need be.
Yes, ok, so that’s Brazil, one of the best in the world. But dammit, the US used to do the same damn things. We used to get upset because what the US lacked wasn’t spirit, passion, energy, but rather talent. They had horrible first touches, lousy execution, etc., because they were naifs, not born and bred to play. That aspect of our game has definitely improved; most of the US players are capable enough with the ball on their foot. But now we have a team that mails in their results all too often.
For me, that’s the fault of the coach. I know for a fact that Bruce Arena would never have stood for that kind of effort. You don’t see it from the Iraqis, for goodness sake, under Bora. The Egyptians put up a much better display their second half (admittedly, theirs wasn’t impacted by a red card). But by the time we got our red card, the Egyptians had already levelled their game, scoring twice. So, to me, it’s a coaching issue. And I never see Bob Bradley impassioned about anything on the field. He just stares at it, impassively. :rolleyes:
