First of all I’d just like to say that the US soccer team impressed me and performed really well at the World Cup. I really like the way they play, and it is impressive to get such good results with a team largely consisting of players who do not play in the biggest leagues.
I think the US team excells in two areas: tactics and attitude. Most national sides play a game where tactics are considere guidelines rather than rules, where a lot of the decisions are left up to the players to make. The US works well as a team and the coaches instructions are obviously much more specific and/or are followed more. The attitude of the players and the mind set in general also seem to be very professional in a good way.
Now here’s the TWO things that the US team needs to be able to go further in competitions, and they are both individual skills.
-
First touch. This is your ability to (quickly) get the ball under control when recieving it. On average, American players are bad at this compared to bigger soccer nations. This is a key skill set for attacking. A bad first touch is one of the main reasons for goal scoring chances not appearing, you hit a good pass but the guy recieving it gets it too far infront of him or scrambles it out of touch. Or just needs one extra moment to control it, which is often enough to ruin the chance.
-
Finishing. America has the tactics, passing skill, creativity etc to create chances (though a lot are squandered due to the poor average first touch), but they aren’t good at finishing. They score on most of the easy goal chances, and sometimes the ones taking average skills, but very very rarely do they “create a goal out of nothing” and too often they blow good chances. This is a skill set that is harder to define than first touch, it takes both the ability to stay cool, precision, awareness and some sort of intangiable “instinct”.
Compared to the big teams I actually think that the US is at least as good or better at several very important areas. Physical fitness, tactical awarenes, organisation, attitude… If half the US team developed their first touch significantly, and two or three became better finishers, they would in my opinion be able to go very far in international tournaments. Admittedly in a sport most americans don’t give a f-ck about.