Bridge is a great player but I put Ashley Cole before him in the England squad. Cole has been going through his own issues recently so the England squad is kind of fucked. Bridge will be sorely missed because he was our next choice after Cole, in my opinion. I don't rate Upson or Brown.
Bornstein is awful. Spector played terrible. Honestly, our whole system is shit. Either kick it far and try and get Davies/Findley now a breakaway... and good teams generally wouldn't have breakdowns that will allow this to happen. Our other strategy is to swing it in and try and get lucky with a Onyewu/Dempsey (McBride...) header... and our two most prolific scorers in this manner are both hurt. Hopefully Altidore continues to develop and we can actually run a more successful offense. As it is now we are generally defense-heavy, and frankly our defense and defensive mids are our weakest links.
Exciting last few minutes of the match that I caught. Beasley really put a stamp on the game. Nice to see Altidore making good decisions as well.
If the US tries to keep it on the floor and TRY to play a possession game they'll get slaughtered. We simply don't have the players. Hoofing it to our forwards is about the best we can hope for. Our forwards were by far our biggest weakness in '06 and I think it actually might be the teams strength this time around. (but still not good enough) and not that they'll get any service. Getting out of the group stage would be a huge accomplishment IMO.
I like your realism but you guys have a really good up-front pairing even by the "top" countries' standards. You're completely correct on the possession game. If the States tried playing this game I don't think it will end up pretty. England played "hoof the ball" for a good five years until we began to find the more technical players as well as our superior wing-backs (that adds a whole new dimension to the game).
Guys, remember that we were missing 6 potential starting players in this game. We'll look a lot more solid with a full roster on the pitch, come June.
i didn't think it was a terrible game from the US. a decent effort and they really picked up their play at the end. findley was terrible and should be done as a national team player until he shows significant improvement. any attack that went to findley immediately died. same with eddie johnson, though to a lesser extent. if davies doesn't make it back and the US has to take one of them, i hope it's johnson, though i would prefer just bringing altidore and ching with dempsey and donovan able to play up front if needed. bornstein had a couple of pretty bad moments(the pk and the handball in the box that easily could have been called), but he also did get back at one point and save what looked like a goal. he's not a great player by any means, but he'd been playing pretty well until today and none of the options that have been tried at left back have been better. donovan never really got involved in the game. in a game like this, they really need to focus on getting donovan as many touches as possible. once he moved up top, he was a lot more active but i prefer him in the midfield role. bradley, edu, torres, and holden were all acceptable but nothing special. i thought demerit looked shaky in the back and spector had a couple of mistakes and was his passing was off too. altidore really picked it up at the end which is nice to see since it seems like in general he would fade at the end of games. beasley looked good enough to put himself in contention to make the team. if he gets a decent amount of time with rangers, he'll probably go. assuming health for everyone, my starting lineup at this point would be altidore, davies, donovan, bradley, edu, dempsey, bornstein, bocanegra, onyewu, spector, howard. if davies can't go, dempsey would be moved up top and feilhaber/holden/torres/beasley would be fighting it out for the last spot.
i can't agree with this at all. the strength of the US team is the midfield with donovan and dempsey. just hoofing it up to the forwards doesn't work. the US is not going to be able to control possession consistently against top 10 teams in the world, but they are capable of doing much more that just kicking the ball up field and hoping for the best. the US's strength really is counters and set pieces but they finally do have players capable of breaking down defenses. and getting out of the group stage is expected. anything less is a disappointed with the talent level of the team and the group they are in.
If the US don't get out of the group stages there are some real issues with their tactics, not talent.
