Huge game tonight at Azteca in Mexico City. I expect the filthy el tri to try to manhandle Pulicic tonight and play dirty as usual. Flopping, flipping, floundering all over the field. The fans will undoubtedly be acting like dumpster trash and shouting their puto chant like the mouthbreathers they are. I'm also expecting a loss unfortunately. A tie/result would be unreal. Mexico has been playing really really well.
Listening to you bitch about the Reffing is like the knocks fans when they played the cavs. I didn't say it was fair I said it wasn't as bad as some of you were making it. And I stand by arena not being a tactical genius last night. packing it in against a team we should be better than does not excite me. It was a good result but we shouldn't ever have to pack it in.
We WERE God-awful with Klinsmann. He was a complete fucking joke...the worst manager/coach I've ever seen of any team I root for in any sport.
And winning a friendly in Azteca means shit. How many examples of the meaninglessness of friendlies do we need before that concept sinks in?
Unlike others on this Board, I do not believe we were God awful under JK, just horribly inconsistent and underwhelming. He continuously searched for answers and tinkered with how and when he used players.
I do not think that Arena is a savior, but rather an intermediate step to where I hope that this program can go. I want him to handle the transition between past and future by giving the younger players an opportunity to experience the challenge of WCQ, instead of playing it safe and returning to older veterans who have reached their limits.
Arena had the team in the quarterfinals in Japan/Korea. They then suffered a heartbreaking loss to Germany, in a game they were clearly the better team. And they managed a draw with Korea in the group stages.
Bradley won the group in South Africa. He also had the US in its first ever final of an international tournament when they lost to Brazil in the Confederations Cup.
Also, while Klinsmann navigated the team through a difficult group stage, he laid a coaching egg against Belgium. If there ever was an embarrassingly defensive game plan, that game was it (Wondolowski's mind-numbing miss notwithstanding). It felt as if Klinsmann played for the 1-0 loss.
It isn't a stretch to say with better coaching from the beginning is of qualification, this team would be well on its way to Russia.
I'll also add that Klinsmann's performance in the Belgium match was pathetic. Deploying Cameron as a midfielder (over Beckerman, along with Fabian Johnson our best player in the tournament) because he happened to play in the same league as Hazard was a joke. He got it completely wrong and Belgium, a flawed team that was less than the sum of its parts, should have won 9-0.
If you want a refresher of that nightmare of a match, here's the Zonal Marking article on it. A key passage from it is the following:
What that tells you is that the tactics leading up to the match are a mess, and the team performed better when the tactics had to be abandoned in search of a goal.
Klinsmann's hiring, and the incredibly long leash he was given, was everything that's been wrong with US Soccer for years. Too many people (not just fans, but within US Soccer) believe that someone is going to know more about soccer just because they're from Europe, or that a player is going to be better because he plays in Europe.
It's a gigantic load of horseshit and it drives me insane. Bruce Arena and Bob Bradley take shits that know more about soccer than Jurgen Klinsmann, whose greatest contribution to the game was to ruin the 1990 World Cup final with a blatant dive to earn the decisive penalty. And then he comes in and destroys our 2014 World Cup.
Fuck that guy.
Link - ( New Window )
Of course not. My piint was aside from Wondolowski's miss, the team didn't come close to an attempt on goal.
Quote:
We were god awful with klinsman. The fucking guy won at azteca and took us out of the toughest group we have ever been in in the World Cup. I like arena but when you make him out as this savior for everything he does it's just ridiculous. Playing a defensive game like last night is not tactical brilliance. It's playing it safe and smart. Fine, it got a point. To say that klinsman couldn't do that is fucking stupid.
We WERE God-awful with Klinsmann. He was a complete fucking joke...the worst manager/coach I've ever seen of any team I root for in any sport.
And winning a friendly in Azteca means shit. How many examples of the meaninglessness of friendlies do we need before that concept sinks in?
I'm not technically sound with commenting on the nuances of Soccer, but Klinsmann was just awful. The best team was the 2006 WC team that was a missed handball in the goal away from beating Germany and getting into the semis. This tea is vastly improved.
Last night was smart playing with a reduced team. Getting one point was more important than attacking all night and losing 3-2. That one point was huge.
As far as Salcedo's elbows (TWO in the 1st 5 minutes), how did they not see those since the ball was there? It is not like it was behind the play and out of sight.
In retrospect Klinsmann talked like he was some theoretician of how soccer should be played, all elliptical and goal-oriented in his perorations, and his resume COULD be said to fairly glow, and Gulati fell for it. But it turned out he was an airhead, a true California beach bum, with no feel for tactics, no concept, no ability to communicate them, and no feel for his players' respective positional aptitudes. Contrast his approach to his formation quake (debuted for, what was it, Mexico in Columbus in November?), when Bradley and Johnson had to derail him at the half--and he proceeded to throw them under the bus--with Arena's formation quake which was planned and thought through. (And in looking back at the thread before hitting the Submit button, I see that Turk said much the same)
My feeling is that USMNT is still mortally deficient in the back. I took Cameron to task in the pre-game thread, saying he and Brooks were too slow, physically reactive and in reading fast combinations. Cameron had a good 2H, and he, Gonzalez, and Brooks have good size inside the 18. I just have a hard time believing there is no one better lurking offstage. And I do not believe that Cameron is the answer on the outside, nor is it DB.
The one thing I think you can say is a JK positive is that he shook, not stirred, the martini of channels of access to USMNT. We had become a bit stale in player development under Bradley, hung on to the stalwarts too long, like the Giants' OL in 2011/2012. I am not saying JK was good at player development (too much position changing/did not let chemistry take hold), but he did shake up the mix and that made it easier to let talent flow.
Holy Cow, taking Jozy to task for coming on late and being slow and lazy? Often you have to let the game come to you, and the last 15 - 25 minutes was all about not letting El Tri cop a winning goal.
I'll admit I didn't quite get that switch (Wood out?), because those two have worked together well, and thought that the Nagbe for Accosta (was that it?) came about 10 minutes late.
The players' work last Thursday and the altitude in Mexico City last night obviously weighed heavily on Arena's 11 (including TH's groin) and substitutions.
And, man, was I spitting fire after that 4th-place finish in the Gold Cup. Just disgraceful beyond words.
I gave him a lot more leash than others. I thought he was experimenting to find the right mix, but then I realized that playing people out of position and suboptimally wasn't an experiment, it was his cluelessness shining through. By the end, he lost the team, alienated some of the best players, and had us out of a qualifying position and an embarrassing showing at the Gold Cup
It did not take very long at all to see how in over his head he was as a communicator, gameday/roster/personnel, and just general incompetence.
The cost far exceeded the benefits after the abomination against belgium, one of the worst game plans I've ever seen for a team so poised to move on.
The post-WC mess was just the nail in the coffin.
Bruce was about as unexciting a move as we could have made but it just goes to show the job he did with the lesser talent back in his early tenure. I'm starting to get very high hopes again.
Unfortunately, as many already note, we just can't seem to find the talent in the back.
if a player played in europe - they were automatically better than any player that plays in MLS
“It’s bad timing for [the Gold Cup], because the guys in Europe have gone through this long club season and now the World Cup qualifiers. They need a break. They have three weeks off, and asking them to come in for Gold Cup makes no sense. It would take three weeks to get them ready.”
When asked how many players on the Gold Cup roster will come from his best possible U.S. roster, Arena said: “Almost none. Very few. Maybe [Omar] González and [Matt] Besler. Maybe [Clint] Dempsey and [Jozy] Altidore at some point. [Darlington] Nagbe is a possibility.
“I have to see in the next couple weeks how everyone is doing. We’re pretty sure [Brad] Guzan is coming in. [Tim] Howard can come in after the group stage. So we’ll have to name at least two other goalkeepers.”
link - ( New Window )
Quote:
But as you guys noted, Panama is only 1 point behind us and has a good chance of passing us in their next match.
So why is that I'm getting the vibe people consider us to be a likely qualifier, even though from what it seems to me on paper is no more than a 60% chance (at best)?
Is it because whomever we'd play from Asia if we finish 4th would be very bad?
No, not because of the Asia team, although if we have to go that route, that should be a winnable game.
The short answer is that Panama still has to play us here in the USA and that should be a win for us. The longer answer - and I won't go game-by-game - is that I see Panama probably getting 7 points out of its remaining 5 games and I see the USA probably getting at least 8 points out of its remaining 4 games - with the swing factor again being that Panama game here in the USA.
So we should be able to maintain our lead over Panama. The other teams (Honduras and T&T) have no chance.
Panama was two points behind us after our tie with Mexico, not one, and Tuesday night they couldn't beat Honduras at home - it was a tie. So Panama just left two points on the table that they pretty much had to have, and they still trail us by a point.
Not guaranteed for the U.S., at all, but that was a good result Tuesday for us.