More hubris than quality on the US team? Footballers wanted

Futbalnugen where art thou?

US – El Salvador WCQ Match, 28 March 2009

The US match against El Salvador did nothing for beer sales with US soccer fans; we’ll all be looking for something a little stronger to drink after watching that display.  The US team as a whole looked poor and this was against a relatively tame opponent, El Salvador.

Perhaps this was due to extenuating circumstances.  

We might wonder if the US squad was unnerved.  The crowd of 30,000 at the stadium was deafening.  They had been there hours in advance of the match, just waiting, and such was their energy you’d think they were each ready to take the pitch and play for their country.  With the El Salvador crowd screaming the whole match, it was too loud for the whistle to be heard.  The US players looked rattled.

Still we can only assess based on what we see.  The US needs a slew of new and better players to come through the ranks fast to make a mark on the World Cup stage, based on how the US team played.  Talk to your US sons, nephews, and neighbor boys, tell them to work on their touch and quickness, their country needs them!

Futbalnugen – Players wanted

Here are my game observations

• All the goals including the US were rather soft and were unlikely to score against a top world cup team.
• The US’ feet were generally too slow and their touch was not good enough.  The ball was bouncing off us.  We often could not keep the ball at our feet, or lost the ball to the quicker feet of our opponents.  On the other side of the ball our tackles were often late or missed entirely, we were too slow.  This is a skill and training problem.  As a group, those feet do not belong on a world cup stage.
• Torres looked the best footballer on the team.  He needs to start and the rest of the team needs to step up their game to match his ability and timing with the ball.  Kljestan was poor and in this game was a liability
• The best teams in the world will have feet as quick or quicker than El Salvador.  We probably thought our feet were quick enough until we played against quicker feet.  There is an urgent need to step this up, and one could wonder if we have the quality we need in our player pool.
• We looked generally poor in the midfield as a unit.  Torres, Donovan, and Dempsey were relative bright spots and need to play in close enough proximity to combine in midfield play.
• The US played with 2/3 of a team in the last 20 minutes, ignoring the pitch’s midfield.  Defenders sent the long ball up into the penalty area, and the US got our goals that way.  We are unlikely to get anything out of that kind of play against a better side, especially a side of equal physical size and strength.
• Hejduk works as a full back and made things happen in the last 20 minutes when he went forward, but he is a liability on defense unless we have a couple strong center backs that free him up from having to defend in front of goal.  
• Beasley and Hejduk gave away the 2nd El Salvador goal.  Beasley let himself be beat and gave away a free cross, but  the opponent could have just as easily dribbled on for a one on one shot on the keeper.  Hejduk did not know what to do about the cross behind him, did not know an attacker was bearing down on him.  It was a case of our players exhibiting the kind of slack defending and basic mistakes which critics often attribute to the MLS.  We’ve got to raise our standard.

We’ll hope that this was just a bad game and the US squad can put it behind them quickly.  We’ll hope the squad plays their best next game, wins, and proves this squad is capable of world cup level play. 

Meanwhile somebody talk to Torres and see if he has any friends to recommend, as I suspect he speaks futbalnugen fluently.