USA Falls to Ghana and Other National Team Thoughts

And the took the guy off in a stretcher and on the sideline the showed him getting up!
Anyway, now that we lost..
Are you read for some (American) football??

it feels like FIFA is not only just content with not bringing the game to the 21st century, but they’ll try their darndest to ‘preserve the integrity’ of the game

Not too soon, perhaps. But probably one of those subjects best left alone.

This is actually an interesting historical question. To make a sweeping oversimplification, the primary victims of the slave trade—or at least their descendants—reside here in the Americas, not in today’s West Africa. In a sense, then, the U.S. didn’t so much “wreck Ghana” as it wrecked itself, and the slave trade resonates with today’s Afro-Americans to a far greater and far different degree than it does with today’s Africans.

Colonialism more generally, especially that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, is the historical issue that looms much larger in Africans’ consciousness today. Although even here, the story can be complicated. My aunt (by Peace Corps uncle’s marriage) is from Ghana, descended from slaves in Jamaica who returned to Africa in the early 1900s. She is named Elizabeth precisely because her father was so proud to have been a child of the British Empire. Needless to say, he was not a big fan of modern Ghana’s founding-father figure, Kwame Nkumrah, who was also one the Third World’s most outspoken voices in the 1960s against “neocolonialism”.

the early struggles is confusing to me. i’m not sure what causes the early brainfarts on defense but it sure deflated the fanbase. Although, the late heroics does provide the dramatics that us Yanks love

Not trying to be mean, but just the way it is.

How dare you, sir? How dare you?

Twist. Honestly, it’s not a complicated game. There aren’t a ton of rules. Once you understand what offsides is, and whether a team gets a corner kick or a goal kick, and why penalty kicks are awarded, it’s pretty damn easy to follow along. If you’ve watched 2 or 3 soccer matches, you should pretty much understand it by now.

I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the post-Everton Landon Donovan has forced me to completely re-evaluate my opinion of the man.

Me too. Startling, wasn’t it?

Sampson had his hands tied with the whole Harkes/Wynalda wife/adultery thing.

98 was still horrible though.

I also think we shouldn’t get too excited over this performance, after all throughout the tournament the United States led for a total of one minute, and were behind for about 130 out of a total of 390.

Donovan and Dempsey will be on the downside—maybe they can provide a grizzled vet presence for that team so our games aren’t as chaotic as this year’s. Felt like our leadership was a little unsettled and we were always scrambling and playing at the pace our opponents set up.

I hope our pool of younger players gets bigger though, because it does seem our depth needs working on. Losing Davies and not having Oguchi at full strength really kept us from making a big dent.

If I had to guess I would say that Donovan should still be a starter four years down the line. Since his value is based on ball distribution and facilitating (a la Beckham), he should be able to play into his 30s unless he loses all his pace, which seems unlikely.

Dempsey on the other hand seems less likely to still be a starter (maybe a sub like Blanco) with the rugged way he plays. Four years of knocking bodies in the Premiership seem likely to take a big toll.

Most disconcerting was the lack of the second central midfielder. Throughout the tournament whomever was paired with Bradley in the midfield either got dispossessed, displayed sloppy passing, or an inability to move the ball forward to players in promising situation

I disagree – there were two clear defensive central midfielders who excelled during their time on the field. Feilhaber and Edu were great whenever they were on the field. Which makes the start of Clark in the Ghana game all the more perplexing.

Altidore was a huge huge huge disappointment in this tournament, particularly given the nature and extent of the media mastubation about him.

In every game it seemed that Altidore played every ball for the whistle. He would flop around like an Italian or Argentine at the smallest contact – particularly whenever in the area. I lost count of how many times I shouted at the television at seeing Jozy once again on the turf. The argument about age is hollow, as there are always plenty of players in the 19 – 23 year range in every cup.

Someone needs to show Altidore a video of Gyan’s goal every day so he can understand that playing the ball is often more successful than playing for a foul.

As for the rest of the US team’s performance, it was about as expected – an appearance in the round of 16 before going home. If they hope to advance to the quarterfinals in 2014 they will need to develop a much more cohesive and disciplined defense. Far too often the US back 4 were out of position or caught flat-footed. It really is quite inexcusable that defensively the US hasn’t made any real progress since the days of Lalas and Agoos, who quite frankly, sucked.

Offensively I was pretty impressed with the tandem of Donovan and Dempsey. Bradley showed a nice tenacity and nose for the ball, while Gomez seems to have a nice future. But unless Altidore gives up his disgusting flopping, he should never see the national side again.

I get the impression that Bradley was, in defense, re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic, because his choices weren’t that great. I am not an Onyewu believer, for instance, but maybe AC Milan can teach him how to read an offense in motion.

It’s also hard to have a defined style when you have a disparate set of skills to build around – a lot of speed up front, but not a lot of sophistication, for instance, versus pretty comprehensive mid-fielders who often are trying to simultaneously bail out the forwards and the defenders.

Anyway. Despite having got into a tizzy about it with some people on Twitter, I can’t help but wonder when Bob Bradley’s going to be judged to have reached his limit with what he can do with this team, and who they will have replace him.

The big replacements will have to come at the back. Dolo, Bocenegra, Demerit are all on the far side of 30 – and those 3 played every minute of the Cup.

Goodson will hopefully move to a bigger league in the coming 4 years – and Bornstein and Spector will be, 28 and 27 in brazil. I hope Spector can regain his form – and Bornstein can cough improve.

Midfield is pretty capable now – Torees, Bradley, Edu, Feilhaber will still be in the their primes – we just need 2-3 more strikers to back up Altidore and Davies.

I think the development of Michael Bradley is key. He’ll probably be the core personality of the 2014 team, and it remains to be seen what his best role is. I personally see him better suited to the holding midfielder’s role, or at least a pitbull disrupter a la Genarro Gattuso. While Bradley got that key equalizer against Slovenia, I felt he got caught upfield too frequently and clogged space in the offensive third better exploited by the likes of Donovan and Dempsey. The first half of the Slovenia game was key, when he and Torres had it completely backwards; Torres should have been upfield, with Bradley behind him.

While I’m critical of Bob Bradley’s performance at the World Cup, I think he’s generally done a very good job leading the MNT, and in the abstract, I wouldn’t mind him staying on for another four years. But I’m nonetheless highly suspicious of the father-son dynamic, and given how important Michael has become, I think it’s time for Bob/Dad to move on.

Klinsmann is the obvious foreign option at this point. As for American coaches, I think both Sigi Schmid and John Harkes would be interesting options down the line.