Since the Euro is beginning today I know it’s odd to begin the day with a look at, well, anything else, but I’m unable to watch today’s slate of games so I’ll leave that to Frank.
What I do want to look at is the US Men’s national team’s gauntlet of friendlies that they are in the middle of. Having already completed the games against England and Spain, the third game left is against Argentina, a game which the Americans will be returning home for. A quick recap of the games:
England: The US side was expected to come out and challenge the English, possibly even squeaking out a result. That expected display never materialized. The English side looked faster and much more organized, more like the world-class side they are, than they’ve looked in a long time, beating us 2-0 on goals by Steven Gerrard and John Terry.
Spain: After the drubbing by England, the collective hearts of American soccer fans were suddenly filled with fear (after having been so high before that result) over the Spain friendly. The US gave an improved performance, only dropping the game 1-0, but still did not play up to what I feel is the US’s capabilities. We lost momentum in the second half and allowed Spain to take the game to us. Spain is a fantastic team, and has my vote to take the Euro, but we just didn’t show the tenacity that would be required to pull anything out against them.
What have we learned?
What we have seen has been two extremely timid and flat displays by a team that is obviously still in transition. US coach Bob Bradley has been at the helm for two years now, but doesn’t seem to have his team figured out yet. Now, I don’t want to join the ranks of Bradley bashers yet, I still think he can do the job, but I’m getting concerned with both his reluctance to field the same squad twice in a row, if only for continuities sake, and his over reliance on using two holding midfielders. The US players, even if they’re not the most gifted attackers in the world, have an attacking mentality. By relying on defensive formations such as the 4-5-1 or the increasingly popular 4-2-3-1 we are not taking advantage of that mentality. We do have attacking options, despite the resounding sounds of woe coming from the soccer community after these games, but we’re not using them effectively. Josh Wolfe has had his time and is no longer a viable threat for us, and I could write an entire post on the futility of continuing to call up Eddie Johnson, at least until he shows some improvement with Fulham. I realize that a large number of our better forward prospects were tied with MLS commitments and that it would have been difficult for them to make the trip, but Bradley has to stop worrying about stepping on MLS’s toes so much and leaving our MLS players out of the mix when these scenarios come up. These friendlies were scheduled to test us, and they have. But they’re not helping if we’re not actually fielding our best effort. Hopefully the Argentina game will see a squad that has some of our better attacking options suited up, including rewarding Freddy Adu’s effort against Spain with another start.
The thing I’m the most disappointed with in the two friendlies is that we managed zero goals. I know we were playing against top competition, I know we were using two sub-par forwards, but I think it had more to do with the mentality than the players themselves. There just wasn’t the push. We were timid and bunkered in. On the blog Stateside Footy, in their review of the game, blogger Brian Lomax said, “I’d rather us lose 5-0 attacking the other team than lose 1-0 trying to play for a tie…” Somewhere deep down I think every American player has that same mentality. They want to attack, they want to go for it. Bob Bradley needs to do a better job harnessing that and go after Argentina if we’re even going to stand a chance.
