Well, with the US men coming out on top in last evening’s extremely emotionally charged contest I have to say that I’m proud of the ol’ boys this time.  I’ve few complaints, plenty of kudos, and a little guarded optimism.  I think the obvious storyline is that of Michael Bradley’s development.  Let’s not jump to the conclusion that he’s “arrived” much like many people said of Sasha Kljestan after his hat-trick against Sweden.  Anyone who’s ever played competitively can tell you that one game does not a player make, nor does it break.  Any player can be over-the-top on fire or completely ineffective in any given game.  However, Michael Bradley is starting to string together enough impressive showings, as well as demonstrating growth over time, that I think it’s only fair to say that we may have a budding dominant midfielder in our pool.  At the very least it’s time for the cynics who like to pout about him only getting playing time because of his blood relations to be a little more honest about his abilities and his future on this team.

For my part I’m willing to lay off Bob for a while.  The Nats showed a level of preparation and fire in this game that requires credit given to the coaching staff.  So for now I’m shutting my trap about roster selection and line-ups and simply offering my gratitude and kudos to Bob Bradley.

The last observation to make about the possible insights this game offered is the interesting pattern of the step-up player.  For the last run of games whenever the US has been under some sort of pressure to perform, we’ve had a player or two step up to sort of own that game.  Last evening Tim Howard and Michael Bradley put their unmistakable stamp on the game to get us through.  Sweden saw the best of Kljestan.  Argentina was left befuddled by Howard as well.  Slowly but surely (and it’s really too early in the tough qualifiers to be spouting off TOO loudly about this) we seem to be gaining ground on the fire that’s needed to challenge at this level.  One of the major pieces of any world class team is that they play with passion, desire, heart.  Spain and Argentina live and breath the game.  The African and Carribean nations that so impressed in Germany played with such heart that no one could argue that they didn’t deserved to be there, no matter what the scorelines or odds were.  2002 saw the US step onto the field against some real heavy weights, but we took to the task with pride and shocked a lot of people.  On the flip-side, the ‘98 and ‘06 finals were built up to like the US was a lock to advance before the draws were even done.  Maybe our group of youngsters are taking it seriously…maybe we’re finally getting the right attitude.  I don’t want to make TOO much out of this game, after all Mexico seemed a little dazed…understrength…not quite themselves.  And there are other factors in this series and in Mexico’s recent run of poor form that could have brought a lot of positive things out in us last evening in Columbus, but I could see this being the beginning of our run into the finals.  If anything good is going to come of 2010, we will all look back and say that this was the game where we really first saw it beginning.

PS – I also want to point out that, even though I gave Mexico credit for a possible goal that never materialized, I did call the 2 goals from the US (*pats self on back*)…although considering how many times we’ve scored exactly 2 goals against Mexico lately I guess it wasn’t really that much of a stretch.  Oh, well.

So, in my post yesterday on the newly released US roster for the Cup qualifier on Wednesday against Mexico I stated that none of the inclusions or omissions surprised me because all of them related to problems I’ve had with the Nats since Bob Bradley took over. I wasn’t planning on writing this post so soon after saying that (I was planning on waiting until after the game to see if my complaints are even warranted), but I’ve been thinking about it since I said that and I’ve decided (or rather my impatience has decided) I just can’t wait.

My main problem around the Bob Bradley era version of the USMNT is actually a spill over from the Bruce Arena era, but it has been exacerbated by Bob. During the majority of Bruce Arena’s tenure he had Eddie Pope to call upon to play central defense. Pope proved on most occasions to be a smart, strong, speedy player who could hold our back line together as much with his brain as his brawn. He was a break from the long-standing mold of defenders produced in the United States that included Alexi Lalas, Marcelo Balboa, and Jeff Agoos, to name a few.  I hold Thomas Dooley to be an exception to this rule, but his memory went down in flames after he was asked to carry the world on his aged shoulders in the ‘98 debacle.  In 2006 Arena paired Pope with Oguchi Onyewu to create an interesting juxtaposition of playing styles in the middle of the field. It was an experiment that was never given time to adequately blossom. Teams took advantage of our weakness at outside back rather than play us down the middle, and Pope ended up red-carded for what ended up being out final game anyway. Pope’s retirement left us with some questions in the middle of the field…questions that fell to Bob Bradley to answer. Bob’s solution from the very beginning has been to use both Carlos Bocanegra and Oguchi Onyewu as the first choice pairing in all games of any consequence. Now, to be completely up front, I have no particular problem with either Boca or Gooch. They are both solid, gritty defenders who seem to lay it all out every time the step on the field. What I have a problem with is that they seem to be the exact same type of player. Both play in such a way that is more about strength and grit than reading the game, intelligence, or positioning. When I watch them play I see little finesse about our defense. Thank God for Tim Howard’s positioning genius and ability to play with intelligent reckless abandon. Just watch the Argentina friendly from a few months back to see how often he is forced to cover for them when their attempts to out-muscle leave them vulnerable to be split by a far more skilled player or players. These two are also largely responsible for the long-ball and counter-attack style that the US team plays. Instead of collecting the ball and being cool enough under pressure to give the midfielders a chance to check back, they tend to rid themselves of the ball with considerable gusto. This is a major reason why Brian McBride’s retirement was such a blow to the Nats, and why we continue to gripe about finding a player in his mold rather than developing a new system around the more ground-attacking minded squad we have. Our central defender’s tenancy to send the ball for a ride requires a forward who can collect long passes and hold the ball up long enough for the bypassed midfield to catch up.  Brian Ching, for all the flack he has caught for not being a major scoring threat since Bradley’s take over, is preferred by Bob for specifically these reasons, and is usually all alone when recieveing the ball.  This effectively takes him out of the attack on most plays because the defense has had time to organize and are usually keying on him because he’s the one holding the ball up to start the attack.

This is also part of our inability to use the wings to spread out another team.  Argentina spread us all over the field, as did England and Spain, as well as a host of other games I can think of in recent memory.  We have a few players who have come up through the system over the years who have been talented wingers, but wilted in long-run.  One of the reasons teams like England, Spain, the Netherlands, and even Mexico create such a broad pool of talented wide players is because they focus on that just as heavily as the center of the field.  The area you emphasize is the area that most readily develops.  What do we emphasize?  Defensive Midfielders.  What do we have a dearth of?  Exactly.  What does Brazil emphasize?  Attacking players.  Where have they always been vulnerable?  Defense and goalkeeping…it’s blindingly obvious.  Really, only DeMarcus Beasley has been a mainstay of the flank attack of the States with any kind of regularity, and even he has been in and out of form in long crests and troughs.  We simply don’t use the width of the field, and we rarely ever have.  Now we are resorting to using players who are not natural wide players to cover those positions, and get those players on the field (Donovan and Dempsey, anyone?).  But by puting these players who are vital cogs in our pool out there when we don’t use the wings, we are stranding skilled players away from the action and essentially taking them out of the game.  This all, of course, starts at the back.

(Wasted wide talent…)

The solution I’ve long been proposing has been bringing in and developing another group of central defenders that are cut from a different cloth.  Both Jay DeMerit and Michael Parkhurst are the type of players we should be looking at.  Michael, although often considered a bit undersized (despite his abundant success in face of the very physical play of the MLS), is a brilliant defender who makes his own success out of his ability to read the game, involve the midfield in the game, and his ability to position himself to break up the play before it happens.  DeMerit has had an up and down time with the Nats and with his current squad in the English Championship, but has been impressive in the few game situations he’s been asked to perform in.

And this leads into my third major gripe with the Bob Bradley version of the men’s national system.  Players who are seen as having “potential” are given very few chances to actually grow inside the system.  Most players called up on any regular basis have established themselves in one way or another.  Onyewu, Bocanegra, Cherundolo, Ching, Dempsey, Donovan, Howard, Beasley, and a small handful of others that have been given repeated call-ups paid their dues under Arena’s system.  The rest of the supporting cast has been called up on a somewhat rotational basis that makes only passing sense to anyone outside looking in.  If you believe the BB method, there is a huge talent pool in the United States, the second tier of which is either completely interchangable talent-wise or is so bad that we can’t seem to find adequate parts.  And whatever explanation you chose the general belief seems to be that they need to spend no time developing players at the national level.  Now, I don’t know about you, but the amount of actual playing time I see most of the fringe players (and some of our other regulars as well) in leagues outside of the MLS would suggest that their clubs aren’t spending too much time actually “developing” them.  I think that for the United States Soccer Federation to ignore internal development (which, let’s be honest, has kind of always been the policy…”Oh, let’s just let someone else worry about creating our players”) seems kind of blind and negligent. Freddy Adu and Jozy Altidore, along with Kenny Cooper, DeMerit, and Parkhurst have been the most glaringly obvious victims of this policy.

And this has been where the recent regeime has fallen down on us.  No one is going to develop our players for us.  Donald Rumsfeld once said you don’t go to war with the army you want, you go with the one you have.  Well, Donald and Bob are both thinking this way, and they are both wrong.  You go to war with the army you build.  Bob is playing, not with the team he inherited or the pool he’s got available to him, but with the one he’s building.  But he’s not conciously building one…and I believe it shows in the results.

When it comes to this beautiful game I don’t think anyone would deny that the goalkeeper is our best position.  In a beautiful game we’re best at the most rough and tumble spot on the field.  I wouldn’t go so far as to back Alexi Lalas’s boasting during the 2006 World Cup that we have the unquestioned best keeper’s in the world, but I would look at our goalkeeping squad over the past 15-20 years and put it up against any other keeping squad in the world.  Our backups are generally not too far off the pace of our starters.  In 2002 we had Keller baking up Friedel.  In 2006 we had Howard and Hanneman backing up Keller.  It’s a pretty sweet set-up we’ve got going in the net.  But our current situation bothers me just a little bit…something just isn’t sitting right with me.

My concern right now isn’t one concerning our unquestioned starter and sheer man-wall Tim Howard.  If anything I’m concerned that Howard is a little TOO good right now.  What I’m more worried about at the moment is Brad Guzan.  Guzan’s move to Premier side Aston Villa was a great move as far as I was concerned, and I was extremely excited to see him be able to challenge for first team football in the EPL.  But I was extremely dissapointed to learn that Villa had gone on to sign Brad Friedel from Blackburn. Considering that Friedel is still playing at an amazing level, it’s great to know that he can mentor Guzan, but there’s just no way Guzan is ready to challenge Friedel for a top spot. So then, is it better for him to sit on the bench in the Premier League, or start every game in the MLS?  I want to know that if Howard goes down, we’ve got a quality man to step in-between the pipes because, let’s be honest, our defense has learned to rely on Howard’s ability to single-handedly hold a game together when we aren’t playing well.  I can’t think of another position on the field that the USMNT has come to rely the same way that they rely on the keeper in recent years and I don’t like the idea of our backup making a major move only for that club to go get someone better to play in front of him so he can ride the pine.

Right now our center defense is all brawn and little brain, in my humble opinion.  Tim Howard has been the perfect man to manage this unfortunate situation.  We are slowly working our way into a situation where the drop off from first to second choice keeper is big and getting bigger, and we are learning to rely on a specific player due to his amazing talent, and the limited players we put around him knowing that he can handle it.