1) Seattle…wow
Screw the David Beckham saga.  Seattle Sounders FC is THE story of the young season. I’ll get into a few more specific thoughts below, but let’s just remember that the last expansion team to start the season 2 and 0 went on to win the MLS cup that year (granted, in a weaker version of the league).  I feel the need to say that I was predisposed to hate the Sounders.  I was skeptical of the Ljungburg signing; I felt the stealing of Sigi Schmid from Columbus was a bit of a questionable move after he just helped that city win it’s first league trophy; having them play on a turf field that’s in a football first stadium; the fact that they’re in Seattle (which I have other sports issues with); and the fact that they basically swiped an NASL identity rather than create their own, although I have since reversed my feelings on this issue…bring in all the NASL identity’s you want.  It’s our professional heritage as a soccer country!  All this had me, uhh….let’s call it slightly put out with the Sounder expansion team when things first started.  But they have built a program up there that’s to be respected rather than slaping an expansion team together that’s prepared to fall back on the first year excuse.  And all props to Drew Carey, who is one of the best high-profile soccer fans in this country.  Little fact: he still holds his Galaxy season ticket despite being a minority owner of the Sounders because he lives in L.A. and wants to support his local team.  He’s good for this country’s soccer programs. He and the Sounders made the effort to woo the city and it’s fans first rather than just hoping they’d turn out.  They made it so that the city of Seattle identified with that team from the very start.  And they’re getting results to boot with two very convincing wins to start the season, one of them against a team who was in last year’s MLS cup, and another against a team many pick to make a run this year themselves.  After having watched the city embrace them, support them, and the model they’ve put together, I’m a converted fan.  I’m pulling for them for many reasons, not the least of which is if they are successful more expansion teams will aim to emulate their style and enthusiasm…and I don’t see how that could be a bad thing.

2) Columbus prettiest soccer in MLS?  Maybe, but here comes Seattle.
In watching most of the games in the first to weeks of this 2009 season I feel I can say with some confidence that the Columbus Crew, despite their tag of being the hardest working team in the MLS, also are currently deserving of the title of the prettiest soccer in the MLS as well.  Guillermo Barros Schelotto runs his mid-field with precision and confidence on the ball as well as a kind of player’s player mentality that just makes that team fun to watch.  I’m a huge MLS supporter, but even I recognize that the MLS has a ton of direct play, bypassing the midfield, and loose ball type play that gives it a few hard to watch games every year (by a few I mean more than half…and by that I mean a lot).  I love the physicality of the league, and the work ethic of the players, and the parity of the league, and the unpredictability of the way things bounce in the MLS, and the Revs…I love the Revs (although I’m super disappointed at Parkhurst’s departure…it’s taken something from being a Rev fan for me).  But when I want pretty soccer, I watch England’s Arsenal or Spain’s Barcelona.  Columbus is changing that a bit.  They are a hard working, good-looking soccer team.  Good for them, and I tip my soccer fan’s hat to them for that.
That being said, Sigi Schmid is putting together a pretty good-looking side in Seattle.  They were a bit frantic in the opening minutes, and even after a couple of goals, of the Red Bulls game.  But they showed some great flashes of slick play, a huge hunk of which came from the young Columbian, Freddy Montero.  Their second game against Real Salt Lake was a much more complete game from start to finish.  I was excited watching them play, their attacking runs, the way they controlled the ball and managed the game, which Ljumburg did very well upon his entry despite his high attacking expectations and the ho-hum response to his short performance.  He was smart and I, as a player, appreciated what he brought.  Rookie Steve Zakuani made a few overly long wasteful runs in which he covered a lot of ground only to get caught in a tight space and lose the ball, but brought it on enough occasions to warrant his continued selection.  If the expansion/inexperience blues don’t weight this team down over the run of the season, they’re going to continue to be effective, but more importantly they’re going to continue to be entertaining.

3) Hang on to Freddy Montero

This one’s no surprise really.  I don’t know what Montero’s contract deal is for, but I pray to the soccer-gods that it’s longer than a year, and that Seattle has the balls and brains to hang on to him as long as they can.  This kid’s been nothing short of brilliant in the first two games and he’s going to start to draw notice really quickly.  Someone who thinks they’re being business smart would say that when the high offers start coming in for Freddy Montero from overseas we should sell him and get bank for the kid early before he starts to decline or gets injured or something.  I say Seattle should go shopping for a second DP tag and hang on to this kid as long as is humanly possible.  He’s the kind of player that can galvanize entire fan-bases around him and his team.  He’ll put butts in the seats.  He’ll be remembered long after Ljumburg has ended his 1-2 year run, Keller has ended his 1-2 year run, and Seattle has lost it’s expansion buzz.  Other bright young talents will sign with MLS because of him as long as he’s here.  He’s the kind of player that the MLS needs to hang on to if it wants the level of play to go up.  Clint Dempsey, Jozy Altidore, Bobby Convey, Freddy Adu, and others were smart sells at the time because the league saw the benefit of the money to grow the league, and didn’t have quite enough swagger to pull off hanging on to them and their ambitions.  Montero represents the beginning of a new time period in MLS history.  He’s a smart, cheeky young player who’s come to the league from elsewhere in his prime as his announcement to the world.  Now’s the time to capitalize on his faith in the league to begin to hang on to these players and think about the product on the field.  A bold move like this would benefit the league long after any allocation money that would have been received for him would stop circulating.  I’m not stupid enough to think we won’t lose him eventually, but a year or two isn’t enough time to really allow what his actual playing impact can be to trickle down through-out the league.

4) NY reorganized to look disorganized
I’m shocked and disappointed that the NY Red Bulls revamp in the off-season has left them looking so disorganized and piss-poor so far this season.  Juan Carlos Osorio is looking less and less like the good coach he appeared to be with Chicago, and more and more like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.  In both their opening games so far they have looked like they were scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on in their defensive half, abandoned most of their midfield play, and had little to no possession on in the attacking third.  I sure hope they get it together or Juan Pablo Angel may decided he wants to go on loan somewhere in Europe this summer.

5) Houston and NE dominance over?
As much as it saddens me to say it, especially given my Rev’s trophy haul during this time, I believe Houston and New England may have seen one too many important players fly the coop than can be compensated for.  I believe both Dominic Kinnear and Steve Nicol are brilliant coaches, and I tag them both to dominate this league again with their team selection, but for now both the Revolution and the Dynamo look to be teams who are no longer set up to dominate this league.  They have both been unimpressive so far this season, and seem to be searching for answers in key positions.  Will Stuart Holden step up to lead the team and take some of the burden off Brian Ching?  Will stadium concerns and field concerns dog Houston all year?  Will Taylor Twellman and Steve Ralston come back with enough form to lift New England up by the bootstraps, and then continue to stay healthy?  Will Steve Nicol find someone or a combination of someones to replace the vital cog that Michael Parkhurst represented?  Can either team keep the ball on the ground long enough to actually create some flow to a game and therefore some decent attacking opportunities from the run of play rather than counter attacks and surprise chances?  These questions and many more will determine if we even see these two once dominant teams in the playoffs this year, but for now I certainly wouldn’t lay any money on seeing either of these two teams come out of the tunnel at Qwest field come MLS cup ’09.

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 I originally envisioned this particular posting it was before the WC qualifiers had started.  I didn’t write it then because there were simply too many unknown quantities.  For instance, while I’m in complete support of bringing in players like Kenny Cooper, Jozy Altidore, and Freddy Adu into the mix of the first team because of the flashes they have shown when given the chance (or in Cooper’s case the sheer dominance he has displayed in his current goal-scoring form), but I hesitate to create a mental ‘best-case-scenario’ line up that includes them because we just don’t know.  The reality is that we as fans can only evaluate the effectiveness of players that Bradley Sr. actually chooses to play.  To assert otherwise is simply armchair arrogance.

What has prompted me to return to the idea of this article is my own internal need to comment on what I’ve been seeing happen in these initial stages of qualifying.   Wednesday night’s win against Trinidad and Tobago, and I’m not trying to take anything away from the T&T squad, but the win showed a level of play that I feel we should have been at MONTHS ago.  Our current attacking philosophy feels disjointed at best.  I think our reliance on the 4-5-1 type of formation doesn’t take advantage of the mindset that American players need to be groomed to have.  Our national team players are being drilled in a philosophy that, I think, is supposed to be defense-first and tactically sound, but instead is looking like conservatism-first.  Our players don’t seem to be playing with fire and determination.  Our players are picked apart on an individual basis because they don’t play with the fire of a combined unit.

I would advocate that the time has come for some tough love with players who only show ‘potential’.  Eddie Johnson, Brian Ching, Michael Bradley, and even Donovan, Bocanegra, and Beasley, and Dempsey need to be pulled out when their form is not good.  It hurts me to say that because I’ve always been a staunch supporter of allowing players to play through bad form.  But there’s an air of complacency that seems to have settled over the national team, which is ironic given the seeming hesitance of Bob Bradley to call up or field the same squad in repeated performances.

Landon Donovan was quoted after the Cuba game as saying, “”Something that gets overlooked is the goal is to win the game.  The goal is not to win the game 3-0 or 4-0, the goal is to win the game. Once you score a goal and if you’re winning in qualifying, the job then is to make sure the other team doesn’t score.  It’s not always as simple as, `Go attack, go attack, go attack.’  The goal is to win the game.”

In a way, he’s only half right.  The LARGER goal is to win the game.  And no, it doesn’t matter if the score is 1-0 or 10-0.  But this mentality ignores all the other things that go into the game…like focusing on maintaining position, possession, good shape, discipline, and playing with tangible grit.  If you take care of the game, the result will take care of itself.  Right now the USMNT is playing a reactive game.  This will not allow them to grow as a squad.

So what are my personal suggestions?  I would like to see the calm passing out of the back and good positioning of either Jay Demerit or Michael Parkhurst replace Carlos Bocanegra in the back-center of the park to offset the unquestionable physical and mental grit gifts of Oguchi Onyewu, who doesn’t truly provide those passing/positioning options. I would like to see us move away from the two-holding midfielder system OR (radical idea) play 3 across the back and add that extra to the attack while maintaining a duel-holding midfield presence.  I would like to see Bradley Sr. look at his playmaker options and develop that role within the US system.  I think it’s time to call up those I mentioned in the beginning of the article and allow them to develop IN the system rather than waiting until players appear to be the complete package.  I think it’s time to stop looking for a replacement to Brian McBride and start developing a coherent philosophy based around the players we have now.  We need to purposefully use the wings more and develop a true role for what we want those on the wings doing.  Given that we have very few true out-and-out wingers in the US national system (Beasley and Cherundolo are the only ones that come to mind) we need to create a clear idea of what our wingers do in the system because anyone we play out there is out of position and obviously no one has shown the instincts to play the position dangerously.

Just my two cents…

Wow, I haven’t been that excited watching a game for a long time…simply put…a much improved performance from a US side that was obviously both fatigued and fired up at the same time. As I sat watching the game (thank God for ESPN360) I was furiously scribbling notes so that I would remember everything I wanted to say. I’m not going to actually recap the game. I think most of us know by now it ended in a 0-0 draw. (If you’re interested in a quality recap, go here) However, I do have things to say about this match from my page of barely legible notes:

The Good: I think it only fair to start with the tenacity shown by our defenders. Danny Califf played a tough game. He wasn’t great, and probably shouldn’t be the top of the pecking order for center backs, but he presents himself as a solid back-up to the top choices. Cherundolo and Pierce both showed themselves to be solid and gritty in our own defensive third. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the monster game put in by Howard. Great positioning, great job organizing and communicating, and fantastic work keeping up the momentum of frustration after he had gotten under the Argentinian forwards collective skin. Julio Cruz worked hard the whole game and created some fantastic opportunities with both his skill and his runs, and Howard denied him every time. Donovan was stabilizing and brought an attacking mentality that has been missing without him. Dempsey was cheeky, if a little tired, and Beasley continues to be one of the hardest working men in the US player pool. Michael Bradley showed that he has composure on the ball, although he loses it way, way too much for my liking. And, even though this is a US break down I feel I have to say, every time an Argentinian player took their touches to control an incoming pass or to bring a ball down it was magic. I was absolutely captivated watching the skill, class, and composure that every player in blue stripes played with.

The Bad: Now, to be fair, most of my handwritten notes are negative points because I was enjoying the game and only scribbling when I was disappointed. I also am a coach, and having the vantage point that TV offers when you watch a game makes it easy to pick this stuff out, but it is what it is:

1) The field players of the US team were far to quick throughout the game to shield the ball with their first touch rather than open up to the field and try to play the Argentinians straight up through the midfield. It caused some slow build ups that allowed Argentina to get their men all behind the ball. The US has developed into a counter-attack team, which I’m not a fan of, and although the slower pace lead to a more possession-heavy game it made us a bit predictable. It wasn’t until Freddy Adu came on that he and Donovan really started striking at the heart of the defense and taking players on straight up. The middies needed to give the Argentinians a little less respect and time to close them down by opening up to the field and speeding the attack up a bit. Argentina kept the ball in front of them and moving at all times and their game was obviously much more fluid because of it. Argentina also took advantage of the quick restart in both their and the middle thirds, where the Americans set up almost every free kick no matter where on the field it was.

2) Our outside backs offered us little going forward. Steve Cherundolo and Heath Pearce both looked a little lost and hesitant on the ball when they took it on themselves to attack. I will give them both credit for taking to the attack and hustling like crazy to get back when they were caught high, Cherudolo especially, but they looked like they were of two minds of what to do every time they had the ball at their feet in an advanced position. Even Heath Pearce’s volley looked to me to be more of a panicked one-time touch than a planned volley on goal.

3) The United States was defending through the back the entire game. Argentina’s ability to strip us in the midfield combined with our inability to have a forward hold the ball for very long in the attacking third meant that every time we pushed up our guys were then caught racing back when Argentina countered, which they did with speed and skill. We gave up far to many dangerous fouls, especially late in the game, because our players were just running through the back’s of the Argentines. They teach you in HIGH SCHOOL that if you can’t defend the player from the side then you run past them and zone up on the defender who steps up to defend. Our defensive angles were atrocious from our midfielders. And after Mastroeni got thrown off (I’m not even going to go there) we were settling for lunges and long-balls until Adu and Kljestan came on and worked with Donovan to settle the attack down. In fact, there was one moment that stood out to me, after DeMerit came on, where I was getting frustrated that our defenders were just booting the ball for a clearance, which they did all night but got worse at towards the end, where Demerit stripped a player of the ball just outside the box and then made a 20 or so yard pass to a checking back Donovan, to feet, and I stood up and shouted “Thank You!” because Jay DeMerit was the only one who seemed to be able to distribute out of the back without winding up.

4) (Last one, I promise) I didn’t see the US playing the wings directly all that much. Where were the men checking to the touchline to give out attack width? Where was the play through the middle that goes wide to stretch the defense? Most everything went down the center, or straight up the touch line to then cut in. We weren’t stretching Argentina on what was a very large field on a very hot night, but they sure weren’t shy about trying to stretch us, and that’s what created several of those opportunities where Howard had to bail us out.

The Ugly: I don’t want to harp on Eddie Johnson anymore, but I feel I have to. The only thing I can figure out is that Bob Bradley is trying to play Johnson out of his slump. Maybe Bradley likes Johnson’s speed with our counter-attack style. Who knows? But after last night’s game, Johnson’s time has to be up. He gave us ZERO pressure on the ball in the attacking third after it was lost, he spent way too much of the game checking all the way back past midfield to receive a ball, only to lay the ball off to a defensive middy, and he showed no real tenacity toward goal. His poor first touch on his attack around the 65th minute put him in a rough spot, but then to lay that ball all the way back to the top of the arch?! Into the heart of the Argentine defense?! Rather than have a go at goal?! He could have gotten a corner, or a rebound, or a lucky ball snuck under the keeper, anything would have been better than that! Eddie Johnson does not offer our attack anything that another player doesn’t offer, and those other players offer more on top of it. Until Johnson shows improvement with Fulham, he shouldn’t be on the roster. And when/if he comes back, he should be a late sub until he shows more SMARTS in the game.

With all this out, I want to reiterate that I’m actually proud of the US’s effort in light of the recent friendlies, but I still maintain that we have a lot of work to do and a long way to improve in order to challenge on the world stage.

Cheers

(Images from ESPN Soccernet)

In anticipation of tonight’s US/Argentina friendly in New Jersey (7:30 pm Eastern Time, ESPN Classic) I thought I’d throw out my prediction. I actually have two based on the way the US comes out to play. If the MNT comes out and plays an attacking game that includes Donovan, Cooper, and Adu in the attack I could see us playing to a 1-1 or 2-2 draw (let’s be honest, we’re not gonna keep Messi and Co. off the board). I’m a little more than interested in what happened to Brian Ching in the player pool, and would have loved to see him in the mix for the game tonight as an attacking option. If the MNT comes out and plays the duel holding midfielders role and lays back the way we have been against Spain and England, I think we loose 2-0 or even 3-0. The most important thing I’m looking for in this game is that the US SCORES! We’ve been shut out in both of the last two friendlies. We’re playing at home, we’ve got better attacking options than we’ve had in the last two, and we should be royally pissed off at this point. To be honest, I see a mix of what I said above happening, and we lose 2-1…but I sure hope I’m proved wrong.

P.S. – If Eddie Johnson plays, I think we lose 3-1.