Gold Cup Champions
I wish I had a laptop, so I could have kept minute-by-minute notes during the Gold Cup final.
Let's pretend I did. It would have gone like this:
I have so much to say about our team, though. This Thursday, of course, we start Copa America (We got an invitation to the South American conference tournament. We're bringing our 'B Team'), but let's digest the Gold Cup first. There have been a few revelations this tournament, most of them good, some of them troubling, but -- in the end -- my optimism shines bright.
First and foremost: Landon Donovan (25 years old) is a stud. He is cleary our best player. When he is dribbling at people anything can happen. Bob Bradley's invention this tournament, and it was something Bruce Arena never did, was move Donovan outside. Ronaldo dominates for ManU from the wing. Robben dominates for Chelsea from the wing. England is best when Cole is running. Ditto, now, America. We need Donovan running at people. Period.
Pushing Clint Dempsey (24 years old) inside is a good move for the MNT (men's national team). Dempsey is classier than Donovan, and operates better in tight crowds. He might be our second best player. Unfortunately, Dempsey doesn't like playing inside. It's clear from his body language -- whenever he got pulled from the game, or whenever the play wasn't flowing like he thought it should -- that he's unhappy with some MNT developments. This worries me. We need Dempsey.
DeMarcus Beasley (25 years old) is a classic American soccer player, and I mean that in the worst way. Although he is brilliantly quick, and he does some things well (including, surprisingly, crossing the ball), his first touch is garbage and his finishing is worse. There are entire men's national teams that do nothing well outside of first-touch and finishing, and they win World Cups. See: Italy, 2006. Soccer IS -- it IS - first touch and finishing. That is what the game turns on. I love Beasley. Other teams fear his speed. But come 2010, he won't be starting. He's just not classy enough. At least twice this tournament, he missed open net. You just cannot have that. Dozens of times, he turned the ball over in ridiculous fashion. I think the general consensus coming out of the tournament is that Beasley played well, and he did, but people who think he's the final answer aren't correct. Or, heaven help us, they shouldn't be. You can beat Panama with Beasley. Even Mexico, if Mexico's biggest threat is clearly suffering from a concussion or other brain injury, but Germany? England? The Dutch? I suspect not.
Benny Feilhaber (22 years old, Hamburg SV), Michael Bradley (19 years old, Dutch first division) and Ricardo Clark (24 years old, Houston Dynamo) are all excellent. They each have their own problems (Feilhaber's tackling is sub-par, Bradley's ball control is inconsistent, and Clark doesn't have much offensive imagination) and none of them is terribly fast -- although Clark is best here -- but they have time. Feilhaber looks Brazilian, or Spanish, with the clever little touches he uses to deke hard-charging defenders. Both Feilhaber and Bradley play balls that only John O'Brien, the infamously fragile #5, has ever done for us. All tournament, they were dropping balls behind defenders, and Beasley/Donovan/Dempsey were running onto them brilliantly. Neither Feilhaber nor Bradley is as complete as Reyna, but either of them could end end up being better than he was. By 2010, Clark will step in where Pablo has served us well. He also seems less of a card concern, but who knows. He didn't get enough time for me to be sure.
Our defense concerns me a little. When we played Canada in the semi-final, Canada's best offense was trying to pick-pocket our central defenders, who were too clever by half. Neither Oguchi Onyewu (25 years old) nor Carlos Bocanegra (28 years old) has very good ball skills, and Keller is becoming a train-wreck with the ball at his feet. The problems continued against Mexico, and I damn near had a coniption fit by minute 20 today, until we finally started just booting it up the field. Much safer. Phew. I think Gooch and Carlos have time to develop some touch, but it isn't there yet. Not by a damn sight.
Jonathon Spector (21 years old) looks promising as a right back, but it isn't clear to me how good he actually is. For instance, he makes mistakes that you wouldn't expect players from the English Premiership to make. If good soccer is about first touch and finishing, bad soccer is about making bad turnovers in bad places. Spector has both good soccer and bad soccer in him. Scary, then. Jonathan Bornstein (22 years old, Chivas USA) is another outside defender with promise, although his defending is shakey. As an offensive presence, Bornstein is incredible and I love him. Both Mexico and Canada exploited him mercilessly, though, and -- well, I mean, defenders need to defend. Right? We can only suffer so much exploitation. Bornstein is so young I think he'll be OK. But, geez. Between him and Spector, we've got a lot of 2010 promise, but a ton of 2007 concern.
We need a forward. Eddie Johnson (23 years old), who many fans seems to place great hope in, is awful. He has no first touch at all, but that's not his biggest problem. No. His biggest problem is that he has absolutely no desire to score. I've never seen a MNT forward make fewer "positive" moves. (Positive, of course, meaning: towards goal). EJ might work as an attacking central midfielder, or even as a outside midfielder, but it's basically impossible for me to imagine him working anywhere else. Playing him at forward is worse than playing with 10 men. Taylor Twellman (27 years old) and Brian Ching (29 years old) are OK and likeable. But they are not inspired. They are not even good. Simply put: They are not 2010 heroes. We've got to find a young buck. That's all there is to that. (Josi Altidore (17 years old), anybody?)
So, anyway, those are my thoughts on that. We're good. We're quite good. We're even dangerous. But we've got holes.
Let's work on 'em.
Let's pretend I did. It would have gone like this:
Minute 1 - Kickoff.If you haven't seen the score by now, the USA beat Mexico, 2-1. It was our fourth Gold Cup Championship. (The Gold Cup, as I had to explain repeatedly to my roommates, is to soccer what the Big East Championship is to college basketball. Only teams from North/Central American compete).
...
Minute 90 - Sorry. Game way too intense to take notes, or type game diary. Spent most of match biting fingernails, hugging head, pulling hair. Typing? Not likely. No time for that.
I have so much to say about our team, though. This Thursday, of course, we start Copa America (We got an invitation to the South American conference tournament. We're bringing our 'B Team'), but let's digest the Gold Cup first. There have been a few revelations this tournament, most of them good, some of them troubling, but -- in the end -- my optimism shines bright.
First and foremost: Landon Donovan (25 years old) is a stud. He is cleary our best player. When he is dribbling at people anything can happen. Bob Bradley's invention this tournament, and it was something Bruce Arena never did, was move Donovan outside. Ronaldo dominates for ManU from the wing. Robben dominates for Chelsea from the wing. England is best when Cole is running. Ditto, now, America. We need Donovan running at people. Period.
Pushing Clint Dempsey (24 years old) inside is a good move for the MNT (men's national team). Dempsey is classier than Donovan, and operates better in tight crowds. He might be our second best player. Unfortunately, Dempsey doesn't like playing inside. It's clear from his body language -- whenever he got pulled from the game, or whenever the play wasn't flowing like he thought it should -- that he's unhappy with some MNT developments. This worries me. We need Dempsey.
DeMarcus Beasley (25 years old) is a classic American soccer player, and I mean that in the worst way. Although he is brilliantly quick, and he does some things well (including, surprisingly, crossing the ball), his first touch is garbage and his finishing is worse. There are entire men's national teams that do nothing well outside of first-touch and finishing, and they win World Cups. See: Italy, 2006. Soccer IS -- it IS - first touch and finishing. That is what the game turns on. I love Beasley. Other teams fear his speed. But come 2010, he won't be starting. He's just not classy enough. At least twice this tournament, he missed open net. You just cannot have that. Dozens of times, he turned the ball over in ridiculous fashion. I think the general consensus coming out of the tournament is that Beasley played well, and he did, but people who think he's the final answer aren't correct. Or, heaven help us, they shouldn't be. You can beat Panama with Beasley. Even Mexico, if Mexico's biggest threat is clearly suffering from a concussion or other brain injury, but Germany? England? The Dutch? I suspect not.
Benny Feilhaber (22 years old, Hamburg SV), Michael Bradley (19 years old, Dutch first division) and Ricardo Clark (24 years old, Houston Dynamo) are all excellent. They each have their own problems (Feilhaber's tackling is sub-par, Bradley's ball control is inconsistent, and Clark doesn't have much offensive imagination) and none of them is terribly fast -- although Clark is best here -- but they have time. Feilhaber looks Brazilian, or Spanish, with the clever little touches he uses to deke hard-charging defenders. Both Feilhaber and Bradley play balls that only John O'Brien, the infamously fragile #5, has ever done for us. All tournament, they were dropping balls behind defenders, and Beasley/Donovan/Dempsey were running onto them brilliantly. Neither Feilhaber nor Bradley is as complete as Reyna, but either of them could end end up being better than he was. By 2010, Clark will step in where Pablo has served us well. He also seems less of a card concern, but who knows. He didn't get enough time for me to be sure.
Our defense concerns me a little. When we played Canada in the semi-final, Canada's best offense was trying to pick-pocket our central defenders, who were too clever by half. Neither Oguchi Onyewu (25 years old) nor Carlos Bocanegra (28 years old) has very good ball skills, and Keller is becoming a train-wreck with the ball at his feet. The problems continued against Mexico, and I damn near had a coniption fit by minute 20 today, until we finally started just booting it up the field. Much safer. Phew. I think Gooch and Carlos have time to develop some touch, but it isn't there yet. Not by a damn sight.
Jonathon Spector (21 years old) looks promising as a right back, but it isn't clear to me how good he actually is. For instance, he makes mistakes that you wouldn't expect players from the English Premiership to make. If good soccer is about first touch and finishing, bad soccer is about making bad turnovers in bad places. Spector has both good soccer and bad soccer in him. Scary, then. Jonathan Bornstein (22 years old, Chivas USA) is another outside defender with promise, although his defending is shakey. As an offensive presence, Bornstein is incredible and I love him. Both Mexico and Canada exploited him mercilessly, though, and -- well, I mean, defenders need to defend. Right? We can only suffer so much exploitation. Bornstein is so young I think he'll be OK. But, geez. Between him and Spector, we've got a lot of 2010 promise, but a ton of 2007 concern.
We need a forward. Eddie Johnson (23 years old), who many fans seems to place great hope in, is awful. He has no first touch at all, but that's not his biggest problem. No. His biggest problem is that he has absolutely no desire to score. I've never seen a MNT forward make fewer "positive" moves. (Positive, of course, meaning: towards goal). EJ might work as an attacking central midfielder, or even as a outside midfielder, but it's basically impossible for me to imagine him working anywhere else. Playing him at forward is worse than playing with 10 men. Taylor Twellman (27 years old) and Brian Ching (29 years old) are OK and likeable. But they are not inspired. They are not even good. Simply put: They are not 2010 heroes. We've got to find a young buck. That's all there is to that. (Josi Altidore (17 years old), anybody?)
So, anyway, those are my thoughts on that. We're good. We're quite good. We're even dangerous. But we've got holes.
Let's work on 'em.
Labels: Benny Feilhaber, Landon Donovan, Michael Bradley, USA soccer
posted by Chris at 5:33 PM
2 Comments:
Good stuff. I'll buy it. I was a huge Beasley fan after World Cup 2002, and when he was scoring goals in the Champions League for PSV. But by the end of the 05-06 season, he had stopped scoring goals in the Dutch league, and his move to Manchester City this past season didn't jump start him. Maybe he's past his prime. As Chris has noted before, the best players on the best clubs are very often younger than 25.
More likely he's just a streaky soccer player. Right now, he probably still merits a spot in the starting lineup. But I can understand Chris's comments that he's not the "final answer." If he's coming off the bench in 2010, I'll be thrilled that the US-MNT has a better option.
I think Beasley is streaky. The problem is, I think he's in form right now, and he's still not very good.
In related news, Univision is webcasting all Copa America games live. Best news ever? Probably.
http://www.univision.com/contentroot/uol/30deportes/content/jhtml/copa_america/NOMETA_partidosEnVivo.jhtml
Quality isn't great, and the audio is obviously in Spanish, but it's totally worth it. I watched the first half of the Argentina game, and we looked quite good. At minute 26th, Eddie Johnson made a stunning run with the ball -- stunning because it went forward and it was effective -- that almost turned into a shot on goal. Ben Olson looked mean, which I was loving.
I guess we fell apart in the second half. I've seen the score, but haven't read any articles. I don't read enough Spanish to know if the game will be archived anywhere.
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