Mining for Gold

America cruised into the second round of the Gold Cup (basically the North American championship) last night with a 4-0 victory over El Salvador. There's a number of encouraging signs to note from the first three games of Bob Bradley's tenure that count.

• The U.S. has won their games 1-0, 2-0, and 4-0. If you extrapolate that out, we should win the championship with a score of 32-0. Fun times!
• Beasley got two goals last night. A dangerous Beasley is ingredient 1b to a healthy U.S. attack. He was terrible in the last World Cup, and brilliant in '98. He also had 4 goals when the U.S. won the Gold Cup in '95. (Ingredient 1a is Donovan getting lots of touches in the middle of the field facing the goal.)
• 6 different Americans have scored for the U.S. In the end, it would be nice to have a guy who is The Goal Scorer. But at least now there are more possible players to emerge in that role. And lots of goal scorers is a much better problem than no goals.
• The competition hasn't been too tough, but zero points in three games is excellent. Maybe the rest of the world isn't familiar with the phrase "defense wins championships" and America can make that our secret strategy.

The biggest negative to the American efforts is that Eddie Johnson, a guy who was briefly The Goal Scorer back in World Cup qualifying a couple years ago, has a strained knee. That's brutal, especially since he had been playing the best soccer of his life in MLS.

Click here for the current situation and brackets in the Cup.