USA vs Netherlands game thread

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Goooooal. still got time to tie it up!
 
wow, great ending to the game. Should have tied it up!
 
You're good Ronan. You're very good. 2-1 Netherlands.
 
How do you feel about the Bridge/Terry situation? Was Bridge a key player on the team?
 
Rodolfo said:
How do you feel about the Bridge/Terry situation? Was Bridge a key player on the team?
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Bridge is a great player but I put Ashley Cole before him in the England squad. Cole has been going through his own issues recently so the England squad is kind of fucked.

Bridge will be sorely missed because he was our next choice after Cole, in my opinion. I don't rate Upson or Brown.
 
Bornstein is awful. Spector played terrible.


Honestly, our whole system is shit. Either kick it far and try and get Davies/Findley now a breakaway... and good teams generally wouldn't have breakdowns that will allow this to happen.

Our other strategy is to swing it in and try and get lucky with a Onyewu/Dempsey (McBride...) header... and our two most prolific scorers in this manner are both hurt.


Hopefully Altidore continues to develop and we can actually run a more successful offense. As it is now we are generally defense-heavy, and frankly our defense and defensive mids are our weakest links.
 
Exciting last few minutes of the match that I caught. Beasley really put a stamp on the game. Nice to see Altidore making good decisions as well.
 
BengalDuck said:
Bornstein is awful. Spector played terrible.


Honestly, our whole system is shit. Either kick it far and try and get Davies/Findley now a breakaway... and good teams generally wouldn't have breakdowns that will allow this to happen.

Our other strategy is to swing it in and try and get lucky with a Onyewu/Dempsey (McBride...) header... and our two most prolific scorers in this manner are both hurt.


Hopefully Altidore continues to develop and we can actually run a more successful offense. As it is now we are generally defense-heavy, and frankly our defense and defensive mids are our weakest links.
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If the US tries to keep it on the floor and TRY to play a possession game they'll get slaughtered.

We simply don't have the players.

Hoofing it to our forwards is about the best we can hope for. Our forwards were by far our biggest weakness in '06 and I think it actually might be the teams strength this time around.
(but still not good enough) and not that they'll get any service.

Getting out of the group stage would be a huge accomplishment IMO.
 
OddEnormous said:
If the US tries to keep it on the floor and TRY to play a possession game they'll get slaughtered.

We simply don't have the players.

Hoofing it to our forwards is about the best we can hope for. Our forwards were by far our biggest weakness in '06 and I think it actually might be the teams strength this time around.
(but still not good enough) and not that they'll get any service.

Getting out of the group stage would be a huge accomplishment IMO.
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I like your realism but you guys have a really good up-front pairing even by the "top" countries' standards.

You're completely correct on the possession game. If the States tried playing this game I don't think it will end up pretty. England played "hoof the ball" for a good five years until we began to find the more technical players as well as our superior wing-backs (that adds a whole new dimension to the game).
 
Ronan said:
I like your realism but you guys have a really good up-front pairing even by the "top" countries' standards.
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Yes, I wrote it was our strength this time around when previously it was a major weakness.
 
ALTIDORE!
 
Guys, remember that we were missing 6 potential starting players in this game. We'll look a lot more solid with a full roster on the pitch, come June.
 
i didn't think it was a terrible game from the US. a decent effort and they really picked up their play at the end.

findley was terrible and should be done as a national team player until he shows significant improvement. any attack that went to findley immediately died. same with eddie johnson, though to a lesser extent. if davies doesn't make it back and the US has to take one of them, i hope it's johnson, though i would prefer just bringing altidore and ching with dempsey and donovan able to play up front if needed.

bornstein had a couple of pretty bad moments(the pk and the handball in the box that easily could have been called), but he also did get back at one point and save what looked like a goal. he's not a great player by any means, but he'd been playing pretty well until today and none of the options that have been tried at left back have been better.

donovan never really got involved in the game. in a game like this, they really need to focus on getting donovan as many touches as possible. once he moved up top, he was a lot more active but i prefer him in the midfield role.

bradley, edu, torres, and holden were all acceptable but nothing special. i thought demerit looked shaky in the back and spector had a couple of mistakes and was his passing was off too. altidore really picked it up at the end which is nice to see since it seems like in general he would fade at the end of games. beasley looked good enough to put himself in contention to make the team. if he gets a decent amount of time with rangers, he'll probably go.

assuming health for everyone, my starting lineup at this point would be altidore, davies, donovan, bradley, edu, dempsey, bornstein, bocanegra, onyewu, spector, howard. if davies can't go, dempsey would be moved up top and feilhaber/holden/torres/beasley would be fighting it out for the last spot.
 
OddEnormous said:
If the US tries to keep it on the floor and TRY to play a possession game they'll get slaughtered.

We simply don't have the players.

Hoofing it to our forwards is about the best we can hope for. Our forwards were by far our biggest weakness in '06 and I think it actually might be the teams strength this time around.
(but still not good enough) and not that they'll get any service.

Getting out of the group stage would be a huge accomplishment IMO.
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i can't agree with this at all. the strength of the US team is the midfield with donovan and dempsey. just hoofing it up to the forwards doesn't work. the US is not going to be able to control possession consistently against top 10 teams in the world, but they are capable of doing much more that just kicking the ball up field and hoping for the best.

the US's strength really is counters and set pieces but they finally do have players capable of breaking down defenses.

and getting out of the group stage is expected. anything less is a disappointed with the talent level of the team and the group they are in.
 
If the US don't get out of the group stages there are some real issues with their tactics, not talent.
 
Ronan said:
If the US don't get out of the group stages there are some real issues with their tactics, not talent.
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that would be one possible reason for the US to not get out of their group.

one thing that really bothers me about the world cup is how people make such huge proclamations about such a tiny sample size of games.
 
rocketeer said:
that would be one possible reason for the US to not get out of their group.

one thing that really bothers me about the world cup is how people make such huge proclamations about such a tiny sample size of games.
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small sample or not.. there should be no reason for US to at least be ahead of Algeria and Slovenia after group stages.
 
Wheels said:
small sample or not.. there should be no reason for US to at least be ahead of Algeria and Slovenia after group stages.
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i can think of plenty of reasons. injury, bad decision by a ref, random goal completely against the flow of the game, etc.

i mean the US could lose to england(who is unquestionably the better team) and win their next two games and still not advance because of goal differential(if 3 teams end up tied with 2 wins and 1 loss while the 4th team loses all 3 games).

take last world cup as an example. the US left basically embarrassed as a soccer country. but why? they played one terrible game against the czech republic and lost. they then played a decent game against italy but were on the wrong end of some questionable calls and forced to play 9 on 10 but still managed to get the tie. then in the final game, they lost because of a bad penalty decision.

it you judged by the overall play of the US, they would have lost the first game, beaten italy(because they should have been a man up rather than a man down), and tied ghana. instead the US finished with only 1 point and was in last in their group. a 3 game sample size tells you almost nothing about how well a team played.

if you need another example, just look at the confederations cup. the US lost to italy(in a game made worse again by a poor decision to send off an american) and were dominated by brazil. but they still made the semi finals just by beating egypt. that tournament is considered a "success" because the US made the final eventually but the group stage was pretty similar to the group stage at the last world cup that was considered a complete failure.

i'm somehow that prefers to judge things on how they actually happen rather than strictly on result alone. obviously, the result ends up being the most important part but it shouldn't be the only thing that matters.
 
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