Compelling Soccer
Jun 28, 2011
Javier Hernandez. Chicharito. The toast of Mexico and CONCACAF these days. At 22, he set the Premier League on fire with 20 goals in 45 total appearances. And according to plenty of soccer writers, he’s the reason the US had better get used to looking up at Mexico in the soccer-world hierarchy.
Mexico’s 4-2 win over the US in the Gold Cup final has left many dismayed and even bitter. The two big fish in a backyard pond, the US has actually had the better of the rivalry in recent years. So naturally anything that upsets that balance is disturbing and will prompt lots of ink to be devoted to it. Hernandez does that, so there has been plenty on him the last few weeks.
Despite the title, this isn’t going to be another exercise in that. I don’t really care how good he is. Because THAT is precisely the problem. The US concerns itself with Mexico and it’s players to the point that’s all anyone here actually knows how to measure the US against. And after going on twenty some-odd years of that, 4-2 is the result.
I can’t help but compare the two takes on Grantland as the right way and the wrong way to look at the game, Hernandez and the US in general.
Carles reaction is to compare Hernandez to Freddy Adu, to tell us that Adu will never be Hernandez. Not that I think he will be, but I could draw a huge list up of former prodigies that were considered “done” because they didn’t thrive right away. But besides that piece of flawed reasoning, it goes on to say that Hernandez will send the us into the Dark Ages of soccer and that it’s probably no US player will probably score 20 goals in the EPL any time soon. Again, why he throws Juan Agudelo, who is playing at a higher level than Hernandez was at the same age, is a mystery beyond me.
But that gets to the flaw of all of this. Trying to compare the US to Mexico is a lazy exercise that results in the US being either slightly better or slightly worse, as the case was Saturday, to Mexico.
The US didn’t lose the Gold Cup final because Hernandez was unstoppable. They lost it because their two holding midfielders played awful games, ranging from shaky to plain shitting the bed at times.
On defense, Jonathan Bornstein may have played his away off the US team forever. I say may because I’ve thought that before with Bornstein and yet he always finds his way back, even if he’s not playing at a club level. Clarence Goodson is a decent player, Carlos Bocanegra is solid but slow and Eric Lichaj is talented but inexperienced.
The US was dominated in the midfield, something that has been a strength of the team in recent years. If you want to see who murdered the US Saturday, look no further than Giovanni Dos Santos, who made incisive runs all night, threatened the US defense, did things to Bornstein that were unspeakable and to cap it all off, embarrassed Bradley junior, Tim Howard, Jermaine Jones, and others en route to the goal of the tournament and maybe the year.
It was a performance that would have beaten the CONCACAF minnows anyway. Had Steve Cherundolo not gotten hurt or Bob Bradley not went to his worn out, smelly old security blanket in Bornstein, it might have beaten Mexico. But it would NOT have beaten England, France or heaven help us, Brazil.
And yet had we beaten Mexico, it would have reaffirmed to pundits and most fans that even with Hernandez, the US’ scappy play is good enough. ‘They found a way’ would have been the common phrase. It usually is, until it suddenly Saturday, it wasn’t anymore. But if it hadn’t happened Saturday, it would have happened eventually, because you could easily make it ‘They found a way to beat Mexico at home’ and have it mean the same thing it has for the past 10 years.
This is why Bill Barnwell’s take on the loss is probably the best I’ve read. It gets at the mindset flaw with US Soccer. The process is wrong.
It sounds strange to say that the US shouldn’t be disheartened by a team passing it in quality. But the truth is if the goal is to win the World Cup, or to be at least seen as a true contender, the concern should be their own quality compared to England, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and Spain.
This highlights the problem with the US mindset. For too long the US has measured itself with Mexico as it’s measuring stick. What you’re seeing now is the result of that.
Mexico has always been a second rate power in soccer. Solid base that can get out of the first round of the World Cup with regularity. But no one looks at Mexico and sees potential champion. Hernandez and Dos Santos aren’t changing that; plenty of second rate powers produce Premier League quality strikers. Hell the US has one right now; Clint Dempsey cracked 13 without the service that Hernandez got. (Not that scoring double digit goals in the EPL is hint enough that Dempsey could handle being the striker in Jozy Altidore’s absence.)
World Cup Qualifying was a success in 2009-2010. Why? Because we won the group, beating Mexico. (Mind you we split with Mexico in the group, and Mexico was flat out awful to start thanks to Sven Goran-Eriksson’s worst stop in his coaching career, but that’s just negativity, right?)
The US still holds on to the 2002 second round victory over Mexico. It was a great moment, but as unlucky as the US was not to get that penalty against Germany, were they lucky to draw a team on their level in Mexico in the second round, and a team that they were extremely familiar with.
And now today, we are crying because our best can’t beat Mexico. But should that be a surprise? Instead of looking towards Brazil and England, all we’ve done is look directly over the Rio Grande. If all we’ve done is measure ourselves against Mexico, then what have we done but worked to be just a little better than Mexico? We could never pull away from them because we refused to measure ourselves in any other way for all but one month in the four year cycle.
We didn’t want to compare ourselves to England or Brazil because we wouldn’t feel good about ourselves. We didn’t match up. But we didn’t match up with Mexico in 1988 either. We got better though and maybe even surpassed El Tri for a brief moment.
But instead of looking ahead, we looked behind. In the process we stumbled and fell.
Bob Bradley and US Soccer looked at the Gold Cup as something that had to be won at all costs. A team that was looking ahead would see 2014 as ominous, where the US’ current stars are on the wrong side of their careers. Their replacements? Well Adu made a surprise claim to the role of facilitator and Bradley deserves credit for that. But where are the others? Why wasn’t an effort made to find out who might be the future, besides Juan Agudelo? Where was Maurice Edu?
One would have hoped in all of their looking behind, they’ve have seen the corpse of their shredded back line, lying along with the remnants of Oguchi Onyewu’s career as a reminder of how lacking replacements for your studs can come back to bite you in the ass. (best of luck to Onyewu at Sporting Lisbon btw. May Portugal treat him better than it has Adu.)
Or perhaps 2006, when the 2002 heroes reminded us all four years is a long time. Surely had US Soccer been looking towards France and Italy, the same message would have been clear after their embarrassing flops in South Africa.
Bob Bradley gets a lot of the blame, but some of it is undeserved. The talent, while greater than it has been, isn’t world class. The US has a pay-to-play system, that weeds out people based on money first and talent second. Talking to a co-worker, her nephew ran up bills of a solid grand to play youth soccer. Many families can’t afford that.
To put it in perspective, had Clint Dempsey’s sister not tragically passed away, he wouldn’t even have been in position to be arguably the greatest US player ever. The money that his family would have used for her tennis, instead went to Clint.
It took a tragedy to give the US one if it’s greatest players. That is a tragedy in itself. But it’s a system that is considered good enough by US Soccer. Why? Because it’s good enough to be a perennial World Cup team out of a terrible region and mess around with making the round of 16 and if luck goes your way the quarterfinals.
You know, like Mexico.
And that is why the Gold Cup was actually a loss. Because instead of looking forward, once again the US measured itself against Mexico. And in 2014, unless something drastic changes, the US will be older and slower and less skilled than a second rate soccer power.
But hey, in 2009, Javier Hernandez didn’t even break double digits with Chivas. Now he’s the toast of CONCACAF. A lot can change in two years, let alone four. Agudelo could be a star striker in 2014 and the US might win CONCACAF again. Maybe they’d even crack the WC quarterfinals like in 2002.
Which means that we’d be slightly better than Mexico again.
Actually, scratch that. Nothing’s changing at all.
Tags: Chicharito, Mexico, US National Team
Apr 7, 2010
Lionel Messi is better at soccer than you.
Yes, we know it's been a while since we posted. Life intervenes. We hope to get back in the swing of things soon.
Tags: Arsenal, Barcelona, Lionel Messi
Nov 19, 2009
The World Cup field is set but as is the way in soccer, it was not without controversy. The France-Ireland game ended in disaster for the green and orange as France drew level in extra time to win 2-1 on aggregate. The goal was scored after Thierry Henry played a ball with his hand (twice!) and then passed it on to William Gallas, who buried it with his head. The referee flat out missed the call. France went up 2-1 and Ireland couldn't find another goal. Thus France is going to South Africa. Ireland is going home. Naturally, Ireland and many others are rightfully upset at the non call.
It's bad, but let's put it in perspective here. This hurt their chances of qualifying but it alone did not eliminate the Irish. If the handball is called, Ireland still has to score. Otherwise, it goes to penalties. I'm sure they'd have taken that, but penalties does not necessarily a World Cup berth make. It stinks they got potentially deprived of the opportunity but let's also not pretend they didn't blow opportunities of their own.
Tags: France, Ireland, Thierry Henry, World Cup Qualifying
Nov 18, 2009
Denmark v. US
US Starting Lineup
--------Altidore----Cunningham---------
-Feilhaber--Bradley----Clark----Holden--
Bornstein?!--Bocanegra--Spector--Hedjuk
-------------Guzan--------------------
Stakes: For the teams? Zip, zilch, this is a friendly after all. For the US players, there's a lot of the line for some. Some players will be fighting to make arguments why they should be in contention for a spot on the team headed to SA. This is especially big for MLS players who won't have the next few months to state their case in their league. I'm looking at you Jeff Cunningham.
Questions I Have: The pregame lineups have Jeff Cunningham in the lineup up top with Altidore. This is his shot. With few games remaining in International competition, a Conor Casey v. Honduras performance would go a long way to getting him on the 23, especially with the uninspiring competition he's got up top. Benny Feilhaber is on the wing today, not the center. Clark takes his spot there. Stuart Holden replaces Dempsey. Robbie Rogers heads back to the bench.
Now for the WTF moment. Jonathan Bornstein and Frankie Hedjuk? Really? REALLY? At this point what on earth is Bornstein going to show us that we don't already know? He's MLS quick, talented offensively and is a terrible, terrible international defender. And Hedjuk? He's old and he tries hard. He should be nowhere near South Africa. Why isn't Bradley getting a look at Edgar Castillo OR Heath Pearce in the LB spot with Jimmy Conrad or someone else in the center with Boca? (Spector out at RB) It makes no sense. You don't care about winning friendlies as much as you care about seeing who is worth your time. Hedjuk isn't. Bornstein is a known quantity.
Seriously, I'm just sitting here shaking my head.
Will I Be Watching: Will try to keep tabs if nothing else.
Expectations: Bornstein to crap himself again count? Hedjuk to run really hard but not get anywhere quickly? (But people still liking it because he does run hard) Whatever. I just hope we get a look at some of the other guys in place of the left and right backs.
Nov 17, 2009
So the Slovakia game was an ugly affair for the US team. Let's face it; the Slovaks are a team the US should be able to handle. Unfortunately, the US attack stagnated without Landon Donovan and became a complete non-entity once Clint Dempsey checked out of this one. With the two nowhere to be found for this game, that doesn't bode well for the team's chances against a much stronger Danish side. In theory it could provide plenty of opportunity for someone to step up, especially in the midfield, and show something that cements their place in the South Africa squad. In practice, that probably won't happen, though it's probably wise to keep an eye on Danish based Benny Feilhaber.
What lineup can we expect from Bob Bradley? Here's my educated guess:
---Altidore-----------Cunningham----
---Holden-------------------Rogers---
-------Feilhaber----Bradley-----------
Castillo----Bocanegra----Conrad----Spector
---------------Guzan----------------------
Tags: Manager Mode, US National Team
Nov 14, 2009
Tags: Live Blog, US National Team
Nov 11, 2009
ESPN's just posted Nate Silver's SPI rankings, which is his system of ranking the world of International soccer. Never too early to get started on the WC promotion right? Slow Wednesday in November just before the final part of qualification is just as good a time as any to launch a system.
Since it's Nate Silver, I'm looking at this with intrigue. The guy's had a lot of success with this type of thing; from Baseball Prospectus to FiveThirtyEight.com. He discloses his methodology which nice. Some of it goes off leaps of faith, which he admits, but overall I don't see too many problems with it thus far. Or at least I think it makes more sense than a personal ranking or heaven forbid, FIFA's. Having read through the length explanation, I can't say I understand all of it, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for now. The real test comes in SA next year. Until then every ranking has to be taken with a grain of salt anyway.
Tags: Nate Silver, Predictions, US National Team, World Cup
Expanding on the David Ngog furor from the past two days, I thought I'd go into a little exploration of the FIFA guidelines on fouls. Partial credit goes to my roommate for this idea; he broke out the FIFA rule book when he was discussing how the rules were applied in FIFA 10.
Anyway, I found the section on free kicks and ended up posting a smaller summary of my take as a comment on the SBI forums. Basically, the rules show why this certainly wasn't an egregious dive and could have been called a penalty either way.
This is the section on direct free kicks:
A direct free kick is awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any
of the following seven offences in a manner considered by the referee to be
careless, reckless or using excessive force:
• kicks or attempts to kick an opponent
• trips or attempts to trip an opponent
• jumps at an opponent
• charges an opponent
• strikes or attempts to strike an opponent
• pushes an opponent
• tackles an opponent
A direct free kick is also awarded to the opposing team if a player commits any
of the following three offences:
• holds an opponent
• spits at an opponent
• handles the ball deliberately (except for the goalkeeper within his own
penalty area)
A direct free kick is taken from the place where the offence occurred
(see Law 13 – Position of Free Kick).
Tags: David Ngog, FIFA Rules, Lee Carsley, Liverpool
Nov 10, 2009
So the soccer world is abuzz with Liverpool's controversial draw against Birmingham City. The reason it's being talked about? David Ngog drew a penalty after a "tackle" by Lee Carsley. It has been almost universally hailed as a dive and Ngog is being blasted by Carsley and the media as a result.
It was a dive, though not an egregious one. People are whining because it's Liverpool and because it was the biggest game on a Monday. But the reality was the tackle was bad. He slid, impeded his progress to the goal and never got the ball. If Ngog doesn't jump, he trips over him and it's a penalty. You can say he intended to go down but that's irrelevant (and also probably impossible to tell). The bottom line is if you go to the ground and don't get the ball, you're asking for trouble. If it happened at midfield, no one would complain. It certainly isn't the worst dive ever, nor does it prove Ngog is a cheat. It is unfortunate this happened, because the goal he scored earlier was quite the finish.
Nov 9, 2009
One step forward: Glen Johnson back in the starting lineup.
Half step forward: Steven Gerrard on the bench.
Status quo: Alberto Aquilani on the bench; not starting.
Twelve steps back: Fernando Torres nowhere to be found.
That is all.