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