See, there are soccer fields in CO Springs

I’m sitting here, reflecting on today’s mess in Mexico City and just can’t come to terms with our preparation & execution.

What was the reason for the 80 minutes of bunker ball? Was the team absolutely winded by the conditions? A further look into the so called ‘home field’ advantage conditions doesn’t provide alot of answers:

1. The game was moved earlier in the day to supposedly smother the Americans in heat. It wasn’t hot, mid to upper 70s. Perfect soccer weather.
2. The pollution makes it difficult to breathe for American players. The sky was blue with a few clouds.
3. The Americans can’t play in altitude, Azteca sits at about 7,200 feet above sea level.  Well let’s examine this one a bit futher

If indeed the overwhelming factor today was the altitude then someone please explain to me why the team trained in Miami for a day before flying to Mexico?  When I heard of the United States’ pre game camp plans I felt like I was missing something.  Why only a few short days to practice together when the Mexicans were preparing much in advance?  Why train in Miami (6 feet above sea level) instead of Salt Lake City (4,226 feet above sea level) or Colorado Springs (6,305 feet above sea level).

Who makes these decisions and why?  Is it because they don’t want the European players to have long flights?  Why not do the necessary amount of preparation in similar conditions to that of Mexico City to win a crucial game in World Cup Qualifying?  Whatever happened to ‘Winning is the only thing’ and ‘Whatever it takes to win?’

Needless to say there’s alot of questions that should be answered.  Of course they won’t be.

The most recent display of Bradley’s coaching quality was today in Mexico City when after 10 minutes the United States decided to pack it up and pray for Mexico to be unable to put the ball in the net. Surprisingly, Charlie Davies had provided the Red White & Blue with an early one goal lead, but Bob Bradley did everything in his power to render his star players useless for the rest of the game.

Using Donovan as a defender just simply is a waste of talent. He’s our most explosive player and needs the ball at half field or higher, not in our own box. Needless to say, Donovan was basically non-existent with his handful of worthless touches. Don’t blame Donovan for his disappearing act, blame Bradley for bunkering down for 80 minutes and not allowing Donovan be in a position to explode at the Mexican defenders.

When our players were time wasting at about the 30 minute mark, I couldn’t help but be reminded of our collapse against Brazil in the Confederations Cup 2nd half where we stopped making runs forward and relied on U-10 boot ball to the other team. We were bound to lose and we did in classic USA fashion, with a whimper.

Stranding Ching up on top seems to be the preferred strategy in games that our coach clearly doesn’t think our team can go toe to toe against which must be a wonderful sight for our opposition. There’s no need to hold 4 defenders back against one striker and Mexico enjoyed pushing the ball forward slowly with 10s of yards of space. I feel bad for Ching because he just cannot succeed in that role with absolutely no support.

All in all a worthless game with one moment of excitement for USA fans and we basically learned nothing about our team. If this is the way we have to play against superior teams then I am going to find it harder and harder to get excited about the World Cup.

Fire Bob Bradley Now, he can’t win big games and will take us nowhere in South Africa.

With the obvious Brazilian onslaught continuing, Bob Bradley made the audacious decision to field Sascha Kljestan & Johnathan Bornstein while removing Jozy Altidore & Benny Feilhaber respectively, thus dooming the United States to a defensive shell which ultimately was their demise. In doing so, Bob Bradley signaled to the Brazilians that the Americans were done pushing the ball forward (despite needing a goal to win) and were content sitting in the back defending. The game winning goal wasn’t far behind Bradley’s decision to bunker and in a last gasp effort to tie the game, Bob brought on Connor Casey in the last few minutes of the game.

Nobody expected the United States to win this game and there’s no shame in losing 3-2, but what hurts so much is how the USA succumbed to Brazil. In the first half, the US took it to the Brazilians and were rewarded with 2 excellent goals but they completely fell apart with a different second half game plan. Everything that could’ve gone wrong did. They got scored on in seconds after the start, made defensive substitutions, and allowed two more goals.

This feeling of being letdown that I have right now sucks and I know that next year in the World Cup, at some point, I’ll have this feeling once again. Just one time I’d love to have that feeling of winning a big competition instead of surrendering to the ultimate understanding that it takes a near miracle to win these type of games.

Impressed that we made it this far, but ultimately still disappointed with the result.

This will be my last post on this site, Bob Bradley will be our coach through the World Cup.

I regret nothing, however, because I honestly think we saw the emergence of the United States Soccer fan throughout this tournament. I have never heard such loud voices from the soccer community here in the States, and though it came from wanting to get a man fired I feel that this type of passion displayed by the fans helped to inspire the team to come out against Egypt & Spain and win. We all read the comments after the Egypt match, the players knew that we were down on them and they used that to fuel their desire on the field. Hopefully both team & players can rekindle that passion on Sunday as well as August in Mexico City.

Go USA!

It’s hard to criticize the coach in these situations especially when everything that needs to go right, goes right and your team is moving on, watching the likes of Italy & Egypt pack it up and head home.  However, I think this game has more to do with the players and less to do with the coach in the end.

The players got up for this match and were simply the more determined team on the pitch.  This result makes the last two games even more painful for me because if they would have had this attitude against Brazil & Italy we might be praising this team instead of feeling surprised that we’re moving on.  Our boys were the more skilled, quicker, and physical team as Egypt seemed to be focused on their future matchup with Spain than what was happening on the field.

Bob’s  tactics were the same tactics that we’ve been criticizing for weeks.  Overly defensive formation with players who have been under achieving for consecutive games.  Instead of considering Adu & Torres, Bob Bradley opted with Ricardo Clark and stuck with Dempsey.  I was shocked to see this lineup and felt that we’d get lambasted once again but was pleasantly surprised that the players passion overcame any tactical shortcomings.  I’d love to know what the logic was behind Altidore getting subbed off for Feilhaber, considering we still needed another goal to move on, but today everything worked out for Bradley.

Do I now feel that Bob Bradley is the most qualified person to take our team to South Africa next summer? Certainly not.  The ball bounced his way today, even in Brazil’s win, but that doesn’t make up for the previous two months worth of frustrating football.

Will Bob Bradley be fired before the World Cup?  At this rate probably not.  This was the game that saved Bradley’s job, plain and simple so now we forge ahead and hope to see some new players for the Gold Cup.
Oh yea, there’s the game on Wednesday against Spain, but we can’t possibly win that, right?  Well if the soccer gods are smiling on Bradley like they did today, anything is possible.

Man its sweet to move on when Giuseppe Rossi has to get on that plane tomorrow for Italy.

Freddy Adu = Good. Bob Bradley = Bad

Since we’ve already talked about the biggest issue with Bob Bradley’s coaching in the lack of passion instilled in his team, now is a good time to continue the biggest discussion spreading throughout US Soccer at the moment.  Why doesn’t Freddy Adu see any playing time under Bob Bradley?

Unless your Eric Wynalda or some other status quo loving grouch, you want to see Freddy Adu play for the USA in South Africa next year.  He’s shown the flair at the youth level, provides creativity unprecedented in the American system (sorry Dempsey, your foolish ball tricks only create giveaways), and commands defensive attention from the opposition.  Though for some reason Freddy continues to rot on the bench despite our team’s last goal from the run of play being weeks ago by a defender.   Why?

The reasons for Adu’s lack of playing time have been many, from both Bradley-lovers to the coach himself but none of them travel too far with people who are fed up with the same underwhelming results and embarrassing performances on the field.  Let’s look at some of them:

Freddy Adu needs to get regular minutes with his club.

A standard anti-Adu stance on BigSoccer now also backed by Landon Donovan and Bob Bradley himself in a recent interview.  I could argue that it doesn’t matter how a player performs for his club but how he performs in National Team camps and more importantly while he’s on the field.  More often than not, when Adu gets garbage minutes with the United States he attacks defenders, draws double teams, frees up his teammates, eases pressure off our defenders.  Does his lack of time at Monaco somehow change that?  Ok, so if playing time is so important to you then please explain to me how the likes of DaMarcus Beasley & Benny Feilhaber continue to get chance after chance, despite not playing for their clubs; despite continuing to suck on the pitch?  Johnathan Spector?  Jozy Altidore?  Clearly you see the pretzel logic with this flawed prerequisite for club playing time.

Freddy Adu isn’t big enough.

How big was Diego Maradona before he discovered cocaine?  How big is Guiseppie Rossi?  The answer is not much bigger than Freddy Adu.  Freddy Adu is not a defender, he is an attacking midfielder, winger, or striker.  More often than not, the truly skilled players on the pitch are smaller but quick and agile.  This gives them the advantage in a 1 on 1 against a clunky flat foot giant defender.  The United States fields many tall & physical men and we’re still getting beat on set pieces and getting scored on, maybe we should try pushing the ball forward for a change and take the pressure off our defense?

Freddy Adu can’t play defense.

I think this is ridiculous on many levels.  The first is, Freddy is actually alot better on defense than most haters give him credit for.  Often times Freddy sprints back to cover for his teammates but apparently that goes unnoticed.  The second is, SINCE WHEN DO ATTACKING PLAYERS HAVE BE GOOD DEFENDERS!?  Last time I checked, nobody critcizes Lionel Messi for his poor defensive skills and Robin Van Persie isn’t known for his crunching tackles & physical play.  Sorry folks, but the old saying goes, even piano movers need a piano player.  This is a problem with the US Soccer system and American soccer development in general.  Young players are held upon high if they are big & physical and praised for being good defenders, while chastised for being creative and attack minded.  Clearly this is the problem right now with Bob Bradley (and the system, which deserves a blog on its own) and is something that won’t change under his regime.

Like it or not, Freddy Adu is one of our best attacking players and is the most creative thinking player the United States has ever produced, period.  Wasting him and others with skill on the bench because of the baseless arguments outlined above is restraining our team and United States soccer development from becoming a world class power in the sport.   Torres is another good example of wasted talent because Bob Bradley simply isn’t comfortable with their style of play and would rather opt for the “dependable” Beasely, Feilhaber, and Kljestan.  Why those nobodies play over Adu & Torres is mindboggling.  Why Bradley closed the Brazil game with one sub left and Adu on the bench while losing 3-0 is ten times more mindboggling.

Regardless of what personal problems Bob Bradley has with Freddy Adu, his insistance on not putting our best players on the field has hurt this team in the short run and in the long run will prevent Adu from developing into the player that even Bradley himself sees.  Bradley admits there’s a future in Freddy, “”Obviously, the fact that we call him in is an indication that we still see talent and the hope is that he can continue to move himself along.”  Well, playing him would definitely help his improvement, right Bob?

When your team is listless on the field for months and is stacking up loss after loss, what is there to lose with playing someone who you see as a potential player for South Africa 2010?  Aboslutely nothing, and Bob Bradley’s refusal to play Freddy Adu is one reason why Bradley needs to be fired effective immediately.

Bobocop

I told friends that if we had a pathetic showing at The Confederations Cup that I’d start this blog.  I didn’t want to do it.  I’ve been behind Bob longer than most fans and even after our sickening loss to Costa Rica a month ago I thought he’d turn it around.

We escaped Honduras at home (and I use the word ‘home’ loosely, thanks Sunil) with sloppy late dramatics and are completely nose diving in South Africa.

So many things about our team, performance, attitude, & roster are wrong and Bradley is responsible for all of it.  I understand that we don’t have world class talent.  But neither does Egypt, neither did Senegal in 2002, neither did Australia in 2006, the list goes on.

I’ll be touching on these in more detail so I wanted to start off with this blog with something that permeates the entire program right now: lack of passion.  Regardless of the talent on the field, condition of the field, quality of the opponent this United States Soccer team is devoid of inspiration.

The El Salvador game is when I first started to notice this important ingredient missing from our game as the players stepped on the field clearly unprepared to play.  The Cuscatlecos jumped to an early lead and followed that up with a goal in the 2nd half, doubling their lead.  Amazingly the United States rallied and luckily (and excitingly) netted two late game goals, stealing a valuable point as they rushed out of El Salvador.  Things weren’t looking good but we wrote this one off as an aberration; nothing to worry about.

Costa Rica was a nightmare in the making days before kick off.  The media had everyone convinced that the United States had no chance of winning and Bob Bradley apparently didn’t prove to the players that the media was wrong.  The team trotted around uninterested, almost expecting to lose from the opening kick off.  There was little to no tackling and Costa Rica was the more physical team by leaps and bounds, which made its impact on the game almost instantaneously as the United States allowed a goal within minutes and never got into the game.  The rest was table- punching, couch-kicking history.

Tail between their legs, Bob Bradley’s team got off to an almost identical start in a hostile Chicago (once again thanks to the genius of Sunil Gulati) when Honduras trotted down the field in the early stages of the match to stun the Americans with a cracking goal.  It was looking dire until the Americans decided to be inspired and take the match into their own hands to dominate the 2nd half and get an all important, scrappy goal from their defender Carlos Bocanegra.

So after 3 World Cup Qualifiers and almost 3 loses against weak regional opponents, Bob Bradley prepares his team for South Africa where they first play World Champions Italy.  The first half begins well, until the team’s heart was crushed with a foolish red card in the first half by Ricardo Clark.  Surprisingly the US moved ahead with a penalty kick, courtesy of Landon Donovan.  After the break with a one goal lead, Bob’s players stepped onto the field a completely different team.  This team was tentative, confused, slow, and disorganized.  Playing a man down against one of the best teams in the world is no small order, but what just destroyed fans watching from home was the utter lack of grit and determination on the field.  They played as if getting scored on was only a matter of time, which of course it was as The Azzure dropped bombs into our net.  This team was defeated when the score was still tied!  Still some fans (and players and Bradley) had the ‘man down’ scapegoat and used it wisely.

Next up, Brazil, another world class opponent and Bob Bradley’s lineup did not exude confidence.  It reeked of status quo, boredom, and fear of the Brazilians which was mimicked by the players who almost immediately after kick off allowed a goal.  In fact watching our guys walk out for the anthems I said to myself  “wow these guys don’t look like they think they have a chance.” You could see it in their eyes… there was no way they’d take it to Brazil.  Our players gave the Brazilians space, didn’t move off the ball well, and passed with the quality of an AYSO team.  The first goal made it all but official, we had given up again and only 5 minutes into the game.

As I said, many many things have been going wrong lately but Bradley’s inability to inspire our players is the one issue that should be making decision makers in Chicago worried.  We didn’t see Egypt fear their opponents, we saw them play with creativity and passion though their player pool is light years away from our team, let alone Brazil and Italy.  If you can’t field the best players in the world then you’re supposed to make up for it in a desire to upset your opponents and make an impression on those watching the game worldwide.

If Bob Bradley can’t get his team to put on their Stars and Stripes with pride then he is not the right man for the job.  Bob, you’re a nice guy and we thank you for your service, but its just not working out.