As I’m sure you can tell, this post refers to the US/Mexico match, which Mexico won 2-1. They deserved to win. I wish they hadn’t. Below are my lessons learned from this match.
First, Charlie Davies was excellent again, and has pretty well established himself as the best US striker. That’s a pretty good rise from almost total obscurity just a couple of months ago.
Second, Brian Ching and Clint Dempsey ware both entirely invisible. Ching has amply demonstrated his complete inability to do anything useful up top, and he needs to be released with a vote of thanks and never invited back. If we demand a target forward up top, then move Dempsey there, because when he’s in the midfield, he looks lost.
Third, the midfield was very bad. Clark, Bradley, even Donovan, did nothing at all. Feilhaber was better, and Holden twice showed that as a provider of service he has no equal in the US system – too bad neither time was a forward able to take advantage.
Fourth, Bob Bradley’s subs were almost exactly what I would have done (I would have subbed Altidore for Dempsey instead of Davies, even though Davies pretended to be hurt). They worked pretty well. He obviously went for the win, which I approve of, but of course in hindsight you would have subbed on Spector to add defense and played for the draw. A draw, only the second one in history, would have been in retrospect a good result. Alas.
The US was better. But not good enough. This is a game that could have been won, but Azteca is a terribly hard arena to win in. And we are also just not quite that good.
Tags: US soccer
Posted on Wednesday, 12th August 2009 by chrisjones
Posted in Blog & News, General | Comments (0)