Unless you’re blind (or haven’t refreshed your browser) you’ll see the template has changed for this website. I’m ever-so-slowly migrating information from my old web pages to the new ones (the baby’s disposition dictates the speed at which this happens) but I should be done with it in a couple days. Most happily of all, the dual WordPress install seems to have worked flawlessly. Whew!
Observations and annoyances with the US loss to Mexico:
* Look Mun2, congrats on nabbing the rights for a huge game in order to draw attention to your bilingual station. But is there a reason the game was tape-delayed? I assumed (incorrectly) that the game was kicking off live at 5:30, only to discover by browsing the Internet that it had started a few hours before, thereby cluing me in to the half-time score. Lame, lame, lame.
* Phil Schoen and Marcelo Balboa? Gag-worthy commentary. Schoen is only tolerable when paired with Ray Hudson’s outrageous color commentary, and Balboa simply doesn’t know when to shut up. Silence would be preferable to these two.
* Yes, the reffing was atrocious but that’s to be expected playing away in CONCACAF qualifying (and despite what the-writer-who-will-not-be-named over at Fox Sports says, the US does not get anywhere near the quality of home cookin’ other CONCACAF teams receive). Having said this, if you blame this loss on the refereeing then I say, welcome! because I can only assume this is the first round of WCQ you have ever watched. Part of winning on the road is playing well enough to overcome the utterly predictable crap calls.
* If you’re looking for reasons why Mexico beat the US, look no further than this one: Mexico thoroughly outplayed them. That’s the long and short of it. As much as I can’t stand the Mexican national team, and no matter how cowardly and hypocritical and dirty they play, they showed more skill than the US players and deserved to win.
* What concerns me is how the US started like they did against Spain and Brazil—aggressive, speedy, fearless—and got an early goal. From that point on, they switched into pre-Egypt mode relying largely on the long ball to an ineffective front man. The defense repeatedly gave the ball back to Mexico anywhere from outside the penalty area back to the halfway line, but rarely much further than that. Rarely was there any kind of transition play from the back line to the midfield. The strikers did a lot of running but didn’t have much to work with.
* The midfield was terrible. Clark, Bradley, Donovan, and Dempsey were all anonymous except for Donovan’s pinpoint pass to Davies on the first goal. Whenever the defense did pass to the midfield, they mistrapped it or shanked a long ball into touch. Disappointing to say the least. And it was a real shame to see “flicks and tricks” Dempsey return in place of “head down, hard working” Dempsey.
* Onyewu is proving that the Confederations Cup was a fluke. He’s easily turned, clumsy in the tackle, can’t distribute very well, and is otherwise a liability. Bocanegra’s poor performance also showed that the Cherundolo-Onyewu-DeMerit-Bocanegra line isn’t that good. This foursome cannot keep quality opposition off the board over the course of a long tournament.
Ultimately, the US demonstrated that they haven’t consistently improved as much as the Confederations Cup may have suggested (to some). Mexico has an incredible record at the Azteca and they needed to win this game very badly. To their credit, they rebounded after a poor start. Would it have been great to win? Absolutely. But this was an acceptable, if disappointing loss, under extreme conditions. Plenty of teams would struggle at the Azteca, what with its size, the elevation, the air pollution, the rabid support, etc. It would take a special team to go in there and come away with a composed win.
Personally, I feel the US is neither as good as many fanboys claim, nor are they as awful as their critics make them out to be. To me, it seems pretty clear that they’re among the top of the second tier of teams in the world and to expect them to be something other than that at this point would suggest you haven’t been paying attention for the last ten years.
Current Mood: Fine | 