Well, blogging sure ranks pretty low on my “to do” list I guess. The schedule nowadays could best be described as “crushing” most weeks; I have to hunker down and work quite hard in order to free up enough time to play soccer on Saturdays. It’s a sorry state of affairs.
What makes things worse is that I’ve been pushed from my defensive midfield role out to be an attacking winger. While theoretically I have no problem with this, it involves far more running and far less of the ball. I haven’t scored any goals this fall after averaging almost a goal a game over spring and summer. (sigh)
Unsurprisingly, school is largely to blame for the workload. Teaching two new courses in a single semester isn’t great to say the least. After teaching a class once I get a sense of how it will all roll out and making adjustments becomes much easier. As it stands, I feel like I’ve been lurching through this semester, where I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself by having large(ish) assignments due in both classes on the same week. This kind of stuff isn’t apparent until you teach a class once. The good news? I’m fairly sure that students are learning, which is good. I take my teaching very seriously and I feel I focus too much on what I’m not doing well rather than what’s getting through.
To compound problems, the two classes I’m taking allow for a great deal of self-direction. (This shouldn’t surprise me since one is an independent study.) This is great but, as all self-directed learners soon realize, it’s a lot more work to 1) figure out what you’re interested in, 2) figure out how to pursue these interests, and 3) keep to schedule than to just have someone thrust a syllabus in front of you, effectively saying, “Do X, Y, and Z by these dates.” Still, I’m learning a lot of good stuff so I can’t complain. But I do.
Ho hum, the US qualified for the World Cup again and (yawn) won the group. I should probably be excited but I’m not. Has this team significantly improved from 2006? God, from 2002? I don’t think so. There’s some weird alchemy that allows the US attack to play extremely well at times but fall flat most of the time, but I can’t figure it out. Sadly, neither can Bob Bradley.
What makes this World Cup 2010 effectively a non-starter is the defense. Yes, I realize this same team made it to the Confederations Cup final having beaten Spain, but in the context of the World Cup their progress would be equal to a quarterfinal exit—the same point they got bounced in 2002. I would also hasten to point out that the US needed to ride a serious wave of luck in both 2002 and the Confed Cup before being eliminated. Yes, a team needs a certain amount of luck in these major tournaments, but the key point here is that the US loses when they don’t get lucky, and they tend to lose even if they’re a bit off their game. That’s not the hallmark of a competitive team.
The draw won’t be done for another couple months but, regardless, I have a hard time seeing this be a very cheery World Cup. Onyewu and Bocanegra are a clumsy central pairing and the left back spot is problematic at best. The US had a hard time keeping CONCACAF opponents off the board; African, European, and South American opposition will be far more clinical and the US attack is neither potent nor consistent enough to keep top-notch opposition on their heels.
All for now. Hopefully this space won’t be as barren in coming weeks, but I’m making no promises…
Current Mood: Feh | 
Currently Listening To – Bob Dylan – “The Bootleg Series, Volume 8: Tell Tale Signs”
3 Comments
Sadly, neither can Bob Bradley.
You hit on something I’ve been thinking about for a while. US soccer fans spend a lot of time hoping that our players get picked up by top-tier European teams, and/or that our domestic pro league develops into something better than ‘decent’ by international standards. But what about our coaches? Our best known coach, alas, is Bruce Arena, whose playing pedigree is as backup keeper for a single year in Tacoma (I had to look that up). Only five MLS coaches have top-flight Euro league experience–and none of them are Americans. I guess we’re simply not far along enough to have American coaches of world-class competence. And probably too xenophobic to let Johnny Foreigner coach our national team.
Yeah, coaching is a real issue. Bruce Arena might have been able to get a job abroad after the ‘02 World Cup as no American coach’s stock has ever been so high. The problem as I see it is that coaches in the rest of the world work their way up the system, usually serving as part of the coaching staff before taking over at a small or mid-sized top-flight club. No one respects the MLS enough to give an MLS coach a top-flight job to start, and what MLS coach would leave a head coaching job in order to take a staff spot with a European club, even if (and it’s a big if) that opportunity ever became available? The best stepping stone option might be moving to Mexico or somewhere in South America, but I can’t see that being very attractive either.
As far as the US hiring a foreign coach, I think they’d do it in a heartbeat if they felt it was a right fit since “foreign”=”quality” in the US soccer mindset. My theory is that it’s all Steve Sampson’s fault. From 1991-95, Bora Milutinović coached the USMNT and sort of taught them fundamentals, and they played extremely conservatively. Sampson took over when Bora left and gave the players more attacking freedom and they were awesome. Gradually though, the tactics leeched away and Sampson was left looking like a buffoon. Since that point it’s been Arena and Bradley, and the sounds coming out of US Soccer have always been the familiar “we need a coach who understands the [insert country] player” line, which almost always turns out to be false—see Fabio Capello.
From what I understand, Klinsmann was almost in the bag but USSF President Sunil Gulati would not give him full control, since Klinsmann wanted to shake up the carefully cultivated feudal system that is youth soccer in this country.
Thanks for that.
By the way, how is it that Tottenham insist on central defenders made out of paper?