Comments on: The Great Slap in the Face

By: the other alex

the other alex — Sat, 31 May 2008 03:12:40 +0000

The striker you are talking about is right here in your own back yard.

By: saban

saban — Sat, 31 May 2008 01:37:07 +0000

I have never seen the results from Cherundolo to justify his spot on the team let alone actually playing.

Beasley hasn’t been the same in years, since his first knee injury. He’s good depth but not a quality starter.

If Altidore can make it he & Dempsey should be the forwards. But they need to bring him along at the proper speed; so far I think they are.

Meanwhile Cooper is developing into the best finisher MLS has ever seen except for maybe Twellman. But Twellman can’t make it anywhere but MLS. Perhaps with his size & athletic ability Cooper can develop into something special for the National team. A little wishful thinking here perhaps.

Let’s face it, we did miss Donovan, but even with him the rest of our Midifeild needs to be upgraded. Bradley might be good in time, still young. But we don’t have wing Midfielders that scare anybody.

By: FC Uptown

FC Uptown — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:10:03 +0000

Bradley needs to get that team fired up and at least playing with some heart.

By: soccerfan

soccerfan — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:19:57 +0000

I really want to see altidore, donovan, zizzo, szetela, Adu, Dax MaCarty out there. I really liked how the u20s did last summer. I think alot of those guys are the future of US soccer. We need a very strong center midfielder with vision and speed and a world class forward. I never liked Beasley or Eddie Johnson. They just dont cut it.

By: KK

KK — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:46:28 +0000

Well written, Peter. I just found it shocking that Bradley would put 5 players (FIVE!) on the roster who don’t even have club teams. Further, 3 of those started. I didn’t necessarily expect alot from this group, but like you said, who else is there? The difference isn’t athleticism. It’s the techincal ability and mental speed that is the canyon. First touches, short passes, finding space, making the right runs…all of these were displayed as serious shortcomings yesterday.

By: 2-Cent

2-Cent — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:56:11 +0000

Lots of great comments. I’m consistently impressed by the level of soccer knowledge on this site.

I’ll add only that Bradley cannot keep starting players that are not in good form. I don’t care who they are. Beasley (injured) and Johnson (so low on confidence that his desire not to touch the ball in a pressure situation oozes from his pores) should not have played. I know this was only a warm-up for later qualifiers, but playing against England in Wembley is not the time or place to let a player “find” his form.

By: Ross

Ross — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:50:43 +0000

The empty bucket formation didn’t do our boys any favors and when you add the ineffectiveness of Johnson and Wolff it was a recipe for disaster. How different do you think we would have played in a 4-2-3-1 with Adu as our starting AM and Johnson starting alone up top and all other personnel being the same? Now, I am not impressed by Johnson but I think it would have helped stifle England’s midfield and allowed us to play a little stronger with better offensive ideas. I think we would have looked better, but with Johnson up top it probably would have been about the same result, maybe a 1-0 or 2-1 scoreline. Without Donovan and a decent striker(Altidore? hopefully) we just can’t compete with soccer’s upper echilon but with a better formation we could be more competitive.

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:38:55 +0000

Take a deep breath. Relax. England didn’t make the Euros, but they now have a real coach, who they were trying to impress, and they played their best game in about two years, and they still only scored two.

The gap is big, but not as big as it looked. Lightning would have to strike for us to win the World Cup, but that shouldn’t be our goal. Our goal should be to get out of our group.

At our level, a pounding like this will happen sometimes. Look again at the three results before this. We’re still getting better.

By: Moose McDowell

Moose McDowell — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:28:19 +0000

Agree with that, but I hope someone else gets the start in Spain.

By: Conor B

Conor B — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:53:04 +0000

beasley is still coming off a bad injury. it is going to take him time to get back