Comments | tehdawgfather: Disappointed, but not unexpected

tehdawgfather

Disappointed, but not unexpected

May 28, 2008 21:42

It wasn't as if I expected the United States to walk into Wembley Stadium and completely dominate the Premiership-dominated England squad. I didn't expect to see Eddie Johnson one-touching with an ACL-recovered Damarcus Beasley while Josh Wolff made enlightened runs to open space ( Read more... )

soccer

Comments 5

scoreboard May 29 2008, 02:21:36 UTC

Haven't looked at the whole game yet, but I saw some of the highlights at lunch. What's really discouraging is that this England team is largely the same team that got Stevie Blunder ridden out of town on a rail last November, and they've barely played under Capello - we got rusticated by the most underachieving national team in UEFA.

At least the road shirts look smart.

tehdawgfather May 29 2008, 02:25:45 UTC

They've always had good players, but we just assumed that because they had players named Lampard and Gerrard in the starting lineup that they weren't going to play anything up the wing.

And we were wrong.

It was also obvious that these are good soccer players that just understand how to play as a team and we don't have that yet. That has a lot to do with the fact that we're starting Josh Freaking Wolff and Carlos Bocanegra instead of Jozy Altidore and Josh Spector/Michael Orozco. We've got lots of good young players who really understand to play the game but we don't teach that here. We give out trophies until you're 12.

Once we figure out how to really challenge our best young players to grow, develop and live the game, we'll be in good shape. But that's probably two generations away.

Though when I buy a new shirt this year (Altiore, Adu or Edu as of now), it's going to be the away strip. It's pretty sweet.

O By The Way scoreboard May 29 2008, 02:26:19 UTC

Cosign on Beckham, totally. It's that whole "lion in winter" thing that made Joe Montana as a Chief (or hell, MJ as a Baron) interesting to me. If only he hadn't played for three club teams I can't stand...

(in fairness, though, I am compelled to say that I would take Nakamura over Beckham for a free kick to save the world at this point in time, assuming both in full health. But I have three Celtic jerseys.)

trendywendy May 29 2008, 23:20:15 UTC

How is Josh Wolff even still in the player pool, let alone starting against England?

Amen brother. I thought he had sheep shagging evidence on Bruce, but I guess he's got something on Bradley, too, because what he sure doesn't have is TALENT.

kat_chan May 30 2008, 04:27:12 UTC

My opinion on the match; you get what you pay for. When you cheap out on your manager, it shows. I was not impressed. And I'm not sure that Donovan would have improved matters any. The match could have, and should have, been about 4-0 or 5-0. The US seriously needs a manager that is going to employ strikers who can make a through-run and not run formations that attempt to gum-up the middle rather than relying on more of a spread and guys who are actually athletes ( ... )