Great win for the US, coming back from a 1-Nil deficit at Half. All in front of a predominantly Mexican crowd. With the win, the US gets the 2nd automatic berth into the 2009 Confederations Cup. The other auto bid went to the #1 team on the planet, my beloved Italia, for winning the World Cup (Italy, still atop the FIFA rankings, btw, thank you.)
Turd box Donovan notched it at 1 with a PK (credit to Brian Ching for earning the PK), and got his 34th career International goal, tying him with Eric Wynalda. But the big goal came from Benny Feilhaber in the 70th minute...frickin incredible strike from right outside the 18.
Amazing, exciting, end-to-end action throughout. Props to both clubs for the exciting game. Hats off to Nery Castillo, my Man of the Match, who created a slew of chances for Mexico. And kudos to Andres Guardardo (who got carried off on a stretcher afterwards, hope he's OK for Copa America), and a stud performance from Goalkeep Oswaldo Sanchez.
Great game.
Now for the part I don't understand...and I'll claim my naive ignorance as a semi-novice fan here...
WTF is with the squad we're (US) sending to the Copa America?!?!?
It's obvious the #1 goal for the US team this year was to win CONCACAF. Bob Bradley, whose done an amazing job so far, as so much as said so. But there's no doubt the better competition resides in South America. So...if you're goal as a National team is to compete with the best in the world, why wouldn't you send your best to Venezuela to face the likes of Argentina and Brazil?
No Beasley, no Donovan (whose probably thankful he'll be saved another embarrassment), no Dempsey, no Bocanegra. I understand you need to start prepping some youth for the future, but is throwing them to the wolves, so to speak, the right way to go about it? After a great accomplishment such as winning the Gold Cup, we're going to follow it up with sending a lackluster squad to face Argentina in the opening round Thursday?
If we lose by 5 goals to Argentina, the world's 5th best team according the FIFA rankings, and who isn't holding back any top players, what does that say for US Soccer? I say, instead of sending our B Team, we should be thankful that we're even invited by South America to this event, and at least send our best.
Instead, we're using it as an exhibition for the youth of US Soccer. Again...I'm probably a little naive, here. I understand the EPL is starting training camps soon, and guys like Dempsey and Bocanegra need to report.
Oh, well. I guess I'm just disappointed because I wanted to see my guy Donovan get embarrassed.
2 comments:
Don't fret Gary, the squad has some question marks but i'm not on this B-team bandwagon everyone's moaning about. Some of these cats need rest-- see Dempsey, Bocanegra, etal, and Bradley is throwing some guys in to see how well they respond, the more players with international experience the bigger the pool to draw from come World Cup time, it also keeps competition for spots high and that's something we need, hence your favorite turd Lando might have to work a bit harder to keep his place.
From what i saw in the Gold Cup the coach's kid may end up being the best midfielder we've had in a long time.
That makes me feel better I guess. As said, I'm a rook, so upon 1st glance it looked shoddy. But if others are aboard...I'll hop along.
Oh...and absolutely on Bradley...that kid was phenomanal..all over the place. The late tackle (if you can call it that) from behind on DeGuzman was pretty brutal, but I'll chalk it up to misguided hustle and desire. Up to that point in the semi, he was great. I thought Ching stepped it up big time in the 2nd half, also
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