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CONCACAF Cup 10/10 US vs Mexico

jeffbear

jeffbear

Mod Squad
Staff member
Next big game (not really, kind of fake) for the USMNT is upon us. Mexico awaits in the Rose Bowl on Saturday night.

Couple of notes ...

- This game offers a trophy and a chance to play in the Confederations Cup in 2017, which really just offers a preview of the World Cup venues in Russia. So big deal, kinda sorta.

- US and Mexico are your last two Gold Cup winners, thus this tie. The US could have avoided this game had they not played like crap in the Gold Cup.

- The Rose Bowl is sold out, but LA is notoriously a pro-Mexico crowd so expect about a 50/50 mix ... maybe a little heavy on Mexican support.

- For Mexico, Tuca Ferretti is still in charge and still wearing the interim tag. As awlays with their managers ... who the heck knows? Gio dos Santos is out with injury and is a big blow for them as he returned to the good graces of the national team and always drives the US nuts. Capt Andres Guardado and Rafa Marquez should also be out due to injury but are for some reason included on their team sheet. Again, who knows?

- The US has been all over the place since losing their edge in the Gold Cup and there's growing heat on Klinsmann to do SOMETHING. So even this largely meaningless game takes on huge significance. Primary among his problems is a defense group that just can't seem to find their collective game. And we've got pretty much the same old lot back for this one ... including Alvarado and Orozco, the central pairing from hell. Similarly repeating problems surrounding who will actually score for this team will be left to the same old crew as usual. Altidore and Wondo in the true striker roles, Zardes and Dempsey in the playmaking forward roles. Whoo Hooo ... fills you with confidence.

Saturday 10/10 at 8PM on ESPN ... tune in and find out what happens, because there's no way I'm handicapping this mess. Both sides are a big pile of question marks.
 
jeffbear said:
Saturday 10/10 at 8PM on ESPN ... tune in and find out what happens, because there's no way I'm handicapping this mess. Both sides are a big pile of question marks.
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Not sure where you got this. the US Soccer website shows a 6:30 PT (9:30 ET) kickoff on Fox Sports 1. I should get home from the Canes game in enough time to see most of the first half.

The US defense is scary. Not only the gruesome twosome in the middle, but when 94 year old DaMarcus Beasley is still the best choice at left back, there are problems. Maybe Klinsmann will throw a complete curveball and start Cameron and Besler in the middle. That's who finished the Peru match last month.
 
andyt said:
Not sure where you got this. the US Soccer website shows a 6:30 PT (9:30 ET) kickoff on Fox Sports 1. I should get home from the Canes game in enough time to see most of the first half.

The US defense is scary. Not only the gruesome twosome in the middle, but when 94 year old DaMarcus Beasley is still the best choice at left back, there are problems. Maybe Klinsmann will throw a complete curveball and start Cameron and Besler in the middle. That's who finished the Peru match last month.
Click to expand...


A. Probably from the ESPN promos, and they might well be doing an hour pre game with as many people as they'e sending to cover this globally pivotal sports happening. I'll find out when I get around to setting my DVR for the weekend.

B. The D ... at this point I'm just sick of hearing about it. Go score some goals and you take the pressure off of those poor saps. And FWIW, Cameron has been lights out in central defense this season for his club. Wonder what it says about Jurgen that a perfectly competent CB from the EPL looks lost in his lineup? Oh heck. I know that one ... his insistence on meddling and tinkering never allows those guys to even practice with the same partner two days in a row. THAT's the issue in my book every bit as much as the quality of the players.

This is for free ... try, just try, playing a few guys at their normal, natural positions and quit trying to turn central midfielders into wings and attacking mids into holding mids and fullbacks into center backs and vice a versa. Just give it a stab and see what the possibilities might be. Let Bedoya put on his big boy pants and play the attacking role you keep trying to jam Bradley into. It's what he does for pay 10 months out of the year, after all. Let Bradley boss the possession from just on top of the D they way he likes. Go ahead and let Zardes play out wide ... he's going to drift out there anyway. Play a possession game out of a 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 if you need to ... if that's what best suits the guys you've got on hand. Don't be so bloody afraid that somebody will accuse you of playing Bob Bradley tactics ... nobody cares so long as you win.
 
Mexico wins it 3-2 after extra time. Tied 1-1 after 90, Mexico gets a goal in the 96th minute to go ahead, answered by Bobby Wood in the 108th, only to have Mexico win it on a world class strike from Paul Aguilar in the 117th minute.

I don't care what Gulati said, Klinsmann has to go.
 
Yeah ... I dunno.

All I know for sure is that we got beat by a better team last night. The Mexicans far out shone the US at pretty much every position. They had the drive and the legs and we looked sickly in the second half, mostly from being worn to a nub defending. Jurgen made some boneheaded tactical and personnel decisions, but even if everything had gone well I'm not sure the would have deserved better than they got.
 
If he's going to start a diamond midfield, he can't have both Beckerman and Jones. They're essentially the same player and neither is suited to playing out wide. And when that flattened out to a straight 4 man midfield, both were in bad positions. One thing that Klinsmann can't be blamed for is Dempsey's failure to show up. He's been MIA for far too long.
 
Not sure what his other options look like in deep midfield though. If he's going to have any chance of getting forward, we don't have the players to play 4 across. Our strength is holding mids, but only Bradley can pass worth a damn and nobody covered themselves in defensive glory the other night anyway. It's not like he's sitting on a ton of options over on the bench. Pretty much everybody he's got are either attacking mids who suck in a flat four (Bedoya) or somebody super similar to the guys he's actually playing (Danny Williams). We've got a ton of winger types but not very much quality otherwise and without being at least decent up the middle you get what we got from Mexico ... which is hammered.

Honestly, the personnel he's got favors a 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 of some sort, but then he's got nowhere for Dempsey ... who like him or lump him actually finishes. His time is on the wane anyway, but he's still their most creative forward. Going forward, I'd like to see us in that kind of formation since have so many young forwards in the pipeline with good to great wheels. It's no use playing guys like Zardes and Yedlin unless you're going to give them their legs.

Bottom line ... there are plenty of things I'd like to see Jurgen do differently but that's mostly frustration talking. In cold reality ... he's got a million mediocre options and no really good ones. For the other night in particular I fault him for the Beasley selection and for pulling Besler out of mothballs cold (and going back to D pairing that he blew up for no good reason a couple of months ago). Maybe he should have brought Yedlin on sooner. Otherwise ... I dunno. We got clocked.
 
Grant Wahl on why Klinsmann is better suited to be the technical director than coach.

http://www.si.com/planet-futbol/2015/10/11/jurgen-klinsmann-usa-mexico-concacaf-cup

The thesis is that he's more of a big picture guy. We know his tactics suck but are his responsibilities as coach of the senior team taking away what he needs to be doing as the technical director? The U-23s play Canada tonight for 3rd place in the CONCACAF Olympic tournament. A loss knocks the US out of the Olympics again. A win means a playoff against Columbia in Rio in March.

One other thing that doesn't work in his favor but is completely out of his control is MLS not recognizing FIFA dates. Part of the reason for lineup juggling is that many times, his best players aren't available because they're playing MLS matches. Besler and Cameron are probably the best center back pairing we have. But he buried Besler (and blew up the pairing as you said) after the World Cup and then he wasn't available for some friendlies over the summer. It's hard to form a cohesive unit when your best players can't play together.
 
Yeah ... the MLS thing could be fixed if both sides would put their egos in check long enough to hash out the big picture. It is an issue though, no doubt.

Oh ... and the news this morning is that Jurgen dismissed Fab Johnson from camp ahead of the Costa Rica friendly to "get his attitude right." The point of contention seems to be that Johnson asked out of the Mexico game in extra time because he felt spent ... not injured, just beat. Umm ... his play pretty clearly indicated that he was indeed shot. Jurgen seems to have had some sort of grand plan to insert Rimando had the game gone to PKs and was ticked off that Johnson needed to be be subbed. Frankly, this is childishness on the part of the manager. A guy who has clearly run out of legs can't ask to sub out without you verbally bashing him for two solid days? What planet are you on?

At this point I think he's out of ideas tactically and is letting his frustrations boil over onto bystanders.
 
And .... another ugly, ugly loss to Costa Rica in the friendly. You've got to think Jurgen is hanging on by a thread at this point.
 
At least the U-23s won to advance to a playoff against Colombia for a spot in the Olympics.
 
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