It was a great world cup but could have been bigger if not for jk ego. No way Brad davis should have come over landon. None of these guys even saw the field when kozy got hurt. If you have to play 1 striker youre doing something wrong

7/3/2014 8:04:31 PM

I don't see how having Donovan on the roster improves our ultimate course. We got out of the group and lost the round of 16 match in extra time. The games may have been prettier and we may have held a little more possession but round of 16 is pretty much our ceiling right now with or without Donovan.

7/5/2014 9:07:15 AM

Let's keep it real. Everyone on this board would rather have had Landon come on off the bench rather than Wondolowski (who's career could totally nose dive if he can't mentally recover from that shank). Wondo hits that shot 9 out of 10 times in the MLS, but he blew his load against Belgium.

As for Julian Green....it's great that he scored that goal....but let's be honest...he lucked out. He wasn't trying to hit the ball with the outside of his foot, he was trying to bury it through the laces. Luck has it that the soft touch worked in his favor. I'm happy he got a World Cup goal under his belt, and he can build from that, but this wasn't his technical quality coming out party. He still has a lot to prove at the elite level, and that goal isn't likely to propel him to the Bayern starting 11.

With all that being said, Landon needs to shut up and let his supporters argue for him on his behalf. He doesn't need to join the conversation.


Anyway, solid world cup, both technically and tactically, and yet another step in the right direction for the sport in terms of American popularity.

I return stateside in a few days, not liking forward to my workload..

7/5/2014 10:54:59 AM

Are you serious? Half tthe goals scored in soccer are 40% luck.

Why is everyone working so hard to shit on Green?

7/5/2014 4:12:41 PM

60% of the time, it works every time.





And, I'm not shitting on Green. He just continually looks under developed out there. Props for being in the right spot to get a foot on that ball, but any accolades he gets right now are based off of pure speculation at this point....which is typical for a player his age. He has a high ceiling, yes, but he hasn't shown any flashes of brilliance, yet. Being patient as a fan with him is a far more sensible position than outright declaring him the great American striker.

[Edited on July 5, 2014 at 4:20 PM. Reason : ]

7/5/2014 4:14:21 PM

But nobody is doing that.

Sure he is still raw, but that was a great goal

7/5/2014 4:24:40 PM

Was it a great goal, or was it a 40% lucky goal half the time?

7/5/2014 4:36:12 PM

jesusHchrist

7/5/2014 4:44:52 PM

Quote :

"And, I'm not shitting on Green. He just continually looks under developed out there. Props for being in the right spot to get a foot on that ball, but any accolades he gets right now are based off of pure speculation at this point....which is typical for a player his age. He has a high ceiling, yes, but he hasn't shown any flashes of brilliance, yet. Being patient as a fan with him is a far more sensible position than outright declaring him the great American striker."

Agree 100%. Lot's of people were talking about how great Green was and slamming Klinsman for not playing him more after that goal.

7/5/2014 4:45:13 PM

Quote :

"or was it a 40% lucky goal half the time?"

Sorry you are having trouble with basic statistics

7/5/2014 6:12:16 PM

You said "half tthe goals scored are 40% luck."


That's not a basic statistic. That's you farting out nonsensical arguments.

7/5/2014 6:40:04 PM

Well considering the guys he put in couldnt score easy goals in their lap I definitely rather have a guy that will get I. Position for a lucky goal than to be shutout.

7/5/2014 8:09:49 PM

Yedlin to Roma. Will finish season on loan at Seattle. Wonder if any other guys get European offers?

[Edited on July 6, 2014 at 11:48 AM. Reason : ]

7/6/2014 11:45:57 AM

some analysis blogs

From Andy Mead, a national soccer photographer that actually lives in the Raleigh-Durham area:

Quote :

"It's been 24 hours since the United States lost to Belgium. I have pretty much avoided the message boards and haven't read or watched any of the post-game post-World Cup analysis. I have spent the day lost in my own thoughts. During the game and in the immediate aftermath I had been presented with two data points that didn't fit well within my understanding of where the U.S. Men's National Team is and where it's heading. The first is signified by Romelu Lukaku. The distribution of physical attributes and talent for various team sports exists more or less on a bell curve with a very high middle and long shallow tails. One can credit the progress the USMNT had made over the last twenty five years to an increase in leveraging the massive population advantages we have over other World Cup countries. It makes sense - to a point. As I pointed out in a previous article, the U.S. could put together a second team of 23 that would have challenged Greece or Algeria for their spots in the knockout round. The game against Belgium made me ask myself, "Where's the American Romelu Lukaku?" The answer? Probably selling insurance in Paducah, Kentucky and looking back on his days as a high school football or basketball star and possibly his checkered career in college. By themselves the NBA and the NFL aren't the problem. There were roughly 2,400 Americans in the NBA and NFL combined last season. In a country of over 150 million men, 2,400 isn't that big of a deal. The problem is how many 10-18 year-olds that football and basketball pull out of the pool of athletes. Fortunately, the NCAA has done a lot of the work for us. Only one of 30,000 high school basketball players goes pro. For football, the numbers are better: one in 12,500. I'll do the math for you. The current rosters of the NBA and NFL represent roughly 3.6 million American high school players. That's just at the high school level. The differentiation point for elite, world class, athletes happens earlier than that. The football/basketball industrial complex has hoovered up virtually all the available elite athletic talent at the far end of the spectrum. There's a point on the bell curve beyond which soccer has not been able to reach, at least not in the numbers needed to uncover the true gems. The American Paulo Wanchope or Romelu Lukaku either never played soccer or was pushed in their early to mid teens into focusing on football or basketball. There are, to pick just one physical attribute, somewhere around 250,000 American men in their 20s that are 6'3" or taller. That includes the ones with no athletic interest or ability. The societal and cultural pressures that push players into football and basketball in the numbers listed above means that the players the USMNT needs to break through into the elite are off limits at this time. At least the numbers needed to identify and develop a world class soccer player by brute force of population. The national team has plateaued. We have leveraged our population to the point that we are legitimately in the top 20 teams in the world. On our day we can beat anyone we play. What differentiates us from the other teams in our neighborhood is that we're not dependent on any single player. We aren't in a "golden generation". The drop-off from player 5 to player 50 is negligible. Any holes we have on the field are roster mistakes. We had substitutes for Jozy Altidore, we just didn't take them to Brazil. The consequence is that we've become the team everybody hates to play. We have the depth of the elite teams, but we lack the transcendent player(s) that pretty much every other World Cup finalist brings to the tournament. I admit to having been in denial as to why no American field players have ever stuck at any of the elite European club teams. Honestly, it's because we don't belong. That's the tough medicine I've been processing since yesterday. Other than a couple goalkeepers, I can't tell you a single American men's soccer player that is an elite world class player. None. And that's shocking. It's not natural. The numbers just don't add up. That's what yesterday's game made me realize. The talent exists, but at the current moment, soccer hasn't had access to it. The second thing that really hit me hard in the immediate aftermath of the Belgium game on Tuesday was Julian Green. Not Green, himself, but the data point that his performance represented. His appearance in the game and performance he gave didn't fit into the mental model of how the USMNT works that I had created. By training I am a mathematician and scientist. My peculiar gifts are pattern recognition and an innate ability to create algorithms - or more generically - methods to solve problems. I'm sure that's too much information, but I consider it relevant in that my brain builds models of how things work. I create theories based on available information. The scientist in me demands empirical testing. When the results do not add up, I have no choice but to admit that there is something wrong with the model. The Belgium game completely laid waste to my theories and assumptions. Not the result of the game, mind you, but the way the game was played and who it was played by. Let's go back a month. When Jurgen named the final 23 a lot of words were written about how he was looking to 2018. I didn't buy a word of it. If you stop and look at successful World Cup teams they generally do have a mix of senior players and raw, untamed talent. I always assumed that DeAndre Yedlin and John Brooks were on the team because Jurgen thought they were needed now, in 2014. Julian Green? Well, I figured that was a special case, a Quid Pro Quo. I've seen Klinsmann getting some flack since the Belgium game about the final roster, and frankly I think he deserves some of it. There was no cover for Jozy Altidore, and it really would have been nice to have Landon Donovan on the bench. However, the problems weren't the kids, and they weren't the German-Americans (or as I like to call them, Americans.) The United States scored five goals in four games plus a 30 minute overtime period. While it's nothing to write home about, it's not terrible, either. I guess what Julian Green scoring that goal did is it makes me realize that we really aren't designed to score goals. Against elite competition we score them more often than not by chance or on freak plays. In CONCACAF play it's not an issue as we tend to outclass most of our opponents. At the World Cup, on the other hand, we are completely bereft of any concept that the goal of the game is to score goals. In Brazil we scored five, but three of those were either freakish (Dempsey's first) or one-off flash in the pan (John Brooks in 45 minutes of play and Julian Green in 16 minutes). Maybe if Chris Wondolowski hadn't flubbed his 88th minute chance I wouldn't be writing this article. Then again, my understanding of the USMNT and where it is headed was flawed and a reckoning was coming sooner or later. The real issue is that I don't understand how the USMNT progresses from here. When we get to Russia in 2018 we need to able to steadily generate valid goal scoring chances. Playing rope-a-dope and hoping to get lucky on a counter isn't a viable system against the class of teams we play at the World Cup Finals. I honestly don't know if it is talent, coaching, or some combination. The U.S. is an unusual team. We have gotten to the point where we have advanced out of the group stage in three of the last four World Cups. But there's a difference between us and the other teams that can say the same. Even when our opponents cede us possession, you rarely get that feeling that a goal is imminent. How do we change that? I apologize to those of you expecting answers, at least my answers. I still don't have any. I'm still processing and I haven't come up with a new model that fits the data I've collected over the year. If any of you can help piece it all back together, I'd love to see what you've come up with. Like I said at the top, I really want to thank those of you that took the time to comment on part one. The more information I have to analyze the better. Different views and opinions are welcome and helpful. At some point over the holiday weekend I'll come back and wrap this up with my thoughts on where the USMNT can go from here. I promise more conclusions than questions in part three."

7/8/2014 10:17:57 PM

okay?

7/9/2014 8:11:28 AM

tl;dr

7/9/2014 8:13:41 AM

That was a lot of words to say, "We don't have a dominant player that we can depend on to score goals."

7/9/2014 8:49:12 AM

It makes the fair (but somewhat obvious) point that we don't have any dominant players because most kids who have the potential to become soccer phenoms are busy playing basketball or football in high school.

How good of a soccer player would Steve Nash or Rondo or Chris Paul be if they spent their entire childhood/high school/college career focusing solely on soccer?

7/9/2014 9:18:29 AM

The bottom line is that our youth development isn't what it is in Europe and other countries. If we can keep improving that (although I haven't been following, people say its getting better)...then we should keep getting better.

And I get the point about the "tall and athletic" players going to basketball and other sports...but it should still be negligible in a country of our size. We should have enough guys slip through the soccer cracks and onto the big stage for that not to matter.

7/9/2014 9:25:46 AM

^^ Probably just as good as Jozy Altidore or Eddie Johnson. We have world class athletes already, I don't get that argument.

We will only improve when 9 and 10 year olds find their way into academies and professional development type systems, which is happening a little more now than it used to. The coaching at that level needs to improve; mostly, they need to value individual skill over meaningless tournament wins. It's just going to take time to get the necessary investment/system in place.

[Edited on July 9, 2014 at 9:35 AM. Reason : jbrick beat me to most of it]

7/9/2014 9:35:11 AM

Yeah, slowly but steadily. I remember they Olympic Development teams/training for 13 year-olds even back in the late 80s.

(and before someone points it out, I realize Nash is Canadian)

7/9/2014 9:43:50 AM

I had this conversation with an England supporter while I was in Brazil (humble brag). He asked, "you guys can dominate at every [olympic] sport, but why not soccer?"

Anyway, the point I argued, was that our youth athletes start the game too late. The reason why the US has a solid team year in and year out now (having plateaued, as suggested by the post above), is because we don't find the soccer prodigies at a young enough age. If we are looking at high school kids to be the next (first) Great American Striker, then we're looking too late. Other countries begin finding their Neymar's, Messi's, and Ronaldinho's before they hit double digits in their age. You can find YouTube videos of Ronaldinho dominating at age 7, showing absurd levels of technical skill, ball control, and creativity.

But the main point I made was this: In the US, the school kids who go on to be elite American athletes come home, and they spend their time after school playing basketball or football from the hours of 3:00 - 8:00. This is BEFORE highschool. These kids are getting 4 to 5 hours a day of practice at basketball or football pretty much every day for a good 5 to 7 years. In Europe and South America, those same kids are playing soccer. Those hours add up, and that's why our European and South American counterparts have a competitive advantage by the time they are at the age where they would then go on to enter an acadamy.

I'd be willing to bet that any athlete on this board would have been the best basketball player in the school yard had their families moved to England or Spain or Argentina, just by virtue of athletic priorities in the US. Inversely, many of us know the "kid from [insert European or South American country] who moved to the US in highschool and instantly became one of the best soccer players on the team.

7/9/2014 11:32:08 PM

"It's been 24 hours since the United States lost to Belgium. I have pretty much avoided the message boards and haven't read or watched any of the post-game post-World Cup analysis. I have spent the day lost in my own thoughts. During the game and in the immediate aftermath I had been presented with two data points that didn't fit well within my understanding of where the U.S. Men's National Team is and where it's heading.

The first is signified by Romelu Lukaku.

The distribution of physical attributes and talent for various team sports exists more or less on a bell curve with a very high middle and long shallow tails.

One can credit the progress the USMNT had made over the last twenty five years to an increase in leveraging the massive population advantages we have over other World Cup countries.

It makes sense - to a point. As I pointed out in a previous article, the U.S. could put together a second team of 23 that would have challenged Greece or Algeria for their spots in the knockout round. The game against Belgium made me ask myself, "Where's the American Romelu Lukaku?"

The answer? Probably selling insurance in Paducah, Kentucky and looking back on his days as a high school football or basketball star and possibly his checkered career in college.

By themselves the NBA and the NFL aren't the problem. There were roughly 2,400 Americans in the NBA and NFL combined last season. In a country of over 150 million men, 2,400 isn't that big of a deal. The problem is how many 10-18 year-olds that football and basketball pull out of the pool of athletes.

Fortunately, the NCAA has done a lot of the work for us. Only one of 30,000 high school basketball players goes pro. For football, the numbers are better: one in 12,500. I'll do the math for you. The current rosters of the NBA and NFL represent roughly 3.6 million American high school players. That's just at the high school level. The differentiation point for elite, world class, athletes happens earlier than that.

The football/basketball industrial complex has hoovered up virtually all the available elite athletic talent at the far end of the spectrum. There's a point on the bell curve beyond which soccer has not been able to reach, at least not in the numbers needed to uncover the true gems. The American Paulo Wanchope or Romelu Lukaku either never played soccer or was pushed in their early to mid teens into focusing on football or basketball. There are, to pick just one physical attribute, somewhere around 250,000 American men in their 20s that are 6'3" or taller. That includes the ones with no athletic interest or ability. The societal and cultural pressures that push players into football and basketball in the numbers listed above means that the players the USMNT needs to break through into the elite are off limits at this time. At least the numbers needed to identify and develop a world class soccer player by brute force of population.

The national team has plateaued. We have leveraged our population to the point that we are legitimately in the top 20 teams in the world. On our day we can beat anyone we play. What differentiates us from the other teams in our neighborhood is that we're not dependent on any single player. We aren't in a "golden generation". The drop-off from player 5 to player 50 is negligible. Any holes we have on the field are roster mistakes. We had substitutes for Jozy Altidore, we just didn't take them to Brazil.

The consequence is that we've become the team everybody hates to play. We have the depth of the elite teams, but we lack the transcendent player(s) that pretty much every other World Cup finalist brings to the tournament.

I admit to having been in denial as to why no American field players have ever stuck at any of the elite European club teams. Honestly, it's because we don't belong. That's the tough medicine I've been processing since yesterday. Other than a couple goalkeepers, I can't tell you a single American men's soccer player that is an elite world class player. None. And that's shocking. It's not natural. The numbers just don't add up. That's what yesterday's game made me realize. The talent exists, but at the current moment, soccer hasn't had access to it.

The second thing that really hit me hard in the immediate aftermath of the Belgium game on Tuesday was Julian Green. Not Green, himself, but the data point that his performance represented. His appearance in the game and performance he gave didn't fit into the mental model of how the USMNT works that I had created.

By training I am a mathematician and scientist. My peculiar gifts are pattern recognition and an innate ability to create algorithms - or more generically - methods to solve problems.

I'm sure that's too much information, but I consider it relevant in that my brain builds models of how things work. I create theories based on available information. The scientist in me demands empirical testing. When the results do not add up, I have no choice but to admit that there is something wrong with the model. The Belgium game completely laid waste to my theories and assumptions. Not the result of the game, mind you, but the way the game was played and who it was played by.

Let's go back a month. When Jurgen named the final 23 a lot of words were written about how he was looking to 2018. I didn't buy a word of it. If you stop and look at successful World Cup teams they generally do have a mix of senior players and raw, untamed talent. I always assumed that DeAndre Yedlin and John Brooks were on the team because Jurgen thought they were needed now, in 2014. Julian Green? Well, I figured that was a special case, a Quid Pro Quo.

I've seen Klinsmann getting some flack since the Belgium game about the final roster, and frankly I think he deserves some of it. There was no cover for Jozy Altidore, and it really would have been nice to have Landon Donovan on the bench. However, the problems weren't the kids, and they weren't the German-Americans (or as I like to call them, Americans.)

The United States scored five goals in four games plus a 30 minute overtime period. While it's nothing to write home about, it's not terrible, either.

I guess what Julian Green scoring that goal did is it makes me realize that we really aren't designed to score goals. Against elite competition we score them more often than not by chance or on freak plays. In CONCACAF play it's not an issue as we tend to outclass most of our opponents. At the World Cup, on the other hand, we are completely bereft of any concept that the goal of the game is to score goals. In Brazil we scored five, but three of those were either freakish (Dempsey's first) or one-off flash in the pan (John Brooks in 45 minutes of play and Julian Green in 16 minutes).

Maybe if Chris Wondolowski hadn't flubbed his 88th minute chance I wouldn't be writing this article. Then again, my understanding of the USMNT and where it is headed was flawed and a reckoning was coming sooner or later.

The real issue is that I don't understand how the USMNT progresses from here. When we get to Russia in 2018 we need to able to steadily generate valid goal scoring chances. Playing rope-a-dope and hoping to get lucky on a counter isn't a viable system against the class of teams we play at the World Cup Finals.

I honestly don't know if it is talent, coaching, or some combination. The U.S. is an unusual team. We have gotten to the point where we have advanced out of the group stage in three of the last four World Cups. But there's a difference between us and the other teams that can say the same. Even when our opponents cede us possession, you rarely get that feeling that a goal is imminent. How do we change that?

I apologize to those of you expecting answers, at least my answers. I still don't have any. I'm still processing and I haven't come up with a new model that fits the data I've collected over the year. If any of you can help piece it all back together, I'd love to see what you've come up with. Like I said at the top, I really want to thank those of you that took the time to comment on part one. The more information I have to analyze the better. Different views and opinions are welcome and helpful.

At some point over the holiday weekend I'll come back and wrap this up with my thoughts on where the USMNT can go from here. I promise more conclusions than questions in part three." Where are the black people?

7/9/2014 11:37:55 PM

^^^ Unfortunately, ODP is absolute shit. So that wasn't really any progress.

7/10/2014 8:00:00 AM

figured i'd put this here too:

Inside: U.S. Soccer's March to Brazil | Grantland Channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTRGGeuGY5w

7/11/2014 3:55:38 PM

^Proud.

still makes me a little sick to know we could have won

7/12/2014 7:35:08 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfI4_Ay_Cxc

MLS with a pretty solid Ferris Bueller parody featuring Mike Magee, Omar Gonzalez, fine ass Sydney Leroux, Hope Solo, The Bruce, Thierry Henry, and Michael Bardley. Clint Mathis is fat as hell. The outtakes are good too.

7/16/2014 3:57:40 PM

Mike Magee is a terrible actor.

7/16/2014 11:01:01 PM

Zelalem starting on ESPN2 for Arsenal...

7/26/2014 5:04:50 PM

Watching now. Noticed what Lalas mentioned - Zelalem is everywhere positionally. Long term, he's projected to be a CM? AM?

7/26/2014 5:33:56 PM

http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/7/28/5947029/omar-gonzalez-drops-deandre-yedlin-shoves-clint-dempsey

7/29/2014 9:58:50 AM

What do you think about this Bullet?

7/29/2014 11:05:24 AM

It's obviously the end of US Soccer. What do you think?

7/29/2014 12:10:21 PM

I'm not bothered by it.

Didn't know if you had thoughts on it or you just like posting links.

[Edited on July 29, 2014 at 4:13 PM. Reason : .]

7/29/2014 4:12:58 PM

Whoa players are friendly when playing together but confrontational when competing! Crazy!

7/29/2014 4:53:57 PM

Anyone worried about that has never played a competitive team sport against a friend.

7/29/2014 7:06:55 PM

Besides Seth Rosenthal, who's worried? Some of you people, jeez. It's just a story about a few guys on the US Men's National Soccer Team. aimorris, what's your damage?

7/29/2014 7:56:56 PM

you've gotta admit that it's kind of your move, though

presenting links without comment

7/29/2014 8:58:04 PM

Donovan retiring this year. Thanks for the memories braj.

8/7/2014 2:10:18 PM

Here's a link: http://blog.foxsoccer.com/post/94545227342/landon-donovan-is-the-latest-athlete-to-have-a-short
And here's my comment: It's kinda funny.

8/12/2014 2:41:48 PM

See you next year Timmy.

8/21/2014 4:48:24 PM

Howard is not old for a keeper. Has he said anything? I would fully expect him to be around stronger next world cup without any knowledge of statements or anything you guys must be going off.

8/21/2014 5:17:55 PM

He's planning on taking some time off from the national team to spend some time with the family, and plans to come back next September if he proves that he deserves to be back.

8/21/2014 5:21:04 PM

He didn't want to get dropped for big games like Boca, Donovan, and likely how Dempsey will if he doesn't do the same thing as Howard. 2018 is Guzan's WC.

8/21/2014 7:58:36 PM

http://www.espnfc.us/united-states/story/1996424/tim-howard-to-take-one-year-break-from-us-national-team

Quote :

"Tim Howard will take a one-year break from the United States national team to spend more time with his family, the goalkeeper announced on Thursday. The 35-year-old Howard is not retiring from international competition and will continue to play for Everton in the English Premier League."

8/22/2014 9:07:57 AM

Oh we back. International breaks this soon after the World Cup are stupid but oh well. Next Wednesday v. the Czechs.

Quote :

"GOALKEEPERS (3) : Cody Cropper (Southampton), Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Nick Rimando (Real Salt Lake) DEFENDERS (7) : John Brooks (Hertha Berlin), Geoff Cameron (Stoke City), Timmy Chandler (Eintracht Frankfurt), Greg Garza (Club Tijuana), Fabian Johnson (Borussia Mönchengladbach), Michael Orozco (Puebla), Tim Ream (Bolton) MIDFIELDERS (7) : Alejandro Bedoya (Nantes), Joe Corona (Club Tijuana), Mix Diskerud (Rosenborg), Julian Green (Bayern Munich), Emerson Hyndman (Fulham), Alfredo Morales (Ingolstadt), Brek Shea (Stoke City) FORWARDS (5) : Jozy Altidore (Sunderland), Joe Gyau (Borussia Dortmund II), Jordan Morris (Stanford), Rubio Rubin (Utrecht), Bobby Wood (1860 Munich)"

15 of the 22 are younger than 24.

8/28/2014 2:55:25 PM

when is Julian ever going to actually play for Bayern München?

8/28/2014 3:01:18 PM

^ went to Hamburg on a year loan. Pretty good move for him, imho.

Strangely looking forward to the game today. I want to see Hyndman, Green and Rubin mostly.

9/3/2014 10:47:34 AM

Win, 1-0 against Czech Republic, supposedly Rimando had some big saves?

9/3/2014 4:14:17 PM

He looked good but it's not like he saved us from a vicious beat down or anything. I stopped watching after all the subs late in the second half since Rubin/Morris weren't included.

We looked very comfortable for most of the game and especially the first 15-20 minutes of the second half.

9/3/2014 4:23:09 PM