UNITED STATES 2:4 CZECH REPUBLIC
The World Cup begins in South Africa in just 16 days, and the US team is making preparations and playing warm-up games. They'll take on Turkey this Saturday, fly to South Africa on Sunday, then play Australia over there on the Saturday before the World Cup begins. But before any of this, they were in Hartford on Tuesday to take on the Czech Republic, who failed to qualify (and finished behind Slovenia, who the USA will play in Group C.)
30 men are currently included on the American squad, 23 of whom will be on the final team. With some of the biggest names - Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, Landon Donovan, etc. - sitting Tuesday's match out, the match was billed as a chance for players on the "bubble" to prove they should be included.
(You may remember that the Czechs whacked the USA 3-0 in the team's first game of the '06 World Cup. The USA was terrible that day; I tend to overreact, but my review, in which I gave up on 2006 and started looking forward to this year, wasn't far off.)
So what did we learn on Tuesday? A few notes:
- It was Oguchi Onyewu's first game back after being out seven months with a knee injury. He looked like a man who hasn't played for seven months. Everybody has him penciled in as a starting center-back, only because he's been there for a few years now, but he doesn't look ready to go. (Playing 65 minutes the week before the team leaves for the tournament will not convince anyone.)
- The defense was terrible. (Conditions normal.) More on this in a moment.
- DaMarcus Beasley has fallen out of favor lately, but I thought he was the only decent wide American player on Tuesday. He was all over the left wing of the pitch, especially on defense.
- Wondering what you can do to help American soccer? I suggest you start, somehow, developing outside backs for the team. I don't know how to do this. Clearly nobody does, because everyone that plays left or right back for the USA is awful, just terrible. Jonathan Bornstein, Steve Cherundolo, Heath Pearce - they were all terrible on Tuesday. And at least two of those players will be on the final squad. GAAAAH!
- Maurice Edu scored a scrappy goal, which was nice, but had to play center back late in the game... and was really quite bad. Let us hope we never see this again.
- I thought Stuart Holden's free kicks were pretty good. I thought everything else he did was pretty useless.
- Speaking of useless: Eddie Johnson and Sasha Kljestan, everybody!
- I really hope that Herculez Gomez is on the final team, because HIS NAME IS HERCULEZ GOMEZ. (And yes, the first name is spelled with a z. THAT. IS. TREMENDOUZ.)
- Clarence Goodson has a tiny head, looks like DJ Qualls, and is not very good at kicking a soccer ball. Unfortunately, the last of these makes him fit right in with the rest of the USA defense.
- I think we learned something about Jose Torres: He's not bad when you put him in central midfield. We know from previous experience, though, that if you put him outside - say, on the left side of midfield - you might as well play with ten men.
The real truth: we'll likely know much, much more after the Turkey and Australia matches than we do now.
