Gold Cup Porn: Last, Giddy Glimpse

As the cliche goes, it's all over but for the shouting - though there's still some of that going on. I finally did the grand tour of Gold Cup porn (e.g. all the stuff - some glowing, some more sober) on the Gold Cup final and found some interesting nuggets in a variety of places. I thought I'd post those as a kind of farewell to a happy 2007 tournament.

To begin with a personal note, how friggin' awesome was it to see a shirtless Frankie Hejduk walking onto the stage to give Sepp Blatter and other FIFA luminaries a naked, sweaty hug? He looked like a thinner David Lee Roth up there...and with hair; it was so quintessentially American.

To start with the best review I read, I'd have to give the honors to Mark Ziegler's report for the San Diego Union-Tribune. It didn't have the bits I'm lifting from the items below, but I thought he got to all the good stuff and in style. It's a personal thing...

And, speaking of good stuff, Pitchinvasion.net posted some great photos from the occasion...good to know they'll catch just about anything out of Chicago on that site.

Getting back to Hejduk, though, he threw out a good quote in the Houston Chronicle's drama-drenched write-up:

""We had 23 players standing around the cup in a circle. And everyone who wanted to see us lose were outside. We had all those thousands of people trying to get into there, doing everything they could to take the cup away from us in our own country. And we defended them all. We held them all off. The beer always tastes a little better when you do that."

Good to know beer motivates him as well...

Speaking of player quotes, it's been fun seeing multiple examples of how seriously our players take this rivalry. When asked about missing the sitter Landon Donovan provided him to ice the game, DaMarcus Beasley provided the following to the Washington Post's Steve Goff:

"If [Tim Howard] hadn't made that save, it would've been on me and I would've cried."

Another noteworthy thing to have come out of this game may (or may not) be the growing respect for the U.S. team among Mexico's players. For instance, ine can find word that Carlos Salcido swapped jerseys with Donovan - or that he shook his hand at the very least; I read somewhere (can't recall where) that Mexican 'keeper, Oswaldo Sanchez, had good things to say after the game. With the sometimes ugly commenst that followed some of our wins I looked pretty hard for any disparaging words out of the Mexican camp and, happily, the worst I found appeared in the report behind the link in this paragraph in the form of a quote from Mexico's coach, Hugo Sanchesz. Here's that:

" "I want the team that played the best to win," Mexican manager Hugo Sanchez said. "I don't want a team to win on the ref's call."

That sounds pretty sniveling - and maybe it is - but a fuller version of the same quote (from the Boston Globe's report) makes the whole thing read better:

"We were hoping the US would score on a brilliant play, plus there was one [penalty] on Omar Bravo. I would prefer that whoever wins is the better team and not the team that wins on a referee's call. Sometimes the best team doesn't win. But the US was maybe more practical and they deserved it."

On a number of levels, then, it's a little tempting to hope a corner has been turned.

On the personal level, a couple people walk away from this tournament with a bit of shine on their reputations. For instance, Bob Bradley's decision to replace Pablo Mastroeni with Ricardo Clark has drawn wide praise, up to a straight statement that this proved him most qualified for the job. Whatever you think of that particular asssertion, it's safe to say Bradley didn't hurt himsefl in the Gold Cup. And, to file under "numbers don't lie," who'd a thought Landon Donovan would tie two records in the 2007 Gold Cup? We all knew about his tying Eric Wynalda's all-time scoring record, on the way, no doubt, to setting a tough-to-top mark down the road. But how many out there knew Donovan also tied the record for Gold Cup goals? When he scored yesterday, he netted his 12th in Gold Cup play, tying Mexico's Luis Roberto "Zague" Alves.

While that's all to the good, I'll close here with some sobering points. Keeping with "the personal," it seems that a few people see this year's Gold Cup as the end of the road for Pablo Mastroeni - or at least that applies to a few people who responded to questions left by Luis Arroyanve on his Red Card blog. Writing as just about the only Mastroeni fan left on the planet, it pains me a little to acknowledge this is correct: the reality is, he's slowing down, or, no less accurately, he's being overtaken by younger players who have the incalcuable upside of being a lot younger when 2010 rolls around. He deserves a send-off, but, unquestionably, it's time to groom new people.

Finally, turning to another part of the team, as Ives Galarcep pointed out today, a basically improved performance yesterday aside, the reality is our defense still needs to improve. That can happen by improved cohesion and coordination or changes in personnel, but there's no question it needs to happen.

Ah well. It has been a fun couple weeks. It has had some very real highs and some bruising lows, but, given the happy ending, it would be churlish to call the 2007 Gold Cup anything but a good time for U.S. Soccer.

Gold Cup: Eunuchs Lifted into Final

To put my thoughts on last night’s game on a bitter simmer...and, as with all things simmered, this will be long.

The U.S. lost. On every level but the final score, we lost last night. Canada carried about 2/3 of the game and played with greater intelligence and precision. The blown offside call thwarted the Canadian rally in the end, but that may be better understood as a unique and plain symbol of a game in which Fortune, by and large, favored the undeserving.

And before going any further, I want to get in this: Sunday’s final is going to be fucking torture.

Now, where to begin?

As implied above, Canada certainly looked the better team - more certain in their approach and execution. They moved the ball far more effectively and, with the exception of long, crossing passes and wayward passes aside, to places where the receiving player was 90% certain to get it. Apart from the two times we laudably broke through - and on the couple occasions where we nearly did - the Maple Leaf’s defense ably contained the American attack, especially our forwards.

On the American side, we destroyed more ably than we created. The outstanding disturbing element in our game last night, however, came with our passing; I saw so many short, bobbled, indecisive - just flat-out worthless - passes; no less a problem were the series of clumsy attempts to dribble out of trouble in the defensive third, our players stabbed and/or entirely missed clearances, and the general air of panic. When we didn’t botch short passes, we resorted to long balls too often and too soon, especially out of the back; this evidenced some anxiety about playing through the Canadian midfield, particularly in the first half.

We did have some good spells and, not coincidentally, we scored our goals during one of them. Frankie Hejduk did score a peach and he looked at least as shocked to score it as I was to see him do so, but our play in the stretch before it made that, and Donovan’s penalty kick, possible. But Hejduk’s goal was more noteworthy in that it shows our capacity to build from the back and establish possession in the opposition half. The goal did come, if memory serves, from a set-play, but we earned that set-play by making the Canadians chase us in dangerous parts of the field. And that’s the pisser: we can do it. And, when the Canadians had to chase the game a little to start the second half, we did well with that...till our legs gave way to jittering fatigue, that is.

The maddening, and not a little eerie, reality is the fact the game played out precisely as expected, particularly within the context of the 2007 Gold Cup tournament; the game unfolded almost as if scripted. We score - once, twice, it doesn’t matter - and simply cannot maintain and hold things together. It almost begs the question of what scares American players so goddamn much about scoring?

As most attacks before them, the Canadians stretched and scrambled most of the back four - Hejduk, somewhat surprisingly, stood as the exception - the difference being that they could exploit the gaps. Given when the Maple Leaf’s finally managed their actual breakthroughs, I assume fatigue played a role; it’s more likely, however, that fatigue - and rather stupid attrition - hit our midfield by the end, thereby exposing a rickety defense. The inability of our more offensive players to maintain possession and kill the game meant more time spent chasing, hence more fatigue, etc. It’s a grand, knock-on effect in the end and the pieces keep falling till they run into - and, last night, over - a defense that has yet to cohere - and, in terms of the specific personnel, perhaps never will.

Looking back on the tournament as a whole, the U.S. turned in exactly one comprehensive performance - the win over El Salvador. We’re now in the final against the team arguably best equipped to exploit the highly apparent disorganization that has featured in...every...single...game except that one game; then again, in our favor, the Mexicans have hardly lit up defenses poorer than ours. But still....anyone feel like we’re a solid favorite?

The hard reality is, even if we win the final, this tournament leaves me feeling LESS secure about the future of the U.S. Men’s National Team. We have very real problems to sort out, starting with our back line; we need to get that sorted out to alleviate some worry about what happens when the up-field players can’t swing their part.

That's the free-flowing part: time to turn to player rankings and such. For the record, a 5.0 rating denotes a performance that didn’t hurt or appreciably help. Before that, however, let’s dispense with the honors for the game:

Man of the Match: Canada’s Ian Hume. He came onto the field like a one-man shot of adrenaline, not only scoring the Leaf’s goal, but adding vital bite to the Canadian midfield.

The U.S. Man of the Match: Frankie Hejduk, hands down - he’s the inspiration for the title to this post. He played like he had balls on loan from half the team...too many of whom played as if they’d loaned out theirs.

Kasey Keller, 4.0: Damn, did he have issues with decisiveness. And starting him over Tim Howard still has me scratching my head.

Frankie Hejduk, 8.5: If his passing and crossing were better, he’d go higher. But Hejduk shut down the Canadian left, tackled like a demon, stretched the Canadians going forward and he scored a goal. It flat-out sucks he misses the final...even though I’m pretty sure he left his legs on Soldier Field last night.

Carlos Bocanegra, 4.5: Lucky not to have been sent off for the tackle on de Guzman. His interventions on defense connected poorly too often, whether with his body on a player on with his feet to the ball.

Oguchi Onyewu, 4.0: He bumbled when playing out of danger more than once and drifted out of position too often. I’m ready to look elsewhere.

(By way of general comment, Onyewu and Bocanegra are not the central defensive pairing of the future. There’s a palpable lack of organization in general in the back that relies too much on desperate, pack defending that has our players to get in one another’s way.)

Jonathan Bornstein, 2.5: I don’t want to see this guy in a U.S. jersey for a couple years, period; I wouldn’t lose sleep over never either. Last night exposed all my worries about his penchant for getting beat - Bernier ate him alive in the first half - and his, frankly, shitty traps in bad places.

DaMarcus Beasley, 6.0: Add a flash or two on offense - he did well to cause the penalty - to overall sound defensive work and harassing of the Canadian back line and you get a good overall game. Not as good as he can be, but good.

Michael Bradley, 5.5: He would have scored quite a bit higher, but that was about the dumbest goddamn red card I’ve seen this year. Apart from that, however, Bradley was strong and active, one of our better players out there.

Pablo Mastroeni, 6.0: Until Hume came on for Canada, I thought both Mastroeni and Bradley did really well. Pablo tired by the end, but, before that, he played the d-mid role pretty well.

Landon Donovan, 5.5: The odd thing is, Donovan kind of did what people want him to last night: force the game. Trouble is, he didn’t do it all that well; he carried into dead ends too often, didn’t pass early enough, etc. It’s depressingly remarkable that he was still our most dangerous player. His PK technique is weird - and I don’t mean his ritual; it’s the bombing it up the middle thing.

Eddie Johnson, 4.0: Will someone please pull the plug on the EJ Experiment? He lacks confidence and aggressiveness at this level, pure and simple. Did he run at anyone? Not that I recall. Did his passing push the offense? Rarely. Take away the time Donovan played him behind the Canadian defense - a great, alert run that petered out with, yep, a lack of aggression - and his rating goes lower.

Clint Dempsey, 5.0: He may actually be our best passer, but he was a step off last night. The moves he had been making all tournament to keep possession didn’t work last night. He just looked flat. (UPDATE: I finally read a report or two, which reminded me of the good things Demspey did - much of which goes back to the "best passer" line, but which also include his near-miss header - and acknowledge I rated him too low: so revise this to read, Clint Dempsey

Subs:

Benny Feilhaber, 4.5: Needs to orient his brain to a possession game...or cede the job to someone who can. Feilhaber didn’t actually perform badly, but he should have recognized the need to slow down the game instead of pushing it forward.

Taylor Twellman, 6.0: I can’t believe this, but, in the short time Twellman was on the field, he was the only one who seemed to appreciate the need to keep the ball in the Canadian end of the field. He wasn’t always successful, but at least he tried.

Ricardo Clark, 5.0: He barely merits ranking, though I’m tempted to ding him for reaching his foot up to a ball in our penalty area that he needed to control more decisively.

Bob Bradely, 3.5: Yep, the coach gets a number because, in my view, he impacted the game in all the wrong ways. Where were the subs? Clint Dempsey appeared stumbling tired by the 70th minute, if not early, and Donovan looked ready for a breather; Eddie Johnson never started and should have been subbed by the half. Clark should have come on sooner for Mastroeni, he started Keller over Howard for reasons that beg explanation, etc.

OK. I’m done. I can’t think of the last time I’ve been so disappointed with a win. It’s games like this that make qualifying for the World Cup look a lot more complicated today than it did in May 2007.

The Unintentional Brilliance of the Assist Statistic

Somewhere out there, an article on Steve Ralston moving into second place in the all-time assists in Major League Soccer (MLS) goes into a somewhat obligatory spiel about how assists don't quite fit soccer, a sport that rarely wears statistics well.

That spiel made sense till last night when I watched the New England Revolution's Steve Ralson head a ball over his head toward goal; that semi-random action led to an Adam Cristman goal, the Revs' first for the night and Cristman's first all-time. It's not so much that Ralston consciously headed the ball with an assist to Cristman in mind; the action can more accurately be described as bonking the ball somewhere that seemed useful. Whether intended or not, that shows up as an assist to Ralston and, the more I think about it, the more fair that is.

Of course, there are "real" assists; in the same game, for instance, LA Galaxy midfielder Pete Vagenas played sharp pass against the grain - and through a thicket of defenders' legs - to teammate Kyle Martino; it was a spot-on, intentional pass and Martino slotted it home for the Galaxy's first goal. When people talk about assists, that's what they have in mind.

Even if Ralston's assist was more random, less skilled, etc. it falls under a kind of big umbrella concept: making shit happen. In a sense, that's what the assist stat should be: give it an acronym ("MSH's"?) to protect tender ears, but that's basically what's going on. The same principle applies on the defensive end as well. A well-time tackle (for instance, Frankie Hejduk picked Francisco Mendoza clean in the Columbus Crew v. Chivas USA game) could pick up the same statistical denotation.

Sure, this is imprecise and, sure, people will quibble about what really counts as an MSH, but we already quibble about assists and everything else under the sun so what's the harm? But the MSH fits a sport like soccer, in which so much positive activity cannot be readily quantified.

No, I don't think this will ever become an official stat - though I'd love to see league officials have to explain it to soccer neophytes. But it does help me look at Ralston's looming stroll into the league record books without wondering how many of those assists would require asterisks. The thing is, none of them do because all of them essentially say, "Let the record show that, on 113 occasions, Steve Ralston made shit happen."

(########)

The Unintentional Brilliance of the Assist Statistic

Somewhere out there, an article on Steve Ralston moving into second place in the all-time assists in Major League Soccer (MLS) goes into a somewhat obligatory spiel about how assists don't quite fit soccer, a sport that rarely wears statistics well.

That spiel made sense till last night when I watched the New England Revolution's Steve Ralson head a ball over his head toward goal; that semi-random action led to an Adam Cristman goal, the Revs' first for the night and Cristman's first all-time. It's not so much that Ralston consciously headed the ball with an assist to Cristman in mind; the action can more accurately be described as bonking the ball somewhere that seemed useful. Whether intended or not, that shows up as an assist to Ralston and, the more I think about it, the more fair that is.

Of course, there are "real" assists; in the same game, for instance, LA Galaxy midfielder Pete Vagenas played sharp pass against the grain - and through a thicket of defenders' legs - to teammate Kyle Martino; it was a spot-on, intentional pass and Martino slotted it home for the Galaxy's first goal. When people talk about assists, that's what they have in mind.

Even if Ralston's assist was more random, less skilled, etc. it falls under a kind of big umbrella concept: making shit happen. In a sense, that's what the assist stat should be: give it an acronym ("MSH's"?) to protect tender ears, but that's basically what's going on. The same principle applies on the defensive end as well. A well-time tackle (for instance, Frankie Hejduk picked Francisco Mendoza clean in the Columbus Crew v. Chivas USA game) could pick up the same statistical denotation.

Sure, this is imprecise and, sure, people will quibble about what really counts as an MSH, but we already quibble about assists and everything else under the sun so what's the harm? But the MSH fits a sport like soccer, in which so much positive activity cannot be readily quantified.

No, I don't think this will ever become an official stat - though I'd love to see league officials have to explain it to soccer neophytes. But it does help me look at Ralston's looming stroll into the league record books without wondering how many of those assists would require asterisks. The thing is, none of them do because all of them essentially say, "Let the record show that, on 113 occasions, Steve Ralston made shit happen."

(########)