Gold Cup Loss

An article on why it was good the US.

I agree we need to go younger, but more importantly to look for more creative, risk-taking, special players. We will only go so far with players I define as "solid." The best you can hope for with the teams we construct is upset counter-attack victories. Perhaps the best example being the Portugal World Cup match in 2002. Even Germany, the best counter-attack team in the world, changed their style of play the last World Cup. You just cannot consistently win playing that style. You end up with a team who mostly loses in "close games" and it allows everyone to sit around and say - oh, we were close, if just this-and-that happened, it would have been a different story. Well...of course...if everything went perfectly we "could of" won certain games. Fact is, things rarely go perfectly.

You obviously have to play with the players you have. That is to say, if we don't have a Messi, we cannot just plays "as if" we had one. But it strikes me there is something terribly wrong with either how we develop players or spot talent that a country as large and as healthy and as rich as the United States cannot find a couple of these type of players. Sure...some of them will end up Ronaldihno - brilliant for a short span - and then turn into a weirdo, but that is life. How can we not find a Diego Forlon? A Chicarito or Dos Santos? A Michael Essian? A Drogba? Some of these guys come from countries the size of Los Angeles. Believe me, they aren't all playing basketball or baseball or football, we're still large enough to have some mistakes. To find our soccer playing Hakeem Olajuwon. Only then, will we compete on an international level - where we are able to find these type of guys somewhat consistently and then surround them with the solid dudes. Also, we need more speed. Adu looked good. I think Donvan, Dempsy, and Bradley look world class. Everyone else is expendable if you ask me.