No Man's Land

I look forward to IM laying waste to this post.

From an ESPN article on the US-Spain match last week:

United States coach Bob Bradley was impressed with Spain during Wednesday night's friendly but believes his counterpart Luis Aragones might have some concerns about the lack of goalscoring chances the Iberian side created.

OR NOT.

Given the way they dismantled the Russians up top, it looks like the absence of David Villa against the US was the difference. He and Torres were brilliant. On the other hand, Spain's center defense was abysmal today. Russia could easily have easily picked up a couple of garbage goals in front of goal just because the Spanish seemed lead-footed and clueless there. Which leads to this - another ESPN report on the US/Spain match:

And therein lies the difference between the Americans and a side like Spain. It's not that the U.S. doesn't have players capable of making a play like that. It's that there simply aren't enough of them who can conjure up that kind of creativity on a regular basis, and it makes for an attack that isn't varied enough to trouble a quality side like Spain.

It wasn't Russian creativity that created many of their chances. It was Spain's defensive lapses. As impressive as they were today and as unimpressive as the Italians were yesterday, I would bet that Italy makes it through as the runner-up in Group C and Spain wins Group D which means they meet in the quarter finals. If that comes to pass, my money is on the Italian defense to contain David Villa and Torres enough to counter attack strongly and score the couple of goals needed to advance.

The Greece/Sweden match today was dreadful until Ibrahimovich laced in a rifle shot off of a quick one-two pass. That broke the Greeks who clearly had no intention of trying to score off of anything that didn't fall into their lap and realized immediately that their Euro2004 redux park-the-bus-in-front-of-the goal game plan lasted exactly 67 minutes. Think Sam Kinison's classic stand up bit on drug paranoia at the airport, "They see through me. Oh, oh, oh..."

All of which brings me to the real point of this post - the state of the US team. I fully profess to being a soccer neophyte and admit that when watching matches I'm forced to rely on an inadequate general instinct rather than a carefully honed knowledge of the game's nuance. So all of the above and below is probably either crap or self-evident. OK, both.

After watching the first eight Euro2008 matches and the last six months of US friendlies, it looks to me as though we are stuck in two no-man's-lands ahead of South Africa 2010.

One strategic and one tactical.

As for the former, the three earlier European road wins against Switzerland, Sweden and Poland showed progress. The last two losses against England and Spain, and the loss-but-for-Howard's-goalkeeping to Argentina shows how far we have to go to get to the next level, with no clear path that I can discern based on the personnel at our disposal. There is nothing humiliating in admitting that the top national teams are fielding talent well beyond ours. That just leaves the question of how we get develop talent on par with theirs, which I cannot pretend to address.

But is still leaves open how we get the most out of the talent we have, which brings us to the tactical.

We don't do anything particularly well that I can see. Some athleticism here, great goal keeping there, flashes of strong defense and maybe a bit of fast and furious finishing up top, too often from a long pass. A strong midfield that dictates tempo and transitions is always going to be a challenge, even for the very best national teams. But the US side seems unwilling to decide on a strength. Are they going to focus on defense or try to play a beautiful passing game or work off set pieces? I can't tell. In the last couple of years of watching closely, I can't say where this team is going. There is no discernible ethos or culture. Until we decide on that, I think we're doomed to hang around in both no-man's-lands.