Dismal 2nd Half Spells Doom for U.S.
Germany 4, USA 1
Way overblown headline by the WaPo. This was a good tuneup & a good lesson for the 5th in the world US squad. As in, that ranking is bogus & you're going to have to play your best to advance.
The US controlled the first half, but didn't do much in the final third of the field. Ching was a block of wood except for one fine shot. Gibbs, Mastro, & Convey shone and GAM (Eddie Johnson) looked good. I haven't seen Gibbs play much & was suitably impressed. He was super fast and very poised against a big rough German team.
Arena started out with his beloved 3-5-2 lineup but returned to sanity and went 4-4-2 after about 15 minutes. I hate three in the back. We're not fast enough or technically skilled enough to play that way -- especially when we're playing our B squad.
2nd half, Germany's A team finally broke through USA's B team. Giving up all those free kicks had to come back to haunt us & it did. Berhalter was abysmal in the back and left Conrad out to dry a few times. Even Cherundolo made a few uncharacteristic errors.
This was definitely our B team, though. Look at the missing: McBride, Donovan, Beasley, Reyna, O'Brien, Dempsey (Clint, control your temper!), Gooch, Pope, Hejduk, Lewis. Add Keller to that ten and you'd have a fine starting "A" lineup.
*I'd put in a pretty picture, but blogger's photo function is screwy. Sorry.
Update: Apparently this is a blogger problem, lots of folks over there at blogger help getting the white screen instead of "Done".
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