US Soccer Catch-All

C'mon, they could just be moving like normal people do.

kazooka wrote:

I would hold out on the new jerseys on general principle. All of Nike's National Team jerseys are the same template with slightly different colors. And since most of their National Team clients are teams with red, white, and blue on the flag, they basically all look alike unless you squint.

Yeap. Nike was so lazy this year.

Back in the driver's seat. Good showing usmnt!

Yeehaw!

That's a bit of an improvement.

Pleased, but cautiously guarded. Guatemala were awful.

...and the men aren't going to the Olympics, for the second time in a row. My buzz from the 4-0 win is completely gone.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

...and the men aren't going to the Olympics, for the second time in a row. My buzz from the 4-0 win is completely gone.

Arrrgh, that was brutal.

The Women play Colombia tonight in a friendly! Since it's date night with my wife, I may not be able to see it.

I also updated the OP with the rest of the scheduled matches through this summer, including the Men's matches in the group stage of the Copa America Centenario, but excluding the Women's Olympic matches, which haven't been announced yet.

Early June will be a great soccer watching time as the Women play past champions Japan who somehow missed qualifying for this Olympics the day before the Copa America kicks off.

Two sound wins against Colombia mean the Women keep rolling. Now we have a bit of a wait for more action from either senior team.

Well, time flies and here we go! The men have added a friendly for this Sunday vs Puerto Rico. I added all listed upcoming matches for both senior teams to the OP.

This should be a great summer of soccer with Copa America Centenario for the Men and the 2016 Olympics for the Women, with a side of Euro 2016. And then in September, we get right back into World Cup qualifying.

Unfortunately, many of our men aren't available for some or all of the pre-Copa friendlies; yet another reason I'd love for MLS to adopt more of the practices of global soccer community. Hopefully we can still somehow find a rhythm and field a great team, but with no opportunity to field the June 03 starting eleven beforehand, that's a serious challenge.

Hopefully the Men will have a good tournament and we'll find a good squad to see us through the remainder of World Cup qualification.

I assume that Carli Lloyd will not be ready for the friendlies against Japan in a few weeks, but supposedly she'll be healthy enough for the Olympics come August.

Go USA!

The field, camera work, camera quantity, etc. of this friendly v Puerto Rico is as bad as I've seen in a long time.

We're playing a very, very young squad today, and leading 2-1 at the half. Bobby Wood scored, and Tim Ream got his first goal for the USMNT.

And if anyone hasn't seen it, our Copa America roster:

http://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2016...

Looks pretty good to me. Surprised there's no Jordan Morris, but apparently he's not having the greatest season with the Sounders. Tim Chandler is still somehow getting call-up.

Nice win for the home team tonight, and congrats to Darlington Nagbe on his first goal for the US!

Honestly, I thought all the youths did well - Nagbe, Pulisic (made grown men look silly when they tried to dispossess him - have we found someone besides Jozy who can hold up play?), Wood, Brooks, and Yedlin.

Let's build around this. Give these guys more game time, Jurgen.

Fabian Johnson and Michael Bradley seemed their usual, reliably good selves.

On the other hand, I though Zardes was bad. What exactly is his strength? He wasn't able to evade defenders, his first touch is just bad. Clint Dempsey is a favorite of mine, but didn't really seem present.

We need Cameron to get healthy. He's got nine days!

Zardes isn't a winger. Beginning and the end of the story. Play him at forward and he's serviceable at worst.

Okay, the ladies take on Japan in one hour! The men go against Colombia tomorrow night.

Also tonight I've got the Texas Derby between the Houston Dynamo and FC Dallas. Go Dynamo!

Well, not a great result for the WNT last night. As they say, a draw is a win for the road team. We clearly weren't prepared for Japan's tactics. Giving up a stoppage-time goal to lose our lead was depressing. And finally, Japan played with 10 women for much of the game.

Funny that we looked better on offense, imho, when we had been so strong on defense last year and until now. These were only the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th goals we've given up this year.

Still, we didn't look that strong going into the World Cup last year, and we peaked at the perfect time. Hopefully this is a good wake-up call for the team.

We play them again on Sunday at 12:30 ET. Hopefully we'll have a plan to counter their press.

AND TONIGHT IS THE MAIN EVENT! LET'S GO, USA!

Fedaykin98 wrote:

AND TONIGHT IS THE MAIN EVENT! LET'S GO, USA!

Not a good start.

Very unfortunate first half, where I would argue we weren't really outplayed at all.

Since this is going to be damn near unrecoverable, I say stick the youngsters in and see what happens.

Welp.

Hopefully we can pull off a win against a Costa Rica that's missing Navas and Waston. Second place in this group is definitely wide open.

And on an optimistic note, if we do get out of the group, our first knock-out match might be more winnable than previously expected. Brasil did not look terribly good in their first match. Interesting bit of trivia: This depleted Brasil squad started no one who started in the 2014 World Cup.

The other favorite of Group B, Ecuador, is a team we played in a friendly a couple weeks ago and stole a win from with a very late goal.

That said, Peru is leading that group right now. If we can advance, we have a chance against any of these teams.

And in non-USA news, I'd say Mexico has played the best game of any team so far. If we get second in Group A and they win Group C, we would meet them in the semis if both teams beat their quarterfinal opponents. With their current form and our performances last year, I'm not hopeful about how that would turn out - but it would be a great rivalry game.

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/pKJVSuD.gif)

Not sure I can steel myself to watch tonight, though I suppose the possibility of a win over a depleted Costa Rica keeping us in the hunt might be strong enough bait.

This game is nuts. Costa Rica looked like the better team but the US has capitalized on their chances

Both teams deserve awards for flopping.

Happy to be wrong so far.

So far so good. Nice to see the variety of names on the scoresheet.

Everything I read said that Paraguay was the weak link in our group, which struck me as odd. If that were true, why all the panic after the Colombia game? Colombia were always favored to win this group, so the fight was among the other three for second and the US has to have confidence against CR at home (even if it is not snowing this time!).

Wasn't panicked, but for my part, the skepticism short list would be something like:

* the US lost its most-recent game against Costa Rica
* USMNT has not looked convincing (especially at the back) in some time
* until last night over half of our goals in the past three tournaments (10 of the last 18 goals) had been scored by Clint Dempsey - and it's a lot easier to mark a single player out of the game

Glad for the win, though the final scoreline definitely flatters us. That was probably the least-convincing 4-0 win I've seen, but all anyone is going to remember in the future is that the lads stepped up when they needed to.

Yeah, I was kind of expecting a competent/stodgy 2-1 victory, not the eventual demolition derby we ended up with. Still think we're playing too many forwards as wingers. Still think a good coach would have found a way to get Fabian Johnson in his natural position. Still, if this means we're finally going to see some consistency in formation and lineup, I'll take it.

Well, I still want to see Nagbe starting, either by removing Zardes or Bedoya. But it may be that JK finally wants to run the same lineup for a while in the interest of developing chemistry and winning right now, which is fine.

But as soon as possible (but maybe not in WCQ games, which resume in September), we need to see if Nagbe and Pulisic should be starters for 2018.

If 2018 sees tonight's lineup plus those two and minus Zardes and Bedoya, I'd be thrilled.

The fact that Beckerman and Wondolowski got minutes while those two are on the bench is just bonkers, and definitely makes me concerned about Klinsmann's approach to blooding new talent. (On the plus side, Bobby Wood was sharp, and right now looks tough to dislodge from the starting XI).

Dimmerswitch wrote:

The fact that Beckerman and Wondolowski got minutes while those two are on the bench is just bonkers, and definitely makes me concerned about Klinsmann's approach to blooding new talent. (On the plus side, Bobby Wood was sharp, and right now looks tough to dislodge from the starting XI).

I'm hoping that was a reward to two of his longtime contributors/favorites for coming along. You bring 23 and can only play a max of 14 per game, so it's understandable to want to sneak those guys in when the game has been put away. Bringing Beckerman on when you think you've scored enough makes some sense even without that angle.

I also think JK is in "win now" mode. We're in the biggest tournament he's coached us for outside of the World Cup, for one, and just yesterday Sunil Gulati gave an interview where he seemed to hint for the first time ever that Klinsmann's job isn't guaranteed.

The Men in Blazers had a very funny response to those comments in their post-game show, by the way. Their YouTubes with Vice Sports and the Total Soccer Show podcast have been great (and completely opposite) accompaniments to the Copa.

As seen on Reddit, Good Guy Rondon:

https://m.reddit.com/r/ussoccer/comm...

It is our duty as patriotic, sportsmanship-loving Americans to support Venezuela the rest of the way!