OT Soccer...Brazil vs USA

[rwsaunders]

Anyone watching?.....USA up 2-0 at 30:00.

[Louis]

We'll see if the US can hold them off...

[Smiley]

landon donovan, best us player on the field

[johnnymossville]

Can't let up now!

[Louis]

Oh boy ....

[Louis]

Well, the better team won.

Nice run while it lasted.

[Smiley]

The second half was watching a battering ram attack the USA, it should have been 4-2. They are so much skilled everywhere across 11 players.

[1centaur]

Brazil has been my favorite team ever since I was living in England as a boy (I am American) and saw the 1968 World Cup team of Pele, et al. I asked for Brazil football kit for Xmas that year.

Due to what I think was a schedule switch from ESPN2 to ESPN, my TIVO was recording poker instead of soccer, so I only saw the second half. Brazil was beatable today (even though Kaka's header was definitely in; funny how the commentator said it was hard to tell when the whole ball was visible beyond the post from an angle well off the goal line - classic failure of spatial imagination), but the US STILL suffers from what has hurt them for the last half century: the emphasis on athleticism rather than ball skills. Winning soccer is about having the space/time to do what you want, and that space is created by efficient skills - getting possession, keeping possession, moving into space off the ball, and knowing when to dribble and when to pass, then passing to the right spot (in stride), not a spot 5 feet away from the right spot. Donovan has long been a suspect passer - he sees the space and then delivers it too far from the right spot. His teammates are not much better. They fundamentally lack the ability to win/keep/move/pass. They need to spend more time kicking balls against walls - hours a day - I'm not kidding. Then they need to run intricate 35-25 yard line passing drills to get more efficient at getting players open at the 18-yard line. Do that for a year.

[rwsaunders]

Well, the better team won.

Nice run while it lasted.

Very true.

[Climb01742]

i'd bet that thierry henry spent untold hours kicking a ball against a wall. until the u.s. can produce players of that playmaking skill level...

[johnnymossville]

It was a good run, keep working at it and World Cup will be a great ride.

[1centaur]

One of the benefits of kicking a ball against a wall for thousands of hours is that if you don't have to think about controlling the ball you have more capacity to think about what you want to do with it. If every good soccer player in the country has natural and complete ball handling and passing skills, you just have to wait for the 2 or 3 that see the field better and then surround them with good strikers with good bursts of speed, stamina, and the brains to run into the seams.

[ada@prorider.or]

It was a great game of USA
hats off

[Ozz]

... They need to spend more time kicking balls against walls - hours a day - I'm not kidding. ....
Too funny....we just went thru registration for our youth soccer league and all the parents of kids on my team have been asking me what they can do to get their kids ready....I just told them to find a wall and kick the ball against it....my son was out doing it yesterday after the game! :p

It was good game and I think your analysis was right...the US was unable to maintain possession after they got the lead, and you just can't give Brazil the ball for that long and not expect to get scored on...

It sure looked like Kaka's header was in....but I will defer to the linesman whose job it was to watch for that...not that it mattered in the end.

Fun to watch and kudos to the team for the effort!

:beer:

[goonster]

They need to spend more time kicking balls against walls - hours a day - I'm not kidding.
With all due respect, telling members of the U.S. men's team, who have just pushed Brazil to the brink in a FIFA tournament final, to spend a year kicking the ball against a wall is like telling an Australian baseball major leaguer to hit a ball off a tee because he's just not good enough to be MVP.

When a player is good enough to be on the roster of Fulham, Borussia MgB, Standard Liege, Monaco, etc. he is getting coaching and training appropriate for his level of talent and skill.

It so happens that Landon Donovan is simultaneously both the best playmaker his country has produced in a generation, and also a guy who can't hack it week-in-week-out in a top Euro league. But the reasons for that are not as simple as soccer not being his primary sport, or his unwillingness to spend time on fundamentals.

[1centaur]

Pretty sad that he's the best playmaker in a generation, if that's true. I can see speed and instincts for his own movement that tell me he's better than average on the national squad, but his ability to deliver the ball exactly where it should be while in the flow of the game is severely lacking.

You can get coached and trained all you want, but if you lack the muscle memory/synapse firing history to handle the ball naturally and unconsciously you should not be on the national team of any country with a population over 10,000. At the club level there are more and less natural players, but at the international level the US soccer team vs. a top country looks like the Princeton Tigers vs. Duke in college basketball. In a sense, they should be credited with great coaching for being as competitive as they are, disciplined on defense (most of the time) and focused on set plays. That said, you can just watch ball touch after ball touch, possession after possession, decision after decision from the midfield on in during a game like yesterday's and see the fundamental lack of talent, hunger, and joy that are so essential to the best of the game.