Sunday, June 13, 2010

USA 1-1 England

A few notes on the US's 1-1 draw with England. It was an okay performance by the US. It was a normal performance by England. I expected the US to win going into it. England has bigger names than the US does, yes, and they qualified more easily than the US did. However, my account of both teams comes from experience watching both teams pretty regularly throughout qualification. By that perspective, the actual performance of England measured up to how the the team has performed in recent history. By the same perspective, the US's performance was not quite where it has been over the past year, but still respectable.

I'd like to see Buddle or Gomez start in the remaining two group matches. Findley was alright, but he doesn't have the nose for goal that Buddle or Gomez has. I also want Clark out of there. Having watched Slovenia-Algeria this morning (and once or twice in qualification), I don't think either team needs any more help running up its tally of incomplete passes. Bradley will be enough disruption for both teams. I wouldn't mind seeing a start from Torres, Edu, Feilhaber, or Holden.

The tournament so far has been very even, and very low-scoring. The games haven't been totally defensive; the teams just haven't been good, overall. Greece is just awful. South Korea should be cautious in its celebrations, because I expect Nigeria and Argentina to beat Greece too, and the scorelines might be even more crooked than 2-0.

I haven't seen Twellman on that CSN show yet; I turned on the 10:30 edition last night to see his commentary on the US-England game, but the first 15 minutes of the show were about the Celtics and Red Sox so I turned it off. Nothing against the Celtics or Red Sox, but I wasn't particularly interested in those subjects at the time.

Revolution-Cruzeiro tonight.

-John

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