USA 0-3 Czech Republic

people, please…

this group is really, really difficult…we started bad, but please, give this boys a little credit for God’s sake…let’s just support our team and even if they’re not getting out of the group, let’s just learn from all this world cup experience and take what’s good out of it.

call me nuts, but I STILL BELIEVE.

in the end, no matter what we say here and there, the only thing that matters is what the TEAM USA will think and do. i’m sure they’re also angry and dissapointed, but all we can do is SUPPORT this guys. THEY WANT TO WIN AS MUCH AS WE WANT THEM TO WIN.

I’ll support my team NO MATTER WHAT.

GO USA !

Posted from  United States

Italy did not impress me at all today. Even though they got the win, Ghana seemed to play the stronger game. They even got screwed not once but twice on what should have been penalty shots. Lets hope that Arena will recognize that they will be looking for a counter-attack on Saturday. The US must strike first, because we all know what happens when they dont. Oh yeah, why isnt the MVP of the MLS on the USNT?

Posted from  United States

Mike the Italian game against Ghana was all about counter attacking. Italy played a wonderful game of letting Ghana open up the field and they they fill in the holes. This is a risk a team like Ghana takes when they play this type of Football.

Posted from  United States

Though I was far from impressed with the US today, I don’t think today’s showing was disastrous as everybody thinks. I think we saw today clearly what happens when a brilliantly talented offensive team has a good game and a little luck.

That first Koller goal shouldn’t have happened. That was lousy marking, no doubt. But the next goal, the one that really determined the game, was both brilliant and a bit lucky. Obviously, it takes talent (and those lovely new Adidas balls) to hit a screaming knuckler from 35 yards out and tuck it six inches from the post, but it also takes a fair bit of luck. If that ball had moved six inches to the right and Reyna’s shot had done likewise, the game would probably have been 1-1 at halftime. And the game would have looked very different.

I’m not saying the Czechs weren’t the better team (they were), and I’m not saying the US didn’t look disorganized in the attacking third of the field (they did), but I am saying that mostly what I learned today is what I already knew. Specifically, if a talented, experienced, disciplined team gets an early lead and spends the rest of the game putting eleven people between the ball and their goal, it’s going to take a really special offense or some good luck to score on them.

Brazil could certainly have unlocked the Czech defense. So could a handful of other teams with a couple of pure goal scorers up front. We aren’t one of those teams. We knew that already.

I’m not ready to start pissing on effigies of Bruce Arena yet. For most of his career–from UVa to MLS to 2002–he’s done nothing but produce winners. He might still do so in the next two games. We’ll see. And I think it’s really unfair to bag on him for the picks he made putting together his 23, especially the midfielders. Who else would he have taken. Who else, who isn’t injured, has the required experience and ability (or just the transcendent physical readiness that trumps experience)? Is there somewhere a shadow team of Serie A and Premiership American stars sitting around in their boxers in front of the TV saying, “Damnit, Bruce, how could you have overlooked my 42 goals this year for Chelsea?” Was Ronaldinho calling Arena and begging him to get the US government to expedite his naturalization?

And I don’t see the point in bagging on the MLS. Sure, it’s a nice counterbalance to all the rim-jobbing ESPN and ABC are giving the MLS (who bribed them to do that?), but most people aren’t pretending that the MLS is anything but a fairly successful first step in a long process of building a powerful professional soccer infrastructure in this country.

I expected something exciting from USA and was very disappointed. A lack of creativity and determination in attack, and poor defensive play in midfield gave the game to the Czechs.

Posted from  United Kingdom

EEY!!!

Come on, you don’t belong in this tournament…

Totally outclassed….

I also heard your commentators a couple of times on the internet… and they are destroying a beautiful game….: “PK”…????!!!

“CK” ????

Nooooooooo, cut it out….!

Posted from  Netherlands

GO GO USA!

GO GO USA!

GO HOME !!!!

Hahaha…

It’s Europe here, we don t play football with hands and helmet…

I like the picture wery much
but I thik it is not the end.
Litle hope for seccond place but a draw with Italy is possible and 3:0 With Gana. Wy Not

Posted from  The Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia

i think the US is 1 of the teams other teams should look out 4. they are 1 of the fastest teams even though they didnt show it at that game.GO USA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Posted from  United States

mikas rite

Posted from  United States

The only time I root for the United States in any sport is during the World Cup. In 2002 I was thrilled that we made it so far. Four years later, the team looked like they did in 1994. It was tragic. Bottom line, it’s time to get rid of Bruce Arena and rebuild the US team with some players that have international premiership football skills.

Posted from  United States

Oh I forgot- ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!

Posted from  United States

Tactics. They had better tactics. They knew that our strength comes from our ability to drive down the sides with Beasley and other midfielders who then cross the ball to either Donovan or McBride. They stopped any momentum down the sides. Convey and Beasley were so intimidated that they had to keep passing back. Second, they marked EVERY PLAYER, while they US, while defending sorta marked “zones.” They made sure someone was behind every one of our fowards and midfielders especially McBride and Donovan, so they wouldn’t be passed to. In their half, every player was marked. In our half, we sometimes had two guys in the center not marking anyone, while three attackers overwhelmed two defenders in the wings. Third, they pressured even our defense, even Keller! something we never did. Fifth, we didn’t MOVE AROUND to create options for passing. It’s like the US players just STOOD THERE, unaware of the fact that there was a Czech player in perfect position behind them to steal the ball. Of course no one’s going to pass the ball to you if you just stand there. All the midfielders should have been constantly moving around. That’s how you create options for passing.

By the way, Italy didn’t cover Ghana’s sides very well at all. They let Ghana drive all the way down a lot. Italy is all about their counter attack, and Ghana has a similar style of ball control as the US, but no real good world class strikers like us too. Italy’s midfield left a lot of holes, so if they play like that again, it could be a very different story on saturday.

The better teams seem to know that you take advantage of every opportunity to score you have! While the worse teams seem to control the ball more, but never end up scoring. They get counter attacked successfully.

Posted from  United States

Well I watched this game twice. And what I’m reading here is really quite amusing. It’s beyond me how an entire country can be swayed by a sports chanel into beleiving they could have won this game. Size?…how big are Nedved and Rosicky?…more ball posession?…at one point it was over 60% for the US….this and that guy didn’t play up to his potential?….blah,blah,blah. The USA is so far from achieving success at this level of the sport, that you should all be happy you even made it to the tournament. Arrogance, false self confidence, and hype will not win games here. What it takes is several genarations of true commitment, humility, patience and many, many more lessons about the game like the Czechs gave you. Don’t whine about the loss, learn from it….it was the best thing that could have happened to you in this early stage of your development. The US soccer head was getting far too big for it’s own good. Now everybody pay close attention…there are still two more lessons coming…and there won’t be more like this for at least four years. We’ll talk again then. Best of luck.

Sincerely,

Dman

Posted from  Canada

A few points and questions from reading these posts – coming from someone who watches an awful lot of European football.

1. Why Keller? Hes been nothing special at Gladbach and surely Hanemann (sp), Tourettes timmy or, your best option, sweet talking Brad out of retirement would have been far better?

2. Good points about the size of the players. McBride does well in the EPL because he suits the team he plays for down to the ground, as well as being of a great size for EPL.

3. DaMarcus Beasley. I constantly watch this guy for PSV and he is utter bollocks, really. Why are the BBC calling him the danger man when all the viewers know full well its McBride.

4. How much are your players talked up? Weve been hearing that a super team of Donovan, Beasley, Adu and Besagno is going to win 2010. and then wetting ourselves. Whos fault is this? You do realsie that this tactic has crippled England and Holland many times before?

5. Most of your European players clearly arent EPL/Serie A/ la Liga standard. The ones in the top league are in poorer sides or reserve players, its in competitions like the championship where they shine (Eddie Lewis, Convey etc)

6. Whats the deal with the refusal to take latino/naturalized players? We (Germany) have several naturalized as have most of the top teams (Holland, France, even England have Hargreaves). Who are these latino players? I don’t watch much MLS but i do look for clips of some of the players i’ve heard big things about, i’d like to check them out.

7. Do you think that teams (and the floating support) willl have an added desire to beat the US because of political situations? Or because of the growing concern about Amercianisation of the sport (eg pks, cks, ‘tie game’, all that bullcrap)

Is Spector injured?

9. I bet you guys wished that Ryan Nelsen was a yank. Hes made a lot of fans in England, and is living proof that MLS players can make the grade. How many, remains to be seen.

Posted from  United Kingdom

Bruce Arena is ABSOLUTELY PATHETIC!!! HE WAS JUST SITTING ON THE BENCH LOOKING HIGH ON MARIJUANA SHOWING ABSOLUTELY NO EMOTION, NO COMMAND, NO ENTHUSIASM AND NO ANGER WHEN HIS TEAM IS DOWN 3-0!!!! GIVE ME A BREAK… WTF WAS THAT? he TOTALLY SUCKS!!!!!…. This is not a good coach.

Posted from  United States

One reply for Dman from Canada, one for Andy from the UK. (It’s an Anglophone post.)

REPLY THE FIRST
Re: Dman’s posting and all the many other assertions about American arrogance.

Much of what Dman says a few postings above this one makes sense, but (and I say this as a dual national and with all love and respect) I’m not sure my Canadian brethren are in any position to be lecturing anyone on what it takes to build a world-class soccer program.

Still, it is true that a lot of people see the US men’s team as guys who act like poor winners before they’ve actually won anything. And a few of the players have encouraged that perception. But I’m not sure how much the actual US team is to blame for the stupid hype and boastfulness. It seems to me that most of the US’s players have said nothing worse than “We’re not going to cower before teams just because the (European) experts think they’re going to beat us.” That’s standard athlete talk. Sometime around 1972, some enterprising athlete patented the “While we respect X, we certainly think we have a chance to beat X or we wouldn’t be showing up for the game” line for pregame press conferences. And this year most of the US’s players have been following the formula and paying that guy his 3-cent royalty every time they do so.

Most of the stupid hype has been coming from advertisers and commentators. Stupid hype sells commercials. And there are a lot of American soccer fans out there exhausted by years in the wilderness and ready to provide and hear stupid-hype commentary. In particular, the ABC-ESPN analysis teams are laden with former American soccer players who endured long international careers with little success, and it seems to me like a lot of these guys are desperate to see an American team pay back some of that frustration. It’s understandable, but it’s embarrassing and unhelpful.

REPLY THE SECOND
Re: Andy from the UK (a country that could teach the US a great deal about building an international contender)

In response to your #7.

Yes, most teams will want to beat the US for political reasons (I assume you mean reasons like Iraq and Kyoto). Even more so, people will want to beat the US because at the moment we’re the world’s only superpower, and many people in other nations resent that (a privileged group of people in) America controls so much of what happens in the world. Even if we were the very model of sane, respectful, humane superpower (and we ain’t), a lot of people would still resent America and want American teams to fail.

I think that’s part of why so many people elsewhere are, like Dman, so ready to see the American team as arrogant and counter-factual; those people (rightly, IMHO) think our President is both of those, and they paint the national team with the same brush. (The historical irony of this, of course, is pretty amusing. The same nations whose press corps decry American arrogance and “imperialism” often end up playing one or more of their former colonies.)

As for the Americanization of the sport, I have a hard time imagining that any such thing is happening and, if it is, a harder time understanding why or how. I doubt that there’s any fundamental “Americanization” of soccer at any level of training and tactics. Sure, Klinsmann is taking some grief for living in California and insisting that his players come in fit, and, sure, some are calling that “American,” but the South Koreans run more and better than we do. And if he’s Americanizing German soccer, how much do we have to pay him to come Americanize American soccer?

Past that, what Americanization do you mean? Just the lingo? Surely we, like every other nation on earth, are entitled to our own lingo–to our “PK”s, our “CK”s, and our “tie games” and all those other innocuous acronyms and phrases that seem to so horrify English speakers from other countries. I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with them other than they aren’t English–in what way is “spot kick” objectively better than “PK”? (And when I listen to American coverage, our announcers mostly say “penalty kick” or “penalty” anyway. “PK” is rare anywhere but in the microscopic statistical summaries of soccer games that constitute American soccer journalism in non-World Cup years. Ditto “CK.”)

If English or Europeans in general are picking up our soccer idiolect, surely that’s your own fault. It’s hard enough getting American journalists to cover soccer at home; it’s not like they’re flooding the European market with their heathen terminology so much that you have no choice but to adopt it.

(And even if they were, it would just make us even for your having inflicted “at the end of the day” on our national speech.)

hahaha USA sucks. You guys are going to take last place in ur group.

Posted from  Saudi Arabia

I think the game bearing the greatest political meaning the USA ever played was the one at the WC in 1998, a game vs Iran…

USA 0 – 1 Iran

It amazes me how much the americans are brainwashed by their own political propaganda. As for americanising the sport, as i recall the MLS initially did not allow matches to finish as draws they added a hockey style shootout for games that ended as draws. We have already seen some games in the world cup involving great matches that ended in entertaining honorable draws. I think that the only problem that the US have is to accept that winning isn’t everything and more can be learnt from defeat.
I think that the US team have a solid foundation in a good team, theres discipline, hard work, determination. What is lacking by the defeat to the czech rep is creativity skills on the attack that all the top teams posses every US attack was route one football, lofting the ball forward without thought, no clever midfield runs to support the attack as the czechs Nedved and Rosicky were so effective in doing.
And by the way what happeded to Adu (another sport personnel import from another country)? There was such a hype about him 2 years ago, touted as the new Pele.

Posted from  United States

HAHA,
America you suck. It was a proud day to be part czechoslovakian. Im 16 years old and i know you guys are pathetic. GO HOME. Play Your pussy football where you wear helmits. A country of softcocks. Play Rugby League. Thats a mans game, no helmits there. Just your balls, you guys dont have any so dont worry. i.e Australians are real men. You suck at soccer. Rosicky ate you alive. Australia are closer to qualifying than you guys and they have japan, brazil and Croatia to compete with. Toughest group in the cup. And we have 20 million people. You have 15 times as many. And you are still piss poor.
GO HOME YANKS…

Posted from  Australia

I agree with Adam. You guys are soft cocks. Give up on soccer. You arnt co ordinated enough or fit. Do you try to be shit?
or is that natural. good luck faggots…

Posted from  Australia

America. Listen to Adam and Phil. They are 100% right. America is a country of school girl bitches, Espicially on the socce pitch. Up yours America….

Posted from  Australia

Sheessh i apologise for the above posts very un australian ito kick someone while they are down. Although i am more than happy to see bruce arena to eat his words. He wrote Australia off as easy beats and he’s probably never heard of of most of our palyers.

The Problem with the USA is that they have too many MLS players and from what ive seen its nothing too spectacular.

Ausrtralias whole lineup Plays in ALL of Europe’s top leagues that is why despite are no 44 ranking no one was surprrised to see us start so well. our Players are house hold names in My country as well as overseas especially in the english premier league.

Our record proves our calibre defeating the asian champions japan and euro champions Greece as well as goin through the tougher qualiying that the US.

I dont remember the last time the USA beat teams like uruguay
but they seriusly need to make sacrifices and give Europe a go cos nothing the MLS can compare.

Posted from  Australia

u all suck, u fucken americans im glad they lost the match.

Posted from  Germany