USA v. France, 11/11/2011

[Basketeer]

Anybody else catch the match yesterday?

Some thoughts:

1) This Klinsmann team is looking a heck of a lot like the Bradley teams. Great effort, great hustle, solid defense, non-existent offense.

2) Team is desperately missing Jose Torres and Stu Holden. Maurice Edu is not an attack-minded central midfield pivot, yet Klinsmann keeps playing him here. Of all the CM's on the roster, only Michael Bradley can adequately fill that role in the absence of Torres/Holden. But he's best served as a deep-lying playmaker, which isn't really what Klinsmann is trying to do with the midfield.

3) Jozy Altidore looked very strong up front. He was the prototypical target man. Unfortunately, there was nobody to help him up there. But I'd still like to see C.J. Sapong earn a call-up before WC qualifying starts.

4) Danny Williams is not a winger or right midfielder. He's a defensive midfielder. Which seems to be the only type of midfielder Klinsmann has been calling-up thus far. Which partially explains why we haven't been scoring.


Here's the line-up I'd like to see against Slovenia:

9: Jozy Altidore
10: Clint Dempsey

LM: Brek Shea
CM: Michael Bradley
CM: Jermaine Jones
RM: Fabian Johnson

LB: Timothy Chandler
CB: Carlos Bocanegra
CB: Clarence Goodson
RB: Steve Cherundolo

GK: Tim Howard


And going forward, I think this is our strongest line-up, one that I'd like to see for the first WC qualifier:

9: Jozy Altidore, Teal Bunbury, C.J. Sapong
10: Clint Dempsey

LM: Brek Shea
CM: Jose Torres/Stuart Holden (if he's 100%)
CM: Michael Bradley/Jermaine Jones/Danny Williams
RM: Landon Donovan, Alejandro Bedoya

LB: Timothy Chandler
CB: Carlos Bocanegra
CB: Oguchi Onyewu, Clarence Goodson
RB: Steve Cherundolo (though I really want to move Chandler here)

GK: Tim Howard

[MikeAD]

Its hard to only give up one goal off of 14 shots. Danny Williams frustrated me the whole game, not sure why he is in that position with capable folks on the team. This team should get better as the roster gets set. I like what I saw but hopefully we can get more on the offensive side.

So far in the games I've seen we haven't done that yet. Something needs to be done to get the ball on our side more and get better balls offensively. If you can't shut out and you can't score you can't win (well here I go with the worthless cliches).