United States Soccer

Yeesh, Bocanegra with a turnover and almost turns into a goal for Brazil.

Beautiful ball my Bradley through the backline helps lead to the goal with Gomez finishing it off with a header.

Our offensive capabilities appear to be fine at this point.... our defensive prowess though is lacking. Our backline is REALLY poor.

I'm sitting right on the line here in DC...how'd he miss that offsides? I'm sitting right here.

Also, onyewu is spoiling slow in person

This game has been a rather deflating. Young brazilian players that have showed extreme talent and poise and have absolutely run through us. Things don't look good for us at this point. Yeah, yeah this is Brazil but this team didn't have all their best players either. Things will only get tougher.

Whats your impression of the team mexitucky? You have a first hand look at the team so I ask your opinion of it.

I thought that we were just as athletic up front. Once the game opened up our center backs were exposed. Live, Onyewu looks DONE. He is so slow and Bocanegra is right behind him. Fabian Johnson is the real deal. The hand ball in the penalty area happened fast, was that legit? Also, they looked offsides on their last two goals. The US had 5 legit chances to score. I don't feel to bad about them as long as Onyewu never plays again. Our future in the back scares me to death.

Originally Posted by mexitucky

I thought that we were just as athletic up front. Once the game opened up our center backs were exposed. Live, Onyewu looks DONE. He is so slow and Bocanegra is right behind him. Fabian Johnson is the real deal. The hand ball in the penalty area happened fast, was that legit? Also, they looked offsides on their last two goals. The US had 5 legit chances to score. I don't feel to bad about them as long as Onyewu never plays again. Our future in the back scares me to death.

The last two goals were questionable and I know at least one of those was offsides as even the commentators pointed it out. Regardless, it seems we can compete up front and in the midfield. Like you said, our defenders/backline are insanely poor.

Johnson and Bradley were easily our best two players tonight in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Show Stopper

The last two goals were questionable and I know at least one of those was offsides as even the commentators pointed it out. Regardless, it seems we can compete up front and in the midfield. Like you said, our defenders/backline are insanely poor.

Johnson and Bradley were easily our best two players tonight in my opinion.

Gomes, Torres and Jones did real good work.

Originally Posted by mexitucky

Our future in the back scares me to death.

I don't know... we're still playing some old guys in Bocanegra and Cherundolo and I think tonight was probably Gooch's last appearance for a while. Outside of last summer, we really haven't seen much of what the future is going to look like back there. Given the relative success of those guys over the last several years, we have a lot of young defenders that we've only seen once or twice. I'm curious to see if he does some more experimentation with those young guys in the next round of call-ups for qualifying matches this fall. Guys like Eric Lichaj and Tim Ream I definitely expect to see more of going forward.

Originally Posted by Show Stopper

Our offensive capabilities appear to be fine at this point.... our defensive prowess though is lacking. Our backline is REALLY poor.

Pretty much sums up last night. At the same time, outside of Bradley, it seemed like the midfield spent the first 30 minutes trying to pass the ball to guys wearing yellow shirts. Some really poor passing early on. Lots of credit to Brazil on that, who played some serious high pressure that our guys just couldn't seem to get away from.

But we definitely had our chances and 4-1 is a harsh scoreline considering we were a hair away from making 3-2 at one point and had serious chances late to make it at least 4-2.

Gomez, Bradley and Johnson were heroes last night. Bradley right now might be the best proof I've ever seen for the argument that significant playing time in a top league does more than anything else to help refine skills. Since beginning his stretch with Chievo Verona in which he's started almost every game, he's been fantastic.

Mexico beat Brazil 2-0 yesterday.

I didn't get a chance to watch the Canada game yesterday.... how did we look and how did some of the players fare? A 0-0 draw against an inferior team doesn't speak well obviously but I was hoping someone might have a little insight if they were able to watch the game.

Originally Posted by Show Stopper

I didn't get a chance to watch the Canada game yesterday.... how did we look and how did some of the players fare? A 0-0 draw against an inferior team doesn't speak well obviously but I was hoping someone might have a little insight if they were able to watch the game.

They looked just like the score indicates...terrible! It was a pathetic display. Almost seemed like they were giving about 80% effort.

Is tonight's World Cup Q game on television by any chance?

Originally Posted by Wireman

Is tonight's World Cup Q game on television by any chance?

I think it's supposed to be on ESPN and ESPN3.com.

I'm curious to see what Klinsmann comes out with after that embarrassing 0-0 draw in Canada on Sunday. There's no reason why this scoreline shouldn't be similar to one in the Scotland match a couple weeks ago. Anything less than a decisive win would be a HUGE embarassment considering that Antigua and Barbuda, on the whole, has about as many people as Owensboro.

Here's what I'm hoping for

--------------Gomez--------------
--Dempsey ------------Donovan---
-------Edu-----------Jones--------
-------------Bradley---------------
Castillo-Bocanegra-Goodson-Cherundolo

Goodson has earned that starting spot in the back over Onyewu and we can beat A&B without Fabian Johnson; give him more time to recover from that injury so he can start down in Guatemala City on Tuesday. I think we're looking good with the Edu/Jones/Bradley midfield but I'm not sure where to position them. Bradley has been, without a doubt, our best distributor in that position, so the question is: do you put him in the back, to distribute forward and get attacks going, or put him further up, making sure we have a good ball-control guy to maintain attacks and possibly set up Dempsey or Donovan along the wings?

Both left backers are out of the lineup with injuries tonight...probably will move Bocanegra to left according to ESPN.

That game gets a big, fat "meh."

Herculez Gomez was solid; he's got that killer instinct and a drive to the ball that we've been lacking up front. Clarence Goodson made good on Klinsmann's choice to start him at center back by putting himself in front of Antigua's best scoring chance in the first half and had a solid game.

On the other hand, Onyewu revealed why the choice was made to start Goodson over him by playing slow and being almost singularly responsible for Antigua's goal by positioning himself extremely poorly. Given how he's played, I don't imagine he'll be called up for the next round of games in September... I certainly wouldn't bother.

Two important things happened in this game: 1) we cap-tied 21-year-old forward Terrence Boyd, who plays for Borussia Dortmund in Germany and whose mother is German, when he came on in the 79th minute and 2) we grabbed the first three points in our quest to qualify for Brazil 2014. Not the dominating, Scotland-match-like performance I was hoping to see, but we'll take the points.

Originally Posted by Getslow

That game gets a big, fat "meh."

Herculez Gomez was solid; he's got that killer instinct and a drive to the ball that we've been lacking up front. Clarence Goodson made good on Klinsmann's choice to start him at center back by putting himself in front of Antigua's best scoring chance in the first half and had a solid game.

On the other hand, Onyewu revealed why the choice was made to start Goodson over him by playing slow and being almost singularly responsible for Antigua's goal by positioning himself extremely poorly. Given how he's played, I don't imagine he'll be called up for the next round of games in September... I certainly wouldn't bother.

Two important things happened in this game: 1) we cap-tied 21-year-old forward Terrence Boyd, who plays for Borussia Dortmund in Germany and whose mother is German, when he came on in the 79th minute and 2) we grabbed the first three points in our quest to qualify for Brazil 2014. Not the dominating, Scotland-match-like performance I was hoping to see, but we'll take the points.

My thoughts are similar to yours especially on Onyewu. Hopefully he doesn't sniff the field again in the future unless there is an injury like the one yesterday.

Also I think this team is extremely unselfish to a fault. They often are making too many unnecessary passes when in the box or just outside of it and are thus passing up good opportunities. In cases like this, some selfishness is a good thing. Landon Donovan passed up at least two opportunities last night to go to the goal and take a shot but instead took the ball out wide closing the opportunity to score.

Also Gomez was very impressive last night.

Gomes is really good. I can't wait until he held w Donovan and Dempsey. He missed a couple of their find to the far post last nht.I like our midfield. Torres is looking odd man out. I like the fact that they can pass and defend. Hopefully we can figure something out in the back.