Revolution at Chicago Fire, 9.25.11: MLS Supporters’ Shield Proposal, A Statistical Defense of Rajko Lekic, and More

The MLSsoccer.com recap article on New England’s 3-2 loss to the Chicago Fire on Sunday notes that the Revolution are “now all but mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.” A team that is 5-13-12 with four games to play should not simply be “all but mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.” It should be fighting to avoid relegation to a lower league. But of course teams aren’t relegated in U.S.-based sports leagues, and the MLS playoff format, in which 18 clubs vie for 10 spots, cheapens the very term “playoff team” and allows organizations as pathetic as these Revs to hold out hope well into September. That hope has mercifully been extinguished, and New England soccer fans can now turn their full attention to the EPL, La Liga, Serie A, etc.

While we’re on the subject of the MLS regular season: Is there a more meaningless hunk of sports hardware than the laughably named Supporters’ Shield, given each year to the MLS team with the best regular-season record? In most soccer leagues around the world, a team doesn’t just win a trophy for finishing the season atop the standings, it actually wins the league. Of course, most leagues don’t have playoffs.

I don’t propose doing away with the MLS playoffs, but league powers should truly reward the team that finishes the season with the most points. In my opinion, the Supporters’ Shield winner should be exempted from competing in all playoff games until the MLS finals. The Supporters’ Shield winner should be able sit and rest while all those many playoff teams battle it out for the right to play them in the championship game. That policy would keep teams like this year’s Galaxy, Sounders, and Real Salt Lake squads from resting their players in late September and October, and also keep fans everywhere interested in games involving teams that have already clinched playoff spots. It would also, of course, reward a team for performing consistently well all year long. As the playoff structure exists now, there’s little to be gained from winning the Supporters’ Shield; just ask last year’s Galaxy team, who finished atop the league but who lost to FC Dallas in the semi-finals. Of course, the Colorado Rapids barely slipped into the playoffs with 46 points (13 behind the Galaxy) and yet won the entire league.

But let’s move on to the Revolution match against Chicago, a rare 4:00 pm Sunday game and a rare second consecutive game in which the Revolution won the battle of possession. Of course, New England lost their last two matches (the first, you’ll remember, was against Portland) by a combined score of 6-2. That’s evidence that possession in itself is meaningless unless a team also plays good defense, creates chances to score, and capitalizes on those chances.

Speaking of possession, in another post, way back in July, I suggested that when Rajko Lekic is in the game, the Revolution are in effect always playing a man down. After all, he is almost always alone up top, and rarely is he involved in buildups or in trying to press the other team and regain possession when the other team has the ball. Since Lekic is injured and didn’t play against the Fire on Sunday, and since he was out for the second half of the Portland game (when the Revolution began to control the run of play), I thought I’d do a little digging to test out my hypothesis. If Lekic is in the game for the Revolution, what happens to the team’s time-of-possession numbers?

I don’t generally spend a lot of my free time poring over sports statistics, but I spent many hours yesterday gathering time-of-possession numbers, goals-scored and goals-conceded stats, etc., and placing that information on a spreadsheet. I’ve listed the most interesting statistics below. They apply to the 30 regular-season games the Revolution have played so far this year. I wouldn’t swear in a court of law that they’re 100% accurate, but then again I’m reasonably confident they are. I was surprised by what I found.

·      Goals scored per 90 minutes of play for Lekic: .31. The number is .20 if you take away his two penalty-kick goals. Those aren’t great numbers for a relatively well-paid striker, but read on.

·      Revs’ time-of-possession average for games in which Lekic did not play: 45%.

·      Revs’ time-of-possession average for games in which Lekic did play: 43%. So, I was right about the Revs holding the ball more without Lekic in the game, but then again the number went down by only 2%.

·      When the Revs win, their average time-of-possession percentage is: 43%.

·      When the Revs tie, their average time-of-possession percentage is: 42%.

·      When the Revs lose, their average time-of-possession percentage is: 45%. So, the Revs hold the ball more consistently when they lose than when they win, though again the numbers are close. (Their overall possession percentage per game for the season so far is 44%.)

·      Revs’ record, and winning percentage, without Lekic playing: 1-4-4, .259. (Note: When factoring the winning percentage, I counted a tie as 1/3 of a win, since a team is awarded one point for a tie and three points for a win.)

·      Revs’ record, and winning percentage, with Lekic playing: 4-9-8, .317. So, when Lekic plays (and he’s never been on the field for less than 45 minutes in any game in which he’s played this year), the Revs have a .058 better winning percentage than when he’s out of the lineup. (The Revs’ overall winning percentage this year so far is .300.)

·      The bottom line: Lekic may gripe and moan and jaw from time to time, even to his own teammates, but the numbers mostly back up his talk.

To return to the Chicago game on Sunday: The final 3-2 score line must strike the 5,000 or so people in the world who watched the game from beginning to end as bizarre. I know it does me. Chicago led 3-0 in this game from the 30^th minute to the 90^th. They got their first goal early, off an unforced giveaway by Benny Feilhaber in the midfield circle that led to a breakaway by Chicago and, ultimately, a penalty-kick goal for them. I argued last week about the importance of a good defense to a winning soccer team, but Feilhaber’s bad pass in the 4^th minute was a great example of how careless giveaways at midfield frequently lead to goals for the opposition.

Less than five minutes after Feilhaber’s gaffe, Shalrie Joseph couldn’t get control of a ball at midfield, and that too led to a quick Chicago counter. Speedy forward Dominic Oduro beat center backs Darrius Barnes and Franco Coria for Chicago’s second goal. The Fire’s third goal was—and you don’t hear this very often—the result of a lazy play by Matt Reis, who came way off his line and tried to clear an Oduro through ball. Reis kicked the ball completely without conviction, and Patrick Nyarko calmly blocked the kick with the bottom of his right cleat and then side-footed a shot into the open net.

The Revolution came on frustratingly late in this game. Kevin Alston, for instance, made a good attacking run and shot in the 75^th minute. Had that shot gone in, the Revs might have picked up a point. A tie would have seemed an impossible dream as late as the 89^th minute, but in the 90^th, Alston sailed a long cross into the box from the right wing. Chicago keeper Sean Johnson tried to catch the ball, but Milton Caraglio got in his way and the ball slipped out of Johnson’s hands and to the feet of Ryan Guy. Guy took an awkward shot with the outside of his foot, or maybe even his shin, but the ball sailed over and between two Chicago defenders and into the net. The Revs were down 3-1 with only 2 minutes of stoppage time left. It seemed like the archetypal useless goal.

But then New England scored again almost immediately, and there was nothing awkward about this one. Diego Fagundez, who came on in the 71^st minute, showed good skill by receiving a throw-in and using the inside of his right heel to flick a ball back to Caraglio, who then passed the ball squarely across the box to Guy. Guy beat the keeper with a good low shot to the near post.

After that, the Revs had only seconds left to tie. Shockingly, they might have pulled it off had Feilhaber’s cross from the left wing not sailed frustratingly out of reach of a sprinting Caraglio.

So while the Revs came on too late, at least they came on. I’d far rather watch that kind of effort than the kind the Revolution put forth relatively recently against the likes of Philadelphia, New York, and Houston—games in which they collapsed after promising starts. At the end of this one, the Fire wanted to get off the field and the Revolution wanted to keep playing. In this lost season, that’s at least mildly gratifying.

Revolution at Portland Timbers, 9.16.11: Building from the Back

Many years ago I read one of John Madden’s books about football (I suppose I should say “American football”). In one interesting passage, Madden recollected his time as Oakland Raiders head coach. Madden would sometimes get into friendly arguments with his boss, Raiders owner Al Davis, about which is the most important unit on a football team. Madden contended that you build a successful football team around its offensive line, whereas Davis felt that you should build a team around its cornerbacks. Neither man ever wavered in his opinion, though as I recall Madden considered cornerbacks to be the second-most important unit on the field, while Davis considered the offensive line to be the second-most important unit, so they were both pretty much in agreement. (Fascinating that the position of quarterback, let alone running back or wide receiver, never entered the argument.)

I thought about Madden and Davis’s old argument last night while watching a replay of the Portland Timbers’ 3-0 defeat of the New England Revolution in Portland. (The game actually took place last Friday). How do you best build a soccer team? Do you start with the midfield line? With the forwards? With the back line? With the goalkeeper? Which of those units is most important to a team’s success?

I happen to think the answer is defense. Let me digress just a moment and say that I’ve always taken the old soccer adage about “building from the back” to refer to what happens during games. That is, I’ve understood “building from the back” to mean that effective buildups—and eventually goals— start with a good defense, with defenders that can defend and effectively distribute. But maybe I’ve misinterpreted the old saying. Maybe it actually means that you build good teams by first installing a good defense and then by building around that particular unit, just as Madden thought that you build a good football team by first assembling a good offensive line.

Whatever “building from the back” means, anyone who has ever coached soccer at any level will know that a team’s chances of winning a game are grim if that team plays with even a single bad defender. I’d argue that New England’s dismal record this year (5-12-12 so far) can be attributed to a constantly changing and often below-average back line. It’s not that all of New England’s defenders are bad—they’re most certainly not—but the unit has had a near-constantly changing lineup, and it is missing a true left back.

Let’s start with the positive. Two of New England’s defensive starters this season have been good and for the most part injury free: center back A.J. Soares and right back Kevin Alston. They are dependable, but it should be noted that they lack experience; Soares is a 22-year-old rookie and Alston is still only 23.

As I’ve mentioned, the other positions along New England’s back line have been in a near-constant state of change. Darrius Barnes, only 24, has been mostly dependable this year. But he’s a central defender repeatedly miscast as left back. (He does occasionally get to play in the center, but that’s usually because would-be central defenders Ryan Cochrane and/or Franco Coria are unavailable.) Didier Domi was a natural left back—and might have spared Barnes the task of playing out of position—but Domi was old, often injured, and is in any event now long gone from New England’s roster. Chris Tierney prefers to play midfield, but he’s sometimes pressed into service at left back. The same can be said of newcomer Ryan Guy. I’m no doubt forgetting other players who have been asked to play left back this year for the Revolution, but it should be clear that the position has yet to be adequately filled.

As for the center back position, Cochrane and Coria have been inconsistent alongside the steady Soares. Last night, for instance, Coria had one of the most perplexing unforced errors I’ve seen by a Revolution player this year. In the 72^nd minute, with no pressure on him whatsoever, he tried to switch the field of play and his pass flew over Alston’s head and out of bounds. Alston appeared to stare back at Coria in disbelief. Dude, he might have been thinking, aren’t you from Argentina? And Cochrane—a native of Portland who presumably desperately wanted to play in front of his hometown crowd— didn’t even get on the field despite the back line’s poor performance in the first half.

Top to bottom, the New England starting lineup against Portland on Friday was actually a pretty good one. A midfield consisting of Benny Feilhaber, Shalrie Joseph, Chris Tierney, and Monsef Zerka is probably above average by MLS standards (though Zerka is still not in shape and was obviously exhausted after an hour of play in Portland). New England’s striker tandem of Milton Caraglio and Rajko Lekic is also respectable, though I’d like to see a lot more hustle when defending by both of them, particularly Lekic. And of course Matt Reis is a virtual MLS living legend. He’s leading the league in saves and generally having a stellar year even by his standards; the Revs’ problems have nothing to do with him. No, the Revolution’s problem is its back line.

New England coach Steve Nicol said it himself after the Portland game: “Our back four in the first half, that's why we lost the game tonight.” In fact, that’s why the Revolution have consistently lost all year long. Playing regularly with only two dependable defenders—and both of those young and inexperienced—is a recipe for a lost season. The back line in soccer is a lot like the offensive line in football that John Madden considered so vital to any successful team. Just like football offensive lines, soccer defenses must not only play well at the individual level, they must—more than any other unit on the soccer field—learn to play in concert, to communicate, to ensure that no attacker is left unmarked, to know when to clear the ball and when to settle it and make the short pass, when to make an overlapping run and when to maintain position, when to hold the line to create an offside call and when to sprint back and get between an attacker and the goal, and on and on.

Revolution management has made a great start building the team’s defense by drafting Soares and Alston. Coria is yet another youngster at 23, and he may yet work out for the Revs. He’s big and strong and good in the air. It’s conceivable that current emergency left back Barnes may move inside permanently, rotating with Coria and Soares. This would make sense. One of the Fox commentators of the Portland match made the good point that Barnes simply doesn’t like to play with his left foot and is incapable of making effective overlapping runs from the left side, as Alston does on the right. It’s tough to be a good soccer team if both of your outside backs aren’t comfortable making those attacking runs.

Management no doubt thought it could stabilize this year’s young defense by bringing in Domi and Cochrane, but that plan has failed. Domi has been jettisoned, and at 28, Cochrane is probably not in the Revolution’s long-term plans either. But whether Cochrane is here next year or not—and God knows they could use his experience—there is still a glaring hole at left back. This hole must be filled in the offseason unless the Revolution want to see continued declines in wins and attendance and a continued increase in on-field chaos.

Revolution at Philadelphia Union, 9.7.11: Rewind (and Taylor Twellman)

Before I got a chance to see the replay of the September 7 game against the Philadelphia Union, I’d heard that New England had collapsed yet again and given up a three-goal lead. The match ended in a 4-4 tie. I couldn’t bring myself watch the Union game until after I’d already attended and written about last Friday’s Dallas match, so this post is out of chronological order.

As expected, there was little pleasure to be derived from watching the Union/Revs replay, though it is true that eight goals were scored—six in the run of play—and a couple of those came off killer shots. But really: how much fun can you have when you know in advance that your team is going to melt down? Sadly, Philly’s late surge appeared foreordained even to the announcers who watched the game in real time. Color analyst and former Revolution striker Taylor Twellman routinely made the point that the game had a strange feel and that Philadelphia were going to come back. With New England up 4-2 in the 55th minute, for example, he said presciently, “With the way this season has gone for the Revolution, Stevie Nicol is nervous.”

New England was in retrospect lucky to go home with their single point. Philadelphia dominated possession (64%), outshot New England 28 to 9, and took 8 corner kicks to New England’s 3. As Twellman noted late in the first half, New England took five shots on target yet they’d somehow managed to score four goals. That bizarre statistic would hold up until the final whistle. When Sebastien Le Toux scored the equalizer in the 91^st minute—his second goal of the night—he rejected celebrating in favor of snatching the ball out of the net and sprinting back to the midfield stripe to try to get the win. Given the way Le Toux and his team were playing at the end, the fact that seven minutes of additional time had been given by the referee, and the fact that the Revolution were playing a man down due to an injury to Pat Phelan, it was a near miracle that Philadelphia didn’t in fact win.

Le Toux was man of the match. He missed some good chances to score early—two in the 4^th minute and another in the 14^th—but he fully redeemed himself in the end. I like the guy’s erect, almost regal European bearing on the field. He looks to me more Eastern European than French for some reason, perhaps because he sports a crew cut. He’s also as thin as Ichabod Crane, a reminder that good soccer players come in all shapes and sizes. All, I suppose, except fat.

I’ve already quoted Twellman, and I’ll go a step farther and say that I think he’s an excellent announcer. He’s knowledgeable, articulate, confident, opinionated, and passionate. Anyone who thinks Americans can’t by nature call a good soccer game ought to listen to him. I was moved to jot down many of his comments during the Philly match since they were so spot-on. I’ll end this post by quoting some of the better ones.

·       “[Rajko] Lekic is going to complain all game long. [He needs to] get off his rear end and get it.”

·      “I’ve seen closers come out of baseball games and throw the water cooler. That may have been my first experience of seeing a soccer player being subbed out and just kicking the water, Lekic just kicked the water all over the fans right in front of him. . . .  I was dying laughing over here. That’ll go over very well in the Revs’ locker room, I can guarantee you that.”

·      “Only in the Northeast do you get booed [in that situation].” [In the 89^th minute, after Phelan got a knee to the face and lay motionless on the field for a troublingly long time, many Philly fans booed as he walked off the field.]

·       “I’m not going to say I told you so, but New England has been God-awful this year.” [After Le Toux scored the equalizer.]

Revolution v. FC Dallas, 9.10.11: Live! (And Preceded by Tailgate)

My first live and in-person Revolution match against MLS competition was a good one: New England beat an excellent FC Dallas team 2-0 at Gillette. What surprised me most about my experience at last night’s game was my own confidence throughout most of it that the Revolution would prevail. That confidence was hardly justified given the Revs’ abysmal recent history of late-game collapses, and it was personally surprising since I’m one of nature’s pessimists. Not wishing to tempt fate, I did try to mask my optimism, as when Rajko Lekic scored the game-sealing goal in the 85^th minute and I turned to my companions and said, “Dallas has us right where they want us, I assure you.”

But as I say I never really feared Dallas would win. They had the lion’s share of possession—virtually all opponents do against this New England team—but the Revolution created more quality chances and deserved the three points. New England not only scored two goals, they could’ve pretty easily scored more. Near the end of the first half, for instance, Milton Caraglio sprinted on to an errant back-pass to Dallas keeper Kevin Hartman, dribbled around Hartman, and fired a shot into the side netting of the open goal.

Going to the game also reaffirmed for me the old notion that witnessing an event in person is very different from watching one on TV. Sitting in a stadium can be monumentally distracting, especially when the spectators aren’t uniformly consumed by the action on the field. Last night’s audience consisted largely of pre-teen suburban youth soccer players and their parents, just like my daughter and me. My eleven-year-old daughter went with me to the game not so much to see soccer as to hang out with her best friend, which is okay by me and no doubt speaks to her mental good health. In any case, most spectators in our section weren’t especially concerned with the game. During one stretch of play, for example, our entire section rose to its feet. Only, the spectators rose not to watch soccer, but to wave frantically at the Gillette Stadium cameraman, who had walked down the stadium steps to take crowd shots for the JumboTron. It was all a far cry from my usual soccer-watching experience, which includes sitting in a quiet living room taking notes on a computer and rewinding the DVR when I feel like it, all while my kids are asleep and my wife’s in bed reading young-adult fiction.

Some other “highlights”: having a conversation with my seat mate about why the Ocean Spray company would pay to have its logo plastered on the blue mesh fabric the Kraft Group uses to cover up the seats it can’t sell in the section behind one of the goals (“We’re Ocean Spray: Think of us, and think of a decaying fan base.”); spotting a fan wearing a floppy knit cap in Ghana’s colors and noting that there was probably a higher percentage of spectators of African descent at last night’s Revs’ match than at any of the Red Sox, Patriots, or Celtics games I’ve attended; recalling an African friend of mine saying that the Revolution would draw many more local fans originally from soccer-loving nations if only Steve Nicol’s charges played a more stylish brand of “football.”

Yes, all very distracting, but all worthwhile. I also “tailgated” for the first time in my life last night, a pretty pathetic statement from a 44-year-old guy who’s been to hundreds of sporting events, but then again I grew up in D.C., not exactly the epicenter of tailgating. Anyone who, like me, is on a budget and considering going to a Revolution game should know that parking is free and that you can tailgate in lot P6. Tailgating was a blast. Our group cooked DePasquale’s sausages on a little propane grill, drank some overpriced “craft” beer, kicked around the soccer ball, bonded with a group of five in the next parking space over that took me for three dollars in a game of Left Center Right. I did not begrudge them taking my money, especially as they’d graciously given us some of their grilled steak.

Our seats for the game were relatively cheap but not bad, in fact perfect for taking in the best play of the night, which started in the 14^th minute near the midfield circle. Shalrie Joseph ran onto a loose ball and beat two Dallas players, one of whom was my man Brek Shea, who unfortunately was mostly invisible during his 46 minutes. Joseph dribbled strong towards the goal and passed to the right flag. Caraglio tracked the pass down and back-heeled the ball to newcomer Monsef Zerka, who crossed it in to the six. Joseph ran on to it and slammed home a header for his eighth goal of the year, a beauty.

What else can I say other than that we had witnessed some very good soccer? And seeing Joseph’s goal live and up close was of course different from seeing a goal on the small screen. The players looked bigger and more powerful, the ball seemed to move faster, the lighting appeared whiter and more brilliant as it reflected off the players’ uniforms, the turf, and the white goalposts.

Finally, when you see a game on TV, you might be tempted to think that maybe, just maybe you could be thrust out there and not embarrass yourself, if only for a minute or two. But when you see world-class athletes perform right in front of you, you know better. You know they’d run right through you. When Joseph fearlessly ran on to Zerka’s cross and slammed his header into the narrow gap between the keeper and the near post, even my daughter cheered.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Belgium in Brussels, 9.6.11: Brek Shea and Juan Agudelo

It’s official: this blogger’s come down with Brek Shea fever. And I’m happy to say I’m not the only one. In sideline interviews after the U.S.’s 1-0 loss to Belgium last night in Brussels, English Premier League vet Clint Dempsey singled out Shea for praise, and coach Jurgen Klinsmann said it looked as if Shea had been playing for the national team “for ten years.” Not bad for a 21-year-old with just four caps.

There’s something about Shea’s presence on the field—especially when he’s on the ball—that makes him appear even larger than his listed height of 6’3”. I was surprised to hear ESPN announcer Ian Darke mention in passing during last night’s broadcast that central defender Clarence Goodson is 6’4”. Goodson rarely strikes me as particularly tall, whereas Shea, who stands an inch shorter, always strikes me as particularly tall.

To use a tired, I think American sports phrase, Shea “plays big.” To use a moderately fresher term, the guy’s a beast. I’m not exactly sure why this is. I think his commanding presence has less to do with his frequently mentioned shock of blonde hair than with his obvious physical strength (he’s lanky but solid—it looks like he doesn’t carry an ounce of body fat) and the fact that he runs down the field in a sometimes inelegant-looking north-south style that would make former New York Giants coach Bill Parcells nod with approval. In short, Shea occasionally lacks flair, even very occasionally borders on the awkward, but he’s strong and brutally effective. He lacks flair in a way that Magic Johnson used to lack flair on the basketball court. I’m not putting Shea on an athletic par with Johnson, but the latter’s effectiveness lay in the fact that he was both powerful and economical. He might not have dunked like Dominique Wilkins, but there was zero wasted motion when Johnson drove to the hoop.

An example of the economy of Shea’s game came in the final minutes of the match against Belgium. In the 89^th minute he received the ball near midfield along the left sideline and ran directly at and somehow right by the Belgium right back. It almost looked as if Shea were loafing, but he positively blew by the defender, created space for himself, and passed the ball back to Dempsey, who got off one of the U.S.’s only on-target shots of the night. Shea’s run was an example of the truism that good athletes often don’t look like they’re running hard and fast when they actually are. It never ceases to amaze me that sprinters like Usain Bolt and Michael Johnson appear to be jogging when they shatter world records. The guys they dust, by contrast, always look like they’re running at light speed, huffing and puffing and frantically slashing their arms through the air, veritable orgies of wasted motion.

Having talked up Shea, let me add here that there’s plenty of room in my soccer heart for another very young and promising U.S. player: Juan Agudelo. Agudelo came on at the start of the second half for Jozy Altidore. (Given his 40 caps, it’s easy to forget that Altidore is himself still only 21.) Like Shea, Agudelo has a pleasantly laidback or calm quality to his game. But Agudelo is unlike Shea in that his game is characterized far more by elegance and style than power. His ankles and knees seem to have extra joints, and he plays the ball equally well with the outside as with the inside of his feet.

Because of his soft touch and occasionally flashy game, I think many fans will be pulling for Agudelo to succeed perhaps a little more heartily than they’ll be pulling for Shea. Put another way, all those folks clamoring for a more Latin style of play on these shores will probably embrace Agudelo more warmly than they will Shea. There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, it’s only Bill Parcells and Bobby Knight types that don’t want to see a little flair on athletic fields. As for myself, I’m pulling equally hard for both Agudelo and Shea. It’s obviously very early in their respective careers, but here’s to hoping they continue to improve, to realize their potential, to march through their twenties playing alongside each other on the national team, a kind of beauty and the beast pair, running at defenses, raining crosses into the box, slamming balls into the net.

That might seem an odd vision or naive hope, coming as it does after three straight games in which the U.S. has scored a grand total of one goal. And it should be noted that last night’s loss was frustrating not just be because the U.S. didn’t score, but because of the paucity of chances they created. Regrettably, a failure to create scoring chances, even against teams we should rout, has been a defining characteristic of U.S. soccer for as long as anyone can remember. Shea and Agudelo probably won’t change that, but I love the fact that they’re young and getting praise from veteran teammates, coaches, and critics. Their recent play, along with that of the resurgent Altidore and the equally promising and almost as young Jose Torres, has been enough to keep Klinsmann smiling after matches, even though his U.S. teams are still winless after three tries.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Costa Rica in Los Angeles, CA, 9.2.11

The subject of the U.S. men’s national soccer team arose during the waning minutes of last night’s ESPN broadcast of the Andy Roddick-Jack Sock U.S. Open match. The match ran over its scheduled time and into the broadcast of the soccer friendly between the United States and Costa Rica at the Home Depot Center in Los Angeles. (Thankfully, the tennis broadcast only affected the pregame portion of the soccer broadcast; it didn’t run into the actual game.) The exchange between the tennis commentators went something like this:

--Wouldn’t it be great if the U.S. made it to a World Cup final in our lifetime?

--Well, what about winning it?

--That would be filthy!

Shortly after the Roddick match, our national team went out and lost 1-0 to the Republic of Costa Rica. It was as if they were reminding us that we’ll all have to lead biblically long lives if we hope to see the U.S. men win a World Cup. Costa Rica is of course hardly a world soccer power, and probably not much of a world power in any area that we First-Worlders are likely to measure. According to Wikipedia, it’s a nation of 4.6 million people with a per capita GDP of $11,215. By contrast, the U.S. has a population 312 million and a per capita GDP $47,123. And lest you think the relatively tiny, poor nation’s defeat of our soccer team last night was a fluke, the ESPN announcing team of Ian Darke and John Harkes indicated that the U.S. hasn’t beaten Costa Rica in our last five outings against them. (Unless I’m missing something, however, the Schedules and Results page of the official national team website indicates that we’ve only played Costa Rica three times since 2006, which I suppose is some consolation.)

All of this is standard stuff, of course. It should be common knowledge to anyone with even a passing interest in U.S. soccer that we’ve been eliminated from the last two World Cups by the Republic of Ghana, an African nation of 24 million with an anemic per capita GDP of $2,931. Obviously, a country’s population and affluence have little to do with its ability to produce good strikers. This is a large subject, and one I’d like to return to in another post, but let me just mention in passing how pathetic I think it is that many knowledgeable commentators, along with people who know virtually nothing about the game but who still like to talk about it, believe that the U.S. fails to produce great soccer players because we don’t put enough money into formal youth soccer programs. If we can’t get by Ghana in the World Cup, it should be obvious to anyone with a pulse that money isn’t at the root of our problem. Our problem is simply that athletes like Allen Iverson and Marshall Faulk and Dustin Pedroia—to take three random examples of American athletes in different “big three” sports that I think might have made excellent soccer players—didn’t throw open their screen doors as kids to go play soccer in the streets and on rocky fields. They might have been in organized youth soccer leagues, but they didn’t un-self-consciously play pick-up soccer the way kids do in Ghana and Argentina and England and Mexico. Our soccer problem is cultural, and no amount of money is going to change that.

Despite my little rant above, last night’s game was actually highly entertaining, and the U.S. played some exciting, even elegant soccer, especially early on. They dominated the run of play, holding the ball for 65% of the game, making 583 passes to Costa Rica’s 325, and taking 4 corner kicks to Costa Rica’s 1. Jose Torres improved upon his promising performance against Mexico, hustling and pressing on defense and passing effectively in the midfield. His good night started early, in the 4^th minute, when he pirouetted around a Costa Rica defender and laid off a beautiful pass to Brek Shea down the left sideline. And Torres hustled until the final whistle. Shea, meanwhile, also built on his solid performance against Mexico, going the full 90 minutes against Costa Rica. He made his share of mistakes, probably more than his share, but he always looked to be a threat. His night might be exemplified by a sequence in the 6^th minute. He made a bad touch on an outlet pass from Tim Howard, but he worked to win the ball back, engaged in a give-and-go with Jozy Altidore, then played a nice ball into space that Landon Donovan ran onto. That should have resulted in a goal, but Donovan side-footed the low shot just wide of the post.

Obviously, the entire match would have changed had Donovan made that shot, which was a virtual sitter for a player of his caliber. Despite that, and some of the low player ratings I’ve read online this morning, I thought Donovan had a strong game. Altidore also looked good, particularly in the box when settling long passes. Juan Agudelo came on as a substitute late in the game and he too played well. It’s a shame that he and Altidore didn’t get a chance to play alongside each other.

On the down side for the U.S., I thought Edgar Castillo looked out of his depth, just as he did against Mexico. If you’re going to have an outside defender routinely make forward runs as Castillo does, that player should possess great skill on the ball or he’ll give up possession and set up the other team’s counterattack. I haven’t seen Castillo play much, but I’m not sure he has that kind of skill. In the 53^rd minute, for example, he took a good one-touch pass from Donovan on the wing and made a horrible kick (Cross? Shot? Random expression of exuberance?) over the Costa Rica goal. In the 62^nd minute he sailed a ball to a Costa Rica player at midfield, prompting the normally restrained and amiable Darke to say, “That’s a dreadful ball by Castillo.” In the 88^th minute, when the U.S. was down a goal and pressing, Torres made an impressive play along the left sideline, splitting two defenders and getting the ball to Castillo. Castillo then just gave the ball away. I thought I heard Darke bite his tongue on that one.

But the larger problem for the U.S. was their inability to get a serious shot on goal despite their gaudy time-of-possession numbers. Costa Rica clearly let the U.S. dominate possession, banking that they could pack their box and selectively and effectively counterattack. Their plan worked perfectly, and though the U.S. got more shots off, Costa Rica’s shots were far more dangerous. When Costa Rica actually did score, in the 65^th minute, the goal came off a rebound from another shot that might have gone in. In other words, Costa Rica created two chances in two seconds and converted one of them. The U.S. created only one serious chance all night, when Donovan pushed his shot wide.

I don’t know if this should come as solace to U.S. soccer fans, but the game’s one and only goal was scored by Rodney Wallace. Wallace was born in Costa Rica but moved to the U.S. at the tender age of nine. He grew up in Maryland, attended the University of Maryland, and now plays for the Portland Timbers. In other words, we got beaten in part by one of our own.

There were others, of course, who beat us, including Costa Rica attacker Daniel Colindres, who came on in the second half and made some impressive runs down the right sideline. I just looked up Colindres’s name on the Internet, hoping to find out more about him, but there’s very little information out there. It was another reminder for me that there is a staggeringly high number of good soccer players in the world and that they don’t all come from places like Brazil, Spain, and Germany. Darke observed during the broadcast that the U.S.’s qualifying games to get into the 2014 World Cup will be difficult ones, not mere formalities. I couldn’t agree more strongly with him, and our continued lack of success against Costa Rica is worrisome. Before any of us starts dreaming about how “filthy” it would be for the U.S. to win a World Cup, we’d do well to remember that we still haven’t secured a spot in Brazil for the 2014 tournament.