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.