U.S. Men’s National Team v. Panama in Panama City, 1.25.12: The Little Things

The point can’t be made too often: soccer is a cruel game. I thought of this a week or two ago while watching a replay of Espanyol v. Barcelona, which surprisingly resulted not in a Barcelona victory but in a 1-1 draw. It was the first game I’ve seen involving Lionel Messi in which Messi failed to provide even a single moment that made me say, “This guy is just too damn good to be human.” If the demands of soccer are so great that they can, for an entire match, dampen the immortal mastery of Messi in his prime, imagine what they can do to the likes of players whose talent is merely world-class?

Which is to say that the U.S.’s drab performance against Panama on Wednesday night is hardly unforgivable, even in the wake of their invigorating play against Venezuela just a few days earlier. But the performance was mildly disappointing, even given the fact that the U.S. prevailed 1-0. Panama was on the front foot for long stretches of this game, even before the U.S. had to play a man down when Geoff Cameron was given a straight red card for a tackle just outside the 18-yard box in the 52^nd minute. Panama had 17 shots to the U.S.’s 8, 6 corner kicks to the U.S.’s 1, and—most tellingly—19 open-play crosses to the U.S.’s 3. Panama’s crosses were routinely dangerous, as were many of their shots. The U.S.’s scrappy opponents were highly unfortunate not to tie or even win this one.

So, yes, the U.S.’s effort was not a great one, but there were mitigating factors that went beyond the often cruel nature of the sport. The night was hot and humid, the stadium hostile. As I mentioned, the U.S. played a man down for forty minutes. Perhaps most important, the U.S. scored early, which sapped them of a sense of urgency. The goal came in the 9^th minute, and it was a good one. U.S. left back Zach Loyd sent a high right-footed cross into Panama’s penalty box. The ball glanced off the top of Chris Wondolowski’s head (or his defender’s, it was hard to tell which), ricocheted off Teal Bunbury, and fell to Graham Zusi, who calmly and accurately but very emphatically pounded a side-footed shot under the diving keeper and into the back of the net. From that point on, the U.S. set about killing the long game.

As for individual performances, relative newcomer Michael Parkhurst had a game he probably wants to forget. At 5’ 11”, 155 pounds, he’s small for a center back, and he was victimized on more than one occasion by high balls into the box. In the 78^th minute, for example, a Panama attacker got behind him. A cross then sailed over Parkhurst’s head, leading to a strong header by Panama that was just off target. On the play that led to Cameron’s ejection, a through ball narrowly slid by Parkhurst and fell to the foot of Panama’s Blas Pérez (recently signed by FC Dallas), who drew the foul. While the night wasn’t all bad for Parkhurst—he made some reassuringly composed clearances near the end of the first half, for instance—it was a definite drop-off from his unimpeachable performance against Venezuela.

It’s probably clear by now that this was not a game rich in revelatory moments. That said, C.J. Sapong came on for Teal Bunbury in the 76^th minute and put in an unspectacular, short but very smart and effective performance that belied his youth. (Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Sapong’s Sporting Kansas City teammate Bunbury, whose mostly poor play included an egregious run with the ball towards his own end in the 43^rd minute; he looked like a player in a pee wee league who’d suddenly forgotten which goal he was attacking.) On numerous occasions, Sapong won the ball at midfield and held it effectively when the rest of his teammates were dog tired and the game needed to be killed. Sapong didn’t score or even come close to scoring as I recall. But his outing was a reminder that soccer is not only a cruel game, not only an occasionally spectacular game, but a game that provides countless brief sequences of subtle importance, often far from either goal, that can go unnoticed by the uninitiated. A player, even Messi, can’t always dazzle. But even on down nights he can still be effective by working hard and playing intelligent, fundamentally sound soccer. As my high school basketball coach used to say: “What separates a great player from a good one? The little things.”

The 1991 Washington Redskins: One of the NFL’s Greatest Teams

Twenty years ago today, the Washington Redskins beat the Buffalo Bills 37-24 in Super Bowl XXVI in the Metrodome. I was living in San Francisco at the time, but I flew to Minneapolis for the game and was in the stands that day. The Super Bowl was the only NFL game I saw in person that season, but I and three displaced Skins fans in San Francisco watched every minute of every Redskins game on TV that year (no easy task in those days, but one of our group was a bartender who worked at a place with a satellite dish).

I had closely, religiously, followed other Redskins teams in the decade and more before 1991—including its Super Bowl championship teams of the eighties—but the greatest Redskins team ever was certainly that 1991 group. In my opinion it ranks with the five or so best NFL teams of all time. The players were remarkably dedicated to each other and to winning, as their Super Bowl victory and 17-2 record attest. (For evidence of just how committed the players were to each other, check out the articles, interviews, and video in today’s Washington Post Sports section commemorating the team.)

I mentioned in another post of this mostly soccer-themed blog that the 1991 Redskins were stacked top to bottom with above-average players. However, the team had no superstars. It is true that it boasted three future Hall of Famers in Art Monk, Russ Grimm, and Darrell Green. But no one ever thought of those guys as “superstars,” in fact that may be the first time the word’s been used in the same sentence with any of their names. If one were cynical, he or she might even dismiss them as boring players, which is more or less why it took so long for a guy like Monk to get elected to the Hall of Fame. His under-the-radar demeanor on and off the field made it easy to forget that he played on four Super Bowl teams and three championship teams, held significant NFL receiving records, was a willing and savage downfield blocker often used more like a tight end than a wide receiver, and was an acknowledged team leader. The New York Times appropriately reported his retirement announcement thus: “Art Monk quietly became one of the best wide receivers in National Football League history. Just as quietly, he retired yesterday.”

If I were to pick a single fact about Washington Redskins fans that shows them to be a knowledgable bunch, it’s the fact that Monk is their most beloved player, past or present. When the Redskins played the Cowboys on the last day of the 1996 season—their final game at RFK stadium—the team trotted out all the great ones during halftime. Charismatic Hall of Famer John Riggins may have brought the house down when he was introduced, but Monk positively demolished it.

Monk went for over 1,000 yards in 1991, and fellow receiver Gary Clark—my candidate for the most underrated football player ever—went for over 1,300 and averaged over 19 per catch. If you think I’m looking back at Clark through rose-colored glasses, go check out Hall of Famer Michael Irvin’s statistics and compare them to Clark’s. Clark’s stats are very similar to Irvin’s—each caught 65 career touchdowns and averaged between 15 and 16 yards per catch, for example—but you never, ever hear Clark’s name in connection with the Hall of Fame. This is particularly unjust, since Clark toiled for two full years in the USFL before being taken in the supplemental draft by the Redskins. Clark—quietly excellent, quickly forgotten—can be seen as yet another player that embodies those ’91 Skins.

The 1991 squad was not built around Monk and Clark, though, but around its offensive line, which remains one of the league’s greatest units. It yielded only nine sacks, allowing quarterback Mark Rypien to throw for over 3,500 yards and 28 touchdowns, and allowing running backs Earnest Byner, Ricky Ervins, and Gerald Riggs to combine for 21 touchdowns and over 2,000 yards on the ground. You could make the argument (and many Skins fans have) that Joe Jacoby was an even more dominating lineman over the course of his career than Hall of Famer Grimm (and Jake should almost certainly also be in the Hall of Fame). You could also make the argument that tackle Jim Lachey was in 1991 better than both of them, which should give some indication of the group’s quality. Grimm, a little long in the tooth by then, was actually a backup, which gives some indication of the group’s depth. Mark Schlereth, who would go on to win more Super Bowls with the Broncos, was the starting right guard.

I could go on about the offense, but I haven’t even mentioned the defense. I read in the Post today that the 1991 Redskins defense shut out their opponents three times in their first five games that year, a particularly amazing stat when you consider that since 1991 no Redskins team has shut out an opponent even once. Wilbur Marshall was sublime. His combination of size, speed, and athletic talent would have allowed him to dominate in any era. But how many fans today so much as remember that Marshall played for the Redskins? I’m reasonably sure that most football fans outside D.C. remember Marshall, if they remember him at all, as a guy laying waste to opponents with the 1985 Chicago Bears. But Marshall was every bit as good with the Redskins. In ’91, he recorded 135 tackles, 5.5 sacks, and 5 interceptions, one for a TD. The touchdown run was particularly memorable; Marshall looked like Walter Payton streaking down the left sideline, running half the field and freezing a defender brilliantly with a fake lateral just before running it in.

One of my favorite defensive players that year was role-player James “Jumpy” Geathers, whom as I recall the Skins picked up for nothing from the New Orleans Saints. Matt Millen said that Geathers and Jacoby were the strongest players he’d ever been around, which is saying something given Millen’s pedigree as a player. Geathers had a move he routinely used that year that I’d never seen employed before and haven’t seen since. He called it “the forklift.” Though Geathers was a rather wiry, tall defensive tackle, he was so strong that he could run at an offensive lineman, extend both his arms, and quite literally pick up the opposing player and drive him into opposing quarterbacks. It was positively degrading, and amazing. Geathers had only 21 tackles that year, but 4.5 of them were sacks.

I’m almost driving my fingers through the keyboard as I think back on all those players from twenty years ago. I suppose this modest reminiscence is in effect a thank-you note to them for performing so well and with such dedication. I appreciated watching them then, and, given the Redskins problems since that time, I appreciate them almost as much now, reflecting from my house outside Boston, Mass. So bravo, guys. Some of us still remember that season with striking clarity and remain grateful to have witnessed a collection of very good players willing themselves to be a great team.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Venezuela at University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Arizona, 1.21.12

I can’t remember the last time the U.S. so thoroughly dominated a quality opponent as they did Venezuela last night. It’s true that the U.S. managed to score only a single goal, and that didn’t come until in the eighth minute of stoppage time. But as anyone who’s watched more than a dozen games of soccer at any level knows, the final score often doesn’t reflect the run of play. This is especially true when a goalkeeper plays as well as Venezuela’s Jose Morales did against the U.S. He saved a Brek Shea header in the 23^rd minute and a Chris Wondolowski header in the 87^th, both shots that most keepers would’ve been helpless to stop. Morales tarnished his performance in my mind with a little gamesmanship near the end of the match. He and all his teammates extended stoppage time by complaining en masse to the referee that Morales had been run into while making a save. In the end, though, the Venezuela players’ shouting and moaning only increased the surprisingly high drama of this friendly and made the late goal—yet another header put on frame by a U.S. player—doubly satisfying.

Credit for the victory deserves to spread more or less evenly across the U.S. roster, mostly a collection of second-tier or B-team players, with the exception of A-teamers Brek Shea and Jermaine Jones (both of whom played the whole game). The friendly was played on a so-called non-FIFA date, meaning that players from most leagues around the world—most notably the English Premier League and the German Bundesliga—were unavailable. As a result, the U.S. roster is now choked with MLS players. Four MLSers—A.J. DeLaGarza, Bill Hamid, C.J. Sapong, and Graham Zusi—earned their first caps against Venezuela. Jones, of course, plays for Schalke 04 in the Bundesliga, and under normal circumstances he would not have been available to play for the U.S. this January. But he pulled something of an Albert Haynesworth last month while playing for his club side, stomping on an opponent’s foot during a stoppage in play and drawing an eight-week suspension.

Rather than further punishing Jones, U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann used the suspension as an opportunity to bring him into camp and even appoint him captain against Venezuela. As U.S. fans know, Jones can be erratic in his play and behavior, as his wildly up-and-down performances in the recent Gold Cup attest. For example, Jones had an excellent game against Jamaica. But against Panama he played poorly and gave former coach Bob Bradley an unjustified earful when he was taken off the field after 60 minutes. Still, there’s no doubt that Jones is a monster physical talent. Giving him the armband and attendant responsibility may have been just the thing to turn his national-team career into something a little less volatile and little more consistent and professional. And while no one likes the thought of rewarding shameful behavior, Jones didn’t stomp on anyone’s foot while wearing a U.S. shirt. Furthermore, he has fourteen caps under his belt, which is actually enough to merit consideration for the captaincy in this relatively callow group.

Whatever one thinks of Klinsmann’s decisions to call up Jones and appoint him captain, the holding midfielder was unquestionably the man of the match against Venezuela. He covered a huge amount of ground last night and was in excellent form. His final ball of the night was the corner kick that led to the lone goal of the game, scored by substitute Ricardo Clark.

Speaking of Klinsmann, he continues to be his likeable self, both during sideline and other media interviews—which manage to be both respectful and b.s.-free—and in the way he encourages his players to be creative and to aggressively take the game to their opponents. Taylor Twellman made the good point last night while calling the game that Klinsmann attempts to create situations in which his players will succeed, taking into account the players’ individual strengths. In the megalomaniacal world of coaching, this is actually an uncommon trait. Most coaches, professional and amateur, prefer to stick with a certain system that has worked for them in the past—say a 4-4-2 in soccer or a 4-3 defense in American football—and force any and all players to adapt to it. Last night, Klinsmann started with a single forward—Teal Bunbury—who has the skills to assume that role. But the U.S. played portions of the second half with three forwards on the field. As Twellman noted, a player like Wondolowski isn’t suited to playing the role of the single forward, so Klinsmann put him up top with others to get the most out of him.

Wondolowski did not disappoint. He came on in the 62^nd minute for the New England Revolution’s Benny Feilhaber and created opportunities to score. Wondolowski—with his Plasticine-like filet of side-parted black hair and fresh-scrubbed Catholic-schoolboy mien—may look like he should be wearing wrinkle-free slacks and keeping books for an accounting firm, but he’s a genuinely tough and polished player. Not only did he almost score off that header in the 87^th minute, he had another good header on goal minutes before that, and a minute before that he appeared to have drawn a foul in the penalty box, though none was called. (The referee, from Mexico, was admirably consistent and let the players play on when he reasonably could.) Wondolowski also showed a nifty bit of skill in the 83^rd minute, flicking a back-heel pass to Bunbury that led to a shot. And in the 76^th minute, Wondolowski artfully used his body to shield a defender from the ball in the penalty box, enabling him to get off a good shot and ultimately earn a corner. Wondolowski’s naked desire to score was refreshing, and you could see his frustration mounting with each near miss. It was even more refreshing to see him celebrate Clark’s late game-winner as if he’d bagged it himself. I don’t know if Wondolowski has a realistic shot of playing in World Cup qualifying matches this summer, but his effort against Venezuela almost certainly left a favorable impression on Klinsmann.

 Former New England Revolution defender Michael Parkhurst, who now plays for FC Nordsjaelland in Denmark, stood out as part of a back line that wasn’t tested much by Venezuela but that played with composure and consistency. Parkhurst and the Houston Dynamo’s Geoff Cameron make a formidable central tandem, and DeLaGarza—who plays central defender himself for the L.A. Galaxy—played well on the right side, making frequent attacking runs. Veteran Chivas USA and national team defender Heath Pearce played on the left. He didn’t have much of an impact, but then again he didn’t have to with the way Venezuela was packing their own box.

I can easily foresee U.S. soccer fans and pundits dismissing this friendly as simply our B-team beating visiting Venezuela’s B-team. But we should remind ourselves that Venezuela is no cupcake soccer nation. It finished fourth in last year’s Copa America, ahead of Brazil and Argentina, which is a respectable finish for virtually any nation on earth. And if last night’s friendly goes some ways towards proving that the U.S. program has more depth than a good South American nation’s program, then that’s cause for optimism. The uniformly solid performance by the U.S. last night may also be concerning for many of our presumed A-team players. Hard workers such as Cameron, Parkhurst, and Wondolowski may just muscle some of them off the roster.

Will You Come to My Pro Bowl Party, Will You Come?

Virtually everyone who follows the NFL regards the Pro Bowl as a joke. This is not just a prevailing sentiment, it is a monolithic one, as though Communist Party-type snitches lurked on every street corner ready to drop a dime on anyone with a dissenting view. I can’t recall a single line in defense of the Pro Bowl ever being written or uttered by a football writer, player, coach, talking head, or fan. Richard O’Hagan’s lead for a 2011 article in Bleacher Report speaks for millions: “Is there a more meaningless contest in professional sport than the Pro Bowl?” he writes. “As an exercise in utter pointlessness, it appears to be without equal.”

I don’t intend to challenge this take on the Pro Bowl and its cultural irrelevance. But I’ll admit that I’ve always been drawn to the game, or at least to its potential to be something exciting and fun. I still have a vague but deep-rooted memory of turning on the TV as a child and watching my first Pro Bowl, sometime in the early or mid-1970s. I was first of all delighted and surprised that there was more football to be seen that season after the Super Bowl. Since then, I’ve come to regard the Pro Bowl as a metaphor: it’s like methadone for a heroin addict who’s going off the stuff but still needs a fix, no matter how ersatz. (For this reason, and because Super Bowl players are now precluded from playing, I think it’s a bad idea to move the Pro Bowl to the week before the Super Bowl, as the NFL did a few years ago.)

When I was a kid I also thought it was fascinating that the NFL—a paragon of regimentation even in the long-haired, rough-and-tumble seventies—would condone players from the same team wearing helmets with different designs. The different-helmet-same-team thing is inexplicably cool to a football-card-collecting boy in elementary school. I still feel vestiges of excitement when I see all those variously colored and logoed helmets in the Pro Bowl. (Pro Bowl jerseys are, unfortunately and for no good reason, always ugly.) Finally, it was somehow life-affirming to see division rivals putting aside tribal hatreds in Hawaii to win one for their conference or for each other or for the winner’s bonus or for the love of the game.

At some point a decade or more ago, I began thinking about throwing a Pro Bowl party. I thought it might be fun in part because I find the very term “Pro Bowl party” borderline hilarious—so close and yet so very far from the ubiquitous “Super Bowl party.” I also thought a Pro Bowl party might have some real advantages over a Super Bowl party. Super Bowl parties tend to be fractured. Devoted football fans are on one side, irritated by all the distractions caused by the non-fans chit-chatting and strolling in front of the TV at critical moments. Non-football fans are on the other side, bored by the game and paying attention only to the newly unveiled commercials or to the bloated halftime show or to their own conversations.

At a Pro Bowl party, I reasoned, no one would care about the game and no one would feel compelled to watch, creating a more agreeable party atmosphere. Everyone could feel free to wear leis and the jerseys of their favorite teams, or to ignore the game altogether. And since virtually all teams are represented at the Pro Bowl—even teams like my currently dismal Washington Redskins—all fans could in some small way feel like they’re cheering on their respective squads in a post-season matchup. Furthermore, Pro Bowl games have the potential to generate more jokes than a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. Guests could even stockpile material beforehand, like: “Quiet down, everyone! This is an important series for the NFC!” or “It’s close to halftime of the Pro Bowl, when dozens of toilets all across America will be flushing simultaneously!” or “Where were you during Pro Bowl XXII, when a young Ken O’Brien of the Jets brashly predicted victory?”

Not surprisingly, most of my friends expressed only mild amusement at the idea of a Pro Bowl party. So I sat on it for years. Then, late last football season, I saw an opening. My wife—who hasn’t watched a football game from beginning to end in her entire life—joined a fantasy football league with some of her coworkers, almost all of whom were younger women with a similar lack of interest in and knowledge of the game. After last year’s fantasy season, I suggested that this bevy of good-natured women and their significant others might be the perfect group to invite to America’s First Ever Pro Bowl Party. My wife, who is a good sort on a party, agreed and sent out a completely non-ironic evite to her coworkers. Almost everyone accepted, and there was only one perplexed comment. “Wait,” it read. “Are you sure you mean the Pro Bowl and not the Super Bowl?”

Despite the initial confusion, the party went off reasonably well. We had fifteen or so guests, all of whom were endearingly game for the rather odd affair. They arrived with smiles and treats: craft beers, bourbon, wine, desserts. One woman wore a sarong, or kikepa, another a Tom Brady jersey. Either my wife or I (I can’t remember who) wore an old Darrell Green jersey of mine. She made coleslaw and macaroni and cheese among other dishes, and I smoked a ten-pound Boston Butt in sub-freezing Boston weather so we could serve pulled-pork sandwiches. All of the good food, drink, and company pretty much rendered the Pro Bowl broadcast that evening even more irrelevant than it might have been otherwise, even in my house.

When the game finally did kick off, just over half the partygoers continued to sit in the dining room or mill about in the kitchen, talking and eating and drinking and doing what hundreds of millions of other Americans were doing at that time: ignoring the Pro Bowl. The rest of us actually sat down to watch. After my wife’s bare-bones electronic invitation, I tried to gently reassure my fellow viewers that I understood no one actually cared about the Pro Bowl, that I wasn’t just off the boat from Estonia or wherever and confused about what TV broadcasts were appropriate to invite fellow Americans over to watch, that I wasn’t off my rocker. Things loosened up after a few jokes, and soon all felt comfortable joining in the mirth. It was a long game, though, and its grip over the people in my living room was needless to say loose from the start and never tightened. Witty banter in such situations is hard to sustain, especially when those gathered together aren’t old friends and/or completely sloshed. Most guests left before the game ended. It was after all a Sunday night, and it was only the Pro Bowl. Everyone assured my wife and me that they’d had a good time and wanted do it again next year, but I sensed they were mostly being polite.

The game was predictably unmemorable even for the host of America’s First Ever Pro Bowl Party. Still, I’d like to close by saying something about the 2011 game and something more about the Pro Bowl in general. First, it was heartening to see Redskins linebacker London Fletcher make his second appearance as a Pro Bowler in 2011. (He’ll get another chance in this year’s game.) He played hard and often with a smile. Being a fan of his, I actually expressed some mild excitement after one of his tackles. Expressing anything but contempt over anything related to the Pro Bowl is pretty much the acme of uncool, and I thought I sensed some of the guests stiffen at my unsophisticated reaction. After all, even Hall of Famers want nothing to do with the Pro Bowl. In a broadcast a week before last year’s game, Troy Aikman gave advice to first-time Pro Bowlers. Don’t go into the locker room before the final gun, he laughingly said, because the commissioner doesn’t like that. After the game, AFC coach Bill Belichick said dismissively of the Pro Bowl, “It is what it is.”

While I don’t feel much warmth towards the taciturn Belichick or his erstwhile boss with the Giants, Bill Parcells, the latter once said something about one of his former players that has always stuck in my mind as fantastic. Parcells talked about how Lawrence Taylor—maybe the best defensive player I’ve ever seen—was a “parking lot guy,” meaning someone who would play football in the parking lot after a game without anyone watching, just because he loved playing. I don’t vividly recall Taylor’s play in any Pro Bowls, but I’ll bet he played hard and had fun, a lot like 13-year veteran London Fletcher did last year. Another Redskin—the late Sean Taylor—was also a parking lot guy. His hit on an AFC punter trying to run for a first down in the 2007 game is maybe the only Pro Bowl highlight that has ever attracted a significant number of viewers on YouTube. It certainly attracted genuine applause at the game itself, as the video attests. Even the blown-up punter pops off the deck to congratulate Taylor.

I submit that the NFL should insert a Parking Lot Guy clause into its Pro Bowl player contracts. Give each player the right to opt out of playing. Tell him, in essence, that you had a great year, you’re going to get this Pro Bowl Selection honor and you’re going to get the money that comes with it. HOWEVER, the NFL is not going to fly you and your family to Hawaii and put you up in a hotel unless you actually want to play in the game. If you do not want to play in the game, then thank you for your honesty and please stay home and accept the check (less any winner’s bonus) with our compliments. We will move down the list of players at your position based on Pro Bowl votes until we find someone who does want to play in a game with the other best players in the world, someone who will play for free plus any winner’s bonus, someone who will leave the game early only because he’s been taken out by the coach and wants to go play pick-up in the parking lot.

If the NFL did that, then throwing a Pro Bowl party might not be such a laughable idea. 

POSTSCRIPT: Last year’s First Ever Pro Bowl Party may have been more of a success than I realized. As I was proofreading this post, I received an email from my wife, who is now at a sales conference in Florida with most of the attendees from last year’s soiree. Her email reads, in part: “Everyone is asking about the pro bowl party. Do you want to draft the invite?”