Thoughts on Graham Zusi and Landon Donovan after the U.S. Men’s National Team Win over Honduras in Salt Lake City, 6.18.13

Going into the June 2 friendly against Germany in Washington, D.C., Jozy Altidore hadn’t scored in eleven straight U.S. men’s national team appearances. He broke that streak with a stunning volley against Germany and proceeded to score critical goals in the three World Cup qualifiers that followed, most recently netting the only goal of the game in the U.S.’s win over Honduras in Salt Lake City. Altidore went from being the main story of the U.S. men’s national team to being the main story of the U.S. men’s national team, just for different reasons.

The media fixation on Altidore probably speaks more to the shallowness of the U.S.’s striker pool than anything else. But after three straight qualifying victories, U.S. fans can be excused for ignoring their team’s deficiencies. With six of the U.S.’s ten final-round CONCACAF qualifiers having been played, the Yanks are leading the hexagonal, two points ahead of Costa Rica and five ahead of Mexico, their closest pursuers. The final round is, in fact, shaping up to be easier for the U.S. than the semi-final round, in which three Group A teams (the U.S., Jamaica, and Guatemala) beat up on one team (Antigua and Barbuda) but couldn’t distance themselves from each other. Given that three of the six final-round CONCACAF teams will go to the World Cup, and a fourth will participate in a two-game play-in series against the Oceania champion, the U.S. will now likely have to average only about a point and a half a game to advance to Brazil next year.

So, the U.S. is in a good position in this final round, and its players and coaches should be commended. As for the players, Michael Bradley, DaMarcus Beasley, Graham Zusi, Eddie Johnson, Clint Dempsey, Fabian Johnson and Altidore have distinguished themselves in these qualifiers. As for the coach, Jurgen Klinsmann has shown a willingness to experiment, and his creative moves have paid off. His most notable decisions have involved the U.S. back line. He’s paired Matt Besler with Omar Gonzalez in the center and played natural midfielders Beasley and Brad Evans as outside backs. That unexpectedly appointed group has largely been responsible for the U.S. holding their opponents to a single goal in the last five qualifiers.

All of that said, the U.S. will need all the outfield quality it can get when it (presumably) goes to Brazil next summer. The recent friendly loss against Belgium was a reminder of the daunting skill and depth of highly ranked FIFA teams, which the U.S. can’t match. I like Brad Evans’s grit, smarts, and willingness to do whatever his coaches ask of him as much as the next guy, but how is he—a 28-year-old middling MLS performer playing out of position—going to do against world-class strikers? He was exposed a number of times against Panama and beaten more than once against Honduras, most notably in the 84^th minute when Roger Espinoza blew by him on a counter attack, only to hold the ball up (as if taking pity) and wait for his teammates.

Which brings me to the subject of Landon Donovan. I find it difficult to believe that some, including Jurgen Klinsmann, have doubts about whether he could help the current U.S. A-team. To take a representative example, check out this May 16 article in The Guardian, called “Landon Donovan: should USA coach Jürgen Klinsmann bring him back?” The writer (Elliot Turner) pointedly asks of Klinsmann’s decision about Donovan: “Should we care?” Turner goes on to mention that, while Donovan is the U.S.’s all-time leading scorer, Donovan’s fellow players might feel “aggrieved” at his decision to take an extended vacation last winter and spring, that Donovan is 31, that “you either love Donovan or you love to hate him,” and, finally, that Donovan is “not indispensible” to the U.S. national team. I suppose that last shot means that we shouldn’t care if Donovan gets the call for the next round of qualifiers.

What Elliot fails to mention, what almost every writer and commentator fails to mention when the subject of Donovan and his value to the current national team arises, are the chances Donovan creates for his teammates. One shining exception to this rule is Matthew Doyle, aka The Armchair Analyst, who last October wrote this about Donovan’s 2012 club-team play: “Donovan is insanely efficient. He creates just under three chances a game; only one other player in the league (Robbie Keane, which probably says something about their chemistry) creates as many as two. Guys who are having Best XI caliber seasons — Mauro Rosales, Felipe and Brad Davis come to mind — aren't within shouting distance of LD.”

Last season, Donovan was second in MLS with 14 assists, behind only Graham Zusi, who had 15 on the year but who averaged fewer assists per minute than Donovan. It is true that Donovan had just a single assist for the U.S. national team in 2012, but his 2013 MLS assist numbers prove that he still has the ability to create for his teammates. Watching him and Keane play off each other last year was MLS at its best. And as for all-time USMNT statistics, Donovan is not just alone on the assist mountaintop, he’s alone on the entire mountain. He has 48 assists 144 appearances. Cobi Jones is number two on the list with 22 assists in 164 appearances, and the great Claudio Reyna is number three, with 19 assists in 112 appearances.

If you’re still convinced Donovan can’t add significant value to the U.S. team, go take a look at the current USMNT roster and try to maintain that conviction. The roster includes Edgar Castillo, Maurice Edu, Joe Corona, Terrance Boyd, Brek Shea, Michael Parkhurst, and Danny Williams, along with six goalkeepers. Yes, Donovan is not directly be competing for some of those players’ positions, but (goalkeepers aside) does a player’s normal position really matter much to Klinsmann? Did anyone envision two months ago that DaMarcus Beasley and Brad Evans would start together as the U.S.’s outside backs in World Cup qualifiers? If you really want to get creative, and get your highest-quality players on the field, why not move Zusi, who can run box to box all day long, to right back in place of Evans and put Donovan on the right side of midfield? Then you’d have the U.S.’s top assist-makers working off each other down that right sideline, with the equally dangerous Beasley and Fabian Johnson on the left.

Donovan has been named to this summer’s Gold Cup preliminary roster, made up largely of USMNT B-team players, young hopefuls like Jack McInerney and Mix Diskerud and veterans like Carlos Bocanegra and Oguchi Oneywu attempting to get back onto the A-team. The roster has, however, a significant number of current A-teamers, including Beasley, Besler, Gonzalez, Herculez Gomez, Eddie Johnson, and, most significantly, Zusi. I look forward to seeing how Klinsmann uses Donovan and Zusi together. I doubt if he’ll move Zusi to right back given the preliminary roster, but I for one would love to see him start a backline of Zusi, Beasley, Besler, and Gonzalez, with Donovan ahead of Zusi on the right. That back line, and that right side combination of Donovan and Zusi, could give the U.S. its best chance to advance deep into the World Cup finals tournament in Brazil next year.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Panama, Seattle, 6.11.13

Some sports-related clichés are meant to describe a situation in which an athlete’s physical talents, fitness, intelligence, and confidence mystically coalesce into a dominating performance. A player is “in the zone” or “locked in” or “letting the game come to him.” I don’t know if those clichés applied to Jozy Altidore in the U.S. men’s national team’s 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Panama last Tuesday, but I do know this: The man was feeling it.

I’ve never seen Altidore play with such self-assurance as he did against Panama, in particular during the first half. He hustled, as in the 10^th minute when he won a ball at midfield on a strong defensive play. He used his body to stonewall defenders, as he did in the 27^th minute when he started a nice sequence for the U.S. that nearly led to a chance. He exuded comfort and confidence on the ball, as he did in the 32^nd minute when he worked in a tight space near the flag to win a corner.

And after ten or fifteen minutes you just knew he had a goal in him. It appeared that that goal would come in the 34^th minute, when Altidore, standing with his back to the goal, received a long pass from left back DaMarcus Beasley. Altidore thoroughly schooled Panama defender Román Torres, muscling him off the ball, turning and splitting Torres and fellow defender Leonel Parris en route to the goal. Torres made a lunging, clumsy tackle, taking down Altidore about ten yards inside the box and whiffing on the ball. The referee, though, missed the call and signaled for a Panama free kick.

After the takedown and call, cameras showed Jurgen Klinsmann furiously barking complaints from the sideline. And while I’m no fan of berating refs, it was hard to blame the U.S. coach. The soccer Gods agreed, and quickly rushed to balance the Karmic scales. Within a minute, Michael Bradley picked up the ball at midfield and ran at the Panama defense, eventually sending a pass into space for U.S. left winger Fabian Johnson. Johnson, who’d played a poor cross into the box just five minutes earlier, made no mistake this time, sending a flawless cross towards the back post and just out of reach of the Panama keeper. Altidore was waiting to side-foot a shot into the back of the net and celebrate with the overwhelmingly pro-U.S. crowd of 42,000 in Seattle.

Speaking of which, this was the U.S.’s first time playing at Seattle’s CenturyLink Field; judging by the result and the U.S. players’ reactions, it won’t be their last. Bradley, not known for his verbal effusiveness, said this afterwards: “Obviously for me you can’t talk about the game without talking about the crowd—unbelievable. The best crowd I’ve played in front of in the United States without a doubt. From all the players, a big thank you to everyone who was here in the city who makes this a special night for us. People should know the difference it makes when you play in an atmosphere like this.”

The only dubious aspect of the venue was its surface, which is normally FieldTurf (i.e., plastic). For the Panama match, though, the plastic surface had been covered in sod, and players from both sides slipped frequently, especially early. In the sixth minute, two Panama players separated by a few yards made a cut and slipped simultaneously. It looked choreographed. Later, and more significantly, U.S. right back Brad Evans was beaten badly for speed. But the Panama attacker, with no direct pressure, slid and fell on the surface. I mention all this in part because I don’t care for watching games played on artificial turf and wish there weren’t so many of them in this country, all the way down to youth leagues. And artificial turf is of course the reason that the patchwork, slippery sod had to be laid down in Seattle for the Panama game in the first place. As Beasley said before the match, “It’s obviously not the best or the same as regular grass, but I'd 100 percent rather play on this than on [artificial] turf.”

Ah, Beasley. In the space of a few games, he’s now my personal favorite player on this U.S. roster, and he turned in another stellar performance against Panama. He got forward so often and so effectively that he might as well have been playing in the midfield. His crowning moment should have culminated in a goal. In the 80^th minute, still running like a fitness addict ten years his junior, Beasley perfectly read a U.S. buildup, came streaking into the Panama box, received a nice through ball from Altidore, and deftly got off his shot, which glanced off the outside of the post. He was picked up off the turf by Clint Dempsey and calmly ran back to his defensive position, equally calmly flashing a thumbs-up to Altidore for the through ball.

Beasley is pure class, and I can’t get enough of him. Unfortunately, he received a yellow card in this match and so will have to miss Tuesday’s qualifier against Honduras. I fear this bodes ill for the U.S., even against a depleted Honduras side. Along with Bradley, Beasley is indispensible to this current U.S. roster. He’s the only U.S. defender with recovery speed, his soccer IQ is second to no U.S. player’s, and he can attack better than any other U.S. defender, including Fabian Johnson, who will no doubt replace him on defense against Honduras.

But that’s not the note to end on. With the exception of Evans, who was picked on by Panama and looked vulnerable, the U.S.’s performance against Panama was uniformly good, excellent even. Along with Altidore, Beasley, and Bradley, Geoff Cameron deserves praise. Cameron played a remarkably solid game at holding midfielder in Jermaine Jones’s absence. (Jones sat out the game after suffering a concussion against Jamaica.) Cameron broke up a significant number of Panama buildups with well-timed tackles. He also looked good on the attack. His perfectly placed ball over the Panama defense in the 53^rd minute promptly led to a goal by Eddie Johnson. Johnson, playing in his club team’s stadium, also played notably well, filling in for Graham Zusi (unavailable due to an accumulation of yellow cards) in the midfield. Johnson’s takedown of Cameron’s pass on that play was excellent, as was his finish.

In case you missed it, the USMNT quote sheet has a good picture of Johnson acknowledging the crowd after the goal, a smiling Beasley clinging to his back.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Jamaica, Kingston, 6.7.13: Is the Linesman to Blame for Jamaica’s Goal?

Here are the key points of the U.S. men’s national team’s 2-1 World Cup qualifier victory in Kingston on Friday: Jurgen Klinsmann started the same group of players in consecutive games for the first time in his position as U.S. head coach. Brad Evans, a peripheral figure for the U.S. two weeks ago, has seemingly emerged as the team’s regular right back, and he netted the dramatic game-winning goal in stoppage time after being shifted to midfield due to a Jermaine Jones injury around the hour mark. Jozy Altidore has now scored in back-to-back games after having failed to score in his previous eleven international matches. Graham Zusi, who assisted on Altidore’s goal, played well, as did Michael Bradley, who assisted on Evans’s. Fabian Johnson did not play particularly well. Clint Dempsey had a drab, largely invisible performance—a tendency of his that is not widely recognized—and the U.S. back line looked at times disorganized, giving up what seemed to be a heartbreaking soft goal off a free kick a minute from time.

That soft goal is perhaps the most intriguing storyline of the game. I watched the game in a Boston sports bar amidst hundreds of Bruins fans watching game 4 of the playoff series with the Pittsburgh Penguins. There was only one other soul in that huge, crowded bar besides myself who was watching the soccer game, a genial twenty-something previously unknown to me who spent as much time looking at and fiddling with his smart phone as he did watching the match. After the Jamaica goal (scored by Jermaine Beckford) he informed me, “People are saying the Jamaica players were offside.”

Perhaps my young fellow USMNT fan was following SI writer Andy Glockner, who, according to a Bleacher Report article by Tyler Conway, tweeted after the match: “I still can't believe JAM's goal counted. Beckford was clearly offside. He was the only guy that was. How do you miss that?” In his Bleacher Report article, Conway seems to share some of Glockner’s disbelief, but adds, “most will forget about the poor officiating after Friday night” because of Evans’s subsequent goal.

But was this really a case of poor officiating? Highlights of the game can be found at the following mlssoocer.com page. Replays of the goal can be seen from three or four different angles on those highlights. After reviewing the play, I agree that Beckford was in an offside position at the moment of the strike. So, the goal should have been disallowed.

However, we should as always in such cases remind ourselves that linesmen do not have the luxury of pausing and re-pausing plays after the fact to get a call right, as referees have in some other sports. A linesman must put himself into a position to see the exact moment of the ball strike as well as the exact positions of the last defender and the attacker furthest forward. Pace Glockman’s unsympathetic tweet (“How do you miss that?”) the offside call leading to the Jamaica goal was not an easy one to make.

If the highlights mentioned above are paused at various points in the 3:51-3:52 range, we can see just how difficult it must have been for the linesman to make the right call. Just a fraction of a second after the ball is struck—when it is maybe five yards off Rodolph Austin’s foot—Geoff Cameron has tracked back into an area that would have kept Beckford in an onside position if the ball had been struck at that moment. Well, you might argue, the ball wasn’t struck when the players were in that position, it wasn’t even close. To which a reasonable person would counter: it is not possible that a human being can process all of this information so quickly in real time over such great distances and with so many moving players involved in such a crowded space and get every close call right. To repeat: the call, or rather no-call, was wrong but understandable, the kind of no-call that happens all the time in soccer, not a howler, certainly nothing on the order of, say, the call that disallowed Maurice Edu’s goal against Slovenia in the 2010 World Cup.

More to the point, players simply cannot trust that an offside flag will go up in the chaos of a free kick taken near the box, especially when playing in another team’s park. On such a play, I believe a coach should instruct his players to forget about zones and offside traps. Players should mark their men goal side and stick to them. This is no easy task, because attackers will simply take any forward position they can if a defender marks goal side, which is why there is so much grappling and shoving prior to free kicks around the box.

In any case, it’s clear from the video that some U.S. players—like Evans and Bradley and Cameron—kept themselves between their marks and the goal. Other U.S. players—most notably Omar Gonzalez and Eddie Johnson—did not. (This is another reason to forget about drawing attackers offside on a set piece—it’s too chaotic and too crowded to get everyone on the same page.) Johnson (not Gonzalez, as some have written) was marking Beckford on the play and let him have a free run to the goal. If Beckford hadn’t scored on the play, Gonzalez’s mark—about two yards behind Gonzalez when the ball dropped into the six-yard area—almost surely would have.

In short, if there was anything notably “poor” about the Jamaica goal, it was not the linesman’s no-call but the defensive marking of Johnson and Gonzalez. And fans, commentators, and coaches should not be taking the linesman to task, but the players.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Germany, RFK Stadium, 6.2.13

After forgettable performances against Belgium on May 29, Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey led the U.S. men’s national team to a surprising 4-3 victory against Germany in Washington, D.C. Altidore is coming off a season in which he scored 31 goals in 41 competitions for his Netherlands-league club team, a single-season goal record for an American playing in Europe. But he’s had difficulty scoring for his country lately. Prior to the Germany game, he’d failed to score in 11 matches going back to 2011. Dempsey has been much more productive for the U.S. recently, but I can’t recall him being as consistently involved over the course of an entire match as he was against Germany. In short, both Altidore and Dempsey were feeling it against Germany, and they showed themselves to be players of world-class quality.

Other notable U.S. performances included those turned in by Brad Evans, normally a midfielder playing right back for the first time in a U.S. shirt, Michael Bradley, who returned to the team after missing the game against Belgium, and midfielders Graham Zusi and Jermaine Jones, each of whom had an assist and generally looked strong.

On the downside, Edgar Castillo came on for DaMarcus Beasley in the 56^th minute and the U.S. backline suffered for the substitution, giving up two goals in the next 25 minutes. On the buildup to Germany’s final goal, Castillo put zero pressure on the ball, giving his player plenty of time and space shoot from distance. Tim Howard managed to deflect the shot, but the rebound fell to Germany’s Julian Draxler for the easy score. As if to prove the play was no fluke, six minutes later Germany’s Sidney Sam blew by Castillo with the ball at his feet as if Castillo had just roused from a pot-induced afternoon nap. It would be unfair to judge Castillo too harshly based on 35 minutes of play, but his performance should only serve to further entrench Beasley as the U.S.’s starting left back.

While enjoying the aftermath of the victory against Germany—delightful in part because it must have shocked all those snorting European-soccer-loving fans who assume all American players are oafish chumps—we should pause to remind ourselves that this was just a friendly, played in hot, humid conditions more agreeable to the Swamp Thing than a bunch of northern Europeans thousands of miles from home. Germany looked exhausted and out of sorts for much of the game, much as Scotland’s players did when the U.S. played them in Jacksonville last May. When Dempsey scored the final U.S. goal, in the 64^th minute, there’s no denying it came off a beautiful left-footed strike. There’s also no denying that you could have parked a Ford Expedition between Dempsey and the nearest German defender. As commentator Ian Darke observed, “They stood and watched him do it, basically.” Darke also noted that most of the German players on the field were on the bench during Germany’s most recent World Cup qualifier. In other words, this was Germany’s B team. Finally, one of the U.S.’s scores came courtesy of a Germany own-goal worthy of a Benny Hill skit.

In other words, we shouldn’t assume that the success the U.S. enjoyed against mighty Germany will necessarily carry over into the more meaningful match against Jamaica in Kingston this Friday night.

U.S. Men’s National Team v. Belgium, Cleveland, Ohio, 5.29.13

 

The U.S. men’s national team was beaten badly last week by Belgium, whose roster includes an impressive eight players from the English Premier League. And they’re not faceless EPL cogs either, but important players like Vincent Kompany, Marouane Fellaini, Romelu Lukaku, and Christian Benteke. Taylor Twellman and other commentators have noted that the team could make a strong run during next year’s World Cup tournament, and that this group may herald a golden age of Belgium soccer.

So it was not surprising that Belgium dominated the U.S. in this friendly, winning 4-2 in a game that easily could have ended 5-1. (The referee failed to call a clear hand-ball in the box by DaMarcus Beasley in the 39th minute, and called a dubious hand-ball on Belgium’s Toby Alderweireld in the 79th minute to set up a Clint Dempsey penalty-kick goal.) The game was strongly reminiscent of last May’s friendly outside Washington, D.C. against Brazil. Brazil beat the U.S. 4-1, and the gap in technical quality between the two sides was glaring, just as it was against Belgium. Died-in-the-wool U.S. fans might point out that our boys didn’t have Michael Bradley against Belgium, but even Bradley’s presence would not have closed the gap much. And besides, Belgium played without one of its own best midfielders, Eden Hazard.

Against Belgium, the U.S. backline looked vulnerable and, with the exception of Beasley, lead-footed. They were punished early, in the 6^th minute, off a Belgium counterattack that saw U.S. keeper Tim Howard come way off his line to fill a chasm left by Geoff Cameron—a natural center back playing on the right—and center back Omar Gonzalez. Howard was able to break up Lukaku’s dribbling run, but the rebound fell to Kevin Mirallas, who chipped a shot between Clarence Goodson and the near post. After the score, Howard leapt up and repeatedly screamed at his defense in disbelief: “What the f---? What the f---?”

Howard might have saved his ire for a more egregious defensive error committed in the 56^th minute that put Belgium up 2-1. The sequence was painful to watch and saw Gonzalez running towards his own end line in the box to intercept a rolling cross. His first touch was neither fish nor foul, neither controlled trap nor clearance, bouncing off his foot and rolling to Belgium’s Kevin De Bruyne (my candidate for man of the match). De Bruyne passed to Benteke for an easy goal, Benteke’s first of two on the night. On the bright side, Gonzalez is an intelligent player and unlikely to make such an indecisive, careless touch in the box again. And learning from mistakes is probably the only major benefit of staging these friendlies (apart from making money, of course).

The U.S. back line should not, however, receive more than their share of the blame for this performance. Statistics will show that Clint Dempsey had an assist and a goal against Belgium, but he was a nonfactor for huge stretches, something that can be said about most of his teammates. Graham Zusi played strong early, showing a great work rate, but he faded. Fellow starting midfielders Jermaine Jones and Sacha Kljestan were largely ineffectual, as was forward Jozy Altidore. Few shone, and the game had almost no flow on the U.S. side, understandable given the U.S.’s constantly shifting lineup and the fact that they haven’t played together since March.

For me, the most compelling U.S. players lately have been Beasley and Eddie Johnson. (Johnson came on for Altidore at the start of the second half.) Beasley, who played in his 100^th national team game against Belgium, did make couple of errors against Belgium, including that hand-ball that wasn’t called. But he is tenacious, is constantly insinuating himself into the action both on defense and the attack, and recovers superbly if he’s beaten. In the 53^rd minute he looked like a rabid terrier while defending and eventually dispossessing Lukaku in the corner. It was the most impressive play made by any U.S. player on the night. Beasley also repeatedly got forward against Belgium and worked well on the attack with Johnson.

Johnson for his part created the hand-ball call that led to Dempsey’s goal, had two good balls into the box (one in the 67^th minute and one in the 82^nd), and generally made you sit up and take notice. Here’s to hoping Johnson and Beasley continue to get minutes with the national team, and that their dynamism begins to rub off on their teammates.

POSTSCRIPT: I am writing this during the USMNT’s friendly against Germany, which I plan to watch on replay and know nothing of at the moment. It seemed to me going into this Germany match that the U.S. tends to play well after losing big. I just went through the USMNT’s results over the past seven or eight years. I found that in games immediately following those in which the U.S. has lost by two or more goals, the team has a record of 6-6-5. Both the U.S. and their opponents in those games have averaged 1.2 goals per match (rounded to the nearest tenth). Given that history, I’ll predict that Germany—currently ranked 2^nd in the world by FIFA to Belgium’s 15—will beat the U.S. by a surprisingly slim margin, say 2-1.