Moving On – Mimicking Birds
I’ve Got It All (Most) – Modest Mouse
We are through! In the end, it was a tiny bit anticlimactic. For a period of 20 minutes or so, we were a single goal away from elimination at the hands of Ghana, who could have advanced over us for the third straight World Cup. But then, bless his soul, Cristiano Ronaldo scored a goal for Portugal and we could all breathe a lot easier. So things petered out, and the US is on to the next round!
I have to say, I didn’t think they would do it. I wrote a couple weeks ago: “I certainly think this team has it in them to beat Ghana and nick a draw from Portugal and/or Germany. But each of those results is at least a little optimistic. I would not be at all shocked if we only get one point (or even zero) from this group.” And back in the winter I was saying that we probably had a 25% chance, trying to make a fair assessment, but in my heart I couldn’t even really get myself to believe it. I was sure we’d get bludgeoned in at least one of these games. But in the end: beat Ghana, draw Portugal, lose to Germany by a small margin turned out to be exactly what happened.
And to have done all this having lost Altidore after 20 minutes, having Bradley playing at the bottom of his expected range of quality, with the obvious tired legs they displayed today after a grueling schedule, against these three excellent teams…it’s a really proud moment for US Soccer.
They have shown (against my own expectations) that we deserve to be talked about as a legitimate second-grade ‘power’ of global football. We are tough to beat, can hang in there with anyone, and when we play up to our potential, can beat anyone. And that’s with a group of players who weren’t particularly highly thought-of going into the tournament.
First on that list is Kyle Beckerman, who I pooh-poohed, but who has been absolutely huge for us. And his performance in the holding role has freed up Jones – who has been the best player on the team over these three games. It’s really stunning to see him play so excellently. Fabian Johnson has been a revelation. I have been high on him for awhile but he’s arguably been our most important attacking player so far. Beasley has held out stubbornly against all odds (and quite a few held breaths). And I’ve loved seeing Yedlin off the bench.
One thing that’s becoming more and more clear: MLS is a quality league. It’s not La Liga or Serie A or anything, but the guys from MLS have looked perfectly capable of playing at the top level. Even five or six years ago, I was still pretty dismissive of the quality in our domestic league, but I’m really coming around. It’s pretty exciting.
United States 0 – 1 Germany
Portugal 2 – 1 Ghana
I know some people feel like losing today somehow cheapens the fact of advancing. But I don’t see it that way at all. Losing 1-0 to one of the best teams in the world is a perfectly fine result. We did the hard work in the first two games. This one was about keeping ourselves in a position to respond to events. If Ghana had taken a lead at some point, you can bet the US would have attacked more aggressively and looked for an equalizer. But attacking too much can leave you exposed. We saw what Germany did to Portugal. The goal was to avoid that risk, unless it became necessary. Stifle the game, protect ourselves from getting battered, and prevent the extra freshness of the German players (who had an extra day to recover and a less intense climate in their last game…and who are probably just better athletes in general) from overrunning us.
It wasn’t pretty, exactly, but it wasn’t nearly as desperate as they were for most of the Ghana game. This was a more composed effort. And while it petered out quite a bit in the final third of the game, they had enough left in them to challenge for a draw right ‘til the end. But frankly, once Portugal re-took the lead in the other game, it didn’t make much sense to push too hard. We were going to finish second either way so the only real risk was giving up a couple late goals, ruining our goal differential, and suddenly letting Portugal back into things. It was a good plan from Klinsman and was well-executed by the team.
Notable performances: Tim Howard remains excellent. He made a couple nice saves but was really excellent in controlling the box. He came out for quite a few crosses and through balls, and did a fantastic job organizing the defense in front of him. He’s not quite at the level of Neuer or Courtois and a few others, but I think there’s a very solid argument for him being among the best 10-15 keepers in the world. Bradley was somewhere in between the first two games. Still having trouble with his first touch, but more composed than against Ghana. He was fine tonight. Not good. If we’re going to beat Belgium, though, we’re really going to need a top-level performance from him. And from Jones who was excellent once again today, apart from his tendency to keep running into people (the ref, other US players). Then there’s Gonzalez, who started at center back, in for Cameron, in a move that I don’t really understand. He managed fine (a couple scary moments, a couple nice ones, mostly pretty solid), but I am terrified about him getting any more minutes for this team. I really hope that this decision was a matter of Cameron being particularly exhausted from the previous game and dragging a bit in training. Because from what I’ve seen, he’s a clear step better (and more experienced) than Gonzalez. I hope he’ll be back for the next game. Notable in a bad way was Brad Davis. Or rather: totally un-notable. I have no idea why he started today. He provides very little defensively and was at fault for a great deal of the early pressure. And if he touched the ball in any useful way more than two or three times the whole day, I sure didn’t see it. Rotating Bedoya made some sense, I think. But I sure would have liked to see…well…just about anyone else. Diskerud perhaps?
I mostly focused on the US game and took glances at the other one, up until the final 20 minutes when I reversed my attention. So I can’t speak too much about that one, except to say that it seemed frantic, very very open, and lacking in a bit of quality. Which is to say: pretty fun for a neutral but nerve-wracking for a US fan who just wanted it to remain 0-0 the whole day.
South Korea 0 – 1 Belgium
Algeria 1 – 1 Russia
Algeria are through! Their game was reasonably exciting, with a lot of attacking from both sides, though Russia never quite seemed comfortable in their counter-attacking role. A draw seemed just about the right result, and I won’t be shedding any tears about Russia getting summarily dumped out of things.
The other game was terrible. Belgium went down to 10 men just before halftime, which seemed to make no discernable difference. They were the better team, I guess, but mostly only because South Korea once again seemed pretty helpless. They created just enough to have possibly nicked a win here but can’t really have much to complain about.
This was a truly rotten tournament for Asian teams, by the way. All together, they got 3 points from 12 matches, by far the worst ratio of any confederation. They were outscored by 16 goals, again the worst of any confederation. Australia gave it a go in two or their games, and Iran was excellent against Argentina. But other than that, these teams brought very very little. For example, both South Korea and Japan faced opponents that were reduced to 10 men before halftime. In those 90+ minutes, they scored zero goals while conceding one. That’s…well, it’s not very good.
While we’re on the subject, here’s the confederation table, by goal difference and average points:
CONMEBOL – 6.8 +17
UEFA – 4.7 +10
CONCACAF – 4.5 -1
CAF – 2.4 -10
AFC – 0.75 -16
80% of teams from the Americas advance. 33% of teams from the rest of the world do. Maybe there is a significant home continent advantage after all.
I’ll post tomorrow with my predictions and commentary for the Round of 16.