My Worry is German Soccer Everyone knows Germany is a consistent international power. They’re always a contender. Gary Lineker* once said: “Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.” I think that would suit most people just fine. But you know what, German […]
National Team
Klinsmann: The Upgrade
World Cup champ, Euro champ, Germany 2006 coach, Bayern Munich, blah, blah, blah. Looks great from 10,000 feet, huh? That’s the resume/pedigree trap. Don’t fall into it, because it loves to claim victims. Hopefully it’s understood by now that sparkling player resumes don’t correlate with quality coaching. And coaching resumes? Well, we need to be […]
Klinsmann: What are the expectations?
This is the first of a multi-part series I’m doing on Klinsmann. I want to stay focused and only talk about one specific theme per post. Now is the time to clearly set up expectations. Be specific! What should his charter be? I’ve stated this before, but let me repeat not only what I think […]
Why Bob Bradley Got Fired
CONGRATULATIONS! Whether you’d like to believe it or not, this is your triumph. I believe Bob was relieved of his duties in large part due to your collective voices. Like the last point in my optimistic piece, 5 positive influences on US Soccer in 2010, suggested, I had never witnessed such a strong and sustained […]
Sooooo … Now What?
It’s been 5 long years of this: “It was our B-team.” “The players were tired.” “Bradley’s tactics were spot on.” “Bradley’s tactics were off.” “Bradley should try the youth.” “Onyewu never recovered from his injury.” “The ref sucks.” “We just don’t have the players.” “Give him time.” “We’re making progress.” “We beat Spain.” “We tied […]
US vs Guadeloupe: 8 Thoughts and Feelings
1. Watched the game at El Torito (hey it was taco Tuesday). An American fan, who was surely several tequila shots deep, comes up to us around the 80th minute and says: “This is embarrasing. I can get 11 of us in here to play better.” We couldn’t stop laughing … a US fan with […]
Apparently Clint Dempsey is World Class. Who Knew?
First, let’s get something out of the way; Dempsey is a quality player. He is one of the few worthy of representing our country. He has a good touch, a good brain, and is highly valuable to his club. But World Class? I know we want one of these badly, but people are reaching and […]
US U-20 World Cup Qualification Failure: Who Cares?
I’m a bit late to the U20 topic, but this is not a news outlet; it is an education outlet. In case you’re not up to speed, we lost to Guatemala and were eliminated from the U20 World Cup for the first time in 8 cycles. And as with most US Soccer failures, many across […]
US Soccer vs Paraguay: The Conclusions
This was much much better from the US! There was some intent to build an attack instead of firing cannonballs up field. Now for some context and conclusions: 1) The obvious one. This was not Argentina. Nor was it against a Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico, or any team whose style is to keep the ball. This […]
US vs Argentina: Another Game, Another Rant (well not quite)
As the title suggests, this is me blowing off some steam after reading and hearing stupidities from people across the web. But there are takeaways here that are well founded. Is the result all that matters? It’s a damn shame when the majority of the media, and dare I say fans, focus on the 1-1 […]