Ghana-US

First of all, if you haven't seen the game, hopefully you aren't reading this. Neill.

Now, on to the game. What an atrocious POS game. I mean, it was brutal. Maybe the worst match of the tournament, though I can think of a just a couple others I'd rather watch less. There was no style on display, even from the victorious Ghanains. In my opinion, the two mistake goals cancel each other out in terms of "luck," though Reyna may have been fouled, it's still a horrible mistake on his part and I'm not going to sit here crying about the foul on Reyna.

Then the Onyewu play. In my estimation, that is atrocious refing right there--a clear dive. I wouldn't have given a yellow for the diving performance but I can't see that play being a foul, even if we aren't talking about the box but instead the center of the midfield. That was a shocking play. I really do not understand the penalization of guys in the back like Onyewu who happen to be 200+ and really tall. And that tendency has not just been to Onyewu but any big guy back there for any team. Bad refing all around--like the idiotic yellow card to Essien (Good luck against Brazil without Essien Ghana!). Nevertheless, I'm still not one of these people who is convinced the ref "stole" the game. Because realistically, are we going to score after the half? Yeah, maybe we have a slim chance, but with the way the guys were playing except for a brief spurt in the second half there was no offense to be had. None. Not even a prayer. With only two goals in the tournament, one an own goal and the other a horrible defensive mistake, it's time to think about the US team and not the reffing. I think the ref did take away any chance to win the game but that chance wasn't as large as a lot of people are saying. I think that odds are that the game ends 1-1 without the foul in the box, with us flailing away with long balls all second half, like we did anyway.

Beyond that though there was a failure on two counts in the US--coaching and creativity. The coaching up first. Arena needs to go after this World Cup. We need to send a message that not playing to win isn't ok. I like Bruce Arena, and he brought our team from god awful to very respectable. But his lineup choices were puzzling at best, given the team. Eddie Johnson needed to start--he certainly needed to come on after their goal in the 25th minute or so. Johnson clearly has something that no one else on the team has: a willingness to create, be selfish and even (gasp) shoot from distance. But more on that in a minute. Coachingwise I think we very well could have won the Italy game (which we had the momentum in) with better subs and more attacking play. I don't think it ends with the subs or starting team though--it has something to do with the tactics. We weren't just playing a 4-5-1 with off form players (fucking Beasley), we were also playing a predictable and boring 4-5-1 that the other teams seemed to be able to anticipate and see through easily. I think now that Arena has laid the groundwork we may need a dutch coach or some other international coach who expects the team to work in the midfield, stringing passes together and play a creative game of football, not just scrape by ugly style and pray for a tie or win like some of the Oceania and Asia teams. I think the fact that Arena and the other players haven't commented on some strategic and tactical problems, but instead are standing behind a "we almost had them except for that foul!" attitude says quite a bit about the mindset in place right now. We got fucking smoked this tourney except for the good game against Italy--but much of that was with less than 11 men and at that point throw those carefully planned tactics out the window.

Second, creativity. We don't have creative players at the international level. We desperately want Donovan or Beasley to be that guy and they just aren't right now and may never be. I can think of the number of times on one hand that we had guys confident with the ball come in and challenge a defender this world cup. To be fair though, I think that a lot of European teams are missing this creativity as well. Which is why on all the big Euro club teams you seem to see it supplied by South American or African imports. I'm not sure what to do about this but just keep encouraging creative passing and combination play with the feet of our players and try to get better players. Get some new South American American citizens? Having such a flexible citizenship requirement may be an advantage here!

I think the most telling problem in relation to our players and creativity is shooting. Simply put, we have no one who can shoot, really. That extends to shitty free kicks supplied by Donovan and others this whole cup but even more than that no one who will challenge the keeper from outside the box. And if you watched the games this world cup you saw over and over the good (and bad!) teams challenging the keeper with long shots and quite often scoring on those shots. We have *no one* who can do that. I don't think I saw a shot from outside the box area all week from the USA. We need it badly. Because all the other teams know we won't shoot outside that box they can just pack it in, triple mark our front runners and prevent any dangerous headers off crosses. And stop any cutting through balls we want to put out. Once again, I don't know how to solve this but it was so obvious that there was no respect that we would do anything dangerous or creative as long as we were outside that box.

I'm sort of spent, but I'm actually not angry right now--I'd be angry if I felt we were robbed. I'm mainly just really disappointed with the shitty way our team played and was coached. I think we can do a lot better. South Africa here we come, I guess.