I’m leaving the rotting corpse of the England team where it lay and turning my attention to the US team and what happened there.
The World Cup is over and the US football scene is falling back to its usual level of coverage that’s designed for the anoraks and not the casual “is it a World Cup year?” fan.
The US were somewhat outplayed in the final 16 by a rather good Ghana team that a lot of people seemed to be looking past towards a quarterfinal game with Uruguay.
The team was unconvincing in the group stage (as were England), take away the routine ball that Rob Green fumbled in the opening game and the group would have looked very different. If England had won that game 1-0 the US would have been drawing lots against Slovenia for the right to advance to the second stage rather than winning the group.
Bob Bradley the US manager has a lot of detractors. He has been in charge for three-and-a-half years, coached the team in 66 games and called up a total of 92 different players during that time. He has made some inexplicable personnel decisions.
- Sticking with Jose Altidore no matter how bad he’s playing.
- Freddy Adu never even made Bradley’s preliminary 30-man squad for South Africa. Adu is young, but could be the best outfield player to come out of the US youth system.
- Picking Ricardo Clark, a player who’s does not have the speed or touch to play at international level. He was chosen to start the first Group Stage game against England and made the mistake that led to England’s goal. Inexplicably he was chosen again for the Ghana game and made the error there that led to Ghana’s first goal.
- Starting clearly out of form RSL player Robbie Findley over Herculez Gomez and the red hot Edson Buddle.
To be fair Bradley has had some success. Most notably winning the Gold Cup in 2007, beating Spain and reaching the final of the Confederations Cup last year. There were a couple of rough patches, but in the end he ensured a fairly straightforward qualification for the World Cup, and finished atop Group C at the tournament.
I’ve said before that qualification for the World Cup should be all-but automatic for this team. Three teams are guaranteed to come out of CONCACAF; they should be Mexico, the US and whoever else is hot (Honduras this cycle) so I don’t see that as much of an achievement.
The Win over Spain and leading Brazil 2-0 at half time at the Confederations cup was impressive, but the success here seems to have been put to one side and not built on.
Bradley inherited a very disciplined side from Bruce Arena, not the most creative team in the world, but very functional and played to their strengths. Unusually for an international side the US team play a lot of games together, far more than the European and South American sides. However during those games he picked 92 different players, no chance at consistency or taking advantage of all those games to build that well drilled club mentality that has been so obvious over the last month in sides like Spain, Germany and Holland.
Under Bradley that discipline has been lost and the team has no real identity or style. They have been questionable at the back and gave up a lot of goals against mediocre opposition during the qualifying campaign. His best player is unquestionably Donovan, who gets misused in a far more defensive role that takes away a lot of his influence on the game that makes him so important to LA and was seen during his loan spell with Everton.
We are at the start of another four year World Cup cycle, a coach needs two years to understand the personnel and get them playing his way, and another two years to actually qualify. The question that the USSF needs to ask, is Bob Bradley the right person to lead this team through this cycle?
If not then who. Jurgen Klinsmann’s name keeps coming up. For the last 6 years he’s been a large part of building the Lowe’s young and talented German squad. A team that plays very tidy, attractive, attacking football, with loads of confidence.
Klinsmann lives in LA and has an understanding of US football. He was the federation’s first choice but said no when the USSF would not give him the level of control he wanted over the entire national team set up. He has proven with his role with the German squad that he knows how to build a team at this level and probably has a better understanding than anyone else about what needs to be done to raise the bar for the US Team between now and Brazil 2014.
I fear the USSF would rather stay with what they know and either stay with Bradley or one of the other insider coaches they know. Going with someone like Klinsmann and giving up control to him would be a philosophical change fore the USSF, but it may be what they need to make it to the next level and possibly repeat the results of 2002.