Dave's random mumblings…

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.

The final is tomorrow morning Pacific time, neither Spain or Holland have ever won the tournament. Holland has been close as defeated finalists twice under Cruyff. A lot of new ground has been broken over the last four weeks, most notably the success of the first tournament in Africa, it seems fitting that it will end with a new name will be added to the cup.

Two weeks ago I was questioning the football played by the Europeans and what was wrong when compared to the South American sides. To be clear, Italy, France and England brought little to the party. Spain is the reigning European champions, I was wrong to lump them in with the underperforming and ill disciplined.

Holland are unbeaten in South Africa, taking into account warm up and qualifying it’s now 25 games since they lost, there was plenty of evidence that they were going to be tough to beat.

Over all we have no cause for complaint, the 2010 World Cup in Africa has been eventful. Coming out of the group stages Argentina and Brazil both played good football. Brazil especially had a little flair and performed in the way you expect Brazil to perform in the World Cup – impressively. Holland made short work of Brazil in the quarterfinal, 1:0 down at half time; the Dutch dominated the second half in a very controlled, but physically forceful way.

If the Dutch play the same way against Spain, they should win. This is not total football and this team will not be mistaken for the team of the 70’s but they can still play. They know how to come from behind and knowing they have defeated Brazil and Germany to get here can only add the confidence coming into the game,

Unlike Holland, Spain have lost in this tournament 1-0 to Switzerland in their opening game, it was he only game that the opposition scored first and Spain were never able to get back into it.

Spain have had a little of a struggle to finish their chances, only 7 goals so far in the tournament. All the wins during the knock out stage have been 1-0. The poor form of Fernando Torres has not made Spain’s scoring problem easier. Having said that Spain have only conceded two goals, and are very good at hanging onto slim leads, the defensive discipline has been good, especially during the semi-final against Germany when they shut down the German midfield very effectively.

Holland has scored freely, 12 goals in 6 games (against 5 conceded). However it does not matter how disciplined you are when you have layers like van Bronckhorst who opened the scoring against Uruguay with the goal of the tournament.

It has the makings of a fitting final for what has been a very good tournament. In the knock out stages Spain has not been seriously troubled, you get the feeling they are playing within themselves, that there is another level to their play that’s not been required yet. If Holland can play to their best, if Robbins, van Bronckhorst, van Persie and co play to their ability Spain may have to raise their level to win this thing. A World Cup final deserves that.

My feeling, Spain at their best should be too much for Holland, but Spain have not been at their best yet, but it’s also not been required. It’s the potential to be a very fitting final to a good tournament.

South Africa opened the World Cup with a great goal; England opened theirs with an utterly unbelievable goalkeeping blunder. It was a widely held belief among England fans that the keeper was not one of the team’s strengths, and so it’s proven. Green gave the US their goal with an unforced error, and England were never able to get back into the game.

It was not a classic England performance, the team has a deserved reputation for starting slowly in big tournaments. Maintaining tradition, todays outing was particularly unmemorable.

The goal came down to an elementary mistake by Rob Green on a soft shot by Clint Dempsey. Green holds onto that 999 times out of a 1000, why did it have to be today? Green was not helped by England playing back, perhaps defending too deep and allowing the US team space to play further up the field

In the plus column Rob Green did have a great reflex save in the second half turning Altidores close range shot onto the post, but post match will inevitable focus on the mishandling of what was more of a back pass than a well struck shot on goal.

For all the questions around Emile Heskeys selection on the strength of three Premier League goals last season, he was the provider with a well-placed pass into the path of Gerrard. The England captain finished well slotting the ball past Howard. Five minutes in and England were 1-0 up.

Sadly this is England in their opening game of the world cup. Following tradition, the team seldom does things the easy way from the beginning. All the hard work was undone five minutes before half time by a goalkeeping screw-up we will be talking about for years to come.

England was defending deeply and a lot of the play was taking place in England’s half of the field. While the US were not getting too much penetration, nor were England for much of the game. Rooney was noticeable for his lack of impact, there seemed to be something of a disconnect between the midfield pairing of Gerrard and Lampart and the front two.

Milner was replaced early. Ledley King did not start the second half and will be out of the Algeria game. Capello took a couple of risks in the team, one of which was King, and it’s not paid off so far.

England had chances, but as we got further into the second half there was a growing feeling that it was just not going to be England’s night. There were chances on goal, but they seemed to be straight at Howard causing him no real issues.

It was not a total disaster for England and some perspective is needed. It was only the opening game and 4 or 5 points are all that’s needed to go through to the second round. England did not play consistently well; against a well-drilled side like the US it was not good enough. Friday it’s Algeria, drop points there and we’ve a problem. I’d like to see a comfortable win, over the course of the tournament luck evens out, I think England is owed a little by the football gods after today, I hope they had a good laugh and England learned a lesson or two. We’ll find out more on Friday.

The squad has been announced, the last of the real friendlies are played and we’ve had the usual whines from the goalkeepers about how the match ball flies strangely through the air.

Lets just say I’m excited.

Fabio Capello was employed by England for only one reason, to win the World Cup. That’s why he earns millions as a coach and if England get to a semi-final, or even the final then I think most English people will think he’s earned every penny.

He gave England a huge boost and has removed another potential distraction from the team by committing himself to the national team until after the 2012 European Championship. He’d been openly courted by Inter Milan and before flying to South Africa he signed an amended contract that removes any chance of Capello leaving before Euro 2012.

“Now we can all concentrate on the World Cup and give Fabio and the players our full support.” Said head of Club England Sir Dave Richards.

Capello was clear about his commitment “I am very happy about this and would like to thank Sir David Richards and the FA for their continued support and assurances about my future. I always wanted to stay until the end of my contract. In South Africa we are totally focused on the World Cup.”

After spending years in racing I believe completely in the saying that teams take their tone from whoever is in charge. It was that way at every professional team I’ve been part of, the sheer professionalism of McLaren and the underdog mentality of Minardi both came from the top.

The England squad is no different, under Erickson four years ago results were inconsistent and Sven took the whole jaunt to Germany as a well deserved reward. Capello seems to be treating it all very differently. He’s a professional and is clear England are here to win football games. His goal is very simple, it’s the brief the FA gave him when he took the job.

After a spectacular qualifying run followed by some mixed play in the recent friendlies the first stage is over. It gets serious now.

Its 9 months to the world cup and England are in the midst of a full-blown keeper crisis. OK, crisis may be rather strong, but there is a problem and the British red tops are going to have fun with this.

Capello has been totally clear, anyone who wants to play for England during the tournament needs to be playing regular top-flight football. Beckham is heading to Milan in a week or two to play for AC and hopefully a place on the flight to South Africa.

Ben Foster started in Doha against Brazil yesterday and was not at fault for the goal, the two central defenders were half asleep and beaten by a well-timed run and a very nicely taken goal.

A few minutes later Foster was put in a tough spot by Wes Brown and made contact with the Brazilian striker and conceded a penalty and a yellow card. The penalty was missed, but Foster had a fairly solid game behind a defense found wanting when faced with runners through the channels.

Fosters problem is that he is not even on been on the bench for Manchester United over the last few weeks. He seems to third choice behind Van der Sar and Kuszczak for his club. Despite that he is starting for England, rather a unique situation and an indication of the dearth of domestic talent at that position.

The previous first choice keeper James (and his interesting hairstyles) has a nagging knee injury that means it’s a couple of days after a game before he can rejoin training. With 4 games in 15 days during the group stages this is a problem. James was not with the team in Doha and has played in only one of the last 8 internationals.

Capello has also made it clear that players need to be fully fit to make the trip to South Africa.

The third keeper in the mix has been Robert Green. Green started six consecutive matches before his sending-off for a professional foul in the 1-0 defeat by Ukraine last month. In the past two matches Green has been in the squad, however Capello has chosen Foster for both games.

England has some problems between the posts and if James is fit he seems to be the first choice. If he’s not fit it becomes a big problem for Capello.