Wednesday, May 24, 2006

US v Morocco: "Of bigger concern..."


Not sure if I agree with ESPN when they say: "A late goal by Moroccan substitute Mohamed Madihi sent the U.S. to a 1-0 defeat. Of bigger concern for the U.S. was an injury suffered by Claudio Reyna." I may draw some criticism here but I am not the biggest fan of Reyna and am not sure that we should be more concerned about him or the fact that we can't seem to get our act together. I missed the game, so I have nothing to go on but the news I read on line, but it sounds like we need to figure some things out...

Post game reactions can be found here. In the course of the video, you see the goal that was scored on us. Cherundolo made a pretty bad decision on this one. There is also a shot of Eddie Johnson going up for a header that they show during the interviews. This header alone, plus hearing Arena state that we got out planned and out played, makes watching this set of clips worth it. I find it fascinating to hear what he has to say to his players when his team loses to a team that it should not lose to. He minces no words.

Did Dempsey sub in for Gooch? Check out the US Soccer line up and sub stats. WTF? And Wolff is starting? Ugh.

3 comments:

rc said...

Reyna is one of my all time favorite National Team players, but with the amount of time he is injured, the US needs to stop depending on him and move forward with some younger talent.

Anonymous said...

so as you know (or wait, you didn't know) i did not get to see the game either in the end. however, i have a dempsey/gooch theory. the second half they were playing a 3/5/2 with gooch on the right back... they moved cherundolo up to right mid. so when gooch got subbed out, i'm sure they moved cherundolo back to right back and then dempsey to right mid.

the critics were quite condemning of the performance... i wonder what they would have said after a tie.

i'm hoping it's just another canada (1st game after a training session) and that they just need a bit more time to get into the flow...

Unknown said...

rc: Yea, I'm not so sure why everyone is so hot on Claudio. I am not saying that I don't think he is good...but truth be told, he is out so much that I never get to really see him contribute.

I like the theory Carlee, you should think about coaching ;-)