Well, we’ll be fine as long as we continue to get free-kicks near the box or corner kicks. The US MNT defeated Poland in a friendly match in Poland today 3-0. In general the game wasn’t the prettiest. It wasn’t terrible, but there wasn’t alot of rhythm found by either team. The field wasn’t in the best condition and had a hand in keeping both teams from being able to establish a better flow to the game.
In my opinion, the US defended pretty solidly, and didn’t give up a really dangerous opportunity to Poland the entire game. The bulid-up and attack for the US was decent, but only dangerous from the run of play on a couple of occasions. Considering we scored off of two free kicks and a corner, the US was obviously dangerous from set pieces considering. Not much more to say in general, so a few specific thoughts.
- Poland is big. I think they had some World’s Strongest Man competitors out there playing for them.
- Heath Pearce played very well in my mind and may have made the choice of who to play at left back (a question of concern lately) easier for Bradley. Cherundalo has to be first choice at right back for us right now; another solid performance from him.
- I’m still wholly unimpressed with Eddie Johnson. I hate dogging a guy, but I’m not sure why Fulham picked him up and have been playing him. He is still yet to impress me when he’s played for the US. I haven’t witnessed his speed, any scoring touch, and sometimes I question his work rate.
- I’m a big fan of Michael Bradley, and Ricardo Clark is solid, but I think we need to find a more creative midfielder to compliment the ability of one of the two of them in the midfield. They both play very good defense and start the transition well, but we need something a little more in attack.
- Hats off to the Polish fans. With what looked to be a bit of a cold and dreary night, the stadium was full and loud the entire match with chants and singing. You can’t ask for much more as a soccer fan, even if the songs and chants are against the side you’re rooting for.
The next match for the US is May 28th at Wembley Stadium against England. Should be another interesting test for the US and an interesting game against a English team with all the talent in the world that has horribly underachieved of late.
Sunday’s Olympic qualifying final is exactly the kind of game that I was afriad of when I kept talking about our lack of finishing. There isn’t a whole lot to say about the game except that we didn’t finish. I felt like I was watching my co-ed team play. We dominate games, but don’t score and end up losing or with a draw. I understand that some of our better players weren’t there, but we still played well enough to easily win the game and didn’t get the job done.
Just a thought or two about the roster for tomorrow night’s friendly with Poland. Should be a pretty interesting game. Poland should be playing pretty hard in preparation for the Euro championships this summer so they’ll put out their best squad. I’m looking forward to seeing how our full internationals do. Bradley is not putting out his full squad giving some of the U-23s that just played a little break and allowing some of the US based players to stay at home; basically most of the European based players make up the team.
Two interesting things I noticed about the make-up of the roster. Cory Gibbs got a call up. I had forgotten about Cory, but he was playing on the national team until an injury before the 2006 Cup sidelined him for a while. Perhaps Bradley wants to run him out and see what his progress is looking like.
The other interesting thing with the roster that I noticed was that we’re not carrying a large number of midfielders and Benny Feilhaber got the call. I’ll go ahead and disclose that I’m a Feilhaber fan and I’ve been confused why he hasn’t been playing at Derby. I was also surprised that he didn’t get the call into the U-23s for qualifying, so I was a little surprised to see he did get called up for the friendly tomorrow. This quote from ESPN.com may give an indication why he is where he is right now.
“‘He has to grow up,” [Bob Bradley] said of the 23-year-old midfielder. “He has to mature as a player. He has to understand, day in and day out, how to earn the respect of the people he plays with.’”
From this I read that its not necessarily his play, but his work ethic or attitude on the training ground. From what I’ve seen of him, Benny has a lot to offer a team, but that can’t always compensate for a poisonous attitude on the training ground. I obviously don’t know if this is really the case, but if it is, it would be terrible for him to be hurting his playing career because he wasn’t towing the line and working hard in practice.
I’ll chime in with my two cents worth after the match tomorrow night.
A much improved match last night from the US, and obviously a favorable result. The win advanced us to the finals of the CONCACAF qualifying tournament and secured us a spot in the Olympics in Beijing, even if we don’t win the finals against Honduras on Sunday night.
A couple of thoughts on the US performance. The showing from the team in general was a notch above anything we’ve seen from them in the first three games. Everyone was ready to step up and fight for a win tonight, which was encouraging. There have been times when I felt like US teams have played games going through the motions, but there was a true sense of purpose in us last night. High pressure all over the field made it difficult for the Canadians to maintain possession, and they barely made it out of their half of the field during the first half of play.
Our possession was excellent through the defense and midfield, and I really liked some of the dynamic movement I saw from the midfielders. All of the midfielders seemed to fluidly interchange as the flow of the game demanded, with Adu, Holden, and Kljestan appearing on either side of the field and up the middle as needed. Movement like that can make it difficult for the defense to settle in and get comfortable. The possession and movement led to a noticeable increase in threatening play around Canada’s penalty area, and we were more willing to take some long range shots that kept the Canadian keeper on his toes.
The two goals by Adu were beautiful, though for different reasons from my perspective. The first goal was created as much by the confusion Kljestan’s run into the box caused for the Canadian keeper as the actual strike by Adu. The second goal was simply a thing of beauty from Adu, and there’s really nothing to say about it just watch the video. The third was initiated by Adu’s ability to recognize and exploit the opening up of play resulting from Canada pushing more numbers forward, and was finished off by text book play and composure from both Holden and Kljestan.
In a quality match like this there weren’t a whole lot of negatives, though I did see two. We still weren’t threatening enough from the run of play, in my opinion. We took more shots from outside of the box and some of them were dangerous, but our crosses from the wings definitely need some work. Also, I don’t think Altidore has lived up to his billing yet. I’m cautiously optimistic about Altidore’s future and I’m not one to jump on the hype train surrounding him, but comparing his play in this tournament to what I saw in the U-20 World Cup last year, I’ve been a little disappointed. I’ll grant him that he hasn’t had very many opportunities in front of goal, but if you’re going to be a great striker and an impact player, you have to find a way to make your presence felt in the game on a consistent basis. His play did lead to Adu’s free kicks, and perhaps he would have made more of those opportunities had he not been taken down. I felt that he should have done better with the ball crossed to him in the box early in the match, which was one of our best scoring opportunities. I’m not suggesting he’s playing bad, I’m just hoping to see more from him in the final on Sunday.
Generally speaking, cable companies are…well…bad. They charge you exorbitant amounts for services that don’t work near as consistently as they should. The most super-fun part of having cable is dealing with the customer service departments.
We are currently beholden to the whims of Cox Communications just outside of Washington, DC. We have been using their HD service through one of their HD DVRs for about 10 months. Last week we got an HD Tivo to replace the cable supplied cable company DVR b/c Tivo kicks the cable DVRs butt. This is where the shenanigans started. To use an HD Tivo the cable company installs a CableCard to decrypt the cable signal, replacing your typical set top box. For a variety of reasons that finally make sense to me, we aren’t receiving the same number of HD channels we did before.
The reason I’m so peeved at the moment, is we asked the cable company numerous times what was going to change about our service and no one ever said anything about us losing channels. So for the last three days I’ve been arguing with their customer service reps about what channels I should have. They kept saying that we get a different line-up with the CableCard than with the set-top receiver, but couldn’t explain to me why. I went through three levels of supervisors in technical support and no one could give me an explanation of why. They readily admitted having no idea why it was that way, which honestly, didn’t instill a great deal of confidence.
So today, I called back for a somewhat related issue that I had to deal with in the billing department and ended up getting into the whole debacle with the billing rep. She clearly and simply explained to me why the channels aren’t coming in, and then she tried to argue with me that the people in tech support knew the answer, as well. Now, its great I got an answer, but two things bother me about today’s exchange. 1) Someone in billing shouldn’t know what someone in tech doesn’t know if its a tech related issue. That’s not a sign of a healthy organization. 2) The person in billing tried to argue with me about whether the people in tech knew the answer. If they did know the answer and didn’t give it to me, they’re stupid. If they didn’t know the answer, they should have, and they’re stupid. Plus, its really annoying to have someone argue with you about a conversation you had with a third party, when they weren’t around to hear it.
Bottom line, dealing with the cable company is like a trip to the dentist. Despite all your best efforts to avoid it, there’s usually going to be pain involved at some point.
Soccer in the Olympics is a little bit of a different beast. Unlike most Olympic sports, soccer has regional qualifying tournaments where countries must play their way into actually competing in the Olympics in Beijing. The US’s region, CONCACAF, is currently being played in Florida and Tennessee. The US successfully limped through the opening round and will be playing in the semis on Thursday. They have to win in the semis to actually get to compete in Beijing. I just wanted to throw out a couple of my thoughts and opinions on the games so far.
First, the qualifying tournament is important beyond the Olympics. The team is composed of the up and coming international pool of players for the US and allows for a look at the talent that will be making up the full side in the next couple of years.
That being said, our first three games (1-1 draw with Cuba, 1-0 win over Panama, and 1-0 win over Honduras) provided some positives and negatives. I saw some very encouraging play from a couple of guys that could be positioning themselves to fill holes on the full national side in the not too distant future. Stuart Holden impressed me and could potentially fill in for Demarcus Beasley when Beasley is not available to play for the full side. I finally saw something promising from Sacha Kjestan, who had not impressed me in his appearances for the full side thus far. He’s a couple of years away still, but he looks like he has a good base to grow from. Even though our defense is playing with a bit of a patchwork back line, they’ve been solid to this point which is encouraging.
The down side seems to be a common refrain for US Soccer, and that’s our lack of ability to finish. The US MNT is often guilty of a lack of creativity in attack, which didn’t seem to be too much of a problem for the U-23s, but we’re still lost when we get into the last 25 yards. Though we put ourselves in position to strike on goal, we have an absolute lack of a killer instinct try to put the ball in the back of the net. Jozy Altidore, the US’s striking hope of the future, has proven his finishing ability in club play and his previous appearance with the full Men’s National team, but I see a lack of consistency in getting him opportunities to try to put one away. The two main failings I see in attack for the U-23s is the lack of ability to consistently deliver good crosses to strikers running on goal or a desire to try to walk the ball into the goal, which ends up with us losing possession around the edge of the penalty area.
Build up through the midfield has been solid for the most part, but if we’re not able to get ourselves into good scoring position inside the 18 yard box or find a willingness to take shots from outside the area, we’re going to have to continue to rely on winning through PKs, which you can’t always count on.
The U-23s, who won Group A, will play Canada, the second place finisher in group B, in their semi-final match on Thursday in Nashville. Our northern neighbors should provide a pretty solid opponent given the nation’s growth in recent years when it comes to soccer. On paper we should be a pretty solid bet to go through to the finals, but given our lack of scoring from the run of play, nothing is certain.
Over the last year I’ve had the benefit of being able to make a handful of trips that involved flying to a pretty wide range of places, including two trips to Europe. Now, growing up in Atlanta, I pretty much flew Delta whenever I went somewhere given that Atlanta is Delta’s home airport and you can fly pretty much anywhere on Delta from Atlanta. After I moved to DC, I basically looked for the cheapest flight that I could and I didn’t fly back to Atlanta all that much because my parents had moved to South Carolina. As a result I don’t think I flew Delta for a couple of years before last week. The point of all of that background is that I forgot how much more I like Delta than other airlines.
In my experience, Delta’s planes are new/nicer and cleaner feeling. Unlike AirTran, I couldn’t feel the metal framing of the seat through the bottom cushion for two hours. I also like that the seats were leather. I would think that leather seats would be a little easier to keep clean and they didn’t feel as dirty as the cloth seats I’ve experienced on United of late. Maybe its in my head, but that’s how I felt. The service was really great and everything ran pretty smoothly. An added benefit is that they have regular flights between Atlanta and Washington-Reagan National airport, which is the better of the two Washington area airports to fly through.
Well, this past week has been a pretty busy one. I’ve been out of town visiting family and some friends and haven’t been near a computer so I’m going to take a couple of posts to talk about that stuff I did last week.
Last Saturday we had out first real weddingish thing that we did since Carissa and I got engaged. My sister in Atlanta hosted a small engagement cookout for us at her house. A lot of our friends and family have moved away from the area so it was a pretty small affair, but it was really great to see the people that were able to make it. My parents came down from Greenville, Carissa’s brother, who lives in town, came, and my best friend from high school and his fiancee came. It was really great to see everyone and visit with them over great bar-b-que. I hadn’t seen my best friend in a couple of years and I had never met his fiancee so it was especially good to see them.
We also got our first couple of gifts as an official engaged couple. My sister and brother-in-law gave us a really great cheese plate and spreader set. I was never a cheese and crackers for a snack kind of person until I started living with Cris, but we’ve done that on a number of occasions since I moved in, and I know that it will be well used. My parents also gave us a beautiful set of crystal toasting champagne flutes. I’m a typical guy and don’t know a lot about domesticated kind of stuff, but I do know enough that they’re really nice looking and I’ll probably be afraid I’m gonna break them every time I use them.
All in all it was a really great time and I really appreciate everything my sister did to put it together. Random surprise for the day, Publix (regional grocery store) makes some of the best cake I’ve ever had. When I get back home I’ll see if Maybe I can get some pictures from the bar-b-que posted somewhere.
Posted by Erik 
Posted by Erik 
Posted by Erik 
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