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.
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