A couple of days have passed, but I still wanted to throw out a few thoughts on the game.
A pretty mundane game, quite honestly. We got the win, which is pretty important. I’m tempted to say its the most important thing, but I can’t actually agree with that statement. I’m half remembering a quote from a movie I don’t remember the name of; “Sometimes when you win you really lose, and sometime when you lose you really win.” I’m not sure I’d say we lost even though we really won, but I think we tied.
Cuba is a bad team. There’s no question we should have won this game. My issue is that we should have won much more handily than we did. So the conditions weren’t exactly ideal. It looked as though the field was pretty crappy and there was rain to be dealt with. That can make it a little harder to play a short passing, possession game. I actually thought we did reasonably well with that, despite the conditions.
Here are my problems. Our attack is boring and generally unproductive. If we can’t create more opportunities than that against Cuba, we’re in trouble. You know what, I feel like a broken record. I’m not going to really comment on our crappy attack anymore than to say it still stinks, until it doesn’t anymore.
I’m not so sure about Frankie Hejduk anymore. He puts forth great effort, but I feel like his effort goes overboard too often. I don’t think many would disagree that he’s a fill in for Cherundalo when he’s not available, but I think I’d like to find a backup, and eventual successor for Cherundalo that is a little more even keeled. My other concern about Hejduk is that his his abilities in attack are limited. He seemed to hit long balls a little too often for my liking, and I wasn’t very impressed with his crosses into the box.
We need to at least try something different in the midfield. I’m starting to feel like two defensive midfielders is just too conservative. I could understand it maybe against a team that is equally skilled or better than us, but we should be prepared to try to take the game to less skilled teams. One defensive mid should be sufficient for a team that we’re much better than, and we could definitely use the extra help to try to produce something in attack.
Brian Ching won a few points with me this past match. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect him to score goals, but he did an excellent job of playing with his back to the goal. He received the ball and held it long enough to get support and play the ball off to then move the attack along. Its not exactly what we need from our strikers, but it is something that helps the team.
We play again Wednesday against Trinidad and Tobago in Chicago. Now we have no excuses not to play an attacking game. We’re at home with as favorable a crowd as we’re likely to find, the surface should be high quality, and T&T has to travel. If we don’t show something really impressive this time around, I’m honestly going to be a bit concerned further along in the qualifying.
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