Avoiding the Drop

Nightmare Fuel

Every week before the interlull, the “Avoiding the Drop” staff has a little tradition. It goes something like this:

1. One of us who’s actually paying attention checks the U.S. Men’s Team Roster, finds that “Conor Casey” is listed, and sends out an e-mail to that effect.
2. I try to find a different (and increasingly less eloquent) way of restating my opinion that Conor Casey is the worst striker on any international team’s roster ever (the more rationally laid out version of that opinion is here).

This time’s no different, except for the fact that the Colorado Rapids have posted the above picture (along with an article commemorating the callup that, of course, bears no mention of his stellar goal tally of NONE) on their website, which is frankly just too much for me. That said, there are other players on the Men’s National Team (a whole squad of them, in fact), and next weekend’s qualifiers are a pretty big deal; if we win out, we win CONCACAF, but if we lose out than we can drop all the way out of qualification. With that in mind, let’s take a look at who Bob Bradley’s relying on to take down Honduras and Costa Rica.

Actually, before we do that, let’s look at the table.

That’s right: in spite of their recent performances, the U.S. are actually leading CONCACAF. Don’t wet yourself just yet, though; that’s only a one-point lead, and with an away match at Honduras coming up on Saturday (which you can’t watch) one would have to think that the U.S. will go into next Wednesday’s home match against Costa Rica needing full points to avoid slipping into the fourth place and a playoff match against Argentina the fifth-placed CONMEBOL team.

So with that in mind, let’s look at the squad Bob Bradley’s decided to bring along.

Goalkeepers

Brad Guzan (Aston Villa), Tim Howard (Everton)

If this is surprising than you haven’t been paying attention; these two are basically a guaranteed call-up. Also guaranteed: Brad Guzan won’t get a game in, even though Tim Howard has been wobbly lately (that Portsmouth game notwithstanding). Howard has had a minor issue with coming too far off of his line; you started seeing hints of it in the Confederations Cup (Italy, anyone?) and it’s been notable ever since. A good part of it is also poor defending with the makeshift line in front of him, of course, but Howard is not always in the best of positions. That’s not to say that Guzan should start these matches; changing keepers now could be a complete disaster. It’s more to say that, at some point, it may be worth giving Guzan an actual look in the net.

Defenders

Carlos Bocanegra (Rennes), Jonathan Bornstein (Chivas USA), Steve Cherundolo (Hannover), Jimmy Conrad (Kansas City Wizards), Clarence Goodson (IK Start), Oguchi Onyewu (AC Milan), Jonathan Spector (West Ham United)

Jay DeMerit cut his eyeball with a contact lens (ouch), while Chad Marshall is out with a sprained knee. In their stead, national team veteran Jimmy Conrad and IK Start’s Clarence Goodson are brought in; both were on the Gold Cup squad earlier this summer.

To be honest, this is not really a fantastic group. To compound the issue, the shuffling of players has meant that the U.S. has not actually kept a consistent back four from one match to the next at any point in this round; that’s a lot of shuffling and a lot of inconsistency, which is exacerbating any keeper issues we may have. It’d be great to see a Frankie Hejduk call-up, too; he’s a good player who could maybe bring some calming influence over a back four that’s really seen a lot of shake up recently, and since our right back situation isn’t even sort of settled I’d be interested to see how he did.

Also, while we’re not being consistent, let’s bring Michael Parkhurst back in.

Midfielders

Michael Bradley (Borussia Monchengladbach), Ricardo Clark (Houston Dynamo), Clint Dempsey (Fulham), Landon Donovan (L.A. Galaxy), Benny Feilhaber (AGF Aarhus), Stuart Holden (Houston Dynamo), Robbie Rogers (Columbus Crew), Jose Francisco Torres (Pachuca)

This is exactly the same lineup as the last time out, which is not a particularly good thing. The most notable miss for me is the inclusion of Robbie Rogers at the expense of…well…um…someone else.

That’s kind of the problem in the U.S. midfield at the moment. The players they’ve been relying on – Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey, and Ricardo Clark – haven’t all been on the same page lately. The midfield’s lineup (again) is shifted around a lot, but it’s starting to look like Bradley, in particular, needs some time off to get his head straight. He’s barely appearing for club, too, which means (if one goes by the “Freddy Adu Rule”) that he shouldn’t really be getting playing time, but there isn’t anyone to replace him with. Until Maurice Edu and Jermaine Jones heal there’s a major void at the position.

It’s a void, however, that those two should be filling once healthy; regardless of how well Holden and Rogers do, Edu and Jones should replace them once they regain fitness. Hopefully Bradley agrees with me on this.

Forwards

Jozy Altidore (Hull City), Conor Casey (Colorado Rapids), Brian Ching (Houston Dynamo), Charlie Davies (Sochaux)

This is what one might reasonably call a “problem area” for the U.S. See, our best player (Charlie Davies) is still not guaranteed a start, while the worst player (Brian Ching) is. For all of Conor Casey’s sins against soccer aesthetics, the reality is that he doesn’t play that often; Brian Ching does. Sunday is an important anniversary for Ching: October 11th, 2008 was the last time he scored for the U.S. in a match that meant something (I don’t think he’s scored in friendlies, either, but I’ll cover myself); that’s not a good thing for a striker.

And while Altidore is the easy answer here, there’s a reality to face with Jozy. He was loaned to Xerez last season and Hull City this season, and struggled to crack the lineup of both teams in spite of the fact that neither team had a proven striker or anyone else with proven goal-scoring abilities. He was loaned there by Villareal, who haven’t won a match yet this season. If Altidore’s planning on becoming something other than “raw”, he’s going to need to go to a club that can spend time developing him; relegation battlers aren’t those teams. I’d much prefer a permanent move to a Dutch or Norwegian club for Jozy, where he get settled in a side; unfortunately, he’s still raw and has both moments of brilliance and moments that are just shocking.

Also: there are other American players playing as strikers in Europe. Bradley’s rosters are incredibly MLS-centric; it’s almost as if you have to have featured domestically to get a cursory look. That’s left players like Gabriel Ferrari (Sampdoria, on loan at Foggia), Mike Grella (Leeds), Marcus Tracy (Aalborg BK), Matt Taylor (FSV Frankfurt), and Johann Smith (NK Rijeka) out in the cold. I’m not saying any of those players are better than what we have; I am saying, though, that I think they’re probably better than Conor Casey (Matt Taylor scored seven youth goals; that’s seven more than Casey’s ever scored internationally).

All of this brings us to the line-ups and tactics. Bradley’s dirty little secret is that his team desperately wants to play the counterattack, which explains why they have a hard time against teams that they should dominate. It’s hard to counterattack a team that’s trying to counterattack you; unfortunately, the U.S. squad seems to lack the ability to maintain possession for any stretch of time, which results in an inability to do anything else. I’m not sure how you fix that, but it’s the biggest problem Bradley has at the moment; being that he’s a coach and all, I’d hope he has some ideas.

My line-up:

Howard

Spector – Onyewu – Bocanegra – Bornstein

Torres – Bradley

Dempsey                            -                           Donovan

Davies – Altidore

That’s never going to happen, but it’d work.