Liverpool FC Forum

Feeney wrote:F*cking great match, tell you what, take my hat off to USA, almost English-like in their play. Strong in the tackle and played with passion and determination. Really took the game to Brazil but the quality shone through. Give USA 10 years, they'll certainly be consistently up there.

Sabre wrote:

Feeney wrote:F*cking great match, tell you what, take my hat off to USA, almost English-like in their play. Strong in the tackle and played with passion and determination. Really took the game to Brazil but the quality shone through. Give USA 10 years, they'll certainly be consistently up there.

U.S.A. might not have sheer quality in their starting eleven, but football is a colective game, and that game has been very well played by them. Fair play to them, and credit to their manager Bradley.

I disagree on the resemblance to England, because English shirt has a lot of weight and they try to dominate more than the more defensive / counterattack approach of the americans.

On the give ten years note, I would like to clarify something with Joe. The other day an old Spaniard that played against the Yanks as far as 1954 said that "USA were not pushovers back then and they aren't pushoevers now". If what he says is true and in 1954 USA had a decent squad, I'd like Joe to confirm that and explains me what happened afterwards.

Sabre wrote:Cheers for that insight. I think your thoughts are sensible, and paralelly I hope the Spanish football learns from the defeat against the americans. Like you I think the defeat can be good for Spain, because there was too much euphoria surrounding the team.

JoeTerp wrote:

Sabre wrote:

Feeney wrote:F*cking great match, tell you what, take my hat off to USA, almost English-like in their play. Strong in the tackle and played with passion and determination. Really took the game to Brazil but the quality shone through. Give USA 10 years, they'll certainly be consistently up there.

U.S.A. might not have sheer quality in their starting eleven, but football is a colective game, and that game has been very well played by them. Fair play to them, and credit to their manager Bradley.

I disagree on the resemblance to England, because English shirt has a lot of weight and they try to dominate more than the more defensive / counterattack approach of the americans.

On the give ten years note, I would like to clarify something with Joe. The other day an old Spaniard that played against the Yanks as far as 1954 said that "USA were not pushovers back then and they aren't pushoevers now". If what he says is true and in 1954 USA had a decent squad, I'd like Joe to confirm that and explains me what happened afterwards.

we beat England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup.

In the 50s, professional football was not nearly as popular as it is today, same with pro basketball. Also, back then we would have had many more kids with parents born in Europe.

Also I am sure that football all around the world was at a less evolved state back then, and football in the US stayed static for a long time.

Also, I have to mention that IMO our biggest problem is our infrastructure. We have lots of kids that play, but very few are getting good coaching, and very rarely do we have our most talented kids play with the other most talented kids against the most talented kids.  There is no club culture over here, we have franchises. And although some fans probably have a very similar passion for their sports teams as other people around the world have for their club, its never quite the same.

Not having a professional domestic league for so long also severely stunted the growth, and when we did set one up, it was set up like a mini-NFL, and it tries to make itself a legit top division, but without any of the proper backbone supporting it like all the lower divisions and history provides the support for the big leagues in Europe to stand upon.  Its like we are trying to build a house from the top down. 

I think the most dangerous thing these games could do would be to have American's think that we are close. We are not close. We are still miles behind, we are just getting better at punching above our weight. That should not be the goal. The goal should be to actually get better to the point where we can stand toe to toe with Brazil and play them in an even game, or even dominate them.  But I think losing the way we did is the perfect result for out future IMO. Americans will see that there is hope, but its clear to see that we were dominated in terms of the play, but we also showed some moments of high skill level, like in the counter attacking goal.

But unless some changes come, we are only going to get marginally better at playing the same kind of game, which can only take us so far. But I do see a glimmer of hope when I saw our U20 team in 2007. They beat Brazil, and beat them at their own game. Altidore and Adu were dribbling by the Brazils and working nice passing movements, and most of those players found their way to Europe shortly after. The problem is that none of them are seeing the pitch. I guess that is the next step.  It will be interesting to me to see if the next crop of U20s progresses in the U20 world cup this September-October (Adu and Altidore will both be eligible)


Also, we were missing our 3 best defensive midfielders in this game.