The Czech Republic clearly superior in every phase of the game, essentially ended any US hope of escaping from the tough Group E. The 3-0 dismantling left the US looking doubtful and exposed the idiocy of the FIFA rankings for what they are. The US is clearly nowhere near 5th in the world.
Despite the easy win, the match might also end up hurting the Czech’s chances down the road. Their mountain, and scorer of the first goal, Jan Koller went out with an apparent hamstring problem. He would be a major loss to that team.
Tomas Rosicky, on the other hand, is going to be amazing in an Arsenal kit this year. He took over after Koller was carted off and put in the other two excellent goals.
About the only hope for the US now is that they looked so pathetic and overmatched today that Italy and even Ghana may underestimate them in the next matches. It would be hard not to. Who was even on the pitch for the US? Keller couldn’t be blamed for not stopping any of the rockets past him, and Reyna was okay. The rest of the team may as well have been wooden cut-outs.
Very disappointing. They looked terrible from the opening minutes.
What a letdown.
The match was like a basketball game between the University of Toledo vs. the Dallas Mavericks. The USA had no tricks up their sleeve today. Hat’s off to the Czech’s, it was men against boys today. The USA looked slow and sluggish.
Koller’s injury is not a big surprise. The 33 year old Koller is coming off major knee surgery, played only 9 times in league play this past season and after the goal he seemed to forget his age and start to really let loose… until he got hurt again.
I don’t think this kills the US’ chance at advancing, but much like last World Cup, it’ll depend greatly on how the other three teams play. Hopefully, Arena will stick with the second half line-up in the next game. Both Eddie Johnson and John O’Brian played amazing compared to the rest of the guys on the team…
I actually think that the biggest problem the US had was lack of speed. They seemed to play in slow motion all game long. A secondary issue was that they made bad pass after bad pass. it is one thing to slow the pace intentionally, but you simply cannot give the ball away that many times especially when your strategy is to be patient.
I hesitate to react to strongly but I think the game is a very bad sign for the US. Too many problems on the pitch.
I would expect the US to try to add some speed to the lineup, they subbed their fastest forward, Josh Wolff into the match, midway through the second period and I would not be surprised to see Wolff on the pitch vs. Italia on Saturday. But it will take more than Josh Wolff to save the USA in Round 1
Arena singled out Beasley as one of the guys who contributed nothing.
After watching Italy play, it’s hard to imagine how the US will have any chance against that team.
America’s problem yesterday was not foot speed, it was football speed.
The Italians were a perfect demonstration yesterday. Many of the Italian players are rocket fast in a 40 yard dash but some are slow of foot, however all of them know what they want to do with the football. Italy’s players often took a pass and immediately passed it, like a touch pass in basketball. Impressive stuff, especially considering the accuracy and difficulty of many of the passes. This makes the Italians fast.
With the US, even Reyna, who at least demonstrated precision and skill in his passing, seemed to take forever to decide what to do with the ball. Beasley was another one, he would catch up with a pass, take possession, then take what seemed to be forever to decide which teammate to pass to. I’m not sure who to blame but clearly the Americans were preoccupied more with Czech size than Czech’s speed and we seemed to get frozen in our decision making and hence it slowed us way down.
Josh Wolff is known for quick instincts around the goal, he matches up well with Italian defenders tactically (albeit, Wolff will get the beating of his life physically). I would like to see Arena insert Wolff on Saturday night.
In any case, If the Czech Republic put the US under pressure, Italy will be another step up in speed and it will be interesting to see how Arena recovers the situation. Several lineup changes are needed for sure, Wolff is only one piece.