Quote:
Originally Posted by The Funk
Sweet draw for England, and good for the US hopefully both should go through, though Eastern European teams can sometimes be hard to crack
If you guys get your confidence up with a couple of good results in the group stage you could potentially be a tricky tie in the group stages. Do you have a special player who can really make the team tick though. I'm not very up to date with world football over the past couple of years, does the US have any really top class players? Who's your 'keeper these days? Friedel's gotta be a pretty big miss, I've always rated him highly; big and imposing in a Schmeichelesque way.
It's a shame that little Rossi fellow who came through the youth ranks at Man U chose to play for Italy.
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I so agree with you about Rossi. Lord knows we could use a dominate attacking player with his ability.
As far as Friedel he was absoultely brilliant both internationally and in the epl in his prime, but Howard has stepped in nicely over the years and is also one of the better keepers throughout europe currently. I don't know if I would go as far to say he was as good as friedel in his prime, but he is definetly class and more than capable back there. There won't really ever be a shortage of talented american keepers anyway so it's the least of the team's worries
As far as having that one truly special impact player with star power etc, the US still lacks in that area, however the overall talent and quality throughout the entire team is the best and probably overall most experienced it has ever been. Onyewu and DeMerit are both solid when playing well, and spector is a good young back that has proved reliable while Boca has the experience. Defensively is really not the issue as much as the offense is. Like I said before the US still lacks that quality striker as it always has but it does what it can with what it has. Bradley likes to sometimes put Altidore (who gets lost out there a lot) as the lone striker and use Donovan and Dempsey as the attacking forwards on the flanks. This has proved some horrendous results. The best the US looks is when they choose to play a standard 4-4-2 with Donovan and Dempsey as outside mids and Altidore and Davies up top. Davies who really shined for them and was looking like he had a bright future ahead of him likely suffered career ending injuries in a car accident a couple months ago, and not having him in the world cup and or over the next few years is just going to be a huge loss. In the middle the US will use Bradley as a defensive mid (who is inconsistent) and Feilhaber or Clark as the attacking center mid. I wouldn't say either Clark or Bradley is that great but if Feilhaber can solidfy a spot over the next few months that would be huge cause he really is a quality player.
Overall it's just a lot of solid players over the pitch with high level european experience. The team certainly isn't in the same class as England, Spain, Brazil, or the other powers in the tournament but as I said before if they play well they are more than capable on a given day of getting a result against one of them and are going to be taken very seriously as they should be.