After every World Cup there is much debate over the future of the coach of every team that participated, from the Cup winners to those that return home heads bowed in shame. (I’m looking at you France) US coach Bob Bradley is no different.
I’ve been super busy with work and non-work stuff lately so I’ve had basically no time to write anything, but there is no way I couldn’t comment on the WC. Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows that I follow US Soccer very closely and I’ve been waiting for this Cup to come back around since we unceremoniously crapped out of ’06.
In early pre-World Cup qualifiers you don’t learn so much about the team as you hope to learn about individual players. I think tonight we were actually able to learn a lot about some players and at least a couple of really key things about the team.
Thanks to my bro for the find.
What a way to finish the season. Last weekend was the final weekend of the regular season, including conference championships, and there were some pretty incredible games.
Pitt-WV was tight until the end with points flying left and right.
The ACC championship was the same. The game actually went the way I wanted. I was rooting for the higher ranked Continue reading
So the coaching carousel has started turning in a big way last week. A number of lower profile coaches lost their jobs last week, but there were a couple of others who were the subject of much debate due to the nature of the coach or the nature of the program they headed.
With the awesomeness of this college football weekend, I’m a little surprised at myself for how long its taken me to get this post up. Huge win for FSU, unexpected win for UGA, and USC lost its third game this year. I think the college football gods are starting to know that I see the end of the season coming and I’m getting sad so they gave me a little gift.
This was kind of a crap weekend for football. There were a number of decent games, but none of them went the way I wanted.
First, the quick and dirty. How does Oregon take USC behind the woodshed last week and then lose to Stanford, of all people, yesterday? That’s just embarrassing.
While we’re on the subject of embarrassing, Notre Dame lost to Navy again. Now, Navy isn’t terrible, but Notre Dame has been playing respectably this year and they should be able to handle Navy at home.
To rattle off a couple more scores that shouldn’t have been, Michigan lost to Purdue at home, Oklahoma lost to Nebraska, and Cal lost to Oregon St.
The crap game to cap off the weekend was FSU’s loss to Clemson. Now, if I’m honest I never really expected for us to win, but with our offense playing the way it had been I was harboring some dreams of a miracle. Again, FSU gave me some hope, only to dash that hope in the end.
I knew that they would gouge us for big plays like they did, especially with CJ Spiller in their backfield. What I didn’t expect was for Christian Ponder to have his worst game of the season. There is a positive way to look at his performance in that his numbers were still pretty good in terms of yards and completions. So even with a disastrous four interception performance, it wasn’t a complete meltdown.
Basically, what we can take from this is if our defense isn’t a complete nightmare next year, even on bad days our offense could still be decent enough to get the job done. As it is now, our season is pretty much over. Ponder is injured, possibly for the rest of the season, and Mickey Andrews is retiring at the end of the season. Our chances of making a bowl game are pretty much nil at this point, which pains me to say, and while I’ll keep watching games, here’s hoping for a better run next season.
Color me completely stunned right now. I can’t believe how this game finished up. I can’t decide if we played well or played bad. Maybe we played worse than we should have against a team like Costa Rica, but part of me thinks we played better than the scoreline. One thing is for sure, there is no doubt we missed Charlie Davies tonight.
I hate to say it, but that was some of the worst finishing I’ve seen from the US team in a while. It used to be that we couldn’t create any chances. Tonight, we created plenty of chances and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. Given what we saw from him this year, I have to believe that Charlie would have put away at least two of the numerous ridiculously open chances we had throughout the game.
We absolutely must dispose of the horrific defensive brain farts we keep having. Generally speaking, we play solidly and then completely go to sleep long enough for the opposition to score a goal. I thought Tim Howard was going to rip someone’s head off after their second one tonight. I don’t know what the answer is, but Bradley has about eight months to figure out how to lock up the defense.
Feilhaber and Holden didn’t have their best games tonight. Feilhaber had a very, very quiet game. He didn’t get involved enough and didn’t do enough with the touches that he did have. Holden was a little better than Feilhaber, but his services weren’t of the typical quality he usually gives us.
I was glad to see Paco Torres get a run out. I thought he had a very good showing. He was very involved in directing the attack and he came up with some quality defensive work at the end of the game. Hopefully, he will continue to get more time on the field between now and next summer so he has a chance to solidify his place on the roster.
I was unsure of the introduction of Robbie Rogers, but he proved to make a huge impact on the game. He made the initial service on Bradley’s goal and had a couple of good chances shortly after.
Its sort of a relief that qualifying is over and we’re through to next summer. Now we have a chance to try to get things sorted out in terms of roster spots and team chemistry. I’m very concerned about Onyewu’s status. He looked like he was in a fair amount of pain when he was taken off. I just hope that its not too serious and he’ll be able to get back on the field soon and start getting some time for AC Milan as soon as possible.
Next up for the MNT is a friendly later this year against Denmark, who qualified top of their group in European qualifying.
We interrupt our regularly scheduled honeymoon post to bring you some thoughts on the weekend of college football.
I know we’re half-way through the season, but this is the first full day of football that I’ve gotten to watch from Gameday through the games that I wanted to watch. I think I’m sitting on about eight straight hours of football right now. Life is almost good.
I say almost good because my teams are kinda suckin right now. This was the weekend of crushed freakin hope.
Florida State looked ugly through most of the game. They played really well towards the end of the game and were able to tie it up in the fourth quarter, but that was just to give me hope they could stomp on at the end of the game. I called it at half-time, too. I said they were going to play well in the second half and get it close enough to give me hope and then screw it up in the end.
Their defense just isn’t good enough to make us a good team right now. Its really frustrating because we finally have a decent enough offense to make us a team that can compete. We give up way too many damn big plays, and while our offense has gotten better, we still shoot ourselves in the foot by fumbling and dropping balls.
Georgia did the exact same thing. Both LSU and Georgia played pretty crappy through most of the game. Then they get to the fourth quarter and points start flying around. We led late and then gave up a huge run for a touchdown. Simply depressing.
At least one team that someone in this family likes won. Notre Dame, Cris’ team, was able to pull off a pretty exciting win in overtime over Washington.
As depressing as the games were, it was still great to be able to sit and watch lot of a football during the day. I love college football.