If you didn’t watch the US Women defeat Brazil in the Women’s World Cup quarterfinals today you missed one of the most exciting victorious in US Soccer history, men’s or women’s. Just a couple of quick thoughts on the game.
Though it was a huge game with a crazy result, this is going to be a pretty short post. I honestly think the game can be summed up in pretty short terms and my “analysis” is pretty straightforward.
In our matches against Egypt and Spain we showed that we could come out with energy and force the game to our strengths. We did it in a team riding high against Egypt and we did it against the best team in the world against Spain to reach the finals against one of the most storied national teams in soccer history.
For the first 45 minutes of the final we did the same thing. We came out with energy, pressured and absorbed pressure defensively, and pounced on Brazil when they made mistakes finding ourselves up 2-o at the half. So what happened?
It comes down to two things for me. We ran out of gas and we didn’t compensate for Kaka.
First, I’ll say that them scoring less than a minute into the second half of the game was a huge blow to our psyche. The first and last five minutes of each half of any game are critical. The first five minutes of a game can set the tone. The last five minutes of a half can determine a huge shift in momentum and team confidence. The first five of the second half; another chance to set tone. The final five minutes are often about who wants it more. My only comment on the goal itself is that Demerit got extremely unlucky. He was in Fabiano’s face and nine time out of ten he blocks that shot. This one squeezed through his legs and past Howard.
That first goal took quite a bit of wind out of our sails and I could see the energy level drop. Its hard enough to maintain the emotional and energetic high we were riding coming off the Spain match. Instead of continuing to take the game to Brazil we started just trying to hang on. There’s only so long we could hold on against a team like Brazil. We got fatigued, started losing our shape, and didn’t maintain the defensive positioning that carried us through the previous two matches.
Our failure to deal with Kaka was likely due in part to fatigue, but we needed to make a strategic adjustment that we didn’t make. Kaka generally takes up a position in the center of the field, but started wandering to the wings in order to get the ball in space. This lead to significant overloads on one side of the field, or an open player on the backside to receive crosses. As a result our center backs started getting stretched and contributed to our lack of shape on defense.
When it comes down to it, they were better in the 45 minutes they won than we were in the 45 minutes we won. Make no mistake, we handily won the first 45 minutes of that match. I come away from this game with equally deep feelings of pride for our performance and bitter disappointment in the result. As they say, experience is one of the best teachers, and this past two weeks has given us some great experiences that we must learn from if we have any dreams of advancing into the deeper stages of the World Cup next summer.
Pure and simple, this game was an embarrasment.
Brazil is traditionally one of the better teams in the world and few people expected us to win, but the way in which we lost was just sad. We showed no heart and barely any fight throughout the whole thing. And again, I really have to question Bradley’s line-up and substitutions decision making, again. I’m starting to feel more and more that Bradley is not the right coach to take us where we want to go.
My early prediction is three games and out in 2010. My quick thoughts on this debacle:
Our last match of the Confederations Cup is this weekend and its going to be very interesting to see what Bradley does with his line-up. Egypt barely lost to Brazil and beat Italy in their first two matches so I honestly don’t expect us to have much of a chance against them. It would be the perfect chance to give some of the less experienced players a chance, but I honestly don’t hold out much hope of that happening.