Coming off the debacle of a game against Spain I have to admit that I was really worried about our chances in the Gold Cup. The team that played last night looked nothing like what we saw last week. I recognize there is a different level of quality between the opponents, but the whole attitude of the US team was completely different. A couple of thoughts from the game. Continue reading
The USMNT just finished the group stages of the Gold Cup last night with a draw against Haiti. Just coming off a busy schedule with the Confederations Cup, we brought in a batch of players that hadn’t been playing with the full senior team lately. Given the number of players with little to no experience at the senior level, I decided I wasn’t going to do a review after each game. I wanted to see how things panned out a little before I formed any real opinions.
Now that the first three games are over, I feel like I’ve seen enough play to form some opinions on how we looked and performances from individual players. This is what I saw from the first three games.
Freddy Adu has a fair distance to go before I’m convinced he belongs on the field. He’s obviously rusty from not playing, but this was supposed to be his chance to show that he deserved to be considered for regular time with the full team anyway. Its understandable that his touch is going to be rusty and hit fitness wouldn’t be great, but he just lost possession of the ball way too easily way too many times. I’m starting to get the feeling that he was overhyped, or he’s just not reaching his full potential. Bottom line, right now we have too many other options that are much better than him in the midfield.