It was essential for the US to get a win tonight in Salt Lake City, and we came through with a pretty solid performance. Generally speaking, I would say we played well. Our attack was able to create several very good chances, even beyond the goals we scored, and we were able to possess the ball much better than we have in past matches.
Usually, our most dependable aspect of our game, our defense, wasn’t up to the quality of our more recent performances. Part of that is obviously due to the absence of Oguchi Onyewu, who will be back Wednesday after serving a one match suspension for yellow card accumulation during qualifying. Chad Marshall was a serviceable stand in for Onyewu and the injured Demerit, but his lack of experience at the international level showed from time to time.
The most problematic aspect of our defensive game tonight was our ability to clear the ball out of the box. Jonathon Bornstein’s failure to solidly clear the ball led directly to El Salvador’s goal, and the clearance problems continued for others through the rest of the match.
On the subject of Bornstein, I think he’ll be one of the first sent to the bench once other defenders are well enough to play again. One of the most worrying problems with Bornstein is his defensive positioning. Too often there is a significant amount of space for long balls played over the top that outside attackers are able to run on to and cross the ball into the box. Additionally, his offensive abilities are also clearly lacking. Though his lack of crossing ability is concerning, the bigger issue is his penchant for giving the ball away in our own half. He doesn’t appear to have the poise or confidence on the ball to calmly bring it down and find the feet of one of our central midfielders when we’re trying to transition from defense to offense.
In a bit of a departure from the norm, our attack tonight was solid and lively. The combination of Michael Bradley and Benny Feilhaber was a little more attack minded than Bob Bradley usually ops for, but it fit this match and worked well. Dempsey played well and Donovan has clearly found his best position at outside midfield instead of striker.
Donovan has been able to settle into a position at midfield because we have finally found a pair of strikers that are able to both help create and finish goals. Altidore got on to the end of an excellent cross that he put away and simply put, Charlie Davies is the real deal. Its hard for me to single out what I like about Davies right now, because it’s pretty much everything. His physically abilities are obvious, but his intangibles are the source of his success right now. He has exceptional anticipation of where the ball is going to go and he creates chances from that. He also uses every bit of his strength to play bigger than his size and he never gives up on a play. If he continues to improve like he has over the last year, he will fully establish himself as our top offensive threat.
Qualifying continues for the US Wednesday in Trinidad and Tobago. T&T sits in last place in qualifying, but this cycle has already shown that there are no easy road games in CONCACAF, and with the top four teams all within a point of each other every game is a must win.
