Just mystifying that he went the full 90. Honestly, JK's performance was almost as bad as Castillo's.

Torres is normally an option versus teams that will turtle. In a truly competitive game he just hasn't been good enough. He's still probably a part of the B team more than anything else behind bradley/demspey/donovan/holden/rando defensive mid

To be fair to Torres, he hasn't been given a ton of chances in those situations. I thought he did very well when he came on against Mexico for example.

Costa Rica > USA I suppose.

Meh, he's still a clear step down from a healthy holden though, who is his main competition to the A squad. And iirc, torres had a couple of nasty games leading into the wc.

I would have liked to see this formation vs a team that had more possession and offensive intent (edit: and talent, heh). We would have probably been down 3-0 at halftime. It was asking alot of Landon to be basically a CM and a second striker. Landon wide with a Holden in the middle might work though.

Holden obviously a first choice, but don't mind having Torres as an option either as cover or to change the game as sub.

This game also a bad one for the MB haters.

Yeah let's not go overboard with a friendly though. While they were missing some of their top guys, we were missing Dempsey, Holden, Bradley, Jones and Cherundolo. That's Castillo, Rogers, Shea, Edu and Torres. A massive upgrade. I'm wondering was Adu there tonight? Seems like he'd be an ideal choice in that kind of game.

Adu wasn't in the roster was he?

It was Castillo. Worst player on the pitch. I'm hoping Jurgy understands he should not spend another minute with the 1st team

Yeah. Seriously, the performance of the team aside, this was not confidence inspiring from Klinsmann. Only using 2 subs, sticking with ROgers far too long, playing Landon and Shea (in his 4th game in 9 days!) the full 90, not switching the tactics at all in the 2nd half when they were clearly off.

Seth its still a friendly. Winning is nice but it means very little

I'm not talking about the result at all.

I'm a fan of the 4-3-3



everyone is using it

4-3-3 is just an aggressive 4-5-1. The change we've made is the 3 cm v 2 cm. Not sure if that's really the best formation for us though.

so it apparently is Martin Vasquez, the same guy he had at Bayern. that does not bode well unless one of them has learned a lot.

Maurice Edu not getting enough love ITT. Played that role very well, and IMO should be the anchor next to Bradley.

Obviously watching Brek Shea is a lot of fun, but if you watch closely the guy turns the ball over a ton and isn't as accurate with his passing as I'd like. I still think he should be and will be the left winger by the next WC because he has serious talent, but he is still a work in progress.

Chandler's good plays were alright, but he looks shaky as an actual defender.

Castillo. Not really sure what Jurgen sees here. Ian Darke said as much.

+1 to the Donovan is tired/injured/something. That was an awful performance, but I'm not reading anything into that. Shocking that JK wouldn't sub him out.

Jozy never really looked dangerous as a scorer, but I thought he operated decently as a target man, where he usually is kinda rough. Hope playing in Eredivisie improves his skill a bit more, because there's still lots of room for him to expand his game before the next WC.

Overall I'm actually pleased due to the first half. We never get that type of possession, and a new brand of soccer is being implemented, so I'm not going to jump off the JK bandwagon yet. Again, only real problem I had was giving a clearly diminished Landon the full 90.

Like I said earlier, Shea has played more than 4 games in 10 days (he played 60 whatever minutes in the CCL match that got lightninged out in addition to the replay, a league game and the USOC semi)

We played a 4-1-4-1. It was way different than say Chelsea's 4-3-3 from last year or a midtable PL club's normal away 4-5-1. We had a clear holding MF and 2 advanced attacking MFs with Landon often diving into the box like a second striker (for the first half hour at least).

how come media always blows the offensive players and craps on the defense, when that is plainly never actually the USA's problem?

http://espn.go.com/sports/soccer/new...arlisle-soccer

Giving castillo a 4 as a grade is charity

Really not sure what JK sees in Castillo. He's dreadful defensively and not any better in the attack. Multiple times he made runs to the middle of the pitch when he could have made the overlapping run past Shea.

Shea is good. Rodgers is not.

I don't really understand why Landon is playing 90 in a friendly in the middle of his season. Especially considering he isn't 100% fit. Would rather see Adu or somebody get some of those minutes but I guess JK knows more about their club situations than I do.

Thought Jozy was relatively good. It's really tough to be what is basically a lone striker in a new system. The timing between him and the mf on runs will come with time.

Aguedelo's touch is sick.

Thought Torres was very good. Especially tracking back which I don't remember him doing very well pre World Cup.

It's just important to remember not to get too high or too low. It's a long process.

Rogers really isn't so bad, but he's a guy who should be coming off the bench to play 20 minutes with the national team, not ever starting.

I think rogers pretty much proved that he shouldn't be playing for the national team period. He was late with lots of balls that could've/should've been scoring opportunities