Does no one try to win in pre season in the USA? Probably to some degree, and thats the key factor, its just that degree is not set that high compared to a real competition, then add in all the other factors such as fringe players, numerous substitutions and you just come out with something not really meaningful.

In a world cup year friendlies are the most meaningless because players are at peak injury fear, winning a friendly is way down the list of priorities, if a player wins the game in the 94th minute but injures himself in the process ruling himself out of the WC that is the worst possible thing that could happen to him. This is why friendlies in a WC year are devoid of tackling and physicality, major components of a real competition.

One phenomenon that occurs is that the effort supplied is often in reverse correlation to likelihood of a starting place in the first 11. The player who is first name on the team sheet will mail it in completely focused on not getting injured, the player on the extreme fringe will sometimes bust a gut, another factor that warps the performance and outcome relative to both teams first 11s meeting in a real competitive fixture.

The coach still gets some idea fringe players perform and he will definitely get to see if tactical systems can be followed and the squad gets to bond a bit, thats about the entire usefulness of a friendly.

Its worth pointing out the value of international friendlies is questioned constantly by the footballing media/punditry especially in regard of key players getting injured.

Just because the players are trying to win on some level, doesn't mean the results mean anything. The players on the court during NBA preseason games aren't going out there trying to miss shots. But winning isn't as important in any of these games as several other things. It's the same in these friendlies.

The thing is, the US supporters itt could very easily say the squad's performances in friendlies show that they won't get embarrassed off the pitch. Because that much is true. But they're too stupid to make that argument. Instead, they just post the results as if it means anything that they beat Bosnia's subs 3-2 in the second half. The final score of that game was meaningless. They were outplayed bad in the first half and then dominated the second half vs. subs.

They have some friendlies against Brazil and Spain that at least show an impressive level of competency. But again, nobody tried to break it down that way. Instead they just posted WE BEAT SPAIN IN A FRIENDLY, STOP UNDERRATING US and then put their USA #1 foam fingers in their ears.

FWIW, those same rumors have Guzan starting at Arsenal in the next 3 months, so don't act like it's clear cut.

is guzan #1 for usa now? his performances for villa have been >> howard for everton for 18 months. guzan an above average keeper in the prem & should be starting

Wouldn't hate it

You could make an argument pretty easily. I think Howard still gets the starts if WC starts tomorrow because of history with the team (not saying he should, just that it's the truth) but I'd say it's a tossup who starts in June next year.

They're definitely on opposite career slopes.

No question as to who should start. Guzan has improved immensely over the last 2 years. The main criticism a number of years ago was that he couldn't command his box and flapped about during set pieces, but he has clearly worked on both and drastically improved. I cannot praise his improvement enough.

a lot of people prefer guzan over howard. i am not one of those people. TIMMAYYY

I've been on the Guzan train for about 9 months now. But lots of folks say that Tim is a huge leader behind the scenes so as long as the two of them are commensurate Tim will start imo. And even though I think Guzan is like .5% better I'm okay with it.

Gotta raise that Tourette's awareness

I don't see guzan play much but from what i've seen Howard is definitely better. More athletic and more authoritative.

No, just no.

I think there's a lot of conflation of two different senses of meaning anything.

Friendlies have almost no inherent consequences. Everyone understands that. You don't get to call yourself World Champion of the Friendlies (unless you're listening to these people) and you don't get to rub your rival's nose it in when you win a friendly. If you try, you deserve to be laughed at. The dispute is entirely about whether friendlies have predictive value -- and if so, how much.

A good comparison is when a big underdog plays a close game but loses. The resulting "moral victory" isn't worth much on the record books. But in fact, all kinds of research shows that it has great predictive value -- losing a gridiron football game by 3 points may in fact be closer to winning by 3 than to losing by 49, even though every loss counts the same (except for tiebreakers).

At one point, at least, several hundred posts back, right after everyone ran their WC draw simulations, that was exactly the gist of the argument. USA boosters said we had a shot against elite opponents, citing these friendly results to show that we at least have a chance; others laughed at them. So yeah, then it became several hundred posts of caricatures.

That's a reasonable criticism as it stands now. Basically you're only going to get a limited amount of intelligent analysis in a fan thread. I'd rather have the intelligent analysis, but laughing at Mexico made it all worth checking this thread several times a day.

lol

I hate agreeing with OAFK as much as I am in this thread, but his best recent point is comparing the degree to which the Pro-USA top tier side ITT care about friendlies to how Euros treat them. They are seen with very few exceptions as an annoyance, at least in-season friendlies. If the preseason analogy doesn't work for you, how about an all-star game? Yes you can tell somethings about some players, but aside from baseball (lol baseball) does an ASG itself (as opposed to an ASG appearance, which is meaningful, just as a cap is meaningful) mean anything?

jesus christ let's just let this ****ing friendlies discussion die

Nobody is overrating friendlies, it's just there's nothing else to point at w/ respect to US vs Europe competition besides us beating England last cycle. All anyone is saying is that the consistency of our friendly results show we aren't outclassed at the top level. You and OAFK are taking that way out of whack and he's trying to say that friendlies are basically meaningless which is completely ridiculous w/ a side of terrible arguing and USA#1 poster rustling him. Talent level differences show up even when both teams aren't trying as hard, it's just the nature of sports.

fixt?

But yeah.

Whoops you're right Boot. We can't lose sethy to the lolside though

so yes or no we're in the same ballpark as argentina?

Not 1 person said that or believes that AFAIK.

EDIT: I see how you agree with OAFK though, pulling his act of someone saying it means something minimal and equating bizarrely with meaning everything.

I'm not on the lolside, I think this is the strongest USA side ever, by a decent margin, but I don't have us rated higher in part because of the "golden ages" of some other midlevel sides (Belgium and Chile as two examples) which have them higher than us. To break into the next tier we really are going to have to develop some truly top level players, especially up front.

I was watching Champions League highlights the other day and noticed this guy scoring and remembered liking him from the Ghana side in 2010. We don't have random Americans popping up and scoring in the Champions League. We STILL barely have Americans playing in the Champions League. This is slightly dated, but still:

SortByClubTeam isn't everything, but it's a pretty good first pass, and is at least as good (in my mind far better) look at squad strength than friendly results. Now Ghanaian's (many of whom have French or German passports) or mid level euros have advantages in terms of not needing work permits, which skews the comparison some, but still.

without a doubt if we are playing each other.

are we as good as argentina? nope.
would we lose? most likely.
would we get embarrassed? doubtful.

I'm just trying to figure out what people think it means that we've had decent results vs. Argentina in friendlies. I think it means largely **** all beyond proving that we are competent. Which is not really in doubt.

sethypooh21