I know, but I was thinking more along the lines of how that affects the edu/torres question, not if he's better than Carrick.


Also, I agree that man marking isn't a great idea, but for slightly different reasons. It's hard to keep proper shape when someone in your back line is man marking, and England has other dangerous players. The US will just have to keep it's zones very tight to Rooney and not give him space, because he's going to be all over the field and we have to defend with numbers to stop him.

Also, isn't demerit coming off of an eye injury or something and isn't 100%? I doubt he'd be able to keep up with Rooney even if he was 100%, much less 90% or so.

I hate doing lineups, especially with the US team because they have players who can play so many positions.

For the counter attacking football I want them to play vs England, I would like to see Jozy up top with Dempsey playing withdrawn behind him. Even though I believe Dempsey is better overall on the wing I think for this game I'd play him behind Jozy. Landon will be on the left going against Glen Johnson. I believe this will be our best chance to get a goal from open play because Johnson likes to get forward and is pretty terribad at defending.

I'll call the football I want them to play as "beautiful stoke football". We will be booting the ball up to Jozy all game I suspect but with with the speed of landon and clint we can open things up a little bit

all I can say to this is good luck. I've watched him utterly rape zonal marking schemes often this past year. The other problem is that if Lampard is playing forward you then have him shooting into the areas that are trying to keep out Rooney


Edu/Torres won't be the ones reaping the benefits of Carrick's piss poor passing, it'll be Bradley and Donovan. Barry being in the DM position even at a reduced level makes things more difficult for the attack because he won't give the ball away so cheaply as Carrick has been more then prone to doing over the past 6-8 months. Basically what would be ideal is having Carrick start, and then trying to attack Glen Johnson and hope that Rio has a bad game so that Terry has to cover ground for both of them

Just going to post this here

Great article from NY Times on Ajax youth system (in relation to US youth system)

I wasn't really thinking this before at all, but if they're really that worried about Rooney do you think they might come out with a kind of a 4-5-1? Edu would mostly shadow Rooney, allowing the back four to keep their shape. This is very different than what they've been doing, and it seems rather unlikely, but if they're really just going after the one point, it might make some sense.

I think we'll come out with the empty bucket 4-4-2 that we've been playing. I bet Edu gets the starting nod, but I would expect Torres to be a half-time or second half sub. I think where Dempsey starts depends on how match fit BB thinks Holden is.

We know, the best of several bad options ldo.

They may play a 4-4-1-1 or whatever, but I'd be pretty surprised if they came out with a true 4-5-1 because they've sucked whenever they tried it.

how would that hurt Rooney? Even if the US is in a 442, how the midfield shape is going to be won't be the determining factor on Rooney. And yes, the US should be tremendously worried about Rooney as all of the US defenders are guys at the caliber level that Rooney has made mincemeat out of

Cramming the midfield won't be the ultimate effect on rooney, it'll possibly close down on Lennon, Lampard and Milner, but Rooney will track back to get the ball, so that in of itself basically renders a simple 451 null and void. Something much more advanced will have to be designed to restrict Rooney, and then you have to hope that Capello is silly enough to go with a Lampard/Gerrard midfield as opposed to sitting one of them down

ikes, how would zonal marking still be the best of the bad solutions? With zonal marking, space will be given up, its just going to happen. Rooney has taken full advantage of that space whenever its given to him. When teams have shut him down, its usually been due to having a DM drop back a bit and then having three men in the center of the box to negate space that he will try to find

Maybe we just aren't using the same terminology, but bolded is essentially the plan we'd use. There are all sorts of zonal marking schemes, and I certainly don't mean to imply that we'd play a flat four and let Rooney work in front of it.

Our midfield is typically shaped with both CMs hung back to build a fairly solid block of six that is hard to go through the middle on. We force teams to the flanks and try to succeed in the air against our fairly athletic team. Hard to draw it out well, but it's like this:

-------X-----X------
---X------------X---
-------X----X-------
-X-----X----X-----X


How much we get outside of the 'empty bucket' basically depends on how good the team we are playing. MB gets forward more against weaker teams, but stays back against teams like Spain. The outside mids drift way in on the weak side, almost into an ACM role, which leaves the weakside back on an island, but the team thinks it can shift over fast enough. The ballside mid drops off, shifting 'the bucket' so the bottom faces our goal.

Against our formation, the obvious play for rooney is to try to get in between the pushed up outside mids and the outside backs. Now while I'm sure that Donovan/Dempsey/Holden will be more withdrawn than they are normally against England, this is typically how teams choose to attack us because we clog the middle of the park.

And while Rooney getting lots of 1v1 opportunities against Dolo/Boca scares the **** out of me, at least he'd be to the outside and have either a poor angle or a few more players to go through.

Look... I think the point is that we're going to have to go in with the mindset to get 1 off a set piece and then bunker down and hope we don't give up 2. Obv England's attack on paper should murder us. I cringe to think of Crouch receiving crosses against our defense. However, Howard has shown enough class that he can get us through a match filled with pressure giving nothing. It can be reasonable for us to assume he can do it again giving up only one or two.

Michael Davies, a television exec and sometimes WC content author for espn.com was on Simmons' podcast yesterday (overall it wasn't too great. Simmons is loluninformed.) and gave a quote that an Italian player gave him after last cycle's US match v Italy. I'm paraphrasing here but the Italian lamented the US doesn't have enough talent or class to win the tournament, but it's as if nobody told the Yanks. They simply play like they believe they will win in the end. And it makes them a tough out no matter who they play. I'm believing more and more that tactically speaking what we do isn't going to be as important as the collective effort and fitness combined with some luck. We're gonna need a lucky bounce or 5. That's just the way it is.

loosekanen-

Tactics are going to be very important because it's going to allow that effort to be channeled correctly. It's the freaking world cup, players are going to be playing hard. Good tactics allow that to come through properly.

Phase 1 : Isolate Landon vs Glen Johnson
Phase 2 : Score a goal
Phase 3 : Don't concede

Agree to disagree. Assuming that everyone is playing hard/focused/together in the world cup is shortsighted imo.

Is Bradley even an on par tactical manager? Wasn't that the knock on him when he was hired? Dance with the one who brung ya, imo.

WTF are you talking about?

For some reason i lol.

Sure we're not the best team, but we will MAKE IT RAIN if we win.

http://www.sportingintelligence.com/...istory-020603/

REVEALED: USA’s $20m bonus pot – the biggest in World Cup history

The potential payout is the most lucrative confirmed bonus scheme in the history of the tournament and could net the 23 players involved $895,000 (£617,332) each should they triumph.


Robbie Findley has already made more than his annual contract with MLS ($72,560) just by making the team, guaranteed $78,447 even if the US doesn't earn a point.

Basically what Seth said. The quality of Bradley's tactical coaching skills aren't really relevant to the discussion we were having.

really, I mean really?

lol que?

Per Cashy - $25 WC fantasy league

LOL @ Rossi.

jozy altidore has a sprained ankle, in the hospital now

Awesome.