My beef with team USA is the same every time I see the national team compete. They cannot control the ball, plain and simple. Their passing game is pathetic, their control of passes is sloppy, the ball is consistently stolen after just one or two passes. Our attacks on goal happen only when defensive breakdowns occur, not because of good playmaking.

I think that the USA will likely make it past group stage but we will hit the usual wall of ineptitude.

we need more italian imports!

i hear a lot of jersey kids go learn futbol in italy

here's one but he escaped us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Rossi

Those of you from the rebel colony should be pleased to hear Ronaldo is apparently out.

http://metro.co.uk/2014/06/18/cristi...njury-4767002/

good article about Spain's end of an era

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...media-reaction

again, are you basing this one one game rob?

colombia 2 ivory coast 1 amazing second half!

vamos sudamérica!

LADS LADS! Let's not fight. And thanks for the compliment.

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Very much worth reading.

Shit. I missed it. How did Ivory Coast look? I really want to like them but against Japan they only seemed to wake up when Drogba came on.

Basing it on every friendly, concafab, world cup, and other such events I have watched team usa in for the past 25 years.

Oh and I''m pretty nervous about tonight. Just break Suarez's leg in the first minutes and I'll be calm.

HOWEVER! Having said that I still think we can win.

they only did wake up with drogba but colombia woke up first and scored them 2 and only then fell back to defend and gervinho scored a good goal nearly a purely invididual play. fucking gervinho! always a day late and a dollar short.

ic also got pretty rough near the end but i think this was more emotion than malice.

colombia was amazing, attacked and defended well, but their centerforward was not a match. first half there were many opportunities wasted. goals came from other players.

i'd suggest that the problem is that earlier generations have learned a style of kick-and-run football, not possession and ball control. this is fed from childhood, where unexperienced coaches thought the game was all about speed and power and little else. this sort of aggregates and gives you a kind of "national flavor."

as the game evolves in the US, more refinements will develop. it takes time, because it's a cultural phenomenon rather than a matter of choice--just like languages develop over time.

we don't really have a tradition or much of a street game, or poor kids looking at futbol as a way out of poverty. our futbol has been a sport of rich kids being driven around by their moms, not poor kids trying to get out of the house and become rich as pros.

we've had some youth development in the past, and this is increasing, but it is no match to what professional teams do in other countries. i repeat this fact often, but consider that messi was taken from argentina to barcelona when he was 12!! the MLS is still harvesting players from college--too fucking old.

now klinsmann finally is trying to change all that. he's brought imports. he's changing the team's style. he's focusing on youth development. he wants american players to work at the highest levels in the top leagues. but you're not going to see the full results of what he's doing for another decade at least, maybe two.

and speaking of "national flavor". reason i mentioned italy wasn't sheer flippancy-- if you watch italy play you see how they look like they have a boot magnet. that is something players learn as little kids, watching their favorite teams, imitating them, etc. it's in the air. and i'm serious when i say there's a new jersey-italy football bridge.

super-fun first half, amazing uruguay goal, but godin deserved a 2nd yellow didn't he? fucker should be out.

uruguay defending in classic form and england is missing more danger on the attack. but so far, anomalies aside, looks very even.

uruguay scores again!

HOOOLY SHIT!!!!!

suárez is magic.

there, i said it.

Thought it was a pretty even game but yeah, Suarez is something else. Love the guy, even when I'm having to hate him.

if cavani was 1/2 the player suarez is, they would never have lost to costa rica.

not all is lost for england however. italy should beat costa rica, and then uruguay has to face italy-- that's gonna be a tough titty for them, suarez or not.

england has to kick the shit out of costa rica, and they should. i don't really think they are that good.

We have to thrash Costa Rica and Italy have to win both games. Just frustrating that a draw would've meant we only had to beat Costa Rica. Half of me wishes we'd been eliminated cos knowing it's out of our hands will be torture. As it stands, Come on Italy, I suppose.

*sigh* why do I do this to myself everytime.

As to USMNT and American style of futbol, its not just that we don't play like Europeans because we don't have that experience, its that our entire LEAGUE more or less plays the same way. USMNT style of run and gun is basically evolved from our years of playing in CONCACAF primarily. In fact, the first year for Klinsmann was an eye-opener. He tried to immediately implement an entirely different style, and it wasn't just inexperience that hurt USMNT, it was that this style doesn't always match up well against other CONCACAF teams and they were eating us for breakfast.

I like what Jurgen did in the past year and a half, its sort of like a hybrid system. It has better passing, dribbling, and a quasi-diamond formation but it also relies on the more CONCACAF style of defense which is better suited to the USMNT skill set anyway.

I agree with !@#$%!, the changes that are being implemented will take a decade at least to mature into fruit. Its not like the US team just gets beaten up all the time, we can hang with almost any time. Can we win the WC? Not a chance, but that isn't exactly our goal just yet.

Its pretty obvious that we develop better basketball and American football talent from a young age, and that our amateur and "college" teams are much deeper at that, but looking at how dominant US Women's soccer is, I think its safe to say that we can develop quickly if it becomes the focus of some really good programs. Honestly the best middle step would be for American colleges within Division 1 to begin to focus on recruiting and developing, because within the American framework Division 1 college sports is basically the amateur leagues of America..

Also, to be sure, 25% of current NBA players were born outside of the US, so its clear that if the world can get better at playing America's own game within 20 years, that surely Americans can get better at playing the world's game.