Questions Linger for U.S. Before Germany
The U.S. soccer team Sunday took the final step on its road to Germany, making hard work of defeating an industrious but technically and tactically inept Latvia at East Hartford, Conn.
On Thursday, the squad will fly to its World Cup base in Hamburg, and Coach Bruce Arena can spend the hours in the air pondering several things. For instance:
* Was it the correct call to include Eddie Johnson on the roster at the expense of Taylor Twellman? Yes, Johnson has speed, but in the three warmup games against Morocco, Venezuela and Latvia, he once again showed a glaring lack of soccer savvy. He simply does not read the game well enough to react the way he should. And that was against essentially feeble opponents. Look for Josh Wolff to start ahead of Johnson in Germany.
There is a good argument to be made that by handing Johnson bags full of money to keep him in Major League Soccer, the league has actually hampered his progress as a player. What Johnson needs is the day-in and day-out sort of training regimen that only comes from playing in Europe. If he gets that, he will be a lot more dangerous player by South Africa 2010.
* Will DaMarcus Beasley be able to regain the electricity that made him arguably the best U.S. player on the field in recent years? Beasley is out of form and his lack of confidence in himself is evident, no matter how much Landon Donovan has tried to set him up with astute passes. Beasley has only two weeks left to get it together or the U.S. will struggle.
* If John O’Brien is not fit enough to last 90 minutes -- and he clearly is not -- then is it worth starting him knowing that he will have to be substituted at some point in the match? Bobby Convey’s performances of late suggest that he might be the better option. But again, O’Brien has a couple of weeks left before the June 12 opener against the Czech Republic.
* Clint Dempsey might have scored a goal against Venezuela, but apart from that bit of opportunism he did little in the three games to stake a claim for a starting spot. Dempsey’s strength is his unpredictability. His weakness is his inconsistency.
* If the U.S. is to have a chance of getting out of the first round at the expense of the Czechs, Italians and Ghanaians, most of the burden is going to fall on Brian McBride, Donovan, Oguchi Onyewu and Kasey Keller.
And that’s where Arena can relax. All are in top form. Perhaps it won’t be such a long flight after all.
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The FIFA ranking system, long regarded as a futile exercise in fiction, is to undergo a few changes.
That’s good, because as three-time World Cup veteran Marcelo Balboa said on the air during the USA-Venezuela match Friday night: “You’ve got to grab those rankings and throw them in the trash.”
The U.S. currently is ranked fifth in the world, just behind Brazil, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Mexico, which are ranked 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Anyone who believes that there are only four better teams than the U.S. in the world, and that Mexico is one of them, needs a reality check -- something the World Cup surely will provide.
Under its new system, FIFA will take into account international matches played over the previous four years, instead of eight, and it will give different weight to such factors as the importance of the competition, strength of the opponent, and so on.
The first ranking to be issued under the new system will be on July 12, three days after the World Cup final in Berlin.
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The U.S. attracted a total of 80,522 fans to its three World Cup send-off games during the last week.
Australia’s send-off game, against European champion Greece on Thursday at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, drew a crowd of 95,103.
No further comment is needed.
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American fans going to Germany for the World Cup can be grateful for more than simply that fact alone.
By being in Europe, they will miss having to listen to the inane commentary provided by ESPN2’s virtually soccer-illiterate Dave O’Brien, who spends 90 minutes reading cue cards because he doesn’t know the sport.
They will also miss having to endure the gushing Shelley Smith, more cheerleader than journalist, as she hypes the U.S. team ad infinitum.
The fact that ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 are covering all 64 games in the June 9-July 9 tournament is good, but the suggestion here is for fans to watch with the sound turned off. It’ll be the only way to get through the World Cup without putting a brick through the screen.
Either that or tune in to Univision.
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The Galaxy -- remember it? -- has announced a couple of friendly matches, perhaps in the hope that such events will cause its dwindling fan base to forget what a truly underachieving and awful-to-watch team the defending MLS champion has been so far in 2006.
The Galaxy will play something called an Iran Select team Sunday at 4 p.m. at Drake Stadium on the UCLA campus. It also will play England’s Crystal Palace on July 19 in Richmond, Va.
The Iran game, put together thanks largely to the efforts of U.S. government officials in Dubai, who cleared the way for the Iranian players to come to Los Angeles, will feature the likes of defender Mehdi Amirabadi, midfielders Hossein Kazemi, Farzad Majidi and Alireza Mansourian, and forward Sivash Akbarpour from Iranian league champion Esteghlal.
Mansourian, along with forward Ali Samereh, midfielder Hamid Estili and goalkeeper Ahmadreza Abedzadeh, were on the Iran team that defeated the U.S. at the 1998 World Cup in France when Galaxy Coach Steve Sampson had charge of the American team.
It should be like old home week for Sampson, then.
And if he and Alexi Lalas, the team’s president and general manager, can sign an Iranian or two to turn around the Galaxy’s fortunes, so much the better.
