Beginning of the End?
Well, Toto, I don’t think we’re in CONCACAF anymore.
(Or, to put it in terms for the more casual soccer observer: Where are the Canadians and the Costa Ricans when you really need them?)
Twenty-two Americans in Paris Monday night must have felt a million miles away from their safe and secure World Cup qualification zone, where diminutive Guatemalans never win two head balls in the American penalty area on the same play and score; where blacksmiths from Trinidad and Tobago never chest down searing crosses into the box and calmly flick them like wisps of lint past Kasey Keller; where frolicking Jamaican forwards never backcheck with the teeth-rattling fury of Teutonic Esa Tikkanens, sending long-haired Americans careening into the sideline Snickers billboard.
Sorry, but except for a Claudio Reyna here and a Chad Deering there, players who earn their paychecks playing professionally in Europe, Americans don’t often experience the fierce, brutish, unforgiving brand of soccer Germany threw at them inside the stadium at Parc des Princes--a 2-0 pounding so severe, it seemed to knock the Americans back in time.
“I was watching it on the sideline, just like you were in the press box,” U.S. reserve Tab Ramos told a group of reporters, “and it looked to me more like our 1990 team out there than our 1994 team.”
The 1990 U.S. team, as green as the grass it flopped upon, was blown out of Italy in three quick games, yielding eight goals and scoring but two--a mere shadow of the 1994 squad that upset Colombia, reached the second round and garnered a bit of worldwide respectability.
“That is unacceptable,” Ramos said, emotion escalating with every word. “I’m a little angry about it, as you can see. . . . I just don’t think today was a step forward for U.S. soccer.”
Ramos had a point--and he hadn’t been around for Coach Steve Sampson’s post-debacle spin session with reporters, in which Sampson lauded his players for playing hard in the second half and almost scoring on a flying header by Frankie Hejduk and almost playing the Germans even-up for the last 45 minutes.
Sampson sounded like an AYSO coach trying to buck up the little ones after an 8-nil thrashing in the opener, having to scrape together some words of encouragement or else lose the team to the neighborhood video arcade for the rest of the season.
Hasn’t U.S. soccer, circa 1998, progressed beyond almosts and trying hard and “closing the gap between U.S. and German soccer,” to borrow Sampson’s own words?
Qualification in the CONCACAF zone--the American League Central of World Cup play-in regions--might have fooled Team USA into thinking so, but let’s face facts: If you can beat St. Vincent and the Grenadines (both at once--it takes some doing) and draw with El Salvador and Honduras, you’re in.
And then, as “tuneups” for its World Cup opener against 1990 World Cup holder and 1996 European champion Germany, the United States schedules a series of “friendly” matches against Austria, Macedonia, Kuwait and Scotland.
Then, when the United States beats Austria by three goals in Vienna, it starts talking about knocking off Germany and forging through to the quarterfinals because, well, what is Austria if not a poor man’s Germany?
(Answer, as we all know today: A poor man’s Bulgaria.)
Macedonia and Kuwait, as it turns out, is not ample preparation for Jurgen Klinsmann, Andy Moller and Thomas Hassler.
“I don’t know how you can do anything that prepares you to play Germany in a World Cup game,” U.S. goalkeeper Kasey Keller said. “You’re playing one of the top three or four nations in the world in the biggest event in the world. Beating them 3-nil is probably not going to happen.”
U.S. striker Eric Wynalda, who has played professionally in Germany, knows the hard truth, that “anybody in the world that plays Germany is going to struggle. That team is not world and European champion for nothing.
“They’ve got a lot of things going for them--speed, talent and experience. It’s hard to overcome a team like that.”
Give the Americans this much, though:
They stayed with the Germans for eight minutes.
It all fell apart, however, in the ninth minute, when Klinsmann and Moller combined on a play taken from the first page of the first chapter of Corner Kicks 101. This involves lofting the ball to Player A stationed near the far goal post and having Player A head the ball to Player B, stationed near the near post, and having Player B head the ball past the keeper.
Usually, this is easier sketched out than done, especially at this level, especially when the man setting the dominoes in motion is the supposedly decrepit Klinsmann, nearly 34 and said to be planning retirement in America--on an MLS roster some time soon.
But those creaking knees and flimsy muscles lifted Klinsmann into the air over 29-year-old David Regis, high enough to enable Der Kodger to head the ball--just as the textbook instructs--across the box to Moller, who out-jumped Thomas Dooley and Reyna to nod the ball into the net.
“It’s basic defending,” said a disapproving Sampson. “You have to be extremely alert in those situations.”
Say what you will about Alexi Lalas and Marcelo Balboa, the benched World Cup veterans of ‘94, but they both know how to clear a corner kick out of their own penalty area. Against a team of such aerial prowess as the Germans, Lalas and/or Balboa--fading foot speed and all--would have been useful.
But, there is no room for them in Sampson’s 3-6-1 “World Cup special” formation, which featured four World Cup rookies--Regis, Deering, Eddie Pope and Brian Maisonneuve--starting in four of the five critical defensive positions, leaving Dooley, the 37-year-old sweeper, as the lone seasoned hand in front of goal.
As Wynalda lamented, “You could tell some of us were playing for the first time in a World Cup.”
It has been a long time since the Americans seemed so small on a field. Small in all areas--physical, emotional, strategic.
The Germans came hard from the opening whistle, flattening any red shirt that dared dribble the ball instead of hoof it downfield. Jones and Hejduk looked like rag dolls, and even Pope--6 feet 1, 180 pounds, sturdy--was sent flying at one point.
“We learned a little lesson during those first 20 minutes from the European champions,” Keller said. “We need to match up physically with teams in the World Cup. We didn’t do it the first 20 minutes and the Germans made us pay for it.”
Iran, next up for the Americans, isn’t likely to ease off the gas pedal, either. “It’s unfortunate we played as poorly as we did in the first half,” Wynalda said. “But, we’ve still got two games to get it right.”
