If You Add Personality, What Do You Subtract?

So now it’s personality that was the missing element in the United States’ loss to Germany.

Not experience. Not size. Not speed. Not precision. Not desire. Not athletic ability. Not knowledge of the game. Not the ability to apply that knowledge at high speed. None of those things.

Personality.

“I thought Tab Ramos, when he was in the game, was an injection of personality,” Coach Steve Sampson said. “That’s what we lacked in the first half--personality.”

Four days before its must-win game against Iran in Lyon, the U.S. is clutching at straws.

Sampson said Ramos will start against the Iranians. He also said that Frankie Hejduk, who came off the bench in the second half to provide a spark and almost scored, will start as well.

That means that at least two players who started against Germany in the 2-0 loss are out.

Mike Burns, who played in midfield rather than in his more accustomed marking back position, is likely to be one of them. The other could be almost anybody.

Or rather, any of the midfielders.

But if Hejduk is playing wide on the right, and Cobi Jones is wide on the left, that leaves only the two defensive midfield and two offensive midfield roles as options--assuming, of course, that Sampson sticks to his 3-6-1 formation.

And if Ramos is supposed to bring the offense to life, it does not make much sense for Sampson to use him in a defensive role. That takes Chad Deering and Brian Maisonneuve off the hook.

And leaves Ernie Stewart and Claudio Reyna dangling.

Reyna was hammered by the Germans, who knew that if they rendered the U.S. playmaker ineffective, the rest of the team would be left at a loss.

That scenario was understood by Sampson all along. Even before the team left the United States, questions had been raised about Reyna’s fragility and the likelihood that Germany would exploit it. But Reyna started anyway, in part because it was believed that Ramos, coming off two knee surgeries, could not last 90 minutes.

Now, apparently, he can.

Stewart is unlikely to be left out in the cold. After all, he has speed and he is also the only player to have scored a goal in the last four U.S. World Cup games--against Colombia at the Rose Bowl in 1994.

Since then, the Americans have been shut out by Romania, Brazil and, now, Germany.

So it might well be that Reyna, the great hope of American soccer, will be on the bench Sunday. There had also been speculation that Ramos and Reyna could not play together, both trying to fill the same playmaker role.

Ramos dismissed that.

“You know, I keep hearing that question and I don’t know what that means,” he said. “Brazil has 22 players--all of them better than our players--and they don’t get in each other’s way.”

All of which leaves the most pressing question still unanswered: Who is going to score the goals the U.S. must score to stand a chance of surviving the first round?

Eric Wynalda, despite his claims to the contrary, looked totally ineffective against Germany. Roy Wegerle, who came on in his place in the second half and who is rumored to be starting Sunday, was no better. At some point, surely, Brian McBride must be given a chance. Of all the U.S. forwards, he is the only one who is any good in the air. He also does not simply stroll around, waiting for service.

Yet Germany dominated the aerial game and basically ignored Wynalda and Wegerle while McBride watched from the bench.

Also languishing on the sideline was Preki Radosavljevic, who has proved his ability to score when given the chance. He was supposed to be the U.S. team’s secret weapon, but he remained a holstered gun.

Sitting alongside him was Joe-Max Moore, whose 17 goals for the U.S. make him the team’s second-highest active all-time scorer, behind Wynalda. He also chases all over the field, a nonstop worker. But there was no role for him against Germany.

Whether the three veteran defenders who did not play would have made a difference against Germany is debatable. But Jeff Agoos, Marcelo Balboa and Alexi Lalas have played 311 international matches among them. Balboa played in the 1990 and 1994 World Cup tournaments. Lalas played in ’94. Neither would have been awed by the occasion or by Germany.

“Everyone who was sitting on the bench in the first half thought they could have done something better,” Sampson said.

Presumably, he did not mean to include assistant coaches Clive Charles, Thomas Rongen and Milutin Soskic. But there might have been others in the stands who were thinking along those lines.

It’s a question of personality.