Reyna Limps off as USA Lose to Morocco

Talking of national interest … if the president can issue executive orders for Terry Schiavo, he can definitely issue one to grant citizenship to some 11 Brazilians.

In all seriousness if you ignore the scoreboard, USA wasted about 5 good chances while Morocco didnt have any except for that ONE. Not too bad I guess, but the team better gel fast.

These are the most painful games to watch, where nothing happens for 90 minutes and then your eam just loses.
I thought Bobby Convey looked good, as he did against Germany in another disappointing match-up.
I’m not going to jump ship yet, but the MNT is trying my patience.

Karl,

If Bobby Convey had been on the pitch for 90 minutes, he’d have been the Man of the Match for the US.

As it was, I think that Beasley played very well and deserves the honor.

Over on another blog entry, I (half jokingly) posted that Bruce Arena purposefully wanted to slow things down until the last 10-15 minutes. If my reflection was true, it would account for the uninspiring 75 minutes we got.

I thought landon played poorly. Never looked in the flow of the game. Convey looked great when he came one. The defense looked pretty good, although gibbs was playing out of place.

What did we learn from tonight?
1. The US still lacks true finishers
2. Convey should get more PT
3. Eddie Lewis should be in at left back.

Lets wait until all three games this week to pass judgement.

Bob mentioned that somewhere Italy and CR were smiling. I think those two have been smiling since they learned that the US is in their group. What a pathetic showing…I actually think the US is better than that. They are after all ranked 5th by FIFA.:-)

Beasley was terrible. Horrible 1st touch every time the ball came to him. He is an absolute liability on the offensive side of the ball.

Landon needs to start looking to shoot as opposed to looking to pass first.

Arena needs to send a message to the team that complacency will not be tolerated. Start a completely different 11 for the Venezuela game — yes that means benching Keller also.

I did not get to see the game, but am disappointed in the result. But it’s waaay too early to start writing the team off. This was a warm-up game, so if the team needed to get a few things out of their system, I’d rather they do it before the competition actually starts.

Wow, the 36th ranked Moroccans defeat the 5th ranked Americans… I guess this goes to show that fifa world rankings are not to be trusted!
However, I agree with USA’s comment that this is way too early to determine the caliber of the US team. After all Brazil struggled to qualify for the 2002 finals before eventually winning the championship.

Schadenfreude!

This game reminds me of a World Cup warmup game the US played 4 years ago. The game was against Holland and despite getting the better of the chances they lost 2-0… I think the reaction was pretty much the same as well. This is the first of three warmup matches, everyone needs to calm down, I think Bruce will have the team prepared for the World Cup. I am sure he has something up his sleeve.

friendlies mean less than nothing

‘Tis but a ruse to lull the others into complacency…the world will feel the power of US football!

…and walk away giggling.

I certainly hope that’s not the best our guys have to offer.

I am thorougly disappointed to say the least. Let’s see how the other games pan out.

It might be true that the major powers (like Italy) and the mid-majors (like Czech Rep.) don’t look at beating the US as some kind of trophy to add to the wall.

However, there are many other countries (like Morocco) for which beating the US has some resonance, particularly with their fanbase. Add in the motivation to do it on US soil, and you’ve got yourself a team that can catch the US flat-footed.

With this in mind, I believe that Venezuela is exactly that kind of a team. I’m sure that Hugo Chavez would love for his team to stick it to the US.

We’d better be ready for a Venezuelan team that has more to play for than we do.

Admittedly this was after all only a friendly, but I think both the result and perhaps more importantly the performance confirms what the rest of the world already knew.

Team USA is:

a) not a bad football (sic) team
b) certainly getting better/stronger
c) still going to really struggle against the more quality/experienced opposition at the world cup, especially against teams like Italy, Czech (and frankly it would be a minor miracle for you guys to qualify from that group)
d) absurdly overrated in the FIFA rankings. But luckily no one pays any attention to that BS anyway.

I hope you guys do well as it would be good for the sport over here but really chaps, don’t get your hopes up…

This game was more about working as a team and using the space of the pitch than it was trying to score goals (US had plenty of opportunities). The US showed us great speed, a tight defense and watching the great quick passes from back to shot on goal was like watching a great NCAA basketball team break a quality full court press.

Friendlies sometimes dont mean much, but lets face it fellas, step one is to admit your DENIAL!THE USA TEAM SUCKS, ALWAYS HAS ALWAYS WILL, until they start importing more sout americans and africans. Morrocco did not qualify for the world cup, meaning they are not a wrld cup class team, and they didnt even play theyre hardest yesterday, trust me, i have seen morrocco operate many times in the past year and a half. If USA plays 3 times as good as they did yesterday, than they might only lose to ghana by 2. This just proves that USA has the easiest world cup qualification in the world and that they dont deserve to participate in the cup. USA, THE WORLD STILL LOOKS FORWARD TO PLAYING YOU!-JOGA

James,

Agreed. Arena had a good assessment in looking back at the ‘90 squad as basically an amateur team whereas we’re now more a professional team. Who knows, in another 20-30 years the US might be legitimate regular competition to the best teams. There’s a good talent development system in place now, most of the current squad came out of it, and the more players we get out into top leagues, they better we’ll become. The US could have as good a tournament as in ‘02, it’s really going to come down to attitude. Then, they played without the fear that has been a hallmark of our efforts in the past. Hopefully they’ll do the same this time and have some success. I hope they give a good account of themselves, regardless of the outcome.

Can’t wait… :)

Not wanting to flog a dead horse here but I honestly think team USA has become a victim of its own success in WC2002. The hopes of a nation – who for the most part don’t know and frankly don’t care very much about the sport – are now absurdly over-rated, based on the performance in the last WC coupled with the ridiculous FIFA ranking (in general, not just that of the USA. Mexico, anyone?!). And the players aren’t helping either – Landon Donovan suggested Johnson could be the tournament’s top scorer. Nice positive attitude but seriously guys, c’mon…

I’m not sure if USA didn’t want to show anything… tried to avoid injury or just tried to gel in this game… it was a boring game.

USA didn’t show anything, and the only player willing to take risks was John O’Brien.

They need to play him more.
Sure he made some blunders early, but the longer he played the better he was at finding the right pass.

That chip to Donovan should have been an easy goal.

I expect the US to come out very strong this next game and win 2 or 3 nothing.

They’re going to gel, but they have to want it, like last world cup.

If they think they’ll just get a pass to the next round because what they did last world cup, they’re dead wrong.

Malik,
This is not a club, a national team cannot “import players from Africa or South America”. An even if they could (FIFA doesnot allow it) who says any South American would choose to play for the U.S. instead of Argentina or Brazil?

Biggest concern from this game was that we could not score. The articles before the game said Morocco would play really good defense but we still needed to score. The goal we gave up was because we were pushing everything forward and got beat on a break away.

Associated Press is reporting the results of the MRI on Reyna’s hamstring came back negative. He’ll sit for the remaining friendlies.

Nayo,,
i think what malik meant by importing players from ohter countries was that the players become Naturalized citizens. there are a lot of teams that have Naturalized citizens on their squads. I know Mexico has at least one, Franco.

one more thing..
I think everyone is wondering why the Us is still behind in soccer. The reasons are very easy to understand. Soccer does not make money.. There are no comercials, and comercials pay the T.V stations. No TV stations to play , no fans. and so forth. .. we are a society where Money controls a sport. and soccer, well it just does not cut it.

Louie, if you want to know about naturalization AND money in the game, look no further than the Kalou brothers who could conceivably be playing against each other in a couple of weeks’ time…

Also, anyone say Freddie Adu?!

James,

The US is better than “good” and I’m guessing you’re so negative about the team because you’re probably from England and you realize that England is overrated and that the US could beat them anyday. England has recently lost to Denmark, Northern Ireland, and barely beat Poland (who we shut out in Germany)–a complete bunch of chump teams and you start making judgments about the US because we got scored on in the 90th minute of a game where we outshot them 12-5. See you “chaps” in Germany.

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