22 March, 2006

U.S. Soccer - rank outsiders

As promised: a post on the U.S.A. - 5th in FIFA world rankings.

Well, that might possibly change after tonight's less than impressive result against Germany. The Germans were tentative in the first half, booed off the field and tails between legs.

It took confusion in the penalty area on Schweinsteiger's 46th minute free-kick to quell the German revolt. Another sub, Neuville scored a second as U.S. defending got progressively sloppy and naive. This after Kahn saved a sharp Johnson header.

Klose cleverly deeked Keller for the third, again after poor defending. The fourth was a powered header from 12 metres by Ballack, his 30th international goal (amazing record).

Kahn misjudged a 60 metre hopeful ball from Cherundolo to leave the final score 4-1.

Difficult to judge the U.S. performance as I think there were some missing cogs. Bobby Convey had a few decent runs. But, there was, otherwise, a lack of invention in midfield especially after Germany switched from 4-3-3 to 4-4-2.

FIFA rankings are teh suck.

1 Comments:

Blogger D said...

Game was a mess for the US, but this is something like our B squad. We paid for our mistakes, but I hope the A team wouldn't have had the same problems.

23 March, 2006 15:10  

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