pardon the intrusion moderators my first thread here simply because there must be some sobering dialogue on what took place last night. maybe you can merge later.
my version of events lead me to beg the question, after 26 years why have we not figured out a way to hold these basic yankees on their home turf and render them ineffective like jamaica has done on so many occasions?
last night's game was no mystery, it was like watching a game from the 90s where they played the long ball down the flanks crossed into the box on the ground and boom goal, landon donovan and coby jones have mastered this tactic for years while waiting on the edge of our 6 yard box were mc bride and eddie johnson for the easy tap in, and it worked every time.
we had a terrific first half of play which should have seen us take the lead with the many looks on goal at our disposal, but for some strange reason unknown to us jovin jones and levi garcia seemed shelled shocked, as for kenwin jones who has now become our albatross, he spend the whole night trying to get the ball unstock from up under him.
as the years progressed i can't help but notice how cumbersome jones has become with the ball at his feet, normally with time players get the hang of their first touch and progress to be more smooth dynamic players, but this bloke somehow has not been able to come to terms with his passing and dribbling and we saw this against guatemala and the united states which cost us to lose out on quite a few opportunities on goal.
another mystery which is quite difficult for me to come to terms with for the life of me, is why have we not been able to use our flanks effectively by putting in cross after cross in their penalty box especially when we have the best header of the ball in concacaf? in every game we have consistently failed to use this weapon to our advantage which could clearly open up a game for us.
another thing we have failed to do consistently over the years is to organize our defense like panama and costa rica has done. last night the united states had done nothing out of the ordinary, they played deep into their half to neutralize our speedsters like jovin, garcia and molino, while we allowed our defenders to lose their shape and become discombobulated.
they used the flanks over and over again especially on the attacking left, while leaving two defenders on the 18 yard line at all times and kept their defensive shape throughout, and the only thing that would have disrupted that was an early goal.
we actually played this game like we were up by a couple of goals and was cruising along by trying to maintain possession, we didn't press them in their 18 yrd box nor used our flanks effectively, while they had two players constantly guarding their flanks on defense which constricted us to lumping the long ball into the box which cannot work especially when there was two defenders glued to jones at all times.
in closing the best player on the field last night was hyland by my observation, and i know folks like controversial would disagree simply because he watches the game from a spectators point of view and misses the subtilties of professional football only privy to the keen eye, but hyland broke up so many plays emanating from the midfield that left them frustrated, and without him we would have been in serious trouble, molino also broke a sweat but could not connect with jones who was clearly not himself last night.
i don't believe the united states is anything special, actually they are as basic as you can get get if you ask me, but their saving grace over the years seems to be that they understand the game thoroughly, they are extremely disciplined, (something we desperately needs to learn) and only plays to their strengths. what are your thoughts?