Four years into Jurgen Klinsmann’s tenure and 76 matches later, there is an increasing sense the US men’s side have gone nowhere. Are these four lost years? Amidst the constant chopping and changing, is the US any closer to clarity of purpose? In fact, what we saw last night was the antithesis of what Klinsmann had promised in the beginning, exciting, innovative, and possession based football. Against Mexico, the midfield was guilty of constant giveaways under very little pressure.
There was no evidence of tiki-taka and no constant counterattacking threat. With a Kyle Beckerman- Michael Bradley double pivot, the midfield was ill equipped to start counters in which the first two or three passes are crucial to cover the most pitch in the shortest possible time to exploit a mismatch in personnel. For that you need players who can distribute the ball precisely and others who can fall into position as quickly as possible to pick up those passes. Beckerman is no passer and Bradley was pinned too deep helping out on defence to be truly effective. As for the Jozy Altidore and Clint Dempsey combination up field, they were too slow and too narrow and were caught like lemmings by the Mexican defence which has had its struggles of its own but found it all too easy to pick off the duo. The outside midfield with Jermaine Jones and Gyasi Zardes were ineffectual as the Mexican trio of Oribe Peralta, Chicharito Hernandez, and Raul Jimenez had them pre-occupied. The impression was a side shackled by the constantly recycling Mexican attack and vulnerable to errors.
Dempsey was execrable getting his feet tangled up with the ball trying to slalom his way through and Altidore was inert with even his hold up play deserting him. With the midfield struggling, Michael Bradley had to drift deeper and deeper, disconnecting him from the attack. It’s no surprise he was most effective on set pieces where he could pick the player best positioned to threaten the Mexican goal. Because, the reality is the USA looked incapable of producing a goal from open field till Bobby Wood entered the game.
Fabian Johnson was almost a non-factor on the right flank with few overlapping runs whereas his counterpart DaMarcus Beasley made some industrial strength forays down the left but his eagerness left him overexposed to Paul Aguilar, El Tri’s right back and best player who regularly got behind the US defence in the same way expected of Zardes or Johnson.
The USA now sits in this uneasy twilight where it is yet to uncover the technically proficient players who can produce the possession football and at the same time it has divested itself of the counterattacking strengths which used to be the hallmark of the Landon Donovan centric sides. It seems another day, another age when Charlie Davies and Donovan tore up Egypt and Spain in the 2009 Confederation’s Cup in an exhilarating display of run and gun football in matches that mattered. And no, apart from warm fuzzies, friendlies don’t count. The USA has no Xavi, Pirlo, or for that matter, Andres Guardado steeped in the passing lore and possessing the skill sets to do so.
Lets face it. Bob Bradley used to get a lot of stick for his protectionist tactics when playing a three man holding midfield with Maurice Edu, Beckerman, and Jones, who contributed to a slow congested feel and multiple redundancies. What Klinsmann should do to move forward is to develop an older Bradley as a deep lying playmaker just as Andrea Pirlo at Juventus and more recently, Santi Cazorla at Arsenal, and let the young uns like De Andre Yedlin and Wood run at defences with their speed and movement. A pivot needs a partner who can protect the back four to disrupt and provide the first crucial touch. A possible role for the highly rated Emerson Hyndman facing an uncertain future at Fulham. A player who Klinsmann should be familiar overseeing the U23 side in his role as technical director. To go with the losing theme, the U23 side lost to Honduras in their 2016 Olympics qualifying match. The CONCACAF region is no longer a given with a much more confident and disciplined Caribbean presence in Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Haiti making significant improvements along with the hard nosed Central Americans providing their usual resistance.