Once every four years almost every sports fan in the world is, for one month, focused on the same thing, the World Cup. In most country, where soccer is the number one sport, the world cup is the most important event in sports for them and there is no comparison.
The United States, despite being clearly the best team in CONCACAF this past cycle, has been drawn into this world cup’s group of death. Group G contains Germany, considered by many the best squad in the world, Portugal and the best player in the world in 2013 Cristiano Ronaldo, and Ghana which is maybe the best team in Africa and the team that knocked the US out of the past two world cups.
Despite popular opinion in the soccer loathing United States we are good at soccer and our team does have a very good chance of getting out of the group. Each nation in our group has had some negative feelings about the team bouncing around in their country. Germany didn’t put star Borussia Dortmund defender Marcel Schmelzer on the world cup roster to the dismay of many German media members. German goalie Neur and defender Phil Lamn sat out warm up games due to injuries. Klose, Germany’s only real striker on the squad, has also sat out due to injury. The 35 year old wasn’t playing very well near the end of the season anyway.
Cristiano Ronaldo has a slight knee injury that affected him during Real Madrid’s UEFA Champion’s league final win. A Ghanaian witch doctor claims that he gave the injury to Ronaldo. This Ghana team is much older than the one that knocked the US out of the last world cup. Many of their stars have retired from national team duties or won’t start because of their declining performance.
This is the best US team that has ever gone to the world cup. Ricardo Clark, the man who had the game losing turnover that lead to Kevin Prince-Boateng’s goal in the 2010 world cup match against Ghana, wouldn’t even make the 2014 team let alone start a knockout stage game. This team is deep it has veterans and experienced players. It has more speed on it than the world cup qualification teams did because of the competition the US will face in the group stage.
This US team has looked good on the attack in recent games. They have created a lot of chances but they haven’t converted many of them into goals. Jozy Altidore has looked much better with the national team than he did for his club team, Sunderland. Jozy had a goal taken away in a recent friendly against Turkey on a debatable foul call. He hasn’t actually scored a goal since January but in the recent friendlies Jozy has played well as a hold up striker and a playmaker for his teammates. Dempsey and Bradley have both been great in the midfield roles as usual. The world cup team has employed more of wide midfield with the outside defenders comming forward in the attack frequently. This was some of the reason for not including Donovan in the World Cup team. Zusi and Bedoya don’t look totally comfortable in those roles yet.
While the US has looked promising on the attack and possessing the ball in midfield the defense has been very bad. Tim Howard is one of the 10 best goalies in the world and he has been playing great. He will always be able to back up the team as the last line of defense. Recently Klinsmann completely changed up the starting defense. He brought Timmy Chandler who hadn’t played for the team in 14 months in to start at left defense. Cameron replaced Gonzalez at center back and Fabion Johnson has become the permanent starting right back instead of being rotated in which was the situation during world cup qualification. The back line is not functioning as a cohesive unit. In time they will get better together. Against Turkey there was bad communication frequently. against a better team they would have given up a lot more goals.
The US teams have its problems but so do almost all of the teams in the world cup. Most people in the US think that the team has no chance in the group of death. The reality is that there are very few teams in the world that could. Everyone seems to forget that there is a team in every major tournament that shows up as a favorite and plays terrible in the group stage. Italy and France in the 2010 world cup are great examples. The Netherlands lost the 2010 world cup finals 1-0 in extra time. In the 2012 Euros they lost all 3 of their games and earned 0 points. Germany or Portugal could be the team in this world cup that has that performance it is very possible. The US does have a very good chance of surviving and getting out of this group.
by Noah Gould
