The World Cup, Another Way To Survive.

One of the things I've been depending on this past month is the World Cup. I've been losing myself in soccer, becoming absorbed with the teams and tactics and the bracket as I track the progress towards the final. I will get back to writing, directly, about being unemployed and the way I've been surviving, but today I've got some things to say about soccer.

The U.S. Men's Team was fantastic. It is a shame Altidore was so wasteful in front of goal, in that respect he is the American Emile Heskey, a giant, clever forward who can't score goals. His play in the group rounds and against Ghana, to a lesser extent, was fantastic in all aspects except his wastefulness in front of goal. If he could score when one on one with the keeper the U.S. would have racked up a much higher goal tally and would most likely still be in South Africa. Additionally Landon Donovan was immense. He is truly, currently, the best U.S. player in the game. He can't be compared to past greats because we haven't had a similar player before. I take back what I wrote six months ago about him not being able to hack it on the big stage, Landon Donovan has full filled the potential set out before him and is the true leader of the team. Dempsey, Bradley, Felhaber, and Edu all performed exceptionally and with such a strong midfield available it is a shame that coach Bob Bradley is such a tactical dinosaur.

Credit goes to Coach Bradley for directing his team out of the group stages, he instilled a lot of discipline and drive into a team of dedicated, if largely limited, players. The team played an open, fast, direct game that suited them well, drove forward as they could and, as mentioned previously, if they weren't so wasteful in box would have easily overcome the teams they faced. However, I wonder what a 4-2-3-1 formation would look like on this team. With the depth in midfield it would allow for some screening in front of the the defense which is, admittedly, a bit shaky and allow the more natural attacking midfielders (Donovan and Dempsey) the chance to roam forward from the width to work off of Altidore playing as a target. With Bradley linking between the two screening midfielders and Altidore it seems a much cleaner, efficient, system that could be changed to a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 as the situation demands. Coach Bradley was successful with this team, against all the criticism, against all odds but his time with the team, as head coach, is over. The mad search for successor will begin before we know it.