A day late, a dollar short, I know, but here we go with my impressions with the United States' win over Italia yesterday.
Before I go into any more detail, I'd like to put it out there that ANY win for the USMNT is a good win, especially when we can claim a high-profile scalp like that of Italy. Especially with the opening phases of World Cup qualification looming, winning is a fantastic habit to get into.
So, now that we've got that cleared up, I'm going to have to go on record as being a little disappointed by yesterday's match. I know, I know. First ever victory over Italy. Beating the four-time World Cup champs on their own soil. All of this is fine. Fantastic, even. It's a grand accomplishment. But I still find myself a little disappointed by the performance yesterday.
International friendlies are more about performances than results. The result on Tuesday was a good one. Our performance, conversely, I found to be mundane. Anybody who's followed the USMNT over the past few World Cup cycles was familiar with yesterday's game. Defend well. Absorb pressure. Win possession in midfield and try to break upfield quickly. Grab the lead against the run of play. Trust Timmy Howard and the back four to keep us in front. Proceed to profit. It's not a bad system--hell, it's been working for us the past decade, hasn't it?--but it goes against what the emphasis on this team is now supposed to be.
Jurgen Klinsmann's reign was supposed to be about getting America to take the next step--to playing teams like Italy as equals. About retaining possession and playing good, technical soccer (football?) against the world's best. Bob Bradley was fired because he produced too many results like the one we had yesterday--practical, ugly, yet effective (at least, he probably was...I can't claim firsthand knowledge of US Soccer's inner workings).
And personally, I love that approach to soccer (football?). For the US, particularly, it's fantastic way to play. It emphasizes our strengths (pace, athleticism in midfield, commitment to solid defending, goalkeeping) and downplays our weaknesses (lack of technical prowess in midfield, inconsistent forward play, outside backs' inability to get forward effectively). For me, this style of soccer wasn't broke, and we consequently didn't need to fix it. Suni Gulati and company evidently felt differently.
The progress Klinsmann has made in his quest for possession and technical domination will get a different kind of test in World Cup qualifiers--starting in June--where the US will be favored in virtually every match it plays. Objectively speaking, we SHOULD control possession and boss the game against the likes of Barbados & Antigua and Guatemala. While there's no such thing as a gimme World Cup qualifier (that goes double when we're on the road) we have no excuse not to progress with relative ease. These games will provide a better barometer about the team's progress under Klinsmann.
If we put on a Barcelona-esque display of passing and savvy, I'll be willing to buy into the new reign. On the other hand, if we have to resort to kickball and set pieces to triumph over inferior opposition, I'll have to wonder if Klinsmann has the right plan to take the team to the next level: consistently playing on level terms with the world's best. Not an easy task, but US Soccer's sacking of Bradley shows that the powers that be weren't content to play efficient counterattacking soccer (football?). The new challenge is to become one of the big boys, and not just play them well. It's still early in the World Cup cycle and the boys still have lots of time to settle into Klinsmann's system and develop but I have to conclude that early results have been at best mediocre. I'd love to be proven wrong in the future, but I can't help but wonder why exactly we got rid of Bob Bradley in the first place.
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