General Soccer Thread

[Jocephus]

i dont care what the end result is, america will be number 1.

/cue f yea

[TimeForGuinness]

We have as good a chance as Ghana and Portugal, I think. The schedule is favorable in that we play Germany last. It all hinges on the first game with Ghana. A win there and we're probably through. A loss and we're done. Draw and we have a shot but we have to beat Portugal.

Portugal, by the way, is not scary. They seem scary, because they have Ronaldo, but the rest of their team has a bad habit of standing around waiting for him to win the game for them. Ghana is tough. We have no athletic advantage, no technical advantage, but we have more motivation and of the two teams, Ghana is much more likely to underestimate the US than vice-versa. That game hinges on Jermaine Jones. If he's disciplined and gets under his club teammate's (Kevin Prince-Boateng) skin, which is easy to do with that dude, we could take their whole team out of their game.

Germany is a lock to win the group and the rest is a crapshoot based on team form and health.

++

Don't we have horrific travel for each game as well?

I'm hopeful.

[thrill]

Yeah but our players are used to absurd travel. The Euro based players have to fly back to the US 20 times a year for natl team games. MLS players fly thousands of miles for club games. That may be an advantage, but that's kind of a stretch.

[TimeForGuinness]

Yeah but our players are used to absurd travel. The Euro based players have to fly back to the US 20 times a year for natl team games. MLS players fly thousands of miles for club games. That may be an advantage, but that's kind of a stretch.

Wasn't trying to determine if it was an advantage or not...I was just curious on the travel. I don't think it matters all that much.

Last question, I've heard talk that if we can get out of the group then we could go pretty deep in the knockout rounds just due to how the other groups are stacked...any truth to that?

[thrill]

I didn't think you were saying it's an advantage. It's just something that seems to be going around, kind of like this knockout round being an easier match up theory. If we get out of the group, we won't face a South American team in the round of 16. No non-South American team has ever won the world cup in the western hemisphere, so the common wisdom is that you want to avoid S American teams because playing at home is such an advantage. It all depends on the match up, which will probably be vs Belgium (1st from Group H), which means we will probably be going home, despite Belgium not being a South American country.

[TimeForGuinness]

I didn't think you were saying it's an advantage. It's just something that seems to be going around, kind of like this knockout round being an easier match up theory. If we get out of the group, we won't face a South American team in the round of 16. No non-South American team has ever won the world cup in the western hemisphere, so the common wisdom is that you want to avoid S American teams because playing at home is such an advantage. It all depends on the match up, which will probably be vs Belgium (1st from Group H), which means we will probably be going home, despite Belgium not being a South American country.

cool cool...thanks trill

[Vidor]

the annoying American media adopting Englishisms when covering soccer.

So annoying. Describing the score as "nil-nil", calling the field a "pitch", ugh, let's use our own dialect.

Anyway, I'm gonna write us off as d-o-o-m-e-d doomed until they prove me otherwise. When the weakest team in our group is the one that has bounced us from the last two tournaments, and the other two are better, well, the Cubs always lose and so will USA soccer.

Apropos of nothing, the IOC has recognized American football.

http://deadspin.com/american-football-g ... 1480515587

It would be pretty stupid if the IOC made our football a sport when the far more internationally popular baseball got bounced, but I would totally watch an American football tournament. Assuming, as the article notes, that the USA roster was constrained in a way to make the tournament competitive.

[go birds]

A-MERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[/youtube]

[slide_into_first]

Swansea sack Michael Laudrip.

http://espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/17047 ... up?cc=5901

[33anda3rd]

I'm late to the group-of-death or whatever it's being called discussion, but I'm more worried about Portugal than I am Ghana. Portugal has, IMO, a really strong back line and I don't see them allowing the US crew a lot of opportunities. It's going to be a tough match. I'm thinking Ghana is a gimme, Portugal I want to get with a point, and Germany, oof. 4 points. Which means we might need Germany to beat Portugal and get by on GD. It could very easily go GER 9, USA 4, POR 4, GHA 0. The goal diff v Ghana and Germany could decide if we get out of the group stage.

On another topic, and why I clicked on this thread: F Jose Mourinho. Calling Wenger a "specialist in failure" is utterly absurd. If Wenger is a "specialist in failure" Mourinho is a specialist in both opportunism and wearing out a welcome. Mourinho has never built a club himself, just coached what someone else has built, usually with an incredible amount of talent that's bought with an incredible amount of money, not developed. Who's homegrown at Chelsea? Terry, and that's it, right? Wenger has been in the same spot for almost 20 years, has developed or bought low on Fabregas, Cole, Henry, Vieira, Bergkamp, Van Persie, countless others, and has constantly had to deal with the reality of not being able to keep them, or Toure, or Adebayor, or really any of the stars he develops. Mourinho could never do Wenger's job, dealing with stuff like "ok we lost Van Persie...who's our striker this year?" His situation has always been "ok we just bought a 30-million-pounds striker, what do we do with the 20-million-pounds striker?" Wenger on the other hand could do Mourinho's job--step in at Real Madrid and win a UEFA CL, no problem. He goes deep in that tourney every year getting by on what he can afford.

Yeah, Mourinho won a UEFA CL title with Porto. Tough road too, had to go through Man Utd (squeaking by 3-2 on aggregate, largely because Roy Keane went Roy Keane and got booted from the first leg), Lyon, Deportivo (1-0 on aggregate), and Monaco in the final. A lesser Spanish team, two French teams, and an English team that was in an off year. They had to play a whole 34 league games, while teams from England were playing 38 in the league plus the two ongoing cup tournies and their CL games. Play that CL season again 1000 times and Porto maybe wins 5 of them.