General Soccer Thread

[thrill]

It's been easy to miss if you're not a diehard, but in the last couple of months, a kid who the US Soccer prospect watchers have been salivating over for a few years now has turned into a legit, budding star. Not like, "hey this kid might really be something if he works real hard and catches the right breaks" in the Clint Dempsey/Michael Bradley/DeAndre Yedlin mold, but an actual "an American high school junior is scoring goals for one of the biggest clubs in the world and setting records instead of going to prom" situation.

His name is Christian Pulisic, he's from Pennsylvania, and if you watch the Copa, you're going to hear his name constantly, whether he's in the game or not.
This is a good primer:
http://www.pennlive.com/sports/index.ss ... occer.html

Last Thursday, after diving in to strip the ball off an Ecuadorean opponent, he muscled off the 6-foot defender, turned away from his own goal and down the left sideline, cut the ball back against the defender's scrambling teammate and swam around the original defender to pin him on his own back — all with seven touches of the ball, before turning inside to lay off to a U.S. teammate who was rooted, watching as Pulisic left two international opponents a combined 24 years older than him with zero chance of the ball.

Look at this lil goddam terrier.

That's prime Clint Dempsey stuff right there. As in, 25 year old, 6 feet tall, 180 pounds Clint Dempsey, the craftiest, most determined player we've ever produced. A little poetic that it's a 34 year old Dempsey watching and then snapped out of it to receive the ball.

[MrSaigon]

John Strong calls a good game. Came up through Timbers in USL on the radio. Local boy who was in the Timbers Army before that. Man, he's done really well for himself.

[Freed Roger]

Well, I know they need to move on, but I need a post-mortem.

[MrSaigon]

Easy there. Do we have any idea if Pulisic has even a shred of Dempsey's petulance yet?

FS1 wasn't working. All jittery like that 30 Rock commercial, so I missed today's game. ...I tried for a while. I used to watch games like that living overseas. I can't do it anymore.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Watched the 1st half which was frustrating and then fell asleep which was nice.

[Freed Roger]

Playing in Orlando mid day is a dreadful draw, regardless of opponent. Major adv to teams starting in Seattle

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

One thing that's pretty awesome is the cable package I've got which has nothing but PBS and cbs and fox and nbc also has a Spanish speaking channel called Univision which is showing the games. Paraguay and Ecuador I think just ended in a tie. It's non stop soccer.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Oh Univision is an ota channel I'd just always delete it because it was Spanish.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Holy Chit this Brazil Ecuador game is insanely good to start off. First 6 minutes have been nuts....I have no idea which team is which, but it's pretty awesome.

[thrill]

Well, I know they need to move on, but I need a post-mortem.

Disjointed in moving from the midfield to the strikers. Dempsey fought hard, made the only chances. Two mental mistakes led to two Columbia goals. Otherwise both teams were pretty unimpressive.

Pulisic came on and looked very dangerous but only got 15 minutes.