Thank You Bob Bradley

After the US soccer team failed to advance out of the group stages of the Olympics I was going to write a post about how US soccer is held back by poor coaching. Briefly, my thesis was that the US has solid players but since the overall talent pool is shallower than other soccer crazy nations our talent isn’t spread evenly to all positions. The US always has great goalies, we’re starting to consistently produce athletic strikers, and our midfielders are improving. However, defensively our teams are pretty weak at all levels. The problem with the team we sent to the Olympics was that it was loaded with talent at the striker and midfield positions, but pretty thin on the defensive end. The coach, who was Polish and gained the position due to his ‘accomplishments’ coaching DC United (if we’re going to have foreigners coach our team can we at least get foreigners that have coached good teams), should’ve adjusted his strategy to fit the personnel he had. A 2-5-3 formation would have worked but instead he stuck with the standard 2-4-4 and the US sucked it up. Also, I thought the players he put on the field were questionable, but I didn’t actually watch the games due to my Olympic boycott so I’ll forego that criticism. Overall, my point is that the US has to get away from playing that crappy AYSO brand of boot-and-run soccer and develop their own style that fits with the players they have rather than trying to blindly copy the European or South American styles of play.

I say I WAS going to write that post because last night I watched the US National Team play Guatemala in their World Cup Qualifier. I was reminded that Bob Bradley knows what he’s doing. For the most part the players he puts out on the pitch are there because they work well together and fit the style of play that the US is slowly developing. Unlike his predecessor who tried to make the US play a style that was like a bad mix between AYSO and South American soccer, Bradley is building a team that plays in a distinctly American way.

The bottom line is that the US plays Central American and South American teams to get into the World Cup. Those countries hate America. Their fans throw bottles at the players and the opposing teams play extremely dirty against us. Mexican players even threatened to kill Landon Donovan’s mom. But watching this game you could see that the US team’s response to that was to embrace the soccer nationalism that makes international play great. Soccer nationalism (which I’ve mentioned previous in The War in Europe) simply means the way that National soccer teams epitomize the stereotype about their country (the Germans are organized, the Brazilians are flashy, the Eastern European teams are stoic and tough, the Italians bitch and moan, etc).

The stereotype of the US is that we are assholes who everyone hates. Well guess what, that’s how we’re playing soccer now and I’m pumped about it. Guatemala was showing the US players their spikes and our guys responded by giving as good as they got. That’s what we’re about. You hate us already, so why not play in a way that deserves that hate. Seriously, we played that game as if to say to Guatemala, ‘fuck you, we can’t find your country on a map but we are going make you our bitch’.

The only game the US played well in the last World Cup was the Italy game in which red cards were given out repeatedly and Brian McBride’s head was gushing blood. Last nigh, each team got red carded and Tim Howard (our goalie) nearly got into a fight with Carlos Ruiz after Ruiz kicked him in the chest while he was on the ground. The team played possession ball, made solid aggressive runs, and didn’t take shit from anyone.

So while coaching at the under 23 and MLS level might be lacking, it looks like Bob Bradley has the National team on the right track.