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designated players
decisions, decisions
The boring Mexico-Chile 0-0 draw last night means Copa America is over for the US MNT, but no matter what roster was sent (or what conmebol thinks of it), accepting the invitation to the South American tournament was the best decision USSF has made in years. That needs to be said as we move forward and look to the future.
(note: Conmebol tempered their criticism by saying that they like having the U.S. included in the tournament even after knocking its roster, but if we continue to see the tournament as practice, we might not get automatic invites down the road. You got to love how they used Mexico as the proper example of how a guest team should prepare. Add in the fact that Brazil sent a B-team to their own confederation tournament, and makes it kind of hard to take any of the U.S. criticism too seriously).
As we head into the off-season, for lack of a better term, I’d like to focus some attention on our friendly schedule – those meaningless games I alluded to a couple of posts ago.
Lets play decider after the jump…
That ‘finished with meaningful games’ line from a few days ago was purposely harsh, foreshadowing this post before I knew I would write it. Of course a friendly game isn’t meaningless – all international experience is worth something – but I think we will all agree the average friendly match hardly equals one in a Copa America or Gold Cup.
There is a way, however, to increase the heat and boil as much as possible out of the limited opportunities friendly matches provide, leaving something to work with. It is a priority that USSF has overlooked, and is one of the many questions USSF should have to answer to. Their recent track record of silence in explaining their decision-making is disturbing for an elected group who owes such answers to their members. (Remind you of another elected leader?)
Just as entering Copa America was the best decision USSF has made in some time, their friendly scheduling represents some of their worst.
The next two games, October 14th against Catalonia at Nou Camp and October 17th against Switzerland are good starts, taking the team to the historically unfriendly confines of Europe, but there is room to improve.
Now I’m no politician, and surely there are plenty of conflicts that make scheduling friendlies difficult, but more attention needs to be placed on development, not wins and losses. Our opponents should reflect that. Copa America proved that ethos in Coach Bradley, and I’m sure USSF must feel the same way, what with their new youth development league focused on precisely this ideal.
So besides the obvious – play the best teams possible – I have one specific idea that isn’t revolutionary, but that I think would be a great start to building an intriguing and exciting US MNT schedule every year, year after year.
Give your ideas and the reaction to mine in the comments section below. Here it is, in all its simplistic glory:
Jay Jaeger
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 1:59pm
I think someone should mention this about the roster selection. Most star players from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico… play in Europe. European seasons are on summer break right now (I think some just started training camps for next season). Also Argentina, Brazil,… did not play in the Gold Cup. I feel it is harsh on MLS to take away a lot of its best players for two long competition. Having your best players miss 5, 6 or whatever games can be crucial in your season. This is something that I am sure conmebol does not think about. And for the the European players, it it beneficial to them if they get a little rest between the Gold Cup and their training camps.
I like the idea of having these yearly games, except the Mexico one. With us playing them in the Gold Cup and WC qualifying, I do not like the idea of another game in this rivalry. It would fill the stands, but I just do not like it. However I would love to see a yearly game against England. In college football many teams play every year and the winner gets some kind of trophy that they keep until they play again. I think we should do that with England. I am sure we can think of some clever trophy when looking at the history of our two countries…
bruce
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 2:28pm
and dont forget the rumored september 9th game at azteca
lets hope that happens
the usa now knows they can dominate mexico in the states, they need to go to azteca as many times as possible to figure that place out
Ricky B
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 3:04pm
There’s also a friendly in Sweden in August. As for Adam’s suggestion, we basically already have an annual friendly with Mexico. England does bring out the fans and provides a good atmosphere, although I imagine they would use an annual friendly with the US to bring younger players rather than many of the big names that American fans would be hoping to see. I also doubt the FA would go for the idea in the first place. Canada doesn’t make much sense to me- their team isn’t bad by any means, but they aren’t anything special and despite my hopes that a great rivalry could one day develop, it’s just not there yet. Friendlies versus Canada do not produce an exciting atmosphere in the stands- at least not in the US. Maybe you put it in BMO Field and the TFC fans come out in force, then you could have a good atmosphere.
Jay Jaeger
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 3:15pm
What is this September 9th game? I haven’t heard anything about it.
Ric
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 3:21pm
I like the idea of scheduling difficult games each year. And while I love games (wins) against Mexico, I don’t really think we’d want to play these three teams every year. Sure, we’d help stoke regional rivalries (especially with a much improving- both in quality of play and crowd participation-Canada), and we’d be able to either play in Wembley or in the US, where the Premier League is widely popular. But as to gaining experience, it doesn’t help us all that much.
Here’s my idea (with conditions), which is a little different that yours, Adam:
Every year, we must play a team from each region of FIFA, and at least half of those games must be away games.
Condition #1- If we can’t schedule six friendlies, cut the CONCACAF game (we play them in qualifying and the Gold Cup anyways) and Oceania (really, it’d be cheapr/easier to try and get an MLS All-Star team, or just one of their better teams) games. That would be four games, against teams from South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Condition #2- Try to make them good teams. Like top 50 worldwide. No playing Andorra or the Faroe Islands. Or, if we do schdule against those teams, we need to play an extra game for that region, against someone in the top 30 worldwide.
I think this idea works because we get to play regularly in hostile environments, we play a good amount of games during the year, friendly-wise, to try out new things and to let our core players gel. We also get a chance to play teams with a variety of styles of play.
BoB
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 3:30pm
I love the idea of playing England yearly or at least every now and again to keep our friendly prestige up. I’m a little weary of wearing out the Mexico rivalry though. I think once a year against them and Canada could be valuable but if we play Mexico again this year it might be too often.
Sure the atmosphere is what we need more of, extremely hostile environments, but I’d like to see us vary our opponents. Hopefully that means a friendly with England or really any other European powerhouse.
Pat
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 4:16pm
I see a problem with the England friendly…Why would they want to play us? They don’t consider us in thier class (and I can’t say that I disagree). They are not getting on a plane and flying 6-10 hours for a friendly to play in the US when they can fly a few hours to Munich, Rome or Madrid to pay a sexier - just as lucrative game. Remember the last friendly against England? Most of the big stars came up with injuries at the last minute. We played against the likes of Zat Night, Alan Smith, Peter Crouch and Anton Ferdinand (Thier equivalent of our Copa America squad)
The US is not a big draw, so they are not going to want to play us in Wembley. It’s nice for us to dream about this but I don’t think it is realistic until we start making some serious noise on the international scene.
A more realistic scenario is playing Germany in Germany.
We should be loking to schedule matches against the likes of Ghana, Nigeria or Uruguay during the European season at a neutral sight like Craven Cottage or White Hart Lane. Give the Europeans the easy commute and put the handful of MLS players to get on the plane.
The Beautiful Game
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 5:19pm
Great stuff as always. I totally agree with those suggested friendlies.
I’d love to see a match every now and then with someone like a Poland, Ukraine, Sweden, Croatia, Romania, etc.
Take care.
Peter
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 7:30pm
a team can send their B team if they at least make it to the next round, and they’ve won the tournament a few times.
Mike
on Jul 5th, 2007 - 10:07pm
I do like the idea of setting a regular schedule of friendly international matches, but if the USSF wants to play meaningful games (and I’m not sure that is the priority for anyone other than Bob Bradley at this point) why not schedule Mexico, one UEFA side and one COMNEBOL side every year?
This would allow us to play at least 3 quality teams a year as has been suggested but with this set up at least 2 of these games would be on our half of the planet and these teams could perhaps be lured to the US for home matches. I don’t want to play England, since we know that they won’t field a full squad and their program is waning right now anyway. I think our full team would thump their half-side at this point.
If we do have to go abroad to get good competition so be it we should do it. Brazil play half their friendlies in Europe because that is where most of their players are. As the US talent base moves overseas we’ll be able to draw on some of more of our players who are in European leagues to play over there, and be able to do it without disrupting their training schedules. And, if the USSF wants to draw in more TV viewers, games against better known European teams will surely dwarf the revenue for games like the ones we’ll have in Europe fall.
If you’re looking for a true barometer for where the national team is, I still think that playing big time internationals on their home turf is the way to go, which is why the way we approached Copa America disappointed so many people.
prairie
on Jul 6th, 2007 - 10:27am
The MNT blog last week also dropped a huge hint about a potential African friendy to close out the year. Yes, we should play Mexico at least once annually just because it is always fun to play and beat them, but it’s good to play a wide variety of teams, and throwing some African or Asian curveballs into the mix will help. Play teams we know aren’t as good as we are, play teams we know are way better than we are, play teams that are a huge mystery.
flow
on Jul 7th, 2007 - 2:19am
i think all is good. 1 - 2 teams between all continents/regions/whatnot. asia, africa, europe, south america, the islands (jamaica, trin/tobago, etc.)
once these are scheduled, just make sure that no more than 1/2 are at home but if they seem frigid about coming to the states then play there.
so we could use something like this:
Japan, Iran
Germany, Czech
Ghana, Ivory Coast
Argentina, Mexico
Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago
Trevor
on Jul 7th, 2007 - 5:55pm
england would play us 40 times a year if they made enough money, thats what we have to do is figure out how to make money with friendlies, then any team in the world would want to play us
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