Bear Down Wildcats

azgreg wrote:What do we expect tonight?

Im not really sure anyone knows what to expect...

Arena's two friendlies a bit ago looked pretty poor. We will see.

Yeah I wasn't expecting this first half

They seem rather aggressive tonight.

legallykenny wrote:

azgreg wrote:Who's surprised Dempsey is on the squad?

There's only two other forwards in the program who can actually score and one of them spends half of his national team time getting injured. You simply can't count on Jozy playing two games.

Only thing that actually matters is whether Bruce will start Pulisic.

This was probably not the most challenging prediction ever made.
Every skilled American teenager needs to go to Germany or the Netherlands to play. We should Bender let another kid go to England.

And LOL at Stu and Landon saying in every indirect way possible that the tram despised JK. I think the entire squad just took a dump on his corpse.

Not impressed with this lineup at all. Pulisic is damn good

Ream and Zusi starting in the back 4 is... awful. Injuries really killing us, but Pulisic is freaking amazing.

TucsonClip wrote:Ream and Zusi starting in the back 4 is... awful. Injuries really killing us, but Pulisic is freaking amazing.

That back 4 was horrendous tonight. Very luck to get a point.

Watching US-Venezuela a few hours after RM-Juventus was, uh, painful. I'm not sure they're even playing the same sport.

Pulisic looked good. Mexico up next

How bad do we get our ass kicked here?

GOOOOOOAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!

What a kick by Bradley!

Bruce tinkers with the lineups like Jurgy did. The difference is that the players know what's expected of them come game time because they've practiced it. I had my doubts about that roster, but it came through, even the carcass of DMB.

MrBug708 wrote:Bruce tinkers with the lineups like Jurgy did. The difference is that the players know what's expected of them come game time because they've practiced it. I had my doubts about that roster, but it came through, even the carcass of DMB.

QFT. Bruce prepped the team for weeks in camp, even going so far as getting the MLS guys released early, so they could spend more time together. Unlike Jurgen's 3/5-man backline experiment against Mexico (remember, JK used a similar formation in Columbus), Bruce put together a smart, reasonable gameplan. He's got the guys back, focused on fundamentals, with defense seemingly priority number one. Which, I don't mind necessarily considering our mediocre forwards, and our surplus of talented CB's.

Hopefully we'll see some players emerge from the Gold Cup. I've always been a big fan of Dom Dwyer, ever since his first season with KC, and there are a couple of others that I think could be good contributors or competition for starting/sub roles on the WC 23-man squad.

Not getting clear penalty calls at home...that's US Soccer!

We might think about subbing Tim Ream at the half

SCCats wrote:We might think about subbing Tim Ream at the half

Starting random shit Euro league player of the week over Besler is the kind of thing that got Klinsi fired. How in the world did Arena make the same mistake?

More importantly though, how is Brooks always out injured?

Costa Rica has 3-4 good players and 1 of them didn't play and still won on the road 2-0. That's US Soccer for ya!

What's this I hear about Russia using North Korea slave labor for building their stadiums?

This is not going to be a pleasant day for Christian Pulisic.

lol well it will be marginally funny to see Bruce fired this early on in his second tenure

Well escaped with a point

I'm going to flip out if Bruce decides to start Zusi or Beasley in important games ever again. Yedlin's healthy, so that takes care of Zusi, and I just pray Fabian gets moved back, or Villafana starts at LB instead. Just ridiculous. Honduras looked like Spain out there, and Zusi was beaten off the dribble all day by a Honduran winger who was just waiting at the halfway line to burn him every time. Just atrocious. If Honduras were any good at finishing, we're losing 3-0. Thank god Bobby saved our bacon with a scrappy goal at the death.

And FFS, the announcers and most of the press, so soft on this team. "Oh, we'll take the point!" "Honduras is tough!" "Crowd support against Costa Rica wasn't good! Boo hoo!".

Glad Alexi called them out. They're on the cusp of abject failure, it's time they play with a little fire instead of coasting like they clearly were on that winning streak. Back to reality boys, time to get wins.

If only there were an excellent possession midfielder who had played WC and WCQ games next to Michael Bradley somewhere toiling away in MLS. Where or where could we find such a player?
Bonus points if he has a reputation for reaming out under performing teammates.

legallykenny wrote:If only there were an excellent possession midfielder who had played WC and WCQ games next to Michael Bradley somewhere toiling away in MLS. Where or where could we find such a player?
Bonus points if he has a reputation for reaming out under performing teammates.

I can't tell if you're talking about Jermaine Jones, or Benny Feilhaber, or who...

This team dearly misses the take-no-prisoners bruiser that was Jermaine Jones for over a cycle. Danny Williams would've been the most obvious like-for-like, but not only has he been passed up for shitty MLS guys, he's gotten himself injured just before WCQ, so he's unavailable anyway. Doubt Bruce would've called him in regardless, but now he's got an excuse...

qwertyus wrote:

legallykenny wrote:If only there were an excellent possession midfielder who had played WC and WCQ games next to Michael Bradley somewhere toiling away in MLS. Where or where could we find such a player?
Bonus points if he has a reputation for reaming out under performing teammates.

I can't tell if you're talking about Jermaine Jones, or Benny Feilhaber, or who...

This team dearly misses the take-no-prisoners bruiser that was Jermaine Jones for over a cycle. Danny Williams would've been the most obvious like-for-like, but not only has he been passed up for shitty MLS guys, he's gotten himself injured just before WCQ, so he's unavailable anyway. Doubt Bruce would've called him in regardless, but now he's got an excuse...

Benny. Jones is 18 months past being done.

Lineup definitely skews towards attack, curious to see how much Panama parks the bus on us.

So here we are...at the cosmo, praying for qualification.

At least I'm in my holy city for this prayer session.

Omar Gonzales?

I wouldn't bet my legacy on him, but ok.

SCCats wrote:So here we are...at the cosmo, praying for qualification.

At least I'm in my holy city for this prayer session.

I actually want these fuckers to have to go to Syria to qualify. Would be well deserved after the half-assed shit show performances they've put out there this cycle.

How's the Cosmo? I was surprised by how normal the Venetian and Wynn were when I was there Monday night.

legallykenny wrote:

SCCats wrote:So here we are...at the cosmo, praying for qualification.

At least I'm in my holy city for this prayer session.

I actually want these fuckers to have to go to Syria to qualify. Would be well deserved after the half-assed shit show performances they've put out there this cycle.

How's the Cosmo? I was surprised by how normal the Venetian and Wynn were when I was there Monday night.

Yeah totally normal here.

And I'm honestly not sure we could, in good conscience, send a team to Syria (Latakia?) to play a football match.

Holy shit.

I wondered this summer if some team would look smart four or five years from now trying to snap up Pulisic for 40M or so.

Impressive goal. I hope he stays in Germany forever

Very very nice

Couldn't ask for a better first half.

Thankfully we are finishing, because we easily could have conceded a few.

The center of the American backline

The whole middle of the field is crap

We are in big trouble

MrBug708 wrote:We are in big trouble

We're toast. We now need results from others.

This is beyond pathetic.

Is there a good breakdown on qualifying? Or are we just fuct?

Win and we move on. If Honduras and Panama both lose, which they are, we move on. If we the, we are going to the playoff. Then it gets murkier based on other teams

phenom5 wrote:Is there a good breakdown on qualifying? Or are we just fuct?

Need Mexico to beat or tie Honduras AND Costa Rica to beat or tie Panama

If only one of those two happen, it's into a playoff

Thanks guys

And we are out

Hopefully Sunil goes with Bruce