PRETORIA, South Africa – Before the Bob Bradley and his United States soccer team makes its final stand – well, final stand in the opening round, anyway – let’s have a quick look at when players have and haven’t risen to the moment here so far.
Dispatches From South Africa: Identifying The United States’ Elite
This can change in an instant of course. But over 180 minutes so far, I’d grade three U.S. Americans as the best:
Donovan has been quiet in spurts. But he’s also the opposition primary focus on defense. They are always aware of Donovan in ways that they aren’t of, say, Robbie Findley. So it makes sense that Donovan has traveled over his softer spots. But he’s doing good two-way work from his midfield spot, he’s serving a few useful crosses, he’s hitting damn good restarts and then, of course, there was his Herculean strike that ignited Friday’s comeback.
What else can Cherundolo do? He forced an early change in the England game (James Milner went off after 30 minutes). He shut down the dangerous and speedy Shaun Wright-Phillips for the next 60 minutes. He helped create Donovan’s big goal and was rock solid throughout the entire Slovenian effort on defense. While you see Carlos Bocanegra giving up some space occasionally on the left, you just haven’t seen it happen on Cherundolo’s side.
And then Howard. His body of work is fairly self-evident. He was instrumental against England then safe-and-sound against Slovenia. He’s been, more or less, exactly what people expected. He may not be a member of the elite global ‘keepers club just now, but he’s driving around the parking lot of the building looking for a spot. That is to say, he’s not far outside it.
Michael Bradley is having a good tournament overall, but I couldn’t put him in the class of the other three just yet. He was partially at fault for the second Slovenian goal on Friday, and he wasn’t quite up to par in general in the first half of that match. His work in the second half was impressive stuff; not just the goal, but his passion and purpose and commitment to go down kicking and screaming, if at all, were apparent. With such an effort over 90 minutes in Wednesday’s do-or-die against Algeria, he’ll threaten perhaps to dislodge one of his buddies listed above.
What about the other side?
Start with Oguchi Onyewu. I’ve made my case clear about him. He’s been at least partially culpable on all three goals scored against Bradley’s team, and I’m not entirely confident that he won’t be on the hook for one inside Loftus Versfeld Stadium on Wednesday.
Findley hasn’t been anything to shout about in his game and a half here. (And, no, I’m not giving him demerits for collecting two yellow cards and the subsequent suspension, as that was an egg-headed decision by the Malian man in the middle Friday.) It’s not exactly fair to criticize Findley, as he remains so inexperienced at this level, and as so little was ever expected. But if we’re just discussing who has and hasn’t delivered the goods here, his name must come up.
And then there was Jose Torres, who was clearly not up for the job in his 45 minutes against Slovenia. He appeared tactically naïve against the wily, well-drilled Eastern Europeans. And he simply wasn’t assertive in driving the ball forward or looking for penetrating passes. Torres never came close to unlocking the Slovenian defense.
See More:
