You are forgiven if you thought that Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan are conspiring to keep you from seeing them play together. Ever since Jurgen Klinsmann took over as United States manager last August, the two have taken turns being hurt or resting so they were never on the field together. They finally played together on Wednesday for a short time when Dempsey came off the bench, but it wasn't for long and they couldn't really get much going.
USA Vs. Canada: Time For The Dempsey And Donovan Show At Last
On Sunday, the wait for the Dempsey and Donovan Show should end. Dempsey appears to be getting back to full fitness and ready to start, which means that he and Donovan will make their very first start together under Klinsmann, now 10 months after the German took the manager job.
Exactly how Klinsmann wants to play the two together remains a question. In their short time against Brazil on Wednesday, the U.S. was in a 4-4-2, but that doesn't appear to be the favored formation of Klinsmann, so that match provides no insight into how he will play the two.
Klinsmann has preferred to play with a five-man midfield, but, of course, there are a lot of variations of that. He could continue playing the 4-3-2-1 that he has played in the last two matches with Dempsey and Donovan as the two. The problem with that is that Dempsey is not playing as a true “number 10” then, which seems foolish considering his quality. If he does play in that central number 10 role then the team ends up extremely unbalanced, and while Klinsmann has turned to unbalanced formations in the past, that would be more unbalanced than even he would like.
Another option is to play a 4-2-3-1 (or 4-4-1-1 depending on how you look at it), with Dempsey in the middle and Donovan outside. That would force Jose Francisco Torres into a truly wide position, though, which isn’t exactly his best place.
However Klinsmann deploys Donovan and Dempsey, they will not be far away, and their ability to combine will give the U.S. the type of threat that they have been looking for under Klinsmann, but haven’t gotten with any consistency. For a team committed to keeping the ball, but which has struggled at times in turning possession into chances, the opportunity to put the two of them out there together has to have Klinsmann salivating.
Make sure to check out the U.S. vs. Canada StoryStream for all of your pre-match, live and post-match coverage.
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