James Rodriguez stars as Colombia beats USMNT, 4-2

There were some highlights for the USMNT on Thursday night, but Colombia had quite a bit more, and the better ones too. James Rodriguez scored a gorgeous goal and notched an assist while dictating his team’s play throughout the game.

The USMNT defense — particularly the left flank of Antonee Robinson — struggled with Colombia’s talented attack. Kellyn Acosta and Bobby Wood’s goals were encouraging, while Tim Weah had a solid all-around match, but the Americans will hardly look back on this as a good performance.

Fresh off the bench, Borja scores a sensational goal. Off a cross from James Rodriguez, he placed a pretty scissor kick finish past Zack Steffen.

The USMNT gets caught out badly after a set piece. John Brooks stayed in the box for a second ball in, and the Americans got punished. Carlos Bacca beat Antonee Robinson one-on-one and played a ball into the space that Brooks would normally occupy. He wasn’t there, but Radamel Falcao was.

It seems everyone has stopped defending in this one. The USMNT’s left side gets shredded again, this time by Santiago Arias, who gets to the byline and delivers an excellent ball for Bacca.

What a turnaround! The USMNT puts together a fantastic counter-attack just four minutes after their equalizer. Tim Weah set it up with an excellent through ball to Wood, who beat the Colombia defense to the ball.

The much maligned Antonee Robinson has redeemed himself by setting up a goal. He put in a very nice cross that Davinson Sanchez struggled to deal with, inadvertently flicking it into a more dangerous area. Acosta timed his run perfectly and finished at the far post.

This is going just about according to script. The USMNT has held their own and put together a couple of promising attacks, but Colombia is just straight-up better. Young left back Antonee Robinson is having to play against James Rodriguez or Juan Cuadrado one-on-one most of the time, a tough task for experienced, world class defenders. He’s not quite been up to it, which has led to most of Colombia’s eight shots and James’ spectacular goal.

The man the crowd in Tampa paid to see delivers with an outrageous curling shot into the top corner from a fairly acute angle. They don’t get much better than this.

Antonee Robinson and John Brooks are going to have to sort out whatever’s going on here.

Michael Bradley has made his return to the starting lineup for the USMNT, and he’ll get the armband too. He’s joined in the midfield by Kellyn Acosta and Julian Green, as Wil Trapp is dropped after captaining the team on a few occasions in 2018. The back five is a familiar one, and might be a set unit going forward in the event all five players are healthy.

Colombia looks to be playing two strikers, with Carlos Bacca and Radamel Falcao up top. James Rodriguez, Juan Cuadrado and Davinson Sanchez also make the starting XI, as Los Cafeteros field a full-strength team.

The United States men’s national team will be looking to build on a recent victory over Mexico when it takes on Colombia on Thursday night. However, the Americans will be without three first choice stars — Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams.

Colombia has brought all its stars to Tampa, which should attract a pretty heavy pro-Colombia crowd. The match is likely to set the record for a U.S. Soccer match in Tampa, with over 30,000 tickets sold as of Wednesday afternoon.

Coverage starts at 7:30 p.m. ET, though kickoff isn’t likely to be until after 8 p.m. ET. You can watch the game on TV on FS1 or Univision Deportes, and online at the those networks’ streaming services.

This post will update with live coverage, starting just before kickoff and running throughout the game.

The United States men’s national team would like to commit to a more ambitious style of play going forward, but they were very much forced back into their own half against Brazil, and Colombia might present a similar challenge.

Still, current head coach Dave Sarachan wants to talk about the players expressing themselves.

“We’ve got a lot of young guys that we feel have a real future in this program,” Sarachan said in the pre-game press conference, adding, “we’ve established a little bit of an identity with this group which we’ve been building with each and every friendly that we’ve brought them in for.”

When asked what he thought that identity was, he talked about the players expressing themselves. “Each and every time, it’s still about the honor of wearing this crest, it’s still about competing, it’s still about trying to win games, it’s still about being yourself and showing your personality,” Sarachan said. “I hope that continues because that’s when you see the real personalities of the players, when they play without any kind of handcuffs on them,” he added.

All of Colombia’s big names are in Tampa, including James Rodriguez, Radamel Falcao and Juan Cuadrado. Stars and Stripes FC has a scouting report of Colombia, and points out the weaknesses of Los Cafeteros’ starting lineup, if you’re an American fan looking for reasons to be optimistic.

Pulisic, McKennie and Adams are all 20 years old or younger, but they’re clear first choice starters for the United States. All three are missing from this camp with injuries, and there are questions about the depth behind them. Players like Kellyn Acosta, Jonathan Amon, and — I’m ducking to avoid the rotten tomatoes being thrown at me — Michael Bradley will need to step up.

Match date/time: Thursday, 7:30 p.m. ET

Venue: Raymond James Stadium, Tampa, FL

TV: FS1 (English), Univision Deportes (Spanish)

Online: Fox Sports Go (English), Univision Deportes en vivo (Spanish)

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