OT: soccer thread

[fatlever]

great post e4.

its not clark's fault. i blame bradley (if there is blame). he should have started edu and not started findley today, and most everyone knew it before the game. we wasted 2 subs in a grueling game replacing those two. that might have been a difference maker. who knows. but like you said, the future look much brighter now than it did a decade ago.

[fatlever]

hats off to ghana... they burried their shots and we didnt.

if anyone was wondering, jamaicans were rooting for ghana (or against usa). im in a resort in jamaica and i was surprised to see that i was basically in a room full of ghana supporters (the staff and locals), despite the resort being filled with 75% americans. the staff can smile at your face and pretend to love you, but when the game comes on, that all goes away. hmmm.... oh well.

[fatlever]

hey e4, which soccer sites forums to you visit on a regular basis?

my daily list:
soccerbyives
soccernet

semi regular:
big soccer - mainly chelsea board and usa stuff (not registered, just lurk)
goal.com
foxsoccer


once in a while:
soocerlens
football365

[e4Nf6]

Bigsoccer.com is a must, lots of silly reactionary posters but then you occasionally get great stuff like Mix Diskerud or Edgar Castillo posting themselves, or Dave Marino-Nachison posting about every American playing in the Romanian third division....
Soccerbyives.net is the best IMO for breaking news, if anything big happens in the world of soccer it will be on there 5 mins later.....
Soccer365 has some good articles sometimes, although I mostly only read it when its linked from somewhere else.....
I'll at least check the front page of soccernet everyday, although I'm not a huge fan of their articles.....

some others I like:

Noshortcorners.com
unprofessionalfoul.com
nutmegradio.com
theoffsiderules

[Det the Threat]

Too bad for you guys, but it you've missed your chances in that 2nd half of the game and it looked like you didn't have much left in the tank during extra time.

I was really delighted to see Michael Bradley play in this WC and i really hope he can keep this up at Gladbach this upcoming season.
Though, i'm not sure if he'll play for my club next year, with Everton(as usual) and Birmingham said to be interested in him. Still, the only offer i've read was the one by Birmingham and those £5 million won't do it to get him.


Anyways, today's the day as we'll play England.
They're the favourites, with all those great players, but we're still Germany and like Gary Lineker said, in the end Germany wins.

@fatlever:
Those are the teams rumored to be interested in Mesut Oezil, who most likely won't return to Werder Bremen with only one year left on his contract.

Arsenal(probably if Fabregas leaves)
Chelsea
Tottenham
Liverpool
Inter
Barca(if they don't get Fabregas)

Out of those clubs i think Arsenal would be the best choice for him.
Arsene Wenger is known to work with youngsters and also known to get the best out of them, while giving them lots of trust.
Barca would probably be the toughest team right now, cause i don't know where he should play in that lineup and i think it would be best for him to play at another club before joining such a huge one.
Chelsea could be good for him as well, with them trying to go younger and letting go of guys like Ballack, Joe Cole and, most likely, Deco.

[Thaliontil]

I´m sorry but in my personal opinion Torres is,as we would said on the nba,a "bust".He is famous because he came younger to the Atleti,but then...I think he has never scored more than 15 goals when playing in Spain...He just can´t hit the ball well when aproaching to the goalkeeper,on friday against Chile he was just AWFUL.

e4,xDDD,I love Liverpool because of Benítez (now he is gone ) who made my Valencia one of the top teams of Europe,but I can´t stand Torres.I love his goals with the national team because I support every single player of my country when playing an international match but...I´d rather put Fernando Llorente instead of him.

I was watching Ghana-USA yesterday,I´m sorry guys,I wanted your country to move to the quarter finals but Gyan made a beautiful goal,How is Onyewu doing at Milan?Because he is GOOD,and Tim Howard seems to be a nice goalkeeper,I didn´t like the son of the coach,perhaps he was a littler nervous on the last minutes but he missed some important passes.

Ozil is a machine.He played against Valencia this year and we ended up with a 4-4,we moved to the quarterfinals but he and Marin were espectacular,we won because of Villa and César.

And i bet England was on the Final...But if they had to face Germany I´d rather choose your country Det,I love German´s story and the way they played the first game.I think it would be a 3-2 for Germany.

Good luck

[Fred Williamson]

Müller is the truth.

[BigSlam]

Watching the German's smack th living snot out of the English makes me feel a lot better about the Aussie's 1st game of this world cup.

GERMANY is the truth.

Fixed!!

[SWedd523]

Playing behind the 8 ball so many times ended up biting us in the rear end. It's terrible that it takes a punch in the face in the first five minutes to wake us up and have us play well. We exceeded expectations by winning our group, but we really could have done something special with a favorable draw in the bracket with a serious shot at going to the semis. Lots of disappointed guys on the team but tons of new fan interest in America that will hopefully bring a lot of new talent up. Have to feel for the older guys on the team that missed out on a chance at history though...


On that note, how are we looking for World Cup 2014? Looking at our Cup Roster (Disclaimer: I have no idea who our "up and coming" guys are, so I'll only analyze the team as the current roster stands):


Defenders-- Safe to say Bocanegra (35), Cherundolo (35), and DeMerit (34) won't be back. Gooch is questionable as he'll be 32. There goes 3/4 of our back line, maybe the entire unit. Key reserves Spector (28), Bornstein (29) can fill in on the outside, but neither are guys who give me much confidence. Who plays the two center positions?

Midfielders-- Dempsey (31) and Donovan (32) were likely our two best players, and will likely be too old to play, so we'll have some huge shoes to fill. Clark (31) will also likely be out, leaving only Michael Bradley (26) as our mainstay. He thoroughly impressed me this year so I suspect he'll be one of our leaders in 2014. Key reserves Jose Torres (26), Maurice Edu (28), and Benny Feilhaber (29) will likely move into the three openings, which doesn't make me too mad as they provide a nice mix of talent.

Forwards-- Jozy will be 24, and likely our best player and star, and Findley will be 28, so there shouldn't be much different up front. I'd like to see us replace Findley though as he doesn't really provide anything of value as far as I'm concerned. Only problem is that both Gomez (32) and Buddle (33) will not return so we don't have any other guys.

Keepers-- Tim Howard will be 35 so it's definitely possible that he won't return. However, Brad Guzan has played nicely in his stead at times and should be a capable replacement.



Who are some of the young guys that could come in and make some noise between now and 2014?

[e4Nf6]

Too many promising young guys to mention. I'll just name a few, an I'm not going to look up how old they are. Go check out the US mens national team board on Bigsoccer if you're interested, this is all their talking about right now..

Defenders:
Tim Ream, CB, New York Red bull, 22ish: Very Very good on the ball, not something that is common in our pool of players at CB.
Omar Gonzales, CB, LA galaxy, 21ish: A Gooch clone, wins absolutely everything in the air
Geoff Cameron, CB, Houston Dynamo, 23ish: Another guy who is great on the ball, also plays CM.
Edgar Castillo, LB, San Luis(Mexico) 23ish: great attacker, not as impressive defending.

Also: Ike Opara,(CB, Philly Union) Gale Abousasoemthing(not gonna look up how to spell his name, CB, Sporting Braga, Portugal) Kevin Alston, (RB, NE Revolution) Eric Lihaj(RB, Aston Villa) Sean Franklin (RB, LA Galaxy)


Mids: Bradley, Torres, Holden and Feilhaber are good bets to still be around, that's half the mids we'll probably take.

Also:
Sebastian Lletget CM, West Ham, 18ish: Still only playing in reserve games for his club but tore it up with the U-17s
Michael Stephens CM, LA Galaxy, 22ish. He's looked just as good as his team-mate Donovan.
Luis Gil, CAM, Real Salt Lake, 18ish: Had offers from Arsenal and a bunch of other big names, shocked everybody by signing with MLS.


Forwards: Their are a ton of promising 18ish or 19ish forwards in MLS, I suspect one of them will emerge in the next few years.

I need to stop posting here and just get a blog....

[Diop]

Watching the German's smack th living snot out of the English makes me feel a lot better about the Aussie's 1st game of this world cup.

GERMANY is the truth.

Fixed!!

I'm still a little annoyed at our negative approach in that game. You can't go into a game expecting to lose and just play completely defensive in the hope of minimizing the loss.
The best defense is often to play offense, play your best team and be aggressive. That's what I would have preferred to see.
The problem with "preserving" players is that you never know what might happen, especially with these ref's, and you end up with one of your most important players, Kewell, playing only 17 minutes for the whole tournament.

[Paydro70]

Dempsey and Donovan will most likely still be playing. There are tons of 30 year olds at the world cup.

[Thaliontil]

I suppose Donovan will be in the national team on 4 years time,as well as Onyewu and Tim Howard.He´ll be 35,yes,but here in Spain,my team (Valencia C.F.) has a goalkeeper called César,he will be 39 this september and i assure you there wasn´t a better goalkeeper (perhaps Valdés or Diego Alves) this season.

Hope Chile beats Brazil today!And then we have to knock down Portugal ^^

[doc.end]

LOL

http://sklad.obrazku.cz/obr428526_1277654791369.jpg

and this one is nice too

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/8460/31714.png

[fatlever]

i think howard, dempsey, donovan and gooch will all be on the next team baring injuries.

[e4Nf6]

I'd put the odds at Howard being on the roster in 2014 at about 90%. Landon and Demps 70%. They probably won't be as important to us then maybe not even starters, but Landon is the best player in the history of US soccer and Demps and Howard are not too far behind. Given that, it's not crazy to think that they'll still be one of our best 23 players in their early 30s.

Guys like Cherundolo and Demerit however are almost definitely not going to be there....

It's funny to see Bigsoccer threads from 2006 trying to predict our 2010 roster. Absolutely nobody picked guys like Demerit, Torres, Gomez, or Jozy (who was 16 at the time IIRC) Other guys like Adu or Eddie Johnson were seen as locks. A few people picked guys like Danny Setzela who has fallen off the edge of the earth. A lot of people thought Claudio Reyna would still be on the roster using similar arguments to the one I just made above about Donovan.

[fatlever]

thats one thing about soccer... many good players dont stay at the top for long. injuries wreck guys. lack of playing time will wreck guys.

i still have hope that maybe one day adu will put it all together and become an asset to the team, but my hope is fading fast.

[Thaliontil]

Where is Adu now?Last time I hear about him he was in Monaco I think...
Brazil just overrun Chile...I expect Villa to score 2 goals tomorrow just to tie Fabiano and Higuaín on the top of the strikers list.

[fatlever]

adu is playing in greece for aris thessaloniki on an 18 month loan, starting last january.

he actually had a decent second half of the season, when he played. in 12 appearances he had a couple of goals and a couple of assists. it seems he has found a place where he is wanted playing for a good established coach who is willing to work with him. hopefully he gets more first team action next season.

[Thaliontil]

When I last heared about Adu the specialists said that he was a rising star who just stopped his progression after a stellar debut.I hope he recovers and starts playing with Usa team soon.

Now i´m suffering,Spain is controlling the game but we just can´t reach Portugal´s goalkeeper,Iniesta is playing horrible and When Ramos leaves his position on defense to put the ball on the area we get surpassed when they counterattack.

Go spain