CHICAGO – If the U.S. Men’s National Team’s 2-0 loss to Colombia in the opening game of the Copa America did anything to dampen expectations for fans of the host nation, members of the squad appeared unfazed by losing to a team many considered the favorites in Group A.
Losing to the No. 3 ranked team in the world may have put the USMNT in a nearly must-win situation for it’s Tuesday clash with Costa Rica, but before training in Chicago on Monday the team downplayed the effect of the result on their chances of getting out of the group.
“We’re still going to be going with the same mentality and attitude that we did the other night, now we just have a little more pressure on us,” Geoff Cameron said. “You guys all didn’t expect us to beat Colombia anyway so it doesn’t matter. We lost and we understand that, we were disappointed because we believed we could beat them and yeah we felt that we could have performed better, we could have finished off our chances and done a little better. But nobody really expected to win, or from what you guys wrote before you guys didn’t expect us to win so it’s nothing different.
“Where now we have a little more pressure, back against the wall. We know that Costa Rica is a team they’re in our qualifying, we’ve played against them a bunch of times and we know it’s going to be a difficult game but we believe in ourselves, we believe in the ability that we have and it’s another opportunity for us to get a win.”
After calling the performance against Colombia “totally even” in the postgame aftermath, Jurgen Klinsmann was asked Monday about when getting the right result becomes as important as a good performance.
“The result is always the most important thing at the end of the day, but a tournament has it’s own characteristics in a certain way,” Klinsmann said. “It’s three group games and you have to find the points to get out of the group. We were very disappointed there after the game, absolutely, because we thought we played a really good game. When you read the dry result, a lot of opinions go different ways then, but we have everything to play for.
“They played 0-0 in the first game, so they’re only one point ahead of us. There’s everything to play for in the last two games, and then hopefully you go through, which we are convinced we will and you start a whole new tournament again. The knockout stage is a completely different stage than the group phase. We explained that to the players, we talked to them. A lot of them played in those tournaments before, so they are very hungry to do well in this Copa America, so results matter, absolutely.
Like Cameron, captain Michael Bradley minimized any outside negativity stemming from the loss.
“I don’t spend two seconds worrying about what the reaction is or what the narrative on the outside is,” Bradley said. “You guys are going to write what you’re going to write, people are going to think what they think and ultimately we’ve got much bigger things to worry about than what goes on on the outside.
“I think over the, since I’ve been in this team, one of its strengths has been its ability to you know close the door, know who we are, know what needs to be better, understand what was still good and get ready for whatever comes next. Obviously that’s what we need to do tomorrow.”
I’m not usually one to hark on poor spelling/grammar, but this article is one of the worst I’ve seen lately.
couldn’t agree more, it makes for a hard read in certain moments. Who is their proof reader lordy?!?!?!?!
I am glad that I am not the only one you thought the we did OK the other night. I’ve seen enough bad USMNT losses to know the feeling, but I watched the Colombia game to the end without feeling let down. Sure, we did not create a ton going forward, but our passing was crisp and on the whole our defending looked competent. We lost on set pieces to a superior team.
I wouldn’t call the passing crisp. Passing among the defensive line won’t lead to goals. When Bradley had the ball and was under pressure in the second half, he certainly didn’t show crisp passing. His passes were either misdirected or lacking in pace, which led to one-to-many turnovers. Up front there were no passes that split the Colombian defense to lead to dangerous shots on goal.
I do think though Clint Dempsey needs to sit out the next one. He could have dropped and help the midfield and fed Wood and Zardes but instead he was bitching and moaning and not a lot of movement. Sure he had two chances but that’s not worth the slot wasted. Instead bring him of the bench. Other than that the USA made Colombia look mediocre and they look mediocre also because they neutralized Colombia. I thought they were good. Start Nagbe over Dempsey and play Bedoya still.
The same guy JK called a warrior after the game? Benching him is effectively saying you think Wood or Zardes can lead the line in a must win game. I haven’t seen anything to suggest either can do that.
I know the players have to toe the company line but….yikes.
Who could possibly not be worroed with how the US looked in that game? Toothless and having no ideas.
I don’t understand this narrative. The US actually held possession, controlled the tempo of the game, and had a few dangerous chances throughout the match. I think they weren’t great, but to say that they or we should be worried is ridiculous.
They didn’t control the tempo of the game. Colombia gave them the ball because they went up early on. They knew that by closing the passing lanes and sitting back the US would keep the ball but not create scoring chances, which is what happened. Their scoring chances were very limited and mostly came off set pieces from fouls the Colombian’s gave up near their penalty box. They sat back and waited for some counter attacking options to add to their tally and they got it. 2-0. They could’ve made it 3-0 if Bacca had scored on anther quick breakaway. What I saw was a Colombian team that wasn’t worried about the US and instead were biding their time, keeping their defensive shape, and conserving energy.
So you want our team to focus on the loss, say the sky is falling and generally lack confidence? Thank God they aren’t losers like many of the posters on this blog.
Interesting (read:ironic) stance from you regarding support through tough times lol 🙂
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We played fairly well and Columbia wasn’t amazing either. They managed the game after a goal due to a mistake by one of our better players. The result happened, fate is legitimate analyses of a soccer match, and any Colombian could spin it as a professional performance, but we weren’t run off the field technically which has happened at least once in every world cup I’ve seen (1990 vs Czechoslovakia, 1994 vs. Romania and Brazil, 1998 vs. Germany and Iran, 2002 vs. Poland, 2006 vs. Czech Rep., 2010 vs. ok never run off the field but 1st half vs. Slovenia was terrible and tournament almost ended there, 2014 vs. Germany and Belgium). I don’t know of a major international tournament – copa, world cup, or confed – that saw us coast through group play. Has never happened to my knowledge. Even copa america 1995, we needed to beat Argentina by a lot of goals to go through.