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USMNT “need to be harder to play against” for rest of Gold Cup

There’s no sugar coating what happened in the U.S. Men’s National Team’s 3-2 win over Martinique on Wednesday night.

The USMNT deserves credit for responding to a pair of surprising second-half tallies from the Caribbean minnows, but the squad should be rightfully criticized for how poorly it put the game away when it had the chance.

Simply put, Wednesday’s performance that put the USMNT atop Group B was disappointing and not up to the high standard Bruce Arena and his staff have.

Defender Omar Gonzalez, who opened the scoring with a tap-in from close range, admitted the showing from the team, especially in defense, needed to be better.

“Obviously I’m happy to get my goal, but disappointed to let in two goals,” Gonzalez said. “As a center back, you want to keep it zeroes. Talking before the game, we said we needed three points and we wanted goal differential. We got the three points, but we didn’t do our job keeping the zero in the back.” 

Martinique found plenty of space on both goals, and it led to a frantic period in which the USMNT was tasked with recovering fast, and luckily it did.

“Credit to them, they didn’t stop running, didn’t stop playing,” Gonzalez said.  “After 2-0, you might have thought they would stop playing and maybe we would’ve got more goals. That wasn’t the case and they kept threatening us in the back and finding space in behind us. When they did that, they got their chances in front of goal and scored two of them. I think moving forward we need to be smarter, we need to be more focused throughout the entire game and be harder to play against.” 

With one game left in Group B, one more opportunity is out there for the players currently on the fringe of the first-team roster to impress Arena and his staff. Despite the rocky second half, Arena was impressed with a handful of players, which may make the decision to name six replacements after the group stage a bit more difficult.

“I think I saw a lot of good performances out of some our players,” Arena said. “Clearly Jordan Morris with two goals. I think Eric Lichaj and Matt Hedges and Justin Morrow did a good job in our back line. Cristian Roldan, for his first cap with the US team, did well and I think Agudelo and Morris did well. Zardes had an excellent game tonight.” 

For certain players, the Gold Cup is about regaining a spot in the team after being left out for so long. Justin Morrow and Eric Lichaj are two of the best examples of that. Both full backs impressed on Wednesday, and if they get another opportunity on Saturday against Nicaragua, it could further boost their stock at a position that hasn’t had great depth in recent years.

“It felt great to get back out there,” Morrow said. “It was years of hard work accumulating tonight. To get over this injury I had early in camp and to get back out there is special for me. The words from Bruce on the game were good win, we still have a ways to go to get a lot better and that’s a good thing.” 

Cristian Roldan is on the opposite end of the spectrum, as he gained his first cap with the USMNT starting next to Kellyn Acosta in central midfield. With Acosta already having 150 minutes on his legs through two games, Roldan could get another shot to shine on Saturday alongside either Dax McCarty or Alejandro Bedoya, both of whom came off the bench on Wednesday.

“Just play confident and be smart and play like I do in Seattle,” Roldan said. “(Arena) thinks that I’m here for a reason and I do believe that too. For me, it’s making a good first impression and hopefully I did so.” 

For many, Saturday’s match in Cleveland against Nicaragua will be the last time they have a chance to show Arena what they’re capable of before the end of 2017. It’s vital for anyone in the lineup to take Gonzalez’s advice and be a tougher opponent against a team that is a part of an improving core from Central American and the Caribbean.

“I think all the Central American and Caribbean countries improved,” Arena said. “If anything comes out of this tournament for me, I think that’s a real positive for CONCACAF. You see the small countries have elevated their football, They’re much better.” 

“I don’t know (Nicaragua) that well,” Arena said. “We’ll certainly start looking at it over the next couple days, but the little I saw, they played very well tonight.” 

Comments

  1. Bruce is not one to denigrate players publicly. I don’t think you can tell much about what he really thinks about any player from his post game comments.

    For me this was a terrible display by the USA. They played Martinique who fielded a team of mostly amateurs. Guzan once again failed to make a save he should have. Hedges was beaten too often, Rolden was almost invisible for long stretches. Acosta did not dominate the midfield as he should have, but at least he did not make tons of giveaways. Lichaj was pretty solid and helped the attack, probably the guy whose stock rose the most in this game. Zardes showed some glimpses of what he can be capable of. Omar did well and played the whole game without temporarily zoning out like he can do. Morris scored a couple goals, but without Lichaj and Zardes to provide the final service he looked pretty confused.

    It was a tiny island nation with a population of less than half a million, this game should be more like 10-0, not the score they got.

    Reply
    • Martinique is a French Overseas Department and as such can tap into the very formidable French Football Federation, and its coaching apparatus It has two divisions and they are not amateur. Several of the players play in the various French and European countries including a few in D1 teams. Its readily apparent to me that the US team and Bruce Arena underestimated Martinique, choosing to replace 8 starters from the tie against Panama. Another French Overseas Departement, Guadaloupe, with a population of 400K, finished fourth in the 2011 Gold Cup.

      Reply
    • I don’t agree with almost every assessment he provided on performances, but he’s the manager and has forgotten more about the game than I’ll ever know.

      Still, it’s pretty puzzling the specific names he mentioned because I think there’s a case for a few of those to have provided the worst performances on the pitch.

      Reply
      • Pretty sure he was just watching out for his players, knowing he still needs to count on them moving forward. You could tell how upset he was on the sidelines, but he is not going to call them out right afterwards to the television crew.

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