By FRANCO PANIZO
The U.S. men's national team began its game against Costa Rica by dominating possession and pushing the tempo, but its inability to translate that into scoring opportunities proved costly.
The United States suffered its first loss under head coach Jurgen Klinsmann, falling 1-0 to Los Ticos in front of 15,798 spectators at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California on Friday night.
Rodney Wallace, who made his Costa Rica debut in the second half of the match, scored the winner five minutes after entering the game.
Playing in a 4-3-3 formation, the Americans started the match by playing attractive soccer with good movement and quick combination passes. But Costa Rica withstood the early pressure, and that helped the visitors settle into a rhythm of their own just before halftime.
That carried over into the second half of a feisty game, as Costa Rica was again able to hold firm in the back despite losing the possession battle for long stretches.
Los Ticos then took advantage of some poor defending by center backs Carlos Bocanegra and Michael Orozco in the 65th minute when a long ball played over the top allowed for Alvaro Saborio to get behind the American back line. Saborio raced onto the ball and hit a low cross to midfielder Michael Barrantes, whose ensuing shot was saved by Tim Howard. Wallace pounced on the rebound and his diving header was too strong for Howard to block.
The United States did not create many chances before or after Wallace's goal, but it was not able to capitalize on the ones it did have.
Landon Donovan came closest to scoring for the U.S. team in the opening minutes of the match, when he wasted a clean look on goal by shooting the ball wide after Brek Shea passed it to him.
Jose Torres and substitute Juan Agudelo also tested Costa Rica with shots in the second half, but goalkeeper Keylor Navas saved both efforts.
The Americans are now winless against Costa Rica in their last five meetings.
The United States next plays Belgium on Sept. 6.
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What did you think of the United States' 1-0 loss to Costa Rica? Who impressed/disappointed you? Think we'll see more of the same against Belgium?
Share your thoughts below.
SBI, how about providing some player rankings?
I meant it wasn’t 90 mins
Castillo was lucky that his mistakes did not turn into C.R. goals. Fault a less than great C.R. effort for that. He had no better game against C.R. than Bornstein did when C.R. was actually using a full-strength squad, except, of course, Bornstein did score a goal (for the USA, I might add).
It is clear that Torres can handle the ball and pass well if he is given a bit of time and space. I do think he does not react so well to hard challenges. What he does very well is pick out teammates and pass the ball well when he has the time and space. What he does not do so well is handle hard physical pressure. At least a couple times he coughed up possession under hard challenges (some would have called them fouls) that put the US in poor position to defend; it was only C.R.’s inability to capitalize on those opportunities that kept Torres from getting a lot of negative attention.
Too many people listened to the announcers over-simplified comments and took them as absolute truth.
Pretty much agree except for Edu. In the first half, he did not have much to do so that was not the concern. In the second half; well, I would like to see my defensive midfielder a lot more active when the opponents are getting more of the ball, Edu stayed pretty much the same and I think he needed to be more involved in winning the ball than he was. Basically, I thought he did not get himself involved in the play nearly enough.
I am not sold on Torres. He did well when C.R. was not pressuring, but in the second half when C.R. got more into actually playing and certainly got more physical, Torres had a tough time. He seemed to do well and I thought made some nifty passes in the first half, but with the increased pressure in the second half, he did not do nearly as well and coughed up possession (admittedly on a couple plays that could have been called fouls) in positions that were potential problems for the US. Better teams than C.R. would have made more of those.
This was a game where guys haven’t really played together, especially the back line. It was a trial and error type game. What I liked about it was the attacking pressure. It was 90 minutes of back passing or side passing. The US had flow and movement and it was nice to see.
Ives’ blog here does a nice Americans Abroad feature. There’s a link under Categories in the left column of this page, and here’s the link too
http://www.soccerbyives.net/soccer_by_ives/americans_abroad/
check it out, it’s pretty helpful and they update often.
will be interesting to see if the US can play similar tactics vs. Belgium in Europe, or if we see something different because of opponent and venue.
cheers