The U.S. men's national team plays its second game in a week, and second of 2011 in Panama City tonight against CONCACAF foe Panama (8:30pm, Galavision/ESPN3.com).
The United States is coming off a 1-0 victory against Venezuela, but tonight should offer a much tougher test as the Americans face the Panama side that beat the Americans in the Gold Cup group stages before losing a 1-0 decision in the Gold Cup semifinals.
Jurgen Klinsmann will look to keep testing the new faces he has brought into camp, such as Geoff Cameron, A.J. De La Garza and Bill Hamid, while also taking looks at players who have had previous runs with the national team, like Benny Feilhaber, Heath Pearce and Jermaine Jones.
Here is my Fox Soccer preview on tonight's match, which talks about Ricardo Clark, who gets the start tonight.
SBI will be providing live commentary on tonight's match so please feel free to follow along here. As always, you are welcome to share your own thoughts and opinions in the comments section below.
Enjoy the action (Commentary is after the jump):
indeed, ugly win so far
Some of you all need to chill out posting crazy on SBI.
You are crazy if you think that Jones was not good the first game. He was one of the main ones that was building the attack vs Venezuela.
Brek Shea is really off these days. What is up with him? His dribbles and runs used to come off without a hitch…
Here’s CJ…
Wtf delagarza Burns him, gets fouled and then smacked in the face and he gets the yellow?
This is so crooked
This is why you should never comment on SBI. Cause you are always trolling and bashing a player oon the US team. -_____- At least when I bash players I have only two I bash. You bash everyone.
Concacaf refs are a joke
I always wondered what happened to Todd Bridges.
He could not do worse because Bunbury is a zero. Same as last game. Dude is living off dance after PK that Agudelo earned.
Clark is not going to improve. Look at his age, he is the player he is. And that’s one who doesn’t understand the game well enough to succeed at the national level. He can’t get into games for his 2 BL club, just accept that he sucks.
Sapong could do no worse than Teal. If anything you get frest legs to try to play into.
Wow…. This high line is gonna be twice as difficult without a speed option in the backline like Cameron….
Red card or not, Sapong needs to get on. Better now than never…
this recurring Battlestar Galactica ad makes me want to punch my computer screen
That was an EASY card to give. They’ll be using that clip in referee clinics when they wanna show a textbook DOGSO. This ref may have made some dodgy decisions, but that red card wasn’t one of them.
He took him out from behind. Straight red anywhere.
Are we sure Rico Clark is playing? I haven’t seen him since the opening minutes.
not saying I want to or that it’s the best choice… I can just see us doing it
It’s pretty easy to go down when someone trips you…
No such thing as shoulder to shoulder for this official.
regardless of where the ref is from that’s an awful card to give…pathetic
Just what I was thinking — with the defense struggling and down a man, we need…who else? Jeff Parke!
Good for Parke though. Nice to see him get a look 🙂
Shambolic defending
Anyone wanna complain about that call?
clavado grande!
Perez goes down WAAAAAY to easy there… but if Cameron is the last man…
And the friendly is now ruined… we have to bunker in
you can’t be serious….
Relax, it’s our B team.
They are more than awful, they’re corrupt, but not going away.
I don’t think you understand how good this Panama team is and how much they’ve improved over the years. This really isn’t a cake walk, especially away from home.
haha the insults are really unnecessary fischy, step off your high horse of moral superiority for a second and realize that I am not intending to single out spanish-speaking countries whatsoever, I just believe the referee crews employed in international competition should either speak the same language as both of the teams or a different language than both to ensure fairness.
I’m so sick of these kinds of comments… So if Clark improves and becomes a great player, we shouldn’t cap him? Take out your emotions on a punching bag, not on a board where we have to share space with your stupidity.
How is that “missing”? It’s not like it wasn’t on target.
I know Twellman is color commentating, but who is the guy next to him?
That’s what I meant. USMNT left backs are awful.
The USA really needs someone behind the forwards to link play in to the attack through the midfield. The goal was a good showing of our wing play, but we if we’re going to play more possession-oriented attack, we need to be able to play up the middle as well. I’d say we bring in Feilhaber and Sapong, with Benny playing underneath CJ. This gives us the link we need, but also a creative spark.
I’m absolutely stunned how intent Wondolowski was to stay tethered to the Panamanian back line. The space in front of them was right there for him to take, but he instead decided to do battle with their centerbacks, which didn’t work.
they buy the feed from someone else for cheap not their cameras
The referee is Mexican. I don’t think Mexican refs should call U.S. games, there’s just too much history there, but there isn’t a “Hispanohablantes vs Los Estados Unidos” worldview in general… there are roughly 20 Spanish speaking countries in the world and they (for the most part) do not view each other as one group. There’s a lot of bias in Central America against Mexico, there’s bias in Spain against all of Latin America, there’s bias between Central and South America, bias between the Carribean and the continents, Argentina and Uruguay hate each other, et cetera.
cameron has been good so far. is half time.
Can’t stand Twellman
Actually, I’m not sure what Ryan is calling for. Should the USA always have Canadian or Jamaican refs? Or, would they be biased because they speak English? Maybe when the USA plays Latin sides, we should have Haitian or Guadeloupean refs….
In case you’re wondering — you ignorant jackass — they speak French in those countries.
Wel, theres something in the water in Central and South America where he don’t get a call and we get called for just about everything….so yeah..I see where hes coming from. Get real bra.
Perhaps more shocking than the officiating and hold-up play is the fact that ESPN is allowing this production to bear their name. Somehow they could afford to use a blimp for unnecessary shots every five minutes but couldn’t bring in some HD cameras. Also, maybe the guy who had to cut his mostly mediocre career short due to brain injury isn’t the guy to provide insight into the tactics of international football.
I want to cry, what happened to US soccer?
Teal looks even worst than Loyd.
I never want to see clark in a USMNT jersey again he is GOD awful. Having said that were missing a distributor in the midfield
Worst player in Canal Zone.
A crew from, say Costa Rica, might not like gringos too much, but they sure as hell don’t have a soft spot in their heart for Panamanians. Just because they speak the same language doesn’t mean they’re on the same page. And what would be neutral? A Jamaican crew?