The U.S. Under-20 men’s national team made it two victories out of two to begin life at the CONCACAF U-20 Championship.
Four different players celebrated goals in Michael Nsien’s squad as the USMNT U-20’s blanked Cuba 4-0 in group stage play on Monday night. Ethan Kohler and Xavier Gozo scored in the first half before Taha Habroune and Marcos Zambrano added second-half tallies.
Kohler delivered the opening goal for the USMNT U-20’s in the 15th minute, redirecting Niko Tsakiris’ free kick into the back of the net. The service from Tsakiris was pinpoint, allowing Kohler to sneak in front of his defensive marker and score.
Gozo would extend the Americans lead 11 minutes later, giving them a 2-0 lead heading into the interval. Habroune played his teammate into the box before watching Gozo rifle a right-footed shot into the near corner.
Habroune was in the right place to add further damage to Cuba’s night. Sergio Oregel’s free kick was blocked by the Cuban wall, but the loose ball fell to Columbus Crew attacker Habroune, who slotted home.
Zambrano added insurance in second-half stoppage time by poking home a cross before the final whistle. It marked his second goal of the competition.
The USMNT U-20’s close out group stage play on Thursday against Costa Rica, who have also reached the quarterfinals.
Gozo is one of the guys eligible for the next U20 WC as well so I’ll cut him some slack but yes Vazquez looks to be the first choice. I believe all 3 frontline starters against Cuba would be eligible next cycle. Gozo probably wouldn’t even be there if Campbell and Fletcher had been available. I don’t know that any of our attackers are as ready physically as the last group you weren’t going to push Cowell, Clark or Luna off the ball.
i preferred the seeming “delayed press” approach the U20s were using to the senior team’s naive tactics. this way, it’s like they rally back — which gets at the transition problem and establishes shape — and then at a point step aggressively to the man on the ball. i personally am a sit back and counter guy, but the “get back and reset” part makes it a little less like naive U14s compounding their offensive giveaway by (often unsuccessfully) chasing a defender up into the opposing corner and getting all out of shape. this is more disciplined, the shape isn’t all stretched apart, and the controlled aggression results in more turnovers.
in general the defense is far superior to the last U20 cohort. cuba wasn’t freely countering into open green space, they were getting hard won chances off poor clearances or fouls or corners. and, yeah, don’t clear a ball on the ground right up the middle. but generally people are marked up and either have a tough look or get fouled or give it away. and we’ve shipped nada. which says the defense is basically working.
zambrano looked more like a central target guy at the end. they had some playmakers on but until the second half lacked a 9 to get it to. to me figueroa wants to take people on and is really more of a wing or AM playing out of spot.
I think the other comments cover most of the game. I just will add a few things. While Cuba was much better than Jamaica, the US did not play as well. Twice they had a player inside of 10 yards with an open net and both times the ball went way over the crossbar, once via a header, the other time via a shot. The other point is that Cuba really played dirty and the ref let them get away with way too much. One time there was a dead ball and the Cuban player got up and, right in from of the ref head butted the US player right in the stomach and I think he was aiming lower. A clear card. Another time the US player was on a bit of a breakaway and the Cuban player grabbed him around the neck with one arm and raked his hand right across the face of the US player, knocking out the US player’s contact lens. It was clearly deliberate and worthy of a red card and only a foul was called. The US player had to go off not much later since he didn’t feel he could play with only one contact. Another time a US player cut inside, just outside the Cuban box, beating his defender. The Cuban defender blatantly used both hands and arms to push the US player over. While not card worthy, it was such an obvious foul and the Cuban player got all upset like he had done nothing wrong. Cuba easily could have gotten 2 or 3 more yellow cards plus a red card. At times they looked more like a rugby team than a soccer team.
The US was in control so I had it on but was doing other things the last 30 mins not giving it full attention. I was shocked when I looked at the stats and saw they only had 1 yellow card for the match.
It’s a good thing we won relatively easily or we would have had a lot of reasons to complain.,
the odd part was the ref wasn’t missing the contact calls, he just was using old school no blood no card rules. example, he caught the kohler eye socket fishhook — that resulted in the player coming off soon after — but somehow that’s not a card. (and there’s VAR there? cause they’re checking the goals.)
To be honest they could have had a couple more goals, but overall a good performance.
Keep up the good work lads.
that struck me as a heavily rotated team. both in terms of changes and quality of first half forward play.
Cuba was much tougher than Jamaica. They closed down the ball handler quickly and always seemed to leave in a leg or hip. The Ref should have handed out a dozen yellow cards. Most impressive with their ball handling and accurate/clever passing were the 2 midfielders, #14 and #19… HABROUNE and OREGEL.
Hopefully they develop into great MNT players. Also of note FIGUEROA did not show well. He had a clean 1 yard breakaway and the defender caught up and took the ball away.
Well we’ve qualified for the quarterfinals. It’s hard to say a 4-0 performance wasn’t impressive but it kind of was. Habroune was so good last night. I thought Figueroa looked like a player in his off season. Medina was also pretty wasteful for me. Gozo had a great finish for the second goal, but wasn’t very good the rest of his shift. Nsien is doing a lot of rotation so that should be beneficial going forward.
gozo was useless. i think that goal was literally the only productive play he had all first half. literally everything else was passes to no one, getting pilfered on the dribble, or overcooking/shanking the crosses. and while i am generally a body of work guy, i tend to take tougher games more seriously. so cuba was tougher and he stunk. if the game ends up 1-0 maybe we blow off the struggles but we had a pretty good margin.
so to me vazquez is clearly better so far.
i liked the offense seemed to start from the middle instead of the touchline — i was always taught taking it to the flag was a sign you lacked attacking ideas — and thought the AM combo of tsakiras and habroune played well. i thought the B side wings and forwards underwhelmed and wasted some of it. maybe use the jamaica forwards and the cuba mids.
to bring this back to one of my senior team critiques, i don’t think the men often enough reward the performance disparity when a rotated side looks much better in some aspect.
habroune to me did waste the 70′-ish break where he had figueroa wide open. dribbled dribbled dribbled then sends him to the endline offside. plays it earlier and that’s an easy goal.
Taha is in that stage where he isn’t quite good enough to get big first team minutes for Columbus, but he’s too good for MLS Next Pro. He’s only played 230 minutes combined for Columbus and Crew II this season. I think just a little rusty. I’ll cut him some slack given he dribbled through their entire midfield to even get in that spot to play Keyrol.
JR: the whole side of the field is open 30-40 yards out. commit the defender early, reward the run early to avoid offsides, and play it early to take the keeper and endline out of it. it’s offsides and to the endline because he passed it a half hour late.
we were taught to execute that play right in youth select. if i learned that in U14 or U16 how does a NT or YNT not know some of these offensive and defensive principles. basic tactics.