Association Football

With the announcement of the US World Cup squad yesterday, the US will be taking its deepest ever squad to a World Cup.

I can already sense the disbelief among many US fans that I just said the US squad had depth. After all we are taking 3 very unproven forwards, we are plagued with injuries to the backline, and face a real void – as usual – at left back.

But this needs to be put into some perspective. The USA has never been deep. We are still a very young soccer nation. So by our standard this is by far the deepest USA squad ever.

This US World Cup team in stark contrast to past US squads, relies almost exclusively on foreign based players. In both 2002 and 2006 the US roster had 11 MLS based players and 12 European-based. In 2002, 11 of the 12 Euro-based players played in top leagues, while in 2006 just 7 played in top tier European leagues. The US this time has 19 of the 23 playing abroad and this does not count Landon Donovan, who played more games in the Premier League this calendar year than MLS. So even if you eliminate Jose Francisco Torres (Mexico), Herculez Gomez (Mexico) , Jay Demerit (England Championship), Benny Feilhaber (Denmark), and Clarence Goodson (Norway) as they don’t play in top European leagues (although Demerit and Feilhaber did play in the Premier League and the Mexican league is very good) that is 14 players playing in elite European leagues. This is not a knock on the quality of MLS, as 17 out of the 23 got their start in MLS. Instead this shows that MLS is developing real talent and that the pool players available to Bob Bradley to select from is not mostly confined to domestic based players.
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The US looked pretty good against the Czech Republic last night and if one were to ignore the scoreboard you would have thought the US to be on the whole the better side. Awhh, but you can’t forget the scoreboard. The US had a number of catastrophic defensive lapses throughout the game – a failure to close down a cross, poor positioning on free kicks, and poor marking that all resulted in goals. However, this game should be put in some context. Almost none of the main players for the US were out there last night and many of the players that received significant minutes won’t make the squad. Bradley was also experimenting throughout the game – especially at the end when some players were playing out of position.

So what did we learn?
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Putting the US men’s national team camp in Princeton makes at a lot of sense. Princeton has great facilities – a reason that Bob Bradley sited. It is just outside New York, which encourages the east coast media to take an interest. The Daily Show for instance sent John Oliver to tape a segment. It is also close to two sites for friendlies in Hartford and Philadelphia.

But my question is that aren’t there other places in the United States that could more accurately reflect the conditions that US will face in South Africa? England are training in the alps in Austria and Algeria are training in Switzerland to get them used to the altitude and to try to emulate the temperature. One of the advantages that we have as a country is that we can generally emulate most climate conditions. In 2002, for instance the US I believe set up their camp in South Carolina to emulate the heat and humidity of South Korea.

So why not have camp at altitude in Denver or Boulder, or Salt Lake, or another city in the Rocky Mountains, were the US can get both acclimatized to the altitude and play in cooler conditions.

Now I am sure the US training staff has this figured out. We are world leaders in fitness science and I assume that the boys will be well acclimatized to the altitude. Still, with other countries making the concerted effort to emulate the conditions in South Africa, why aren’t we?

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Charlie Davies has been left off the World Cup squad. I have to say that I am surprised Davies wasn’t called into the 30 man camp. I thought Bradley would give him to the last possible moment to make the final roster. But Bob Bradley killed the comeback story. He is the bad guy. But the fact that Bob Bradley made this decision, should give US fans more not less faith in him as a coach.

US fans are all clearly disappointed. Davies was a revelation last year and American fans dreamed of Davies and Altidore partnering in South Africa, especially after a year of seasoning at the highest levels of European club football. Sadly that won’t happen. But that isn’t Bob Bradley’s fault.

Ives Galcarep, a veteran reporter, perhaps hyped expectations to an unrealistic level when he visited and profiled Davies comeback in the spring and concluded he would make the squad. The fact is that in soccer – especially the World Cup – it is not simply good enough to be healthy again. Being in form and achieving match fitness takes time to achieve. Davies had not touched a soccer ball for almost six months. He recently entered full training, but it was always going to take a lot of time for Davies to get back to where he once was.

The fact is that Bob Bradley gave Davies the chance. He sent a US trainer to Sochaux to evaluate him – clearly the trainer didn’t clear Davies. The club itself didn’t think he wasn’t medically fit enough to play in matches. Now one could argue Sochaux has an incentive not to have him play in the World Cup and risk further injury. But so does the US and most clubs want their players in the World Cup, as it tends to boost their values, since the World Cup is a talent scouting meat market.

Davies was always a long shot after the tragic and horrific accident. Yet all of us longed to see him on the plane to Jo-berg and if it were up to us fans probably 90 percent of us would have brought him even if he wasn’t fit. But this is what you pay coaches for – to make the hard cold-blooded decisions that in the end are in the best interests of the team.

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