USA World Cup Review

Well it has been about 30 minutes since the US was eliminated by Ghana again by a score of 2-1 just like in 2006 in Germany and I will look back on their performance over the past 2 weeks.
While it was exciting especially Landon Donovan's game winning and group winning goal in the 91st minute against Algeria and controversial, just look at Maurice Edu's game winner against slovenia being disallowed. I think the US, who showed some positive signs, may have just missed out on their best chance to make a deep run in this World Cup. From a group with lightweights like Algeria and Slovenia. To a quadrant in the knockout stage with South Korea, Uruguay, and Ghana in which the US was the highest ranked team the US should have made the semi-finals.



The main person I blame for this loss and disappointment is coach Bob Bradley. First of all he stuck with Robby Findley at striker instead of either Hercules Gomez and Edson Buddle, who a week before the cup began scored 2 goals against Australia and was the leading goal scorer in the MLS. Also instead of putting Edu or Feilhaber in this game vs. Ghana goes with Ricardo Clark who struggled against England and made the big mistake which led to an early goal and had to be subsituted in the 30th minute leaving a tired US team to play in extra time without a needed sub.

Then there is their struggles in the 1st half where they were outscored 4-1 in this tournament with the one goal being a gift against England. That says something about the players inability to get up for these games right off the bat and the coach's inability to get them up to start the game. The last major issue for this team is the scoring, or lack there of, from strikers (8 world cup games without a goal from a striker), this could have been solved by inserting Buddle into the starting 11.

Now the US is looking at 2014 in Brazil with great uncertainty as key players like Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, and Oguchi Onyewu are among the 13 men on the 23 man roster that are 27 or older meaning that they may not be at their peak and the US may need guys like Michael Bradley and Jozy Altidore to lead the next wave of US players into Brazil in 4 years.