Soccer Saturday wrap: Gold Cup, Galaxy, Chivas USA
U.S. 2 Mexico 4
Golden boys: Mexico celebrates their win in style Gold Cup victory that featured a dazzling display of attacking soccer the U.S. just couldn't stay with (AP Photo).
*Staff writer Miguel Mendez has the game story.
But really you could boil it down to this comment from Tim Howard:
"We didn't get it done - that's what it's about."
The long version of pretty much the same comment from Coach Bob Bradley:
"They have some very good attacking players and I think that we do too. I think sometimes a final becomes a real test of both teams going after each other. That was the way we chose to play this game knowing that it would still require good reactions defensively to deal with those situations. In there, there are some plays where our reactions don't end up being as good and sometimes there are some plays where at the end you give credit. Dos Santos' fourth goal is a great piece of skill."
Watch:
Notable: No reporter asked Bradley if he thought he deserved to stay on as coach as World Cup qualifying approaches. I'll have more on this in Tuesday's column.
Earthquakes 0 Galaxy 0
*Read the game story.
Notable: The Quakes out-shot the Galaxy 17-5.
*Watch:
Quotable:
"I thought that the first half was the best soccer that we have played since the team came back in 2008," said San Jose coach Frank Yallop. "We were moving the ball well and we created a number of chances. We should have been up a couple of goals. You have to give LA credit though because they didn't buckle. In the second half, their game plan worked and ours didn't. We couldn't get that goal that would have changed the game."
Ricketts reportedly has a broken arm. That's the sort of injury to one of the dominant goalkeepers in MLS that can see a season begin to unravel for his team.
Union 3 Chivas USA 2
Read the game story.
Quotable:
"The biggest area of improvement for us is we've got to stop shooting ourselves in the foot," said Chivas USA Coach Robin Fraser. "We've done it game in and game out. We're giving up way too many leads and either tying or losing games that I think we should win."
Chivas USA lineup: Dan Kennedy, Zarek Valentin, Michael Umaña (Andrew Boyens 46), Heath Pearce, Ante Jazic, Paulo Nagamura, Ben Zemanski (Blair Gavin 76), Nick LaBrocca, Jorge Flores, Justin Braun, Marcos Mondaini (Chris Cortez 71).
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About 100 Percent Soccer
Sportswriter Nick Green has written the 100 Percent Soccer column since 2005 for the Daily News, Daily Breeze and other Los Angeles area newspapers. The blog of the same name began in 2007. A native of England, he began writing about soccer in the mid-1980s and in 2000 permanently exchanged a seat in the stands for one in the press box. He lives six miles from Carson's Home Depot Center, home of the Los Angeles Galaxy, Chivas USA and the training headquarters for U.S. Soccer and is married to a long-suffering soccer widow. Join Nick on FaceBook and follow him on Twitter.
There's plenty of blame to go around, but Bornstein should never see the national team again ...
Well... it looks like I will have to eat my hat over my previous comments about Freddy Adu. Pretty impressive play... though he still had a couple nice passes to Mexico. From my vantage point (on the 73rd row) I didn't think M. Bradley had as bad of a game as you all on here saw. In my opinion, the US's real issue was its swiss cheese defense. Mexico just ran around us once they got into our box. I thought our mid-field looked pretty good.
I didn't think the traffic was as horrible as they said it was going to be before the game. Zipped in and zipped out using my secret squirrel route. I was back in Torrance before 9PM. The key is to take the 2 to the 210 and exit at JPL. No one ever seems to take that route. $20 for a nice parking spot on the back nine doesn't seem so bad after parking at the HDC.
Oh... forgot to mention. The best thing about this game is knowing this means Bradley is gone.
But UCLABZ, the midfield -- especially the central midfielders -- need to cover for the defense and at least slow the other team's attack. And that's where Bradley Light was playing ...
US coaches and players still talk about learning lessons from these embarrassing performances. They must be the dumbest bunch of idiots who still can't figure out this "simple" game. It's time now for the Federation to bring in a master tactitian and sideline savvy coach to start teaching other teams lessons. Enough of these incompetent fools. There is just about enough time to bring in a new man to prepare for the qualifying games.