Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="JoePgh, post: 4028017, member: 1131"] I mentioned defensive lapses because you did, and you attributed it to "old and slow". When I and others pointed out that the back line on Team USA 2021 was not old (don't know about slow), you now shift ground to offensive lapses. OK, so let's talk about that. Team USA scored 5 goals against New Zealand and 4 against Australia (in the Bronze Medal game) and The Netherlands. They failed to score goals against Sweden, Canada, and in the first Australia game. We can discount the first Australia game (especially after the Bronze Medal result) because neither team was really trying to win that game -- both were assured of getting into the elimination rounds regardless of the score. That leaves Sweden and Canada as the two teams against which Team USA failed to score. Those just happen to be the two teams that played for the Gold Medal. Those are good teams with good defenses (better than Team USA's) -- they only managed to score one goal against each other in the Gold Medal game (and Canada's goal against Sweden was on a penalty kick, just like their goal against the USA), so their offense against the same opponent wasn't much better than Team USA's. That doesn't suggest that Team USA was completely outclassed on offense by anyone in Tokyo. It certainly doesn't support "stunk up the joint", "need to be blown up and started from scratch", and other similar language in your previous posts. [/QUOTE]