Change of tactics here in discussion, and then I'm out for awhile. Nice day.
I did a whole bunch of reading yesterday, and what I learned, confirmed what I learned a while back, is that soccer is very much like my oval football, just without any start or stops in ball movement, and a whole different meaning to what "stopping" the ball is. My football, the ball and man is connected and you need to knock them both to the ground to stop, in soccer you need to separate the man from the ball - to stop. In my football, separating the man from the ball, is a totally different thing, in stopping the advance.
Advancing the ball isn't that much different, other than nobody can pick it up and carry it around, other goalie in his designated area, and that when advancing the ball, there is a hell of lot more leeway in going backwards with the ball.
The actual strategy and tactics and play making / structure in soccer is where I get lost, but I'm learning.
I learned yesterday that soccer is much like football in that it is copycat - teams take what works for others and copy it. Spain, has won the last world cup, and the Euro, and basically developed a style of play that reminded me of the old New Jersey Devils a long time ago. They won championships, but it was a ticky tacky (those are the actual words used) method where they passed the ball all over the place with accuracy - and don't really understand much more after that. It worked and it won, and people didn't like it much, but they copied it.
Now - the Germans, yesterday won a world cup game 4-0 without playing a true goal scorer forward. I read that - they played a style of play and strategy and tactics that had something to do with luring an opposing team into thinking they are defending well against the sideline and then springing a long attack with an overhead pass across the field. It apparently works well, against the style of play that had developed in the world in the past several years around what Spain was doing.
My point in writing all of this - is that when Klinsmann talked about expectations, I believe he was talking about this kind of thing. A country like Germany, and probably Brazil, and others, approach a tournament like this world cup - with a strategy and tactics and method of opposing their will on the others within the game that is designed to win the entire thing. They have the ability to do that.
THe USA - we simply can't do that - develop an entire strategy and tactics irrespective of opponents we face, with the goal to win the whole tournament.
We need to take our strategy and tactics game planning - and I guarantee that game planning is HUGE in soccer, maybe more so than American football because the game play never stops, and we need to be doing it on a game by game basis, and I believe we have the talent level, and physical ability, throughout the roster to find ways to match up with anybody on our schedule. The fact that we were able to win, without any significant contribution from Michael Bradley - reinforces that for me.
Enjoy the afternoon everyone!!
Not like Messi is carrying Argentina single handedly either. Even with all that talent they're gonna have to play some defense at some point.
