A new year. A new hope.
Jon Levy
USA vs. Iceland: Your TYAC Preview
US Men’s National Team soccer is back, finally!
More importantly for the Yanks, 2015 is gone; dead and buried with the hopes and expectations of fans and players alike. And if the new year doesn’t come with better results, well, we’re looking at missing out on the Olympics again, getting embarrassed on American soil in the Super Omega Copa America everyone knows we bought with corporate blood money, and maybe even being eliminated from World Cup contention before we hit 2017.
Let’s. Do. This! (embrace the challenge to win, not run to our room, lock the door, and maybe cry for a long time… though I see how there could have been some ambiguity there.)
So how does Jurgen start turning those performances and results around? Apparently by kicking off 2016 with a friendly against a national team that’s rightfully become one of Europe’s most admired.
Weather: 70 degrees and sunny. Glorious. Klinsmann flying the chopper weather. May California never forget the winter of 2016.
Series: 7th meeting. Tied, 2-2-2. This is the first meeting since a 1994 World Cup tuneup, won by Iceland 2-1, meaning the two nations haven’t met since Alexi Lalas retired or since Iceland’s footballing renaissance.
No Gylfi. But still dangerous.
What will we see out of Iceland?
Thankfully, “January national team camp” translates to “Camp Cupcake” in Icelandic just as it does in American English, so Gylfi Sigurdsson will be riding this one out in Wales, where he can’t break my heart by keeping the ball away from eager USMNT prospects for 90 minutes while creating scoring chances at will. No, this Iceland squad is a true equal and opposite reaction to the Klinsmann’s gang of internationally green MLS dudes. Most the Icelanders coming to California play for Nordic clubs and are still rockin’ single digit caps. And that’s just about where the “equal” part of this physics metaphor ends. Get ready for “opposite” to punch you right in the American pie hole.
Iceland hired Swedish tactician Lars Lagerback and homegrown detail enthusiast (that’s what you call an control freak who wins) Heimir Hallgrimsson back in 2011, just a few months after US Soccer gave Jurgen Klinsmann the keys to the kingdom. So I guess I lied about the “equal” part being done with. The FA of Iceland gave Lagerback and his new protégé nearly complete control down through the academy system as well, and the results haven’t just been more consistent than Klinsmann’s, they’ve been absolutely staggering by any standard.
Iceland- where a new manager is given mostly total control and actually succeeds in quickly achieving revolution.
The team’s jumped 100 spots in the FIFA rankings, and for people like me who see the flaws in that ranking system, the metrics that matter are just as impressive. After barely missing out on the 2014 World Cup in a two-legged playoff with Croatia, Iceland stormed through their Euro Qualifying group, beating the likes of Netherlands and Czech Republic and becoming the first team to qualify for this summer’s tournament. They’ve become the European minnows that every small country wants to emulate. And Hallgrimsson, the former assistant who’s now joint manager with his mentor and heir apparent to Lagerback (and rightful heir to the Iron Throne), gave the footballing world a cheat sheet on “How To Iceland” last month in Glasgow. Click that link. It’s worth your five minutes. Now some of Lagerback and Hallgrimsson’s practices wouldn’t fly in a country with a poorer populace, and many of their methods are unrealistic for a country as large as the US, but there are lessons scattered in the Iceland plan for every national team. They’re not looking for the Icelandic Messi, they’re building a unity of soccer brain which goes beyond the unified spirit we laud so greatly in the best versions of the USMNT. And sadly for this experimental version of our national team, the guys on Iceland’s C team that take the field Sunday have been a party to this programming just like the stars who play in Europe’s bigger leagues that didn’t have to make the trip for this one. Sorry, these defenders aren’t going walkabout, and the young midfield isn’t likely to lose its composure or its organization.
And of course it all starts to make just a little more sense when you read what Iceland’s Women’s manager Freyr Alexandersson had to say about the team’s prep work:
“I have never seen so many meetings, I thought I held many before experiencing this,” he says. “Each meeting is about 30 to 40 minutes and when it’s over the team feels like there will be nothing that will surprise them. That is very important and Hallgrimsson prepares them brilliantly with PowerPoint. It’s incredible, all the details and movements. I think no one is better at that in the world than him.”
So there you have it. Iceland’s got a respected international tactician with loads up big match experience in Lagerback, and he’s working in perfect harmony with a perfectionist that knows how to work a computer! But seriously, these guys seemingly have every player in the pool completely bought in, and the aforementioned combination of attributes kind of sounds like Jose Mourinho without the God complex. Under this regime Iceland’s proven they can play a possession game with anyone, they can keep any team off the score sheet, and they can score without an elite forward. It’s about system and preparation from the academy up to the national team.
Icelandic Player to Watch: Runar Mar Sigurjonsson (GIF Sundsvall)
I can praise the system and throw impressive possession statistics at you all day, but the fact is, Iceland’s preferred style of play works best when Swansea City midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson is pulling the string for the boys in the center of the park. Oh, and he also leads the attack from a withdrawn position. But like much of the top choice squad, Iceland’s best player wasn’t called in for this one. So what does this great manager tandem do? Bunker in and hope to hit on the break? Shyea, sure, maybe if this was a World Cup elimination match against Belgium. No, I think Lagerback and Hallgrimsson do what any good manager would do in tryout friendly like this one. You plug your second and third choice players in there and see if they can run the system.
Runar Mar Sigurjonsson might just be closer to second choice than third, and he’s got more senior team appearances (8) under his belt than the other midfielder’s on this roster. He plays in Sweden, which is one of the better leagues inhabited by these midfielders, and is most likely to be given the chance/task of bossing the midfield against the Yanks. Like Sigurdsson, he’s a ball-mover with a quick mind. That’s probably where the similarities between the two end. But if Sigurjonsson can frustrate these American defensive midfielders (and they’re the strength of this squad), we might be singing a different tune come Sunday night.
Michael Orozco is here. He scored at Azteca. Get fired up!
What to watch for from the Yanks:
Immediate inspiration.
January camp for the USMNT is generally a low stress time for the manager. He’s tasked with sifting through prospective national team players, figuring out who’s on the fringes, who makes the grade, and who we don’t need to see again. That’s why we call it Camp Cupcake. They play a couple friendly matches and that’s it. But this year’s version of the tryout camp sees the USMNT still at a low point, and with big matches looming as early as March for the would-be-Olympic team. So it would be really nice if some of the new blood on this hopeful and experimental squad could seize the opportunity like eventual World Cup starters Graham Zusi and Geoff Cameron did in 2012.
While the team is in need of inspiration across the board, what are the real problem areas we’d like to see patched up with exciting new national team regulars?
Fullback: We’ve got nothing. On either side. Especially since Jurgen’s finally conceded that Fabian Johnson is an attacking winger. Jurgen did call in Michael Orozco today- and he’ll help somewhere on the back line, but there’s still a reasonable chance the US play a backline that looks like Acosta-Birnbaum-Besler-Parker, or something, which is more bizarre than good.
Center back. With Omar Gonzalez playing well for Pachuca in Liga MX, Geoff Cameron consistently doing the same for Stoke City, and the promise of Matt Miazga, who’s now on his way to Chelsea, this position may not be as concerning as we might have guessed a few months ago. But questions should linger until we see a couple of these guys form an effective national team partnership. And also… you guys… the John Brooks/Ventura Alvarado abomination from this past summer hurt me real bad. I’m still not over it, and that’s okay. But it means I’m gonna go ahead and need the next guys to treat the goal behind them with more respect, y’know? Whichever goalkeeper happens to be standing back there deserves better than that. I deserve better than that. We all deserve better than that.
Okay, good; I think I worked through some stuff there. Progress.
But that’s the basic rundown. America needs defense, and I’m not talkin’ bout Donald Rumsfeld’s new solitaire app. Seriously, that’s a thing.
There’s a link right here and everything, and I swear it doesn’t take you to a Rick Astley song. On Miller, on Birnbaum, on Acosta, on Polster, on Parker, on Vincent! America needs YOU! (Maybe) Buy War Bonds Today!
This section took a strange turn.
American Player to Watch: Jordan Morris (Seattle Sounders)
I ask for immediate inspiration. Stanford University gives us Jordan Morris.
#USMNT prospect Jordan Morris’ assist from Werder Bremen’s 1-0 friendly win over Inter Baku. (h/t @BrianSciaretta) pic.twitter.com/3jGRjNFtnw
— Howler Magazine (@whatahowler) January 15, 2016
He was US Soccer’s young man of the hour until Miazga hopped a jet to London, and now he’s back in the senior national team after signing his homegrown player record MLS contract with the Sounders. And we’re a little over a month removed from two immensely important Olympic qualifying playoff matches against Colombia. Of course the latest and greatest American powerhouse forward is our player to watch.
I want him to prove he’s ready to contribute in a big way for the senior national team. And just as much as I want that, I want the handful of U23 team Olympic-eligible players on this squad shine against Iceland, and against the USMNT veterans in training. Jordan Morris is my player to watch, but I’m all in for that Colombia series with Rio on the line, and you should be too. So keep an eye on Jordan Morris, you kind of can’t miss him. But I’ll also be monitoring Trapp, Kiesewetter, Shelton, and most of those defenders I namedropped in the section above this one.
Prediction: USA 1 – 2 Iceland
You might have sensed during my mild gushing in the Iceland section that I wasn’t going to pick the US to win this one. Hopefully I’m wrong about the Nordic league reserves making the grade just because the dynamic duo at manager instructs them to do so. You can’t make sushi with canned tuna right? Who’s hungry? I know Jerome Kiesewetter is, and he gets his first senior team goal. But elderly Eidur Gudjohnsen is gonna score in this one and send me into a profanity-laced tirade about the five times he almost came to West Ham, and how he was a bum when he finally got back to the Premier League anyway. And he was.
Enjoy the match, and Go USA!
Jon Levy co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @TYAC_Jon.