Clint Dempsey celebrates the winner with Gyasi Zardes in Foxborough Friday night.
Neil W. Blackmon and Jon Levy
The Group is Won, but can the US play better?
The US enter tonight’s final Gold Cup group stage match against Panama (9:30 ET, Fox Sports 1) knowing they’ve won the group. That’s often an incentive to experiment– and you should expect that tonight. Still, there are larger questions at play here. ? Do the US need to play better to win the Gold Cup? Can the US play better? Will the roster look different in a couple of days (when Gold Cup rules allow Jurgen Klinsmann to make up to six changes)? When will the US develop a star field player beyond Landon Donovan, Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey? Do we demand too much?
What a strange tournament it’s been, regardless. The US entered the tournament the lowest ranked of CONCACAF’s big three, behind Costa Rica and Mexico. The Americans haven’t played well but have full points and Group A secure. Mexico have played tantalizing football except in front of the goal mouth, and for that they sit on four points, and must defeat surprising and fun Trinidad and Tobago to win Group C. Costa Rica have only two points, and there’s a scenario where they don’t qualify for the elimination rounds period, which would be a stunning story given that just over a year ago they played in a World Cup quarterfinal.
The US opponent in Kansas City tonight is a very familiar one- Panama. Los Canaleros have been an enigma bordering on disaster since dismissing the dely Valdes brothers in the aftermath of Graham Zusi and the World Cup qualification failure in 2014. But they are a country that has many of the players who helped them reach the 2013 Gold Cup Final against the United States, where they pushed the Americans until Brek Shea’s winner.
They also handed Bob Bradley his worst defeat as US manager in Tampa at the 2011 Gold Cup (my recap here). That match interests me, a bit, because a US team relying on one highly technical midfielder struggled against a packline Panama defense and eventually saw a sometimes shaky backline picked apart on frenetic counters. It’s a recipe that has served Panama well over the years and you can’t expect much different tonight.
The Panama win in 2011 set Los Canaleros up for a whole World Cup cycle, giving them confidence moving forward and putting them within minutes of a playoff for a World Cup spot in Brazil. It was the kind of win that doesn’t often happen at Gold Cups- an “exception that proves the rule” about Gold Cups not being of long-term import beyond continental bragging rights. Hernán Darío Gómez had a failed stint in charge of his native Colombia, and hasn’t had Panama playing well since taking the job last August. He’ll look to tonight as a chance- perhaps a last one- to turn things around.
Let’s kick the usuals around before we dive into the particulars.
Series: 16th meeting. United States lead, 12-1-2. Second meeting since Graham Zusi’s late goal knocked Panama out of the World Cup in 2014 and sent Mexico to a playoff instead. The only Panama victory? Aforementioned 2-1 stunner in Tampa at the 2011 Gold Cup. Bob Bradley gets little credit for winning the rematch (THAT FREDDY ADU PASS, and the Dempsey “I know I’m going to be captain eventually” hug)– but the loss perhaps the first of the final blows sealing Bob’s fate.
Weather: HOT. 90’s most the day and into the 80’s by kickoff. Chance of violent summer Kansas thunderstorms is high, as is the Fabian Johnson Misery Index, which rolls in at 9.5, or about 8 on the Manaus scale. Or 7.5 Orlando City home games between May and October.
Alberto Quintero gives Panama a speed merchant and a focal point under new management.
Jon Levy on What to Watch for From Panama:
This is a new look Panama team in spite of all the familiar faces that we’ll see on the field Monday night.
New manager Hernán Darío Gómez has undertaken the audacious task of turning Panama into a free-flowing possession team. That might not sound like such a tall order for most national teams, but when you take into account the anti-possession “chaos theory” programming that the Dely Valdés brothers had installed in this team, you start to realize just how tough (near impossible) a task it is for Darío Gómez to shape this team in his image in time to seriously compete in this tournament. And after making the 2013 Gold Cup Final and losing narrowly to the US, this team is absolutely expected to compete.
So how’s it going thus far?
Depends on how you view the glass. Half-full? Before the USMNT’s friendly match against Los Canaleros earlier this year I predicted that Panama would punt on Hernán Darío Gómez before the end of 2015; that’s how bad the team looked in his first spate of games. But The Canal Men were helped by scheduling, drawing a Haiti team that allowed them to play the new style they’re aspiring to in the first match of this tournament. Panama out-possessed and out-chanced Haiti in a match they were unlucky to lose. They also flashed some of the trademarked hard-tackling defense that marked the Del Valdés era; so if you’re a Panamanian optimist, that first match probably had you singing Van Halen and thinking of good times ahead.
C’mon- you know we’re never doing a TYAC Panama preview without Van Halen.
Of course the team wasn’t expected to replicate that level of possession against Honduras on Friday, and they were solidly beaten in that category while resorting to reaching even deeper into the physical defense bag en route to another draw.
As far how this very much still in-transition team will put it all together against the Yanks who certainly haven’t found their form yet, I’d still guess that it’ll look more like the defensive Panama that we saw against Honduras than the possession Panama that drew Haiti. Some good news for the US: not only is former Panama captain and central defender Felipe Baloy not in this Gold Cup squad, but his old partner Luis Henriquez was ejected from the Honduras match in its testy final moments. For the first time in a long time the US can look at the center of the Panamanian defense and see opportunity instead of dream-crushing towers of unyielding physicality.
Mix Diskerud among the many Americans who struggled against Hait. Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports
Neil W. Blackmon on What to Watch for From the United States:
Brian Straus did (as ever) a really nice job summarizing the last US game against Los Canaleros where the US had nothing to play for and Panama everything. Tonight in Kansas City is- as I mentioned in the introduction- slightly more complicated.
No, a World Cup isn’t at stake for Panama. But there’s a reasonable argument that Hernán Darío Gómez’s job is, or should be. If Panama fail to advance in the Gold Cup after coming minutes from a World Cup– the only direction you can argue for the team post Dely Valdes brothers is down, and if you are the Panamanian FA, you reverse that trend before qualifying for 2018 begins.
Meanwhile, the Americans have questions. The midfield struggled mightily against Panama, lacking the technical prowess to break Haiti down when they did have the ball and lapsing defensively when they didn’t.
It was clear after half an hour why Mix Diskerud hadn’t appeared in a competitive match for the United States since the fateful night in Panama– and more clear after 90 why Klinsmann has only trusted him in Gold Cup matches when the US play competitive matches with advancement or qualification still on the line. Jason Kreis has been the latest manager to struggle with where to deploy Mix- and he’s a bright tactical mind. Jurgen Klinsmann has suffered through the same dilemma, and Diskerud looked lost out on the left, floating in to the middle and then back into the channels and rarely occupying a predictable positional place. He committed two terrible giveaways in the first half, rushing forward and turning the ball over central. Both led to Haitian scoring chances. He was slightly better in the second half when the US switched back to the 4-4-2, but by then his inability to defend and his lack of understanding had soured his performance.
Michael Bradley is the best player in CONCACAF, and for the second straight match, Jurgen Klinsmann and his staff placed an immense amount of responsibility on the US captain. Deployment as the 6 against the frenetic Haitian counterattack made sense, for plenty of reasons:
https://twitter.com/shinguardian/status/619660474850902016
It just meant there was a ton of responsibility on MB 90, and when the US decided to rush vertically into the defense with the ball, rather than manage possession high, it was caught out fairly consistently and Bradley was left back to goal, doing less of his late-running help in attack.
Further, the US heat map- partly due to a lost Diskerud, resembled a Christmas tree: Graham Zusi the only player attempting to get wide in the first half and doing so more out of classic Zusi effort than productively. The Americans got little in terms of an overlap from the defensively-oriented Greg Garza and Brad Evans, and instead of holding the ball high to break down the middle- they settled for long diagonals to heavy of foot Jozy Altidore and out wide, Zusi.
There were bright spots, as John Halloran will note in a companion piece to this preview that will publish shortly- but the point here is that the US, without many technical midfielders, aren’t well-equipped to break down the tighter and more compact defenses of CONCACAF, and, as Charles Boehm pointed out in his wrap of the match, teams out here in the soccer nether-regions aren’t as afraid to counter and attack as they used to be.
Questions exist on the backline as well. For all the discussion of an experienced US back four, Klinsmann has fielded two entirely different groups, and appears to have not settled on a top pairing. This is in keeping with the reality of Klinsmann, to be sure: promised proactive and attacking soccer, we’ve gotten pragmatism and promises of what’s to come. But it isn’t as if there’s a paucity of information at this point. Maybe “what’s to come” is already here- a US team best-suited to counterattack is what we have and without different roster call-ups, they aren’t particularly well-equipped to dictate the game.
In that backdrop, the Americans enter Kansas City, home of Benny Feilhaber, a player in form who could really help them, hoping that tonight is the night they appear more effective getting forward. It’s a nice thought, just not one particularly likely to come to fruition. Caught in the balance, the US know they’ve secured the group, and may choose, in a tournament that comes with only two days rest between group stage fixtures, to prioritize rest over reps. The quarterfinal is July 18 in Baltimore, offering full rest to the US regardless of the route they choose to take tonight. But in the heavy Kansas City heat, against an opponent bound to sit in and wait to break, will the US play its best in an effort to show they can dissect a deep-sitting defense?
Potential US deployment.
Klinsmann was non-committal in Boston: “The approach is picking up more rhythm, going for another three points [and] finishing off the group with three wins,” he said. “So we take that very seriously. We also know we have an influence on who’s going through, so we are not kind of taking the foot off the pedal there. So we will give it a very, very good game and keep on building, basically, confidence. We’re building more fine-tuning elements, and we want to improve our game. As you saw, there was still stuff that was not so good. So we keep working on that. It’s just a nice feeling knowing you’re already first but it doesn’t mean we’re slowing down now. It should be actually the opposite. We’ve got to keep kind of raising the bar a little bit.”
Best guess- Klinsmann the pragmatist, playing a blend of both, like the inset, although on rethink, a Zardes start up top makes a good deal of sense in lieu of Wondolowski.
I am looking for a sixty minute shift from Ale Bedoya. TYAC was told in Nashville that Bedoya wouldn’t play and would likely be limited in the group stage, but that he was with the team because getting his knee right with the national team and not his club team, while many medical staff was on vacation, made more sense than calling Bedoya in after the group stage. The goal was always to get Bedoya 60 minutes or so in the final group stage game, so we think he plays tonight. Klinsmann is occasionally sentimental, though Jurgen’s sentimentality usually only extends to friendlies. If with the group won, Jurgen takes the sentimental route, a Johnson start at left back with Zusi playing in his home city on the right would also make sense. Rimando the keeper because as Trinidad and Tobago reminded us last night, goalkeepers do and can get injured, and with Navas out for Costa Rica, Brad Guzan is a big advantage for the US against any opponent in this field, even Mexico and Memo Ochoa.
Jon Levy on the Panama player to watch: Alberto Quintero (Lobos de la BUAP)
Panama’s speedy and aggressive left winger is turning out to be the primary beneficiary of the new manager’s coaching. And Quintero was hardly anonymous under Dely Vadlés. He was actually our Panamanian Player to Watch in 2013’s Gold Cup Final.
But on that team the Lobos player (inexplicably he plays in the Mexican second division), was the exception rather than the rule. He was one of very few Panama midfielders who was comfortable running at defenders with the ball at his feet. But the old chaotic style meant that Quintero couldn’t rely on receiving the ball from his teammates as often as he’d like.
Enter Darío Gómez and a shot of adrenaline for Quintero. To say that Quintero has emerged as a focal point for Panama in the first two matches of this tournament doesn’t quite do it justice. He’s getting more touches than ever, and absolutely making the most of them. He’s driving dangerous balls into the box, cutting in and creating shooting opportunities for himself, and drawing more fouls than just about anyone in this tournament. And these aren’t benign fouls either. They’re forcing the referee to produce cards, and often they’re in prime position for the subsequent free kicks. He almost drew a penalty against Honduras, and knowing our friendly CONCACAF referees, I see him getting that call against the US. Oh and I haven’t even mentioned the goal he scored, because yes, it was a gift from the Hatian defender, but he still struck the ensuing shot perfectly. I’m going to be nervous when Quintero gets the ball at his feet on Monday night, especially if Brad Evans gets the start at right back. Al Q absolutely twisted and turned Evans in World Cup Qualifying two years ago. I don’t need to see that again.
Ace Alvarado battles in the air against Mexico. He was cap-tied to the US earlier in this tournament.
Neil W. Blackmon on the US player to watch: “Ace” Ventura Alvarado, América
List of players Jurgen Klinsmann has said “I don’t think he even understands how good he is and can be” about. One. Ace Alvarado.
His national team displays to date have been a mixed bag, with flashes of that immense potential and moments, like the ones Jon Levy documented earlier in the tournament, where you wonder why ohe’s on the field.
The young Mexican-American has a skillset largely unique to the US player pool. Alvarado can help the US build possession from the back- long a Klinsmann dream- and is younger than Tim Ream, the only other player at Jurgen Klinsmann’s disposal that is well-suited to do that. He can hit the big sweeping diagonal ball himself or carry the ball comfortably to the midfield stripe and calmly dish to a mid. He plays bigger than 6 feet tall because of a good vertical and can win the ball in the air. And he’s an aware positional defender with good recovery speed. That said, he’s not a particularly skilled 1 v 1 defender and he tends to overpursue when he smells trouble, which can lead to silly fouls in bad positions.
The only solution for this is reps. Trust is won in teaspoons and not only on training pitches, and if Alvarado is to be a staple of this cycle for the US, he’ll need to show he can play lock down defense against teams like Panama first.
When you have a massive talent, you play it until the word potential is replaced by accomplishment. With potential Gold Cup quartefinal starter Matt Besler already in Kansas City, the final group stage game may be Alvarado’s last look for a bit.
Prediction: USA 1, Panama 1. A draw sees the US through. I like a Johannsson goal, near post on a diagonal from Bedoya, to give the US a lead they’ll lose late.
Neil W. Blackmon and Jon Levy are Co-Founders of The Yanks Are Coming. Follow them on Twitter @TYAC_Jon and @nwblackmon.