Re: The Fight For South Africa

Kartik — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:55:52 -0000

Welcome Justin!

I'd call the US MNT "new" but not "improved"

As someone who has followed the national team for 20 years I believe right now we are about at the same place we were in 1993 and worse than we were in 1999 or 2005. WC 2010 if it happens (if we qualify in a tougher CONCACAF with a weaker squad) will be three and out without a goal unless things chance.

Right now if you take Landon Donovan away from the US I am almost positive we are not one of the top 3 teams in the region.

Here is a comment from Paul Gardner the dean of American Soccer writers:

"

Bob Bradley is skilled at producing workmanlike teams. But they play banal soccer — if we didn’t know that previously (those of us who suffered through his years at the MetroStars sure as hell did) we do now. Pedestrian soccer rules, and Banality Bob is saved, on occasions, only by the flair and brilliance of Donovan. As long as Donovan is around, there is hope of something more rewarding than Bocanegra’s crunching fouls or Michael Bradley’s late tackles. The question that needs answering is why — at this late stage in the Great American Soccer Boom — the hopes for skilled, international-level play rest so heavily on one player. Is there an obvious replacement for Donovan waiting to take over? I don’t know of one — yet there should, by now, be three of four such candidates."

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Re: The Fight For South Africa