Penal! Penal! Penal! Penal!

USA v. Mexico - Gold Cup Final

Am I the only one who giggles like a 12-year old boy when Spanish broadcasters start yelling Penal! Penal! Penal! Penal! everytime there's a penalty called. I probably am, but to this day, I find it hilarious.

I managed to hunt down the Gold Cup game yesterday on FSC and despite the horrible commentary, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The US didn't come out as strong as I'd like. In fact, I very nearly soiled myself in the first 10 minutes, but the game eventually calmed down.

Some Things I Noticed

- Jonathan Spector is not fast enough to keep up with Guardado. Although Spector played a good game, he had a hard time keeping up. I have to give him an A+ for taking that shot in the face though. That looked horrible and I have a pretty good feeling that's he's feeling the aftereffects today.

- Oguchi Onyewu is not fast enough to keep up with a turtle slug. Yeah, I said it. If a turtle and a slug were bred together, Gooch couldn't beat them. I found this out as Nery Castillo smoked Gooch to the endline to put it right on Guardado's foot on the back post. I was worried when it was one-on-one over there and at first I turned to my friend and said, "here comes a red card". Instead, he just got burnt for a goal. Not sure which is worse.

- Feilhaber is the future. He is calm under pressure for his age and I really wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't get picked up my a bigger club if he performs well at Copa America (although with our roster, that's going to be difficult). I think him and Bradley will solidify those positions for a good while. Let's just hope they don't get the Claudio Reyna injury bug.

- We have no finishing ability. Despite Landon Donovan making 3 or 4 penalties in this tournament, we didn't create a lot of goals. That's mainly b/c we got to see Donovan whiff a ball on an open goal (v. Canada), Dempsey try to juke a ghost man causing him not to shoot (v. Panama), and Beasley hit the crossbar when it was only him and a beautiful open net (v. Mexico). We really need to find a world-class striker. And for the record, it's NOT EDDIE JOHNSON.

- Our core players are still our strong point. Although some of the new guys contributed, Dempsey, Donovan, Bocanegra, and Beasley are still our best players. Don't know if it's because of experience or what, but they are our most consistent players by far.

Players I'd Hug and Players I'd Cut

Players I'd Hug

Dempsey - Solely b/c of his creativity. No one on the team will make people stand up and clap for being creative with the ball and attacking a defender.

Donovan - Although everyone seems to call him a poon (and dub him Landycakes), I think he's our most constant threat. As long as he's playing on a wing where he can use his speed, he's money.

Feilhaber - He controls the ball (although he didn't have the best passing game yesterday) and his volley was absolutely world class. Having watched US Soccer steadily since the '94 World Cup, I'll have to say that it might be the best strike I've ever seen an American score for the US. Certainly one of the most exciting.

Players I'd Cut

Pablo Mastroeni - Although he is a physical presence, I do not feel like he has any touch on the ball. I'll admit that he works his ass off which is something we need, but if you're looking for a distributor, he's not the answer. Thought Ricardo Clark played much better when he came in.

Oguchi Onyewu - As I stated before, he couldn't beat a turtle slug. We don't need a linebacker in the back. You use Bocanegra's height and then pair him with someone a little quicker. I vote for Jay Demerit in the center with Frankie Simek ALWAYS starting on one side. Like what I see from him.

Frankie Hejduk - Although he pulled out a miracle game in the game against Canada, I don't know that he'd EVER be able to pull off that performance again. He is a liability for a card, as every single person on this list is. We need enforcers, but we don't need reckless enforcers. If you have to take somebody out and it's close to a red card offense, then that means you were out of position. Well, look at all three of these guys. They must be out of position a lot. 9 yellow cards between them all throughout the Gold Cup Tourney. Yowsers.

Conclusion

Although it looks like I'm focusing on some of our weaker points of the tournament, we still won the thing. We played pretty well for our first real tourney under Bob Bradley and I shouldn't be complaining. There are obviously some choices that most of America would have made differently, but at the same time, we're not the coaches. I have noticed a lot of dicussion on blogs (located on the right) regarding the games, so hopefully, that means soccer's marketability and popularity is increasing a bit. I suppose we'll see in the future.

- Brad

P.S. If anyone happens to wander to this site and is interested in writing blogs just talking about your opinion on different soccer-related items, please drop me an email at soccerfaninusa@gmail.com. I'm trying to put together a bit of a community to discuss soccer results, trades, and other talk. The US doesn't have a lot of that and I thought it would be nice to have somewhere to go to praise or bitch about what's going on overseas and in the US regarding the world's game.