Well the U.S. got their Solo back in Goal. They didn't expect a plural of repeat mistakes though.
The U.S. women's soccer team lost 2-0 in Norway not because they didn't have star striker Amy Wambach. (Though I don't pick them to win gold partly because of this) They lost because they made a bevy of defensive errors. One's that could cost any team a game.
I just recently saw the game on-line on replay. It looked worse than described!!! The first goal was scored because the goaltender and defender got crossed up and let a cross sail by them to an attacker for an easy score. It looked like they had never played with one another before.
Gee that seems eerily reminiscent on how Brianna Scurry and a attacker did the same thing in last year's World Cup semifinal against Brazil for the first goal.
Even the Norwegians were looking around bewildered how they could score so easily.
Then the 2nd goal was scored on an awful backpass to no one in particular. It was so poor that NBC had to break from their replays to catch the girl dribbling on goal. It was in real game time less than a minute after the first!!!! The attacker just kinda easily stole the ball and had an one on one with the goalie. Within 5 minutes it was 2-0 Norway.
So new coach, new goalie, similiar results. Oh yes and this is in group play. By the way Norway has beaten us before too and usually play us tough and it was the first game of the tournament so out goes all those excuses.
With Wambach they may have tied the game up if they were extremely lucky.(Big time luck in China's version of L.A. and Houston smog mix making running that much more difficult.) Without her its damn near impossible.
U.S. is very disorganized in their midfield attack and defense and its beginning to show now for the last year. The thing is most teams simply don't have the talent and coaching themselves to exploit it. The few that could, Germany, Brazil, Norway and even North Korea hae seized on it. If you know a team has trouble clearing the ball and cannot put a succesive attack on you'll just pressure them in critical junctures to get that turnover you need deep in their own end.
Excellent forwards on this team but I see no true style or sense of what they're trying to do on offense, which makes playing tight, discplined defense even more important.
Lucky for them one of those 3 aforementioned teams may not make it to the knockout stage. There are top 2 teams from a group and 2 3rd place qualifiers for knockout.
I think they'll bounce back against what's a scrappy Japanese team but a draw starts putting the U.S. in tight position. They would have to beat New Zealand (whose not very good) to qualify.
We're going to learn a lot about the character of this team in a couple of days.
Keywords: U.S Women's Soccer
