By Jared Launius
It's worth mentioning from the outset, I think, that this a lot of this is, in some small way, needless. Close to half of the camp roster was (no disrespect meant here) glorified filler, and Shea, Parkhurst and Cameron were the only players – by my estimation – bidding for legitimate starting nods with the full team. But there are certainly spots to be filled, young players to discuss and Jermaine Jones-y things to scrutinize. So, mount up!
The PersonnelBy my count, 18 Yanks checked in for Mr. Klinsmann and Co. over two games, including four for the first time, which is always fun to see.
Two guys with Boston connections, Geoff Cameron – who grew up there – and Michael Parkhurst – who played with the Revolution for four seasons – deputized in central defense in both matches, each taking chances at different junctures to make a claim for the up-for-grabs right center back spot in Klinsmann's starting XI. To form, Parkhurst looked the safer, steadier option, with his unruffled feathers and sharp positioning helping deliver two clean sheets, while Cameron looked the sexier option, often teasing us with brilliant distribution and the kind of recovery speed you would ideally pair with Captain Bocanegra. I'll get to more individual evaluations of each player a little bit later.
M. Night Shyamalan lookalike AJ DeLaGarza tried his hand at right back in both friendlies, but all Signs pointed to the natural center back having no Sixth Sense for what it takes to be The Happening thing on the right flank. As you'd expect, he dueled well and was generally in the right place defensively, but also struggled to link with college teammate Graham Zusi and always looked unsettled on the occasions he foraged up the field. I like DeLaGarza, I really do. I think he's a very good player and an MLS champ and this is more a referendum on das coach and not AJ personally, but it's a little frustrating Chance Myers and Sheanon Williams watched from home as a center back trotted out at right back for two matches.
Keep reading after the jump
Jermaine Jones was tasked with more distribution responsibilities than we've previously seen, donning the number eight shirt each game out, and he played box-to-box the way you'd expect Jermaine Jones to play box-to-box: like a drunk Tazmanian Devil. I'm not exactly sure where Jones will ultimately fit under Klinsmann, as he lacks the discipline and tactical wherewithal to be a true stay-at-home holding midfielder, but is nowhere near the composed, consistently accurate passer you want playing box-to-box. So, probably on the bench, I guess.
Elsewhere, well, I have to come to Graham Zusi's defense. The general sentiment I've found around the Intertubes is that Zusi was largely ineffective, save a few nice set pieces and a cool finish for the winner against Panama. And I agree: Zusi looked slow, occasionally lost and mostly unimpressive on the right flank. He did. Know why? He's not a right winger. Ask Peter Vermes, who ran him out there a few times last season only to realize it wasn't working. Zusi is a timekeeper from the Xavi mold – a heady, clever player who keeps the ball well in tight spaces and will keep possession beating like a four-count. He's also – based on a few interactions I've had with him – extremely, ludicrously nice. Which makes me think he came to his position in an interaction that went something like this:
Jurgen Klinsmann: Graham, what position do you prefer to play?
Graham Zusi: Well, I'm grateful to be here, and I'll gladly play anywhere, but I prefer to play central mid –
JK: Great! How about right winger?
GZ: Well, I, okay. I'd love to.
Opposite Zusi, Brek Shea was unspectacular in a set of friendlies you'd like to see him dominate. My understanding was that the FC Dallas winger was sick, and he looked it in Panama City particularly. He was slow and seemed at a dearth for ideas all night, though he rarely received overlapping support from Heath Pearce and Zach Loyd. It will be interesting to see where Shea stands when the full team convenes in Italy next month. He's cooled down significantly since that torrid stretch last summer.
And, well, Teal Bunbury was Teal Bunbury. I like Teal, he's a very nice guy, but his game is remarkably immature for a player with two full professional seasons under his belt and that kind of potential. There's no questioning what he's capable of, but his refusal to hold the ball up/keep it within five feet of his body on his first touch can be very difficult to watch.
The PerformanceI'm trying to avoid coalescing these two matches into one big conclusion, because they weren't really two trials of the same experiment. Rather, it was two different experiments testing two different ideas with some similar controls.
Against Venezuela, Klinsmann deployed the formation and tactics we've all come to expect – a proactive 4-3-3 with a high defensive line and plenty of positive soccer. Jeff Larentowicz manned holding midfield and Benny Feilhaber was the highest up the pitch in the three-man midfield. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the U.S. dominated possession and kept Venezuela pinned in their own half most of the night. Rico Clark's stoppage time winner had to be toughly stomached by the South Americans, but I don't think anyone would argue a goal wasn't deserved. You could easily argue the U.S. was hard done by not to score multiple goals.
Game two was, again, different. The 4-4-2 Klinsmann deployed surely drew unwanted Bob Bradley flashbacks for many, though the line Klinsi had his defense keep was much higher than anything Bradley ever featured. It was, though, uncomfortably similar in other ways. Benny Feilhaber was sacrificed to bring on another striker – Chris Wondolowski – and Clark spelled Larentowicz in the #6 shirt. Why? I dunno. Why do we need separate words for stalactites and stalagmites? Aren't they the same thing, excepting that one grows upside down? I don't pretend to have all the answers. Why to any of this? Perhaps – and I'm reaching here – this is how Klinsmann plans to play in CONCACAF road games during qualifying?
At any rate, things played out the way you might have likely predicted. Neither Jones nor Clark got far enough up the pitch to link with the forwards, neither Bunbury nor Wondolowski dropped into midfield or held the ball up and Graham Zusi, whose #10 shirt might have suggested linking to the forwards was his responsibility, didn't really do so. The tactical result was bizarro-Barcelona – lots of people out of position, but never for good reason nor by design. On a different night, Panama might have scored three goals with all the chances they got. Neither Jones nor Clark played a true holding mid, but neither was a creative catalyst, either. The offside trap was often uneven, allowing Panamanian forwards in behind the defense several times.
I'm trying to avoid calling the Panama match a step back after the encouraging Venezuela tie because, well, consider:
-The formation was different and predicated on different ends.
-Jeff Larentowicz, Benny Feilhaber and Heath Pearce were taken off in lieu of players who offer less in possession and, you could argue, most other facets.
-The game was in a Central American city on a clearly puddle-y field, though that is something all those guys will have to experience if they ever want to be full national teamers.
-It was their second game in four days after three weeks of very heavy training.
-The right side of the field – Zusi and DeLaGarza – was out of position
So yeah, as often is the case, the play we saw needs to be taken with a heavy dose of context.
The Highlight
Rico's header was fun and dramatic and all that, but was hardly a thing of beauty and felt, in some small way, kind of cheap. And Zusi's goal, while a lovely, composed finish, was cleaning up trash in front of the goal. You like to see that, but it wasn't the most beautiful thing to watch.
My favorite moment was a tidy little passing sequence in the 48th minute against Venezuela started – how often do we say this? – by a very nice pass from a U.S. center back. Michael Parkhurst's defense-splitting pass from near the halfway line found Benny Feilhaber's diagonal run about 35 yards from goal. Feilhaber tried to quickly slip an overlapping AJ DeLaGarza in behind the defense, only to see the ball carom off the latter's unsuspecting heels. The ball fortuitously rolled to the feet of Teal Bunbury, who took two quick touches to turn his defender before knocking it out on the right wing to Sporting KC teammate Graham Zusi. Zusi feigned a cross, freezing the left back in the process, before weighting a sweet ball toward the touchline to a streaking Benny Feilhaber. Feilhaber's sliding cross was post-marked for an unmarked Jermaine Jones to the left of the penalty spot – he squared the cross up and cleanly volleyed, only to see it bend tantalizingly away from the near post, missing by inches. It didn't result in a goal, but only one player in that sequence took more than two touches, and it was Bunbury with three. That's the kind of quick passing and movement that can lead to the positive soccer Jurgen Klinsmann is looking for – and bonus points for it all starting with a sweet 30-yard pass by Michael Parkhurst.
It starts around 1:08 in this video.
The runner up was Benny Feilhaber's expertly weighted through-ball to put Brek Shea behind the Venezuelan defense in the first half Saturday (around :45 in the above video). What the clip doesn't show, though, was Geoff Cameron's perfect leading pass to get Feilhaber into the space to pull off that pass. Very, very encouraging.
The Lowlight
I'll resist calling ESPN's whole production – from putting it on ESPN3 to the crew calling it* – the lowlight, though it was short shrift. Tells you, I guess, how important the Mothership thinks Camp Cupcake friendlies are.
*No, they weren't the lowlight on the field, but were difficult to listen to at times nonetheless. Ricardo Ortiz's constant mispronunciations of names would have been a lot easier to stomach (I would struggle just as much if I were trying to call a game in Spanish, after all) if it weren't that he was mispronouncing the names of the wrong players – he never seemed to identify the correct players he thought was talking about.
And, hey, Taylor Twellman, do you think Jurgen Klinsmann should put another forward in so they can have two guys up there pressuring the defenders? Do you? I had no idea! I wasn't sure where you stood on the 4-4-2/4-3-3 debate! Yeah, let's just keep two forwards up there and, hey, while we're at it, bring back the two holding mids system and center backs who can't pass the ball or keep a high line. Because, hey, why not? We were good enough to make it to the World Cup every four years and sometimes pull wins out of our asses against far superior teams by dumbing down the game. That was our ceiling in that system, and no one actually enjoyed watching it, but winning is all that matters, right? Not development! Development? More like shmevelopment, amirite? Winning! Just winning! America wins!
The lowlight could be any of the several times an uneven back line let Panamanian attackers in behind the U.S. defense Wednesday, with none worse than the sequence that led to Geoff Cameron's red card in the 52nd minute. A Panamanian defender (forgive me for not knowing which one) optimistically pinged a ball in the general direction of his forwards, leading to errors by each of the U.S.'s center backs. The ball was hit straight at Parkhurst, but the generally sure-footed defender misjudged it and let it go bounding behind him. Meanwhile, Geoff Cameron lost track of Blas Perez, who ran in behind the duo and looked to be in on goal. Cameron showed great recovery speed, but his takedown of Perez just outside the penalty area was judged to be too brash. The Dynamo man was given marching orders.
The sequence, if you can stomach it, starts around 3:32 in this video:
Player RatingsThese are aggregated player rankings from each of the two games.
Bill Hamid – 6 – It was a pretty uneventful first cap for the 21-year old DC backstop, as his goal was kept safe all night by his defense and Venezuela's anti-offense. He did make one very nice, decisive punch in the first half, though.
Nick Rimando – 8 – Rimando was the only of the three U.S. keeper to play last week who was called on for help. His 25th-minute denial of an in-behind Gabriel Gomez was nothing short of world class, and his ability to pass the ball accurately up the field flies too much under the radar.
Sean Johnson – 6 – Like Hamid, Johnson had little to do except keep a few dribbling shots out, though there was much more excitement in his box than Hamid saw.
AJ DeLaGarza – 4.5 – DeLaGarza, as I discussed earlier, defended admirably and worked pretty consistently to get up into the attack. What held him back, though, was how he played when he got up there. He looked hesitant to cross or, for that matter, do anything with the ball at his feet. He was, of course, out of position, but it wasn't the best showing for the LA Galaxy center back.
Michael Parkhurst – 6.5 – The F.C. Nordsjælland center back, fresh off a helluva year with his club, did little to dispel my opinion he is the most polished center back in the U.S. pool. His distribution was tidy and sometimes adventurous, his positioning tight and he looked comfortable paired with Cameron. He'd be at a 7 had he not let that previously-mentioned ball in behind him to put his center back partner in a bind.
Geoff Cameron – 6 – Watching Geoff Cameron play center back, you just wish some coach much, much earlier in his career had committed to making him a center back. If he had grown and matured in Europe, it almost certainly would have happened during his youth career, rather than just last year. The raw tools are there – he reminds me of a taller version of Arsenal's Laurent Koscielny (with the hair to boot) – with all the speed, dueling, technical and passing ability you'd want from an international-caliber center back. But he's still very raw at the defensive skills – holding an offside line, knowing when to run with a forward and knowing when to pass him off, etc. – required to play that role internationally. In MLS, he can get by because he's faster and more skilled than everyone. That doesn't fly quite as much at the international level, which, I think, is why you saw him scrambling often over the course of these two friendlies to make last ditch tackles.
Heath Pearce – 5 – The Chivas USA defender hasn't played left back regularly for over a year, and it showed. His passing was fine, but he rarely overlapped Shea on the left and accomplished little with the ball at his feet. Pearce is still relatively young, at 27, and he's got good feet for a good-sized defender, so he's still got time to earn back the kind of favor that saw him land the most caps of any U.S. player in 2008. He didn't do much this weekend to help, though.
Zach Loyd – 5 – This is on a curve because, like many others in camp, the FC Dallas defender was played outside his usual position. Loyd was pretty effective as a sub for Pearce in the second half of the Venezuela match playing as a wrong-footed left back, when he overlapped club teammate Brek Shea well on a couple of occasions to play in some pretty incisive crosses. It was enough, in Jurgen Klinsmann's eyes, to earn a start against Panama, which could be qualified an unmitigated disaster were it not for the cross he played in that led to Zusi's goal. Overall, Loyd is a little reckless in tackle and doesn't always take care of the ball when he's going forward. Not the best showing for him.
Jeff Parke – 5 – Parke had little time to stitch his mark into the friendlies, as he came on to replace the hole Cameron left in the field with his red card in the second half against Panama. His botched clearance header in the 86th minute lead to what should have been an equalizer for Panama, if only Blas Perez's shot had, you know, not gone sideways.
Jeff Larentowicz – 6 – It was a pretty professional shift for the Rapids captain, providing the calm, reserved yin against Venezuela to Jermaine Jones' YANG. Not a whole lot to note, and not enough to supplant much of anyone in the pecking order, but solid work nonetheless.
Jermaine Jones – 6 – Jones excelled in the first match when his objective seemed to be "be as many places at once as you possibly can." He struggled against Panama, though, when tasked with primary distribution responsibilities. Just not his bag, ya dig?
Benny Feilhaber – 6 – He played played some very incisive balls during his 62 minutes of work and provided his customary calm and craft on the ball. He also, at times, was bossed too easily on the ball and spent way too much time asking the ref – who, to be fair, was abysmal – why he wasn't making calls. I have to wonder, too, if things, at some point in the last few weeks, went askew between the Revolution midfielder and Coach Klinsmann. The former wasn't inserted during the second half against Panama when the game was begging for a midfielder to come in and aid in possession, and I've read a few places (forgive me for not remembering exactly where) that he had a sour look on his face while warming up on the sidelines. He was the only unused sub in the second game.
Graham Zusi – 5 – I've said my piece on Zusi. He was, more than any other player I think, set up to fail. He looked most comfortable when he was able to come to the middle of the field and use his herky jerky dribbling to keep the ball and pick out passes. His set-piece service, it bares mentioning, was very strong.
Brek Shea – 5 – Shea looked rusty against Venezuela and like he might actually – like literally – be sleepwalking against Panama. His header in the former was unlucky not to score and he provided some nice service in that tie as well, but he really struggled to find the game in the latter due to some combination, I think, of fatigue and Panama looking at him and saying "this is their biggest threat, let's throw two defenders at him." The quirky winger had few chances to run at defenders against Panama, and looked out of touch when he tried.
Ricardo Clark – 3 – He scored, so what? I don't think results matter right now as much as how the team plays and how the players develop and fit into the style Klinsmann is trying to institute. Clark – who, in his defense, hasn't gotten a competitive game since August – was helpless and negative in possession, giving the ball away like free demos at a high school battle of the bands competition. Positionally, he left his back line exposed too often to go ball chasing and was pretty reckless in tackle. For the health of his own career, he needs to find a loan or transfer right meow. I hope he finds one, because I really like Rico. I hate to see a guy's career stagnate like that.
Brad Evans – 5 – I'm going to be completely honest: I don't remember a single thing Brad Evans did in either game. No disrespect meant, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just a thing.
Teal Bunbury – 4 – I've already written plenty about Teal on this blog, but this was another sideways step for the Sporting KC striker. His first touch – particularly in Panama City – was amateur and he didn't take the chances he was given well. Perhaps most disappointingly, his motor was weak, and he didn't get himself into spots to score. Here's hoping the staff in Kansas City does some serious work on Bunbury's game in training camp next month.
Chris Wondolowski – 6 – The San Jose striker, per his reputation, consistently got into good spots and was able to ask some serious questions of opposing keepers with headers in each game that brought out remarkable saves. The trouble with Wondolowski, though, is if he isn't giving you goals, he's not incredibly valuable because he doesn't hold the ball up or pass it particularly well. He was lively and industrious, though, and is the type of player you like to be able to bring off the bench for his proclivity for popping up around goal.
CJ Sapong – 6 – I don't think I'm alone when I say I wish I'd seen much, much more of Sapong. The lanky Sporting KC striker proved the most adept of any of the three forwards at holding the ball up and proved very valuable in possession in his limited time. Having seen a number of Sapong's games last season, I can honestly say he might be the best of any American forward at holding the ball up. He has a way to go in developing his auxiliary skills, but he's daaaaaamn good at that.
