U.S. Soccer - toughest 10 days ever?

[patdog]

Was just looking at the US Soccer website article about tomorrow's match against England, and noticed the upcoming schedule is brutal.

May 28 - at England (ranked #11 by fifa.com and #8 by eloratings.net)
June 4 - at Spain (#4 and #5)
June 8 - Argentina (#1 and #2)

Damn! I'm all for playing good competition, but only a masochist would want a schedule like that. If we can somehow go 0-2-1 and only get outsored by 6 goals, I think that would be a fantastic result. I'm afraid we may go 0-3 and get outscored by double digits though.

Also, how tough is European soccer? England didn't even qualify for the 16 team Euro 2008 tournament this summer.

 

[DerHntr]

it should be fun to watch if we keep it close though. any idea where or when it will be televised...if at all? i know that i could go look for myself but am lazy today and figure you or someone on here may already know.

 

[Uncle Leo]

And it's about time we schedule like this.

This is much better than our typical three-game stretches of Guatemala, Jamaica, and Honduras.

 

[FQDawg]

We may get our asses handed to us, but I'd rather play these types of games to get better than a 2-0 win over Panama.

 

[patdog]

and England, Spain & Argentina. I think you improve by playing teams better than you, but I don't like playing 3 top 10 teams in 11 days. I'd much rather see something like, at England, at Scotland (currently ranked #15 by FIFA) and home vs. say an Uruguay (#28) or Colombia (#19) for this stretch of 3 games.

 

[NapoleonDynamite]

Here's a link to the US Soccer matches coming up... Beware this schedule includes all national teams (Men's senior national team, junior, youth, women, etc.) - just to confuse you.

http://ussoccer.com/schedule/index.jsp.html

"Mine eyes have seen the glory!"
- "Jingo" Jack Edwards, ESPN, 2002 World Cup after US upset Portugal 3-2

 

[MrHooch]

and England, Spain & Argentina. I think you improve by playing teams better than you, <span style="font-weight: bold;">but I don't like playing 3 top 10 teams in 11 days.</span> I'd much rather see something like, at England, at Scotland (currently ranked #15 by FIFA) and home vs. say an Uruguay (#28) or Colombia (#19) for this stretch of 3 games.

dare I say "Welcome to the SEC"? It's pretty much comparable...
</p>

 

[PosterFormerlyKnownAsRFAA]

I would love to have played Argentina IN Argentina. When the World Cup comes around, maybe this experience will pay off.

We can continue to play home games against lower CONCACAF opponents and get our *** handed to us in Europe or we can finally try to schedule these games in Europe and improve. While Arena was coach, we didn't do this. We've never done this.

I'm excited. I think this will pay off. I'd like us to finally breeze through qualifying for the World Cup and I hope these leads to that. The only team that should challenge us in the region is Mexico. It seems like most go arounds though that we lose a game or two that we have no business even worrying about. I don't know if these friendlies will actually change that or not, but at least it is worth a shot.

 

[patdog]

I certainly don't want to play a bunch of CONCACAF friendlies. And I strongly agree that we should schedule some friendlies against the top teams in the world, which we are doing. I think that's vital to developing the national team into a legitimate top 10 team. I just think that 3 matches against the top 8 national teams in the world (2 away) is going a little overboard. One (or at most 2) of these matches at a time would suit me much better. I like to see us play top competition, but I also like to see us win. We need a mix of tough but winnable games (like recent games against Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico and Poland) with a few really tough matches (like this 3 game stretch). I also think we should still schedule a few easy wins (like South Africa or a CONCACAF team) every year. I'd play those games primarily with younger players to evaluate them. You can't really evaluate a young player against an Argentina. Whether he's good or not, he's probably going to look bad in that game.

That said, you can bet I'll be TIVOing all 3 games and watching them with great interest.

 

[PosterFormerlyKnownAsRFAA]

We need a mix of tough but winnable games (like recent games against Sweden, Switzerland, Mexico and Poland) with a few really tough matches (like this 3 game stretch). I also think we should still schedule a few easy wins (like South Africa or a CONCACAF team) every year. I'd play those games primarily with younger players to evaluate them.

...meaning that we have scheduled a solid group of games against teams of various level, minus the patsies which we will get plenty of in a couple of months...

I'm hoping that the games against the likes of Spain, England, Mexico, Sweden, Poland will allow us to get the experience and toughness. I hope we can get to the point where our younger guys can get their experience in against the weaker CONCACAF teams during qualifying...when it matters. If we can get the experience against these tough teams, hopefully they'll be able to handle the weak team easily.

Regardless, I like the schedule and like the fact that it seems (without going back and comparing the last year or so to previous time frames) as though the team plays more games under Bradley than we have under past coaches.

I'm going out on a limb and predicting a 2-1 win over England, a 1-1 draw with Spain, and a 1-1 draw to Argentina!

I just hope we go out and play attacking soccer, which it seems Bradley prefers, and not play too defensively, which Arena seems to enjoy more.

 

[patdog]

I'm going out on a limb and predicting a 2-1 win over England, a 1-1 draw with Spain, and a 1-1 draw to Argentina!

That's really going out on a limb. I haven't broken it down into individual games, but I expect the cumulative score for all 3 to be something like 2 goals for us and 8 goals for England/Spain/Argentina. I really think we're stepping in way over our heads. An 0-2-1 record with no blowouts would be a fantastic performance for the U.S.

As for qualifiers, I don't think road games in CONCACAF will ever be easy for us. Too many ****** fields and biased referees down there. But the home games against pretty much everybody but Mexico should pretty much be gimme wins. And a 1 goal win should be something of a disappointment. </p>