Thursday, July 12, 2007

S.Y.N. And the Half-Assed Recap: US U-20's 2-1 Uruguay

I left to see a movie about sixty minutes in, so I don't have much to post here. I'll give it to you, but that was an ugly win so I think the less said, the better.

Who had a good game? Szetela continues to show well, Zizzo continues to impress, and Freddy was more than decent. That said, my bid for Man of the Match goes to Bradley as he (and sometimes he alone) kept the team in it through the finish. It's appropriate that he notched the go-ahead goal. You can tell that he's senior-squad quality.

Other notes:

- Wallace is solid.

- Altidore got cleated.

- The ref is whistle-happy.

- Beltran is having a better game than the one versus Brazil.

- It's amazing to see that the whole team is distracted in Seitz' absence. I'm sorry to say that Perk is giving folks a scare.

- Furthermore, the defense doesn't respect Perk like they do Seitz. There's a lot of miscommunication. I can tell at this point that Perk is a technically solid keeper, but I hope he is more confident than he looks.

- Neither team has had a solid shot on goal by the end of the first half.

- Akpan over Ferrari? Wtf? Did Ferrari do something to piss Rongen off or what? I'm dreaming up theories why Ferrari hasn't seen a single damn minute yet this tournament. The best I can come up with is that Rongen anticipates Altidore growing more fatigued as the tournament progresses and wants Ferrari as fresh as possible so that he can start over Altidore in the latter stages. Otherwise I'm thinking that Ferrari is already established with a European club whereas McCarty and Akpan aren't and Rongen wants the world to give them a look. Otherwise, WHAT THE F*CK GIVES???? (I missed it! Ferrari got some minutes and I missed it! Ives says he was fairly mediocre, though.)

- McCarty for Zizzo? I'm just as baffled. Rongen needs to start defending himself during the post-game interviews because these substitutions are inexcusable.

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