Sorry our fans were annoying but hey, the team played with passion and provided you with some surprisingly entertaining football, no?
The irony is that the US since 1990 have always been a team that wasn't that talented, but played hard and disciplined and that along with having a very good international GK (Keller, Howard) to bail us out kept us somewhat competitive. Klinsmann was brought in to change all that and show the world we weren't just blue collar defenders; that we could play attacking, attractive football with the world's best. And what happens? We ended up playing mainly on the counter, worked hard, and our GK bailed us out. But what can you do? We really just don't have technical players. I wish yeah, that we had attacked a little more earlier or that we had a winger that gave defenses fits but in the end there is really nothing you can complain about. I think that team can walk away proud that they played their absolute best. And perhaps Yedlin and Green gave us a little glimpse of the future where in the next WC maybe we will finally have a bit of an attacking threat.
It's got to be a slight advantage that most of the US players are only halfway through their domestic season rather than the rest of the world who are at the end of their seasons. Just a thought.
I've always thought that the reason why America have loads of good goalies is because, when they're not playing Football, they'll be playing American Football and playing that will make them more likely to want to be a goalie.
My stupid pet theory on why the US has good GK's is because well, one we have some large people. But also in this country kids play on big fields, because it's a wealthy nation and not densely populated so there is space for lots of fields and you can always find an empty one near you to play on. The best soccer players tend to come from suburbs or from the Northwest and not densely populated urban areas like in other countries. You don't have kids playing football in streets or kids in makeshift games just throwing down some sweaters to make goals where no one plays GK or even if someone does they aren't standing in a real goal. If you play in the streets on a tiny space with your friends 3 on 3 or 4 on 4, you get pretty good at technical skills and ball tricks and you need to be creative. If you play on large fields with real goals in organized games then speed, endurance, physical size, and team organization and real goalkeepers are useful.
I coached in America for a couple of years around 1980. There were some amazing players, but they were mostly Mexican!
