Legal Commentary

World Cup Preview : U!S!A!

By Big Tent Democrat

The World Cup opens tomorrow and I will be covering and recapping every game at SportsLeft, starting Friday morning at 9 with the opening match South Africa v. Mexico. But today, I want to discuss our boys, the US team and their chances in the 2010 edition of the World Cup.

The Key Players. You will hear a lot about Landon Donovan ("Donovan is the key to success or failure for the U.S. in South Africa"), arguably the best player the US has ever produced, and Jozy Altidore,the new hope. But for my money, how far the US goes in the World Cup will depend on Clint Dempsey, the most instinctive scorer on the team. More . . .

The likely starting side for the US will include Tim Howard in goal (who plays in the English Premier League), an apparently now healthy Oguchi Onyewu, who is a terrific center back and member of Inter Milan. The rest of the US defenders - Carlos Bocanegra, Steve Cherundolo, Jonathn Spector, Jonathan Bornstein et al are simply not very good imo.

The midfield is the strength of the team, with Donovan (who plays for the Galaxy but had a great run with Everton of the English Premier League in January), Dempsey (a star for Fulham in the Premier League), the coach's (Bob Bradley) son, Michael Bradley, and Stuart Holden are the starting four in midfield.

Bradley will almost certainly use a 4-4-2 set up with Donovan and Dempsey expected to move forward a lot. For the 3 forwards, it appears that Bradley will go with Altidore and Robbie Findlay. I hope we see a lot of Hercules Gomez, leading the Mexican League in scoring, and Edson Buddle, who leads the MLS in scoring. I firmly believe in "hot" scorers. The US has no Christiano Rinaldo or up top strikers of the old school, Gerd Muller type - so I hope Bradley is willing to play the hot hands up front.

The US is is Group C, with pre-tournament favorite England, Algeria and Slovenia. 2 teams will go through from the group, and the US is the second choice. Then again, the US was expected to go through to the second round in 2006 and did not. And in 2002, it was not expected to advance but made it to the quarterfinals (and should have won the match over Germany). So "expectations do not mean much for the US.

We'll have a better idea what to expect from the team when we see how the look against England on Saturday, June 12.

Look for a preview of Friday's games - South Africa v. Mexico and Uruguay v. France later tonight at Sports Left.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on June 09, 2010 (boomark / email).