TIANJIN, China -- You can call the U.S. Olympic team's midfield a donut, because coach Peter Nowak has a huge hole to fill in the middle as the USA prepares to face Nigeria in a key match in Beijing Wednesday.
The Americans must earn at least a tie with the African side to advance to the quarterfinals and they must do it without their two best midfielders -- attacker Freddy Adu and defensive-minded Michael Bradley.
Both players received their second yellow card of the tournament in the USA's 2-2 Group B draw with the Netherlands Sunday. And both are vital to the Americans' success.
Adu is the midfield leader who is not afraid of taking chances -- take a look at some of the runs he made against the Dutch and his pass to Sacha Kljestan that set up the U.S.'s equalizing goal.
Bradley is Adu's antithesis at midfield. He stays home, tries to break up plays, helps starts attacks and becomes part of it whenever he can.
"We have a good enough team," Bradley said. "We still have enough confidence that we'll go to Beijing and take care of business."
Adu admitted it will be difficult to sit the bench in such a key situation.
"I can't tell you how difficult it's going to be," he said. "I've never been in a situation like this before. This is the first time I've been in a situation like this. I can tell you right now, it's a horrible feeling. It really is."
Nowak's three options: He can use switch from a 4-4-1-1 formation that he has used to start the first two games to a more conventional 4-4-2. That way he can deploy Jozy Altidore up front alongside Brian McBride instead of starting the former Red Bulls forward on the bench. He would still have to fill the defensive/holding slot in the middle.
He has three options -- Benny Feilhaber, who has played 18 minutes off the bench in both games; Danny Szetela, who probably is more suited for an attacking or all-around role; and former alternate Dax McCarty, who stood out during CONCACAF Olympic qualifying. Szetela played four minutes vs. Japan and McCarty has not seen a minute.
There is a fourth possibility -- returning central defender Maurice Edu to midfield, but Nowak probably would be unwilling to break up one alignment and make a huge hole there to fix another.
Nowak said he will consider his options.
"As I've said from the beginning it's all about the group," he said. "The 18 players we've chosen have to be up to the challenge."
Adu was optimistic whoever winds up in the lineup will do well.
"I have faith in the guys to get the job done," he said. "Not one person makes the team. It's a team effort and I know the guys will get the job done."
Dealing from the middle of the deck?: As it turns out, Bradley and Adu did not exactly accrue their yellows on hard tackles or rough play in the first two games.
Bradley received his first yellow card from referee Badara Diatta (Senegal) in the 64th minute for a soft foul on Hiroyuki Taniguchi in the 1-0 victory against Japan Thursday.
The former MetroStars midfielder called that card "a joke. It was not a foul."
His second card came in the first minute of stoppage time as referee Michael Hester of New Zealand sanctioned Bradley for taking his time on a restart -- a free kick -- vs. Netherlands.
"Obviously, the one today I should have been a little bit smarter," he said. "I should know to play the ball in quickly."
Adu was slapped with his yellow on his first foul of the game in the 1-0 victory against Japan after he was used as a pincushion by the opposition until then. It was the first yellow card of the game.
On Sunday, the 19-year-old midfielder got his second for kicking the head of goalkeeper Kenneth Vermeer while going for the ball in the penalty area in the 78th minute. Adu claimed his innocence, but replays showed the inside of his left boot hit Vermeer's head. Two minutes later Nowak pulled Adu for Feilhaber.
"Obviously it's disappointing, but I don't think I touched the goalkeeper," Adu said. "I touched the ball first, trying to get over him. The referee sees it a certain way and calls it. We'll see what happens. I'm very disappointed in that because it is an important game."
Actions speak louder than words: There is no official eating crow competition at the Olympics, at least not yet.
But the U.S. team certainly made Netherlands coach Foppe de Haan take down a heaping portion Sunday night.
Prior to the match, de Haan said that the United States did not measure up to Nigeria.
Here's his exact quote:
"I think the USA and Japan don't have the level of Nigeria," he said after the Dutch played the Africans to a scoreless in his team's opening game last week.
He was asked to elaborate on his remark at a press conference Friday.
"Nigeria is confident on the ball," he said. "They have two very good forwards. The Americans are more of a team whose players are on the same level. Nobody is extremely good. They have a good system."
After the surprising USA dominated Sunday's encounter, de Haan did not exactly apologize or that he was wrong, but he did say the U.S. made life difficult for his side.
"We had a lot of problems of the players of the USA," he said. "We lost control of the midfield."
He was referring to Nowak switching things around in the midfield to give midfielder Freddy Adu more room. Adu took advantage of it to make several runs through the Dutch.
"We are not, not now, a real team," de Haan added, referring to the fact the Dutch hadn't practiced together for long periods of time.
Needless to say, the U.S. made a big deal of de Haan's original comments.
"I knew their coach was doing a lot of talking before the game," Adu said. "We used that talk as motivation. we came out there and we wanted to prove to everybody that we're here to play. This team can play. It gets to a point where as a player you get a little tired of people disrespecting the United States, saying that we can't play, we can't do this, we can't do that. We keep proving people wrong over and over. At the end of the day, it's about what you do on the field. We felt it was a great team performance. We felt we were a little bit unlucky at the end."
No comments:
Post a Comment