To be closely followed by the Landon Donovan penalty kick goal and roughly ninety minutes of Alamo-level defending? Why not. PES 2008 has the U.S. winning two-nil on an early goal by Altidore and a second half set piece goal off of Sacha Kljestan’s head. But in the simulation the game decided to start Bobby Convey for the Yanks; I’m not sure whether the score line or that starting berth is more far fetched (in all fairness Convey did get hurt and was removed at halftime). Here’s hoping Bradley’s boys can get at least a point out of this match against Brazil, because I want to have a reason to watch the actual winnable game against Egypt on Sunday.
Brief thoughts on the Italy debacle: Every time. No need to even grandstand about the unwarranted red card. That type of thing seems to happen to the U.S. It will continue to happen. Moving on.
The team was playing with the Italians and even getting the best of them on a number of occasions before the manufactured hour-long power play kicked in. Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley deserve special mention for inspired first half performances. The DeRossi goal to put the Azurri up was soft though, and that’s on Tim Howard. Thoughts on the New Jersey born turncoat who knocked in two goals for the Italians to help defeat his native country will be withheld in the interest of avoiding a profanity laden diatribe, mismanagement by the previous national team coaching staff aside.
And Jonathan Spector played his second great game in a row for the team and seems to be providing a real solution at right back in the absence of Hejduk and Cherundolo. Let’s see how he handles a still-drunk-from-last-night-Robinho today. If he performs as admirably as he did against Italy and provides service into the box on attack, his club West Ham United may look at rescinding their contract offer to current captain and right back Lucas Neil altogether.
Props to NWB for the Bernie Parmalee reference in the last post… Go America!
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