2015 Gold Cup

Someone that will be going somewhere is Guzan. Kind of 'ironical' that on FB yesterday Tim Howard in an interview on Everton's official site said that he was throwing his name back into contention for the team. While that call was strange, it was Guzan's fault to let that infraction be flagged.

My buddy is currently in Guadalajara visiting family and the vast majority of folks and media there are in agreement with Timmy. They feel Concacaf is a joke, that because Mexico is a cash cow is the only reason they are still playing, that their performance has been terrible, and it would have been honorable had Guadardo missed the pk. (In either game)

 

Ok, so on the 1st set pc goal Jamaica had 2 men at the top of the 6 yd box. Evans & Beckerman had the first guy tightly marked with Beckerman fronting him. Brooks was tight on Mattocks, placed between him & the goal. Alvarado was between the 2 marks, closer to Mattocks in a free role. For me, he has to be the one to react there because he is between Mattocks and the ball and is in the best position to intercept. Also, there wasn't anyone else making a run into the box for him to be distracted by. Brooks probably should have done better positioning his man but he did make the challenge, however it just fell perfectly for Mattocks. If he heads that more directly toward goal by just a little bit, Brooks likely gets a deflection.

I haven't been a big fan of Alvarado this Cup, but clearly Klinsmann & Co think he is the future at cb for us in the next WC cycle. As mentioned, the Gold Cup ultimately doesn't mean all that much (especially since we already held the 13 win) so I don't really take issue with him using it as an opportunity to give Alvarado and other young players experience.

I'm more disappointed that they were (seemingly) caught by surprise by our weakness at CDM. Jones was hurt, but someone should have been in the queue behind Beckerman to get some experience in case he struggled...which he did mightily.

As for the playoff, I don't see the BS. There are 2 Gold Cups between Confederation Cups so having the 2 winners play for that spot isn't unreasonable. Plus it's an extra chance to make $. I might take issue if a team won both Gold Cups and still had to play a playoff but that's not the case. I guess you could argue that the 15 result is the more relevant?

 

Unless it's a rematch with Jamaica for the US...but the respected senator's reasoning is sound and supported by 20 years of Gold Cup finalists.

 

Money that US Soccer gets a cut of as well.

From what I read, the intent behind the move was to help encourage teams not to sandbag the off year Gold Cups. I'm sure there are underlying greed factors as well, but not exclusively.

 

You guys have pretty much covered off the USA-Jamaica match, but regarding the Mexico- Panama match; well, I have to consistently defend the game of soccer with some of my friends and if any of them saw that game, I'm pretty much SOL. Every bad stereotype soccer has was on full display. Poor fan behavior, poor player behavior, poor refereeing decisions. Any time a game is stopped for a solid 10 minutes, you know you've got a problem. CONCACAF and the game of soccer at its worst. Looks like I'm going to have to work even harder to win over my detractor friends.

 

Don't know if this is an option for you, but I use Firefox and I have it set to delete all cookies whenever I close Firefox. I don't use Fox go, but I can log in to watch Prem games on the NBC Sports site, for example, and it works just fine. So, they can track me while I have Firefox open, but then all the tracking cookies are deleted when I close the browser. The price is that I have to enter user name and password every time I want to view games on NBC or get email or access fulhamusa, etc. The setting is Options -> Privacy -> Never remember history

 

I didn't remember to set the DVR to record extra time of the third place match but I will say in my opinion Panama completely outplayed the US during the first 90 minutes of the 3rd place match. It could have easily finished 3-1 to Panama in regular time.

 

I didn't realize we were playing this on Sat, so (inverse to Barry) I tuned in at the 90th minute and saw the rest. The officiating was dodgy as heck, but not uneven. I thought we outplayed them in extra time but neither side really looked like a serious threat to win it. And man, we're England-level bad at penalties. The only good one we took was by the kid from Iceland. Deuce scored his, but it was his usual, weakly hit ball down the middle.