Bradley’s Approach Different than Arena’s

Eddie John­son and Brian Ching cel­e­brate a goal against Bar­ba­dos, the only game which a cur­rent US striker has scored a goal in the last 14 months for the national team.

Bob Bradley’s tenure as United States National Team man­ager has gone about as well as can be expected: A CONCACAF Gold tri­umph, sev­eral vic­to­ries in the “old world” and thus far a smooth run in qual­i­fy­ing includ­ing an elu­sive win over Guatemala. So with this in mind, clearly their will be no coach­ing change for the US in the next sev­eral years. But Coach Bradley unlike his pre­de­ces­sor Bruce Arena seems to be reluc­tant to use cur­rent club form as a guide to player selec­tion. Arena, almost to a fault felt it nec­es­sary even dur­ing World Cup qual­i­fy­ing to call in any in-form Amer­i­can player to give him a look.

Bradley seemed to take the Arena phi­los­o­phy early in his tenure. Bradley’s first year and change on the job saw the call ups of about 70 play­ers. How­ever since the March friendly with Poland, Bradley’s selec­tions have become less and less cre­ative and more and more pre­dictable. Thank­fully some of this pre­dictabil­ity has been the now rou­tine call ups of Frankie Hej­duk and Eddie Lewis both of whom spent a year with­out being called in after World Cup 2006 when younger play­ers tried and ulti­mately failed to fill their posi­tions. Unfor­tunetely this also means the con­tin­ued rou­tine call ups of Eddie John­son, now play­ing his trade in England’s sec­ond divi­sion, Clint Dempsey who has scored one club goal in the last nine months, DaMar­cus Beasley whose role should be filled by Lewis until the later retires, and Ricardo Clark who has looked com­pletely out of his depth in his last four matches for the United States.

The return of Clark to the national team for crit­i­cal qual­i­fiers is totally unjusi­tifed. Despite play­ing on MLS’ dom­i­nant team, Clark’s con­fi­dence is in the tank. He has been most unim­pres­sive to me while play­ing for the Dynamo this year other than in a few glim­mers. Eddie John­son and Brian Ching the cur­rent US strik­ers have scored goals in only one match for the US in the last four­teen months: that match was an 8–0 thrash­ing of Bar­ba­dos. Had Arena still been man­ag­ing the national team, in form Kenny Cooper or Char­lie Davies would have surely been called into this squad if for no other rea­son to judge them in camp.

Clint Dempsey not only has played poorly for the US, but see­ing him in per­son now in sev­eral US matches over the last 12 months I fear he has gone from hav­ing a mon­ster killer instinct to dis­in­ter­est in the national team. This prob­a­bly comes from being over­worked at Ful­ham and now con­fused about his role there, thanks to Man­ager Roy Hodgson’s tac­tics. DaMar­cus Beasley is a player whose hus­tle wins him acco­lades from Amer­i­can coaches and whose Cham­pi­ons League expe­ri­ence gets him love in the press, but whose util­ity on the inter­na­tional level appears to be wan­ing. Beasley’s first touch and cre­ativ­ity are com­pletely devoid when he needs it the most and I per­son­ally am much more com­fort­able with a wily vet­eran like Eddie Lewis on the pitch than Beasley whose mis­takes and poor posi­tion­ing are more likely to cost you points than win you anything.

Bradley’s call in of Mar­vell Wynne is long over­due. For some rea­son with Wynne avail­able for matches against Mex­ico and Bar­ba­dos ear­lier this year, Drew Moor was called in ahead of him as the first choice right back. Also the call up of Mexican-American full­back Michael Orozco who hope­fully can earn his first full US Cap is a wel­come sign.

The omis­sion of Kenny Cooper, and Freddy Adu the most cre­ative player the US has are glar­ing. Arena most cer­tainly would have called both play­ers in to camp in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion. Only time will tell if Bradley’s deci­sions are justified.

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