Closing Thoughts for Gold Cup

This was the sec­ond straight Gold Cup title for the Amer­i­cans and, in many ways, this one was sweeter than 2005. First, rather than need­ing penal­ties against Panama to take the title, the US knocked off their biggest rival for CONCACAF in the Final, com­ing back from a goal down. Sec­ond, the United States posted a per­fect 6–0 record through­out the tour­na­ment notch­ing 13 goals (from 9 dif­fer­ent play­ers!) while con­ced­ing only 3 goals. By mod­ern stan­dards in world foot­ball tour­na­ments, the US did not really strug­gle to win this thing. Sure they caught a major break against Canada and needed to come from behind against Mex­ico, but nowa­days, who wins a tour­na­ment or even advances to the final (other than the ’02 Brazil­ians who were awe­some and feasted on a weak tour­na­ment field), with­out a break or two along the way (i.e. Italy’s con­tro­ver­sial penalty against the Aussies and come-from-behind effort against France in the Final last sum­mer). From start to fin­ish, the US was the best team in the 2007 Gold Cup and deserved the title more than any other team in the field.

The answers…..
1. Bob Bradley passed his first test as US National Team man­ager.
2. The US is one step closer to leav­ing Mex­ico com­pletely behind and estab­lish­ing them­selves as the dom­i­nate force in CONCACAF.
3. The US dis­played a lot of strength in depth through­out the tour­na­ment
4. The US clearly has not taken any steps BACK in the last few years (like some peo­ple seemed to believe after Ger­many)
4A. Same for Damar­cus Beasley and Lan­don Dono­van
5. Tim Howard is ready to be the #1
6. Benny Feil­haber is quickly matur­ing into a legit­i­mate play­maker in the clas­sic #8 fash­ion and packs a reper­toire that includes deft touch, an astute tac­ti­cal sense, and the abil­ity to make match-winning plays.
7. Ricardo Clark may be the two-way mid we’ve been search­ing for.
8. With Frank Simek, Jonathan Spec­tor, and Steve Cherun­dolo, right back should not be a prob­lem for the US in the near future.

The questions/problems….
1. Bob Bradley has big­ger, more impor­tant chal­lenges forth­com­ing (2010).
2. The US may have another for­mi­da­ble CONCACAF rival in Canada (the leafs got robbed; who knows what would have hap­pened if that goal was allowed to stand).
3. While the US showed depth, there are still some posi­tions where they are far from secure (i.e. up front, left back, right mid).
3A. Up top: Ching looks ser­vice­able enough to keep the seat warm for (hope­fully) Jozy, Davies, Fer­rari, or who­ever. John­son and Twell­man remain uncon­vinc­ing.
3B. Left back: Born­stein has a long way to go (par­tic­u­larly defen­sively). There’s also Spec­tor and Pearce (I hope to get a bet­ter idea in Copa as Bradley will get a look at Pearce and Born­stein against peren­nial South Amer­i­can pow­er­houses).
3C. Right mid: answer­ing the ques­tion up front will help a lot here, as will a stel­lar Copa per­for­mance by Sacha Kljes­tan. (If the World Cup started tomor­row, I’d like Ching-Donovan up top with Dempsey at wide right mid.)
4. Based on last summer’s per­for­mance in Ger­many and only wins against CONCACAF foes this sum­mer, the US has not evi­dently taken any big steps FORWARD in the last few years either.
4A. Based on that stated above and per­for­mance in MLS/spotted play­ing time with Man­ches­ter City, same for Lan­don Dono­van and Damar­cus Beasley.
5. Unfor­tu­nately, after a shaky semi-final per­for­mance against Canada, it seems Keller’s days may have passed (or at least they prob­a­bly will within the next few years).
6. Pablo Mas­troeni seems to have lost a step and looked fatigue early in a few games, none more so than in the Final. His best days with National Team have passed.
7. Feilhaber-Clark? Feilhaber-Bradley? Clark-Bradley? What’s the best cen­tral mid­field in the near future?
8. Is Bocane­gra the answer for cap­tain? If not, who?

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