Everyone is saying what a great job Beckermann did. He was effective. But he could be great. With more playing time and experience he could be an extremely effective holding midfielder. Valderama style.

Rogers is a phenom. I can’t explain how he found the confidence to do what he did. But if he can keep it up, we may have an American Ryan Giggs at our disposal.

We have shown that we do have depth. Now Bradley needs to spend the next 12 months making sure those guys get experience and that our first string players stay match fit. It’s gonna be tough. I don’t envy his job.

As I said in the piece, I have been told by two very good sources that Brian Ching is done playing on turf unless it is absolutely necessary. Good for him: we need more top american players to take a stand like that. He won’t say it in public but has let his feeling be known to his coaches and team mates which is a very stand up thing for him to do IMHO.

The sad part is Ching may be forced to play on turf at some point this tournament because of the number of potential games the US could play on the junk.

I cringed watching Davies attempt to run full out as he did so brilliantly in SA, and often pulling up on runs to protect himself, and pulling up on concrete can cause as much ligament damage as running fullstop. It’s such complete nonsense.

It’s not football, it’s a different sport entirely. Nothing is gained for the US football movement by this match, nor is anything gained by a new member of MLS playing their matches in an NFL ground. It’s cheap, short sighted and pathetic.

Heath Pierce is complete crap. I’d rather see whoever it is from the excellent under 17’s get a look, someone who has promise and can actually make a difference in the program. Goodson is hopeless as well, whilst at Dallas he showed a complete lack of any explosiviness or decent athleticism and gets beat by any marginally good run made by an opposing striker.

For all the talent Mr. Adu has, and ability to read the game and ability to deliver excellent free kicks or very good balls into space, he’s lost all confidence in traffic due to lack of competitive football. Even if he ends up in the third division of French football – a significantly more productive football experience then MLS matches – and getting consistent first team football, he needs it now.

Our depth is now such that we can overpower the teams from smaller nations without doing much more then selecting the right players to the squad. Bradley haters and doubts may complain about this but the National Team head coach should be in charge of player development. This job Bradley does well and I doubt if any of the foreign big name coaches who people would like to see take the job would care about what coming up but just what they have to work with now.

So, a good night for the US.

As for the negative, he did look tired at times. When you watch him play he seems to look like he is a bit carefree out there. He certainly does not have the intensity that some players have and his work rate was nowhere near what Donovans was at confederations. I am not sure, but he looks like he is just trying to be mature or a smart player instead of going 100 mph every moment. There were definitely times he could have made something out of a ball if he would have gone 100% on a run. Instead he just kind of petered out. I think we should also take note that he was playing pretty high up tonight. Since the US had 90% of the possession he was sitting around the eighteen a lot with his back turned to goal. There were really only two times I remember him getting knocked off the ball and once or twice going for headers where there should have been a taller forward instead of him.

I think it is a mistake to bench him. What he needs to do is play. He needs to get 90 min fit. We were all blasting the Confed cup team before they all turned around their performances. For goodness sakes, we have seen 4 or 5 games of Sasha and Beasley to know they should be out. Maybe what Adu needs is 3 to 5 games in a row with the team to shape up. The talent is there so lets give him a go but if this is the best we get out of him tonight, then yeah lets bench him.

The other stand out players were Rodgers and Holden. Rodgers did great attacking up the wing and Holden looked really good bringing the ball out and into the offence. I thought Beckerman was good too. He looked sharp for the first half but made some sloppy plays in the second. Obviously we can not really rate the defense and Perkins because they were barely in the game. Perkins could have ordered a pizza and passed it round to his backs for most of the game.

Maybe Adu is rusty from being benched so much by his club team like Beasely. Not good. He needs to get on a club team that will play him asap.