T&T 0–3 US: The Victory of “Anti Football”

On a day when foot­ball finally came home in the form of England’s heroic 4–1 vic­tory over an arro­gant and vastly over rated Croa­t­ian side, “anti-football” scored a big vic­tory as well.  While young­ster Theo Wal­cott pro­vided the hero­ics for Eng­land, no young­ster of Walcott’s cal­iber was in the neg­a­tive look­ing and tac­ti­cal side Coach Bob Bradley sent out for the United States against a weak­ened Trinidad and Tobago team which was going to be run off the pitch by any side with a pulse last night. Instead of call­ing in Walcott’s Amer­i­can fac­sim­i­les Freddy Adu or Jozy Alti­dore, the United States fielded a safe lineup which fea­tured Clint Dempsey and DaMar­cus Beasley exploit­ing the flanks and a 3–0 US vic­tory. Given the weak­ness of the oppo­si­tion and the ease with which oth­er­wise shaky inter­na­tion­als like Beasley and Dempsey dom­i­nated their mark­ers, would not this have been the per­fect occa­sion to enter Jozy Alti­dore and Freddy Adu to World Cup qualifying?

The Amer­i­can vic­tory while deserved was not pretty. Unlike the Mexico-Canada match going on at the very same time in Chi­a­pas, the US lacked artistry or any sort of tech­ni­cal on the ball skill in this match. When you are fac­ing a young side that’s going to be eas­ily over­whelmed, results like this one occur, but the inabil­ity of the United States to con­trol pos­ses­sion in the mid­field was appar­ent. Freddy Adu would help Bob Bradley’s side in this regard instead of watch­ing the US hoof the for­ward or sim­ply play unat­trac­tive foot­ball which is bound to be los­ing foot­ball come South Africa 2010.

Mexico’s two young­sters, Car­los Vela and Gio­vanni Dos San­tos didn’t have the best of matches tonight against an extremely game Cana­dian side. They did not have too: Their man­ager Sven Goran Eriks­son real­izes the occa­sion and the need to build the strongest pos­si­ble side for South Africa. After all Sven left Eng­land some­thing spe­cial by tak­ing its future star­let Theo Wol­cott to World Cup 2006, which in turn increased his under­stand­ing of inter­na­tional foot­ball allow­ing him to hum­ble the arro­gant Croa­t­ians in Zagreb.

But the Amer­i­cans don’t take these sorts of steps: play­ing it safe both on the pitch and with regards to player selec­tion is the norm in US Soc­cer. Today’s result not with­stand­ing every sub­se­quent match­day for Dos San­tos and Vela where Alti­dore and Adu do not par­tic­i­parte is a vic­tory for Mex­ico in the long term bat­tle with the United States for regional supremacy.