Richard Fleming has two decades experience of covering international soccer for the BBC. He has covered World Cups and European Championships, and now calls play by play for the MLS Colorado Rapids.

USMNT critics should stop looking for the soft option

by Richard Fleming

Let me state this from the outset.

This piece is not to dismiss the thoughts and views of others, rather to add an outsider’s view, and from someone who hails from a soccer-loving nation that – until recently – felt we were still among the best in the world, and that tournament organizers only introduced penalty shootouts so as to give other countries a fighting chance.

England won the World Cup in 1966, and almost every major tournament since has seen the media, pundits and fans predict great things.

Bookmakers would install England as one of the fancied teams. The reality was, aside from a glimpse of glory at Italia ’90 and Euro ’96, England have often – as the cruel jibe goes – been back in Blighty before the postcards!

As a soccer nation, England were delusional, gripping firmly to the long-held belief that they were better than reality suggested. They felt their players were superior to the likes of Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Occasionally they were, briefly. Every so often England would put in a masterful display, dazzle the opposition and appear unbeatable. But it didn’t happen enough, or when it mattered, for them to truly be considered one of the best.

There was an unhealthy arrogance about the way England saw both themselves, and how they viewed other nations on the soccer stage. Unfortunately, when you genuinely feel you have the quality on the field to match all-comers, the cause of failure must therefore lie elsewhere. That’s the logic. If the players are a good enough and the team is defeated, then there must be other reasons, right?

---

“Tactics, or lack of, is too easily thrown about as to why teams come off second best”

---

Down the years it has been the significant matches which have usually lead to the greater soul searching.

So, managers came and went, and the outcome was often the same. Of course, it’s a lot easier to hire and fire a manager or head coach, and press the reset button, than to admit you were wrong to have such elevated expectations of your players.

It’s also a lot tougher to admit you’re not as good as you thought, and that there are others in your line of work that can make you look ordinary. As a proud soccer nation, that slice of humble pie sat uneaten for a long, long while.

As a snap-shot, I saw similar traits with the USA off the back of the defeats to Colombia and Argentina at Copa America Centenario. Social media chatter really took off after the semifinal loss to Argentina, with most pointing the finger firmly in the direction of head coach Jurgen Klinsmann. Few even considered that maybe, just maybe, the players had a big role to play in the failings, or that Argentina were four goals better than the USA.

Yes, the Argentine loss was just one game, but the scoreline as well as the manner of the reversal raised more froth from the depths of despair.

A 4-0 defeat, and no shots from the USA. Is that what angered fans so? A USA that could be so outplayed, out-thought and out-fought was not a USA that many recognized. But did that one game, on one night, from one tournament finally burst the delusional bubble, similar to the one England had been smugly sitting inside for so long?

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, that tactics were an issue in the heaviest and most humbling of the previously mentioned matches. Let’s suggest that Klinsmann got it wrong; that he set up not to concede rather than to get in the faces of the Argentines and take the game to them.

 

I could accept that. I could acknowledge that he was seeking to do a ‘containing job’ which, of course, with hindsight may have been a mistake.

But those simply pointing at tactics, or perceived lack of, as the key reason for the USA’s 4-0 loss to the South Americans are missing a number of vital elements. You don’t gift a team like Argentina a two-goal cushion and expect to breeze back into it.

Goal #1: Every player has a job to do at a set piece. Surely it’s on the players on the park to notice a certain #10-wearing, World Player of the Year-trumpeted Lionel Messi loitering with intent on the edge of the penalty area. Pretty sure you’d be keen to mark him.

Goal #2: It wasn’t tactics, rather technique, which had the ball rebound off the boot of Chris Wondolowski, to the mesmerizing feet of Messi. Wondo was then forced to chase back and haul down the little master for the freekick which wowed the footballing world. So, tactics, shmactics.

Those are two occasions in which concentration and technique cost the USA, not instructions and advice pregame.

The end result was that the USA were 2-0 down to the best team in the world. Argentina, a better team, with better individuals, boasting better technique. Their passing, movement, vision and invention was all far better. That has nothing to do with tactics, rather the ability of the individual and an understanding of others around them.

Stop looking for the soft option.

‘Oh, it was Klinsmann. He got his tactics all wrong.’

‘The lineup was so wrong. I would have started X, Y, Z.’ … and so on, and so on, and so on.

The assumption by many is that different tactics and a different lineup would have led to a different outcome. Some even went all misty-eyed, and wondered whether Klinsmann’s predecessors Bob Bradley and Bruce Arena would have had the USMNT better prepared.

Stop living in the past, work in the present, and learn lessons for the future.

All of this is also assuming that the USA is anywhere near the level of Argentina. Against teams like Argentina, everything has to be right. You have to field your strongest side, hope everyone brings their ‘A-game’, and pray that Argentina is a little off color. The reverse was true on Tuesday, and the hiding was handed to the USA.

And let’s not forget, your tactics are only as good as the opposition allows them to be. Implementing tactics is not a foregone conclusion. (Again, giving up a goal in the fourth minute puts a huge dent into any game-plan).

There is an element that feel the USA ought to be competing with teams such as Argentina, or certainly giving a better account than was shown. Again, that may be the case, but there are occasions in sport where you simply hold your hand up and accept you were a distant second best.

You can begin with the best of intentions, and the most crafty of tactics, but if individuals lack the most basic approach to the game, resulting in you playing catch-up, then it’s often going to be an uphill struggle. Tactics, or lack of, is too easily thrown about as to why teams come off second best, though it does allow those who see this rather simple game as a complex battle of minds to flex some cerebral muscle.

---

“It’s also a lot tougher to admit you’re not as good as you thought, and that there are others in your line of work that can make you look ordinary.”

---

 

Were the USA set up to lose from the outset, as some would have us believe?

Maybe, but it doesn’t help when individuals switch off. You can’t concede such soft goals and then lazily blame it on tactics. Players have to take responsibility. With all due respect, Bradley, Dempsey and Co are not in the same league as Messi, Mascherano and Higuain. And there, for me, stands the elephant in the room.

How many of the Argentine side would get into the USA team, and vice-versa? Man-for-man, Argentina were, and are, a better side. The USA, as a collective, can compete … up to a point. But they’re not the best in the world, and – harsh as it may sound – they don’t possess players that can consistently meet the demands of producing at the highest level.

This isn’t about bashing the USA. After all, they battled their way to the semifinals of Copa America, which was a fantastic achievement. This is more about adding balance to the raging debate about what went wrong, who was at fault, and what ought to be done about it.

In order, the following is seen by many as reasons for Tuesday’s downfall:

*Klinsmann’s tactics.

**Klinsmann’s chosen lineup.

**Klinsmann.

**Players.

There seems to be an eagerness to place Klinsmann in the dock, all while the armchair coaches inform us how they would have done things differently. And, by ‘differently’, they mean better.

And that’s the beauty of being an armchair soccer coach. You can pick a team, conjure up tactics in your head and imagine scenarios being played out on the field, without actually putting those plans into action. It’s pretty safe territory. You’ll not be ‘getting fired in the morning’. I’ve been an armchair soccer coach for almost 30 years!

People often ask me ‘when will the USA produce a truly world-class player?’ Well, until you recognize how your players stack-up against the best in the world, then you’ll struggle to know what’s needed to be the best in the world.

The USA has had it far too easy for far too long. Gauging success by how well, or otherwise, they do compared to Mexico limits your ability to appreciate where you stand compared to rest of the soccer world. By competing in the Copa America, the USA has been tested in a way that no Gold Cup or CONCACAF World Cup qualifying will ever do.

By stepping outside of its comfort zone, the USA (players and coaches) has been subjected to a severe soccer lesson, and one it doesn’t get very often. But, rather than seek the soft scapegoat, take a deep breath, stand back from wreckage and question whether – like England – the belief that you’re more advanced than you are is actually holding you back.