re: CONCACAF World Cup Qualifying - Guatemala v USA

Pearce is always bad.

Might be time to call up some younger defenders.

Marvelle Wynne is a rec player.

Well, the team got the win and the 3 points, which is huge and sets the tone for the rest of the group stage. If we can get another 3 at Cuba on September 6th, it would take a pretty massive failure during the rest of the stage to not advance to the next round.

The defense played well for the most part, and the offense played well for stretches. It's still going to take some more creativity and cohesiveness to be able to seriously challenge and compete at the Finals level.

With Cherundulo out for the Cuba match due to the red card, what does Bradley do with the defense to keep the quality of play high enough to compete and (hopefully) win? The usual suspects didn't pick up cards today, which is good. But if Dempsey or Mastroeni were to pick up a second yellow during the group stage, we'll need Edu, Adu, Klejstan, and whoever to be able to step in and step it up. Hopefully Beasley will return to full match readiness and be able to start and contribute considerable time by the 6th or the 10th.

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While everyone wants to see guys who have 1 or 2 caps (Cooper, Rogers, etc.) Guatemala City isn't the place for those guys.

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I totally agree with that. I'd even venture that at Cuba might not be the best of times to experiment. However, with a huge goal differential advantage against Barbados going into the road match of the tie, Bradley opted to not work most of those guys then either. They only got a little sniff here and there against our slate of friendlies in the past year, which would have been a great time to work in 20 or 30 minutes against some top flight competition. When is the right time? It's got to happen some time.

It's not that any change is a good change, it's that people want to be improving at a consistent pace. And the national team seems to be in almost the same position now that it was eight years ago. There's hope on the horizon, but we really don't know if it will be any better, any worse, or just more of the same at this point.

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Eddie Lewis was a GREAT call up

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Strongly Disagree. He is a very savvy and solid player, but he is just solid and we have PLENTY of those people already. I know Beasley wasn't completely ready but Lewis gets hurt and Beas comes in and almost immediately puts the corner kick on Bocanegra's head.

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While everyone wants to see guys who have 1 or 2 caps (Cooper, Rogers, etc.) Guatemala City isn't the place for those guys.

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Although I agree that some of those 3rd world countries are TERRIBLE atmospheres, we need these guys to grow up. They are critical for our success in 2010 imo. Maybe this wasn't the best time to get some of them PT but they need to start growing up.

It's not FIFA 2008 on xbox, but it's common sense that young guys are critical to our future success. And having people like Eddie Lewis take up space for some of these other guys isn't helping. Also, to the poster talking about Pearce not being bad. He is absolutely terrible. He's played poorly in every friendly and WCQ we've had.

Yea, he's a joke...I just don't get it

Spector is a lot better than him, but he's hurt right?

Spector is hurt (till early '09), and I think eventually will be more of a central defender.

Pearce hadn't been a superstar, but had played pretty well on that left side in the games prior. He's been there for most of the last year. You don't notice that he's doing a decent job until they throw Ramiro Corrales out there.

What are the other options at left back? Bornstein? Mike Randolph? That position is tough for almost every country.

I still think Eddie was our most reliable left sided option last night, without a fit Beasley. He's damn good on set pieces, and an adequate defender.

Again, what are the other options? Bobby Convey if it's 2005. You could have Mapp or Gaven sleep walking over there and playing ZERO defense. Robbie Rogers would have been a great option to sprint 40 yards and dribble the ball over the end line.

Freddy hasn't shown an ability to keep his cool, and not letting the hacking get into his head. He could stand to watch LD and Beasley in that regard. He would have been sent off or mind-fricked out of that game, so he wasn't really an option.

I thought the US did well, in a place we haven't won at in 20 years.

Freddy seems to handle the hacking pretty well imo. And I don't know who's better than Pearce, but he has been bad in every game and I'd have to think he's not so far ahead of everyone else that he's a lock now. If he's a lock we're up a shite creek.