What the Euros tell us about US World Cup Prospects

Coming off three straight games with exactly zero goals, the U.S. is settling in to face tiny Barbados tomorrow for our first World Cup qualifier. It’s a home-and-home series — one game in L.A., one on the island — with the winner advancing to the semifinal round. If history tells us anything, it’s that we can expect to see the goal drought end tomorrow. Maybe we put up four or five on our Caribbean pals. Everyone feels better, right? We were already feeling good about the 0-0 draw to #1 in the World Argentina… Everything will be OK. Right? Right?

Once again, that was three games with zero goals. Sure, the likes of England, Spain, and Argentina are very tough opposition — the kind of friendlies we should be playing — but you have to go back past our previous match against Poland (which included three goals from set pieces) to the Mexico game to find a goal from the run of play. That would be from young Jozy Altidore. Now we haven’t seen Jozy the last four friendlies, presumably due to injuries and the fact that U.S. soccer didn’t want to jeopardize his big move to Spanish club, Villareal. But then again, we’ve only seen about 85 minutes of Freddy Adu in the last 270…

And herein lies the problem. No Altidore. Very little Freddy. Very little Landon Donovan. No goals. So you would think Coach Bob Bradley might use these last three games to try out some other attacking players: Robbie Rogers, Kenny Cooper, Arturo Alvarez, etc. But instead we got the same old, same old, with euro players who seemed worn down and perhaps intimidated, the 4-5-1 with the empty bucket midfield, and a general lack of creativity.

Meanwhile, the European Championship has been on ESPN2 the last week and-a-half, and there you see talented, attack-minded teams scoring goals. You see some intense soccer with teams intent and scoring goals. You see traditionally stingy defensive teams (like Italy and Greece) giving up goals.

So where does that leave the U.S.?

It leaves us wondering how the hell we’re going to score against quality opposition. And in the World Cup (assuming we qualify, which isn’t a given) we will be unseeded and facing other very good teams. The problems start with player selection, with Coach Bradley seemingly set on a rotation of players who (you guessed it) can’t score. Of course there are other factors — MLS ignores international friendly dates and Coach Bob has seemed reluctant to use domestic players who will likely be gone from their teams during the Olympics. This has left the aforementioned young attackers out of the loop. This still doesn’t explain the reluctance to use more of Freddy Adu. Then there’s the tactics, the defensive, almost frightened approach. The hockey-style chase-and-pressure and hope the other guys screw up or we can score off a set-piece. We’re better than this. We should be better than this.’

It makes you wonder what really happened during those meetings with Jurgen Klinsmann two years ago and why the US Soccer Federation didn’t bend over backwards to get him on board. Now, it seems we’re stuck.

Sure we’ll probably score a bunch agains Barbados tomorrow, and then we move on to more regional teams we should beat nine out of ten times, and everybody feels better again. But these recent performances are a more accurate measurement of this team — especially in comparison to the rest of the world. It’s a team in need of change; the sooner the better.