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[quote=Blutarski][quote=NoYou]The Guardian really takes the US style of play to task after the loss to the Netherlands.

"What did the US lack most at the World Cup? Football intelligence"
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/dec/04/what-did-the-us-lack-most-at-the-world-cup-football-intelligence

"This is a difficult one to handle,” Berhalter reflected when interviewed on the pitch after full-time. “We came up short today, but not for a lack of effort.” Effort may not have been lacking, but many other qualities essential to footballing success were: commitment off the ball, defensive nous, ruthlessness in front of goal. Despite the precision of the opposition’s finishing, the US were not undone by moments of individual brilliance, quirks of technology, or other acts of semi-divine footballing intervention; instead their demise was almost entirely self-inflicted. The US failures were in defense and attack, basic areas of core technical competence. Truly, this was a team who saved their worst for last."

"USA’s familiar shortcomings exposed against clinical Dutch at World Cup"
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/dec/03/usa-netherlands-world-cup-2022-soccer-last-16

"The Americans’ profligacy from promising attacking positions, their imprecision in building chances from possession and their consistently poor set-pieces all came under a harsh glare on the world stage after persisting through an often-rocky World Cup qualifying campaign. [b]For three matches in Qatar they were able to make up the difference with closely knit team play fueled by boundless energy in midfield.[/b] But when the reserves ran dry on Saturday night, their defects finally caught up with them."

How many US Youth soccer matches have I seen with this same style of play. Run-run-run-run until you are tired and then sub out someone else who run-run-run-run-runs. It's frustrating that this mentality has such a hold in the US when over and over again it isn't working at the top levels.

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I don't think there is anything wrong necessarily with the high effort, athletic style that we play with. It's a byproduct of our soccer culture and won't change until our system matures. Better coaching at the youth and college levels is needed to change our emphasis, and that will take some time. In any event, it's not why we lost against the Netherlands. I thought the team made a decent showing overall against a very good Netherlands team. It's just one game. If we had simply picked up the late attackers and had half of their finishing ability ourselves, we would have been dangerous.

I don't think we can expect to win the world cup at this stage, but this was a decent start at regaining some respect. Given the parity that now appears to exist, we're at least in the mix for 2026.

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