Ken Pendleton of USSoccerPlayers offers up a frank assessment of the Americans’ performance at the Copa America, and the overall national team effort over the last month, which he rates as “a huge success.” There can be no question that the Venezuela experiment turned out to be an “anticlimactic conclusion to a rather busy month,” but everyone knows that Coach Bob Bradley purposefully sent an inexperienced squad.
From here Pendleton says the biggest question the national team coach needs to answer comes at the back, where regular central defensive pairing Carlos Bocanegra and Oguchi Onyewu demonstrated enough inconsistency at the Gold Cup to give Jimmy Conrad and Jay DeMerit a shot at replacing them. Inconsistency and inexperience were hallmarks of left back Jonathan Bornstein’s experience in Venezuela, too, although the 22-year-old will likely be allowed to mature in that position. Meanwhile, Frankie Hejduk’s Gold Cup performances at right back made him look superior to Copa experiments Marvell Wynne and Drew Moor, although the fact that Hejduk is 33 places his long-term prospects in doubt.
In midfield, Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley will no doubt maintain their places out wide, while Ricardo Clark — arguably the best U.S. player in Venezuela — Benny Feilhaber, and Michael Bradley have all made claims to a starting spot in the center. “The biggest disappointment of the last month,” were the U.S. strikers, Pendleton says, mostly due to their inconsistency. Eddie Johnson was strong in Venezuela but less dynamic at the Gold Cup; Taylor Twellman looked capable at times but failed to score or get in good positions to score. Brian Ching was perhaps the strongest of the three, particularly against Mexico. Clint Dempsey, meanwhile, created bags of chances at the Gold Cup and should have sewn up the withdrawn striker role.