How to Take advantage of an opportunity
Gio Reyna did exactly what he needed to do at one of the earliest opportunities. He put himself in position for a free header in the box and put the ball in a place where the goalkeeper isn’t saving it. There are very few caveats for the obvious. Goals prove whether or not a player belongs on a roster. Scoring them, creating them, and on the opposite end, stopping them. That’s the easiest way to define success on any team, and international soccer is no different. Paraguay catching the United States defense on the run a few minutes later and keeping the pass just ahead of the defender and the target works the same way, asking immediate questions about holding leads and limiting space. This is the level, with the objectives obvious on both sides of the ball.
The passing game
There was a sequence in the 21st and 22nd minutes where the USMNT looked for the entry pass to start an attacking move. Resetting multiple times by cycling the ball around the defenders in the back, the US finally found space to get a shot on goal. The shot, in one of soccer’s better turns of phrase, bordering on cliché, didn’t trouble Paraguay goalkeeper Orlando Gil. What it did show was a patience in possession, combining with Paraguay’s matching patience in defense. No Paraguay player went the athletic route, stepping into a pass for no reason other than the ability to perhaps get a foot in. It wasn’t about disruption. It’s about setting a rhythm to the defending that might allow the USMNT a look, but not the best look. That Paraguay responded with goal scorer Alex Arce back on the ball and taking a dangerous shot over the bar is also worth considering.
Don’t underestimate the value of the shot from distance
Once upon a time, Michael Bradley could change a USMNT game with a shot from distance. To borrow a term more associated with basketball, the dagger is a shot that destabilizes a defense due to its unpredictability. In soccer, whether or not it goes in, it can quickly remind a defense that they haven’t considered everything, and that unpredictable shot could turn into the goal that determines the game. There’s no pretending any defense can account for all eventualities but establishing that a player will take a low percentage shot keeps the thought in the collective defense’s head. What happens if this guy decides to blast the ball and hope for the best? In the 67th, that was Sergino Dest taking time to lay the ball down parallel to the top of the box and see what happened. It was tipped over the bar for a corner. The destabilizing effect of seeing the space Dest had and his willingness to shoot rather than pass or make a run added to the work he was already doing on that side, where earlier he had a run in on goal. Folarin Balogun would score on a run into the box a few minutes later and try his own shot from just outside the box in the 73rd minute. It’s worth pointing out that Miguel Almiron tried to make the same idea work for Paraguay five minutes later.
Of course the weather matters
Playing a friendly in a cold weather city in November meant a temperature of 50 degrees when the game started. That’s going to impact performance and strategy. It was 72 degrees in Tampa and 81 degrees in Asuncion, both a few degrees south of what it will likely be like this summer at the World Cup. When the weather isn’t what we should expect when the games count, it raises the same questions about moving from warm weather to cold in September.
The January camp issue in November
One of the biggest working criticisms of holding out of window national team camps cuts in two directions: the strength of the USMNT roster and the strength of the opponent. An out-of-window camp relies on one or two other nations deciding it’s worth their time to hold out-of-window camps as well, with all suffering from the same basic issue of player availability. In the most meaningful of ways, it simply can’t matter as much when a player has a standout game receiving and sending passes to players he may never be on the same roster with ever again, and doing it against an opponent that will never look like that again. For all the talk of established national team players making their debuts in out-of-window camps, that’s because, by necessity, MLS teams stock those squads. The opportunities for those players didn’t exist or otherwise disappear based solely on what happened in a January camp. While certainly not the same scenario in an actual international window, injuries and absences have a version of the USMNT with a similar big picture issue. There are too many potential starters missing to draw hard and fast conclusions from whatever happens in November, as it may not necessarily carry over into the next international break in March. It could, but it’s not a direct line from one to the other. How much that ends up mattering is another question on the list, but it deserves to be there, perhaps underlined.
