So Rachel and I spent the weekend packing and making sure that we have all the necessary items and paperwork for our travels. I think we are ready for this trip to begin. Enough with the waiting.
Bob Bradley's squad is probably feeling the same way. Yesterday morning was USMNT's pre-World Cup match versus Australia and the last opportunity for match experience before the real deal. Here are some of my thoughts on the match. I did not expect Altidore to play and he did not. But I also did not expect his replacement cast to do as well as they did. The three goals scored by the US were by the two players put on the roster specifically to fill Charlie Davies' position and score goals, Edson Buddle and Hercules Gomez (Hercules, Hercules, Hercules). While granted the match was against Australia, a team who is mediocre and much like the rest of the World Cup teams is a little worried about having or causing any large injuries in pre-World Cup friendlies but it was still nice to see those two players scoring.
On the other hand I was a bit concerned about the nature of play in the second half by the US. I felt like we relaxed and tried to mail it in for the second half. It concerns me because England, and for that matter Slovenia and Algeria as well, will come out firing and countering the whole match. We will not be able to let up. This may have been because no one wanted to get injured in a match that did not matter this close to Cup play but I don't want us to learn the "full 90" lesson (the understanding that wins come when a team plays hard for the full 90 minutes) by loosing in stoppage time.
Finally since this is the Weekend Edition of the Hammer Times, I am going to list the matches that Rachel and I have tickets to so that if anyone is interested they can watch those matches and look for Rachel sprinting across the field at the 13th minute.
Sun June 13th Germany v. Australia on ABC at 2.30 pm eastern time
Wed June 16th Spain v. Switzerland on ESPN at 10.00 am eastern time
Sat June 19th Netherlands v. Japan on ESPN at 7.30 am eastern time
Tues June 22nd Nigeria v. South Korea on ESPN2 at 2.30 pm eastern time
Fri June 25th Portugal v. Brazil on ESPN at 10.00 am eastern time
Those are the matches. If we are able to get to any others I hope to have time to let everyone know. Thanks for reading. My next post I hope to include a video so that I can test run 'vlogging'.
p.s.- we all know that there is no chance Rachel is running on the field.
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2 comments:
Even though I don't know anything about any of these teams, here's my World Cup bracket-- you better do one too before you leave:
http://games.espn.go.com/bpredictor/en-us/entry?entryID=870492
If you can't access it let me know-- I have Espana over Brazil in the final, though I would prefer to see a North Korea-South Korea final.
Some fun match-ups would be Brazil-Chile in the 2nd and Brazil-Argentia in the semi's. Also Spain-Portugal in the 2nd round.
Getting to watch Brazil-Portugal should be awesome for you though.
Fantastic analysis. Keep up the good work. I am very jealous that you get to be there. Really hoping you make it into the US v England match. That Brazil v Portugal match is going to be crazy.
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