Thursday, March 23, 2006

A return to normalcy

... was what Warren Harding promised after a past American adventure in Europe, and that's what we seem to have now after ours. Germany swept aside the US 4-1 in Dortmund yesterday, restoring both the natural order of football, and some sense of German optimism. (Nice headline there by the way, Merrill.)

Here are Wagman's always generous ratings, Sams-Army's, and Kicker's.

I won't be able to watch the match until the weekend, so I can't yet fully comment. But it seems like the central defense had a really rough day, particularly Berhalter. I don't think that Arena will bring down the axe on Berhalter or Conrad because of one half, but it can't have helped them either. Conrad's main competitor for a roster spot is probably Cory Gibbs, who didn't seem to have the greatest game either, but he was played a bit out of position on the left. Klein and Ching surely didn't help themselves either. It seems like the best US player was Convey, followed by Mastroeni and/or Johnson.

I'd caution against hyperbolic overreaction to this result. It wasn't pretty but it was, given the circumstances of the match, always on the cards. I'll write something fuller on this when I watch the match later.

On the other side of the pitch, of course things are peachy. Even the German press seems happy.

No comments: