Rode by Morocco

Hmmm. Well, once again that was a pretty poor performance by the United States. Match report here.

Arena's postgame tip of the hat to their opponents was deserved. They did an excellent job of breaking up attacks through the center and they played very quickly when they had to. This being said, we never got to them down the flanks enough, which is odd since we came out in that trendy 4-5-1 formation designed to hurt teams down the flanks and isolate opposing fullbacks. This formation seems custom made for DaMarcus Beasley, but he and the other winger Josh Wolff never really got into this game. The US never found them the ball and when they did the Morocccans were back in numbers.

The crossing from the outside backs was also poor. Cherundulo got a couple of telling crosses in the second half prior to his gaffe, but not nearly what he should. And while Cory Gibbs is a great defender, he isn't yet convincing going forward.

Good points? A nice 45 minutes from John O'Brien, who looked like he was really having fun out there. Donovan and Mastroeni weren't bad.

And then there's Reyna's injury. You just knew that either he, O'Brien or Mastroeni would go down in one of these games. There's nothing to do but to wait on the results of the scan, but I'm guessing he's probably out against Venezuela and Latvia.