US thoughts

The unbeaten Bob Bradley era continues apace. But it's a really hard thing to judge where this team is right now. Trinidad and El Salvador were both colossally poor (to be fair to the Trinidadians, they weren't able to send their whole team because of a pay dispute.) and the US were really only bothered against Guatemala, who employed their classic strategy of trying to cripple their opponents. I hope Panama and the winner of the Canada-Guatemala semifinal are able to give them a better game.

The player whose probably done the most good for himself is Benny Feilhaber. Despite seeing only limited time for the Hamburg first team, he's improved a great deal as a player since last I saw him in the U 20 World Championships. He's become a fine distributor of the ball and has excellent vision and positioning sense. Probably the best bet for the US going forward is to pair him next to a hard man like Mastroeni, in the Italy Pirlo-Gattuso vein. Michael Bradley may become that player, but he isn't there yet, I think.

Also having good Gold Cups are Clint Dempsey, Michael Parkhurst, Frank Simek and Jay Demerit, although it should be added that the latter three haven't faced serious tests yet. I was particularly impressed when the inclusion of Demerit completely killed off the Guatemala game at the time when the Chapines were looking mildly dangerous.

It's not been so good for Oguchi Onyewu, who most fans, I think, had basically pencilled in as an automatic starter for the US up until this year. Onyewu needs to go back to a stable situation, whether at Standard Liege or elsewhere. Clearly, his career uncertainty has disrupted him somewhat.

As for the others, well... there isn't a lot to say because they really haven't needed to elevate their games at all. Yeah I know Beasley scored the two goals, but he still seemed in second gear to me. It'll be interesting to see who Bradley starts in the final if we get there; that should be an indication of what he considers to be our best XI right now.