Arena's Tactics

You're right when you say, "The U.S. was everything it failed to be against the Czech Republic: cohesive, composed, determined...Arena's team harried the Italians off their game in the opening 20 minutes."

But I wouldn't say "fluid".

I would say that Arena got his tactics right this time.

I really think that the issue in the Czech match was tactics and not execution--as Arena tried to say when he publicly criticized his players this past week.

In the Italy match, the Americans took a page out of the Croat's book (who "harried" Brazil in narrow 1 nil loss but didn't do so with such crude and obvious tackling).

Of course this is hindsight talking. Arena seemed to assume in the first match that the US was ready to play a more open style. And I take very little issue with that as a neutral. I really believe that technically and in individual player development the US has really improved over the years and arrived as football power.

But it is in the collective aspect that they need to be careful. They are still relatively weak in some positions and will break down at certain points against World Class teams (of which they have two in their group, plus that beautiful revelation from Ghana). For instance, the first Czech goal by Koehler and the first goal yesterday by Gilardinho, reveal an alarming weakness in defending and marking.

Why is this? Defending, marking, focus and intensity are the very things, the teachable things, that sometimes allow lesser teams to nullify and steal points from top countries.

With a FIFA top ten ranking perhaps the US had lost the desperation of a "lesser" team. The fact that they changed tack yesterday and chose not to go toe to toe with Italy technically but instead opted for battle mode is a tribute to Arena's winning mentality.

It didn't make for good football. The game was a mess. But I wouldn't blame the Uruguyan referee alone. Arena had a hand in this. His objective was to disturb the Italians and disrupt the game. (Perhaps that's why Di Rossi snapped and delivered that viscious blow to McBride's head.) The US had stated their intentions earlier in the week with a player saying that the game would be a war.

While I was impressed by how the US managed to survive yesterday, I believe that the Ghana match will be the toughest of the tournament for them: they can't match them in open play and they can't defend the way they did against the Italians. I think that given the way Ghana attacks in waves, with excellent, fast, supporting play, full of one-twos, the Americans could see as much red against Ghana as they did against Italy.

So, how to win?

Well, that's a question for Arena. I'm in the hindsight business and I believe that next week I'll be talking about how an African team managed to win one of the toughest groups at the World Cup...

(From my post to Roger Cohen's Blog, The Beautiful Game)