The Mental Game
The importance of Team USA’s mindset going in
Numerous professional columns and blogs — and at the invitation of ESPN, YanksAbroad, and other websites dedicated to soccer afficionados, countless amateurs — have spoken to the US team’s chances of advancement out of one of the toughest World Cup group stages ever this summer, but few have addressed the team’s state of mind going in, other than gleaning interviews. Team coach Jurgen Klinsman himself will obviously be coy about what he sees from his players’ body language and interaction during the pre-Cup training camp.
The USA is the land where anything is possible — at least in theory. Over the past 12 years, the team has pulled off competitive upsets against Portugal and Spain, tied a South Korea team on its home pitch — the same team which beat Italy and Spain in successive matches only a week later — and notched friendly wins against Germany, at Bosnia, at Italy, and against Mexico in the normally imposing Estadio Azteca. For the most part, the belief is there … for the most part. In the vast bright pool of optimism swims the obscure, but undeniable acknowledgement that the USA’s campaign not only has no room for error, but already a couple of kinks in the armor.
Jozy Altidore’s struggles in the premiership are well documented, though as some pundits have indicated, some balance is in order: despite his only goal in league play this year (plus another 2 in the FA and League Cups), he has assisted 5 more in all competitions and drew two penalties resulting in further scores from the spot. Moreover, he has routinely shined as the target man for the US team even while struggling at the club level — see his opening score in the USA’s upset of Spain at the 2009 Confederations Cup semifinals while rarely making the bench at Valencia and torrid scoring last year in the USA shirt.
What makes this funk different, and more worrying, is his final two league displays which saw him duff a sitter each time against West Brom and Swansea. His work rate is high — club coach Gus Poyet repeatedly said so — but the effort has not translated to numbers on the pitch, and regardless the level of an athlete’s professionalism or his public comments about taking everything in stride (see http://www.espnfc.com/news/story/_/id/1821066/jozy-altidore-world-cup-goal-show-us-count-me?cc=5901), his confidence will suffer from sustained disappointment at that level. His imposing physique, hold-up play and turning were all on display against both Azerbaijan and Turkey, but so was his hesitance to go straight at the goal; at the end of the day, a striker needs to … well, strike.
Fortunately, Jozy seems to be the exception here as the rest of the team is in a competitive frame of mind. After a reality-imposing stint with the Premier League’s Tottenham (12 goals in all competitions — still respectible), then a nightmarish return to MLS, offensive kingpin Clint Dempsey seems to have righted the ship with a renewed vigor this season at Seattle. Michael Bradley has emerged as the most important player on the field and Klinsmann may have found the team arrangement to maximize his prodigious passing ability. Landon Donovan had embraced his receding role on the team, but has been left on the outside looking in, and the omission does not appear to have affected team chemistry on the whole.
The team’s performance over the past year is admirable though requires some perspective, with a 2013 record of 16-4-3, including a world-best 12-match winning streak for the year. The loss to Belgium last May may be seen as an aberration considering it immediately preceded the aforementioned 12-game tear, including a 4-3 win over Germany which wasn’t as close as the final score. That said, it bears mentioning that 10 of those 12 wins were against CONCACAF opponents, so excepting a pair of 4-3 wins against admittedly stiff European competition, the U.S.’s recent winning ways was against teams they should beat; moreover, both of those marquee victories still tallied 3 goals against — include the 4 let in to Belgium in that loss, and that figures to a goal every 27 minutes against European competition, though all ended as WC qualifying group leaders. Another takeaway from the Gold Cup is almost every team (Panama being the notable exception) brought a makeshift squad to the tournament, and while the Americans’ goal differential dwarfed all the other participants’, it was against weakened opposition — the U.S. was the best team at the fielded tournament, but not the best team the federation has to offer.
To darken a somber note, the US starts this World Cup finals against an increasingly familiar nemesis: Ghana has effectively knocked the USA out of the past two World Cup tournaments, and its Under-20 team thrashed the USA’s 4-1 at the U20 World Cup in Turkey last summer, slowly evolving into another of the list of interesting international pairings where one side has decidedly dominated the other (more on that in a following post).
The team’s attitude appears to be on the up, and if anyone can get and keep the team in the right frame of mind, it is Jurgen Klinsmann, who got Germany to rebound from a lackluster qualifying campaign to third place in World Cup 2006. The Azerbaijan match was that in name, though the national team should have dispatched so easy an opponent with more ease than was the case; against a stronger Turkey, the team showed the tenacity — if not always the positioning and judgment — needed at the tournament, recovering defensively and challenging possession. Altidore was part of the forward corps which infamously didn’t score a goal four years ago (assuming Dempsey and Donovan were midfielders then, since they were listed as forwards when camp kicked off); he’s also the one who’s name comes up more often than any other on Team USA’s score sheet from last year. Which one shows up against Ghana will go a long way to indicating how far Klinsmann got with this team during the camp.
