Hello, everyone. I was on vacation when the Copa América Centenario started, so I didn’t publish a preview piece for the big tournament, but I’m back now, and I’ve got my soccer expert hat back on. Team USA overcame an opening loss to Colombia to defeat Costa Rica and Paraguay and finish first in Group A, so we’ll be facing Ecuador tonight. Here I am to answer all your burning questions that I’ve made up for you. Since I didn’t publish a preview, I’m including links to highlight reels where I discuss individual players. Let’s go:
How are our chances in tonight’s game?
Not great, but fair. The Ecuadorians are second in South America’s World Cup qualifying tourney, scoring an impressive 2-0 victory over Argentina in Buenos Aires nine months ago. They’re currently ranked 12th in the world, though FIFA’s international rankings are notoriously hard to parse. They resemble Colombia in soaking up pressure and counterattacking with speed, but the good news is that their defense is not that imposing on paper, and they don’t have a distributor like James Rodríguez orchestrating the attack.
What’s the bad news?
As everybody has noticed by now, Ecuador’s best offensive threat is left winger Jefferson Montero, who has speed, quickness, and skills, and is comfortable either cutting inside and going for goal or sticking to the sideline and crossing the ball in. He used to be quite undisciplined early in his career, but his current stint at Swansea in the English Premier League has him playing much smarter now. He’d be a handful for any right back, and it so happens that USA’s starting right back DeAndre Yedlin is suspended for that brainless red card he got in the win over Paraguay.
Wasn’t the referee in that match handing out cards like candy?
Yes, but that’s not the point. Yedlin’s first yellow was a bit ticky-tack, but there was no doubt about the second offense, and coming less than 60 seconds after the first booking was stupid in the extreme. When you’ve already been cautioned, you can’t be diving into challenges like that.
What does USA Coach Jürgen Klinsmann do about this?
I don’t know. He used Michael Orozco as a substitute right back against Paraguay, but Montero seems exactly the kind of player who can punish Orozco’s lack of speed. The coach could switch Fabian Johnson to the right side and slot in Edgar Castillo on the left, but perhaps this would cause too much disruption to a defense that has been watertight in the last two games. A logical move would be to push Geoff Cameron out to right back, where he often plays with Stoke City, and replace him with another center back (Matt Besler or Steve Birnbaum?). The trouble is that Klinsmann seems loath to make that move, and Cameron seems to regard himself as a central defender as well. Whatever decision Klinsmann makes figures to have a big impact on the outcome.
Anything else about USA?
The 4-0 win over Costa Rica was a performance to dream of, a deliberate piece of counterattacking play where our guys expertly picked off the opposition on the break. Meanwhile, the 1-0 win over Paraguay was the sort of gritty results-oriented victory that teams always need to get through a tournament. (It helped that the opponent was stultifyingly uncreative.) The best player for USA so far has been John Brooks (pictured above) in central defense. After scoring that famous late winner against Ghana in World Cup 2014, he fizzled out in last year’s Gold Cup, one of the reasons that USA finished fourth in that tournament. However, his experience at Hertha Berlin has given the 23-year-old defender experience and resiliency, and he looked particularly commanding against Paraguay. Right now, he looks like the future of USA’s defense.
What other teams have been impressive?
How about Venezuela? That country might very well be the worst place to be in the world right now, but their soccer team unexpectedly made it out of Group C ahead of Jamaica and a Luis Suárez-less Uruguay and came within a few minutes of beating Mexico. Historically, the country’s best athletes have tended to be baseball players, but Venezuela’s defense is stocked with players who ply their trade in Europe, and striker José Salomón Rondón gives El Vinotinto a puncher’s chance against a stronger opponent. They’ll probably go out against Lionel Messi and Argentina, but they’re something for the Venezuelans to be proud of in dark times.
What the hell happened with Brazil?
They should have advanced from an easy group, but they flamed out instead, costing Coach Dunga his job. Neymar has been held out of this tournament in favor of the Olympic soccer tournament later this summer, so it’s natural that the team wouldn’t have as much of a cutting edge as usual. Still, for a team boasting creative influences like Willian, Renato Augusto, and Philippe Coutinho, they were downright ugly. They failed to score against either Ecuador or Peru and deserved to lose both games, as Ecuador had a winning goal wrongly disallowed. This isn’t a fluke result, either. Brazil haven’t recovered from the 7-1 shellacking that Germany gave them in the World Cup, and they’re in some early trouble in World Cup qualifying. The sport is plagued by crooked administrators (the last two heads of Brazil’s soccer federation have been indicted in the FBI’s FIFA probe, and the current head is afraid to leave the country) and short-term thinking at the local level where coaches get fired if they have two or three bad results in a row. Being Brazil is no guarantee that they’ll be good in the future, but people there are acting like that’s the case.
What about the other quarterfinal matches?
Chile vs. Mexico looks most appetizing to the neutral fan, but I’m skeptical about El Tricolor‘s chances. They didn’t look impressive at all in their win over Jamaica (not that they had to to beat Da Reggae Boyz) and needed a last-gasp equalizer to draw with Venezuela. Our neighbors to the south have a splendid finisher in Chicharito, but Chile have more world-class players in Arturo Vidal and Alexis Sánchez. Meanwhile, Colombia reaps the benefit of Brazil’s ineptitude, getting to face Peru instead. Los Cafeteros finished second to USA thanks to coach José Pékerman’s blunder, resting 10 of his 11 starters and helping hand the upset win to Costa Rica. They were impressive against USA, though, and against Paraguay they looked like the Golden State Warriors, running straight up the field and looking like they would score every time they had the ball. If anybody can stop the mighty machine that is Argentina, it’s probably Colombia.
Back up. Mexico is called El Tricolor, but Ecuador is called La Tricolor?
Those two teams faced each other here at AT&T Stadium two years ago, too. I was hoping that whoever won that game would get to keep the noun gender, but no such luck.
Is there anything else to watch for?
Everybody hates Donald Trump right now, but the Latin countries have been at it ever since the Donald’s “Mexicans are rapists” remark. An Argentinian TV channel produced a brilliant promo for the tournament that made fun of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee intercutting footage of their great players with Trump’s dire warnings about a Latin invasion. The final message translates as, “Really, the best they can do is not let us in.” If Argentina meets USA in the semis (a not unlikely outcome), this ad may very well come true.
