Olympic soccer will begin before the Opening Ceremonies to the Beijing games this week, starting Thursday morning. Here is a breakdown of the US schedule in the group stage:
Thursday August 7 – US v. Japan @ 5:00am on MSNBC
Sunday August 10 – US v. Netherlands @ 7:45am on USA
Wednesday August 13 – US v. Nigeria @ 5:00am on USA
Worry not, loyal readers. Yours truly will be getting up to observe these games, despite their early start times. They’ll re-air at some point I’m sure, but I don’t have that in front of me. But I’d prefer to watch it live.
The US side will be lead by Jozy Altidore, Freddy Adu and Brian McBride but faces a tough group, including 1996 gold medalists Nigeria. The Dutch are led by Liverpool winger Ryan Babel, a 21-year old stud who has been injured since May and old man Roy Makaay. Japan figure to have a solid squad and will have the least of the travel and time zone changes to deal with.
August 4, 2008 at 8:30 pm |
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August 4, 2008 at 10:50 pm |
I am legitimately pumped for this. I feel bad bc I railed against the Olympics being held in China, but I freaking need some soccer to tide me over til football. This is what happens when the Braves are out of contention in August.
Anyway, I have no idea who Jozy Altidore is. Who is he and what does he play? What I do know is that Michael Bradley is the shit. He’s got to be the only American midfielder other than Claudio Renya that went to Europe and played well. And Bradley scores far more often than Renya ever dreamed of.
Plus, when you combine Bradley with Benny Feilhaber in the midfield good things happen. I still remember teh Mexico game last year when those two controled the game like pros. I remember it bc I was finally watching a US Soccer team that played soccer like it’s supposed to be played instead of like a bunch of AYSO kids.
Then throw in Freddy Adu playing a striker/midfielder who may or may not show signs of the player he was supposed to be and I’m waking up at 5am to watch this shit.
All told, I have no idea if Japan is good. They played well in the Korea/Japan WC and they are close to China, but I feel like we win that game. The Dutch will then smoke us behind my boy from Liverpool (Ryan Babel is sooo underrated). And finally, I think we beat Nigeria. I watched them against South AFrica and they didn’t look all that great, which is saying something since South AFrica is terrible. So I see advancement to the knockout stage in our future.
August 4, 2008 at 11:07 pm |
Altidore is a striker, 6′1″ and age 18, and generally tabbed to be the best American front man in a long time. Villareal picked him up for $10 million from RBNY. Once he’s done with Olympics, he’ll be playing in Spain and the Champions League, so we’ll find out pretty soon just how good he is.
August 4, 2008 at 11:54 pm |
Ok cool. My next question is how does he fit in with McBride and Adu? I mean if you want to run a set up with 5 midfiedlers (which is what I’m reading they want to do) how to get Adu in the CAM position and have McBride as the striker and have Jozy in? Are they going to bring McBride off the bench?
I don’t know, I’m interested to see how they lineup. I looked up Jozi and he does seem like a big time prospect. But I’m really hoping for situation in which you have Adu freelancing up top with the striker and then Failhaber and Bradley side-by-side in the middle. But the only way to do that AND have Altidore in is to revert to a 3D-5M-2F set-up.
August 5, 2008 at 12:08 am |
For whatever reason, they seem to like to play Bradley in more of a holding role, so I suppose it’s possible that they could move Altidore out to some type of wide attacking position in a five mid alignment. My tactical soccer acumen really isn’t strong enough for me to write that with much confidence though. It’s also possible that it’s been determined that at 36 and with limited match fitness, McBride just isn’t in a 90 minute player and Altidore could potentially be brought on as an attacking spark, or vice versa.