The Morning After: Thoughts on USA-Turkey

It’s the day after the United States defeated Turkey 2-1, in what seemed like two games within a game. The US looked like a team in shambles in the first half, but rebounded nicely in the second half, and put on a great performance for the fans in Philadelphia, as they now head for South Africa. Let’s discuss yesterday’s contest.

– The first half was quite puzzling. After the poor defensive performance against the Czech Republic, we thought that surely things would at least change a little in this match. That was not the case for the entire first half, as guys were getting embarrassed all over the place. This is still the most glaring weakness this team has, and that isn’t exactly a good one to have heading into the World Cup.

– But then we move to the second half, where business picked up pretty quickly for the USA. To me, the key component to the early burst of energy and confidence in the second was Robbie Findley. He came out immediately and was all around the ball. He made the beautiful pass to Landon Donovan, which led to the Jozy Altidore goal to tie it. And then he had more great plays to go along with that, even if he was perhaps trying to do a little too much at times. But he started it all for the US, and was your game MVP, in my opinion.

– Findley wasn’t the only second half sub that changed the entire complexion of the game though. Oguchi Onyewu came in and had a much better showing than he did against the Czechs. Jose Torres had several nice shots, and gave us big energy like Findley. Steve Cherundolo was probably the least impressive of the four, but he wasn’t awful or anything. These were great moves, and the Findley one won the game for this team.

– It wasn’t a great day for the Jonathan’s yesterday. Jonathan Spector hurt himself with yesterday’s performance, because he got in major trouble defensively at times. Turkey had way too many chances in the first half, and could have been up by much more than just one goal entering halftime. Spector didn’t help this matter much. Jonathan Bornstein was in the same situation. He got burned on several occasions after coming in for Carlos Bocanegra in the second half, and allowed Turkey some chances to take control of the game. I’m not blaming these two for everything though, but they had days to forget.

– I was sort of worried about Clint Dempsey in the first half, as it seemed like he would make one great play, and then do something really odd. But he had a very nice second half, which was capped off with the winning goal. Dempsey is very active, so I think we’ve got to accept that he’s going to make mistakes. But again, it’s hard to look back on his up and down first half and be critical, because he definitely stepped it up in the second half.

– Tim Howard was once again Tim Howard out there, and had a pretty flawless performance. The one goal allowed by the US wasn’t his fault, as the defense just completely broke down before it got there. And Howard let his guys know about it. That’s what I like the most about this guy. He is simply not afraid to let his guys know how bad they’re doing defensively. And unfortunately, he had to do that quite a bit in the first half yesterday. But we can expect Howard to be rock solid at the World Cup. Let’s just hope the defense in front him is much better.

– In going back to Donovan, while he wasn’t perfect, he was pretty great out there. He’s the leader of this bunch, and he made some critical plays yesterday that put the US in some great positions. As one of our readers mentioned in the live blog yesterday, if everyone has the type of motivation that Donovan seems to have all the time, then we’re gonna be in good shape.

Overall, a solid second half performance gives us something to build on. I’m glad it wasn’t “first half = good” and “second half = bad” because it’s hard to build momentum that way.

The US has the friendly with Australia on June 5, and then it’s a week to prepare for the big boys, England. Priority number one is defense, and we’ll see what changes are made before the first World Cup game on June 12.

Your thoughts on yesterday’s game?