England 2, USA 0

Here are my player ratings from the US's lackluster 2-0 loss against England on Wednesday.

Tim Howard - 5.0 - couldn't do anything about the goal he gave up, had little else to do.

Steve Cherundolo - 5.0 - also had a so-so game, he looked decent going forward at times and defends the flanks well, but he really struggles in the air.

Oguchi Onyewu - 6.0 - I actually thought he played pretty well though he did lose Gerrard on the second goal. One of our best players.

Carlos Bocanegra - 6.0 - he also did ok, made a few saving tackles, but like Oneywu he made a mistake that resulted in a goal when he failed to effectively mark John Terry on the first goal.

Heath Pearce - 5.0 - and rounding out our defense was another decent performance by Pearce. He came forward a few times and looks like he has a good shot, though his one chance got deflected out for a corner. He did make one terrible play to let Defoe turn in the box, giving him an easy chance - lucky for us, English strikers suck (though not nearly as bad as American strikers do) and Defoe hit it right at Guzan.

Clint Dempsey - 4.0 - he made a couple nice moves and runs but overall he did very very little. He hasn't been playing too well for the national team lately, hopefully he'll pick it up.

Michael Bradley, Ricardo Clark - 3.0 if I was only rating these two players' defensive performances, they'd get a 6 or 7. They were pretty energetic and for the most part, we never let the England midfield dominate the game with ball possession, which is quite a feat when you're playing against Gerrard, Lampard, Hargreaves, and Becks. But they also did next to nothing offensively, showing absolutely no creativity at all. I kept waiting for Bradley's club goal-scoring form to show up but it never did. I still like both him and Clark but this game showed that neither is ready for the big-time internationally yet.

DaMarcus Beasley - 2.0 - he also had a pretty garbage game. I'll give him a pass because it was his 2nd game back from tearing his knee up (his first was much more successful, an awesome performance with a goal and an assist in the Scottish Cup final victory for Rangers). The biggest disappointment for him though was how poor he was delivering set pieces, especially since with Donovan delivering and Oneywu and Boca as the targets, we've been really really good on these lately (see USA 3, Poland 0). And apparently, Beasley has been really good taking the set pieces for Rangers, so I expected way better from him. This was even worse since about 5 minutes into the game it was painfully obvious we weren't going to score against England from the run of play.

Eddie Johnson - 6.0 - I actually thought this was EJ's best performance in a while. Playing as a target forward, he won his fair share of long balls against Ferdinand and Terry (no small task) and did well holding the ball up and distributing it (though he still is the king of the back pass). He didn't do anything in the final third, but neither did anyone else, and it's not like we were setting him up for good chances left and right. He also was way more active than he has been in recent games, probably because he feels like he has something to prove both to Bob Bradley and to Fulham, where he didn't get any playing time towards the end of the season. If he would've finished the one half-chance he got at the very beginning of the 2nd half it would've been a perfect performance, but as it was, I was encouraged.

Josh Wolff - 0.0 - I saved the best for last, the most worthless player I have ever seen. Really, I think Bradley is just trying to torture me by continually choosing him. I was pissed when I saw he was part of the roster but thought it'd be ok if he only played as a 2nd half sub. Then Landon can't play, so instead of giving Freddy a big game to show his stuff, we choose Josh fucking Wolff and have him spearhead our attack for 70 minutes?! Hmm, relying on Josh Wolff against probably the best central defender in the world in Rio Ferdinand and another of the 2 or 3 best in the EPL in John Terry - I think my mom could've told you that wasn't going to work out too well and she hasn't watched a soccer game since I was playing in high school. And Wolff didn't disappoint, I honestly can't remember him making a single positive offensive play the entire game and I was watching him pretty closely since I was telling my roommates who I watched the game with how horribly he sucks beforehand. The fact that he is one of our top 3 or 4 options as a striker right know makes me want to kill myself.

Subs:
Brad Guzan - 5.0 - like Howard, he could do nothing about the goal he let in and he handled everything else well, though nothing too difficult. Hopefully he can get a work permit worked out and head to England/Scotland soon, since he's looking like our new #2 keeper.

Frankie Heyduk - 5.0 - I not so lovingly call Heyduk the Josh Wolff of the defense but even though he can't hit a cross to save his life (gotta love the Heyduk special where he has a good chance to send in a dangerous cross, but inexplicably scuffs it directly at the first defender, with the ball never going more than 2 feet in the air), having an active, obnoxious, unskilled player in the defense is exponentially better than having one playing forward.

Maurice Edu - no rating - he really didn't make an impression on me in his 10+ minutes playing. I do like having him, Bradley, and Clark as solid, young options in the center of the midfield. As they develop, we could be really good come 2010 (or from the pessimistic side, if they don't develop, and we don't find any forwards, we will be really bad come 2010).

Eddie Lewis - 7.0 - our best attacking player in the game by far. I've never been a huge fan but he's growing on me with his recent performances. Surprisingly, he was pretty much the only player who was willing to take on the English defenders 1 on 1, and he did so successfully twice, once sending a great ball into the back post that forced David James to make a sprawling save. He also is the only one of our wing players who is actually good at crossing the ball. A very poor man's David Beckham.

Nate Jaqua - no rating - he got a courtesy cap after receiving what I hope is a courtesy call-up to the national team. If this dude is really an option come WC qualifying, we need to seriously consider forcing Brian McBride to unretire. On second thought, we should force McBride to unretire either way. He is still significantly better than any of our true strikers besides Jozy and he showed he can still play by leading Fulham's successful fight against relegation (scoring I think 3 goals in their last 6 or 7 games). He's leaving Fulham even though they wanted him to stay for another year to come back to the US, so maybe he'd be more open to playing for the national team now that he'll have a less demanding club career. If the French can have Thuram, Zidane, and Makelele unretire (and 2 of the 3 likely starters in their Euro '08 squad 4 years after they originally retired), we can get McBride damnit.

Freddy Adu - 6.0 - and last but not least, my boy Freddy Adu. As always, he had some sweet touches, stuff that most of the US players couldn't dream of doing. Our attack also looked 10 times more dangerous after he replaced Wolff for the last 20 minutes (now there's a shocker). He made the English defense not quite worry but at least consider in the back of their minds, hey maybe these guys might at least get a shot on goal at some point. Not so positively, he also sent one or two head-scratching balls to no one in particular. Still a positive performance from Freddy.

Overall, I was relatively pleased with the way the defense played, we only gave away one really clear chance from the run of play and that was Barry's brilliant ball to Gerrard who never misses chances like that, and even that was very very close to offside. We did give away too many dangerous freekicks which is asking to be killed against England when Beckham is in the side. But for the most part, the defense held pretty firm.

The offense was another story. We clearly missed Donovan. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but I will never criticize his play again (that is until he refuses to take on a defender 1 on 1 for the 10th time in a game, instead opting to pass it back to a player with 1/10th of his offensive skill in a less dangerous position than he is). We are horrible without him. Eventually, Freddy might be able to have the same impact, and I would've liked to see what Freddy could've done from the start against England, but Bradley went the conservative route by going with the defensive-minded (and completely horrible) Josh Wolff instead. Without any creative players, we couldn't do anything on the counter-attack, where we are normally dangerous and couldn't hold possession. So we ended up playing as a long-ball and set-piece team (sound familiar England?) but while Johnson did do an admirable job as a target forward with no support, we could never create chances from the run of play and Beasley repeatedly screwed up the potentially dangerous set pieces we did have. In all, this was one of the most disappointing offensive performances we've had in recent years.

Bottom line, this game showed we can't compete with a full England side (or any top team). We're still a young team, so as Bradley, Clark, Freddy, Jozy, Edu, et al develop, we'll hopefully be able to put up a more competitive effort two years from now in South Africa. That's the goal at least.

On to Spain, who I wouldn't at all be surprised to end up with 70% ball possession against us (especially if they let Cesc pull the strings).