Ping: USA Soccer Fans (Game Today 5pm ESPN2)
 

Friendly vs. Norway.

Just a reminder/heads-up, as I didn't hear about this. :)

son of a bitch!

thanks RPI

Does anyone have the starting lineup?

Goal! 1-0 USA! That was an excellent, excellent ball from Dempsey.

Who is that play by play guy?

sweet goal by Twellman in the 5th minute off the assist from his Revvie teammate Dempsey.

1-0 USA

Did they try and credit that cross to Hejduk initially?

Hahahahaha....

Lineup (off the top of my head):

---------Hartman---------

-Hejduk--Conrad--Pope--Dunivant-

-Dempsey--Donovan--Zavagnin--Noonan-

----Twellman--Wolff-------


And did I hear them say Freddy is on the bench????????

He already got capped against Canada. Rumor mill has him moving to Man U in the summer.

twellman is playing like a man possessed. he wants germany!

Is that Dempsey or Kaka out there?

Jeez....

wow. great save by hartman there off the volley

dola

and I LOVE this game because of my FM playing of Rosenborg...I know a ton of these Norwegian guys...can't believe that Peter Vagan Moen took that last shot...I bought him once upon a time

double dola

damm erland hansveit!!! i own him...he shouldn't be fouling dempsey!

triple dola

TWELLMANNNNNNN on the header!!! 2-0 USA!!!

Who hit that free kick (to set up Twellman)?

That is one of the cool things from games like FM. I have surprissed my friends a few times watching games in TV versus unknown teams, when i said "Hey that winger is so fast and has good dribling, you will see" and after some time they saw it was true and looked at me like a master of football :D

Dunivant, I think.

Dempsey is freakin brilliant today.

yeah. it's sweet. must be even more fun for you europeans who actually have futbol on tv to watch as opposed to us who only get national team games (mostly...not counting the MLS games, but there aren't that many unknowns there, not as many leagues)

Yeah, we watch here the Spanish, Italian and UK leagues, plus some Argentinian league games and resumes of all the european leagues. But on the other hand we can't watch USA college sports, i need to watch them online in my pc.

Noonan is normally a right winger, correct?

Rocket shot by Pele just off the cross bar.

Dempsey has impressed me so far...that was a great shot

so is my hatred of frankie hejduk completely irrational?

Not sure, but he is left-footed.

twellman missed the ball on that bicycle kick lol...now they are just playing around

Frankie gets a bad rep. However, he will get a roster spot and probably deserves one.

This play by play guy has a good voice but he is getting mixed up some. Didn't he use to do hockey?

Nope, completely rational, as Frankie Hedjuk deserves to be shot out of a large cannon. :D

Jason Wolff, the BS crowd will love that one.

i think i just dislike hejduk's "surfer" sort of appearance/way he carries himself. plus he ALWAYS seems to be slide-tackling and once upon a time i had a coach tell me "if you're slide-tackling it's because you were out of position"

(which is a bit of a generality, but it's an attitude that's stuck with me

that's a horrible no-call!

Donovan is playing more of a holding role today. I am not sure if I have seen him in that role with the NT before.

but hey...as long as Dempsey is playing so well, it shows a lot of self-confidence and sacrifice and maturity by Donovan to adapt like that

Adu is not on the bench.

goal for eddie pope. yay eddie pope

I hope Hartman gets the third keeper spot

Not to sound like a jerk, but you guys do realize it's the Norway B-squad? For example, of the players active for Norway today, only one played in any of their last five WC'06 qualification matches.

Edit: I dare to calim that all these players are from the national league, which should be shutdown right now due to the winter break.

Well I don't think anyone is getting overly excited about this one. Plus, we're playing with a backup keeper.

WTF? Nobody is saying this means USA should be ranked #1.

We're saying Twellman, a guy who has never given good NT performances, is playing well verse a group of decent, tall defenders.

Do YOU realize this is the U.S.A.'s B+ squad, with NONE of their European players?

:rolleyes:

what RPI said

ditto.

My mistake. I thought Frankie Hejduk, Eddie Pope and Landon Donovan were first team players. Of course I know that the Europe based players are not playing, guys like O'Brien and Beasley played today. Besides, it wasn't ment as a stab at anything.

:rolleyes:

Pope and Hejduk are fighting for a spot in Germany, on the 23-man roster. We are in BIG trouble if they see the field.

Donovan is of course the man.

The only other people who played today who MIGHT see the field in Germany are Wolff, Dempsey, and Zavagnin.

of those three...donovan is the only one who i guarentee you will see on the field in germany for every match (barring injury). the other two are by no means guarenteed.

And Twellman ;)

There was only one person on the field today with a WC spot locked up. That is Donovan. That was no where near our first squad and we just totally dominated them. It could have easily been 7 or 8 goals.

By the way, I think the Norway keeper has some American blood in him.

wow. RPI beat me to it. i would submit though that if Zavagnin or Wolff see the field in Germany we are in trouble. Twellman...ehh...well he might be okay to see. I need to see more consistency from him

Yeah, their teams played, but of course they didn't, still being injured and all...

Humiliate me. Right here, in this thread. I deserve it.

I think you'd have a lot easier go of it if you gave up your little crusade for Europe and admitted that the U.S.A. outclass a lot of teams that you don't want to admit.

Sorry, MIJB, I'm taking care of Blade over in the WW thread.. can I take a raincheck and all that? :D

seriously, it was the USA B+ Squad 5, Norway B+ Squad 0.

Taking care of me? I laugh in your general direction

Get it right, binky :) Go strong or don't go at all...

It sounds like you have needs that can't be met in this thread.

I'm not on a crusade for Europe so there's nothing to give up. I don't even care about the other European countries' soccer teams. I'd be happy if the USA would show teams like France, England, Spain and Italy what they're worth and why they got as deep or even further into WC'02.

I'd lie if I would say I don't find the discussion about an international friendly between reserves of reserves a bit silly. Maybe I should have known better and kept away. But I really didn't mean anything with my comment about Norway playing with a B squad, other than pointing out that it is a B squad and the result of the game shouldn't boast the confidence for the World Cup too much. I rooted for the USA throughout the WC'02 and have a little thing for them with a couple of players with ties to Dutch teams. The group stage draw is bad enough and I honestly fear the worst for the USA.

I was just joking around about the humiliate me, I deserve it comment (sex joke). Lost in internet translation I guess. I like that international people comment on US sports teams.

Which ones? Maybe we can find you some pics.

;)

I know my google!

I'll dare you to find a John O'Brien picture in an FC Utrecht jersey. :P

Haha, another translation issue, I suspect.

"Have a thing for someone" is an idiomatic way of saying that you want to be sexually involved with them. :)

i don't think it boosted any of our confidences about the WC. what it did though was give us a look at some "bubble" players. and that is something that we don't get to see as often here in the USA, so we may tend to gush about them a little. but all of us (here at least) are smart enough to realize this was a B-squad against a B-squad.

I know, I know. I tried to play along with the joke.

But did you find the pic yet? O'Brien's wearing the same jersey design I have a replica of. Pretty neat since he never played in that one as it was from the season before he got to Utreg and they used that design for just one season.

Ok, so while I was watching the game yesterday, I went onto the national team website and noticed that they were playing a match against Guatemala here in Frisco on 2/19. For those who have gone to a national team match before, how long could one wait to get tickets? Do these friendlies sell out at all? I want to go but it may be a week or two before I can buy tickets.

Well against an European team I'd be shocked if a friendly sold out, but this is against Guatemala in California, so you can expect a large Hispanic presence in the crowd. Of course it probably depends on where they are playing and the size of the stadium.

Dola,

Overall observations:
Even for a "B-team" 5,000 miles from home that Norway team on the field was god awful.

Twellman (finally) looked very good, not just with the goals but with some strong back tackling as well. Twellman probably put himself in the front running to win one of the striker slots (I'm assuming McBride and EJ if healthy are in) as no one else, see Ching, have really stepped up. I still think this is our weakest position going into the WC especially without a fit EJ.

Dempsey was amazing in the first half. He kinda faded in the second half though. Not sure if this was the fact the match was in hand, but this is the second time I've seen him kinda fade in the second half. Of course Twellman and some of the others did too.

Noonan was poor, and nonexistant except for some bad passes. Disappointing.

Defense was untested, hard to draw any conclusions there. Hedjuk will probably win a spot, but he worries me at right back. He seems to always look for the forward run (don't know if that's Arena's strategy or not) but against a better team he's gonna get caught.

Very suprised Norway didn't attack the ball more. Given time the USA players can pick their spots, but I think if they're pressured constantly on the ball their lack of technical abilities will show. I know they're quick, but I'm not sure there's many people on that squad that could dribble past a decent team.

This game's actually in Frisco, TX where FC Dallas plays. Any difference? There are tickets still available right now and we're just 3 weeks away from the game. I'm hoping I'm safe for another week...

Sorry, my bad (I didn't look up the actual site). Still a large Hispanic population, but I think you'll be ok.

You should be fine -- I don't think a non-Mexico USMNT game has sold out in years, including qualifiers.

Norway is known for their defensive style. That's what made them succesful and that's what they'll continue to play. Even after the WC'94 debacle, where they went out on # of goals scored, and the Euro2000 drama, where they went out, thinking a 0-0 draw would suffice and they ended up not making it as in the other game Spain scored twice in the final minutes to beat Yugoslavia 4-3, on the h-t-h loss versus Yugoslavia. In WC'98 they got lucky with it, as they had to play an already qualified Brazil and were handed an easy win, making them make it into the second round in stead of Morocco.

That's why i was suprised. I didn't say attack with the ball, I said attack the ball (i.e. actually confront the players on defense). I mean the USA players had all day at the edge of Norway's box to let players make runs, and pick out passing lanes. They were rarely challenged agressively by the defenders. I guess the younger Norway players were just overmatched.

I play my foreign language card here, even though it doesn't apply, I simply missread that.

Maybe it helped that the USA players were trying to prove to be world cup worthy, while the Norwegian guys are just coming back from/ are still on winter break and having nothing to prove in that game? Just a theory though, it does makes sense for a devensive minded team to give up once they're 2-0 down. I mean, if your trait is winning games 1-0 or 2-1 in a rare case, it's far fetched to score 3 goals. They just can't score 3 times, they don't know how to.

Or the USA simply has/had a better, faster playing team. I mean, the MLS is probably no top10 league in the world, but would still rank above the Norwegian league. Every guy who scores two goals in a game in Norway gets scouted and leaves Scandinavia. The MLS is apparently still undervalued and better talent doesn't get scouted by the second/third tier clubs in Europe. Although, the tide seems to be turning. For example, it looks like dutch clubs have discovered that big land mass across the big pond.

BTW, I did the Netherlands national team qualify for this World Cup or are they out (ie.WC 02)?

Holland cruised their group (losing only once IIRC), they were the joint best looking in Euro qualifying with England IMHO.

Not that the rankings mean a lot but I see they are #3 in FIFA's poll.

Marco van Bastien really turned them around.