By: COLIN REESE
The United States Men’s National Team continues to lag behind elite national teams that demonstrate collective team technical ability and visibly superior play, but the United States can play like the best national teams, even if the overall skill level isn’t as high.
Brazil for example has a specific formula that it always uses.
Brazil uses two modern outside backs that flank two athletic and technical center backs that show elite defending.
Additionally, the Seleção deploys two defensive midfielders: one destroyer and one box-to-box central midfielder. In the attack, Brazil uses a hybrid between three attacking midfielders and one striker or two attacking midfielders with two forwards.
Brazil also always uses a Number 10, whether it’s a type of fast, goal-scoring Number 10 like Neymar or one like Oscar. Neymar plays differently than Zidane played, but using Neymar as a Number 10 gives Brazil a real playmaker.
The formula that Brazil and many other national teams use works.
The United States can use Brazilian tactics without being as talented and elite. The United States has the personnel to field a 4-2-3-1 or a fluid 4-2-2-2.
Jürgen Klinsmann should use the 4-2-3-1 formation, but he should use it with players playing their natural positions.
The USA has outside backs and center backs. DeAndre Yedlin is a talented right back, and Greg Garza and Fabian Johnson are talented left backs.
To be fair, Johnson plays right back and left back.
Kofi Sarkodie and Andrew Farrell are two other talented right backs in the American player pool, and Chris Klute plays both right back and left back like Johnson does. Klute is extremely fast just like Yedlin is.
These types of outside backs give the USA width, which lets the midfielders look to focus on keeping possession and breaking down defenses with quick passing slightly more in the center of the field.
The USA also has skilled center backs. Geoff Cameron, Ventura Alvarado, John Brooks, Michael Orozco, Maurice Edu, and several other center backs are all talented – some more so than others. Steve Birnbaum has proven to be capable as well. Shane O’Neill looks the part as well.
Certainly, Yedlin, Alvarado, Brooks, and Garza or Johnson form a Back Four where all of the players are good enough to play well against top national teams, and all of these players are playing their natural positions.
Forming the line of two defensive midfielders, Cameron as the midfield destroyer with Bradley as the more box-to-box midfielder is an obvious partnership, and it has proven to work.
As the line of three attacking midfielders, what’s wrong with starting Joe Corona, Benny Feilhaber or Mix Diskerud, and Clint Dempsey?
Nothing is wrong with that, and at least those players have the technical ability, experience, and athleticism to play skill soccer as opposed to kick and run or bunker ball against top national teams.
Jozy Altidore and Juan Agudelo are both strikers that the United States can start up top, but Agudelo is out of match fitness due to his recent time without a club until he resigned with the New England Revolution.
Both Altidore and Agudelo are skilled and athletic strikers that can cause problems for top national teams, stretch the opposition’s defense, and put the ball in the back of the net.
This combination of defensive midfielders both playing the ball out of the back and protecting the attackers and Back Four allows for the United States to really display the proactive soccer that Klinsmann has spoken so much about.
With Klinsmann, there has never been a logical and organized system of deploying the best American players in their natural positions, but if he were to start the best American players where they belong, then the United States would at least be looking to impose its will on the opposition and display quality soccer.
Other players need to be tested out and given experience, but the players and formation discussed above would be a step in the right direction for Klinsmann.
Bob Bradley used to deploy two defensive midfielders in the middle of the midfield with Dempsey and Landon Donovan on the left and right wings respectively, but Klinsmann’s job was to take this one step further and make sure a playmaker was used in place of the second forward in the 4-4-2.
If Bradley had used a quick playmaker as a second striker, then he would have been able to keep his formation, but at least his tactics were clear.
Klinsmann has the ability to have his defensive midfielders, his attacking midfielders, and his forwards along with a technical, athletic, and defensively-solid Back Four, but he just hasn’t fielded this sort of line-up.
The United States isn’t as good as world football’s elite national teams, but at least the coach should use the personnel and tactics to play soccer that is closer to elites.
At the 2014 World Cup, the United States was thoroughly outclassed with only the spirit and work ethic of American players making the USA’s games close. Certain American players played well, but the overall visual of the United States was a team still lacking in collective technical ability.
To close the gap with the Brazils of the world, Jürgen Klinsmann owes the United States, its players, and its fans a national team that plays skilled players in their natural positions in an effective formation, and Klinsmann has plenty of players to choose from that were born and/or raised in the United States.
Klinsmann’s insistence on looking for dual-nationals abroad as opposed to all of the players that developed in the United States is insulting to American soccer fans, and his policy of always looking abroad first has been ineffective at closing the gap with elite national teams.
There’s nothing wrong with using players from abroad that qualify to represent the United States due to their background, but Klinsmann has overlooked too many players that developed in the United States.
Even if he has used plenty of MLS players, the overall amount of promising and young American talents that were born and/or raised in the United States have quite simply been untapped and untested by Klinsmann.