Better late than never

I’m sure you noticed that my review of the US v. mexico game was somewhat subdued. That was because I didn’t actually get to see the game and couldn’t comment. That has changed, however, thanks to Ricky sending a huge package with the soccer game, some football games and other crap that I can’t get in this damn commie country.

Let me just say this: fuck mexico and their excuses. I had read that mexico was the better team on the field and that they just didn’t get a result.

Poppycock.

When you lose as consistently as mexico does against the US, it’s not a fucking accident. They haven’t scored a goal in the US in this millennium. Once again: not an accident.

The whole first half was slow with both teams having the same number of chances: approximately zero. Then the US didn’t take very long to score in the second half and mexico had the better chances for the rest of the game. Does that come as a surprise to anyone though? I mean really, you score first then your priorities change to absorbing attacks rather than creating scoring chances. Think about a football game as an example. When a team takes the lead they try to grind the clock while the other team is forced to air it out to get back in the game. So when you look at the stats after the game, a novice might be surprised that one team kicked the other teams ass in passing yards but the statistics can be misleading in that regard. Same with the amount of shots mexico had against the US. They put all they had into the attack to get an equalizer. You might look at the number of shots and think mexico dominated but that simply wasn’t the case.

Something else I noticed: mexico pissed and moaned about their bad luck and shots that should have gone in just didn’t. Again, fuck that. Watch the tape. The American defenders were well positioned in most cases and blocked shots or the keeper got to them. To use another football example, complaining about that would be like saying, “we would have kicked their ass if they hadn’t kept tackling us. We should have scored many more times but they were lucky like that.” Is it just me, or is defense still a part of the game?

The last thing, and this can’t be brought up often enough, mexico was playing in a very friendly environment and they brought their A-team. All of their stars were on the field. I don’t want to say the US was playing their B-team but at best we’re talking their “A minus” team. Yeah, Andres Guardado looked good but he wasn’t dealing with Steve Cherundolo. He had a struggling Albright and inexperienced Gros to deal with. Borgetti didn’t have Oguchi Onyewu on his ass and DaMarcus Beasley was still in England (not to mention Reyna, McBride and Keller aren’t in the picture anymore).

A pattern has been established friends. There’s no doubt who the number one in CONCACAF is anymore.