Germany played really well first half. Fortunate to be nil nil. I'm assuming Cameron will start second half.
First half was a success. I'm literally watching a slide show with audio. Now both teams should play it cool, don't get any injuries and just pass the ball around for a half.
Bradley still struggling to keep possession. At least he is aggressively defending. whats up with fabian's throw in? they are way too hard and at the knees.
That wasn't a barrage. Yes, they dominated possession but they're missing passes and haven't taken many clean looks, yet. The US defense is doing well getting in front of crosses and closing the passing lanes. As it went on, possession got better, too. Jones seems to be causing some trouble for them by staying up and making good runs out of the midfield. Dempsey is getting a lot of attention. I'd like to see more runs out of Johnson and taking them to the corner. One question. Why is this the only day of the 3rd match games where the higher lettered group doesn't play first? Every other day has had B then A, D then C, F then E. Why are we the ones that have to play first?
Ya definely advance in case of a draw vs Germany. In case of a close loss ya'd still advance because of a better goal difference than Portugal/Ghana.
win or tie today and we advance. If we lose it gets more complicated: if we lose and port and ghana tie then we advance. if we lose and one of those teams wins, then the winner would have to same record as us and it would then go to the first tie breaker which is goal differential (GD). USA has a GD of +1, Portugal -4, Ghana -1. So rooting for Portugal to win makes sense because they cant really overcome that GD.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-partner="tweetdeck"><p>Touches in the first 10 minutes of first half: GER 147, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USMNT?src=hash">#USMNT</a> 31. In last 35 minutes: GER 301, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USMNT?src=hash">#USMNT</a> 256.</p>— Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/PCarrESPN/statuses/482205200120573952">June 26, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Um no... USA was just really lucky in the first half. Germany had way too many chances and dominated possession.
We tried in the first minutes, but the second half was horrible, really sluggish build-up play. You can see us not attacking as much as we could, plan seems to be to maintain the defensive line and prevent counterattack from hurting us.
