Rodman to the Rescue
For 105 minutes the USA looked uninspired, devoid of ideas, and frankly tired. Then Crystal Dunn hit a long diagonal ball to Trinity Rodman in space. Rodman brought it down, created space for a shot 1-on-1 against her defender, and ripped it in the upper 90. Amazing.
The match followed the pattern everyone (including us) anticipated. Japan sat very deep in a 5-4-1, and forced the US to try to break them down. When Japan won possession, they looked to spring forward quickly and managed to put the US backline under serious pressure.
What most observers, us included, failed to predict, is how poor the US would be in buildup. Girma and Sonnett passed the ball at the back and struggled to work it to Albert in the holding midfield role. We went side to side and really put Japan under no pressure. Eventually, we would give it away and Japan would counter.
We found ourselves begging for either Horan or Lavelle to come back and help Albert advance the ball through midfield. We basically had a single choke point in our attack and it was easy for Japan to cut off all the supply by blocking out Albert.
The breakthrough finally came when we cut the midfield out of play with Dunn hitting a long ball over the top to Rodman. In our Key’s to the USA’s Success from our match preview, we called for the US to look to create chaos in Japan’s box, and Dunn’s ball finally did exactly that. The rest of the game felt far too patient and conservative.
While we’ve been impressed with Hayes thus far, we absolutely cannot understand what she was thinking by not making any adjustments to the build up tactics. What’s that definition of insanity again?
The downsides of Hayes not rotating the squad are obvious for all to see, as the team looked tired. When we finally made substitutions, Lynn Williams was excellent. Hopefully Shaw and Davidson will both be fit again for the next match against Germany, as we need fresh legs badly. The good news is that Germany also went 120 minutes against Canada, so they will likely be tired as well.
Despite winning 4-1 against Germany, US supporters should keep in mind the expected goals was much closer, with the US leading in that statistic 2.11 to 1.63. On a different day that game could have gone differently so we shouldn’t take advancing to the final for granted.
attack momentum and match stats
Stat of the game
The good news is that the USWNT completed 925 passes today. The bad news is that our goalie plus back 4 completed 71% of those passes. Our front 3 completed less than 10%. Shockingly bad performance progressing the ball through midfield.
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10.4 – Weekend preview
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