USA open Copa America against Bolivia. Look for a dominant win with more challenging games to come
The USA FINALLY begins their Copa America journey on June 23 against Bolivia. Almost all of Bolivia’s players compete in their domestic league, which is not exactly the most competitive league in the world. It is a match the USA should win, easily.
The team needs a big win to start the tournament. As we’ve said many times, we need to make a deep run in this tournament in order to be “on track” to change the narrative around soccer in this country. Coming off the heels of an extremely disappointing loss to Colombia, and a heartening draw with Brazil, a confidence boosting W against Bolivia is just what the doctor ordered.
This game will come down to effort. For Bolivia, this is a huge opportunity. Realistically they are unlikely to qualify for the World Cup, so Copa America is the biggest tournament and biggest stage these players may ever have. We should expect 110% effort from them.
If we play as hard as Bolivia does, we’ll win. If we come out and act like we are entitled to win just because we’re the better team, watch out for a repeat of the Jamaica Nations League game, where we needed a last minute equalizer – from an own goal no less – to avoid a shock defeat.
We’re backing the USA to come out determined and put this one away before the 60th minute. We should then rotate some players in and rest our stars for harder games in the coming days.
How we stack up
Bolivia is one of the weakest teams in this tournament. They do not have any players in Europe’s Top 5 leagues. 70% of their team plays a team called The Strongest, Bolivar, or Almost Ready. These are 3 teams in Bolivia’s domestic league that we’ve honestly never heard of. We expect our entire starting lineup to be from the Top 5 European leagues.
To make matters worse, Bolivia is in poor form, sitting 9th in CONMEBOL World Cup Qualifying with 3 points from 6 games, and a negative 10 goal differential. Honestly their participation in this tournament is down to the fact that all 10 South American countries participate in Copa America. There are few qualification processes that they’d have come through successfully. If we can’t beat them easily, we don’t deserve the hype this generation of USA talent has generated.
Lineup and Positional Advantages
This will be a rare version of this chart, where we have a significant advantage at every position on the field. In case you doubt us, have a look at our analytical methodology here. Or take a look at our Brazil preview where we had a positional disadvantage all over the field.
Shaded circles behind each player represent Dos a Cero’s measurement of the player’s capabilities compared to the opposition players who will be closest to them on the pitch – except our keeper who is compared to the opposition keeper. Ratings are based on a combination of (i) EA FC 24 player ratings; (ii) age adjusted transfer market valuations (actually the logarithm of transfer market valuations, which reflects that transfer values escalate dramatically for the world’s very top players despite minor differences in quality); and (iii) average match performance ratings in the 23/24 club season, adjusted for league quality (in other words, strong performances in MLS are not given as much weight as strong performances in the Premier League).
Scale: Significant Advantage, Slight Advantage, Even, Slight Disadvantage, Significant Disadvantage
prediction
All of the pre-match commentary from our PLAYERS has been spot on. Pulisic is on record as saying that it’s time for us to “prove ourselves.” Tyler Adams has said anything less than a semifinal appearance would be a disappointment. We agree with both statements.
Berhalter has taken a lot of heat for comments in a recent press conference that we “hope to get to the knockout round”. Obviously that has to be an expectation for this team, particularly in this group with Bolivia and Panama. They are nowhere near the quality of Wales and Iran who we faced in the World Cup, and we made it out of that group. We’re actually going to give Berhalter the benefit of the doubt here. We think the rest of the quote is important.
We think Berhalter meant that he hopes to put in a good performance, not that he hopes to get to the knockout round. Still, I’d rather see him saying things like what Tyler Adams said, that anything short of the semis is a disappointment. He should be setting expectations high for this team if he wants to maximize our performance. But he can’t say that because it might cost him his job.
We think the players will look past that and put in a determined performance against Bolivia, largely because they will heed the “wake up call” provided by Colombia.
Final Score: USA 3 - 1 Bolivia
Our Bet Sheet
Carlos Lampe (Bolivia’s GK) – Over 3.5 saves (EVEN) No offense but Carlos is going to be busy (1 Unit)
Chris Richards (USA CB) – Over 0.5 Tackles (-200) (1 Unit)
USA win and Over 1.5 Total Goals (-260) – we see virtually no chance the USA doesn’t win, and virtually no chance there aren’t at least two goals in this game. These odds imply about a 70% chance that the USA wins and there are at least 1.5 goals, we think the true odds are 80-90% (1 Unit)
Christian Pulisic to Score (+115) – surprisingly, he’s not the best odds American to score, despite being far and away the leading scorer, and penalty taker, for this team. We think it’s good value in a game where the USA should be putting our opponent under pressure all day. (0.5 Units)
Weston McKennie to Score (+295) – McKennie can be a bit of a flat-track bully at times, especially when it comes to goal scoring, meaning he does so against weaker teams. His ability in the air could also be vital as Bolivia looks to be compact and not leave space in the box. A bit of a flyer and a fun bet (0.5 Units)
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