U.S vs Guatemala review

Here is Jack Bell's article from the New York Times that reviews each player's performance in the game with a rating scale of 1-10, which is commonly done in soccer. To begin, I believe that Jack's ratings vary a bit too much. Its usually pretty rare that players on the same team get a score of 3 and also 8. They are usually much closer together.

I generally agree with his ratings though, and as I've written before I don't know why certain players are still included in the squad. The names that come to mind are Eddie Lewis, Frankie Hejduk, Pablo Mastroeni, and perhaps even Steve Cherundolo. Bob Bradley needs to inject more new blood into this team, especially at the forward position. I don't believe that Clint Dempsey and Brian Ching are the forward combination that the U.S. needs to get to the 2010 World Cup. Dempsey on the right and Beasley on the left is the combination that should start. Landon Donovan should be in the middle with a target man, preferably Kenny Cooper. There are other changes that I would look at Feilhaber in midfield with Michael Bradley. Freddy Adu should at least have a place on the bench. Jozy Altidore has to have a place in the squad. There are many others as well, I've included a list from the Yanks Abroad blog. Bobby Convey, Danny Califf, Ricardo Clark, Jonathan Spector, just to name a few.

Bob Bradley got a great result last night, there is no doubting that. However, he needs to look deeper into the players that are available to him and really begin to mold a starting XI that can be altered as necessary, but that is pretty consistent. The lineup put out in the Guatemala game is not going to cut it as the team gets deeper into the qualification process.