Celebrating a Century of U.S. Soccer

The United States took on Germany in an International Friendly this weekend, and the game marked 100 years for the United States Men’s National Team.  With it being a milestone, and with qualifying right around the corner, the match was very important to the United States.  However, with a poor result against Belgium in their other friendly earlier in the week, this looked a tough match for the American team.  

Germany (currently ranked second in the world) fielded a team with some big names like Miroslav Klose, Lucas Podolski and Per Mertesacker.  For the most part though, their starters in this match haven’t been getting consistent minutes in their recent qualifying matches.  The team that USA fielded looked very close to their optimum starting line-up with stars like Tim Howard, Clint Dempsey, and Jozy Altidore. 

Altidore opened the scoring early, when he was able to volley home a great cross from Graham Zusi.  Altidore had been showing great finishing abilities for his club team in Holland, but had a long goal drought playing for his country.  It was important for team USA to get their center forward back into scoring form, after not getting a goal from him in over a year and a half.  He also had the assist to the 3^rd goal, another nice cross to Clint Dempsey which he volleyed home. 

Dempsey scored the third and fourth goal for the United States in the match, the fourth proving to be the winner.  His game-winner was a nice curling left-footed shot to the far post from about 25 yards. That fourth goal was also the US strikers 35^th for his country, sending him ahead of Eric Wynalda on the all-time goals list.  Landon Donovan still remains 14 ahead of Dempsey as the all-time leader.

With a 4-1 lead late in the game, team USA looked to be getting complacent with their lead and let Germany back in the game with lazy defense.  The Germans were able to score two quick goals, making the rest of the game very nerve-wrecking for the American supporters.   In the end, USA was celebrating their 100 years with a 4-3 win, and more importantly gained momentum going into the next round of qualifying matches.

The Americans have 3 matches coming up for World Cup qualifying against Jamaica on June 7^th, Panama on June 11^th and then Hondurus on June 18^th.   If the USA can keep their form and momentum from the win against Germany, they should be able to get positive results from these next matches.  However, they shouldn’t be extremely overconfident considering the quality of players that didn’t actually play for the Germans.  USA beat the second ranked team in the world, but keeping things in perspective, it was more like the second team of the second ranked team.