Re: How good would they be?

On 2006-01-16 21:16:27 +0900, Bruce Scott TOK <Use-Author-Supplied-Address-Header@[127.1]> said:

Huw M wrote:

Considering the 1994 World Cup: 

Interesting notes...

1) USA *did* have phenominal home support.  Matches were held in larger
stadia than normal for a world cup, and all were sold out. You could argue
that the majority of the crowd had never seen a professional match live
before, but they were still giving the USA plenty of support.


Yes.

2) The USA had more than 6 months training camp.  Do you not remember how
the squad played so many friendlies they were practically a club side.


Yes this is also true.

3) Both South Korea and the USA, as hosts, were seeded, and thus had far
easier first round groups than they should have had.


They were about the same.  One big team that massively underperformed
and one basically beatable one (Poland, Swiss).

The biggest difference between USA 94 and Korea 02 is speed, pure and
simple.  We didn't have it then.  Our defense was sold but slow, and we
didn't have any fast guys who could finish (one moment of exception was
Earnie's winner against Colombia).

However, in 2002 we had as much speed as Korea, and arguably more
stamina.  I do think had we got past Germany and met them in the semi we
could have got to the final.


One could argue that:

Without that superb Park Ji-Sung goal against 9-man Portugal, which wasn't even absolutely necessary for the Koreans (and veterans Hong Myung-Bo and Yoo San-Chul on the pitch actually knew that it most likely wasn't), the US would've bowed out in the group stage with the not-so-impressive record of 4 points and GD -1, out of three games against South Korea, Portugal and Poland. If anything, 9-man Portugal seemed more threatening than the US full squad was against South Korea, as the Korean players themselves implied so post-match.


The US was already a good team in 1998 although things didn't go their way that time around, and I personally didn't see that much of a change in 2002, other than how far they went in the tournament. In that sense, I wasn't surprised by the US performance in 2002 at all (those who were surprised to see the US beat Mexico in a place that wasn't an Azteca simply didn't have a clue, did they?). Hopefully winds will blow in a good direction for the US this year as well.

Of course I didn't mean to devalue the US achievement in 2002, since results are results no matter what, and that's the basis of all these futile football arguments, but seriously, it is only THAT kind of a difference.


S.I. 

.

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