Craven Cottage Newsround

Our boys (as in Clint and Boca, not the rest of ‘em) line up in line.  Ready for action.

What the f*ck are those on your feet, Mr Dempsey?

Anyway, as you can tell, the US have been in action again, providing the Fulham members of that squad with some meaningful recreation.   BQ tells us about it:

As you can see from the first photo, Dempsey and Bocanegra both started with Bocanegra wearing the captains armband again for the U.S.

The U.S. had many opportunities in the first half and no one could claim that we didn’t make the “final pass”. But on this day we lacked finishing as it seemed the team was pressing almost too hard. Taylor Twellman had at least four opportunities in the first half and never made the best of any of them.  Twellman hit the cross bar once and the upright another time in the first half.

Dempsey looked good again and it was Dempsey who placed a cheeky little pass to Landon Donovan who beat his man and was into the box when tackled from behind allowing the U.S. a penalty which Donovan than took and scored. Dempsey created problems for the opposition all game by his runs and he seems to be getting his decisions right as to when to shoot and when to pass. From the ratings I saw from sports writers he ranked highly.

From U.S. soccer:

“It took only two minutes for the USA to double the lead, this time off the head of team captain Carlos Bocanegra. With the U.S. earning a free kick just outside the area on the right side, Beasley whipped a perfectly curled cross into the six-yard box. Bocanegra slipped his mark and hammered a header past a helpless Penedo, getting his third career goal in the tournament and seventh in 47 international appearance.”

So another goal for Boc’s as it was the type we often have seen him score for Fulham. He had an attempt in the first half from a corner from the left side where he went near post and took the short corner on his head flicking it with power to the far right post only missing it’s mark by a small margin.

Again, from U.S. Soccer:

“The U.S. could easily have made it 3-0 in the 82nd minute after Dempsey found himself alone 10 yards out thanks to a delivery from Donovan, but the striker took too long to choose an option and saw the ball poked away by Perez.”

Yes, it’s true. I have no idea what Dempsey was doing but he received the ball right in front of the goal (in the box) and instead of first timing it did a Cruyff type moving cutting it behind his back only to have a second defender come up from behind and clear it. Let’s hope this is something he will learn from. It was an easy first touch and Lord knows what he was thinking.

Overall a good result for the boys in red, white and blue. Their next game is in Chicago on Thursday, 6:00 pm. CST carried on Fox Soccer Channel here in the States.

There we are.

Back in Blighty, it seems there are Egyptian rumblings afoot.   This has to be something to do with MAF, in which case we should indulge him, but the word is we’re about to sign Mido.   You can see a pattern here:  Mido, Harewood, very similar type players.  When I was guessing we’d be after Heskey earlier in the offseason I perhaps wasn’t being as daft as I thought.   I’d much prefer Harewood, but if Mido can be arsed to play he’s not a bad big man.    Word from Spurs was that he generally couldn’t be arsed to play, which is a bad thing.   He doesn’t seem like Lawrie Sanchez’s type at all, which makes me wonder if this isn’t some kind of smoke signal themed misdirective plot.    Possibly.  At any rate, I could easily have made some reference to storm clouds rumbling in the distance here if I’d wanted to.   I don’t like this Mido idea one bit.

We still only have half an Aaron Hughes on board so far, but it’s early days yet.  Who knows what’ll happen next?