Just to clarify: I myself was calling the Gold Cup USMNT the "B" team at the beginning of the tourney. But after chatting with some other folks and thinking about it, I was persuaded that we were fielding our "C" team over the last few games (which we won, before today). Just wanted to make that clear. And the reason I think some of the Ives commenters are nutty is because they're drawing ridiculous conclusions about the quality of the USMNT from this match. That's the nutty part.

FF

So we got smoked 5-0 in the Gold Cup final against Mexico. Ugh.

A few things: we actually outplayed Mexico in the first half. In the second, Aguirre brought on Vela -- who played vastly better than Medina -- and Mexico got a fairly cheap penalty on poor Jay Heaps. Once down 1-0, and with no firepower to bring off the bench, we collapsed. Mexico ran circles around us in the second half, making us look amateurish. I've been following the USMNT for fifteen years (not every game, obviously), and this was easily the worst we've ever looked. It made the 3-0 losses to Brazil at the Confed Cup and to Czech Republic in WC 06 look super.

The saving grace is that this was our "C" team. A couple nutty commenters on SBI (soccerbyives.net, if you haven't checked it out, do so, it's a great site for American futbol fans) claim this wasn't our C team, but it was. With very few exceptions -- e.g., Ching, Holden, Perkins -- none of these guys should/will even make the bench for an A team game; that makes them C-teamers. Guys who ride the bench behind the A-team are the B-team.

One of the very good things to come out of this disaster -- people will hopefully see that guys like Beckerman and Pause just aren't internationals. Guys like Rogers might be -- I certainly think he can be -- but the brilliance he displayed against the weaker sides didn't translate against the better teams in the playoff rounds. He needs to improve.

I'd like to put this in the rear-view mirror as fast as possible. Good news is that we get another swipe at them, Aug. 12, in a huge WC qualifier. And this time, we're bringing our A-team...

FF