This weekend both England and the US played friendlies they were expected to win. Interestingly, both teams turned in embarrassing first halves, found themselves down 1-0, then rallied to win 2-1 against teams they were expected to beat.

US-Turkey: we were lucky not to be down more than 1-0 at the break. Our backline (Boca-Goodson-Demerit-Spector) was disorganized and tentative. Rightback Jon Spector had a particularly rough day; he was beaten several times and lacked confidence. And our central midfielders -- Bradley and Clark -- gave the Turks way too much space, which they exploited.

At half Bradley brought on Onyewu, Findley, Torres and Cherundolo, all of whom played well (although Onyewu didn't have a lot to do), particularly Torres and Cherundolo. Dolo was solid defensively and surged forward effectively several times. Torres had a brilliant, brilliant game, lending organization and purpose to our attack, directing play and actually getting in several nice tackles. When Torres is on, his technical ability and vision really make the US a much more dangerous team. Findley's speed appeared to frighten the Turks, and his aggressiveness -- in one memorable play he tracked back a third of the field and stole the ball from an attacking Turk -- seemed to inspire the rest of the US team, particularly Donovan, who recovered from a modest first half with a sharp second, where he played a big role in both goals.

Bornstein, who came on for Bocanegra late in the second half, was beaten badly at least twice, once almost leading to a goal, and he only played about 15 minutes. I've had less bad to say about Bornstein than others in the past -- I still remember the decent job he did on Messi in the 07 Copa -- but recently he's just looked astonishingly bad, getting beaten, no soccer IQ, terrible positioning, a pure disaster. Boca's our best left back, no doubt about that at all. If only he were a little faster...

England-Japan: not a performance to be proud of. Japan scored all three goals in the match, one to the good and two own goals. England played in the first half like (1) they'd all just eaten an enormous brunch and (2) the grass was a foot high. Gerrard and Cole came on in the second half, and England looked much better. Not great, but significantly better. I don't quite get the Joe Cole hate in England. The guy's injury prone, yes, and he's not that strong defensively, but he's creative and causes trouble for the other side in virtually every game he plays. I'll be surprised if Cappello doesn't take him to SA.

FF

Edit: Whoops. Brainlessly wrote Czechs instead of Turks. Fixed.