Our Man in South Africa, Part 1 - USA vs. Australia Warm-up



Like all great news organizations, we here at the blog have a worldwide network of reporters and affiliates dedicated to bringing you the best from the world of soccer.  With fantasy and/or the Premier League usually being our major focus, that usually means that we have people stationed in front of televisions and computer screens in the US (birthplace of fantasy sports) and the UK (home of the Prem).  With the World Cup the major event of the day, we have spared no expense to bring you live coverage from the venues.  This coverage comes in the form of one Jamie Harper, a business school classmate of Neal's, member of the legendary Emory business school intramural-championship winning squad of 1997-98, soccer fanatic, and ex-pat living happily in South Africa.

Given that you can get a run-of-the-mill match report from the Associated Press or Reuters anywhere on the web, I have asked Jamie to give his impressions of the things you won't likely get from those match reports.  His impressions of the crowds, the flow of the match, the manager's decisions, and the overall experience.  So, with that typically lengthy introduction, here we go with our first installment of our live coverage from South Africa.  Take it away Jamie...

Entering the stadium is not the fastest process as they were funneling everyone through security. Girls went to one side and boys to the other in an effort to make it easier to search people and bags.  Once in, the stadium turns out to be a fairly cozy venue with seating on only one side.  My best guess is that there were about 8,000 present at kickoff with the number growing to about 10,000 as the match went on.

On to the match...

Line-ups...When Onyewu came out to the bench with warm-ups on just prior to the match we thought Bocanegra might start in the middle with Demerit and Spector would take up the left side.  Surprise, surprise when the lanky Goodson walks out in the starting 11.  Another surprise to us was Ricardo Clark in the midfield instead of Edu, but the forward pairing of Buddle and Findley made sense since Altidore turned his ankle earlier in the week.

The US dominated from the opening whistle and had the Socceroos under pressure, which resulted in a sloppy turnover that Buddle picked up deep in the outback third [ED. Not sure if this was an intentional pun but if it was, that's awesome], beat one man, moved to his right foot and blasted past the Fulham keeper.  The left side of the stadium erupted along with most of the locals.  Several people holding inflatable kangaroos were in shock as they had just founds seats when they went down 1-0.

The pressure resumed from the next whistle and it could have been 2-0 as Findley got behind the defense after a nice through ball from Bradley (we think it was #4 as we were on Beckham watch as he appeared briefly on the small second deck above us).  We did recover in time to watch Findley round the keeper and then shank the ball to towards the Melbourne section of the crowd.  Wow, that summarized Findley for the rest of the day, dangerous, but with the finishing touch of Shrek the ogre foot.

Just as we thought our necks were going to cramp from watching one way football, the Aussies gained a free kick in the US third which seemed to turn into a 5 minute Aussie crossing drill with corner kicks and sloppy defending.  Don’t blame the ball folks, it was the some awful marking and poor possession which led to Cahill stabbing home from close range.

Stevie ‘Dolo and Donovan were working very well on the right side and combined well to launch Dolo’s cross to the back post for Mr. Buddle to climb up and nod home moments later.

There was an odd moment when Goodson jogged to the sideline and spoke to the trainer, we were guessing he lost a contact lens.  He returned to the field and then came back again to the sideline and popped some pills the trainer gave him.  Odd.

It didn’t seem to help as the Aussies had a clear header chance before the end of the half, luckily the tall Aussie religious figure look-alike missed the target.

The second half was notable due to the substitutions or lack thereof.

The best was Marcus H who replaced Howard and looked sharp stopping several point blank shots.  Although he did have one howler when he came after a cross and flapped at it.  Blame the ball, other than that he was good.

Bocanegra seemed bothered by something which introduced Bornstein onto the field early in the second half.  Coach, please, what are you doing?  JB had a few classic moments including his 30 yard square ball to the Aussie midfielder du jour.  Wow, this performance should seal his fate on the end of the bench for the rest of his vacation. We hope.

Onyewu finally got onto the field and the former Clemson Tiger looked pretty good, which makes us wonder why he did not start….

Someone told me DMB or “the Beasley” came onto the field at one point.  We cannot confirm this.

Herculez finally came in for the exhausted looking Dempsey who must have been the most fouled player on the pitch.  He had a couple good opportunities before he scored and could have setup Findley for a beautiful goal but his 10 yard pass was altered by the poor pitch or the new ball, or… He did redeem himself with a nice finish from a Donovan pass late in the game for the third goal.

Where the heck were Edu and Torres?  Edu actually did put a shirt on in the dying moments as Clark took a knock late, but he never got in as the final whistle blew.

Torres, who looked great in his last match against Turkey but never entered the game.  Why DMB (who we confirm did enter the game, according to the Internets) would get into any game before Torres is an absolute mystery.  Unless of course this is the only action DMB sees along with Bornstein, kind of like a “thanks for training hard” gift.  We can only hope….I hope you enjoyed the first installment of Jamie's guest stint as a reporter.  He'll be back for all of the US matches as well as any other matches that he has tickets for.  I enjoyed getting a feel from "ground level" from someone I know has a great eye for the game.  If you have questions for Jamie or things you'd like him to comment on in future posts, feel free to post them to the comments section and he'll try to accommodate.

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