My daughter and I watched last night's U.S.-T&T tilt and for me the big news is we found a center at last.
Football players come in three varieties — forwards, midfielders and defenders. The first two are sometimes called strikers, the second sometimes wingers. The strikers are the important ones. They put the ball in the onion bag most often.
Of these the rarest breed are the centers.
Some strikers shoot from distance. Some get into the box and hit the ball with their head. Some goals come from rebounds, some from set plays.
You can go a long way with that. Mexico has. But you don't win the big one that way. We haven't.
American players have traditionally been small. The big kids play American football, or baseball, or basketball, where the money is. Footy, soccer, not so much. It's fun watching America's team line up against one of those European squads, because they're usually a head or more taller than our guys.
Most strikers are the equivalent of basketball guards or forwards. David Beckhem is a small forward. Very few strikers are the equivalent of basketball centers.
You do find some in Europe. Players like Emile Heskey or Peter Crouch or Didier Drogba. Crouch is especially tall, Heskey and Drogba are both quick and strong. They can play with their backs to goal, getting the ball in the mixer and directing it past the defense. They clog the lane.
America has never had this kind of player before. Until Jozy Altidore. He's 19, not the finished product, but if you had a 19 year old Shaquille O'Neal you'd play him. We did last night. He scored three times, mostly on assists from Landon Donovan. Good times.
Altidore's biggest problem, and thus America's biggest, may be that he went to the wrong European club. His contract is held by Villareal, a Spanish side. They sent him to a second-division team which doesn't play him either. The reason is that Spanish football, like Latin football generally, doesn't use a center. They use speed and quickness to get an open look, then shoot really hard.
England, Germany, and Italy all use the muscle game. That's what you need when the pace slows down, when set plays and corner kicks become the only route to goal. That's why they win. Bruce Arena built his team on the German model, and while new coach Bob Bradley has tinkered a bit with it at the edges it's still Arena's team — run the ball down the wings with a defender, whip in a cross to the center, get a head on it.
When you have a center, the play changes. Instead of whipping in a cross to the goal line, you get the ball into the middle, at the equivalent of the top of the key. The center whips the ball to a shooter and it goes in. On a set play he rises over everyone else, gets a head on the ball and directs it to the goal.
Altidore is built for that kind of game, but he needs to get practice in it, before the World Cup, if he's to do his best for us. Bradley's biggest problem as a coach is that he's passive before Europe's big clubs. He wants his players to go there, but he doesn't shepherd them along. Our guys in Europe are getting a lot less playing time, and at lower levels, now than in the run-up to 2006.
I hope yesterday's performance shows Villareal how Altidore is best used. If they don't want a center they should sell him on to an English or German team that does.
Because we need one.
