With J Hutcherson -- What does it take for the US Soccer Federation to treat the Confederations Cup seriously? You might have seen the articles that are already putting over the Confederations Cup as one of the highlights of a year that will gift the US home and away Qualifiers against Mexico. Then again, this is the same leadership that decided to put its focus on the Gold Cup rather than the Copa America in 2007.
Granted, that would strongly suggest that the real target is the Confederations Cup, using it as the best possible warm-up for the World Cup. Then again, that carries with it a lot of significance.
The available excuses decrease the stronger the build up is for this summer in South Africa. Throw in a few not-so-likely choices in terms of personnel as well as tactics, and it's a version of what happened in Venezuela. No matter what the US players on the field might have been able to accomplish, the excuses were already in place when the squad was announced.
Last summer, the US did the European road show against England and Spain, returning to North Jersey for a game against Argentina. Though I would argue the US showed well in two of those three games, that ended up not being the majority opinion.
I still point to that Spain game as the follow-up to the bright spot from the '06 World Cup. That would be the Italy game. The US showed they could take a stronger team out of its game, play disruptive soccer, and almost pull off a win against an eventual champion.
Group B would need a couple of those performances within three days of each other. Maybe the Bob Bradley regime lets it roll, names the best US eleven available, and puts the Confederations Cup up with qualifying. At this point, there's not enough history to take that as a given.
Comments, questions, solutions to problems that have yet to present themselves. Please, tell me all about it.
