The United States got a much-needed victory on Sunday when it dispatched Panama 2-0 in California.
First-half goals from warhorses Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey were enough to snap the team’s five-game winless streak and ensure its first outright victory since knocking off Ghana in the first game of the World Cup in Brazil.
Bradley’s opener was the rarest of goals: directly from a corner, untouched by anyone. Bradley floated the gently bending shot from the left corner and it curled all the way across the goal and into the top right corner, eluding heads and fingertips.
Dempsey’s closer came off a magnificently weighted pass from Gyasi Zardes, leaving Dempsey with only the keeper to beat. As he is wont to do, Dempsey got a little cheeky with a step-over dribble – similar to the move that freed him to score that opener against Ghana last summer – and had to poke the ball into the goal as a Panamanian defender almost caught him.
So, what to make of this win?
It’s hard to tell.
Panama didn’t do much. They had just six shots, one on goal.
Manager Jurgen Klinsmann again used a bevy of veterans – Bradley, Dempsey, Jermaine Jones, Matt Besler, Nick Rimando and Jozy Altidore – which makes it seem that he was more interested in getting the win than giving some of the youngsters full runs and important experience.
A few of the youngsters who did play, Zardes and Miguel Ibarra, did well. Johnson, a native of Atlanta, came on in the second half in place of Rimando and preserved the shut out.
With the Gold Cup looming in five months, it’s obvious that Klinsmann isn’t ready to turn the page on the roster and start to use even more of the younger players in important roles, though those players may be the ones to lead the team in the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
It’s an odd thing.
Most want the U.S. to develop into a soccer power, one that can consistently give the world’s best a good game using something other than a rope-a-dope style that is always the fall back.
But the U.S. can’t move forward until it moves forward with its roster.
Everyone it seems except for Klinsmann now knows what Bradley, Dempsey, Jones, Besler, Rimando and Altidore are capable of. It’s also fairly clear how far the U.S. will go with those players as the team’s nucleus.
As painful as it can be, it’s time to turn the page. Though Germany still trotted out Philipp Lahm and Miroslav Klose in its World Cup winning team, its nucleus was full of many players who still have their best days ahead of them.
Klinsmann had the stones to drop Landon Donovan from the World Cup roster.
It’s odd that he won’t give Dempsey and those players a rest so that the potential starlets like Ibarra, Perry Kitchen and Lee Nguyen can get their chances in a full spotlight.
U.S. women: While the men finally were able to post a comfortable victory, the U.S. women's team continued its recent struggles with a 2-0 loss to France.
It was the team’s first loss to France and the first time it has been shut out in consecutive games.
This is a World Cup year and the U.S. women are expected to survive a group that includes Australia, Sweden and Nigeria and win their third title.
MLS: MLS and officials and those representing its players are having trouble finding common ground in attempts to craft a collective bargaining agreement.
One of the main sticking points seems to be free agency: the players want it and the league doesn’t.
The players want free-agency because it gives them an avenue to increase salaries, which pale in comparison to the best leagues in the world. The average salary in MLS last year was $207,831, but the website empireofsoccer notes that 83 percent of the league’s players make less than that average.
By comparison, the average salary in England’s Premier League last year was $3.5 million. In Germany, it was $2.2 million. In Italy, it was $2 million.
The league counters that the lack of free agency, and the discipline of a salary cap, are why MLS is succeeding.
The MLS season is supposed to start March 6. The specter of a strike looms.
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