{"id":36770,"date":"2015-07-11T01:09:33","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T05:09:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=36770"},"modified":"2015-07-11T01:09:33","modified_gmt":"2015-07-11T05:09:33","slug":"winning-ugly-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=36770","title":{"rendered":"Winning Ugly"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo

Photo credit: Chris Aduama\/aduamaphotography.com<\/p><\/div>\n

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – Two games into the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup, the U.S. Men\u2019s National Team has yet to hit its stride. Yet, despite struggling at times, the U.S. clinched first place in Group A and a spot in the Gold Cup Quarterfinals after playing just two of its three group stage matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously happy to be already in the Quarterfinals,\u201d said U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann. \u201cBeing secured first place after two games is nice to have and I think every player knows how tricky and how difficult these games are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klinsmann made seven changes to the line-up on Friday from the team that defeated Honduras 2-1 on Tuesday. On both occasions the U.S. were strong favorites on paper, but were outshot by 10 against Honduras and 15 against Haiti, hardly looking the dominant side expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe play against teams in this tournament that are determined to make the game difficult,\u201d said U.S. captain Michael Bradley. \u201cThey put a lot of guys behind the ball, they\u2019re organized. They\u2019re committed to slowing down and destructing and making every single play as difficult as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Friday, Haiti caused the U.S. plenty of trouble on the counterattack, especially early in the match, making it look like it would be a long night for the Americans. After going into the break tied at 0-0, the U.S. pushed forward early in the second half and substitute Gyassi Zardes set up Clint Dempsey just two minutes after the break to give the U.S. the lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really kind of raided us on many occasions,\u201d said Klinsmann. \u201cThey showed their qualities and we had to come back into that game. I would say after 25 or 30 minutes then we kind of started to have a bit of a rhythm and more tempo and created more chances and had more urgency in the game. That\u2019s what I told them at halftime, \u2018you know we\u2019ve got to now keep on going here with more urgency, more drive towards the goal, more trying to create chances and find the forwards faster.\u2019 It started well in the second half. The goal calmed things down and from there on it looked much, much better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew it was not our best first half,\u201d said goalkeeper Brad Guzan. \u201cAt the same time we kept the ball, we kept the ball moving. You try to limit your mistakes and we want to put them under a bit more pressure and I thought we did that right from the start [of the second half].\u201d<\/p>\n

Still despite the improvement, the U.S. was outshot 12 to 2 in the second half. Some timely saves and subpar finishing from Haiti helped the lead stand up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no easy gamed in this competition,\u201d said U.S. defender Tim Ream. \u201cSo we had to come out [in the second half] the way we finished the half. The first 20, 25, 30 minutes weren\u2019t the greatest for us and the last 15 we picked it up a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, the team recognizes the performances, despite the positive results, can improve. To advance further into the tournament the team will need to be closer to its best. On Monday, with first place already clinched, the team gets a low pressure match to continue to work on getting better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019ve hit our full stride yet,\u201d said Ream. \u201cWe have a little bit of work to do, but we have another game to iron out the kinks and go into that quarterfinal game hopefully with another win and playing a little bit better and peaking at the right time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

U.S. gets another victory and clinches Group A, despite less than stellar performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1218,15],"tags":[1219,891,892,1279],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/USAvHONfeature2.jpg?fit=615%2C400","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36770"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36773,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36770\/revisions\/36773"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}