Belgium 2-1 USA: A story of wasted chances

    Belgium’s comparative abundance of attacking resources vis-à-vis the United States does not come as a surprise, but the USMNT’s reluctance to get the best out of Belgian tactical shortfalls does. The run of Julian Green towards goal in extra time illustrates what the starting wingers, Alejandro Bedoya and Graham Zusi, should have done consistently throughout 90 minutes.

From my viewpoint, a couple of months ago Eden Hazard was pilloried by Jose Mourinho for the Portuguese to justify his own mistakes during the Stamford Bridge Champions League semifinal in which Atlético’s full-back, Juanfran Torres, got the best out of Chelsea’s left side. Hazard does have a low working rate when it comes to tracking enemy full-backs, yes; but Simeone’s 4-2-2-2 outfoxed Mourinho’s 4-2-3-1 insofar as Atleti’s ‘inside wingers’, Koke Resurreccion and Arda Turan, stayed narrow, prompted midfield overloads, and allowed for Juanfran and Filipe Luis to make overlapping runs. Here’s my diagram:

If Hazard tracks Koke towards the interior of the pitch, Juanfran can surge; if Hazard tracks Juanfran instead, then Atleti has superiority in the middle of the pitch and therefore can dominate possession.

Klinsmann could (and must) have used the match against Belgium to seriously test the truthfulness behind Mourinho’s words. In some ways he did so because Fabian Johnson first, and DeAndre Yedlin later, turned Belgium’s left into a true Achilles’ heel. Barring the images of Tim Howard making amazing saves, the most repeated ones were those of Jan Vertonghen in one-on-one situations with Yedlin.

In a perfect world, a full-back (Vertonghen) should not cover the opposition’s full-back (Yedlin), but the opposition’s winger (Zusi). Hazard, the winger, should have covered Yedlin instead. But the Chelsea man neither covered Yedlin nor covered Zusi and finally covered nothing, which means Zusi (or Bedoya because Klinsmann likes to switch wingers) had space to create overloads with his movement.  Mourinho, at the end of the day, perhaps was right.

But we can’t know if the Portuguese was right or wrong for sure since the US wingers wasted their chances to translate freedom of space into meaningful possession. For huge lapses of the match it was as though the United States had a pair of Olivier Girouds playing outside the box as wingers. In this scenario is worth asking whether an inverted winger such as Julian Green, or a possession-oriented midfielder such as Mikkel Diskerud, must have had playing time or not.

From a neutral perspective the match was thrilling and spectacular but one can’t help feeling the USA could have done a lot more with Hazard’s catalogue of tactical opportunities.