USA Should Begin Preparing for 2014 in 2010

You may have watched Wednesday night's World Cup qualifier: USA men lose 3-1 at Costa Rica. Landon Donovan's 90th minute penalty kick goal for the USA could give an impression that could confuse fans who didn't watch the game. The game wasn't as close as the score indicated. The USA was bad. Costa Rica was good. USA may have been more bad than Costa Rica was good. It looked like a 5-0 game (Costa Rica was playing "Ole Futbol" in the FIRST HALF). The USA has no excuses. On Wednesday night the USA was beaten by a better team. Costa Rica's players were better than USA's players. So which USA players should see significantly less or no playing time?: Altidore and Wynne are still works in progress. Both players need a lot more skill, savvy and experience to succeed at the international level. Torres looked good. Play Torres. Involve Robbie Rogers. If Rogers is not in the starting 11 have him available off the bench. Rogers is a talent and a risk taker. Of course Frankie Hejduk (injured, did not play) could have helped. Hejduk has developed into a very reliable right back. Wednesday night made me wonder if the soon to be 37 year old Brian McBride and the soon to be 46 year old Preki wanted to wear the USA jersey again....OK now I'm thinking that any team that could play as badly as the USA played Wednesday night couldn't possibly have any chance in 2010. It would be impossible for any truly good team to play so badly and then turn things around so quickly (a year with limited time together) and succeed later vs better competition. Once we qualify (USA should still qualify) for 2010, for the good of our national team, we should prepare for the 2010 World Cup and use players in the 2010 World Cup who could play in the 2014 World Cup (Freddy Adu, Jozy Altidore, Jonathan Bornstein, Michael Bradley, Kenny Cooper, Charlie Davies, Landon Donovan, Maurice Edu, Eddie Gaven, Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, Sacha Kljesten, Michael Parkhurst, Heath Pearce, Robbie Rogers, Jose Francisco Torres, etc.). The 5 year time span would provide a significant amount of time for the coaching staff to develop a very competitive and successful 2014 team with an advanced and understood style of play that is needed to have a chance to win a World Cup.

Josh Howard Scores for Soderhamns FF (Sweden)

Josh Howard (Lee's Summit North HS, KC Attack, William Jewell College, KC Brass) has earned Man of the Match for Soderhamns FF (Sweden) in his two most recent matches. Photo: Josh celebrating his first professional goal in Soderhamns FF 2-0 win over Rasunda.