Bradley Lays Down His Cards (Part I)

If I felt so compelled, I could launch an offshoot of this blog dedicated solely to soccer, both the electronic and real-life versions. That has yet to happen, so my legions of readers better gear up for a summer of incisive reporting on the biggest party on the planet.

For starters, have you seen the ad previewing the World Cup narrated by Bono? It has a slick lyrical rhythm to it and crescendoes nicely to get you excited for the matches. The premise of the ad, however, is debatable. "It's not about politics..." Soccer is very often political. I have written about this in a previous post, and don't feel like going into detail now. Plenty more on that in forthcoming soccer posts.

In this first installment of my preview of the World Cup, I will focus on the initial 30-man roster that U.S. national team coach Bob Bradley selected this week. This group will be trimmed to 23 by the end of the month as each peripheral player goes under the microscope.

On the whole, Bradley has made some sound choices:

Starting in goal, Tim Howard has two sturdy back-ups in Marcus Hahnemann and Brad Guzan. Goalkeepers are America's biggest export in soccer goods, and this is one position where we top the English (our first opponents of the tournament).

Injuries convolute our back line. When all are healthy and in good form, the starting four should be Jon Specter at right back, Oguchi "Gooch" Onyewu and Jay DeMerit in the middle, and Jonathan Bornstein on the left. Carlos Bocanegra, a savvy player who often wears the arm band, is too slow to play on the flanks and should come off the bench for one of the center backs. Specter is an effective passer, while Bornstein offers something going forward.

The U.S. midfield may be our biggest shortcoming. The Yanks are particularly stretched when it comes to defensive midfielder, a crucial position that, when played right, eases pressure on the back line by gobbling up the opposition's attack. Michael Bradley, the coach's son, is versatile and our best bet in the middle. He is a strong tackler and can rip a shot from distance. But he needs more help than is available. The physicality of Jermaine Jones, a German-American who recently switched allegiance to the U.S. national team, would have allowed Bradley to venture forward without worrying about leaving his back line vulnerable to a counter-attack. But chronic injuries mean Jones will miss the World Cup.

We turn to three talented but unpredictable players in search of Bradley's midfield partner. Maurice Edu would be a solid anchor. He won "Rookie of the Year" in the MLS in 2007 (a more competitive award than it used to be) and gained important international experience with the U.S. at the summer Olympics. Ricardo Clarke has spent more time on the field with Michael Bradley and his tenacity would be welcome. But Coach Bradley should be leery of starting someone who tends to end up in the referee's book. A turning point for America in the last World Cup came when defensive midfielder Pablo Mastroeni was ejected for an idiotic tackle against a short-handed Italian side. Another option in the middle is Benny Feilhaber, a creative player whose first instinct is not to defend. How Bradley designs his midfield may be the biggest determinant of America's fate in South Africa.

The venerable veteran Brian McBride has finally retired, and it is good to see some fresh legs up front. Jozy Altidore is blessed with power and pace. He will likely start, along with Landon Donovan, America's all-time leading scorer. I am happy to see Donovan playing with more conviction these days and he must not wilt on the big stage. Clint Dempsey is a unique player who thrives as a secondary striker and not as a midfielder. Dempsey brings swagger, cunning, and a knack for finding the net (he was our only scorer last World Cup). And, in his own words, "thanks to soccer, I rock more ice than a hockey skate" (click here to watch the explosive music video). Rap may be more closely associated with a sport like basketball, but Deuce proves capable of bringing it to the sidelines of a soccer practice.

A final thought in this abbreviated preview: Charlie Davies should still be on the roster. The diminutive spark plug was the best player in the United States' run to the Confederation Cup final last year. He is remarkably fleet of foot and has the grit that Donovan sometimes lacks. But just as Davies' career was taking off, he was in a disfiguring car crash that left one of his friends dead. This was last October. Doctors and physical therapists understandably ruled him out of the World Cup. Davies had fractured bones in his leg and face. He is lucky to be alive.

Just five months later, Davies was running through drills and vowing to be ready for South Africa. It was to be a rousing return, one that would surely motivate his teammates. But Coach Bradley has decided to leave him off the 30-man roster to allow Davies to make a full recovery. This is a reasonable enough decision, but it hollows out some of the spiritual unity on the team. Bradley knows how this tragedy has affected his team, and he would be right to have Charlie in training camp, even if he will not be ready for the World Cup. Besides, Davies is better on one leg than Eddie Johnson.

The Periscope will be on hand to watch the U.S. team play its final match before heading to South Africa in about two weeks. Since we are not playing a Latin American country, there is a good chance the crowd will be for the home team.

A Pitch for Peace

I came to believe in the cathartic power of the world’s game after taking in an impromptu soccer match between monks in a Burmese backwater. There, in an unheralded village between Yangon and Mandalay, lay a gem of earthly spontaneity. The pitch was a humble tract of sun-baked mud, but its unlikely surroundings brought a sense of eminence to the proceedings – a shallow lake became one sideline and two adjacent embankments provided elevated viewing for spectators. After a week of listening to my guide boast of how every landscape we observed was uniquely Burmese, I was attentive to a scene that proved him both right and wrong. Under the “uniquely Burmese” category might fall the holy men who checkered the pitch with their luminous maroon robes and jocular soundtrack to the match. In so much as my a priori ignorance of Burmese culture would allow, I also designated the rhythmic cheers emanating from the village crowd as “uniquely Burmese”. But if you were to zoom the viewing lens on the tattered ball that bounced from one spry foot to another, you could easily emerge in another part of the world, amongst another set of bare feet. Here, Kurdish children clad in European jerseys clamor for a shot on goal.

This is where my story dissolves and Ian Klaus’ fades into view. Where the touchline had been a lake in Myanmar, here it is a foreboding border with a hostile country. But these footballers are heedless of international fault lines and perhaps even of the wars endured by their forefathers: a boy casually hops the stone wall marking the Iraq-Iran border to retrieve an errant attempt at goal. For these young Kurds, their own touchlines trump those drawn by statesmen. The dusty pitch provides a stage for self-expression, much the way a dinner table provides a poor family confirmation of its self-sustenance. There is something primordial and natural in the rivalry between the Kurdish towns of Tawela and Biara and the molting of inhibitions on the pitch. There is nothing natural in the border post that stands within earshot of the match. Just as in Myanmar, where Orwellian edicts hover over the citizenry from billboards, Iranian theocracy is a ludicrous sideshow to the freedom provided by the pitch.

Some grassroots organizations are trying to expand the pitch’s touchlines, to claim more fertile land for the artistic minds of young footballers. The younger they start, the better. As Franklin Foer chronicles in How Soccer Explains the World, it does not take long for soccer to mirror sectarianism. Rival hooligans pivot effortlessly from stadium brawls in peacetime to shelling each other’s neighborhoods in guerilla war. The “beautiful game” carries the seeds of a beautiful but tragic life. The liberating bliss with which young players take to the pitch is menaced by the “realities” of war and staid conflict. It is all too often a cruel choice between staying at home and joining the thugs who practice ethnic sport. Either way, the primordial innocence of ball, feet, and dust is lost.

A few years after my trip to Myanmar, the world got wind of a tragedy unfolding in Yangon, the former capital. Thousands of monks were descending on the city in spartan defiance of the ruling junta. Soaring fuel prices had sparked the protests, but there was also a palpable purge of grievances held for decades against the government. The junta responded with the Tiananmen playbook, mowing down the revered monks and jailing thousands of sympathizers. Macabre, awful, and sorrowful though the 2007 crackdown was, it cannot disrupt the tranquil image in my head of monks as the sentries of Burmese society. They had found refuge in the village soccer pitch that day, a rare haven unfettered by tyranny. When it came time to leave the pitch, whether hours, days, or years later, the monks left in resolute columns and carried the dignity of a supportive people with them.