Back 4 / USMNT

Zonal (Den)Marking

While it was great to see Jozy Altidore continue his exploits in front of goal for the USMNT (and Toronto FC...seriously, how disfunctional is Sunderland??) the back four continued to struggle.

Here's the highlights ... see the bottom of the page for some good video breakdown on the US back line:

To be fair, it's lots harder to get the group play ironed out than to find the big target forward, but there is a disconcerting trend of USMNT squads with underwhelming center back pairings.  This goes back to Alexi Lalas and Thomas Dooley...but think of Matt Besler getting torched twice by Belgium in the Round of 16 in Brazil...

In this space the global shortage of excellent center backs has been touched on before through the lens of Arsene Wenger...

When asked whether there was a lack of top class defenders to buy in the last transfer window, Wenger said: "That is exactly [the issue], you sum it up very well...There is not a lot on the market and if you look at the other clubs, they had exactly the same problem. If you went anywhere, everybody is looking for defenders."

ESPN offers some great advice to would-be center backs in this analysis of the match with Denmark earlier this week: