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On Site Jones, Agoos star in encouraging game for U.S. team
Posted: Saturday June 03, 2000 08:13 PM
Following the United States' 4-0 defeat of South Africa in the opener of the U.S. Cup on Saturday, Sports Illustrated's Grant Wahl spoke with CNNSI.com soccer producer Jeff Green and offered the following thoughts: It's only one game, but it's encouraging for the U.S. After the recent loss to Russia where the U.S. failed to score, a lot of the players -- Cobi Jones this week, and Bruce Arena -- were saying, "Listen, that was one game. It was horrible finishing. But for the most part, the U.S. does a pretty decent job of finishing." And if you look at the results, that's true. They haven't been shut out too many times. In this game, they won the midfield, and the play in the midfield wasn't very different from the Russia game. It's just that today they finished their chances. It helps when you have your forwards looking to score, too. Cobi was looking to score today. Jeff Agoos had a great game at the back, playing in the center where he normally doesn't play. He's usually on the left. He made a lot of nice saves. He saved the butts of David Regis and Tony Sanneh a couple of times. Regis on the left and Sanneh on the right had really bad games in the back. Agoos and Carlos Llamosa saved them -- especially Agoos. Agoos getting to 100 caps today just shows that the guy's had a very good career and continues to play awfully well. It's great for Jeff. The crowd here was yelling "Goose" every time he made a play, which was pretty awesome. Agoos has never gotten much fanfare, and he deserves to play. I voted him third in my U.S. player of the year balloting last year, solely for what he did in Mexico. I thought he was the best player for the U.S. at the Confederations Cup. He's just a smart, smart player, and I think he's very underrated. Tuesday night against Ireland at Foxboro Stadium, the U.S. is going to start a much different lineup, most of the guys who didn't start today. The main thing to look for, I think, is going to be Ante Razov and Jason Kreis starting up front. They got a little time today. Those two guys are the ones who are really auditioning for a spot on the team. You've been looking for a U.S. finisher for so long, and you can't decide all of that on one game. But Cobi looked awfully good up front. Earnie Stewart looked awfully good at times, very graceful. I liked Brian McBride up front, too. I thought he made a couple of nice plays. He's a good set-up player. He's not going to score a ton of goals, but he found guys in the right position to do damage today. I was pretty impressed. The only disappointing part of the game -- they didn't market the game well here, apparently. They only got 16,000, and for a game that's not just a friendly and involves the U.S. national team, you'd think they could do better than that. The atmosphere was decent; 16,000 here probably sounds like 30,000 at Giants Stadium because of the acoustics.
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