Belated Gold Cup Comments

Sunday's Gold Cup Final struck me as one more nail in the coffin of the inexplicable fascination with Pablo Mastroeni. He seems to be one of those guys the majority of U.S. soccer fans have an eternal hard-on over, and I never really got that. Some of it may be allegiance to Chris Armas, who maybe wasn't as good of a passer, but also was never the red card magnet Mastroeni has always been. But the clear change in dynamic when Mastroeni was taken out at halftime for Ricardo Clark was striking. Critics seem to have already piled on Carlos Bocanegra -- who is kind of the polar opposite, in that he's a guy that U.S. fans blame for nearly everything and almost never give the credit he deserves -- for being out of position on the Mexico goal before halftime, but Mastro should have been tracking back in the center of the field as well, and wasn't.

I also probably owe Landon Donovan some sort of apology, as he did more things well than just run real fast in a straight line with the ball at his feet. There was some nifty passing and good field vision that I saw in the matches I was able to actually watch, and I missed the apparently colossal whiff of the ball in the Canada match. But I still think his strongest asset is running real fast in a straight line with the ball, which isn't really much to hang your hat on.