Everybody In The Pool

Saturday night in Chicago was important for the U.S. soccer team in a whole bunch of different ways. Obviously, they battled back from an early deficit for an important three points in the Hexagonal round of CONCACAF qualifying. It doesn't really get more important than that, but head coach Bob Bradley got some clear indications on who can help his cause on the road to South Africa. And who can't.

Four guys helped themselves a whole lot, and pretty much anyone who watched the match could identify the rise in value of the defensive Jonathans -- Bornstein and Spector -- along with a solid match from Ricardo Clark and a return to form of Gold Cup hero Benny Feilhaber. The latter two give Bradley the elder a much better set of options to pair with Bradley the younger now that Maurice Edu is sidelined for three months for knee surgery.

This is key, because Pablo Mastroeni has proved in the last two matches that he's no longer an option. I'd rather see Bob Bradley talk Chris Armas out of retirement than see Mastro in a national team uniform again. And before you think it's just me and my anti-Pablo bias, keep in mind that I almost got Fire play-by-play guy Chris Doran to say something negative about him in a comment on an earlier post. If you know Chris, you know just how rare that is.

Bornstein has probably earned the right to be on the left side of the defense until he proves otherwise. From field level, he looked better than he did on TV, showing confidence and a good ability to get forward. Spector will still need to show that he's a better option than Frankie Hejduk, but that's a good thing.

There are still some open questions, but those are coming into focus as well. Up top, Bradley is hoping that Conor Casey might be able to fill the role of Brian Ching filling Brian McBride's role as a target forward. Pretty soon, someone may have to admit that the best person to play Brian McBride's traditional role might actually be Brian McBride, as the Fire forward worked his butt off in the off-season to get in top shape. I also have to wonder if Clint Dempsey might be a better option as a forward then in the midfield, but I've thought that for a long time.

And speaking of the midfield, DaMarcus Beasley's return to form is also an potentially troubling issue. Beaz has always had a heavy first touch, he can usually use his speed to catch up to it, and that's one of the things that's missing now. Bradley knows he needs the minutes to get himself back -- it's just a question of which tournament lends itself to those minutes. Now that left back seems to have a working solution for the time being, maybe he can go back to his more traditional midfielder role.

That being the case, I think I'd like to see something like this for the Confederations Cup:

F Altidore Dempsey
M Beasley Clark Bradley Donovan
D Bornstein Bocanegra Onyewu Spector
G Howard

I could see Dempsey and Donovan switching, which turns it almost into a 4-5-1, but I still think this would work better.