Gold Cup group stage: USA 3-2 Martinique
USA – Omar Gonzalez 53rd minute
USA – Jordan Morris 64
MTQ – Kévin Parsemain 66
MTQ – Kévin Parsemain 74
USA – Jordan Morris 76
The French islanders almost got the best of an apathetic US Men’s National Team. Despiste the victory 3-2, the team was woefully lacking in rhythm and consistency in the first half. Then, USA showed no sign of confidence after going up 2-0 and letting Martinique back in this game. Without Morris’ effort who notched a brace and the winning goal, the night could have been a nightmare for the Americans. Needless to say that the motivation is not really here and this level of play will certainly not be enough to qualify to the next World Cup! Coach Arena believes the Gold Cup enables him to find his starting XI ahead of the World Cup qualifiers in September.
Coach Arena is positive and comments on the match:
“We are certainly guilty of making the game a lot more difficult than it needed to be, but give Martinique credit, they fought and played hard the entire game and made a good showing. It was a good game. In the first half, Martinique played with a lot of energy and played with really solid defensive organization. We needed to be sharper on the ball and moving the ball in the last third and we weren’t.
We did tell the players and our backline at halftime to push up, and told our fullbacks to get higher. We made mistakes but we also saw a lot of good performances.One of the things we’re trying to do in this tournament is really look at some players in our pool that we as a staff haven’t seen much of, to help us make decisions moving forward with World Cup qualifying in September and October. But they’ve also made it much more complicated to decide what changes to make in this tournament, and that’s positive.
