Copa America day 2: USA 4-0 Costa Rica
Following the defeat to Colombia 2-0, USMNT had no over choices but to beat Costa Rica to preserve chances to advance. Their response was clinical! A terrific first half punctuated with one of the best 35 mins of football played by Klinsmann’s squad in years to have a large 3-0 advantage at the break.
Costa Rica came on fire to start off, but Dempsey delivered a stellar performance with one penalty scored at the 9th minute and two assists in the closing minutes of the first half.
USA is now in the driver seat to qualify to the next round and look to do so when they face Paraguay later this week.
Coach Klinsmann shares his views:
“I think again we played a very, very good game with Colombia. We lost it because of two set pieces. Tonight, even there, maybe we didn’t actually play as good as we did with Colombia, but we scored the goals. The goals came and obviously goals are a confidence builder.
This is a learning process. It’s a developing process. To integrate a younger striker up front with Bobby, Bobby has to learn to play off Clint. Clint has to get a feeling for Bobby. Where’s he coming from, what is he doing and all these things. We had the luxury to finally send the same 11 out.
Our hope was obviously to build a more fluid style by keeping the guys connected together, same starting 11, which that luxury we never really get in World Cup qualifiers or other times of the year. We’re always missing guys. We always kind of have to improvise and fix things up. Now this is how we started the tournament, this was our idea with these guys. We could continue this in the second game.”
