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Dominate the game (and play good soccer) and lose. Would rather have won the game and not impressed by taking more advantage of our size and speed.

Japan did a really good job marking on set pieces, but were getting beat bad by long balls to Morgan. Should have just kept playing them.

Dominate the game (and play good soccer) and lose. Would rather have won the game and not impressed by taking more advantage of our size and speed.

Agreed! I hear this a lot from soccer folks -- "we played the better match with attractive possessing & attacking soccer, but lost." The object is the result!

What speed?
Morgan. O'Reilly. Rapinoe? Maybe a few others.
But as a group, we are not particularly fast or athletic -- which is why we lost to Sweden (who ran circles around our backs) and nearly lost to France (who ran circles around our mids).

hey coach, throw out your first diplomatic assumption & just roll with your 2nd which we all know is correct.
after what i witnessed with our game against france, i was baffled with our ineptitude & thought the match against japan would be an embarrassment. But, our girls proved they knew how to play soccer against a very quick technical team & won the play on the field, lost the match because we couldn't finish but thats another story & hopefully an easier fix..?
gotta admit tho, when i saw our girls laughing at their dumbass easy misses in the 1st half, i started to root against them. no excuses, they choked & blew it

Might even go so far as to say--from a casual observer's standpoint, of course--that if we were USED to playing a solid, technically-sound possession style of soccer, we might not have made a couple of the fairly bizarre mistakes that led to giving up goals...and if we had a MIDFIELD that developed a style of possession and control of the ball, we wouldn't have to play possession in our defensive third instead of the central third where it's much safer and more productive.

We lost to Sweden and barely survived Brazil and France playing a straight-ahead, all-athletic, put-it-on-Abby's-head-and-pray style. Japan, meanwhile, made beating Sweden look fairly easy. I'd say our result against Japan represented a step up in level of play. If we could develop that style as an every-game scenario and become FLUENT in it--to the point where the momentary breakdowns that cost goals don't happen--I daresay the result everyone is looking for will be somewhat different.

Maybe. I dunno...just an average Joe's thoughts.

The implication to a significant commitment to and change of style is threefold:

1) Different formation/strategy.
2) Different selection/evaluation process and roster.
3) And (quite possibly) different coach.

Also, forgetting about WINNING the Olympics (unless it's purely as an effort to send people out as winners) and thinking 4 years down the road, when, in all likelihood, such stalwarts as Rampone, Boxx and Wambach will be honorably retired.

In the immediate future, regardless of style, we must develop AT LEAST two central defenders and two poession-style attacking central midfielders.

In the back, Rampone, I suspect, will retire. And Buehler, barring significant improvement, is nowhere near good enough. I see Krieger and Le Peilbet as "maybes."

Our current interior midfield of Boxx and Lloyd (as a pair) just aren't in step with the current game. They're both 1999-style bruisers, as opposed to 2011-style quick-footed technicians. As Boxx will retire, finding a new partner for Lloyd is probably the direction to take.

Japan's tournament run is really being overblown and you're giving them too much credit. We would have got embarrassed had we played the same way we did previously? We didn't get embarrassed by anyone in the tournament, and played more talented teams than Japan.

Germany, like us, put pressure on the entire game and didn't capitalize on their chances but were the better team. But that's what makes tournaments entertaining (and frustrating when it happens to your team), the better team doesn't always win.

They controlled the tempo vs Sweden, but still struggled to create scoring chances. I don't care how long you have the ball in your half if you don't create good scoring opportunities. Their 3 goals vs Sweden were an own goal, and two horrible failed clearances by the GK which were immediately converted into goals. Even though they were better than Sweden, they could have very easily gone into OT/PK and it would have been a fair outcome. I give them credit for taking advantage of the other team's mistakes (like they did vs us) but for all the credit they get for dominating, they didn't create a lot themselves.

And against us, they again didn't create a lot. What CB over the age of 10 thinks its ok to clear it centrally so close to the goal? Their first goal was again them taking advantage of a terrible play by the other team rather than Japan showcasing their dominance and creating something on their own. Buehler should have been taken off right after that for the girl who replaced her vs France and played pretty well. Do that, and the 2nd equalizer doesn't likely happen as Buehler was beat again.

As for speed, you don't need a lot of it to take advantage of it. Morgan was abusing their back line, they clearly had no answer for her. I would have sent long ball after long ball to her in the 2nd half. There was nothing wrong with how we played in the 1st half and it was nice to see, but we failed to convert. Even Ian Darke said that we needed to just start playing over the top to Morgan because of how well it was working. I would have liked to see Rodriguez on after Japan's equalizer in regulation for more speed up top as well, even though she had a very bad tournament. Heard she scored the previous 3 times vs Japan in the year, which isn't surprising due to their clear problems in the back against speed.

Have to disagree about the Olympics. Unlike the men, it is a prestigious tournament for the women.

You are correct, Japan didn't create a lot of scoring opportunities, in part because of the way we were playing. You could see it in the Japanese players' faces...they were downright bewildered at some points. I maintain that if we had coughed up the ball to Japan as easily and frequently as we did to Brazil, France and Sweden, they would have taken full advantage...they didn't create as many opportunities because we didn't give them as many opportunities to create.

As for Alex Morgan, she was very impressive with her speed and goal-scoring ability, and what she was doing seemed to be working well. The other half of that equation, though, is that in order to use a player's speed to create those breakaway goals, you have to create space for her to run in...

...which requires drawing the defense out away from their goal...

...which requires...

...possession in another part of the field.

Keep banging the ball deep every time, then that's where the defense stays, and there's no running room for an Alex Morgan to get a step ahead of the defenders. Drawing them up with possession and THEN sending the ball deep to Morgan is a pretty good one-two punch.

Basically correct. Except that Morgan's goal vs. Japan was a quick-hitting long ball off of a turnover -- not the result of great possession.

Morgan is, no doubt, a future standout, whose speed and finishing will work in any style.

As yourself now, assuming Solo and Morgan both grow and flourish, who else is on the roster in 2015? And what type of player will they be at THAT point?

I think it's a mistake to stick with the status quo. Not because we can't win international tournaments as currently constituted, but because the TREND toward a different, more competitive women's game is glaringly obvious.