US

Me thinks that, if Wednesday’s thrilling comeback 4-3 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina is any indication, the new chant at USA games will be “JVA! JVA! JVA” in honor of one Josmer Volmer Altidore.

Some postgame quotes from the USMNT’s win:

Jurgen Klinsmann:
I think [the players] deserve a huge, huge compliment. It’s a test game and a friendly where you want to see certain things from new players coming in and where your top players are right now, especially at the beginning of the European season. You don’t really know where you stand but I think they showed amazing character…

We conceded the two goals and we knew that Dzeko and Ibisevic are such a threat, especially from set pieces. But we already had chances to score and I said to the guys at halftime ‘there’s a game to play and we can come back in this game.’ It was wonderful to see the energy and dynamic of the whole group. We pushed and pushed, kept the tempo higher than Bosnia did and absolutely deserved the win…

It definitely prepares us confidence-wise. If something goes wrong and we’re down a goal or two goals, we know how to react the right way. We know to keep playing at our rhythm and our pace and our passing game. Going into Costa Rica it will be very dramatic and we’ll need to have a calm element in our game to say, even if something goes wrong, we’ll still make it through, score and even win the game.

Jozy Altidore:
“I think Jurgen has always said even if we go down a goal to keep responding. This time we went down two goals so it was a challenge for us. But I think you saw in the game we were never outplayed. It was just a matter of ironing out the mental errors, which we did, and we created a lot of chances…

It’s exciting and I think it shows how far the program has come. At the same time we understand we still have to raise the bar. We can’t afford to make mistakes [like the ones tonight] because in group stages of the World Cup you can’t come back from them. We have to learn to iron those out but we take the positives from tonight and move forward with our head held high…

Everybody has confidence and tonight shows the depth we have in this team. Guys can step in at any time and put in a good performance. It makes us all better and demands the best out of each other. I think for the qualifiers we will look good.

Tim Howard:
“What a win. It was a tale of two halves. We didn’t play well the first half and the second half we were awesome. We deserved the win.”

Klinsmann concluded, “We learned to keep the tempo higher and higher like European teams do…We’re working on catching up. We want to break into the Top 15 in the world one day. We still have a way to go. But you can see that we are becoming more confident and we can really play the game. We came here to play, not to defend, not to counterbreak. We came here to play eye-to-eye and make the best out of it. Therefore we are very satisfied.”

What is the root of the US’s success? Altidore said, “It comes from us finally clicking and I think everybody buying into Jurgen [Klinsmann] and his method. Bob [Bradley] started it and now he’s carried it on. And I think everybody has finally responded to trying playing football and playing out of the back and you see we created chances. I think it’s been effective.”

Match reports and recaps from PSP, US Soccer, MLSsoccer.com, ESPN, ASN, ProSoccerTalk, SBI, Deadspin, New York Times, USA Today, Goal.com, Reuters, and The AP.

Player ratings from Soccer America, MLSsoccer.com, ASN, New York Times, and Goal.com.

MLSsoccer.com, ProSoccerTalk, ESPN, and SI with thoughts and lessons from the game.

At Soccer America, Paul Kennedy writes, “It’s impossible to think of a better performance a U.S. forward has ever put on than what Jozy Altidore did on Wednesday night in Sarajevo.” ESPN’s Doug McIntyre says Altidore is in the form of his career.

As Jm Curtin noticed, Michael Bradley completed 92 out of 100 passes. ASN also noticed in their tactical review.

Klinsmann said after the fine performance from Aron Johansson in his first appearance for the US, “That’s why I think everybody now understands why I tried to convince him to play for the United States and not for Iceland…You see from his first game just his ability to see a pass, to create space for himself. He’s a fantastic player and I’m glad that he’s here.”

John Brooks says choosing to play for the US was an easy decision.

Soccer America notes the US “is only three wins away from tying the world record held by Spain—a streak the USA stopped with its 2-0 win at the 2009 Confederations Cup. The USA ties the CONCACAF record winning streak held by Mexico (1987-90).”

Grantland on the “Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of the Young American Striker.”

Philadelphia Union

The Union have never won at Red Bull Arena, a fact of which John Hackworth is all too aware. He said at Wednesday’s weekly Union press conference, “It’s an arena, it’s a team that when we’ve gone up there hasn’t been the most hospitable to us. But we feel like we’re in a good way right now and we can only control what we can, so our plan is to go up there and put in a performance that will hopefully get us a result.”

He continued, “We’re going to have to do a good job managing the early part of the game emotionally and not let it get away from us. Then we hope we can get our game plan into effect and play with our rhythm and tempo that we like to play. We kind of battled them when we played up in New York earlier this year. But at the end of the game we let things slip away from us. I think we’re a better team that we were then. We’ll see on Saturday if we can go up there and finish what we started earlier in the year.”

Hackworth said of the central midfield concerns, “We like to play off, we call it rhythm all the time, and we like to play off a certain rhythm. And we like to have guys in those different lines as you go farther up the field, and sometimes we’ve had a problem this year where we’ve had two central midfielders square to each other and we didn’t have one farther up the field. And everybody has to adjust. It’s not ideally what you want, and we have to continue to do that. Our opponents play a big part in that, because when they pin us back, it flattens everything out. So we have to do a better job of keeping the ball and finding our rhythm and tempo.”

Whether Raymon Gaddis or Fabinho will start at left back against New York is still not certain. Hackworth said of how Fabinho and Sebastien Le Toux combined against DC, “It’s the first time that they’ve started there, so clearly it took a little while for that relationship to start gelling. We told Sebastien to go a little inside because they were both getting stuck in the exact same channel, and then you don’t have any angles to pass through. And as soon as Sebastien started doing that, it opened up Fabinho to go around. It opened up the game for Sebastien on the inside. Conor was dropping and Seba was running off him, and that’s what we want to have, that kind of mobility and the interchanging of positions based on where the ball is, where your defenders are, is really what we try to do all the time.”

PSP’s Dan Walsh talks to Red Bulls podcast Seeing Red about Saturday’s game.

KYW’s Matt Leon talks to Jonathan Tannenwald about the same.

Big Apple Soccer reports that it is unlikely that Bradley Wright-Phillips or David Carney will feature for the Red Bulls in Saturday’s match against Philadelphia.

The information comes from a post on a different subject, but the Union are fifth in the league in long passes attempted in the attacking half of the field with an average of 27 per game or 13.9 percent of total passes. Above them are Kansas City, San Jose, DC, and LA.

Using a post from Sounder at Heart as a starting point, Brotherly Game explains that the key to the Union’s success in the standings has been their road form.

Kerith Gabriel continues his series of Q&A’s with the Union Academy coaching staff, this time with U-16 coach Jeff Cook, who joined the team after being head coach at Dartmouth. Cook says,

I think that the last thing that will set us apart is the approach to creating the complete player as we do want to produce top notch, world class, professional players—that is our goal. It is not going to be easy, it is going to take some time, but as we do it we are also concerned on developing good people. That is what struck me even being around the first team and even being around the staff, both at the Union and here at YSC, is the emphasis on character and club culture. I was so impressed with that when you go to first team training and you see the professionalism that is throughout the place. It’s an idea we are trying to instill that in the academy players right now…

I really believe our ownership has the right idea when we talk about a culture of excellence. There are no shortcuts. In other words, if we have a talented player we want them to have excellence in all areas of their lives. So we are not going to accept someone who is rude, immature, and doesn’t reflect the club in the most positive light. We are not going to accept someone who doesn’t do their work academically because we all know that you are one injury away from not having a professional career. It is such a small margin so we want to produce guys that have intelligence, professionalism, and represent our club with a lot of pride and we hope that when our guys get to the first team level someday that the manager can know that he can rely on a player that was honed through our academy.

Cook notes that since the new academy program was started in July, the accompanying scholastic program has grown to 30 students.

Local

In USL PRO play, Richmond Kickers claimed the season title and secured home advantage in the playoffs by defeating second place Orlando 2-0 on Wednesday night. Harrisburg City Islanders will look to secure third place when they travel to play Dayton Dutch Lions in their final regular season game on Saturday (7:30 pm, USL Live).

A preseason poll of the 13 head coaches of the Atlantic 10 women’s teams has La Salle finishing second in the conference.

Another preseason poll has the Penn State women’s team winning its 16th consecutive Big Ten championship.

MLS

The LA Galaxy say they’ll reveal their third DP today. The smart money is on Omar Gonzalez.

The Galaxy also say Robbie Rogers, who was left off of last Sunday’s gameday roster, needs to improve. Associate head coach Dave Sarachan said, “Robbie is moving, maybe not quite to the speed we and he would feel comfortable with…Robbie, he knows that everything needs to improve a little bit—speed, speed of play, the ability to get at players, getting crosses in—and it’s a work in progress. We’re confident Robbie will get there.”

The international transfer window isn’t so closed after all. “The” TFC are on the verge of signing Argentinian forward Maximiliano Urruti and Chicago have signed Uruguayan midfielder Arévalo Ríos on loan from Italian side Palermo. Ríos will occupy the DP spot formerly filled by Sherjill MacDonald, who “has departed the club by mutual consent,” and could play as soon as this weekend.

After receiving five red cards over the last five games, Chivas USA have announced they will be taking so far undisclosed disciplinary action “against players who receive any punishment during games.”

Cynthia Craig, former human resources and administrative manager at Chivas USA, has filed a suit against the club alleging harassment and “accusing team officials of flouting employment laws, temporarily hiring undocumented coaches and discriminating against non-Latino employees.”

NWSL

ESPNW looks at the success of FC Kansas City.

Elsewhere

Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore explains his views on Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup in summer. “At the end of the day, FIFA made a decision which is for none of us to comment on. They decided the World Cup will be in the summer in Qatar. Our view is, if that is deemed not possible by FIFA, they need to move the location. We can’t just, on a whim, decide to move to the winter. It’s extremely difficult—nigh-on impossible in our view.”

FIFA has asked Russia to explain its new anti-gay law.

Switzerland beat Brazil 1-0 on a Dani Alves own-goal. Hilarious.