1. Heath Pearce’s performance against El Salvador won’t be enough to surpass Jonathan Bornstein. Bornstein will get the start, and despite looking lost out there for 65 minutes before getting replaced, he will still be widely regarded as our first-choice left back.
2. Robbie Findley will finally get a chance to impress with something resembling our first team (let’s face it–our troops are depleted). Unfortunately, he won’t see much of the ball and will walk away from this game about where he was going in.
3. Someone in the American soccer media will regard Thomas Rongen as a key component to breaking down the Dutch in the lead-up to the game. They will be wrong.
4. We get to see Maurice Edu as a starter. Despite the team’s struggles, he will do well enough to become the first-choice pairing with Michael Bradley.
5. Holland wins this one easily, 2-0. It could be much worse. The Dutch will shove it down our left flank and we’ll have an extremely difficult time stringing passes together. We’ll have several good opportunities to score, but the finishing won’t be there. The good: Maurice Edu, despite not having much time on the ball; Altidore will play hard, but can’t find the finish; Torres will look good in his 25 minutes on the field; and DeMerit will be a huge reason the Dutch don’t score more goals. The bad: Bornstein gets torched and is completely ineffective offensively; Donovan has an off game and doesn’t make much of an impact; Holden will struggle a little bit; and Bocanegra won’t be at his best.
Wow. I’m getting more and more adventurous with #5. Believe me when I say this: I would love nothing more than to score this one an F-. Come on USA!
I disagree with you on the prediction. I see this game as being the inverse of the El Salvador game. I think we get pretty much dominated, but Tim saves us for the first 70 minutes. Then, somehow we get a goal on one of our only chances to sneak to a 1-0 lead before the Dutch finishing wakes up and finishes us off 2-1.
Honestly, if that happened, I’d be pretty satisfied. I don’t expect to win, but I’d feel pretty good if we could look better for extended stretches. Let’s face it–the result just doesn’t matter that much.