Belgium 4, USA 2: More Growing Pains

Maybe United States fans are becoming rather accustomed to the roller coaster of performances and related emotions during Jürgen Klinmann's time in charge. Previous wins in Italy and Mexico during Klinsmann's tenure, along with a recent four point haul from games against Costa Rica and at Mexico, have given Americans every reason to think that the national team was progressing quite nicely. In stark contrast, more abject performances on the road in World Cup qualifying against Jamaica, Honduras and even Antigua and Barbuda have accordingly led to more question than sufficient answers about the direction of the team in advance of next year's World Cup.

Given the undeniable fact that Belgium is in the midst of a golden generation of players that the country has honestly never seen before and that could very possibly see Belgium as a fashionable pick for glory next year, there would have been no shame at all in losing to a Belgian side that was as near to full strength as one could want. What is most troubling, however, is that yet another uninspiring performance all but rolled out the red carpet for what would be a rather elementary Belgium win.



While one could analyze many aspects of the game that went horribly wrong for the US, the most glaring concern, and perhaps understandably after leaking four goals, has to be the absolutely lackluster outings from both Geoff Cameron and Omar Gonzalez. While Cameron did redeem himself to some extent with his goal, his bit of ball-watching on Kevin Mirallas' goal was nothing short of inexcusable. With regards to Gonzalez, we've seen both the very good and the very bad from him in this calendar year in a US shirt, with his efforts against Belgium, replete with a woeful giveaway that led to yet another goal, regressing to what we saw in Honduras as opposed to how resolute he was against both Costa Rica and Mexico.

Considering that Cameron and Gonzalez are set to be fixtures in the American back line for years to come, the tandem will have to offer far more in the way of stability if this generation of US players is to enjoy anywhere near the success that their more recent predecessors have. Thankfully their aforementioned defensive sins happened in a friendly as opposed to in qualifying or in a tournament.

US fans must also find themselves somewhat bemused by what we saw out of Jozy Altidore in his somewhat anonymous 45 minutes minutes on Wednesday. After looking at least somewhat lively in the first five minutes of the game, he would go on to fade out of the game before seeing his involvement end at the interval. In all fairness, his dearth of chances and productivity can be largely attributed to a lack of service for large parts of the first half, but regardless of this, the US scoring drought for the Eredivisie's fourth leading scorer this season, which dates back to 2011, continues on.

With very few positives to be visually taken in from this anemic showing from the US, one can only hope that the unseen, intangible positives will be more mental and educational in nature and resultantly reaping benefits in the near future. With the upcoming friendly against Germany and World Cup qualifiers against Jamaica, Panama and Honduras in store, Klinsmann's team have very little time indeed to show that yet another lesson has been learned to great effect.