Folarin Balogun had an earlier goal overruled for the U.S. men’s national team, but eventually … [+] scored in the Americans’ 2-0 victory over Bolivia in their Group C opener Sunday at the CONMEBOL Copa America.
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The United States men’s national team gave a perfectly acceptable tournament- opening performance in Sunday’s 2-0 win over Bolivia to start their Copa America campaign.
Christian Pulisic opened the scoring very early with a brilliant long-range strike, Falorin Balogun finished off a classy second just before halftime, and although the USMNT couldn’t add on after the break, they allowed Bolivia almost literally nothing in the attacking half.
It was the kind of professional display you’d expect from the best team on a continent against an opponent more than 70 places beneath them in the world rankings. And it’s the kind we’ve seen countless times over the years from the better teams in major tournaments, who outclass inferior foes in the group phase without reaching top gear.
But what transpired afterwards among the American game’s most-visible TV and Internet analysts was a significant exaggeration — or at least mischaracterization — of the Americans’ showing. And perhaps it helps explain the climate that has created so many American fans out who are still distrustful of U.S. Soccer and manager Gregg Berhalter to a level well beyond the credible criticisms that this space and others have published regularly.
FOX color analyst Stu Holden suggested that a more normal outcome given the chances created would’ve been a victory by at least a couple more goals. Over on ESPN’s Futbol Americas, Herculez Gomez — who has never been shy about criticizing Berhalter’s group — said the final total could’ve been “six or seven” with a more normal level of finishing. And on X (formerly Twitter), MLS soccer.com columnist Matt Doyle published a similar post suggesting that the chances created were not reflective of a somewhat close score.
There many other similar assertions eachoing around American soccer, declaring in one way or another that the score should’ve — and normally would’ve — been more lopsided. And by any statistical measure, that’s not true.
The Americans were always in control. But it wasn’t an overwhelming attacking performance.
According to FotMob.com, the United States generated 2.51 expected goals, meaning on a given night that’s the average number of goals they’d be expected to score given the quality of chances created. According to another model from FootyStats.com, the xG total was in the same neighborhood at 2.0.
No xG model is perfect, since there are discrepancies in what scoring probability each individual shot is given and since dangerous sequences that don’t result in shots are not included in the measurement. And it’s considered a more effecitve metric when used over a longer stretch of games than even the full duration of a tournament can provide.
But in a general sense, those numbers suggests the final score was actually in the neighborhood of what should be expected given the kind of shots the Americans took.
(If anything, that expectation was inflated based on the two late chances Ricardo Pepi missed in quick succession. According to FotMob, the combined xG value of those two shots was 1.35. But the second chance never even happens if the first one isn’t saved.)
Americans viewers are watching more soccer than ever, from more sophisticated and more diverse outlets than ever. And if they watch their national team and hear postgame analysis that doesn’t reflect the game they saw, and that practice is repeated over and over, it’s exactly the kind of climate that fuels the polarity and irrationality we see surrounding the program.
And it’s a vicious cycle. The distrust by many American fans of their national program probably leads analysts to believe those fans can’t process more nuanced analysis. It’s potentially even the reason why so many folks felt compelled to say Sunday’s game should’ve been 6-0 or 7-0. How else do you convey to irrational fans that a 2-0 game was never closely contested in a meaningful way?
The confounding thing is, so many dominant teams win plenty of games over inferior opponents in this fashion. A look at the results of 2022 World Cup champion Argentina or four-time Premier League champions Manchester City will show plenty of two-goal victories over considerably less talented opponents that never felt particularly close. And those broadcasts rarely featured talking heads trying to tell us how many more goals should’ve been scored.
In fairness to Sunday night’s pundits, there was also one other feature of the Americans’ win that made chance evaluation a little more difficult. Both Pulisic’s opener and Balogun’s second came on chances with a relatively low conversion value, meaning the Americans led by two goals at the half on roughly 0.5 of xG created. In other words, the majority of the higher quality chances were made after the Americans were comfortably in control, which might have made the game feel like it should’ve been spiraling, even when numbers suggested otherwise.
Source link : https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianquillen/2024/06/24/the-usmnt-looked-good-against-bolivia-but-stop-exaggerating-it/
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Publish date : 2024-06-24 05:00:00
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