But really ask yourself, where is the talent on this team?
Bradley? Jozy? Agudelo? Ream/Goodson? Wondolowski? Bedoya? They are good players by American standards but most if not all have not proven themselves at the international level or even the club level.
We don't have a Chicharito. We don't have a Marquez. Those guys have played and proven themselves at the highest level. The closest we have is Howard, Dempsey and Donovan. The rest of the cast is subpar and can be exposed by some savvy teams/players. We completely lack the ability to think for ourselves and it shows with losses like Panama.
Spot on! Fundamental changes are needed to the pipeline that develops young players.
This is where players like Kyle Beckerman, who really isn't international caliber, can play very high level soccer when he plays for a coach that emphasizes thought and structures the team around principles rather than systems. It's why it hurts so much to see a player like Sean Franklin who used to be creative and expansive in his game as a young player, reduced to running box to box and learning how to deliver crosses to players that can't finish. He functions more like a machine.
Dempsey has become quite creative and expressive at Fulham and is considered to be their most technical player. Holden and Francisco Torres have some of those capabilities, but there are very few US players in the pipeline who have developed thought and creativity to the international level. We have systematically coached it out of them. Michael Bradley is allowed to do what he wants, but I'm not particularly impressed with his ideas.