Why is the midfield giveaway that led to the goal a bad play but none of the other giveaways are? You obviously know more about soccer and what they're trying to do, but Bradley lost the ball 4-5 times in the 2nd half in the same way as that last one, no? And that's not counting any bad passes.Fat Strat wrote:I would have to watch the second match again, but I didn't see the "Bradley was terrible" narrative.
Bradley was terrible if you look at two things:
1) The cross (by Johnson, I think) that Bradley shot right into the legs of the defender. Had the goalie beat, just had to put it on goal. Bradley struck it well with pace (soccer lingo!) but he should have put it into the corner.
* Bad play? I suppose. More unlucky than bad. Bradley scores on that same ball 99 times out of 100. The last thing you want to do in that situation is try to get fancy and end up missing.
2) The midfield giveaway that led to the equalizer. (No analysis needed.)
Obviously, those two plays made the difference in the game's outcome. The rest of the game, Bradley did an excellent job of setting up the attack and controlling the center of the midfield. He was much better than the first match. He had multiple quality passes that could have easily ended in goals. I thought overall he had a very good game with two costly and unusual mistakes.
I guess you could equate his performance to a guy who went 2-3 in a baseball game, but his one out was a K with runners in scoring position, and he had a costly error in the field that led to a run.
The missed opportunity wasn't really horrible. The placement could have been better but he at least got a good foot on a bouncing ball and put it on goal. More unlucky than bad.
I'm with go birds....just distraught. Their probability of advancing to the next round went from like 99.99% to maybe at best 60%, probably more like 50% in less than a minute of play. That's got to be some kind of record in soccer.
Are there win expectancy charts for these games like bbref has for baseball games?
