For U.S., qualifying just the start

By Ridge Mahoney, Special to SI.com, Soccer America

Jozy Altidore has made his case to be the regular starter at striker, but Charlie Davies' accident left him without a natural partner. Jonathan Ferrey/Getty Images

At a press conference prior to the Hexagonal finale against Costa Rica in Washington, U.S. Soccer press officer Michael Kammarman pointed out that in 2009, the U.S. would play its 21st competitive match, the most ever in a calendar year.

To get through such a daunting schedule of competitive games, coach Bob Bradley used a lot of players, a few of which clearly improved their World Cup prospects from where they stood last January.

Stuart Holden, Benny Feilhaber and Jay DeMerit are a few who moved up from possibles to probables for the 2010 World Cup. More changes are likely. Injuries, peaks and dips in form, club situations and other factors can alter a national-team squad between October and early June, when the final roster of 23 must be submitted to FIFA.

Only in the Hexagonal -- the six-team, 10-game final round of qualifying -- did the Americans play road games in hostile conditions, where nerves and heart and skill can be severely tested, and very different squads were selected for the CONCACAF Gold Cup and Confederations Cup, which are short bursts of intensity that follow somewhat the World Cup format and cycle.

Projecting how the U.S. will do in the World Cup based on its Hexagonal finish isn't feasible. There's no real correlation between the two; the U.S. has finished atop the Hexagonal and sputtered in the World Cup, and it has finished mid-pack regionally and gone on to great things globally.

The exhausting grind of 10 Hexagonal matches provide a baseline of the team's current state and a starting point for comparisons to past teams. Assessing strong and weak points at this point provides insight into where changes and improvement may be needed.

Top guns

Their solid performances individually and in tandem this year had virtually secured starting spots up top for Charlie Davies and Jozy Altidore, in spite of their youth. Davies is 23; Altidore just turned 20.

But Davies was seriously injured in a car accident on the eve of the U.S.' final match against Costa Rica. If he recovers to resume his promising career, it will be after next summer's World Cup. That there is not another forward blessed with Davies' strength, pace, tenacity and nose for goal presents a great challenge for Bradley.

Altidore's youth is a concern. A 20-year-old with limited pro experience is very vulnerable to the harsh treatment and excruciating pressure endured by goal scorers in the cauldron of a World Cup. He will need a partner of poise and savvy as well as pace and range, qualities that rugged yet limited Brian Ching and Conor Casey don't have in abundance. Neither does Kenny Cooper, and so Bradley may have to take another tack, perhaps experiment with Clint Dempsey -- whose stints up top have been productive, though he's been starting most games as a wide midfielder -- to use his guile and finishing ability as complements to Altidore's power and speed.

In the Hexagonal finale against Costa Rica, Bradley paired Altidore with Casey. Though neither scored, both earned and set up good scoring chances. Altidore floated outside at times, as he did in his final season with the MetroStars when he played some games wide, and thus stretched the back line to create space that Casey and Donovan exploited.

Casey nodded in a header and tucked away a Donovan through ball in the historic 3-2 road win at Honduras that secured qualification and broke his scoring duck as a national-teamer after 14 scoreless games.

But Casey scuffed a few good chances against Costa Rica, including a wide-open chance from close range set up by Altidore that he hooked well wide of the top corner. Casey's been banging in goals regularly for the past season-and-a-half in MLS, and could be hard to leave off the World Cup roster, though his touch and pace aren't truly up to international standards. He may be best utilized as an alternative to Altidore rather than a partner.

And if consistent scoring MLS gets you noticed, where does that leave the league's leading goal-scorer, Jeff Cunningham, who last played for the U.S. in '05? Though Dempsey can be mis-positioned in midfield and isn't the physical match of Donovan, Casey and Altidore, he's a finisher and clever passer with World Cup -- not to mention English Premier League -- experience.

No doubt Bradley will tinker with formations and systems and combinations of attackers, but as the team stands, with Davies out, sending out the U.S. in a 4-4-2 formation against a good team would practically require Dempsey to play one of the forward slots, assuming a wide spot in midfield can be filled by Holden or somebody else. Another option is Donovan.

Center mix

Central midfield is also short on experience. Unless Pablo Mastroeni resurrects his international career, the U.S. will head to South Africa without one center mid steeped in a World Cup.

Friendlies and the Confederations Cup have steeled Michael Bradley and Ricardo Clark to some extent, but a long-term injury and stiff competition for playing time have stalled the progress of the more physically gifted Maurice Edu of Glasgow Rangers.

Feilhaber and José Francisco Torres have flashed some promise in their limited appearances; with the World Cup eight months away, both would be gambles as 2010 World Cup starters but excellent prospects for 2014.

Feilhaber started and struggled against Costa Rica, and also worked hard but lost his bearings earlier in the Hexagonal against El Salvador. Steady playing time in Denmark for Aarhus will move him along, and his busyness and energy as well as vision and good feet are obvious attributes.

Torres is even better on the ball, a very calm, composed customer under pressure, and though there are concerns about the physical side of his game, he's got a lot of it. Against Costa Rica, he seemed better attuned to the differences of playing in the middle for the national team, and out wider for Pachuca in a three-man midfield it often uses.

Much of the U.S. success at the '02 World Cup stemmed from an ideal meshing of personalities and abilities in central midfielders John O'Brien and Claudio Reyna. The team's troubles in '98 can be attributed in large part to a shakeup by which coach Steve Sampson jettisoned captain John Harkes, and redeployed his formation into a 3-6-1 with Brian Maisonneuve and Chad Deering playing centrally.

Germany overran the U.S. in the first game. Sampson dropped the 3-6-1 and made five changes for the second game against Iran, but again the U.S. floundered in midfield and it never regained the cohesion and chemistry that had steered it through qualifying.