Rinsing the bad taste; U.S. needs better night against Canada

A few readers beat me about the head a little, through comment or email, for being a little too hard on the U.S. team after Saturday’s Foxboro folly, the 4-0 loss to Spain. The prevailing sentiment went like this: It’s Spain! They’re good. Plus, it was only a friendly.

Generally speaking, I’m the one warning against reading too much into friendlies. Motivation frequently goes on holiday for both sides, so most efforts at assessment are flawed from the start. I get it.

And, yes, Spain is a special team. It’s not like they lost to Burundi. I get that, too.

It wasn’t that Bob Bradley’s men lost – it’s that they got clobbered. If they had lost by a two or three goals but not looked so prosaic in the effort, I could have checked some of the censure. But you saw the game, right?

To play at home and never really even threaten to score a goal just isn’t good enough. The defense was pooh, and the midfield was worse (at least until Michael Bradley and Clint Dempsey came in). Oguchi Onyewu just wasn’t good enough. The central mid pairing of Maurice Edu and Jermaine Jones wasn’t good enough. Robbie Rogers barely needed to be on the field. And where was the tactical adjustment to get out closer to Xabi Alonso, whose unchallenged balls from deep spots were nothing short of devastating.  I could go on.

At some point, you just want to see a problem or two solved out there. You want to see a little more initiative. You want to see a little more pride in the effort, a little less outright capitulation.

And let's not kid ourselves: Spain could have mashed the gas and scored more.

As I keep saying, if the United States holds serve against Canada tonight, if there’s a positive response to Saturday’s beat down, then we can write off events at Gillette Stadium as a bad day at the office, a lesson learned, and we can just move on.

Get yourself prepped and ready by checking out this week's SI.com soccer podcast here.

You can check out myself Grant Wahl, Avi Creditor and Jen Chang for SI’s Instant Analysis tonight, starting about 7:45 ET. An hour or so after the final whistle, my expanded player ratings will be up at SI.com. And I promise to play nice – so long as those players I’m rating do their part.