US U20s O for Peru Tourney

Remember all those good feelings as the US U20 team won the Milk Cup earlier this summer? Yeah, well forget about it.

Rongen took a team with many, but not all of the same players to Peru to get some more international experience. The result?

USA 0 Paraguay 5
USA 0 Colombia 2
USA ? Peru ?

Well, at this point, if I were a mathematician, I'd say, USA 0 Peru 1. So what exactly happened?

Against Paraguay, we must have had someone put liquid heat in our jocks ala Revenge of the Nerds because despite going head to head in the stats department, we gave up 2 by halftime, another just a minute into the 2nd half and we were down 5-0 before the final whistle including the final 2 goals in the final 9 minutes of play. So how bad did it look? (Young children, cover your eyes, ladies turn away)


In the Colombia game, we were simply outgunned. A former coach of mine told me "If you don't shoot, you won't score." That was the case in the Colombia game as we were outshot 3 to 16. Granted, now that appears to be pretty good that we only gave up 2 on 16 shots, but damn...

Since I've kept you in suspense so long, the Peru matchup resulted in, wait for it, another loss for the US. 2-1 with our lone goal by Victor Garza (Tigres).

At least it isn't a totally lost affair. We do get a token match Sunday, but it's only for the official last play team seed.

Looks like we're back to the drawing board of trying to figure out SA teams.