Lynden Gooch, and the predictability of American soccer
Lynden Gooch presents a familiar vision of American soccer
Sunderland’s Lynden Gooch started his second ever Premier League game against Middlesbrough on Sunday, and he was … okay. The American neither impressed nor really struggled, which, it is worth emphasizing, is an achievement in itself for a 20-year-old making only his second top flight appearance.
Gooch started the game on the left side of the midfield in a 4-4-2-looking thing and spent most of his time harrying and hassling and generally making a nuisance of himself. He has this choppy, scuttling way of moving with the ball at his feet, which stood out in particular because of the man on the other side of Sunderland’s 4-4-2-looking thing, Adnan Januzaj. Gooch did a lot of good things — he worked hard, he tracked back, he did not make any errors. He tried hard, basically. But he did not make any of it look easy.
In comparison, Januzaj — who at the tender age of 21 still ranges anywhere from massive disappointment to future global star, depending on who you ask — may as well have been enjoying a day at the beach as he glided past Middlesbrough’s George Friend early in the first half. This is neither to criticize Gooch, nor to suggest Januzaj, who wasn’t really any more effective, should be some kind of benchmark for his American teammate.
But it is to point out how familiar a sight it is to see a young, male, American Jay Spearing-type chopping and scuttling his way around a soccer field. If you are wondering who Jay Spearing is, that is exactly the point.
Gooch looked more comfortable after half time, when he shifted to a more defensive role in a midfield three. But while he made one nice run after winning a tackle early on in the second half, he seems to lack the natural acceleration that will allow him to burst past players, either in central midfield or on the wing.
And he did not display the intelligence of pass or movement that will allow him to compensate for that lack of speed, though admittedly the Sunderland midfield is probably not the best place to hone one’s tempo-setting abilities. Gooch’s tenacity and discipline should be enough to ensure he gets a steady diet of these sorts of games over his career, but it is hard to see him rising much higher than a bottom half club.
Even so, Gooch’s job right now is to work hard and to earn a consistent role in this team. In that much, he did well. There were periods of this game where he was genuinely the only thing resembling a driving force Sunderland had. That focus and intensity will serve him well under David Moyes, who appreciates that sort of thing. So things are looking good for Gooch.
And yet I couldn’t help thinking how very American it was too see him play as both a winger and a defensive midfielder in the same game.
The question is why it felt so predictable that, of the two young midfielders on show, the modestly-talented, hardworking one was the American and the dancing, darting, dangerous one was not. There are a lot of long, complicated answers to that question, answers that have to do with this country’s creaking talent development system and the old American preoccupation with blood and thunder. Many of these answers are very good, and the further questions they raise are likewise very important.
I would like to offer a less comprehensive response, though one I still consider to be significant: Americans don’t like soccer enough. I don’t mean not enough American like soccer. They do. And I don’t mean the ones who do like it should like it more. They shouldn’t.
I mean that too many American players are led to believe the sport is simply a game to be won or lost, another arena in which to compete, another level at which to dominate. But soccer must be a pleasure before it can be a sport. Players must delight in the game before they can master it, or win it.
Perhaps these conclusions are too grand for a late August match between Sunderland and Middlesbrough. Still, I can’t help but feel some important part of the difference between Gooch and Januzaj, or some alternate future versions of Gooch and Januzaj, is the difference between the belief we kick a ball around to win or lose and the belief we do it to find out what is possible while kicking a ball.
Lee Dixon is the announcer the world needs
Leicester vs. Arsenal was supposed to be the marquee game of the weekend; a shot at redemption for two teams that got off to sluggish and/or harrowing starts to the new Premier League season last week.
(Side note: it will be interesting to see how long Leicester fixtures are treated this way. A year ago, Leicester vs. Arsenal was not a marquee fixture. It was an away game Arsenal were expected to win. If the Foxes return to the mid-table as many expect them to, then how much longer is everyone going to insist they are worth watching? Too long, I’m guessing.)
Anyway, the big game turned out, in that way these things almost always do, to be just simply boring. Which is perhaps a good thing, because it gave us the opportunity to enjoy, after an all-too-long summer break, the dulcet tones of Lee Dixon, who is a commentator so good he is capable of making me not only not miss, but sometimes even also forget completely the double-headed announcing Jesus that is the Jeff van Gundy – Mark Jackson tandem, whose possibly passive-aggressive banter I could listen to for literally ever without getting bored.
This is the era of the educated fan, when we all of us demand a certain level of sporting insight from our announcers and pundits and mailmen and doctors. This is, I suppose, a not entirely unwelcome development. But it has also led to the rise of a special kind of miserable bastard, who seems to derive pleasure from watching sports only insofar as they offer him a platform to insist everybody else is an idiot. This type of fan has always existed, of course, except now he is armed with information (on analytics and tactics and what his favorite player ate for breakfast and the 17-year-old Romanian left back his team is about to sign), and as far as I can tell it has made him a thousand times worse.
There may be no real, lasting solution to this kind of fan, but Lee Dixon’s approach to commentary — which I imagine is not dissimilar to his approach to sleeping on the couch — may offer the most promising way forward. I have long been a Dixon advocate, but I think this game was perhaps his finest piece of announcery to date. So much so that I have compiled a brief power ranking of the many, exquisite Dixonisms that peppered this match:
3.
In second half stoppage time, the best opportunity of the match fell to Leicester substitute Ahmed Musa, who, when the ball dropped to him eight yards out from goal, opted neither to shoot nor pass, but instead to roll the ball tamely behind two of his teammates. Said Dixon: “Well, what’s he doing? Just shoot.” Sometimes it really is that simple.
2.
Lead commentator John Champion, in one of the game’s many lulls, told us a long story about referee Mark Clattenberg, who spent his offseason getting a pair of tattoos to commemorate the fact he took charge of the finals of both the Champions League and the European Championship this summer. After a brief pause for thought, Dixon said, “I’m just deciding whether to comment on that or not. I don’t know whether to be judgmental or just leave it. I think I’m just going to leave it, John, I think.”
In one fell swoop, he managed both to tell us exactly how he feels about Mark Clattenberg’s tattoos (not good) without ever once using his name and he took another bold leap into the hitherto under explored genre of meta-commentary. He is the to the mid-90s-full-back-turned-commentator what Charlie Parker once was to the swing musicians of the 1930s. The future is now.
1.
At some point in the second half, long after I had stopped caring, Santi Cazorla was substituted for Mesut Ozil, which led Champion to start talking about the Spaniard’s name. Apparently, he told us, “the Premier League now have a system where every player looks at a camera at the start of the season and says their name as they would like it to be pronounced. And apparently he [Cazorla] comes from a part of Spain where the ‘Z’ very definitely is pronounced as a ‘TH’; Santi Cathorla, it is.”
Another Dixon beat. Then, in the driest voice this side of the equator: “I come from an area of Manchester that pronounces it as a ‘Z.’”
This is Lee Dixon’s league; we are all just watching it.
Weekly Awards
The Lee Dixon Award for Excellence in Commentary (non-Lee Dixon category): Jim Proudfoot and Matt Holland
Burnley’s stadium is located right next to Burnley’s cricket ground, which for some reason the cameraman at Burnley vs. Liverpool kept insisting on showing us. While I still firmly believe that not showing the pitch at any point during a game of soccer should be a criminal offense, it did give the announcers a good opportunity to crack wise. As the camera panned away from the cricket batsmen, Matt Holland said quietly, “Mind my car.” Jim Proudfoot’s response? “Is yours the one that’s got a big hole in the windscreen, by the way?” Lee Dixon wasn’t built in a day, people.
The Henrik Larsson Award for Misleading Debut Touches: Paul Pogba
I suppose this wasn’t technically Paul Pogba’s first touch for United, but anyway. With his first touch (or his second first touch or whatever we’re calling it), Pogba played an excellent pass to Southampton’s Pierre-Emile Hojberg, who passed to also-Southampton’s Dusan Tadic, who went on to win a free kick at the top of United’s penalty box. Peter Drury of course speculated that maybe the nerves were getting to the young Frenchman, who proceeded to dominate for much of the rest of the game. I can’t help but feel United don’t deserve Pogba after the way they so totally failed to identify his immense talent the first time around, but he is going to be one hell of a player for them.
The Tim Duncan Award for Patience with Pun: Rob Holding
Rob Holding is a defender who plays for Arsenal. Holding is a word that means, per the Merriam-Webster, “the illegal act of using your hands or arms to slow or stop the movement of an opponent.” Needless to say, the latter was used a lot in reference to the former this weekend. Robbie Earle made a joke in the NBC studio, John Champion made a joke in commentary and everybody else with a mouth and a microphone is probably going to make a joke about it some time in the next nine months as well. It’s going to be a long season, Rob. At least your name’s not Lynden Gooch.
The Fabien Barthez Award for Ambitious Goalkeeping: Petr Cech
The highlight of Leicester vs. Arsenal on the pitch was probably watching Petr Cech’s perfectly executed drag back against Jamie Vardy. That was the second time in as many seasons the Arsenal keeper has humiliated Vardy with the ball at his feet. Maybe Arsene Wenger should try Cech up front. He would be like a new signing.
The Jonathan Woodgate Award for Terrible Debut: London Stadium
Last season, West Ham fans bid a tearful farewell to Upton Park, which had been their home for over 100 years. Against Bournemouth on Sunday, they played their first game in their new home, dubbed the London Stadium, which you may have recognized from the London Olympics four years ago, and may have heard about since because of the £700 million of taxpayer money they used to build it. The atmosphere didn’t sound great, or even good, but then the game wasn’t great either. The only way is up, probably.