HARRISON, N.J. – If the US national team want to keep things moving in a positive direction in their World Cup qualifying campaign, picking up three points is an absolute must on Friday.
Costa Rica’s organized style of play will likely not make that easy, however.
The US will lock horns with familiar foes Costa Rica on Friday night at Red Bull Arena (6:30 pm ET | ESPN, Univision, UDN), and are entering the World Cup qualifier with an aggressive mindset. The Americans are planning to take the game to Los Ticos, but know that breaking the Central American nation down will not be easy given their propensity to throw numbers behind the ball.
As such, the US understand that a key to the match will be finding a healthy balance between waiting for an opening in the defense and creating one themselves.
“The ability to control the game with the ball, to drive them back, to be patient, to not let them off the hook so easily by giving balls away early on in possessions, that part is important,” said captain Michael Bradley. “But in other moments when we win balls, as they’ve unbalanced themselves, if we can find the right ways to play forward and play forward quickly and go and use our athleticism and mobility and speed, that becomes important as well.
“As in any game, it’s about finding a good balance.”
While the Americans are on a good run of form that has seen them go undefeated in 2017, they have had their difficulties at times this year in creating clear scoring opportunities. Playing a team that is as talented, defensively disciplined, and dangerous on the counter will not make things any easier.
Nonetheless, the US are confident that they have what it takes to grab the first goal that will force Costa Rica to open up.
“Our mentality is to win,” said right back Graham Zusi. “I think we’ll have to be patient at times with their block of seven that they put behind the ball, but not so patient where we’re not kind of getting after it. It’ll pose difficulty, but I think we’re up for it.”
The match-up may be challenging and the approach for it tricky, but the US need to come out on top in order to avoid potentially falling down the Hexagonal standings. The Americans currently sit in third place in the table, one spot below Costa Rica, and only a win will guarantee that the Americans don’t slip into a more precarious position.
“As we know this is a very important game for the US team if we have any hopes of qualifying for Russia in 2018,” said head coach Bruce Arena. “Costa Rica has been one of the strong teams in the competition to date. They have an outstanding team, beat the US team convincingly last November, and this will certainly be a very difficult game for us.”
