Chris Wondolowski, Aron Johannsson have big shoes to fill vs. Portugal
SAO PAULO -- Jozy Altidore has a funny way of dominating the discourse surrounding the United States men’s national team. The striker does when he’s playing and when he’s not playing; when he’s scoring and when he’s not scoring. Somehow, he always seems to be the story. Which is ironic, since he tends to be rather media shy.
Altidore is injured now. He strained his left hamstring early in the USA’s 2-1 win over Ghana in their World Cup opener on Monday and had to be stretchered off. Nobody will say how serious the injury is, exactly, only that the team is hopeful he’ll be back “during this tournament” – suggesting his recovery could be fairly lengthy. That means Sunday’s showdown with Portugal in the Amazon city of Manaus, a pivotal game for both teams – for the USA to potentially secure a spot in the Round of 16 and for Portugal to stay alive – will be devoid of Altidore.
This is a complicating factor for the US, as Altidore can’t be relied on to score. He labors through lengthy droughts – he scored twice in a friendly against Nigeria on June 7 after going a good seven months without getting a goal for his country. Or he goes on scoring benders, like last summer when he bagged seven goals in five games.
But his hold-up play, the particular work he does as a target man – leveraging his considerable size and brawn to knock down balls and get teammates involved – is irreplaceable insofar as there’s no other American on the roster capable of it. Eddie Johnson might have, but he didn’t make the 30-man roster. Or Terrence Boyd could have done it, but he was chopped from the final 23-man roster.
As such, Altidore’s absence represents a quagmire that could play as big of a part in the outcome of the bout with Portugal as the heat and humidity of Manaus, and whether or not injury-riddled Portugal star Cristiano Ronaldo is in any sort of shape to play a decent game of soccer.
Assuming that Klinsmann sticks with two strikers in his formation – and it seems almost inconceivable that he’d post the roaming Clint Dempsey up front by himself, leaving nobody to anchor the front line – he’ll have to find a replacement in either Chris Wondolowski or Aron Johannsson. (By sending both out to face the press on Friday, Klinsmann didn’t tip his hand as to which man he’ll go with.) To state the very obvious, neither of them is Jozy Altidore.
Wondolowski is a goal-scoring phenomenon from Major League Soccer who has no obvious physical attributes other than a penchant for exerting endless effort and being in the right places at the right times. Johannsson, who replaced Altidore on Monday with only modest success, mostly makes runs at goal from out wide, relying on speed and guile. Those are useful strengths, but they just don’t bring the things to the table Altidore does.
So how does either one replace the man they aren’t? “Jozy is a special player,” said Wondolowski on Friday. “You can’t. That’s like saying, ‘Hey, go be Cristiano Ronaldo’. You can’t necessarily replace certain aspects of it but I think that both Aron and I bring different styles, different sets of skills that I think are useful. That’s what we have to do: incorporate those skills sets and also be able to fit into the game plan as well.”
“We’re going to have to do certain things that Jozy didn’t and did do,” Wondolowski continued. “And we’re also going to have to be able to incorporate our style as well, so it’s just kind of managing those two things.”
Johannsson largely echoed those sentiments. “Both of us have different styles than Jozy,” he said. “If either one of us gets on the field then we just try to play our game and try to do what the coach wants us to do. If that’s to play like Jozy, then we’ll try to do that and if he wants us to play like we normally play, then we’ll try to do that.”
Trying to play like someone else can prove counterproductive, though. That probably means that no matter which man Klinsmann goes with, he will be forced to alter an aspect of his tactics he has never really deviated from in all his time in charge. Whatever formation he has deployed – 4-3-3, 4-5-1, 4-4-2, whatever – and no matter which players drifted in and out of the national picture, there was invariably a target man at the top.
So while Altidore may not be the best player on the team, he is one of its most inimitable and indispensable. And until he comes back from his injury, the many puzzles Klinsmann has to solve in navigating his Yanks through this testing World Cup are missing a major piece.
