things kevin hates

Now, let’s get one thing straight right of the bat. Jonathan Bornstein is an amazingly talented soccer player. In a nation of 310 million, he’s one of the best 30 or 40 players. And he’s probably a perfectly nice guy and decent human being.

But he still sucks. He’s a left back, but he can’t defend, which is a pretty important skill to have if you’re a left back. He was terrible in the World Cup last year, and he was terrible today against Mexico in the Gold Cup. I realize we’re thin at left back, but is that really the best we can do? When Steve Cherundolo went down with an injury, not only did we have to bring Bornstein on, we had to switch Lichaj over to the right. Lichaj has looked pretty good on the left, but he didn’t seem comfortable on the left. So we got worse at two positions. In a perfect world we’d have had Timmy Chandler come on at right back, but he wasn’t called up, presumably because we wanted to keep his German club team happy, as he would’ve had no offseason had he played in the Gold Cup. (Some thought that it might have to do with him wanting to play for Germany, but that’s not happening, according to interviews with him and his agent.)

Again, I realize our lack of depth and experience along the back, but couldn’t we have brought on Spector? Or Ream, even if it meant shuffling some players around, which we did anyway? As soon as Bornstein came on, it’s like the entire Internet said, “Oh, shit!” (Well, the American parts of it, anyway. The Mexican parts we’re saying, “Hell yes! Look at this crappy half-Mexican defender the gringos just brought on!”) Everybody knows he sucks, except for Bob Bradley. Sometimes Bradley gets attached to players and those guys pan out. (Exhibit A: coach’s son Michael Bradley, who is an absolute beast in the midfield.) Other times, it just doesn’t—for example, Ricardo Clark get inexplicable minutes in WC 2010. It’s the same thing with Bornstein. He just sucks, and needs to be booted from the national team.