USA-Algeria: Five Things To Watch For

The U.S. team is relaxed ahead of its critical clash with Algeria Wednesday. (Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

JOHANNESBURG — Five things to watch for in the U.S.’s final group-stage game of the World Cup against Algeria in Pretoria on Wednesday (ESPN, Univisión, 10 a.m. ET):

• Can the U.S. avoid its Game 3 Curse? This much is simple: If the Americans beat Algeria they will advance to the Round of 16. Even a tie could put the U.S. through if it got help from the England-Slovenia result. But it’s also true that the U.S. has lost every single Game 3 it has ever played in the World Cup—seven times in all. If these Yanks are going to change things, they have to avoid falling behind early as they have in their first two World Cup games against England and Slovenia. The culprit in both cases was a lack of team defensive focus early on, most notably by center back Oguchi Onyewu. Algeria has yet to score a goal in this tournament, but I have seen Karim Matmour and Karim Ziani be dangerous in several games this year against good opponents, including Egypt and Ivory Coast (both upset victories by the Desert Foxes). The Americans can’t afford to take them lightly, though I don’t suspect they will. Matmour and Michael Bradley are teammates in Germany with Borussia Mönchengladbach, while defender Madjid Bougherra is teammates at Glasgow Rangers with Maurice Edu and DaMarcus Beasley.

• Who will start up front for the U.S.? We know that it won’t be Robbie Findley, who is suspended after receiving his second yellow card of the tournament against Slovenia. You can safely assume we’ll see Jozy Altidore, who showed he can be useful even if he’s not scoring in the second half of the Slovenia game. (Altidore’s improved ball-holding and target-man skills are a good sign for the future.) Might U.S. coach Bob Bradley go with Altidore by himself up top? I doubt it. Even though Algeria may use just three defenders and a 4-2-3-1 might seem smart for the U.S., the fact remains that Bradley hasn’t used Altidore as a lone forward in a long, long time. If I had to guess, I’d suspect Bradley will go with Edson Buddle, with the idea that he could make a move at halftime or 60 minutes by moving Clint Dempsey into Buddle’s spot and inserting Benny Feilhaber or Stuart Holden in Dempsey’s wide-midfield position.

• How open will this game be? Very open, I predict, at least until someone scores. Algeria needs a victory to have any chance of surviving after gaining a tie against England, and the U.S. doesn’t want to rely on other results to advance to the second round. If Algeria goes with a three-man back line, there should be spaces for U.S. wide midfielders Landon Donovan and Dempsey to attack. As good as Donovan was in the second half against Slovenia, starting the U.S.’s epic two-goal comeback with a thumping goal, he has yet to be a dominating presence for both halves at a game in this World Cup. If Donovan wants to be viewed as one of the top players in the tournament, he needs to have a huge 90-minute performance on Wednesday. As for Dempsey, he was lucky not to get sent off in the first minute against Slovenia for an elbow to Zlatan Ljubijankic. Dempsey, too, needs to find a higher gear. I expect we’ll see Maurice Edu starting next to Michael Bradley in the central midfield. Edu provides a bit more offensive spark than Ricardo Clark.

• Could the referee affect the game’s outcome again? It’s always possible that we could have more issues of the kind that plagued Malian referee Koman Coulibaly in the U.S.-Slovenia game. But FIFA, perhaps acknowledging that controversy, has chosen one of its favorite refs to officiate U.S.-Algeria: Belgian Frank De Bleeckere. He got good reviews for his work at World Cup ’06, though he’s not shy to pull out his cards, and he did controversially send off Inter Milan’s Thiago Motta in this year’s Champions League semifinals against Barcelona. You can be sure that Onyewu, for one, is familiar with how De Bleeckere calls games, since Onyewu played for many years in Belgium, where De Bleeckere is a veteran official. That’s probably a good thing for U.S. fans.

• Are the Bradleys turning into the big U.S. stars of the tournament? Judging from my conversations with international media, 22-year-old Michael Bradley has been the revelation of the U.S. team on the field, at times dominating play in the midfield while also ranging forward at times. (He scored the crucial equalizer against Slovenia.) Bradley has moved up the ladder from Heerenveen in the Netherlands to Borussia Mönchengladbach in Germany, and he seems like he’d be a good fit for the English Premier League. Meanwhile, coach Bob Bradley often appears to get more respect abroad than he does in the United States. Bradley’s tactics may not always make for highlight-reel soccer, but sometimes they do, and whenever he has had his best players he has gotten results: winning the 2007 Gold Cup, reaching the final of the ’09 Confederations Cup and winning the CONCACAF World Cup qualifying tournament. If he can get this U.S. team through to the Round of 16, he could be on his way to maximizing the U.S.’s potential again.

What do you see happening on Wednesday?