After abysmal start, defender Lichaj gaining Arena’s confidence
PHILADELPHIA » A bemused Bruce Arena sat at the dais at Lincoln Financial Field as Wednesday night approached Thursday morning and groped for positives.
He bemoaned players that could’ve been sent off in the U.S.’s 2-0 win over El Salvador in the Gold Cup quarterfinals. He lamented ones that stayed on the pitch, many in a very literal sense with the goal of time-wasting instead of playing soccer.
But Arena unearthed a silver lining, beside the deadpan strength that the U.S. scored two goals Wednesday and El Salvador none.
“I think one of the things we’ve benefitted from in the tournament is we have been able to look at a lot of players and see how they fit into the big picture,” Arena said. “If there’s anything I get out of the Gold Cup, it’s going to be that.”
That response was couched in an appraisal of Eric Lichaj, the enigmatic defender who has spent years on the periphery of the U.S. picture in a perceptive limbo: Near enough to be deemed an option, far enough for that rarely to come to fruition. And the case Lichaj stated Wednesday — with a goal in the first half after a couple of defensive blunders — did little to dispel the mercurial nature of his candidacy for the 2018 World Cup.
“He’s an experienced player. He’s a good solid player,” Arena said. “… Still needs a little bit more experience at this level, but he fits in well with the team and that’s a positon we need help (at).”
Lichaj’s first half ran the gamut. A loose back pass in the third minute after a U.S. corner allowed forward Rodolfo Zelaya a solo sortie in on goal, but Tim Howard rushed off his line assertively to deny, which elicited the gratitude of his right back.
“First 45 was really bad,” Lichaj said. “I was just trying to keep it simple. The first pass back to Tim was not very good at all, but I told him thank you at the end of the game because that was a big save from him. He got me out of the dirt there.”
Lichaj atoned in first-half stoppage time with an astute, adventurous run befitting a 28-year-old veteran with Premier League experience and 150 English League Championship games as a Nottingham Forest stalwart the last four years.
Lichaj recognized the dwindling clock and read the fatigue in a defense that had conceded four minutes prior, a deflating Omar Gonzalez goal that punctured an aggressive start by the marked underdogs. Lichaj also ascertained that the winger marking him wasn’t attentively tracking forward runs.
So Lichaj darted centrally as the action stayed in the attacking half, cutting from his right back post into the left channel, receiving a through ball from Clint Dempsey and slotting home a finish that belied his defensive pedigree for his first international goal in his 13th cap.
Though the celebration — an abbreviated dash to the corner flag before Lichaj felt the heaviness of his legs and flopped to the turf to conserve energy — left much to be desired, the goal was a statement of resilience in the micro sense for a forced to brandish scope of years.
“I needed that goal if anything because I wasn’t happy with that first half,” Lichaj said.
“To see him come back in and score, I’m happy for him,” said forward Jozy Altidore, one of Lichaj’s former residency teammates and a player familiar with the pressures of English soccer. “You stay up late in England and you watch these games and it looks like an easy game, but it’s tough. It’s tough playing these games for a lot of reasons, but I’m happy for him. He rebounded very well.”
Lichaj’s defensive assignments weren’t always handled so crisply in his second start of the tournament. While the back four was the same as the 3-2 group-stage win over Martinique — Lichaj, Gonzalez, Matt Hedges and Justin Morrow — only two of the front six starters withstood veteran reinforcements for the knockout stages.
El Salvador applied pressure on several occasions in the first half; in Arena’s words, the forwards player often it over the “for the first 30 minutes of the game owned our center backs.” After the break, Morrow misjudged an aerial ball, freeing Zelaya to evade Lichaj only to rocket an attempt high of the frame. Denis Pineda turned Lichaj in the 52nd, but his cut-back shot fizzled wide.
Lichaj atoned with a big block in the box to clear chaos in the 73rd, and the U.S. repelled further attacks to post just its second clean sheet in four Gold Cup outings.
Arena has deemed the right back job as ripe for an emergent face in the last year of the World Cup cycle. While Jorge Villafana has staked a claim as the starting left back, the opposite flank remains open. DeAndre Yedlin’s injury history ushers in reliability questions, while the wingeror-defender jockeying with Yedlin and Fabian Johnson contributed to the tactical instability of Jurgen Klinsmann’s dying days. The prominence of converted winger Graham Zusi and the reluctance of DaMarcus Beasley, at 35 years of age, to go gently into the good night of international retirement indicate the opportunity.
Lichaj toes the line between future and present. The Chicagoland native is enjoying the journey, with his English wife, Kathryn, and two children adventuring around the country, driving from Cleveland to Philadelphia and booking flights to Dallas for Saturday’s semifinal with Costa Rica. But Lichaj also has an eye fixed on next summer, with hope that the present will sow benefits reaped in a World Cup future.
“It’s just doing as well as I can in every game I’m picked,” he said. “I’m not looking too far ahead. It would be nice to make the World Cup team. Obviously that’s the ultimate goal, but the way I played the first 45, Bruce would be saying, we probably shouldn’t go with Eric. And I need to sort that out, that first 45 minutes, because I know in my head it’s not good enough and that I can play better than that.
“But I haven’t won anything in my career. I’m 28, and so I would love to win, especially with my country. That’s something I would remember forever.”