When Oscar Boniek Garcia stole between Omar Gonzalez and Geoff Cameron and tapped the ball across for Jerry Bengtson to score the Honduran winner, he not only handed the US their first ever loss in an opening game of this round of qualifying, he drew focus back to one of the perennial problems of recent US teams - how do they solve the center back problem?
While Howard maybe deserved his share of blame for his timing in coming off his line, Cameron's hesitancy and Gonzalez's lack of awareness of Bengtson stealing in behind him, each compounded the other's error, and suggested that there's still a long way to go before speaking of these two as the answer at the heart of defense. Of course, you could argue this was their first time playing together, and that the team was also finally permanently integrating Timothy Chandler on the outside of the back line, so mistakes were to be expected (having made that argument, you may want to wonder why this experiment was happening now...).
Of course, had Chandler committed sooner and Gonzalez not started 2012 injured, it's possible that Cameron, who himself only broke through last season, would have been lined up with a more familiar backline in Honduras. The mistake might still have happened, but it would perhaps have felt like less of a referendum on a coaching selection for a crucial part of the team, if it had been part of a larger sample size.
Bocanegra, dropped in favor of the larger Gonzalez, could have been forgiven for feeling somewhat vindicated as he watched his young replacement struggle, but this is less a problem of individual personnel and more a problem of stability at the back. And arguably, you could go further and say that that problem is emphasized by the job the backline is asked to do behind the equally unstable swirl of mostly defensive midfielders being swapped in and out of the side in front of them.
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