Jose Francisco Torres: El Gringo Should Start For US Vs. The Netherlands

With Maurice Edu coming back into form at Rangers, Ricardo Clark should be returning soon from his calf strain, Jose Fransico Torres starting at Pachuca, and Jermaine Jones if he ever gets healthy, we've got some options and maybe even a bit of depth to work with in S.A.

Its clear to all of us that whoever earns the starting spot as our D-Mid for South Africa is going to be crucial to whether we make it out of our group or not. Michael Bradley is all but a lock in the center as a HM and can play box to box all day. We need to pair him up with someone who can not only defend but maintain possession and also distribute.

Clark is questionable to play on March 3rd given his calf strain and Jones hasn't played regularly since before last summer. This should open the door to give Torres and Edu another look in this role.

Currently Torres has had a great run of form with Pachuca and had a great strike on goal this past weekend from a free kick for the game winner. If you haven't seen him much for Pachuca this season that's too bad, but most of us saw him in the last 30 minutes of the Costa Rica match in October. One of the few times he's had 30 plus minutes for us.

Torres came on around the 60th minutes and the US was down 2-0, not looking to good for us. I remember watching the game and noticing how we went from a more defensive posture to more possesion and attacking as soon as Torres and Rodgers were subbed in. Go back and watch the end of that game, Torres was moving the ball around the midfield with true class and stayed deep to gets balls coming off our defenders.

We need a player who has that little bit of creativity and poise on the ball to calm things down and work the ball thru the midfield to our more attack minded players on the wings and upfront.

Ricardo Clark is a better tackler and covers huge amounts of ground but he lacks that poise necessary to buy himself time and then distribute the ball up field. This causes M. Bradley to have to come back more rather than staying further up the pitch where he can drop those deft passes in to our strikers. Remember Bradley put away our first goal back in the Costa Rica game too and was deep in the box at the time after Torres had come on.

I'd like to see more of the Bradley/Torres pairing in midfield. We've seen the Bradley/Clark pairing and we know what we get with that. I'd like to see the Bradley/Edu pairing more too.

Please share your thoughts.

And if you get a chance check out a Pachuca match on Telefutura, the annoucers call him "El Gringo" or "Gringo Torres" every time he gets a touch. Pretty harsh for a kid with Mexican heritage.