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Why is the United States playing so poorly in the Gold Cup?

Why is the United States playing so poorly in the Gold Cup?

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. – When new captain Michael Bradley was asked how he would grade the United States men's national team's performance two games into the 2015 Gold Cup, he fixed his deep-set eyes on a reporter and, without missing a beat, delivered his assessment.

"I would grade it with six points," he said.

That would be the yield from the Americans' two wins, of course, which has already clinched them the top spot in Group A and a place in the quarterfinals with a game against Panama to spare. But their victories – 2-1 over Honduras on Tuesday and 1-0 against Haiti on Friday – have come in wholly unconvincing fashion. In truth, the U.S. was mostly outplayed by Los Catrachos and then allowed the Haitians to create the bulk of the chances.

For a team returning 16 players from last year's World Cup and projecting the reasonable expectation that it follow up its 2013 triumph in this tournament with a place in the final – at the very least – this is a trend of grave concern.

Klinsmann has spoken of the need to slowly grow into the Gold Cup and peak at the end of it, but the performance against Haiti represented a regression from the one delivered against Honduras.

"We keep on building basically confidence. We're building more fine-tuning elements," Klinsmann said on Friday. "We want to improve our game. As you saw there was still stuff that was not so good. So we keep working on that."

"Now it's just a nice feeling knowing that we're already first, but it doesn't mean we're slowing down now," Klinsmann continued. "It should actually be the opposite. We're going to keep kind of raising the bar a little bit."

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But while Klinsmann looks ahead, the question that begs asking is why the Americans have looked like such a cheap impersonation of themselves over the first week of this tournament. Honduras and Haiti both gave their defense fits with their movement and desire and capitalized on an inefficient midfield. At the other end, the U.S. buildup was stunted and the creation of chances sparse.

In formulating an answer, Klinsmann pointed to the awkward timing of this edition of the Gold Cup, which is usually held in June but was pushed to July this year, presumably to accommodate the Women's World Cup. When it's held in June, the players employed by Major League Soccer are in the middle of their seasons and those playing in Mexico or in Europe have only just wrapped up their club campaigns.

This time around, those playing abroad – and there are a dozen of them on this 23-man roster; nine of whom have already made a start thus far – were at least a month from their last competitive game and got just a week of training camp before the tournament.

"I think it's a logical element, actually," Klinsmann said. "Bringing these guys back from vacation from Europe, and then in Mexico they only recently started preseason as well, and mix them back together with the MLS players, we knew that was going to be a little bit difficult the first two weeks."

"And that's still ongoing, it's not there yet," Klinsmann added. "The tournament being played in July is very tricky, for all the teams. It will take every team more time to get into this thing because of the different seasons the players are coming from."

You could counter that argument by pointing out that the Americans, unlike most all of their rivals, have the depth to rotate their team – as they did on Friday, cycling in seven new starters. Haiti head coach Marc Collat pointed to the U.S. being "fresher" as one of the reasons it had ultimately prevailed.

Bradley refused to leverage the difficulty in melding the players with varying levels of fitness as an excuse for the performances. "It's the reality," he said. "I don't use it as a reason or as an excuse or anything like that, but it's just the reality that at the moment you have guys that are in the middle of their MLS season and then you have other guys who after the [U.S. friendly] games against Germany and Holland [in early June] were off for 2½ weeks and now come back into camp and – as much as they've been doing stuff on their own – are trying to get themselves going again. It is what it is."

Jozy Altidore admits that he's still getting into shape after returning from injury. (Getty Images)
Jozy Altidore admits that he's still getting into shape after returning from injury. (Getty Images)

"It's hard but it's the same for everybody else," echoed striker Jozy Altidore, who is rebuilding match fitness after a hamstring injury. "That's no excuse for us."

What has made the Americans' form, or total lack thereof, so particularly jarring is that the lasting image we had of them was their rollicking attacks in upset wins over both the Dutch and Germans last month. But whereas those opponents, who placed third and first in Brazil last summer, respectively, took the game to the U.S., regional opponents tend to do the opposite.

"You play against teams in this tournament that are determined to make the game difficult," Bradley explained. "They put a lot of guys behind the ball, they're organized, they're committed to slowing down and destructing and making every single play as difficult as possible. It's always going to be a difficult game."

"These teams, if you observe them, they like to drag back two central defensive midfielders," Gyasi Zardes said. "They leave a couple of strikers up top and the rest of the team is just tucked in. It's hard. With Germany and Holland they're attacking and we're attacking, it leaves the field of play open."

Between the inevitable fitness issues and the stubborn opposition, there have been mitigating circumstances for the Americans. But after they play Panama on Monday, a quarterfinal awaits in Baltimore on July 18. And if they fail to impress then, having gotten another game and a third week of practice to get their house in order, any excuses will ring hollow.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.