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| Clint Dempsey and Cristiano Ronaldo will be key men in a game likely to define Group G. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images |
USA and Portugal head to Manaus with a raft of sick notes and
suspensions altering the prospects for Sunday's vital Group G match, and
at least a couple of question marks hanging over key players – neither
of whom has an obvious replacement.
Let’s start with
Cristiano Ronaldo.
Because as Ronaldo himself might tell us, everything starts and ends
with Ronaldo. And as he has reportedly told the Portuguese medical team:
"I'm the one that says whether I'm playing or not.”
It was clear
that the left-knee injury Ronaldo nursed through the warm-up games was
still hampering him on his arrival in Brazil and in Portugal's opening
game, a dispiriting
4-0 defeat by Germany.
From
the ice-packed evidence of this week’s curtailed training sessions, he
is still far from fully fit. One report in Spain even had a doctor
telling the Real Madrid star that the MRI on his latest setback
suggested he should sit out the next two months, let alone Sunday’s
game, for fear of a career-ending tendon tear. The same doctor has been
cited in a Portuguese paper as denying he said anything of the sort.
If
Ronaldo is at all fit, it’s hard to see Portugal not starting him in
what is now a must-win game (a draw could leave their fate hanging by a
goal-difference thread). Yet whatever Jürgen Klinsmann’s understandable
wariness about Portugal as a wounded animal, the USA coach might prefer
to take his chances against a less-than-100% Ronaldo in the testing,
Amazonian conditions in Manaus, no matter how good he is.
If Ronaldo does play, it's worth remembering that his lack of impact
on game day one was not just down to injury – Germany stifled his supply
to perfection. From a US perspective it is worth noting that such an
approach is far from the preserve of the elite, since Israel and
Northern Ireland were also able to pressure Portuguese supply lines at
times during qualifying.
Of course, Portugal will definitely be missing other players, the injured
Fabio Coentrao and Hugo Almeida, who limped out of the Germany game, and they will also be without the suspended
Pepe.
While those players will be missed, Ricardo Costa and André Almeida
should be able deputies in defense, and Helder Postiga will probably
cover up front.
In fact it’s arguable that never mind these
three, or whatever happens with Ronaldo, the absence of the USA striker
Jozy Altidore will create the most significant alteration to the pattern
of this game, so key is he to the Americans' preferred style of play.
The
diamond midfield that Klinsmann has tried to introduce of late requires
Altidore to do a lot of muscling and running up front, with
Clint Dempsey free to run off him when the USA attack. When Altidore
pulled up with a hamstring injury
against Ghana, to be replaced by Aron Johannsson, that fact – plus the
broken nose that hampered Dempsey’s breathing and movement, plus an
uncharacteristically muted performance from Michael Bradley – meant that
the USA found themselves under sustained pressure and
without a natural outlet up front.
Altidore is definitely out for Sunday, though the other player
withdrawn against Ghana due to a hamstring complaint, the central
defender Matt Besler, will be available, meaning
goal hero John Brooks will likely be on the bench again.
He
may play a part, though. Manaus has already lived up to its reputation
as a cruel venue and the USA, who made much of their familiarity with
extreme conditions in the lead-up to the tournament, seemed to struggle
in relatively benign conditions in Natal.
To lose one player to a
hamstring injury in the first half of your opening game might seem a
cruel misfortune. To lose another at half-time and see others apparently
struggling with fatigue you might expect to see in extra-time in the
knockout stages suggests there may be something to the persistent
criticism of Klinsmann for over-training his player
