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What we learned from the USA's Gold Cup triumph

Tim Howard is still the first-choice keeper, Darlington Nagbe shone in midfield and Jozy Altidore remains the team’s focal point ahead of next year’s World CupTo the USA got what they needed out of the Gold Cup. If there was ever any doubt that Bruce Arena was playing to lift the trophy, the call-up of some of his biggest players after the group stage demonstrated absolutely that Arena knew what was at stake here. Arena had entered the US job damned with faint praise as the safest pair of hands to help the US fight its way out of World Cup qualifying trouble, but over the course of what’s now 14 unbeaten games he has carved out something like a...

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Clint Dempsey's taste for havoc shows he's not done yet

Christian Pulisic may well be the future of US soccer but during the Gold Cup semi-final the Sounders striker showed he is integral in the short-termClint Dempsey’s star turn against Costa Rica in the Gold Cup semi-final did more than win his team the game and help the striker match the US goalscoring record — it may have extended his meaningful international career by another season.There was a danger that by the time the Russia World Cup came around, Dempsey would represent the kind of selection headache for Bruce Arena that Landon Donovan became for Jürgen Klinsmann in 2014 — no longer a player a coach could build a team around, and potentially as much of a distraction as an...

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