U.S. held in Czech

GELSENKIRCHEN, Germany — Coach Bruce Arena may have taken the U.S. team to the No. 5 ranking in the world by winning games in the Americas, but life on this side of the pond always has been tough for the United States.

And so it was yesterday, when the second-ranked Czech Republic soundly outplayed the Americans to win 3-0 in the opening game of Group E before 52,000.

In 11 World Cup games against European teams since 1990, the U.S. team has won just one and tied one. And yesterday’s game basically looked decided after just five minutes, when 6-foot-7 Czech striker Jan Koller, built like an NFL linebacker, did the early damage.

Olney native Oguchi Onyewu had the difficult task of marking the giant, but Koller was able to get away from both Onyewu and fellow defender Eddie Pope on the opening goal.

Defender Eddie Lewis failed to close down defender Zdenek Grygera, who was able to float in an ideal cross. Koller, looking fit after missing seven months with a knee injury, rose above his American markers to head it in from six yards out past helpless U.S. keeper Kasey Keller.

“I don’t think we ever positioned ourselves to win this game, giving up a goal as early as we did,” Arena said. “The Czech Republic took advantage of every play we offered them today in terms of the attacking end of the field and had a pretty good success rate in getting three goals. Obviously, the first goal was big.”

The goal came just after Onyewu was yellow-carded for fouling 2003 European player of the year Pavel Nedved, who tormented the U.S. team all evening with his brilliance.

“I thought Nedved was the player of the match,” Arena said.

The United States finally looked lively in the 28th minute, when captain Claudio Reyna had a 25-yard shot hit the post, but that was the best chance they got.

“We have to look forward now,” Reyna said. “We have Italy [on Saturday], a great opportunity as well to bounce back and find out what we’re made of. Again, we have a lot of guys who, I think, showed a little bit of inexperience today.”

The nightmare got worse for Onyewu, who headed a clearance from Nedved’s cross right into the path of Tomas Rosicky in the 36th minute. The Arsenal striker, with plenty of space, fired a 30-yard shot above the diving Keller into the top corner, which could be the goal of the tournament so far.

The U.S. team caught a break in the 43rd minute when Koller stumbled in the box and was carried off with a pulled hamstring, suffering a major blow to the Czech’s hopes in later games. He was replaced by Vratislav Lokvenc.

“Unfortunately the injury is the only negative from this game, and it is serious,” Czech coach Karl Bruckner said.

After the break, Arena replaced the invisible Pablo Mastroeni with John O’Brien and added an extra striker with Eddie Johnson in for Steve Cherundolo.

If only Reyna had more touches, things might have looked better for the United States.

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