After an exciting game against Serbia, the USA would take on Colombia in part two of their January assemblage. It would be fast and frantic with plenty of chippy play, but lacked enough quality to make it much more than a disjointed if not irrationally energetic game.

The USA changed things up quite a bit with only Walker Zimmerman returning as a part of the starting XI that faced Serbia.

Colombia won the lineup announcement by actually posting a formation. Their selection for the match was both young and inexperienced with their national team as 19 of 20 players have less than four caps and 11 of them have none.

Gifs of... there’s one Gif, the game was pacey but otherwise unpolished in general

While the USA match against Serbia taught us that Serbia was great at pressing and thundering forward in transition, the start of this one showed that Colombia was content to absorb pressure and then wait for the USA to lose the ball and then thunder forward in transition.

The match started as a high paced affair but things settled fairly quickly. Colombia saw most of the possession and created a vast majority of the chances. Through the first half Los Cafeteros out-shot the Americans 11-3 and the Stars and Stripes had difficulty completing passes in the opposition’s half and final third.

It was a January friendly. But it was still pretty fun. There are not one, but two Pax’s on this roster but Paxten Aaronson tried to be the first one on the scoresheet as he nearly put a shot in the net on a nice setup from Matthew Hoppe.

The teams went into the half even at nil-nil and Anthony Hudson made a change to begin the second 45 as Eryk Williamson made way for Alan Sonora. There wasn’t a marked improvement from the Americans ability to move the ball into the final third and create chances in the second half. A promising moment came just before the hour mark when Paul Arriola found Ferreira inside the top of the 18 but the striker didn’t shoot the ball when what he should have done was SHOOT THE BALL.

For their part, Colombia was too busy falling over and rolling on the ground to do much going forward. The game had good pace and good energy, but it was also Concacafy.

Shortly after Ferreira’s dispossession, Brandon Vazquez came in for Ferreira and minutes later Arriola departed for Emmanuel Sabbi. This seemed promising, but the game didn’t see much more in terms of good chances as the teams looked quite a bit like two sides with players that were missing chemistry. They did make up for it in terms of passion, but that wouldn’t be enough as it ended in a nil-nil draw.