Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #169: Nine USMNT takeaways from the March window

Episode Date: April 8, 2021

Aaronson as an inside winger, Reyna and Musah as ball-hawking, ball-retention warriors, and much more. Also a couple patron questions. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Georgia. With me is Greg Velasquez in Iowa. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Hey everyone. Today we're going to talk about some things we took away from the March international window. We recap the games, but now we're going to try to boil down what we think we learned in that convention of U.S. men's national team players. Disclaimers being, we're not necessarily in line with Burrhalter on this stuff, and the situation continues to be fluid. So it could be. be totally different in a month or two. Greg, how you doing? Amari Bells. Less fluid, though, right? It feels a lot less fluid now, certainly than it did this time in 2019. Yes, increasing viscosity, I believe. Decreasing. It's decreasing. Wait, is viscous mean fluid? I think so. Things are starting to cement. Yeah, okay. Somebody, Scott Jorri, can you look up the word viscous for us? I think we've used it on like every show, but never sure if it's being used correctly.

And we will continue to do so. Yeah. Just flying blind on viscous. So we're going to rotate. I think we have nine takeaways in the show notes, but that number is also somewhat viscous or non-viscuous, depending on your definition of the word. So Greg, why don't you lead us off, number one. All right. Scuffed pod favorite, Brendan Aronson leads us off.

And it was great to see that Brendan Aronson was a perfect fit for the U.S. men's national team left winger. I think it was a big deal to see that for me. Yeah, stylistically, right? Stylistically, yeah, a perfect fit for, I think, how we like to use our wingers. Because he's kind of an attacking midfielder, kind of can play as an eight, doesn't deputize extremely effectively there for the national team, at least hasn't. But, yeah, he's got that inside winger. stuff nailed down, doesn't he?

Yeah, I mean, from the moment he came on, I think, like, his first involvement was that little shimmy he had from the left sideline into the middle where he then fed Rana in for a breakaway. And you were just like, okay, this is fantastic. We knew we had Pulisic. We knew basically that Rana was a great option there. And we're all kind of assuming Tim Wea is. But once, you know, when we lost Jordan Morris, it was like, okay, well, maybe I guess

Paul Areola, who's pretty limited, doesn't create a ton for us. and then after that we were thinking Ullianas maybe is going to step in and do this job. Yeah, yeah. And I think he still could for the record. Sure. Sure, but to see Aronson do it

and to know that Aronson is going to be playing this weekend and the weekend after that and the weekend after that and eventually in the Champions League in the fall, it's good to, it feels safe. It's a nice, cozy feeling to have seen that shift actually take place to move him from center mid to the left wing. And again, we're kind of assuming that that that move is going to be semi-permanent for the national team.

It puts him at least, I mean, he puts him as the fourth winger on the depth chart, doesn't it, behind Pulisic, Raina and Waya? And I don't know, we don't have to put them in that order, but those are the four wingers at the moment, right? It feels like it, and, you know, the fit is a big deal for me. You know, when we started speculating that this was what Burrhalter was going to start running back in, you know, February 2020, There were real questions about how a Jordan Morris would fit in this kind of a setup

because Morris likes to sort of be more stuck to that sideline. And now we're asking the guys to come in and play a pseudo number tens. And so I think Aronson becomes probably a better fit than Morris. Now we haven't seen Morris. Morris hasn't played for the national team since 2019. And he's not going to be playing anytime soon. But it's one of those things where it could be pretty difficult for him to break back in. Yeah.

Not hoping against it, of course. I want our best players to, you know, continue to push the guys who are already there. But it sure looks like Aronson definitely slides right into that slot. Yeah, way to beat up on a guy while he's down, Greg. I think I did the same thing when Ledesma did his. I was like, oh, no, he's going to miss the Olympics. He'll never get in the pro. And they'll never get in the squad now.

Yeah, well, those are, I mean, those knee injuries are serious. Obviously, they're serious. And the timing on both of those injuries is really bad for those guys. We should be clear, you said at the top of this little segment, scuffed pod favorite Brennan Aronson, I input, just to be totally clear on that, I in particular have been an Erinson skeptic for a while. And I think I was. I no longer am. I've had a lot of conversions in the last couple weeks.

We'll get into them. No, that was definitely an Easter egg for any of the close list. listeners because we haven't been super high on him, in part because, you know, there was a lot of hype around him. And then in the two games he played prior to moving over to Salzburg, he played as like a number eight. And in both those games, he started alongside Sebastian Leggett. And in both those games for me, he looked much less effective than Sebastian Leggett. So for me, it was just like, okay, well, he's, he's exciting sometimes. It's cool to watch him in Philly. All this, you know, transfer stuff going around to Salzburg is great.

But he still doesn't really look the part for the national team. And then he jumps to a different position, and he just looks totally explosive. So that's just really great to see. I think he also looks more explosive since he went to Salzburg, you know, like even in the clips from those Austria League games. You may disagree with that, but I thought it was kind of fun to watch him with Philly. Kind of not that fun to watch him with Philly. Like sometimes he'd be invisible and, you know, he would wilt in the final third. but he's got a he's got sort of i mean this is all mystical talk but he's got like a he's got a

verve to his game an aggressiveness that i think is increased even in the like from six months ago he's he's got that that fun frenetic uh appeal to him and and also you know i just want to you know at least hint at you're going to look more explosive when you're playing for salzberg against other teams in the austrian bundlesliga but the fact that you're the one who salzberg has chosen to play for you makes it the big deal. Yeah. All those high-priced defenders in NLS. That's true.

That's true. Make it tougher. No, I'm not arguing. I'm not arguing that point. Just trying to be funny. Okay. Can we move to the second one? It's somewhat related.

Okay. Or do you got anything else on Aronson? No, no, no. Well, excited to see him in sort of higher stakes matches and against hopefully better competition. And off the bench, which, because I think, as good as he was in those games, I think Pulisic is still, I mean, it's obviously Pulisic is still the starting left winger.

And that brings us to my first takeaway, which is Geo Raina for me is a nailed on starter at right wing. I was really impressed with him over the last two friendlies. And I, you know, I have another Easter egg for closed listeners of the pot. Yeah, are these 10 takeaways or is this like the Miakopa episode? What are we doing here, Bell? I mean, I did talk some smack about Raina here and there, and I made some funny videos on Twitter.

Some would call them funny. But whether it's Pulis or Erinson or even Wea or Morris at left wing, I think we need Raina to play right wing and help us break presses and seize control of games. So it's not that I'm like he was so incredible in the final third in those friendlies. It's that he helps us control games. I think that's the big thing. I think I even said a couple months ago that he's not as good as everyone thinks he is. A couple months ago.

You've said that every day that I've talked to you. That's not true. The last two and a half years. That is not true. I wake up to a text message from Bells and just like, I just don't see it. What's everyone talking about? In my defense, one thing I've never questioned is his ability on the ball, like receiving it, turning with it, keeping it under pressure. And that aspect of his game really started to look indispensable to me against

Jamaica and Northern Ireland. Sure, it wasn't world-class competition, but you could see how he can help us dominate soccer games by pressing, by counter-pressing, and then keeping the ball. And everybody saw that clip of him turning on the right wing, and then playing the past slightly behind the guy. I think you noted that. I was just joking as well. But no, it's true.

And that style of play is almost reminiscent of like the mid-2000s hold-up striker, the guy who was so valuable because you could just sort of lump the ball up to him. and he could keep a guy on his back and just hold it for long enough for us to get our shape. And that's a big out, you know, when Mexico is pressing us, if we can just sort of hit that ball up the sideline to Raina's feet, and he can just hold it for two or three touches and hold a guy off while we reshape around him. That's a massive deal. It really is.

I think people under, maybe some people underestimate how important that is. And, yeah, yeah, yeah. He could win a throw in or you could win a throw in, you know. You know, just get us out of, just get us out of trouble. And his, you know, he's, I think you noted this in the podcast, the last podcast we recorded. He's pretty good in the press and in the counterpress. Oh, yeah. As part of that front three is excellent.

Yeah. And I'll just touch on that, the ability to hold the ball up to is that's not something you get from Brendan Aronson that I've seen yet. No. It's very much sort of the opposite. Aronson might pull off like a cute flick every once in a while where a guy's on his back and, you know, Crois sit behind the guy's legs or whatever it is, but he's not just going to hold it for three touches and keep the guy at bay. He's much more effective.

Aronson is much more effective sort of in the stretched moments where there's, he's either helping turn the ball over and then run or the game is stretched because it's the 80th minute and there's a little more space to play in. Yep. I would say Rain is better at it than Pulisic. He's better at it than Wea. He's probably as good at it as anybody on the team. Probably the best.

at it on the team and he's only 18. Hopefully he gets the final third stuff, you know, gets a little more refined in the final third, a little better at releasing the ball at the right moment, that sort of thing. That'd be great. I do think it's probably safe to say that we can stop talking about the form of Raina and maybe the other guy we have who's also still alive in the Champions League. Our two Champions League players, I feel like, are the guys that we were most worried about their form.

You mean Pulisic? Pulisic and Raina. Yeah, they're going to be fine when they come back and play for the national team. I was just watching Raina's involvement against Man City the other day. He came off the bench and played 30 minutes. He didn't do really anything, you know? He didn't really make an impact on that game. And I was like, so what?

Who cares? He's playing the Champions League quarterfinal. Against Pep Guardiola, yeah. All right, next one. All right, so next one is Sergeant Indyke. That's it. Those are the takeaway. Yeah, let's, why don't you tell what your takeaway was from Sargent?

Because we got, you know, we got more of him than we did, D.K. And the two friendlies. Yeah, so Sergeant, for me, sort of cemented that number one spot. And I feel like the only way he loses it is if DK comes in and is able to basically replicate the same kind of link up play that Sergeant gives us, but also add the sort of DK ability to absolutely dominate and bully defenders and finish on 30% of his shot. Right? Which is an actual statistic. Insanity. So, I mean, that was my takeaway, is that Sergeant gives us exactly what we've been looking for is a forward who can drop in and do the link up stuff. And again, it's not holdup play so much as it's like, come be involved and combine. But he also gives you that sort of traditional forward play that you think of in the box. And I think, you know, we talk about the continuum between like Zardez on one side and Jesus Frere on the, on the,

the other, but we probably need to switch over to like quadrants where it's like that the axes are the midfield combination stuff and the in the box do like do real forward stuff. And I think sergeant we could probably think of as being somewhere in that top right quadrant. And it's going to be up to other people to think to displace him. Yeah. Well, I think so yeah, I agree that sergeant is probably number one right now. Although So we had a little bit of a discussion about this earlier this week. DK., of course, he played well against Northern Ireland. Got on the end of three really good chances, I think.

And didn't finish any of them, which, like you said, it brings his XG back to sort of regresses to the mean. Back to some human level. Right. Or his goals to XG ratio. But he does offer something that makes me think that we should think about utilizing it, or Burrhalter should think about utilizing it.

Like that, you know, the way Barnsley plays is just lump it forward and then press and, you know, they just rely on DK to sort of drag centerbacks around, bully them, bring the ball down and just find feet. And even if he can't, he does enough to cause a mess back there and everybody comes forward and somebody else wins the ball and then they're into the attack. And I'm thinking like, why,

Why don't we have that as a plan B for really tough away qualifiers? Or maybe like Tata Martino is going to come into that. Let's say we go to the S-TECA in March 22. That's what the schedule is. And Martino is thinking, all right, Greg Burhalter is going to come in here and try to play through our press. We're going to really, you know, we're going to really do it. And then you just pull a surprise on him. You put D.K. in the starting lineup.

And you're just like, forget it. We're not going to try to play through your press. We're just going to have D.K. bully your aging centerbacks and have, I think you said, CP and Wea running off him, maybe an example of when Wea might get the start over Raina. And I'm like, that's, I don't know, that makes a lot of sense to me. It does. And again, we haven't even established what D.K. looks like in that sort of midfield accommodation

zone. We don't know that he can't do it. It's not like it's established that he can't do it in the way that I think we can't comfortably say, Zardes isn't going to give that to you. Yeah. He can do it as well as Zardis, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, I assume.

But again, I haven't seen a ton of it. He was doing a little bit at Orlando. He just does zero of it for Barnsley because all they do is lump it up to him and make him make the defenders uncomfortable. And what's crazy about that is, Barnesley's doing it no matter what the numerical situation is, no matter what like the pressure situation is, it's one on four that they'll just hit it up to decay and it doesn't matter. What we could do if we bring him in that Mexico game where Mexico is going to press us is we don't have to have that be the default.

We can just say Mexico, if you're going to commit numbers upfield and you're going to leave just two centerbacks with DK and that's it, that's when we can start to skip those lines. So it doesn't have to be all or nothing. You can kind of give yourself that flexibility. And if Mexico drops off to be a little safer or just holds one extra man back, then that might open up more passing lanes to play through the press. So that's that tactical flexibility that a Darrell D.K. could give you and sort of force opponents to be a little bit more conservative with how they try to pressure. Yeah. And I think we should be careful to say, or I want to be careful to say, it's not like Sergeant is, he's not Bobby Formino. You know, he's not like, he's not brilliant at Linko play.

He's just pretty good. And he does have some flashes of really nice stuff. And so it's not like the bar. for for D.K. is incredibly, incredibly high to be, you know, in the same ballpark

as sergeant on that stuff. No, and that's totally true. And sort of my, the reason I kind of put D.K. a little bit lower at the moment is because, uh, it doesn't seem like Burhunter trusts him yet.

And that's, it's really early to say that. But, um, just based on some comments he's made, uh, in the January camp. Um,

and then I don't know all the details surrounding the second game of the, of the March camp, whether D.K. could have started. But the fact that he doesn't says, you know, Burrhalter's definitely taking his time integrating him. And I'm sort of just thinking about the, I know a lot of people are starting to put out their 2022 rosters already for the final World Cup. But I'm very much just thinking like, okay, what's the next three months and the next six

months? What does this team look like? So for me, it feels like it's sergeant at the moment. And D.K. just has to sort of prove a couple of things before he really enters into that number one conversation. He's proven quite a few things, but I don't think he's a guy that Burhalter would, like, change his entire game plan around if that's what it would take to play him. Yeah. Well, yeah, so I guess just to wrap it all up, the takeaway here is positive. Like, Sergeant and D.K. are both trending upward and when it comes to the national team.

I think Sergeant is, you know, we joke about him, quote, unquote, turning the corner at Verde Bremen all the time. But it does seem like he's gotten better in the last six months, six, seven months, to me. I'm an optimist. Bremen seem to have, like, settled into how they want to play. And it definitely isn't, like, a striker's paradise by any means. But it at least seems like they're getting more comfortable in their own skin. Yeah. And Sergeant seems to be part of that as well. Yeah, he had a really nice, I put it on Twitter this morning, but he had a really nice moment where he pulled the ball down in a DFB-Pocall game against Jan Regensburg.

pull the ball down between two centerbacks and then volleyed it sideways to Osaka in on goal, a plus point three XG chance, and Osaka missed it. Plus point three is a lot of XG when you match it up with the eyeball test. Yeah, you said it was like it wasn't going to show up on the score sheet and I was like, Bell, that is exactly what shows up on most people's score sheets. He is racking up that XA. I mean, like the traditional score sheet, the football man score sheet. All right.

Well, yeah, as long as Sergeant can play against two Bundesliga centerbacks every weekend, he's going to keep racking up those stats. All right. Our fourth takeaway, second one for me is Eunice Musa is a godsend. And I know a lot of you already think this way, judging by the number of avatars that are Eunice Musa on Twitter. but it really these two friendlies really clarified for me how valuable he is and it's not too dissimilar from what reyna is you know he's a he's even more of a workhorse just a just a blue

collar engine room guy in the middle taking responsibility covering ground winning the ball showing showing to give teammates like an outlet always moving but he also brings you know quality engine lubricant you might say to the table doesn't often turn into the teeth of a defense the way Raina does but he's very comfortable on the ball a tidy passer and really difficult to take the ball from much like Raina so these two young guys are just really tough to take the ball from and it's a simple thing but man it matters a lot and I and I wonder well go ahead go ahead well it's it's not even just that we talked about this I think after his first friendly too and it was more about just how the team were playing against Wales

but it's their ability to not just destroy things like they don't just he doesn't doesn't just destroy a play. He destroys the play in a way that leads to us keeping the ball. So it's not like he just comes in and blows things up and now there's more chaos in a less dangerous area of the field. Like he blows up the opponent's possession in a way that the ball lands at our feet and we get to have it now. When our whole midfield is doing that, then yeah, then suddenly this possession game that we want to play, like we get to actually see it happen. And for so long, we just didn't see that. We'd lose the ball and we'd have to wait three minutes to have it back. And it just doesn't feel like that's the case anymore.

Yeah, that was the thing about our possession, our possession aspirations back in 2019 is they didn't come along with, like, possession winning ability. I say another thing about Musa is he's also dropping deep to pick up the ball and switch the point of attack or even spray it diagonally into the corner, the way any Burrhalter six is, you know, supposed to do. I really think he should be a starting eight and a second choice number six for the national team.

And one thing I noticed is he spent a fair amount of time in this window dropping deeper while Acosta stepped into one of the eight roles. So if Adams isn't available, I guess I don't see any problem with Moussa being the six. And I should say also it seems like the three midfield positions are much more fluid now than they use. they used to be when it was Michael Bradley or Jackson Ewell back there. Christian Rodon is accompanying them.

Yeah. It's not so obvious who's the six and who's the eight. It wasn't in this window. So I think Musa's really valuable in that way, too. Say Adams is injured. It could be Musa at the six and Legette and McKinney at the eight or, you know, whatever. Right. Especially if like a Kelan Acosta sort of shows that he is a more limited play.

then I think, you know, I think we all understand he's not, he's not going to be Musa or McKenny, but we're kind of hoping that he can do a job. But if he can't really do the job at the level we need him to, I totally agree. And I've been hoping that we have one of those eights that we can convert into a six for a long time to give us those interchangeable parts. And, and again, that might be, Acosta might be one of them. But if you find out that Musa is better at it, then Acosta might still be on the roster, but he's not the first guy in when his center mid goes, if Tyler Adams goes down.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's obviously ignoring that Jackson Ewell might be like the default backup for Adams at the moment. Right. I think, you know, I think that'll sort itself out over time. And Moose is another one where, you know, his club form hasn't been great, but who cares? Right. Yeah, he barely plays.

I don't know if people are following Valencia that closely. but he doesn't really I think he's got like 140 minutes over the last two months so he's got about a game and a half it's not been a that much that oh yeah it's he's not he's not seeing the field

so and when he does he's playing like that wide midspot so it's not like there's anything really that transfers in necessarily to to what we're doing with the national team but who cares I really hope we can just retire the whole form debate for the most part like find our best players who fit evaluate them to

determine who the best ones are and then play them against teams. Yeah. Well, and then, you know, another midfielder, we don't have much of a takeaway about here because he's not, he wasn't in the camp, but, you know, you could throw Dwayne Holmes in there with a Musa McKenny-Lajette midfield and you've won scuffed bingo. I don't, I feel like we're just, I feel like Dwayne Holmes isn't going to happen. If he couldn't get in the camp over Odissoui and Cappington, and even De La Torre, who, like, again, it's great that those guys are there.

But if those guys are all getting called in ahead of Holmes, unless it was strictly like for Olympic tryout purposes, man, it just feels like Holmes might not get his shot again. I guess not. Sad day. All right, let's talk about another English-American. Number five. Number five is we're going to talk about Anthony Robinson,

who is getting his shot. And I think was good enough in these games that I want to say that Serginio Dest's position, should now be dictated solely by Serginio Dest in the sense that whatever puts Dest in the best position to succeed is where he should be played. We shouldn't try to worry about hiding Robinson to get Cannon on the field or we shouldn't worry about, we really shouldn't even worry about if we have to remove Robinson because Dest is better on the left. Like wherever Dest is going to be at his best self is where he goes. Yeah. And Desk made a strong argument that he can be really effective on the left.

So it may be that Robinson doesn't always get to start, but I think the way you put it is nice and precise and gets the point across. Yeah, and we saw in that game, Jamaica I think was weaker on their right half of the field because of some of the personnel they were using. But I think that's an important takeaway, because we're going to play teams in Concaf who have like one-off really strong players and then on the other side of the field, they might be really, really weak.

And I think that's something where you could do some matchup games and be like, okay, if this team has a really weak right back or a really weak sort of right and midfielder to protect their right back, then we're going to throw Dest at them on the left and be like, hey, hey, deal with Pulisick and Dest for 70 minutes. And if it's vice versa, then it's Dest on the right and let him run it, let Desk run at their weakest side. Yeah, I guess there's a whole, you know, raft of tactical considerations there. Like if, say, we play Jamaica again and they have Kumar Lawrence, who is a pretty good left back,

Do we bring Dest over to the left to attack the weaker right side, or do we keep him on the right to pin Kamara Lawrence back? You know, is there a conventional wisdom on that? I don't think so, but what's great is to just have that flexibility and know that, in my opinion, either Robinson or whoever we end up using as Desd's right back backup is going to be competent. So I think Robinson sort of gave us that level of competence that everyone had kind of been wanting to see. Maybe not. I feel like some people still, no matter what, I'm going to be like, no, too shaky, defensive disaster. But I just think he's there and he's going to be fine.

So it really comes to figure out how you maximize Serginio Dest game by game and run with that. He does seem like he is sort of in a class by himself as a left back. Sammy Vines didn't have the greatest tournament. I mean, he wasn't horrible in Guadalajara, but he wasn't like a standout. performer, especially in the latter matches. And I just don't know who else there is, you know. Yeah, Vine's going to have had like three assists in that tournament and that everyone

would have been continuing to rave about him. And, you know, he was undone by the anchor of the entire team and a couple of like poor finishing attempts. Yeah, I mean, even if he had. Even if he had, three assists, I don't know, I don't know. No, I'm with you. I'm with you. He's still unproven against any real level of competition internationally.

Yeah. And there's nobody really clearly coming up behind him. I love to think about what's going to have with Jonathan Gomez someday, the Louisville City left back, or I still hold out some hope that Kobe Hernandez Foster will become a professional left back. But man, man, you know, those things seem a long ways away. George Bello. There's a kid down in Atlanta that does all right. Yeah, he's okay. He's okay. I don't think he's as defensively reliable as Vines is. maybe a, maybe a little more flash going forward. I'm not even sure about that. But that takes us to our, go ahead. Take it and take it to the next fullback option then.

Yeah, because so my takeaway is I'm still a little hesitant on Robinson. And I think like who's, so who's going to be the next elite, who's the next best chance at an elite fullback after Dest? And there's no guarantee it's going to happen. But it's, it's Brian Reynolds. I think he came on for the second half of that Northern Ireland game after we saw him look pretty lost for Roma in his debut in a loss to Sasuola, Sasuolo I think, or maybe it was Parma, I can't remember.

But Reynolds looked promising, I thought, against Northern Ireland. He shows that he has some bite going forward a little more than, I think a little more than Canon. You know, he can hit that probing ball with his right foot, just rockets it in there. And defensively may be pretty shaky still. But I guess my takeaway is come quickly, Brian Reynolds, you know? Right, right.

Break into Roma's team for the last seven games of the season. Make this choice as easy as possible. It might just be something where he blows up in the Gold Cup and he's a, you can't leave him off the roster come September. Right. I'm just putting him in the Gold Cup because I've chosen to do that. he has time yeah he has he has he has a he has good opportunities ahead of him you know that that gold maybe the gold cup maybe nation's league uh goal cup does seem more likely somehow but i want gold cup

because i want him to get the minutes and i think in nations league i don't think he's getting the minutes i think he'd keep he'd get a couple of cameos but i want him i want him like starting and i want to see what he does for 90 minutes even though the competition will be a mixed bag yeah and then uh preseason with roma hopefully he'll be familiar enough to really compete for minutes next season. But you can see the upside. You know, he's able to, he's able to get around people. He can play a nice cross.

He can play a nice early ball. I think Italy's a good place for him to work on 1V1 defending and sort of tactical discipline and stuff like that. There we go. Brian Reynolds. Stuff that I don't really understand. We kind of do because, again, the kid in Atlanta, I feel like has shown, Bello has shown us a nice progression in that tactical understanding

where you can look at some of the more raw moments. I remember thinking the same thing even about DeAndre Edelon back in 2014 where almost just like caught up field too much and guys able to beat sort of beat you into that backdoor cut. So I haven't noticed Brian Reynolds getting like suckered into any of those kinds of situations. Yeah. It doesn't look like it just doesn't look like a natural state for him to be, you know, facing a guy up and defending.

But he's young. Everything can change very quickly. Next takeaway, number seven from Greg Velasquez. Oh, no. Johnny Cardoso was not the prince that was promised. No, he wasn't. That felt too close to, like, dumping on a 20-year-old. But it was just a matter.

I think it was more a matter of, like, I think people had really built him up in their minds. You know, there were a lot of 20, full-strength senior 23s with his name behind Tyler Adams. despite the fact that we basically just never saw him play ever because it was so hard to get video of him from Brazil. He got like a tiny cameo in the November friendlies in Europe with the senior team. So when he came into Olympic qualifying, it was like, oh man, we're finally going to see it.

And I was like totally expecting to have to go the other direction where I was like, okay, yeah, he looked great, but it was against the Dominican Republic U23s. Like, let's just all slow down. And then it just was the opposite of that where we have to, like really be like, okay, we're just going to need a lot of patience with Johnny Cardoso if he's going to come around. You know, I'm assuming maybe that was a total one-off and he steps up immediately and it looks way better. But from what we got of him, he doesn't feel like he's that close to breaking through with the senior team. No. I mean, yeah, like you said, there's the possibility that

he just got Christ and that was, it was all on the coach and him not knowing his role or being put in the wrong role. And there will be some people who argue that. But no, he was not, he wasn't, he wasn't clean on the ball. He wasn't super creative. He kind of went into dead ends with the ball and, you know, tie was like positionally sort of all over the place. I think you have noticed that in particular. Yeah. I mean, whether it's, I mean, I guess what I'd say is if the guy was going to be our second overall, you know, number six, then he should have been able to pretty fluidly step into a number eight role against much weaker competition and he

and he just definitely didn't do that. So again, not putting him in the bin. He's 20 years old. He's playing first team soccer down in Brazil. Like, let's just keep watching him and keep checking to see if he's sort of making progress in the areas that we definitely think that he probably needs to make some progress

in. Yeah. But I don't think, I don't, again, when we're talking three months and even six months out, it doesn't feel like he's in the picture for the Nations League, doesn't feel like he's in the picture for September qualifiers. No idea who's in the picture for Gold Cup, though. So maybe that's where Burrhalter gives him another look or pre-Camp, pre-Gold Cup

camp, get him in there with a bunch of guys, see if he's cleaned some things up. Pre-gold Cup camp seems like a possibility. And then he could sneak into the Gold Cup roster. But doesn't seem likely. Number eight, I'll take this one. The centerback situation remains. somewhat unclear outside of John Brooks. And I think you would argue this isn't such a bad thing,

but just to sort of lay it out there, Brooks is the starting left centerback, obviously, maybe the best pass around the team. And it appears Burrhalter favors long as his partner at right centerback. But Richards is right there in the mix, Burrhalter-wise, it seems. And this camp moved Richards up in the, you know, official pecking order, it sure looks like.

But it's not clear who, the top four centerbacks are for the national team. It's not clear that Long is, you know, always going to start over Richards or that he should necessarily. Ream is in the mix. So is Miyazga. I think McKenzie, who has struggled a little bit recently and wasn't in that camp, is probably still in the mix. He got his first start in a while on Sunday and look pretty good. Can we say Eric Palmer Brown is not in the mix since he didn't feature in this last window? I'm fine saying that. I'll also push back a little bit on Richards moving up in the official pecking order. Am I allowed to do that? Or I guess maybe if you had him way down in the pecking order,

then he moved up. But are we sure that he's ahead of Miyazka in the pecking order? I don't know. I don't know. That's a good question. Because he started, he didn't start either game, right? Richards didn't. He just got the second half in the Jamaica game. And then he came on as a sub for long, I think, in the Northern Ireland game. Oh, man. I honestly don't remember. I know he just came on and not even at halftime. Because there was some speculation that he was like on a minute's restriction, but he didn't even hit 90 minutes for the, for the whole window. So it seems strange that he'd be on like a 75 minute restriction. German precision.

It might just be that it might just be that Burrhalter just doesn't quite trust him yet. And all it's going to take is more appearances where he's, you know, fine, where he doesn't totally botched things. And honestly, a lot of that I think is how I rationalize long being sort of the unmovable right centerback for Burrhalter is that I think Burrhalter just trust him flat out just thinks he has a good command of the game like those old time

quarterback manager type deals where they're not doing anything great at quarterback but they don't screw up and for some people that's like enough to be like oh yeah you can't take him out he just he just knows how to manage a game it feels like that's Aaron Long because his

form you know and everyone talked about the form like has gone up and down for New York Red Bowl over the last two and a half years, but he has not, it doesn't seem like he's even been close to being passed over for Greg Burhalter. Yeah.

Well, I guess, I guess I would push back on your pushback a little bit and say that Richards did move up in the pecking order because he wasn't in the pecking order, you know, that much. I mean, he wouldn't have come on at halftime in September if we played a game then, you know. So he's,

the movement is upward in the pecking order. All right, he has appeared in the pecking order and seems to be somewhere in the four, four to, somewhere between second and sixth. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. All right. All right. And last takeaway. Last takeaway here.

We still have Tyler Adams, West McKinney, and Tim Wea to put in this squad. That's just a, just an obvious thing to point out that we didn't even have these guys in the, in this camp. And I think they're all top 12, top 13 players. Obviously McKinney and Adams are nailed on starters. Way is pretty close. I think it's debatable. Like rotational starter.

He's going to start games through qualifying. I'm 90% sure of it. Again, we don't actually have any information about that because the last time he was called up was in November, and he didn't play very much in the November windows, which was fine. Like he was still kind of coming back from a year out of being injured, but it sure seems like he can add,

add to the group. Yeah. And we also know that when we get those three guys back, we're going to be missing two or three new guys for various reasons. But either way, it's going to be fun to see them back in uniform, back in camp, back in those behind the crest videos. Yeah. And it'll be fun to see McKenney in a pretty clearly attacking role, you know,

for the national team. Because if he's got Musa and Adams, in the midfield with him, that gives him a lot of freedom to kind of do what he does at Juventus, which is just run all over the front line and just cause chaos kind of. Right. And the other thing I think we're going to see is we're going to see these guys just totally being handed the leadership of the team, which I think is a pretty big deal too. Adams and McKinney in particular.

I mean, I don't even know what that means, but yeah, it just feels like these guys are going to be the leaders of this team for the next decade. Yeah. Really excited about Nations League, man, and the Gold Cup, and of course the big ones in September when World Cup qualifying kicks off, and we need to get points. No more excuses. If there were any excuses to begin with.

We won't need any. We're going to be cruising. I hope you are right about that. We've got two patron questions we want to get to before we get out of here. Adam, by the way, thank you to all our patrons. We really appreciate it. Try to say that as much as possible. Adam Ulrich says,

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more on what the ideal roster creation would be for both the Nations League and the Gold Cup. I know we expect Burrhalter to call in a first choice 11 for the Nation's League and use the Gold Cup to build depth for qualifying, but is that the right call? Couldn't an argument be made that with so few chances

to bring in your first choice team that we should do that for both competitions simply for reps and team building. He says, you know, he acknowledges some of the stuff about the Pact European season and the MLS schedule and wanting players to have as much preseason with their clubs as possible, but the question stands. Shouldn't we bring our best together as much as possible? What do you think, Greg? I mean, basically no. Like, we can't bring them together as much as possible because we can't burn them out. And so if we brought them together for four games for Nations League as soon

as their club season ended, it would almost run directly into, like, the Gold Cup pre-camp, where they'd then do that for two weeks and then actually play six games in the Gold Cup, and then they'd return to their club team straight from there, like to their opening weekend already in progress.

So, no, for me, it just basically is not possible. And with the timing of the two events, I think it basically only makes sense to do the, to bring them to Nations League. I don't think you would bring them to Gold Cup instead of Nations League either. I think it basically you have to just do Nations League and then give all these sort of first choice guys the rest of the summer off, which it sounds like that's what Greg Burhalter is doing. I have to sort of defer to the experts on this.

I don't know what it's like to be an elite athlete and face the prospect of burnout. But boy, that does seem like a recipe for burnout. Like if you're going to play in Nations League and Gold Cup and then you got like probably a pretty rigorous preseason and then you jump right into World Cup qualifying. I think Burrhalter framed it in terms of give these guys a chance to refresh and spend time with their families or away from the game for a little while. And that does seem like a plenty good idea to me. Because again, qualifying is going to be a grind too. They're going to go back to their clubs or for their preseason, open the season with their clubs. And I'm imagining, I guess I haven't even looked at the club calendar, but it's going to be compressed too because of all these international breaks.

So you're going to have this compressed club calendar, then throw in three match windows for qualifying every month all the way through March. It's, yeah, it's just going to be an insane calendar of matches. So while we would love to be able to have them for four more weeks together in a camp, it just, the cost would be, I think would be too much on their mental and physical health. So I think we're doing the right thing. I think we're doing the right thing by getting them together for Nation. League and giving them the rest of the summer off and then knowing that we will still have

some kinks to work out through the opening couple of games of World Cup qualifying. Yeah, it seems to me that we're doing the right thing too. Jason Beers asks an Olympic qualifying question, Olympic qualifying failure question. Was it a mistake to use the senior team system instead of building a system around the strengths and weaknesses of players available, especially given how few of these players were likely to feature in World Cup qualifiers. Would a 4231 or 422 have better fit the skills? Let's not spend too much time on this because I don't think most people really want to

hear about it anymore. Ready to move on. But what do you think? So I think it goes back to my 2019 parallels where I think we could have done one or the other. I think if we knew we were going to run the senior team system, then I think we very easily could have chosen players who fit that system. better. Once we chose the players we did, I think it would have been fine to deviate from the senior

team system and actually play those players in a way that would have accommodated them more easily. So it was just like we had to commit to one or the other and we would have been fine, but we didn't. And the 2019 parallel was we committed to like this possession style attack like at the cause in lieu of any other way of creating goals. And then we called in a bunch of players and started them who are not particularly good at a possession-based attack. Yeah. People familiar with Christianity will recognize this reference, but we were lukewarm and Conca Caff spat us out of its mouth.

So there. One other thing, one other thing about the Nation's League, the Nations League Gold Cup roster discussion is I think the best case scenario is, I can't improve on your answer to the Olympic. qualifying thing. I think that's great. The thing about Nations League and Goal Cup is like the best case scenario is we, that Nation's League team really is essentially first choice. And those guys go and they get the job done against Honduras, which is never going to be easy. I mean, you think it's going to be easy, right? No, absolutely not. Okay. Okay. I thought I got that from you in a message.

Okay. Retract it. Retract it. It's not going to be easy to take care of business against Honduras. And then we get to play Mexico and we finally have our coming out party where we like show that we can play with Mexico because we haven't been able to do that up to now. And then everybody gets to go home brimming with confidence. We have a gold cup where a bunch of players get a chance to, you know, sort of work their way into the into spots 14 through 25 to 30 in the roster. That sort of gets less viscous or more viscous depending on how you define that word. It can be both. It's like aloha means hello and goodbye. And then we come just like roaring into September qualifiers.

That's, you know, I think I can see how that would all work out. And I could work out nicely. Absolutely. I'm going to choose to live in that universe. All right. Anything else, Greg? No, that'll do for this. Women's team plays this weekend.

Catch them because they are just a team of all-stars. I think the 10th and the 13th are their two games. Okay. Um, 10th and 13th. That's like Sunday and Wednesday. Is that right? Do I have those games, right? Saturday and Tuesday. You want to watch them. It's fun. Yeah. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.