Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #178: USA-Mexico recap

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

The first-ever Nations League final vs Mexico delivered! What a night! We've got a full recap including a detailed timeline and a few big picture thoughts.0:30 intro and lineups and general thoughts15:30 First half timeline42:420 Second half timeline1:22:10 Wrap-up thoughtsSubscribe to this podcast's Patreon to support it long-term: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Scuffed **News** and subscribe on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXHOvwKB9lVW5_w_wQvhb4g?view_as=subscriber 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. Ah, drink it in. An absolute circus of a midnight matinee in Denver ends with the U.S. defeating Mexico 3 to 2. Only the second time we've defeated Mexico in a final and the first time we've defeated them in a competitive match since 2013. That's eight years, guys. Obviously, this was the biggest win of the scuff podcast era. Feels good. And wow, what an entertaining match. How you doing, Greg? I am doing well.

I am barely recovered. Barely recovered. I mean, we were, I was scrambling to make myself presentable, if you will, for what we're about to do. Yeah, I mean, it was a late night. Everybody, every U.S. men's national team fan is tired this morning, this afternoon. But man, man, it was so, so fun to watch that game. Let's just go right. Let's get right into it.

No time, right? That was, I mean, everyone who knows or is expecting a bell's chronology here knows that they've got a, they can get a lot of things done on their to-do list while they're listening to this episode. Yeah, make sure you have a lot of dirty dishes and some really long grass to mow, you know, whatever you got to do. So the lineups were Mexico came out in a 433, sort of their standard 433 under Tata Martino, memo, and the goal. Shaka Rodriguez, Nestor Rao, Hector Moreno, and Jesus Gallardo across the back line.

Edson Alvarez as the six, and then Charlie Rodriguez and Hector Herrera as the eights. And then from left to right, Tecateo, Herving Lozano, and Antuna across the front line. And Lozano was, so Lozano was the nine, which is not usually his role. But he was kind of, he was free-flowing. He was everywhere. I mean, a little surprised not to have Guardado in there just because I feel like for that kind of a game, you know, this bitter rivalry, I thought maybe they'd lean on him and his, you know, his wiliness. I mean, obviously he's also a very good player. Yeah. Yeah, I even tweeted before the game, like, watched the battle between Acosta and McKenny and Herrera and Guardado and then the Mexico lineup came out and Guardado wasn't even in the lineup.

So boy, did I feel silly. Cutting your legs off immediately. And then the USA had Stefan in goal, and then we had a three-man back line, Mark McKenzie, John Brooks, Tim Ream. This was rumored earlier in the week, and it came true. And then we had Yedlin starting at right wingback, desk at left wingback, and then a two-man midfield of McKinney and Acosta, and then Raina, Sergeant, and Pulisick across the front line. No surprises on the front line, but I was a little surprised by Yedlin being in the starting lineup. and the three-man back line. I didn't really believe it until I saw it.

Well, so I'm going to get pedantic already, if I may. Please do. Please do. So as soon as we saw the lineup, everyone was like, oh, he's doing the three-man-back line with wingbacks. But I don't think it really played out like that, and I'm sure we'll talk about it more. But I think the form it ended up taking was basically a similar 4-33,

or a slightly dissimilar 4-33 to what we're used to seeing in this sort of new era of Burrhalter-Ber. ball, but it looked more or less like Tim Riem was playing left back, Yedlin was playing right back, and Dest was playing as sort of a right midfielder. Left midfielder. I'm sorry, yeah, left midfielder with a cost of playing as sort of the center midfielder, and then McKenny as a man on the right side in defense when we were defending. When we would attack, Dest went into his normal spot, which was up high on the left side line

with Pool 6 sort of in the half space. And would you say in attack, Yedlin was staying further back than Dest? I mean, maybe a little bit farther than Desk, but not really, no. He still did, he still had the same role. So it wasn't too much of a difference there. Like Riem was flaring out wide to the left side line. Yedlin was flaring out wide to the right side line, just like they kind of are in our 433 as the left back, right back.

Okay. So in your mind, it really was more of a 4-3. or whatever, not so much a three-man back line, just still had Ream on an island out wide left. Yeah, that's how I thought it looked. That's how I thought it looked, and that was the immediate concern, even before that, just knowing that Ream and Brooks were going to sort of be trying to hold down Tecito and whoever they threw at him. So it was a concern, and I think it never got unconcerning throughout the match. Yeah.

And I would say, like, I mean, we can get into this more later, but tactics and system, in my mind, just sort of all went out the window. We could debate about what point in the game that happened, but there were big portions of even the first half where it was just pinball, trying to, like, win the ball and jump into the attack. And it was just like a ton of battles in the middle of the field

for loose balls. I did my rewatch on this too And I was actually surprised at how At actually how much Mexico did control things At least or looked comfortable on the ball They didn't create a lot from it Over the course the entire game It's not like they didn't create anything

But it's not like they were like constantly peppering us With chance after chance after chance But I thought it was going to look more like scrappy And for the most part Mexico actually looked pretty comfortable even against when we'd occasionally get a little more energetic in our press. It started to remind me a little bit of the 2019 Gold Cup final, which is why I really want to do this and literally break down and group all of the U.S.'s possessions and then group all Mexico's possessions

because Mexico had a lot of extended possessions where they knocked the ball around for 25, 30 seconds, and then it would break down in the attacking third. And the U.S. had almost none of those. Like we rarely strung passes together And it wasn't necessarily because we weren't trying to Like we weren't just like oh well we'll just play direct Like we were just

We never really gained a rhythm in our possession game For the entire game like there was no point Sometimes like the goals make easy narrative Like turning points when you're telling the story But even after the first goal It's not like oh that settled us down And now we you know started to build things It was not that that was not the case at all

Yeah. So maybe I'm thinking of it more from the U.S. perspective when I say it was scrappy because, yeah, we never did get a rhythm. And I, you know, on first watch and even on second watch, I've put a lot of the blame on that on, you know, some of our, some of the players we rate most highly like Pulisic and Dest and even McKenny, who I think grew into the game was was a little messy in the first half. And we, so. So we, like, in my mind, we had chances to, we would, we would get through that first line of Mexico's press. And, and I didn't think Mexico was pressing as vigorously as they have pressed us in the past either. But there was, you know, we'd get through that first line of Mexican defenders, Mexican attackers, really. And then, you know, somebody would have the ball at their feet driving into the, into the other half. And then we would just, like, give it away. We would just be sloppy, like, over and over again. I'm not saying we did that at will, but when we did do,

it we didn't capitalize in the first half very often. Yeah, and I'll even say, I think it's important that you said when they drive through past the half because that's about where it would break down. It wasn't even in the attacking third. We never even quite managed to breach the attacking third or very rarely even breached the attacking third with control of the ball. It was super uncommon. Whereas Mexico could get into the attacking third, could even get into box sometimes, but

never really create an opening. So in that sense, again, very similar to the 2019 Gold Cup final, where we did a very good job defensively of bending but never breaking. And that's pretty close to what we did in this game. The breaks were very obvious individual mistakes, at least in the first goal. And I can't help but think the bending would have turned into a lot more breaking if Diego Linaz had been on the field in the first half instead of Ariel Antuna. I mean, that was just such a massive upgrade from Antunah to,

to Linez and of course we did see Linaz have a huge impact on the game when he did come on but Antuno was getting some joy up that right flank I mean Tecateo obviously was too on the left side but not quite as much as Antuna and Antunna just couldn't really like you couldn't really make anything of it you know that's what I'd say too is that's where it got sloppy for Mexico

and even like I might I'll just say before you get to the timeline some of their decisions like were very relieving to me as I was watching it because it would be Antunah running at Tim Ream and he would almost like hold up and not just try to blow past him or he'd be by Ream and now Brooks was going over to cover and Antunah would release the ball instead of just trying to pants Brooks and I'm just like oh thank God he passed it even if it was a slightly dangerous situation

at least he was passing it into an area where guys would be able to make plays whereas we've seen Brooks and Ream in those ISO situations are very unlikely to actually come come out on top. And again, I'm not even faulting those guys for it. Like, you can't, you can't ask your, that can't be a staple of your defensive game plan is to be like, oh, well, we'll just have Ream defend on an island successfully for, for 80 minutes.

Right. And I thought, you know, Mexico, Mexico's midfield, I mean, Alvarez had a, had a good game. He's like a, he's a really impressive to me, at least destroyer and like, just responsible, kind of what we want Tyler Adams to be for the. the national team. And I thought Hector Herrera was fantastic for Mexico in this game. He's so good.

He's good at everything. He wins the cage matches. And then he finds a, he does something clever with the ball, and then he finds a pass. But I did not think Charlie Rodriguez was on that level, who was the guy who started over Guardado. I just thought he was more timid and not quite as, didn't have quite as much influence as the other two. And that helped us too.

I mean, there was one time where Rodriguez took the ball off of McKenzie's foot or, like, intercepted one of McKenzie's foot and drove past him. And he could have, like, dribbled him behind him and instead stopped and played a square pass. And that would be one of those, that was a moment where I was relieved at that decision. So. And let me just also say, because we're kind of already discussing this very, like, coldly on play-by-play, just the pruders. and the main thing here is the celebration. Like this is a, we're talking about it now after after 12 hours of just like mental adrenaline celebration. It was such a ride.

Yeah. Yeah, it was. And I, you know, I want to echo something Taylor Rockwell said on the Total Soccer show a couple of days ago, a few days ago. He said, you know, you can sneer at the Nation's League if you so choose. It's like a made-up tournament that's brand new. This is the first time anybody's ever won a trophy. But these games, and we didn't talk about this when we talked about the Honduras match, I don't think we talked about it very much.

These games are perfect proxies for World Cup qualifiers. They are exactly the kind of games that this young team of very talented players that hasn't played together much needs to be in. And, you know, if you're Greg Burhalter, we'll get into Burrhalter, good, Burrhalter, bad stuff here in a few months. moments, but if you're Burrhalty, you've got to be thrilled. And I personally am thrilled with the way this team fought and came back from two deficits, came back from giving up a goal in the first mother-frikin minute. And then it's, you know, it's punctuated with Pulisic going top

bins on a penalty, a guy who I thought was like up to now was pretty bad at hitting penalties. and then Ethan Horvath, a guy who's gotten no respect, almost no respect from me over the last three years, just being an absolute hero off the bench for Zach Stephan and then saving Guardado's penalty. Not a great penalty from Guardado, but still, that's a heck of a moment. And, boy, it was just pure entertainment. Great television. All kinds of stuff happened in this game. Right, and it's amazing.

And the whole idea of the Nation's League being a joke can be true, but, also true is, you know, I don't care about the trophy and what it's going to look like in our trophy case. But what matters for us sort of watching and trying to figure out what it all means is that we brought the very best players we could bring. Mexico brought the best team that they thought they could bring. Those were their, you know, first choices. Whether we all got them right is another question. Both teams were trying to win that game. There were no compromises of like, this is going to be an experiment or, you know, whatever else. The experiment was how do we maximize our chances to win this trophy?

And everyone was playing that out at full speed, full intensity. And it was riding a motorcycle off of a helicopter. It was, what a relief. I mean, relief isn't the right word, but what a jolt to see the U.S. play in a game, the U.S. men play in a game with that level of intensity after so many non-intense games. And we've talked about that, you know, like against Uruguay back in 2019, it was like a pretty sleepy affair.

Even the friendly against Switzerland wasn't all that intense. but man this was I would say probably the most intense game some of these guys have played in even though they play for big clubs in Europe because a lot of those big games in Europe have happened in front of empty stadiums and they're not they're not like this national rivalry

Right McKenny's played in a ton of pressure-filled games obviously last season for Juventus but I don't remember any times that McKinney has been in a dust up with 15 other guys and he's, you know, having his throat grabbed until you go back to the last U.S.-Mexico competitive game. Right. It's very, it's singular.

It's its own category of game for the U.S., I think, for most of these players. And, you know, as intense as those games in Juventus and Gelsenkirkin in Torino and Gelsenkirkin can be, you're never getting like, you know, full bottles of Mountain Dew thrown at your head. So should we get into the timeline? Are you ready for that? Let's go full chronology here. All right.

An extra 30 minutes of chronology. Probably an extra 50 minutes of chronology when the whole thing's all set and done. The game went for 144 minutes. I thought I saw that stat. So, you know, well over one and a half games of the football. First minute thought we came out with good energy, but a lack of precision and we paid for it immediately. Acosta gave it away and then it fell to Hector Herrera, who will come up a lot in this chronology, who beats Raina and sprays it wide to Tecateo.

Tecateo beats Yedlin and then McKenzie. No, I'm sorry, Yedlin and then McKinney. And then Yedlin recovers and taps it back to McKenzie. And McKenzie tries to square it wide for McKinney as Tecotito is on rushing. Tecotito reads it, intercepts it, drives at the goal and smashes it right over Stefan's head for a one-zero lead inside one minute. and I almost had to quit using Twitter at that point. It was so dark on the timeline.

Yikes. And here's some fun context on my end. Just the way I was watching the gaming experience in it. I had family in town. And so they got to my place around 730 or 8. And so I had like family obligation visiting time, which I was happy to do it. I haven't seen family in a long time. But I was doing that for like three hours.

And then I had to jump in later. had blacked out everything. You know, even my phone was, I'd put my phone in, like, the, in the aquarium. And I just, like, didn't watch any, didn't check anything. Got on and watched the game. So, discipline. So, so didn't experience any of that sort of. So, yeah, so I didn't, I didn't experience any of that sort of roller coaster.

And almost, it had a hard time actually going back to check it because you can't go so far back in the timeline because it was such a crowded, uh, social media event. So much volume. You can't. It's impossible to go back. But I can only imagine, I can only imagine, you know, coming into this game off of what we sort of all felt was like an underwhelming Honduras win. It's a win, but it felt a little underwhelming. And then to be like, okay, well, now it's the real, real, real test, you know, and to have the first question go that way, I can only imagine the mental shambles. And I haven't seen the officials to stats on attendance or anything, but I saw Max Burr.

who was at the stadium, say it was, you know, there's 60,000 people there. This is a, it's a full house in Denver of, like, mostly Mexico fans. So this is like, this is like in a way qualifier in the Azteca minus the mystique, you know, and 30,000 people. Do we need to break, do we need to break the play down at all? Like everyone saw what happened. It's very obvious what the mistake was. We're usually not like, usually when we're breaking goals down, we're assigning blame by percentages,

but here, here we can feel pretty good about, this isn't a plurality. McKenzie's going to get the majority of the votes here. Yeah, 95% of the blame. I mean, we're usually fans of languidness. We like players who are languid, but he was too languid here. If you want to give 5% of the blame to somebody else,

maybe McKenny for not getting wide enough for him. No, I'm giving it to Acosta. I'm giving it to the four, the 3% to Acosta on the turnover to start this game out. Because it was a, because Acosta, that was a really poor touch from Acosta. A player I thought had a really good game overall, but that was, uh, his first, his first involvement was not positive. All right, fourth minute.

McKenny wins a little battle on the sideline and zips a hopeful ball up the line for sergeant. McKenzie, I'm sorry. I can't, I cannot keep mixing those two up. McKenzie wins a little battle on the sideline and zips a hopeful ball up the line for sergeant. This is pretty soon after the goal. Hector Moreno mishandles it

And sergeant is on goal Just like that Coming at the goal from a little bit of a poor angle And he gets a shot off with Edson Alvarez Baring down on him Kind of falls down And hits it right at the keeper Didn't look to me like he had any other options

But shooting Yeah it didn't look like that And it never really looked like it was going to Score just from the way he was sort of Being little brothered by the time He was taking the shot Yep I would say

you know, one of the problems, and I don't know if this is coaching or tactics or the way these players play, but I clocked like three moments of really poor off ball movement as we're trying to build into Mexico's half in the first, you know, 15 minutes or so. And one is Pulisic as McKinney drives forward. McKinney's driving forward on the right wing at about the, in the six minute, five-40 mark or so. and Pulisic wants the ball at his feet he's facing McKinney and the McKinney doesn't give it to him at his feet and Pulcic just kind of like

jogs along you know it doesn't if Pulisic makes a hard run in the channel there McKenny slips him in and Pulisic doesn't do it and I thought I don't like that you know I like off ball movement so I love it bells because I have this

I have a couple of these instances marked as McKinney missing Poulosick. Oh, really? So we're just seeing two different things. Because I love giving the ball to a Poulosick type player while the back lines retreating and letting him just turn and be the guy who starts driving. So it's essentially just like McKenny hand this ball off to Christian Poulosick who thrives. I mean, he is elite in the world in this situation.

Give him the ball here. You run past him to add another player and let him Poulosick his way through the traffic. Because he wasn't looking at a holding mid. And I think that there's a clear distinction there. he would have been looking at two centerbacks, you know, retreating. And that's, I think, a massive opportunity. That's a great way to initiate an attack, and you want to do that as often as possible in my mind.

So I had it as McKinney having a little bit of tunnel vision and missing him just slightly off to McKinney's left. And it happened a couple of times. I think you probably clocked it a couple of times the other way where Pool Sick didn't, wasn't aggressive enough. But I had wanted McKinney to just dish it over to Pool Sick can continue going. Interesting.

I mean, I guess I can see that the percentages are in favor of that of giving it to Pulisic and letting him turn and run at the centerbacks. But, I mean, McKinney is not bad at driving into the box. And in the one that I clocked, if Pulisic just, I mean, we're getting way too detailed here. But if the one that I clocked, if Pulisick, you know, if Pulisick makes that hard run in the channel, McKinney will slip it to him. I mean, that is like, that's a vintage McKinney.

type of moment and and then pulisic has one centerback to beat and he's coming at the goal from a 45 degree angle but let's not beat that dead horse it is it's interesting that we both had it yeah we'll uh we'll post some some clips of that and let the listeners decide yeah maybe maybe we will eighth minute yedlin probably should have gotten a yellow for stomping on tecotito i he didn't um i noticed death's off ball movement sucked when pulisic tried to head it to him on the sideline and I notice another of these from Desk when Acosta is trying to play out of the press.

He's just a little too static and I'm not sure if he didn't understand his role or what was going on there. It's tough and that could be something we kind of ask some questions of Burrhalter about like he put a lot of guys in brand new roles. We've been running roughly

the same shape and principles for the last year now and, you know, this almost had a bit of a cleanseman feel to it to just be like, okay, huge, massively important game against, you know, one of the regional powers, let's change everything and throw everything new at them right away. Or, you don't mean the day before. So that's kind of what it felt like, okay, now Dest is suddenly playing this, like, winger with Tim Rang behind him, and things are going to be a little bit different for him.

Yeah. And he seems to have been a little frustrated by the night. I think it's fair to say. I'm not going to make a big meal out of that. I know you hate that kind of stuff. But I don't think it's out of line to say that Dest was frustrated when he came off. Anyway. Dest had started all three games so far in this window.

And he went 90 against Switzerland. He went 90 against Honduras. And we're asking a lot of him to run up and down the sideline. Not that the Switzerland running was necessarily at full speed for him. But he was covering a lot of grand. round. And there's the, the, the, a little bit of a, uh, side note on desk is that it, it was reported that he kind of was getting through the last month or so of the La Liga season playing through injury. Um, so he could just be, he could just be at the end of a long spell of

minutes and just needs his body might just need, body and mind might just need a little bit of a break. Yeah. I mean, I, I, I, that's how I'm going to think about it because he wasn't, he was not effective on the night. He was, he gave the ball away a lot. Um, um, but I think he'll be okay. I think he'll be fine come World Cup qualifiers in the fall. 10th minute, Brooks Yellow Card. I think for disrespecting the ref, is that what it was? I couldn't tell if it was that or if it was for clattering a guy from behind.

I mean, you could have gotten a yellow for hitting the guy in the back the way he did. Like I don't remember which attacker it was, but it was basically posting him up. And he met the guy back at the same time the ball was being collected. a ref might give a yellow there to try to settle the game down. Well, it seems like a poor omen down 1-0 with our best centerback on a yellow after 10 minutes. But Brooks held it together and he didn't get another yellow for the rest of the game. I played quite well. 19th minute, Dest beats two guys up the line and then puts Alvarez on skates.

Kind of a nice moment for Des, really the nicest moment of the game for him. started a little spell of pressure from the U.S. for the first time, but after he puts Alvarez on skates, he tries to find a ball across and can't. You know, it doesn't just kind of hits it. I think he was trying to hit Pulisic arriving in the box, maybe, but it was too hot for him, and Pulisic couldn't get there in time.

The best part about this for me was it showcased just what, like, we can do on pure talent, because this wasn't like a tactic situation. It was Dest and Pulisic, pinned on the sideline. in our own half against four Mexico players, and they just comfortably, like, play their way around them with just a little, like, one, two, and then Dest with just the slightest bit of misdirection

gets past, gets the edge on two different Mexico defenders, and now is racing at two more retreating ones. So with no, you know, tactical disorganization or anything that we achieved, we got Dest running into the box with the soccer ball. Yeah, it was a good moment. And we got to, like I said, we had a little pressure over the next, you know, minute or so. Pulisic had a shot blocked. Acosta had a shot from outside of the box blocked. I think that's it for the first 20 minutes. I also want to note that despite his guilt for the goal

and some other moments of shakiness that got a lot of attention, Mark McKenzie did make some nice plays in that first half. And I want to spotlight one in particular. I can't remember the exact timestamp, but he stepped to the ball and then played a lovely outside of the boot pass to sergeant's feet through I mean through like three defenders and sergeant kind of wasted the chance or wasted the opportunity

a little bit but you get to see a little flash of like what McKenzie is capable of in that and a couple other moments and a pass in the final third around the 20th minute so just I wasn't happy with the way McKenzie gave up that first goal and a couple

of other things he did that was a problem and that needs to be corrected but let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater as they say right and he had he had two solid games leading up to this so uh so yeah it was nice to see him have some bright spots where he's not gonna he can he can have some good good clips in the video session 24th minute mexico's second goal we thought it was going to be mexico's second goal called back by v a r they go they go route one from the back and this is a this is a thing that mexico did not mind doing it all in this game is just hitting it long for somebody's head in a next to a centerback.

They go route one to Hector Herrera and he lays it off for Lazzano who springs Antuna wide and Antuna plays a cross that kind of is to nobody and Yedlin clears it for a corner. On the ensuing corner, it's a short one. Herrera gets the return pass from Lozano and whips a ball at the back post for Hector Moreno who is unmarked and he heads it in. I would say McKinney, Riem, Anacosta were free and. could have picked him up, but none of them did. It was two zero, but wait.

Moreno was offside by a couple inches, the video shows. Thank heaven for video technology. Yeah, to me, it looked like a Costa's man who he just kind of lost, and sometimes you could say, well, if the guy, if you lose the guy to the goal side of you, then you just have to assume he's beyond your line, so you have to let him go. But I don't know that we were that, like playing with that level of, discipline or if it was just in attention. McKenny ended up the closest guy to him, but it was because

he peeled off his guy, I think, to try to make any last ditch play on it and just couldn't get there in time. I hate to disagree with you. I almost never do, but I watched this very closely, and Acosta was marking a different player. I don't remember

who it was, who came further forward, like further forward toward the ball, and nobody was really marking Moreno. Nobody was marking him to begin with And nobody was marking him at the end Ream peeled off to go

Closer to you know closer to the ball as it was hit And McKinney sort of like leaned towards the back post Because there was somebody he thought there was somebody there to To mark that it turned out there wasn't And it was in Marino was just on mark so we got it We just got to be more discipline there And it was he was offside by literally two inches Three inches something like that

Or Stefan just comes and collects it with his hands He's allowed to use this. You think it was close enough that that would have been easy for Stefan to collect? Not easy, but doable at least. I'm going to, I suppose, get in trouble with like the Stefan enthusiasts, but I feel like maybe there are going to be some folks fleeing that camp a little bit. I think Stefan is like excellent at towing the line of not doing the things that would be considered very good execution. So it's like he's always doing, like not doing the things where like,

it would have been a good, it would have been a good collection if he'd come and got it. But they don't always come and get it. He just always seems to be on the wrong side of those over and over. And then sometimes way on the wrongs. Maybe he's a little, maybe he's a little gun shy after the Honduras incident. There's going to be a goalkeeper controversy now, I think, at least among the fan base, because Horvath gave us a lot to think about. 27th minute, the U.S., almost immediately after this whole VAR episode over the callback,

Moreno goal, we get a goal. It's a rena goal on a rebound off a McKinney header on a corner. We get the corner from a long throw. So this is what we call disorganizing the opponent with the ball. McKinney just hurls it down the line for Sargent, who runs onto it and tries to cut it back. It's cut out for a corner relatively easily. On the ensuing corner, Pulisic hits a good ball into the mixer and McKinney rises and just thrashes it off the far post. Karam's directly back into the face of goal. So it's just like a perfect ding ding right back. And it goes right to

Rayna, who calmly side-foots it past Choa 1-1. What a turn of events. Huge turn of events. And honestly, I think that is like the biggest first half contribution that you can credit to Greg Burrhalter because he has made a point of emphasizing throw-ins and taking them quickly. There's the great video of him collecting a ball that skips to him out of bounds and like in one semi-disjointed motion, you know, getting it back to the thrower that we all love and it's great. But I mean, that's not so awkward. But it's for a purpose. Like there's a, you know, they've done, they've got the data on throw-ins taking quickly.

And McKinney, obviously, his throw-in is a weapon. he put that ball 40 yards down the sideline in space beyond sergeant i don't think anyone was expecting it um so yeah so that that's that's an intentional thing that's that wasn't an accident but also you're not going to build your entire offense around those opportunities to get in behind but it is it's a it's good it's good that we have a weapon like that and that as it turned out in this game our our set piece attacking was like i felt like we were going to score a goal every time we got a corner kick, you know. It was, it was remarkable, and it was always off, it was always from McKinney's head.

34th minute, another bad giveaway from McKenzie, but Charlie Rodriguez kind of wasted. I mentioned this earlier. I won't go into detail. This is a sort of, it would have been an easy in the narrative of this game to be like that goal, you know, Mexico had their goal disallowed. We come right back and score one. This is the turning point. Everything, you know, we started to really get back into the game. And I was kind of expecting to see that on rewatch. But this is where I want to say it was definitely not that at all. Like we scored that goal.

And I know you got went to the 34th minute, but within seconds after the kickoff, Mexico was back in the box down Tim Rheim's side. They got in again a couple of minutes later. And that was all before McKenzie's bad giveaway. So it wasn't like, oh, we, we now like got our foot in the game and we're going to hold on for things. It was still like one-way traffic as far as possession. goes. That's true. They were picking on Ream down that, like just dumping in that corner and having somebody run onto it. And Tecateito was, was allaying Yedlin and

McKenzie a little bit down the left wing. I will say, we do have to say, though, that despite the picking on Ream and the, and Tecotito having some joy down the left, like you said earlier, there weren't, there were no guilt-edged chances for Mexico in this span, you know. I mean, there was control of the game, but they weren't, you know, they weren't racking up XG. Yep, that's exactly what it was. It was very, it was very good bending, but not breaking in a little bit of, you know, maybe Mexico letting, letting us off the hook a little with not fully exploiting what, what maybe the, the Ream Brooks pairing on that left side was giving them. But maybe not. Maybe I'm underselling, maybe I'm underselling how good those two

were doing it at, you know, hitting their peak defensive abilities. I mean, I think, if you went to the scuffed corollary, you know, the Eltree corollary of the scuffed podcast, which I don't know if there's one like us that exists, they would be like, why is Tata starting Aurel-A

on tuna? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Because he's just not the player that Linus is, or even like Rodolfo Pizarro who didn't even get into this game. Is he he even in this camp? I don't know. No, he didn't get, he didn't make this roster. But that's interesting about the

the Mexican scuffed equivalent because we would be complaining about the same things. We'd be complaining that Tim Ream is going to be too easily dusted. And then they're going to be saying, Linus should be in here dusting Ream. And then that's, you know, that's exactly that. So the Mexican equivalent equivalent of scuffed one out in this case. 35th minute, bit of a chance for the U.S. McKenney wins it in the press and slips Raina down the line. And he beats his guy just enough and blasts the ball across the face.

of goal. Sergeant is kind of making the backpost run, but not fast enough to get to it. What's going wrong at this point in the game, do you think? I mean, I just described a chance where I think maybe Sergeant could have been a little more decisive, but I'm not sure about that. What do you think is going wrong here? One, I think when we get the ball into those spots, and I thought this about the Honduras game, too, and I thought Legette maybe was one of the worst.

offenders, but we'd get the ball into those sort of dangerous spots wide of the 18, and that's where Raina got it. And then we would deliver non-dangerous ball in, a ball into like a not even dangerous situation. It's not a good number situation. So you're hitting this sort of hopeful ball when really maybe you still need to soccer for a little bit longer. And Rain is capable of that. I mean, Raina is not a guy who, oh, well, he's definitely not going to beat a guy 1 v1, so let's just have him whip a ball into the mixer and see what happens. Like, you might want to see him actually take that defender on and beat that guy. It's worth the risk of losing the ball because if he does, the next man comes over.

And then it's a square for a tap. And so, I mean, that wasn't it because we didn't even get into those situations too often. It just looked all a little frantic and we never really looked all that calm on the ball once we cross midfield. That's probably an oversimplification. What did you think? I thought like I said I thought Acosta really grew into the game and played pretty well but he could connect a pass like I said earlier to McKinney or Pulisic sometimes even Pulisic or Dest and then they would just they were just wasteful they were just wasteful in the first half just sloppy and I mean we saw the same thing a little bit against Honduras when everybody was playing hero ball in the second half but this didn't feel like Hero ball in the second half but this didn't feel like Hero ball, it just felt like we weren't quite, I mean, Mexico was just a little tougher in those, like, cage matches, and we, we kept losing the ball, and we couldn't build any rhythm.

That's my, that's my read on it. So I guess I wonder if there's a more, like, you know, sophisticated tactical explanation. Well, I'm hoping to see the pattern in the autopsy to see how all of our possessions were ending, because when you line up your possessions over and over, it's easier to sort of get that rather than watching the game in real time where our turnovers are broken up by long spells of Mexico possession. But I think you might be on to something there where we were just trying to drive the ball forward and we ran into a lot of cul-de-sacs. It didn't pick the right option, didn't have the right options to keep going forward,

but, you know, just forced to force the round peg into the square hole. I think Sergeant also was not as clean as he should have been. in this game. So when he did get chances with the ball at his feet, like he would make a pass that was awkward, or he would get a ball to his feet and not have his body shaped the right way and not be able to receive it. That happened at least twice, one on a really nice pass from Acosta in the first half.

In Mexico, Mexico, again, they're good players. These are really good players who are playing against. Something I noticed earlier I forgot to comment on it. I think it was in like the third minute was when Sergeant did get kind of played free in. where he took that shot where he was falling down. Pulisik was making his run that he'd make for the square. And as he was trying to get into the box, the Mexico player who was near him just sort of like threw a hip into him

and just bumps him off of his run. And it's stuff that you might not pick up on because you're paying attention to Sergeant and what he's about to do. But that's why some of these open passes don't develop is because Mexico aren't, you know, Trinidad and Tobago, where we just have free reign to do whatever we want

and everyone can be where they want when they want to be there, and we can always find this open pass and look really good. It's not that easy. Mexico is going to be like, no, you don't get to go where you want to go. I'm going to knock you off, and the timing's now off by a fraction of a second, and that's all that you need to do to disrupt players at this level. So, you know, that probably plays into it, too, is we're just playing a good opponent, and there isn't a scenario where we are just going to, like, routinely or reliably

carve Mexico up. Yeah, I did notice this is a slightly different type of thing. example but I didn't notice. I think it was McKinney with the ball maybe on the edge of Zone 14 driving at the goal and he tries to play a through ball to Pulisic. I think it was Pulisic. It might have been

Sergeant and Moreno just like reads it and cuts it out. You know when a lesser centerback might not have read that. It might have just been sort of passed through. So I think that's a good point. 43rd minute

Lozano gets his big chance Chipped in behind by Charlie Rodriguez I think Lozano was offside I looked at it pretty closely but it was close and it wasn't flagged and he is 1V1 with Stefan and he makes a big save Stefan does got huge and came out decisively

I the day UDN broadcast actually didn't show a replay of this because of other things were happening but that's just too easy for us to give, too big of a chance for us to give up so easily. And we're giving up a lot of those. We've been giving up a lot of those in the last three games. So that's a concern. Yeah, and again, that's a new one because we weren't giving those chances up

earlier in the year. And again, we're playing worse teams. But even through 2019, which would make sense. We were playing more of that mid-block where nobody was really just getting in behind us for free. And now we've seen Honduras do it in Mexico do it, success. Insuing corner kick, Carrera gets a free header from the penalty marker and sprays it wide. Okay, that brings us to halftime. Before we get into the second half, two little plugs.

Check out our Patreon and think about subscribing there. It's the best way to support this podcast, and many of you already do that, and we thank you. I'll put a link in the show notes. Also, number two, please check out scuffed news on YouTube and subscribe there if you can. That's my other endeavor. Greg's not involved, so he's not guilty of any of that. that. It's not soccer related, but I think it's worthwhile, and I do really believe if people check it out, they'll agree with me. I'll put links to that in the show notes as well.

To the chronology for the second half. The second half was great. The opening of it, at least, felt like maybe we were starting to get a foothold in the game, and it could just be variants that we put together a few good possessions in a row. But I'm not exactly sure what was different because we didn't make any changes to start the second half. And it honestly, just look like a little bit more composure. As much as you can boil things down to that, it was like, hey, like guys, just relax on the ball, pick your head up and identify the next pass that you can complete

and make that pass. And we put a couple of decent sequences together. Yeah. And just and move in, move for your teammates, move off the ball, get into the middle of that polygon, like you said it last week, and open yourself up for a pass. if we have people moving around a lot more,

I think that would help this whole project move forward. You know, just since you mentioned that, I do think one thing I did actually notice was McKinney dropping a little bit deeper to collect the ball, and I thought the deeper he dropped to have his starting position be, the more effective he was overall in the game, in possession at least. So that might have been a specific instruction,

or it might have just been McKinney sort of finding better pockets. Can you say double pivot? I still want us to stick with the triple pivot. Let's not move off of the triple pivot. Okay, all right. So the 48th minute, an example of some good play from us was some buildup from left to right, Dest to Sargent.

Dest plays it into Sargent in the middle of the field, and Sargent quickly one touches it to McKinney and then McKinney sprays it wide to Raina. Raina's cross finds nobody, but at least we're putting passes together. And then 49th minute, a yellow for Acosta, instigated by Moreno and Gallardo and other L-Tree players reacting to what I thought was a pretty benign shoulder-to-shoulder foul against, I mean, I hate, I'm not a big argue with the refs all the time kind of guy, and I don't think you are either, but it just seemed weird for him to get a yellow card for this foul on, it was a foul on Herrera. And so he's on yellow too now. Yeah, I never got a good, like, close-up of it to see if there was anything.

besides shoulder, like if you put a little bit of extra sharpened elbow into it, or whether there was a stomp or anything. Not that I'm saying there was, but the only look I got of it was from, like, way overhead. So I'm not sure if there was anything yellowish about it. Yeah, I think it was just late

and then it was reacted to as if it was an insult against Hector Herrera's mother or something, you know. I'm skipping ahead to 56th minute. a chance for Mexico. Dest mishandles a ball that falls to him and this was unfortunately a pattern for him

just really not on his game for the day. Mishandles a ball that falls to him in our half and Herrera strips him and plays Charlie Rodriguez and Charlie has a curler from 20 yards that's just over the crossbar and Dest is now about five minutes from being subbed off 58th minute

decent attack sprung by Acosta and McKenny and we get a corner out of it. On the corner, it falls to Dest, and his shot flashes wide on the volley. It looks like we're kind of back in. To me, it looked like we're kind of back in the game there for a little bit. Well, and that's what it looked like. That was a nice little sequence of Acosta with that cool little flicked Pulisic, I think, and Pulisic finds McKinney driving.

McKinney gets his shot off, and that's where Sergeant can't quite do anything with the rebound. No, that one's later. That's okay. That's okay. But we'll get to it right here. Weaya came on for Dest, and we moved Ream to left back and put Wea out wide. And then the 61st minute's the one you were just talking about. Really lovely move up the middle of the field.

It starts with McKenzie intercepting a pass and one touching it to McKinney. Like you said, McKinney turns and plays Raina. And then Raina takes a couple touches back to Acosta, Acosta with that clever one touch pass to Pulisix that you just referenced. and pull a six off in the attacking half. He turns his guy and he's going, and he plays a good pass to McKenny. McKenny cuts in at the top of the box and shoots.

It's saved on the dive by Echoa and Sargent kind of biffs the rebound. I don't know that that was a real good chance for a goal for Sergeant, but he didn't, however good of a chance it was, he didn't score. And that's probably the best attacking move of the game from the U.S. Yeah, by far the best team moves.

I had my notes too. 63rd minute Stefan gets hurt on what looked like a non-contact knee tweak. Did you, have you heard any word on that? Nope, I haven't seen anything about it. So no idea what we're going to hear back on that. That's scary for the no contact thing when you see, you see, I'm not, I'm not speculated, but I just mean, I'm saying you see ACL's done that way when there's no contact. So the range of injuries here could be significant.

It could be a, you know, a tweak. in a muscle or it could be something serious. He's trying to jump around and test his knee, you know, several minutes after he went down. And McKinney went over and kind of, I think, sort of put his arm around him and I'm guessing, told him, hey, it's okay to come off. And then McKinney carried the physio's dop kit off the field for him. So this is a, this, McKinney, like I said earlier, didn't have the cleanest first half, but he really started to emerge as like the big personality on the field for the U.S.

in this game. And this is one early example. He really stepped up in a lot of intangible, and it turns out tangible ways down the stretch. So Horvath-on, Jordan Sibbutchuk, Pfok is the name on in the back of his jersey, comes on for Sergeant, Luis Romo for Charlie Rodriguez, and Henry Martin for Takedito.

All of that happens around the Stefan injury. I think it was starting to dawn on me. here that that Tim Rima now was playing true left back with very little protection. I think when Dest was there, I think the idea was like, okay, he'll offer him more defensive protection. And it's not that Tim Waya wasn't working hard. Well, did Wayo play on the right? He did.

And then Raina was hanging out on the left. Yes, that's exactly right. But it just felt, it just felt like Ream was starting to be like, that's when you're like, oh man, we are in real, we are in real risk-taking territory here. It felt dangerous immediately. I mean, Antuna worked Ream in the 70th minute, and Acosta covers well to make Luis Romo's shot difficult. So Antuna just pushes the ball around Ream and runs around him the other side,

and then he slips Luis Romo into the box, and Romo's shot is difficult thanks to Acosta's resolute coverage. Yeah, I had that noted too, because it was just something that stood out as a difference between what Acosta will give you in that spot and a Jackson Ewell, for example. Yeah, should we stop and just, like, get into that a little bit? I mean, in my opinion, Acosta was a lot better than Jackson Ewell in this game, a lot better than Jackson Ewell was against Honduras. Yeah, I don't think it was even particularly close. Acosta wasn't like a liability.

He wasn't flawless. He had a couple of giveaways. but he wasn't like Hold your breath every time the ball went to him kind of a play and he actually made quite a few incisive passes that helped open things up for players not that we took advantage of those instances necessarily but you saw it usually were like oh that's something

and then defensively he just offers so much more bite so much more ground coverage and you know so much more it's just such a better Conca Calf player for me like when we're getting into these street brawls I won Acosta, he belongs. Yeah. And I see people on Twitter saying that Acosta wasn't any good.

And I'm like, what game were you watching? You know? I mean, he did have the poor touch on his first touch. And he had a couple other shaky moments. But I thought he was very good. Well, it's one of those things where if there's any player out there you don't like, especially in a game like this, you are going to have a couple of clips minimum. that you could compile to be like, here's where he was, here's why he sucks.

This guy sucks. He doesn't belong here. But again, you could put one of those together for every player on the field in that game. Acosta has quite a few of the positive moments to more than balance those out. Yeah. I mean, I was ready to, you know, swear fealty to Christian Pulisic after that penalty in the, an extra time. So I'm like, I'm a huge Christian Pulisic fan. but like if you want to make a low lights,

a low lights reel from this game, the Pulisic one's going to be way longer than the Acosta one. You know? Nobody's All Touch's video from this game is going to be very good, other than maybe Ethan Horvath. Yeah, Horvath would have a good one. The thing about Twitter is you can't do an All Touch's video because it's only two minutes, 20 seconds long.

It's impossible. And I think if we had Sanjiv on here, you would tell us nobody really wants to watch an All Touches video. just us um 71st minute we earn a corner on a big horvath goal kick and pulisic just harassing for the ball all the way to the corner on the ensuing corner pulisic plays a good ball and mckenny gets good contact and draws a big a choa save this is when i'm starting to think like we get a corner kick we have a 50% chance of scoring a goal at this point it felt like uh mexico was like zoning right they were setting up in a zone and just letting

McKinney get a good running start and go up uncontested? I don't know. Is that what they were doing? Is that why he was so easy? I think so. And they didn't have anyone on the posts, which I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but like, if you're just letting, if you're just counting on memo to cover the whole thing and giving McKenny any runway he wants to get his header, I don't know. I guess we'll just see what happens. That's foreshadowing. I mean, I don't think they'll do that. next time we play. I would assume not.

Seventy-second minute Burrhalter gets in on the action. Check out Wachie's video about this. He maybe tripped over some water bottles, but he did sort of challenge Nestor Arajo for the ball on the sideline. I'm surprised he didn't get a card for that. Anyway, kind of a funny moment. And then, similar, like pretty, I guess he's an old, you know, Burrhalter's an old man, and he looks awkward when he does physical action. activities, but both throwing a ball or like running into Nestor Arajo. But it was funny.

75th minute, blind ball from Raina to Wea down the wing, just a big looping cross-field switch. And Wea runs onto it. I thought his speed did was a positive factor here. Like he really, he stretched Mexico and created some threat in behind. This was a good example of that. I like how physical Wayo was on enough occasions. I mean, he's another guy who's not going to be shying away from Concaf stuff. And again, I think that's something a positive we can take from this game especially,

is we have quite a few players we can rely on to not be little brothered. And Tim Wea was not about to be little brothered in these games in this game. And I think that's a bit of a stark contrast to say the other guy who could have come in for that spot, which would have been Brendan Aronson, who I don't think necessarily would have held up as well in these conditions. I agree with that, yeah. I think the intensity of the game did take some players a back.

Like I think McKenzie was taken aback. I may be just projecting, but I feel like Dest was maybe taken a little back by the intensity of the match. Just the speed with which Mexico would close on you when you had the ball, you know? Like you had to get rid of it Or you had to like make a decisive action

Yeah or in this case a couple of times You had to be clever enough to be like oh they're coming I don't have any other passes So now my job is to stick my foot in between their foot And draw the foul But that's some punishment that you're going to take over Over these three match windows Yeah

He did take a little punishment in that way So on the ensuing corner kick after Wea Runs that ball down in the corner McKenzie gets his head on it, but that one troubles Choa less. So that's McKenzie with Z in there, not McKinney. And then Tata Martino, who had been watching Ream's struggle with Antuna, expertly subbed on Diego Linus in the 78th minute. Linus immediately works Ream right off the bat when he comes on.

Kind of a warning shot from my perspective. Hit like Meg's ream in the box and then Brooks comes over And then Brooks has to do the don't foul him dance to like kind of challenge But also realize that he's about to get done So I think Linus ends up poking it past Brooks to Towards the Mexico player but nothing comes of it But it's definitely like is is that warning He's so so tricky just like explosive and silky at the same time

A lot of trouble and gonna be a lot of trouble for the next ten years, I think. 79th minute, just over a minute after he came on, Linus scores. It starts with Herrera combining on the left, making a run down the line, receiving it, and slipping it inside for Lozano as Pfeck gives chase. Chucky traverses the top of the box and then sprays it wide, right for Yon-Lines, who is isolated with Tim Rie. and he just takes a couple touches inside he's just so tricky you can't really like if you're

ream you can't really do anything about it and snipes it at the near post 2-1 Mexico right that that war with ream was lost before it was fought like you knew what was happening there the only question was whether acosta or mackenzie could get over in time to help and to be honest they they both kind of did mackenzie was in the path of the shot and i believe it went through his legs. Do I have, is that how you saw it? I didn't see that it went through his legs, but it was close to his legs. All right. So, so in that scenario, McKenzie's there to take away the near post. And I think Horvath probably is counting on that a little bit. And so, again, like, there are

some blocking techniques here that defenders should be employing to help their goalkeeper out as much as possible. And so McKenzie needs to not give any passage through his body, if that's what happened. And that's what it looked like to me. So, So a little bit of that goes on on McKenzie for for not standing up that shot. It's tough. I mean, these are bang, bang, plays. If you shift your weight wrong just slightly at the wrong time, that stuff happens. Yeah.

Yeah, but I'm okay with blaming the other guys a little bit because you know Ream is on an island out there. You've got to help him out. Like everybody in everybody watching the game on television all over the country and all over Mexico knew the same thing, you know. And that's not to let, let Ream off the hook. is to say that, you know, that goal is on whoever decided to put Ream in that situation. Like, that's honestly where I was thinking. I was like, oh, well, like, this was not a surprise. And so a little bit, that's where you're thinking, like, this one's on Burrhalter.

81st minute, the U.S. didn't wilt. We won a corner on a run down the wing from Wea and a cross that's mishandled by Chaka Rodriguez. Raina takes the corner and it goes far post. And McKinney, there he is, just rises above Jesus Skyardo and powers it in past Ochoa at the far post. Two-two. And that's, I almost woke up. I did wake up my wife when that happened. She was not happy about that.

You know, it felt like a nothing play, but that cross from Wea, like his technique on that, on that cross was like eye-popping even in the moment, even before, you know, Rodriguez horribly misplayed it under no pressure. Yeah. But part of that no pressure, I'll backtrack even on that when I get to it. But anyway, Way-ass technique is it's like this bouncing ball. He didn't have any, like, really room to step into it. And he just, you know, swivels his hips a little bit and just fires a ball across that doesn't miss P. Fox's head by very much. So it was like a pretty dangerous situation.

But then as far as Rodriguez misplaying it, part of that is because of the intensity of the game, like where his heads down looking at the ball that he just collected. he's probably panicking just a little bit or rushing just a little bit because if there's someone coming and there's been somebody coming in this game, you don't want to do a McKenzie right there. Yeah, he didn't know how close. Was it Raina still at that point? I assume Raina would have been on that side, yeah.

Yeah, because Raina still had a play to make on the other end. Man, that was just really something. 2-2, and it felt like anything was possible at that point. And it turned out anything was possible. Then Adams comes on for Ream. Acosta moves to left back and Legette comes on for Raina, who was fading at that point after a decent showing, including the opening goal.

And from this point forward, I think the game turns into just chaos, you know, just epic moment after epic moment. No, it totally was. And something that, you know, my initial reaction when I saw Tyler Adams on the screen,

because I didn't hear his name come on and they didn't show him entering. So suddenly the ball's out of bounds for a third. throwing and it's just him over there to take it. I was like, holy shit, that's Tyler Adams. And then he hasn't played in a month. He hasn't played for us and forever. But my actual initial reaction to that was like, oh, no, like, why did we take Kellyn Acosta out of the game?

For a guy who hasn't played in a month, is this going to work? So I was actually really kind of like thrown by that sub when I first saw him. I was like, this is quite the confidence we have in him being full strength to put him in a 2-2 game for the last 10 minutes plus extra time when Acosta had been doing well. And then I saw that Acosta was playing left back. And I was like, okay, of course, just like we planned it when we put this roster together. Kel and Acosta is playing left back for 40 more minutes against Mexico in a final. It was a good sub, right?

I mean, that substitution made a lot of sense in the moment to me. And Adams looked good. I thought Adams didn't look particularly rusty. He comes on and he immediately closes somebody down. I mean, he does foul Linus in a dangerous spot, but who isn't going to foul Linus in a dangerous spot? He took care to foul him outside of the box before Linus could get in and force a much worse foul.

Yeah, so maybe it was exactly what he intended to do. Yeah, that happens in the 90th minute. Mexico gets a chance from that. The free kick falls to Lozano, who cuts it. him from the left and has one from 25 yards and this is when Horvath starts to flex his muscles. A pretty good save on that shot. I don't know. How good of a save was it?

That's a good save. Again, it's one where it's like he should make it. Like he should make that save, but you don't know. He's come into the game cold. He's been scored on once. You're not sure where he's at. And so that's a good moment for him. And then, I mean, Mexico is really barren down on us trying to get that last goal.

before the end of regulation. And it's another big Mexico chance. Long kick from Achoa. Now this is another little mark against McKenzie, I think. Catches our back line unawares. McKenzie isn't like really tracking the ball's flight at all. And the guy next to him at San Alvarez gets there first and steers ahead her right into the path of Henry Martine,

who beats Brooks to it and smashes one on the half volley from about 14 yards. and draws what seemed to me like a more impressive save from Horvath than the last one. Oh, yeah. This was definitely an escalation in Horvath's escalating saves. But this, that I'm going to maybe give McKenzie an out here. I'm not exactly sure because, again, never saw the replay of Ochoa's long ball, but both Brooks and McKenzie seemed pretty convinced that that guy who, I think, when the header, had been like well offside and just was walking back up to the upfield to rejoin the play.

So they were both irate that the flag didn't go up on that. Okay. And actually then eventually the flag did go up, right? Because even though Horvath saved it out, it restarted with the offside. Oh, I didn't notice that. Okay. All right. So Justice was served.

Justice was served across the board in this game. Moments later, Herrera is driving at the goal and he tries to get around Brooks with a long touch. And Brooks kind of leaves it for Horvath. It comes a little late. And Herrera goes, kind of studs up, kind of swings his foot at Horvath as he's sliding for the ball. I don't, it doesn't come across to me as like super malicious, but it was, it was a yellow card foul. And then a big scrum ensues, you know, as the U.S. players come over to protect their goalkeeper. McKenny, Herrera grabs McKenny's throat.

Now, this is the second time McKenny's throat has been grabbed by, uh, an aging midfielder from the Mexico national team. The other one was Guardado two years ago, almost like carbon copy images. And Herrera doesn't get a card for it. And he probably should have been sent off right then. It was a lot going on there, you know, a lot of like a lot of action. A lot of posturing.

I enjoyed it. That's great. I love it too. And the thing about Mexico is, I don't know how other people feel about them. I think they're actually an incredibly likable team. Yeah. And so even when these scrums are going off, like it,

I don't, I don't really think anyone's getting dirty. Like no one was stomping. No one was trying to get it. It's all just like puffing your chest out. And so it's just a bunch of like pretty likable badasses from both teams. Uh, being intense. Yeah.

I, I think grabbing someone's neck is like across the line. I mean, even if it's brief, you shouldn't do that. And McKinney was pretty mad about it momentarily. But as USMNT only pointed out on Twitter earlier today, he found a clip where, like, you know, McKinney's getting his neck grabbed and he's like yelling at everybody. He's really mad.

And five minutes later, he's like sharing a water bottle with Edson Alvarez. You know, they're like brooding up. That's what I mean. So I think it is a lot of posturing. No, I totally think it is. And again, I'm pretty, I feel pretty safe that McKenney isn't going to cross any lines in the scrum to do anything silly where he's going to get sent off. I think Mexico are taking some chances there because, again, if a refs sees a little differently and decides to be a little harsher,

then you're gone and you're playing down a man. So I think through Honduras and through this game, in these little tussles, I think the U.S. has done a really good job of keeping their composure, while still not backing down if we want to have like these measuring contests. Yeah. I think Brooks was the hero in the Honduras game in that respect and I think McKinney was the hero in this game.

96th minute, well in stoppage time. The game was paused for the anti-discrimination protocol because of the chant. And, you know, that caused a little bit of delay and then regulation ends. Somewhere in there, a dude ran behind Kate Abdo, Oguchi and Yaw-Aunyewu, and Clint Dempsey on the CBS set, and hurled himself over a railing with a security guard in hot pursuit. Clint just wolf smiled at the whole thing. And I have no idea what the ratings were on this,

but boy, it was television gold at this point in the night. I was just like sports. Amazing. Honestly, there was like a WWF feel to a lot of the goings on. So in extra time, 94th minute, so four minutes into extra time. Herrera just tries to murder Wea studs up in a tackle and doesn't get a yellow which would have necessitated a sending off considering it was already on a yellow. Even the broadcasters on Univision were convinced that it should have been a yellow.

Yeah, that's probably that's probably the one non-likable moment, I suppose, I'd say, from Mexico in that game. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I love the way Hector Herrera plays soccer. I think he's like a really fun to watch. But yeah, he should have been sent off. 98th minute, good spell of possession for L3 in our half, ends in a cross from Herrera to I think Moreno, not sure, but his header doesn't trouble Horvath too much.

There's a lot of little moments in here. Linus gets a little joy on a throw-in, but his cross is caught by Horvath Salcedo for Moreno, and Guardado comes on for Herrera, who was, you know, kind of on thin ice at that point. Turns out to be a key substitution, though. Yeah, yes, it does. And then Luzano cuts in and shoots right at Horvath.

Mexico pretty much dominating extra time at this point. And it did have very much a feel of, like, the U.S. is hanging on for dear life, which I didn't mind at this point. You know, that's just, that was just sort of the nature of the game. It was beyond the point where we could expect to have some sort of pretty game. plan that was working out. Right. Again, and we were talking like, oh, at this point, we've shifted, Kell and Acosta at our left back. Like, it all felt very, like, patched together to just see us through. But I also did notice that we had gone back, we, at that point,

once Adams came on, I think, we had resumed our sort of 4-3-symmetrically, where we had our four-backs, and we had our sort of inverted triangle with Adams at the base, and we had our sort of Wea-a-Pulisic P-Folk front three. And so the shape, the shape, the the shape that we were more used to was now in effect. It didn't necessarily look any better in possession. It's not like we somehow smooth things out and started controlling the ball. But I just noticed it was easy to see from overhead. Oh, our shape is back.

Yeah. And I thought, you know, even though we gave up some chances, this was also a bend but don't break sort of period of the game, where it seemed like we had a little more stability. We did have more stability with Acosta left back. Like he wasn't going to shut down Linus, but he wasn't going to get left for dead every two minutes, you know. A 102nd minute, just very briefly I'll mention that Wea took a shot on the volley, and it definitely deflected off of Arawahoe's hand and out of bounds,

and no handball was called. It would have been outside of the box if it was. And more crucially, to me, no corner was given, because as we know at this point, we were scoring a lot of goals on corners or getting a lot of chances on corners. Then comes another line as shot from outside the box, goes over the goal. But man, he looks so good. Like, why isn't he playing for Real Batisse? I have no idea.

Club form doesn't always translate to national team form. I guess so. And then Cannon comes on for Yedlin, who'd been cramping, I think. And that's the end of the first period of extra time. Do you want to, I've, you know, the Bell's chronology has sort of been, got, a little monotonous on my end. Would you take the 108th minute episode, please? All right, well, here we go.

I get the key moment of the game. The ball starts from Acosta, hits kind of a hopeful ball. It's cut out. Falls to a jet in the center circle. He hits it first time to Peefolk, who sends it wide for Waya on the break, and we've got sort of things going. Waya hits it out wide to Cannon. Canon squares it for Poolstick.

In the box, I actually thought Waya kind of slowed Cannon down too much. I mean, when we had that momentum, but whatever. Canning get into pool six feet. Pool sick is surrounded by bodies, but pool sick being pool sick, nice through them a little bit. It looks like the danger is gone because he may have overcooked his touch and he can't quite knife through, but not so fast. Turns out he couldn't knife through because he was body blocked off by a defender. And the referee goes to the video screen and gives us what I would say is a somewhat soft penalty.

I would agree. I would never have called a penalty there and change the course of the game that way if I were the ref. But, you know, don't hate it. They happen. Here's my question for you. And I don't, again, we don't get too much into debating these calls. But I'm just curious because they kept showing us one angle of it, or at least the feed I was watching, just kept showing the one angle of it, like from the end line out of bounds looking back at the field. That's the one I saw.

Is that exactly what the ref is looking at too? Do you know? I thought they were basically like showing us the. camera that the ref was looking at. I thought they were too. And I don't know how much control the ref has over what angle he gets to see. Hopefully he has some control. I mean,

all I'm saying is if that's the only angle he was looking at and he didn't look at any other angles, then it is actually insane that he would award a penalty just on that because there could have been like a gap between Pulisick and Defender and Pool Sick just goes down anyway. Yeah, I don't even know. Cameras are tricky. Was the cameras are tricky? Was the foul called on Salcedo?

I mean, I don't even know who the foul was on because I think it was Salcedo and was it Guardado involved there? I don't know. I think it was whoever essentially stepped in front of Pulisic, whichever guy stepped in front of Pulisic and like showed his butt to him and Pulisick just kind of fell down over his leg.

I'm not saying this is like Pool Sick shouldn't do this, but that's how I would read it as a foul. Okay. Well, that would have been Salsing that way. So, and that was, I think, probably the second best team attacking move of the game. It didn't really result in a, like, a real chance, but at least, you know, five guys strung five passes together. And we got a penalty out of it, low and behold. And lots of other drama going on.

Tata gets sent off for putting his arm around Burhalter and the ref, John. Pity, who's from Panama, to look at the monitor. And then Burhalter and Tata have a laugh about it with Hector Moreno as Tata's sent off. And then Pity points to the spot in just absolutely dramatic fashion. And then Pulisik comes up to the spot and goes top bins. Best penalty I've ever seen him take. An emphatic finish. And he's off to celebrate in the corner with his shirt off.

Boy, does he look good. iconic photo out there from Christian de Marchena, I think is the guy. You've probably seen it. And then there's a shower of beer cups and bottles and even cans. And one wallops rain on the head and he needs medical attention. And again, man, so much drama. I hate to see fans throwing stuff. And I know everybody, it's like sort of obligatory to say like, shame on them. That's a disgrace. Even Merritt Paulson came in on Twitter and said, if anybody ever does that in Portland, they're never coming back in this stadium again. But like, it's kind of fun, you know.

Stakes, like there's stakes to this. It's like this game matters and people are pissed and like, what a story to tell, you know? What percentage of our listeners do you think have that photo as their Twitter background by now? I'm going to say 10%. 10%. All right. I figured it'd be, I figured it's probably around there. It's a significant chunk.

Yeah. It's not insignificant. Yeah, I mean, I, I'm deliberately not going to put it as the background of my Twitter just because I know so many other people are doing it. I went with them more. It's a great. Anodyne, just the boys lifting the trophy photo. I'll say, I'll say this.

I think, I think the referee made a huge mistake in going that emphatic on this penalty because he didn't leave himself much room to go bigger for later in the game. Poor strategy. He really really emptied the tank right there. Yeah. And, you know, some people were criticizing the ref for making himself the center of attention. I don't know enough about refereeing to get into that, but it sure was fun. And then Mexico is desperately chasing a goal.

Remember, we're in the second period of extra time at this point. They get a corner kick and the cross is headed. It looked like on frame by Luis Romo in the 119th minute. But it catches Mark McKenzie's arm. Again, I'm not sure this is a penalty or should be a penalty, but if you give the one to the U.S., you kind of have to give this one. And P.D. does after consulting the monitor.

And it's Gordado versus Horvath, and basically, well, it's not the final action of the game, but it's pretty close. Got to mention the gamesmanship here. Because Acosta is following Guardado, drawing at him inside the box and then you know Linus kind of comes over to break that up and then a little scrum ensues and then Acosta and Brooks don't allow Linus to stand on the line edge of the area and Brooks box his line has way out I mean lines is a small guy as as is known and then Horvath saves Gordado's penalty I think I might be in the minority here but I

thought it was an outstanding save and the reason is because I mean it's not too close to the post. It's not hit as close to the post as you want to make it unsavable. But the key here is that Guarado smacked the shit out of it. He hit that ball and it wasn't that waist height that's super easy for

goalkeepers to have as like the natural height of their hands as they fall to the right in the time it takes for a penalty to reach the goal line. It was low. It was on the ground. And so there's a tremendous amount of like coordination required for a keeper to react and quickly get their hand there.

instead of just having their hands sort of extend out from their body. Anyway, so I thought it was a much better say than maybe people were giving it credit for. I mean, everyone was loving it because of the drama of the moment and what it meant. But it wasn't necessarily like a bad penalty. Panemoneum on the U.S. bench. Somebody on Twitter asked us to do some body language analysis of Sergenio Dest and Eunice Musa. I would say Musa, Musa's body language has been very. Fantastic throughout my analysis is that he is, he was, you know, he's got a picture on Instagram of him with the trophy between his legs, kind of like Michael Jordan in the corner after his first championship.

Michael Jordan, the basketball player, I'm talking about. Ah, uh, of course. I know this makes you a little uncomfortable, Greg, but I did notice that Des, you know, when, it was a little time after the save by Horvath, but everybody else is jumping around yelling at each other and Dest is sitting on the bench. sergeant's kind of peek kind of standing up and like kind of looking around like what's going on and uh desk is just sitting on the bench so that's my that's my body language analysis not a great game for desk go ahead just for anyone who's listening who wants to read into it uh this would have been like the penalty was saved and then the play continued and the ball got knocked around for a while and then ended up back in the box and horvath collected again and collapsed

as goalkeepers do when they're preserving a lead an extra time uh and all a bunch of the american And defenders like raced up to him and are, you know, doing the necessary shouting. And then it cuts to the bench, the U.S. bench. And that's when all of our players are really celebrating because the sequence is over. We're five minutes an extra time. And Dest is sitting on the bench not doing that. But it is like 30 seconds removed. So we don't know.

For all we know, he was on his feet for the penalty. And then collapses back down because he's exhausted from all of the running he's done the past three matches at altitude. Fair enough. On short rest. Fair enough. appreciate your um your clinical nature Greg five minutes of stoppage time after that total amount of time on the pitch like I said it was 144 minutes and in the 127th minute nominally

we get a pitch invader some yokel and white athletic shorts and a black athletic shirt McKenney stepped in to prevent extra law enforcement brutality I hear from someone in the stadium so you could see him running toward the dog pile on the broadcast before it cut away, but somebody told me that McKinney kind of stepped in and got the security guards to like chill out with the guy a little bit because they were being a little rough on him. So yet another reason to celebrate Weston McKinney. I mean, not a knot that we're excusing pitch invasions. It's just some like dork running around on the field, you know. It's not trying to hurt anybody. Was there any confirmation? Was it the same guy who jumped over the railing

behind Dempsey and company? Has anyone matched the clothes up? I hadn't even thought of that. What kind of detective am I? Probably might be the same guy. Who knows? And then in the 129th minute, as we're like wasting time down in the corner, Pulisic's got the ball.

He's just like forcing throw in after throw in. He gets fouled maybe and kind of makes a meal out of it, which I totally support, pretending that he's more hurt than he is. And there's just another barrage of projectiles from the stands. And this time, one of them hits an Eltree player, Henry Martine, just like square on the head. Again, not excusing that kind of behavior at all, but the drama was pretty rich. Feel bad for the players, but this is spectacular content.

Yeah. And then a couple more throw-ins in the final whistle, and it's a dogpile on Ethan. Go-Go-Go USA. Hey. It was, that was, like I said, man, that was a ride. Before we get out of here, let's just try to put a bow on this. I said already that, you know, how valuable I think these games are, and I'm obviously not the only one saying that for this team to coalesce.

And so that's awesome. And it's awesome that they fought back into this game a couple of times, even though they, even though several players didn't have their best game, several of our players that we sort of would like to think are our best players didn't play their best. We went down early, we came back, and we came back again, and then we took the lead an extra time, despite, I think, not getting the better of Mexico. Mexico had the better of the game. So that's all great.

But I had this date circled because I thought it would be a chance for us to play out of the back through Mexico's press, and like this was going to be the litmus test on the Burrhalter project. How did the litmus test go? I think we would have to say that it was a no contest. We didn't actually contest that question. He abdicated. Yeah. That's kind of how it felt.

I don't know if the players would agree or Burrhalter would agree. I don't think they were necessarily directed to just launch it long out of pressure. So maybe that's not true. Maybe this probably does go down as like a C minus D. plus that from the possession side of things we're not there, we're not particularly close based on this evidence. Are we any better in this game than we were in the

2019 friendly trying to play through them? Hmm. Maybe a little better. Or is it just a talent edge that allows you to, like in the first half in this 19, 19th minute when Serginio Desk can take it against four guys and just dribble through them. Well, I mean, that's going to be part of us being able to play through a press is like having more talent. You know, I mean, you need to have talented players to play through a press.

And I don't think, like, a player like DeAndre Edlin, who I did appreciate some of his defensive work in this game. He is not the kind of fullback that is going to play through a press. I mean, it's just, it's not even close. It's not his game. So I don't know how, you know, how we expect to do that with a player like Yedlin. And then I think McKenzie can do it. But McKenzie, understandably, took a little, a big hit to his confidence early in the game. And I don't think he was, you know, he wasn't at the top of his game for.

I mean, he fought back. He got back in the game. He did some good things, but he did some bad things, too. I don't to be honest I'm not I'm not ready to say where we are on it this was not a certainly not like a passing with flying colors and I am I am very interested actually I'm probably the only one interested in actually like looking at all of the possession sort of side by side and like clocking them and being like okay we held the ball for four seconds this time six seconds and I'm curious how many times we held the ball for more than 10 or 11 seconds it doesn't seem like there were that many of those occasions and I do want to find what the common thread was for why they kept getting broken down so quickly, because it wasn't like, oh, it broke down because we had an opening and took a risk and went for it the way

like a Red Bull Salisburg does, where their possessions are short because they're emphatic about getting the ball towards the box. It definitely didn't feel like that was necessarily the case. So I do want to see whether it's technical breakdowns, whether there just aren't enough options for our players. But quite frankly, I wasn't able to really be doing that during that game because of the total adrenaline of the of the whole process. Yeah, it was hard to

it was hard to be clinical while we were watching that game. And I guess that's the, you know, that's the big takeaway is that it's just really fun to win a game against Mexico. But it does seem like Burrhalter's tactics are still just a massive, unproven

theorem for me. The back three was not particularly effective. And I can't shake the feeling and I know I'm not the only one that we're just overthinking and over thinking and over-complicating things with a player pool that is talented and like we're

it's just getting I don't know I don't see what advantage we're getting from this intricacy that we're supposedly trying to implement we just end up you know why not just do something more simple and see what happens because basically what's happening now is we're in this more intricate system and we're just ending up seeing what happens

you know And we've given up a lot of big chances that were too easy in the past three matches like we talked about earlier. So for you, is the intricacy too much on the possession side, or do you think the intricacy that is too much of like we're committing too many players on a press and defense and that's leaving us open and teams are just getting him behind us too easily? Would you rather go back to more full like Ben don't break defending? Yeah, maybe. And I guess the intricacy against Honduras is having those eights up so high and then not allowing or not utilizing McKinney further back on the pitch and letting him do what he's best at. Instead of that, we're asking him to be like a false nine or something in possession. And that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

It just seems like you're shoehorning him into a system that isn't really. built for like one of our best players you know in that case and then against against Mexico it wasn't so much intricacy as it was we went to this three at the back and then we had two two two two two midfielders and we couldn't really build out I want to see I want three midfielders I want to win physical battles in the midfield let's just focus on that and see what happens from that so you want the whales the Wales midfield right you want you want to have Adams in there obviously we always want to Adams in there, but even if you can't, you want somebody else in there with two other, like,

ball winners who are going to, like, take the game and take, like, control the game and not let other teams have their way with the soccer ball. Yeah, I think it's, the first choice is, for me, is Adams, McKenney and Musa. Second choice would probably be Acosta McKenney and Musa or, like, Lajetz, I think, serviceable in one of those roles. but then if you can't just win individual battles and get the ball and keep it, nothing else you're trying to do works, you know? You just, you're just losing the ball.

You're like Jackson Ewell is losing, you know, Jackson Ewell has all this, like this profile that Berhalter wants out of that six, but if he takes a touch and he gets blown up every third time he touches the ball, none of it matters. You're just losing the ball. And so you can't do all this other stuff. And that's why I think, that's why I think Musa's got to be in there at some point. I guess it's still to come out, like, what happened with him in this camp. But, but like he.

Right. If he starts against Costa Rica, if he, if Musa starts against Costa Rica, what does that do? I mean, that tells you he was healthy. So this is just a coach's choice? Or are you worried about like dual national eligibility that he wanted to preserve? I don't know. Do you just think Burrhalter didn't think he was the right guy to get the result? It sounds like Burrhalter didn't think he was the right guy to get the result.

I mean, based on the quotes. And that to me sort of indicates like sort of a system over personnel sort of mindset, I guess, where you, whereas if you had Musa, okay, maybe he can't disguise his passes in the exact way Jackson Yule can, or maybe he doesn't, you know, he can't spray the ball around the way Kelana Costa can. I'm totally willing to admit that. But like, he wins battles with other soccer players on the field. And then he finds somebody's feet, and then we can do stuff. But if we can't...

Or he carries the ball 25 yards and then finds someone's feet. Right. And he's not going to score a lot. He's probably not going to score a lot of goals. He's probably not going to get a lot of assists. But everything else you're trying to do on the field is predicated on your ability to get the ball and keep it. And that's, I guess that's what I'm talking about when I say. It seems to, to borrow a word from you, it just seems a little too cute.

Yeah. And so for me, Jackson Ewell sort of symbolizes that too cute, that like Burrhalter getting cute with his call-ups and being like, oh, this is totally going to work. It's exactly what we need to unlock things when, you know, maybe we'd be better off just looking at the actual effectiveness of the players and not trying to sort of overvalue. particular trait. I think that's sort of been the rubs since he's took over with Bradley and with Trap and now with you all is that the over emphasis on this trait that he thinks they have and can execute at a high enough level to make an impact in national team games. And for all three of them, we haven't seen that. And all three of them come with incredible, like, limitations in other areas of the field. So I guess what I would push back on

is I don't necessarily think that his system is too intricate. I think he's had a weird obsession with this particular trait and it's not even required for the system because the system can function with Adams and Musa and McKinney in the midfield. We saw that happened fairly well against Wales. So you don't have to have that trait in the quantity that Berhalter seems to think that some of these players have it. So if Adams can't go, if Adams can't go, you can find another player who can play a roughly similar version, an Adams Light version, rather than going to the

total opposite end of the spectrum for his backup. But I don't think the system itself is necessarily too intricate. I don't think the rotations and the way we play is. So I'm fine with maintaining that. I just think we need to not put in a player

who offers so little on the ball winning side. I think you can have a little bit of both of those worlds. I don't think it has to be the extreme. Yeah. Yeah, intricate's probably not the right word. And I'll accept that. I just think when he comes to a game like this, what's stopping us from my point of view

is not that we have the wrong system or whatever. It's that Hector Herrera is taking the ball away from our players and we don't have players outside of, like, I would say Raina is the exception to this because he's really tough in a cage match. But like we don't have a lot of players who are just going to say no, you're not going to take the ball for me, you know, or you're not going to win this ball. I mean, Moose is one of those players. And, and, I mean, Acosta and McKinney have plenty of bite, but it's not, like, their absolute strong suit. But it is Moose's, I think it's Moose's strong suit, at least when we've seen

him for the U.S. And so, like, you got all these things going on. You got 50,000 fans screaming hostile fans, and you have, like, the most intense game that you've played in all year. And for some of these guys, I think it probably was the most intense game they've played of their career in terms of just emotion and the moment. And you're just not, you're just operating on instinct, you know, like what, like get the ball, protect the ball, find somebody's feet. If you're a plus plus player, get the ball, protect the ball, make an incisive pass. It's all just happening really fast.

And I guess the intricacy is, that I'm thinking of is the intricacy to, is the sense in which it's like intricate or cute to say, well, we need this kind of player in this. role to do this. And I guess I'm sort of just repeating the point that you made in a much more long-winded way. Well, here's the question that I'll put to you then. Do you think Jackson Ewell plays in the next tough, do you think he plays again for the national team in the September window?

Do you think Ewell's in that camp? I don't know. It's a toss-up for me. Like, does Burhalter watch the game the same way we do and say, like, he's not progressing the ball with his passing like he did against Honduras and he's also a bit of a defensive liability so we can't bring him in in September like do you think that's how he he reacts to that I think that's why he wasn't in that game against Mexico I don't I don't think that it was inevitable that count maybe it was maybe Burrhalter going into the window into this was like if we get to the

final and we're playing Mexico I'm going to run with Acosta because he's going to give us more protection and we'll need that protection against Mexico but I'd say that what you saw was even against Honduras, Ewell doesn't offer that kind of protection. So if that's the mindset of, you know, recognizing that he's limited, I think what we found out was those limitations

extend beyond just Mexico. It's not just in those games that he's going to be a liability. It'll be in other games as well. And so I don't know, man. I could see him getting into camp because I don't think Burrhalter is a guy who likes to just cut people out almost as like a relationship maintenance thing.

But I don't necessarily expect Ewell to to see the field in the September windows, I'd be a little bit surprised. Unless it's the tail end of a game that we're thrashing, I don't know who our opponents are, but one of the opponents is going to be one of the play-end games. So if we're playing El Salvador, and we're up 3-0, with 10 minutes left,

maybe Jackson Newell gets on the field. Yeah, I guess the pragmatic reason to keep him in the fold is what if Acosta and Asa, Adams are both hurt, you know, and then... Then what? He's still not the guy, though, right? Well, then the list of guys starts to get shorter. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here.

Is it worthwhile to, like, 86 somebody from the program completely because they don't, they're not up to snuff? Or do you just kind of keep him around so that sort of break in case of emergency, you know? Yeah, so I guess what I would say is, I think what, and it's one game, and maybe he was way off against Honduras and he'd have more to offer in another game. But I think for Jackson Ewell, like, he has to be that player or that, you know, incisive passer, and he has to show that he's not going to be a total liability defensively. And the fact that he didn't wasn't incisive and was a huge liability, I think for me,

that's almost enough that he does fall off the depth chart. Like, he basically doesn't exist. And Calana Costa, who doesn't play the six at all. becomes your next, your next man up. And if Acosta can't go, then Eric Williamson's your next man up or James Sands is your next man up. And you get somebody who at least is going to provide the cover against Conca Calf opponents that won't leave you totally exposed. Yeah. Okay. I mean, yeah, I don't have a strong, I don't have a strong objection to him being sent away to hit from me.

for him for him being exiled exiled but um i don't know he is familiar with the system like could we use him in uh in one of the three games and in one of these world world cup qualifier windows uh i think probably yes it would we could we could use him without you know falling on our sword for that but we'll see you know i wouldn't it'll be really interesting to see what the Gold Cup roster looks like. It'll be interesting to see who plays against Costa Rica on Wednesday. We'll see. In the meantime, let's just be like super excited about what happened last night because that was awesome. That was brilliant. Celebration continues. Yep. The Costa Rica game is going to be just a nonstop celebration. I don't care. I don't care if we're getting pants left and right.

Like you can't take that Mexico win away. Everyone knows this is just the friendly. Yeah. Who are we going to see Dike start against Costa Rica probably? I'm not banking on it, but again, I've been wrong on almost all these rotations that I was thinking we'd be making. I think it would be harsh on Sibichu to not start him in this game. If he's your number two guy, if you have him rated second out of the three, and he didn't get that many minutes in the first three games, this could be his start, and D.K. gets the last 20. Yeah. I don't know. I won't be mad either way, because I want to see more of, I want to see more of both of them. I'd like to see Dike and Moussa, hopefully. And it'd be

cool to see a little Brian, Brian Reynolds start at right back. But hey, be honest, you were actually for a lot of this Mexico game. I know you were thinking about Mousa a lot, were you also like, man, Darrell D.K. wouldn't be at a place in this contest. Yeah, you know, I didn't even vocalize that anywhere or type it anywhere. But yes, I was thinking that like, why not just, I mean, if we're going to be launching it forward anyways, which we were doing a lot of, why not have a big guy up there who can trouble those centerbacks? Because Sergeant wasn't doing that. Yeah, that whole striker situation probably deserves more thought and conversation, but not today. Today we feast. Yeah. Anything else, Greg, from you?

No, let's pick it up. Let's pick it up after Costa Rica and we'll probably just end up talking more about this Mexico. Yeah, get in the video room. Let's see what, let's see what you come up with when it comes to, you know, the patterns of play and how the play broke down. I'm very interested in that research. All right. Thanks everybody for listening.

We'll see you.