Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #179: USA-Costa Rica recap

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

A sunny evening for a victory lap in Sandy, Utah. Wingers with ideas, a hold-up striker, and Tyler Adams and Yunus Musah in the midfield.For access to the Discord and other somewhat minor perks, please subscribe to this podcast's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed 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. The U.S. beat Costa Rica 4 to 0 in sunny, sandy, Utah on Wednesday night in a relaxing and fun Nation's League victory lap. Greg, how are you doing? I'm good, Bells. I'm on cruise control, much like I feel like the team has been. I don't mean that in a bad way. I think that was an excellent cruising performance. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like a... It feels like a parade right now, doesn't it? It does, man.

That's outcome-based emotions that sports generate, you know, to essentially say it. Like, it just feels good to win games. There's really not a lot of complication to it. It was a low-intensity friendly, so discounts and caveats apply. But still, some pretty pleasant football from the guys who didn't have to play for six hours straight against Mexico on Sunday. Didn't you think those wingers? Yeah, it was great. My one complaint about the experience goes back to production.

It's nice that we're now at the point where our complaints are about the television broadcast rather than what's happening on the field. But I hate, hate, hate the since we're building out of the back so well, the fact that the broadcast decides to only have the guys in the frame, the two centerbacks and Tyler Adams while we're moving the ball around. and we can't see all this, what I assume, is like nice coordinated movement up the field from the other exciting players. Like it's really frustrating watching it. So that was my big, like, frustration with the 90 minutes. Yeah, it's a tight, it's a tight zoom on the centerbacks tapping it back and forth. And then when they play it, the line breaking pass is just like, could be to anybody.

And the camera moves and you see what happens. All right, well, let's get into the lineups. For the U.S., it was Horvoth and Goal, Cannon, McKenzie, Ream, and Robinson across the back line. Tyler Adams, starting at the 6th. There we go. Eunice Musa, starting at the 8, along with Sebastian Leggett, and then front line of right-to-left, Wea, D.K. And Brendan Aronson. I really liked the lineup.

I assume you did, too, for the most part. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's crazy, and you saw the sentiment a few times on Twitter, but we rotated everyone but McKenzie and Ream, neither of whom are probably first-choice centerbacks anyway. And we were still from the Mexico game, and I guess Horvath, who didn't start Mexico, and it still is a lineup that I'm incredibly excited to watch play the game of soccer, even before the game started, and we saw that that excitement was warranted.

Adam's Musil-Ladjet sure feels like it could be a World Cup qualifying starting, midfield and then and then getting to see wayad dek a in arson get their like real sort of breakout chances dk's first start i feel like it might be tim way out's first start for greg burhalter i can't say for sure but it sounds right yeah gonna need to confirm that too but uh but yeah i mean and then and then to see that adams is you know fit enough to start a game and whether you know going into it i don't know if he'd play a half or if he what he'd get but it didn't matter the fact that he was healthy enough that they were comfortable starting him huge Mm-hmm. Yeah. And man, that midfield was fun to watch, and they're able to control the game, just like we, I feel like we bang on about on this podcast all the time.

And then those second-choice winger's, Wea and Erinson, feel like they could start in a World Cup qualifier just fine and offered, in some ways, they're better at some things than Raina and Pulisic. I still think Rayna and Pulisic are obviously the starters. I'm glad you added that for our own sake. Right. No, I mean, I'm very convinced on that front. But I think Waya and Erinson do things that Pulisic and Raina don't, which we can get into, I suppose. Costa Rica's lineup, Leonno Morera in goal,

he's obviously the second choice goalkeeper for them behind Kail and Avas. and then Keisha Fuller, Aaron Salazar, Giancarlo Gonzalez, Francisco Calvo, and Joseph Mora across the back line. That's a five-man back line, sort of the classic Costa Rica set up. And then Gerson Torres, Yeltsin Tejada, Bernalda Alfarro in the midfield, and Joel Campbell and Johann Vanegas up front in a two-striker formation. I think this is pretty much a second-choice rotational lineup for Costa Rica outside of Calvo and Campbell. Yeah, that's probably right.

We're going to need to, and I'm committing us to something here that I haven't cleared with you. But once we find out which teams are officially in the Ocho, I feel like we do need to seek out some experts on those countries' teams and get them on here to really get some deep dives. Because I'm not sure. I know Fuller and Tejada all started versus Mexico and Honduras in the Nations League. So if they're not first choice in an ideal 11, they were first.

choice enough that that's who got picked to try to win a trophy. Obviously, Marrera is behind novice, but he's, you know, he might get called into some games. But I think it's cool that, you know, we're playing the second choice lineup, but we're going to see second choice lineups in qualifying. I expect we'd see second choice lineups that try a little bit harder. But this might not be like out of, out of the ordinary once we get into World Cup qualifying. And obviously we threw our, what I would say, a lot of second choice guys at them as well. So we're going to see games that match up second choice guys versus second choice guys. And we seem to have a lot of pretty good second choice players at the moment.

Yeah. I think you could argue we had four first choice guys. You could argue we had four first choice guys in the lineup. And I would say that maybe, well, Adams for sure. And then Horvath for sure. Horvath for sure for you. No, I'm not, hey, I'm not saying Horvath for sure. I absolutely think there's an open competition between Horvath and Turner to be our first choice.

And then Musa, I would say, should be first choice as an eight. And then I think we can get into this, but I think D.K. is definitely in the conversation for the first choice striker. Oh, yeah, DK's in the conversation. And probably one of Cannon or Robinson is in the – I mean, they're both in the conversation. And so unless you're positive Yedlin's first choice, then one of those two guys is first choice. But this is good.

This is what we want. We talk so much about this new era we're in. The new era can't just be eight guys who are playing Champions League. It has to be 30 guys. So this was like, okay, well, let's see how good the next group are. Part of the reason it feels like this feels like just a really long, pleasant Fourth of July parade for me, is that that part of it feels so vindicating, you know, like we've, I mean, we've been talking about how there's this wave of talent coming for, you know, two years now, three years.

And this is a really good example of it, I think. We beat Mexico, albeit somewhat fortunately, I believe, on Sunday. And then we rotate almost completely and we come out and we're playing, like, this might have been the most pleasant soccer we played under Burrhalter. again against a pretty low intensity opponent after what has been a lot of energy expended for both for both sides over the last couple weeks but still it was like we played there were a lot of beautiful attacking sequences which we will get into from a team that that you know two years ago it would have been ariola and tyler boyd you know starting on the wings or who and those guys are nothing against those guys but that's a different kind of player than Wea and Erinson. So I think, man, there's a lot of reasons to be happy right now. I'm sure you'll, I'm sure you'll throw cold water on it.

100. Well, no, I don't want to. I'm actually going to say like 100%. And more than that, you know, we've enjoyed a runner-friendly's now where we have sort of pummeled some teams. But those teams we were pummeling were, I mean, barely even backup teams for Jamaica and for who else will we play, Trinidad and Tobago. And like, those were really, really poor.

versions of already weak teams. In the middle of a pandemic where they hadn't played together for a long time. Just get some bodies into camp so you can throw a lineup out there. And this is, again, it's leftovers for Costa Rica from their Nations League, but it's leftovers from their first choice group. So it's not nothing. I mean, it's not a lot. It's not a ton.

The Honduras performance still means a lot. But this being able to just dismantle it. seen this casually isn't nothing. And it was a dismantling. Like it was the XG was, I think, almost 3 to 0.4, according to Instat. And I mean, Costa Rica had almost no attacking danger that it provided. And I mean, I think you mentioned this in a text. Like the XG that we got doesn't include the time where D.K doesn't, you know,

doesn't have one on that little reverse pass from Aronson. I think there's a couple other examples of attacking danger that didn't result in shots. Yeah, Aronson's little backheel flick. And then there was also right after D.K. let that ball through and kind of dummied it. It came right back in and missed his head by three and a half inches. Yep. So we were, yeah, we were dangerous. XG over one game is still noisy.

But that seems pretty, pretty correct. Yep. And then, of course, a final score of four to zero. So let's get into the timeline, shall we? Let's do it. I love a chronology. Fourth minute, Erringen and Legit combine on a bouncing ball and Leggett taps it out of the air on the bounce toward D.K. Kind of tries a sombrero.

It does sombrero the guy, but to D.K. And I clocked this just because I think it's telling. He brings it down with his chest with Giancarlo Gonzalez on his back. pretty aggressively on his back and finds Moosa's feet about 10 yards away as another guy as another centerback is closing on him

and I think Musa then hits a gorgeous disguise pass to Wea on the wing he makes like he's going to play a square ball out wide to a kid in I love it that pass popped for everybody I feel like every single person

like either on the timeline after the factor like posted that clip I had it in my notes Everybody was like third minute, Eunice Musa pass. Three minutes and 22 seconds into the game, if anybody's looking for precision there. And Wea loses it, one of the few negative moments for Wea in the first half. But we see there, I think, an example of really capable striker holdup play from D.K. He's not a perfect player, but I just don't know if I trust Sergeant to do the same thing in that moment as D.K.

So here's my pushback there is I think Sargent actually had a lot of really good moments against Honduras in a high intensity match of linking up play, like getting it with his back to goal. Usually he doesn't do it with the guy on his back. He creates a little bit of separation a lot of times when he does this successfully. He's not necessarily holding the guy off. But he did constantly get the ball, not constantly, often enough from like the back line up to his feet. And then he laid it off to Jackson Ewell advancing into space, which is a really good. great way to initiate an attack. But for me, it's still super important that D.K. does this because what's important is if D.K.

can do it too, not that D.K. has to do this better than Sergeant, but if he can also offer this, he can offer a lot of other things that Josh Sargent simply does not. So if D.K. is giving us this too. If he's doing this reliably, that's probably going to be the number one striker job done and and dusted right there. Yeah. And I would go further than you. I would say he does it better than Sargent.

because he can do it when there's somebody really on his back, somebody really aggressively trying to get physical with him. He just shrugs it off. Gonzalez is just bouncing off his back when I think probably in the same circumstances, Sergeant, he doesn't bounce off of sergeant's back. Darrylique is not getting little brothered at any point in his career. No. So, yeah, enough about that relatively non-momentous moment.

I'm going to come back to it at the very next incident. But go on. You're going to talk about the Musa Pass too, right? Well, yeah, I mean, the Musa Pass is, like, it sort of gives the lie to this idea that Musa can't play that kind of pass. I don't know that anybody's actually explicitly saying that. But there's this idea out there that Yule can play a kind of pass that Eunice Musa can't. And I don't want to pigeon my whole myself and, like, dig myself into this deep hole where

I'm insisting that Eunice Musa play the Six. I'm not doing that. I'm just saying, like, what is the difference, really, between what Musa can do and what Ewell can do? And right now I'm not convinced that there really is a difference. I think Moose is probably better at everything, including hitting disguised passes. Right. So unless you're thinking that Jackson Ewell just has some excellent defensive positional sense as the deepest midfielder, that Eunice Mousa can't pick up on very quickly, that, you know, if we're exploring options,

Musa would be, and Ewell's worthy of exploration, then Eunice Musa certainly would be. I don't know that the Eul exploration will be continuing in too much more earnest, but yeah, I mean, I'm totally with you. Eunice Musa as a sixth could be something worth trying. At least let's get him ready for the role in case Adams is hurt, you know. Get, I mean, honestly, get Sebastian Leggett ready for the role. We need options. I mean, we can get into that, the trivet.

The trivet. triple pivot, trivet, all right. Keep going with the chronology. Okay, seventh minute. Do we have music for that? Do we have any kind of sound? Do you play like a TikTok, Captain Hook style clock? Have I already asked you this? I know you don't listen to the podcast. I know you don't listen to the podcast, but no, I don't play any music for the chronology. Nope. Okay, well, just an idea for our producer. Could you get the band together and work something up? Seventh minute, Legette receives it on the half turn from Mark McKenzie, who played quite a few nice line-breaking passes in this game.

And Legette then turns and plays a lovely ball sort of down the channel for Robinson, who is very wide and high. This is an example of we didn't get to see what Robinson was doing until we saw the replay from the end line. But he sprints out wide and high on a line with the striker, basically. as Legette drops to receive the ball. So there's something nice going on there to my, you know, uneducated eyes. And then Legette's ball cancels three defenders.

One of them, Aaron Salazar, who was, I looked it up a 22-year-old getting his, I think, his first cap or one of his first few caps, probably could have cleaned it up if he was a little more on the ball. But he was slow to read the situation. Robinson gets there first, slides a low ball first time for D. D.K. Beats Calvo to it, takes a touch, tries to shoot. with his left foot from just outside the six. Calvo blocks it.

That's Chicago Fire Center back, Francisco Calvo, blocks it, but it bounces up into the air, sits up real nice for Brendan Aronson, who had been following the play and comes in and side foots it hard, kind of deflects off the top of Marrera's outstretched forearm and into the net 1-0 USA. Okay, so can I just point to one thing here for my bit on this goal?

Point to as many things as you like. it's related to what we talked about for DK, in the earlier sequence, in that a ball into DK doesn't have to be perfect. And I think when we're talking about the ball that you hit into Sergeant, it very much has to be right to his exact correct foot, like away from the defender, or it's too easy for a defender to disrupt that ball that goes into Sergeant. And with DK, that's just absolutely not the case.

Not that Robinson hit it in a bad ball, he didn't know a good ball, but D.K. creates the space to receive the ball with the use of his body and with the ability to not let that centerback gamble to stick a foot in because you probably have to foul him to get to the ball. And that's how D.K. is able to receive the ball in the box. So his ability to receive the ball in the box is going to be a huge asset compared to a sergeant, I think.

That's something that I take away from it. And I think that also applies elsewhere on the field as we kind of talked about. That's what I was coming back to. Yeah. Yeah, I agree 100%. And I think this chance, I mean, the chance might have developed with Sergeant. He might have made the run a little more aggressively than DG did. But yeah, I agree.

I don't know why I'm rambling about it. 14th minute, Cannon intercepts a pass from Calvo in the press. And he, so on the right side, our right side, one touches it to Wea. And this was just so lovely. he croifs it down the line for a cannon on one touch and cannon squares it into the box for D-K his first shot is blocked and when it falls back to him he pokes it to Wea closer to the top of the box

Wea had come inside and circled around to that position and he tries to place it near post, curl it near post and it's saved on the stretch by Marrera. Really good chance I thought. Yep and again it's just stuff we love to see from Tim Wea and good work from Reggie Cannon getting involved in the attack, which, again, the fullback situation, I know it can seem like no one's claiming the spot, but also it's like, we have some good options. We have plenty of guys who aren't going to

be devastating to play in games. Yeah. Yeah, I find myself ragging on the fullback options a lot, and I think you're right. The Canon is fine. I think the gap between Cannon Robinson and Yedlin is it's a little bit like the centerback situation was a couple months ago where it's just who knows although I would say Yedlin is below Cannon Robinson you had to you had to do it um around this time in the game a nice bit of defending from McKenzie I didn't clock it exactly but he bodies Campbell on a ball over the top and and and then there was that moment where Musa brings the ball down with his head in traffic you remember that yep yep um Just a nice bit of skill from Musa, and he was really good in this game.

It's one of those moments where I'm like, oh, man, if this is the World Cup qualifier, is he getting cleaned out there? There were a lot of moments in the game where I was like, oh, man, if this was six days ago, he's getting wiped out on that play. Yeah, I will say he did. I would agree. Maybe he held on the ball a little bit too long several times in this game, which wasn't punished. but you know assuming he's in a world cup qualifier where he's getting like he's got bodies flying at him i don't think he would be holding on the ball so long same same all right where are we at 17th minute another good attacking move mackenzie goes short to adam's feet adams turns and plays

waya on the touch line and way again with a deft one touch pass down the line this is this time with the inside of his right boot for musa to run on to musa wins a corner i'll note he doesn't look super comfortable out there running onto the ball on the wing, which begs the question, why does he play wing for Valencia? I don't know. They have a lot of good players. They think he's good. They want him on the field.

Sometimes they don't always want him on the field. And that's where they're finding minutes for him. Yeah. He seems so very much to be a central midfielder when he plays for the U.S. It's weird that he's been playing on the wing. He's not going to continue his club career at the wing for long. That's my bold prediction. Yeah, right.

Valencia has Weissout too. 20th minute, another very pleasant footballing move. Long ball from Horvath to Dike, who comes back to the ball, holds off Calvo and lays it off for Musa, who picks it up just inside the half and drives forward and slips Aronson in behind Aronson's in the channel inside of Musa. And then Aronson plays that sexy little cutback, reverse pass across the box. D.K.'s right there, unmarked, and he lets it roll in front of him, which is kind of weird.

What do you, what's your read on that situation? So my actual read when I was watching it was that it was, it would have been a left-footed strike form, I think, the way his feet were set. I don't think he could have gotten his right foot to it. And any time I think D.K. can get his right foot to contact the ball. I think he needs to do that. But this one was on his left, and I think he decided that since it was his left and not quite as strong, that he was going to leave it for the guy running in behind in which he assumed was Anthony Robinson,

but Anthony was already past him and had no way to get back to it. Yeah. To at least get a shot. Yeah, Robinson did come back to it. Go ahead, go ahead. But really, I don't know, man. Like take a touch and smash it, Darrell D.K., that's your, that's kind of your M.O. Yeah.

I wish he would have done that. I'm sure when he watched the tape, he won't make that mistake again. Well, he had another moment in the first half where he had it at a really terrible angle on the right side of the box, but it was on his right foot. And I think he like, like, fake a shot and tried to square it or cut it back. And same thing, I'm like, no, like for other players, I want all of that unselfishness. For Darrell Dicay, right foot, hit the ball at the goal. Nobody can stop any of your shots. Right.

Test the limits of expected goals, Darrell D.K. everything towards frame. Yeah. Well, Costa Rica, not at max intensity in this game. Is that fair to say? Yes, it's definitely not a coincidence that in any window, the guys who play against the weakest teams always end up gaining the most standing. And that's, it felt like a little bit of that happening here.

I think there aren't many of these, but I should mention them when they happened. Costa Rica got a chance in the 31st minute. Gerson Torres creates a little bit of danger by beating Legit down the line and slipping it to Fuller on the overlap. Fuller plays a pretty good ball across the area and it bounces right in front of the six and McKenzie has to sort of in desperation chest it to Horvath as somebody's bearing down behind him. Well done by McKenzie there, but you know we weren't completely impregnable. This was and this was the one where once Lejet got beat, it was Anthony Robinson returned. treating, playing defense retreating. And he essentially retreated off the ball to also absorb the overlapping run.

And he didn't deny the cross, but I think he, in a 2-V-1, I think he did about as well as you'd be able to do in that situation. And it just stood out to me because, you know, went back in 2018 all the way back to like his early games. Those were the situations where he would just be all at sea. and here at least he looked like he was in control of as much as he could control of that situation, which is just a good thing to see. Yeah. And I think that's a thing worth saying because I'm about to say something not so nice about Robinson, but it is worth pointing out that he does look defensively solid,

at least in this small sample size we've gotten over the last couple weeks. But then 32nd minute, just some unacceptable sloppiness from him. when he's passing it back to Ream, he hits like a head high ball that's sort of like a hospital ball back towards his own goal, which, you know, that kind of mistake, which he had another one later in the game that he can't be doing that. Right, right. That's exactly where a higher intensity match against a slightly or much better opponent is where we're going to be seeing the full punishment. Yeah. I don't want to ramble on too much here. Anything you want to say at this point in the game? No, I wonder.

Let's keep this thing moving. We talked before and I was like, in a game like this, the events of the game are basically all that you can take from the game. There's not going to be a lot of like big learning moments. Yeah, we'll try to sort of wrap up the window a little bit at the end of the show and maybe even do another episode about that when we have time to let it marinate. But 35th minute, Waya pumps a ball into the area for Aronson. and Erringen tries to backheal it, I think.

Oh, or else? It's sort of just that Aronson like spaz energy, right? Like the guy just playing soccer has this total freneticness. And it came out again in his really amazing like sauce highlight. But it's just this like squiggly movement. Yeah. Absolutely the wrong, the wrong choice technically to try to get that flick up rather than, you know, preparing himself a little bit better and getting his foot, feet the correct to strike it, but I don't know.

Where do you stand on that? Yeah, it's like he was trying to scorpion kick it, like Zlaton or something. And because it was a really good ball, and it's just he either badly misjudged the flight of it or, you know, was trying to do something he probably shouldn't have tried to do. But anyway, good ball from Waya. I feel like Waya had generated a lot of the danger in the game up to that point as sort of like the guy unlocking Costa Rica. I know Aronson got a lot of, you know, a lot of attention for some good stuff.

He did like scoring a goal and beating three guys down the right side. But in terms of turning possession into attack, I felt like Wea was the clear victor in this first half. It's nice, man. You were talking about two years ago having, you know, looking at some of the options we had two years ago and I keep thinking to the last cycle when we had graham zoosie and alibadoya filling into those winger spots not because they were standing in the way of better players or it was anything there it's just they weren't uh they're not these kinds of attacking players and

never were so this does this just feels like such a such a completely different era yeah it is it is a new era mackenzie in the 37th minute slipped while dealing with the bouncing ball and conceded a yellow card when he was about to get dribbled past. Cannon was behind him, though, so it wasn't a denial of goal scoring opportunity. On the ensuing free kick, I thought it was kind of funny. Joel Campbell's shot was blocked by his teammate, Gerson Torres, who kind of stepped into the gap in the wall, and then it deflected off his back and up over the goal. It looked like it was a pretty well-hit free kick.

Yeah, it was disappointing because Torres denied us the chance to get another Horvath highlight. I don't think Horvath really had any highlights. The shots today, I felt like went straight at him. When you're watching Ethan Horvath, does a party you think that you've somehow accidentally changed the channel to like an Iowa basketball game and they've trotted their great team out there for the end of a blowout? Yeah, he kind of looks like Chris Street, you know? I don't mean that as a dig on anybody, you know?

Or like Ryan Bowen, one of those big tall centerbacks, man, I mean, centers, everybody's like turning this podcast off right now. All right. Yeah, we can move off a University of Iowa basketball. He, Horvath does. He looked very competent, didn't have much to do, but looked very in control of what he did have to do. I'll say this again, too.

I don't know if any of these major timeline, but he very routinely hits a nice ball on the floor straight up the gut. And we talk about we're going to need goalkeepers to be brave and have good ability to play the ball with their feet. he's hitting really precise passes to Tyler Adams checking back in a gap and then whichever midfielder he's hitting, whether it was Adams Moose or Legette, would make another good decision in technical execution.

So that was good to see for Horbath because that had been one of sort of the reputational sticking points against him was that, oh, well, he just can't play with his feet, so he won't work in a Greg Burrhalter team. And a reputational sticking point promulgated by none other than me? What was I even talking about? no idea what I was talking about. Unbelievable.

Maybe he's gotten, I mean, it's possible it's gotten a lot better at it. You hit that pass a lot of times. If you haven't been hitting it your whole career and then you start hitting it a lot, you can make a lot of progress in a short amount of time. We'll go with that. We've been right all along. I've been right all along. Speaking of Tyler Adams, we didn't, I didn't clock any of these, but he and

Eunice Musa were just wrecking balls in the midfield. Wrecking ball is in the best possible sense, and it's just so relaxing for me to watch them blow up things in the middle of the field. You know, they just kept doing it. What did you think of their tendency, both Musa and Legette, did it seem like they stayed tighter to the midfield when Adams was there? That's probably the wrong way of saying it. Did it seem like there were more occasions when they were tighter to Tyler Adams than when Jackson Newell was playing against Honduras? Yes. Yeah.

It felt more cohesive. They felt closer to the six. We weren't doing this nonsense where they're running around with their heads cut off along the front line. So, yeah. So for me, it's a big deal because, and I changed the question because while there were more occasions where they were closer to Adams, I think there were also plenty of occasions where they were free to go wherever they wanted. You know, Musa way up at the sideline or Musa up combining with Canon and Wea. And so I honestly think it's a, I don't know, my theory is like they have.

have to stay a little bit closer in the buildup because there's a chance that Tyler Adams is going to go forward off the ball. And so somebody has to be close enough to recover. Whereas with Jackson Ewell playing against Honduras, there's no chance where Jackson Ewell is going to be like, I have a 30-yard vertical run I can make here. Like, that's just never going to happen. So there was never any need to essentially like try to cover for him. And so this is all my long way of saying that the triple pivot exists and it's what we should, what we're going to be employing from here on now. Can you talk a little bit more about the triple pivot? Just give us the two-minute version?

Well, it's just that interchangeability that we've talked about a lot. It's Adams being able to go forward knowing that Musa can slide in and cover for him temporarily and become the six. Or Leget. And again, we've seen Legit do it. He did it against Jamaica when Acosta would go forward. So it's just this ability to rotate anyone. It's not a double pivot where one goes and one stays. It's just this like triangle.

cyclone revolution The Tex winners Central Midfield And it's what I really hope That we try And obviously I really hope that it works There's no guarantee that if Tyler Adams isn't there That it's going to look very good

With a non-Tyler Adams player Right Right right right right Yeah I'm I really like that idea too We saw it like you said We saw against Northern Ireland Well not so much against Northern Ireland But mostly against Jamaica

Wales and the big one was against whales. Okay. Yeah. We're really like stuck. And again, we've talked about it even before that because we, since we don't have that player, that backup six, the second six, it's always been about, okay, well, who can we kind of mold into it and make do? That gives everyone the freedom that we wanted to have. And so that's kind of where I'm hoping we try. Okay. Let's see.

41st minute another example of D.K. Hold up on a long ball from McKenzie. He draws a foul. He was just good at this in this game. And you could say it's because of low intensity, but I don't buy that. 42nd minute, we get the McKenzie line breaking pass to DK in behind. This did seem a little too easy, but it's a great pass for McKenzie. D.K. does well to stay on side. And he gathers himself as he goes to goal and kind of sends the keeper the wrong way, slots it near post to zero. So this is one where, again, this is something D.K. offers that Sergeant doesn't. We saw this in the Northern Ireland game. He got in behind, and I think it was De La Torre who fed him once, and he might have gotten in behind a couple of times. Pulisic fed him as well, yeah. There you go.

So this one, I got to go check now, since you brought up that point about it being Salazar for Costa Rica, it being his first cap, and he's in the back line. one there was one Costa Rica guy who was like four yards behind everyone else in the line on the weak side so not even on DK's side I bet that was Salazar yeah and it was on the right side so so yeah so it could have been Salazar and so some of it's DK staying doing a good job staying on some of it's just a little bit of luck because I don't think he'd checked behind him that that was the case he just was making his run and so when you're playing a weak team a weekend team that's the kind of rub of the luck you're going to get yeah finish with was excellent patience and the calmness how how composed was that yeah almost looked like almost looked

too to calm and composed coming you know coming into the box to me but i was wrong he didn't take a touch that was that was the coolest part right he never touched it he just let it roll like kept his i feel like he just kept his eyes up on the goalkeeper the whole time waiting to see if the keeper would lean uh so i i want to watch that back too because if if uh if marera started to lean a little bit, that would have been his trigger to just pass it the other way. Made it look easy. Made it look easy. 46 minute, we get the sauce fest from Wea and especially Aronson, which is worthy of

mention. Wea wins a corner after getting sprayed wide with a little bit of imprecision from Dyke. I'm sorry, D.K. So the past could have sort of led Wea into the space ahead of instead of made him slow down. I think you mentioned this with with Canon and Wea from the Mexico game On the short corner

Wayia showboats a little bit with Campbell and almost loses it but taps it to Aronson and then Aronson really showboats to beat two guys But especially Joseph Mora he's just zigzags Through and among them on the end line And cuts a ball back into the heart of the area DK does get a toe on it but not enough

And it falls to Musa at the back post and he can't quite get enough on it either and doesn't quite connect and it goes wide. And this is where I actually think we could have done more of this against Honduras which is to press the 1V1 advantages we have to test how good at defending some of these players are. And it doesn't mean it's going to be hero ball.

It's to just stress them a little bit. I feel like we did one or the other. We either did full hero ball or we looked at a defender standing us up and didn't even test him. We just stop, pull it back, pass it around, tap around the edge of the area or all the way back to midfield.

And I want to at least put some stress on them. See if they can handle it. And if they can have the composure to pull it back away from them and reset or recirculate. But if you get one guy to fall, that's the disorganization we're trying to achieve. And so that's what we, that's what we saw right there. I mean, Aronson got a couple of guys to fall. Yeah. Especially that outside of the, outside of the boot touch to go back to the end line through Mora,

that's the one that that's the one that I love the most you know yeah and it's not even just stressing there it's I thought when we in the first two games when we get the ball into that space at the edge of the 18 wide I thought too often we would just kind of like hit a ball in and be like okay we're here time to hit a ball in and see if someone can get on the end of it and I really would like to again see us just soccer a little bit longer and and see if we can do more controlled attack within that space and and this is that's exactly what I want to see I don't know if it'll work in a full-blooded game or if it'll be nearly as successful as that little sequence was, but that's what I hope we see a little bit more of.

Yeah, I mean, at very absolute minimum, Aronson is going to be a wonderful person to bring in off the bench to run at tired legs, you know, and that's absolute minimum. So we come to the half. There's some substitutions to talk about, et cetera, et cetera. But before we get into that, I want to mention that we've started a Discord. for Patreon subscribers. Patreon, many of you are subscribers on Patreon already. Patreon's a great way to support the podcast.

It's not a great way to have a conversation. The app is really clunky. So you can create a Discord and then connect the Discord server to the Patreon. We've done that. Think of it as like a mashup of Twitter, Reddit, and Slack where everyone is so far, nice to each other. And it's focused on USM&T conversation. You might ask, why would I want to waste more of my time on soccer?

and that's a good question I can't answer. But it seems to be going well so far, and you will be welcome there if you go to our Patreon and subscribe. So consider that link to the Patreon. We'll be in the show notes. The news is that there's a Discord now with 100 plus people talking about soccer in loving, obsessive detail. All right, man.

That's an excellent development for the discourse. The discourse on the Discord. Zimmerman comes on for McKenzie, who played pretty well, I thought, in the first half. A nice little bounce back for him. And in the 51st minute, D.K. flicks a throw down the line for Aronson. Just another example of what D.K. offers, I think. Aronson cuts in. Erringson kind of slows the play down, cuts in, and switches it for Cannon, who taps it to Musa.

And then Musa gets into the box, does a couple stepovers and tries his luck with his left foot from, I'd say, I don't know, maybe 12 yards. And it's well wide. But yeah, I like the effort. I think I saw what he was going for, which was to curl it around that defender. So the defender unsights the keeper and you curl it around him and Tierraun Ria it into the, into the far post. Didn't get any curl on it. So it looks way, way off.

But if there's a little bit of curl on that, it gets a little better looking. Yep. Yeah, I don't mind the idea at all. 52nd minute, very shortly thereafter, we get Cannon's goal. It starts with Tim Wea playing really fast on the turn after receiving from Adams. He plays on the half turn in tight quarters, tries to pass it to D.K. About five yards away, the pass is cut out. But D.K. stays with it, chases the guy down, and Adams pounces on the counterpress.

And Costa Rica's next pass under duress from Adams is sideways out to the left. Cannon sees it, steps, intercepts it, dribbles it. dribbles into the box, sits Calvo down with his right foot, and then slots it near post with his left foot, which is, I was like, whoa, Reggie.

Calvo's a good soccer player. And that's a pretty clinical finish from Canon, and the fullback controversy continues. It was really nice from Canon, and again, it stresses the defender. He's putting stress on that defender. And again,

I think we're going to start seeing this in the qualifying window, teams are going to have a hard choice to make. Like that was Calvo. This is Calvo's third game in three days. How old is Calvo these days? Late 20s. I'm not sure, though.

So we've got these situations where, all right, if you don't think the guy has the, and it might have just been that Canaan just did him so well that it didn't matter that this was third game in six days. But like I'm choosing to believe that it matters, that these are tired legs and it's easier to cut tired legs. And teams are going to have choices to make whether they throw tired legs out there, whether they rotate and put a much weaker player like Salazar, whoever on the field. And either way, we have the players to exploit that, even if we also rotate. So excellent whole movement. Do we talk about Tyler Adams' contribution to this play?

Please, please do. So Adams blows up two players, right? In succession, the ball comes out as they're trying to somewhat clear it, and Adams meets that pass and blows it up to another Costa Rican player a few yards away. Adams obviously doesn't slow down at all and is immediately on the next man to force the errant pass. And that's just, I don't, I don't want to say it's unreplicable. Irreplicable. No, no, I don't, that doesn't sound right, bells.

I don't want to say it's unreplicable. But we, we, again, this goes back to we haven't really tried to replicate it with too many other guys. We've gone the exact opposite direction when Adams hasn't been available. So definitely we get it from Adams. It's going to be important to see whether there's anyone else in the pool we can throw in, whether Kellanacosta could do that or whether one of these Gold Cup auditionees can give us something similar. But it's massive. It's massive to have that in our defensive box.

He's so cerebral. He's a cerebral destroyer. He knows exactly what he's good at. And he loves to do it. You know, you can tell. He loves to close down. guys in the counterpress or when they're trying to when they're trying to build out um yeah it is it is not replicated by anybody else in the pool i think like the only person with the sort of profile to do it i

think is unis musa but i won't beat that won't beat that drum anymore um and i don't think you know that the four or five year difference between adams and musa is uh is pretty significant when it comes to like professional experience adams is like you know he's a grizzled war veteran compared to Musa. Robinson, I mentioned this already, but the next thing that happens in the timeline is that messiness from Robinson playing the ball back to Ream, I think, again,

with his right foot. And I just think the bar is higher in this game for that kind of thing. Like if you look messy in this game, how messy will you be against Mexico when it's really intense or even against Costa Rica when it's a game with points on the line.

So he's got, I said this already, but he's got to clean that up. 62nd minute, Ewell comes on for Adams. That is fine and dandy at this point. We're up 3-0 and Adams is coming off a long layoff for injury. What do we think of Ewell? Do we need to discuss him a lot? Just in that he didn't like necessarily like get his full redemption here. I think he was okay.

He still had some really shaky moments, but there still wasn't anything that like screams in a home match against a mid-tier Concaf team, I'm the guy you need to slice teams open. And I'm not drawing that conclusion from this 30 minutes, but I kind of am having to draw it from the Honduras game along with this where that's your trial. Like if you didn't do it in those games and he didn't look great against Switzerland,

it becomes a risk to put him in against a mid-team. Kankajaf team in World Cup qualifying. Now you can sort of shift it down a level and be like, okay, but he can be useful against El Salvador or, you know, whichever of those weaker teams come out of the playoffs. But like what's the, what's the point? If it takes something really special to include Jackson Ewell, like if it takes what Jackson Ewell brings to beat El Salvador at home, then we're in a much bigger mess than we think.

Yeah, you end up saying something ridiculous like Ewell is tailor-made for St. Kitts Nevis at home. Right. Right. That's where you're at. So if he couldn't do it in the game that he was basically groomed to do it for, which is home against Honduras. And again, it's strange because the passes he was shying away from in that game are passes

we've seen him make for club and a little bit for country too. So it feels like it was like some kind of a mental block. But regardless, it was a mental block in a way that was nearly costly on lots of it. I mean, there's already an opportunity cost for the passes he doesn't make. There was nearly a cost for Kosteri or for Honduras going the other way against someone who had no ability to control the space the way that several other candidates could. So it's just going to come down to like, are you going to risk it and just say, I'm sure he'll do better. I'm sure that was like literally the worst game he could have had and he'll do better the next time in a game where World Cup qualifying points are on the line. Yeah, I don't think so.

I don't think so. And I thought I would say he was that mental block definitely extended into this. game. He didn't look confident. He didn't make hardly any incisive passes. I mean, defensively, he was okay. He wasn't horrible defensively. He does his level best cover ground and everything, but there were still examples in this game. I don't have the energy to go back and find the exact clips, but there were examples of this game where he receives a pass from Tim Ream, and he doesn't even attempt to check his shoulder and try to turn into that open space and find somebody's feet. He just taps it right back to him. And I think mental, mental block is probably

a good word for it. He seems to be right now a little lacking in confidence. And I hope that's not because he listens to the scuff podcast. It's not. But, no, that, again, the whole reason that there was any sort of ground swell for you old was because he was hitting these ridiculously, like, audacious passes for San Jose. I mean, just stupid, like, 60-yard diagonal volleys, like all these different things. And he was doing that a little bit for the national team, too.

but he was doing it against, you know, much, much weaker competition, zero stakes. Again, his only real game with stakes was the Canada Part 2, but he didn't really hit any of those passes in Canada Part 2. They didn't, that wasn't really what was on in that game, that he was never asked to do it in that game. The game never called for it. So, yeah, I don't think we need to keep going on and on about this. I just think it's going to be tough for him to maybe get into any more meaningful games in this sort of, of really important stretch coming up in September October. Yeah, for those keeping track at home, I think the second six, the second six debate,

Ewell has sort of dropped, I think, in our view has sort of dropped out. And it's, it's Acosta. There's like sort of the Bell's Musa fantasy that there's the, you know, all of this, all this said with the understanding that Greg wants a triple pivot. And then we're going to have to look at some people in the Gold Cup, you know, look at some people in the Gold Cup who could, who can do this job. I just hope that when we look at people in the Gold Cup who can do this job, that Burrhalter isn't so, you know, so laser focused on this profile that he's had in mind. Because I think a good midfielder can do what you do a better job than you will as, you know, without being this sort of, you know, regista or whatever we think. you will it was supposed to be basically almost like without requiring special protection we can't we shouldn't

we shouldn't have to design like special protection into the into the setup unless you are an elite ball player right okay Alex Mendez Alex Mendez all right let's let's keep moving um 64th minute erinson fed down the line by Robinson has a chance to cross it for waya from the left and uh and it doesn't get the cross right uh waya was a little frustrated well it was a little frustrated well it was a a little frustrated a lot of this game. He wanted a goal pretty bad, I think. He's been demonstrative since 2018. I remember seeing, like, he'll throw his arms up.

It's a lot like Raina, but Wea doesn't take any heat for it. And again, I don't really care that either of them do it. But he, he, like, shows his frustration when a ball doesn't come to him, when he thinks he's got a lane. He's a son of a president, you know? Come on. He gets what he wants. 70th minute Costa Rica's best chance of the game

clocked at 0.18xG That's 18% of a goal on the shot by Instat Came on a giveaway when Robinson passed the ball to Ewell It wasn't a great pass and Ewell didn't think it was to him So he didn't try to get to it even though he probably should have tried to get to it And it just rolled into Zone 14 where substitute Alan Cruz picked it up and passed it to substitute Juergens Montenegro who scuffed his left-footed shot from a pretty manageable angle

and that was the most Horvath was tested on the night, I think. And just to break this pass down into like the most granular level possible, I don't think it was Robinson just missing his pass technically by several yards. I think it was like one of those wide receiver quarterback miscommunications. I think Robinson was expecting Ewell to be dropping another two steps so that he could receive it moving away from where the, the line of confrontation was and looking upfield. I'm not saying that Robinson was correct and Ewell was wrong to do it.

I'm just saying Robinson didn't literally just like miss his pass by several yards. Yeah. Ewell thought it was a fly pattern and Robinson thought it wasn't out. No, that's a silly. That's a silly. Ridiculous. Come on, Bells. We're only doing basketball analogies today.

We're, so at this point we're not progressing the ball. The game feels kind of static. Raina and Pfeffach and Acosta come on for Wea and Dika and Musa in the 74th and 75th minutes. There were so many substitutions that it took more than more than a minute for them all to happen. And then 76 minute right after he comes on, Raina runs onto a lumped ball from Tim Ream, gets his head on it and gets fouled, I guess. I mean, was it even a foul? And then just makes an absolute meal out of it. Waki has a great video on this on Twitter.

He does a double hop on his right foot to go crashing into another guy who's arriving in the box So it's like I don't even know who the foul is called on Anyway, there's a foul called You about to say something? Go ahead No, my prediction long ago once we started seeing Raina even in the Bundesliga With that Raina and Pulisick are going to draw some penalties Yeah It's just so hard for defenders not to stick legs out in front

Once they've already sort of gotten your weight shifted the wrong way and so two games in a row now, pools that can rain have drawn penalties. And I should mention here, I've invited Waki on the podcast to do like a S-H-I-T housing episode, a gamesmanship episode looking back on this window. And Greg, of course, is welcome to join us. But it is cool that Raina seems to be,

absolutely ready for the gamesmanship that's required in in concordcaf or you know in soccer in general let's not let's not fetishize conquer calf yeah you get you get a got a defender wrong footage moving the wrong way you punish him yeah run right run right over that leg run directly into it well i want to mention i i mean not just that but like reyna when he you know when he got hit by a projectile after pool of six goal against mexico if you really slow that clip down he got hit with a paper cup of soda on the shoulder he did post it have you posted it i haven't posted it i want to see the i want to see the the the frames oh well i will do it eventually um paper cup i'm sure it'll go well with it would it'll go well with the watkey interview i'm sure

yeah yeah there that's one we'll post it and i can't believe he didn't actually save that save that scoop which is which is which is which makes it all the more glorious that he pretends to be concussed for, you know, several minutes as not even a player who's on the field. He wasn't even on the field at the time. He was a sub. Right. He had been sub-d-off. He came on the field to celebrate and ended up wasting like an extra three or four

minutes pretending to be concussed by a paper cup of Soto that hit him in the shoulder. So, I mean, kudos to you, Gio Raina, because you have figured out some things that the typical American player historically has not, you know? And I'm just going to throw in a scoffed podcast disclaimer that if we're incorrect about that, and it was something much harder, then we want full consideration giving to Giorina's health and hope he's okay and are not implying that he would, that he's faking a legitimate injury. I mean, yeah, the- What I'm saying is it's good either way. I mean, it's not good. If he was really hurt, oh, we get it, he's really hurt.

If he wasn't really hurt, it's still an excellent piece of match management. Yeah, this is not an, okay, it's possible. he got hit by like a lighter or something or a battery and we haven't heard about it that would be awful and it is we're not excusing the person throwing a paper cup of soda at the players from the stands just so everyone's clear on that um anyway back to this play 76 minute he wrestles the ball after the penalty is called he wrestles a ball away from pfok and rolls it into the left corner sending marera the wrong way for zero USA you notice anything else about that penalty on the replay not really uh i don't know if this is common uh i don't think

i've noticed it from anyone before uh he never he never looks at the ball when he's when he's on his approach to the ball really he's only looking at the keeper he doesn't like waiting at the last second look down his eyes are at the goalkeeper the entire time so he i mean again it's it's not that insane of a thing to do but it seemed unusual to me i've never seen a guy not look back down at the ball at the last second to strike it I'm going to disagree. It seems insane to me. I could never, I could never take a penalty without looking at the ball.

This is, again, this is where like an orange slices, Mark McKenzie, Heath Pierce podcast, is so valuable because those guys, like, are just relating things that they do on a, you know, in games, in camps at the hotels, like all of these little details that only a player who competes at that level would know. But anyway, I just thought it was nuts that he didn't. That was my orange slices plug again. I feel like I want to plug them every time. They do all the best interviews. They get everybody.

They have all the access. They have Mark McKenzie doing it. He's one of the producers. So anyway, I thought it was nuts when I saw it. Okay, 82nd minute. Desk comes on for Robinson. Just want to mention that substitution. I don't know that Dest had really anything to say about this game

because it just sort of slid off into the sunny distance in Utah. Maybe PFAC got hurt, but I don't think it was that, it didn't seem that bad, I guess. If we finished the game with 10 guys, nobody noticed because, yeah, it was very much just batting each other on the back for the last 20. So what's next, Greg? What's the, what's next on the agenda for the U.S.? I think it's just pat ourselves on the back that we've done it. Yeah. I mean, you know, we're good again.

You say that somewhat sarcastically, I assume. I mean, only a little. Like, it is a big deal that we came into this window and walk out with three results. It's huge because results are really important. But you still have to look a little bit clear-eyed at performances. And I think, again, the Costa Rica performance, it's nice to curb-stop a regional opponent, whatever the circumstances. but the Honduras and Mexico games are sort of the performances that I think you take something from to try to extend sort of forward to see how we're going to guess how we're going to perform down the road.

So yeah, so what's our clear-eyed take on the performances? Well, they weren't convincing. They weren't convincing in the sense of us playing a new brand of soccer and being able to control soccer games. I think that's fair to say. The Mexico game, as everyone knows, we scored our three goals, two of them on corner kicks, and one on a penalty, and all of our serious chances came on set pieces in that game. And then the Honduras game was infamously a struggle for us, I think. Yeah, and so on my

rewatch of that game, because I didn't get the rewatch in before we recorded, but I talked to... Shame on you. I know. You know, when I was talking about it in our little group before the Mexico game I was like hey on the rewatch most of the guys were pretty okay and then again I'm not trying to keep coming back to this but Ewell was like probably worse than I remembered

from original viewing because you started to see all of these missed passes all these things that could have set us free and could have opened up the game for us that just weren't happening and it's like if we get those it's not oh if Raina had finished that chance it's a different game it's if we created five more chances

it's a different game because then somebody's going to finish one. You can't just finish the one you create. You got to create eight, so you score two. And the reason we weren't creating all of those is because our attacks were dying on the vine too early, even though things were on. So it's like, okay, well, if we replace that with a more competent player, or a more comfortable performance, I should say, because again, he can give a better performance than that.

That's where it's like this game could be different. So I guess what I'm saying is that the results were okay, performances were okay. If you think about it from like a qualifying window for those two games, we had two home games and we got one win in a really scrambly last second way against Honduras for three points. And then really we tied Mexico at home in a really gritty performance because you don't get the extra time in the qualifiers. So that be four points from our two home qualifiers and not a super convincing one in the first one. So in that sort of light, it's not quite the giant parade that it is if you're just focused on the outcomes.

It is a huge improvement outcomes-wise, of course, on the way we played Mexico in September of 2019, where we lost three to zero. Absolutely. And that's why it's such a celebration, right? Because, you know, in a vacuum, beating Mexico at home in a really tight, gritty game where you don't necessarily control it is, still a good thing and it's even better compared to what sort of the expectations might have been given our recent performances against them. So that's where it's this huge emotional relief to see it happen at all because it could so easily, you know, you were anticipating that it could easily go spiral out of control the other way. Yeah. Well, I still want to see, you know,

I still want to see a Adams McKinney-Musa midfield with, with Rain and Pulisick on the wings. and I guess probably Darrell Dicay at this point for me, that striker. Well, we'll see them all, right? We'll see him. I don't think there's any doubt that D.K. is going to get minutes in the next World Cup qualifying window. Do you think that's, you think it's even possible that he wouldn't play in the next three meaningful games? I think not, you know, unless he has like a huge drop-off, regresses to his XG or whatever.

No, I think he's in the group now. The group, remember that phrase? The group. The group is so night and day from when he literally was saying, here's the group. But that's actually the other big thing then, right? So I'm not trying to throw a wet blanket on this window because there's one thing about this group,

the one upside, is that there is so much upside. This is an incredible young group. They have almost no time together in camps and in matches. And these were their very first competitive games. So it is a positive that they gutted it out against Honduras. It's definitely a positive, huge one, that you can gut out a game against Mexico. those traits you can carry over.

And then it's about improving the actual, you know, triangles. It's about improving the movements and the coordination and the patterns. And that, I think, we have a group of players that can do. Yeah. And we still haven't seen them all together in the way that I think we'd all like to see them. I wonder if Burrhalter would go, would still do the three at the back. The nominal three at the back, if Tyler Adams were available, I guess the better way to say it would be interesting to see if Burrhalter would do a two-man

midfield if Adams were available to start that Mexico game. I'm very curious about that because I want to see us play Mexico with that three-man midfield that we all want to see and see what happens, you know? Well, next step is going to be Gold Cup, and I feel like there's a going to be a lot of enthusiasm for the gold cup now that maybe wasn't there before because because of how many working pieces we have and how many we can feel good about the gold cup can just be a like identify the two or three players the four or five players whatever it is who who we can be comfortable with bringing in on the fringes of this really solid core that I think we feel

so good about so it's it's going to be such a good tournament for like what our expectations are for what we need to see. And I also just think that we're probably going to get some pretty good results. Do you? Because I sort of wonder if we are going to, everybody's going to be excited about the Gold Cup and then they're going to get let down because it is going to be, you know, it's going to be like a C-plus team or something like that, you know. I guess I'm not sure.

I was trying to figure out some of this stuff about what Herdman might do. But Canada's in our group is the other sort of main power. I think we'll end up with Haiti and then we have Martinique. And again, I know we just went through the Olympic qualifying debacle. But I think that whatever group of domestic and European players who weren't in this nation's league roster, we put together on the Gold Cup, should be able to beat Martinique in a home game. And then Canada is going to be really interesting because they are about to play their third and fourth games of this extended June window in the Ocho playoffs. Must wins for them. Yeah.

Must wins. And so everything's focused on that. And I just don't know if Hurdman's going to bring all the big guns back in for the Gold Cup. He might. Big guns being Jonathan David and Alfonso Davies and maybe a few other guys. But those are the two big ones, right? I mean, those are the big ones. And they're both on clubs that might not prefer that their players play 10 weeks of international soccer over the summer.

And I believe the rules are that they don't have to allow them to go to, oh, maybe it'll be different since these are World Cup qualifiers and Gold Cup. I'm not sure. We're going to need our Concaf attorney. in here. Because it is, the Gold Cup is a FIFA sanctioned Confederation tournament. It is, yeah, I don't know. I kind of hate learning about that stuff too. Well, I'm going to tell you, the sticking point I think is that it's team clubs don't

have to release teams for major finals in the same year, multiple major finals. And so the Nations League finals counts as a finals. So like, that's how Dortmund, that headline about Hortland won't, Dortmund won't, Dortmund won't let Raina go to the Gold Cup. They actually can deny him the Gold Cup, not that Burrhalter was going to call him up anyway, because he went to this finals for the Nation's League. They'd have to release him for one or the other.

But I don't know if that extends to this round of World Cup qualifiers that all these team, non-Ocho qualified teams are playing now. It seems fair. It seems fair to not have to, for Dortmund to not have to let him go to both tournaments. Well, and would Hurdman want to, we're way, we're into the Canada section of scuffed now, but would Hurdman want to take his best players and have them play nonstop soccer and then send him back to the club and then have him come right back for qualifies? I doubt it. So in other words, Canada might be pretty weak too.

Right. That's the whole, that's the whole thing. Okay. But again, I've expected way more rotation than what we've seen in any of these windows. So maybe, again, I'm way overestimating how cautious international management. managers are going to be with their players' legs. Well, speaking of that, I think the A-team guys, the Ranas and the Poulosix and McKenny's and Adams, and they hopefully are enjoying their time off the first day of their break before they

have to go back to Europe before preseason. So I hope they're having a great time. Anything else we should cover here? I mean, we'll have to put our heads down and figure out, like, some. some things to say over the next couple weeks. But there's the Gold Cup, obviously, that roster will drop, what, late June? Not too much longer. Yeah, I think the Gold Cup itself kicks off July 10th.

I think our first game is maybe the 12th. 11th, I bet it's 11th, yeah. Yeah, Group B. The women's team is playing three friendlies today in a summer year, or not today, three friendlies in the next week. Portugal today, if you're listening to it on Thursday. Jamaica on Sunday and then Nigeria in Austin on Wednesday, June 16th, which would be an awesome game to attend. I wish I could, but I'm not able to.

And then they'll have the Olympics, obviously, coming up, which is going to be exciting. And then I believe the Euros kickoff, which will feature very few U.S. men's national team players, but still, for most people, there's going to be some overlap of interest. I think that does it. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.