Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #187: USA-Jamaica recap

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Back to the 4-3-3 with Sands, Busio, Hoppe and Dike getting the nod in a knockout quarterfinal in the Gold Cup. Full chronology and more. Scuffed merch available at https://my-store-11446477.creator-spring.com/Support the podcast by becoming a patron and getting access to the Discord, where people are nice and the discussion is generally thoughtful: 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 Scufft podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Georgia. With me is Greg Velasquez in Iowa. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Thanks for downloading this episode of Scuffed. The U.S. defeated Jamaica 1 to 0 on an 83rd minute winner from Matthew Hoppe and advanced to the semifinals of the Gold Cup against Qatar. The winner of that game, which is on Thursday, plays in the final on Sunday against the winner of Mexico, Canada. So far, this is a success. Right, Greg? This game was absolutely a success. in sort of the process of what this gold cup is supposed to be. How's that? Is that qualified enough?

I think so, yeah. I think, I mean, I said that a little tongue in cheek that this tournament has been a success so far. But I mean, we are in the semifinals. We've sort of dragged our way there. And what do you mean this game was a success? I assume there's another shoe to drop with that formulation. So it's a, this gold cup is process over outcome.

And I think, you know, as soon as we heard what the roster was, or even before that one, when Burrhalter back in like May was saying, the guys who play in the Nations League are not going to come play in Gold Cup. I'm going to send all of our, most of our first choice players to vacation for the summer. That tells you right now, outcome is not the most important priority of this tournament. It's a process. And the process is getting ready for World Cup qualifying, identifying players, getting them reps in the system. and this particular lineup against Jamaica with these players in the system that the first choice team runs was absolutely the correct way I think for me in my opinion

to sort of run this process I don't think we necessarily got that earlier in the tournament and you know we've talked about roster construction quite a bit but even some player choices in the Haiti game and then the system the setup and player choices against Canada were a bit head scratching so we kind of didn't have good process decisions there, but this Jamaica game was.

So if you're going to nitpick, which we do on this show, the nitpick would be... A little bit, yeah. We're a little bit behind on our timeline of experimentation, of process, because it would have been nice

if this was the lineup we saw against Canada, and then we got to tweak and evaluate and fine tune so that in the quarter final we got to do, you know, this lineup a little bit better, and then, you know,

if all goes well, then in the semifinal, we fine-tuning in. Because doesn't that feel like what we're going to do now is take this lineup and build off of it, this performance? Yeah, maybe we'll see a different striker starting. Maybe one of the midfielder's will be switched out, though I wouldn't bet any money on that. But you might see little minor changes and like, okay,

how do the midfielder's rotate? How do they interact? That's a little bit different because of what we saw, worked versus Jamaica versus what didn't work. And that's where I feel like we can build off something. I don't feel like this game was building off of the Canada performance. Is that fair to say? Yeah, it's like we started fresh, not started anew, but started fresh with this game.

So yeah, so this game is like what I wanted to see. It's not that every performance was positive and that all the information was excellent information. It's that we were, the experiment was set up well for tonight, I think. And so I thought this was a very good way of setting up the, team and choosing the right players with, you know, I mean, there might be a couple of quibbles, but those are all, you know, very much at the margins. Yeah, I mean, my preferred lineup going into this game was that 3-4-3 with Sands in sort of that hybrid centerback six position that you talked about last week.

But what we got wasn't really too far off from what I wanted. I think, like, I would have had a legit on the wing and Ariola. Well, we got Hoppy in for who I would have played out as the right-sided centerback, George Kessler. Henry Kessler. Henry Kesslinger. And otherwise, and then Boos, I would have started Williamson over Busio, but it sure seems like that ship has sailed. And I'm definitely not sad about Hoppy playing. I thought he was the, you know, the brucey.

rightest attacker on the field for us last night, obviously. So when you're talking about the ship sailing, you're you talking about Williamson's ship? It doesn't seem like he's going to get any minutes in this tournament anymore, does it? That's what it feels like to me, too. We can get into the lineup here in just a second, but just on the Williamson front, he didn't get into the basically dead rubber against Canada.

And then, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about this too. Sebastian Leget was not outstanding by any stretch in the game against Jamaica last. night and Williamson would you know probably be a like-for-like replacement there so if Williamson doesn't get in when Legette's having an off game and he didn't get in the Canada sort of final group stage game it is hard to see where you think Burrhalter might trust him it's not impossible but it just seems like it seems really unlikely that he would start for example on Thursday yeah yeah so let's do the lineup let's do the lineup the USA came out with

turner in goal and then James Sands and Miles Robinson as the centerbacks that was a little surprising to me to put Sands in as a, you know, sort of a traditional centerback and a two centerback formation. But Berhalter did it and it worked out pretty well, I thought. Yeah. And his hands might have been a little bit tied there. I mean, Kessler just came into camp a week ago. So he's coming in a little bit behind. He's never been capped for the senior team before. So he'd be throwing a brand new player into a knockout game. I'm assuming that's what you might have been expecting was Kesslinger to start. Yes. Yeah. Henry Kessler. So that would have been, that would have been, you know, a risk, I guess you'd call it, to throw him right in there.

So, you know, it makes sense that it's Sands and Miles. We also found out Donovan Pines was not available. So it'd be another risk to run all three of your available centerbacks out there with no one left on the bench. I mean, you can obviously change formation in a pinch mid game. But, you know, we're light on centerbacks. Okay. Yes, the rest of the lineup. And then Shackmore at right back.

and Sam Vine's at left back. I don't think there are any surprises there. Maybe a tiny bit of a surprise that Cannon didn't get the call. And then it was Buccio, Acosta, and Legette in the midfield. We'll have to get into, in some detail, how they set up and how that setup evolved over the course of the 90 minutes last night. And then it was Ariel on the right wing, Matthew Hoppe on the left wing, and D.K., up top as a striker.

So I guess that... So those calls felt like... Quite a few, almost like quite a few coin tosses, right? DK over Zardez. But I'm glad again because I wanted that experiment. I wanted the DK experiment. There's very little experimenting necessary with Giazzi Zardez at this point that you're going to learn something new about him.

Ariola, back from injury after a couple weeks out. He got injured 10 minutes into the very first game against Haiti. And then Hopi, I think we were, I was glad to see, but it very, yeah, like you said, it could have been legit there and rolled on. is sort of the half-space guy. So just, yeah, just that's how the coin tosses landed in this one. Yeah. And like I said, the only surprises for me were Bousse over Williamson and Sands, you know,

which like you pointed out, is a, may have been a choice that was forced on Burrhalter, but Sands in that two centerback formation. Jamaica's lineup was Andre Blake in goal and then a back line of Alvis Powell, Damien Lowe, Liam Moore, and Kamara Lawrence from right to left. And then I guess it was a 4-4-2. Is that what you saw? Yep. Junior Fleming's, Devon Williams, Daniel Johnson, and Blair, Turgit across the middle.

And then Bobby Reed and Corey Burke in a sort of a two-striker setup. It's no Bailey, no Liam Bailey, no Hector, the championship midfielder. So this was, you know, I think people are saying this was like a very, like a, Some people were saying this was a really strong Jamaica side. I'm not sure. I mean, I agree with that. I mean, losing, not having Bailey and Hector is a big, you know, makes a big difference. I thought Andre, what's that guy's name?

Andre Gray. Gray, yep. He came on, didn't make much impact, which surprised me because he really scared me in the March game against Jamaica. I thought he was awfully good. But he didn't start. So you, so what we had was pretty. much an MLS side with a sprinkling of championship and U.S.L. players. Yeah, a couple of U.S.L players, right? In Junior Fleming's and Devon Williams?

Yeah. And again, so you're going from, you're going from Liam Bailey to Junior Fleming. So you're going from a Champions League caliber winger to a U.S. championship winger. That's a drop-off. It is. And actually, I thought Fleming's was one of the brighter players on the night for Jamaica. I thought he played pretty well. And Williams actually had a decent showing too in center midfield. So,

uh, so you can take that a couple of different ways, right? Right. But let's just not. Let's just get it straight. This wasn't like, uh,

this wasn't the best team Jamaica can put out there. And it wasn't like, uh, it wasn't vastly different from the team we faced in March with our A team. But it was a better team than Haiti. These, these are still good players. And I kind of, I'll go back to that like qualified praise I gave earlier.

After the Haiti game, there was a lot of disappointment. And for me, a lot of that disappointment came from player selections. It wasn't necessarily like we should expect to score five goals against Haiti. It was we didn't give ourselves the best chance because of some of the players we used to give our best performance, the best possible performance we could give. But there was just a lot of sort of defense of like, oh, every game in Conccaf is tough. Like we shouldn't expect to just run teams over. Haiti's better than you think

and I don't know that that's really true I don't think Haiti is that great but I actually think a lot of those Haiti defenses that people are coming out with to defend our performance there actually kind of apply to this Jamaica game where this Jamaica team is a collection of competent players

some of them playing at a higher level than a lot of the players we had on our team and we didn't we certainly didn't like blow the doors off but we never looked like we were like total We didn't look like we were incompetent. So this was like more of the kind of game that I think you can defend that way of like, oh, it was about what you'd expect from a very experimental team playing against a competent Jamaica side. And it's a good result.

I mean, the result being like coming out ahead is obviously a good thing. Yeah, winning the game. And I thought, yeah, I thought they were competent. I will praise Jamaica for like their energy and physicality. and the speed with which they closed against us, especially in the early going. The press caused us a lot of trouble. But they were very forgiving in the final third.

I thought they, you know, we're going to talk about the U.S.'s struggles, putting, like, goal scoring moves together in that final third. I mean, Jamaica, a Jamaica podcast of a similar bent could have exactly the same complaint, I think. They didn't wear their finishing boots, pretty much in this entire tournament, to be honest. They dominated Costa Rica in the last group stage game,

but just missed sitter after sitter. And against the U.S., they didn't create, obviously, a boatload of sitters, but they did have maybe one or two that they kind of really did not take well. No, Bobby Reed was particularly guilty, I think. We'll get into that. So let's start with the timeline unless you have any other preambles. No, let's go full chronology here. Okay.

First minute, it's just a mess from opening kickoff, two blocked passes, one each from Sands and Robinson, and a chance for Jamaica 15 seconds in. It falls to Mr. Reed, the aforementioned, and he's offside, so it becomes a moot point. But Turner makes a good save with his right arm to tip it over the crossbar before he knows that Reed is offside. So that's good from Turner. Not great from Sands and Robinson, but I just think the change of... intensity, the intensity that Jamaica brought right off the bat was a surprise to them. And it took kind of everybody a few minutes to recalibrate and get, get ready for that. Yeah, you're being generous.

I mean, we shouldn't be able to screw up our football style, tackle football style kickoff. We ran it to perfection against Canada and got a goal within 15 seconds in here somehow. It was a blocked punt, basically, that Jamaica nearly capitalized on. But yes, 15 seconds in, I also was like, man, Matt Turner is going to win us a couple of World Cup qualifiers this fall. Just because of his pure shots stopping ability. Yeah, it just doesn't make mistakes. It's just very difficult to score on him.

Yeah. As we're seeing in this tournament. Yeah. I thought, I thought Sands was, sans was not, just wasn't prepared for that onrushing. I think it was, I think it was Burke. I can't remember for sure.

But he put his head down to hit that long ball. And from the time he put his head down to the time he struck the ball. The defender covered maybe 10 yards and he just wasn't ready for it. But yeah, we can't be starting games off that way. And that'll be a theme that speed of closing down that Jamaica showed. That's going to be a theme, I think, throughout this conversation we're going to have because it is vastly different than what we had in any of the other three games we played.

And a lot of the criticisms that we were giving to players in those games was not doing enough with the time and space they were afforded against some weaker teams who were not as aggressive. And here it's going to be about sort of the lack of technical ability effect, essentially, to deal with the lack of time and space that they were afforded by Jamaica. Yeah. We talk about the cage match a lot on this podcast, as you know. And one way I think about it is, like, can you hold onto the ball when you receive it with somebody on your back? and I would say, did anybody pass that test last night?

I don't have too many of them. And the other thing I'll say is there were guys who were very happy to try to even get rid of the ball before the cage match could develop. And there was a lot of really ugly hot potato between both teams where we would just immediately hit it to them. They would immediately hit it into our shins and it would just go back and forth like that, seven, eight straight turnovers. I don't know how you even score keep that. if you're one of the opta guys,

but it was a lot of interceptions. Yep. I thought Acosta was maybe the one guy who was comfortable receiving the ball in a tight space and able to convert that difficult moment into something positive. Everybody else was just back past city for most of the game, for most of the game.

Yeah, and I'll even be like, he didn't necessarily convert it into something positive. It was almost just like who could convert it into a moment of like calm, who could at least find an area where we could be more composed, even if it never led to anything particularly dangerous. Because there just wasn't a ton of dangerous moments in this game. No.

Which we'll talk about as we get into our second bullet out of several. Fourth minute, Miles Robinson, who had a very good game defensively, steps past Bobby Reed and carries the ball, what, 30 yards and taps it to vines, vines and Hoppy retained possession in the corner before Legette wax a ball into the box, hopefully. So some themes I wanted to identify here with this timeline moment. Robinson looking comfortable with the ball at his feet,

more comfortable than he has in the past games in this tournament, I thought. So that's a positive thing. And also, this whacking the ball into the box, hopefully was something we did a lot of throughout the night. I haven't seen the data on like how many crosses we hit. But there were a lot. And Leggett was hitting them often, not just in the run of play,

but he also got all the set pieces. And they were almost uniformly not dangerous. This has been a theme all summer. So even in like the Switzerland friendly, I thought there was just too much of this from us where we stopped playing soccer too early in the sequence and just hit this hopeful ball into the box. And Legette was one who was doing it a lot against Switzerland. in this tournament, like, I'm going to be a little bit critical,

because again, we're the nitpicking podcast, but like Shaq Moore. Shack Moore just gets the ball, and if he has, like, time to hit the ball into the box, he's just going to hit the ball into the box. Like, there isn't this sort of like, let's make an actual decision. Let's identify, like, where we can play.

And maybe it's because it's Darrell D.K. starting up top, and you're not looking to hit a ball into his feet and then have runners off of him in these really tight, attacking third spaces. But there just has not been a lot of that, right? like tight like combination in the box it's very much just hit the ball in pinball see what see what happens yeah totally agree i um and i'm not you know i don't know enough to like

identify what we're doing wrong there that we can't do something more constructive in the final third but we we we aren't we aren't doing anything more constructive for the yes it's not even like the the manchester city cutback zone stuff like we're just we're just at the edge of the 18, fireball in or clip a ball and stand it up. But it has very much just felt like that hopeful, hopeful attack. And that, again, that's even coming from the full strength team through Nations League. Yeah, a lot of hero. I mean, we talked about it in Nations League, a lot of hero ball from Raina and Pulisic or

just hopeful stuff. So moving right along in the timeline, I just thought, I noted that Acosta was the guy coming back to pick up the ball. so he was, I think, at least nominally, the six. But it did look triple pivoty in the first half and maybe even more so in the second half. There's a lot of interchange between Acosta, Busio, and Leget. What did you see there? Something similar.

Acosta definitely the designated six. It was his job to be that player right in front of the two centerbacks who would kind of split out. Moore was getting really high, and Vines would get high on the left flank. and then I thought it was good to see both Busio and Leget coming back to play with Acosta because again when it was Ewell in that spot it just seemed like everyone would just leave and just everyone would hang out upfield and it was on Yule and the centerbacks to pick something out and here I prefer the smaller triangles so I preferred to see them working together and then there were some times where Ariel would come into the mix with Moore and Busio on that right side

And it was Legit shaded out to the left with I thought less effect And overall I think Legit had a pretty rough outing But yeah, it looked like a Boozio at the 6 And then Leget and I'm sorry, Acosta at the 6th And then Legit and Busio coming back to help combine with him quite a bit

Yeah I think it was Susayada pointed out on Twitter That the triangle between those three was actually pretty effective like they were well connected with each other, but the triangles between the wing backs or the full backs and one of them and the winger never really got a stew going, you know, neither side. Okay, a hopeful cross number two in the sixth minute from Leget.

This one was actually, I mentioned this one just because it was actually en route to decay at the 6th. It was just hit too low. It just wasn't executed exactly right. If it would have been two feet higher, I mean, maybe we get a goal there. So that's why you do it. That's why you pump the crosses in because. Because if you get everything exactly perfect, you get a low percentage chance at a header.

So tempting. It's so tempting. Seventh minute, Buccio too timid in the early going for me. He wasn't the only one, but he did commit a good professional foul after a giveaway combining with Hoppy. So I thought Buccio is an interesting case because there's, you know, There's a lot of emotion wrapped up in this young player in the fan base, positive and negative. I thought he, so I'm praising him for this good professional foul here, which there would have been a counterattack going the other way.

And he didn't even get a yellow for it. So that's great. Bravo for that. He playing a more advanced midfield position as like an eight was not, I think, comfortable. It was not comfortable receiving the ball in the half space. and becoming a merchant. Like he can shuttle. He can quickly and efficiently shuttle the ball if he has a lot of room.

But if he's got somebody close to him in this game last night, he was giving it away, especially in the first half, just sort of like not, I don't know if the field was bad or what, but the technical ability, which is not something I usually criticize,

Bousse O'4, just didn't seem to be there when the situation was tight. And this is one of those things that I thought was a theme throughout the night. And I think part of it is, again, that step up in competition. We're still not a particularly high step with Jamaica. But it's, again, you're talking about, you know, professional players playing at a decent professional level. And so it's all about like the subtleties of advantage and what advantage exists and how long an advantage exists for.

Like there were plenty of times where we were connecting with that triangle that we liked in the midfield. Acosta and Busio and Legette, where you could see the next pass was there. So it might be Acosta to Busio and then Busio might find Ariola, but these little technical slip-ups sort of compound from pass to pass, and Jamaica are good enough to,

even if they aren't going to take the ball from you, which they did plenty of times, they're good enough that by the time that third mistake happens on a pass, and it could just be, it's hit with the wrong weight or it's hit to the wrong side of the guy's body, whatever advantage you'd created

with your movement and your, and your first three passes is gone. And so now we have to go back and reset and recirculate. And so that's that technical deficiency that you see kind of creeping in. And maybe the field played a part of it. But it's just the difference between playing friendlies against Trinidad and Tobago's reserves and playing Jamaica in a knockout round. Yeah.

Yeah, I thought Bousseo, like, you know, he couldn't get the ball out from under his feet a couple times when he had a, and then he would just get wrecked. And I thought, come on, come on, buddy. let's turn and play ball. But there's redemption for him, at least in my eyes. I thought he improved as a game went by. Tenth minute, Sands almost loses a foot race for a ball down the, I think it's Fleming's attacking him down the left side,

but he got there and he played it out of danger to Acosta. So there's two things here. One, you do see, I think, his physical limitations as a true, you know, centerback in a, you know, in a physical battle with, with a higher level talent of talent, Birmingham, Birmingham Legion talent. But, no, no, I'm not, I'm not trying to make fun of him. I think you just see that he's not like, he's not as good of an athlete as a Walker Zimmerman or a Miles Robinson.

But he manages to get it done because he's a cage match hero, you know. So he solves it. He uses some body intelligence to just seal the guy off and connect his pass. And he, the other bit there is the pass to a costly hit is not an obvious pass, right? No, a little outside of the boot and kind of like sets us up to go the other way. Yeah. So just, I mean, because he could have sort of not panicked in that situation, but known that he's in a tough spot with this player who is probably, could probably overpower him eventually.

And it would have been like, you wouldn't have thought anything of it if he had just won the race to the ball. and just like knocked it out of bounds for a throw-in like you see in youth soccer. Yeah. And we've seen that from the U.S. too over the past couple weeks. But instead, like the composure to control his body and to shape himself to hit a pass to Calan Acosta, who is looking upfield. Yep. And that's no small thing. Yeah.

I agree. A very, very pleasing moment that was for me. 13th minute, a good U.S. counter through Acosta Buccio Moore and Aureola. I mentioned it because we connected passes. It was Acosta who turned in. our defensive third plays it to Buccio, Buccio out to Moore. Buccio's very effective at that. He's just good at receiving that ball in space and then finding the next pass.

Moore taps it to Ariola, and then Ariola tries to play a return pass to Moore in the box, and it kind of fizzles out. I think Moore just takes a bad touch on the return pass and kind of takes a shot as he falls down. Yeah, that shot in Jamaica's early chances on goal looked very similar, just these really weakly hit, not getting your feet set kind of things. But yes, that sequence stood out for its scarcity, right? We weren't doing a lot of that. So when we did, you were like, oh, man, we are, we're buzzing.

And then we didn't do it a lot from then on. Yeah, I noticed one other instance of it. I think it was in the second half. There may have been more, but not a lot. So 14th minute, D.K. blown up trying to hold the ball up again. He did not have a great night in terms of like, connecting play and bringing his teammates into the attack. I don't know how much of that is like he wasn't getting the ball at his feet enough,

but certainly when the ball did come to his feet or in the vicinity of him, he did not make the most of it. I don't know. What's your verdict on D.K. after tonight last night? So mine is that sort of those two things are connected, that he didn't get the ball enough and that he wasn't very effective at linking up play. And I guess what I'd say is some of that is probably D.K. and his tendencies.

Like he's not, I don't think he's really looking for the ball to come into his feet. You know, when we would have those little build-up moments between, I think of most of them occurring on the right side.

So Buzio and Moore and Ariola, there might be a window when that ball gets shifted out to Moore or Ariola a little bit wider where they could hit a ball into D.K.'s feet right away. Like the window's open for a brief time, we could hit him there

and see what sort of the next patterns develop after that. And we wouldn't look for him. And I don't know if it's the guy, on the ball not wanting to look for it or whether it's DK not demanding it because that's not really his game. He hasn't played like that much and this is the kind of information

that I'm glad we got in this game was that we either need to improve it or we can't play this way when Darrell DK's our striker. Because it doesn't connect. Like there was very little connecting. Okay. 16th minute sustained pressure from the U.S. and a great

ball from Hoppe to Shaq. after okay dk runs down a ball in behind something he he seems more comfortable doing a robinson ball in the channel and then takes it to the corner and clips it back to hoppy so good work from dk there and then hoppy takes a touch and just whips a ball in kind of like he did to dk against martinique and this one is for shackmore on the back post just a gorgeous ball and i didn't you know i don't know that i would have pegged hoppy for that kind of service from wide And Shaq can take it first time, I think, on the bounce and have a decent shot on goal. But he gets it wrong, tries to take a touch and then hit it.

And his first touch is heavy. And I don't think he even gets a shot off. Yeah, he scuffed it. And it's tough. But yes, that's a good-looking sequence to create a man alone in the box. That reminded me of like our 2019 style of play where we were always looking for that full-back. as the extra man arriving and then he would usually try to square it back across

for the Zardaz Tappin. Yeah. Good stuff. And then Fleming's in the 19th minute gets a chance for Jamaica on a nice diagonal from Devon Williams. So it's the USL connection. He's 1V1 with Shaq and takes a shot through Shaq's legs off the side netting.

Also in the 19th minute, Vines at Hoppe, gets some joy up the left side. Vines takes a touch in the box. It's a little too. heavy and it fizzles out. I have too many timeline items. It's very cool. But I'm on for the next one.

What's the next one? 22nd minute, big Hoppy shot after a floated Route 1 long ball from Robinson to D.K. D.K. didn't flick it to Hoppy, but he bothered the centerbacks enough, sort of in the spirit of Barnsley, that the ball fell kindly for Hoppy. And he absolutely smokes it after letting it bounce one. with his left foot. And it's, I think, a pretty good, you can tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it's a pretty good save from James Blake.

I mean, Andre Blake to his right. Yeah, nice, nice secure save. But again, this is where the value of D.K. is apparent. Or this is what his, if you're going to use him, like this becomes where he's most valuable. And we're going to get to Zardas eventually when he comes into the game. But a lot of the things people were saying Zardaz was doing that we just weren't

getting from DK, I think we basically were getting them from DK. I think we basically were getting them from DK. It's just, that's all your, that's at the moment, that's all we're getting from him. So disrupting these centerbacks on this, on this, you know, nothing ball in from LeJet or Robinson, whoever hit it. That is something. And again, we see him, we would see him do that every weekend for Barnsley very effectively. And that is a good chance that is absolutely a sky ball Barnsley situation. Yeah, so I think somebody said in the Discord, if that.

shot is like a foot up or a foot down it's unstoppable for for blake or very difficult to stop so you know could have easily been one zero there uh 28th minute alvis powell the right back comes off for o'neill fisher for jamaica i don't i'm not sure exactly what was troubling him but he was he was he was struggling out there physically 34th minute uh dk gets that one b one shot from a tight angle he he He's sprung by vines after a scramble in our defensive right corner. Some would argue D.K. should have slipped it across for Bousio, but I don't, I don't know. I like D.K. having a shot there and it's blocked. But he, but, you know, you want it.

I think what we want from D.K. is him with the ball in that situation, even if he's taking a shot from a bad angle. Yeah, when the ball's on D.K.'s right foot there, I want him shooting that. And I don't think the pass, it wouldn't, it wasn't like simple square for a tap-in. Buzio had been caught by another Jamaica defender, so it would have taken some threading and timing and execution from a lot of players, whereas ball on Dekay's right foot, smash it.

The only thing I wish is that he would have gone for the roof rather than smashing for low, but that's, again, that's, you know, six of one, half a dozen the other. Yeah. No, I think he would have had to curl it to Buccio, and the pace on the pass would have had to have been absolutely perfect. to reach him, but we don't need to get too deep into that. So we already have.

Side note, I like the way we closed on Jamaican ball carriers when we were defending. I thought it was very decisive. Everybody was flying into tackles. So Jamaica was doing that, but so were we. Another side note, LeJette's set pieces were just uniformly bad. Why wasn't Boussio getting those? Or Costa. Yeah.

I don't know, man. Just a note on the tackles. not only we were flying into them, but it definitely felt more like hunting in packs. Yes. Which was a criticism I had against Canada was that, you know, all these duels that people were posting of, you know, whether it was Buzio or Leggett just being left behind. It was always like they were the only guy in the screen for some reason. And now it was like one guy shepherds him into the other guy and they both end up collided, like crunching. So you're just, you're really, I think doing a good job of laying traps and smashing people.

Yeah. Which I love, I love smashing people on defense. I don't care. I want to be a nice pretty possession team that can do that, but once you don't have the ball, I want the smashing. Yeah, it was, it was like a trap. It was like a half court trap a lot of times in basketball where we would just, we would, we would, we would sense that somebody was vulnerable and then there'd be like two, three guys just converging on him. And we won the ball that way a lot, a lot of times. I don't know the numbers. I'll throw this note out there too, because I don't know where else to stick it. A lot of times when we were doing that, I would almost say,

that we at times, sacrificed our defensive balance in the way that, you know, the normal rule is you leave a plus one back. So however many guys Jamaica has up the field, we leave that many plus one extra guy. And in this game,

something I really thought stood out was we left Miles and Sands 2V2 a lot. Like it was a lot of times where cost as a six was high enough up the field that Jamaica could win it, get it up to the forwards, and it was two on two. And it never, never really burned us other than our kickoff. Yeah, no, it didn't because Sands and Robinson played so well.

And you might have some good one-v-one moments in the timeline where they, I'm sure you will, because they cleaned up a lot of those situations that never even felt messy. That was what was so cool about it is. You know, on a chalkboard, you're like, oh, man, this is not a good situation to be in. But it never felt like Sands or Miles were exposed in a way that was going to cost us. Yeah. I agree with that. I mean, Robinson especially

handles those situations without seeming to even break a sweat. And Sands did well to, even when he was pulled out wide to defend on the sideline. Jamaica's causing us some problems at this point of the game. Nothing super dangerous, but there's like a Buccio clearance in the box and then an Ariola clearance in the box

that result in corner kicks. Hopi, who did well to take the game by the horns several times. I mean, he was the guy who had, sort of a spirit of defiance in his body language. So I really appreciate that. Obviously, he scored the winner, and he had that great ball for Shaq, and he had two other really good chances.

So, you know, I think he accounted for more, almost 0.9 of the expected goals that the U.S. produced it in the game, not even counting that assist. And I don't even know if that counts for XG. But, you know, he's great. But he gave the ball away a lot. He gave the ball away a lot. He was really messy. And here's one where he gave it away just outside of Zone 14,

just taking a few too many touches, too many times in a row. And it seems like Jamaica sort of sniffed that out, and they realized that they could bury him because he wasn't going to release the ball. Fleming picks it up and slollums toward the top of the box and just rips a dipping shot, far post. I think it was on frame. I mean, what did you think?

Oh yeah, that was on frame. That was a good save. As a goalkeeper, I'm going to say that that is the perfect shot to save because it's from distance. It's not, I don't think he smashed it. Did you think it was like a, it wasn't like ripped? Maybe not, but it was definitely dipping. It was hit.

So there was some good dip on it. But the key is, it's from the perfect distance that Turner has the time to take his step, which is the huge thing for a keeper. So he got to take his little shuffle step to, to his left and that lets him get the full power on the extension to dive. So I don't think there was anything particularly difficult about that save. It's just a really good looking technical save that all goalkeepers love to make because it looks really cool.

Yeah, it did look cool. So I was tricked by that. Yeah, it's just a really cool visual. So, but no, I don't, I mean, I think that that was a routine save. It's just a routine save that shows the limits of how far goalkeeper. keepers can dive in a good way. Yeah. Okay. Well, 41st minute Buccio give away at Halffield. And this is one of those examples of him trying to be a half-space merchant as an eight in this setup and just not quite being able to do that. And Kamar Lawrence drives

towards the box and then plays it to Bobby Reed's feet inside the penalty marker. I mean, probably at like the eight-yard mark. And Reed just, I don't know, he just saw. Hyde foot's a pass right at Turner with his left foot. It was, I think, Reid accounted for more than half of the XG for Jamaica, and this was a big part of that, because it went down as a shot, but it almost didn't even look like a shot. He trapped it towards Turner. That was a really rough one, and this was a, I'm going to point out, one thing for Busio here is that after he loses that ball, I didn't think Busio or Leggett had a good, like, Osh button where they'd, like, go into Turbo on and

giveaway. And when we're playing this 4-33, like we need all three center midfielders at times to be those guys who race back to recover to prevent these sort of transition moments. And so, you know, Busio loses the ball and he's just sort of very, in this instance, he was just sort of very okay losing it. Like, ah, that didn't work out. I'll just kind of walk back. And Acosta was the only guy who sort of was working back as the six, which is, it's his job. And in this one, he didn't do a particularly good job of getting his angles right and his spacing right. So he never came out to close Kamar Lawrence

down. And he also didn't take away the split into Reed into the middle. So he didn't really accomplish anything in his defensive recovery. And I don't know if Miles Robinson was confused expecting him. So what happened was James Sand stepped out to Kamar Lawrence. And Lawrence hits this ball into then the space that

Sands left, which is where Bobby Reed found himself. But Miles didn't shift over with Sands when Sands went and Acosta didn't fill in that space either. So that's how Reed gets that big pocket of space. So that's just a little centerback six. Eight. Mishap, if you want to call it that, or getting their wires crossed.

And no real help from the eights to really work back to get there. St. Bines, as a left back, it would be asking a lot for him. He's way upfield on the turnover. He was working hard to get back, but there's just little chance of him actually, you know, having the time necessary to do it. And I do feel like a lot of our opponents over the next. two years are going to do a lot more to bury that chance than Reed did. That was a good, a good opportunity to shoot from very close to the goal.

Yes, we will need to limit those, those moments, the transition moments generally. Like when Boozio loses it, I wish he would have just wrapped a guy up and brought him to the ground. That's, that's the next step. I mean, because I thought, I thought Acosta did do a good job generally in this game of busting things up in transition. So, you know, take a, take note. John Lippa.

It's a good one for a video review. That one's a good one for the video. 45th minute, we went a corner and Acosta has one on the volley from the top of the box. I don't, I want, if you want to say he didn't hit this one well, I won't hear it. It flashed over the crossbar, but he got all of it and it was dipping majestically. So that's then comes the half and early in the second half. Let's just plow right ahead. The press, our press gets us a legit chance.

Let's do it. He, he, uh, it's kind of a tough one and he skies it with his left foot. On the ensuing corner, I guess it was a corner. Did it get deflected? It falls to decay. Yeah. Okay. Reff called a corner so we wouldn't have to give a penalty for the guy clipping Legette's

falling through. I see. see. Legette was, Legette seemed to be in pain. Maybe he was conca caffing. I don't know. Also, on that little, on that little moment in the press, like, it was D.K. Scrapping, so it's more Barnsley ball.

Like, a terrible Jamaica clearance from inside their own box, like, hit it directly into Paul Aureola's head, who was 10 yards away from the guy. And then D.K. scrapped for the next one. And that's how it stayed alive for LeJet's chance. So just another example of, like, D.K. was doing the things D. D.K. was doing the things D. is known to do. And, you know, fairly effectively at those things.

Just that was all he did. He didn't do any of the other things that we are wondering if it's possible that he can do. Coming back to the ball, playing in quick combination with his teammates. Exactly. So on this, in this ensuing corner, it falls, I think, to Busio, who heads it towards D.K. And then D.K. one touches it to Hoppe, who is just, to his left, DK's got his back to the goal at about the penalty marker, and Hoppy takes it on the bounce and hits it straight at Blake, another really good chance and, you know,

probably the cleverest moment of the night from DK. Yep, perfect execution intentionally just kind of juggled it over to Hoppy, and Hoppe smashes it. So that is a promising moment. I've been searching for the word juggle to describe that pass all morning, and I could never find it. I couldn't bring it to mind. 49th minute.

Good ball across from Buccio. I think this, I just point this out because it's like, it's more laying it back off for Buccio and then he takes it first time and hits a good cross. It's a little high for Hoppe, but it just reminds me that why isn't Buccio taking the set pieces? I won't keep saying it. Orica. Orica. 52nd minute, a couple good chances.

Hopi stepovers and across from the left side is a little too. long and then more is bearing down from the right and tries to cut it back neither ball connects uh 56th minute another chance for jamaica it's a long ball from blake basically you know from his from his six yard box and uh cori burke beats sands to it and flicks it wide to flemings who is unmarked and now it's uh robinson and accosted having to rush back and uh costas acosta is on his horse which i think a lot allows Robinson to commit to Fleming's because it's kind of a two-on-two. And then Robinson makes a good tackle on Fleming's. And then Sands kind of comes back to clean it up.

Yeah. And that's like exactly the data we need to see on Miles Robinson. I mean, not that we don't already have a lot of that information from Atlanta United. But that's where you're just like, okay, feeling a lot better about centerback depths and where our sort of centerback floor is. going into September. Again, I'm sure we'll get into all that in the wrap-up. Yeah, I suppose.

I mean, why don't we get into it a little bit right now? Because Robinson had, I think, one pretty bad pass for a giveaway in the second half, but otherwise was pretty tidy and then defensively was excellent. So where is he in your centerback depth chart right now? In the mix. I've got, I think we still all have John Brooks as our centerback. And then we have, I'm basically just saying I'm comfortable with five other players starting beside him. Three, I'll say three.

And Robinson's one of them. Robinson, Richards, probably Zimmerman. And I'm mostly fine with McKenzie, I think, too. But still just want to see him get through a couple of games without the howlers. Yeah, for sure. So I think I said this earlier, but we're pretty good at rondowing in the middle of the field, and then you see a lot of this in the second half. We're stringing passes together sometimes from side to side, but we just can't penetrate from there.

And I wonder, is that, if you think, is that just a function of us not having enough 1V1 talent on the field or something more structural? What do you think? So it's probably, it probably is a combination of not having the target structure. record of playoff, but playing in a way that like in the backdrop, like that's supposed to be one of the avenues we have to get in, is to play it up to our target's feet and then have players running off of him to stretch defenses out, create space underneath for that layoff. So he can, he's not necessarily just going to flick on to hoppy running beyond him, but that's going to

drive the defense back and then he can lay off to Legette or Busio and they have more room now to pick their head up and pick the next diagonal through ball or that killer pass. And that just again, it just didn't present itself at all in this game. We didn't create that situation at all. And then I do think there's an element of like, it's different when it's not Christian Pulisic and Gio Raina. So when it's Sebastian Leggett and Paul Ariola, like that's going to, that's going to be less dangerous.

I don't think, I'm telling any stories. Yeah, breaking any new ground in terms of insight. No, yeah, but I guess I worry that like when Raina and Pulis that are on the field, we tend to rely too much on them just, there's some evidence that we have tended to rely too much on them to just go at people and then everybody just kind of waits for them to do something. And when they're not on the field, then we don't, we don't have anybody who can do anything. I mean, Hopi is a slight deviation from that, I think, maybe more than a slight deviation. He created some stuff. But when are we going to get to this, the balance where we are, like,

where we are, you know, we're doing, we're setting the team up so that we can, we can put these one-v-one players in a position to do what they do best without it becoming just like, give the ball to Christian and see what he can do, everybody else stand around. And my hope is that this, this gold cup is what we're, we're going to accomplish that. So, again, I think we did every once in a mile create the right windows, the right pockets for some of these guys. that it's just once it goes to him, you know, again, it's Paul Ariol in the pocket instead of Gio Raina,

and there's going to be a noticeable difference in quality at that point. The progress is going to be how often we can do it, and in my mind, again, when we talk about the Honduras match, and it was Jackson Yule in that spot who was doing, we just gave all of that sort of responsibility to him, and he wasn't up for it, the question is going to be, does this new sort of more triple-pour,

pivot-ish midfield represent an upgrade. And I think the answer will probably be yes. If you're saying, when, like, is this group right now at the Gold Cup ever going to be capable of just constantly creating danger? The answer is probably no. Yeah.

This group of players throughout the rest of this tournament is not going to suddenly have like a 4xG area. A five goal outburst. Yeah. Well, okay. Which is fine. We're not, we, we, we can't expect that necessarily. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm not sad about that. So 63rd minute, and I'm not sure, you know, some of the favorites that people talk about wishing would be in this roster like Cade and Clark or Cade Cow. I'm not sure they would change that equation either. I mean, maybe they would, but. I don't, they're not going to lead the whole team to creating that, that level of ridiculous production. But it was still been nice to have gotten some information about them individually. That's, that's still going to always be the, uh, the rub about this particular roster. is that we could have run a couple more James Sands-like experiments

and hoped that maybe a guy who we weren't expecting to show us that could have shown us that the way James Sands kind of did. Speaking of which, Jonathan Lewis still hasn't seen the field since that opening match of the Gold Cup and Jackson Ewell still, I think he came on late in a couple of those matches, but he still hasn't gotten any major responsibility. Is it fair to assume that Berthelter has, decided to move on from these two players?

I'm going to go ahead and assume that, yes. And I think, you know, one of the positives from this tournament, and it's a little silly that it took this long to accomplish this, is that I think we are moving into like, at full strength, moving into like a cute-proof roster in the parlance of our show and Berlter getting cute with his choices. It seems really difficult to even imagine who would be in an extent, ended camp come September that you would consider like a cute choice.

We're talking like, I mean, who would it be? I feel like we might have six centerbacks ahead of Tim Ream at this point. And I feel like he's kind of the last remaining holdout. I'm not ready. Yeah, I'm not ready to believe that Burrhalter agrees we have six centerbacks ahead of Tim Ream. Well, I think, I think Ream will be in the September camp because Burrhalter adores him. And I'm fine of that. It's just going to be about who actually takes a feat.

And again, it just feels like we're moving where we're now beyond like anyone left who I think I'd consider a cute choice. Some people might think Legette is, but I haven't been of that opinion in a long time. So yeah, so I think that is a positive. Again, the nitpick is maybe we could have already been cute-proofed a while ago, and we could have just been building up a ton more reps of the non-cute choices in their positions playing together. Yeah, that's interesting you mentioned Leget. as a potentially cute choice, because I do think he's getting cuter as a choice.

He just hasn't been as effective, right? Right. And we've been... Over Nations League and... Right. We've been big fans. I think we've both been big fans of LeJet, not just how good looking he is,

but also his soccer ability. And he's not looked good all summer. He's not looked like I expected him to look. Perhaps we can get more into that, too. So 63rd minute. it. Roldon comes on for Areola, who had a, I think, a very unsuccessful evening. He wasn't bright.

He looked like he was coming off an injury. Zardis comes on for Dke. And I think I'm not sure that much changed in our setup. Did you think anything changed? So we notice this in the Martinique match, too. When Roldon and Moore are out there, Roldon flares wide and gets his heels on the chalk on the sideline, less of a half-space guy. and Shaq Moore actually comes central

and is almost like looking for the ball to go to Roldon and then Roldon to just curl one behind the defender for more to get onto. And that seemed to be the case again here. Roldon was mostly collecting the ball out wide. So I think there probably is maybe like a better chemistry between those two guys or just a more effective

chemistry and spacing than what we got from Rol D. Or from Ariola and Shackmore. But Roldon himself on the ball didn't really do anything amazing. I think he was getting a lot of praise and credit for, like, changing the game, but there wasn't much that he did. I know he had the assist, but as far as I'm concerned, when you're, like, evaluating players, assist is kind of like a dirty word. Like, you just got to describe what he actually did on the play.

And there wasn't anything particularly special about what he did on that play on the goal. Yeah, yeah. I'll hold off. We'll get to that later. Okay. Yeah, I noticed. I too noticed that Roldon was setting up wide and shack was working the half space more in possession once Roldon came on. I thought that was interesting.

The other thing that I think has been, people are saying, happened after those subs, is that, or maybe even in the, earlier in the second half, is that Busio was dropping deeper in possession and picking up the ball more.

And I'm not ready to say that definitely didn't happen at all, but I don't think there was that big of, that, there wasn't an obvious change in the way the midfield operated, basically from opening kickoff to the end of the game. Because they were triple, They were triple pivoting in the first half. They were triple pivoting in the second half,

but not as like the only thing they were doing. I think Acosta was still dropping deep to pick up the ball in the second half. Yeah, I got to take an incomplete on that one too. So I'll have to do the full rewatch to see if there was a more pronounced dropping of Busio or if it was potentially just the shift to Roldon in that space and the way that rolled on and Shaq moved, that made it just a more effective, like Buzio just being much more effective

than he wasn't the first half. Or maybe it forced, you know, with Shackmore and, and Roldon sharing that half space and that wing area, it just forced Boussio back a little bit. I mean, maybe that happened and it didn't happen on the left side for Legette.

Okay, 66th minute, good sequence, a long ball de Zardis. He scraps for it, rolled on battles for the second ball and it falls back to zardis who who i think takes a touch and just rips one from 20 yards drawing a good save from andre blake i keep wanting to call him james blake the uh the british singer guitarist uh so this this is another this is another absolute absolute like barnsley ball sequence right i mean this zardaz shot and it's it's zardes's very first action after coming into the game and i think that's like

kind of led to this sort of sense that Zardez gave us this big boost or an immediate boost. But I don't really think he did. He did the Barnsley stuff that we kind of know he can do too about like the same way that D.K. was doing it. But he also didn't do basically anything else in this game. So it's not like he was suddenly like we were connecting through him. So when we talk about who should start in the semifinal, I don't know that there's going to be any difference in what we can execute,

whether we go Zardaz or D-K Yeah I do think Like what you're resisting here Is this this tendency to say Okay, Roldan and Zardis came on They completely changed the game And that's why we won the game

I don't think they changed the game very much at all That's where I landed too In fact The The fact that Moore was More in the half space Is the only like noticeable thing that changed for me.

And it's possible that there were a bunch of knock-on effects, and that helped us control the game because we did control the game more in the late in the second half. But I think a fair amount of that could be just Jamaica getting tired, you know, because they're pressing hard, especially in the early going of the game, and sort of gradually sagged as the game went on.

There's a penalty shout, a bit of a penalty shout, I guess, when Busio plays it to Zard's feet in the same sequence after Zard's shot. Not a huge one, though. I don't think nobody was screaming about it. And then we had a bit of a dominant stretch, I thought, just probing that right side and pinning Jamaica down with Boussio Acosta and Leggett,

kind of cleaning up everything that sprayed out from their box. Jamaica was threatening on the counter, but only sort of in name, not in reality. And this is where it's big, because I think that this was where there were a couple of those 2V2 sequences, and the fact that Jamaica could never even make a 2V2 look date. dangerous during that time, I think speaks well of what Miles Robinson and James Sands can give us. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's the big learning, as they say in the business. The big learning from the game for me is Sands and Robinson. But let's finish the timeline off. 74th minute, Jamaica makes some subs. Andre Gray and Shmar Nicholson come on for Burke and Turgit. Burke had put in a shift, but I was worried about Gray. did I already say this?

He looked dangerous for Jamaica against the U.S. in March. You did, you did. He was very close to being excellent in the group stage game against Costa Rica because his XG was probably like 2.5. But he was finishing exactly as weekly as Jamaica finished in this game. So he never, I mean, he didn't rack up any goals, but he has the look of a player who could be, or should be dangerous. There was a moment in that March game where he'd,

backed Aaron Long up about 15 yards and then turned him and then played one of his domestically teammates into in behind for a for a not a very well finished chance but you can you can definitely say that Gray and Nicholson coming on in my mind are probably talent upgrades over Burke and I think so yeah I would have I assume so I don't know why they didn't start somebody get Whitmore on the line I'm I'm really curious about some of these choices is too. I don't know if it was, because they had a whole week off between games. So yeah, definitely curious. Maybe somebody got in trouble for doing something behind the bus barn.

Let's see. Dangerous ball crossed from Fleming's in the 76 minute. It's missed first time by centerback Liam Moore, but he was offside anyway. It's still kind of a nervy moment. 78th minute, a Camar Lawrence set piece is just missed by Nicholson. in at the six. I think Sardis got a touch on it as it sailed through, but that was a very dangerous moment. And I got to say by the 81st minute, I'm starting to feel like the U.S. is just desperate. They're pumping the ball into the box, into the mixer. Acosta has one from 25 yards that doesn't much trouble Blake. The ideas seem a little stale at this point, which I think

sort of counters this narrative that this artist and rolled on subs made all the difference. I think we were just doing the exact same thing, which was pumping it into the mixer. That's what it has felt like for a lot of the tournament. Even from the opening game against Haiti felt like it was exciting, but it was just Shackmore slamming the ball into the box from the wide space over and over again. Yeah, he did. He probably hit like 10 crosses that game. And then we get our goal.

And it comes on a series of crosses into the box. starts with an Acosta diagonal to Roldon, a nice pass from Acosta, and he just, Roldon just takes a touch and crosses it from deep. And it's too long, it's recycled to Legett, who was not playing well at this point in the game and just dinks it off a Jamaica defender. And they're going the other way, but Miles Robinson wins the ball over Gray,

which is no small feat. And, hey, Gray was backing into him too. Gray was like undercutting him. good body control from Miles Robinson to maintain his shape and get a header off to do you get it to... I think he got it to Moore, yeah.

He headed it to Moore. Who taps it wide to Rold on. Nope, hold on, hold on, hold on. You're underselling more here because this was actually a really nice faint for more. It was Eric Williamson-esque. Moore fainted like he was just going to drop the ball back. And Jamaica's best center midfielder, Johnson, bit hard on that fake, and then more just

I mean, walked right past him, walking at the top of the box with the ball, and a 2B1 with Roll-on. I missed that completely. Thank you for mentioning it. It was great. It was a great little moment for Shaq Moore. Probably his best for me in the game.

Huh. And then he taps it wide to Rodon, who lifts it at the back post and Hopi rises just beyond the rising Zardis and puts it away. Also rising in the frame of the camera somewhere is Andre Blake. Tell us what you think of Blake's Foray out of his goal here.

He kind of went full Zach Stephan here Where he just comes out And it actually isn't Zach Stephan Stefan. Stefan against Honduras Had no business coming out And he came out for that ball That he was never going to get And just abandoned the goal

And Sergeant made his goal line clearance Blake comes here probably correctly And is there to hit the ball And he just whiffs Like his fist is right there And he just moves his fist in a way that does not intercept the ball, and now we've got the open goal. But so this is why, like, you know, giving Roddon credit for the assist feels a little bit much.

I mean, he obviously gets technical credit for the assist. But this is very not much different from any of the other balls that we just kind of hit hopefully into the box. This just happens to be the one that Andre Blake has a absolute howler on. And it's actually two knockout games in a row for Andre Blake against the U.S., where his goalkeeping has been really suspect and probably cost them. of the game. In the 2019 semifinal, he gave up two really poor rebounds that we finished for tap-ins and knocked Jamaica out that way. That's right. So questions. Questions around Andre Blake here. Yeah, I don't know that his job's in danger, really. I mean, but. It's not, but Jamaica's World

Cup qualification chances could be in danger if, like, for whatever reason, he just keeps having these, I don't know, I'm calling this one a bit of a howler. It's, yeah, is it a full, fully certified howler? Yes? Okay. I think so. Again, this isn't even like, sometimes keepers just come out and they've gotten it all wrong, kind of like more of the Stefan camp and they just kind of flat but they're nowhere near the ball.

Like he was right there. He had everything where he needed to be and he just moved his fist into the wrong arc. Yeah, I mean, he was kind of moving his fist more towards Zardis. And, you know, Zardis wasn't going to get to that ball. So Hoppe puts it away. The celebration's on. Hoppe comes off immediately. I think Burrhalter had been trying to sob him off for the better part of five minutes at that point.

Great moment for Hoffman. Yeah, totally. Joe Aquini comes on for him and then Cannon comes on for more. There's another sub from Jamaica in the 86-minute Tyreek McGee. I thought, who I thought was an excellent U-20 player in the, you know, when was the last time we had a U-20 company? where we saw Jamaica. It was the 2000, it was the Kanka Kaff Championship before the 2019 World Cup. So it was like December 2018. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember it was Thanksgiving weekend. Okay, there you go. And then at this point, we just saw the game out. You know, Robinson and Blake knocked heads on a corner kick, but both were okay. It turned out, and that was the main action in the final minutes. We tried to bleed out the clock, and we did, and we won the game. I'll, this is where I'll throw some credits of Roldon and Zardaz. They were actually both very effective in totally, you know, cynically killing the game off in the corner at the sidelines. Like they both did a good job of keeping the ball in Jamaica's attack, in our attacking corners. And at worst, giving up like throw-ins for Jamaica.

Yeah, throw Leget in there too. He was involved in that. Okay. As well. There we go. The disc... That was very professionally done. The Discord is so hard on Legette.

but um and he did not have a good game but he did some he did some nice things all right let's wrap this up and kind of get ready for thursday what do you take away what do you take away here what data do you what data are you putting in the bank uh that we're going to have to again figure out how we want to use our forward when it's if if dk or zardes is going to be our forward um because it's going to take some work to make them part of like a nice free-flowing positional play possession offense. It'll take more emphasis on them wanting to be those players and then it'll take some emphasis on how to actually like or whether it will even even pan out. So that's a big one. Yeah. We are because we can't run it we can't run Hopi there. I mean it'd be nice to

try Hopi at that spot because he sure seems technical enough that he could be that kind of a player. but then we run out of wingers because I don't think Jonathan Lewis is technically eligible anymore. He's not a viable option. Yeah, okay. So we do have to figure out how to use a striker for this team at least. It does do something for Josh Sargent's stock, I think, to see the way the strikers have struggled in this tournament. Not all of their own doing. you know, it's a lot of it's on Burrhalter.

But I watched Sargent's clips over the weekend, and he looks like he can do this stuff, you know, which is kind of what we always thought about him. He can come back and he can combine, even though he's playing on the wing for Verde Bremen. He's doing a little half-space merchandising and has to do some of that stuff. So that was one of the big questions going into the tournament,

and so four games in, I think we are still, searching a little bit for that solution and for how we can get the most out of a D.K. Arsardes. We've already talked about Miles Robinson. Definitely a big tournament for him. And I'd say he's got to be in the top four at this point, especially with Aaron Longhurt. James Sands, I don't know if he's in the top four for centerbacks for me. But boy, his versatility is nice.

and I would still like to see him as a six. I don't know if that's ever going to happen, but I'd really like to see it because he seems plenty comfortable in the ball. He seems plenty able to play forward passes. And boy, is he alert and intelligent as a defender. So please, Greg Burhalter, try him at the six sometime. Well, and for me, what Sands is going to do here

is make a real good case for just being a fifth centerback. and in the extended qualifying window camps, that's no problem. You can call in however many you want. So I imagine we'll always have five centerbacks anyway. And so Sands makes a very good case to be the fifth, even if he's not your surefire favorite fifth centerback. So even if maybe someone else is a little bit ahead of him as a pure centerback,

I think you just carry him, Sands as the fifth centerback, because of the potential for playing in the three-back setup, three center-back setup, or maybe adding a little bit of depth. at that holding midspot. I mean, surely Burhalter saw or maybe even instructed him to step forward out of the 343 and turn it into a 433, you know? Oh, 100%.

Yep, that diamond against Canada. So he knows he knows Sands can handle that part of the field and those responsibilities. Surely it's not a bridge too far to just start him at the 6th and a 433. But maybe it is. Well, can't do it in this tournament because you don't have another. centerback to play. That's true. Yeah. That, that, that, that, that is another ship that has sailed. Now, so that's, I think, very positive to see, for Sands to go from, you know, not even getting call-ups to now he's like, he's pretty much indispensable, at least in this roster.

In the group, like in the camp, he'll be, I think he'll be in the September camp. He's got to be. He's got to be. He's too useful. And then, uh, Vines and Moore, they didn't have brilliant games last night, and they weren't perfect, but they both defend. defended well and I think they've both proved that they're credible options at fullback and World Cup qualifiers. Maybe we already knew that going into this tournament, but we still know it. But we definitely did not know that about Shaq Moore. I think Shaq Moore was basically dismissed as a possibility, you know, especially given the number of options we have seen it right back between Dest, Yedlin, Cannon, Brian Reynolds up and coming, Arajo getting minutes. So, you know,

I don't think anyone was like. Jack Moore could wiggle his way into World Cup qualifying windows. And I think now that is a distinct possibility. He hasn't sealed a spot by any means come September, but he would definitely not be a surprise inclusion in a September camp. No. And I'd take him, I said this last week, and I know you're going to disagree,

but I'd take him over Canon right now. I don't necessarily disagree. Here's what I don't have a firm opinion on any of these fullbacks other than Serginio Dest. So it's kind of like the John Brooks situation where he's a, centerback, pull one of the other names out of a hat. Like, I'm basically there with all of the fullbacks. For the other starter, opposite of the desk, and for who fills out the rest of the roster,

pick one. Doesn't matter to me right now. And I feel like we're in a good place to be able to say that, not like, oh, no, one of these guys has to play. I'm like, oh, yeah, any of these guys will be fine. What about Sam Vines? How comfortable do you feel with him in a World Cup qualifier at left back? Not super comfortable, but I don't feel super comfortable with Robinson or and I don't feel super.

I know I just said I'd be fine. Right. Anthony Robinson. I wouldn't be, I'm not super comfortable with Dest on the left and any of the other guys on the right. But I don't think, I don't think we're going to, I don't think we're going to drop points because of something San Vines has done. Okay. Now moving into the mid. Compared to any of the other guys. Like if he's replacing somebody else,

I don't think the marginal difference is going to be what costs us points. Okay. I sense that that's a very carefully layered statement, but I don't know exactly how. In the midfield, I'll say I think Acosta has definitely jumped to Sebastian Leggett. So we always talked about the fourth eight, because we thought of it as McKinney Musa and Leggett, one, two, three, and the eight depth chart.

I think Acosta's jumped Leget, at least, you know, as of today, as the third eight. So I guess Legette's the fourth eight? So the fourth eight, and then the question is how open is the competition for that spot? Because again, Williamson not getting looks there. Is Buzio the next competitor? Is it Luca De La Torre? Is it Paxton, Pomacall? I'd love to see Deletore and Pomacol.

I don't think Bouscio is He's not horrible at that role But it's not his doesn't play to his strengths He hasn't claimed it and I don't think that's unfair And I don't think I think you could say that about a lot of players Like you could say if Legette was coming in cold You would say he also hasn't claimed the fourth eighth spot But he's not coming in cold

We've seen him play a lot for the national team And he's had a lot of good performances And now he's strung together quite a few middling performances but there is a little bit of comfort, I'm sure a ton of comfort with Burrhalter for LeJet. And even for me, I'm just like, well, he'll be fine. Like if he's on the bench coming into games or if we rotate him and start a couple of games

surrounded by the other sort of top tier talent we have, Legette will be fine. Yeah, okay. But to your point, I think Acosta becomes more droppable and undropable out of the 23 at the moment, then Legit would be. So if somebody is going to jump,

if Pomacol or Williamson or De La Torre do have an amazing showing somewhere, it probably would be Legit who would fall out and Acosta stays in because of Acosta's second sixedness. That's true, but I think it's also true even apart from that, that Acosta is probably better at the, more effective as an eight right now than Leget. But the fact that he's a second six.

Bob Morocco's going to make you go to the tape and justify that one. Well, sorry, Bob. It's not going to happen. Let's see. On the wings, I guess I'm thinking hoppy is... What have we learned about our wings in this terms? Well, Hoppe is the only one.

I mean, Aureola didn't have a good game, like I said. Let's just give him a mulligan for this one coming back from injury, whatever. Hoppe, I think is, you know, probably within striking distance of Aaron's for that fourth eight, I mean that fourth winger spot, I guess that's how I think of it. I don't, I'm not, I'm not ready to say which one is better at the moment, but I wouldn't have put Hoppy in that category before last night. You know, as like a high energy sub to come on and just like go after some people,

which is kind of what we think of as Aronson's role too. Right. I know. I still, I still want to see a lot of Aronson, a lot more of Aronson, and I still need to see a lot more of Hoppy, to be honest, to think of him as like, to even think that that's how he will be used in a full strength set up rather than potentially as an out-and-out number nine.

I really wish we could see him do that in this tournament. It's to actually play forward. But again, we're talking about ships that have sailed, and that one definitely seems gone. So, yeah, so that's going to be an interesting case to follow is how strongly Aronson is holding on to that fourth-wing spot, or if we think it's Wea that's holding onto the fourth spot, and we don't have to talk about that necessarily now.

Well, Wea is the third winger. It's Pulisic, random way. You think so? For me. Same for me. I just, I don't know if that's the case. I know Wea is the one who came in against Mexico, which I think is meaningful. So at least in that game,

you know, Wea was chosen over Aronson, and that's how I would do it too. But, you know, I don't know if that was match-specific, or if that's sort of the standing. Cuteness went out the window in the Mexico game. And then, of course, we have just a wide open, it seems, competition for the striker job. D.K. D.K. has not settled any of the concerns that there were about him before this tournament started.

That's all I got. You got anything else? So how are we running out against Qatar Thursday? Hmm If I were Burrhalter I would do the same lineup Except I'd put Williamson on for Busio

I'd give Legit another chance If he doesn't get it done in the first half Pull him off at halftime Play Busio Give me I drop I run the same 11 back But I drop R-A-L-2 For sure

Toss, and I toss Legit up there So Legget you're going to have to do it As a half-space merchant now Which she should be able to He plays that. He's very versatile. And then it's Williamson. So I want to see Bousio Acosta N.

Williamson with Legget and Hoppe as the nominal wingers. And I want to run D.K. Up top again, see what he can do. Again, D.K. For the data. For the data. Okay. I'm fine with that.

Whether it's rolled on or Legette at the right wing, it doesn't really matter that much to me. So I'd be happy with either of those. All right. Thanks for listening. We'll see you.