Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #195: El Salvador-USA recap (WCQ1)

Episode Date: September 3, 2021

The USA men opened their World Cup qualifying campaign in San Salvador on Thursday night. Full look at the meta-interpretations, full timeline, and an assessment of the team under Berhalter now.Support Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedJoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/ayz9QekfeRBuy our merch: https://my-store-11446477.creator-spring.com/ 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. A huge night in San Salvador. The biggest game for the USA since Coova and the biggest game for El Salvador since 2009. The fans showed up at the Kuskatlan as many as nine hours before the game and the anthem was very stirring, a full house singing at the top of their lungs. But the contest itself took the energy out of the atmosphere, in my opinion. El Salvador was. wasn't sharp in the attack and the U.S. wasn't either. It ended zero zero. One point for the U.S. And it's back to Nashville for the Canada match on Sunday,

which becomes, if not a must win, a very important bellwether for the program. Greg, how are you doing? Bell, I am cautiously disappointed. Is that, is that something we can, can we bring that into the lexicon? We can. Yeah, but before anybody turns us off in frustration, because there's going to be a lot of cautious,

disappointment. Let's just get out of the way, like the, well, let's get the meta narratives out of the way. Why don't you, why don't you take us through that term? Yeah, because I feel like that kind of hangs over the entire discussion of how we should think about it or how people are saying, you know, it should be framed. So I guess we'll start with sort of the very first angle that most people bring up, especially the seasoned men's national team followers is, you know, is this, is this your first Concaf qualifier on the road? Like, are you, have you, have you not been down this road before to be disappointed. And I guess what I would say to that is, like, it kind of is the first Concaf qualifier on the road, the first one that we've had this level of talent on paper.

And I would say that's sort of indisputable. So I think it's a little bit at least fair to go into this game, at least wondering if that talent would sort of transcend the Concaf away elements and hoping that it would. You know, our own players were talking about that. You know, Weston McKinney talking about if you want to be the top dog, it means dominant. on the road. And so then you can get into the semantics of what a dominant performance looks like on the road in Concca Caff. But I'll ask you, Bell, do you think that our talent in any way transcended sort of the

Conccaf Road elements? No, no, I don't. I don't think our talent, I mean, this has been my soapbox for a while. I don't think our talent has been put together in a way that makes the sum greater than the parts, you know. I mean, we should admit, Miles Robinson had a free. free header at the five and McKenny had a free header at the six. McKinney was kind of getting undercut, right?

Can we at least quibble on whether that's a free header or not? Did he get his feet? Okay, yeah, not a free header. He did. He, I think seven out of ten times he and Miles Robinson put those away. That's outrageous, bells. Even against Mexico in the Nations League final where McKenney was incredible and we all know what an impact he had with his headers, he still hit the post with one of them.

and on another one, Memo Ochoa made a great safe. So you don't score all of those. You just don't, you don't do that. But those were very, very good header chances. They weren't, I mean, they were better than the better than the one that McKinney scored on against Mexico, particularly Robinsons. It was, you know, he wants that back. I'm not harping on Robinson. I recognize that those things don't always go in, but that, but I think a lot of people, fans would say,

why be so negative, that game could have easily been two zero. And I mean, I don't want to bring XG into it too much because, like, you know, single-a-game XG doesn't mean anything, blah, blah, blah. But the XG numbers don't even reflect how good of a chance those two headers were, I don't think. And this is all fair. And this is where I think we get into the semantics of what does a dominant performance look like. You know, we absolutely strangled, almost absolutely strangled El Salvador. or, you know, they did have a decent header of their own that just went over the bar.

But, you know, we didn't give up much. And I think that's, if there is like the one piece of this game that you can really feel good about, it was the way that a very young team didn't have any enormous howlers. Like there weren't any of those mistakes we talked about it before the game of like, if we're going to get broken down, it'll probably look like a one-off terrible howler. and we didn't really have those. We were maybe Heller adjacent on maybe one or two occasions.

But we didn't have that one big like, oh my God, I can't believe that that just happened and now we've got to claw it back. Yeah, I mean, if we want to talk about positives, I thought Miles Robinson played very well, just like he did in the Gold Cup. I mean, he seems to be very much the real deal as a centerback for this team.

I thought Tim Rheim actually played pretty well. And Matt Turner did what was. I'm not asked of him played fine. So, yeah. And then it's good to have Tyler Adams in the midfield because he does make you more defensively stout, which is what we've been sort of banging on about for nigh on a decade. Absolutely.

But I do also think we can say that the talent didn't, like, transcend the level. I think I totally agree with you there. It didn't, we didn't go out there and, like, suddenly look like a European Champions League team playing, you know, the minos of Concaf. It's still very much looked of a kind with prior cycles away matches in Concca Caff. And I'm not even saying that that means we're destined to always look like that on the road.

This was our first road match. You know, talk about is this your first away qualifier? For a lot of the guys on the field, it literally was their first away Concaf qualifier. But on this, in this metanarrative sort of conversation we're having, like on the punditry side, I feel like there is a faction that's like dangerously close

to almost saying the quality of the available players just doesn't matter. Like there's, there is no level of talent that will allow you to look better than how we always have looked. And I just have a hard time believing that. Right. And if you do believe that the quality matters, then I think the question is,

are we maximizing our quality? Are we setting it up well? Like, are we, do we look well prepared? Are we seeing anything that's an improvement over just rolling the ball out and saying, go get them, fellas? No, we're not. And that's the,

that's the depressing thing. about it. You know, we didn't yesterday. It doesn't, again, it doesn't mean that that's how we're doomed to look. This was, this was the first chance at it, first crack at it for a lot of these guys. There's nothing to say that we can't improve, but on the data point we got looked a lot like rolling the ball out and saying, go get them, fellas. Yep. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think it's really hard to argue with that.

And the quality of the players does matter because we, even though we didn't actually string, we never strung. you know, eight or nine passes together into the final third and got a shot out of it. We never did that. We never looked cohesive in the attack. We still, you know, we still got chances and we still reasonably could have gotten three points of it from this game because we have so much talent. You know, I mean, like, we can roll the ball out there and say, go get them. And Gio Raina is going to create, you know, two or three good chances in a game that's even when we look like trash, you know, as an attacking side. Co-hearing side, yeah.

It's going to happen. He's, because he's that good. He's that good. And, you know, I mean, McKinney's going to make things happen now and then. We're going to make stuff happen even if we don't have, like, something more cohesive going on. But I guess that's, you know, that's the issue for me is the, there's no evidence of progress in, like, the overall goals of the program, which is to be dominant in Concaf and to be able to play with the ball and suffocate the opponent. no we don't we we we didn't do that we didn't do we didn't do anything close to that and so this will kind of dovetail i think into sort of that second thing people are the refrain is any point on the

road is a good point we're still on track and i would say purely from a mathematical standpoint yes that that is totally true uh but then the question is like on track for what like on track for qualifying yes but again as far as i'm concerned of course we'll qualify like i i maybe again this is some arrogance but i have i'm actually not worried at all about qualifying uh i think Peter Vermeis actually said it best back in a 2018 interview with the athletic during the great coaching search for the men's national team. Right. When he said, like, instead of going, I'll just quote it because I've got it right here in front of me. He said, instead of going back and saying, what are we doing?

What you have to say is, where do you want to be? Who do we want to be? If your only objective is to qualify for the World Cup, then just hire a head coach. And my apologies, but apparently Peter Vermeis works blue a little bit. He said, just fucking hire anybody. You can go hire a soccer coach. He can qualify the team for a World Cup. But that's not making any advancements.

And that's sort of exact. So that's the end of the quote. That's sort of exactly where I fall. Like we, of course, we will qualify. We have talent. It took an outrageous confluence of events to not qualify in the last cycle, despite our, despite having lesser talent. Qualification is not going to be the issue here.

It's about are we actually like seeing. This team play as well as this team and this collection of talent is cable of playing. Yeah. And it's an open question. I mean, it makes me very nervous. It makes me very nervous when you say qualification is not the issue here. But I get it. Yeah.

I mean, we should qualify. If we just rolled the ball out there and said, go get them and maybe didn't make some sort of silly slash cute lineup choices, then we will qualify. But we're doing, we're doing silly stuff. We're doing cute stuff, which we'll get into. So, yeah, I agree. I think I agree with Vermeys's quote, but I do, I get nervous when we start saying, well, of course, we're going to qualify. I know. Because we didn't last time.

I will, I'll caveat the same thing and say, even when we lost our two opening matches last cycle and brought in Bruce Arena. And, you know, we're, oh and two. I was still at that point, like, of course we're going to qualify, guys. It's a super forgiving conference. like conference we you can't not qualify uh and felt that way right up until we lost to Costa Rica at home but the point the point that you know a point on the road is keeps us on track I think and this is the first game for a young team in a in a pretty you know impressive away environment I mean I get all that and I and I think you like you just said that's

that's mathematically true it's there's no reason to say this guy is falling or anything I I think the thing that I'm impatient for, and I assume the thing you're impatient for, is progress from Burrhalter on making this team look like more than the sum of its parts and a team that plays soccer in a way that is pleasing to the eye and can beat better teams. Right. And again, that's still the open question. So for anyone who's saying, well, we will against Canada, we'll look better. It'll be a home game. And then we, you know, will improve throughout the cycle. That's very possible. But it's, you know, on the first data point we have, you're a little bit taking that on faith still.

Oh, yeah. Very much, very much taking it on faith. Living by faith. Yeah, we got a good set piece. We got some individual action from Raina and some good stuff from Legette laid on. I mean, some small good stuff from Legit laid on. I'm not trying to overinflate what Legit did.

But by and large, our attack is just not in sync. And you can blame this on the field or the crowd noise, but it's been a consistent theme with the A team under Burrhalter. it's either hero ball or it's set pieces, very little attacking cohesiveness. You throw in some suboptimal performances from the fullbacks and a bad choice to play Aronson and the midfield in it. It felt cute. It felt impotent.

It didn't feel like progress. That's my sort of large picture take on it. I think that's totally fine for a large picture. I do want to just go back and say the stranglehold we put on El Salvador's chances did feel like progress. And I'm sure we'll talk about sort of the few and far between looks they're got as we go through the chronology. But should we start with the lineups in case anyone forgot who played in the game yesterday?

Yes. Turner was in goal. Yedlin, Miles, Ream, and Dest across the back line. A little bit surprising to play both of our right backs in this game. Tyler Adams at the 6, McKenney and Aronson at the 8. And then Raina, Sergeant, and Conrad from right to left, across the front line. So can we talk about this one?

El Salvador. Can we talk through our 11 real quick? Let's just get, let me just give the El Salvador group. 11 and then we'll talk about ours. So it's, yeah, it's Martinez and goal, Tamaccas Zavoleta, Eric Zavoleta and Rodriguez and Lauren across the back, Latine. And then Oriana at the 6. And then Rodan, Montereosa, Serene, Enriquez,

across like a four-man line of midfielders, and then Rivas as the striker. So, yeah, yeah, let's talk about the U.S. lineup. Okay, El Salvador is who we expected, other than Peres, Joshua Perez, who made way for Anthony Roldon to play sort of a right winger, or right, right, yeah, basically like a right one. It was a tiny surprise.

Yeah, Alex Roldon, Alex Rolodon. So that was El Salvador mostly expected. Can we talk about the U.S. now? Yes. You want to give your reaction when he saw the lineup? Well, yeah, my initial reaction was I'm nervous about Reem and Dest together on the left side. And then my initial reaction without knowing where Aronson and Raina were going to play was that I wanted Raina in the middle and Aronson on the wing. And that didn't, we didn't get that.

We got Aronson as a midfielder and Raina on the wing. Yeah. So same thing. When I saw Dest and Yedlin on there, it was a little bit less about playing. playing both right backs at the same time, though I don't love it. And more just felt like I didn't even want Desk to start at right back in this game. I wanted to give him more time to sort of settle into things. And I absolutely hated him starting on the left side, where I don't think he's been as effective for the U.S.

And again, we talked about it in our projections. This felt like, well, I don't even want to say it felt like Dest was totally ineffective in this game. And that is a waste of Dest minutes. So if you still think that Sergenio Dest is a really good player and can really be an impact player for the U.S., those minutes can be precious in a three-game window. And I don't know that we saw any return on them. Zero return from Des. I mean, he had a very bad game. He's getting like, he's getting pilloried on social media.

Yeah. And I, you know, I guess I talked about Dest, this is maybe not being the right stage for Dest down in a tough environment with a, I don't want to go on and on about the field, but it wasn't like a perfect field. You know, it wasn't like for somebody like him who plays very intricate soccer and likes to be in tight space

and dragging the ball around and beating people. It's just not ideal for him if he's going to be playing that way. And if he, you know, at some way he's going to have to learn how to play different ways in different situations, but like he didn't,

he didn't look good at all. And I think that, not to pat myself on the back too much, but I think that like my misgivings were vindicated in that case. Yes, it was an absolutely like indifferent performance sort of at best. That'd be like the best way of describing it. Felt a little quick sandy, especially, you know, to borrow a term from the Total Soccer Show. So then Aronson at the 8.

What do we think about that? Don't love Aronson at the 8. I'm still, you know, I've actually voiced some skepticism. And I don't want to say skepticism. I'm like, I think Aronson is a bad player. I just mean skepticism on Aronson as we still haven't seen him do anything against a good opponent. And that goes for Salzburg and it goes for the national team. I'm still very hopeful that he will, but we just haven't seen he yet.

So I don't like him as an eight. I think he definitely best fits as a inverted type winger. And I still need to see him actually do something. I thought this could be a chance for him to do it in this game. So to see him come in as an eight and have very little impact. on that space was frustrating. Yeah, he had a poor outing. Just didn't look like he was thinking fast enough in the middle of the field.

You know, he would just get buried every time he got on the ball. And it was like, dude, just get rid of the ball. Get rid of it. And then we'll get into this in the timeline, but I was really frustrated at there were two through balls from Raina to Aronson in the second half that were both. I mean, you could argue one of them was a little heavy, but they were, in both cases, Aronson's instinct is to stand as a stationary target at the top of the box. And he sort of makes a run, but doesn't quite make the run.

And then he doesn't get to the ball. And like, just make the run. Somebody make a run off the ball. And I thought Aronson was the guy who kind of would be doing that. But no, he hesitated. And we didn't, we couldn't, we couldn't break them down that much. in the final third. I think partly because our off ball

off ball movement was just non-existent. Bells, are you essentially asking for a little bit more verticality from your, from your players on the field? I mean, I don't know if I need to get all fancy

and call it verticality, but just make a decisive run when you don't have the ball. It doesn't even have to always be, I mean, sure, it has to be vertical. That's the whole point. So here's a, question.

Go on. Here's a question for you. So was the plan to just play the ball direct and try to press them off the pitch? And was that why Aronson was, was that why Burholder played Aronson as an eight? Because Aronson's known for his good pressing. Like, is that what we were trying to do? I would say not the first half of it. I don't think the plan was to play direct.

I think the plan was to press. So I think, I think off, like in the defensive phase, I think the plan was to have opportunities to press because El Salvador will try to knock the ball around. So I think anticipating that, we want to set up pressing players. But again, Aronson is a very good presser in the attacking third. I don't think he's very effective as a presser as the number eight. I think he's much less oppressive because you need those center mids to really be doing battle physically. And Aronson, he's a little brother for sure in our hierarchy of brother of brotherhood.

So I think he's the wrong guy to be doing it. at Z8. He's an excellent little nuisance presser from the front where he's this little terrier just constantly nipping at heels but once it's actually time to like body somebody off the ball in the middle of the field where it might be coming from any direction somebody's trying to body you

I think he's far less effective and we'd seen that in past instances for the US when he played as the 8 and he played it twice for the US in when he was still at MLS before he went to Salzburg both times next to Sebastian Leggett and Sebastian Leggett always

looked more effective, more like the grown-up in midfield, and Legette was available. So it was another one of those kind of baffling things where, yet we started both our right-backs at the same time, and then we started all three of our wingers for the game and had very little opportunity, like very little ability to change things later on. Yeah, and these may all seem like ticky-tacky things, but, you know, grading against the optimal, we wanted, we wanted to have a winger, I think, to come on late and run at Alex Roldon, who was totally gassed in the last half hour of the game. But we didn't, but we didn't have one.

We brought on Christian Roldon as a winger, who is a fine player in some ways, but he's not somebody who's going to test a tired left back. 1V1. So we're both very clear on not appreciating Aronson at the 8. I want to read Burrhalter's or at least explain Burrhalter's answer in the press conference afterwards when Henry Bushnell asked him why, why was Aronson at the 8 and ran on the wing instead of vice versa, which is a great question, Henry. Thank you for asking that.

Um, Berhalter seemed to respond to the brevity and simplicity of the question, which is a little bit unique in this press conference. And he said, he said, sorry, I'm in the press. You guys are just asking, just asking long questions and answering your own questions in these like long-winded questions. Somebody's got to get to these reporters and get them to settle down and have some composure in front of the microphone. But anyway, uh, Burrhalter response. responded to this question because it was a good one and he said he once reyna near the penalty box and pointed out that he created some danger from the wing which is true he also said um erinson has played more in the midfield than geo for the national team i think that's in reference to

one game no two i talked about it january 2020 and then uh december of 2020 both those games he played next to leget as a dual eight i'm sorry and that is part of the foundation for my for our I think both of our lukewarm approach to Aronson until he started playing more on the wing for Salzburg. Okay. My apologies, I should listen better. So then, so yeah, he said that's the reason Aronson's played there more than Gio has for the national team. But he also said something along the lines of, hey, but we'll have to evaluate that. So, you know, you could read that as Berthalter speak for maybe we're going to change it up next time and we won't do that again.

I think that would be a reasonable approach to take from this game. So the portion of his answer about Raina, that's essentially one of the arguments I've been making too for keeping Raina out of the midfield is you want him closer to the penalty box. He's like our best non-pool sick final third attacker. So dropping him down a line into the midfield could be very expensive. That just doesn't explain why if you're going to leave him up there, you would start Brendan Aronson as an eight instead of Sebastian Legette.

So, or, you know, so that's, that's kind of the rub there. So I don't know if that was a rotation issue where he didn't feel like he had enough center mids and he needed to save, if he was saving Legette, which seems a little strange to say, right? We need to keep Sebastian Leggett fresh at all costs. But, yeah, that one was a head scratcher. Seeing Aaron sent it's the eight. And seeing him stay there, too, was the other thing. When we couldn't, like, just establish control of that midfield to then not maybe flip those two guys in the run of a play. I kind of expected to see that happen and a little bit frustrated that we never

really got a chance to look. And again, no guarantee that that would have solved everything. There's certainly no guarantee that starting legit in the midfield would have led to a 1-0-200-win. It just, again, it just feels like we didn't get to, we didn't get to answer any of those questions. Yeah. Yeah, could have even used Cal and Acosta there. hopefully we get to use Eunice Musa there in the next window. We'll see. Should we get to the timeline? Let's do a little chronologizing.

All right. Kronologizing coming right at you. All right. The press goes well, I thought, from the jump. We got a good view of it because the CBS broadcast was going full tactical cam for several moments after kickoff, which I don't think was on purpose. But it did give us a chance to sort of see how everybody was set up. Almost immediately we forced a throw down the left side. desk gives it away twice in the ensuing sequences, which was definitely a tone setter for him.

Fireworks are going off in the third minute, and McKenny turns in midfield and sprays it wide to Yedlin, who plays it in behind for Raina for a shot off the side netting. So, you know, we're looking okay. A few little chances in the first five minutes. A clearance bounces off of Aronson and goes just over the goal. Fifth minute, some good work from Sargent leads to another chance he slips Yedlin behind and Yedlin tries a cut back and that's the one that gets cleared right off of Aronson.

We get a long throw from McKenney to Sargent who gets him behind but then loses the ball which is his lack of efficiency from Sargent. Though I wouldn't say he had a terrible game, he was not reliably efficient on the ball, particularly in the second half. And this was maybe the first example of that. And I think Conrad dribbles a bunch around. the left side and draws a foul in a dangerous area. You could see that he was very comfortable on the ball, which was encouraging. And then Raina hits that set piece to Robinson in the ninth

minute for a golden chance. It's a beautiful delivery. Robinson unmarked and heads it just over. Can I jump in here quick on the Robinson set piece? I don't have anything to add. I'm not, I don't need to dissect set piece. It was nice to see how easily he got open. And I was hoping that that would be the trend for the rest of the game. It obviously wasn't. But that kind of goes into something. You know, when people are talking about, oh, well, we created these great chances and if we just needed to finish one, the question then you ask is like, okay, well,

what kind of chances were we creating? And how committed were we to creating as many of those chances as possible? So I'm going to basically plagiarize Doyle here. And if our best chances are coming on set pieces, you know, are we setting up the team to be as dominant as possible on set pieces? Like, what are we setting up for? What kind of chances are we trying to create? Have we committed to, you know, maximizing that subset of chances?

And again, this is where I say the answer to this is probably no, right? We created a couple of good chances, but it was all sort of ad hoc and hodgepodge. And it didn't seem like, oh, well, we are clearly set up in this game to try to whip crosses in to McKinney and Pfeck and Miles Robinson on set pieces. So that's sort of another one of those sort of veiled criticisms of, okay, well, if that's what we're going to do, then let's do that. If that's how we're going to steal points on the road because we're going to concede that it will always be sloppy and incoherent, then let's go all out on it.

Let's commit everything to scoring those kinds of goals and see if we can get eight chances instead of three. Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, on the Discord, where there are a lot of pretty intelligent and committed soccer fans, you know, U.S. men's international team fans, it's nobody can figure out what the plan is, you know. So if the plan wasn't to get set pieces, what was the plan? It's not clear.

It's just not clear. And that's why I throw this idea out there about like, we're just going to play it long and then press. I mean, it started to kind of look like that towards as the game progressed. Maybe that was the plan. I have a hard time figuring it out. I mean, there's all kinds of like left on the left side we have Conrad and Dest. they have zero chemistry together. Des would play the ball to Conrad,

and then he would just stop and wait. And then Aronson would sort of like arrive 10 yards away and stand there and wait. And then it's like we're all just watching to see if Conrad can skin his guy. And then El Salvador would bring over three guys to sort of suffocate Conrad, and we could never put together a triangle

to quickly work through that and create danger. I think that's actually a great observation there because that was happening constantly. whether it was Conrad or Dest, they'd get the ball comfortably faced up, but very quickly it was a wall of three to four El Salvador defenders. And you're absolutely right. We never like went from there ping it around a couple of times. And suddenly it's either on the other wing or there was a seam in the middle because of El Salvador

sort of overcommitting towards death to prevent and Conrad to prevent their little twinkle toes from doing anything. So I think that's a great point and a great like possible way of opening them up that just never materialized. and never looked particularly close to materializing. Yeah. Okay. We got, in the 10th minute, Conrad wins a corner on an Aronson dink in behind, and there's another good delivery from Raina and a good counterpress from Adams. And he like sort of keeps the ball in there attacking third.

And at this point, it looks to me like the U.S. are really dominating and going to get three points. Didn't you think? Yeah, I really did think that we would be able to continue. you're just keeping the pressure on El Salvador's actual goal frame, not just like mostly controlling the game, but actually just like peppering them over and over and over with dangerous, you know, balls into the box. And somehow that game state just slipped away and right around the 10th minute and never, I mean, we had some decent spells of play throughout the game, but it never really returned to that level

of like, we're in charge of this game and we're going to, we're going to shove it. it down your throat El Salvador. I think, I know you hate this stuff, but I think there were a couple things that played a part in that. In the 11th minute, Tyler Adams had fouled a guy on the right side. It probably should have been a yellow card. And that caused a stoppage. And then Tyler, Tyler goes down after a head clash in the 13th minute. And initially very scary.

Like he was like he was motionless on the ground, but it was more like he was just, I think, trying to argue to the ref that he should have been, the other players should have been whistled for a foul. But after those two moments, I would say which slowed down the game, there was stoppage, there was a chance for El Salvador to maybe get their breath. They settled in and started pinging it around and, and I would say dominated the next 10 minutes. Yeah, I don't think that's too much of an exaggeration.

Like they were totally hovering around out. 18 for the next for the next 10 or so minutes. And again, I don't know that like our players saw Tyler Adams crumple in a heap and like deflated. It could have just been something as, you know, a simple sort of like that early adrenaline sort of wearing off. And maybe for both teams, maybe El Salvador was a little edgy. And maybe we were like, yeah, let's go, let's smash her in the mouth came out really well. And if that wears off after a little bit, you know, that could have just been sort of the normal settling, the normal, the natural equilibrium. Yeah, well, if it was a natural equilibrium, it was maybe brought on a little quicker by the stoppages that sort of disrupted the flow of the game.

So the big chance for El Salvador in this part of the game is in the 16th minute. It's an in-swinging corner from the left side. Ronald Rodriguez's header flashes over. It's not quite as good of a chance as Robinson's, you know, not quite as point-blank, but it's still very good and he nearly turned it on frame. And now it looked to me like the U.S. was rattled. You know, El Salvador looked rattled at first. Now we look rattled. I'll weigh in just on the actual set piece itself.

A little bit soft defensively in that set piece. Like even before the kick, the focus was right on Adams. And now I don't remember who else was standing next to him. But there were two center mids almost in like a little zone setup outside of the box. And there were three El Salvador players right there. Adams was shouting. It might have been Raina. Adams is like shouting at somebody, but he's not shouting at another player to come in.

and help mark those three. So it was this little like three on two. And then it just seemed way too easy for El Salvador to get that, what I would consider like a free header. He wasn't disrupted. Adams, I think it ended up being Adams man. And Adams didn't get up and actually like lean on him or disrupt him

nearly as much as I would have liked. Still an incredibly difficult. I think Miles, yeah, it would have been quite a goal. Robinson was maybe two yards away as well. well, not marking anybody in particular. Okay, 19th minute, we force a turnover and Conrad and Sergeant managed to connect it wide to Desk who cuts in and takes a speculative shot.

I don't mind that shot at all. That's the one that hopped in, right? Just didn't hit it. Like came in on the hop. Yeah. Yeah, I like that one too. In those conditions, if you know the field's a little rough and you're not dealing with, you know, Manuel Noyer and goal.

Like, let's see what he's got. Let's see if he might spill some things. Yeah, it's something we didn't do enough probably was test the keeper. because he didn't look, he didn't look, he looked shaky. 21st minute, we get a little decent spell of possession from the U.S. And this is a good example of Desk, Conrad, and Aronson just kind of not, just being very static. So we would have a good possession and then come over to the wing and then, you know,

nothing would really happen. We couldn't unlock that. But I already talked about that. So 25th minute, Sergeant fouled in the center circle. I want to mention this to say that, Sergeant's, hold up play at this point in the game was okay. Not incredibly good, but he was making some stuff happen. He was coming back to the ball, able to receive it, able to find somebody's feet, not elegantly, but he was doing it. And he wasn't always finding feet backwards either. There were times

he was getting a little bit of like, he could kind of rotate 45 degrees and then hit a forward pass to the next man to Conrad. I feel like it was quite a few times down that, maybe not quite a few times, but a couple that stuck out in the mind of advancing the attack. Yeah, that was the chance right before the half, which we'll get to where he came back to the ball and then he clipped it with the outside of his boot wide to Conrad. And then Conrad was able to cross it for McKinney. And then McKinney headed it back to Sergeant for that volley attempt. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Dest, 28th minute, Dest is fouled in a dangerous spot, being tricky, which he was trying to do a lot, mostly.

unsuccessfully. And this time, this time Raina's free kick was not as good. Just punched out. So real quick, Bell, since we're on these, hold on, hold on, hold on, I'm stopping you. you. Since we're on this free kick and since we've talked about set piece sort of dominance,

should we just run through real quick in this lineup who this set piece sort of monsters are and like sort of how you see that we didn't really commit to it? Yeah, I mean, it's really, it's really just Robinson and McKinney from this lineup that are set piece threats. And I guess, you know, you could have replaced Ream with Zimmerman to try to bring in another centerback who can score, score on a set piece. PFOC probably would have been a better option than Sergeant for scoring on a set piece. It's hard to even imagine sergeant scoring on a set piece.

Yeah, anyway, I was just throwing that out there to see if there were, if there were other options we could be bringing in. And it does seem like there are a couple. If that's how we're going to generate most of our chances, again, will we commit to that or will we sort of keep falling in this sort of in-between state? John Brooks, obviously, if he's available, would be another one. It doesn't have to be Zimmerman and Miles. Brooks is going to give you that same advantage.

Yeah. So 30th minute, a lovely attacking sequence from El Salvador. It's a bunch of passes, Tamacas to Monte Rosa. Enriquez, back to Montereosa, Roldon. And then it ends with Monta Rosa open at the top of the box. And he gets it all wrong. He tries to shoot it with the outside of his boot. But probably the most lovely attacking sequence of the game for either side.

31st minute, Desk Dispossessed goes down hurt. And El Salvador, or at least appearing to be hurt, El Salvador comes down and Tamacus hits a bad cross. Des, just was laying on the floor for, I don't know, all the, the U.S. brought it all the way back in the attack and he was still on the ground and I'll explain that attack here it's a good slip pass from there's some kind of ping-ping nonsense in the middle of the field where we lose it and then get it back but then McKinney slips Aronson in behind and he doesn't do well with his first touch he gets it kind of poked away from him and the chance starts to piddle away but it looks McKinney's got it in in the box and it looked to me on the rewatch like

he could have you know played it to Sargent because one of the the defender closest to Sergeant who was like on the other side of the penalty marker from McKinney was rushing back to the near post like he was going to cover it, which was weird. I don't know why he was doing that. But Sergeant was wide open and totally on side. And McKinney instead taps it back to Aronson, who then lost it. It's one of those defensive moves.

Since no one expects it, it actually works out brilliantly. No one will expect me to run in and play second goalkeeper. Right. 33rd minute, poor touch from Turner gifts El Salvador a corner. They go short and this was another chance for El Salvador. It's going to be, the XG is going to like barely register on the scale because it's a shot from such a poor angle. But Alex Rodon works Yedlin and then whips a shot from a tight angle just over the crossbar. It's not going to show up on the stat sheet, but that was a dangerous moment and you could hear it in the crowd.

I'm just thinking Dest and Yedlin look pretty bad at this point. Desk gets Croyfmeged in the 35th minute by Enriquez. Definitely some shades of Tecotito there. That's why I start to think about it as a quicksand performance for Dest. Because nothing's going right. Really wish we would have just not run Dest out in this game. Right. But that's sort of a cop-out.

We're going to need to at some point see Desper perform on the road. So whether it's this game, whether it's Honduras, whether it's next window. Like he's going to have to put something together, right? Yeah, totally. And I, you know, I think he gets, he gets, he continues to get some, a mulligan because he's playing on the left, which is not his, you know, natural position. But I don't think that should be a full, what's the word?

It doesn't completely make him innocent here. He's not absolved. You know. So can I just? Absolution, yes. Can I just, you're the one who should know that. Can I just ask you to speculate wildly on his psychology? Because I hear this with basketball players a lot, right?

Like the better you're doing scoring points, like the better your defense is going to be. Do you think that plays into Sidginio Dest where if he's cooking people on the ball and getting, even if it's just cute little combinations, not just him dicing people up? Do you think that's going to show an improvement on the defensive side too? Probably. You know, when one thing clicks and other things start to click.

I noticed Ream in the post-game press conference sort of made a point to talk about how, you know, there are players on the team who get emotional or discouraged if things don't go, if things aren't going well and, you know, if he felt some responsibility to help them through that. And I was like, I wonder who he's talking about, you know? Who is he talking about? It's got to be test.

It's got to be. You know, they have that relationship on the left side there. there's clearly it's clearly somebody that ream is going to be you know communicating with a lot and dependent on i can't imagine who else he'd be talking about when he made that comment there's my wild speculation every watki fan right now is screaming that it's georena that that georena is the obvious changri candidate and tim ream as has been noted by watkey is georeen is the georena whisperer so it's it's tim reem comforting Raina in those heated moments.

Why not both? Why not both? Okay, 39th minute. Aronson makes a run up the left wing. The first good thing he's done of the half, and it's kind of a lucky moment because two guys, two El Salvador guys collide, and the ball kind of skips through.

And he dribbles it away. You know, he dribbles it into centerback, and then it falls to McKinney, who takes a long shot with his left foot and just skies it drawing hoots of derision from the crowd, sloppy from Wes. And he had a few moments like that. Just a few minutes earlier,

he had clipped a ragged cross into the box right at the El Salvador keeper. I don't think McKinney was terrible in this game. You know, he had some good moments. I think he was more or less who he is as a player. I'll push back a little. And, you know, we, you can almost make that, like, you can describe a lot of the players in the game as sort of not terrible, but not really anything good.

But I thought the entire midfield, and I think Bob Morocco pointed this out, maybe they were poorly set up. Maybe, I mean, you know, we definitely don't think Erinson fits very well in there. But in addition to that, there were just these technical breakdowns of, instead of like passing eight yards to the player's feet, like, we leave. him by three yards into a tackle. And that was just, that was actually like the most consistent theme for me was these passes that just didn't either go to the right person.

Like we could, we had the open man, but instead we hit a pass into a guy who had way more pressure on him. Or even when we were hitting the open man, making the right choice, the execution was off in like the same way every time. Like we always seemed to lead that pass into a tackle. And that prevented us from creating any kind of rhythm. And so that was sort of my aside, as you were talking about McKenner. not necessarily looking terrible.

It was always just that little bit. It wasn't terrible. It wasn't like giving it directly to the other team, but it was always setting the next guy up to give it to the other team. Yeah, uneven quality, no doubt, throughout the game from pretty much everybody. Here's another example. Dest sprints forward. It's kind of a clever little restart.

He sprints forward. Adams has a free kick just inside El Salvador's half, and he chips it over the top for him and he's got a chance to bring it down inside the penalty area and create something and he can't even do that. He can't even get the touch to bring it down and it just goes out of bounds.

And I'm like, what the heck is going on with Dest? You know, I mean, that's like, that's what you want him there for for that kind of moment. So, I should say, Burrhalter mentioned, you know, this is for Desk, This is a learning experience.

He's a very good player. He plays for Barcelona. He doesn't play in settings like this a lot. So nobody's given up on Sergenio, I don't think. 42nd minute, Dest plays a ball across for Sergeant. It's a good ball. And there's a header in traffic that doesn't get to goal. Sergeant just doesn't have the power to test the keeper there with like, you know,

guys on his shoulders. Reference my point earlier about it's hard to imagine him scoring on a set piece. 44th minute sergeant attempts a volley off his chest with his back to goal on another restart. This is a chipped ball from Miles. And I don't mind the try. I think it was it could have come off, but it doesn't. And then another, another sergeant moment right at the end of the half, he hits that volley on a McKinney layoff that we talked about earlier where Conrad, he came back to the ball. He sprayed it for Conrad.

Conrad was able to get a cross off that, a good one to the back post. And McKinney heads it back to Sergeant at the top of the box. and he just can't quite get the volley right and it's it flashes wide and at and at this point I'm thinking like or actually frigging dingus said this on on the discord he's a great he's a great presence on the discord I don't even know what a friggin dingus is but but he said is he said sergeant's danger adjacent and I thought hmm there may be some truth to that there might be I'm not going to judge his danger adjacency on on an attempted volley from from 20 yards out Those are going to be tough to complete. There were like four bodies between him and the goal. That's the one where he kind of like hammered it down into the ground and it went a couple yards wide. Yeah, but hammered is a very generous verb there. It was somewhere between a hammer and a scuff.

Yeah. Yeah, but definitely closer to a scuff. All right, halftime came and went. No changes from the U.S.? Any thoughts at this? moment, Greg? I'd have liked to have seen some changes. I feel like with five subs in these conditions, I think this, uh, uh, these games will, I see it as more of a benefit, given our depth, uh, and the conditions to make changes sooner. I don't, I don't think that waiting until the

60th minute or wherever it is is, is, is necessary. I feel like you can get more out of more, you can get more legs, uh, you can get more mileage with changes sooner. But that's just sort of a general observation. I'm not even going to get into like who specifically we could have changed for that. I just think generally on these rotation heavy qualifiers, earlier subs is probably going to be more beneficial. Yeah. And we made our first subs. We did three, three subs in the 64th minute. And then another group of subs. When was it? It was a 78th minute. So we'll get to that. 47th minute. You certainly wouldn't say at halftime, hey, everything's clicking. We got to keep doing the same things just a little bit better, we're going to ride the same lineup back.

Like, that definitely wasn't the case. So it's not like introducing subs would have wrecked this, you know, excellent chemistry that we had established. Yeah, I feel like Greg's just stubborn. You know, he's like, this is going to work. We're going to do it. And we got to stick to the plan. Whatever the plan is.

I have no idea what it is. He is. He is right until that stubbornness ends up with us totally with zero plan remaining. and throwing Calvin Acosta right back for the last 15 minutes. Crime-a-minute. 47th minute, Yedlin wrecks a guy, which is nice to see. It's nice to see him getting stuck in. And it sprays to Sergeant in the middle of the field,

and he drives at the goal, and you think, okay, we got something going here. But then he just kind of timidly slides it wide to Conrad, very late in the attacking sequence. Conrad has, you know, kind of on his heels as he receives the ball. ball and he's dispossessed very comfortably. This is an example of our limpness in the final third, I thought. 49th minute, Sergeant not good enough in the attack. He's driving forward again and he slips it lazily wide to Aronson in transition and it's

picked off. This is one of those passes that's like that leads him by too many yards. Yeah. And leads him into a tackle. Hey, let me go back to that 47th minute. That's the one where the sergeant ball to Conrad is like in the box, right? Like well into the box. Yeah.

It's like a two yard pass, yeah. Yeah. So this is where I think we do have to appreciate like the difficulty of field conditions because you have to just be a little bit extra careful with all of those passes. You know, the ball doesn't behave predictably. You can't take for granted that it's going to be where you expect it to be. So everyone looked like, not just sergeant, everyone just looked like they're just sort of having to watch the ball in a little bit longer and can't quite hit the exact measured pass that they would prefer to have.

hit. So this also kind of goes back to your desire to want to test the goalkeeper more. When those situations are present, like you also have to like bake that into your decision. So trying to slip that ball to Conrad becomes a much lower percentage pass than it would if you're playing in pristine conditions. And that's where I'm like, he'd already wait, like the defender had already waited a really long time to commit. Just test the keeper at that point.

I was really hoping to see like the toe punch. from 12 yards out to see if you could sneak that past the uncommitted defender and, and, you know, catch the keeper off guard a little bit or create a new scramble. But it's so difficult to connect the little intricate passes when you can't bank on the field quality supporting it. Yeah. I typically don't like when people say he needs to be more selfish there, but I do think he, Sergeant needed to be more selfish there.

he did have a guy on his back, you know, kind of coming in on his right shoulder and he had a, and he had this defender in front of him that you mentioned who wasn't committing. So I don't know. It was a little bit more complicated of a situation than I thought it was on first watch. And that's why, that's exactly what I'm prescribing the toe punch because when you don't get that, you know, when you take a shot and do the old, the old plant foot, then strike routine, everyone knows what's coming and it's easier for that trailing defender to recognize it. And that's when they can commit to poking it away.

or the other defender finally commits and can block off most of the goal, but the toe punch is going to surprise everyone. Add that to your repertoire, if you're coaching any kids, add it to their repertoire. A little toe punch right in front of goal. Right. I love that prescription. I'm going to go pick it up at the pharmacy right now. Number 50th minute Conrad picks up an errant pass and drives forward, slips it wide to sergeant

in a sort of a carbon copy of the previous moment. and sergeant's shot is blocked. Raina's hit with a projectile, I think, in the corner before he takes the corner. But it wasn't nearly, I didn't think the crowd was nearly as hostile as, say, like, a crowd in Denver in June. You know, it was an intense environment, but it wasn't, I don't, it didn't come across as like, what's the word pernicious or anything. Well, they have to lob those projectiles over the 15-foot fence, which, which, which, which, you know, changes that trajectory. It's a lot harder to be aggressive.

You've really got to float it over the coverage. And it's easier for the... And then you have some riot cops and riots... And then you also have cops and riot gear with plastic shields. So... Yeah, creating a phalanx. Right. So, Rayno, no, Sergeant was not good enough in the holdup again in the 51st minute.

I think he got dispossessed. Desk gets in 53... I'm going to go through these quickly. Dest in the 53rd minute gets absolutely. worked by Henriquez. The cross is blocked by Ream. 56 minutes sergeants dispossessed again. And then Magdan midfield to add insult to injury, attack down our left flank.

On the ensuing corner, it's headed well by Zavalletta. Again, a tough chance for him to generate power on. But he does force a decent save from Turner down to his left. And in the 58th minute, Rana, here's one of those examples of Rana and Aronson, not quite being on the same page. Rayna cuts him from the left to the top of the box and then plays like a reverse pass in behind for Aronson, and Aronson's just hesitant and doesn't get to it. I think it was on if Aaron makes a decisive run there,

but he kind of makes the run, he kind of stops as Raina gets closer to him and then it's too late. And it's a clever pass from Rayna. 61st minute, pretty ugly from McKinney trying to pass to Adams in the middle of the field, and it's just that was a moment in the game where I was, my heart kind of sank because I thought, boy, this is not good. That does not look good. And that's exactly, you know, what I was talking about earlier about, just like open available passes. Like, no, no explanation for why that pass can't connect other than just like that failure to execute, whether it's nerves.

I mean, that's, that has to be the only, the only rationale, right? Like nerves within the game of like, oh, man, we aren't doing it. So everything you're trying to do a little bit too much. So you lead the guy instead of just trusting that if you create a good passing rhythm, things will open up on their own. And I also just want to point out now that, like, anyone who watched this game and is now listening to this chronology is like, how do they have this many events? There was nothing that happened in this game. And it's funny to me because I'm praying for that day that our chronology is not just a series of obvious misconnections. Yeah.

Well, I mean, the reason I do this is to sort of like make sure I know what I'm talking about, you know, and then show our work for the conclusions that we try to draw. 64th minute, we get the subs. Robinson for Dest, P. Focon for Sergeant and Acosta for Conrad. Aronson goes to the wing. And Acosta's playing in the middle at first, you know, for 14 minutes before he gets moved to right back. And I thought we immediately looked better. Like, basically it was a different game. I mean, we didn't, obviously we didn't score, but we looked a lot better.

Didn't you think? Yes. And that's where we get into, like, no, you can't guarantee that if we'd started this with this personnel, we definitely would have won the game. But it sure looked like this group of personnel would have given us a better shot at it over if they'd been given 75 minutes instead of 25 minutes. Yeah. Another Rana, this one a real slalom from the left hash.

And then he slips it, you know, he beats like three guys and then does a one to with, I think it was Pfok. And then he slips in Aronson behind. And again, Aronson hesitates with his run and doesn't get to it. Just make the run. Like, what do we have to lose at this point? Passing it to you with your feet, to your feet being stationary at the top of the box is not going to accomplish anything, dude. He's going to have to shake this little brother tag in my mind. Like too much, too little, too tentative, I think is what I'd say.

Yeah. McKenney gets a yellow card in the 67th minute, probably deserved. Yedlin gets one in the 68th minute after he gets megged. 72nd minute, this is a very, very good chance, and it pains me to bring it up. But Raina cuts in on his right and tries a shot from distance. It bounces back to him. Kind of lucky there. And then he dances to the end line, cuts onto his right, you know, makes the guy drop to the ground, cuts to his right.

And then clips a ball at the six. And McKinney is arriving with pace and just misses the frame with the header. You mentioned earlier that go ahead. Heather goes over here, right? This one actually goes wide of the post to the right. Was just going to... This was the one where he was maybe being undercut a little bit by the defender. just going to mention that on those kinds of like clipped balls in, it is a little more difficult

to generate the power, you know, to get it to go downward rather than, you know, it's easier to get underneath it and head, like, give it a little boost up. But it's hard, it's just hard. It's a difficult finish. I know that we're all like, we've seen him do it before. So we have really high expectations. And it's awesome that we create that chance for him. And it should be the goal to create several of those types of chances for Weston McKinney per game. But I just, you know, we can't hang on to he has to finish this one. Like we can't expect him to finish every header that he gets. Yeah.

I just wish he had and I think he could. Yes. Yes, definitely. He could finish that. So there's still zero zero. 76 minute. Pfeck wins a cage match with two guys in the middle of the field. Kind of gets hung up, but he shrugs them off and then slips McKinney down the wing.

Who plays a ball at the, lifts a ball at the back post for a cost. And Acosta puts it on frame with his head. A good save down to the keeper's right. It's very similar to the Zavoleta's head earlier. Not a lot of power on it, but well-placed. Well, let's give P-Fox some of his due now because he came in and you made this point. He was immediately looked more effective. And I think that's exactly what it was.

He wasn't necessarily elegant with it either. There were plenty of times where the ball went into him and it looked like he had lost the ball. But then he effectively just like manhandled the centerbacks that were on him and was like, no, no, no, no, no. still have the ball and actually I'm now moving away from you or not necessarily you know he didn't just get behind them but he moved he like had the ball in a chance to make the next pass so it wasn't even just trying to survive it was like I will move you out of the way so I still have it and I have my head up and I can find the next the next play and that was a very noticeable change yeah yeah I don't I don't have a strong feeling that Pivoc is way better than sergeant right now but yeah I agree

with that. 78th minute rolled on for Aronson and Legette for Yedlin which pushes Acosta back to right back because we don't have any other right backs available and

Christian Roll-on goes to the right wing. We get a little bit of action from Anthony Robinson a good run down the left with the ball and he tries to clip a ball in in the 79th minute in the 80th minute we get a good little combo from Raina and Leget after a throw

in and Legette pokes the ball in the air to Pfok for a header from the six. I mean, I'm not saying he should have scored, but he could have scored there. And he kind of gets that one wrong and heads it over. So those are our three big chances of the game. Three headers, Robinson, McKinney, and Pfock. And Legett puts another cross into Pfock in the box in the 84th minute. with his left foot and he just kind of mishandles it. This one was not like a, like a,

it was not a cross that he could have like turned on frame, but he could have collected it. And then in the 85th minute, we get that poor cross attempt from McKenny where he just kind of like kicks it way out of bounds. He looked, he looked kind of done in the last 15 minutes. And the crowd in San Salvador was singing their boys home for a draw. They were singing Vamo something.

I don't know what they're. what that song was. Not much more to say other than I thought Alex Rodon was awesome for El Salvador. I thought Montaeroza is a good player as well. And then we didn't test Rodon

toward the end, even though he was very, very tired and had put in quite a shift. Yeah, there was no one left to do it. Acosta actually tried to from right back. He found himself advanced quite a few times. But yeah, there was definitely no sort of change of pace sub to bring on. You know, you talk about McKinney sort of being done with 15 minutes to go.

That's the other sort of knock on effect of running the personnel out that we ran is that we labored our way through 90 minutes, specifically Weston McKinney, Tyler Adams, and Gio Raina. So we'll have to see what kind of knock on effect that has Sunday against Canada. And whether or not we can get 90 minutes from them, what their energy levels look like. there's some there's going to be a lot to be thinking about over the next few days. Yeah. If we lose to Canada, we should hire Hugo Perez. We should actually just like create a staff with every coach of the teams that have been.

So we'll actually hire Herdman and Perez and formulate some kind of a workable staff between the two of them. Just as long as Perez is in charge. That's all. So give me, can you give old bells a refresher on why we can't do a straight up 4, 2, 3, 1? It messes, it messes up our pressing shape, is that it? I'm very, I'm very slow on this. So I kind of assume you're saying, why can't we play Rain as the 10 and run Adams and McKenney as the double pivot? Is that mostly?

Yeah, because it would drop, it would drop, I think McKenney would be more comfortable deeper. He can still burst forward with the ball, which is his, you know, sort of best attacking quality other than arriving in the box. he can still arrive in the box, but in the buildup, he'll provide, we'll have options, more options for the fullbacks to play off of

and less congestion up front. It feels like, you know, we have ostensibly five players sort of in the attacking front line, you know, give or take. And they don't,

it just like doesn't seem like there's much harmony between them, you know? Yeah. So to go through, the sort of my reluctance for the fort with geo as the 10 in a 4231. I'm going to almost just cheat and say that's not doing too much differently than just putting geo as one of the eights in the 433 or if it does, there are other knock on effects.

But what I really want to say is if we're going to press out of that shape, if part of our goal revenue stream is in transition after creating turnovers high up the field, then our front three in the press would no longer include Gio Raina. or if it did, it would take some creative, you know, shifting to get there. And so, just like Burhalter said, it's not like the best option in his mind, not the best option in my mind, to drop Raina out of that front three and to move him into midfield. So if you're going to play him as a 10, there have to be other ways to get him there.

And I think Bob Morocco is thrown a couple of those ways out. Like you essentially run Gio Raina as the inverted player and move him into central midfield in different buildup shapes and that just pushes Raina from Central Midfield up higher. But that has to be the goal for me is keeping Raina as high up the field as possible because I do think it's really expensive to move him out of that space

because I think there's a huge drop-off to go from Raina to Aronson or from Raina to Conrad. Yeah. Okay. Well, it's something to think, I mean, it does have a huge effect on the press, I guess, but like it almost feels like it would be simpler and more, uh, easier for the players to navigate if it's,

if Raina is, Raina sort of has that space to himself and he's free to go and like, find the ball instead of having two bodies in that, in those double eight, those double eight roles that, and it just seems like it's never clear who's doing what, you know. So what do we, so what do we close with here? Uh, that just how, just how open the question is. Like, are we actually going to play good soccer that looks like we have a team full of elite talent. Can we do it on the road? Certainly there are questions about that. And then we still have to find out if we can do it at home

because we never really put that performance together in Nations League or in the Gold Cup. So this Canada game is going to be like, okay, well, can we at least looks apart in a home game? And, you know, Canada struggled at home against Honduras. That's the other thing we didn't talk about is Conga Calf cannibalized yesterday. where Honduras and Canada drew, so both teams dropped two points, or you could say Honduras stole their point on the road, which is the goal.

And Costa Rica and Panama drew yesterday. So everyone's sitting on one point other than Mexico who beat Jamaica and are on three. That's a very good, you know, for the math, those are also really good outcomes. Because one of the issues with our failed cycle was Trinidad didn't cannibalize anyone. And Trinidad lost eight games out of ten, so they never took points away from our direct competition. And Jamaica almost stole that draw from Mexico. It took a 90th minute winner to give Mexico the three points. But if you're a math nerd, if you're the math nerd, you actually don't want Mexico to drop points.

You assume that they're the sort of one or two top teams. You actually want them to take points from everybody because we don't have to beat Mexico. We just have to beat all the other weak teams. weaker, weaker teams. From a math point of view, I guess we're glad that Honduras and Canada drew, but it also shows that Honduras is no joke,

which we should know from Nations League, and that's going to be a tough game on the 8th. And also Canada is going to, Canada having dropped points at home is going to be extra hungry to like try to get a result, I would think, in Nashville. So narrative-wise, it's not super encouraging that they

Drew, it would have been, you know, if Canada had gotten the three points, then we could say, okay, maybe we could feel a little more bullish about Honduras on the 8th and also feel like Canada could rotate against us this weekend. And I think the confidence that those things are going to happen is lower now. Definitely. I don't want Canada to rotate against us. I want to see Alfonso Davies against Sergenio Dest. I want, I want some narrative to be furthered, whether it's Desk just can't defend, which I'm skeptical of, or whether it's, no, no, no, no, is the Barcelona right back that we've always dreamed of, and he proved it against Alfonso Davies.

Yeah. I got to say, I just got to be explicit, that I am frustrated with Burrhalter for putting Aronson in the midfield. It doesn't make sense. It didn't make sense. At the beginning, it still doesn't make sense. I don't know why he does this kind of stuff. And then, you know, Desdette left back was very bad, too.

We used all of it, like we've talked about already, we used all of our wingers in the starting lineup for reasons that are unclear. We used both of our right backs. For, you know, Desk went 64 minutes and Yedlin went 78 or something like that. Until he was cramping up. So until he physically could not continue and we were out of options. Right. So Dest is coming in.

Dest is probably going to have to start it right back on against Canada. I mean, I hope he does. he got some reprieve with getting subbed off in the 64th minute but not a lot and yeah it just seems like a lost opportunity i thought oguuchi onyewu was spot on in the post game yes one point is yes one point is technically okay the math works out but you watch this game you know who we have on our team you cannot have watched that game and thought well will you and be happy with a all, you know, we've, we got to play better than that. And we should be able to play better than that. Can I throw one more observation I had in here? I posted it on Twitter, but we haven't, we haven't

discussed it yet. I should have when we, when we first introduced the lineups. Please. I need, I need somebody to clarify this for me. We had 11 outfield players on our bench and then Ethan Horvath as a goalkeeper. And I don't, I'm not convinced that we are allowed to do that. Like, teams can't just choose. My understanding was teams can't just choose to only carry two goalkeepers. So I'm really curious if I'm just wrong there or if technically Burrhalter had to call one of the guys in and be like, hey, we can get you on the bench in uniform, but you're actually going to be listed on any, like anything official as a goalkeeper and you're not allowed to play in the outfield. And the reason I think this was because I remember

when you only used to carry two goalkeepers and then there were like some emergency situations where teams either had a red card or an injury or vice versa where first keeper gets injured, second keeper gets red card and now they're throwing an outfield player in goal and there was a worry that that ruins like the competitive integrity of a match and so they allowed you to carry three goalkeepers but they enforced that it was three and you couldn't try to like sneak on an extra outfield player under your roster and say oh he's a goalkeeper but it turns out we're going to use him as a fullback in this game so I'm really curious if one of the players on our bench would only have been allowed to play goalkeeper and I need somebody somewhere to

to find out if that's the case. And I need to know which player it was. This sounds like something you should start keeping quiet about, honestly. Do you think Mark McKenzie actually had a goalkeeper jersey under his warmup? I don't know. I don't want us getting disqualified. Because we didn't follow the letter of the law. I think you'd only get disqualified if you played that third goalkeeper as a field player.

I see. Yeah. Can you retroactively identify one of the players? players as a goalkeeper. All right. All right. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the rules tangent.

Get the Little League baseball rulebook out. Logger protest. People love that stuff. Yeah, I think Canada's going to be, I imagine not an easy game on Sunday. And I don't think Honduras is going to be an easy game on Wednesday. So we got our work cut out for us. Quick announcement. We're going to, we are.

doing we are definitely doing a tailgate scuff tailgate at nissons stadium in nashville we're going to be in parking lot are started hopefully i'll be able to get in there at two o'clock um but i may not be able to get into the parking lot until three o'clock and um we got a bunch of us on the discord or getting some food and drink together be if you want to come by we would love to see you we're going to try to record a live show, B-Y-O-B, and, you know, bring some meat if you want. We'll have a little grill going. We're going to get hot chicken delivery in the middle of it,

but I can't promise hot chicken to everybody, because what if like 100 more people show up? The logistics of this are already, like, destroying my psychological welfare. If you're just finding out about this now. I'll give you, I'll give one of you one chicken tender. That's what I was going to say. If you're just hearing about the tailgate now on this podcast,

podcast, consider it B.Y.O. Hot chicken. Yeah, B. Y.O. B. Y.O. H.C. Anything else, Greg? We missing anything here? No. It's just delayed. It's just sort of postponed this nervous feeling. Like, it was possible if we had won that game. Even if we just won it with the exact same performance, one of those headers goes in, sudden we would be feeling differently. If we had won it and looked much, much better, then it'd be like, all right, it's party time. Now we got to wait. We got to wait another week to see the extent of the of how big of a party we're having. Yeah, that's the dialectic. That's the dialectic of the U.S. men's national team and really of this podcast. It is, are we like, how are we now? How good

could we be? And, you know, we're all living in that sort of like hopeful, at least those of us who really are interested in like the details of the game are living in that sort of hopeful space where we just want to see it sort of come together. And, you know, that consummation is delayed. Again. We'll see you.