Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #207: USA v Jamaica recap (WCQ4)

Episode Date: October 8, 2021

A pleasant night in Austin, even without Pulisic and Reyna. Ricardo Pepi season is in full swing. Musah is a huge asset. Dest and Robinson playing well.Here's a video version of "Oh Gianluca" if you want to watch it: https://twitter.com/scuffedpod/status/1446160074154684417?s=20support Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedjoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XU buy 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. The U.S. men defeated Jamaica 2 to 0 on a second half brace for Ricardo Pepi and now sit top of the table in the Ocho. Level on points with Mexico, but ahead in gold differential after Canada played El 3 to a draw at the S-TECA late last night. Good night of soccer. Greg, how are you doing? Good, man. It was a good night of soccer, but I can't go on until first I say that in the past on this pod, I've said this a few times that apologies to everyone. But I've said that Jonathan Lewis, you know Jonathan Lewis. I've made a comment on Jonathan Lewis. You're going to bring up Jonathan Lewis for this recap? This is where we're starting. I have said that Jonathan Lewis, because he's taken some criticism from us from fans, is better at soccer than we are at anything in our lives. I've said that before. And I do think, I, I struggled with it a little bit, but I do have to acknowledge that it's true.

Well, I'm about to backtrack on it because I do have to say now that Adam Bell's is better at a cappella arrangements than Jonathan Lewis is at soccer. So suddenly, I don't know. I don't know. Suddenly I've had to change my tune on our relative skill sets and strengths. I don't know. I'm not ready to claim that. But thank you.

Thank you. I enjoyed putting that together. And hopefully, you know, hopefully the Holy Spirit will move another time or two, and I'll have a couple more songs about players coming down the pike. But no immediate promises. All right. What I'm going to, I'm going to insist that the O.G. Unluka plays us out of this, of this podcast. So when we wrap up this podcast, that better be the music that our listeners listen to.

Done. Done. I'm good. I'm good. It was a party. Last night, it felt like a party. It was a celebration. 90 minutes celebration.

It did. It felt, I mean, it was a little tense until we got that first goal. But after that, especially after that second goal, it was just a relaxing evening on a beautiful green surface and a beautiful green stadium in the capital of Texas. It was nice. So I'll even say that even before the goal, and I know there's always that tension because these games are important. You know, there's stakes in World Cup qualifying games. And we didn't score until the 48th minute or whatever it was. For some reason, for me, it always felt like we were winning the game. And it was even before the goal. So it did feel like 90 minutes of like I was enjoying it the whole time. And it partly because I was seeing a lot of the things that I really wanted to see, it felt like we were trying to play the ball into Jamaica's defense, whatever Jamaica's quality of defense was.

And that's really what I wanted to see. Just constantly trying to pass balls and defeat. It wasn't always coming off. It was clumsy at times. but it was so night and day from what we saw for a lot of the last window where we weren't even attempting some of those passes and some of those movements. So to start seeing that, and I know everyone was talking about verticality all week, but it was, again, for me, much more like seeing this pistoning movement

happening over and over again and midfielders changing places. And so that was like I was just really enjoying us see, I was enjoying seeing us try that. And then I thought it just kept getting smoother and smoother throughout the game until the last 30 minutes were just like we were running riot. It felt like even though we only scored the one goal in the last 30 minutes, like it was chance after chance. And no matter who it was, it was looking good.

And I'll even get into the timeline about actually like we were missing a bunch of passes, but I think of them as like really positive misses because we were missing these open guys who we'd worked really hard to create these openings. And so again, just it was a really enjoyable game to watch. it's interesting you hear you say that that that that about verticality how that was like that that was the buzzword it became comical you know almost uh in the days leading up to the game i still don't you know really know what it don't know what it means or you know what gregg burhalter is looking for in that sense but i did i noticed a few times in the game i mean maybe it was mostly in the first

half where we were we still did have people running away from the ball uh and i mean i know you spotlighted one moment and I think like 23rd minute or something, 24th minute. But I noticed a few others where, you know, Anthony Robinson would have the ball or Miles Robinson would have the ball and the attackers in front of them would both be running away and there would be nobody checking back to the ball. So it's interesting to hear you say that you saw enough of that to please you. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, for sure. And you know, I saw some of those same times and there were times where it looked like a missed pass where I think Robinson like hit the ball into a window where he might thought ariola was going to stay in it, but ariola ran out of the window and went vertical.

And so it was a missed pass. And you can put it on Robinson, Ariel, I don't really care whose fault it is. It's just a misread. And so there were those times. But again, it was just so different from Canada where we were never trying to make these passes. And there were a lot of reasons it was a different game than Canada, right? Jamaica are not as good as Canada. And Jamaica might not be as good as any other team we play in qualifying.

Like Jamaica were pretty, pretty bad. And we had suspicions that that would be the case going into the game. And I think it played out that way. Like there was a lot of shambolic defending. We were wondering, I was kind of saying, I'd said in the preview that teams should probably sit deep against us. John Arnold in his preview had said, not sure if Jamaica can really do that. The TSS, distinguished gentleman had talked about how there's just so many gaps in the lines and they're not particularly organized. know John Mueller had talked about how raggedy their lines are in their in their first window.

And I think that played out. Like they didn't sit deep. I don't know if they could have done that successfully anyway. But the defense that they trotted out there was full of gaps. It was porous. Yeah. I mean, Arnold in the pot on Monday spotlighted the weakness of their midfield.

That sure did come true or sure did get borne out. their midfield was a was a guy that you know their their band of two the two the double pivot I guess they had um was a guy playing for the humble lions in Jamaica and a guy playing for Miami FC in USL and the USL championship so that is uh that is a level of opponent that we should be able to um have success against in the midfield and we did I thought you know right so they're not top talents and they and again they weren't particularly organized on both our goals, we'll talk about it, but midfield was basically non-existent. We just got past them almost instantly.

And then it's just, you know, again, you can talk about verticality. It's easier and necessary to be vertical when that's what the team's giving you. We already saw that in the last 45 minutes against Honduras. If they're going to run, if they're going to run against us and be open, we will roll them because we have much, much better players than they do. It doesn't necessarily tell us how we will fate do against a team that's a little bit more organized and maybe a little bit more concerned. conservative in their approach, whether or not we'll still be able to break them down. But I did still think that they were promising pieces in this game that suggest we're going to try. And we could do a lot better again than we did against Canada. Well, even when we do break somebody down, the windows

are going to be small and the chances are going to be somewhat rare until, you know, until the game opens up. And I thought that was even sort of the case in the first half for this game. I'll be interested to hear why you think that was but we got to I got to say just from my own heart how happy I am about the guy getting those chances and putting them in the goal being Ricardo Pepe it's just dreamy man that was not an easy finish I don't think that first goal and um and then I mean the second one was easy I guess but boy it feels good it feels good and he just tweeted out like a like an hour ago he tweeted out a slow motion video of him running to the corner flag kissing the, kissing the crest.

And I was about ready to start crying all over again, you know. So is that going to, is that going to draw you, drive you to another composition? Are we going to get a, are we going to get an inspirational ballot about Ricardo Pepe? I'd like to, but nothing's, nothing's cooking at the moment. Fair enough. The, but yeah, you know, that, we talked about this in office hours yesterday, but that, that, that piece about Pepe and what his parents went through, sending him away when he was 13. and like all the sacrifices their family made

and the hard times they had when he was a young kid, it was, I mean, it's all pretty emotional. I mean, I'm not trying to overplay it. I'm just, it's a sport. I'm just a normal person living my life. But, you know, it's pretty cool. That's all.

Should we get into the lineups? Yeah, let's talk about them. Okay. So Burrhalter came out with Matt Turner and goal, no big surprise there. and then Dest Zimmerman, Miles Robinson, and Anthony Robinson across the back line. I guess the only real surprise there was Zimmerman and not that much of a surprise, would you say? Yeah, I guess if you want to qualify it as a surprise because Zimmerman wasn't on the original roster and now he's starting, you could.

But I think that's even for me, that's kind of a reach because the guys he was replacing, it's not where your top two centerbacks are for sure going to play all three games. So it might have been that one of Reamer Brooks would have been the starter in this game based on whatever, however Burrhalter's mapped it out. And when they're not available, like Zimmerman fills into that role. And the guys technically, I guess, ahead of him, if you want to call it that, already have their roles for the future games. But I don't know if that's the case or not. Maybe something just changed it in Burralter's mind. And Walker Zimmerman is actually centerback number two for the camp. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think what you're saying is right. I mean, you could totally see Brooks at left centerback, Miles Robinson at right centerback to be the pairing for the opening match of the window. And when Brooks goes down, of course, you know, you've got to come up with a different plan. So Adams at the 6 and then Eunice Musa and Weston McKinney as the 8s. This is a midfield that a lot of people wanted to see known as the MMA midfield. Who coined that term? No idea. It's going to be lost to lore.

But yes, we all wanted to see it. And again, this is where I'm going to say, even as excited as I am and as optimistic as I am about this midfield trio, I'm not ready to say yet that all of our midfield problems are solved based on this performance against Jamaica. It was a necessary performance, but not necessarily sufficient to sort of lock in the midfield for the next 10 years. necessary but not sufficient i'm i'm in i'm in on that uh now ariola peppy and erinson were the front line i think no surprise that peppy started no surprise at erinson started really no surprise that ariola started but it did displease uh some people um should we get into the ariola discourse we could do that later we get into that later well i'll at least say right away uh in our projection episode where we mapped out the three games i had ariola starting one of them. So it's not like a huge surprise that he started this one. It's, it remains to be seen,

again, whether this is sort of just a rotation kind of thing or if Ariola is rated by Burrhalter ahead of, say, a Tim Wea or a Matthew Hoppe. Right. And, you know, that rating can change. There's like, I think Burhalter has a lot of trust in Areola. So even if he does rate him ahead of those guys at the moment, it can't be by much. And, yeah, there are actually reasons to to praise ariola's play last night absolutely yeah it's gonna be hard

to like really be particularly critical of any player uh either starter or sub in this match oh we'll find a way I'm excited to see how you go about it um

and then and then Jamaica had Andre Blake and goal of course uh Powell Damien Lowe Mariapa and Kumar Lawrence across the back line

and then Devon Williams and Javon Watson as the two holding mids I guess and then Bobby Reed, Tyreek McGee and Jamal Lowe across the band of three in the 4-2-3-1 and then Shemar Nicholson as the striker You know Let's not pretend that they're all terrible players There's some good

I think there's some talent there Lowe and Nicholson were occasionally dangerous I think Tyreek McGee is an exciting young player Plays for the Plays for Yupin, the top club in Belgium right now. It doesn't play very much, but he's on that, he's on that game day squad. Well, let's, let's talk about how, how much he plays? How much is it? I noticed he played like, he had like one came on the last three games.

He has 15 minutes on the season, two appearances, a one minute appearance and like a 14 minute appearance. Okay, but, okay, but, but that one of those appearances came in the last two weeks, the 15 minute one. Fair, that's fair enough. But again, we, we, we just need to, to be realistic about what we're talking about here for who we, uh, who we dispensed with in the midfield. Yeah. And this isn't, again, this isn't to say like, we shouldn't be happy. It was, again, it was a celebration watching, watching us do some of these things for me. Uh, but then just for what it means big picture, we just got to be a little bit cautious here. I, at least I'm going to be cautious. You are free to run wild. No, I won't run wild. I'm, I'm more bring up Tyreek

McGee because I think he is a, he's an exciting young player. Okay. Rather than to like, to, to argue that now the U.S. is, you know, bound to get to the semifinals of the World Cup. I think he has some nice aspects to his game. So do you want to go right to the timeline or is that okay? Yeah, let's get right to it. There was a lot going on. Yeah. Okay.

First minute, it's, we get this big dog so shout, denial of goal scoring opportunity to shout. Zimmerman wins a header right off of kickoff, which he did a lot of. He won a lot of headers. And that was a nice thing to see. And we get a nice little combo from Musa to Aronson, who plays it to Pepey, and then Pepey turns and gets taken out as he plays a very good through ball to Paul Ariola,

who is dragged, who is in behind. He's on side. He's in behind. I don't think Camar Lawrence is catching him. And Lawrence reaches out and pulls his shoulder back, and Areola goes down. I don't want to get, like, into the, you know,

referee stuff too much, but that should be a red card, right? Yeah, it should be, but there's a couple of things at play here. One, as I believe it was Donald Norman, who I saw tweet this, the referee probably just knows Paul Ariola is not going to turn that into a goal scoring opportunity. You said Kamar Lawrence won't catch him, but I feel like if there's one thing Paul Aureola does here, it's get caught. But either way, it's a great buildup, and the thing I really want to focus on is the combination play and the lead-up to it, right?

Like this is what we need to see more of. It's passing in pretty tight spaces. No one you're giving the ball to has a ton of space, but you're just trusting them. You're just trusting that you can give the ball to them and it's not going to end in catastrophe. And that's what we did. And suddenly we spring someone because we connect three quick passes in a tight space. We draw defenders attention. Everyone's worried about what's going on here.

And they forget Paul Ariola and off he goes. It's his man, Camarne Lawrence is mostly beat because he's trying to create like a little step for an offside. But the centerback who's not paying any of the. tension is keeping Ariel on by half a meter. So this is like right away we're seeing this intent, I think, to play the ball, to pass the ball around, to connect passes and move. Yeah, I think it was Powell, the right back who kept him on. There you go.

Now that that matters very much. Okay, then the, so it's not a, it's not a red. It's, yeah, did he even get a yellow card? Yeah, he got a yellow card. Yeah, he did. And so the other thing on that is, I know everyone's saying concaf, this, Conca Calf, that this is pretty, I feel like it's really standard in the game of soccer that referees would be super reluctant to give a red card 45 seconds into a game that then changes the game completely. So this isn't necessarily a Conca Calf issue. This is just one of those

soccer issues that red cards are super consequential and referees are pretty careful about how they dole them out. Yeah. And for our purposes, those who root for, you know, continual improvement on the U.S. Men's National Team is better to have to face it. 11 man Jamaica in this game and and find a way to beat them then to to face them down a man for 89 minutes. If this is, if it's Mexico and Azteca, I'm going to break my TV to call on for that red card. There you go. Yeah.

So I, I've noticed a few of these verticality and no options moments for people, but I won't, I won't list them all. I'll just, just trust me that I saw a few of them, three or four. 11th minute Adams gets Little Brothered by Tyreek McGee And then McGee smacks him in the mouth As he's going by And gets a pretty good shot off

It goes over the crossbar from about 22 yards 25 yards Just thought I'd note that I think Turner had it covered good footwork Good extension on the dive Okay I

No I just didn't notice that But yeah I believe it And 18th minute, nice pass in behind for Robinson from Brennan Aronson. And he cuts it back. He's got Pepe making a near post run, Ariola making kind of a backpost run, and Anthony cuts it back across the box, and it kind of skitters through the area to the other side of the field.

Do you know what I say? So I love this one because I love, again, I love the verticality, particularly from deep positions. So I love when, I love when Anthony Robinson's joining in on these runs. I mean, we saw it against Honduras, and he was very effective there. I loved when Musa would get in from deep and run vertical. On the cross, this one I thought was kind of interesting.

It was another one where I don't necessarily know who makes the misread here. It looks like, because part of this is the crossers trying to find somebody, but then the runners have to be findable. And in this one, it looked like Robinson identified the window that was open. And it looked like Ariola kind of did, too. he slowed his run, but he didn't stop completely. So he kind of like ran out of the window a little bit that Ariola, that Robinson then put the ball through. But again, it's bang, bang.

This is happening super fast. And they haven't played together a ton. They don't know what all the different cues are going to be. So it's understandable they miss. Again, for me, it's just like, yes, this is what we need to see more and more of. We had a couple of those looks against Canada to start getting them in this game. I felt good. Yeah, Aronson, Aronson was, and Aronson was cooking a little bit.

You know, I mean, he was, he wasn't dominating the game or anything, but he was very lively in finding, finding passes that made attacking moments come alive, I guess. 23rd minute, we get some verticality from Pepe running away from Aronson, and Aronson's pass into the right channel doesn't connect. I promised I wasn't going to mention all of those, but I just started reading it, so I couldn't stop. I did notice how comforting Zimmerman's aerial dominance was at this point in the game. 30th minute. That's the next item.

That nice little combination from McKinney and Aronson up the left side. Robinson plays it down the line for Aronson, and he finds McKinney flooding into the box in the left channel, and McKinney tries to cut it back. I think he was going for Areola. Pepe was in the vicinity too. And the pass was blocked out of bounds. But yeah, you're just seeing all this neat little like combination and movement

where suddenly McKenny's now the guy attacking the N-line. So you're getting that, again, I feel ridiculous, same verticality so many times. But you're getting that burst. We were calling it burst. I think we would always call it a burst. We need a burst from like the back, from deep position. McKinney here with a little burst past Aronson and gets into a great spot.

Aronson with a very clever pass to find him. We're just, we're cooking. It just felt like we were cooking. I don't know why, but it felt like we were already winning this game through most of the first half. Yeah. Yeah, it was comfortable, even though Jamaica did have some half chances. We got in the 31st minute some more nice combination play at this time up the right side between Ariel and Dest. And then Aronson ends up with it and takes a pretty speculative left-footed

shot that was not close, but, you know, he had a, he, he took like, I think three shots from outside of the box and none of them was particularly close, but appreciate the confidence. I'll just throw in, if you watch the video, we did have Robinson arriving as the extra man there. So, because this is going to come up later on as we get really cooking in this game, there are a lot of opportunities to make that last pass in this game or even maybe like make that extra pass to the guy who could then make the last pass and this is just one that kind of like oh we could even find Robinson and for me that's great that means you've flooded the zone with enough players

that the defense can't account for everyone either by pure numbers wise or just because they can't they don't have the time to organize and find the guys who are open yeah there's a good there's a really good example of that from Pepe right after he scores. But 33rd minute, this is another kind of big moment. Great work from Brennan Aronson, pressing Damian Lowe, the centerback. And he pokes it to Ariola, and Ariola immediately plays a perfectly weighted through ball for Aronson. Damian Lowe makes a sliding challenge on Aronson, and is whistle for a foul and given a yellow card.

whether it was a foul is a little unclear to me but it is clear to me that Erinson takes the approach Aronson takes So this is a little bit of this is one example of my nitpicking The approach that Aronson takes to that ball is a little Brothery like he's kind of like tiptoeing around He's kind of tiptoeing around where Damien low He thinks Damien Lowe is going to be coming from

If he just steps right like takes a more direct angle approach angle at the ball he's in he's either in on goal or he's like he's getting damien low's cleats in the back of his calves you know so anyway it was a it was whistled for a foul low given a yellow card a lot of people were talking about that being a denial of goal scoring opportunity or a red card foul i i didn't really see it that way personally but that's one where you're just hoping that the referee feels obligated to because he gave the foul where it's like oh is he going to give the foul okay once he did all right then he might have to he might feel like he's going to

compelled now to give the red because if you say the guy fouled him and Brendan Aronson was going into the box alone on the goalkeeper, then you might just have to dig into that pocket reluctantly and send the guy off. No dice. But again, I'm fine with it because more chances for us to run 11 v. 11, as it were. There we go. I thought at this point in the game, Eunice Musa was flexing his muscles, so to speak, just kind of hoovering up everything that spat out of the Jamaica box, just felt like he was good at dominating a soccer game. And I'm embarrassed that I wanted Luca Delatore to start this game over Eunice Musa. I didn't want it that bad in my defense.

I just kind of set it, you know. I wasn't going to bring it up, but yes, you did. And that will stick with you for a while. Now, I'm excited. I'm hoping, again, we can't draw full conclusions because it was Jamaica's almost non-existent midfield that we were doing it against. But my hope is that by the end of this window, we can retire the Eunice Musa FBREF chart that floats around Twitter every couple of weeks whenever we demand an MMA midfield start. Yeah, this idea that he's not good because he doesn't compare favorably with Lionel Messi.

With the Laliga wingers. Yeah. I know Messi plays for PSG now, but the-it goes back a year. The chart goes back a year, I believe. So it would include Messi. let's see there was a moment in the 37th minute where i thought adams kind of got caught out a little bit sort of chasing the game um or chasing chasing the ball which is kind of his game right and he and mckenny and moose were all drawn over to our right side and jamaica got a little joy in the

middle middle of the field but you know who worked his way back and force the ball out wide. Ricardo Pepe just like hustling back and covering for the entire midfield in that moment. Well, Pepe knows if there's one thing U.S. men's national team fans demand. It's that their striker play a lot of defense. So he'd been hearing that for the past year. So he was like, all right, I can also play defense. That was an interesting sequence because Sergenio Dest, who I think had a very good game.

I thought this was actually a little bit on him because of the way. the sequence unfolded. He was a little slow to put pressure on his man upfield as we were kind of pressing there. And when you talk about our midfielder is getting drawn over to the right side, I think that's why it happened is because the guy that deaths could have been pressuring and trying to force his head down on the ball to make a weak decision, had a lot of time to make a good decision. And that forced Adams and McKinney to try to compensate for that.

And they were both late. McKinney for sure was late to get there and couldn't take away the passing angle into the middle. You could argue that at that point, the midfielder should just recognize that the pressure's not on anymore. Let's reset, get our shape back. We didn't. We all committed late poorly. And that's how you end up with Ricardo Pepe chasing an attacker down towards his own box. Yeah, it could have been a more dangerous moment against a better team for sure.

41st minute, we get that curler from Jamal Lowe. It's a pretty good chance. That starts with kind of a weird sequence in the center circle. a ball comes to Miles Robinson and he heads it, but rather than heading it sort of far forward, he just hits a bullet header right off of Tyler, Tyler Adams chest, and it bounces to a Jamaican player,

I forget which one. And then, you know, the ball gets circulated out to low on the right side, and he cuts in on his left foot with Miles Robinson marking him and has a shot. I don't know if it was going on frame, but Turner had it covered. Of course.

Of course he did. that was a tough one it was so Adams then is tracking the runner through the box right and that's how Miles Robinson doesn't have any help good movement from Jamaica that's a good attacking pattern there for them once they had their sort of attacking moment they didn't have many but yeah and it's tough to put that on Miles to say he can't allow that shot it's really hard 1B1 to simply not allow a shot

we've seen Miles do that quite a bit so this is one of the few times now that we've seen him not get the execution, not to sort of get the outcome that he wants. Maybe he was playing money ball and he just thought, well, Lowe's right-footed. I'll let him have this left-footed curler. I mean, it definitely worked out. I mean, Turner had it 100% covered. All right. Next item.

42nd minute, Musa gets a ball over the top from West McKinney and tries to bring it down with his chest and gets the ball just gets shepherded out of bounds. by Damian Lowe. I noticed it because, you know, a slightly better touch, first touch, which would have been extremely difficult from Moussa. You know, we have a decent scoring chance there. And also, Moussa fouls Damian Lowe as they're going out of bounds and it's just so helpful. So maybe he's going to rise in the helpfulness rankings.

He's so helpful to like to check on Lowe, try to make sure he's okay. And all the Jamaican, those teammates like Blake were like, it's okay, Eunice, you know. got it from here. And I just thought that was worth noting. And he turned out he was not hurt. He was sort of acting like he was more hurt than he was, I think. All right. I don't know.

Did you give the location of this? This was Musa's touch with his chest, like going into the box in behind. So he actually had position on everyone going in. And was it the ball from Tyler Adams or was it McKinney? I thought it was McKinney, but it might have been Adams. You're probably right. It was probably McKinney. But yeah, it was notable, again, just for that burst from midfield.

And that's a tough ball to manage and deal with. but it's another avenue. It's another opportunity, another angle we can get in on goal from, or to threaten from. So, again, a lot of positives, even though the end product in the first half wasn't really there. We didn't get a lot of shots, right? No, I don't think we had any shots on goal in the first half. There you go. I wasn't following sort of the noise as the game was happening.

Were you following it? Was it getting pretty, like, frustrated? Because, I mean, again, maybe I'm the contrarian here, but I was like, this is a a fun half. This is, we're getting there. We're trying to do some things. I had failing in town last night and I missed the first 20 minutes live. And then I checked in, I checked in on the Discord. And Discord was pretty calm, I thought. Twitter was not as calm, I don't think. I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm kind of curious what the vibe was. If it matched what I was feeling or if it was sort of getting like dreary. It can get dreary when you don't score and

there's a lot on the line. It was definitely. more negative than I feel like I would be, I was, you know, watching the game all the way through carefully and pausing and rewinding this morning. And I think that's just how it is, you know. The attentions are high in the moment and negativity comes quickly. That's fair. All right. All right. What happened next? We're getting close to the positive stuff. We are. At 45th minute, Nicholson nearly scores. This was the scariest one of the, the half for me on a glancing header free at the near post. I can't remember if it was a corner kick.

It was. It was a corner. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was. It was a corner from Bobby Reed, a very good ball. I don't know if we were a zonal marking or what, but he was free and he missed the goal by, you know, a yard or two.

Had Turner beat had he been able to put it on frame, I think. Yeah, he, it looked like he was almost like sandwich between McKinney and Zimmerman, space-wise, but there was a gap between both of them. I don't know. I couldn't tell if he got a little push on McKinney, but McKinney basically didn't go up. The other thing is, is Nicholson just a big guy? He is pretty big, I think. I think he's 6-1-6-2.

Okay. Because, yeah, there was no, I don't know if McKinney would have gotten it anyway, just from the trajectory of the ball. It was just a ball that was hit right on a trajectory that's going to go to Nicholson's head. So I don't think there was anything Zimmerman could have done to, like, get there. He just didn't have the right path to the ball. And so you just are like, at that point,

If the guy scores, you just have to tip your hat a little bit, because it's still really difficult to score. We kind of just, I guess you could say we got away with it. Yeah. Remind me a little bit of that, Rafa Marquez's goal in the qualifier in 2017. It was 2016, I mean, the one in Columbus. Remember that? Of course.

Yeah. It was like an unstoppable. What are you going to do, you know? If you get a perfect ball at the near post, I don't know how you I mean don't get me wrong I want a guy I want a guy leaning into Nicholson

not just like going up right behind him or right in front of him I want somebody disrupting his jump you got to disrupt the jump so if we need to fix our zonal marking or if we need to go to man to man or whatever but can't just let the guy even on a perfect trajectory

you still got to disrupt the guy so we have to think about something else work on his balance etc so the half comes and goes no changes for either side. And 47th minute we get, I thought,

decent effort from Pepey to win the ball at the half. And I think it's, I can't remember which midfielder it was that played it out wide to Robinson. Robinson gets in to, you know, gets down the line and plays a good cross, a firm cross to Areola's feet or more like

Ariel's waist. And he just, he doesn't really even make an effort. to kind of do something with it. And on the replay, I thought, I mean, that was a really tough ball to handle. I'm not like dogging on Ariola for that. But on the replay, you can see that Pepe is behind Ariola and he could have dummied it.

And that might have resulted in a chance. He did the little bit where he like brought his heel up, right, behind him and just kind of gave a little flick out of bounds. Yep. All right. Yep. Yeah, it's tough. You're improvising at that point.

And Ariola is probably not going to be like the best. at improvising with that kind of a technique. Right. He's improvised adjacent. 40th minute from the department of nitpicking, I would say I need Adams to be a little braver on the half turn in our half, in our half to build up.

I thought there were a few times where he could have turned into space. We've definitely criticized Jackson Ewell for this and other players. Adams, I think Adams, slightly uncomfortable in that role still, I would say, even though I don't have much to criticize about his game. Okay, Greg's just going to let me let that hang there.

All right, let's go to the goal. 49th minute. Matt Turner rolls it out wide for Dest, and he dribbles 20 yards. You mentioned this earlier. He dribbles 20 yards pretty uncontested and then taps it inside to Musa in the right channel who dribbles another, let's say, 30 yards.

straightforward and flips it wide to Dest outside of the outside of the boot and then Dest takes a just crosses it first time puts a dime right on Pepe's head maybe a little behind him but that was the window that he had to play it in to and it's just such a good header

it's leaning away from the goal I think it's a it's quite a good finish and he directs it down and into the corner Andre Blake has no chance I'm pleased what do you what do you have to say about the goal I loved it.

And I think, again, this goes back to if the buzzword is verticality, some of the verticality is dictated by the opponent, right? This goal doesn't exist against Canada because Canada doesn't give us this much space to be vertical into. We get the ball from Turner out to Dest, and again, Dest is uncontested running 30 yards forward. And it's not like he's uncontested because the block is sitting so deep

and he just gets to run 30 yards. He's uncontested because there are four Canada players already behind him when Turner rolls him the ball. He hits a no pressure pass to Musa who's under no pressure. It's not like a great split or anything. And Musa receives the ball already behind the entire Canada midfield. So it's like by doing no real like work of our own, other than going quickly from Turner to Deaths, which is great.

It's not like we just sat on it and said, all right, let's get our shape and let's build. So that's good. If you want to say the quick get into the attack stuff, that's fantastic. But this is just what, this is sort of just taking what Jamaica has. given us here where by doing nothing special, we suddenly have Musa running at the Canada back line, unopposed. So this is awesome, and it's awesome that Musa is the guy doing this, because I think we all agree this is one of his strengths to just drive the ball forward. No one from Canada is going to

catch him and little brother him. We know that. So he just does this. And then again, you see sort of the shambolicness of the shambolity, the shambolity of Jamaica's defense because we slide the ball out to Dest and at this point Jamaica like their rotations are also terrible so they have four guys shifted out to Serginio Dest and I know you're saying Desk put the ball in the window it needed to be for Pepey but standing

right next to Pepe is a wide open Paula Aureola and standing right next to Paul Ariola I think is a wide open Musa who continued his run so we have three guys in the middle of the box between the penalty marker and the six yard line all wide open and Jamaica is just an absolute mess so it's

it's good we punish them and punishing weak teams is really important qualifying. That's how we get through things. But it's just like we're punishing Jamaica for what they're giving us. And I really enjoyed it. And it was awesome that it was peppy scoring the goal. It's awesome that we have an 18 year. I mean, everyone's talking about the 18 year old, putting a ball out to a 20 year old who puts it in for another 18 year old to finish.

It's wild. Pretty nice. Yeah. I guess I think like even though Musa was running unopposed at the back line, he's still, has, I don't know how many defenders were in the box at that time, at that moment, but it was quite a few. It wasn't like, it wasn't

like a jail break, you know. There was still a lot of Jamaican defenders packed into the penalty area. And then, we've crossed the ball a lot of times over the last few months and rarely gotten a goal from it, you know? I mean, I guess we

got one in Honduras, the winner from Pepe, but it's still not a super hyper percentage, you know, desk crossing it there is not a super high percentage goal scoring opportunity. So it's not, it's still had to go right. Of course, of course. Go ahead. No, the execution is there.

And this is where it's like not all crosses are created equal. And we talked about it with the Bello mistake against Honduras. Like that situation that Honduras is in is nowhere near as dangerous if Bellow's tight on his man. Once you're not tight on the guy and he has all the time to choose I was going to finish, again, still a great finish from Pepe, of course. Don't take that away from him. But being able to contort your body the way you want to with no worries at all about where the defenders are or who's going to run into you. It just makes such a huge difference to be free to finish the way you want.

Yeah, that's true. And he was sort of being marked by, I think it was Mariapa, and Mariapa just let him go. And he slid in between Mariapa and Lowe and neither really picked him up. Um, all right, anything else on the goal? No, it just felt like it felt like it was coming. Even though we hadn't had any shots, uh, it just, it felt like we were, uh, getting more and more joy just playing the way we wanted to against Jamaica. So 52nd minute, we get another Musa gallop down the right channel.

This time he takes it all the way into the box and tries to square it into the six for Aronson, but it's cut out. Um, the game's opening up a little bit. Uh, 56 minute. This is, I think, an example of what you were talking about earlier where we didn't make that final pass. Aaron, I'm sorry, Robinson cuts, sort of slashes in from the left wing

and plays it to Pepe's feet at the top of the box, which is an example of Pepe coming back to the ball, you know, being sort of a target for a pass. I'm calling it a backboard, and I'm hoping that sticks. He comes to backboard. He shows his hips to the ball, his body squared up to the ball, and he comes to get it from Robinson. It'll stick.

It'll stick, I'm sure. And then Pepey turns and has a shot, which is a weak shot. It's not a very good shot. And the thing is that Musa is arriving on his right, wide open, as Dest sort of makes a run in front of him, in front of Pepe, that is. And I think he should have passed it to Musa. I did write this timeline on him before.

I saw what you said in the Discord of a few minutes ago about it. But it sounds like you agree. Oh, yeah, 100%. On a good surface, I feel like you should make this extra pass. Yeah, I just want to keep hammering on that movement from Pepe because I think that's so important. It's definitely what we were missing in that Canada game is he didn't just keep his hips facing the ball waiting for Robinson to put a ball in. He came to the ball and went and got it. And we still had verticality because while he's doing that,

Paul Areola then races behind him. And Paul Areola racing behind him forces the other Jamaica player to go with him. And that's how you have this now wide open channel for Musa to arrive from deeper. And if Pepe has that vision and makes that decision, then he can just slide it into Musa's path. And Musa has eyes on the goal. He can run onto a ball and take a shot from 16 yards out and pick his place. And I had this down as one of my misses. And I call it like a promising miss.

We did all this. We created this open man, Musa arriving in the box. And that's just the next step for me. The next step is now as a team watching this video and being like, hey, we have this guy in this situation. We find him. And this is how you get, this is how you pad your XG out. I feel like, I feel like Arial also made a similar run on the goal, the first, the first goal,

didn't he? I'll have to double check that now. Yeah. I think people were talking about that. But since, since we're in the 50th minute, like there are. there were a bunch of these. So we had, we had one where Aronson came back and was a great little piston or a good backboard to come get the ball rather than going vertical. And he gets it and he cuts in. And he actually had Anthony Robinson now running free into the box into that man's city zone.

And he missed him there. We had another one in the 56 minute. Oh, that's the one Pappy Mrs. Musa. In the 60th minute, Aronson misses Musa at the top of the box. Like we just had so many times where we did have a free man. And I'm not really even saying this critically. Like, I think it's awesome that we are doing this consistently, creating this free man in the box, I think improving our decisions in the last 22 yards is just going to be the next step. I'm hoping. Yeah. Yeah. And we can, you know, it would be nice to beat everybody five to zero, but it's not going to happen, you know. We'll get closer to it if we can hit these extra final passes in the last 22 yards, quite honestly. Yeah. There were a couple of them in the 71st minute, too.

Wea and Ariel both missed Anthony Robinson running in, basically like racing in free. So there's going to be some good video on that too. We'll have to see if it translates to Panama Way and Costa Rica in a bunker, if Costa Rica bunker. But against the team that wants to open up, we're going to be cooking. Yeah. Panama Way on Sunday, and just as a programming note, Panama Way on Sunday and then Costa Rica on Wednesday in Columbus.

It's 57 minute real quick. Desd draws a foul at the top of the box as he's just kind of sauceing his way down the field, feeling it. His ensuing free kick is just over the bar. Very tough to get that on frame from that distance. I mean, very tough to get it up and over the wall and then back down.

And since we're talking about sauce, yeah, the free kicks are tough there, of course. Since we're talking about sauce, though, like I feel like the players had the same feeling that I did watching, like, we are good, we are doing this because Dest was getting saucy, Musa was getting saucy. Anthony Robinson was like

toying with guys right in front of Matt Turner. Like it didn't matter. It was just this confidence of we're good. We have guys moving in a good spots. I can do this and still trust that I can move the ball to somebody else. It felt like we were almost good. You know, like we did that. And then it plays one time we played it to Tyler Adams.

This was after the second goal. One time played it to Tyler Adams. He tried to hit the sort of casual lofted switch out to the sideline. and it was cut out by a Jamaican midfield. I mean, it seems like there were, I know what you're talking about. There were several moments where if you could even hear the crowd, I was impressed with the intelligence of the crowd in Austin, actually.

Like, you could even hear the crowd appreciating those little moments of almost allaying Jamaica late in the game, but then we couldn't ever quite close the deal. And that's, so maybe if you're big ask of the USMNT over the next. few months is to get better in the last 22 yards. Mine is for them to get better at closing the deal on the moments of allaying late in a game when we're up by a couple goals. All right, but can we agree that was a solid four-cylinder performance at worst? Yeah.

How many cylinders? How many cylinders do you give them here? Well, does an engine work when only three cylinders are? I wasn't sure. That's why I jumped to four. I do wonder if a three-cylinder engine is a functional engine. but yeah I'll give it four cylinders yep yep yep let's not let's not get picky here bells so then I just thought right after that after that desk free kick I was like man we just

have so much better players than we did four years ago this is really fun 60th minute good ball across the top of the box from peppy to ariola and then we get a sort of classic danger adjacent touch from Paul, you know, trying to receive that one. And that's going to make the ariola critics roll their eyes a little bit. And it's, I mean, I'll be honest, I was like, oh, come on, Paul. Because that's what I say when I watch soccer games. Oh, Paul. Powell.

But, you know, it's one of those things where I think we know what areola's limitations are. And he's not going to consistently wow us with his technique in those tight spaces. So you have to sort of just say, okay, well, what was he asked to do that he is good at? And did he do those things? And I think the answer is mostly yes. The other thing is, again, like other guys will give a pass to for mistakes. Like Brendan Aronson driled the ball directly out of bounds in the box in the first half. And we're not rolling our eyes at that because we're like, oh, but he's really exciting when he does the things that he's good at.

So I'm just saying sort of give Paul the same grace that you'd give someone else, even knowing that his limitations are going to be. More limiting. Right. And I think, you know, Vince, we were talking about this this morning, but Vince on the Discord says he's always said that Aronson is a rich man's Ariola. And my thought is he's like a slightly upper middle class man's Ariola. You know, maybe like bordering on Nouveau-Rish man's Ariel. Because it's true.

Like Arielsen and Arieola, to me, they look very similar on the field. And, you know, Aronson got the assist on the second goal, which we'll get to. But that's a pass that Arieola makes. He can make that pass. We've seen him make that pass to Pepe. You're shaking your head. You're questioning the veracity of that statement. Well, like, I do think that, so when I call Arieola danger, Jason, I think I've explained this a bunch of times now.

It's not because I don't think he's going to finish the chance that he has. I think it's because when he gets himself into situations that feel like they should immediately become dangerous, they don't. And he had some of those. So, I mean, the one we just talked about at the top of the box is one that like, oh, he got it in a great spot. He did well to get in that spot, but you just don't think he's going to turn it into anything. In the first half, he had a crossing opportunity that I think he hit out of bounds for a goal kick. That's what came to mind when you were talking about him making that pass. And that's why I was chuckling.

Okay, okay. Yeah, I mean, I'll grant that Aronson is closer to, being actually dangerous than Ariel is. Definitely. I don't think there's any doubt about that. So 60th, yeah, we just mentioned that. Statistically, Aronson's going to be coming up on like the most dangerous U.S. men's national team player ever.

If he's not already. I mean, he's short sample size, but I have a feeling he's like putting Donovan to shame in his limited caps and he's been doing it in World Cup qualifiers. for a significant number of those caps. Okay, so nobody time-stamped this discussion. And let's just assume that it's going to continue over his entire career. I just think this idea that they're totally different players is not appropriate.

It's at this point. Like, Ariel played that pass that he played into Aronson when about the yellow card. It was a perfect pass. And I will stand by this take that Aronson took the wrong approach angle. It was a cowardly approach angle. And that is what allowed Lowe to come in and crunch him. I'll agree with that, I guess. Okay.

So that's a danger adjacent approach angle. On we go. And then we have Erringson going for that 20-yard. Bangor again. Right after the- That's the one where he could have shifted it over to Musa because Jamaica had totally rotated over. Again, because of the excellent, like, passing,

sequences that we'd had over there. Kind of. This, I think, was kind of a little scrappier of a sequence. But we'd still drawn Jamaica all the way over there. Musa, not sitting deep as a midfielder, was like at the top of the box, wanted that ball just shifted over to his feet. And that's again where, like, Musa's not necessarily going to score, even if the ball shifts over to him.

But we have Jamaica so unbalanced that the dominoes are tipping over, and you essentially just trust that something very good is likely to develop. The dominoes are tottering at that point. 61st minute junior Flamming's comes on for Jamal Lowe, Kamar Roof for Tyreek McGee, which reminds me, you know, Jamaica, what is, what's next for them?

Is, is Michaela Antonio even going to come to the next camp if, like, they, if they don't get any points from this window? It's bordering on hopeless, like, the qualifying campaign. Yeah, and I'm actually surprised that they didn't wrote, I guess I shouldn't say surprise. I was very interested to see whether they would pre-rotate everyone and essentially concede this game. The same way I was wondering if Canada would do that against Mexico.

Obviously, Canada went the hard man's route and did it. But yeah, I don't necessarily know why Jamaica went for the points here. So they kind of ran some guys out. We'll see how those guys now fare in their next two games in this window. But I feel like they are in a real tough spot. Yeah, me too. Let's talk a little bit about Mexico, Canada, before we wrap up here. But 62nd minute, we get this fantastic team goal, I think, from the U.S.

Right after those subs come on for Jamaica, it's an 11-pass sequence. At least it's 11 passes from when the replays on the broadcast stop, and we go back to the live action. We were kind of probing down the left flank from McKinney to Aronson. we work it back to Miles Robinson who switches it for Dest and the pass is a little sloppy forces Desk to make a pretty acrobatic save to keep it in bounds

with a nice touch with the outside of his right boot and that kind of draws a lot of the defensive Jamaican momentum over toward Desk's side of the field and he plays it back to Musa in the middle of the field Musa and Adams Musa plays it to Adams and Adams hits a sort of a slicing pass down the wing to Robinson

who plays it quickly in behind for Aronson. And it's just Aronson and Pepe basically, you know, doing a shooting drill at that point. And Aronson plays across for Pepey. He side-foots it in just under, just under Andre Blake's outstretched arm, 2-0 USA. And the three points are pretty much assured at that point, I would say.

Yep. And the same kind of thing here is that it's just what, Jamaica is giving us. And don't get me wrong, we had to do well to take this. Dest's touch is excellent to even keep the play alive. Fires a ball into Musa in the middle of the field so he's got to trust that Musa can deal with that, which Musa does comfortably. A great ball from Adams to Anthony Robinson. But that all this happens in Jamaica have like six or seven guys on our side of the field. It's at least six. I'm watching it right now. It's six guys on our side of midfield. And so you can just think back about like that Canada block. And I feel like there was no time in the game, even when they were scoring their goal, that Canada, had six guys on our half of the field. And this, again, isn't meant to be a full wet blanket.

Like, you can only pass the test that's in front of you, and we did it here. We just have to say, like, when Burrhaler saying, I want to be more vertical like we were in the second half against Honduras, that's great. And we did it in this game. But we can't just do this. We can't just decide to do this if a team doesn't send six guys into your half of the field. Like, we'll have to see if there are other ways that we can break teams down.

in the meantime, let's celebrate the hell out of what went on in this play. Verticality out, backboards in. That's what I'm saying. It's both. You have to have both. You have to have some pistoning. Pistening. And then Zardis and Wea pop up off the bench.

So it looks like Burhalter's thinking, well, we got to get Ricardo ready for Panama City. I could be wrong about that, but that was my first thought. And we had a little bit of allaying. And Wea comes on and he starts cooking. Sevent second minute, good run from him, sort of slashing him from the left wing again. It gives it to Areola who sort of burrows off to his left and takes a decent left-footed shot from the top of the box.

Zaris is there for the potential spill, but Andre Blake covers it up. And then again, go ahead. That sequence, sorry, that sequence is where both guys miss Anthony Robinson him pretty badly. Oh, really? I didn't. I missed him too.

But it's exactly like, this is another one of those situations. I've got this one up watching right now too, where Tim Wea doesn't run vertically here. He comes back and receives the ball, I think, from a centerback. I think it's Miles Robinson playing into him.

But that's, again, it's that piss me. And then Robinson races vertically beyond him. So again, vertical movement burst from deep positions to open things up. But instead of hitting Robinson away, I just basically like draws three guys and beats all of them because Wea is not a guy

who's going to get little brothered. He looked awful, awful bright, awful bright, I thought. I guess game state has to be considered in that assessment. Seventy-minute, we get Shackmore for Sergenio Dest, who looked a little gimpy. I'm not sure what the latest is on the, have you heard anything?

No, nothing yet. And then Luca Delatore for Musa, so it was a double substitution. We should mention, If Dest is in any way compromised, fitness-wise, that puts us in a bit of a tight spot depending on either what positional player is unvaccinated going into Panama and whether or not Antin Robinson is going to be allowed to travel to Panama. Yeah. Well, get ready for Tyler Adams at right back. No, hopefully not.

78th minute McKinney plays it in behind for Wea. So that pass into the left channel or the right channel, but it seemed like a lot more it happened on the left side for the player running in behind was on continually in this game. So this is another example. Great first touch from Wea to eliminate his guy, and then he just absolutely fizzes a ball across the top of the six. I think the speed of the surface kind of takes his artist by surprise,

and he can't quite get to it. Now, also don't hear what I'm not saying, but that sequence started with Luca Deletori intercepting a pass and winning the ball. So just a note. Not bad, not bad. You left out Robinson, right? Or is that coming up? Now you got it right here. It's the next guy.

The one where he kind of fires at Top Binns from a triangle. It was just Robinson clowning a guy again. I'm taking this one since I'm watching it right now. Go for that. ball out and once again Tim Wea gets to it doesn't allow himself to be little brother keeps it alive to Robinson out on the left flank

Robinson clowns the guy again races in has had enough of crossing at this point just decides he's going to fire in a shot and Andre Blake does well to bat it over the bar it looked like it was on frame to me did it do you? I thought so yeah I thought it was a decent attempt to surprise him and again

in this case if he had tried to pick out a cross he could have done it but this is one where both guys it's Zardas and Ariola are the only two guys in the box, and they're both being marked touch tight by guys. So there isn't a lot of spot, there isn't a lot of like a margin for error on any cross to score.

So go for it, Anthony. Sure. Yeah, definitely. 83rd minute, Acosta comes on for Adams, so getting him a little bit of rest. And then we get Zardis header in the 84th minute on a corner from Areola. Pretty good corner, pretty decent header,

down just a little, just a little too close to Andre Blake. And then Wea and Acosta combined down the left wing in the 85th minute. And Wea sort of gives it to Acosta circling around the end there. And Acosta plays a ball at the near post. It almost spills over as Zardis and Blake meet right outside of the goal mouth. But Blake snatches it back right off of the line. and then

go ahead. I just have to I just have to jump on again to just compliment Tim Wea and what he brings like total control of the situation here as the ball gets fed to him and he's approaching the box at the corner of the box like has two guys that he's just sort of like pulling strings

on defenders like watching how they tiptoe watching how they shift their weight and then perfectly releases Kellan Acosta with a nice little pirouet so again when we talk about subs being solutions I think we're getting closer and closer to where it's like that's going to be the case.

And this is again, without Poulosick and Raina, and we're bringing on Tim Wea, who just looked untouchable. You could certainly make the case that maybe Tim Wea should have been in the 11 to begin with if this is a level. But it definitely shows that if we have Poole Sick and Raina back and we're bringing Tim Wea in off the bench against tired legs,

it's going to be a handful. Yeah. As MCB says, would you say Tim Wea is a rich man's Paul Ariola? I think I did. I think at some point I put the wingers in categories and I was like, yeah, Tim Wea is like a way, way better ariola. A fabulously wealthy man's ariola. Because he does all the defensive work too.

Like he's a tireless defender. He covers a ton of ground. And again, he will he will not guys over. Yeah. Yeah. So are you critical of the fact that Areola started? over um way then

or uh it's hard to be because retroactively i'd say no if the next game if waya starts the next two then he got this game off because again jamaica are pretty bad and if burr halter sort of correctly assessed how bad jamaica was and sort of saved his more talented players for the two tougher games then no then it's exactly what i want to have happen in these kind of three game windows well i um let me ask another question I'm opening myself up to derision here, but is it possible that if Pulisic were in this game,

we wouldn't have had this sort of like comforting, rhythmic, attacking quality to our game? So it definitely is possible, but I want to really push back on it because, you know, a lot of, I think a lot of the talk is like usually in regards to Aronson versus Pulisick in these situations. like Aronson has been more dangerous. But remember, Aronson wasn't making us any better in our possession against Canada either. He was involved very much in the transition and in the, he scores the goal. But as far as like us team-wide moving and passing and looking connected, that was, I still think that is a team-wide thing.

And if you put Pulisic in this game where we're truly, obviously, making attempts to improve that passing and movement and coordination, then I definitely think that Poulosick stands to benefit as well and can obviously offer us quite a bit of benefit. Yeah. The other thing that Aronson does, I mean, it's related to transition is Aronson, you know, presses the hell out of the other team. Poolsook doesn't do that. Poulzick doesn't play defense.

I'd probably agree with that, like to the extent that Aronson does or that way it does or probably even that Ariola does. But I wouldn't say that Poulosick is strictly an absurd. server when we don't have the ball. Okay. Well, I can agree with that. 92nd minute, we get, this is my final item, we get that Zardis glancing header on a right-footed cross from Robinson. So Robinson cut in on his right foot from the end line and then played a ball at Zardis.

This is a good, very, very similar to Shamar Nicholson's chance earlier in the game. Flash is just wide, but a good, a good chance for Zardis. So did I see you say he got, he racked up 0.76 XG? by one measurement? So I saw that and he played what, 25 minutes, but now I have to hedge on that a little bit too because, you know, the two XG numbers that came out, Paul Carr,

and then I saw another one were like half a goal apart and you don't usually see that big of a discrepancy. And then I think they both said, no, we're pulling from the same spot and they've adjusted between the two releases, they adjusted it, I think to the lower number. So I think it was, there was a, I think Zardez might have been getting more XG

in that, step, then they actually ended up finally giving it. But either way, I mean, I think even by the eye test, you can say, Zardaz got into some really good spots. I was saying this not, and again, this isn't a criticism of Zardas. He's very good at getting into finishing spots, but it's still more of like this team-wide improvement that we saw. And creating these chances for these strikers is a big team objective.

And Zardis is doing his part. Pepe is obviously doing his part. but we don't get these if we're playing the way we did against Canada. It's not just because, oh, but the strikers making this great move. It's because of all the other factors for the 10 seconds before the goal. Okay. And we don't get them against Canada because Canada's much, much better than Jamaica. It'll be interesting to see how we look, you know, when we...

It's so hard. You know, the game is so complicated. There's the matter of the opponent and all these other stuff. But it'll be interesting to see how we look, you know, if assuming Pulsick and Rainer are both healthy, and they're both back in the starting lineup against, I guess it'll be against Mexico in November. Because I, you know, I don't think it's impossible that, like, Pulisic is in some ways, like, holding the rest of the team back because he just, like, doesn't release the ball. Like, we've talked about this. He beats his first or second guy. and then he tries to beat the third and fourth guy too.

And is it like sort of classic selfishness in like the moral handbook of a fifth grader kind of way? I don't know. But it's, it does end up in him getting hurt. And it probably doesn't help us like put together a coherent attack. Even though he's absolutely scintillating. He's clearly the most talented player on the team. You know, Raina may have some disagreement.

there. But like, I think that's, you know, bringing that up doesn't, isn't crazy. I don't think. That's all I'm saying. It's not. I always am going to push back on this too. Part of the like pool sick, whether you want to call it selfishness or lack of vision, like vision is also a team-wide thing, which might sound a little weird, but you don't always see the player you're passing to. That's not always what vision is. Like a lot of times, the vision is actually anticipating where the guy's going to be in the future. So if you already see him, it's usually too late to hit a guy. So, so this vision that guys have is going to be like, okay, I'm going here. I can see the defender going here. It's like solving a Sudoku. So I've got this guy going here. The next guy on my team should be

arriving at this point. And when you're playing in a system that doesn't have that predictability and you don't have the familiarity with your teammates already, like you're going to miss those things. So when Pool 6 starts dribbling against Honduras so much, I feel like a lot of us because things aren't happening well. Like there isn't a lot of coordination. So he's essentially abandoning the idea of coordination. And so that's how he's going to miss some of these passes. He's going to miss the open man because he shouldn't have to even see that guy.

He should just know if this defender takes three steps this way, that opens this passing lane and Anthony Robinson should be arriving. But I don't know if he's arriving or not. And if I have to look, it's too late. So I want to at least, like I definitely want to see, I'm sure you're not saying pool sick shouldn't be called up. into these camps. But I'm interested to see just how, like, dangerous, how much danger we get to squeeze out of him when we are in, when we're moving in more coordinated fashion.

Well, then it becomes a little bit of a chicken and egg thing. Like, is he not passing the ball? Is he not passing the ball because the coordination is broken down? Or is he jumping the gun and deciding not to pass the ball when he should be giving the coordination more of a chance to work itself out? And then, you know, hastening the demise of that plan altogether. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a real feedback loop there that's kind of going on.

And again, that's why Jamaica was the perfect opponent to play at home after the last window we had, where the emphasis, again, regardless of the fact that everyone's talking about verticality, there was obviously more emphasis on coming back to play with the ball as well. And that's where we can get these coordinated movements. That's where we can start to see. And they don't have to be like super rehearsed. A lot of these are common patterns that you just get because you're smart, good soccer players. and so if we can start to see more of these things happening more frequently,

Poole's sick, I think will fit in pretty seamlessly. I don't think he's going to come in and suddenly like wreck everything because he's going to do like head down dribbling nonstop. Yeah. I think you're probably right about that, Greg. Well, I was optimistic, again, I was optimistic that we could pull some of this coordinated play off. I still feel like we can improve even more.

Well, there's some other, some sort of individual things. things to be excited about. I know we've sort of mentioned them at least in passing, but I thought Desk looked very good. You said that earlier. Especially defensively. Especially defensively.

Robinson had a little bit of a rough start. You know, had a couple of sloppy moments, but he definitely grew into the game and continues to be Mr. Leftback for the national team. What else? McKinney and Adams were solid.

Nothing to complain about, really, I don't think. Not much to complain about. No, we get to build our whole platform around what they can do and the ground they can cover and the composure they give us on the ball when it comes to them. Whether any of them are like ever going to be Seth Fabry has to like they all, they both are exceedingly competent when the balls at their feet. Yeah. Moose's burst. Moose's verticality. He does seem like a really, really important player for this team.

and of course Ricardo Pepe I'll throw Anthony Robinson on there again as like a very strong individual performance couple that with his Honduras second half he really looks like he's enjoying himself yeah and if he played you know if he did in fact

sort of play through a little bit of injury then we're then I don't know I'm happy to kind of happy to see that in a way like he believes so much in the project and the need to qualify that he's like screw it I'm gonna play with this knee brace on. Can we talk a little bit about anything else on this on the game?

No, I think we've covered the game pretty well. I do want to talk a little bit about so like celebration. Celebration. We'll see you guys on Monday with the, you know, with the next recap. But Canada, Mexico, again, Canada goes in there, this time in the Esteka with a crowd there and plays them toe to toe. I mean, they were probably the better team in this game. I'm really impressed, man.

I mean, I know Mexico's not playing super great, but there's still Mexico. And go ahead, sorry. No, it's a really impressive thing. Like, I'm still torn like, game theory-wise of like, oh, man, psychologically, that point is obviously huge to go in there and get your result.

I don't think they've done it maybe ever. I was seeing the dates of the last time they got a result or the last time they even played a World Cup qualifier in the Azteca. But I'm still just like, but you don't need to deny Mexico points to qualify for the World Cup.

So in my head, I'm like, they got this point. If they then go to their next game and have to rotate and get a draw there instead of a win, then they lose those two points plus give a point to somebody else that they could have. So I'm still just like,

was that the right call? Yeah. Has anybody done any game theory yet? Are there any clear examples of coaches pulling off solid game theory yet in the window in a third that we've been through? Well, I don't know. Canada rotated a couple of guys against us. Yeah, that's true. Buchanan and David rotated against us.

And then Honduras rotated everyone in the first window at El Salvador. And I feel like that one could kind of be a backfired game theory because, again, they got one point at El Salvador. but maybe if they brought their whole first team, they would have taken three, and instead they played their first team against us again and lost. So they, like, gambled with their best players against us, got zero points, and only took one from El Salvador with the full backup team.

Yeah. Interesting. Well, yeah, Canada didn't do it in this game. They played their best lineup, and they, Tjambi Cannon was just electrifying, I thought, on the right wing. And Davies was, you know, Davies was Davies. they could have scored. They could have scored more.

And Mexico, it took a real moment of class from Mexico in the first half to get their goal, you know. A very nice diagonal ball, a perfect first touch, a very nice left-footed finish. So it's fun to see Jamaica. I mean, it's fun to see Canada be good at soccer.

And they were good in the Gold Cup, too, against Mexico. They were unlucky to not get a better result in that game. And they were good against us in the sense that, you know, we didn't test them as much as I wish we would have, but they were very, I would say, almost like untroubled against us. So they looked apart and, you know, it's possible if these next two match days shakeout where it could basically be the Mexico, US, Canada, like running away with it. Like Canada could be six points clear of the fourth place team by the end of this window.

Yeah. If we beat Panama, which, you know, is obviously not a foregone conclusion. And Canada beats Panama at home, then it's kind of like, it's, what is it? This is going to be like a seven point gap? We'd have an eight point lead. And, yeah, and Canada could have a six point lead. So, yeah. I mean, El Salvador, as Matt Hartman point out, El Salvador could beat Costa Rica.

And then they would be. In Costa Rica, though. Yeah, it could happen. Of course it could happen. But yeah. So far, yeah, all of the other results in this tournament so far. have almost all all benefited us as well. So it's like it does kind of feel like we're cruising a little bit.

Yeah, which is crazy considering where things were at again. I'll say it again, where things were at halftime against Honduras with us sitting on two points and down one zero. But all as well, that is starting to look like it will end well. We have a lot of good players. Yeah, we do. It's fun. Let me just put in a plug for the Patreon.

If you want to support the podcast, make it more viable long-term. Go to patreon.com backslash scuffed. It's in the show notes and support us. Thanks everybody for listening. Thank you, Greg. We'll see you. Oh, John Luca, I'm so sorry that I didn't understand. Didn't understand you are the future of America

Burrhalter needed Someone who could drop in Someone who could drop up in on the other touch line Oh, John Luca I'm so sorry that I didn't understand You are the future of America You went to Venice and A little Italian club

A little Italian club And now you're playing in the top flight Mm-hmm Playing in the top flight Now you look so good Playing against Aisi Milan In the top flight In the top flight, mm-hmm

In the top flight Mm-hmm Burhalter needed Someone who could drop in. Burrhalter needed someone who could drop a pin on the other touch line. Oh, John Luca, I'm so sorry that I didn't understand. Didn't understand you are the future of America.

In Italia, you've gotten better to be fair and my defense. Fair in my defense Fair in my defense But you will pretty Good at a lot of the same things Back in Kansas City Kansas City Oh John Luca

I'm so sorry That I didn't understand You are the future of America Thank you.