Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #208: Panama v USA recap (WCQ5)

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Fecklessness in Panama City. Full timeline and then Greg goes in on Gregg in the final 15 minutes. You won't want to miss that.support 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 were defeated 1 to 0 in Panama City last night. It was a pretty brutal night of soccer for U.S. fans. Burhalter's 11 and 5 subs managed zero shots on target and ended the game in pretty pathetic fashion, repeatedly lumping the ball forward to Walker Zimmerman, who was wandering around up front as the clock ticked down. Panama wasn't brilliant or anything, but they did deserve to win. Greg, how are you doing? Bells, I'm just really hoping that we can spend a lot of time focusing on the non-socer but soccer field antics of the end of the Panama game

because I feel like that was by far the most entertaining portion of that 97 minutes. Yeah. I heard Max, I heard Max Cros, I think I'm saying that correctly, on the first touch Twitter spaces last night talking about that. because he was at the game. And, you know, he said it was, from a, from a spectacle point of view, it was very entertaining, even if the soccer left a lot to be desired. Like you said, it was, the actual soccer was brutal.

So at the very least, we had that bit of, I'm going to call it levity. I'm sure there was some frustration for people watching at the time who were, you know, desperate for the U.S. to score a goal. But as I'm sure you will say soon, there was no goal coming for the U.S. no matter how much time was going to be on that clock. Zero goals. We could have gotten in 24 hours of stoppage time. We wouldn't have gotten a goal.

But we might have had a 5E5 game breakout on the corner of the field near Matt Turner. Yeah. That was funny. I wish the broadcast had shown more of it, honestly. I've got to give the people what they want. All right. So should we do the lineups? Let's.

Let's get in the lineups because I don't know if I'm ready to do big picture things at the moment. Greg Berthelter put started with Turner and goal, of course. and then a back line of Shackmore, Walker Zimmerman, Mark McKenzie, and George Bellow. And then Kelan Acosta at the 6, Eunice Musa and Sebastian Leggett as the 8th, Paul Ariola, Jazi's artist, and Tim Wea across the front line. Any surprises there for you? I'm going to say no. Ariola actually surprised me a little bit because he'd gone 90 minutes a few days before.

This actually lined up very closely with my mapped out. projected 11 for this Panama game. I think the only differences I had were, well, I actually had ariola because I didn't expect him to play in the first game. I had Yedlin instead of Shaq Moore and I had Weston McKenney instead of Eunice Musa

because I thought Musa would be rested, not ready to go back-to-back games. But this was what we'd mapped out before the window even started. So this isn't a lineup that I thought was going to, that I necessarily thought, couldn't handle playing Panama. But it became apparent pretty early.

that it wasn't a lineup that was going to blow anybody's doors off. Yeah, boy, that's an understatement. I mean, the, yeah, I have to admit, too, that I wasn't, like, the things that made me the most nervous about it were McKinsey, that left side of the defense, McKenzie and Bellow, and, you know, they didn't, I wouldn't say they covered themselves in glory on the night, but they didn't, they weren't, like, the problem in this game, I don't think. and I was, you know, I was ready to see Acosta, Musa, and Legette as a midfield,

but that did not, that midfield did not perform last night. And I'm very curious what your, what your thoughts on, are on why that was. Before we get to that, though, let's talk about the Panama lineup. Nine of 11 starters. Hold on, hold on, just, just because I want to really establish, did you have a problem when the lineup was announced with either the number, of rotations or just the, oh, like the balance of it or anything else? Or did you think that on paper, sure, this lineup seems like it could be okay?

I thought this lineup could get like a gold cup type victory or a draw. And I was okay. I think I was okay with the amount of rotation. I'm rethinking that now. But at the time the lineup was announced, I didn't have the wisdom to see that maybe we shouldn't have made seven changes from our lineup a few days ago. What about you? So I thought the lineup was,

I also thought the lineup was fine. And I know that people are a little bit upset about the number of changes, which, which again, I think it's totally fair to be critical of the selections and the changes. But I don't necessarily think that's a good argument to say that the changes cost us like chemistry. I just kind of wanted to point out that this is based,

like you said, you compared it to a team that could get a result in the gold cup style. this was basically the gold cup roster, right? We had, I think, eight of the 11 players here played significant minutes together in the Gold Cup with Bello and Jack Moors, the fullbacks, Walker's remember playing in the Gold Cup, Matt Turner played in the Gold Cup, Acosta and Legette were like playing almost every game in the Gold Cup, Zardez and Ariola. So this basically was a Gold Cup lineup that you just added in Tim Wea, Eunice Musa,

and then Mark McKenzie, who's all. also had extended camps with a lot of these guys before he went over to Belgium. So, like, I don't buy the chemistry issues. It shouldn't, it shouldn't be a chemistry issue where it's like, oh, they just, you know, got thrown together for the first time. Like, these guys should be able to play a recognizable game of soccer. Yeah. Yeah. But they couldn't. They couldn't do it. And I don't know exactly why not. I mean, I think a lot of people had a bad performance yesterday. So Panama had Mejia in the goal.

Michael Murillo, Murillo, Escobar, Cummings, and Davis across the back line. Christian Martinez and Anabald Godoy as the like double pivot sixes. And then Quintero, Barsenas, and Gondola, who I thought was actually quite good. across that band of three in the 4-2-3-1, and then Rolando Blackburn as the striker. I noticed that Freddie Gondola was crying when the national anthem was played at the beginning of the game.

I thought that was pretty cool, like the tears coming down his cheeks. And then he came out and played pretty well, gave Shackmore a lot of trouble. And I actually don't know what his, how many caps he has, how many World Cup qualifying games he has. This is his first start of this window.

I can say that for sure because Panama have only used, I think I have it as 15 different starters for all five of their World Cup qualifying games. They ran the same 11 out there for all three games of the first window and then only made two changes between their first game of their first game of this window in the US game. So they're basically doing the zero rotation approach and they're just trying to ride their starting 11 as far as they can as far as they can go. Yeah, and they were all the sort of buzzwords about a concaf opponent and away qualifier. They were physical. They were, they seemed like they were ready to play. And they faced an opponent that didn't seem like it was ready to play. So let's, unless you will have any big picture thoughts now, let's go to the timeline.

I think most of mine will have, we'll have some openings to discuss during the events of the match. Okay. All right. Well, in the third minute, we get a good attack up to middle from Acosta to Musa. So this is promising. You know, Acosta plays a pass straight up the gut to Musa and Musa takes a nice, deaf touch with the inside of his foot to Areola, who then dutifully swings it wide to Shaq Moore, whose ball to the middle isn't quite good enough. Which I think was a theme on the night, like our service from wide. I know you're not a big pump in the cross. from the touchline guy, but even if you are going to, like, just imagine you are going to do that,

the crosses needed to be better than they were tonight, and this was like one of the first example. It gets a little deflected, and then it spills to Ariola, and Ariola tries to have a shot, but he's just a step slow in, like, getting the shot off. No comment on that, but go on. Maybe should have taken it on the volley,

but anyway, his shot is blocked for a corner kick. The ensuing corner results in a decent header from Walker's Interim. And so I'm thinking, okay, maybe we're going to come out and play a good game of soccer today. Yeah, and I think what makes you think that, I'm sorry, what I thought when I saw that was basically because of the Musa touch. Like the Musa touch there was like, oh, that was slick.

And it got to Ariola. And Ariola's ball wasn't, he didn't just swing it wide. Like he hit this, you know, like that good looking diagonal slide rule ball. He had a big window to hit it into for more on the overlap. But absolutely. And this is something I've kind of been hammering on since way back in, way back since the Switzerland friendly is that we stop playing soccer so early in these patterns. Like we get the ball to Shaq Moore and it's like, okay, now hit the ball into the box

as hard as you can. And I just for the life of me cannot believe that that is the best approach to trying to score goals in a game of soccer. Like, all right, now we're here. We've unbalanced them and we almost immediately like surrender our advantage by just trying to smash the ball at the box and hoping good things happen. I feel like we have a talent advantage already and we've got ourselves into a very good spot continue playing soccer, continue putting pressing that advantage you've created to force Panama

into increasingly severe mistakes. But that's not really what happened. Greg Berholder said the final ball wasn't good enough. And if you think that this should be the final ball from Shaqmore right there, that he should just smash this ball into the box, then that makes sense. I just feel like, you know, if Burhalter were talking about the final ball of each possession wasn't good enough, he's right because it was always a bad turnover. But I don't think we were ever really getting to where we were in a good spot to hit that mythical final ball that leads to actual goals. Yeah, I mean, just to zero in on this play for a second, both Wea and Zardis were marked, like, tightly.

So even, I don't know where a perfect ball would have had to go for it to result in a chance. And maybe what we need from more there and what we would probably get from Sergenio Dest in that position is he would take the ball to the end line and try to cut it back or, you know, put, you know, rest the advantage and try to create something more. But yeah, more just pumped in the cross. And I don't know, even if it had been a perfect cross, I don't know where it would have ended up and whether it would have resulted in a chance, I think not.

So just agree to agree on that. But the slick buildup, the slick buildup was something. I was like, all right, that was slick. I liked that a lot. We created an opening. It's funny how much we sees on that. little moment from Musa. Like that is, that kind of moment really sticks out in a game like this.

And really for the national team in general. So I thought we were a touch slow from everyone right off the bat. I mentioned ariola being hesitant on that one shot. Wea tries to cross it a few moments later. I think we can, but his cross is blocked sort of. And I think we can get up to speed at this point. But then I start to see some systemic things in the way the midfield is playing or maybe not systemic but endemic or definitely not pandemic but in the six minute

musa does well to settle an aerial short range pass from akosta and uh and then sort of takes a touch towards the middle and finds lejette's feet in the center circle and a lot of people have highlighted this moment i tweeted about it but this is a this is a point where legett can open up with his left foot and he's got he's got a lot of options he's got bellow arriving to his left he's got he's got way up further up field to to his left moose is making a pretty determined diagonal run as soon as he plays the ball to to legett to provide another option and then of course zardis is up front and legett takes an extremely negative touch just with his left foot touches back towards his own goal and then just passes it back to mackenzie and um

this lack of courage, I guess, I'd call it, or at least this timidity was a real problem from Lajet, but from, I would say from Ariola as well. I think even it started to affect Wea a little bit. We did not press our advantage. And, you know, these advantages are small. And like in the case of this cross from more, that more hits earlier, the defense is pretty good. You know, the defense is going to be marking people. So we have to find advantages and then press them.

And we, you know, this is a good example of us not doing that. Oh, yeah, totally squandered. And I think when you were outlining LeJet's chances, I don't even know if you said, like he had, he also just had room to just literally just drive the ball up the field himself the way we saw Musa do against Jamaica. Like a pass from Moosa to LeJet there cuts out almost all of Panama's midfield. I would even say not only did he not take the right touch and open up,

like even his initial spacing and he had time to like adjust his spacing to get the nuances right he's crowding mousse a little bit and if he just drifts out towards the sideline he creates more separation between himself and these defenders and it's these little things he doesn't do them doesn't do the work early uh isn't brave enough to do the work once he gets the ball and so he just does the extremely conservative approach which squanders this advantage and at this point i would totally agree i feel like uh going back to the gold cup like lejet has a like a bad case of the yips and it's almost like uh i mean he's he's gotten almost like the ewells going on where it's i mean on this one is visible from space like you have to know that your job here is to advance the ball up field if you're not going to do it you can't be an eight in this system like he can't we we've both defended we've both defended legit a lot over the last two or three years i feel like because i thought you know two years ago he would have he would have taken that ball he would have dribbled forward. He would have found, he would have done something positive. And it seems like that Sebastian Leggett is gone. I don't know if he's just washed or burned

out or I don't know. And we've talked about this to going to the Gold Cup was he has looked a lot better or he's looked marginally better when he isn't this guy who has to drive the game forward, when he's already set up higher in the field. I think friggingus on the discord, for anyone who's on the discord knows probably who I'm talking about, made the point that Liddiq. Jet is way more useful in a game where we are going to control the ball farther up the field, and he's just sort of one of the cogs in the rotation around the edge of the box. And maybe that's just like a luxury to even plan to have those situations against non-Jamaica teams in this campaign. But yeah, at this point, like to be the guy who needs to literally drive the game from the defensive middle third to the attacking third,

Legette was not up for it yesterday. It was very Olympic qualifying-ish. Yeah, okay. There's not going to be a lot of, I feel like there's not going to be a lot of these events on the chronology that end with a positive spin. No, I mean, nothing ends with a positive spin. We generated zero shots on target.

And it's not like Panama was in a low block either. I don't, I mean, there were points in the game where they were packed in, but this was an open soccer game, I think, by and large. wouldn't you agree? Yeah, and I also want to use this opening to say, you know, when we talk about Concaf Away, there's usually a lot of talk about fields and people talk about cow pastures, and I already think that's overblown.

But Panama's field seemed fine. Like, there was no issues it seemed like with people's touch bobbling away from them other than poor first touches. But you could basically trust the field. You could make the pass that you wanted to make and expect that it would go where it should go, and the guy on the receiving end could, you know, play without having to be. to stare the ball into his foot to make sure it didn't bobble at the last second. So there were no surface issues.

Panama was moving the ball around just fine. We were once we actually would settle it in an attempt to pass. It was just so, it was just so disjointed. Seventh minute, McKenzie and Zimmerman are both weirdly high up on a throw-in. They kind of just get lost out on their left sideline just inside Panama's half. And they both get beat on a little header combination. off that throw-in, which results in a pretty decent 2V2 break for Panama with both of our centerbacks chasing. But Acosta and Moore do well to cover it up. Eighth minute, good little spell of possession

and then a speculative cross from the right from Panama. It's covered by Turner. So, I mean, Panama's at least, I don't know if they're knocking on the door, but their door knocking adjacent, I guess you could say. There was, they didn't do much. That's the thing. It's easy to, you know, think about how bad we were and just also sort of give Panama like more credit than they deserve. And I don't mean like for playing well. I just mean for being more dangerous because we were so bad. I think the same thing happened in the first half against Honduras.

We started to think of, you know, everyone knows how bad that game was or that half was. But Honduras didn't do anything particularly dangerous outside of their goal. And it was kind of the same for Panama. there wasn't a lot outside of their three corner kicks that were all of like shots on target in the game. They didn't do a lot that threatened us all that much. I agree. I mean, they did have a couple of moments that were more dangerous than anything we put together. But two of them were probably like Matt Turner gifts.

I think he had a ball. This might be the one you're talking about where he tried to float a ball out to Bello that missed and came right back at us. And then he had another clearance. You'll get to him on the chronology. was the one that results in that really good save he makes with his, on that left-footed curler from, I think it was from Barsanis. All right.

So, yeah, in this case, Turner's distribution is pretty bad in the ensuing buildup, but it doesn't result in much for Panama. Ninth minute, Mousa gets wrecked, dribbling across Panama's half. He gets all the way, the ball comes back all the way down to our end line. I just noticed, I mean, this was a very poor giveaway. It's the kind of thing that happens early in a game and sort of sets the narrative and the way the fans think about a performance.

And Musa had two bad giveaways that we'll get to the other one shortly. This one was particularly bad, but it's also true that at least it looked to me like he had five teammates who were basically doing nothing off of the ball as he's dribbling across the field. I don't know if they were thinking, okay, now our good young player from Europe

is going to do something, so we'll just stand here and watch him or what. But anyway, that happened in the ninth minute. No, I'll talk about this with Adams too. Or I think Adams will fall in the same category when we get to him in the second half. So you had legit, and I would also argue a cost of being particularly like unambitious with the ball. And then what it felt like with Musa and then eventually Adams was they were trying to do way too much with the ball, almost like, oh, I'll just do it all myself.

Like I'll dribble until I beat enough guys that we have a chance to do something. and he did it a couple of times and there were turnovers. I think on average, though, that equals good midfield play, the exact right amount of ambition between our midfielders. So I'm surprised a little bit

that we didn't get more from it. What do you mean on average? That means, like if you average out Moose's ambition and the lack of ambition from Acosta and Legat, then that's the right amount of ambition. That's the exact right amount of ambition for our entire midfielder. In the wrong ways, perhaps. 10th minute, more gets beaten,

by Gondola and Eric Davis a good desperation defense from Acosta to stop a Cantero shot at the top of the box after Davis whips a ball

into zone 14 that's zone 14 go ahead No go on go on finish your zone 14 14 I use that term a lot that is the that is the box right in front of the box

a dangerous area all right yeah if you picture where the arc is around the 18 yard box that's that space I got to jump on Musa a little bit on this one too This was the first thing I noticed where I was like Maybe Musa is still a little bit gassed from three days ago

Because I feel like he's actually the guy who got beat here So our press is actually set up And it was the same 433 press we've been running They hit that switch They hit the ball out to the left side And then their left side of defender Hits it out towards Shaq Moore's man And Shaq Moore is doing it right

He arrives right as the ball does And kind of like clocks his man and was lucky not to get a yellow on the play. But Musa lost his guy, and it's Musa's guy that runs free behind him. So Musa has a lot of ground to cover as that ball moves from right to left, and he has to get there. And then he basically fell asleep as the ball got to Moore's man and allowed his midfielder to race behind him

without either tracking him or grabbing his shirt or whatever to take him off of his run. So this one was actually probably on Musa for me, for alertness and energy. And I think it's worth pointing out. Eric Davis was, he was a, I don't know if he was a problem in possession so much, but that left foot of his was a problem on set pieces and pretty, you know, just something worth noting. 11th minute, pretty sad sequence where Wea wins the ball just inside our half and drives forward a couple yards before offloading it to Musa on the sideline.

And then Musa's passed to Legette in the middle is behind him. And then Legat, of course, plays it backward to Acosta. And then Acosta plays just a casual one touch left-footed pass to Musa that is cut out. It could have been cut out by two different Panama players, and it was cut out by one of them easily, and we lose possession. And I thought it actually looked to me like everybody was not great in that sequence. Like, Waya has, like, the whole field to dribble into, and then he just taps it to Musa on the sideline,

who is sort of a little bit pinned there instead of just carrying the ball. And then Moosa's pass, like I said, it's not a good pass to Leget. And then Leget is, of course, unambitious as all get out. And then Acosta just kind of like dinks it to nobody. So that's an excellent one. And I'll clip it definitely for the Discord because even when you're making safe passes, you can still do them in this rhythm that might open something up because you can do it really efficiently.

And, you know, the ball is moving to different places on the field. And this is like a great sample of, really inefficient passing. Like all the passes are hit with the wrong weight. All the passes in the sequence are hit like a three or four feet to the wrong direction of where they should be to their teammate. And so that's the thing. Like you can have that.

I still think of it because of the origins of this scuffed podcast. I still think of it as like the Marquis Delgado rhythm passes that are like the good versions of layoffs. Like if that ball comes to a jet and he just lays it right in the, he just kills it right in the path of a cost to where it's dead in his path where he can run onto it and hit whatever path. he wants, that actually can have some value. That can be a good pass.

When Acosta, when Legette pings it to Acosta, and Acosta now has to, like, settle it first and then pick his head up, like, there is no, there's no, it now hurts us. We're handcuffing each other with these passes. And that was super noticeable on this play where it initially had so much promise of a bad Panama giveaway to Tim Wea. I'm like, oh, good, we can race forward now. But instead, five poor passes later, we get. give it away again.

And I would say it's, it's kind of hard to find passes in this game from the U.S. that are with the right weight to the right foot. There's just not very many of those. And I guess it's just, it was just a humidity. Are you, are you demanding a Marquis doggado call up?

I'm not. I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that. All right. Yeah, this is just, yeah, I just think the midfield was poor. And, you know, Burrhalter talked about this in the,

in the, Press conference afterwards, he said, is not up to our expectations, the spacing, the touches, the distances between the players. And I don't know, what do you make of that? Is it is Burrhalter scapegoating his own players there in a very, you know, in a very subtle way? Or? Honestly, I don't think so. Burrhalter's press conferences, and I'll even include his interviews with Warshaw, Bobby Warshaw, which I think are great content are really kind of like illuminating for me.

It's like this fascinating thing where I think Beralder is essentially being like a very good pundit. Like if this was, if you were getting this kind of commentary at the half time of a soccer game you're watching, you'd be like, oh yeah, he's identified some obvious, some real things in this soccer game that makes sense to me. It'd be like if he were, if he's, if he's a guest on TSS, he'd be like, oh, this is really good stuff. He's really speaking in good detail with real specifics about this game. and he has like, you know, he knows what the actual instructions are. So he actually has this other layer of, of the analysis. But then he's not a pundit. Like he is the head coach.

He chooses the tactics. Like he's not just aware of what they are. So he's more informed. Like he's chosen them. He's chosen the players. It is his job to prepare the players to execute these things. They aren't just like, you know, handed down on a tablet and he gives it to the, like, it's his job to prepare them.

And I think it's really strange or. not strange. I just think it's like really interesting how he can say all these things. He can diagnose all these things. But it's like, hey, man, it's your job to have fixed them ahead of time. And it's certainly your job as they're going wrong to fix them during the game. Yeah. I guess that was basically the reaction on Twitter to that press conference was like, good job explaining it. Now fix it. You know? 12th minute, good little sequence that falls apart. A ball from McKenzie to Zardis dropping deep.

Zardis first time sprays it wide to Lejet. This one was a pass that was in rhythm in like ahead of him so he could run onto it. And then he taps it to an overlapping bellow who hits a firm pass on the ground to Ariola. It's a little hot, but I think it's a, it's a receivable pass in a pocket of space at the top, sort of at the corner of the box. If he turns, if he like plays on the half turn and turns towards the goal, this is a, this is now a 3V2 him, Zardis,

and I think it's Wea, yeah, Wea attacking two Panamanian defenders and instead his first touch just rockets into the defender back towards the sideline and the clock keeps ticking.

I like the entry pass, so this is where I'm like, yes, I love the entry pass from Bello into a man in the box. Like I want more of this. It's not always going to come off. These are tight spaces. They do require a ton of technical execution. He should do better. He had a similar one last game where we found him at the top of the box and he just, you know, trips over the ball essentially. But it's that that pass is promising. It's just even when we connect that one, we're still two or three passes away with really intelligent movement from scoring the

goal. So, you know, that's like, oh, we see an inkling of what we should be doing, but it's squandered immediately and it's 30 minutes before we get a another look. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to pretend. I think if Pulisic receives that, he's going at the goal, you know, um, Rana as well. I'm not going to pretend that like, like if Wea was the one receiving, there's a possibility way I could take a bad, a poor touch there. I mean, there's a possibility anybody could take a poor touch there. So it's not like, I don't know, it's not totally binary for me, but, but Aureola, we, we have enough sample size on Ariola to know, uh, that he, we don't want him being the one receiving that pass

in that spot in that moment. 13th minute, another Musa giveaway. He's getting a little cute, you know, sort of steps on the ball and tries to push it past the guy and then Cantero takes it away from him. Contrero was very active and I thought probably Panama's best player on the night. And Musa fouls him quickly. 14th minute, which is, I think it's good. You know, if you give the ball away, you should foul the guy quickly.

14th minute, big chance for Panama, Murillo to Martinez to Quintero. They just slice through our left side. And then Quintaro switches it to gondola, who squares up more and whips in a ball that Blackburn doesn't get a touch to. More got a foot to the cross, I think pretty clearly on the replay and puts the trajectory off a little. but it bounced in the six right in front of Blackburn, who was between McKenzie and Zimmerman. So Panama gets zero XG for this, but it was probably the most dangerous moment

of the game outside of the Zardizzoan goal. Yeah, for sure. It puts McKinsey in a tough spot because if he tries to make a play on that, it could have been his name on the own goal sheet. So, you know, it's one of those words like, man, I don't know if there's much that we can do there other than, you know, control more of the game

so we can overcome some of these chances that we can see to Panama. Yeah, I mean, Shackmore can close Gondola down a little bit more, I guess. But yeah, that was scary. And then in the 18th minute,

we get another decent Panama chance off of a throw-in. Earlier, Moussa gets bossed by Kintaro. So Kintaro takes the ball off of Musa, and it ends up with Gondola 1v1 with Moore again. And he takes it to the end line this time and gets a good cross-off and Zimmerman sends it out of bounds

for a throw-in on the ensuing throw-in. Gondola throws it in for Martinez with everyone kind of napping down at the end line. And Martinez loops one across the six for Cintero, who touches it past Legette, who is just kind of doing like a slow-motion

pirouette in the air as he... Don't jump. Defenders at home, don't jump to block shots. It's like basketball. Like, that's the first first-year-old basketball. Maybe just like watching a butterfly. And and Cantero

Contrero's touch is a little heavy but if it's a good touch there, he's got, he's settled with the ball seven yards from goal and nobody near him. Anyway, his touch isn't good enough and it bounces to McKenzie who clears it, I believe, yeah.

That's a good point. I wonder if that went down as a shot too. Because between that, the one that McKenzie elected not to play to avoid the own goal, and then this Matt Turner save that I'm sure we'll get to that probably didn't count for offside like we probably got a little bit of XG saving grace here with some of these near chances.

Yeah, we got a big discount on Panamanian XG. As Acosta set pieces, which I had been excited to see, were kind of not great. I know you're going to kind of disagree with me on this. You thought they were fine? Well, I thought they were intentional. The first few. And again, no one's going to be. perfect for set piece delivery.

Like no one hits them exactly where they want to every time. But I thought it cost to hit Zimmerman's head a few times. And that seemed intentional to me in the first half. And it sucks that we only have one real target on set pieces. Zardaz probably is another guy. So two guys. But based on the design, it looked like we were trying to hit it to Zimmerman's head.

And then Zardaz and Ariola both were like pinching around that towards either post to like frame the goal so that wherever Zimmerman could put the ball on the second ball, they would be there to try to sweep home. But, you know, those, those, it's still always very low percentage. Zimmerman did his best, but I thought, so I thought it cost it was fine early. I think as the game went on, the set piece delivery got, you know, worse or just variance kicking in. Yeah, there was the one in the second half where he, he puts it right in, right in the six. And Zimmerman, you know, Zimmerman thought he was, I think Zimmerman was pulled back by Godoy on that one.

that was I thought the best set piece from from Acosta on the night I thought there were a couple of those corner kicks early from Acosta where he hit it like I don't know 30 yards in the air and I was like what are we doing yeah one of those in the first half I think I think was intentional because if you when I'm watching it Zimmerman doesn't run at the goal as Acosta's taking his run up like he starts and then he actually fades far out toward like 16 17 yards out from the end line and is moving away towards the opposite sideline in end. anticipation of a cost of hitting it over everybody. And then his job is to Zimmerman's job is to head it back across the field and hope to create danger on that one. So that one, again, I think it's intentional. Maybe it wasn't supposed to go out of the screen up in the air. But I think he was trying to overhit the cluster of bodies to Zimmerman. I'm not defending every set piece.

I'm just saying like he had a few good ones. And again, no one hits perfect set pieces for an entire game. Do they? Yeah. Very few. I don't know. Hakeem's eye. maybe. I do think we have to, we should probably hope to be more dangerous on set pieces than we were in this game, especially given how difficult it appears it's going to be for us to generate chances on the road or, you know, sometimes at home as well.

So, well, part of that, part of that is going to be adding Weston McKinney, who's a set piece cheat code. Part of that, Miles Robinson, who's excellent on set pieces. I think he has three goals for the U.S. in his limited caps. and some big ones. So I think that we can get better with more targets. I do agree that hopefully we do get consistent service from whoever's taking the kicks Wednesday because it's hard to imagine that our open play chances are going to be like measure immensely better than they were yesterday.

Maybe we can get an early goal and then really open it up. I don't know. I'm, I can't help but be a little bit optimistic. 24th minute, Musa steps by a guy nicely, I think it was Martinez, and sprays it to Leget, who hits a cross for Ariola. I think it's a decent ball from Legit.

Ariola claims to have been fouled, but regardless he didn't get to it, and there was no whistle. So, you know, really grasping at straws here in the 24th minute. Just static from the midfield, and Zimmerman ends up hitting a diagonal in Wayas direction that's pretty poor. It kind of felt a little hopeful.

bliss at that point in terms of generating chances. 27th and 28th minute we get double Olympico attempts from Panama, one from Eric Davis and one from Barsanis. Turner is able to keep them just out, but there's a little bit of a foreshadowing there. What? You gave me a knowing and exhausted look. You know, it's, I don't know if we'd scouted Panama set pieces. I had not scouted Panama set pieces.

But it's like you're saying, if we hadn't scouted them going into the game, by halftime we should have had a good sense of what they were trying to do. They were loading the guys around Matt Turner, four bodies around Turner, and firing it in a goal. So we had to know that that was in the worst. And then Sam Staskel asked a question about zonal marking

on set pieces in the press conference. That's the athletic reporter. And Burhunter said, Sam, that's a really difficult question. We're going to have to go back two years and look at all the set pieces and like how we, you know, how we do it. So, you know, go and look at some data and then come back to me with a more detailed question. So I'm, which I think maybe there's some, some, there may be fair, a fair response in some ways,

but it's interesting that that was brought up, I thought. Yeah. And I guess in Burrhalter's defense here, I think that's fair if the question is, you know, why have you struggled defending set pieces? Is that, is that roughly what the question was? I think that's how I saw. framed on Twitter. I don't think it was that explicitly.

It was just like, tell me your thought process on defending set pieces more or less. Are you going to stick with some marking or something? Yeah, I'm not critical. I'm not for his response, really. But I would be interested to hear just his, his and his staff's approach is, like, I keep laughing when I think about a staff because I keep remembering Anthony Hudson is on it. So all of these different tactical questions.

And I'm like, I'm sure the, I'm sure the brain. us will get together and come up with some good solutions about verticality going into the next game. No, what I do. I'm genuinely curious how they will, or what their approach was. What was the discussion after seeing the first half corner kicks from Panama? And, because I'm, you know, that you talk about that stuff at a half time. Like, you go through all that. That's your, that's your, that's your opportunity to really diagram and, and come up with how you want to approach it for the second half. Like, I'm really curious what the discussion was. You know, I understand the logic behind leaving the space from the from the goal line to three or four yards out as

Turner space and saying term Matt Turner you control this Matt Turner is actually good at controlling that space. So I'm just curious if there was any sort of discussion or adjustments or if they just felt like we're good and it just took a desperately unlucky if we want to call it that Giazizardez action to to sort of give Panama the lead. I mean goals happen on corner. So this is we'll talk about when we get to it. But I am curious about the. discussion after these olympico attempts we saw in the first half and not just olympico attempts but how panama set up with him by crowding matt turner inside of our zonal marketing system uh what what the

staff's thoughts were on defending that for the second half yeah yeah it would be interesting so the the 35th minute a promising little bit of possession from the u.s legett intercepts it and uh around midfield and then it goes ariola to acosta to who plays through the lines to zardis who then who then sprays it wide to Legette down the wing. And this is a moment where you've got to press your advantage, just not to beat a dead horse, but instead of pressing our advantage, Legette takes a static touch

and then plays it backward to Acosta close to the center circle. Acosta's first touch is brutal. It just spins up on him, and he gets wrecked by Martinez, and then Cantaro is driving forward and slips it wide to gondola in the box. I didn't, this, I don't know that I saw the replay, but this was a close offside call and, um, he got a shot off. Turner kept it out with his right paw, but, um, I don't think it shows it, like we talked about

earlier, I don't think it shows up on XG because it was, it was called offside. Another moment of danger. Yeah. But on the tape, we get another brilliant Matt Turner play. And again, this is like brilliant. Like the, the micro footwork adjustments as the guy's bearing in on. him to change his positioning, to limit the angles. And then the discipline to stay big and to not go to ground, not to lean one way or the other.

And even then the reaction to actually get the hand to the ball, just really fun to watch Matt Turner play goalkeeper. He is really good at stopping shots, man. 36 minute, nice little bit of work from Legette to find an entry pass to Areola. So he does this thing where he looks soft. He looks off the guy to his right. I think it was more maybe. And then finds the pass to Aureola and he turns in drives and plays a pass to Jaze. But Jaze's offside, just barely.

I guess he could have left it for Wea, who was running in behind from the left. But I think at this point, it's worth pointing out, Waya didn't touch the ball in a remotely dangerous spot. I don't think it may be all game, did he? I'm going to say, not that I can think of. There were a couple times, you know, like where he could, where he was able to pump a cross in or something. but man it's really unfortunate to to use up 70 minutes of timwaya just to do like nothing in the attack and not really because it was his fault i don't think i give the same i give the same analysis to

zardis too i thought zardis when he came back to the ball he was fine um but we but he he didn't get any sort of service or any sort of connection from the midfield so no and like we're saying i don't love the approach where Bellow and Moore just try to whip the ball in as soon as they get it out wide in an advanced position but even on those, Zardez never had a chance to even make plays on them because they were always deflected

or blocked and never got to him. No, it's tough. I know there were people who were saying Peppies, the hot hand, etc., etc., but I think if you flip Pepecy with Zardez in starting 11, I think it sure feels like Pepe is going to be exactly as invisible in this game. I don't know how you'd like

watching back through it like be like oh but if that was Ricardo Pepey in there that horrible play from Legit and Acosta would have come off like there was just no there was just no like nothing for anyone in the front three to really work with that much. Zardis was not

the problem I mean you know when Pepe did come came on you did there was a little bit of freshness and a little bit of pep I thought for like a minute or two but maybe I'm stretching with that 39th minute

Kentaro to Barsenus in the Man City zone and his cross is wide of the goal Again I thought Quintaro had a great game and he was really feeling it in this moment sort of the no look inside of the boot pass into the

end line for Barsenaus 42nd minute we get a good sequence where Zimmerman wins the ball from Quintaro, and Acosta plays a pass to Zardis' feet in the center circle, and then he plays it wide to Musa, who plays Bello down the wing, but Bellow's cross is not good enough. And, you know, as we've discussed earlier, maybe he should be doing something besides whipping a cross in from, you know, 20 yards from the touchline or whatever it was. Well, and I'm happy to go case by case here.

So first off, the Musa, this was like the good Musa ambition, right? He had to, he had to, like, change his angle a little bit by doing a cool Musa dribble. away from his man and then hit that nice outside of the foot past Bello to spring him. And actually Bellow does have Zardas here. Looking at the replay, like Zardis has gained a position almost to the point that he's probably offside actually and the flag may have gone up for that ball does get to him. But like it was like at that point if Bellow's seeing it, he probably should hit this early ball in because Zardis has control of the space and any ball in between Zardas and the goal is

Zardes's ball. So I will be like, okay, that one was that one was there. You know, they're not always hopeful. That one was there, but the cross wasn't hit properly to beat the first defender. I don't know if he beat the first defender all night with his crossing. Maybe he only had three or four crosses, so it's not like a huge sample size. Fifth minute, we get some more poor distribution from Turner. I mean, it is the knock on him.

And I think it's a left-footed ball into what would be our right channel. And the ball works its way over to Barsena's on. on the right side of on on our left side whoa very confusing and then Barsanis takes a touch in and then hits a curler that uh I think was on frame and it's a another big say from Turner with his right arm I believe right yep yep and so this was one where uh like it shows where you need to hit a shot to beat him because this is a this is a good curling shot it's not quite top bins and what you see is that to beat him there it had to be like exactly the post and end because Turner had the rest of the goal covered.

And so halftime comes and goes. I was feeling like a zero zero draw would be a fine result for us in this game at that point, given how we had performed. Adams comes on for Musa. Acosta moves up to the eight. Adams at the six. And then Aronson comes on for Areola at the half. So two halftime subs.

That's a little unusual for Burrhalter. Yeah, it is. I'll say here, you know, you're saying you would have take a zero zero draw here, based on what we saw at the half. And where I'm going to push back on this is like, this wasn't our first team, right? We rotated seven guys from what was a very strong 11 for the opening game. What I'm thinking is that was really ugly,

but these were our backups. We got to halftime zero zero. There was plenty of room to improve, but this is where we are now. And now we have really good players on the bench we can bring in. And we can still take this game. We can still take three points from this game because Panama didn't capitalize on the chances we gave them and here we are right like we can improve we have panama doesn't have guys they're

going to bring into this game to make them a lot better and we have a full bench of or at least five or six guys on the bench who can really make us better so i was actually like this is still there for the taking as ugly as it's been so far who were you thinking about as uh coming in off the bench and making us better so i was i was i was actually thinking that tyler adams would make us better because acosta hadn't been great but we can bring in adams and solve that uh i thinking that Serginio Dest makes us a lot better. And if you, you know, if you want end product, if you want soccer to be played in the attacking third, Sirginio Dest will go into the attacking third and play soccer.

And then obviously Brendan Aronson makes us better. So I thought we had three, three guys that we could easily switch Adams for Acosta, Aronson for Arellona and Dest for Shaq Moore, and we get better at attacking. And you got... Ironically, I got one and a half. I'm going to say we got one and a half of those. subs. What do you mean? Because I was going to say you got two out of three. What do you mean you got one and a half? Well, because we didn't get Adams for Acosta. We got Adams for Eunice Musa, and Acosta went up to the eight. So we basically just took what was a really poor performance from

Acosta at the six, which is, I think it's his better position for the national team. I don't love him as an eight. And we just took that poor performance and we just shifted it upfield by 15 yards. I'm like, okay, we'll just be much work. We'll have this bad performance right here next to Sebastian Legette, who has also been performing poorly. What do you think about the whole argument? Well, Musa had to come off so that he could play on Wednesday. I have some sympathy for that, I'll have to say. I do too.

I just think that could, if that's going to be the case, and that's got to be a different sub. Like, either you have to address the Acosta issue with instructions for how he needs to play. Because you can do that too. You can improve players from one half to the other with, you know, instructions, with halftime, either adjustments or literally just. explicitly saying, hey, you're doing this, this and this, and it's not helping us win at all. We need you to start doing X, Y, and Z, which will help us win because you're capable of it.

You are not worse than the players that Panama have on the field. You're either just as good or better. And we definitely didn't see that. You know, like none of those adjustments happened. And even introducing two Champions League players at halftime, as we'll see, didn't lead to us being any more dangerous or really even being, keeping Panama from being dangerous. I would have liked to see Deletore on for Legette I mean there may be something going on

in training that shows Burrhalter unequivocally that LDLT is not ready for this but you know based on what we've seen the tape that I've watched from the Netherlands and you know even his little cameo the other day it seems like he's ready and it seems like we could have used somebody like him

who is pretty good on the the half turn, pretty technical, pretty tidy, not a complete liability defensively, certainly not much worse than Leget, if worse at all. And instead we get 45 more minutes of Sebastian Leggett. Yeah. So, like, I totally agree mostly in that I, like, I think you're totally right that Legit, or I'm sorry, that Luca Deletori could have come on for either Acosta or legit. So I'm saying, once Tyler Adams is your six at halftime, then, you've got a cost and legit as your eights. I think you could have also brought De La Torre on and dropped one of the eights,

especially if you're saying Eunice Musa has to come off for like minutes restrictions. I don't even think you have to do that right away. Like I said, I do think that you should be able to get good effect or improved effect out of your eights just by, you know, the halftime intervention as a coach. You should be able to improve that. You should identify what's going wrong, the yips that you legit has and like almost like force him through that in the field. Once we didn't do that, and again, you are, you are, Luca della Torre isn't unknown, right?

We don't know for sure how we would do in this scenario. There's, I also hope that he would do it, but it'd be a bit of a bigger, right, dice roll right away. Once we go down one zero and there has not been any improvement from Acosta or Legette, like at that point, then it's no-brainer. And even if Luca De La Torre struggles, like he's there with this skill set. This is what he offers. You know that this is his plus.

If he's going to bring anything, this is it. This is where you do have to roll the dice because you're losing. You need to get that goal. And the guys you have on there are not working. So while I'm okay with going more conservative at halftime with those subs and not bringing Luca on right away, to finish the game out with Acosta and Leget as your eights, performing the way they performed is just like it makes zero sense.

Then we brought on, we'll get to it shortly, but we brought on and rolled on for Wea. All right, back to the timeline. We'll get to those subs in a bit. 46 minute. I thought Adams immediately brought something. He wins the ball at midfield, like two separate challenges to get the ball, and then he hits it wide to Wea.

Wea's first touch is a little negative, and he hits a hopeful cross, and it gets nicked, and kind of hurdles over Zardis in the box. 51st minute, don't worry those of you who are tired of thinking about this game. It's not that much more of a timeline. 51st minute, Bello heads across back to the top of the box for Barsenas to have a volley, and he's rescued by Legit. So it's not like Leggett did nothing useful in this game. I'm not trying to overstate it.

But the problem I have with Bello is he just doesn't inspire confidence as the left back. It feels a little scary back there with him. Yeah, and my thing with Bellow is like, you know, obviously it's scuffed. We are not like, we got to worry about the mistakes of the youth. Like our youth are a lot of our best players. George Bellow does make mistakes that are like, in my mind, entirely attributable to youth. Like this, this header is just like, hey, buddy, what are you doing here? Like, this needs to have been weeded out of your game to not have a clearance header.

Like, late, that was an excellent attacking header. Like, that's what a great Olivier Jure player would do right there is to just not. that ball down into a really dangerous area at the top of the box for one of your teammates to run onto and smash it. And he had a couple other ones where that just like there, you see them so rarely because, you know, professional players have to kind of stop doing those things. He had like throw-ins going over his head and he just misjudged in the air. And I'm just like, come on, George, like, just be the, just be a professional player for a little bit. Like, we got to get more out of you here. And if he's not, if he can't, then again, he's just not ready and

no amount of familiarity with Burrhalter can overcome the mistakes he's making. And again, He didn't, I'm not saying he's the reason we lost this game. I don't think he really is. I mean, I don't think it helps to have him over there in like sort of the general game state and like the rhythm building that we need. But, you know, he had that nice pass to Ariola. He has a nice pass coming up in the timeline here. So, you know, he's capable of some good stuff. But the service wasn't good enough.

The defending is, uh, it's a little messy back there. A little naive. I'm going to call it naive defending. It's going to be my bellowed defense description. Naieveness resulting in messiness. How about that? It leads to some mess. And when we have Miles Robinson and again,

Walker Zerrin cleaned up some messes, we can get by. Well, we can get into the Chris Richards, Mark McKenzie debate too, but 52nd minute, a good spell of possession from back to middle third. It gets to Moore on the right wing, and he just passes it back to Adams

for sort of another hopeful cross. And Adams had two of those where he just, he didn't beat the first or second defender with a ball from pretty deep aimed, like just sort of trying to loft it in the box and doesn't even get it above head high. 53rd minute, Adams ball to Moore from deep, you know, way up the, way up the sideline. And more takes a really nice first touch cutting in with the ball. And then his second touch is like, you know, 15 yards ahead of him and he gets wrecked. Giveaway, just sloppy. and a few moments later we concede a corner in the 54th minute as Panama goes left to right they attack that man city is on our on you know

behind bellow Adams does well to cover it to cover the trailing runner and but he pokes it over the end line for a corner it's kind of a not the touch I think he wanted there and then aforementioned Eric Davis takes a corner kick and just whips it right into the corridor of uncertainty Annibal Goddois I maybe got a touch. I don't even know if we got a touch, but it maybe got a touch, and then it,

Zardis definitely gets the finishing touch. Kind of a frown from the gods of variance, but it was, you know, it was deserved for Panama. I mean, if you look at the XG numbers, I think it was 0.88 to 0.22. They, they generate,

they did enough to piece together a goal's worth of attacking, uh, danger. even if you Yeah, absolutely. Even if you take out, even though XG doesn't count

the times when you don't get a shot off, which can often be even more dangerous. So there it is, 1-0 Panama. I mean, I don't have much for it. Again, we can talk about the set piece stuff. You look how we're set up. And with the way that Panama have been doing this,

we do have a guy closest to the ball. So Sebastian Leggett is the guy closest to the post. And he sort of, I'm not putting this on legit. He's not tall enough to go get this ball, right? But the ball's hit just over his left shoulder just between him and the goal. And so it goes back to like, if you can't get it, you don't have to, but disrupt the other guy. So just get your body to Godoy and like lean on him, put a hip on him. You know, like just don't let him have a free header.

And we're still talking about degrees of variance here where I don't even know if his header was going to go on frame. if he's just going to flick it over his head or what. So the fact that it goes off of him and then off of Zardos and then in, nothing with Jet can do about that. But just going back to like general set piece defense, just disrupt a guy. Like don't just stand there and watch the ball go a foot and a half over your head. Like, well, nothing I can do so I can't impact this play.

Like find a way to impact the play. Find a way to protect the goal somehow. Yeah. LeJet just seems tired, man. He seems like a tired man. 57th minute. Stevens comes on. for gondola for panama and then 61st minute we get a really nice ball from george bello to

brennan arson down the left wing it's it just beats murillo and uh murillo and then a good set piece from acosta and then zimmerman thinks he's pulled down in the six i think maybe he was by godoy um but didn't get that call so there you go I'm just laughing about these being like our best moments. I mean, we got, there was a little contact in the box. This was when we were really getting dangerous. Yeah, some little bits of attacking, attack from the U.S. in the ensuing minutes, but nowhere near enough cutting edge in the final third to trouble Panama.

Two more crosses, bellow dribbling into a wall at the top of the box. We get 68th minute, we get Pepefrizardis, Yedlin for more, and rolled on for Wea. Why? Why Roldon? I mean, Roldon looked completely out of his depth out there. Why any of them? Well, I'm sorry, PEPI makes sense, right? Switching your strikers out, especially if you really think PEPI is your number one striker, which I think Berhalter probably believes at the moment.

That makes sense. Like, you're improving at Stryker. Roldon for Wea and Yedlin for more. For me, it was like, oh, these are exactly the subs you would make if you're trying to kill off a 1-0 game when you're winning. They don't make any sense to me as a subs you make. down zero one. Moore wasn't doing anything particularly egregious.

So you're not adding to your attack, I don't think, by going from Yedlin to Moore. I don't think he had to come off like fatigue-wise. So at the worst, leave him on there until he absolutely has to if he's cramping up or whatever and keep that sub available in case you need to make it elsewhere. I mean, we saw Zimmerman by the end of the game is limping. So I don't have a problem being aggressive in using your subs early and like risking that if you have an injury, you got to play with 10 men, but I do have a problem

if one of those subs that you're using is just a straight like for like that's not required. Like that sub actually bothers me more than Roldon for Wea, even though I absolutely hate Roldon coming in for Tim Wea. Yeah, it's a good point.

We really needed we needed some better midfield play. We needed our eights to be better. That was the biggest problem, I thought. Yeah, this for me is absolutely where one of the subs has to be De La Torre. on for one of the eights, whether it's legit or a cost, I don't really care, but you have to

improve the player getting from the eights. And Luca De La Torre might not actually do that, but again, his skill set, the reason you have him on this team is because he can do those things. He's a rhythm passer. He drives the ball. He finds feet as pressure advances. Like, this is what he's there for. Whether he can do it at a high enough level or not, I don't know. And no one else really does either. So anyone who's saying he definitely would have done it is being pretty speculative. But as the coach, you still have to roll that dice because you're losing one zero and running the super ineffective aides that you're running out there are not going to win you a game or get you your point back.

How many players would you cut from the next roster based on this game? I honestly don't know. I'm not sure. I haven't gamed it out yet, so I don't want to say. All right. So those are the subs. And then Panama makes some subs to Eduardo Guerrero. for Blackburn

and then Armando Cooper for Godoy and then we get that the last item I have on the timeline is the 70th minute chance for Pepe Acosta uses his back to win a little aerial challenge and it falls kindly for Pepe just inside the box and he takes a shot

from a tight angle basically all of our XG comes from this one chance I think that's about right either this or Zimmerman's header in the first half of Acosta corner But yeah, and I think that this is telling because we've kind of made light of the fact that Burrhalter calls his subs solutions. And the fact that we're down 1-0 in a World Cup qualifying game and your last item on the timeline is in the 70th minute. Like there weren't any solutions coming in this game.

And I think that's why we can say, I don't care how much time Panama are wasting. I don't care what kind of dogs are running on the field. Like this is a disaster of very much of our own making. and I do kind of wish a couple of events had been on here and those were the ones where it looked like our instructions were wherever we received the ball, kick the ball as hard towards the goal as you possibly can. I think Roldon had one from just outside of Matt Turner's box.

Like it just, again, it just blows my mind and it's just like, what is the plan here? What are the instructions? Because I think Berthalter said the plan was to have the centerbacks and the center mids cut out their forwards. And again, I think it's telling because, Panama we're defending in a lot like a 4-4-2. This is what I feel like is like we have that demeanor of a team that has just begun working on possession play. And it wouldn't surprise me

if the plan is to use our centerbacks and center mids to beat their forwards. But what's the next thing that needs to happen? What's the third thing that happens after that? What are the five options that we're going to have once we get into the next space? And we just don't seem to have any kind of a plan against a team that is in any way remotely organized. And that is, it's pretty troubling. It's very troubling. Like, like, the lack of a plan is troubling. And then some of the player selections, again, I feel like crossover into active harm. Like the manager at that point is actively harming our chances to win.

A lot of the players harmed our chances to win too. And it's part of the manager's job to identify what that is and then make adjustments. And he had certain adjustments available to him that he wasn't interested in trying. And this is like, okay, how are you, how is Greg Burhalter helping us win soccer games? I'm asking you, Bells. I actually want you to give me an answer. I don't know, but I mean, I'll go back to the old standby, which is he convinced Sergenio Dest and Eunice Moussa to play for us. And those players, honestly, after watching last night, the quality of those two players, even though Musa had, you know, he had his warts last night for sure.

He didn't have his best game. The quality that those two players offer is especially, seems even more valuable this morning than it did yesterday morning because of the gap. the gaps between our first choice and maybe our second choice, even 11s. At least, you know, with the rosters that Burrhalter's been calling up. I don't know, man. I don't know what he's doing to help us be better and help us win soccer games. We haven't seen, I mean, we saw like a pretty good performance against Jamaica, but you, you know, you were careful to caveat that.

And if you look at it, you know, we've got our two wins and quality. against the two worst teams in the standings right now, Honduras and Jamaica, against anybody above that bottom two. We're either drawing at home or drawing on the road or losing. It's a tough spot to be in. Like, again, I'm still, I still feel pretty good about our chances to qualify, in part because so many other results are still breaking our way.

So, you know, we talk about how much margin there is for error in qualifying, in Conca Calf, and there is. We squandered a ton of it last cycle to manage to play our way out of the Russia World Cup. We squandered a little bit in the first window, but thankfully, like the teams around us, squandered it right next to us. So we actually emerged from it with basically the same amount of margin for error. And now we've, again, we've kind of thrown a little bit more away. So I still think we're okay.

We still have, again, we still have the top three talent pool in the region. It's not, I don't even think you can argue that. So we're still in a good, in a good spot, talent-wise. But just throwing these points away. And again, denying Panama two points by getting a goal back and getting a draw would have been massive. So that's a three-point swing, even though we only would have gotten one point. It's all about denying points to the other players racing us for that third-place spot. And I mean, this was a winnable game.

Or, I mean, it was a drawable game, but it was also. of a winnable game. Panama was not that good. We were just bad. We were, it was, I do think people aren't exaggerating when they say that this was like in the pantheon of like the worst performances for the US.

0.22 XG with not a lot of like, oh, but we had this moment that didn't quite result in their shot. Like there weren't even any of those where you can try to game the single game XG. I mean, I pick through the game looking for moments of promise. I've given you the best I could. I do wish the chronology would have included some of the antics. I think the antics were notable.

We had civilians running onto the field, which I thought was great. Like there were some high fives involved. The Panama players were all about it. There were a lot of injuries, a lot of good time wasting for Panama, requiring stretchers. I feel like anybody who's going to get subbed at that point knows. And so it's like get as far away from the sideline as you can, go down, wait for the stretcher, take all of these things like I appreciate and say that if you don't want underdog teams to do these things against you, you should just be winning the soccer game. And Panama, as we've mentioned,

there was no need to do any of that. It was not, the game wasn't going to go against them. They were just getting reps. They were just working through the motions, you know, getting reps for when it really does, when it really is necessary. Do we do anything else you want to talk about for this game? Yeah. So bad. I just want to reemphasize that my, my big thing is this,

this unwillingness to press the numerical advantage. So, I mean, is it Burrhalter's fault that Sebastian Legat is scared to play forward? Or at least was in the first, I thought he was maybe a little better in the second half, you know, marginally better in that respect.

Legit was. But, you know, is that timidity and the lack of quality? Burrhalter's fault, it's Berthor's fault for putting them on the field. But I don't know. That's where we get to is even if it's not, even in the best case that it's not, if it's not being adjusted, if it's not changing on the field, again, you're not bound to keep the player out there. Like, it's your job to replace him with someone who will actively try to win you the soccer game.

Which I'm in favor of the guys who will play who will do. that. Yeah. Well, I kind of want to talk about roster cuts. I mean, maybe the cut we need to do is the, is in the coaching position. But it's just not going to happen. It's like pointless to talk about it. Burhler's not going to get fired.

And unless, say, maybe we lose to Costa Rica on Wednesday and then he, then it, you know, slides into. Oh, it could happen at that point. It could for sure happen. I genuinely think it could happen if we lose to Costa Rica at home. And we totally could. Yeah, that's all. I mean, according to who could it happen, you know?

Is Cindy Cohn going to do it? Or like, who's going to, who's going to fire him? You're saying Ernie just won't fire him? It's Ernie's project as much as it's Burrhalters. They're one and the same? I think he's going to be very reluctant to do it, especially if we're, you know, even if we lose against Costa Rica,

we're still going to be like in the top, probably in the top half of the table. So he can very easily, argue, yeah, things aren't going perfectly well, but this is a young team. We're very much in position to qualify for the World Cup. I'm not saying it's right. I'm just saying... I guess I'll just say, and I think I might have said this after the first window, too.

I basically don't think at this point any weight needs to be given to, like, the long-term project that Burrhalter was hired to ostensibly, like, be achieving. Because there's just no evidence that anything that we see on the soccer field is a result of, like, what has been built. Like there hasn't been anything built. Yeah. That makes sense. Like there's no like, oh, we have a foundation of doing this.

And so now you can see this, this and this are almost there, but not quite coming off. Like yesterday was just more of the same of like there is nothing going on here. We don't lose. We don't lose any groundwork. There isn't going to be any. The new coach coming in won't be like starting for like having to start. Like we're already starting over every single time we take the field. Which again is fine.

We talked about this too. like it just means that we have to approach games and be like, oh, I wonder if just like we do with players, like, oh, I wonder if our coach will like make some egregious mistakes this game. And if he does, will we be able to overcome them just like we do when we watch any of our 22-year-olds take the field? Okay. Well, I do still think it's, yeah, I think the case you're making for Brerhunter being superfluous is very strong. I still don't think it's it's likely to result in his firing even if we lose to Costa Rica on Wednesday I'd be I'd be really surprised um and you maybe the player you know you know there's some rumors about the players being really upset last night you know flipping around on the

internet but um I mean I'm not I'm not I'm just you know of course there may there's probably an unhappy locker room last night of course why would why would they're not be We wanted to be an unhappy locker room. But, you know, the only way I could see it really, like, Burrhalter really getting fired is if the players joined together and went to Ernie Stewart and said, like, look, enough's enough. We need a new coach. I know. I have wanted Patrice ever to be on the national team for a while. I was laughing when you said that because it made me think of, like when Yedlin was subbing in, actually, I thought of this yesterday.

When Yedlin was going into that one zero game, what was running through my head was, and I think about this probably once a. month, Daniel Daraisi for Italy in their World Cup playoff to Sweden when they need a goal to win and the coach is subbing him in instead of like their best forward who's on the bench for some reason. And Daraisi is like wildly gesturing down the bench and be like put the forward in like I don't go into this game and he's being like super Italian about it. And I was just wondering if Yedzen and was like hold on coach. Did you call, you call my number? Because we got a lot of guys over here that can score goals and add to goal scoring. And you're so you're, so you're, But you want me to go?

All right, all right, I'll go. Like Matthew Hoppy. Matthew wrecking ball Hoppy. Just throw him in the game and see what happens at that point, you know. I do think we got a legit needs to not see the field for a while after that performance last night. Rolled on. Go ahead. Or at the very, again, for some of these guys, it's like there might just be super narrow roles where they can go in.

And Sebastian Leget being like the guy to drive our offense forward from midfield, he can't be that. He cannot be the lynchpin of our midfield. His job is to like disappear in around a bunch of really good players. Like he can't, we can't just give the keys to him. It won't work. And I mean, Roldon, I would say Roldon looks even more out of his depth. Ariola can, Ariola can have a narrow role, I guess, to use your language.

but his role should not be starter in two straight games in qualifying. And I did think Bella looked out of his depth, and we need to call up Joe Scali. Again, is Joe Scali going to solve everything? Probably not, but we need to find some solutions. And then I didn't think McKenzie was horrible last night, but he also wasn't great. And I think we'd be much more solid back there with Chris Richards than him. And definitely, you know, we all know Miles Robinson's going to be more solid than McKenzie. So, yeah.

And I don't have much problem with how his artists play. So Burrhalter out, Greg, huh? Is that where you are? I don't think we would know, like, I don't think we would notice at all. That's, that's, I guess, like, it might get better, but I just don't envision a way that, like, any of the coaches that we would hire would somehow do worse. Like, I just don't see how you would actually do worse. I don't, I think it's, I think it's tilting at windmills to say that, to ask for him to be fired right now, but, you know, I guess keep the candle burning is what I'd say.

Anything else, Greg? Just that despite like the total ineptitude on display yesterday, it won't surprise me at all if we go out to, if we, in the Costa Rica home game, win like two or three zero. And it still goes back to like last cycle where we were dreadful at times. And then we smashed Honduras 6-0 and we won the summer gold. Cup in 2017 and we smashed Panama 4-0. Like we have that in us at home and we have good players. It's just like we have to have some semblance of what we're trying to do in the games where we aren't smashing bad teams, 4-0 and 5-0. Like you said earlier, it's a team with any of the slightest semblance of organization.

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