Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #209: Office Hours -- Is the USMNT fanbase the worst in the world?

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Watke and Belz talk about a few different things live on Discord. Very little about Costa Rica.contact: [e-mail] us a question at this link and we’ll try to answer it: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdJdevo3myfLQuaH5LwZRmahNTSimCwP3VQLLXu5I_yxZWfvg/viewform?usp=sf_linksupport Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedjoin the Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XUbuy 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. Welcome to office hours. Waki. How are you? I'm doing well. How's the drive going? It's going well. We're in Kentucky, south of Lexington. I'd say it started off rough in the darkness of North Georgia, but got some Waffle House just south of Knoxville. So we're doing well. Just came down out of the smokies. very smoky, very smoky this morning. My cousin who's with me kept pointing out the window and saying, Chef's Kiss, you know, it's been nice. Does the view?

Yeah, it is very beautiful. He could just do a chef's kiss. Yeah, but it became a thing where he would say it out loud, you know. It was fun. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. You want to hear anything more about my drive? I've heard once you get to Lexington, it's pretty much a straight shot.

psychologically from there. Yeah, very... That's kind of the threshold. The terrain becomes less complicated as well. 75 to 71, I imagine. I actually don't know that yet, but... Okay. Yeah, it's I-75 now, though.

We're playing Costa Rica tonight. Yeah, something I wanted... Before we get... I was researching a little bit, and I found out that we're playing Costa Rica and Columbus, and Columbus is named after Christopher Columbus and Christopher Columbus named Costa Rica, which I just thought was a little interesting, little fact triangle.

We don't need to get into that, but... Well, we could get into it a little bit. What else did he name? Do you know? No, I just looked up those, like, three facts there. Fair enough. I assume he named a lot of stuff. No one knows why Columbus is named after Christopher Columbus, though, because he has no

connection to it whatsoever. There's like one theory that it was a state legislator who just really into Christopher Columbus, but beyond that, there's not a whole lot on the internet about it. He used to be more popular than he is now. I think it's fair to say. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's come down a little bit in popularity. I thought, speaking of names, I think, uh, I really like Los Canaleros, the, the Panamanian name. And I still do want to talk about the Panama Canal sometime, probably not today. I think Los Ticos is not as good, but it's still good.

Yeah. It sounds a little bit too corporate. Sounds like it could be a brand for a product. Yeah, like I... Which is like Ticos, though, I guess. Candy. With the low Cicos, it's still pretty good. I don't mean to criticize them. I think it's probably a pretty good name.

Yeah. I really backed off that pretty quickly because I realized we were playing them in a soccer room tonight. I'm pretty nervous about it. Yeah, I'm nervous too. I am pumped to be there, but I have no idea if we're going to be any good. I guess nobody does. I'm not sure.

I'm not sure. I'm not sure Burrholder knows what is doing. What happened in Panama City was jarring to me because I think like a lot of us, I was hypnotized by the fool's gold of Jamaica, of the Jamaica win. Yeah, I think a part of all of us kind of knew that Jamaica was actually just really bad because they just kept letting guys dribble like 30, 40 yards, just straight into their third. And we were just like,

we thought we were just doing a great job, which I guess we were, but it wasn't a normal soccer game as that was happening. Yeah. So I'm nervous. It's in totally straight lines. I'm nervous at all games,

but especially this game. Yeah. I hope the players understand how important it is to us that they win. They probably do. They probably do. I don't know if they do or not, but yeah, I think,

I think I did know that Jamaica was, you know, fool's gold, I guess if I really bore down into my brain, but I'm just so, I'm so hopeful that the U.S. is going to turn the corner that I just want to believe it so much that when I see Ricardo Pepey

score two goals, it makes me feel I can't help but be optimistic after that. I mean, we're still way better than Costa Rica, and we should probably just went. I would have to imagine. I don't know that, but on paper.

Yes, on paper we certainly are. Greg's calling for Burrhalter to get fired. Greg Velasquez, huh? He's really becoming a lot. Not explicitly that, but that's also that was pretty striking to me too. I shouldn't say that. He's there. He's almost there. Yeah, he's almost there. He's basically there.

Yeah, he doesn't share with me what he's going to say beforehand. You know, we often don't know what each other are going to say. on this podcast too, but he's much more of a closed book. And so, you know, that was a surprise to me to hear that. He's a mysterious man in a lot of ways, isn't he? He's a what man? Mysterious. Yeah.

Yeah, you know, Eric Sanders, who's our mutual friend, who came down to the Nashville game and was at the tailgate, you know, he and Greg were boys back when they were like 17. And after Eric was a great friend at the tailgate and everything, and he and I are boys now. But he goes, at the end of it all, he kind of looks around and he goes, Greg remains a mystery. Yeah, that's part of his charm, isn't it? Got some questions.

How did Canada tie Jamaica? I don't know. I don't know how Canada tied Jamaica. I don't know. It was in Kingston. How did that happen? Panama beat Jamaica 3-0. there. I don't

know. I haven't looked into it. Ryan asked why is Bells in Kentucky if you were in Columbus yesterday? I wasn't in Columbus yesterday. I was in North Georgia yesterday. Maybe the confusion came because you were abdicating to start to get a tailgate going on Twitter.

It sounds like unsuccessfully. Yeah, I'm kind of frustrated about that. I mean, to be honest, I'm a shit event planner. So there's also that. but it was harder. You can't really start the day before. Well, I didn't start the day before.

I got some bad news the day before from the general manager of the boat house, which was where we were going to do it, but we can't do it there. Anyway, it's boring, boring story. Let's not get into it. We're meeting at Nata. I'd like to hear it at sometime. Okay.

Later. Yeah, okay. Do you want to talk about Twitter toxicity? Yeah, it's been a pretty intense couple days on there. I've had to kind of, you know, set it aside and go for some walks because people are pretty upset about a lot of different stuff. Particularly about some people are saying some mean things about USMNT Twitter that I kind of took personally. Did you take them personally? I tend to just because I'm part of USM&D Twitter.

Like, why do you say the mean, I get it, but. Yeah. Well, I sort of take it personally too, because I think I mean if we're not the core of USMNT Twitter we're pretty close to it right?

I would think so. Yeah. So an assault on USMNT Twitter is an assault on my very being. That's how I look at it. No, I don't actually look at it that way. I don't look at it that way at all either. But it does,

I'm like, I try to be nice on Twitter and civil? I find it actually to be, for the most part, pretty nice and a supportive place. Yeah. I mean,

there's some people saying some crazy stuff in replies sometimes, but, you know, that's the internet. That's the internet's fault. Yeah. It's not our fault.

It is the, it's the fault of a small number of people. I would say, what, maybe five or six people in the history of my time on Twitter

have just been absolutely beyond the page. toxic. I mean, certainly not more than 10. Yeah. Towards me, I mean. There's a couple.

There's like two or three really crazy ones. I don't get any mean comments. I think eventually I will start doing it, but I don't really yet. And it's just like, I don't understand why people call it the, they call it like the worst fan base on all the internet,

which just doesn't seem correct to me. Because if you, like, sometimes I try to figure out what's going on the rest of soccer Twitter and club Twitter is mostly just people. replying to each other with the word ratio and stuff to try to get more likes to the tweet above it or hold this L is a big one. Or insulting Rinaldo or Messi. Also, there's just fan bases that are mostly fascists, and we hardly have any fascists, as far as best I can tell.

Yeah, how many fascists do you think we have? Probably close to that same number you were saying. 20 or 2? Probably less than 5. Yeah. I mean outwardly fascist. there could be all kinds of it's three four or five

internal internal fascism going on I'm not even exactly sure what fascist means but I do wish probably my one

criticism of USMNT Twitter is I wish not so many people would put USMNT because it just makes it it very difficult to just keep track of who's who it's very confusing

and I don't know why I don't understand why you would do it you was like wouldn't you want to a name that differentiates yourself so people can remember who you are? Yeah, there's some, there's some, maybe the, some offenders of this rule that I really love, you know, Sanjeev, for instance. Yeah, but Sanjiv was before everyone else did it.

It's been a rush for the past three years to just go not. But even when Sanjeev did it, it didn't, it seemed like he could have come up with something a little more interesting. I mean, it's right on the nose. It's very clear what he was doing, but. Well, his actual name. on Twitter is Sanjeev now. I know, but his handle...

Yeah. That's true. His name is Sanjeev. I'm like, maybe here's a compromise we could strike with all the people. Put USM&T in your handle and your at, but for the other part, just put a name that was memorable or your name.

Yeah. If your name isn't memorable, do one that's memorable. Or just go with your mother's maiden name, you know? That's what I did. Just everyone go with your mother's maiden name. I think that makes the most sense for our Twitter names.

And the good thing about that is I think that would actually head off some of the criticism USM&T Twitter gets. Oh, it would be a real differentiator, you know? I think it just overwhelms people when they're getting things said to them by like 30 different people with the exact same name almost. I can see why people would be like, this is not, oh, come on, guys. Yeah. I think that's the real problem here.

to whatever except there is a problem. I have several more hours to say on social media, but I got to get a question to cook the books. O for one post-O-O-Jon Luca, though? Is that O for one on the tailgates, or O for one on life? I just want to make sure how much I'm being dragged here. More Buildings and Food said the YouTube USMNT guys are a rough bunch. Matt Decker says,

I'm just glad I got sober before I had a Twitter account. Why? I mean, I guess just in general, maybe he would have been a little more reckless and nasty. Oh, I see. You would say stuff, yeah. Not that he's reckless and nasty now. He's got a funny Twitter account.

Ryan says he's surprised at international soccer Twitter isn't actually worse, considering it is nationalism adjacent. I don't know. I just don't have a good sense of it. I need to do some research on that. I think there's a distinction between patriotism and nationalism that's pretty important. I couldn't tell you what it is, but I just have a vague sense it is. Yeah.

And then the word patriots been kind of weighted by recent events, too. So it's all very complicated. Let's not get in, let's not talk about that. So a couple of people are just saying, yo, USMNT Twitter is not that bad, actually, which was kind of your point earlier. It's fine. It's completely fine. I just think, I just hate, I just don't like the, when people go on and whine about it,

it's like they just increase the toxicity. I guess when somebody goes on a podcast and whines about people whining about it, then it's even, I don't know, maybe I'm, it's like, yeah, we really, it is actually, it seems like there's more people complaining about it not being good than it. That's not true. There's probably more things making it not good than complain about it. But I do think baking a podcast about people.

complaining about it. You're probably right. We've probably gone too far down this path. I see. Yeah. Okay. But one thing I do, and then from the side of USM and Twitter, they're pretty upset at the media right now. And there was that Ian Paul Joy saying that that's really popular, where he went on TV and said the fans have a right to have their opinions. Yeah. That's really the big thing right now. Which is, you know, in a vacuum, it's a truism. But I'm not really exactly sure who was saying they shouldn't have their opinions, but...

Right, right, right, right. I think what people are saying is, mostly they're saying, is they don't agree with the opinions that they see. And, you know, congratulations to you, Kartik, Krishnyer. It's like, who cares? Yeah. He sent out a tweet. I'm going to read it. I actually know, I'm just going to read it.

because I just had a few objections to it. Scrolling through U.S. main Twitter, the takes are bitter and bad, even by the standards of the worst supporter base in sports. We already addressed that. That's not true. I'm at a loss to grasp what it is. U.S. men supporters expect perfection, question mark. Brazil or France, question mark.

Circa, 2011, Barca. Circa, 2018, Man City. I don't get it. Dot, dot, dot. So I just had, like, some stylistic concerns. I love stylistic concerns. Please, please. Well, he uses an ampersand.

And then he has this sincere use of, I am out of loss. Then he does five rhetorical questions, and there's two unnecessary uses of circuit in there. And then it ends with ellipsis. So it's like, what do you, like, I might be more open to your point if you didn't, but you, like, didn't style this in a way that I can take seriously. No. Hard to take that seriously.

I did take it seriously, but yeah, I didn't even notice the double circa. That's particularly egregious. Yeah, just say that you're the team, if you want. No one's going to be like, well, they were actually good a year a little bit before that too. Yeah, no. I mean, actually. It actually makes the tweet, it turns the tweet into a being about your knowledge of the details of a Barcelona team 10 years ago. Aha.

That's my issue. Yeah. I actually, I do kind of get, part of what I understand about the media, not like you as many, Twitter is from their perspective, it's just like people getting mad at them about them having written a soccer article, which I imagine could be kind of dislocating. That would be a little bit difficult to understand. Yeah. And I sympathize with the, I sympathize with sort of like the mainstream journalists.

And I'm probably not that different than some of the smaller ones in the way I experienced Twitter. But the big ones and the big ones with the big. names, you know, people just treat them like they're not humans. I mean, it's, again, it's a very small number of people, but I can understand why they get fed up. Yeah. Although, on the other hand, I kind of had a little bit of a relation because I'm in a pretty serious ongoing argument with Matt Doyle about orangutings and chickens. And I think for the first time, I can really kind of see where his enemies are coming from now. Oh, yeah?

It's this hypothetical where it's like... Is he punching... Is he punching below the belt? Is he punch him below the belt rhetorically? No, well, he comes into this chat. And he says, guys, this is a great hypothetical. I can't figure out what the answer is. What is, it's, would you rather have to fight a chicken every time you get in your car?

Or would you rather fight an orangutan at random once a year and you get a sword? And he says, I would definitely... And he gets to the point. It's like, I'm going to fight the orangutan, which is insane to me. And, like, that he's even confused about this question at all is weird. And then he refuses to back down after we make it clear to him that the orangutan would, I think, without question, murder him, like the first fight, let alone having to fight it every year. And it was just infuriating.

It was so stubborn and he wouldn't back down. So I kind of like, I get why people are mad at Matt Doyle now. It's been, like, my past 48 hours. people notoriously dramatically overrate their sword skills don't you think that's a big part of it it's like you don't know how to use a sword matt even if like even if best case scenario he's a master swordsman he's still going to have to murder an orangutin every year for the rest of his life just to not have to get in a car with a chicken in it that doesn't make any sense anyway we don't need to I genuinely got upset about this about this argument with him. He lives in New York City. He doesn't even need a car.

I'm not even convinced he has a car. I don't know. It's like just like, and chickens aren't going to kill you. You would get so good at dealing with the chicken within the first week, you would stop even thinking about it, which is become a normal part of your life. And it's like you'd have to constantly worry

about the orangutan hunting you because it's that random. and orangutans are seven times stronger than humans. Yeah, I'm going to have to side with you on this one. I do, I think it would be very unpleasant to have to kill a chicken every time you get into your car. Somebody says, how does Doyle have a car who lives in New York? I'm not sure he does have a car, but I think he definitely understands the concept of a car. And I think he's just, yeah.

I don't know. I don't know his car situation. Anyway, I just think, my point was I get why people get upset at him now. I never got upset at him for other stuff because I don't, care about the soccer as much as stuff like this, but I think there's probably some parallels that I can now relate to. Let me read a few things from the Discord. Tim says it's worth noting that murder and orangutan is a good point because it feels

much closer to murdering a person than what having to take care of a chicken. Yeah, I mean, we already eat an enormous amount of chicken. We're already murdering chickens. Oh, we murder chickens on a scale, almost unimaginable. And in torturous conditions, killing a chicken in your car is, there's a fortunate death for them, given what they could have to deal with. And you don't even necessarily have to kill the chicken, you can just throw it out of your car. Yeah, I guess you could. It's just you have to get a hold of it and then throw it out the car.

Once you get them by the legs, they're going to chill out too. More buildings and food asked if you could take. came the chicken. And I don't think that's in the cards in this scenario. One person, I don't remember exactly who, sang on the orangutine end,

maybe you could try to negotiate with the orangutine. So if we had negotiating being allowed, that makes the question for me a little bit more interesting, especially if it's the same orangutan every year that shows up to fight you. Although, the spirit of the question, I think you do kind of

have to fight. Yeah. I just don't think it's that well-constructed of a hypothetical. Because you shouldn't be able to just avoid one of the fights by driving less. Yeah. They have to be the same in a lot. It has to be the same. Like the orangutan should be in your car or something.

I take it as in this hypothetical, you are required to get into your car at least once a day, you know? I mean, that's at least how I initially read it. Okay. I think what it should be. Sorry, I have one more idea on this. The hypothetical should be, would you rather take fighting out of it? Maybe there's a fight, maybe there isn't. Would you rather a chicken be in your car every time you get there

or an orangutan be there once a year, just like sitting in the passenger seat? That's what I think it should be. We can move on now. Okay. I just think Twitter's bad on every subject. And, you know, social media is kind of just an ongoing experiment with human brains. that who knows how it's all going to end. It'll probably be fine.

Yeah. I guess it won't. Eventually it won't be fine. Eventually it will end. Well, everyone, it'll be fine until it isn't. We'll become like robot brains. By the way. Yeah, yeah.

But let me quick say this show is recorded live on the SCuff podcast Discord. You can listen and participate with us in the moment by subscribing to the SCOF Patreon. we really appreciate all our patrons. Thank you to you guys. Thanks to the people who are talking to us right now. It really makes this more fun. All right, what's the first question? I'll read it.

Scott Dickie asked, during Burhawter's recent interview with Bobby Warshaw, he stated that U.S. had lost two games in the first qualifying window. He later claimed that this was a mistake, that he made intentionally designed to make a point. one that Bobby had missed. Do you believe him, if not, will you at least give him credit

for recognizing his blunder and making adjustments in the second half of the interview? So what happened is, earlier in the interview, he just said offhand, we lost two, and then at the near the end of the interview, he said, by the way,

I made a mistake, did you catch it? And then he made a whole production of it. That's what this question about for anyone who missed that. And it's something I've thought about a lot. Did you have any ideas on this before? I don't want to. Yeah, I think he,

I think he did it on purpose, actually. That was how I read it the first. That's how I listened the first time. Yeah, it was difficult to know, but I do think he meant it. And I was like, because I've spent kind of, because it really did bother me. I was really wondering about it,

so I appreciate the question. I started to think about, like, there's kind of like four types of people. There's like normal people, weird people, normal weird people, and then weird normal people. and Burrhalter is kind of a weird normal. And this is like the exact type of thing

a weird normal person would do. So that's kind of where I got to point. Yeah, that makes sense that he meant to do it. Tell me more about the weird normal person. What's that concept? Is that a real concept? I mean, is it something you read

or is it something you came up with? Well, it's something I came up with, but I can see having read it because I think it's such, I think it's correct. It's weird normal. First of all, there's all these things are going to blur.

together obviously. It's like a spectrum. It's like a square spectrum. But a weird normal is basically like a boring normal person, but who has like a consistent pattern of quirks that the quirks kind of resemble in form something a normal person would do. But there's just kind of something off about them when the when they do them. So it's like it's stuff like we talked about this last week or the week before sometime. Yeah. These um when he unselfconsciously refers to subs as solutions or he's doing behind the back passes or he's collecting starbuck mugs in different places he visits so just like a combination of stuff like that that's that's kind of how i think about you i can you give me a quick refresh on the starbucks mugs collection thing because i i i saw some

references to that but i never saw the like source on i mean what what's the actual story there i think that i first heard about i don't i can remember who said it but i think it was during a press conference, he mentioned that he collects Starbucks mugs and he wanted to get one from Panama, but he didn't know if he could because of COVID. And then, not much more was said about it. I think a bunch of reporters talked about it because it's an interesting little fact. But then later that night or the next day, another reporter named Michelle Giannoni tweeted out, he got it. He got the mug. No one else talked about it, though, but I'm, it, he, he, He looks to be, Michelle is a he, he, I assume.

It looks to be credible. So he did get the mug from Starbucks. And that's it. We don't know how he got it. Grant Wall did mention on his podcast that he wasn't sure if Burhalter saying it meant he was supposed to bring him the mug. So it could be a reporter brought it to him, but we just don't know. And that could be a reason not to report it.

because I think that would actually be a conflict of interest. But we don't know. Yeah. Yeah, he is a weird guy. He's a weird guy. I agree with that. I think, I think, you know, it's that whole thing where you sort of drop something and then in a conversation and then pick it up several minutes later and say,

do you see what I did there, which is what he kind of did with Warshaw, you know? Yeah. Like, hey, do you remember? Do you see what I did there, Bobby? What I said earlier, do you see that? That's a very boomer move, I think. I know, it's hard to imagine a, it's hard to imagine a younger person doing that. And speaking of boomers, cook the book says,

Zumers are inoculated against the worst of social media as opposed to boomers who are engulfed by it. Hopefully. How does that? Hopefully. Why are they inoculated? It's just an assertion. I don't know.

I do think, I do think younger people are chiller about it than, Older people. They're used to it? At least the ones I know. I don't know. The people that comment on my TikToks aren't very nice. Yeah, but there's a lot of older people on TikTok now. Okay.

Maybe they're old. I don't know why we're assuming that younger people are nicer, though. He says, born in it versus had brain crashed by it later in life. I'm intrigued. I think it's a bigger... Yeah, go ahead. Starbucks mug in Panama would have been a little bit hard to get. So I was looking up a lot about Starbucks mug collecting.

I can't believe people were doing that. Yeah, people go after the rare ones. The really, like the really ones that you really want are places with misprints on them on the mug that they had to, that Starbucks then had to hunt down and destroy. There's one with a Seattle one where they misspilled Mount Rainier. And then a main one, they misspelled Mount Kataddin. And then there's a North Dakota one where they identified the state on the mug as center of the United States instead of center of North America, as in geographic center. And then they put the location of North Dakota roughly where Kansas was.

So that's one of the most popular ones. Okay. That is kind of interesting. I don't think it actually is. Well, most of it wasn't, but that part was, I bring up a map, you know, and I'm in, I'm not, yeah, I don't think I should trust someone who collects Starbucks mugs. That's my, that's where I'm landing on all this. That's from Jared. Yeah.

Matt says boomerism is a temperament, not necessarily an age. And Tim says, my in-laws like to buy a Starbucks mugs from the places we live when they come to visit us. Deeply fucked up. What, what do they do? They buy Starbucks mugs from the places where he and his spouse live when they come to visit them. So say they live in Columbus, your in-laws come, and when they're there, they'll buy you a Starbucks mug with the New Columbus sign. All right, should we go to the next question? Yes.

Well, Andrew asks, when you look at the past, you have. performance is USMNT performances. What's the bigger area of concern moving forward? The periods of little to know attacking identity or the small mental lapses in defense leading to potential goals. Hmm. My initial thought is the identity part.

Yeah. It's... Because it just seems so... You know, it's your identity. And it's the... And without it, we can never be what we... You know, what we hope we can be. You're always going to have...

I was thinking... You're always going to have some defense. of lapses, and our defense is actually pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't actually think that the lapses have been as big of a problem as maybe they could have been. But if they were one solution I was thinking about for both problems, we could throw out the system and just focus completely on rest defense. I read a serious article

about this. And one of the teams in Spain does it. I think they're called Katafi. And what they do is they just stay in their defensive shape the whole time and they just pass the ball and so whenever they turn it over they're already defending. It's harder to have a lapse. I don't think Burrhalter would do this

but if we fire him this is what I would do if I were made coach. I mean if I I don't mean this is what I want a coach to do I'm just like if I were literally made coach. Yeah. I had to figure something out.

I'd be in a panic, and this seems like the simplest thing to do. Yeah, I just wouldn't, I wouldn't even accept the job. I'd just say no, thanks. I wouldn't either. No, thanks. Well, maybe it's a hypothetical where you either have to coach the national team where I fight a gorilla once a year or something like that. But, like, I would not straight up take the job.

Yeah. But I'm just imagining if I were forced to take the job. You would do a... On some scenario like that. I would take the job, and I would play, like, Cotafé. That's just... just based on reading one John Mueller article. That's fine.

It's a fine thing to base something we say in this podcast on. Yeah, I think the lack of attacking identity, I mean, it is the problem. It's been the problem all along since he became the coach. And maybe that's because he set expectations too high or something, but they're not. I think what Greg said in the last podcast is basically it. There's nothing.

It doesn't appear that anything's been. built. Nothing perceivable. Yeah. It just hasn't looked very good. And that is pretty damning it. But I don't need to just quote Greg. Let's go question two, or question three, I guess. From Lobar,

regarding Pulisic, is running into opponents full, is it still shithouserie if you get injured? Or does shithouserry require acting? Do you think Pulisic understands that actual injury is not required. I think for it to be shithousing, it does need to be a straight-up dive,

or at least very nearly a straight-up dive. And the overwhelming majority of the time what Pulisic is doing is not shit-housing. And he should be doing far more shit-housing and far-losting-down- Oh, he should be doing so much shit-housing. He should dive more and also not dribble into people until he gets fouled. His ratio is all off.

It's way off, man. Well, I guess we've already covered his intellectual capacity last week, didn't we? Yes. What were you going to say? Yeah. I think I was thinking, I don't know why I thought of this, but there's something about him being from central Pennsylvania that I feel is going to handicap him in terms of shithousing. He's just not ever going to be as good as he could be. Yeah.

I don't know why. It's just kind of an intuition I have. Yeah, he's really from rural Pennsylvania, isn't he? Isn't Hershey pretty rural? I think so. I think so. It should be like a regional difference there. I was...

He's not like the hard-nosed Philadelphia kid, in other words. Right. I was reading about... I think this was in Grant... Well, no, it was definitely Grant Wall. He was talking about how Brendan Aronson... He mentioned that Brendan Aronson really loves Wawa. And that's just kind of...

I thought of that because it's like a regional difference. there. Walwa is like a convenience store with a, you know, made-to-order food and a big drink selection that's popular on the East Coast from like New Jersey, Virginia. And Pulisik, he's on the record. It's really liking sheets. So I just, I just think that's a really interesting kind of a juxt position with those two. Because there's similar convenience stores.

It's actually a little bit strange. Like, those should be switched because walla is a little, like, uh, little simpler and Sheets is kind of more in your face. Well, I guess that does kind of make sense in a way. But anyway, we don't need to get too into that because I know not everyone has those stores. I think, if Sheets is the one I'm thinking of, it's a pretty nice, it's a gas station, right? It's a nice gas station. It's a very nice gas station.

I like those. And it's, yeah. Yeah, they're both founded in Pennsylvania, just one further west where Sheets is. That's why Policciccic likes that. Wawa is more in the Philadelphia suburbs. People are saying in the chat that Hershey's not that rural. Timbo and Jordan. Hmm.

But it sounds rural. It's rural adjacent, I guess. It's a town near a rural area, I imagine. Big disagreement about Wawa versus Sheets. Regardless, it's got a population of 14,000. It's, yeah. What are people saying? about, I didn't.

Two votes for sheets, one for Wawa. I've never been to a Wawa. You don't even need to have a favorite, honestly. You just go to whichever one's more convenient. That's all I've always kind of felt about it. Should we do? Lobar's got another question. I thought that was a good one.

Or did you have anything more to say about the... No, that's enough. I have a lot more to say on Wawa on sheets, but we don't need to... Maybe some other time. He said, question number two. Talk amongst Sargent. Talk amongst yourselves.

I think this part that's about to come was from Lobar, but I couldn't make sure from the form. But here it goes. Is the USMNT fan base overreacting to Sergeant versus Honduras? He was good to excellent in the Nation's League and was arguably the best starter versus El Salvador. He also created our only chance versus Honduras. The idea that we should drop him seems reactionary. He's our best playmaker and defender from that position. Why would you drop him for Zardis, who was outplayed by an out-of-position hoppy in the Gold Cup

and got open less throughout the knockout stage of the Gold Cup than Sergeant did in a single game versus Honduras. Dropping someone who gets regular time in a top five league for someone with a modest scoring rate in MLS doesn't make sense. So I'm not sure that question's from Lobar, honestly. He might have just said Sergeant talk amongst yourselves, but somebody else asked that.

So the questions are related. Well, whoever asks it, it's a good question. It's also a pretty leading question. I'm feeling a lot of pressure to agree with you. I'm sergeant. I would have to really feel pretty strongly about this to go against this question. Oh yeah, I'll go against it in a few ways.

But you go ahead. Well, I just, like, there's so much and I've inclined to take it piece by piece. Was his nation's league good to excellent? I don't remember that. I don't think so. I don't think so at all. I don't also remember him being the best starter against El Salvador,

but I might just... It's very... it's not yeah it did not that does not stick out as true to me either I can't honestly remember who was the good player against El Salvador Miles Robinson maybe I do agree he's the best defender

from the striker position yeah so I'm on board with that he's a pretty good playmaker too he's a pretty good playmaker from that position yeah not much of a play finisher I kind of think the overall difference between the two is is probably

pretty thin in terms of maximizing points for them though. But I'm fine with going like Sergeant being narrowly better by like 0.1 or 0.3 additional expected points. So I can agree with that part of it but

I don't think he's drastically better. No. David and Skokie, I like that when people say what town they live in. I really love that. Is there an email address to contact scuffed HQ for those of us without Twitter? Yes.

scuffed pod at gmail.com. He also asked, who do you think will be the USM&T player players to get a single cap in World Cup qualifying? Last cycle we had five guys get a single cap in the hex, four other guys got a single cap in the fourth qualifying round of the 2018 cycle. So who's only going to get one cap?

This is a trap question for me. Why? This is a trap question because he's just like, he's trying to make us name a popular young player. who's like currently near the team that we actually don't think is good. And this climate, it's not, it's too risky to do that. I don't like getting criticized.

No, I don't either. Don't enjoy it. So no thank you. But I guess, you know, maybe it would be safe to say a goalkeeper, although that wouldn't be. Because then you have to say Zach Stephan. That could be my answer. Yeah.

It might be, it might be Stefan. I could see someone like Hoppy or Busio or, I was going to say, I mean, if Bello hadn't started against Panama, I would have said him probably. But isn't that just one cap? No, because he played against Honduras as well. Oh, I forgot about the last. Yeah. So he's got two.

Disqualifies him. Okay. Let's go one more question. Jesse asked, can you give an in-depth look at upcoming U.S. Youth National Team Tournament? and possible players to watch. No, not right now. But I know you've been asking this question in various places at various times,

and we will get to it. We will do something. If not on this branch of the scuff podcast, then somewhere else. That's my promise. I really liked those ones you used to do with Joey and Matt Hartman. Yeah.

You did like a five-out. our podcast about... Not five. But we did one that was three, which is crazy. It was three. It was, I think it was almost actually three hours. Yeah, that's pretty exhausting and not just for the listener, I'm sure.

Do, um, yeah, I would be excited to listen to that. I don't know any of the youth national team players anymore. Oh, yeah, man, I'm pretty out of the loop myself, but I'll, I feel like I can get back into it. And Hartman would be down. Hartman's always down to do it. I think Joey's a little bit busy, but we'll figure something out. Anything else we should talk about?

No, you know, there isn't. Pretty tangential office hours, but I don't really. I don't know. What else is there to say about the game? Let's just hope that we're good. Or, you know, hope that we get played off the field so Burrhalter gets fired, which you probably won't get fired anyway. Yeah, I don't know if that second auction is something that we won at all.

I think it would be far better if we won. But one of those two things. We're going to just do something right in the middle, and everyone's going to be like, we're going to win and not feel great about it. It's what's going to happen. I hope. You hope. How worried would you be about qualifying?

if we tie. I would be worried about actually qualifying. I wouldn't, I think we're going to qualify. Tie would probably be fine, actually, but,

no, I don't want that to happen. I would like them to win. Ryan says he doesn't know who actually thinks giving up three points to get rid of Greg is worth it. And that's fair.

I don't know that I've ever seen anybody say that. Just threw it out there as a possible way of thinking. Let me read a couple more things. I'm still here, but... Bobby Wood was Jabu's proposal for a one-cap wonder in this cycle, and then

maybe Ferreira, says Ryan. And more buildings and food said that Josh Sergeant discourse is approaching Joe Flack. Is Joe Flacco elite territory? Let's shut it down. You want to say goodbye to everybody? Bye. By, by everybody.

I'm going to hit stop recording now. Okay. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.