Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #210: USA v Costa Rica recap (WCQ6)

Episode Date: October 15, 2021

A massive timeline full of triangles, goalkeeping questions, the MMA midfield, key moments in the final 22 yards, and overall a good strong showing from the first team of the USMNT.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. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The U.S. got a 2-1 victory over Costa Rica last night, despite conceding a goal in the opening minute. And the team ends another roller coaster international window with the much-needed three points, now sitting second in the table behind Mexico. Lots to discuss. Greg, how are you doing? I'm doing all right, Bells. I'm doing exactly 0.2 points. per game better than I was before we played Costa Rica. Is that how it changes, how much it changes the points per game? I think so. I think we're at 1.6 and now we're at 1.83.

Hey, 0.23. All right. Well, yeah, there is a lot to discuss. I really want to get your view of the goalkeeping on both Costa Rica's opener and the U.S. game winner. and I spent some time with people who listen to the podcast over the last couple days, and I know they want that too, but let's get to those later. It seems like there's sort of two ways to look at this game.

One is this is a very old and not great Costa Rica team that we still almost lost to and needed a lot of things to break our way to actually win the game. And then there's another way to look at it, which is like this was the best the U.S. has played. probably under Burrhalter ever in a meaningful game. And so we should all be really excited about that. And I wonder, you know, where you fall on that spectrum. Well, I feel like you blend it, right? Like, this is the best we've looked,

and I thought we looked much better than Costa Rica. And you then caveat that with this is a very, very elderly Costa Rica side playing their third game with minimal rotation compared to us being you know college-aged children playing after heavy rotation but this is the first test we had so we played Jamaica a week ago

and Jamaica were also a bad team but they were also sort of badly organized and we looked good against them so the next test is to play a bad team that's slightly better organized and that's what goes to Rika were and we I think

I still think there are definitely elements of progress that you can that you can look at there in the way we played. Okay. Yeah. Well, let's just go straight to the lineups, if you don't mind, Greg. Absolutely. Okay. USA started, so Berhalter started Stefan and Goal.

What did you make of that? I don't care for it. I don't think it's the right decision. Do we talk about it right now? Let's talk about it right now. So I posted like a clip of like a sarcastic clip of Matt Turner making an amazing save against Panama and being like we definitely don't want this guy on the field. But I also said it probably won't matter, right? It probably doesn't.

And the analogy I'm going to give here is a basketball analogy. I think hopefully some of our listeners are familiar with the game of basketball. And I've probably used this before because it's like my go-to for percentages. Like a coach needs to play percentages. And part of this is me assuming that, like, Matt Turner is the better goalkeeper. And if Matt Turner is the better goalkeeper, I think of it as like free throw percentages. So if you're a basketball coach, you have a technical foul on the game and you get to send a player of your choice to the free throw line to take the foul. And you've got a guy on the floor that shoots 90%.

And you've got a guy on the floor that shoots 80%. If you send the guy on the floor that shoots 80% to take the free throw, like that's a bad coaching choice. He will probably make the free throw still. He's a good free throw shooter. But you send the guy to give you the best possible chance to do it. And so that's kind of in my head what I think of with Turner and Stefan. And again, for me, just like in basketball, like it's a no-brainer. I feel like Turner is so much better than Stefan at stopping shots that even though

Turner, Stefan might be good enough in the game and it might not bite you, you just don't give yourself that risk. Well, let's just hold that in mind. we get to the timeline. But, um, won't have to hold it very long. Well, I've never heard you give that free throw analogy.

That's, that's good. That's helpful. So then, okay, so Stefan's in the goal. And I think that was, that was criticized by more people

than just you. And then Desd, Miles, Chris Richards, a little bit of a surprise, and Anthony Robinson across the back line. Uh,

and then Adams, Musa, and McKen's, Kenny, the MMA midfield, and then Wea, Zardis, and Aronson across the front line, although there's a wrinkle there because Ariola was going to start. It was like even announced an hour before the game in the lineup announcement, but he got hurt in warmups and was a last second scratch clearing the way for Wea to start on the right wing. So I guess for me, both Ariola and Stefan, if we're going to use, you know, scuffed parlance, were a little bit cute.

And then, you know, God intervened in the case of Ariola. Who we hope is recovering quickly. Yeah. Of course. Yeah, but I mean, it's like, Ariel had started both of the first two games. Why is he the guy who starts all three games? I mean, what does what does, what is Burrhalter see in there? I don't, I don't get that.

But like the question of what he sees there is, is definitely up for discussion. But I think what is not up for discussion is at least going into this game, Burrhalter considered Ariola a better winger more likely to help his team win games than Tim Wea. Like once he starts game three, I feel like that is, you can't really argue it anymore. Right. And it would. So, yeah, so Ariola didn't just start to, he went 90.

He went a full 90 in the first game and then went 45 in game two. And then pegged to start game three. Interesting. Fascinating. And we don't want to be, again, I mean, we have this tendency to get really nipicky and we're going to be, but just, I mean, I was, I was at the game last night. I was very happy. I was a very happy person watching the game. I thought it was a, it was quite a good performance from the U.S. mostly. So, I just want to throw that in there before we get, get going.

And then Costa Rica's lineup was, uh, Kailunovas in goal, the, you know, the greatest player in the history of Conca Calf, probably, with all due respect to Rafa Marquez and Hugo Sanchez. and then Blanco, Duarte, Calvo, and Moderita across the back line. Calvo and Moderita will be very familiar to MLS watchers. And then Kelso Borges and Yeltsin Tejada as a double pivot. And then Keisha Fuller, Brian Ruiz and Johan Vanegis in the band of three. And then Jonathan Moya as the striker. it's worth pointing out,

you've heard this on every other podcast you've listened to and in all the articles, but it's worth pointing out here, again, that the youngest Costa Rica player was older than the oldest US player in the starting lineup.

And the average age of our 11 was under 23, like 22.6 or something. Which I know it's getting to be a little, I mean, it's getting to be a little bit of like a cliche thing to keep bringing it up,

but it's worth reminding ourselves like these are, this is an amazingly young collection of players And this is, this was our best, I think most of our best players were in this 11 that were available. It's, it's never, I never get tired of bringing it up because this was again, the premise of our entire podcast, was whether or not we would have enough young players to take over for what was a very barren cupboard. But yes, the outfielders in this 11 for the U.S. all would have been eligible to play in the Guadalajara Olympic qualifying tournament. And then obviously in the Tokyo Games proper.

So just an incredible sense of like, I don't know, I don't know if I want to say perspective, but just like what has happened in the last three years for the U.S. Yeah. On a talent development front and what was missing for the U.S. in five years prior to that. Well, there's a whole way of processing these games that includes talking about that youth and saying, well, that is the reason for the inconsistency of the team. that is the reason, you know, that they haven't been able to coalesce is because they're so young. And that's why I was, that's why I was sort of on, on, walking on eggshells bringing it up.

Because you know, I'm, because you know, I hate it. Yeah, I know you hate that stuff. I'm going to get all fiery about it. It's a terrible angle. Like, at this point, if that's what you, if you want to, like, actually take that angle, like, and assess that angle based on what we've seen in these games, you would, like, say the opposite. You would say that it's the experience that it's, hurting us and really more teams should throw in players who have zero experience in

World Cup qualifiers because that's what translates to points. That's the correlation at the moment for our team. Well, it's definitely Burrhalter's angle, at least part of the time. You know, he's making that case that the youth of the team has, is a factor in the inconsistency of the performances. I mean, and I think there's some, there's some in the sort of broader media landscape who are at least amenable to that line of thinking. I listened to Allocation Disorder this morning on my way back from Columbus.

And they talked about that a little bit. So it's out there and it may even be conventional wisdom in some quarters. No, I totally get it. It's just it feels very, again, I basically just want to say it feels lazy because like drill into it and say, okay, which of the players have we seen that have been inconsistent? and like which of those players are under the age of 23 and which of those players are over the age of 23. And like what is the correlation? Yeah.

Well, I mean, I don't want to get too catty about it. But I saw Tenorio tweeted earlier today about how, you know, Musa had a very poor performance against Panama and then rebounded last night. And I see that. And I'm like, well, did he have a very poor performance against Panama? Panama? Like, he had two bad giveaways in the first 10 minutes. And that is, that is the poison pill for somebody when people are watching the U.S. If you make a mistake in the first 10 minutes, everybody's going to remember it. And that will, that will basically color the way you are assessed by the, by a lot of fans and, like, you know, pundits, whatever. But I didn't think, I didn't think Musa played

badly against Panama. I thought he was the lone sort of bright spot in that game. Not the lone one, but I thought he was pretty decent. So that'd be one place where they, you know, that's one example that you could give. You know what an analog, a good analog in that game would be for me? Would be Christian Raldon, like coming in as a sub. And I feel like the first two things he did when he got the ball was just kick it forward to nobody. And so then I was like, oh my God, all Roldan is doing is just hoofing it forward.

And what's kind of funny about is he kept hoffing it forward all game when he got in. That was the only thing he did. but a lot of his progressive, they actually just became progressive passives. And I don't mean like they were all aimless. Some of them were actually very well played passes. So it's just kind of like an interesting, because the same thing happened to me when I was watching him. But I saw other people saying he was like a spark off the bench. And I was like, he just gave the ball away like three straight times.

That's what it looked like to me. But he actually had like a couple of good passes. And it's also sort of a sad statement on that game that him just, literally kicking the ball forward as far as he could or, you know, every time he got it, whether the pass was on or not, still managed to improve the play of the game. And I think that's kind of the same thing with Musa. He gave it away several times, but also the only good things that were happening in the game where like when he was taking the ball at his feet and trying to advance it. Yeah. Well, forget about the Panama game. Musa was very good last night,

I thought. I mean, we're not going to forget about the Panama game, but just for the purposes of the thing I was just about to say. So should we go to the timeline? I'm ready for a timeline. I'll go on a bunch of rants on tangents as we go through it. I hope you do. In the first minute, as others have pointed out, before the TIFOs had even been lowered from the American Outlaws

end, right in front of the goal we were defending, right behind the goal we were defending, Costa Rica scored. It starts with Francisco Calvo lifting a ball toward the back line, just kind of a kick it and prey kind of situation. And Moia beats Chris Richards to it

and flicks it in behind into a dangerous area, forcing Stefan to leave his box to head it away. I think Robinson was tracking, I think it was Fuller coming in from the right, from our left. but it was still dangerous.

I'm glad Stefan came out, at least until you tell me otherwise. Then Sergenio tries to head it out of bounds, and Brian Ruiz makes a really nice play by getting to it and then backhealing it to an onrushing Ronald Matarita. And Dest is a tad flat-footed, I think. And Matarita beats him to the end line and then floats a ball across the box. And it falls to Keisha Fuller on the back post.

And he kind of scuffs his shot, but it bounces through traffic right past Stefan. So, Greg, I'm really interested in your take on this goal. All right. So, I mean, before we even started, I was talking about how, like, I'm a big Matt Turner guy. Again, think that he just is a miraculous shot saver. I don't put a lot of this on Zach Stephan. So even though I was hoping that it was going to be Turner starting, was disappointed of C. Stephan. We get scored on within 40 seconds of the game. It's an easy narrative to play.

Like, can't believe we didn't start Turner. Look at what has happened now. But like, this is a really, for me, a really tough one to put much of any blame on Zach Steffin for any of it, including the header. Yeah. I heard some people say, you know, I mean, I want to hear what you think about the shot, the shot and the way it went past Stefan. But I have heard some people say, well, if Stefan's going to come out like that. He needs to make sure it goes all the way out of bounds. I'm like, I don't know. He headed it pretty far. And then he got back into his goal. It's not like he got chipped or something. So I tend to agree with you on that. I don't really blame Stefan for that. And it did feel like he needed to come out. I mean, he for sure did. He definitely had to come out.

So can I kind of detail some of this stuff? Yes. And I heard, I've already heard the TSS breakdown. and like I was like, ah, this is exactly what I saw too for most of it. Calvo's sitting on the ball 80 yards away from our goal. We're not putting any pressure on them. Like, our line's kind of sitting back a little bit. We're deep. It's fine. Pepe kind of comes forward, but it's not like he dragged everyone else out and they split us like they did against Honduras to set up that goal.

But I do think that goal, like, is relevant here because when Calvo hits that long ball, what you see when the camera pans over is Miles Robinson is like left the back line to chase a guy up. field who had checked back. We didn't do that in the Honduras goal. We didn't time that well in that Honduras goal away. And Brooks went late and that's how we got beat. So I was wondering if that was like going through the back of Miles's head. Like I can't let this guy receive it between the lines.

There was no danger of that happening. Calvo was 50 yards away from that guy. Yeah. And that guy was flanked by our center mids. Like we would have been fine in that situation. So Miles was drawn out of the back line, which left Richards one-on-one for the header. And Richards lost the battle, which happens sometimes. He lost it pretty easily.

I think you said in the past, I agree with you. Richards is not dominant in the air. No. He's okay in the air. But we have John Brooks. We have Walker Zimmerman. We have, you know, Matt Miosk. Those guys are dominant in the air.

Richards and McKenzie are not. Yeah. So he got shoved off his spot and Moya wins the header. And then the other thing to think about here is Anthony Robinson got beat before this happened. On the Calvo Long ball, when the camera pans over, you see Robinson's man is now goalside of him for some reason, even though there was plenty of time to be getting set up. The only thing Robinson could try to claim is that his man is offside on the actual initial header that starts all this. But he's chasing him.

So Robinson is now beat on the play. And the flag doesn't go up and there's no VAR. So it's like, okay, this is the play. This is what we're dealing with. So for me, Stefan does have to come out. That's a long way of saying like it's the right choice for Stefan to come out. Yeah. And then his header, like, isn't great, but it's a goalkeeper coming out and making a diving header that he has to come make.

So it's like, okay, it was good enough. He put a lot of air under it, which is exactly what he needs to do. And Sergenio Dest is there to do the next thing. He's there to, like, totally eliminate the danger, but he doesn't do that. Maybe or, you know, collect it. Just pop it up in the air again, right? But he doesn't. It just sort of barely skims off his head and a very optimistic Brian Ruiz.

Brian Ruiz is like half jumping at it, probably not expecting anything good to come of it. And Dest's header like carems off of his shoulder and suddenly is like, Dest is now out of position. Stefan's still not in position. But it's still not that dangerous because the ball's still going to the sideline, right?

So it's such a confluence of like not terrible things happening but just keep happening barely the wrong way. Keep breaking barely the wrong way for us. It's like a bunch of 82% free throw shooters when you need a 92% free throw shooters. We had 7, 82% free throw shooters miss in a row at the end of the game.

And they're all front ends of one-on-one. So it was especially brutal. Yeah. And then, I mean, and then Desk gets beat by Moderita. Like, don't, do you, yeah, I mean, yeah, go ahead. You keep going. Well, Desk takes a slightly bad angle at Moderito

because maybe, again, all this is kind of now in, what I would call non-standard defending territory. Your keeper's out that already changes your psychology for how you're doing all this. Waya comes to try to clean up the ball that Ruiz has to just let it go out of bounds.

But Ruiz is really clever because he's Brian Ruiz. And he backheels it and just keeps it in play. And Matarizzo has made a great read and he takes off and it goes right into his path. And now he's got a full head of steam and death does take a bad angle. Can't make up the ground.

And we get the cross off. And this is where there's more. phenomenon is falling in that while once moderita got sprung, like same kind of situation as the Honduras game actually where they spring a guy on our weak side. We did a decent job of shelling up in front of the goal. When that cross has hit, Miles Robinson, Anthony Robinson, and one other guy who I don't remember are all sitting right in front of the goal. So you have your three-man shell at like the edge of the six-yard box to cover the goal up. But the center Mids don't come with them.

So McKinney and Moussa don't come over. Adams has shifted towards the ball, which is his job. But McKinney and Mousa aren't there to make up the next layer of the shell to build your little three two pyramid. And that's where that's the space that Fuller gets into. So again, you're seeing all of these little tiny mistakes that just are adding up. And Fuller gets a shot off and it's Moya, right, directly in front of Stefan? So Fuller's shot is not a good shot.

Moia's not there, Stefan probably takes one step to his right and just picks the ball up and puts it in his chest. But Moia is there and Stefan has to react to him. And for me then, assessing the actual goalkeeper, even though Fuller gets credit for the goal, for Stefan, the shot may as well come from Moja, who's three and a half yards away from him and puts it not directly into Stefan's body. So it's a goal. Like I don't really hold any blame for Stefan on that play. would Matt Turner have saved it possibly, but only because we've seen him, again, make miraculous saves.

So he could pull it out. But even for Matt Turner, it would be a miraculous save. Yeah. You're saying it's like it's basically a shot from Moya because just by choosing not to touch it, he's basically, that's where the choice makes. That's where the choice is made. Yep. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

there. Moia just touches it anywhere else and that's that. Yeah. Okay, good for you. Good for you not, not jumping on your soapbox, not opportunistically jumping on your soapbox. No, I appreciate that. I haven't checked it. Did Stefan actually make any other saves in the game? Um, must have, right? Surely Yeah, he did. He palmed one. I think he palmed the shot over from August. And he also, he also picked up covered up something that kind of dribbled towards him on a free kick at the end. It wasn't a save, I guess, but it was important that he did that. Okay, so one to zero. And I don't have any way of assessing the feel in the stadium because my body was so racked with grief personally

that I couldn't even like observe other people. But it was pretty deflating to have that happen inside 60. seconds, obviously. Well, and because we also had no idea how our team was looking. So it's not like everything's going right and then suddenly the airs out of our sale. It was just this immediate like, oh my God, this game could be a full spiral of like Clemsmanian proportion. Yeah.

But we figured it out. I mean, we started to play well, I guess I should say. In the fourth minute, you know, solid bit of possession ends with a hopeful ball in behind from Adams. there were some hopeful balls, but at least two examples in the first 10 minutes of West McKinney picking up the ball and driving hard at Costa Rica,

which was such a pleasure to see, and then he would give it up, like he would give it away. A poor touch usually was the culprit. And that's not unusual, right? We see that a lot with McKinney, and we take it. And, you know,

Where I think McKinney adds a ton of value, and we have a fifth minute, I think, situation here where we saw his verticality, which is what I love, his off ball verticality. So I'm intercepting your timeline, Bell. Dude, go for it. It was like we built a little bit of a nice attack through possession. Costa Rica kind of cleared, but because Tyler Adams is Tyler Adams, he gets on the end of the clearance and just loops a ball back into Brendan Aronson, who takes it very well, like this kind of ball out of the air. barely, just a little looper on a half turn though. And Ricardo Pepe has set up like a backboard because I'm just, I love basketball terminology. And Aronson hits an easy ball into, like a six-yard ball into Pepey.

And Weston McKinney is running vertically now bursting beyond Pepe. And Pepey with a nice one-touch ball to put McKinney into space. Aronson goes too. And we have this great move at Pepe then takes off as well. And we just have this really good-looking attack into Costa Rica's box. McKinney fires a shot in and it gets like, well, it's like a half shot, half. Maybe Pepe gets on the end of it if it's like far post and a Coast Rican defender blocks it out for a corner. But it's just all very explosive is how I'd call it.

And we get that verticality from deep and we have Pepey facing up and playing a great little combination. And that for me is like, oh man, that was good. Yeah. I mean, are you describing something that happened in the fifth minute? Yes. Right off the bat? Okay. All right.

I didn't even have that in the timeline. But oh man, it was awesome. And it ticked so many in my boxes about like what I want to see like from our striker, from our center midfielders from Brendan Aronson, who also just because, I mean, it didn't come to anything. But after he made the pass into peppy he went to and then right at the last second when McKinney had it, he actually, everyone was running hard at goal.

Costa Rica defender is sprinting back at the goal. Aronson like screeches to a halt, which is I love that movement to create separation while everyone else is dropping. And McKenney, it would have been tough, but McKenney could have recognized it and essentially just clipped it almost like vertically backwards and Aronson would have been able to pick his spot. Hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I have like three other examples of very similar stuff. Like one where, I mean, one that's almost exactly the same thing that happens later in the half. But Pepe did, Pepey did that backboarding to great effect like four or five times to help us pick apart. A pretty, I mean, I think a pretty well-organized defense. And that was fun to watch. So 10th minute, I just want to note a good little line-breaking pass from Richards.

I thought he wasn't a super ambitious player of balls between the lines, but he was, you know, he did it. He did it on occasion in this game. 13th minute, a lovely attack through Costa Rica's left side. Dest dribbles enough to open a passing window to Pepe, who's checking to, basically exactly what Greg just described a few minutes ago, except on the right side. And Pepe makes a lovely first time pass to Spring, Wea in behind.

And Wea gets to that Man City zone and tries to cut it back, but it's cut out by a sliding Costa Rica defender just in front of Dest, who's continued his run. This timeline is going to be full of moments. like this. I mean, there's, there's probably a 20 like this in the game, wouldn't you say? Yeah, and this is what I was, like, I'm watching this one. I'm like, this is great stuff. And that

sequence you just described, I think, came after like a minute of possession. So this isn't all transition moments. Right. Like, this is exactly the kind of passing into the defense, this kind of like testing them out, manipulating them, getting them to fold on themselves, kind of thing that I think we really need

to see as much as possible. I honestly, I think, I think, I think Burrhalter maybe was doing a little bit of a rope-a-dope with all of that verticality talk, like, because there's an obvious emphasis on that sort of like backboarding, coming back from both the forward and the half-space merchants. And I wonder if all that verticality talk was in the press to get defenders to drop a little bit earlier, a little bit farther. I mean, maybe. It's a huge reach. But like, but I have to, I mean, I got to say it can't be an accident. Like it can't be an accident.

the number of times those midfielers are coming back and and peppy doing the same thing when again all of the emphasis on the press was verticality get behind their back shoulder run on running behind the defense like we are seeing this way more than we saw in the first window and i'm here for it yeah no it was it's and the and the the tidiness of the combinations between the midfielders and the full backs and i mean it's a lot of a lot of nice stuff for i've got a 14th minute one that sounds a lot like the one you described off the counterpress as we're bearing down. Adam side foot volleys it to Erinson, turn in a little pass to Pepe.

Pepew with his left foot Springs McKinney. Okay, yeah, it's exactly the same one. Okay. I clocked it in the 14th minute. So I have to check the timestamp. Yeah. So that's the one Greg described, choose your adventure on when it happened in the game.

I thought it was very clearly a shot from McKinney. And I think Navas had it covered, even if Calvo hadn't slid in there and deflected it. But anyway, great chance. 16th minute, pretty good set piece from Aronson after he's fouled on the left touchline. Pepe can't quite get his head to it. Moderita does a good job of putting him off the trajectory of the ball.

And 16th minute, again, Wea has slipped down the wing by Musa, who is just skipping past his opponent's. and his Costa Rican opponents. I think maybe he looked, I mean, he looked like Superman sometimes in this game. Maybe that's partly because of the age of the midfield. I mean, everybody's bragging on Brian Ruiz for being old,

but Borges looked pretty slow out there too, you know. They definitely did, and that plays into it. But we saw Musa do this against Jamaica, too, and we even saw it at times against Panama. And I definitely think a takeaway is, that he can do this. It's not just because Costa Rica's old and, you know, I don't want to say decrep it, but let's be honest.

And we have a couple of guys. It's not just Musa. McKenny does this a couple of times in this game. He did it a couple of times against Jamaica. Like, we have several guys now who look like they're men playing amongst boys. And it's Musa. It's McKenny. Wea at times.

Gio Raina when he comes back. It's going to be cool to watch them exert their will on some of the, teams, which I'm expecting to see happen. It's going to be cool to watch them sit on the bench in the January window so that we can get the Legat Acosta midfield. No, I don't know. Those guys will be out of season. There's no way.

You can't, they wouldn't be fit. No, it does. It's a ridiculous thought experiment. Well, let's talk about it, though. Do you think, I mean, it's one of the takeaways I think a lot of, a lot of people are talking about is just that the pool. of players who can actually win you a game in World Cup qualifying is shrinking. Like the number of people that we think can do that is probably shrinking.

And I wonder if Burhalter is coming to that conclusion as well. I mean, Acosta's, I feel like Acosta and Leggeta are a little different. Like Acosta fits a need as a backup six. You know, we need a backup six. We need somebody who can do the job there. Legette, who we have, I have defended a lot, and I do like him as a player, has not, I don't think he's played super well for the U.S. basically all year. And there's not as much need for him.

Well, it'll be interesting because it's going to have to be, it can't, obviously, it can't always be Adams, Musa, and McKinney playing, right? So the question is going to be, who are the eights that can take over when we have to rotate them out? And so I'm not sure if Buzio is going to, it's like now locked it up. It seems unlikely that a guy could lock something up after 20 minutes, regardless of, you know, how solid those 20 minutes were. So it's still for me going to be like a to be determined. And I totally agree with you. And we criticized Legette during his Gold Cup performances.

but we also kept defending his selection. And for me, it's like the consequences of Legette not looking great in Gold Cup means that he has, like, losing his grip on his spot. And if he keeps playing poorly, which he was really rough against Panama. And he was pretty rough against Canada as well. Like, that grip is loosened even more to the point where after the Panama game, where it felt like a full-on yips situation. Like, it was really rough.

that could be it. Like that could be it for him. Or, I mean, he could be a guy who gets called into a few more camps but doesn't really play and then gets phased out or it could just be he surplus by November. Yeah. I mean, Raina can theoretically slide in there in that eight position, theoretically. I thought Deletoria was fine in his cameo and Busio was fine in his cameo last night. I mean, Bouscio, I noticed a little bit of a transition softness from him that you just, like, it's the comparison between him and Mousa is stark, you know.

If Moussa is a man among boys, then Buccio looks like a boy among boys or a boy among men maybe, though he was really, really clever and precise with the ball, which was nice to see. But we get it, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. I just noticed between the 16th and 23rd minute, I didn't clocked a minute, a poor pass from Weston to Wea in transition. I think Wes, on rewatch, he probably had like 10 giveaways. I mean, it was a lot.

And so I think he is, that is the player he is, you know? He's going to be a huge asset, and he's also going to give the ball away a lot. But it was a little. little too much giving the ball away. I mean, even for him, I think. But he was also a huge asset. I mean, he's a paradox. The man is a paradox. And coming on the heels of that Panama game, man, like, anybody trying to do anything progressive is like, yes, please keep trying that. But I mean, he also, I think I saw a stat that he had, he recovered the ball 16 times, which totally matches my impression of the game.

and every time he recover the ball he's off to the races you know it's he's he's going for it okay 23rd minute nice work by mckenny adams and wea to spring desk for a cross uh doesn't find anybody but then it cycles over to robinson and he puts one right on the head of ricardo peppy making a near post run he doesn't get enough to put it on frame it's a pretty decent chance it's from where i was sitting in the stadium it looked like an extremely difficult cross to actually put on frame, just the pace of it and the angle that Pepe was running at it from, looked like it would have been an incredible shot if you'd put it on goal. But anyway, a good chance.

Great chance. Yeah, a good chance. It helps me with my narrative about headers and that like Pepe isn't some supernatural header of the ball, even though he scored on headers against Honduras and Jamaica. like it's good that he's in that spot but we just have to remember that no one converts all of those so when we see other guys miss it too

it's like oh yeah nobody converts all of those I'm gonna steal this one too to talk about another project that I'm gonna be taking on I think this week and that is gonna be my we talked about it last last two games I think my final 22 yard choice project where we

talk about our choices in the final 22 yards everyone familiar with this because I think this is a perfect example of it because we have Dest hitting the first cross after some really good work by like you said Wes Adams and Way away. I do in some really good half space merchant checking back here

to eventually find Dest and then Dest like hits a ball in to when you say it doesn't find anybody it's because there was really nobody to be found right? We just hit a ball in because we were in a good, we were in a space that sometimes people hit the ball in. And I really still think that this is

the biggest place for us to improve our scoring efficiency is to not settle for that kind of thing when we have really good soccer players. We know how good desk is. We're seeing how well Pepey can combine. Waya loves to get in these tight spots. Aronson, like McKinney bursts through.

So I don't want us to settle for just hitting the ball across. When it gets out to Aronson, or I'm sorry, to Robinson, it's a different story. Like it goes out to him, and Pepey makes this amazing. He actually has an excellent movement here to get across the face of his man. And at that point, I think it's a good choice. for Robinson to put the ball in for a header to score a goal.

So it's like this difference between a hopeful ball into the box and an extremely purposeful ball into the box. And I'm going to break down all of like our final 22-yard services from probably the last three games. There won't be very many against Panama. Actually, there will. That was Burhalter's talking point there. It was the final ball wasn't good enough.

And I just want to like see how many decent advantageous situations were kind of throwing away by just getting it into the mixer. Yeah. Yeah, and there were a ton last night, as we've already talked about, of these. And I would say a lot of the balls didn't feel hopeful, you know. There was a target or there were, you know, it was like, it was a low driven ball across the six. There were several of those that got cut out. but I feel like maybe that it's that it's the cutback, you know,

it's getting to the end line and cutting it back that would, that we didn't see a lot of. Right. And that's, I want those all day. And there were some of these where you can pause it at the time of the cross and be like, okay, well,

you know, technically it is three on three in the box and you don't hate those numbers, but other times it's two on three. And it's just like, all right, well, what are we doing here? Why not,

why have Serginio Dest give the ball up here when he's Serginio Dest? Like he should just keep doing cool Serginio Desd things Instead of just being like, all right Anybody could fire a ball across the box Like Desk can do a lot of other things Yeah As we'll see shortly Yeah we're knocking

I mean I would say basically from when the goal is scored Until the 25th minute when we score our goal It's all USA It's a dominating passage of play and the goal comes in the 25th minute. It's another nice passage of play that goes through Stefan's feet. So let's address this part of the narrative too. There's a,

I think it's a 12-pass sequence, including Stefan clipping a ball out left to Erinson, I think. Robinson hits Anthony. I'm sorry, yeah, Robinson. That's what I meant to say. And it's not a very good pass. So let's just let's, I mean, Stefan is better with his feet than Turner. There's no question about that.

But we did not score this goal because of Stefan's feet in my opinion. Right. This isn't the one we're going to be like, see, this is why we need him in there. He'd already had one earlier that he just floated over Death's head that he tried to hit like a similar ball and just hit it out of balance. This one he under hits and it's behind Robinson. So Robinson has to like cut back hard to like take it off the hop and head it back to. Chris Richards, a lot of things can go wrong there. Yeah, that was a messy moment.

Those two handled it really well. And then, yeah, Richards, Robinson, Adams, and McKinney do handle it very well. They just triangle their way out of our back, you know, our back left corner. And then McKen- There were so many triangles in this game. That was another thing that I was like, oh, my God, triangles everywhere. Aronson and Adams did, or Aronson and somebody did some triangles to start this thing. Aronson intercepted the ball, did a little triangle business, and then it went back to Adams, then to Stefan.

But it was just like there was such an ease to the formation and passing within these triangles. Yeah. So did, well, let's get a metaphor. Well, let's do the goal first. So then McKenney plays it to Aronson on the left touchline. Sort of like that's like the sort of the first major forward pass after all these triangles. and Adams to McKinney is the first one

I'm gonna because that's an important one too and it's just such like again such an easy feeling I hope I got that right every single one of these passes is important I'm not saying any is more important

than the others so McKinney yeah okay Adams to McKinney McKinney to Aronson on the left touch line Aronson to Wea Wea decides he's not going to just sort of try to bang a ball

across the box so he kind of doubles back and then switches fields for Musa who is arriving on the right wing Musa taps it to Dest who is sort of coming back out of the box to reestablish possession and Dest dribbles at

Madarita Matarita cuts in on his left foot as McKinney makes a little diagonal run out of the space that Dest is dribbling towards Just some great burst from McKinney verticality baby and then Dest hits in an absolute banger, which you've seen with his left foot swerving in to out and just thrashes the netting in the top left corner.

Impossible for anybody to stop that shot. One of those where the camera angle just adds to the mystique of it because you just get to see the full flight of it, instantly see where the trajectory is taking it and being like, that ball is unsavable. Yeah. Matt Turner doesn't save that shot. No, no. I'll say in the stadium, it looked to me like it was deflected. Like the trajectory of the ball was kind of had a little bit of a deflection signal to it, but it obviously wasn't deflected.

It was hit pure. Probably that little wiggle. It had a little wiggle right there at the end, and you're just like, oh, yeah, weird spin from a deflection, surely. No, no. Even when I thought it was deflected, I didn't care. happy. All right. 28th minute.

Anything else to say about the goal? Greg? Just that like it doesn't even make sense to do the like oh, 21 year old

hit it to an 18 year old who hit it to another 20 year old because everyone on the team who touches the ball falls into that category. Right. It was because it was way out, I mean, Aronson,

who's 22, Aronson to weigh out to Musa to Dest for the goal. If they can just get a little more consistent, then we'll be, then we'll be. be good.

Imagine what that play would have looked like if there had been a nice veteran leadership presence on the field. 28th minute, another nice bit of holdup play from Pepe. He sort of, he backboards an aerial ball at the half line and guides a header down, like cushions a header down into the path of Aronson, who, who's like just running free down the left touchline. Aronson does kind of dribble into a crowd and lose the ball at the top of the box. And I thought, well, go ahead.

Nope, nope. You can go ahead and say it. Well, I thought, I thought Aronson was a little bit danger adjacent last night. He got in a lot of good spots. He was in a lot of good situations for an attacking player to be in. and it didn't ever feel likely that something was going to come off to me. Both on the first watch and on the rewatch. So that was exactly the sense I had on the first watch.

And on the rewatch, I still agree with that where if we made a final 22-yard comp for Brendan Aronson, it would be pretty depressing. Like, oh, man, this looks really good. This looks really dangerous. And then it's like, nope, it is not dangerous at all. But the reason I don't want to ding him too, much is because he was just involved in like everything.

He was everywhere and he was constantly involved and constantly helping the ball move from place to place. And it was a key, a lot of guys were, but he was, he was just always doing things to help us get into these situations. Sometimes he was the guy getting it in dangerous spots. Sometimes he was facilitating it. So I don't want to, I just want to avoid being like Aronson had a rough game, even though he did sort of let himself down a lot in that last 22 yards.

I'm not even necessarily saying he had a rough game just that he doesn't look he didn't look likely to like convert promising situations into goals. I do I do agree he was he was everywhere. I mean he's he works his butt off. He moves well off the ball. He looks to release the ball quickly. That makes him a man after my own heart. And so there's a lot to like there. just, you know, there's a difference.

I think there's a clear tiering at this point. I didn't, and I didn't think, you may disagree with me, but I didn't think, I didn't, I didn't think Waya was, well, how do I say this? I was maybe not as impressed with Wea as a lot of other people were as well. And I think like there's a clear tiering, at least inability between the, you know, the first two wingers, Raina and Pulisic and the second two. that's maybe that's that's that's not maybe news to very many people but I don't know just seem clear like you get the ball you get rain of the ball in some of those situations and like

you you have the sense that he could do anything he wants maybe like anything could happen I don't I don't disagree and that kind of also that a relevant uh thought or related thought hit my head too and even when I was thinking like man Aronson's kind of like not been great uh in these dangerous moments I was like but still like Like as our third or fourth winger, this is really good looking stuff. So just thinking about how we can be missing Pulisik and Raina and still have our wingers bringing this amount of life and energy and quality to our attack just feels like a pretty important thing.

Yeah. They do bring life and energy, both of them. And I think, and I think you're right, way Raya was cooking in the half space. And obviously he scored the goal. or it was ruled and own goal, but it was a, you know,

it was a good shot. All right. Let's see. 29th minute, a good patient passage of play ends with Robinson going 1v1 at Blanco on the left wing. Nothing too incredible from the U.S.,

but I would call what we were doing, probing. You know, Matt Hartman was not, Matt Hartman was not as impressed with the game as I was, let's say, from like he wasn't as impressed with the U.S. performance.

And I think he would say like the way we didn't really, we didn't create that much actual danger. And I would say, I would, so that's where I come. I'm just sort of trying to thread the needle here. Probing is the word that I come up with. We're like, we're constantly probing Costa Rica's defense. And, yeah, that was a lot of words that didn't say very much. But I think that's spot on.

And I can get Hartman's angle on it too because he's right. We didn't always turn it into shots. And that's also, you know, why I want to do the final 22 yards because I feel like we probed well enough to initiate these really dangerous moments. And then we sacrifice some of that danger by doing something really low percentage as like our attempt to finally make the final pass. Yeah. But I would agree with you. And so then again, the question becomes how probable is Costa Rica? Because they were also more open to like, they were.

They were more open defensively than I expected them to be. Certainly, once they were one zero up, I was just like, okay, well, that'll be that. They'll sit deep and they've got Kailornavus and what are we going to do about that? But there were some gaps. There was a lot, there were big pockets for those wingers to do their half spacing. You think so? Was that because they were pushed up too high? I think so.

I thought their bank of three was too high. Like it almost looked like a 4-1-4-1 at times. And I, or, you know like there was just this giant space between the winger line the three-man line and the back four there was no way there are midfielder's going to be able to cover all that space when errington and way are just all over the all over the shop is that just because uh borgis and and ruse can't run or it like poorly poor tactics on on the part of the team i'd probably call it poor yeah poor tactical choices to be that spread out or poor execution if that wasn't the plan but uh i thought they'd be a lot more

compact it seems to be a theme in this window like people are less compact than we think they're going to be it it is true though both of our both of our goals really came against a compact defense though right i mean the the second one came on a mistake but yeah i i don't think that's off like at the moment like we're finally getting into the box Then they get back and you see almost like a line of six Costa Rica players. And that happened a lot. As we get past them, they would try to track back. But they gave us the corridor into that space too easily.

I mean, perfectly, exactly as easily as they should have for my liking. I'm glad we got into them. But like I was surprised at how easily we were able to continuously get into those good areas. So 31st minute, Musa does Ruiz and then goes 50 yards down the line and tries to whip a ball into Pepe. This is one of those that I would call, I would consider a fairly purposeful ball because it's like, it's going for Pepe's feet

and it just gets cut out, I think, by Calvo. 32nd minute McKinney recovery and a splitting pass to Musa on the right wing. So this is the McKinney, you know, this is the good McKinney who shows up constantly in this game. A very nice pass to Musa out wide on the right. and then he tries to serve Pepey in the box again and it's cut out again, this time definitely by Calvo.

And then 33rd minute, Robinson serves one that skips through to Aronson on the back post. He settles it and then tries to juke his guy but can't get anything going really from about seven yards. I don't even know if he tried to shoot or tried to pass. Kind of hard to tell. I'm sounding I'm dragging him really hard. I'm just trying to describe what I saw.

Right. And I think, again, mentally for me, this is where like the ariola comparisons were starting to, like, get a little uncomfortable. Because he has it there and he just never looked like he was actually going to create a shot. It's kind of how I'd say it. And that feels to me very areola-ish. Like, what should he have done there? Just taking it first time, probably? I don't know

It seemed like he wasn't prepared Like his footwork wasn't He wasn't expecting the ball to come to him Like it surprised him So now he's handcuffed And for me at that point You either toe poke it while it's directly underneath you And see if you can catch everyone by surprise

Like on goal Or you do You have to come up with some fancy feet And either draw desperation lunges To block your shot where you then clip it Disguise Pass to somebody else in the box Or you just have to force jam it in through

Kayla Navas. Yeah. I think he tried to, if I had a bet, I'd say he was trying to clip it across the face of goal. I thought he was shooting.

I thought he was just like, whatever, hit it at the goal as hard as I can, but it didn't even get to Navas, right? Cut out by a defender. Yeah, I didn't. 34th minute,

I can't visualize this moment in my head, but I have in my notes, nice work from McKinney to find Dest in the box from wide. So Desk doing some half space, merchant,

merchanting from the fullback position. Yeah, he did, right? And then Musum would get out to the sideline. Yeah, that was a very nice. A lot. Maybe that's why we had so much space. We just were confusing them. 37th minute, there's a penalty shout for Costa Rica.

McKinney is just, so now we're back to bad McKinney, just way too casual trying to play out of the back. First, he puts Anthony Robinson in a bad spot when he could have turned, you know, we've, we've, we've dragged Jackson Ewell for this exact thing where you have the whole middle of the field to turn into and play a pass or dribble. And instead, McKinney just plays a quick pass right to Anthony Robinson, who's already in a tight space. And then the ball comes back to McKinney again, and he, one touches it back to Robinson again,

and the space is even smaller, and it's intercepted. And then Costa Rica is attacking into our box. there's a ball played sort of across the top of the box and Eunice Musa slides to intercept it and it spills as a through ball unluckily for us for Moya Jonathan Moya

and so Richards is in desperation mode and he slides in and kind of encircles the ball with his left foot and also touches Moia's feet with his feet so that's where the penalty shot comes from I thought it was a great tackle, but I guess you could call a penalty on it, even though that'd be pretty whack.

Yeah, it's something that has the look of a penalty, right? So in real time, if that referee calls it, you're like, all right, well, we slid in and got the guy's leg and penalties are penalties. So there's certainly risk involved there with the challenge. On the flip side, there is obviously a necessity to do that because there's way more risk to not do anything and just see what happens with Moyette. directly in front of our goal. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think Richard says it's a choice. Yeah, he doesn't have any choice. But it's also, I think a very, I think you could argue it's a penalty, but I think it was a really good tackle also, like to get in there and get between him and the ball and move the ball away from him. I don't know, I thought it was kind of impressive.

Bob Morocco did a cool, like, four tweet thread on it and compared it to how, clever attackers well I mean he's he's been on this he's been banging this from for a while anyway about players who knife in it like the last second to seal a ball off from an opponent

as the opponent is like in their back swing to kick it oh yeah yeah and attackers have been doing this lately like as a defender's about to clear it they just like knife in and get kicked where in the past they might call that on the attacker especially because it's way easier to just call fouls on attackers but now because of VAR

the video is like, oh, and actually this guy snuck in and the defender kicked him, so it's a penalty. But that's almost like what happened here, right? So Richards knives in with his body and basically seals off Moia and now has position. And so you could say Moia then is technically the one initiating the contact with Richards. I see, yeah. I mean, making that argument isn't going to matter if the referee is blowing the whistle and signaled for a penalty. But again, it's something Richards had to go for. Yeah, it was McKinney's.

It was McKinney's doing the whole thing. I feel like you can get addicted to those little triangles. Like we were doing them so much. Yeah. And there's such like a, it's such a satisfying feeling to be doing that to get those little rondos going. And when you're doing those, you don't always try to turn because the idea behind those triangles is that the other guy, the other guy you're passing to can see

see past you. So if I play it, I don't have to turn. I can just hit this ball to my teammate. And that accomplishes the same thing because it's just tight. space and he can see what's behind me and he'll just ping that ball into the space. That's going a long way to excuse McKinney, which you shouldn't. I mean, it was a bad choice to do that. You have to be smart about your triangle execution.

Yeah. But it's an interesting idea, though, that to finally have a game where we're doing that consistently could have been intoxicating for Weston. 39th minute, another nervy moment. Peppy heads away. a corner and it's in erinson's direction but he kind of defers to musa who's in the vicinity not knowing that yeltsin tejada is coming through and tejada comes through and the ball falls to kelsa borgas is it borgas or borgias you know borges it's probably borges

that's probably correct uh and so it falls to borghiz and then he uh he takes a shot with his right foot that is i think it's pretty well hit but it's A comfortable save for Stefan. There we go. That's Stefan's big other big save. Right. And I don't know that that Boer has had it in his legs to like do much more than just take a touch and have a shot from there. 43rd minute good cross from Robinson to Pepe.

And Pepe's header is right at Navas. Couldn't generate enough power to trouble him. Please interject here, Greg, if you got to convert your headers. If you want to be the starting striker for the year. I'm just being annoying. 47th minute, nice attack up the right side to Aronson through Dest. Aronson's cutback deflects off of a defender in McKenny and falls for Pepey and his shot is blocked.

Handball called on West's, so Weston, so it kind of didn't matter. And the half comes, and we get something really nice happens. Kailor Navas comes. off with a muscle injury. I don't know. I mean, it's not nice for him to come off with a muscle injury in a vacuum, but it sure is nice for the U.S. chances of winning the game. And Lionel Morera comes on for him. By the way, I met a guy at a bar in Columbus yesterday who, and I believe him when he says this, who says he is first cousins once removed with Kayla Navas. He showed me a picture. He's a Costa Rica, Costa Rica fan from Rich.

Richmond, Virginia. And he was a really nice dude. He bought, he, he supplied me with two different beverages at two different points before the game, like hours separately. Very nice guy. So,

I love the Navas family. I was disappointed. Like, I'll just be honest, I was disappointed to see him leaving because it just takes away from the, uh, gravity of the soccer game in my mind. I,

I want everyone's best place. players to be playing. Yeah. Well, I'll be interested to hear whether you think Navas would have stopped that shot from Wea. Because, I mean, gravity be damned if he had, if he would have been likely to stop it. 48th minute, okay, it's not all there, but we basically open up the second half with three minutes of possession ending in Adams, having a good window for a through ball to

Musa in the right channel. and the ball is I don't know if you remember this one but the pass is heavy and goes over the end line but it is a it's a clear moment of soccer that

we generated on our own where if Adams plays a little bit better ball Musa is in behind and you know we have another one of these perhaps maybe a cup

a chance for a cupback maybe a chance for a hopeful ball but I thought it was good And again, the key here, the key here is just the frequency that these things are happening. So it's not like, oh, we missed our chance. We won't be back here for 15 more minutes. It just feels like it does just feel like it's inevitable.

We are knocking. And it isn't inevitable. Like we didn't rack up a ton of shots because we still aren't polished enough with our choices and our execution in that last 22 yards. But like this is a lot better than going back to the Canada game in the last window. Like this is such night and day from that and again Canada is a better team than Costa Rica and they were more compact and It's a that is a different test and I'm hoping that if we get a chance to take that test again But just the ideas here and the again the fluidity and the ease It's just so different

Yeah, I just think it was really good good soccer Musa Robinson McKinney Destin way all all looked good in this this one moment I'm I'm clocking in the floor 48th minute. And there's a point where, like, shortly after that, we get another Robinson Cross. I guess it's getting kind of tedious to just keep mentioning Robinson crosses, but Robinson has a, I did notice Robinson had a window to find McKinney in the channel in, I don't know, maybe the 50th minute, and the pass is just off. And, like, McKinney was kind of like in on goal there. Do you remember that from the? No, but now I'm for sure going to look that up. I was, I was impressed by Robinson,

almost all game. And it's not, he wasn't like 100%, but again, it's kind of like Aronson. He was doing so many good things, uh, that it,

I mean, it's so far outweighed any, any little mistakes he was making. He, the phrase man among boys comes to mind with him to, you know, he just looks, it's calming back there.

He looks in control. Which is what a nice development. Such a nice development. 53rd minute, uh, quick throw by Weston. Springs, Aronson, his cutback is cut out, 54th minute, nice.

Hold on, hold on, hold on, I know you're on a roll here, but I just want to really quick address this quick throw by Wes because it is assisted by Greg Burhalter. And we've seen this a few times. I share these clips in the Discord. I actually don't tweet them out because I'm like worried that we're going to tip off opponents if they spread too far about like this little quick tactical throw-in that we have.

where it's almost like an alley-up where on this one, on this one, Burhalter gets the ball on the sideline, it goes right to his hands. Wes is coming, and Burhalter like bounces it straight down where he's standing, so Wes can just like step into it and take his throw before Costa Rica is set. And we've done it several other times in the last several months.

So we did it twice against Mexico. Like, this is a real thing that is a real weapon for us that I'm assuming our team is like rehearsed and is all on the same page for. It's really, I'm impressed by it every time. Yeah, I didn't notice, I didn't notice Burhalter's role in that throw in. Oh, yeah. It's a key moment.

And other players have done it, too. It's not just Burrhalter. So that's why I feel like with West in particular, the idea that you can sort of serve him the ball in a way that lets him keep his momentum going, because the other team isn't expecting that immediate of a transition from West, catching it to West, firing it 30 yards downfield. Does, have you known? notice that any of the quick throwings have come off of a behind the back pass?

Because I wonder, I wonder if the behind the back pass is a signal to just like, hey, don't do it this time. Now, we were talking about this in the Discord too. I think the behind the back passes, like, are actually the most efficient way to, it's like Apollo 13 where they have to slingshot around the moon to come back. Like, you get the torque by going around your back to get at the distance he needs to get it without taking a step and repositioning your body. So I actually think Burrhalter is going for like the most efficient way to get the ball to his player

with these ridiculous throw-in situations. I see. So rather than like catching the ball, stopping it and then doing like a classic 1950s bounce pass, you just let it, you let the momentum go all the way around your body. Exactly. Eh, maybe. Okay. I thought maybe I'd crack some kind of code there.

I guess not. 54th minute, a nice entry pass from Robinson to Pepey who lays it off for McKinney this time in the middle of the field rather than one touching it out wide and

McKinney returns it to Pepey in the box and his touch is a little bit loose but this is a really nice little attacking sequence for both of these guys, all three of them I guess, until... Yeah, Aronson gets involved too. Oh, you've got Erringson in this. I love this one and this was...

was a huge marker for me because it's the ball from Robinson to Pepe. And we don't see this ball very much or not enough in my mind where I feel like it should almost be like automatic. When our half space guys go from in to out, they almost always drag somebody a few steps over and create this window into our striker. And I really want us to just like, and I want our striker to want the ball at that point. A lot of times when it was Pfok, when it was Ardas, we don't see it because they just keep their hips sort of facing the goal and they're just occupying the centerback and kind of like pushing him back. But I really think we should just be hitting this ball

into our strikers feet more often, especially with the center minutes we have, who will burst through the way we have here, where, I mean, that's what was, it, like a 35-yard pass from Robinson to, I mean, Robinson's, like, way out wide, and suddenly we have the ball at our strikers' feet at the top of the behind.

Yeah, I don't know if it was 35 yards, but it was far. Yeah, it wasn't a short pass. Yeah, so, so Pepe can do this really well. I think Sergeant could do it a little bit too. You have to want the ball and you have to also be physical enough to not let the centerback get around you while that ball's traveling. Yeah. I'm not saying that just because you said the name Sergeant and I don't know that he could do it.

But Josie Altador would do this. Well, it's weird to think of Pepe as more physical than Sergeant. Do you think that's the case? I don't I honestly have no idea I just know on this sequence very well executed by Pepe and then I also really liked McKinney's pass because I mean these are going to come in a little hot sometimes

because it's really difficult to connect this ball from Peppy to McKinney so McKinney handles it and then it's a really nice disguised ball back to Pepey like it was a it would actually I think qualify as creative it was unexpected it wrong footed guys

It wasn't where he was aiming his hips. So, yeah, this one, this sequence definitely popped for me. It's, after that loose touch, as you mentioned, Aronson got involved. It falls for Robinson and he plays Aronson into the box. Aronson has a shot that's saved comfortably by Morera. I believe it's deflected by, I'm guessing, Duarte. Yeah, it is. And it's barely a shot.

Like, he's basically just trying to hit a firm pass. don't think it was ever going to happen. And I was a little frustrated because I'm a optimization guy, because Anthony hits this ball into Aronson, and again, it's another great ball into a guy's feet, which Aaronson has been, I'm sorry, Anthony has been doing a lot lately. And then Anthony bursts beyond his man and his, like, gets absolute perfect position here. The defenders who block Aronson's shot, like, fully commit to the block. So they've sacrificed their balance.

And if Aronson fakes a shot and just touches it two yards beyond. where he's standing. Anthony has it racing in where, again, like, don't settle for the shot that's not going to score. Don't settle for just

waving a ball in the box. Like, keep going, keep taking advantage of how you've put the defense on their heels and get even better chances. Yeah. I really wanted that slipped ball

to Anthony from Aaron. It's part of me that wonders how much you can even coach. I mean, you can coach some of that stuff, but isn't just like being on the ball in the box is another realm, isn't it? I mean, it's like you, some people are good at it, some people

aren't. Some people, things slow down for them and they do, they make good decisions. Other people don't, right? I mean, it's, yes, I think you, I think that's for sure coachable. Like, again, just, like, you literally just break it down in a video, like, understand that you have, you know, eight different options, you know, whatever, like, you might shoot it, you might slip Anthony in, you might actually fake the shot and decide none of it's on and rather than sacrifice all of it and just pass it to their goalkeeper. You stop everything and pull it back and go negative, which isn't our favorite. But like sometimes that's the right thing to do. And it's like, yeah, the player has to process all those things and do all those calculations.

And the better players do those calculations faster and then are able to execute. And we see those things happen. Like it's not an impossible decision or calculation to make. You're just saying it's innate potentially. yeah i mean uh like the elite the people who are elite at it are you know they have like i i i have the conviction that they have some kind of like special quality to them as human beings you know like but but but that's probably just like a very small that's a very small part of it um let's see 56 minute we got the ruiz break away i thought it was actually very clever of him to hide behind

Tyler Adams and then pop out to to Nick this pass from Miles Robinson. Not that that absolves Robinson for playing a pass in such a, you know, playing a pass that was picked off in such a dangerous area. Richards, I don't know that Richards even sees Ruiz until. Not until later, yeah, yeah, yep, same. You're right, totally, like such an experience played by Ruiz. he's basically been like, again, using his cane for most of the game. No one's expecting this sudden burst from him.

Robinson and Richards have been passing it back to each other freely all game. So a really clever, like, I've lulled them to sleep. This is the one time I'll try it, and he gets it. Yeah. And then, and then, so Richards swings, like, he sets up like he's trying to just, you know, hit it away. like play a pass out wide. And so I'm not sure he even sees Ruiz, which I guess you could, you could ding. I mean, Hartman and I had a pretty spirited exchange about this earlier.

But I guess you could ding Richards for not seeing Ruiz because like he had him in his field of vision. He just didn't look up to see him. But it's just not something you can, I don't know, it's not something you really can prepare for. I don't think. Anyway, Richard swings and misses and Ruiz is off. And Robinson is the one who has to chase him down. he does so actually quite easily and dispossesses him at the top of the box. I don't know what, I don't know what, like, I feel like Ruiz could have maybe done better there,

even with his decrepitness. Miles is miles. I mean, part of that, right? Like, if we're going to give this situation up, we couldn't have asked for a better duo to be involved. is how I'll put it. So that was scary. And it was 1-1 at that point. 57th minute, McKinney takes a shot after a Robinson cross is cleared poorly.

He tries to kind of curl it into the top corner, but hits it way over. He's the one who had sprung Robinson in the first place in that sequence. 65th minute, we get a Robona from Dest amid some nice combination play from the U.S. check out Waki's video on that on Twitter. Is it Rabona or Rabana? He says Rabona. It's Robona.

It's a Spanish word or Portuguese, I guess I'm not sure. Now I'm doubting myself. 67th minute, we get our goal. And it's actually, I think it is in the same passing sequence, right? Yeah, same passing sequence that Costa Rica gets like a disrupts it. Okay. And then we quickly turn that disruption into Wayas shot. Yeah, and it's McKinney plays a frankly pretty poor diagonal ball from sort of the left channel to the right side.

But it's handled disastrously by Fuller and falls to Dest behind him. So it just kind of skips off of Fuller's tummy and falls to Dest. Who takes a touch and then plays Wea in behind with a well-weighted little ball. Wea takes a shot first time. does pretty much hammer it and it caram's off the post and then Marrera's back and then maybe off the post again and then off of Marrera's, oh no, it goes off the ground and then off of the outside of Marrera's forearm and then, you know, caram's again sort of across the face of the goal, always spinning in toward the goal and then it goes into the goal like two yards from the

other post. So, 21 USA. Yeah, and I want to make it clear, I absolutely love a goal that goes over the line but never actually makes it

to the net. I think those are wonderful. I don't know, there's something about that situation where the ball just rolls in and then just dies. Yeah.

Like you're sticking it on a green from 100 yards away. That's funny. Erinson did put it in the net. but it had died before he got there that's true or at least it was on its way to dying before hitting the net so navas probably probably parries this away you think yes i do i mean this isn't like what stephen was dealing with on that first goal that we gave up like this is a pretty

straightforward situation uh it is a great ball from sergenio dest um very dutch where where his job is to with this pass is to, I think they say, take Wayas first touch for him. So the pass means that the quality of the past means Timwaya does not have to take a preparation touch. He gets to just run onto it, set his feet, get everything set to perfectly smash it, which he does. But then, yes, I don't think that from the angle,

even though he hit it hard, I think this is a novice footwork reaction technique puts the ball out for a corner, Which we would have then scored on. So I feel like people saying that Navas would have kept us from winning. No, we would have scored on the corner. But he would have, I think Navas probably makes his play the majority of the time. Yeah.

Yeah, I guess, I don't know, in Morera's defense, Morrera's defense, the, I know Jesse Howe is out there listening to my Spanish and he's not going to appreciate it if I don't make a good effort to pronounce these names correctly. But in his defense, like he's got to cover the far post too, right? I mean, it's the shot doesn't go in if he's not there for it to carry him off him. It's hard to save a shot that's going off the post, right? I don't know. Yes, but that angles, I mean, it is a tough. It's a tight angle. Okay.

Usually from that angle, it's got to, like, go right beside your feet or, like, right over your shoulder into the roof. Usually. Not always. I mean, again, we've seen D.K. Smashed these. So, and Waya makes, hits it with some good wood. Okay. Well, it's 2.1 USA.

It's counted as an own goal against the backup goalkeeper for Costa Rica. It did feel deserved to me at that point. Like, we had dominated the game all game, all 67 minutes up to that point. 68th minute we get, I'll try to go quick through this because we're way over time. 68th minute penalty shout for peppy he gets maybe dragged down by Blanco as an Aronson cross sails over him I don't think he was getting anywhere near that ball

even if he hadn't been fouled so it's not a big of a deal for me we need timeline inflation bells we actually like we've talked about this before when when we're so poor in other games all of these events seem really positive and worth mentioning but once we once we put five or six of these games together, a lot of these will get left off the list because they won't even, they won't even, we won't even remember them happening.

Yeah, I'm going to have to relearn editorial discretion, I guess. 70th minute, a huge chance for the USA. A lovely through ball from McKinney to Robinson and then a good ball flashed across the six. Aronson just misses poking it at the near post. And then Calvo kind of plays a dangerous touch back to Morera. and 73rd minute, Dest comes off for Yedlin, way off for Hoppy, and both of these young men do a victory lap

around the south end of the field that was pretty fun to watch. Because, you know, they could have gone off the normal way and slapped hands with Hoppy and Yedlin. But, no, they came off on the opposite side of the field and went all the way around the south end of the goal, clapping and, like, pumping up the crowd. It was really fun.

It was great. Death knows that every single person there has a phone and an Instagram account, so he knows what he's doing. And then Musa comes off for Buccio in the 78th minute. I talked about Buccio a little bit earlier. I thought he was quite good on the ball. 79th minute, a good chance for the U.S. Buccio to Yedlin. Yedlin finds actually a good pass to Aronson in the box.

Do you remember this? Oh, yeah. Aronson floats it at the back post And Hoppe keeps it alive for Pepey Who kind of drags it back with his left foot And tries to take a shot But it's blocked by Duarte But I like the choice from Yedlin there

To pick up his head and find somebody I mean Aronson was wide open But still he found him Found him And then a really good heady play by Hoppe To just extend it And see if something dangerous could happen He didn't know if it was going to get to Pepe or what

but just to put it in a spot that is much better than having it go out for a goal kick or trying to like score from that angle. I know it's basic stuff, but good moment for Hopi and he wasn't in for Vennel. He worked very hard while he was on there, I noticed. I thought like, again, I thought Bussey was very sharp, had that good ball to Hoppe that was just headed away. It was sort of a diagonal played to the middle of the field. Do you remember that?

Yep. It's a pretty ball. I don't know if that's like a high, if the quants want us to be playing a ball like that. But it was an inch or two from, from Hoppy bringing it down, you know, just inside the box. 84th minute, Saboreo comes on for Venegas

and Bolanos for Fuller and Waston for Duarte. So Costa Rica makes three changes. And then 87th minute Zimmerman comes on for Aaron, since we go to three at the back. and then Zardis for Pepe. And Zardis got a huge hometown welcome in Columbus, which was, you know, kind of cool to see. Yeah, really nice moment for it.

87th minute, a scary moment on a free kick conceded by Miles Robinson. I think, you know, he had a legitimate gripe on the whistle on this challenge. But anyway, it was a foul. It was called a foul. And the free kick from, so the free kick was delayed by all these. substitutions. And then we couldn't quite deal with it when I was floated in the box and it spilled, I thought, somewhat dangerously to Stefan, who covered it up.

And then a foul was whistled against Coast Rica. Yeah, Zimmerman, like, Zimmerman basically got bullied or was trying to get physical with somebody else and, like, lost his footing and stumbled back like three yards. And his stumble kept every Costa Rica player on side, like, well behind the line we'd set up. So it was super dangerous, and it's a bit fortunate that Costa Rica couldn't get any solid contact on that ball during the ensuing scramble. Because they basically had this position advantage that they couldn't take advantage. I didn't notice that. When I say I didn't notice that, I hope that comes across as thank you for telling me this, that I think that I didn't know.

8.9th minute we get another good passage of play through McKinney and Busio to spring Yedlin. And then Busio has a nice diagonal to Robinson on the other side. So Busio is out there dealing. And in the 90th minute, Zardis is pressing and he wins the ball and squares it to Hoppy at the top of the box. who it's maybe a little behind him or his touch isn't, first touch isn't quite right so he ends up tapping it back to Busio who takes a touch and then shoots from just inside the box

that shot is blocked but I was ready to break into song if that would have been a goal and then 93rd minute I noticed I noticed Miles Robinson went down with a shin knock after winning the ball he went to ground

and then he sprang right back up and I was I was sitting next to frigging dingus and we were talking about like, you know, he's just, he just doesn't have it in him to roll around on the floor and see the rest of this game out. Because it had been, it was a little nervy with that free kick and we're thought with, you know, take your time, Miles. Look, you guys can criticize Miles all you want, but neither of you ran out onto the field to delay the game in any capacity. So I feel like it's a bit of like a glass house situation here. Fair enough. Fair enough.

I feel like culturally not acceptable in Columbus, Ohio, in a way that it is more broadly acceptable, probably in Panama City. I think that Panama City's culture is superior in that way. I'm not saying anything about that. Had you been at a game in Panama City, you would have run out under the field. 100%. 95th minute one last nervey free kick and then Zardis bangs it out of bounds for the final whistle and we get our three points so I guess we should talk about the big picture stuff real quick even though we're almost an hour and a half into this um how many how many items were there

did you do we have a count were there over was it an item per minute don't you don't count now Don't count now. We're not going to, I'd actually rather not know. Well, so the question is, you know, last week we said, or not last week, but on Monday, you said there's no evidence that what we have on the field right now is anything that's been built by Burrhalter. And so, like, we were talking about the hypothetical of him getting fired. And if some new coach had to come in, then they would be, you said, well, there's no reason to worry about that. They don't have to start over because we're, I mean, we're starting over every time we take the field.

And I wonder, like, if you still think that after last night's game. I would say more or less, yes. That would still be the case for me. And I'm not trying to just be, like, stubborn on this. I really, I really believe it. We did the crossover with Total Soccer Show. And the big thing, it was after the first window, right? And the big thing was like, are we, can we do this?

Can we put it together? Like, can we put together possession soccer? And you guys were, I think, all pretty pessimistic about it. And I feel like I was actually the, like, optimistic one. And the reason I'm optimistic is because putting it together with the group of players we have should not in any way be considered, like, impossible or some, like, mythical quest to be able to play reasonably good possession soccer. Again, we have really good players right now, like not potential. I'm not ever talking about, like, these guys all have potential.

These guys are all good right now. A lot of them are playing Champions League soccer. Right now, they're not potentially Champions League players. They're real Champions League players. So, yeah, like, I think we can put it together. I don't think we're going to look like Man City and win every game 5-0, and that's not what I'm expecting to happen. And I think that question has kind of shaped this a little bit,

or at least in, like, the backlash to people being disappointed. You have other people being, like, I can't believe everyone's disappointed. like you should just like you all just feel entitled to win all these games. But I do think that you can like achieve something between where what we saw last window against like Canada and how Man City play. I think that is doable with the talent advantage we have in a relatively short time frame. And I feel like this game in a way supports that and even the Jamaica game because you can't chalk this up to like, oh, it just takes a ton of reps or a ton of time because these guys

playing have no reps together. They have almost no time together. some of them don't have, it didn't have any World Cup caps coming into this game. So like this, this to me shows how possible it is to do this. This wasn't like the culmination of the three years that Burrhalter's been doing this and it all just clicked into place.

Like these guys haven't played together and they came out and they played a fluid, easy soccer game. Well, so, I mean, kind of think that you can just sort of do this. Yeah. I guess what you're saying is this not,

this is not the result of like, of a very, very long process, what we saw last night. This is something that we should have been able to see sooner. And we weren't seeing it. Yeah, I basically think, I basically think this is progress from Canada to this week. Like that, that's my take on it. And I'm talking about the progress. And I know there's other talk about how inconsistent we were through the window.

But because of the rotations we used, I feel like you basically have to talk about it as two separate teams. The team that played Jamaica and Panama and Costa Rica were essentially, we're, very similar squads and they both looked really good and I get that those games are at home against the weaker opponents but that we we didn't just lose against panabob because they were better than these teams and uh and we were playing away and it was humid yeah like we looked terrible we didn't try anything I'm not I'm not saying we should waltz through Panama win the game like I get that you don't always win games I get that you might not even draw games even though historically we usually do well away in Conccaf outside of Mexico and Costa Rica.

There's still variance in soccer. So we could make good coaching decisions. We could have a decent performance and we could still lose a game and I'd get that. But Panama wasn't that, right? Yeah. So all this to say, like the team that played Jamaica and Costa Rica, that to me looks like the progress you would make from Canada last window to this window. And I'm not even saying that Burrhalter doesn't get credit for that.

Like, that for me is something that Burrhalter could have accomplished using what we did against Canada, learning from that, hammering on those points and applying things in this window. I just don't think that, like, that that's a particularly difficult thing to achieve in that time. Like, I think a lot of people could achieve that in that time. Yeah. Well, I guess my thought was after the Panama game, which was infuriating, watch was it doesn't matter what we think about Berhalter he's not going to get fired and that's you know even more true now than it was then he's he's safe for a long time even if we lose to

Mexico even if we lose New Mexico and drop points in Jamaica I couldn't imagine so at this point I'm just rooting for him you know I'm rooting for him to succeed and so last night was was great You know, I think, I hope he can take, I hope he does deserve credit for the way they played. And I hope he, you know, keeps building on it. And that we keep playing that way and start playing that way even on the road and at least a little bit. And play that way against Mexico and play our first game against Mexico, at least that I can remember where we actually play soccer against them and beat them at soccer. You know, and not just on set pieces and not just with. grit. Although I love grit.

Pretty elitist to pretend that set pieces aren't part of soccer. But no, I think everyone takes what you're saying and understands it. No, I'm absolutely rooting for him as well. I know. But I just feel like I recognize that, like, for me, the situation hasn't changed that much. It has changed in the sense that it was a real test. Again, after that Canada game, which I thought was super disappointing in a different way than the Panama loss. this is like the progress we needed to see in that regard.

So now we need to see progress in sort of what the Panama game showed as our shortcomings, which is can we manage, can we prepare the players who rotate in? I don't even care how many it is. Whoever we rotate in, can they be properly prepared to play a good soccer game, to at least approach what the full strength team does? And if things aren't going well for either team,

can we adjust properly to fix it in the game? Like those are sort of the next tests we need to sort of see play out. Yeah. And to be, I mean, we need to see him in the sense that like I'm curious about it. And we don't need to see him like, if it doesn't,

he's going to be fired because I agree. I don't think that's happening. To get kind of weirdly specific about the rotations in the future, I think maybe one thing we've learned is, I guess I'm not sure Sebastian Lajet should be banished completely, but I think I'm open to that. But definitely we've learned that you can't have both Kell and Acosta and Sebastian Leget in the midfield.

I'd be very skeptical of that midfield if I saw it again. So maybe we can rotate one at a time, you know, and it doesn't have to be legit. You know, if the MMA midfield is the midfield, and I think that's pretty clear at this point, let's find a way to just always have two of them. in there at the same time. I'm not opposed to that, but that in rotation world, especially in a three game window, next month is a two game window, so we could, I think, get away with starting all three of them twice.

In a three game window, wanting two of them on at the same time might mean never having all three of them on. It could mean that, or only having them on all three on once. I don't know. We don't need to do a permutation game now, but I don't know. We're sitting in second, which, you know, I know, is we were. sitting in second going into the window as well. But I also just want to like urge some caution there in the sense that like where you stand is good.

But what's more important is like how big is the cushion and what are the what are the games still to be played? It's like elections in that sense. You might be winning. But if all the votes of all the votes still be still needs to be counted in California, then maybe you're not as sitting as well as you think. And we still have, we still have Mexico away, Canada away. Costa Rico way. In Mexico home.

So that's the big thing. We're in second, but we're only three points clear Panama, whereas had we maximized our chances to get a result and actually gotten the draw, then we'd be six points clear of Panama. Like, that's such a huge swing. To add a point to us and take two away from them, that puts us in a position where losing to Mexico at home isn't nearly as nerve-wracking if you're six points clear of that fourth place spot.

Yeah. And variance in soccer, which you talk about a lot, is such a real thing. Like we dominated that game against Costa Rica last night, but it could have ended in a draw very easily. And, you know, if Sergenio Dest doesn't pull out that banger, it's maybe we lose the game, you know, it's even like despite totally dominating. So, I mean, I know it's going to come down to the final 22-yard analysis. And I'm not making fun of that. I think that is a great thing to think about going forward. Anything else, Greg? I think that's it for me.

One of these times I'm going to go to one of these soccer games. You've been to two of them now, right? Yeah, I'm thinking about going to Cincinnati to tailgate, but not to go to the game, just to like, just to make our presence known. Okay. I think that'd be fun too. I'm still like holding out for Costa Rica the away game. And now I really need Costa Rica to get some points because I want them to still be alive when we play them. Yeah. Well, Costa Rica is so expensive. You know, that's what everybody's saying. It's like a super expensive place. I haven't looked into it at all. All right. We're way over. No one needs to hear our travel log. All right. People do want to hear. By the way, thank you to our patrons. I'll just say thank you. Thank you. Thanks everybody for listening. and we'll see ya.