Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #213: Office Hours, Vol. 5 — U20 camp, Captain Turner's Rebellion

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Watke and Belz talk briefly about the U20 player pool, Carli Lloyd's retirement from international soccer, interview the people behind Captain Turner's Rebellion, and take a bunch of questions.0:20 intro, Carli, U20s10:20 interview with Captain Turner's Rebellion (@CaptMattTurner on Twitter)25:28 questions questions questions, and a few answers51:40 "Oh Gianluca" cover by John Barrycontact: [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 very well, Adam. How are you doing? I'm pretty good. I'm pretty good. Sunny day. I'm good. Let's start by acknowledging Carly Lloyd's final cap, a start in a 6-0 win over South Korea in St. Paul last night. Lloyd played her last match for the national team after a career in which she made. I think the stats are probably. they're pretty eye-popping when you sort of read them out loud, so I'm going to read them out loud. Ear-popping, you might say. She made 316 appearances and scored 136 goals in a U.S. shirt, which crazy enough makes her third all-time goal score for the U.S. women's national team.

She's won two Olympic gold medals and lifted the World Cup trophy twice. She scored the gold medal winning goals in both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. She scored a famous hat trick in the World Cup final against Japan in 20. 2015, the only woman to do that in the World Cup and only the second person to ever do it. She won the golden ball in that World Cup and was named FIFA player of the year in 2015 and 2016. She's going to finish out the year for Gotham in the NWSL and then retire from pro soccer. She is 39 years old, kind of a big deal. Pretty incredible.

And I read she started in 2005 was her debut. That means most of her career was in her 30. So that's just, you know, some hope for anyone in their 20s who feels like they don't have good things ahead of them. There is hope. Very impressive. She did that. What about us? What about me?

I'm 39. Is there hope for me? Your window is fast closing, unfortunately. And I have a little bit of time left. But for anyone younger, there's still hope ahead. Okay. Second thing we're going to get to is the U-20 camp that's coming up. Let's talk about quickly, not for a long time, let's talk about who is in this player pool.

I do want to do a deeper dive probably with Matt Hartman probably next week. But for now, let's just do a quick spin through the names that are in the mix. The camp is next month and culminates with something called the Revelations Cup, a tournament in Salaya de Guantahuato, which is about halfway between Mexico City and Guadalajara. The U.S. will play Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. during the November international window. So we'll be mostly focused on the senior team at that time, but we'll plan to catch up on the games after they're over.

Let me just turn it over to you to kind of run through some of the names that are in this age group. One is Ricardo Pepe, who is not going to be available, I don't think. Right. So looking at the rest of the attack, I'm kind of basing this on what other people have as kind of a prospective lineup. We've got Caden Clark up there, Cade Cale, and Dante Ceeley. Caden and Cade have maybe flagged a little bit over the past couple months, but Dante's Healy has been really impressive with Young PSV.

So I would say he's the most exciting thing right now. Is that kind of your sense of it? Yeah, he's the buzziest for sure. On loan from FC Dallas to Young PSV, maybe he'll get a chance with the first team over there. And my understanding, it's a deal that he's meant to be bought at some point if it goes well. I don't know exactly the dynamics of it, but that's the general situation. Scored a hat trick in his last appearance and has looked good, I think.

So it seems to be going well. Well, I have the Cades, why have the Caden and Caden contingent lost steam, do you think? I don't know. I mean, I'm just attempting to connect it to the name, but, you know, it could just be their age. You know, they're young folks working through MOS at this point, and they're figuring it out. So it could be a lull. That's the difficulty with evaluating these youth national team. You know, I was hanging out with a friend the other day who has a son.

His kids, I don't know. And he told me his oldest son is named Caden. And I was like, I looked at him, I said, Caden. And he goes, that wasn't my idea. That was my wife's idea. So. And then in the midfield, we have a, I would say a Caden-like name in Paxton-Arensen. This is Brendan Aronson's.

younger brother. That's exciting. Maybe he'll be better than Brendan, and I think it would just be good to have two brothers at some point. So I'm hoping he does well. Aronson is, a lot of people are excited about Aronson. Isn't that fair to say? The younger.

Yeah. And the older. And just one note, Paxton is spelled with an E instead of an O. Similar to how Brendan is spelled with two E's. And one thing that went literal remarked on in Grant Wall wrote about this is the reason there's E's is their mom's name was Janelle without an E. And she was like put off by not having that E at the end because she constantly had to correct

people. And then she overcompensated by putting E's and all of her sentence names. That seems to be a real story that happened. Good, good grief. Is that really a real story? It sounded like it. It's possible it was, it's apocryphal or she was joking. But it was in Grant Wall's one of his newsletters.

man and then the rest of the midfield it's there's moses niman who's somewhat similar his last month hasn't been greater so although i think he might be injured right now and then the big question is at the sixth spot which is kind of a theme for the for us two beyond tyler adams it looks like it's danny lava is who some people have as the starter there yeah i think it's like lava or brooklyn Raines, who is, you know, I don't know that he's a pure six, but he's in the mix. He plays for El Paso, very sparingly. He's only 15 years old at this point. Daniel Edelman from the New York Red Bulls, too.

So I guess, yeah, David Kerr is in the Discord and he talks, he has said in no uncertain terms that centerback and the six are the weak positions in this age group. Okay, should we go to centerbacks? I guess other than, is it Justin Che? It's kind of the clear one. Yeah. It's a bunch of guys getting a U.S. elements, but we don't really know what they are right now.

It's kind of my sense of it. Yeah. I think there's some rumblings about Antonio Leon, who is at L.A.F.C. and has accepted a lot of L3 youth national team call-ups. He might, I think, just possible he'll be in this camp, which would be pretty cool. He's a 2004, big physical centerback.

So it is hard to tell who is a good centerback at this age. And then on left back, I think, is the thing I'm most excited about is Kevin Peretti's is there. And Jonathan Gummers, but we don't know if he's still in the mix for this. But Kevin Pradez has a fantastic amount of flair. I would argue maybe the most in the whole pool, a possible heir to Sergenio Death. I'm not saying he's as good as that, but he just has that amount of flare. He likes to play that. He enjoys playing the game.

Gomez has a lot of flare too, but maybe a different kind of flare. More understated. Gomez is going to be playing in the playoffs for Louisville City in November. I think that's why he's not going to be in this camp. I guess he's at a big consideration across the board with these guys, I imagine. Yeah, I don't know if DC is going to make the playoffs, but yeah, it's going to be a consideration for several of them. And then the goalkeeper, can I just go with the goalkeeper? It's Gabe Slanina, I think is the big, buzzy one.

He's getting real minutes and MLS for the Chicago fire. And I probably should have said this right at the beginning. This age group is the birth year of 2003 and 2004 or later. So the cutoff is January 1st, 2003, and Ricardo Pepe just comes in under the wire for eligibility. Obviously, he's not going to be there. So a lot of these guys are folks who are kind of on the edge and left out of the U-17 World Cup last time,

mostly because of the edge reasons. So it's cool to kind of get to see them now. And then at right back, I guess it's Maricio Quavos, but he's kind of been off the radar lately. Yeah. The rumor is he doesn't. declined a homegrown deal from the galaxy and has been exiled to U-17 training. Dennis Declosa, don't play, I guess.

It's a real shame. Yeah. So that's the revelation. This is the Revelations Cup is what it's called, which is the first annual one. Because I hadn't heard about this until a few days ago. So it's exciting to have a tournament named that. It is a memorable name. you would, if you'd seen one before, you'd remember it, I would think.

Yeah, and I just look at the games just in case anyone is figuring how to fit this into their schedule. They're on the 10th, 13th, and 16th. So those are two free days, the first one. The 16th is right after the Jamaica game. I don't know where these are being streamed yet, but I imagine they'll be on the social media. Just a reminder, the 12th is the USA-Mexico game in Cincinnati, so it'll be a nice aperitif to that, hopefully. Anything else on the Revelations Cup? No.

I just looked at the city it's in. Their main site seeing attraction is a water tower that's round. It's called the Ball of Water. And it was built in 1908. It was originally constructed in Germany. They brought it to Mexico. And it's the only one like that in the world. But beyond that, that's all I got on the Revelations Cup.

Yeah. There's also a lot of colonial architecture in Celaya, right? I thought I saw that. All right. Next we have joining us the guys behind Captain Turner's Rebellion, a parody account on Twitter in the rich tradition of old-timey American soldier

writing a letter home. Kevin and Alex, welcome to office hours. Thanks, thanks, guys. Hey, thanks, for us. Hey, guys, it's good to talk to you. I do have a bunch of questions. I don't know if we'll be able to get through all of them, so I just want to jump straight into it.

Was there a particular tipping point when you thought, you know, it's time to make this old time and Matt Turner account, or was it more of a gradual realization for you? So this is Alex here. So it kind of, there's a two-part origin story to this, I guess, and the first being that this is definitely an ode to the original Captain Andrew Luck account that garnered a ton of interest a few years ago and culminated with his retiring and just an epic, epic tweet from that account.

And then the second part being that while watching the semi-final of the Gold Cup, I believe one of our friends Brett truly thought that we had Nat Turner starting in goal. He misheard the first name, of course. And yeah, the rest is, I guess, history. Okay, so it was a summer thing. Now, I have a specific question around where Matt Turner is talking about from. What range of years is he speaking from? Or do you have a different way of thinking about it?

Is it civil war, is it a revolutionary war? Is it somewhere in between? I've just, I've had questions about that. I know other people have too. Yeah, so we got called out, I wouldn't say frequently, but by a few different people. When this first started, we kind of just were throwing, you know, ideas at the wall and kind of coming up with these tweets. And then when we started to garner some traction, we realized that we kind of had to peg it down to a specific era. So yeah, we're a revolutionary war.

Maybe not, maybe not at first, but. I'll speak to it a little bit. So when Brett said, oh, what do we got, Nat Turner and goal? You know, I had to remind him, well, actually, that's a turn of the 19th century slave rebellion. So I don't really think he's playing goalkeeper for us right now. But so I think walking in one of your tweets in response to that, you said it kind of seems like a war or a conflict between revolutionary and civil and like kind of nailed it. It's like 1800 to 1830 type timeframe. I was going through, and you have a reference to the volunteer state, which came out of the War of 1812.

That's when that first appeared. So I figured it needed to be a little bit after that. But I think it's fine. You don't actually have to have a specific exact time for it, is kind of my thinking. Yeah, I think it gets us out of some inaccuracies a lot. We've got a lot more freedom to play with when we're not nailed into a specific conflict. You do use the word half some, which would suggest it was a little bit earlier. That is probably the biggest discussion.

had between the two of us. And I think I'm team pro-hath just for the, you know, the comedic relief of using that word. And Kevin's definitely team anti-Hath given the time frame. I think I'm okay now that we've kind of, kind of settled on. It kind of like seems like the zeitgeist has decided that we're a revolutionary war period. So I guess I'm okay with Hath now. Well, it's, it must be a difficult balance of strike because most of the other language it would not be of the Hath era. you know, most of it could fit very easily into the Civil War. So it's just, you always got to figure that out. And I had a question, you have rank assignments for players very often.

There's General Poliswick, Major Stephan, Colonel Reim, General Greg, Private McKenney. Were there any of those that were difficult decisions for you, or is it, you kind of in the moment, something that feels right? And is there any back and forth on that? I think it kind of started as an in-the-moment kind of thing. Again, we weren't given these tweets too much thought, not thinking this would really take off. But now that it has a- I'm giving them a tremendous amount of thought now.

Yeah, we were concerned when Waki jumped in, knowing that we would be up for close inspection on each tweet. But yeah. Okay. Kind of in that vein, Burthalter was originally commander Beryhalter. So I was thinking he was like a naval figure. But then he switched to general Berhalter. Was that an evolution of his role or just a change in your thinking or was it just you maybe forgot you and made him commander for halter? So this is Kevin speaking.

I'm actually, I'm in the military and I took issue with the, you know, between service branches. So we, after we started to pick up some traction, I made a point that we had to stick to, we're all in the army. All the ranks are in the army now. Okay. Okay, that's good. I was wondering if something like that had happened. I have a kind of related question to that, is have you thought ahead at all about how to make sense

of the battle scenarios that could come up during the World Cup? It could be like we're fighting Argentina, but it's in the Middle East. And then does there need to be a shift to naval at that point? Or are you not even thinking that far ahead? I can't say we're thinking that far ahead, but that is incredible. Thanks for that. We have talked about maybe, you know, going back to this like, oh, what era are we from? People are like calling us out that we're not consistent.

Like, why don't we just evolve and just continue moving like forward into the future of American war history? And then eventually when we go to Qatar, it'll be like, you know, desert storm. But I think that's been through a little bit. That was exactly. One of my other questions is, does time in your Matt Turner universe move at a one-to-one rate with our universe? and you're suggesting maybe a dozen, which could allow the World Cup to take place in, you know, a theater in World War II or earlier, or maybe Gulf War.

Gulf War would be a difficult thing to write, I imagine. Yeah, they'd have to be like emails or text or something. Yeah. And then I had one more question, which we may have already hit some, but maybe there's something in it. Let's say it's five years from now, and the real Matt Turner is still playing. Do you imagine your Matt Turner will still be fighting the battles of this current war,

or is he going to kind of move on into a leadership role? So basically the question is the essence of it that it's a war or that he's speaking it to us from the past? Alex. Cool. It's a tough question, and maybe there's no answer right now. Sure, and I guess that kind of goes along with the mystique of this being a long, drawn-out campaign. It makes sense that he would evolve

as he himself, as the player evolves. And yeah, as we move forward through the World Cup qualifying campaign and everything that comes after it, it would make sense to just kind of evolve Captain Matt Turner himself and have him adapt to his new surroundings,

whatever that may be. I think he's definitely in line for promotion. I could see Major Turner in the future. Yeah, absolutely. Those were the core of my questions. Adam, did you have Penny. Oh, I just love the turn of phrase, we yearn for glory in a foreign land. And I wonder if either of you has ever done that yearned for glory in a foreign land. Have you ever been to

a foreign land? I personally have been to England and Italy for a trip, a few trips down to the Caribbean. I would argue, yeah, I have yearn for glory in a foreign land. So I'm with Captain Matt Turner on this one. Yeah, that's Alex's turn of phrase, so that makes sense. We do, we did kind of set ourselves a few rules since this is a joint account of, you know, the one rule being you're not allowed to access the account while intoxicated, and the second rule being that you've got to bounce ideas off each other first for that specific reason of not being, you know, pigeonholed into a specific phrase and reuse and all that. That sounds like a terrible rule. You're not allowed to

access the account when you're intoxicated? I would lift that intoxicated rule. Well, there's been a few incidents. I'm the guilty party here of maybe I hit a like or a retweet on somebody's tweet, and I don't realize that I'm in the Captain Turner account and it gets a little dicey. So we're there. I see. You got, quote, tweeted by the Real Matt Turner.

Yeah. Was that a big moment? We did. That was a Thursday night late. And we kind of, me and Kevin talked that, you know, what's the next step? It's like, oh, getting these good followers. and what's the next step? Oh, getting recognition from maybe a talking head

or someone on one of the big networks. It was literally Adam had DM'd us. And like, you know, I screenshot it and sent it to Alex like, oh, shit, we're big time. And then not even 30 minutes later, we got that quote from Matt Turner. So what do you think is next? What's the grand vision on the Matt Turner, Captain Matt Turner?

I think the grand vision is just to keep building the rebellion alongside the real the real campaign that's going on with the USMNT you can I mean you guys see it on Twitter I'm sure and just the general community this fan base is this fan base is yearning for more and and they're kind of getting that on the field with the talent we're producing and just being a part of something fun and something creative alongside all of that on on USMNT Twitter just kind of go going along with the team and keep building. There have been some other old-timey parody accounts popping up.

Do you worry about that at all? I don't want to distract from the Grand Vision conversation if you had more there, though. Yeah, I was just going to say for the Grand Vision, I think it's just, you know, it started as just silly. Oh, hey, yeah, our friend said this. We should make this account. That's funny. But now it kind of seems like, you know, we haven't had the most ideal results in the first two windows.

and soccer Twitter is very upset most of the time. So I think we've kind of fallen into a space kind of with you and your post-Walkie where people, every once in a while they get a little bit of levity from our account or your account and kind of lighten things up and remind everybody it is just a game

and we're here to have fun. Well, I take your account very seriously. So I think it's an important voice right now. Thank you. I think that's a good point, though. Both of you guys do offer some relief from the constant, quote-unquote, analysis on Twitter. So thank you.

I think Kevin mentioned early on during this account that it's kind of cathartic for both of us because you can get wrapped up in the stresses of being a fan and just the stresses of, you know, real life. And we kind of use this as a, you know, it's a really nice creative thought process involving a sport and a team we love. So it's really a nice blend of those. It helps kind of humanize the players, too. Like, it's really easy to get upset.

Like, oh, man, this guy had such a bad performance. This guy sucks up. But then, like, trying to put myself into the mind of, okay, writing a letter home to mom, kind of, like, helps me remember, like, oh, actually, these are real people. It probably shouldn't say mean things about them. What did you guys think of Turner's technique when he tried to sort of pantomime your style? Excellent. Yeah.

First thing I noticed was, I believe, use of path, which I was a big fan of. That may have changed, that may have been what changed Kevin's mind. But yeah, we were super excited at first, and then we kind of thought like, oh, I hope he's not upset at this or thinking we're mocking him. But yeah, that was all. He's a big fan, I think. So, yeah, his tweet was pretty nice.

Yeah, he nailed it. And then I was going to say, walk you. I have a question from the chat, Ryan asked. Does Captain Matt Turner have any obvious weaknesses akin to playing the ball? at his feet. I guess it would be a specific war tactic thing. So that's a tough question, but I'm going to throw it to you there. I don't know.

We might have some revelations about being in the infirmary with a trench foot or something in the future. We'll see how he performs. Okay. And just to revisit, I think you had a question earlier that may have gotten lost in the mess. But as far as the other accounts, we're not affiliated with any of them. It's cool to see the creativity flow. and they're kind of interacting with each other a little bit, which is nice.

And again, it helps to build that creative story behind the team. But yeah, it's not affiliated with us. We'll see if we can collaborate in the future. You're not planning on extending out more old-timey soccer player accounts. You're more focused on the Matt Turner. I don't think it was ever our idea to field a whole battalion.

of old-timey U.S. soccer soldiers on Twitter. So I think it was going to stick to doing what we're doing. I think that's a smart strategy. Hey, before you guys go, can you tell us, we don't want to ask you to reveal your identities because it seems like it wouldn't be any fun. But where do you live? Where does each of you live, like roughly?

So we're based out of the suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland. I don't know if maybe we have an accent or something. But yeah, we're childhood friends growing up. Like I said, we were watching the semifinal together with a couple other guys when this all sparked. Sweet. Now that you mention it, you do sound like you're from the suburbs of Baltimore. Not a good voice for a podcast, but we make it work.

Got a great voice. Baltimore, Waki. It's Baltimore. Yeah, there's a bee in there somewhere. What did I say? You said Baltimore. Oh, yeah, I'm not a big pronunciation guy. All right, any closing thoughts from you guys, or are you, Waki?

No, I think that's it. I was a, dare mention we'll both be in Cincinnati for the Mexico game. My wife is trying to get us to dress up in, you know, in the garb, but we'll see. Oh, that'd be cool. You got to come to the scuff tailgate, assuming it actually happens. Absolutely. Nice. That right there was the number one goal of us coming on your podcast today. It was to get the invite directly to the tailgate.

Oh, you would have gotten it anyway. It's an open invite, everyone out there. It's at C-A-P-T-Matt-T-Matt-T-Matt-T-Mat-T-T-Mat-T-Rner on Twitter. So look them up, give them a follow. Thanks, guys, for joining us. Appreciate it. Thanks, thank you. Let's get into some listener questions, submitted questions via Google form.

Scotty backslash Bergmeister says, Bergermeister says, what's the best means of ranking our player pool? Personally, I feel like we need to emphasize the tier method as opposed to a straight number rank. How do we differentiate these tiers? Well, so it occurred to me that they're actually pretty similar. A number rank is just a bunch more tiers,

but it's probably not the best answer to the question because they actually are different things. I know you do a bunch of number rankings, whereas you've also done tiers. So how do you see the difference between the two? Yeah, we do number rankings for the top 40 on the Discord, which had 50 some participants last time we did it. I just think things are more fluid than we like to think and tiers can get a little presumptuous. So I'd rather rank them numerically and see how the averages shake out over time. But that's just me.

I'm not even a math guy, really. I do like your idea of having, you know, of numbers being just tiers, just more of them and at regular intervals, you know. Yeah, they might actually be exactly the same thing. It just there's more, there's fewer degrees of difference in the simpler tiers. But I think there's probably room for both because we have a lot of free time, you know? There's only so many national team games a year that there's a lot of time between. So I would advocate for a big. approach.

Just hard not to take that as a shot at the top 40, Scott. So, you know, watch yourself. It was absolutely a shot at the top 40. Corey from Nebraska asks, Greg learns that his job is gone regardless of the result for the next game. He goes out guns blazing with the worst lineup imaginable as a double bird to all his haters. What's the lineup? Okay, so this is something that we often discuss after we record these people get on in

the Discord and we come up with. the most plausible, cute, annoying lineup, but it has to be reasonable for it to actually be worthwhile activity. So I'm going to kind of do kind of how I see that. I think we would definitely want to go three in the back, and then you definitely would have ream in there at the left center back, and then fill out the other two however you want, keeping it plausible.

The key is you have death than at left back, which allows you to put atoms at right wing back. Yep. Which that's going to send people off right there. And then you have two in the midfield. One of them needs to be legit. Okay? And then Giocese at Stryker and the two wingers, you go Ariola and Sergeant.

That's kind of, that's how I see the most plausible, annoying lineup. That's it. That's the one. Chef's Kiss. You could obviously play with stuff around the edges. you can make it even more annoying, but I try to keep it a little bit plausible too. And that's kind of,

I think that's sort of the sweet spot lineup for me. Yeah, it checks the box of plausibility, I think. Scott asks, should there be more discussion around the lack of good American outlaws' chance? They sing the same generic chance, all MLS teams do, and the slow USA clap is not good.

Lots of room for improvement. Thanks. I feel like we've covered this some, my feeling about it is complicated. I think it's tough. Nobody joined American Outlaws to be a choir director, and it's got to be hard to change the culture around chants and singing. But I do agree that this is an area for improvement,

and we are trying to do what we can. Yeah, we definitely did cover it. We did it last episode at the very beginning, but I think we should keep doing it. This is our way to keep that conversation going. We'll just bring it up every time until eventually we start to see gradual shift. Yeah, I guess my message on it is I don't want to, I don't want to criticize anybody too much because this stuff is hard, but also acknowledge that together we can do better. I'm saying a workaround

to not wanting to criticize. It's just constantly how people ask questions about it. Nate asks, how worried should we be about that final qualification window with Mexico and CRC, Costa Rica, away and Panama at home? If we're on the bubble, that's going to be a pretty stressful seven days. Waki? Does he mean how much should we be worried about it right now? Or how much should be worried about the prospect of that week when it happens if we're on the bubble?

I would say extremely worried then, but we should try to do some self-care now and try to not be too stressed about it, just for our own sake. Yeah, I'm not worried about it right now. but if we are on the bubble going into that window, which is kind of how I chose to interpret the question, I would be very worried, worried to very worried. That would be a nightmare. And just the fact of how extreme that would be

could actually make you a little bit nervous right now to kind of undermine myself there a little bit. I'm pretty nervous. Yeah. I'm not nervous about it to be clear yet, but try to be clear-eyed. Andrew asks, do you think January camps have hurt Greg's ability

to select rosters and lineups. Would we have seen Brendan Aronson at the eight or the numerous failed sixes as long without these camps? Do you think USSF should continue having January camps in 2023? If so, would you like to see the format change? Interesting question. Yes, I think maybe the January camps did, kind of offered Greg some fool's gold

that he refused to, you know, let go of, particularly with the things he was talking about, particularly with the sixes. So you see everybody in these January camps doing things exactly as you want them to do them. And then you kind of imagine that's going to happen going forward with those same players. And you forget about talent, like, you know, the importance of talent. And I'm just projecting with all this, but it sounds very plausible that that did throw a wrinkle at Greg that he wasn't able to handle. if the issue there would seem to be with Burrhalter not something in his thinking

we wouldn't actually want to not have the camps though right isn't it nice just to have them in there I could see how it could lead to he gets used to a certain thing and bring it in but maybe you just like don't don't don't keep playing the players there although he also just plays Adams at the 6th now so I don't know if that actually happened He always comes around, seems to. But, yeah, some time was, I think some time was wasted.

We've talked about that a lot on this podcast. USM&T burner says, if a charity boxing match were held between Greg and Tata, who would win? I think Greg would win. I think he's younger. He has a reach advantage, and he's in much better shape. It's tempting to say, Tata, he's probably quite the scrapper. But I think just realistically, if Greg takes this out three, four, five rounds, I think Tava's just going to be gassed out there.

Yeah, as a technical matter, I think it's clear that Greg would win. I mean, I'm no boxing expert. But it would not be pretty. It would be a very ugly fight. I'd like to see Burlter against like Herdman. And then maybe some of the European managers too. I think you'd be a pretty, like, even matchup with Pep. They have similar body types.

Pepp seems to have more physical harmony in his body than Burrhalter does, doesn't he? Yeah, Burrhalter can be clumsy at times, but he's probably taller than Pep too. Drew V points out that Greg also has superior hydration practices. He's very well hydrated, yeah. He drinks a lot from his water bottle during games. Let's jump into it. Let's throw a question from Ryan. He asks you, Wes has that nice little bleached section of hair,

continuing a nice long line of bleached dyed hair with Zardis and Yedlin. Who should be next and what color should their hair be? Hmm. I wouldn't want it on Waya. What Waya should do his own thing? He doesn't need anyone's advice. I wouldn't mind seeing Christian pull-sick get a little bit creative. He tends to just kind of go with whatever the current style is.

I'd like to see him bust out of that a little bit and try his own thing. It wouldn't look good if he did it. but I still I would like to see him do it anyway so I'm going to say pool is sick okay the question was aimed at you so I won't even

I won't butt in and answer it well I mean I don't have any monopoly on who what players should put a bleached spot in their hair I'd like to see Chris Richards do it for just to get a little edgier

uh wild mounty this is Eric S asks I'm thinking we should we should change up the whole red, white, and blue thing. What color should we add and or replace? Well, my first impulse there is I feel like he needed to make a stronger argument

for getting rid of the red, white and blue, because it's just such a strong, strongly branded thing. So I would want to be sold on that a little more. But if we're going to talk about different colors, I could see an earth tone thing. We could try an earth tone thing as kind of an ode to nature. Do you have any other ones? I mean, they're just totally out there, but purple for Prince seems pretty American.

And the yellow of the Gadsden flag that don't tread on me flag is kind of a nice color. I know that. I actually like the purple and yellow idea more than the earth tone thing. Because there aren't really many purple and yellow countries out there. My one question is, is it too royal? Yeah. for a for a for a vibrant democracy such as this yes yeah we can't we can't abandon our colors and right now we got to we got to make sure you know keep that democracy and thing going yeah

purple and yellow purple's definitely too royal i don't know i don't know what what's yellow's significance on the you know style of governance spectrum it's i don't know it's in a lot of south american countries. Oh yeah, as we discussed, there's a lot more yellow and green the closer you get to the equator, right? But to answer, we're going to stay with red, white, and blue. That's my opinion. Yeah. Jordan points out red, white, and blue is a bad color combo for kits. And I guess I'm inclined to agree with that, although France, I always like France's kits, and they have just a slightly different red, yellow, red, white, and blue than we do. I mean, our kits lean heavily just dark blue lately, right? Am I imagining that?

Or white and dark blue are kind of the colors. We always have a loud red involved, it seems like, instead of the sort of more regal crimson that I prefer. I will say, I don't like the red. If I were to get rid of one color, it would be red. I would stick to the blue and the white with the accents of red. Ryan says yellow is a libertarian color. I don't know if he's joking or if that's for real, but I'll take it.

Go ahead. I was just going to say, I did not know that. We need to do some more research shows on these colors. We do. Definitely need to do more research on these colors. Dan Kavis says, realistically, how much better is the USMNT with PEP or Klop as the manager? Realistically, I don't know. I don't know.

Go ahead. I was going to say over the course of qualifying, maybe, 1.5 points better, but also there was some, the soccer math nerds did some report or study that said the coach doesn't actually matter. So I'm kind of saying 1.5 points as a hedge there. Okay. Well, I'm sure that study has methodological problems with it, just saying that blindly. and I'd like to think that with Klopp we have at least four additional points by now in the qualifying window. So surely Pep can do that well too. What would happen differently with them?

I'm just thinking through. Would it be a different lineup? Would they just be, how would we be better? Well, Klop is like a, you know, he's a leader of men. He's a modern day profit. So the players would just care more? Yeah, he would get them so motivated and on the same page, I feel like. I'm willing to give one extra point for that and 0.5.

I'm assuming he had to do a tactical thing, but I'm staying on 1.5 points better. Okay. I mean, it wouldn't it take much for us to win that El Salvador game or to get a draw in that Panama game. But, you know, if you say 1.5, I can't. I'm not going to try to move you off it. I have no idea the answer to that question JJ asks

Who's the better player out of Yedlin Cannon Moore and Kyle Duncan Who is best at defending I would have said Canon a year ago was the best player of the four but Maybe still is I don't know

Maybe I don't know Maybe it's Duncan Duncan seems like the best On the ball of the four And Yedlin's probably the best the best one v1 defender. Go ahead, Wachie. I

think players need to be further apart for me to be able to tell who's better. You're saying it. Why isn't Duncan ever in, I have no idea who's better. Why isn't Duncan ever in a, he hasn't been in a camp, has he? I don't.

He's like one of those kind of weird cases where he's kind of good and he's not ever in the camp, kind of with Keaton Parks. Yeah. He had a very untimely and severe knee injury a couple years ago that I think did set him back a little bit. But I just, but I think it's more that he's just not, isn't separating himself from that group in any way or like distinguishing himself from them in terms of his level. Lobar asks, regardless of the outcome dominance versus Costa Rica, it was too close. If Navas stays in and Ruiz uses his wheelchair, it's a home loss. I'm still not in the Burrhalter camp.

So that's not actually a question. That's just a statement. And I want to say, I hear you and I see you, low bar, and your point is valid. I mean, but couldn't, there could have been also something random happened in one of the games we tied to. You know? I mean, yes, we could have not won that game, but we also could have won the All-Savador game. I'm just, I'm reacting to it because it's not a question. Yeah.

He did have a question later in the, in the paragraph, but I cut it out. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Lobar. That's not, that's not Low Bar's fault. It's mine. Ian asks, what kinds of books do you think Greg tends to fancy? Is he a Chuck Polaniac kind of guy or more of a Malcolm Gladwell reader? Definitely a Gladwell guy, I think.

Godwell. Yeah. and business management books. He doesn't even know who Chuck Polonick is. Is that how you say it, Polonuk? Probably not. I think, you know, Polonuk is like a novelist, basically.

Yeah, he wrote Fight Club. Oh, okay. My bad. David Nskokie asks, if you could hire one soccer pundit, writer, analyst pontificator for Greg Burhalter's staff, let's say he or she replaces Anthony Hudson, who would it be and why?

This is a tough one, I think. I'm going to go with Lloyd Sam because I don't have a strong opinion about this, so I'll just go with the play-by-play guy I've enjoyed the most lately, and I just think he's done a bang-up job for Paramount on these non-US octagonal games flying solo,

which is just unimaginably difficult, I would think. Yeah, will you have to talk for 90, minutes over stuff? I can't imagine that. So I would go with that too. I don't have a really strong opinion otherwise unless it was just sort of a trolling attempt in which case I would go with Matt Doyle. I think that would really help the internet. The internet would really not like that and I would greatly enjoy it. I don't know how much maybe he wouldn't I imagine he hasn't coached before he would be of no help but just I would enjoy it. In terms of fit I think John Mueller would be a good fit

because he's so meticulous and data-driven, and he and Greg would probably have a nice time together, I would imagine. Yeah, I guess I would actually like that. I'll go John Mueller. You've persuaded me. Okay. Also, Alfred asks, do you bring back D.K.? That's D.K., the Orlando City Striker.

So that's question number one for him. Oh, yes, I bring him back. Yeah, I think I agree. You know, he has, what, like four goals in the last six games or something like that? And it's either, with Zardis injured, it's either D.K. Pfok or Sergeant. And it's kind of a roll of the dice for me on the three of them. Retrospectively, I will critique the decision, but going into the window, I don't have a strong feeling about it. I accept that maybe sergeant doesn't feel like the guy right now.

So maybe it's just between D.K. and Pfok. Yeah. I wish Sargent would start doing better. But I guess we've been saying that for a number of years now. Yeah. Let's say no more about it. Let's move on. Simeon asks, you are trapped in an elevator with Burhalter.

Who do you call to the rescue? Jesse Marsh, John McKinney, or Christian Pulisic? in this john mckenny i assume that's weston mckenny's dad 100% yeah 100% so i would choose him john mckenny because he was in the airborne in the year he was born in 1969 too that's what i know about him and i just think that he would have a better idea how to fix an elevator than either jessi marsh and definitely christian pull sick who have only ever had soccer jobs their entire life yeah it's the easy easy answer it's definitely john mackenny basically

if you want anything practical done between the three of those choices, you have to choose McKinney. Lobar got in here with another question. How did I let that happen? But let's read it anyway. The razzle-dazzle kits are an apparent homage to World War I naval camouflage. Has the USMNT made effective use of the razzle dazzle kits? Should they be practicing scripted plays that make greater use of this pattern? We'll just say yes.

Maybe have some more jagged plays. but are the camouflage uniforms aren't camouflaged on the soccer field. They stand out a lot. So it would be more just their disorienting effect, I would think. So I maybe focus on set plays and just have a bunch of crossing patterns. But that might work just without the uniforms too. But yes, I would say yes. There's, this is an opportunity for improvement,

not as, um, not as apparent to me as the one about chance and songs, but certainly an area for improvement. Patrick Keeler says Greg reads every book backwards, then upside down, then correctly. Is that a critique of Greg Berhalter? I think so, yes. Or it's that a compliment. I assume just because it was Patrick Keeler saying that it was a critique. Right, no, is Patrick a pro-berhalter guy?

It doesn't matter. No, no, no, he is not a pro-berhalter guy. Ryan says Greg solely reads Dan Brown novels. You know, they really grab you. They're pretty good. Are they? No, they're not good. But if you start reading that, some of those mysteries,

you're dragged along on a real journey. Yeah. We've got two more questions here. Actually, three, but two of them go together. Toto Briant says, it's a new thing to have Canada as a competitor in the final round of World Cup qualifying. How do you feel about Canada?

Now, I'm just throwing him in there because Franca asked the question we're going to actually answer, which is, do you think the rising quality of the Canadian national team could lead to an unprecedented? precedent rivalry in American sports. The NFL or NBA don't value international tournaments, but it is the lifeblood of soccer. And I say, go ahead, Waki. I would say that would be really great.

Soccer has to get a lot more popcorn, though, right? Right, but maybe this could help. That's the idea, right? Okay. And in which case, yes. I think Canada being good and fun to watch is, I've said this probably once a week for the past three months, but I'm really happy about it because it would be fun to have a real rivalry there in soccer.

And it seems like it's right there for the taking for both nations. Yeah, it does feel like it's, I feel it as a rivalry right now. I do not want to lose to Canada at all. I would rather beat Canada and lose to Mexico than lose to Canada. Really? Yes. So hopefully, but that's, I'm just extremely anti- Canada. That might just be a bias I have. But I could see that carrying over and be turning into a

big rivalry, but soccer will just need to get a lot bigger. And maybe this could help drive it. Yeah. Well, the away leg, I mean, so we drew them in sort of disappointing fashion, I guess it's fair to say, in Nashville. But the away leg is in January. So whatever that happens, probably Vancouver, I suppose. Really looking forward to that. Lugie's asks. Recently on the Discord, there have been a few people talking about having dreams or nightmares involving the USMNT. What is your best and worst USMNT dream?

What is the significance of shirtless Tim Riem in mind? I feel like the Tim Rieme part is the main part of the question. I've only had a Kevin, um, a Costa dream where he was starting. I was, everyone was upset about it. So I don't have anything like the Tim Riem one. I would like to know more about the details of the Tim Rheam shirtless, before getting too much into it. What are you thinking?

Yeah, he's a... Yeah, we may not be able to get those details right now, but at least he seems like a nurturing person, shirtless, you know? Shirtless Tim Riem comes across to me as nurturing. I'm just imagining him as the top half of a centaur now for whatever reason. You know, like in Narnia? I'm imagining a shirtless Tim Riem, his top half is the part of a horse. So that's my answer.

Okay. Well, I don't, so you remember a dream where Kellen Acosta was starting and everybody was mad about it? Yeah, that's the only one I got, though. Okay. Yeah, I don't really remember my dreams at all. So, they're all, what I do have an idea of is that they're pretty esoteric. Like, I'd be in Pittsburgh Riverhountain Stadium and Berlter is over there chatting with Andrew Carlton or something. thing, but it's all very ephemeral.

That's made up, but that's the kind of thing. Dreams that make no sense is kind of what I would, what I have. Anything else, Waki? No. So we're going to close out. I'm just going to play a version of O'John Luca, written and performed by a guy named John Barry. He emailed me this a couple weeks ago, and I thought it'd be a nice way to close out the

episode. So thanks everybody for listening. Thank you, Chris. We'll see you. playing in the top line it looks so good it seems a lie you're playing in the top of life but it's been fair and much but pretty good and the same thing