Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #222: More Dos a Cero revelry + the rest of Concacaf with Watke

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

The anthem, how this game compares to the 2002 win over Mexico in the Round of 16 match, the eye-gouging incident, Mexican newspapers, Panama's miracle comeback, Canada's win in Edmonton, Jamaica's draw and a little bit on the U20s.0:30 intro and more dos a cero reveling25:20 other Concacaf stuff36:015 Very brief U20s discussioncontact: [e-mail] us a question at this link and we’ll try to answer it: https://forms.gle/vEatDVE6wsMzekep8support 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 the Monday review. There is no club action, but we must continue to revel in the biggest victory for the U.S. men since we beat Ghana in the 2014 World Cup on a late John Brooks header. As everyone is saying, it's a different kind of win too. Special. We'll talk about that some more and what else is happening in Conccaf. and we will touch on the U-20s a little bit at the end of the episode. How you doing, Chris? I'm doing very well. Before we get into the review, I just wanted to go over the one bit of news I've seen come out,

which is that James Sands has joined the camp for Jamaica for the suspended Miles Robinson. Yeah, interesting. Do you think Greg's considering three at the back? Well, I think Greg is probably considering pretty much everything because he's a thinker. Sure is. But no, I would think he's probably cover.

We got a little, we got a little guff on Twitter. Is guff still a word? We got a little guff on it. Not really, but I think, I think that we should embrace it. Okay. All right. Because we didn't acknowledge as full-throatedly how much Greg Burrhalter got things right on Friday night.

And let me just rectify that right now. I want to full-throatedly praise Greg Berhalter. I think everything about that game was, nearly perfect. So, um, consider that fix. Yeah, there was a debate right after the game in the parking lot we were standing in, whether he had attained, uh, legend status. There's still some hangout, some holdouts there, but some people were saying that, you know?

Yeah. So, I mean, it's certainly, it's certainly in play. I guess I just, I just don't want James Sands playing, uh, as one of the two centerbacks and going up against Michaela Antonio because that, um, that's not a good matchup, I don't think. Yeah, we don't want that. Let's go back to Friday night a little bit, and we got a few things we want to hit on the anthem. Hmm.

What an anthem. What an anthem. I've watched the video of it several times, and I really enjoy it, not just because I'm in the video, but because, and not even at all because I'm in the video, but because the collective singing is so strong. I liked it some because you were in the video. Okay. I did like it a little bit because of that for sure. but that's not the primary reason. People are going to be like, oh, no, they're talking about singing again.

But, I mean, I feel like this stuff matters. And I would, I gain a little confidence in saying this because after listening, they caught off side pod, J.J. Devaney and Andrew Gundling were talking about this, how powerful the anthem was and how they, you know, they theorized that it bled over into the performance right away. It was very loud. And it was kind of like, Really kind of shake into your core a little bit. And I had to decide between singing or just stopping and listening.

It was beautiful. What did you decide? I would alternate versus more or less. You got the best of both worlds there. You're kind of torn because you want to contribute to how loud it is, but you also just want to fully hear it. And if you're singing it, you don't fully get it. Yeah.

I think that is true. I mean, Wes was tearing up, or not tearing up, but he was contorting his face to prevent himself from tearing up. I've been there. I've been there in certain circumstances. Tyler was beating his chest on Home of the Brave, and we did come flying into that game. And, you know, yes, Mexico had their chances. As Pulisic said, they're a good team. But we were obviously the dominant team, and a lot of it was about intensity. That was the buzzword, right? That was the buzzword from Tata, from Greg, intensity.

We had it. They didn't. I'm normally pretty hesitant to assign direct causation, but I just, I'm prepared to hear almost because of just how loud it was. You mean like how good the national anthem was is why we won the game? Yeah, I think it, well, I think, yeah, I think so basically. Yeah, I'm not, I know you're being sarcastic. I'm not going that far, but I think it's, I think it does matter. And I was in the stands for the games in Nashville, Columbus, and Cincinnati.

The anthem in Columbus was easily the weakest. And I went back and watched the tape. Thank you to, N.A. for that. And the rankings are as follows. Cincinnati, number two, Austin. I wasn't there, but it seems like they did a pretty decent job there. Number three, Nashville, number four, Columbus. Yeah, that's my ranking.

I went through, and that was basically in my ranking, too. I do think we should maybe get some sound measuring devices at these games in the future and kind of track these a little more closely. But that's kind of how I felt to me. Yeah, maybe some, maybe like hand out sports broad trackers to everybody in the stadium so that we can get data on how they're saying. Yeah, I don't know how acoustics work exactly, but we would just want to play some strategically.

We'll leave that to the scientists, though. Yeah, I had a little exchange with Taylor Twelman last night because I said ESPN didn't play the anthem. They had a college football game on. I guess it was important because it was a top five team, University of Cincinnati. But they were playing South Florida and up by two, maybe three touchdowns

around the time we had the National Anthem in Cincinnati. Anyway, it was on ESPN live, I'm sorry, ESPN Plus live, and then it was cut from the replay before that was posted to, you know, the watch ESPN app. So I kind of apologize for getting that wrong, but I kind of don't, if you know what I mean.

To cite another, an idea I've seen from Jay Hernandez, as other people have said it to, we really should ditch the singer and just let it be a crowd, a cappella version. I thought King Kell did a great job in Cincinnati, not knocking his singing. I thought it was wonderful. And he actually did a good job of like,

you know, letting the crowd spread its wings. But in general, go ahead, sorry. Well, the one question is whether that's it, you need that, the singer to set the rhythm. But in general,

I agree with you. I just tend to get nervous for the singer that they're going to forget the words. that kind of, I'm almost so focused on making sure they do a good job that I'm not fully enjoying it. So I always kind of like when there's no singer. But he did, he did well. It is a good question. And I wonder if, like, you know, you go back and watch a World Cup games.

They always play the anthem as like a recording in the stadium. And sometimes that, that record, I don't know how much that recording encourages people to join in with their own voices. It's a, it's something we should be exploring, though. Yeah. another case where we just need to collect more data was it the best performance by the u.s. men's national team against mexico ever um we didn't we didn't fall down hard on this or come down hard on this on our

saturday recap and i know we've had a little bit more time to think it over for me i'm still too stunned by what happened to really say for sure but i think we should explore it and i mean the other question is was it the best USMNT performance ever. And I think that's going to be a lot harder to question to get to the bottom of right now, for me at least. But I do think I just watched, you know, most of the win over Mexico in 2002 this morning,

late last night and this morning. And I don't know how much, how many people remember that. But that was obviously a legendary win for us. but we were barely connecting passes in that game. Like not hardly at all. We had, in the first half, we had, I think we connected like four or five passes in Mexico's half. And three of them were on the goal scoring move. Yeah, I was but a young child and it was, it was some ungodly hour.

And I did not rewatch it. But I remember feeling we got. We got a little bit of fortune there. So I'm inclined to think this one was a better performance, at least. Maybe it wasn't as big of stakes, though. Although maybe it was. No, no, it can't. No, it couldn't have been.

No, it wasn't. That was a knockout game in the World Cup. That was nonsense. Yeah. Leave that in the podcast, so I can be shamed for it. It's, no, I mean, we'll see, we'll see how shameful it sounds on, on the editing process. Yeah, we were, we were clinical. We were desperate and resolute and defending in that 2002 game.

But, uh, Mexico was boss. and us pretty much nonstop. And it's not like we were, it's not like we were a coiled spring, just, you know, bunkering and then countering in sort of, in sort of beautiful harmony with each other. It was just, uh, it was desperate the whole time, pretty much. And what, what are the overall best performances we're comparing this to here? Oh, yeah. I think the, if you're going to talk about best performances ever, the ones in the conversation

are, well, Mexico dosas. zero and a knockout stage game of the World Cup, obviously. That's the one we're talking about. We beat Portugal in that same group stage. And we almost beat Germany in 2002. So those three games, I think, are in the conversation. And then we beat Spain in the Confederations Cup tournament in 2009. I guess I would say if we had somehow beat Germany, that would be the number one.

But otherwise, it's just a question of what type of historical. Oracle lens we're using here. And that gets complicated because the Confederations Cup, how much do we think that matters? It was very exciting at the time. So it was just a complicated calculus going on here. That's true. That's true. I guess the main contrast I see between this game

on Friday night and probably any game against Mexico ever is the way we bossed it. And we obviously did talk about that on Saturday, but that does. Okay. So on my end, I kind of want to punt this down the road and decide for sure next week. Okay. Whether it was the best.

Okay. I'm just not ready to say yet. I need more time. I'm still coming down from the high of it all. Yeah, me too. The foresight, next thing is the foresight required for the man in the mirror shirt. Somebody pointed this out on the Discord, but it raises a question of how specific it was to Pulisic. do you have an opinion on that?

Do you think he was the only one with the man in the mirror? Well, I think it's the big question of the game. Because obviously it would stand to reason maybe it was not just Pulisic wearing the shirt. Maybe it was a cadre of folks and whoever scored would pull that off. But then you have the question of who's in the cadre. And there's also the possible

it was just a Pulisick lone wolf situation. Although I think there's some evidence that suggests that's probably not exactly what happened. But we should talk through. I think it was well somebody in the chat's saying you could see the writing through Pulisik shirt and I didn't see it through anyone else so I think just

Pulisic. That's Daniel that throws a wrench in my analysis a little bit because I would have thought it was probably more of them. Probably if I were away in Yedlin and I wanted to get that message across and I told the equipment manager to do it, why

would you just give it to Pulisic? Yeah it's Pulisic I guess why I didn't know why is Pulisic sending them on an errand to get it on just his shirt? I don't think it was even Pulisik's idea though, right? It was Wayan Yedlands. That's what it sounded like in the press conference. The other thing is like I bet Weston wouldn't have been wearing it because it would have conflicted with this Harry Potter celebration.

Yeah. Which he's fully committed to. You couldn't really do both of those. It would be very weird. Also, doesn't the fact that Pulisick and everyone got so into the man on a mirror thing, it kind of lends sub credence to a choa's original claim.

You know? That's an inconvenient but good point. But it's over now. I do feel we've entered kind of a phase of celebrations where it's, I wouldn't say the cool phase,

but we're planning celebrations out because it wasn't just the man in the mirror. Then there was a secondary phase to it where Pulisick and McKinney kind of did a Panama man in the mirror situation where they put their hands up across from each other.

Yeah. You know? Yeah. And one of them was looking in the mirror. One of them was their reflection in the mirror. So, well, they really went all in on the man on the mirror theme. No. I really, I loved that part, the pantom, the, the, the mime thing that they did.

Jackie points out, do you think if someone else scored that Pulisick would have just pulled his shirt up anyway? That's a good question. Maybe. That's what, see, that's why it would make sense to have other people have it on. But I guess who else would it? It really needed to be pool sick doing it. It wouldn't really make sense with Erinson or maybe Wea.

Wouldn't make sense with Pappy. Yeah. So, you know, I'm sold on the, it was just pool sick now. Are you? We may have to punt until next week on this, too. Yeah, this is going to take a lot more research. I thought I personally, we're going to have to do an investigative piece on it. I thought when Wea was asked about it, he said, and he,

And he said, yeah, we got the equipment manager to put it on. And then he hesitated his shirt. He's talking about Pulisic. But he like he almost said our shirts. And then I'm just, you know, I'm just speculating. When I watched it, I felt the same thing too. But, you know, watching it over and over again, there's no way that's going to hold up in a court of law. Wow.

He's certainly not a court of law. He basically said it. Thank goodness. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. But. Okay More questions and answers at this point

Yeah Okay Well anything else on that No I think we need to spend a bunch more time looking into it Oh Vince says it makes It doesn't make sense what I'm saying Because Wea gave his jersey away Someone would have seen it if he had it on

Um Okay Okay so all signs are pointing to it This was a lone pool soak operation With support from the team I don't agree that's case closed Ryan but I mean it is my case is definitely weakening by the moment how next thing how good was Tyler Adams at breaking things up uh he was very good I thought USMNT Stan highlighted a good moment on

Twitter where Adams anticipates a pass to Lozano and just cuts it out I think Stan pointed out correctly that this is the kind of moment where a lot of central midfielders fall to sleep and Adams just doesn't and I really co-signed that point. Another big thing for me is he gave the ball away every now and then, but the one time he did it at the end of the first half, he gave it away, but then he suddenly did a great job of, I was rewatching it. I didn't notice it fully at the time,

but he just does a full dive to basically take out a guy's knees with his head. Definitely should have been a yellow card. Fortunately, it wasn't. And out of nowhere to bring him. breakup what would have been a, you know, three on two or three on one break. Yeah. I don't know that I've seen a play quite like that. It's right at the end of the first half.

I didn't notice it myself. Yeah. Well, we should post a video of it. It was a great moment and might have contributed to why he got leveled right at the beginning of the second half there. The one where Alvarez got up right in the face of the raft after that. Stan pointed out, or Stan, Stan, asserted that Adams had been doing this all game, was doing it all game.

And I went back and watched all his, all his involvements. And yep, he sure did do a lot of it all game. So even though he was sloppy on the ball a few times in the first half, and one of those could have been pretty costly, the giveaway between McKinney and Robinson, that's something he's not going to do every game. And those defensive instincts, that defensive intelligence, has, which we've been praising for years now.

Man, it's so valuable. Yeah, and that's what it was defensive intelligence on the dive. And then he also, in the second half, did a good job initiating a shoving match with Herrera. It was kind of a exchanging pond situation where he put in the first one and then came the next shove. And that shove could have gotten a yellow because of a second. I guess I would just question whether he should be doing the exchanging pond shove. when he's on a yellow.

If he gets a yellow, he's going to be out for the next game. But just in the context of that game, that was definitely the correct move. And then he got a pat on Tata from the head after. That's nice. It is great that he avoided a yellow. You think he was a little fortunate to avoid one in that case?

I think he was. I think it was pretty fortunate to not have at some point not gotten a yellow in that game. Okay. He did it. Weston should not have gotten a yellow. He was basically, if you just lined up all the, reactions

Tyler Adams was the more likely the two to have gotten a yellow. I understand why Weston did, but... Yeah, Greg Velasquez surprised me by being quite a disciplinarian in the last episode, saying like Weston deserved it because he, it was an instigator twice. I thought, you know, I never knew Greg was such a law and order guy, you know? Well, I thought he was saying it was more of, it makes sense that he would have gotten it, just given that he kept getting into it right there.

But yes. We should talk about that incident though. The Chaka Arrington incident. Walk us through what you know. Yeah, so it's gotten a lot of coverage. And just the one thing I wanted to point out about it that hasn't been discussed. Of course, we know the weird wrapover, gouge the eyes thing that happened. But really the moment that set the play up was when Chaka kind of jump straddled

Aaron's is back and he turned into kind of this cowboy on a bucking bronco situation. That's something I never seen before. And that's really the moment that set up the whole thing, the whole weird scene. And then the other part of that, a shift I noticed earlier in the year, whenever something like that would happen, in the second phase of it in the aftermath, L tree players would kind of come in and try to incite something. That's not at all what happened this next thing. It was all Weston being the aggressor and everyone trying to push him back. And that's why he got the yellow card.

So I don't know, you know, it's just a shift in competitive dynamics in those situations. I don't know if it was from a place of weakness or it was just smart on the part of Altree. I wonder if the knowledge of VAR has become instinctive for a lot of these guys. And they're like, oh, in the back of their heads, almost subconsciously they're thinking, well, uh-oh, shock is going to get sent off now. And it kind of takes them a little bit to realize, oh, wait, Concaf doesn't have Var. So, yeah, I think that was, that is a weird thing that's going on, the Novar. It was like they knew that something had happened that Chaco was clearly the wrong. And then the other part of that was, I was watching the replay, and Stefan got a yell on it,

but he didn't actually do anything. It was just, the ref was about to give a yell to someone else. and then he looked up and he saw there was a goalkeeper standing right in front of him and he was just upset that another person ran up so he just flashed in his face right there.

You could almost see the refs saying I couldn't figure out exactly what I was saying it looks like he was just saying F off and pointing away. It's it was probably the small highlight of the game for me just in terms of the strangest moment

just an angry impulse yellow the refed it. Ryan's saying he refused to back to his goal. I heard it said that it was because he ran 60 yards. You shouldn't, you're immediately amping everything up. Oh, is Ryan saying that

Stefan had come in before? I've been told to go away and didn't. I didn't see that in the telecounts. He's not, doesn't sound totally convinced of it. It's truth. He's just sort of saying that might have been what happened. Okay. All right. So that covers

the shock of Aronson incident. Hard for me to feel much about it, you know, in terms of outrage, because I'm just so, you know, I'm still so happy. I'm just a happy person right now. I would be, me too, I would be so much happier if Weston were playing in this Jamaica game. Yeah, that's true. That's true. All right.

One other thing from the game I wanted to mention is the Mexican press coverage. It's always fun to see what the newspapers were saying. And I think it was Paul Kennedy at Zucker America put together a run. run down with some images. And we're looking at one of them right now. You might have seen it on Twitter, too. It's from Record. And it's probably the most satisfying of all the newspaper covers.

It says, So Mejores, Saludin Al Nuevo Gigante, which is, they're better. Say hello to the new giant. And it's got a picture of McKinney with Pulisick on his back. And Adams kind of arms outstretched next to them sort of saying like, hail to the kings. A dramatic claim.

You mean a dramatic claim by the newspaper? Yeah, it feels like it's a, I feel like pressure now. Yeah, well, three games in six months, three wins in six months. And this one utterly convincing, I can understand. Most of the other, most of the other newspapers use pictures of Mexico players on their covers. And, you know, there's always Dosa Zero involved. in the headline. The one I liked the most was in Esto, a sports newspaper in Mexico City that used a picture of a downcast, Chuckie Lozano. The deck said, the deck is like the, you know,

it can be above a headline or can be below a headline, but it's like more detailed text. The deck said, translated roughly, this is a rough translation. The scoreboard curse born in Columbus moved to Cincinnati, where the United States danced on Mexico, took away the undefeated and the top of the table heading to Qatar. Next challenge, Canada in icy Edmonton. And then in giant black letters on a yellow field, Vue el dos a zero. So it's just dos a zero returns.

It's a pretty nice thing. The Cincinnati to Columbus, or Columbus moved to Cincinnati thing. Somebody made this point standing in the parking lot after this game that Mexico players probably have a really distorted view of what Ohio is.

Because they just show up and they're in the stadium and then they're overwhelmed by it and they probably just see it as a land of nothing but soccer maniacs. So I like that there's this strange idea of Ohio. I guess people in Ohio do like soccer a lot or at least more than

but it's just a strange little quirk. Yeah. I mean, Ohio has a lot, I think a lot more people in it than a lot of people realize, you know. But I have no idea how many people I would ask. I'd like to learn at some point. We'll put that to next week too. Unless you know, do you know. Somewhere north of 10 million, I think, right in the right around 10

million, you know, which is like twice the population of Norway. Um, no. Not that Norway really has anything to do with it. It's just, uh, whatever. Um, I do like the idea of, measuring things in comparison to how many people Norway has, though. How did you know it has twice the people of Norway? Because I don't know. I don't know why I know that. I get in a lot of weird. I've gotten in a lot of weird arguments in my life.

Other stuff in Concalf, man, it was a busy, obviously a busy night on Friday. And everyone knows all this, but the basics are Canada beat, Costa Rica in Edmonton. So they're doing both their games in Edmonton. Panama had this incredible come from behind victory against Honduras in San Pedro Sula. But first let's talk about Edmonton. It's, at least yesterday, it was actually snowing there. Yeah, and this is Mexico is going up to play Canada there.

And I didn't realize Canada or Canada was playing both of their games in a row there. I have a lot of respect for that decision. but Edmonton, it's North America's northern most metropolitan area with the population over a 1 million, which I did not know. I didn't know how far north it was. It's north of even Calgary. And it looks like it's going to be under 20 degrees for that kickoff. So Mexico might be looking at a fairly disastrous road trip.

It's so fun. I feel a little bit bad for it, bad for them. Yeah. Not really, but. It's so fun that Canada is good. But also, we probably want Canada to win, right? I mean, Mexico to win. Mexico to win.

Yeah, I guess. Yeah, probably. Probably won Mexico to win. A draw would be nearly as good. It's out of our hands, though. Yeah, we can't. As is most of this. Unlike the performances of the U.S. team,

which is very much in our personal hands. Yes. Panama's come from a high victory. Honduras got a first half goal from Albert Albuquerque, kind of a vintage run in behind strength and strong finish. Then they got an early second half goal from Brian Moya on a bad mistake from Christian Martinez, Panama midfielder. And you've got to think at this point,

Panama's magical run has come to an end or at least a halt, but holy smokes, Honduras bottled it. They gave up a dumb goal in the 77th, where the centerback and the goalkeeper neither claimed a ball that was between them. I think I put it more on the centerback. And then a Panamanian attacker just pounced and put it in the net.

And then a very nice goal in the 80th and then the game winner, a free kick in the 85th. So in less than 10 minutes, it went from 2-0 to 3-2. And that's a hugely significant result for us. Panama has some mojo to them. Honduras, they really lit us down.

I know it's not about us, but they certainly let us down. They sure did. It seems like their defenders, they just sort of stopped playing defense. And they kind of did an offside, bailed offside trap on that second goal. But they kind of just stopped. We would be in much better position right now if Panama hadn't won that game. So now we have to gut one out against Jamaica, don't we? This is just how points from soccer games were.

But when I looked at it after we'd be in Mexico, it was slightly deflated. Not completely, obviously, because I was elated by what had just happened. It would have been nice to be ahead by more points, though, than we are right now. We're only three points ahead. Let's go to Canada's win.

Why don't you start us? Well, they won is the main thing. They were, again, they were playing an admission twice. And the main thing from that game is the keeper for Costa Rica, who is not Taylor Navas, kind of muffed one and they kicked it in. And that was kind of the pivotal moment. And also they had football lines on their field,

which I would not have guessed. But apparently their stadium is the home of the Edmonton Elks. It is, and it is, of course, an artificial turf field, right? And it's a turf field, so I imagine that would be even more difficult to play on for Mexico. It's a field turf. is the brand of the turf. It's a French company, but they're headquartered in Montreal

and they produce it in Calhoun, Georgia. I heard... I spent a little time looking at it. That's good. I heard Felipe Cardenas, great friend of the pod, great friend of the pod, say on his allocation disorder,

recap that Mexico's been training at the Indie 11 field or practice field for this whole window to try to get ready for playing on turf at Canada. Anyway. Were they playing on that before the U.S. game?

That, I don't know. As the words came out of my mouth, I wasn't sure about that. But at least at some point they have in the lead-up to this game tomorrow trained in Indianapolis. Well, that's very impressive of them. It is going to be a lot colder than that indoor stadium. That's going to be a fascinating game to watch, obviously. But anyway, to the game that Canada won, you're right.

It was a lot that back up Coast Rika goalkeeper just getting little brothered. Boy, he's sort of the, he's the ultimate little brother. Kler Navasas's little brother. KG first half, Buchanan rang the crossbar early in the second half with an overhead kick. Did you see that? That was spectacular. Yeah.

Yeah. Very nearly went in. And then they got their goal, like you said, because of their goalkeeper, the Costa Rica goalkeepers growing up. It was stood up into the bar. box by Eustaccio and he came out and failed to deal with it. It fell to Jonathan David right in front of the goalkeeper. He sidestepped the keeper and slotted at home.

There were a few other chances for Canada, but not a ton, so it seems like kind of a professional win. 1-0 victory. Didn't appear Costa Rica seriously threatened afterward. When do we play Canada again? Late January. Either late January or early February. That window, whatever it is.

In Canada somewhere. Yeah. So they haven't scheduled. Right. Yeah. Okay. I'd be surprised if they put it in Edmonton in, uh... No, they're probably going to go for a expensive game, right, in Toronto?

Who knows? Toronto would be cool. It would still be cold, but I don't think, I think, you know, you get the lake effect there, right? It keeps it a little warmer than other cities at the same latitude further west. Well, that's another thing we need to look into for later, is that. the lake effect in Toronto. Yeah. I mean, I know in western Michigan,

it keeps things a little warmer than they are in, say, eastern Wisconsin. Yeah, I'm now just interested in the lake effect in general. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. All right, Jamaica's game. That's our opponent tomorrow.

They played El Salvador at the Kuskadlan, a place we know well. It would have been really rough on El Salvador to lose this game because they clearly got the better chances. And, you know, Michaela Antonio did score the goal. He didn't come on until, I think, like, the 75th minute or something. Jamaica didn't

create much for the first 75 minutes. And El Salvador did. They rang the crossbar bar a couple times late in the first half, like in quick succession. And then Antonio came on and just created something out of nothing, received a clearance at the half line, bodied his man, made a run at goal, beat another guy, and then dinked one over the keeper with his left foot. And I see, this really kind of bugs me. I see a lot of people on Twitter saying, well, that's just terrible defending. I'm like, have you ever heard of Michaela Antonio before? He does this all the time, not just to El Salvador defenders. He does it in the Premier League, like regularly.

I mean, maybe it was poor defending, but that's not a reason to feel good about it. So I thought it was a scary moment. 1-0 Jamaica in the 82nd minute. And then, of course, Alex Rodon got a 90th minute equalizer on just a towering header from a cross from the right side. Perfect. It was very similar to the, Ricardo Pepeheader at Honduras.

And Antonio, they were saving, he came on in the, he subbed on, right? Yeah, yeah. They were kind of saving him for the US game. And now that they're, they kind of have to win against us or it's over for them.

Yeah, something close to over. It's sort of their last stand on Tuesday. Drap game. Drap game, man. It'd be really interesting to see it. Trap game. Okay. Yeah, that's all I have about that other than it's a pretty important game against Jamaica.

And if we win it, it would really make Christmas a lot less stressful, just in the point situation. Not that I wouldn't be stressed by Christmas itself, but... Yeah. I mean, I think it would be... Christmas would be much happier if we win this game. Let me just, before we move on to the U-20s and briefly touch on them, I just want to thank some people from Friday. There's so many people to thank,

but thank you, Kevin, DFB, Hipster for the cocktails. That was wonderful. Thank you for, thank you to Ryan and Corey. People I had never met before, just DM me on Twitter. Those guys had a flagpole in their pickup truck for the scuffed podcast flag. It was a 90-foot flagpole. Super nice. Just had it in his truck.

and so thank you Ryan and Corey thank you Vince for the pork I've said of this before but that pork was delicious and I think everybody's unanimous on that thank you for running the music thank you ref Joe for bringing the hot dogs and the buns thank you Alex for running that

thank you Jonathan Sanders for donating so much money to the to the food pantry Thank you to everybody who donated money to the food pantry. We raised more than $1,200. And I'm about to cut that second check to them. Thank you to Mary Roberson for helping us get access to the bathroom. Who else am I missing here, Chris?

Because you were there for a lot of people. Probably. Well, there was more than 100 people there. It was a lot of folks. Yeah. Thank you Fernando Varela for bringing Barra 76 over. That was a real treat. Thank you for, thank you, Corbyn.

and Mara for bringing soccer balls and being always ready to down to Rondo. Did a lot of Rondos out there. We did Rondos all over that city. If I forget anybody, I'll mention them in the next podcast. Well, some podcast down the line. It was a lot of fun. That was really fun for me. And I think it was fun for a lot of people.

All right. The U-20s. There's a little bit of a, can you give me a little bit of a meta-take on how you, like, your interest level with? the U-20s right now? Yes. Well, in the past, at least I, and I think people in general would have been a little bit more emotionally involved with them right now.

But since we have our senior team appears to be good suddenly and also we're in the middle of World Cup qualifying, I feel like we have a little bit more of a balanced attitude towards it, which is probably helpful in analyzing this particular tournament that's going on. Yeah. In 2019, the U-20s were so fascinating. Because in 2019, the senior national team wasn't that really that good. And we were like, well, there's going to be a bunch of players who come from this U20 team who are going to make us better.

Now we're starting to be good. And it's kind of harder to envision how these guys are going to fit in. Yeah. The U20s are less immediate. These U20s are less immediately going to be playing for the national, for the senior team in the, you know, in this World Cup. Whereas last time, these were the, guys we're going to be counting on right now.

Yeah, Kaden Clark's going to have to be just a man on fire in, uh, in, uh, at R.B. Leipzig in order to get anywhere close to this national team. Yeah. And he's kind of the leading guy, right? Is there anyone else that's,

looks like they're going to threaten to break through? I didn't really necessarily think so. Yeah, he does seem like the guy, like the guy most likely to. I mean, Paxton Aronson is the other player who looks at. looks exciting to me. Justin Shea is exciting, but boy, he got to learn how to defend. He had some rough moments.

Caden Clark scored a pen. Well, let's just consider the Brazil friendly a total loss. And I do promise we'll come back and we'll talk more about this, this U-20 camp in the coming weeks. There's just a lot of other stuff going on. But anyway. Yeah. Matt Hartman can do a more thorough analysis of each of these guys. Yeah, he'll have the, he'll have the, he'll have the,

He'll have the juice. Clark, so the Brazil game was a total loss. I mean, mostly not because we looked so bad. I thought we looked kind of okay with the ball. Just our back, in the back we were just a shambles. So like, forget about that game for now. In this game, our goal came on a Caden Clark Panenka penalty. So that's cool.

Yeah. And it was a real Panenka. It had a nice height on it and got right in under that. bar at the top. Yeah. He's a confident kid. It wasn't one of those soft panicas, yeah. And the penalty was a real rough moment from that Colombian centerback too.

It should be said. Now, but apparently Varis, Mikey Varis, is pulling things together a little bit, so that's positive to see that. It's still a long way to go. Columbia got their goal at the absolute death, the last action of the game. on a cross and a finish at about the 6th and it was it gives me no pleasure to say it was Justin Chee who was just kind of like not really marking the guy

I mean it could have been on it could have been I think it was Jalen Neal who was in the middle at the time yeah well the good thing what we know now is it okay to have a rough youth national team tournament yeah that wasn't great but onward. And then sort of my big takeaway overall is it at least remains reasonable to hope for a double Aronson situation at some point in the future with the national team, which I'd like to see, just to have two Aronsonson running out there. It also seems possible Pacton is the cooler of the two, so there could be sort of competition there. Yeah, pretty kind of a boring game, honestly,

but we will have more on it at some point. It's all going to start up again tomorrow. Games at 5 p.m. Eastern, 4 p.m. Central, if I'm not mistaken. In Kingston, the word is it's going to be a full stadium despite the COVID protocols. And you know what? Hard to blame. Hard to blame Jamaican fans at all for that. There were no COVID protocols in Cincinnati. Yeah. I mean, come on. Whatsoever. Zero. All right. Thanks, Waki. Appreciate it. And thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.