Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #253: Herdman’s secret plans & Berhalter’s last interview

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Greg and Belz got a pretty detailed look into Canada's tactical approach from a couple of private video presentations conducted by John Herdman, which were leaked to us. We talk through those and try to relate them to the USMNT, and then talk through Gregg Berhalter's latest interview with Bobby Warshaw for U.S. Soccer's house podcast.0:30 intro, background and the basics of Herdman's ideas14:30 Canada's approach to each of the 4 phases of the game26:30 tallying up "advance platforms" as a way to measure on-field success44:25 Berhalter's latest Warshaw interview55:30 Pulisic's benchingCORRECTION: Earnie Stewart's compensation for 2020 was, according to Soccer America, $825,720. On the pod Belz said "$865,000" which is incorrect. support Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedsign up for our weekly newsletter: https://scuffedweekly.substack.com/ join the Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XU buy our merch: https://my-store-11446477.creator-spring.com/drop us a question at this link and we’ll try to answer it: https://forms.gle/rfzSEZJwsvnWSCxW7 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. Today we're going to talk about John Herdman and Greg Burhalter. The occasion for this is that we've been leaked. More than two hours of footage of Hurdman presentations on what the Canadian men's national team is all about. We can't share the video or any clips from it, but we can talk about the content, which really is a remarkable look inside what Canada is trying to do and how they're going about it. Meanwhile, Berhalter just had his most recent conversation with Bobby Warshaw earlier this week, and that will serve as a nice compliment to what we've learned about Canada. Does that about sum it up, Greg? I think so. Some dudes talking about some other dudes talking about soccer.

For me, someone who's not a real soccer coach, I do coach you ate soccer, but I'm not really a soccer coach. And just a passionate lover of the game, the Herdman presentation is pretty impressive. He has this top to bottom vision for how his national team and youth national teams are going to play. And he demonstrated that Canada is committed to teaching it and measuring its success. We have to start by saying probably the U.S. has a lot of similar stuff going on. We just don't have a secret presentation about it. So if anyone has access to any internal U.S. presentations that Burrhalter's made, feel free to share it as sort of the rebuttal side of this.

because it would surprise me if they don't, to be honest. It would surprise me if Burrhalter and Ernie and, you know, the entire staff don't have this sort of, I don't know, some way of presenting what their vision is. Right. Well, let me just make an offer. Ernie Stewart. We will give you $865,000 if you will leak us a presentation like this. Is that his offer from the Dutch FAA to be their director of football? That was his 2020 salary from U.S. soccer.

Okay, so the presentation, just some basics here. The presentation is from 2020, so it's not exactly new. In it, Herdman is still celebrating, for instance, the 2-0 win over the U.S. in September 2019. He's got a couple youth national team coaches on the call with him. The one who talked the most was Andrew Olivieri, the men's U-20 coach for Canada. And I guess, Greg, you're the brains here. What stood out to you from the presentation? So I guess the big thing for me is, and I think you kind of already touched on it, it's just,

the clarity, right? It's the clarity that it's laid out in a way that, uh, feels very applicable to when they do drill down into some of the details about the tactics, about, uh, you know, how it applies on the field. Like, it's so easy to see how, how what they're saying is their overarching high level stuff, uh, ties to what is being executed by the players in the match. Uh, and I think that's, I think that's a really, I think it's impressive. And I, I just totally agree. Hurdman just seems like a very good executive, you know, obviously success has followed him everywhere he's been coaching. So that's not necessarily surprised.

Like you don't get to that point without those sort of executive skills. So, yeah, it was just all very clear and you just immediately grasp exactly what they are about. Yeah. Yeah, he seems like a really good teacher. And I said this when I talked with Jay Hernandez yesterday, but I can't. can't say Burrhalter's is not as good of a teacher as Herdman, I don't like have the knowledge to say that, but Herdman jumps out at me as a good teacher in a way that

Burrhalter doesn't as much, you know, because I mean, part of this is going to be using this presentation and what we've learned about Canada to assess the U.S., which we have to do with a ton of caveats, but I think it's, I think we can say some things and that's one thing I want to say. I'll piggyback on that a little bit because we don't have Burrhalter's version of this. we're even going to compare it to what Burrhalter does with Bobby Warshaw in his podcast,

which is a different thing entirely, right? That is usually a retroactive, like a retrospective after a window. That's the whole, that's sort of the framing of the entire Bobby Warshaw podcast with Burrhalter. In that, Berhalter does come across as a very good analyst. He's very good at analyzing what went wrong at times. And so the question becomes, is he able to actually teach the players to start sort of anticipating those issues and preventing them from happening ahead of time. So I guess jury is still out on the teaching side.

But again, if we can get our hands on the U.S. version of this, we'll have a lot more to say. Three quarters of a million dollars plus, Ernie. So I have a ton of notes on the presentation, probably too much. But I'll just sort of work through it from the top. And you can jump in, please, Greg. They start off talking about how they have this clear structure of essentially three coaches and then some sort of ancillary coaches from the U12 to the U23 to the senior level. And, you know, they're all working off the same playbook very clearly.

And I assume this is going on with the U.S., but I have not seen it explained so clearly. So then the tagline, why don't you tell us what the tagline is for the whole thing? I think that is instructive. Real quick, I don't think the U.S. has this level of cohesion in their coaching ranks. Like, I don't believe for a second that Berhalter and Jason Christ were necessarily preaching the same message. I don't know. That's fair. Just based on some things we heard, not even just because of the debacle in Guadalajara, right?

Just based on some things we'd heard about their relationship and some of their decisions and even some of the ways that Christ would speak publicly. Like it didn't seem necessarily like there was that everyone was, you know, standing hand in hand there singing kumbaya. Yeah. And let me just mourn that a little bit because, you know, this presentation's from long before Canada was, you know, top of the table in Kaki Kaff World Cup qualifying.

This was back when Canada was still a small club. You know? Yeah, it was right after we sort of pantsed them a little bit in the, in the Nation's League final, or not final, the Nation's League, essentially playoff game down in Orlando. Yeah. Yeah, knocked. I can't remember where that was, but it was, but we knocked them out, and we went on to the Nation's League semifinals, which happened a year and a half later, but all of their

confidence was based not on, you know, exactly on results on the field or like some clear idea that they had an easy path to World Cup qualification at the time. They were just full of belief and had some clear ideas. And so that's a thing. So talk about the tagline. So I think it's a big deal. I mean, they're basically saying that they're striving for tactical excellence. And this is like the big head, the big heading. And the goal being to be the most organized and adaptable team in Concaf by 2022. And I feel like when you hear that, you know, phrased that way and then you have the benefit of, you know, the last two years of information that they didn't have when they were given the presentation, you can

probably say they've pretty much done that. Yeah, mission accomplished. Well, well done. All out a banner. Does Canada have any aircraft carriers? Because that would be perfect. And in that conversation, in the presentation, Hurdman comes across as a serious student of Concaf, he said, and he talks about the importance of adaptability in the context.

of having only three days of preparation with the players, lots of travel, different climates, and different profiles of teams and players based on where you're playing, like in the Caribbean versus Central America. He said this will all require different approaches and an easy-to-grasp system that players can comfortably execute.

And then one thing that we'll get into a lot more later that I thought was really interesting is, you know, he talked about identity being, like it's a buzzword, but for him it's not a buzzword. It's the core, it's absolutely the core of your performance. The identity drives everything under performance, under pressure. And then you have these, within this tactical identity, you have sort of a shared mental model that is durable under the pressures of international football

and outside of the identity is the tactical measures. And that's the part we'll get into a lot more later. And he calls it your truth mirror, the ability to actually measure tactical excellence. is having measured. He says if you can't, if you can't measure it, I think he was quoting Billy Bean. He says,

if you can't measure it, why do it? So they're only doing stuff that they can measure and measuring it rigorously. Yep. And so for the most part, I wouldn't,

again, wouldn't surprise me at all if this is like one-to-one stuff with what U.S. soccer has. The one thing, the one almost like preemptive quibble I'd have is like with comparing it to U.S. is that big focus on adaptability.

Maybe some other folks would disagree, but I feel like there are some issues with Burrhalter and the U.S. men's team, and its willingness to adapt in certain ways. It has made some adjustments in the three years running now that Burrhalter has been running the show. But there still seem to be some things that are either very rigid or just, you know, have to move at a glacial pace in order to change. There's a paradox there when you talk about adaptability, right? because in soccer, people talk about imposing yourself on the opponent and dictating how they, you know, dictating the game, dictating to them how they respond to you. And I don't know that those are always compatible. Those two goals are always compatible. Are they?

I don't know. Like Berthelter might say, well, we went to Canada and we dictated that game to them in a lot of ways. I mean, he did essentially say that, which was our goal. And Hurtman will say, fine, you know, you dictated the game, but we were adaptable and we won two to zero. Yeah, I think that's totally like fair framing almost from both sides. Like I completely disagree with Burrhalter in that we dominated. But if he wants to say we dictated the game and sort of defend that by saying,

look, we had the ball a lot. We, you know, we got the ball into X space or whatever he wants to say. That's all well and good. I think it's just easy to say from Herdman's side, like we were. in control of where you had the ball, for the most part, and we were fine with it. So in our sense, like, what we were doing is more likely to get us a win. And what Herdman stresses is that winning is what all of this is geared towards. It's for, it's for like, I mean, there is nothing else without winning. You can't build any of these things if you're not winning. So,

so he's, you know, and we're going to get into right now, one of the, I think, key, uh, pieces I took from it is that one of the first comparisons he makes or one of the first comparisons he makes or one of the first teams he alludes to, and what their overall, like, long-term goals are, is Greece 2004. Yeah.

And for everyone who's sort of been following soccer for that long, or who's maybe heard the stories of, like, Greece is like a legendary anti-football team that anti-footballed their way to a trophy in 2004, like the biggest of tournament underdogs. So, sort of, like,

use that as an inspiration, goes against everything that, like, a lot of coaches walk into a new position, being like, no, we are going to play attractive attacking football. And, you know, we're going to, like you're saying, we're going to impose ourselves on the opponent. And straight away, Herman's like, hey, Greece did something and they won a trophy.

They won. Yeah. They played this way and they won. It doesn't mean that we're going to be Greece. We're going to play exactly like they played. But like there are lessons there in how you can adapt your team to earn a result. Yeah. I mean, it is a pretty stark contrast between we're going to be Man City and we're going to be

Greece 2004, you know. He also brought up, excuse me, he also brought up Iceland in 2016 and the Canadian women in 2012, a team he coached, I assume. Yep, coached them to the Olympics and then had success again when they hosted the World Cup in 2015. Maybe some more stuff that might be one to one with the U.S. He talks about team spirit, tactical excellence in team chemistry, being like the three legs of the stool and the team spirit is based on trust. The players have to trust the coach. They have to trust the plan. They have to trust each other.

Without that, you're not going to get tactical excellence. Honestly, I didn't really understand the team chemistry concept. So I can move. I buy this. We've talked about this before. Like, it was kind of even like back to the Saracan days. Like, you have to know what your role is. Like, you have to know exactly what you're being asked to do.

And it goes back, we talked about it going back to the. Klinsman era too. Like if you don't know what your role is, then there's room to just start sort of freestyling, right? Like you're going to have different players and you've got nine different, you know, you know, type A personalities who are elite at their craft, whether, you know, they're going to be good enough to win World Cup. You know, we have a lot of fans saying we don't have that many elite players. But on a relative scale, these are elite players. They got to where they are by being elite at this game. So if you just sort of don't give them this tactical framework, If you don't tell them what their roles are and they don't trust you, they will just all start doing their own thing.

And I think, you know, when you watch a Canada's team, you definitely know that the guys aren't out there freestyling, right? Like, they are on script. You can just sort of see how easily they snap into, whether it's defensively or once they win the ball and try to go forward, how, how like in tune they are. And I think that's, so I totally buy that that is a big part of, or a big consequence of having every, bought into what Herdman is preaching. Yeah. Now, I'm not saying that the flipside that the U.S. are not bought in to Burrhalter. I'm just saying that, in fact, I would say that they probably are.

I think they might just be a little bit muddled on how to execute it, but I don't actually see them like trying to go off the page too much. Right. I guess the key questions are like, you know, how good of a teacher is Burrhalter? How good is he at... producing clarity and then relating it. And because clarity is, clarity is a big,

a big emphasis for, for Herdman. And let's just get into the meat and potatoes. So in the four phases, they, they, they use the word, in defensive transition,

they use the word hunt. When we lose the ball, we hunt. And he was very big on, like, we got to use simple. I love that. Yeah, you use it all the time too.

I mean, you've used it for years. Because I think, again, it just lends itself to something that players are, to do when we went through 2019 where we did no hunting, because you can play in a 4-4-2 mid-block and still hunt, but I never felt like we were really doing that in 2019. So Canada will often sit back in that mid-block, but they still are looking for chances

to hunt. And that's the key. Like, that's the fun part. You're giving your team, like, something to be energetic about, almost like, look forward to and be aggressive. And those are those cues that players can, like, really thrive on. So anyway, I just, I really appreciate the, the specific, like, verbiage that Herdman's employing here. And he talked about why it's so, so specifically used.

Yeah, it's, it matters to have a word that's clear that people can just, like, the idea is just immediately there when the moment arrives. And, yeah, we didn't hunt at all back in 2019. We were a bunch of friggin' vegans. And, um, but now we do. So that's good. If they can't quickly get the ball back, they drop into their defensive organization and the word they use is tight, not compact, not any of these other words just tight. Get tight with each other. And I think it's mostly about being tight with each other.

Like pretty locked in. And you grabbed a screenshot from that. I mean, obviously we can't share it, but maybe talk about that because you thought that was significant, right? Yeah, it's significant. It just again, it shows how specific they are addressing things that we, I think, do see. And it's not like we have some special insight. Everyone is seeing this with Canada, right? Yeah.

They do get incredibly tight. All 10 outfielders, like, creating this like phalanx. Is that what it's called? I guess. And on their screenshot, you know, they have a freeze frame. And, like, they've got the, they grid up the field and looks like an Excel spreadsheet. And they've got the distances between each players. And then behind the back four.

It's like this shaded area that says no entry zone. And again, this is all very simple. Like, of course, you don't want to let your teams in the opponent into that space. But like the, again, just the focus that you put on that where it's like, okay, all 10 of, all 11 of us have this responsibility to get tight and prevent the ball from going, getting into this space. Not saying that this is unique to Canada. But you just do see the clarity. And when you see them play, you can see that clarity sort of. execution. Yeah, they try to, so I mean, he doesn't say what the prescribed distances are between

the players, but it looks like maybe less than 10 meters along the back line and a little bit, a little bit looser on the second bank of four, but I'm just, you know, guessing, basically. And the other important thing here is they're talking about, like, the play, it's obviously been stressed to the players how important getting those distances essentially exactly right. And there is going to always be some fieldhood. It's not going to be like, you need to be 12 meters away, but it's like you need to be here to, you know, have these angles. They talk about being on the right blade of grass. Yeah.

So that's the language they use there. And then that no entry zone, the final 30 yards, final fourth of the field is how they talk about it. They want, they want to regain possession from their opponent more, at least 80% of the time in the first 90 yards of the goal, the first 90 yards of the field, the first three-fourths of the field. And I suspect they did not achieve this goal against the first. the U.S. It's hard to count when you don't have a, you know, when you have to go through and watch

the whole game, which I did not do with this in mind. But I don't think they achieved that goal. They probably didn't. And maybe we can talk about that later too. But I'll say here too, like this tight defensive stuff that we're seeing in action with Canada, I would say that we are seeing a lot of this also in action with the United States, to be quite honest. Like in this World Cup qualifying campaign, since we've gone to the 433, I would say. say that our defense has been remarkably tight. We are like very difficult to carve up. I think is, would you, would you agree with that?

I do. I do agree. Yeah. I think a lot of that has to do with the, well, of course it has to do with our organization. But there's a lot of good athletes who are alert and intelligent defensively on our team now. Some of those pieces we're missing in the first couple years of Burrhalter's tenure. Yeah. And even then though, like we were not.

never, I don't even think in 2019 while we were sitting in that soft four four two, I don't think we were necessarily easy to carve up. Teams maybe had a little bit easier time getting into the early stages of their attack, but once they got close to our goal, similar to Canada's like no entry, like it was it was tough sledding. And the big problem for me with that four four two was it didn't lend itself at all to us getting the ball back quickly and then doing something with it. So it was just like the game was just dying by attrition and we weren't creating much attack. So I would give Burrhalter credit for totally shoring up our defensive posture and our ability to prevent goals. I would give him a lot of credit for getting us into a really good spot there.

So in this defensive side of, you know, the comparison we're making between Canada and this, you know, their vision, I think defensively we're right there with them, if not, you know, better. I don't know if I can say that, but we are we are a good organized defensive side. Totally true. Yeah. When they, and so let's move on to the attacking transition. When they, when they get the ball back, however that is, whether it's after a hunt or, you know, from a organized defensive position, their goal is to complete the second pass 80 plus percent of the time. So that's the key thing they're trying to do. Get the first pass, complete the second pass 80 percent of the time.

That's good because I guess, why? Because once you complete that second pass, then you have a lot more options. And generally that means you're off to the races. Yeah. And that's the big emphasis is not just to complete the pass, because you could always complete the pass and move it back a line. You know, their emphasis is, can you complete the pass that sets up this forward motion immediately and get the entire team flooding forward? And that's an area where, you know, again, that's where you start to get a real contrast with the U.S.

recently and almost you could almost say throughout Raltors' tenure, it's more the exception that we have those games where we do attack forward quickly, effectively. And it seems to be more the rule that we recycle, recirculate, slow things down, and then let's start again with our, you know, half-court offense, as I kind of call it. Which is something Berthalter bemoaned on the most recent Warshaw interview.

And I feel like has talked about several times. But at a certain point, it's got to be, it's got to show up on the field. You know, if he feels like that's an important thing, he's got to translate it to the players in a way that makes them more decisive in attacking transition. Yeah, because I definitely don't think we have inherently conservative players at this point. Our 11, most of our subs are not safe playing mentalities. Right. Like we've been playing guys who, you know, you see it in their club. They want to go.

They have that mentality. So to see them sort of acting against those instincts, like it does raise some questions about how is this trying to be installed at the national team camps? We're going to get Project Restart Pulisic back and it's all going to be better. Oh man, imagine. Imagine. Project Restart Pulisic gets us a win in Azteca. If we've got him cooking with everything else going.

Yeah. Sorry. Sorry to let myself to sort of get carried away there. but all we need is, I don't even talk about project. All we need is a point, a point at the Azteca and a win in Orlando. And then we,

I guess we need, yeah, just those two things and we're good. No, we need, well, yeah, or we need Canada to just do us a favor.

Keep these principles up, Canada. Yeah. So what's the last one? So they're, oh yeah. They're working through that attacking transition. Again,

that guy just being available. And they don't just mean like, it's this guy every time. That's a team-wide mentality too, right? Like, you have to be available. Like, The Royal You, is that a thing?

Journalist Bell? Sure. Yeah. Like, you need to be available. Every single person on the field needs to think of themselves as the possible person who needs to be the outlet in this situation to instantly move us into the attack. And if you have everyone acting like that, no one's taken by surprise. Like, that's how you get that 80% success rate. That's right.

And the key word there is available. So hunt, tight, available. And then the last one is adaptable. they're in their organized attack they're adaptable which obviously is a concept they're trying to apply to their whole program but so in attacking organization they have platforms they talk about platforms is this a common phrase in coaching world yeah this is going to be common and uh we'll get we should get some other like uh u.s based real coaches in here neither of us really qualify i don't think as real coach i think you qualify as a real coach yes but i mean not to this level like the level

of like a detail in sort of game preparation and season preparation and you know five year plan preparation here uh this stuff is just a different level you know so uh i would love to get some of those guys on here to because they probably could talk in depth about some u.s they've probably maybe they've seen some of the u.s. uh coaching resource presentation so uh i would again i would just love to have the u.s sort of rebuttal available to us yeah i mean this is just uh this episode is you're either going to really love it or you're going to hate it, I think is just going to be none. This is Nerd City in here.

So with the platforms, they have several different ways of setting up, like they have a platform deep and then generally two triangles in the half spaces up further up field, you know. So just real quick, because a lot of people aren't going to maybe know what the platform kind of meant, the terminology is they're almost like just talking about your formation. Like here's our formation in possession with the ball building out of the back. Okay, yeah. So what different platforms do we have to do that? For the U.S., we're used to seeing like a 2.35 or a 325 for most of Burr-Alters tenure.

So this is them, Canada, talking about what their variations of build-up shape are. Yes. And then, so, you know, the goal of all of these platforms is to create, wait for it, AVPs. What's an AVP, Greg? AVP is an advanced platform. So you have your platform that you're trying to use. And again, you could just call this Greg Burholter's disorganizing the opponent with the ball. They're trying to disorganize the opponent with the ball until they can get higher up the field to create an AVP or an advanced platform, which they count, their metric for counting these and measuring these is to essentially have a player with the ball at their feet, facing these.

the opponent's backline or in behind the opponent's backline with the ball at their feet. So, you know, you can think of that as like having successfully disorganized the opponent to the point that you've cut out their midfield and are now attacking their backline. Yep. Yeah, you've talked about this a lot for a long time on the podcast, like running at a naked centerback or a naked back line or something. Yeah, you know you've done something right. All of your, you know, little passing triangles, whatever, have worked when you suddenly

have found a guy free to run at a naked centerback from like, you know, anywhere across midfield. Like, you've done your job. This is now an excellent attacking moment. It's a very dangerous, high leverage moment that you've created. So I really like am almost, it's like humbling almost to be like to have something that I've tried to create in concepts with like the teams I've coached to describe to them what we're trying to achieve and then have this very clear, measurable way of framing it that

we could have been like, it's going to change how like I tally up things when I watch the U.S. play. Yeah. You know, we can tie it back to the Pulisic discussion from after Canada, where we talked about that moment where we found him looking at Alistair Johnson in the box. And it's like, yes, this is what we're describing.

This is what Canada are after two. Everyone's after these moments. But now it's going to be like, instead of just clocking XG, we're going to be clocking like the moment that leads, that could possibly lead to the XG moment. So we're taking it one layer. back from the actual shot creation itself and saying here is a position that we have or a situation

we've created that will very often lead to an XG moment. And something I'm kind of thinking about is if you create a lot of those moments, these AVPs that Canada calls them, like that's, that for me tells you that your tactics have been successful. Like that has been a successful tactic to get that moment created in a soccer game. To turn those into expected goals, that becomes like the player issue now, right? Now it's up to the player to do something with that and turn it into expected goals. So if you're creating a ton of AVPs but having a low XG, that's suddenly like more on the player or more on if it's not on the player.

It's on the coach picking the player. Like you're picking the wrong guy then. You know, if you have Leo Messi available and you pick someone who's not Leo Messi, you're going to have less XG from the same advanced platform moments. So that I think it's just a really useful way to help like guide how you're even watching. a game evaluating a performance and an easier way to tally it up than just like at the end of the day summing up your expected goals. Yeah. And there's a there's a point in the presentation where Andrew

Olivieri, the U20 coach for Canada, the men's U20 coach, he does this little exercise where he shows he shows three clips and asks you to count up the AVPs in that in those three clips. And I was like, ooh, this is fun. And I Interactive. And I counted 11 and then he went back through and labeled all the ones that he counted as AVPs and it was 10. He said there's a little too generous.

There's some gray area and some of them, you know. If you get like a good touch. And so it's a, you know, it's not just did he get a touch to the ball in front of the backline? It's like did he bring, was he was the player able to bring the ball down and then run at the backline? You know, so that's where it. Right. You got to have it in control, right? You got to be in control of the ball facing the back line or in behind it.

And even there, you can quibble, right? Like, we probably will quibble because we're going to talk about, I think, the fact that in that U.S. game in Hamilton or that U.S. versus Canada game in Hamilton, the U.S. probably got more AVPs than Canada would be comfortable. I think it's pretty clear that we did. And again, I have not been able to count them. But, you know, the Pulisic one is kind of like the chief example. but there were plenty, you know, Aronson running at the back line a few times,

Zard is running at the back line. Yeah, Pulisic had a few where he was running at the back line. So. And so I'll just say for me that's another example of like, this is why if you're Canada, it's a great idea to pick the game on artificial turf in the terrible weather because, like, you do know that you're going to give up more of these chances to the U.S. and you might to another team,

and you're trying to, like, help get some help from the elements to neutralize them. So just another, like, savvy play from the Canadian side. Yeah. And they, I think in general, they just didn't want, I don't think they wanted us to be in that final fourth of the field as much as we were, you know. Now, I know people will say, well, they still had, their defending was still very good in those situations. and I can't disagree with that. But that's not what they want

when they're measuring their performance in a game. They don't want the other team. We weren't parked in their final fourth. I say final fourth because that's what Herdman says. We weren't parked there, but we were there a lot. And from Canada's perspective, that's not ideal. Not to say that this absolves Berhalter of all guilt in the game or whatever.

Well, it's, there's even, even anytime you're like just putting a like a full definition on something like AVPs are defined this way, you're going to have it be the case where some AVPs are better than others, right? Right. Like there are plenty of times where you could have the ball looking at somebody's fullback where you're not putting them in any distress at all. They're very comfortable with, you know, the help they have from the midfielders dropping in and you're still very much outside their defensive shell in a not threatening situation. but that might technically satisfy the definition of AVP. So it's still going to be important for us, especially since we're doing one game at a time, reviewing to like,

we'll be counting these up and being able to describe each one qualitatively because that's what everyone is listening for, is that depth of dissection. Well, so let's talk about their attacking organization a little bit because they build out. Let's talk about it a lot. These are the platforms. They build out with three different models, from what I could tell.

And those are the full backs low, full back low, which is sort of their basic look with a flat line of four across the back, looking for movement from the triangles up in the half spaces and just trying to play the ball into them. Then there's the, so that obviously, as the name would suggest, the full back stay low. So I'm just going to jump in here too, just to try to add a little bit of,

color to it. It can look really similar. We've looked similar to this in games. The one I think of is like the El Salvador friendly from December 2020, where Julian Arajo, I think, was one, and it might have been Vines as the other guy. But our left back, our fullback stayed tight and sort of, it sort of looks like a two, three, five, where the three is really stretched out because the fullbacks are almost on the sidelines, you know, or just pinched in just to, a little bit. Then you have like the lone six and that game it would have been Jackson Ewell. So in that sense I think of it as like a two, three, five. So their fullbacks lower,

the two three five and the way they get there, their fullback sort of step up just above their center backs, but not too high. I mean, and then the six is sort of on that line. And it's a very spread out three. And again, you're just looking for ways to defeat that first line of pressure, but putting your fullbacks within what Herbin keeps talking about within range of creating an AVP. So it's not going to take a John Brooks level ball up top. You know, it'll just take a nice little like 30-yard pass that you could hit to create an AVP. And then that be like a, they have like a diamond in the back then where they're sort of, they're staying connected in possession.

It's more than a diamond. It's like a pentagon, I guess. Well, it's just going to be the center middle just go everywhere, right? The center middle will go wherever they need to go to get the ball from the centerbacks or to connect with the full backs. And then the center backs are always like sort of that release valve. And then finally, if you need to, you can go back to the goalkeeper. The second model they talked about was the midfield low, which is when one of the center

mids drops deep and wide to pick up the ball. And then the full backs push up and wider and they essentially become wing backs in possession. And that should be really familiar to U.S. fans because that's basically what Destin, Anthony Robinson have been doing, you know, lately. Like, they get, they get up the field. And then within both of these, you still have that movement of the front five. He highlights the, is it the roll, are there the rollouts? Yeah, rollouts when the inside player goes out, the outside player goes in.

And, you know, it's easy to see it in their graphic presentations because they have, like, you know, lines and swirling discs underneath the players moving on the field. And you're like, wow, that's really cool. I'm sure it happens for the U.S. too. I assume it does. They've got the All-22 video. Like, that's the huge thing. When we're watching on TV and the cameras zoomed in and you just see the centerback with the ball and one line up of midfielders and you can't see what the front five are doing. It's enraging.

But no, the U.S., again, this is actually like those rollouts and stuff, that's positional play, right? Like, that's a staple of Burrhalters since he took over. I think Final Third did a video. of like the January camp matches from 2019 of how like Areola and Georgie or whoever were like making these interchanging runs. If one guy goes, the other guy just reads it and fills in that vacant space. And it's nothing earth shattering. None of this is earth shattering.

So I also, I do want to point out what 30 minutes into this. We're not saying that Canada are somehow like geniuses executing things at that very highest level. And man, we have a lot to. catch up to. It's really just like to give a little look inside of, under the hood of what their thought process is and sort of what you see on the field from it. I don't know. I mean, from my vantage point, they look like geniuses. But I know, I get it. Somebody who's really interested in coaching soccer, a lot of this will not be revolutionary. But you should, if you are coaching soccer, you should eat this up because it's, again, it's a really good way to help

communicate to your players like just the concepts and just to help teach things even if you already sort of understand them and grasp them you know another thing besides the rollouts that that caught my attention was the channel run which comes from the one of the midfielders and basically the two players on the like near the say the right channel they they get far enough apart to create it opening for someone to make the channel run and you know that's that's that's that's definitely an avenue of attack that Canada wants to exploit consistently. And then the third platform that I perceived in the presentation was just a more of a three at the back with the full backs up very high.

And I'm not, I guess I couldn't tell you exactly how this differs from the midfield low. Oh, this is the big one for me. So this is the three at the back. And we've seen three at the back from Burrhalter a lot, almost all of 2019 with to stay at home left back. John, John, Dan Lovett.

Daniel Lovett, Tim Riem filling that role. There's a, there's a different. There's isn't the 325 that we saw forever. There's is a 3-1-4-2. And I feel like this is, this is like the opening

where I feel like Burrhalter could definitely use a little bit more experimentation here because the one place where I think he's been almost entirely rigid is that all of his possession shapes have a five-man front. Like it's almost, it is almost impossible to find us playing without one.

I think maybe the Canada Gold Cup game with Dike and Zardas running two up top, like almost all other times, we run with like a lone striker, the two players in the half space, the dual tens, you can think of them, and then like two wide attacking players. So five people up there, each in those sort of vertical channels of the hallmark of positional play. Canada have a platform where they go like 3-1, 4-2, and the two forwards are sort of, you know, offset from each other. So they each sort of have their own side of the field.

And the end result is just like triangles on each side. So triangle with the forward, the 10 underneath them, and the winger on one side. And on the other side is symmetrical triangle. And like it's always like, oh man, maybe we should, maybe we should try one other platform, one other like attacking shape. Greg, like maybe just try it.

If things aren't going super smoothly in one, Do we have another one that we can roll out there and see if the players can figure it out from that base shape? But we just haven't, right, in three years? Yeah, I guess I would not have been able to express that so clearly. That's the, that's like a, and I don't even really think that would count as adaptability. Like, it's, it's just one other, you know, sort of simple soccer formation to just trot out and see what happens. Yeah. And maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I've just missed times where we have explicitly done that. Like I'm sure in times, in moments in the game, like Pepe's shifted over and Wayas up there and it looks like we have two strikers. But I don't think it's ever looked like our base shape is that 3-1-4-2 that I can think of. Well, one question that occurred to me as I was watching it is like, because they're talking about we can do these different platforms and different games, as we can do different platforms within the same game. I mean, they do.

I'm like, well, how? call and plays from the sideline. And it's, that was answered in this other video, the, like this other presentation, a partial presentation we got to watch, which is, it's all basically on the central midfielders. It's on Samuel Piet and I think Scott Arfield doesn't really play for Canada anymore, right? But anyway, it was on, at that point, it was Samuel Piet, Scott Arfield and Jonathan Osorio, who were, as, as Herman put it, the tactical architects. and what they do is they decide,

hey, we need to move into this different shape and then they make a move that sends a cue to everybody else and they have a benchmark where within four seconds everybody has to be snapped into place in the new format based on the cues from the central midfielders. And probably the U.S. has something similar going on,

but I haven't perceived it. That one I don't necessarily go for. I don't know that we do. And it looks like this is where you get into like, you know, Pulisic is definitely working off his own page sometimes. For sure. 100%. Yes.

So it's not just like, oh, West did this. So everyone else snaps in. It's like, oh, well, a lot of guys are doing some of this stuff. But here's Christian just deciding that he wants the ball right here at his feet and then he's going to do some guys. Yeah. And Herman talked a lot about building muscle memory for this coordinated movement, like those exchanges. and the rollouts and the channel runs, they'll just have everybody in,

they showed video of this in the training, I mean, the presentation, they'll have people playing with the ball with their hands, so holding it with their in, and passing it off and then moving in specifically the way they're supposed to move so that they just, you know,

once they get out there, it just happens. All right, because the movement is important. And so training the movement can, you can do that, I guess, independently of having the ball at your feet and executing the past itself.

Because you do, you just need the choreography, right? Sometimes you just need the dance. Yeah. Well, before we sort of get into the Burrhalter Warshot interview, which we'll look back to this, let me do a quick bit of housekeeping. I sent a message to a bunch of the people

who are $2 patrons of scuffed, and that was earlier this week. And I got to say, the response to that has been really encouraging a lot of people stepping right up And in so doing, making it much smoother the path ahead of us at the SCuff podcast. We're better able to pay the people who help us make the podcast and better able to project our existence into the future. So thank you to all our patrons, but especially this week, those who receive that message and responded to it, even those of you who wrote back and said, no, no, I'm all good.

I'm all good at two bucks a month. I appreciate the respect you showed by responding at all. So thanks, everyone, seriously. Let's get into Burrhalter and Warshot, unless you have more on the, on, on Herdman. No, I think, I think we're good on Hurtman. I'm excited again now to watch some of these games for us and for them with some of these metrics in mind. Yes. And I think, okay, let's just go through the Warshot interview and then we'll kind of try to wrap it up.

I thought, first of all, Berhalter, as usual, sounded sanguine. didn't seem to have a care in the world. And he said the group of players he's deployed is growing and calm and focused. They revisited the fullbacks as superheroes metaphor, which I'm off for that, but don't find it particularly interesting at this point. I mean, especially with our fullbacks in particular, right? There's no question that Anthony Robinson and Sergenio Dest are going to be up there. Yeah.

And I mean, fullbacks are attacking players in soccer these days. a lot of the time. He was, Burrhalter was disappointed in how we conceded the early goal versus Canada. And I think the, you know,

maybe the big nugget from that is he said West was not in position to protect the pocket of space inside our own half on Turner's goal kick. And Turner should have waited to kick it. Right, right. So not that West was in the wrong spot.

He just, at the time of the kick was not in this position to do so the kick shouldn't have been taken. So in other words, it's on Turner to not take the kick until that space is covered, to not hit it long until that area is covered back up, which I thought was nice because a lot of the attention had been on the fact that he took it with the centerbacks deep.

But that is a normal thing that teams do now with the change in the goal kicker rules, that they bring the centerbacks up or all the way back to the keeper, which brings Canada all the way up, which opens up more room to play long if you want to. So it's not a matter of like back in the two years ago before this rule change where you know, if you were going to go short, your guys still had to wait out to outside of the box. So if the opponent came to defend that, you would just be like, okay, well, we're not just going to have you sit 15 yards away. Like now everyone gets up. But with the rule change, tons of teams hit the ball along with their centerback still standing at the six yard line.

So that's not the issue. But Wes not being there to cover the second ball from Zardez. is the issue. So Turner, you know, as you so aptly described in our recap, Turner deserves some blame for his footwork on the goal and for playing the goal kick in the first place. And it was a nice play from Canada pretty much all the way around. And also Miles Robinson lost his footing. So just a horrible confluence of events.

I mean, he lost his footing, but he got bodied to lose his foot. Yeah. Got bodied a few times in that game. maybe was a little rusty. Should we beat that dead horse? No, if Greg didn't talk about it, we can't talk about it. We're just talking about guys talking about soccer. So, yeah, he was disappointed. That's the big disappointment from the game that we conceded that goal.

And then that changed the game, not in our favor, obviously. And then he was disappointed that we didn't generate more pressure on Canada's goal in the last 10 minutes. Which I considered a real insult to Paul Ariola, quite frankly, who was, was doing a lot of that scrappy work. Putting a lot of pressure on that goal. That was, like, I know there are people who don't love Paul Areola, and I don't love Paul Ariola to the tune of like he should be ahead of Wea. That's a huge deal when he's starting head of Wea.

But that performance reminded me of the 2018 cycle when he would come in off the bench and just add this little burst of energy. It isn't always going to lead to danger with Paul Ariola, but it did lead to danger in that Canada game. So if we can get more of that kind of performance from him, that's a good guy to have in the pocket as your fifth or sixth best winger choice. For sure. And he's going to be, he'll be around.

He'll be around. He thought the teams, Berthalter thought the team's intensity and defensive transition was very good versus Canada. I don't. Defensive, what you're saying? Defensive transition, yeah. I don't know. I mean, Canada had Canada, Canada generated some chance. In transition, definitely.

They did not do a lot of, you know, building platforms and then getting AVPs against our set defense. They got almost none of that if you really look back. Yeah, definitely. They got a couple in the transition moments, which, to our credit, and if this is what Burrell-Od or talking about, we buttoned them up pretty well. Even as they looked, they were in dangerous situations, but then we eliminated the danger on a few of those. from their platforms, yeah, building out of the back in possession, almost nothing. And so that's where I wonder if there are modifications to your targets, if you're John Herdman in Canada, in a game like that.

Like, okay, yes, we love to do this. We love to have this attacking, you know, platform. But we've put this game in a super narrow field on turf in the freezing cold. We know it's not going to shake out like that. This just isn't going to be the kind of game where you platform your way up the field into AVPs. Like we are going to just try to hit them when we can on the break. And then once they got that goal, then it's, of course, we're not going to commit tons of numbers forward.

Like there's just, there was already no need to do that. Now there's zero chance we're taking those risks. Yeah. And when I talk about this game and say, you know, some things happen that Canada didn't want to happen the way, you know, the way they did, I'm much more thinking of our presence in their final fourth with the ball than I am them not. building platforms, you know, because I think it's got to be true that their, that their benchmarks change, especially when they get a goal in the sixth minute. If they're adaptable, then clearly the equation changes at that point. Berhalter said, essentially, he understands

that the public is upset after a loss, but being upset is not for him. He had the next game to think about. And if you, I think if you read between the lines, it's, I think you even might have mentioned this in the recap that he was just messaging to the team when he said that we were dominant against Canada. That's just, he was just trying to get everybody up for the next game. I mean, he said, here's the quotes. He said, the most important thing is, quote, to get our guys ready to play the next game and quote, and quote, also, how do we also look at what we did in a way that we could get some positives from it? And that's what we did. He's just trying to make everybody feel better. Well, he's trying to make the players feel better. Yes. Right. And he's, so when

And he's willing to do that, knowing that he's probably going to eat some from the fans for saying that. Like, he's not an idiot. Like, he's got to know that after a loss when he comes out and says, we dominated to a group of fans who are already unhappy. That's not going to go over well, right? They're not going to take a well. But like he's saying, it's not his job to care about that, as weird as that is to say. It's actually his job to go ahead and eat that for the team to try to, like, get the players ready to be like, no, believe in what we're doing. Like, we got this look, we got this look, we got this chance, we had this, we got some looks.

We had the ball, the whole game. And even if the players might be a little bit like, all right, but come on, man, we didn't do much. Like, you just have to keep hammering on those positives. So I get that side of it. I should just say, as an aside, you are an expert self-censor. You bleep out your swear words very, very skillfully. Well, we don't have the, we still don't have the budget yet. We appreciate all the hell, but we still don't have the budget yet for.

For somebody to sit with the buzzer. And then, you know, he mentioned Canada's very man-oriented, very low, very organized. This is hard to break down, but there were opportunities missed. He mentioned, like I said, earlier, hesitancy in transition or not breaking the game open when we did get the right 1-V-1 matchups, those AVPs. He also said we could have emptied the middle more and then filled it again and gotten more horizontal movement to the inside from the full backs to solve that low block. And I will say my mind can grasp the need for more horizontal movement from the full backs.

That makes a lot of sense to me. I don't know that I understand the emptying the middle and then filling it again part. I think he's basically just describing the rollouts. Like I don't think there's too much more to it than that. Like whoever the guy is in the middle rolls out of the middle vacates it and then it's filled by the wide player. and it's just to add a little bit, or even just have the, but mostly that, I think, just to add a decision for Canada's block. Like, oh, do I come with this player or do I, do I, like, pass them off or when do I do it?

And you're just looking to catch them in one, like, a moment of miscommunication or missed assignment. And then you're going to try to exploit that. But if you never have those moments of that sort of interchange, then it's just really easy for Canada to just sit with their assignment and not have to make any decisions. fewer chances for them to make mistakes. And then he, you know,

he mentioned that Weston's header being saved by Borjan was just a little unlucky one foot to either side and it's one one going into the half in a totally different game. I think I said that after the,

after the game as well. He praised McKinney's speed of processing, which he is, he said it's clear he's training at a really high level at Juventus with really high level players. And you can just tell

his mind is moving faster. And that was less about the Canada game specifically, just more about McKinney as a player. So I don't know, I think that's probably the case, right? It sounds right to me. Yeah. That's the case. I do think, though,

McKinney has always had a very active soccer intelligence. And we talked about one of his strengths from 2018, way back when, was that ability to, like, in a scrap, see that there was actually an opening to release somebody ahead of the defense or ahead of the field. But I do think like he's just showing out more and more. Yeah.

That's fun. That's a fun evolution. Like one of my core memories of West McKenney, whenever we talk about how he plays soccer, I always think of him playing away at Freiburg in the fall of, I believe, 2018. And he played two through balls in behind, just perfectly weighted, you know, line splitting through balls. in that game.

And I always think of those two passes. I can see him right now in my mind when people say, like, used to say he wasn't, you know, he couldn't pass the ball or he wasn't technical or something. He's always been good at that. I'm going to pull them.

I'm going to pull those clips for the Discord. And what I'm going to ask you right now to see if you remember is, did they come from like a slow methodical buildup from Shalka or was it just like, there was just some kind of weird chaos going on and then out of it, McKinney out of nowhere just like finds a guy threw in on goal.

These were both in the buildup, actually. All right. Nerds. Now I'm going to have to find the other ones I'm talking about. Okay. Okay. And then the last thing I'll mention from Burrhalter's interview is he said the conversation not to start Pulisic was difficult, but the most important thing is for the team to win the game.

And, you know, it didn't sound at all like it was a rotation decision. It was an effectiveness decision. He even said, here's a quote, the team doesn't revolve around one person. It's about the collective. I was like, that's music to my ears, Greg. It's tough, man. That's going to be a tough situation because Pulsick very obviously is an elite attacking player. So judging whether or not he's going to give that to you on a day or whether we are framed right for him to do that, I mean, that's going to be a question every match, right?

Well, let's talk about that a little bit more because it harkens back to the whole team spirit thing that Hurdman talked about if your players don't try. us to plan and believe in the plan. How do you get tactical excellence? I think we can agree it doesn't always look like Pulisic is bought into the plan out there. Is that fair to say? I don't want to go into like he's bought into it or not. I would say that he's not executing it.

There you go. And if we're going to bring in sort of all this, all of the like personal baggage, I don't know if you, I don't know of a better way to say in it. Pulisick said in an interview, right, that he does feel like it's his job to carry the team. Yeah, you know, Jay and I talked about this in the last episode, just that I published at two in the morning this morning. So probably very few people have listened to it. But, yeah, that's, I don't, I reject the premise, you know.

Like, don't do that. Don't feel like you need to do that. Like, stop. That's my reaction to that. Oh, I'm totally agree. He doesn't need to carry the team. I wish he would stop thinking of that. that way.

But if he does feel like that, like I think when you watch the game out, I think it's a total like, oh yeah, you can definitely see that that's affecting the way he's playing. That's changing the way he's, his decisions and actions on the field. Yeah, I wish you would stop. Right. He definitely doesn't need to do that. Like, he will be more effective. He will help the team more by filling his role than by trying to be the player every time

he gets the ball. Yeah, Jay's thought was maybe he just deep down secretly wants that and doesn't want to give up on it, you know? I mean, he basically did carry the team in 2017. And that must have been kind of fun, even though we didn't qualify. So he did, I mean, if we're going to go back all the way to that cycle, he did carry the team statistically. He got a lot of help, like he got set free by a lot of players. Josie Altrow was setting him free a lot. You know what I mean?

Like there were these moments where it was him being free to go, but not not him dribbling five guys to get his goal. You know what I mean? Like there were actually these little attacking combinations that were on that he was a massive part of, if not the key player. But it wasn't him doing it all himself, ironically. But when that didn't work, so now he's like taking on all of the role all of the time. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, for assessing for...

It's going to be, sorry, it's going to be a good excuse to cut those, cut all of his goals from the 2018 cycle and post them. Because there were some really exciting goals. Oh, yeah. Scored or assisted by Christian Pulizek. Yep. I guess what, in the context of this episode of the podcast, I feel like what's interesting is, you know, if Pulisic's not executing the plan, then like what influence does that have on everyone else? not just in a discreet moment on the field, but in terms of like how committed they are

to executing the plan and, you know, how that seems like something that needs to be resolved. If you accept what Herdman is saying, like you need everybody to trust everybody and like really know their job and then execute it in order to execute it. And if we're not, if our most famous player

is not executing the plan, that's a problem, dude. That is a problem. Well, the El Salvador game will be the, will be like a good data point for it because, again, on one side of the field, you saw the plan in all of its glory. With Timwaya and Dest and whether it was McKinney, whoever was out there, like they were doing cool stuff. Like, that was fun. That's all exciting. And then the other side of the field was this total slog.

And that's where our best player in history is standing. So, you know, like, that's got to be where, that's what you can point to to him and be like, look. This is what it could be. If you just jump in here with all of these other good players, you can enjoy this too. Yeah, this two can be yours. Easy, easy, right? Nothing to it.

Like, there we go. Win it Azteca coming up. That's right. And I guess, you know, just to sort of circle back, if we want to compare the two coaches, Herman and Burrhalter, Herman, and we have the results. Herdman has bested Burrhalter when it most matters

in these two World Cup qualifiers. I mean, you got to draw in Nashville. I think that's a good result for Canada. The extent to which we can say, Herdman is a superior coach, what do you think? I mean, it's still probably too early. Like, I would, if a swap were offered,

if you said, hey, we will start the cycle over again. With the information you have now, you could start the cycles over again. I would take Herdman over Burrhalter. Yeah. but I also like I mean we're still just talking about 12 games in world or what is it 11 games we played in world cup qualifying

and they're like close it's not like a herdman has run away result wise it's he's edged he's edged us in in the home game like he's edged the head to head match up by by a result so I don't know where are you on it

yeah it's I agree I would take go back in time, start in like 2019, who would I want to coach the national team, Herdman or Burrhalter? I'll take Herdman. But, you know, variance could have gone a different way. In an alternate universe,

Hurdman could be the coach, and he might not get by him from Pulisic. I'm not saying Pulisic is like the big, the only problem, or even that the problems are that big. They may be big at the end of March, but we'll, you know, hopefully not. But I know, you know, things can go a lot of different ways. It's a complicated game.

I'm not sure. We'd have to do a whole other episode where we actually like revisit match by match and decisions and like bounces and outcomes to really get through this. Which I'm happy to do, by the way. I do think that like I said earlier, Herman does seem like an excellent teacher. And, you know, I know Malcolm Gladwell. I haven't read any of his books for a long time. I haven't read any of his books, okay? So get off my back about it.

But I know he exists. I know people talk about his books. Yeah. And there's a, he did have an article in The New Yorker about, like several years ago, about quarterbacks and how hard it is for NFL franchises to pick the right quarterback in the draft. It's basically a total mystery, you know? Like remember Ryan Leif at Washington State?

Yeah. I think the stat nerds in the NFL basically say that no one drafts well. Like there's no skill to drafting. Maybe I'm wrong, but I swear that's what the, I swear that's the big stat nerd thing. Well, quarterback is this like, in American football is this like, you know, it's a very complicated position where, you know, like tiny little inches make a huge difference. And I don't know. Anyway, it's not a football. It's not American football podcast, but it's tough to predict who is going to be a good NFL quarterback from college.

performance basically impossible and gladwell made the point that it's basically the same thing with teachers you can't it's like being a good classroom teacher at the school age level is um or i guess at any level is just a very difficult to predict or um or replicate ability and um I think you know we're we're staring at the face of a deep mystery here like is is Herdman a better teacher than Burrhalter? He seems like it. Teaching is really important at this in this job. And, but, but we don't know.

I mean, I don't, I don't feel like I know for sure. That's perfect. I really enjoyed that, that whole, that whole parallel, Bells. Thanks. Anything else? Anything else we can, I mean, I guess the belief, the 100% belief that we see from Canada is, is not, as we've discussed, not in evidence necessarily with Christian Pulisic. It's certainly not in, you know, in evidence with now absent for two windows, John Brooks, three windows.

Dwayne Holmes, if we're going to get very scuffian about it. All right. Anything else, Greg? No, but let's see. Can you just talk a little while? Can you just talk a little while to take me off the hook? Let's see, let's see one or two of those guys back in camp. In March.

Okay. Well, I mean, we're going to see Pulsick, but do you think, do you think Brooks makes his comeback? My gut says no. Same. Same here. And to be honest, I'm not holding out any hope for Dwayne either. Yeah, that's not happening either. I am working on getting Dway an interview with Dwayne.

Oh, that'd be amazing. Eleanor Rigby. That's not really her name, but let's just go with it. Eleanor Rigby at the club at Huddersfield is occasionally responding. to my emails. Hey, thanks for bearing with us through this. I enjoyed it. Hopefully you did too.

Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.