Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #258: World Cup Qualifying Recap Part 1: September & October

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Greg and Belz go back through the first two windows as a refresher ahead of the final window. What worked, what didn't work, who played, who didn't play, etc etc. Part 2, on the November and January/February windows, will come out soon.Details on the March 27 festivities: https://scuffedweekly.substack.com/p/join-us-in-orlando?s=wsupport 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. We thought it'd be worthwhile to do a little refresher on World Cup qualifying so far, both for people newly paying attention and for those who have been paying attention and may have forgotten a bit of what's transpired. Over the next two weeks, the episodes will come faster and thicker.

But before that all starts, let's recap how we got where we are and try to come up with some insight. I'll leave that mostly to you, Greg. How you doing? Good, Bells, it's been a journey, hasn't it, going into this final window? It sure has. And, you know, it's, I went back and watched a lot of the, basically watched all the shots for both teams. That's the way to do it. For every window except the most recent one, the most recent one is fresh enough in my mind.

I didn't need that refresher. And, you know, I don't know if I have anything super new to say, but I think it was useful for me to go back and look at it. And I think it'll be useful for most people to. to hear us go back through it. You know, useful. I use that in a very loose sense. Well, let's also start out by saying where we are now, what the picture looks like now, before we get into the time machine.

Because I think that's important too. And then I totally agree, like having the sort of the benefit of that time going by and not being as much of like a prisoner of the immediate reaction or even like the one window reaction is useful because it is kind of like ephemeral, right? Like that the emotions you had at that point, even if you can kind of put yourself back in that place, you're like, oh yeah, this is, this feels different watching it from afar. Yeah, and I'm not, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm coming at this with a posture of learning, like talking, talking about it out loud is going to help me sort of think it through more

than just, you know, going through it, I guess. We should talk about where we are, right? We are joint second. Yeah, we're tied for second in the Concaf region. The eight team region, the Ocho this cycle. The top three teams qualify automatically. Canada in first with 25 points. The U.S. and Mexico both on 21 points.

Crucially, the U.S. traveling to Mexico for their next match. Panama in fourth. So on the heels of the auto qualification spot with 17 points. and then Costa Rica still very much alive in fifth with 16 points. And it's really been, you know, our chief nemesis, basically since the first window has been Panama. Like we don't need to beat Mexico in the standings. We do need to beat Panama if we want to be top three. And if we happen to beat Mexico, that's fine too.

And Costa Rica, like, that's still the scenario that I'm like somehow most worried about. is Costa Rica turning it on in the last window, using their wily veteran guile to sneak like an outrageous nine-point window and get ahead of us even if we win our home match against Panama. It'd be a legend for them to do that against Canada at home, against us at home. Who do they have in the middle? I want to say it's like Honduras. It's a very winnable game for them in the middle,

a very winnable away game as away games go. Yeah. as we know, no away game is El Salvador, sorry, they're playing at El Salvador on their on their middle match. So, you know, they could end up with three points from beating us

in the last, in the last game, you know, I mean, anything is possible, really. But yeah, I guess that nine point window is within striking distance. I think of, when you say Wiley, Costa Rica, I think of Brian Ruiz's goal in that against Panama and just that sort of

the way they scratched out that result. Well, and they tied Mexico in Mexico City. I know we're already talking just more about the current picture of things. But to go way back in the way back machine, I think of them in the last couple of cycles, how they got out of what they turned into a group of death in the World Cup with Uruguay, England, and Italy. Uruguay and Costa Rica get out of the group and send England and Italy packing.

Never underestimate the Ticos. Exactly. So we have Mexico on the road, Panama, at home in Orlando and then Costa Rica on the road. And really, we just need to beat Panama. I mean, almost certainly just beating Panama will qualify in the top three. It's not, I mean, with all due respect to your nine point window fears about Costa Rica, I think that is pretty unlikely.

So we just got to beat Panama. But again, I think it's worthwhile to kind of look back and see how we got where we are. and I'll start with what it felt like when we were coming into qualifying, which started in September, and we had a full head of steam. We had beaten Mexico in the Nations League final in June, and then we'd beat in Mexico in the Gold Cup final on the 1st of August with essentially a B team.

We felt we had the talent to get nine points in September at El Salvador, at home against Canada, and at Honduras. We had our full complement of players, although Tim Wea, except for Tim Wea, who was hurt, and it wasn't even clear he was, you know, considered first choice by Burrhalter. In fact, it was clear he was not considered full choice by first choice by Burrhalter. So let's talk about El Salvador away. That was the opener of the whole qualifying campaign.

Of course, it ended in a zero zero draw, as you all know. And with all due respect to El Salvador, who has performed admirably, I think, given their size and where they're coming from, I think we all feel that we left two points on the table. It was an intense environment, just a raucous atmosphere, a packed house at the Kuskutlan, a hair-raising rendition of the Salvadoran National Anthem interspersed with and followed by the audible reports of fireworks. Gio Raina flinched at one point while the U.S. National Anthem was being played. Yeah. Go ahead.

This opening window was just full of like intrigue, right? going into El Salvador, there were so many questions about how we would approach these new fangled, fancy triple game windows that this cycle was throwing at us because of the pandemic. You know, it's an it's an Ocho instead of a hex. So you have all these sort of floating questions. But personnel-wise, I think we all felt very good about the players we had available to us. They had combined like a 40-man combined group had taken two trophies in the summer. And it was just like, okay, how do we just get them to fit? together because the talent's all there, we've got this.

And how do we get them to fit together is still kind of the question in a lot of ways. But the, some of you will remember this, but I think a lot of you won't that the starting lineup we played against, against El Salvador on the road, included a front three that we'll probably, we'll probably never see again. It was, it was Conrad de la Fuente, Josh Sargent, and Giovanni Raina across the, across the front three. And I mean, we may see that again at some point, but we definitely have not seen it since for various reasons.

Sargent and Delafonte sort of falling out of favor and then Raina getting hurt in that first window. The rest, go ahead. Go ahead, Greg. So this was just a case of like right away there were sort of pre-questions of Burr Alters organization here because a lot of us don't really think Brendan Aronson gives us what we need in our particular setup in central midfield. And I think when the roster had been announced, there was a bit of a shortage of center

midfielers named. And so I think there was a suspicion or a hope even from the fan base that Gio Raina was going to maybe play a little bit of the central midfield role. And so when the lineup came out with the personnel it did, it still seemed like that was possible that it was going to be Raina Adams and McKinney in midfield. And then when they took the field, it was clear that Aronson was the center midfielder. Raina higher up in the front three. So that was already like, ah, nerds, we didn't do that.

And then I don't want to say predictably because it didn't have to go this way. But we were a little bit sloppy and we didn't quite control midfield in that game as well as I think we could have. Yeah. It was a, it's a big contrast to how dominant we were against El Salvador, you know, just a couple months ago. We were not dominant in this game. We had some big chances. Yeah. I should at least say El Salvador was never close to controlling the game.

That was never the case. Like it was always us who were about to control the game. And then it was just it was just sloppy. I feel like that was the the descriptor for that one. It was loose. It was sloppy, usually in midfield. But also there was a bit of sloppiness from the Sergeant de la Fuente connection up higher towards the box. And that's how a game that could have gone from like full domination went to

okay domination, especially if you're just talking about like the chances created. Like we had four or five pretty good chances. El Salvador one or two very slim, very optimistic hopeful chances. And that's about the story of the game I felt like. Yeah. Most of our chances came with our heads too. And I think the chance of the game, maybe the, you know, the biggest chance, the biggest miss chance of the cycle, really, in my opinion, is it came in the,

the ninth minute when Gio Raina put a set piece on Miles Robinson's head, pretty much right at the six-yard box line. And he sent it over the bar from point-blank range. Now, I'm not going to try to, I'm not going to try to be too hard on Robinson. It's not that easy of a header, but it is one he should have put on frame. And, you know, you don't think, you don't like the word should there. I really hate the word, he's got to put that on frame or he's got to finish that. Those are tough. like it's easy to not give credit or not sort of take into account how like inches matter on trajectories of those things. And so, you know, if Miles might not literally might not be able to get on top of that ball as it's coming in where he intercepts it, like he might, the only thing he might be able to do. And we saw similar from Pfoc late in the game.

It's hard not to get underneath it, just a tiny bit while you're going up to meet it. And so it might just be that the delivery needed to be like literally four inches. lower. And that's not because it's a bad delivery. It's just that's what needed to have happened for him to put it on frame. It's not a gimmie where he's running down over the top of it. Yeah. And then somehow lifts it up.

So I just, I'm like, yes, it's a good chance. I was tempted when you were talking about how rockets the atmosphere was to be like, well, it didn't help them that much because we had a like the best chance of the game five minutes in. But also maybe maybe that's why. Maybe there were nerves involved. It is true, though. It is true.

Watching the replay of it a couple times, it is, it is. the ball is coming from above Robinson more than I remembered it when as I've been thinking about it these past few months it was you're right he wasn't he wasn't coming over the top of it he wasn't his head wasn't coming down over the top of it it was he was a little bit underneath it and you know there's nothing you can do about that right so that's true good point Greg fine I mean you can't do something right it just takes a lot more precision to like have it almost be like glancing not to get so, we're already so deep into the weeds here. Oh, we're going to get deeper.

You have to like get the more of a glancing header rather than like the snapped head over it header. And it's just, it's just, they're difficult. They don't get converted 100% of the time. The other, the other big chances were, um, McKenny with his head, Acosta with his head and Jordan Pfeck with his head, um, all chances to win it with their heads in the second half. El Salvador had a chance with their, with a header from Ronald Rudd

Brigiz that was on a corner. I would say it was probably the least of those five we've mentioned, probably the least good chance. It looked close in practice, but it was out of all the chances, difficulty-wise, before it came off of his head, by far the most difficult.

Because he's leaning away from the goal, right? He's running away. He's literally trying to like snap it to curl around to the far post, which he comes very close to doing. But that's an insanely unlikely chance to convert. Like notably, I think, for our chances. McKinney and Pfeck are two of our better finishers in the air.

So if you're if you give us these, if you say we're going to create these chances, you feel good about the fact that we've done that. So it also speaks to, again, just how much variance can play into this. It's not like, because we had Pfok, who we all know at this point with the benefit of hindsight, just finishes chances like crazy for his club, a ton of them on headers. Yeah. But that's just the nature of the game, right? Like even the best probably heading finisher on the team is not an automatic goal score in the situation.

Yeah, we've seen that with Wes and McKinney too, who is majestic in the air. And it hasn't always put those chances in the goal. I thought on looking back at some of our shot creation, I thought Conrad was actually a little bit useful on the left wing. You know, he created some stuff. Raina, you know, Raina put a peach of a ball on Weston's head for his chance in the second half. All said and done, it felt like a good learning experience. We criticized Burhalter for starting desks at left back and sort of burning up all our right back minutes in one game. Does that still eat at you a little bit?

So at the time, it was actually less about burning both our right backs in game one, because we only brought four fallbacks to that three-game window. it was less about that. The other two were Robinson and Bellow. So two left backs we kept in reserve. It was for me, it was still more about just not throwing Dest into an away match on his less favored left side

for his opener of the week, because I didn't want to waste his fitness, his oxygen, essentially, in that game. But again, I don't think that was, it wasn't inevitable that Dest was going to have a lackluster outing. He's had good outings on the road since then. It definitely did come back,

turn into a person, a roster construction issue later in the window. The fact that we trotted out both our right bags in game one. Right. Yeah, by the time we came to the Honduras game after Desk got hurt, it was, it was pretty thin at right back. Anyway, so let's move on to Canada at home. My last bit on the El Salvador game, and I've said this before, is that that away game, to me, feels like what is sort of the minimal.

acceptable performance level where it's like, okay, it's unfortunate we didn't get a win. A more dominant performance would have given us even a better chance to win, obviously. But we still controlled that game enough. We created enough where it's like, we were a little bit unlucky to leave there with one point instead of three. A little bit, you know. I mean, on one hand, you're saying, well, these headed chances, you know, who knows if you can put them on frame. On the other hand, you're saying-

But if you stack up four of them, if you stack up four of those chances. Okay. Any one of them, you're not going to be like, oh, Miles, you know, bottled it. But you get four of those and it's like, ah, out of the four of them, you know, you usually feel good about one of it, especially, again, given that these are decent headers of the soccer ball. Okay. Yeah, you're stacking up like 0.65xG on the four headers altogether. About that.

Yeah, I think, I think we're, again, we're so far into the, end of the depths here. But I think, like, I think actually by the models, P-Fox was the easiest. or the most likely to score. But again, that still doesn't always take into account, like the trajectory of the ball as it's meaning. It might take into account the height of the ball as it meets him, but not all of the physics involved. Yeah.

And I don't think most XG models do take into account the height, right? Do they? Not all of them. And so, again, certainly none of them are taking into account the trajectory. It's also like he had a defender on, like, kind of jostling him, and so did McKinney when he tried to. score. Canada at home. This one was in Nashville. It ended in a one-one draw. It was fun to watch in the stadium, I thought, but by the time I got to my computer and looked up what everybody was

saying, it was clear that this was not a television experience that anybody enjoyed. The big story, of course, from that match was the day of announcement that West McKinney was sent home for violating COVID protocols. And we've come to learn, you know, it seems like gospel now, but back then we didn't know this for sure. We've come to learn that West McKinney's absolutely critical to this team and not having him is a big problem. It's going to be a big problem in the next month, next few weeks. So we got a lot of mileage joking about it, but it really hurt us. And you didn't joke about it.

To be fair to you, I don't think you really joked about it that much. But Vince and Waki and I have spent some time joking about it. I'm not a humorless scold. Like I get it. Like I'm not a, I'm not on the soccer field, not having West McKinney hurts us quite a bit. Yeah. And I think, uh, I don't know that Sebastian Leggett had as bad of a game as everybody, uh, you know, sort of on social media said he did.

But it was sort of the beginning of the end of my personal support for him in the starting 11 for the national team. Because you and I had, you and I had been fans of Legette. At least I had, going back to 2019, but it was starting to, my fandom was beginning to wane at this point. What do you remember from the Canada game? So what I remember from the Canada game is that we very much looked like a soccer team of decent players who had never played soccer together before. And we shouldn't have looked like that, right? Pool Sick, Aronson, Legette, Acosta Adams.

These guys had all been around together enough, even just from the, you know, the Nations League camp. Like that's enough time to have been together for it to not have looked this drab. We basically what we did is we ran into a low block. Canada sat very low, happily conceded the ball. I think the possession percentage was like 70 to 30 at the end of the game. Yeah, it was outrageous. And we just, what we did is we didn't attempt to break them down, which was the most frustrating thing in the world. watch on TV. Like our movement wasn't great to begin with, especially in the front three.

Pfok and Aronson constantly making like the same run, always running away from the ball. It's funny because this performance ended up turning into like the next window's full emphasis on verticality, which always sounded strange to me. But what we were missing, what we were missing in this game was like any sort of pistoning, where one of the front three is checking back and somebody else is racing behind him. So we were missing that from the front three. our midfield three of Adams Acosta LaJet were almost like useless at progressing the ball. In this game, I'm not saying they're useless players. I think that there are real questions about all three of them as ball progressors,

as putting the responsibility of progressing the ball on them has shown to be a real big risk. And in this game, again, they weren't turning the ball over, but they weren't doing anything progressive with the ball. So we were kind of relying on Sergenio Death to do some hero ball. all stuff out on the right side, hoping for some good service from Anthony Robinson on the left side. And we weren't getting a ton of that in meaningful ways. Yeah. It is interesting that the that whole verticality moment we had as a as a fan base listening to Burrhalter because I wonder if, I wonder if that was as much of a buzzword within the team as it was outside of the team.

If it was, it is a little bit of contrast to John, you know, the clarity of John Hurdman's internal presentations and this uh and what seems like a lack of clarity there or at least maybe the wrong word for what he wanted i i don't know because that because it's true it's like we didn't we watched we watch we watch the games and you would say i don't want people to be more vertical like i don't want people running away from the ball we need somebody coming back to the ball in this pistoning uh exercise yeah we were running we were running fiveverts a lot lot in that game. It was insane that like our, either our back to one of Miles Robinson or John Brooks would have it or one of the midfielders, Adams Acosta, are legit. And the front five would all

simultaneously just be racing away from them. What do they call that in American football when you have everybody running a fly pattern for a Hail Mary? That's fourverts. Yeah, that's fourverts. It's like a Texas tech innovation. I don't remember. Somebody's going to, some, some tackle football fans going to jump on us for that. Yeah, they will. Yeah, it's like it's taken over a football. Well, it doesn't work that way here. You can't just race away from the ball unless you're playing Chernidad's backups in a December friendly.

Like you have to have some kind of coordinated small group movements to unbalance the opponent. And we just didn't have any of that for the entire game. Yeah. Like none of it. Our goal didn't come from unbalancing them.

It came from a loose touch by Canada's central midfielder that Brennan Aronson, of course, will pounce on because he's Brennan Aronson. And that's what he does. and then we raced forward as a unit before they could get set up in their block

and score a very good counter-attacking goal. It was a nice goal, yeah. Our best chance of the first half came on a ball floated to Legette from John Brooks. Leggett brought it down, kind of cutting in towards the top of the box. It did a pirouet, and then as he fell to the ground,

tapped it out wide for Aronson, who played a good low ball into the box, and Pulisich tried to bundle it in at the near post as he was falling just in front of Pfock and a Canadian centerback. I forget which one, but his shot went just off the post. And I thought, you know, going back and looking at our chances, that one aside from that game, Pfok's aerial physical presence was a benefit. You know, I mean, I don't know that it is a benefit within the context of us trying to unbalance

the opponent. But, you know, in this, in what resulted, which was us just kind of trying to pump the ball in or, you know, hoping for a goal and a scramble of some kind. He's an asset. He was an asset in that way, I thought. He was. And there were a couple of moments where, because I was going back through looking at John Brooks's distribution, of course, as he's been, you know, unceremoniously dumbed

from the team or ceremoniously, very ceremoniously done from the team. Medium ceremoniously. But he had quite a few of those where it felt like we weren't getting a lot of penetrating attempts, again, not even attempts, not just guys failing to do it. just failing to try to break their bunker down. So Brooks did take some of that responsibility on his own to try to find those gaps or those weaknesses in Canada's block. And that attempt to Legette was one.

I think he had a couple to Pfok, one that Pfok tried to nod down to an onrushing winger, another that Pfok settled backwards to a center midfielder who could then race upfield because we found them behind the block. But that was where like, okay, this is where I was seeing there is definitely value. to what John Brooks can do, at least that value is emphasized if you don't have a midfielder who can do it.

So if Weston McKenney is in this game, maybe it's a different story and he's the one who's able to push the game forward. A Luca de la Torre type or Luca Deloitte himself could maybe do something like that where it's about driving the game forward and putting that sort of defense on their heels kind of thing, but we weren't doing anything of that nature. Yeah. And then like you said. our goal came on a counterattack.

It was, Erringson took it off of Alastair Johnston, and then he got on the end of antony Robinson cross. Look like we were, you know, back in business, qualifying back on track. We're up one zero. I mean, the one thing I think we, other thing I think we should mention about the goal is there was a little bit of confusion in the middle of the field

when I think it, everybody in Canada thought they were going to get whistled for a foul and then the ref played advantage. And I think that, that kind of, that little pause gave us an opening to exploit. But anyway, it was a nice cross and a nice run by Aronson. I know we're in the time machine here, but I'm not going to let you be smirch Alasdair Johnson's good name.

It was Scott Kennedy. It was their other centerback, like who had to give away. Yeah, and then he was subbed almost instantly. Herdman was not pleased, I don't think. Because again, as long as that Canada just gave us the ball, uh, in our back, in our defensive third, we weren't dangerous. It was just, it was just about avoiding those transition moments that Scott Kennedy handed to us on a plate.

Oh, so then he was decisively subbed off, huh? That was ceremonious. And then Canada's danger, Canada got some danger on a counter after a Brooks giveaway and a desk error. I'm talking about back in the first half, a desk, a Brooks giveaway that led to a laran shot that was pretty harmless. and then a desk error on a long clearance from Boryon where he just kind of overran the ball

and Alfonso Davies cut inside him and then tried to cut it back to Laren and Laren's shot was saved, a very nice save from Matt Turner, right? Yeah, Turner's best save of qualifying. Basically his only good save, I shouldn't say only good save, but his one Matt Turner level save of qualifying. We're going to do an overperform,

underperform segment on one of these episodes upcoming. So there's a little sneak preview of that. That Turner Save came on a sequence where it was, again, if anyone, if any American fans weren't familiar with what Alfonso Davies brings, like that was, that was it right there because what was normally a routine defensive trackback for Sergenio Dest turned into like the entire time it was happening felt like, oh man, this could go wrong at any moment and it went very wrong because of what Alfonso Davies can do. Well, I mean, I guess I'll push back a little bit on that.

Yes, Alfonso Davies makes it more nerve-wracking But that is a play that Sergino Desk can deal with I mean, he's more nervous because of who's behind him, I'm sure But he made a meal out of that He definitely did It's something where like in retrospect Maybe he just, you know, fires that ball into the 20th row To just get it out of there, yeah

But because he's trying to possess it Where normally in that situation he would be able to like maintain possession for the team, it becomes a really risky thing to do with Alfonso Davies breathing down your neck. You know, something I just realized today that I didn't know before this was Canada had drawn Honduras at home in the previous game. So they weren't, you know, they weren't flying into Nashville full of confidence the way they were when we played them in Hamilton in February. Oh, and then they drew their third game too. they had three straight draws to open the Do I have that right?

I thought they opened their qualifying campaign with three draws. Then there, of course, their goal came on a pretty straightforward attack. Otokugby plays it down the left wing to Davies, who beats Yedlin. Yedlin had come on for Desk who got hurt early in the game. And he just, Yedlin can never get back in front of Davies and he squares it in front of the goal. for Kyle Laren, who

John Brooks had stopped tracking. I mean, he was tracking him at one point, or at least was tracking adjacent, but he didn't, he didn't track him at the end and Laren had a tap in front of the goal. So people have been saying this is like John Brooks fell asleep or anything else.

And I promise this isn't like to try to defend John Brooks. I don't think that what he does here is like the right play necessarily. What it looks like to me in the rewatch is that he's essentially trying to fill a lane. Like as Davies rounds Yedlin to get the edge, the Miles and Brooks are both tracking back, you know, to fill the middle. And it looks like what we're trying to do, what Brooks is trying to do is, you know,

the bowling lanes that Davies can feed this ball across in are limited. And so it looks like he's thinking that Turner has the, you know, the gold mouth bowling lane. Miles Robin has the next lane up. And so Brooks is going to occupy the third lane for a cup. back at more of an angle. And it just so happens that Miles and Turner do not have an overlapping coverage shadow.

And Davies hits the ball into that gap. And it's an easy tap in for Kyle Lairn. Well, again, I'm not saying that's even the right choice. I'm just saying it was, it looks to me like it's a conscious choice by John Brooks and not just like he fell asleep and didn't, didn't track his man. So maybe Rob, so maybe Robinson deserves a little blame for not covering his bowling lane better? probably not like I'd still probably put it on Brooks to recognize that that lane won't get covered because Robinson can't see everything behind him he's got to focus on Alfonso Davies it's more just about like it's really hard to coordinate in these moments right this is why so much of the modern game is about denying these chaotic

AVPs if we're going to use Canada's parlant in the first place and it's like Gedlin needs to drag Alfonso Davies down 40 yards from goal if he can so this doesn't happen because making these decisions on the fly and getting them all correct altogether, all the players acting in coordinated fashion, very difficult. Yeah. Well, we're 30 minutes in, and we've only gotten through the first two games of 11 we need to cover. So we could make this,

we could make, Bells, we could make this a two part, two part addition. Okay. I mean, let's just keep going and see what happens. All right.

So, so at the, you know, at the end of this game, it didn't look like, We didn't really threaten after Canada equalized, not in any serious way. And it kind of felt like we weren't up for it. We weren't up for World Cup qualifying.

Now, you look back, those were not ridiculously bad results. But they were both games where we could have gotten three points and didn't. And it hurts us. I think it hurts us in our current situation, probably more than anything except for that panel. a loss. So I'll give that the El Salvador game, you know, felt like points on the table. The Canada game for me felt more like just a continuation of the attacking struggles we'd been seeing since the summer windows, since the Switzerland friendly through all the way through

the gold cup. So despite lifting two trophies, like at no point did it feel like our attack was humming. You know what I mean? Like that we were never firing on all cylinders. So the Canada game was just like, we had very good players in that game. we have pool sick, we have Aronson, we feel like, you know, a full compliment of guys who won trophies against Mexico. And it's like, nope, it didn't matter.

The attack is not solved. We have not figured out how to actually play a fluid style of soccer that disorganizes the opponent with the ball. It's not a thing we do. Yeah. That's fair. And it's not, so maybe we didn't leave points on the table. We just got the exact amount of points we deserve.

For Canada, for sure. The El Salvador one, I'll give you that. It was like, ah, that felt like a three-point. game that we only got one point from. I guess I just think we should have had something of a more attacking rhythm at that point in Berhalter's tenure than we did. Oh, I totally agree with that. And in that sense, we left points on the table. I very much agree that like that, again, it felt like we went into that game and looked like a team that had never played before. And I very much think that that's like a big part of that is how we prepared, how we used the time going all the way

back from Kuva the time that we were eliminated to this first opening World Cup qualifying window, which is what the, all of the focus was on. The entire project is building to this performance and just being that sort of, uh, inept. Oh, wait. Oh, wait. What are we going to do? They're in a low block, you know?

What are we going to do? Again, when the, when the stated goal of the, of the coach in his opening press conference is about disorganizing the opponent with the ball, like that's his focus. and then to go into this, you know, the very first test of it and just being, just again, looking completely unready to deal with it in any, in any capacity. Yeah. That was the giant frustration from Canada. It was.

It was very frustrating. It's frustrating even to people like John Mueller who don't, you know, don't get nearly as emotional as say I do. But this stuff. He's so amused by all of it and by all of us. But he thought that was, you know, that was a disaster to watch. the Canada game in particular. That does almost give you like comfort, doesn't it?

When even somebody is sort of detached from it all, it's like, oh, that was bad. What are we doing? No one knows what they're doing. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I was in the stadium. I was just kind of enjoying the, I was enjoying the night, having a great time. And, but, but, you know, when you sit, sit and watch it on TV with a, with fewer beers in your body, you do, you do have to admit that that was pretty bad.

All right. Well, Bels, you're making a very good case that that is just the correct way to enjoy the U.S. men's national team. Just sit there with friends. Just hang out, watch it with friends. Do not rewatch the game six times. Do not isolate one player's clips and watch those three times. And honestly, that's, you know, most people don't do that stuff. It's just a few of us.

Honduras away. So the nine point window talk was totally gone at this point. And we looked pretty bad in the first half against Honduras. on Pedro Sula, a place where we, you know, that I was scared to play it. I remember how we played there in 2017. That was one of the, that was probably the worst game of the qualifying cycle. We got bailed out by a Bobby Wood goal late to get a 1-1 draw. But we came out in a 3-4-3 with McKenzie, Brooks, and Robinson on the back line.

Again, McKenney was gone. He was temporarily banished from the team. What do you remember? So I remember right away being like James Sands probably doesn't make sense in the midfield too, the poor guy. I don't love once I actually saw that it was Calan Acosta in the midfield with him and Tyler Adams at right back. I wasn't thrilled about that. Again, this goes back to us burning through our right backs so that we have Tyler Adams who can play a game, but we can't put him in the middle of the park. We have to put him on the side.

Because if it's a 343 with Adams and Acosta instead of Sands, like that could literally change the entire narrative. of the 343 formation for the U.S. Like right now it's now totally associated with that first half disaster against Honduras and if we had just had, I don't care, any Brooks Lennon, Aaron Herrera, any right back who was within a plane trip to this soccer field,

like it could have just looked fine. Adams and Acosta is the two in that might have just made the total difference and we could have totally controlled the game, leaned on Honduras enough to get the goals that eventually can. game and we would all think of the 343 as a fantastic variation of personnel that we can use instead like we had to flush it within 45 minutes because

it was a disaster yeah it really was and it felt it felt so shambolic because i mean adams was playing wingback and then bellow was on the other side at wingback and um we gave up a goal that you know i i mean it was a pretty even first half for the for the most for the most part, at least until the goal. And then we had a, it's kind of a sloppy giveaway from Sergeant Sands near midfield. And then a two-minute period of chaos. And then Rubio from Honduras skips by Brooks in Zone 14 and slips it to Jonathan Toro wide left. And then he crosses it for Brian Moyah, who's diving header beats Turner in the 27th minute.

So he was, I mean, yeah, Moia was wide open. George Bello, I think we've, you know, we've been over this. He was not responsible enough to pick up Moya, even though he had the play in front of him. Just didn't really recognize the moment at all. It didn't look like on the replay. Right, right. We had the numbers available to defend even after Brooks gets beat,

stepping up. And we just, we just absolute, like, Bellow in particular, just does not go into the space that it's very obvious he needs to go into to protect the goal. Right. And now we're looking at, so we're down one zero. The second half of the first half was a dark time because it really was. Because it's like, what are we doing? Tyler Adams is at right wingback?

And we're, you know, we're going to get two points from this window. We haven't even mentioned that Ricardo Pepey, 17 year old Wonder Kid, has gotten his very first national team start of any kind, appearance of any kind, on the road. in what essentially felt like a must win World Cup Warfair. And Josh Sargent was playing right wing, Pulisick at left wing. I mean, I don't even remember Pulisik doing anything

in that first half. Sergeant was not super sharp either. I don't know. I think Pepey was really that sharp in the first half. No, everyone looked late to do anything. Anything that they tried to do, whether it was on the attacking side or the defensive side, they always looked late to doing it.

Like they were trying to figure out what to do and then once they made the decision, it was usually too late to execute it in any way that gave us any kind of an advantage. But two Burrhalter's credit, he must have said some good things at the half, and he made three subs. Aronson came on for Sergeant,

Anthony Robinson came on for George Bello, and Sebastian Leggett came on for Brooks to switch it back to a regular 433. So McKenzie and Robinson became the two centerbacks and a four-man back line. And then things started going our way. We had that well-taken, right-footed goal from Anthony Robinson after a legit cross skipped through Pepe and a defender. And then Pepey scored on that towering header on a Yedling cross.

And the goal call from Andres Cordero, Pepe by name, Pepe by nature is not my favorite. but but whatever. And it's burdened your brain, right? Because that was a huge moment. That was a huge moment. And you watch the replay and you keep having to hear Pepey by nature. And I'm like, no, man. But that's okay.

And then we just rolled them from then on. Aronson and Leggett each added a goal. And the Honduras fans were allaying their own team. And it turns out Honduras is not very good. Was not very good. It is not very good. that this game could have gone a different way is a terrifying thought, but it didn't. So we won 4-1 and we ended the window with five points, which, you know, considering what happened

in the first two games, is not too bad. Well, yeah, it's as good as it could possibly have been after the first two games. No, let me break it down for you. And it was, again, it was the end of the window then. That actually was for me like a roller coaster window. But by the end of it, it finished with us just squandering like a little. bit of cushion. Because as we've talked about, the win at home draw on the road thing works if you, if that's what you do the entire cycle. But there's like some really tough road games

that you probably aren't expecting yourself to draw as much as you hope to be optimistic. And so getting those wins at the weaker teams venues like El Salvador becomes kind of important. So the fact that we ended up on par given that we played two of the weaker teams in the in the Ocho felt like, okay, we're, yeah, we, we, we swandered a little bit of cushion. We have a ton of built in cushion to qualify. We've just used a little bit of that up. Yeah. And, you know, an elite soccer nation or even, you know, who's kind of a mid-tier good soccer nation?

Like Germany, for example. No, I don't think so. Switzerland or somebody, they would go and beat El Salvador on the road, you know. Well, I threw Germany out there because I think everyone points to the German lost to North Macedonia. And that might even been in Germany as like, look, it can happen to everyone. But then like they never pointed, they never like followed it up by saying Germany went nine wins, one loss in their World Cup qualifying campaign. Right. When they lost to North Macedonia.

It's like, yes, you can have these hiccups. You can't have a hiccup every road game. Like that starts to be, that starts to be the problem. Yeah, we've had hiccup. We've had a lot of road hiccups for sure. All right. So we, so yeah. Let's do some announcements.

Where are we at on time, bells? Can we get, can we get through? We're at 43 minutes. So. One window in? I'm not going to do the math on this. Speaking of maintaining pace, but. Well, I think we may not have to spend as much time on every window,

although the next two are going to require a lot of discussion. So let's do, let's just see what happens. Some announcements before we get to the October window. We're going to blow it out in Orlando on the 27th. Five aside. pickup soccer the morning of the Panama match, a short distance from the stadium and then a big tailgate all afternoon,

even closer to the stadium. We're calling the Five Aside pickup soccer the Greg Velasquez Five Aside Tournament of Roses. Greg Velasquez Memorial Five Aside Tournament of Roses, even though you are obviously still living. I think it's probably, I think my understanding

was it's in regard to my Achilles heels, both of which are destroyed and then repaired. So it's a memorial of my original Achilles seals. The Greg Velasquez Achilles Memorial. If he couldn't tell, that was me working in, like, preemptive excuses for whatever my five-aside performance will look like.

You're not the only one. The excuses are flowing like water these days. Tactical manager was talking about his knees. Goodness gracious. No, I'm sure that he has a real knee problem. He says he's had three surgeries in the last three years, so. Everyone's going to be showing up with x-rays. Everyone's showing up with their x-rays and MRIs.

And then number two, I know I say this all the time, but I got to do it. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. We are ad-free and we make money from people's voluntary monthly pledges. A couple of perks you get for being a patron are the Monday reviews with Vince and Waki, which are patron-only most of the time, and then access to the Discord. I know a lot of you don't know what that means. So MCB puts it like this. MCB on the Discord, a person on the Discord says, it's like joining the Scum,

group chat without having to give anyone your phone number. And it is a nice place to chat live with knowledgeable fans, you know, basically whenever anything USMNT related is going on, including a U.S. player playing anywhere. Okay, the October window. Let's just plow ahead and see what happens. Next, we had Jamaica home, Panama Way, and Costa Rica at home. No pool sick in this window. Rain is still out, of course.

I thought, you know, if the Honduras game was Pepe's coming out party, because he was involved in all, actually all four of those goals in one way or another, the game against Jamaica felt like his coronation as a striker for the national team. He scored two goals. I mean, I'm not speaking for the nerds here. The nerds might not have thought he was the striker,

but I'm speaking for the every man, Greg. All right. Jamaica was out, was without Michaela Antonio and pretty toothless and we got goals from Pepian assists from Dest and Aronson. I thought particularly the goal on the desk assist was very nice, a much more difficult finish than it looked like initially kind of leaning back like we talked about earlier

and we won two zero. I think you should give a couple thoughts on this and we should just move quickly on to the Panama game. All right. The thing I liked about this game was because Canada was so dire in our attempts to actually play good flowing soccer. The Jamaica game was halting. It was clumsy, but we were trying.

Like you could see there was this pistony action, despite all the talk being about verticality. There was very much like a balanced motion, like a choreography between forward and winger or winger and midfielder. And so there was a lot more of that. Tim Wea coming in off the bench, Paul Areola, Brennan, Harrison as sort of our wingers in that Jamaica game. They were all eager to like come back into the half space,

more like those half-based merchants we'd grown accustomed to, to allow players to run in behind them while we connected into those pockets. And so that for me was like the most promising thing about this game. It wasn't always very clean, but you could tell we were trying it from the off. And it paid, I think it was still zero zero at half, right? Second half, like the payoff was there. And it was always coming. Yeah.

Very good. We have to move on quickly. Panama away. this was Oh I think we should One other thing we should mention about Jamaica is that was I think that was Was that Zimmerman's first start of the

First appearance He didn't play in the first three games The first window Zimmerman did not appear We brought six centerbacks If you include James Sands And Zimmerman was the only one who did not play in the first window Okay What a turnabout it's been for him

Yeah and any other lineup notes Paul Areola did start that game at right wing. I had Tim Wea. Pretty well. Timwaya came off the bench. So yeah. So that was the other most notable thing for me there is Timwaya came off the bench and was lightning. To be fair, Giazzi Zardoes also came off the bench and also had a ton of influence.

So this is going to sound like a dig at Zardas now, but I don't mean it that way. Part of that is like those games at the end can start to just get like that where attacking players can just have their way. Waya definitely did that. Like he looked incredible, dangerous. Every time he got the ball and it was like, oh, man, this is the kind of attacking third polish that we don't get from Paul Ariola. But maybe it's just because, you know, Jamaica have checked out of a zero two soccer game. Yeah. Okay.

Panama was really was the nadir of the qualifying campaign so far, you know, with, there's a decent shot for the second half of the first half against Honduras. But that that was corrected quickly. So we mustered five shots on goal, and two of those were in the first four minutes. Ariola had a shot blocked off his foot, basically, and Zimmerman leaned away and headed a set piece over the bar. So in this game, we had ariola starting again at right wing, Timway at left wing, Jossi's artist at Stryker, and then we had the famous Kellan Acosta, Sebastian Leggett, Eunice, Moosa, Midfield. I don't, I'm not exactly, I can't remember exactly why McKinney wasn't in this game. Was it because of yellow card suspension? No, he did not travel.

So McKinney and Anthony Robinson did not travel to Panama. And it was said that they just had minor injuries. Or at least McKinney did. Anthony might have been like an English prohibition on him traveling. I don't have to have to. Now I know we had our time. She don't have to get back into it. But neither McKinney nor Robinson were at the field.

Yeah. And then we, you know, speaking of, time machines, we had Shaq Moore at right back and George Bello at left back. And this was George Bellow's last appearance of the qualifying campaign. It's also Shaq Moore, I believe. Correct. So this game ended a lot of people's qualifying campaigns. Three, actually.

And it might be McKenzie's last appearance, too. Yes, it is. And then Matt Turner was benched after this game. I know he's gotten back in due to injuries, but he also saw this game run his minutes down. We don't need to get all into the details, I don't think, but it was a feckless outing from the Americans, like I said in the recap. And Panama's goal came, now Panama wasn't amazing or anything.

I think they were the better team on the night and probably deserved to win. Their goal came on a Jazi Zard's own goal. Tell us what you remember from the game before I get into my Zazzi. Zard's own goal bit here. So it was another game of players just not attempting to move the ball forward or being totally unable to as a team because of, you know, team relationship positioning. So this is one where like I'm basically giving, in my mind, I give the entire front three Giazizada is included, like a total pass on their lack of involvement.

The issue was very much goalkeeper, backline, central midfielders and just again, a complete inability slash unwillingness. It was both in this game. Legette just seemed unwilling to try to go forward. Everyone else just seemed unable to go forward. And it was just a complete mess. Panama offered almost nothing going back at us, despite like us being so bad.

And so my big takeaway was just kind of like a real joy, actually, in watching Panama protecting their one zero lead. And I mean that, like as much as I love the United States men's national team, watching the underdog do what Panama did to us for the last 30 minutes of that game was like a real pleasure. Yeah, you're talking about like pitch invaders and ballboys throwing balls on the field at the wrong times and stuff. Right, scripted pitch invaders. Like it was amazing how good they were and how willing they were to just destroy the clock for 30 minutes. So that's the other thing to keep in mind too when you talk about, you know, Panama didn't do too much.

They also stopped trying to play soccer after that goal. And it was very much just a shenanigans exercise in clock killing. Yeah. Yeah, I think Max in Montana, who's in the Discord and is like a capo for American Outlaws, he was there. And he said it was one of the coolest things he's ever seen. You know, he's like a big U.S. fan. I just, I have to respect that.

Like, again, because we have such a built-in advantage over certain teams, like when I see them doing that to like, get that edge to level things, I just have to respect it. I really enjoy it. It should be mentioned, Kellan Acosta had a really bad game too. You know,

he gets, he escapes some of the criticism because he's had other good performances, including, you know, in St. Paul a few weeks ago. But he was, he had a, I would say a shocker of just like poor touches

and not, not up for that game. It was a cost. It was Acosta Legette. It was the fullbacks to my mind. And that was more of a positioning issue, both pressing and being releases for us in possession. And then this was another one where it was also Burrhalter. So those are sort of the combination of failures in my mind that lead to this being a zero one game instead of either one one or zero zero.

And as many have pointed out, Burrhalter did not make, he did not sub out Legett or Acosta, at least not until very late, if at all. I can't remember. No, they played 90 minutes. So again, Luca De La Torre on the bench in that game. Unused. Gen Lucubuzio unused. So those three guys played the whole. Adams came on at halftime for Eunice Musa,

and that was probably more of a minutes management thing rather than Musa struggling. But we left Legitna Costa on. And again, you saw those guys' minutes crater, George Bello canned. And this is where I talk about sort of the difference between how it just works in sports, right? The players who have the poor outings,

you can drop them. You can replace them. The coach has the poor outing and it's like, okay, well, we just have to hope Burrhalter learns better game management. Yeah. Now, on the Zardas own goal, I always just considered it a sort of a, this is how the cookie crumbles kind of situation and perhaps a lack of box control from Turner. Until I listen to Eric Winaldus podcast at the suggestion, which I don't usually do, but I listen to this one episode at the suggestion of Patrick Keeler and more buildings and food on the Discord. And I did find it sort of persuasive when all this very critical of the positioning of both Zardis and Leget, they're both too far away from their own, that near post, and which causes them, so Legit,

Legette's kind of, you know, the ball goes over Legit. I don't know that it's really that big of a deal what he does or doesn't do here. But what Zardis does is he's leaning toward his own goal to try to head it away. And when I'll just say, that's a big no-no, you shouldn't try to do that. and he also thought that we just weren't prepared for that set piece. Like we didn't have the details nailed down as a team. And he criticized Burhalter for that. And I found it kind of persuasive.

I'll give that to Winalda on Zardez. It's a tough one. Like you see players head the ball over their own crossbar at times. And Zardez is not a bad header. Zardaz is actually a pretty good header of the soccer ball. That's one of his very, like, for him, that's one of his strong points. So at some point you need to defer to the player to make a play. I agree on the legit point.

Like, you don't need to be any closer to the ball than Panama's closest player. So legit, you know, I mean, you can essentially like reverse or post the guy up, if that makes sense. Between the ball and the man is what legit can be doing. And instead he's two yards closer to the ball. So you talk about pitch control. That is just forfeiting pitch control for no reason. Yeah. You with me on that?

Kind of, yeah. Like, it gives the ball delivery, deliver a chance to put it over your head to the attacking player. If you're right on the guy, then it reduces the window for that ball to be played. Okay. So you don't totally buy this idea that Zardas shouldn't have tried to get his head on it. I don't buy that. I think if Zardos doesn't try to make a play on that ball, then he's just going to say, me making zero play is better than is preferable like or is a me making a play trying to make a play

is worse than just letting this Panama player have a free header from two yards out and I know the outcome is yeah well you should have let them do it but I don't think you you judge it on the outcome there yeah okay well I'm I'm I'm really just caught between Eric Winona and Greg Bolescas and I don't even know what to do um Panama reminded to everyone, Panama had tried this like four times in the first half. So we had a good sense of where they were going. So the idea that Zardaz is set up too far away from the goal line,

Legette set up too far away from that man on the near post. I think those are both fair. You're essentially saying any ball between our back line and the goal is Matt Turner's ball. And I don't think there was any way Turner can get to this. So I would say this is like a failure in setup. I also do wonder if, you know, Zardis just letting it fly past him would have resulted in a free header for Anabogadoy or somebody else. It might have been two guys. There was Godoy and then another man right behind him.

No U.S., no other U.S. player close to it. So if Zardis lets us go, he's going to get, he's going to get pilloried for that too in my mind. Okay. Like make a play, you know, like you got to do something. Yeah. It's tough. Okay. Well, I guess I'm back to.

cookie crumbles. Costa Rica at home. Of course we won two, one and got the three points, but this game had some real wrinkles to it. First of all, Tim Wea was going to be on the bench for this one if it weren't for an injury to Paul Ariola. So we get the lineup, you know, minutes before the game, an hour before the game, and it's Paul Ariola in the starting lineup.

And then all of a sudden, no, no, no, it's going to be Tim Wea. And then second of all, we'll get into that more. And then second of all, we gave up a weird early goal and went down one zero, which was very disconcerting. Because we're all riding pretty low after the Panama game. Exactly. So that one, another one of those cookie crumbling goals where it's just like, oh, man, seven people in a row made tiny little mistakes and the ball ends up in our goal. Yeah. Yeah, we did not, you did not blame Stefan for letting that past him.

I thought that was what's that was discriminating and charitable of you. Charitable is not the right word. It was it was discriminating. But the thing about the thing about Wea not being in the plans to start and then getting to start at the last minute is he was the best player on the field. And it does call into question Burrhalter's judgment a little bit. Don't you think? Yeah, I don't. I don't think there's any way around that.

It gave, like, the fact that Ariola was in gave the Wea believers time to, like, complain that he was left out. It gave the Ariola defender's time to say, no, everyone just doesn't appreciate what Ariola brings to the table. And so then we kind of got the actual science experiment here of, like, maybe Tim Weaa really is ready to do this. And I think, I think the evidence comes in on the side of Tim Wea was really ready to do that. But we're talking six games into World Cup qualifying. Yes, we are. But let's focus on Timway on how good he is. Can we do that?

Or do you want to, do you want to have it still be? Yeah, go ahead. No, just his ability to interpret space, you know, all this talk about like whether or not Burhalter system is too complex or whatever people take forever to learn it. Like, Waya does not have that much time in Burrhalter camps.

He's been injured for so long while Burrhalter's been in charge. He's got incredibly limited minutes. He comes in and just, he makes it look like the system was built for him. Like it looks like everything that we do has been keyed to Tim Wea. And so very clearly it is possible to jump into this system and play into this team and play with sort of that freedom and that fluidity. And I'm just, it's just like eye opening and sort of tells you kind of gives us that hint of what might be possible for the U.S. Yeah.

Because he doesn't do this with Lill. I mean, he's fine with Lille. But, like, he, I mean, he goes several weeks in a row without even playing for them. He's not, like, the key piece to Leal at this point. And Leal are a mid-table team in the French league. So, you know, it still just gets back to that thing of, like, we can take a good player and he can do it on the international level. Yeah. Well, he does fit so well because he is, because he is so good off the ball and makes such a good.

And on the ball. Yeah. I mean, he's good on the ball at something. things. Like he's good at making fast incisive decisions. He's good at putting the ball across. He's good at cutting it back. He's good at, like you always talk about,

he's good at getting a little window to get that pass away. He's shown, even at least at the Concca Calf level, an ability to like disguise like a shoulder drop as the ball's coming to him. He always does that kind of thing. Like he's always doing something to give himself an edge. But these little shoulder feints he's been doing. for the national team in these qualifiers have actually been like eliminating the first defender,

not just opening a window up, but he's had plenty of times where he is totally like ether to defender and then is able to run at the next defender up and that's when he'll make his like pass. So that's been like another positive that, you know, I've always been high on way. I didn't even think he was going to be doing it to this level. So it's just been, man, it's been fun watching him play.

It's like minute for minute. I think he has been by far most concerned. consistent performer through qualifying. Really? More than McKinney? More than McKinney. That might be tough, but like what he has been doing has been, I think, more decisive for outcomes, frankly.

Like, I think he has been, like, he has been doing the, the extremely hard work of creating goals. Yeah. No doubt about that. McKinney does a ton of stuff to, like, tip the field in our favor. and then Wea has been doing the things that last cycle Christian Pulisik was doing for us and that we were hoping Christian Pulisic would be doing for us this cycle, but we haven't been getting it. And if Wea weren't doing this, like, I don't know what this would, what our, what the standings would look like.

Yeah, we'd be, yeah, I mean, probably you have to assume goals would have come from somewhere, but I can't figure out where they would have come from. Without Raina, I mean, yeah, it's just been incredible what Wea has just jumped right in and accomplished for me. Maybe people think I'm over penduluming, but I've just been so impressed with what he's done. I was ready to be impressed, to be fair. Yeah, you've always been a big way of guy. The goal, the first goal for the U.S., you know, we're down 1-0, but we're playing pretty well. It comes on that desk banger.

I don't need to go through the play-by-play of it. You guys remember, but it's a really, really, really good shot from Dest. And then and then Lionel Marrera comes on for Kailor Navas at the half for Costa Rica. Navas leaves with a muscle injury. So this is another wrinkle. Rinkle number three or four, I can't remember, is that Ruiz breakaway where he steals the ball. At one-one, right? Yeah, at one-one.

He's very clever to hide behind Tyler Adams and anticipate Miles Robinson's pass to Richards. He picks it off and then he's just away. Robinson does manage to reel him in, but only because he's 97 years old. I was going to say what was really clever was Brian Ruiz playing a five-year long con of being really slow and old to trick us into this one moment

where he bursts forward onto Miles Robinson's casual path. So wily, so wily. But yeah, Robinson does track him down and it doesn't even get a shot off. And then we get the goal for the U.S. It's a, it's, call it wrinkle number five.

I mean, it's a frankly poor diagonal ball from Weston McKinney that is just massively mishandled by Keisha Fuller. And it falls to desk, who takes a touch and then plays way in behind and way it takes a shot that kind of hammers off the near post

and then, and then Marrera and then goes in barely. And it's scored as an own goal, but it's a good shot from, It's a good shot from Wea. And we won two to one. But not, you know, not,

it was not a comfortable victory, I wouldn't say. No, no one goal game can be comfortable in World Cup qualifying, right? Because of, again, the nature of soccer and how,

uh, uh, the tiniest flicker of a chance like goal can turn into one sometimes. And several outstanding chances can be denied sometimes. So you're never comfortable at that point, you know, as a fan. But as far as the,

performance went, I, again, I was extremely halfway with the performance even before our first goal, even before the desk banger. Like, we were, I felt like we were kind of like cooking. And it was like a continuation of the, of the home Jamaica game, which makes sense because it was more of the same players rather than the rotated Panama side. It's at home. You add Tim Weas polish. I thought we were, I thought we were doing it. It was our best performance of qualifying easily up to that point. And it did give us hope that the disorganizing

the ball with the opponent was going to come to fruition. I thought it was our best attacking performance of the Greg Berhalter era. Since he's been in charge, I don't think we have ever looked nearly as fluid

as we looked in that game. And that was a combination. Again, a ton of it is Tim Wea. It was Wea playing with Dest and Musa on that right side. McKinney getting in on the act. Wea and Aronson being willing to flip sides

or be on the same side at the same time. And again, this is where I talk about, it's not like Greg Burhalter's possession system is not so rigid that these players don't do these things, right? Tim Wea and Brennan Aronson suddenly both occupying the left sideline. Like that's not like prescribed in the system. That's just good players reading the game well and doing things that disorganize Costa Rica in this case. Yeah. Okay. So at this point in qualifying, we sat second in the table behind Mexico.

We'd probably underformed, underperformed a little bit, particularly the loss to Panama and the draw at El Salvador. But other than that, Costa Rica match, the bigger issue for me was we hadn't been very convincing. So I guess it's good that the convincing attacking performance. And I guess I'm not quite as high on it as you are. I was pretty high. Well, I was high on it. I was high on it relative to what we had looked like for two and a half years up to that point. Because like, I don't know if you remember, there were, it was our crossover with the TSS folks where it was like, can we ever play good soccer?

And I think a lot of people would effectively like given up. Like, no, we just, we just have to accept that good soccer is beyond us. And I was still holding out. Like, no, no, no, like these are, we can do this. We can, guys can make good movements and interact and interchange and combine. like this is this is not some impossible Gordian knot like this can happen so I was really excited to see us like do some of those things even it's not the highest level to show that like there is you can make immediate progress it doesn't have to be a three year turnaround time well it did

have to be a three year turnaround time it ended up being a three year turnaround time it didn't have to be a three year turnaround time all right well uh we're well over an hour into this so we better break it to two parts. We better. We're going to come back with part two on the November and January slash February windows. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see ya.