Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #281: USA v Morocco recap

Episode Date: June 2, 2022

A wrinkle in the shape, a fascinating night for Pulisic, Aaronson outstanding and Luca de la Torre at the 6. Lots to discuss from a free-flowing contest against a respectable World Cup-bound opponent.0:30 intro and lineups, etc.5:30 Aaronson's role18:40 Big Morocco chances29:40 Puli to BA, 1-036:15 Weah smash, Bono bungle, 2-042:15 Greg on the USMNT's shapesupport Scuffed on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedScuffed listener survey: https://forms.gle/sBXXSaJ8jnP6RZDY6 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. Hey, one of the most satisfying U.S. games in a while, at least since November, I'd say. How you doing, Greg? I definitely am satisfied. I'm satisfied because we got new information. We got an entertaining way. And we have, like, I feel like we have a lot to digest and talk about. And it was a little bit fun. It was a little bit fun. A lot more free-flowing than the qualifying games have been. I think Pulisik said after the game, it was nice to have the weight of qualifying off our back. And it did seem like they played with more freedom and joy. It was flowing both directions, which made it, I mean, I think that was a big part of why I was entertaining.

Yeah, especially in the first half, there was a up and down affair. Lots to talk about. A fascinating night for Pulisic. First, his moment of class broke the game open. then he drew and gave a penalty to his friend, Haji Wright. And we'll, of course, get into those things. After the game, he vented frustration in an unscripted, arguably clumsy way

that there weren't more U.S. fans in the stadium. And I think that's a whole interesting discussion. It raises again the question of site selection for these games, and I'd like to get into that. Brendan Aronson had an excellent game as a nominal eight. We'll talk about whether he was actually an eight in this game. We'll talk about whether eights truly exist. I mean, I was like, as I was watching the second hour, I was like, wait, triple pivot.

Triple pivot? It's back. It's back. Pog form. Here we go. And then Malik Tillman made his debut. Joe Scali and CCV each got a half of action. And Luca Deletore played, did he play as a six?

Was he a six? I mean, again, we're in trivet territory. So, but yes, nominally he was the six. I don't think there's any question about that. Yeah. First, the lineups. Morocco, the 24th ranked team in the world lined up in, I guess it was a 3-4-3.

Was it that? It was a 3-something-something. I'm calling it a 5-3-2, but again, formations and numerical descriptions for positions need a ton of context. So go ahead, go ahead with your 3-4-3. No, I don't want to call it a 34-3. I want to call it a 5-3-2.

Okay, we'll call out a 5-3-2. Yassin Bunu was the goalkeeper from Sevilla. He's a regular starter. He is the regular starter for the fourth place team in La Liga. He did not look that good, I didn't think, but we can get into that. I'm going to sort of butcher these names a little bit. I'm sorry, everybody, but Sami Mamei from Ferens Faros is the right centerback. Roman Saiz. Romance Is from Wolves was the center center back. And Naif Aguard from Wren, who's talking about going maybe to West Ham, was the left centerback.

And then, of course, Akraf Haimi, from PSG, you know, one of the best bright backs in the world was the right wing back. And Adam Massina, who plays at Watford somewhat regularly, was the left wing back. And the midfield of Sofion Amrabat,

who plays at Fiorentina, and he's a regular starter. Adele Tarabt, who subs in more than he starts for Benfica and Azadine Unabat. who is a regular start for Angare in Liga-un. That's the midfield. And then the strikers were Tariq Tisudali,

who was really fun to watch, plays for Ghent in Belgium, and Ayub al-Kabi, who plays in Turkey at Hatayaspor. That's the Moroccan lineup. And Nusayr Masraoui, who is, I think, on his way to Bayern Munich, is injured.

He is apparently back in the team, but he was injured for this. He had a similar dispute. with the coach to the one that Hakeem Zeyak has, and Zyik was not in this camp, and apparently still in the outs with the manager. There was a fan in the stadium who had a Hakeem Zyik sign up. There were plenty of Morocco fans in the stadium.

So those are two, like, pretty much world-class players that Morocco is missing. Hopefully they'll get them back before the World Cup, both. But either way, I mean, just you know right away from that lineup for Morocco. The baseline of talent here is very good. Yeah. I mean, we're not talking, I mean, outside of Hakimi on this team, there's nobody who's like elite elite, but they're basically mid-table, big five leagues. The American, the U.S. lineup was Matt Turner and goal, Reggie Cannon, Walker Zimmerman, Aaron Long, and Anthony

Robinson across the back line. Tyler Adams at the six, Eunice Musa and Brendan Aronson as the eights. Again, that was nominal somewhat. And then Tim Wea, Hases Ferreira and Christian Pulisic across the front line. The only other lineup note I have is Berlter said in the press conference afterwards that Kellan Acosta has just run down and after some discussions with LACC, they're looking to, quote, cool him off a little bit. Fair enough. So those lineup number descriptions of the positions that those players played,

I think is very much the case for our defense. And so it was great to see, I should say, when we were defending, so when we were in our mid-block. So it was a great experiment to see how Aronson would hold up as an eight in defense. So it was good to see that. It was good to get that information. How did you think he held up? I thought he was, I thought he was okay.

I didn't, I mean, he wasn't, he definitely wasn't a circus in his individual duels. I thought he came out pretty well, better than he often does. He wasn't, you know, ragdolled constantly. I think the big issue is going to be the overall team, like pitch control. with him in there. And I'm not trying to put this on Brendan Aronson specifically. There are a lot of factors that go into this, including the fact that Morocco is a very good team

who can exploit like openings that you give them. But we were definitely way less protected than I think we have basically ever been in a Burr-Halter game. I almost want to say that. Certainly since 2021, just a very open sense of the field. I guess there were shades of the Switzerland match when Morocco could get out and run a little bit Yeah, because I thought, you know, you said

Erinson wasn't ragdolled very much I thought he won like every duel he was in I mean, all the ones that I noticed I didn't notice him getting little brothered But I'm interested in you connecting the dots Between like his presence on the field and that you know That openness which was you know which is indisputable The US was was vulnerable in this game

to Morocco's attack. And again, I want to make really clear. I don't think this was an erranton issue. I think it was a midfield issue. Like, I think the midfield three just did not protect the back line the way that we're used to seeing them do that. And it was just a matter of them either getting pulled all to one side and high up the field. And then Morocco, again, being good enough to play through that pressure where we had committed

all of our numbers to play through it enough to get the time to hit that big switch, which they're capable of hitting. And then for them to race at us on that weak side of the field. and then once they'd done that, essentially like a lack of urgency from that midfield three to then get back and help reinforce the backline. So the back line, in my opinion, actually held up extremely well in those instances

where we never, essentially, we never allowed a tap-in chance. And that's a big deal when you're, when enough dominoes have sort of tipped over that your back line holds up well enough to not give up those tap-ins. We gave up a couple of pretty good looks in the first 25 minutes, but never where Morocco could just make one extra pass for the wide open tap-in. And that's a big deal for how well those guys in the back held up. I know I'm treading on thin ice here, but it did seem like Morocco didn't wear their finishing boots last night.

No, that's definitely the case. You can always say that about what happened during the game that their finishing was off. That can totally happen in a game over a short spell. And then you just thank your lucky stars that if your opponent has one of those days, especially in a meaningful game. Yeah. Why do you think there was such a massive gap between Tim Wea and Reggie Cannon? And like, is that a, is that something, is that not really the problem?

The problem is we need to force that we need to pin the other team down on that side and not allow that big switch. Or like, I mean, there were three or four times where Messina received the ball with like nobody within 13. yards of him and that's where a lot of the big chances came from. It's all of it, right? So we do need to pin them better. You know, the first switch I have, I think Joel Lowry's posted these if you're following him. I think it was around 16.

And I'm probably jumping on your timeline too. But, you know, they worked it out of the back. None of these were like transition moments. So, you know, we'll talk about the U.S. shape in a bit. But, you know, in possession, we kind of adopted that three in the back look that we that we used to do back in like 2019 with like a three, two, five. And, you know, so you might be tempted to say, well, it's because of this little tweak. But it wasn't really that.

Like these switches from Morocco came after extended Morocco possession in the back, usually starting with their keeper, where we definitely had dropped off into our 433 shape and were totally in our, you know, defensive set. And then they would just work it around enough. On the first one, like, Pulsick just didn't apply any pressure to the ball. I don't remember who it was, but I think they're six, number six. It could just took it. You'll give me the name here, right?

Yeah. got it here. I think it was Saiz who hit that long left footed switch. He's a big kid. So he just collects it on the right side of the field, you know, deep, just takes a touch inside. And then you look and all three of our midfielders

are way over it. There's no pressure on the ball. Cannon's sitting deep, way as up high. So he just hits this big split, which we usually invite, right? We usually invite that kind of a ball. But we don't want him to have the freedom to just hit a perfect ball. And then once he hits that ball, it's where, okay,

we have to know Morocco is a good team. We're going to play good teams in the World Cup who can do this. So it's not like it's unforgivable that this happens. But once it happens, you're like, okay, good team, they got us. Now is that we need that urgent drop. We're broken. We have to drop quickly to get numbers back to catch this play. And that's where we were lacking.

And again, I'm not putting this all on Aronson. This was everybody in the midfield. But Aronson definitely like probably doesn't, doesn't have that natural urgency to get back because he doesn't have to do that. He plays as a front three player for his club. He works his tail off, but when they get broken, he's done. He's essentially done with the play. He drifts back slowly, you know, for Salzburg.

And the other midfielers do all of the heavy lifting to get back. Defense tries to win it, and then they go again. And here, you know, it's Aronson's job. It's Moose's a job. It's Adam's job. They've got to work their socks off to get back and tighten the line with the back four or back two a lot of the times because, you know, Robinson might already be high. And so it just, that's the element that was missing.

That's why I felt it was wide open. And you'd see that, you know, some of Morocco's chances would be they'd drive in at our back line. And then they would have that little cutback pass right, you know, at the top of the box or between the box and the top of the box and the penalty mark. And that was the wide open space. There was just no midfield presence in those transition moments, or not transition, in those times where we were broken in that space. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Especially on the, you know, the big Messina chance after the nice, the really nice work from Tisudali.

Canon was working back to help Zimmerman with Tisudali, but nobody was working back to help Cannon with Messina. Or if they were working back, they weren't working back quickly enough. That's what it was. It's just that urgency. And a lot of times that should be Adams, but there were times where Adams was like essentially in that back line covering for Robinson. Or there were weird times that we'll probably talk about where Adams was like super far out field.

Like he had defending, he was defending way up the field, way ahead of. Musa and Aronson. Well, I have one of my first timeline instances about specifically that. In the third minute, early in the third minute, two waves of pressure in Morocco's half kind of breaks them for the first time we get our first good shot. And it's Adams on, I think, Amrabat's back, very close to the box, you know, just rushing forward. And then Musa chases his guy into a loose touch.

Hakeemie tries to collect it. his touch is loose. Musa heads it off of him. His next touch is a little loose, and it squibs over to Ferreira, who takes a touch and has a decent shot at the far post. But too close to Bono. I don't know if it's Bunu or Bono.

I think I'm just going to say Bono because it's easier. Okay. That was one of those. I'm totally on board with Ferreira's first touch as a striker to help set up shots that other strikers might not be able to set up. So I loved his first touch there.

Again, it's easy to take that kind of thing for granted because it looks so casual and effortless, but a really nice touch to, you know, turn as that loose ball squibbing to him and set up that look. Really wish he went in with the big windup and then tried to curl it around Bono and really wish that as he'd drawn that defender over with his big windup, he just hit that one extra pass to Tim Wea, who would have then had the time to pick his spot, alas, you know. there's like four instances like that where we need just square it you know that's this wouldn't have been exactly a square would it have but um there are a few instances of that wouldn't have been a tap in but it would have just eliminated all of the defenders between the ball and the goal and then it just would have come down to waya versus the goalkeeper um i thought so i have

clocked a nice sequence from tyler adams uh passing it to way in the pocket uh in it you know just a few seconds later after this and And then it moves across to Pulisic in the middle of the field, and then to Anthony, and he loses it. I thought Anthony was not sharp, particularly in the first half of this game. Neither was Hakimi. He gives it away to Pulisic almost immediately for an AVP that I think ends in just a cross getting blocked. It didn't even result in a corner kick.

Weekly reminder for folks, AVP is the advanced platform language that Canada use to describe situations where they freed up and attacked. backer with the ball looking at the opponent's back line. Yeah. Or behind the opponent's back line. It's a fun insidery acronym that I'm not going to stop using. It's great. We had a lot of them and they had a lot of them.

Yep. I just noted that, well, another nice pass from Adams. This went to Musa down the left wing. I mean, I've said for a long time and I still think it's true that Adams is not the best at progressing the ball. with his passing or with his dribbling. So when I see him making passes that canceled defenders, I'm noting it and happy about it.

Now, this was a good one to note. It was an incisive ball. It wasn't like an obvious pass necessarily, and he hit it with the right weight, freed Musa down the left. And this was a big one, because I think it was, I mean,

we're only four minutes in, but this was the one where I noticed my first thing with Ferreira was like, ah, not quite, Jesus. And it was, Moussa has it. Ferreira's open and Musa misses him initially. Like, Musa, I think, should have sprung Ferreira in first.

But once Musa doesn't do that, Ferreira checks his run. And I don't know if this is because he's not as experienced, you know, as a pure out-and-out striker. But, like, he's got to keep going. Like, he has to finish that runoff because even though he's not going to get the ball, if he stops right there, he clogs things up for anyone coming in behind him. And he did that several times in this game in the first 25 minutes, probably four times, where he's essentially clogging up the space

and keeping that centerback that would have to trail him, he keeps that player right in the middle of the field. And you can't get anything then from Waya pinching inside next. You know what I mean? So that was the first movement issue from Ferreira that I saw in this game. And it repeated itself a few times. Interesting. I did not notice that.

In this case, it was clogged. And Pulisic does a little dancing at the top of the box to get himself enough space to take a left-footed shot. But it was, well, I don't know. about well wide, but it was comfortably wide of the near post. But still, you know, two pretty good shooting opportunities in the first five minutes. Not too bad. No, not bad at all.

In the eighth minute, some good pressing by Brendan Aronson and Tim Wea gets in space, drives at the goal, takes a shot from a tight angle where, here's another one of those. A little disguised reverse pass inside to Aronson, and that's probably a goal. or at least a much, much better opportunity to shoot. As it was, his shot was saved comfortably and he didn't really get all of it. And I think we're already in instance number two of Ferreira just hanging out in that inside space from Wea

like clogging things up. So it makes it less obvious for Waya to hit that pass. Like Aronson would be coming second. You know, if Ferreira clears out, Aronson runs into that space that's vacated. And that's more of like the rhythm pass that, like, in my opinion, makes it easier for Waya to see it. with Ferreira there, it doesn't look as much like an open pass,

so a way is less likely to try to slip that ball into a big congested area when he could just wall up the ball at the goal. Let me give a little context here, too. When Greg criticizes Jesus Ferreira, it's a hard-earned, it's a hard-earned criticism. So, you know, because if this is your first time listening to the scuff podcast, Greg has been calling for Ferreira as the nine for a while. But so when he, when he criticizes, hey, Seuss, you know, it's a, it's a real thing. This isn't just, you know, ragging on the MLS guy.

And this was the tackle from Aronson, too, right, that he just cleaned the guy out. Yeah. Like went in low to the legs, like definitely a foul, but whatever, we're going to, no whistle, so we're off and running. I did not see that it was definitely a foul, but maybe that's just because I'm a partisan. I mean, it doesn't matter. Like, again, it's a great risk to take because you get, if they call foul, so what if they don't call foul? here we go. There are going to be some bad referees of the World Cup.

They dig deep into the referee pool and you're going to get some, you're going to get some dicey situations. Yeah. All right. Well, another Anthony giveaway in the 10th minute, a really nice tackle a few moments later from Adams. I thought Adams had a great first 10 minutes. And then we get two big chances for Morocco. We sort of discussed this already, but I'm going to give the full timeline item here.

here. Ferreira nicks the ball off of Saiz in the press. So one thing about Ferreira, he was, he's tricky and decisive in the press. You know, he makes things complicated for the other team. But Aguard, the left centerback covers it and it kind of cycles back to the goalkeeper. And then Saiz comes back and it's this, at this moment where he hits that good left-footed switch to Messina on the left wing, which we talked about at the top of the show. And Massina carries it forward and passes it to Tisoudali, who's making an in and into outrun. into the channel on the left side behind Zimmerman

Tissadali drags the ball I mean very clever little play from him and manages to slip it just inside to Messina who was running free right into the box from about 12 yards out he hits it right at Matt Turner basically and I think the I mean I guess I'll leave this to you but it occurred to me

it was that Turner did well to palm it away from the goal pretty decisively because if he because if he just drops that right in the anywhere near the gold mouth, it's going to be an easy tap-in for Al-Cabi who was lurking. Yep, good strong hand from Turner. I mean, good positioning from Turner. He does the things right here.

The shot was close to him, so he didn't have to make a spectacular save. And I thought most of his saves were like that. I don't think there was anything outrageous about any of its saves today or last night. No, I just keep going back to the pitch control issue. And again, the quality of a Morocco team. And, you know, when Poole's not applying pressure on Saiz, as he collects the ball, you know, and is able to look up at the entire field, there's also the sophistication of all 10 other players. So it's not just him hitting this big switch. And there's this choreography, right?

So our midfielder are, you know, like nominally pressing. Adams is coming up to try to press this so it doesn't quite look so easy. But then their weak side midfielder is instantly like pinching in and high. And that's, you can see Brennan Aronson tracking him. So he's running actually over towards the left side line with their weak side midfielder. And that creates an even bigger gap between Aronson and that big wits player on the left side. So you just see all those little subtleties. And you're just like, man, it's such a fun thing to watch because the game is so intellectual about like, what can I be doing?

Even though I'm 60 yards away, what can I be doing to open up an extra six yards? You know what I mean? An extra three steps of space for a teammate. two paths you know what's even farther away and it's just this stuff that's just so fun to watch and so yeah so i got a kick out of going back through all these uh runs from morocco at us because it's like oh man they really did a job to open us up here yeah and um you know after after a little scramble there after that shot it falls to hekemi who slips in again tisudali who's who's kind of come over to the right side of the field and he drags

the ball and puts Tyler Adams on skates and has a shot with his left foot very close, but it's blocked out of bounds by a sliding Aaron Long. So that got to credit Aaron Long for his commitment there. No? I was just about to do a little bit of tiny bit of the opposite. I mean, his commitment there was great. He reacted well once that ball slipped in. I was going to say it was like the first instance of Long being, of them catching our centerback

snapping a little bit. And it's going to happen. And again, this is like a scramble situation. We've just had to scramble leading up to the initial shot. We're still all out of sorts. They slip the guy in now on the right side of the box, and we are sprinting back to recover it because Robinson had vacated that to go out with the initial rebound. And you're saying that was nowhere near, nowhere near where he should have been.

Yeah, I mean, it was long space then to fill earlier. And it was like, but it's, it's tough, right? Long and Zimmerman are standing right next to each other in the box, still trying to, like, sort things out after the initial shot. And there's a guy right next to him, but they don't both need to stand there holding hands on that man, right? So Long needs to realize Zimmerman's got this guy. I've got to shift over towards the ball rather than standing with Zimmerman on the weak side of the central area of the box. So he's just a little bit late, right?

And if you're a little bit late, then the block that you make ends up looking a little bit more spectacular. But, you know, the cleaner play is just to be out there sooner. He does everything right once the ball goes in and it's a good block. And he didn't, you know, just stand and be like, okay, good luck, Turner. but yes, again, you're just watching all of these little nuances play out, and it's fun. It's fun to watch a high-level team that can exploit those little tiny moments of disorganization. So I just was getting such a kick out of watching both teams do this stuff. Well, we need this.

We need these things so you can look at it and correct it for the next match. Yeah, and it's nice to see these things, and not in like a cagey sort of low XG, game. This was both teams in the other team's box, getting real opportunities. It's just a shame. There weren't more U.S. fans in the stadium. We will get into that. So I thought Musa was doing a little bit too much dribbling and losing it.

And this was a, you know, Pulisic had a few of these. McKenny had someone he came on. But Musa was probably the chief offender. at least in the first half. Definitely, definitely the case. And it was, uh, sometimes it would be like a positive followed by like, just the not the next positive that was needed, right? Right.

Just, just release the ball after you beat the first two guys. Uh, but I'm not going to be too hard on me. He says such a, such a helpful player for our team. So, you know, again, more Antoni's not being sharp. The ball goes under his foot, draws Aaron Long into another physical battle with Alcabi sometime around the 16th minute. 17th minute, the game goes into a bit of a lull. The pace slows down.

I think both sides kind of were taking a break here. Turner hits it long twice in a row. Morocco's doing the same thing, not much possession. And then right at the beginning of the 19th minute, another good chance for Morocco. This time, Akimi goes for a spin. For the first time you see sort of like the Ferrari

that he is. races up the sideline and Meg's Robinson inside to Unahi who hits another switch to Messina who carries it into space and then plays a pass on the ground diagonally to Tarabt, one of the midfielders in the area above the box and he dummies it wonderfully in my opinion for El Cabi

who has a shot with his left foot. It sits up perfectly for him. It's set up perfectly for him to hit it with his left foot but he hits it again right at Turner and it's a pretty comfortable save. Yep, and we're dealing with the same thing here of Morocco pinching our entire midfield over to the right side line. And we have them, right? We have them dead to rights.

And then Hakeemie does what Hakeemie can do. You know, we don't see against Panama. And maybe in a World Cup game, Robinson catches them in time to just wreck him on the sideline and not let him get that switch. Because that's the whole thing. It's like, we've got them pinned. And if we have them pinned, you know that everyone on the weak side is reading that. and they are all crashing over to deal with whatever terrible ball, Akeem he's going to hit out of there.

And then when he spins you and then he megs you and they can look up, it's like, oh, we are way out of position for a guy who has a ton of time on the ball. We're all in no man's land now. So that it can turn that quickly. And once it turns, that's when that we have to have that recognition that like we're broken. We have to immediately start hustling back. And then can we talk about the actual, the dummy?

Yeah, yeah So this was for me It was number two of Aaron Long Sort of making the wrong decision Wrong spacing Because that first ball goes in To Toropt And he

Like Long doesn't have to come to that guy Long leaves his man Who ends up taking the shot And he didn't have to Right That could have easily been Zimmerman's man It was sort of Zimmerman's zone But because Long leaves his man

And because Morocco Are a bunch of good soccer players they exploit it instantly with that really clever dummy and it's like now we have nobody to actually defend the shooter and we just have to hope that he doesn't hit a great shot or draw us all over and scramble and make the next pass and they just they settled for a shot that didn't trouble us yeah I thought that was another

Anthony was scrambling over to cover and yeah what were you going to say sorry No, it was just sort of another time of, I think, Long being a little bit. And I'm not, there was a big proxy war about Long and CCV. And I really don't think either of necessarily, like, did a lot to stake a claim to be the starting centerback next to Zimmerman, if we assume Zimmerman's starting as our centerback. But this was just another case of, you know, Long maybe being a little bit exposed. Okay. I didn't, I wouldn't have, I didn't notice that either.

So I'm learning a lot here. I have another Moussa giveaway in the 22nd minute. It just needs to release the ball earlier. Robinson and Hakemi clash, and Hakemi gets kind of mad at Robinson. And there's a shot from distance by Unahi. I think that's saved pretty easily. Before we get into the next items, which are really fun,

let me just say this is an ad-free podcast. Please consider supporting us on Patreon if you are able. If you do that, you get access to the Discord. you also get access to the Monday reviews with Vince and Waki, which are in an ongoing process of improvement, and I think they're often quite good. And then we're also, you know, we also have this growing catalog of historic recaps. Growing is a little bit generous. There's one so far. We recap the 1990, 5-1 loss to Czechoslovakia soon and very soon. We will, we will recap the Columbia 1994 game where we beat them two to one. And then we'll kind of work our way up through the

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to avoid the copyright cops. All right. 26 minute. So I have it at 25-07. I noticed that Pulisic is flaring up field from midfield.

So he's like dropping into the channel a lot. And there was much made of this in the postgame press conference about, you know, they were trying to get the ball to Pulisik between the lines. But he also was flaring upfield, starting a run in behind. You know, whenever he saw that one of his teammates deeper had the ball with space facing the back line. And with, sort of with the field in front of them. And this was Adams who received the ball facing the field.

And Pulisick flares upfield. But then he comes. Adams plays it square ball, I think, to long. so Pulisik comes back. Well, 15 seconds later, this time Zimmerman has the ball and Pulisic does the same flare and this time Zimmerman hits the ball over the top. And so before I describe the touch and everything,

I just want to say it's so nice to see this from Pulisic, you know, this sort of active offball enterprise. And I think he's really becoming a player who is so dangerous. when he doesn't have the ball. And then obviously he becomes even more dangerous when he does get the ball because he receives this pass

like a wide receiver over the shoulder with a perfect, I don't know, perfect, but a really, really nice touch with his right foot to bring it down. He dances around a defender who thinks he's going to shoot and then squares it to Aronson

for a tap-in essentially. And what a lovely goal. What a game-breaking moment. It was fantastic. Zimmerman with a great ball, and these two did something really similar in the Panama home game that eventually led I believe to Areola's header.

That's right. But Pulcic started out much wider in that scenario. But same kind of thing. And Zimmerman hit another really good ball here, giving Pulcick the chance to run under it, kept total control of the situation with his first touch, didn't let anything like go to waste. And yet everyone, again, in those panic moments,

Morocco overcommitted to Poolsick with two defenders, you know, but you kind of have to, so it's harsh to even call it an over-commitment, and that left the constantly working Brendan Aronson available for that tap-in. You know, Aronson was, like, deeper than Jesus Ferreira. I promise I'm also not, like, totally trying to rag on Ferreira.

But Frera's not slow. When that ball got hit upfield, like that should be Ferreira's cue to get up there, but he didn't make it, right? Like, it was Jedi and it was Brendan for the tap hit. and Ferreira wasn't arriving yet. So it was another time where I was like, man, he's got to, once that ball is hit from Zimmerman,

he's got to be going just in case we get on the end of it. But Aronson did the work, probably a 60-yard run, and we got our tap-in. Yeah, I mean, Erling Holland, he would have run all the way through the goal, you know. I think, you know, I'll read a quote from Pulisic from after the game. He said, I guess for you guys, it might not be easy, but it's what I've done. I've been training this my whole life.

He's talking, he's answering a question specifically about the touch. So for me, it's a touch that I expect myself to make. Yeah, maybe it's not for everyone. That's from Brian Strauss's Sports Illustrated article, you know, just from the press conference. But I was trying to think like if somebody played that ball to me at that speed a hundred times. How many times would I bring it down like that? I don't know. Look, maybe I love it.

Maybe once. I love what he's doing there But like we also have you know We watch plenty of soccer games That that touch is not executed You know 50% of the time by any player You know what I mean?

Like that's when you see it You're immediately dropped Like you immediately start thinking of the other players Who have who you've seen that And you remember those specific instances That Denny Burkamp has done that Because it's not a common thing That just happens every time someone runs underneath a long ball

Like that's still exceedingly rare so it's still it's definitely worth like all of the adjectives that were thrown at it it reminded the one that came to mind for me was Messi versus Nigeria at the last World Cup

where he brought it down with his right foot and then scored with his right foot with his right thigh really a little bit different trajectory on that pass but anyway the perfect angle of Pulisik bringing it down is at the 26th 11 mark if anyone wants to go back and make a jiff a gif.

28th minute Long gets turned by Alcabian has to tactically foul him. The yellow comes out. So that's not great, I don't think. Yeah, and Long was getting posted up, man. Like he was he was getting posted up a bit. And again, these are good players. This is going to happen sometimes. But this, if you're, if you're supposed to be the guy who doesn't get battleship,

like if that's kind of your calling card, then you can't get battleship. because you're not you're not giving us anything in the in the progressive passing department right so you you have to you have to provide something that's going to separate you from from the other guys and so just another example where he he wasn't doing it he wasn't he wasn't giving us what he's supposed to to justify his spot here so he's going to have to he's going to have to turn things up a bit if he really wants to be certainly if he wants to be starter number two yeah because this wasn't the only time he got posted up and spun yeah Well, the game's picking up pace around the 30 minute mark.

Pulisic crosses it to the back post and finds no runner. Ferreiro was in the vicinity. They kind of looked at each other with their hands out. I don't know. This was an occasion where I noticed Ferreira sort of checking to the ball when Pulisic was thinking maybe he would make a backpost run. What did you make of that little moment? So he could have done that and it might have worked out a little bit.

I didn't think this was an egregious example of Ferreira actually checking his run. This one actually kind of made sense. And it wasn't like, oh, man, like sometimes when he'd stop his tracks, it was, it was, visually it's like nails on a chalkboard, watching a move and everyone flowing. And then he starts his run and then stops right at the top of the box. And he's like, no, you have to. Like, you got to get out of there. If you're not going to get it, you got to go.

But this one wasn't, this one didn't strike me as one of those. Okay. 34th minute, we get the second goal. And it's a nice, long sequence of possession. marred only by a Zimmerman giveaway and immediate errands in recovery. The end of it came when Musa played a nice across the field pass to Wea in space,

30 yards from goal. He doesn't even try to play on the half turn here. He just taps it right back to Cannon. And Cannon plays it right back to Wea. He's still in a ton of space. This time he turns, takes two, three touches, and just rips one. And hit with a lot of venom, maybe some shimmy and some shake to the ball.

I couldn't tell for sure. But either way, Bono just bungles it. It goes right off his hands. So from the initial broadcast angle, it looked like a banger. But upon inspection, I think it was just a goalkeeping error. A good shot, but a good goalkeeper stops that, right?

Yes. Yes, a good goaliever deals with that and probably shouldn't even give up a bad rebound because it's hit with enough pace that you just get too strong like palms to it and that ball is going to go 25 yards away from your goal and he just flailed. He just flapped at it.

You know, which we'll take. Yeah, I assume there must have been a deflection from how awkwardly he went up with like one hand. I thought it must have been going far post and then hit off the defender and like veered significantly back to the keeper's left. But no, it just, he just misread it badly. Credit to Wea, like if he doesn't smack it that hard,

that doesn't happen. so good on them for hitting it that hard. But yes, we're just going to collect that gift. Yeah. I forgot a moment in the timeline, which was another way of shot from distance after a nice diagonal from Adams to Anthony, kind of a flat diagonal pass.

And then this is in the 21st minute. And then Pulisic just passed it into a nice little pocket for Waya, and he gets himself enough space to fire a good shot with his right foot, which is saved comfortably. But I have to, I have to mention that to say that it's, it's, what, what Way is doing here is he's wagering that if you hit it hard enough, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you put it in the side of the goal. Eventually, one of these is going to go in because it seems like he's been, he was hitting it out the goalkeeper a lot in this game.

He was doing that against Costa Rica, too, way back in qualifying. I'm glad you mentioned that other one too because it was another instance of Ferreira clogging things up to the point that he had to like scramble to get out of way of the way of way of shot from like two, yards away from Wea. So it's not like he was way upfield and then had to play dodgeball. Like he was going to interfere with the actual shooting motion of Tim Wea. That's how clogged he was in that 21st minute shot. Man, I did not expect this Jesus Ferreira inquest today. I mean, it should all be correctable. Like it's just, hey, finish your run. Start the run, finish the run. But yeah, it was just, it was super noticeable. It stood out like a sore thumb compared to the other performances we've seen.

from Jesus Ferre. Okay. All right. I do want to say that Musa, you know, Musa had been very, had been dribbling a little too much, but at this point in the game, it starts to feel like he's everywhere.

He's just recovering everything. He's pitch control, Mr. pitch control, I guess. I clocked a really good tackle from Aronson in our half where he takes the ball from Taropt and then recycles possession. But then Pulisik loses it on the dribble.

A good chance for Unahi in the 43rd minute. I think this is the last really big Morocco chance before the game is sort of on ice. I mean, it's kind of on ice at this point anyway, but he beats Ferreira to a corner clearance and then shakes Anthony Robinson and hits a shot that

it looks like Turner tipped over, but it was awarded as a goal kick. And then in the right in the stoppage time of first half, an excellent chance for Hayes-Ferera. Long wins. Bono long ball, heads it to Musa in the center circle,

a really clever touch to Pulisic, kind of loops it over somebody. Pulisic juggles it over to Aronson, and he drives at the back line and plays a crisp little pass on the ground to Ferreira between the lines. Excellent first touch, reference what you said earlier from Ferreira

with his left foot to set up a right-footed shot, and it's pretty much right at Bono. Yeah, Ferreira managed to sneak two touches in there. So that pass from Aronson is awesome. Love the risk-taking. Love the execution. It just sneaks by the defender's, like, trail foot. He tries to, like, lift his heel up to clip it.

So Ferreira is really tight to that defender. He has almost no time to react to that ball actually getting passed the defender. And he just gets his left foot out and almost just corrals it perfectly to his right foot. And he actually gets another touch in to set up the shot. And he does all this in such a tight space that this is where I'm like, no other striker for us does this. They might have gotten the shot off in a different way. But you can just see, like, the touches he's. capable of just isn't anywhere else in the pool, I don't think.

So I was happy to see that. I was happy to just see him have a run that he made and finished actually get rewarded with the past too. And we should also mention Brennan Aronson has been fantastic on the soccer ball. Yeah. And so I'll probably use this to kind of dip into that a little bit if that's all right. Please. So I had some worries about this because Aronson hasn't been.

hadn't been like fantastic on the soccer ball in this way even through qualifying. I didn't think. He contributed with some goals, some key moments, but they were always like these isolated incidents in these qualifying games. But you know, I went back through the Mexico home game where Timwayo was outrageous and was like, okay, well, what was Aronson doing on the other side? And I don't think he had like completed a forward pass. And so for the entire 60 minutes he was in that game before he got his eyes gouged out.

So it was awesome to see him do this. I want to qualify too that he wasn't doing this as an eight, right? When we were in possession, I know the big talk going into this game was we were going to play Aronson as a center mid. But when we were in possession, he was still just playing the same role he'd always played, which was basically as an inverted winger or 10. And that was our shape, right? So should we get into the shape a little bit more? Yeah.

You don't want to use the phrase half-space merchant anymore. You feel like it's played out? Well, Burrhalter dropped pocket winger on us in the press conference leading up to this. And I feel like we're done now. It's got to be pocket. That works. So we ran our five. And I thought this was, this is a really clever move from Burrhalter.

Wait, wait, wait. When you say we ran our five, what do you mean? Sorry. The constant, basically since Burrhalter is taken over is that in possession, we have like a front five. And it's not necessarily like foosball. They're all up there at the exact same time. But like you divide the field into five vertical. zones and the highest spaces up wide, you've got five of them.

We basically have one guy primarily responsible for occupying each one of those spots. And in this game, what I think was really clever was, I don't think it was necessarily like moving errands into center mid. I think it was essentially like, for me, it was like a desk calculation, a Sergenio desk calculation. And that desk is usually in our front five. He's usually responsible for the wide part of the right side of the soccer field up high. With Dest out, I think it's a bad math to fill that space with Reggie Can or D'Andre Edlin. They're

way less effective players in the attacking third than Serginio Dest. So what Burhalter did here was with Dest out, and I don't know if that's exactly what's driving him, but it was definitely the consequence. We filled that space with an excellent attacking player in Tim Wea, who would normally be in the half space with Dest on the outside. So now we have Wea out there, and we get to still use Arensen in the half space as a 10, which is where he is at his best. And then we dropped Reggie Cannon into the back, kept him home, again, kind of a throwback to 2019, where we kept a stay home fullback. In 2019, it was Tim Ream usually as the left fullback staying home. It's the opposite. To create a back three. Now it was Cannon staying home, back three

with Musa and Adams as a two to try to link play. Now, if when Dest is the is the advance, right, wing player in that front five, then Adams drops into the, does Adams drop into the back three? If, you know, if Antony and Dest are the, are both wide and high, how do we get to that back three? Can you remind me? We haven't been, you know, we've been doing a two, three, five, which I think we should still do. That's what's going to be really interesting, right? So this wasn't as much an Aaron's center mid test as it was like in possession as can he defend as a center mid.

So this is where the Aaron's, you know, right? and conclusions I'm drawing are still mixed because while he was very good, the things he was very good at in this game were the number, we're sort of doing things in the half space that he already does. Like that's already the position he'd been playing where he was a little bit suspect and where the team was suspect was our midfield cover when he was defending as an eight in our block and in our press. And that's where it's like, okay, there are still questions. There are questions about whether that was good enough where we were satisfied that we can do this or whether we thought that we were too open and not protected enough in the back

with that scheme in defense. Yeah. We want England. We want England. I mean, yeah, but that's the thing, right? You got to test it. And it's not going to be, we're not going to go in and shut down Morocco, right? These are really good.

We're not just going to be like, keep Morocco to zero shots on goal. They're going to get some chances because they're good. And over 90 minutes, we can't stop them for the entire time. But that was, so that was just, I guess all this to say on the ball, Aronson was excellent. But that doesn't necessarily mean that like, oh, he's the right fit for it to play center mid because if if he's in the game playing as a winger, he would still be in all the same spaces he was in doing those things.

It all just comes down to whether or not we were happy with his defense performance. And, you know, I'd just say jury's still out there. He was good. He was better than I thought he would be for sure. Getting into duels. but there definitely are questions about whether or not it was too open as a team with that midfield setup. Well, if it's something that he can be taught,

it sure seems like he has a decent chance of getting it right. Because I agree 100%. He was way better on the ball than he's been throughout qualifying. And I'm going to, I honestly, I rate him a lot higher this morning than I did yesterday morning as a player. call me crazy so at the half we get CCV for Zim.

Sorry, real quick before we jump off the shape because it was a different look. The big question is what happens when Dest is back?

Like if Dest is back, I don't think you run Dest in that Reggie Cannon role, right? Like that makes no sense. So do you go back to MMA in the midfield if everyone's healthy? and drop one of Wea or Aronson? How does it work?

Well, could you go to like have Arons, I'm sorry, have Robinson stay back as, like, in the Tim Ream role and then have like maybe Wea out wide and Pulisica as? I don't know. I don't know exactly. But I guess I'm just not, I'm not sure Antony gives us enough in the attack these days to. to be always up there wide and wide left.

Like he's okay. He's good in transition. He's good at making like a big run and getting a cross-off. But boy, moment by moment having him as one of our top five attacking players, it's not always pretty. I don't know if it's optimal. It's definitely a question. I mean, statistically, Robinson was ridiculous in qualifying.

for offensive production, right? I mean, he's scoring goals. He might have been our leading point score overall over qualifying. He's got a lot of opportunities, though, you know? Yes. But yeah, so that really, it's going to be the big question, right? Whether we want to tinker with that kind of thing, even though we kind of know who our best players are. Do we tinker with how they rotate, get in?

And I think we have, this was a good game. To say we have a lot of positive things. Because if the worst thing that happens is, no, Anthony just stays as a left back who's totally responsible for getting upfield, we've seen that that can work. So it's not like we're grasping at straws here. We've got a good floor for our team format. And if you were to play as like a Reggie Cannon style, Tim Ream style outside centerback in possession, you know, he could still get forward and do his thing on occasion. Um, all right. Anything else on the shape?

Because I know, you know, there's a certain portion of the, of the listenership that is, listens to the whole podcast just for this part, you know? No, it's, it's all just going to be about like, remembering that it won't be an easy, okay, so now Aaronson's proven he can play the eight. And then we get Destin and we stick him at right back. And now we have even more, like, more attacking pieces. Uh, it's just going to be a little bit more complicated. Uh, and obviously when Geo Rainey gets back, gets complicated, more.

complicated still for how those attacking pieces will slot into, you know, that front five. But I think it was a really good adjustment from Burrhalter because we didn't have to have Ayrton play the eight in the buildup. We got to play him as a 10 and we got to play Wea. So we definitely landed with the best front five we could put on the field for this match. And then, I mean, Luca Della Torre's existence also makes it a little more complicated, too. So here we don't need a fourth eight. I had somebody message me and say, we don't need a fourth eight now.

I mean, I think you can make that case. Like we schemed around it, right? Because if we just, if we go three, two, five, and Adams can become one of those guys, then that adds, that essentially adds Adams to the eight pool for those, for those setups. Yeah. All right. Forget what we've been talking about for the past 16 months. The fourth eight is a stay home right back.

Right. All right. So CCV comes on for Zimmerman, Scali for Jedi, and then, and then Hajie Wright comes on for Jesus Ferreira at the half. Scali immediately nearly gets beaten by Hakimi, but draws a foul. Kind of a little messy, but a good result, not sure about the process. It was nervy. It was nervy from Scali, wasn't it? Yeah, a little bit. Musa loses the ball in midfield again, but then fights back for it. wins a little applause from the fans.

I thought a big chance for the U.S. in the 49th minute, a gorgeous 16-pass sequence gets us through Morocco's press from our back left corner and then right flicks it into the center circle for Pulisic and Pulisic plays a lovely looping early pass to Aronson in behind and then Aronson is patient and waits for Wright's run to develop and slips a pass in behind for him and Wright has a good opportunity with his left foot and doesn't get all of it hits it right at Bono. Again, probably could have squared it to Wea running free in the middle of the box.

Oh, I wasn't sure about that one. I'm usually the square guy, but I thought the defender had the square covered and it was definitely time for Hadji Wright to shoot that ball. Awesome pass from Aronson. And just once again, in that entire buildup through that entire 16 pass sequence where we were, you know, flirting with some danger back there with Aaron Long and Matt Turner, not our, not our best Rondo players in their own box. You mean Turnerino?

He was great with the ball at his feet in this game. He was mixed, but, you know, all our goalkeepers are mixed with the ball. We're happy when they're, when they have a mixed performance. Well, the ball went through his feet twice in this sequence, and I thought both passes were quite nice, or maybe three times. I can't remember exactly. But through the whole buildup, again, I just want to reiterate, like, Brennan Aronson definitely not the eight in this situation.

Like you have Musa and Adams, both being like the two players, the two center mids who are very clearly the center mids. And Aronson and Pulisik very clearly like in the advanced line, Aronson higher than Pulisick through the whole thing. So it's just another way of like talking about the way we talk about it and what the positions and roles actually are in the game. Yeah. I love the early pass from Pulisic too.

because I think there have been times in even the past 12 months where he takes that flick down from right and just sort of dribbles until there is nowhere else to dribble. In this case, he doesn't even dribble once. He just one times it hits it first time right over to, right over the line to Aronson. So I love that. Scali gets forward in the 51st minute.

Pulisic's driving forward and slips it to him and the cross is cut out. kind of okay from Scali there. I noticed a good tackle in the 52nd minute where CCV wraps up to Sudali, who has not been easy to wrap up on the night and wins the ball. I thought CCV looked,

he had a big error in the game, but he did, I thought, look pretty poised. Yeah, on the ball, he looked calm. Is that what you're talking about on the ball? Or you just talking about even 1 v1 defending? Both, really, yeah. All right, then let's get to it. And then he loses Tisadali on the next sequence,

and it's a cross from Mascina, and Tisadali gets a free header that Turner saves. I'm not sure what he's trying to do here. He sort of stunts to the near post. I mean, CTV does. Like he starts, runs towards the crosser for a moment. Oh, this was all Tisudali, and who delivered the cross? Do you remember?

Messina. Okay. I watch this over and over again, and again, it's just like this beautiful, almost telepathic sequence because it's like the quarterback throwing the ball before the receiver's broken, right? Tisudali is just on the weak side of the goal, right? He starts coming across. Ccv is tracking him, like, working as hard as he can to stay right next to his man. And even as the ball is delivered, Tisou Dolly is still driving across the goal, like towards the ball. And it's just right as the ball is struck. So Tisoudali didn't wait to see, you know, where the ball is going. It's right as the ball is being struck that he stops. So he and Messina must just have this connection that he knows that Messina's reading this as Tisudali setting CCV up and then he breaks. And CCV can't break in time. So CCV takes, you know, his last two steps still coming towards the ball, plants,

and then basically just has to jump right then. And that's all he can do. So it definitely looks bad for CCV. And, you know, when you're up against. sophisticated players, they're going to make you look bad here. So, you know, I don't know what to tell you. Like, we're running up, it's good to show what sort of the limits of CCVs game reading are. It's also a really well-executed play from Morocco.

Yeah, how do they do that? How do they know that, how does Messina know that Tzu Dali is going to go far post? It's wild. And then also, also need to point out, like on this play, Morocco gets the ball out to Messina wide open because, once again, Aaron Long gets post. posted up in midfield, and I don't remember as Tisudali or the other attacker, and is able to just, like, hold him off comfortably, create three yards of separation so that he can ping that ball diagonally out to the left wing. So my big takeaway, I know the proxy war was raging all week, but was that, again, neither CCV nor long really, like, did a ton to demand that they are the, the, in this 11 going forward. well they're not they're not out neither of them should be like out but uh but i i'm not like oh this

there he is that's our that's our starting centerback for the world cup right well the starting center back for the world cup is hoover alabama's own chris richards no i'm not i'm not as sure about that as i make make out to be um well just and i know i know it didn't make the timeline but there was one more instance of uh of a morocco chance a little bit earlier than this uh where it was just a long throw right and it kind of got bobbled around in the box and it's CCV coming out to press the bouncing ball and he just gets cut badly and then we scramble to block the ensuing chances

but it was just another thing where it's like, okay, so CCV isn't going to just like be a flawless defender and it's not that I expected him to but it's just one of those other moments where you sort of see what our limitations are in the player pool. The floor isn't terrible for any of these guys at centerback but we're not like no one hit it out of the park.

Okay. I like it. I like that way of summing up. We need Chris Richards back as soon as possible. All right. I clock another cage match win from Aronson just before the 60th minute. He's dancing and he draws a yellow card foul, I think.

Or just a foul, maybe. 61st minute, a good ball from Cannon, who was overall very conservative with the ball at his feet. He did not look like there was a free-flowing feel to the way the U.S. played that did not apply, I don't think, to Reggie Cannon. But, you know, maybe that's not what he's not what he was asked to do, you know. I don't know. To be honest, that's my other Ferreira apology here, or my one Ferreira apology. You know, I think you had a note in here that he was mostly invisible in his 45 minutes.

And I think that's true. I also think it's the case that we don't have a bunch of players who are going to be able to take it from the back three and skisely. and skip a line into the feet of Ferreira, which is, you know, one of the advantages of playing in there is that that should be available. But we just don't,

we didn't have the personnel in this game to really be doing that. Yeah, the way we get through the lines is, uh, is Musa dribbling a lot of the time. Um, so,

so Cannon Springs, Hajie right, a good pass, actually, and he chases it down on his right foot, but stumbles over it, over it, and it goes,

uh, He plays it back to Wea after collecting himself. He squares it to Aronson, who takes a nice turn and just rips one. Again, kind of right at Bono, but a good hit. And the Perry falls wide to Pulisik, who hesitates, takes a touch inside just before Hekimi arrives, misses the ball and barrels into him. Burials into him maybe a little strong. He kind of barrels into him and stops immediately upon contact.

And Pulisic goes down and makes the most of it, and it's a penalty, which Pulisic gives to Haji right by playing him a straightforward bounce pass. After holding the ball while everyone was talking to him. Yep. About the ensuing penalty, getting in his head. Haji must have been expecting it. They must have had some chat about it because Haji was expecting it. He comes up and buries it to the left side, hits it low and hard enough to get past

a penalty. And I just thought that was a really cool moment. I know everybody's saying this, but Haji, Hajji's path to the national team has been much less illustrious than Pulisks or McKinney's or Adamses or desks and many others and I think it's a great moment to see him get a goal for the national team.

Awesome moment. Totally celebrated. My other favorite thing about the sequence was as we were building up to it and the ball was with Tim Wea and Hadji, you know, he had done all that hard work to hold the ball up and bought time for us, but he was, you know, out of the picture. He was down at the edge of the box. who came flying in to fill that striker space Joe Scali. Did he?

I was just so amazing. Waya has the ball and here comes Joe just like slashing through the box. Swing back in his way into the box. So I just love to see that and so he did, he made the run, he finished his run, went straight through and waya looked him off, went to Brendan Aronson who again loved the venom on his shot. Oh, that is, that's who was running right by Aronson at that point. Oh, yeah. I see. He was a blur, but he was doing it. It does add a little chaos and a little confusion for the defense.

Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I'm not like making fun. I mean, I'm kind of making fun, but it's because it was our left back flying, or, you know, on his debut. But it's an important movement to make in the sequence. Yeah. All right. Malik Tillman comes on for Christian Pulisick and Luca Deletore, for Todd.

Tyler Adams. That's a bit of a surprise. Luca at the 6th. I guess it's not that big of a surprise. Kellen Acosta wasn't available. We needed to get Adams off the field. But man, I thought Luca was so good when he came on. Just imperious. And like his ability to dribble out of trouble or to drive the ball forward, it's always surprising to see it.

I don't know. It was like a great test. It was because we again, we'd only seen it so far against weaker teams. So for him to come in and look as comfortable as he did, that's huge. I feel like I feel like I want to say he put a padlock next to his name for the World Cup, along with, I mean, everyone else already had Aronson in. But like once I saw that, I was like, okay, that's it. There's no, there's Jordan Morris isn't catching Brendan Aronson and knocking him off the plane.

Like Brendan Aronson's going to guitar done and dusted. No, Jordan Morris. Yeah. even if Arensen hits a wall at leads and like can't can't break through like that game right there was enough to be like it doesn't matter he's he's in the way out category now he's going we got to wrap up in the next four minutes here but we do we don't have to go we don't have to do all these timeline items but the let's talk about Tillman what did you make of him it's tough it's tough to really gauge he he definitely didn't look well I should say right away he did look like it was a bit too big for him. Yeah. Tripped over the ball and gave it away on his first touch. Yeah.

If any of you remember Julian Green's debut against Mexico in friendlies ahead of the 2014 World Cup, that's immediately where my mind went. It was like, oh, he's just like the game's going to be, games going to be tough for him to catch up to. But he didn't at all. He settled in nicely. I should give Julian Green credit to. He should have drawn a penalty in that Mexico game with the referee. He was a bit of a clown.

Thank you for that clarification. But no, Malik looked good, right? I mean, he settled into the flow of it. He could get involved in combinations. And then he got a shot at the end. Well, now that we have 200 people who can play as a nominal number eight, I'm like, we need, I was thinking to myself last night, we need more people who can stretch a back line

because it's basically Way and Pulisic who are comfortable doing that. And I don't think Tillman is that kind of player. That's obviously not disqualifying. He did have a nice combination with McKinney that didn't quite come off. He looked, he looked strong in tight space. There's not that much else to say. We'll see. We'll see how he looks in the rest of these games.

Amin Harit came on for, for Morocco. I always noticed that because I've watched so much Amin Harit in my life. Former Shaka player now at Marseille. You have basically like a connection to him at this point. Yeah, I feel like, I feel like we're related almost. And then there's the penalty on Scali. It looked pretty dubious to me, but not conclusively no contact. And he did swing.

I do think just to be kind of annoying and rulesy about it, if VAR were invoked in this case and the call on the field was a penalty, I'm not sure Var would have been able to overturn it. There are going to be enough cameras at the World Cup. That would have been overturned at a heartbeat. Wow. I don't know that. I don't know that there would have been a caution for simulation, but there's no penalty there.

Are you sure he didn't touch him? Yeah, I'm sure. Okay. I'm sure. In the 89th minute, Wea does some sex on the left side line. It was really nice. Kind of did like a, like, croifed a guy and then got fouled. And then I just clocked some poor recognition from Tillman on a ball from McKinney in behind, down the right side.

did he think it was going to go out of bounds? Like he should have been running on to it. So I'm like, this guy's not ready to stretch a back line if he's not going to run after that ball. No, there wasn't. We didn't do too much, right, for the last 15 minutes? There was that Tillman shot where he kind of smashed it up the year post low. Oh, yeah. That's a good one.

Good for him to get a shot off there in a respectable one. I'll say one thing I noticed, though, in the trivet with McKinney, Luca, and Musa. was the back line was, they were much tighter to the back line in Morocco attacking situations. Like that, it was noticeable. When the ball would go wide from Morocco, you would see our back line lined up. And then you would see like our three midfielder stacked up on top of them and was like, oh, that's more recognizable as a defensive setup. So, you know, that's just something to take from it.

Like, at least, especially for Luca, he was like attentive to his defensive responsibility there as sort of the nominal six. What a guy. Luca deletore. So before we go, let's quickly talk about the pool of six comments after the game. I don't think, I'll say this is my opinion, but I don't think he's great at expressing himself.

I don't. I shouldn't laugh. No, I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. He's not like Captain PR, right? No. And I think, you know,

he's always like, so button down, button down, button down, button down. And then like the only time you hear him say anything, beyond the button down stuff is when he gets so frustrated that it just like bubbles through. And so I think when he said what he said, which was, you know, basically like, I don't know what's going on, but why aren't there more Americans here? I think it's just, you know, totally unscripted, just saying, just letting his frustration vent. And I'm going to kind of pretend to be his communications guy.

But if I were him, I just, you know, turn and look in the camera and say, hey, America, we're building something exciting with the national team, with the men's national team. And we need your support. Come out to the games. We'll try to put on a show. I think we put on a show tonight. We wish more of you were here. I think, you know, if he had time and, you know, had me on retainer, he could have come up with something brilliant like that. And I think, you know, hat tip to Charlie Bowman for digging out this quote from Michael Bradley in 2015, but it's very relevant. And I saw this on Twitter. This is Michael Bradley saying, certainly when you talk about the United States in a bigger way, one of the beautiful things about our country is the ability for people from all over the world to come here and live and work and in some ways make new lives for themselves. And that's something that I'm personally very proud of. So what it means in a footballing sense that every now and then we play with a few less fans than we deal. with it. I think that's a good, that's a good quote from Bradley.

Bells, you would, you would put that bumper sticker on your windshield for sure. That is, I don't, I'm not a bumper sticker guy, but, okay, apologies. You'd put it a sticker on your, on the saddlebags of your bicycle. Put a tattoo on my forehead. No, so, so just independent of like the pool of sick drama, uh,

if we're calling it that, uh, I'm actually like, for me, the preference would be to schedule these games at home, but in hostile environments, because these are World Cup qualifiers were trying to get ready for like a more neutral territory game. Yeah. So I would prefer that our fan, like the people supporting the U.S. team, be outnumbered in the stadium or like roughly even because that's what we're going to be dealing with. So, I mean, you think in Qatar, you think the fans are going to be cheering for us or Iran?

I believe they will be cheering for Iran. I suspect that would be the case as well. So, so yeah, so for me it's like, all right, well, I get what he's saying. and it should be a home game and you're excited to play at home. But as far as preparing us for the World Cup, give me like people whistling at us for passing back to the goalkeeper. Give me, like, I want all of that stuff. I want our guys getting pushed in that sense.

Yeah, I see the optimization case there for sure. But I do think also, so I guess to my final thought on Pulisic is just like, he just don't like get too mad at him for what he said. I don't think he put that much thought into it. And it's just, it's probably, it's a little bit natural for a, you know, the star player of the national team to see that it's not a sellout. I don't know what the exact ratio of Morocco fans to U.S. fans was in the stadium. Vince says it was four to one. He was there.

No, four to one in favor of the U.S. No, in favor of the U.S. Four to one in favor of the U.S. It didn't look that U.S.e on TV to me, but, you know, he was there. I mean, it can, either way, like, you know, a, you know, 20% of fans is, that's a lot of people in a stadium. That's a couple thousand people. Five thousand to be exact.

Yeah. So, so, you're going to hear them when, when they're, when they're all pulling together. I think, I, I think that adds to it. I get the idea of, like, World Cup qualifying matches. You do want it to just be a rowdy, all, all American cheering section. But in, like, in any other game, whatever, like, I want more of, like, that atmosphere of a little bit of, a little bit of hostility. Well, you go back and look at like tune-ups from 2014, which were admittedly like right before the World Cup.

But there was that one in Seattle where Fabian Johnson hits that incredible left-footed shot on the Michael Bradley chip in behind. And there were a bunch of Turkish fans in Seattle? No, it was the opposite. It was like a rabid U.S. fan, U.S. crowd. But then again, it's the second game in Cincinnati in eight months and the fourth in Ohio for about the same period. And, you know, the women have played in Columbus a couple times

in that over that stretch. Tickets aren't cheap, so if you've been to two games already, like, put games in other places, then since I've been all for the Midwest getting, it's getting, getting qualifiers, but this has gotten out of hand. And it's, and like, go to L.A., go to New York. Come on, guys. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.