Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #282: USA v Uruguay recap

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Another good friendly, this one in Kansas City against 13th-ranked Uruguay. Scally struggles, Ferreira against doesn't finish his chances, Musah shines, and we have a bunch of decent data heading into the softer back half of the international window.support 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. A zero-zero draw in Kansas City against the heavily rotated but still quite good Uruguay side. Another useful friendly, I'd say. What about you, Greg? Oh, super useful friendly, super entertaining watch, I'll say, with some caveats later. And as long as you can extricate yourself from the Joe Scali blood feuds. It's been a really enjoyable window to watch some of our really good players play soccer for the U.S. Yeah, I thought, I mean, especially the first half, was extremely entertaining.

Speaking of the Joe Scali blood feuds, I got to clarify something. I don't think on this podcast we have been loudly demanding Scali be called up, have we? I mean, like, we've sort of said, hey, give him a chance. But I don't know. I feel like over the last six months, months we've been pretty ambivalent about Scali.

I mean, mostly ambivalent, I feel like I think he would have been useful, but I think what we've been saying is like, we've got to find somebody who races the floor. I think we were, I was, I was calling for DeWan Jones to stick around in January. Yeah. When we lost Yedlin and

Dest through the last window, I was just sort of saying Yedland to suspension, Canon to COVID and Dest to injury. My big thing was like, I don't care who they are, just have two nominal rightbacks in the camp for World's Cup qualifying. Scali would have, you know, been a name up there, but we brought Shackmore and it's an

emergency, but it's just like, I don't care if it's Brooks Lennon coming down from Atlanta to Orlando, just, you know, carry the right number of rightbacks. But no, I, you know, I've been heavily in favor of auditions for a while now, and through World Cup qualifying, it switched more from auditioning to being like, let's start incorporating guys in camp so that we aren't throwing them in cold if we need to bring them in later on. Scali, of course, you know, Scali, of course, did not have a good game. And that, that is what reignited the blood feuds, I believe. Well, then let's just, let's just talk about it right up front then. He didn't have a good game, right? No. I'm going to go back, what I'm going to go back

to here is an analogy I think we used back in 2018. I think it was, you know, when there was a big, big discussions about whether or not we could, we could use guys who weren't playing for their first team, who were at big clubs, right? And I think I, I think, I, I think at the time, actually, it was about Keaton Parks, who was at Benfica. Yeah. And the analogy was about trying to measure somebody's height, right? Where height is the stand in for soccer performance. And when you're playing at a big club like that, you know, you're trying to measure somebody's height, but you also on the platform where you're bringing these guys up to measure their height, there's a brick wall, right?

You can't see through it. And the brick wall is, you know, six feet tall, let's say. So in order to measure their height at all, if they're at a big club, they have to be taller than the brick wall. And then you'd be like, oh, okay, they're actually this tall. But if there are anything below that brick wall, you can't see them at all. So it's like, no, you don't have any information. They might be just below the level or they might be way below the level. You don't know.

So, you know, you've got to try to find other ways to evaluate them, whether it's training, discussions with coaches, youth camps, and then figure out if they might be close enough to, you know, to the level you need, which might not be the same level that Benfica needs, right? That's the long analogy. Joe Scali's measurement was being measured against Uruguay. That's a different measuring stick than being measured in some of the World Cup qualifying games we had. It's maybe less intense, but it's way more likely to, even at half speed Uruguay, as they showed, are way more likely to just expose little mistakes and turn them into danger, even if that danger doesn't necessarily lead to huge chances or goals.

You're just like, oh, on any individual play, you could see like, oh, man, They just did us there. And so that's kind of what we have to take into account. Because on the other side of the field, the other guy who did not measure up very well was DeAndre Yedlin, who we have seen do a very confident job through World Cup qualifying when that brick wall isn't so high. So we know that Yedlin went from being a, you know, a decent performer. And because we have that information, because we've seen him get measured against lower walls, we know a little bit more about him. We say, okay, but he did a, you know, he did a solid job in some of these other games. Whereas with Scali, the only information we have now is this game, basically.

So that's all we can work with. It's kind of like the Anthony Robinson situation back when he got worked against Brazil and Columbia in 2018. Yeah, right, right. So just getting skinned against some exceedingly good players, talented players, you know, that can't just be like, oh, that's all he has now. It tells us that, you know, Scali's floor. I mean, it definitely establishes that in this game, at least Joe Scali was not a guy who you, were going to want to rely on for extended times to shut down a team as good as Uruguay. You know, we happen to get through without giving up a goal.

But, you know, the variance was definitely playing in our favor today, just like it did against Morocco. Did you think Yedlin was as bad as Scali? Because I didn't. I thought, I thought Yelan was kind of just his usual self, pretty much. I don't know, man. I thought he was. no he probably wasn't as bad as Scali but it's hard

to even try to like quantify it he was really rough and it was a lot of like he was napping on the weak side he was napping sometimes even like one pass away and Uruguay exposed almost like all of those times that that was happening his possession wasn't very good

he did have the one very bright moment that I'm sure is on the timeline his overlapping run around Musa where he delivers the ball for our best chance of the game to Jesus Ferreira But overall, no, if that was the only data we had on DeAndre Yedlin, right, you know, if you just ignore the other six years that he's been playing for the U.S., eight years,

you'd be like, okay, this guy is not ready for the World Cup. But I mean, if that's what we're saying about Scali, we would say the exact same thing about Yedlin. But we have more information on Yedlin, and we should use that information, you know, to help assess the player as a whole. I thought, yeah, I mean, I'll be interested to hear the stuff as we get through the timeline that that prosecutes the Edlin in terms of being as as as rough as Scali or even in the same ballpark but I thought I think a lot of people would disagree and I my my initial impression after watching twice is that it wasn't in the same ballpark but I'm open to being wrong about

that no that's probably fair like if you're going to do the you know the half spaces you know player by player play by play aggregation here it could easily be that Scali was way below you know, just he had a lot more actions on the ball, uh, defensively, I think, um, because I think, I think part of it was they were, they were going after, like they saw. Yeah, absolutely. So, so if that happens, uh, you're going to rack up a ton of volume. And if you're not at the level, that volume is going to, uh, keep driving your score pretty far down. It was the same, it was the same pattern. It was Vena switching it one way or another to the other wingback,

Varela and then Varela going at Scali in a ton of space. or sometimes going at the space behind Scali, as I'm sure we'll get into. The other thing I think worth mentioning with Scali is that the bar is not that high for trials in this spot, you know, for trying out somebody in this spot. We have Anthony Robinson.

He is our undisputed left back, starting left back, that is. But after him, there's really nobody. So, you know, this idea that it was a waste of time to try Scali in here, because he's like clearly not ready full stop is I don't agree with that either even though I think he was quite bad it was it was important to try somebody out we've already tried out George Bellow I kind of wish it was DeWan Jones you know to your point earlier that we were trying out there but we're trying out Scali now so it was it was it was a worthwhile experiment for sure right and the doors enclosed even even through this window you know I don't know what Jedi had an illness he came back and play the second part of the second half or the whole second half. So clearly he can play. He can play still a little bit.

But it'll be interesting to see what we look like. You know, the Grenada game is not going to tell us much, if anything. Granada, Granada. Grenada. It's Grenada. I've been corrected on that, yeah. And then the, but the El Salvador game away could like tell us something. Remember, we didn't look very good in that game.

So Gino Dest playing left back in that away qualifier did not look very good in that game. So we have some, you know, we have this sort of. benchmark to compare against for whoever gets those left back minutes. Okay. So a prospective backup left back has been dealt with here at the top of the podcast. Let's do the lineups. Uruguay was, was it a 352 they started in? I think it was.

Yeah, that's what I'm calling it. Fernando Muslera, the goalkeeper, plays for Galatasaray. Martin Caseras plays for Levanti in Spain Diego Godine who needs no introduction and Jose Jimenez also who's at Atletico of course rounded out the back three

so that was from I gave it from right to left from their point of view and then the wingbacks were Guillermo Varela who plays for Dinamo Moscow and Matias Vina who plays for Roma somewhat sparingly was the left wingback he was pretty good I thought And then Manuel Ugarte, Maro Arambari, and Fernando Goriaran were the midfielders.

And they play for respectively sporting in Portugal, Hattafé in Spain, and Santos Laguna in Mexico. And then the two strikers up top were Darwin Nunez, the sort of Wonder Kid from Benfica, and then Maxi Gomez, who plays at Valencia, a little bit older guy. And then it's just worth pointing out Uruguay was rotating a lot here. It's not a pure B team with Jimenez and Godine on the back line, but it was pretty close. Some players that started on the bench were Federico Valverde of Real Madrid,

Matias Vecino of Inter Milan, and Lucas Terrera of Fiorentina, who's on loan from Arsenal. Also, Edinson Kovani, of course, and Fekundo Belishtri, who was very dynamic, started on the bench. And then Barza defender, Ronald Arajo, didn't even get in the game.

So definitely not as strong of an Uruguay team as the one that beat Mexico 3 to 0 last week, but, you know, still a strong team compared to who we've been playing against. Strong team, again, like, it was the same with Morocco, right? You just have this baseline soccer execution level and this basic soccer, like, pattern recognition level, which was, once again, for me, the most enjoyable thing, where it's like if the U.S. is out of position even slightly somewhere in our 11, especially in our back four or back six, however you want to frame it.

Like Uruguay would recognize it in mass and then they would hit it, right? They would like, you'd be like, oh man, there was a gap and suddenly Uruguay is in that gap. And we are, you know, we are backpedaling. We are like, it's desperation time. So that's exactly what you want to see in these games. It's something where, you know, it almost like shows how badly we miss that. you know, in other games where we can get away with a lot more, even if the games kind of turn into these bogs sometimes in Cockacap or Slog,

uh, it still isn't the kind of slog where it's like, oh man, they just put us through the ringer for, you know, 15 straight minutes. It's like, oh,

the game has bogged down for 45 minutes. It's not, it doesn't ever feel to me like what it kind of looked like in these last two games. You just said a slog and a bog. It's sounds like you've been, you've been reading some children's books. When Veseenian,

know, and Valverde came on, things did start to happen even a little more rapidly. There were some chances that kind of came out of nothing, or at least out of really good balls from those two guys. The U.S. lineup was Sean Johnson and goal, DeAndre Edlin, Walker Zimmerman, Aaron Long, and the aforementioned Joe Scali on the back line, and then Tyler Adams, West McKinney, and Eunice Musa in the midfield, Tim Wea, Heseseserra, and Christian Pulisick across the front line. the only big surprise I guess was Johnson in goal right yeah and I've heard people wonder if

he might be going back to his club ahead of the nation's league games and so they wanted to get him a game I haven't seen any of that any confirmation of that anywhere and it could also just be that like Johnson in Horvath and they're both really close and and he picked Johnson for me it's like we've said this when there's so much speculation about the goalkeeper problem for the U.S. When it's like, no, there's no problem. We just play one of our good goalkeepers and we're fine. We have some. And we played one yesterday and he came up.

He came up with some plays. Yeah, he had a couple kind of shaky moments with the ball at his feet. But I thought it was overall pretty good with the ball at his feet. And then made that, you know, that kick save on that chance late in the second half or midway through the second half. Even the shaky moments weren't necessarily him. It was a mess that eventually made its way back to him. Like it was a, you know, it was a scally long mess that they just said, here, Sean, you deal with it. And then he had to kick it out over the end line for a corner kick.

And then the other one I'm thinking of was very early where he played kind of a scuffed pass to Yedlin. It was a little messy, but it did. It arrived at Yedlin's feet with a little bit of time to do something. No, you're totally right. That first, it was like his first touch of the game. And he definitely undercooked a pass out to the wing. Also had a really nice pass out to the wing to Yedlin that Yedlin mishandled out of bounds. That was, anyway, we'll get into that.

All right, should we go to the timeline? Are you got some, any big picture thoughts you want to get into? Can we talk about the shape a little bit since we went through the lineup? Yeah. You see MMA in the lineup, so you're thinking it's going to be, you know, the 2, 3,5. Again, we touched on the 3-2-5 last game because Aronson was in the midfield instead. And, you know, it was very, I think, intelligent to move Ayrton up a level and keep way up there too while holding cannon back. I thought in that Morocco game that maximized our attacking ability in the right spots.

Different here for this game than pretty much anything we've seen in that we kind of built in like a 4-2-4 through the first half, where the back four kind of made a little horseshoe. And then Adams and Musa sat in that and McKinney stayed on a higher line than him. Of course, every once in a while he's going to come back just in the flow of the game and receive it kind of like a third center mid. But Poulsick was doing that same thing. So it was almost like McKinney and Poolecic. I'm sorry, McKinney. Yeah, so Poulosick would also do that on the other side of the field. So McKinney wasn't for me like playing like the eight that he normally plays with.

He was, I think, tasked with staying higher. Paul Carr posted the pass map. And it kind of bears out that way that McKinney and Ferreira actually were like the two central. hubs and then Pulisick and Wea were kind of getting up ahead of them for at least where their touches were coming from. Wait, so where do Musa and Adams fit into that?

They're the two, right? Yeah, they're the two in front of the back four. And then McKinney and Ferreira were like another central two ahead of them. And then Wea and Pulisic were like the two most advanced players. Again, as far as where the touches came from. Yeah. Okay. No, that makes sense.

It was a bit of a wrinkle there. It felt a little, not a it felt a little bit more like a double pivot in possession because, you know, Musa was coming back to receive the ball deep so often and not as, and not quite as often flaring out wide to get it, you know, which I guess. He was collecting it centrally. And then the big difference I was obviously between Musa and Adams is that when Musa would get it at times, he would just burst up field with the ball at his feet.

And that was a tremendous thing to watch happen. And it was, I think, really, really effective. What a player. He was dominant in this game. I mean, as much as he could be. What a huge benefit to our team to have somebody like that who can basically receive the ball in any situation. And Rondo his way out of there single-handedly, you know? It's a one-man Rondo.

I don't know exactly what that would be called. That's what it feels like. Yeah, it did feel like that. And then it allowed, you know, it allowed Tyler Adams to burst forward sometimes too because he would draw so much tension and then and then play a little like a little, a little reverse pass. And all of a sudden Tyler Adams is looking at 30 yards of open space in front of him. Yep, he got forward a few times. And I also don't want to sell short Musa bursting off of the ball because he had a couple of those too where it wasn't just him carrying the ball from that back, that, you know, back line of two up ahead into the attacking third. There were times where, you know, because he sets up deep, we do get a pass that.

skips them up to either Ferreira or Poulosik. And Musa would just outrun everybody who was in that deeper space. And we could lead him into a big ocean in the midfield and accomplish the same thing. So we were doing it a couple of different ways, not just him dribbling himself, but a pass that skips a line. And then we can lead Musa on the run because he's just, he's just outworking everybody. Yeah. Or they're just not expecting that kind of movement from him, I guess you could say. Yeah, I mean that I don't know, it would have been interesting to see what that looked like over 60 minutes against Vecino and Valverde.

Would he have been so dominant against that class of player? I don't know, but he was a man among boys against, you know, Ariambara and co. For me, it bodes well for the, it bodes very well for the World Cup, right? Like, for me, in the World Cup group stage, it seems like something that can, that can translate. whether it translates into against, you know, knockout competition. Should we find ourselves in the knockouts? I don't know.

But, you know, for where we are, for where we were two years ago, three years ago, five years ago, it seems like a tenable revenue stream of AVPs. Absolutely. It does. And, you know, he was, some people have been criticizing his past,

his final ball, his passing in the final third. And I think that's fair. But, but also he, you know, He was the key to so many of our attacking moves. I can't say for sure if it was all of them, but it was almost all of them. And it was him, you know, him spraying the ball out to Wea in space after, you know,

taking it from one side to the other. Well, we'll get into all those in the timeline. Anything else on the shape? No, I'm good at that. Yeah, I'm good at that. Let's get into the events. First thing I have is at the 140 mark. Decent counterpress puts the ball at pool of six feet, 10 or so yards from the box.

And I'm just noting this to say that he takes a touch and then he just zips a pass to Ferreira, which I love to see that from Pulisic. Just a quick decision, make the pass. And Ferreira takes a poor touch, which was a little bit of a theme for him early on in the game. But Pulisic gathered it back up, tries to slip Scaliant behind. It's not there. And on we go. On we go.

Yeah, definitely like that poor touch from Brera stood out. I've been long saying Ferreira has the best first touch of any of our strikers, and I still think he does. but that is the area in this game in the first in the opening 15 where it was like oh man we needed we need better from from him against a team of this caliber and he could those touches i don't think were forced errors i don't think they were forced because uruguay was compacting space in a way he wasn't used to he had the he had the window to take a good a better touch uh he just he just didn't execute yeah and it it it could have like set a tone you know if if if we can make those connections a few times really But, yeah, I agree that that's not, that's uncharacteristic for him and probably shouldn't be expected, but he does need to, like, figure it out. The Uruguay press is making Yedlin and Johnson a little uncomfortable early on. I mentioned that, that sort of scuffed pass from Johnson, and then I think we give it away shortly thereafter. 4.30, 4 minute and 32nd mark, first sort of chance for Uruguay Scali steps. and Varela plays in Caseres for a ball across to Nunez.

Now, Caseras is the right centerback in the back three, and he makes a run far forward, which is kind of cool. Nunez, he crosses it for Nunez, and Nunez tries to stab at it with the outside of his boot. It doesn't really connect. But it was definitely a warning shot there. Warning shot, and I think this is a good example, too, of where Scali sort of let himself down

and I thought this was the same thing in the Morocco game and that he was a little bit too eager, right? Like I feel like that was his biggest issue defensively in this game was he was like too active, little puppy dogish, right? He goes flying up field to Varela and then Varela just sends him

for a hot dog with like a little faint to the middle and Scali runs himself eight yards to pursue it and Varela just pivots around pirouettes and now he has the whole sideline to play with just Aaron Long to defend And that's where I felt like Scali got himself into trouble. He over-pursued a lot in both games.

And he's doing it against players who are eager for you to do that. They're like, sure, come on in, buddy. And then they just say, see ya. And off we go with a hole in our defense now. And that's what it was. They get the ball into that width. And now the domino effect ended up having some poor spacing and communication on the weak side from Yedlin and Zimmerman.

I tend to put this on Yedlin more than Zimmerman because Yedlin, as the widest defender can see everything, right? So you could say Zimmerman needed to stay farther back, and Zimmerman encroached on the other centerback space by cheating over. But there was a man over there that, you know, Zimmerman's kind of half-tracking in this little zonal defense in this break. And Yedlin, if he sees Zimmerman go, he needs to just follow him tighter, rather than being like, oh, not my guy.

So if Zimmerman leaves, it's not my fault. So we needed to be a little bit more disciplined and a little bit more committed. to that sequence to defend Nunes getting free at the far post. So mostly I'd put that one on Yedlin. All right. So Yedling gets a little blame for that for Nunez being open there. I'm not sure why Nunez didn't try to take it with his head. I don't know.

Because finishing is extremely difficult. And people who think that even the best strikers just convert every chance, just really need to watch more comps. Yeah. All right. At the 715 mark, Yedlin steps and Vinya beats him. It kind of, a little bit accidental.

He tries to play a pass through his legs, I think, and it bounces back to him, and then Vina ends up running past Yedlin, and plays a gorgeous ball, I thought, sort of diagonally through the U.S. defense on the ground, to Varela, who fizzes it across to the back post. Kind of a shot slash pass. I'm not sure exactly.

But it's well defended, I thought, by Zimmerman. Was Yedlin asleep on this? this one too? I didn't notice that. No, this one. This one isn't Yedlin sleeping. This is just really good execution. And it's one where you see how well Uruguay, because of that took, took that fortunate bounce off of Yedlin. And then absolutely, like, exploited the fact that, you know, our remaining back three had shifted over to, you know, basically accommodate that or to account for it. Because Scali's chasing one man central, Long's chasing one man towards the ball. And so it's like, if you aren't aware of all

of the pieces at all times, you switch off for one second to one piece, and Uruguay has the ball to a wide open man running at the corner of the box. There was fortunately nobody on the end of that cross, but it was also dangerous. I thought right at the eight-minute mark, Ferreira tries to take a Johnson goal kick on his chest and can't hold it up. And again, I mean, it's not an easy play, but I want to see a little more from him there. I'm totally in the same boat again. It stood out to me too.

And it wasn't just because he lost the ball. It was like, oh, like as soon as it hit his chest and bounced way farther than you could tell he wanted it to bounce. You're like, oh, that was an unforced first touch error. Yeah. I mean, I can't take that touchdown cleanly in a international soccer game. But I'd like Ferreira too. We're counting on him too a little bit. Yeah.

Eight minute, 30 second mark. Another switch to Varela. This one from Viena again. But he just, he just. he just hits a dime across the field. A dime is a little strong. It was a good cross field switch. And then Varela puts a good ball into the kind of into the mixer.

And Maxi Gomez misses the header just over the crossbar. So this one stood out to me and it immediately brought to mind the CCV sequence from Morocco where they got the cross over CCV's head. And the guy put his header down to the ground and Turner makes it safe. because it was really similar for the for the center back situation or at least it you know the effect was similar and that this was ball goes out wide uh long stays home zerman stays home uh so it's just scally out here to deal with the switch we're still okay numbers wise when the cross comes in like it's long's play to make on on long's man and he doesn't make the play right either misjudges the trajectory or just can't get it and so there's too much of a gap between him and his man and it actually is zimmerman putting out this fire because he gets his head to the the header. So the header is probably on frame and Zimmerman directs it over the bar. And that's why Uruguay get their corner out of this.

I didn't, I didn't see that. I thought you were saying he headbutted Nunez and that's what. No, no, no, no. He got it.

I mean, he made up the ground to get to the guy who had beaten Long into the space. And I'm not even saying this to like hammer on Long, but I feel like people were hammering on CCV a little bit. And it's like, sometimes like a ball is hit with a perfect trajectory that beats your the defender's head by an inch and a half, and it gets right to the head of the attacker, who's only a foot and a half away from the defender.

So it's like everything is very nearly perfect, but sometimes a ball can still beat you. Yeah. That reminds me. Zimmerman was, again, very good in this game, I thought. Immense. Yeah, I thought so too. And not just against the ball. I mean, he had a couple of really nice passes, one through the lines, one over the top.

all right the chances for uruguay start piling up here the u.s kind of has to batten down the hatches there's a corner that's cut out but but it goes right back out to the corner to takeer i can't remember who it was and in the ensuing scramble Jimenez the centerback so it's just interesting to see these Uruguayan centerbacks get into the attack and do useful things it's like impossible to imagine even Zimmerman who had a great game doing this stuff but Jimenez again the Athletico Madrid player, he takes it to the end line and clips a ball across. Nunez tries to scissor kick it, and I thought Musa did well to sort of get his body in the way and just sort of put the whole thing off.

It falls to Godine on the other side, and he takes a shot. It doesn't get all of it, but puts it on frame and it's cleared off the line by Yedlin. And at this point, you're kind of thinking, oh, boy, this is going to be a long afternoon. Hey, full credit to Yedlin. Full credit to Yedlin there because we talk about his weak side defending. had been the guy who I think cleared the initial corner on this and then had to race out to his own clearance to defend it. So he was way out of the frame of the goal as some of this buildup was happening.

So he did have to get all the way back and work off the ball to get into the frame of the goal just in case he's needed and he was needed. He was indeed. We kind of slowed the game down, I think. He kicked it long as soon as we could and just kind of looked for a breather. the next item on the timeline. And so the first 10 minutes was kind of all all Uruguay. Like very clear.

That's totally fair. Felt very much like that. But the next 10 minutes, believe it or not, we're all USA. Starts at the 1130 mark. Pulisic picks off an errant pass, I believe, from Godine. And ends up crossing it back post for Wea, who tries to cushion a header. I think he was trying to cushion a header. it back across the penalty area, but he just kind of blooped it to the goalkeeper.

Muslera claimed it, but a good little moment. I mean, at least some danger generated there. The 1230 mark, we get a great tackle from Joe Scali, probably his highlight from the game. He just crunches, I think it was Goriyaran. And Musa dribbles across the field, switches to Wea in space. Wayad drives quickly into the penalty area and crosses. His cutback is cut out by the outstretched leg of, I think it was Godine again. But at least we're coming right back at him.

And, you know, if that cutback is six inches more of a cutback, maybe it gets through. Or if Wayad played it two touches earlier. Really? This one stood out to me again in real time because, you know, the other thing I was watching for Jesus was his aggressiveness. to break towards goal because I thought it was a little bit off in the Morocco game. So this ball gets out to Waya in space. Great find for Musa, a perfect way to the past.

And Jesus is going, and there is definitely an early lane. So Wea has it. If he takes his first touch to look, and then he still, you know, he didn't even have to be first time. He had his touch.

It was on if he whips it in right then, and he'd have a lot more room to put it in front of Ferreira. And instead, you know, I'm not saying it's like a terrible idea to try to, gain the corner when you're Tim Way and you've been doing really well for the U.S. doing that. But, you know, when you're, we're watching it back through in the slow motion, you're like, oh, there it was. He had the time to hit it.

He, you know, the timing of his steps was good. Could have whipped it across and we were in. And I just appreciated it because it's like, okay, good. Ferreira was, you know, working to get into that space for that early ball. Yeah, I didn't notice that either. I guess the thing that, the thing that really, that whole sequence really pounds home to me is that, you know, we know Musa can do that, you know, turn defense into attack very quickly and get the ball to Wea's feet, especially Wea's feet, because, you know, he's, because Musa's a very

right-footed player, he likes to play off to his right. He likes to start on the left and move to his right, which is fine. But when he gets that ball to Wea with the right weight, there's just a, there's just a rapidity of our attack as a team when Wea gets on the ball. Even if he didn't make exactly the right decision there. He's just, he's going. And it really puts the other team off balance. We, we don't have that when he's not on the field. And we really saw that in the second half. Maybe that wasn't the only thing that was different about the second half, but Paul Ariel is, is not like that. And it makes a big difference when you're playing against a pretty good team. Because you could tell Uruguay was not comfortable when way I had the ball at all.

I think they were pretty comfortable when Aureola did. They didn't mind him having it. I think that's fair to say. 1330, McKinney tries an overhead kick on the ensuing corner kick. It looked a little awkward, but it was not that far off, you know, maybe four or five yards off. You know, like, as overhead kicks go. Yeah, it looked awkward. But I think it was actually like an intentional technique.

Like he didn't, he obviously didn't get totally inverted where he's, you know, Marcelo Balea doing it, which makes it harder to like get it keep it down you know he's he's hitting it on like his up so yeah yeah uh so like some good technique i think to essentially uh keep it down and actually give it a chance i appreciated it yeah good technique to not send it off into suburban kansas city kansas um speaking of which that balboa that balboa overhead kick we are going to we are going to record that Columbia recap. We are going to record that Columbia 1994 recap this week, you know, if all it goes well.

And that, man, that was a, that was quite a hit from Balboa. Anyway, just a little plug for our historic recaps. That's why I brought it up. All right. 1645, Pulisic's playing well, comes back to the ball to win it. There were several, there were several moments like this where Pulisick was physical and sort of committed and hustling. And I don't know that we always saw that in qualifying in the qualifying cycle,

partly probably because he was injured for much of the qualifying cycle. But it's really good to see him sort of being a little tougher and getting after it. Also being much like meaner than he used to be. He's back. Pulick's back. 1810, another ball in behind Scali after he misses an. Ariel challenge, but Adams covers well, and Johnson jumps on the slipped ball in behind. Same thing here, right?

Total like puppy dog energy from Scali to like race diagonally up into the center circle to try to get that header. Like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to show everyone that I can get. And just vacating space and not actually making the play. So when we talk about setting the floor, this sort of puppy dog stuff does not help him set the floor at all. That's going to be the big issue.

Like if he would just sort of sit, stay home and just be like commit to the minimizing mistakes kind of defense. Yeah. It would go a lot farther for me and my comfort level with a floor setting back up left back. There's the dragging himself out of position part, but there's also the like sort of the spirit is willing, but the flesh keeps losing duels. And like he was, whereas, you know, Musa's just imperious physically against.

against this team. Scali is not. He looked not so much little brothery because he's kind of a stocky dude at this point, but well, little brothers can be stocky too, I suppose. He just looked like he wasn't going to win. He wasn't going to win those battles in this game. And he didn't really.

Yeah, and I think that can be like leverage issues where if you're going in over-excited out of control, it's easy to just sort of use that momentum and energy against you. And I think that's kind of what we saw, even in Morocco, again, against a really good wingback in Morocco. But even these Uruguay players who aren't Hakemi were still, I think, just sort of, you know, enjoying the Scali's use of his own energy. Okay, Chance USA, right towards the end of the 19th minute. A nice ball from Zimmerman to Adams, just like a first time zipped ball on the ground.

Adams turns and plays it a short pass to Pulisik in the pocket and then Pulisic plays it to Ferreira who's sort of the mirror image of that chance he had against Morocco where he was between the centerbacks in the right hash instead of in the left and hash is a term I use

sort of with poetic license on the right sort of in the right channel between the center and left centerbacks for Uruguay why don't you take it from here since you know what did you think of Ferreira's first touch and his chance here?

Because I thought this chance was even better than the headed one. Maybe you'll disagree with me on that. Oh, I totally disagree. But it's just a matter of the angle and the distance. And, you know, Ferreira gets the ball just out of his feet, a little bit clumsy on it. And here's, well, I'll just kind of finish the play. So he gets it just out of his feet, shifts it over to his right. So he can swing with minimal windup.

probably changes his ability to really pick out his spot because now he has to rush this before he gets closed down and tackled by the defender. And so it's a comfortable save, I think, for Musilera. It's a comfortable height just off to the near post, I think. So the first touch wasn't as good as it could have been. And this is my very much like begging the question disclaimer that I still think Ferreira has by far the best first touch of any of our strikers. So if there's going to be a chance where it's going to require a prep touch and traffic, I still think he's the only guy who really does that for us. So it's like if that's the shot he could get off,

it doesn't make me think that any of the other guys are going to get off like a better shot there. Which again, I understand that's totally begging the question. But what I do appreciate seeing is just that in this game and in Morocco, there were multiple chances where he did have to create that shot for himself with an early touch. And he was able to at least create the shot. he had two against Morocco and then this one here. And he only played what, 100 minutes total. So I do feel good about, you know, his first touch is at like this threshold.

It clears the threshold needed to work against, you know, high level teams. It wouldn't matter if his touch was like better than everyone else's, but still not good enough to get any kind of shots off. Like if he always just got swallowed up in traffic in those moments. But he hasn't been. He's, you know, he's gotten himself a couple of good looks. And like, I'm just like, okay, That's what we that's what I need to still see from it.

Yeah, that's fair. I thought the, the first touch in this one was, was not as good as the one against Morocco. That was, that was the image. Totally the same. Kind of put his,

kind of got the ball caught under his feet for a second. But about a minute later, another chance for the USA. This is the one that most people think of as the best of the game. And the buildup is all Musa. He keys a 16 pass sequence. I checked. It was 16 passes and everyone on the team touched it,

including Sean Johnson and Tim, Waya. Musa turns after receiving the ball in our half from Scali, does that little hesitation dribble and then plays a left-footed pass to Pulisic to get it up to Ferreira. Ferreira plays it back to Musa. So this is an example of Ferreira being effective in the build-up. And then Musa slides it down the channel for Yedlin, who is overlapping and takes it to the end line and zips the ball across the goal line for Ferreira's head. Ferreira just can't steer it on frame. Now, you said earlier, you think this is a better chance than the other one. But I guess I, whenever I see the ball like really, you know, really hit with pace across the

goal mouth and almost like it was still rising when it got to Ferreira, I think, man, that's so hard, so hard to get over that and put it in the goal. It probably is. The one caveat for this one, though, is Ferreira knows the goalkeeper's not in the picture, right? So there's no thought of, like, where do I have to put this to beat the keeper? The little only thought is like this only needs to come off of my head and stay below eight feet. That's all I've got to do to score this. Yeah. But you have to jump high enough where you're really coming down on it.

And I don't know. Yeah, it comes in hot. It's like you could say it's like a tiny bit behind him. But I mean, this is, this is, you know, for me, the best chance of the match for us. And I'll just go back farther in the buildup. And the sneaky excellent stuff is Musa's first ball. up to Pulisic. You know, you've kind of described what happened here, but he's got a player right on his back, which is, again, is like the Musa's superpower, because he draws this defender

all the way up to him. Defender thinks he might get a little joy out of this, and Musa hits a not at all obvious, like vertical pass up to Pulisick. With his left foot. With his left foot, too. Yeah, with pressure on him. And this, this is the moment where because he's drawn that defender up, when he burst forward, like, the defender is almost always not going to expect this from, like, the guy who's playing holding mid. And it only takes a half of a second for that guy to switch off for Mousa to gain the ground he needs. And then even though he realizes a second later that, oh, no, this is my guy and like tries to

catch up, he doesn't. And then because it's usually like kind of an attacking player, he's going to quit, like right there and then. Mousa gets to touch past him. That guy's just going to be done pursuing. And now Moussa has like the full space to run with it. It is really. Go ahead.

Sorry. It's just, it's a huge weapon in my mind. And I think this is, again, something that will translate even in the World Cup. Yeah, even against teams like France and Argentina, I would think. Yeah, it seems very repeatable and very full of revenue, as you said earlier. Where it's not necessarily going to is against teams that just don't bother to jump up with him. When he's got the ball and it's like a pressing cue because his backs to the field, not every team is going to send everybody up.

I don't care if he has it. We don't care if they have the ball there for 85 minutes. We're just, we, you know, whales, we're going to sit back here and watch them connect and dare them to try to get through our impenetrable 10 man. Yeah, dare him to try to dribble through us at the top of the box, which he, you know, that's where that's where the road came to an end a lot of times in this game. So the first 10 minutes all Uruguay, the second 10 minutes, all USA. Mousa playing really, really well.

I would say right in the end of the 21st minute We get another chance where Ferreira finds McKinney in zone 14 And he tries to play Pulisic in but he can't handle But Pulisic can't handle that sort of waist high pass And his first touch isn't very good I don't I didn't see enough replaced to like assign a certain amount of blame to Pulisic for not handling that Because I didn't see how difficult it was But it was another one where like at this point we were

were cooking. We really were in, and I know, I know people are still like down on Ferreira because he missed his chances and he had some rough moments in the opening 10 minutes, but at this point, Ferreira was very involved in the stew as well. So that was again back to being like, okay, this is promising he can do this against good teams. It's not, he's not just going to disappear when the level goes up because I was still pretty worried about that happening. You think the, you think the discourse is coming down too hard on Ferreira for the last couple games. Let's not do that. Let's not talk about the discourse. My bad, unless you want to. So the discourse is never going to go away about like, should he have finished that? It just won't,

like, until he gets like four, we're going to play Grenada next and whoever starts at striker is going to have a hat trick. And that will probably be Haji. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if Haji gets this start. But, you know, like, no matter what happens in that game, that shouldn't in any way change like any kind of finishing discourse, right? Like it's, it's very much just like, Ferreira is doing the things that need to be done to lead to goals and you just, you have to trust that he's going to keep doing it. If you're worried that he might miss some of these chances in the World Cup,

that's a totally fair worry. There's just zero reason to think that any other striker that we throw in there is going to have like a magically better conversion rate. We've seen already like Pfeck will miss chances. Adjee right in the first minute of his, uh, debut under Burrhalter against Morocco was set up by Brendan Aronson and didn't convert the chance. And I'm not banging on those guys for it either. Like that's just how it works. So I think for at this

point for the national team is on a four shot five shot drought where he had to miss against Panama on the Lucidilatori cutback. And now he's had four shots in the 100 minutes in these two games. And it's like no like strikers are going to have five shot droughts. Like the next goal he scores will make, we'll like bring him back to even for all of that stuff. And that's just the way the variance works. Yeah. I mean, I'm more concerned

about like first touch issues. Like if his first touch kept looking rough all game, then I'd be more worried. But it didn't. He kind of settled in, was involved in a couple of these good looks, good combinations.

And that's wrong. Okay, he's kind of back. He's doing these things. And his pressing continues to be excellent. Yeah. The other thing I worry about besides those first touch issues is,

um, is his physicality. He does seem, he does look like a boy among men up there against Godine and although it didn't you know I guess it didn't impair him that much from doing what he was able to do

if we get to where we get to where we're just launching balls up from the back as our only means of like relieving pressure and like all we want is a body to be bouncing off the defenders as they try to collect him just to make their lives a little more difficult he's not going to be the guy but that hasn't that wasn't us against Morocco it wasn't us against

Uruguay it's not going to be us against Iran or or Wales in the World Cup because I don't think those teams are going to be, you know, be forcing us to do that. So, and I don't think England will either. England have been a pretty conservative outfit as well in their international game. So I still haven't seen anything from Ferrer so far. It's like, oh, man, he just cannot do it now. Right.

And if they, if any of those teams in the World Cup do try to sort of press us high and, I mean, Musa's going to punish them pretty fast. Yeah. Absolutely. we still won't launch it up high. That just won't be, this isn't 2009 anymore. We're not just going to hit the ball up to the target man and see if you can hold it. Uh, 2410. No, no, no, I skipped ahead. 2220. We get a big chance. In the 23rd minute, we get another chance for Uruguay. They switch it to Varela again, and then it's a little combination that finds Ugarte in the box unmarked, and he has a

shot that Johnson saves pretty comfortably, tips it over the bar. I'm not really sure what happens here. And I, because it was, it was just some little triangling by, by Uruguay. And then nobody's staying with Ugarte. So this was, this was some good work from Uruguay who kind of had a little buildup here where off the ball, some guy had slashed through the middle and Long had kind of tracked him. And then they ignore that, sort of recycle a little bit and then flared out to the wing. And at this point, Scali goes out there with Adams. And so now Scali and Adams go out to the weak side.

in a 2 v2, which is fine. It probably should be Poulosick in Scali, with Adams staying a little more central. But this is like a totally fine rotation that we should be able to account for. The thing is we don't account for it at all, right? So it's Adams and Scali now out at the wing. And Long stays way central. Long is like standing behind Zimmerman on this play, basically. Yes, that's what I'm saying.

So Long's holding Zimmerman's hand here, which we could still get away with if Poulisick dips into the space that Adams is usually in, right? But Poolecic doesn't do that because he's pool sick. I'm not going to really put that on pool sick for not having the defensive awareness to go fill in for Tyler Adams. This should be Aaron Long. Adams and Scali are concentrating on their 2v2. Long is the centerback who should recognize this and either fill it himself or make somebody else fill it. And it really probably needs to be him filling himself.

There's a 20-yard gap between the 2v2 out there and Aaron Long. And so Ugarte just strolls forward from that center midfield spot, just walks into that space. and it's open for a long time. And they hit a super easy pass to them and create that 3V2. The other thing to know about this is while it was happening in that weak side that the rest of our team was standing in, we were 5v3. Like there was no reason that like we weren't going to leave something else wide open to send Aaron Long out there.

And again, I'm not trying to hammer on Long here. It's just another example of if you don't do everything like exactly right in a really timely fashion, a team like Uruguay is just going to be like, okay, this is the open spot. We exploit it. and they exploited it to good effect there. The other thing I'll just kind of mention is the last time I kind of talked about along where he missed that header that Zimmerman ended up cleaning up with a really good play. After the play, you see Zimmerman motioned along and be like, hey, you got to stay tighter to me.

You have to stay farther over here. And now in this play, he stays tighter over and Uruguay find that gap. And it's like, okay, so what do you want him to do? And like the answer is you want him to do the right thing every time. it's possible. He needs to see when he needs to go and when he needs to stay and execute it. He did. But I'll just add quickly that he did recognize Ugarte was open before he got the pass,

but it was just a little too late to do anything about it. So he starts, you can see on the video, he starts pointing at him, but doesn't move to him. And by that point, it's basically too late. Right. And he starts to move over to cover the shot. Johnson makes a comfortable save on it, I think. But it's just another example of, you know, as a team having to coordinate to cover all

these spaces on the fly, it's right where our sort of limit is right now. Like that's where we are as a team. We've got to make sure we identify those and try to improve them marginally as we build up to this tournament. Yeah, I wish we had Sergenio Dest in camp to get reps doing that against a good team, you know. Not that he needs it anymore than anybody else. but that sort of coordinated work is not something we have hammered out, obviously. Wea does Vinya and starts a promising little sequence up the right wing,

just showing how dangerous he is. McKenny clips one to the back post, but it goes over everybody. In the 25th minute, we get a tough tackle from Pulisic. Actually, it's a foul. And I just mentioned that again to say that he's being physical and trying hard. Trying hard when he doesn't have the ball at his feet is what I guess to be more precise about it. And then in the 29th minute, when he doesn't have the ball at his feet and neither does one of his teammates, just to make it even more precise. There we go.

All right. He's turning to a scrapper. He's the next ball out of his life. 29th minute, we get a chance. This is also a really nice buildup. It starts way in the back with McKinney on the ball in our own box. He makes a cheeky little chip to Musa to go. to get out of there,

Musa carries it forward into the middle third. Musa plays it to Pulisik. Pulisic plays Musa down the line with an outside of the boot pass. And then Musa steps on the ball and hits a fantastic switch to Timi Wea.

Wea flashes a ball across the goal mouth. Just, just, just out of the reach of Heses Ferreira's outstretched left foot. So that's good. It's another one of Musa outrunning, the other team's midfield to start with it, to beat that ball to Poolsick, and then to beat everybody into that space.

That Poulsick is as vacated. And this is just good soccer. You know, like most of our chances against Uruguay in the first half came not from transition moments or like the press, but from these extended passing sequences that were kind of meandering at times

and then suddenly we would flip the, essentially flip the Musa switch. That's really what it started to feel like. And we'd be off, we'd be off. Yeah, it was Musa. generally speaking to Wea and then there's a chance. I guess it went to Yedlin that one time. Yeah, we got to credit,

and we got to credit the team and Burhalter to at least some extent for that because that is not how we were playing soccer a year ago at all. There's no XG on that chance, but it was quite dangerous. Obviously, Uruguay had a similar one with Varela, flashed a ball across. In the 31st minute, we get a nice ball in behind from Zimmerman to Pulisic.

So another bit of good distribution from the back, a bit of triangling in the right corner, and then Musa Springs McKinney in a pocket. And he takes a very bad shot with his left foot, probably 10 yards wide, scuffs it. It rolls slowly over the end line. Now, I thought, no, that made McKinney look really bad in this game. I did think initially that McKinney didn't have a good performance. And it wasn't like he was, you know, before he had his injury. but as always you rewatch the game

McKinney's not so bad he's actually did a lot of good stuff in this game he's always better the second time you watch I feel like and he's kind of in a new role like again he wasn't playing as like one of the co-eight's he was he was kind of pushed up higher so it's a different ask of him in this game I want to point out the ball from

Zimmerman again because he did that for the hockey assist in the last match we saw him do it against Panama on the Home World Cup qualifier since Jamaica away I think Zimmerman's long distribution in particular has gotten a lot better we saw it in El Salvador in the home match even like he was hitting some of these balls that were like dimes he'll hit one to haji I don't know if that's on the list in the second half for one of hajee's only involvements of the match but this is a big deal and I'm going to back into how how like centerback distribution does matter right like it matters that we're getting this from him now.

And I'm going to continue to back up into like this is why a player like John Brooks adds to the national team because we aren't getting anything close to this from Aaron Long as a less quarterback, right? Like nothing even approaching it. His passing is really not great. And it's unambitious because I think, you know, he's quite a lot of fun. He knows his limitations. Yeah.

Yeah. The few long balls he hits are just like direct like fired to the other team's goalkeeper 75 yards away. And so the reason this is important is because it's like, oh, we don't, you know, people are like, see, we don't need Brooks Zimmerman's doing it. And it's like, okay, but imagine if both our centerbacks could take advantage of these momentary, like, times where the opponent's backline switches off. Right now, it can only come from Zimmerman. So we're having the number of naps that we can exploit because when when these guys fall asleep, we can't choose which centerback has the ball at their feet. Right now, Zimmerman's given it to us, but we aren't getting it from the other side of the field. So, you know, that does matter. So if you're just, again, talking about purely soccer sporting reasons for a Brooks omission, like for me, this is more evidence like Brooks, a player like Brooks helps us. Because we have relied on that for a couple of our better moments in the last two games.

Well, if we're going to talk about someone who's more likely, like infinitely more likely to be in the next camp, I do think Chris Richards helps too. I don't think he's he's not a Brooks level distributor, but he is good at passing out of the back. I would have said he was as good as Zimmerman up until this recent stretch of dime making from Walker. But even that like the long, the distinction between like the long driven ball matters here,

I think Richards can hit balls into the pockets. I think he can, you know, hit a ball, which would, that'll help too. Like, you know, to be able to get it into pool stick more often in the half space, to be able to get it into Ferreira's feet, especially if we're going to keep using Ferreira. Like that matters too.

But to be able to hit that long one, you know, the one from the left centerback out to Tim Wea, if he's going to be out on the right side line. Like imagine what that could open up if we had that available more often. And that's the one that, you know, basically only Brooks hits from the left side of the field. So, you know, just another sort of talk about, you know, the actual soccer piece of it. And again, based also on what we've seen from some of the other centerbacks in this camp, the idea that Brooks just doesn't belong for purely soccer reasons

gets flimsier and flimsier. Yeah. Okay. A nice combination in the 33rd minute in the middle from Scali to Musa to Adams who bursts forward. Then as he gets to the top of the box, he just lays it sideways to McKenny. McKinney slips it into the box for Wea

and Jimenez slides to cut out, Wea's cross. Wea wants a handball. Jimenez gets hurt. Hurt and Sebastian Coates comes on for him. He plays that sporting in Portugal just for reference. I also thought this is sort of a non-socker thing that is probably better suited for the Monday review,

but I thought Wea tried to, you know, tried to extend his hand to Jimenez and like sort of rubbed him on the neck and Jimenez totally ignored him, which I did not appreciate. You don't disrespect. No. Come on, man. Go ahead. I want the Monday review to go into who it's acceptable for teams to disrespect.

It's not Timway. But I'm curious which players of ours you can get away with disrespect. It's not so much. I mean, I do agree you should not respect Timway. It's not so much about the specific person involved. It's like him, you know, him showing concern for an injured opponent. And then the injured opponent just like not even acknowledging it at all. I'm like, come on, dude.

That's not cool. So, yeah, Kuatis comes on for Jimenez. and then here we have in the 36 minute we have an example of Scali getting turned this time by Nunez the puppy dog thing

you're talking about Greg it seems very much in evidence here our transition defense looks a little shaky but nothing comes of it good hustle by Ferreira to get back

and I think Adams is back to sort of help shut things down 38th minute we get that Willie did you have something to say about that sorry I missed you're shaking up I was just saying that Scali got turned by Nunez.

That's it. And I checked to see if you had anything to say about it, which I realized was not that necessary. In the 38th minute, there's that good ball from Sean Johnson out of the back, which I liked it, a nice feathered sort of chest high ball out to Yedlin. Yedlin had a lot of space in front of him,

and then he just mishandles it and it goes right out of bounds. But good for Sean Johnson, right? Yeah, no, it's a good data point for Sean. Yeah, we have good goalkeepers. 40th minute. I'm not worried about the good goalkeepers in the World Cup. 40th minute, that nice little Croif combo from McKinney to Pulisick,

and then Pulisic just loses it on the dribble. I thought earlier in the game, Pulisic was good at releasing the ball quickly. I thought that sort of went away as the game went by, turned into a little bit more of a dribble merchant. Oh, but, you know, in his defense, in the second half, like, the organization was so shoddy that no one, it got hard for anyone to, like, really release players because, I don't know, it just felt like a complete mess. And so I'm sort of just judging Pulisig on his first half. I know that's probably not the right way to do it, but the second half was so, so, like, disheveled. Well, there was a lot of, yeah, it was kind of a mess because, in part because the, the assistant.

Referee allowed seven substitutions from Uruguay and then had to, you know, got sort of bartered into allowing a seven substitution for the U.S. So there was a lot of subbing going on. And Uruguay, I think it's worth pointing out Uruguay got better in the second half because they had better players on the field, made it more difficult for us as our, you know, as our starting 11 was getting tired. The only other big chance from the first half was in stoppage time. another nice move in the 46th minute.

Muson Adams working well off each other. Adams drives forward with the ball again, slides it out to Scali, who lifts a ball toward the back post. It's not a precise service or anything. It's headed away. But McKinney gathers it, and he tries to dribble through a couple people.

He loses it, gets it back, taps it to Pulisick at the top of the box, who dummies it nicely, I thought, for Adams behind him. And Adams has a shot, but looks kind of surprised to, be shooting and doesn't get all of it from 22 yards and it goes right at Musselaura.

Yeah, we need, we need Adams there to really try to aim that ball off of a defender's leg to get his classic. Thinking the exact same thing. Deflected. Deflected goal from distance to send his team to the Champions League semifinals. Hey, we skipped one that you're going to have to include here.

And that's the, that's the Tim Way I throw into Zimmerman because that was a big moment. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. Right in the 41st minute, way it tries to throw it backwards. to Zimmerman and it's just he's not as good to his hands as his feet, I guess.

Puts a lot of air under it. Nunez picks it off, rainbows it over Zimmerman who is kind of just thinking like what the is going on here and he tries to square it for Gomez but plays it behind him. You know, for all the

hyping I've done of Nunez, uh, Lacks end product. I feel like that's what U.S. fans would say about him. This is who we're excited about. Right. He wasn't as amazing as I sort of expected him to be.

And like, you know, full disclosure, I did not watch a bunch of Nunez clips before talking about it. I just saw that he scored 34 goals for Benfica. All right. Well, Tim Wea didn't do Zimmerman any favors here. It's still totally on your dominant centerback, if that's what it's going to be to deal with this mess. and run through the ball with whatever part of his body needs to at the highest point to ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen. So that was for me the basically the lone blemish for Zimmerman here in this match.

And sort of a tough thing to blemish him for because I get what you're saying, but you're not expecting your teammate to give you a hospital ball and a throw-in. You know, it's like it's very surprising. Right, but it's not bang-bang, right? It's up in the air for so long. And then even after it bounces, if you can't get to it before the bounce, which I don't think you could, it's still like, okay, this ball can't come back down again. So I have to run through it and either foul the guy as I'm running through it,

which since you're playing the ball isn't going to, I think, give you a straight red or anything. Anyway, like for me, as a goalkeeper watching my centerback do that, it's like this is where we count on the hard men centerbacks to deal with the problem. And the, you know, the dancing wingers like Timuea, we forgive for putting them in that position. Okay. Seems a little prejudiced, but fine. Berhalter says on live TV at halftime that it's going to be Ariola for Wea, Aronson for McKinney, and Eric Palmer Brown for Aaron Long,

and that is in fact what he did. Uruguay subbed on Matias Olivera for Godine. So that pushed Vina up to, I guess, midfield, right? Or no, was Olivera on as a centerback for a while? They didn't switch their 4-4-2 until the middle of the game, the middle of the half, I guess. Okay. So anyway, Olivera on for Godine. There's not a ton that happens in the second half.

That's really that interesting to talk about. Do you think, like... No, that really isn't. That's what was so like, oh, man, this game is an absolute mess from both sides. There was a, there was like a sequence where there were like five turnovers in a row without a single, like, attempted pass. Like no one even tried to connect the pass to calm it down. It was just like, I got, I got this and I'm going to like dribbled three touches in until I got tackled away. Then they dribble three touches.

And it was just like, man, what is going on out here? Yeah. What are we playing at? Yeah, it was weird. There was that whole shoe lace situation with Aronson and Ugarte where they got caught up with each other and had to had to untangle themselves. I thought I did clock a moment where Ferreira, uh, uh, loses the ball after, you know, Adams intercepts a pass and plays it directly to Ferreira and then races into the green space down the right channel.

I think expecting a first time pass. I mean, Stu Holden expected a first time pass on the Fox broadcast. And Ferreira just got it, took a touch and then just got wrecked. Yeah, I was really disappointed, I guess. Like, I do get disappointed watching Ferreira, like, not do what I wish you would do because I'm like, oh, he definitely does. That's the thing. That's the kind of situation he thrives in, usually.

Yeah, I thought he just made the wrong choice here I think he should have looked off Adams run entirely and just gone out to the other side to Musa who had the whole left side of the field to play with with. That was one where I thought he was too dialed into the to like the rhythm give and go where at some point you got to ignore that piece and go to where the space is now.

I know, but if he was purely dialed into the rhythm giving go, he just would like he just would side foot at first time and kind of curl it back into that space. He's got that in his locker. He does indeed. Pulsick in the 53rd minute cuts in from the left wing and goes wider than near post with his right foot after a weird sequence involving a no-call in the middle. I thought, you know, it's a moment.

It doesn't ever feel like, it didn't necessarily feel like Poulosick was going to score there to me. But he did hit it pretty well, I think. Yeah, and what's notable here, I think, I think this is pretty notable, and it goes along with how much of a mess the second half was. This was our last open play shot of the game. We didn't attempt another shot from open play in this match after 52 minutes. So, yeah, just like all the cool things we were doing in the first half, more or less dissolved completely. How are we going to fill the next hour of time we have allotted for this podcast? I don't think this is going to run for another hour.

Nunez, after a scramble and a flick in the 56 minute, has a hit at a ball that sits up for him, and he hammers it with top spin, but it's a couple yards wide of the far post. He's no Gabriel Bada Stuta, that's for sure. And then the 57th... Why are we comparing him to Badi Studa? Like, you've got to tell me why...

Because it was a shot from the same angle and the same part of the field. You remember that one that Bates Duda scored in the... I think it was either the 94 or the 98 World Cup where he curled it around the goalkeeper with his right foot from the left side. All right, my body's due to bank

isn't quite as deep reaching as yours is. He captured my imagination when I was a child. Yeah, probably because you were drawn. Oh, we'll skip to Argentina, Maradona transition to bodies. Wait, well, how was I drawn? on to Maradona? Because if you're, if you started trying to watch Argentina 94,

because, you know, they were. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, world power with Maradona. And then suddenly Maradona's out with all his drug bans.

You're like, oh, who's this other Argentina attacker, though? It's body. Yeah, I didn't even know enough to really understand the significance of Maradona at the time.

I just saw that goal from Bostuta, and I was like, dang. Anyway, um, EPB, who had come on at halftime, of course,

uh, worth noting that he sort of carried the ball across the half line in the 57th minute and then played it to Pulisic in kind of an awkward space. And Pulisic gets buried immediately and Uruguay is off to the races. It's up the line for Nunez, who manages to cross it for Gorillaran, who misses a full volley. I mean, he's unmarked. He's arriving at the ball.

It's a full volley, so it's not an easy finish, but he misses the goal completely. a very big chance for Uruguay, I thought. And a bad data point for EPB. Yeah, because again, part of the EPB allure is that he's going to be like a big upgrade and distribution. I think that's sort of like what the hope is. Over long. And I for me, yeah, for long, not necessarily, you know, in a vacuum.

But I didn't see any of that here. I didn't see him even really attempting to to play balls into the pockets. And instead he like dribbled into this pocket and then just like handed the ball to pool sick. Yeah. I don't. I forgot to mention, so I forgot to mention on that last one that led to the body studa reminiscence was that was another one of Yedlin's bad ones. And it's like Urugu, I do it a bunch of triangle stuff. And Yedlin just completely falls asleep.

And that's how his man that he should be accounting for in that triangulation is able to run free on goal. Yeah. Although it's more of like, it was like a scramble and then a header and then a flicked header. I don't know. All happen very fast. But then the thing about EPB is that may be the allure for somebody, for some people, that he's going to be a significant upgrade at passing over long. I've never really thought that that was what he was going to be.

You know, I don't think if you watch him at Tuat, you don't see him really passing the ball that well, do you? He's okay. No, I don't, I don't like not. Yeah, he's okay and he was okay when he was playing in the Netherlands. So he, like he would do it occasionally. It wasn't like they'd build their distribution around EPB, the way that Brooks would have distribution built around him at Wolfsbury. Okay.

All right. Another incredible surging run from Musa, this time after getting sprung by EPB. So that's nice. 58th minute, but he loses it just outside the Uruguay box. I mean, he tries to dribble the. entire length of the field. And this is one, this is exactly the one where you're like, you do wish that he would just at some point just hand the ball to Pulisic.

Like here's where I'm like, oh, just give the ball to our very, very good attacker. Or maybe it was Aronson next to him. But like at this point, give it to the fresh legs. You've done your job here. Musa. Take a little breath. It looks like he's looking for somebody to pass to as he's, you know, coming into the final third.

It's just nothing presents itself or nothing that he presents itself that he sees. Yeah, what it looks to me like the way I clock it is he's as he's going, he's looking for that someone to do this like really incisive movement. And if that incisive movement doesn't open up or allow itself, like he doesn't make just sort of the next non-incisive pass. But he's got he's going to be just running out of steam like personally from all that dribbling. So he's not going to have the, uh, the wherewithal to complete that last dribble. Yeah. Yeah, I don't. I think so what we'd want him to do is just make the simple pass and then maybe continue his run or let you know the second run yeah exactly yep and then use his momentum to like wrinkle the gravity of all the other defenders

um in the 60th minute there's a whole bunch of substitutions right for ferrera Jedi for yedlin scali moves over to right back and then for uruguay they bring him vicino from intermilan valverdei for ugarte and then kivani for Gomez and they switched to a 442. They might have switched to a 442 earlier than that, but they definitely had switched to a 442 at this point. And it's worth pointing out at this point, the U.S. was at, according to Bill Connolly from ESPN using stats performed data, the U.S. was at 1.21 XG and Uruguay was at 0.64. So we were, you know, at least by that measure, the better team through 60 minutes. the last 30 minutes,

which we will deal with fairly briefly here, I think, were 0.64 XG for Uruguay compared to 0.08 for the U.S. So we just fell off a cliff. Like, as you mentioned when you said that that Pulisic shot was the last shot from open play that we generated. And that had something to do with, you know,

a Real Madrid and Inter Milan player and Edits and Kavana coming on. Yeah, I mean, we can, we can kind of throw our hands up. I think it was a really good use of, like I think Burrhalter did well using the subs the way he did. I think it was important to test Aronson out as a central midfielder because he was more of like a peer center mid here than he had been in the Morocco match

where he was more like an 8-10 hybrid. But partly because the field was so tilted, he spent a lot of time having to defend here. How did he do, do you think? He was energetic as all hell, right? And it's a little bit different than Scali. but there were some of the same issues that cropped up, actually like 30 seconds into the half.

I didn't touch on it because it was like, all right, well, we don't have to. But when he goes into press, he chases like crazy, and it's the same worry I had, you know, when it was originally proposed that he played center mid. He'll chase himself slightly out of the play. And it doesn't have to be far, but those last three steps he takes where he's fully committed to, like, gambling to tackle the guy.

If they pass around him, we are now short an entire center midfielder. And that is an issue, right? That's an issue against good team. teams that will then run at you with one fewer defender. Like you really rely on numerical advantages as a defense. And if you just eliminate one player consistently, that's bad. Sometimes his gambles will pay off. And that's what he is.

He's a volume defender. He gets into so many pressures because he works so hard. And as a front three player, super valuable for a guy willing to do that. And he just needs one or two of those to pay off. And it's going to create some good chances. As a center midfielder for me, like he's got. to be a little bit smarter about when he's going to gamble for those last two steps to really try to tackle or when he has to just hold his ground and maintain his shape and that,

you know, keep track of the pitch control. So I still think he's got to start moving a little bit backwards towards pitch control. But if you, if you just count like his tackles, he probably started a lot of good transition moments. The tradeoff is going to be that there will be times where he gambles doesn't make the play. And now we're defending with six instead of seven. Yeah, because I did think he was pretty, once again, like he was against Morocco, pretty good in the cage.

This Uruguay team is a bunch of grown men. You know, there are no little brothers on their team. Maybe police street, but then he just, but he's, it's a lie. He's not a little brother. He pretends to be. Big chance for Uruguay in the 63rd minute. Scali gets beat by a lovely touch from Goriuran. Gori Aran.

He back heels Olivera in, the left back. Olivera first choice left back, I think. Vino would be the second choice. Olivera clips it across and it gets tapped back to, I'm not sure who, and who crosses it backposts and Oliver has a shot from point blank that Sean Johnson saves with his shin.

A good save, just kind of, it hit him, right? Yeah, he tracks it well to get in there, make himself big, and it's a big play. I'm going to go back to Aronson a little bit here because there's a positive and a negative form I think on this play as a center midfielder and the positive

is an improvement from the Morocco game where I thought he wasn't urgent enough to do like the deep work of a center mid like when the ball would go deep it was like he would there'd be too big of a gap between him and the back line here in this game in general I thought he was doing a much better job of staying connected in our block to the back line

and that back heel that they beat Scali with to find a crosser in space. Aronson is the guy who's in position to go make a play, which she does. He gets there and prevents or he forces a guy to hit a cross rather than just attacking the near post. That's really good. But then we get into sort of the mentality issue of a front three guy playing center mid. And as that ball goes up to the top of the box, Aronson, because of his work rate is holding the players onside. I'm not digging him for that. You know, he did what he had to do to get deep.

but he's still like the only guy in that space where that cross goes and his like instinct is to just jog back up field to where like a center mid should be. Yeah. So he just jogs away from the open space where the shot ends up happening. Like if you just stands there, the ball probably hits him and there's no shot at all. But he just vacates it to get back up field. And that's where it's like that center mid mentality needs to come in of like, I just have to protect. Wait, did he hold him on side and then jog away as the, the ball was played. Wow. Oh yeah. So he's the deepest man. He's holding everyone on. And then,

and again, I'm not trying to even like come down too hard on him. I think it's just going to be a learning experience for him. As the ball is coming across, like it's literally in flight going directly to where he is standing and he still just jogs away from it. And so I don't know if he's just not quite paying attention. Like, okay, I've done my job. Got to go back up to my spot. But it's that goal protecting urgency that worries me for him as an eight. People have been asking us to repent about Aaron Robinson on the Monday reviews. And I know repentance is feeling less and less likely all the time. Well, he, again, he was like the best player in the Morocco match and it was doing all the

number 10 things or the winger things that we wanted to do. So that game, huge eye opener, right, for what he can do on the ball because we hadn't gotten that from him in qualifying. Despite his production, I don't remember if I gave the actual number, but he was out of the five primary wingers, Gulsick, Raina, Wea, and Areola. Ariola and Aronson, he was the lowest in XGA per 90 minutes. So he was the bottom man in like actual goal and assist contributions per 90.

But then in that Morocco game, he was lights out. he scored the best chance we had and then he set up the other two great chances we had from open play. So that is just like super encouraging for someone who might not even be a starter for us on the wing. That's awesome. The center mid stuff I do think is like stuff you can address in the film room like that kind of mentality of like, hey, you got to go into full goal protection mode here. You're not done just because, you know, you didn't make the play on the ball. And it's an interesting wrinkle. Again, I don't think anyone's saying he should start as the eight.

Maybe people are saying that. Some are saying that, yeah. But, you know. It's an interesting thing. And again, like, he'd probably be fine. It's like a fourth eight. If we're in that situation, we've got to use somebody else. All right, well, there are worse things than throwing in Brendan Aronson as a center midfielder.

But it does sort of bring us back to square one. If he's not equipped to play as a central midfielder at the moment, and he, you know, he has to be sort of taught to do that. and he's not any higher than fourth in the winger depth chart when we're all fully healthy, you know, how much repentance is really necessary. I don't know. And again,

I feel like I'm spending too much time on the actual chalkboard on the sequence because this happens. Players switch off sometimes, right? So it's not like, oh, he is an exception for switching off. There was a rotation here. He might, you know, he just wasn't tuned in to.

having to stay in that rotated spot through the sequence of the play. It just, it happens sometimes, and Uruguay found the spot. Yeah. Okay. We should talk about Haji a little bit. There was a nice combination out of a scramble to his feet in the 69th minute.

And he can't quite handle the quickness with which the space collapses. But your thought is it's a, so Haji had a couple of these moments. I won't go into all of them. There are two in quick succession in the 74th and 75. fifth minutes. But your thought was it's a shame he didn't get more of a chance to do something in this game, right? Yeah, I think he was the big loser out of this, out of this sort of messy shape that we ended up with, this messy ball progression. He didn't get to touch the ball. There was

the one long ball from Zimmerman that put him into space that he gets to, holds off the center back, buys us 65 yards of ground, connects the pass backward, and we get to build now from that new area. but otherwise yeah there just wasn't that much i think he tried to slip somebody in uh once and that was like his only real attempt at an incisive pass and it didn't come off but you know no one's no one's going to be like that's it he's done um so it just felt like an audition that never got to become an audition yeah okay i already mentioned that ariolo was uh not very good compared to wea as at least as with in terms of providing attacking threat But he did try a flick with the, I don't know, what's the outside of his boot to get Haji in behind.

And Haji read it and was going to be released in behind if the flick hadn't gotten cut out. But it was a good idea and it was close to coming off, I thought. Again, a good test to see what areola's limits are. And I think we definitely saw that he's not going to be a guy that we're going to be able to bring into a game like this. say if it were 0-1. And I think, you know, we'll ask some questions about whether he will make it onto a 23-man roster. Because what sort of what is the role that he's going to play if, you know, when would we

use him? What game would we use him in? What scenario? I mean, I guess, I don't know, because he's not, despite his frame, he's not a fantastic hold-up guy. I don't know. Well, let's cross that bridge when we come to it. it. Go ahead.

Well, I was just going to say, like, if you need, if you're looking for the guy who does a ton of work, which is Ariel's sort of calling card, like Brendan Aronson's right there and he's not our starting winger. So it's like, okay, well, we got to see this out. Wayas dragging or, you know, we still haven't mentioned that Gio Raina exists. You throw Brendan Aronson on the wing and you're going to get that incredible work rate and probably a little bit better attack, certainly based on what we saw against Morocco. Right. I got confused and thought you were talking about Haji right there for a second, but yeah, I don't know the answer on Aureola either. Okay.

There's some, Anthony did some good little underlapping here and there, got, earned a couple corner kicks, but nothing really came of it. Luca Delo Tore came on with that extra, that bonus sub, the seventh sub of the game for Musa in the 80, right at the 85 minute mark. And I got to say I'm a little frustrated. You didn't get a little more time in the midfield. I would have preferred to see him get these reps over Aronson in the middle. But I guess it's not anything I'm going to cry about too much.

But anyway, he got five minutes and there's really nothing to say about him. He did get bodied by Kavani that one time, which seemed like a foul to me, but he lost the ball and it wasn't called. And then there was the big Uruguay chance in the 93rd minute in stoppage time where Kavani misses a sitter. Just kidding. It was not a sitter. It was deflected off of EPB right before it got to him. And I think it's kind of amazing he got as much as he did on it.

But it started with a goal kick. Zimmerman won it. And it went to Volveri. Zimmerman headed it to Valverdi. And Valverity just seized their space in behind. And hits it first time with his left foot, loops it in over the back line. Nunez is in on goal, tries to square it to Kavanae. And like I said, it bounced off EPB and Kovani snapshot it wide.

That's it. That's about it. You watch it in slow motion and you can just see again how important the timing of things is. Zimmerman gets that header up 10, 12 yards upfield, looping header. So he at least, you know, solves the initial danger. But as it's going in the air, because Valverde is Valverde and has this technical ability and this awareness, like EPB is the deep man now and he's just sort of jogging forward, which is usually the cue as the ball goes up field, you know, the defense moves upfield. but you have to sort of add the context to that cue of it's going to an uncontested Valverde who is winding up to hit it first time and like now you have to treat it like the visual cue of a of an opponent who's looked up and then put their head back down

that they're going to hit the long ball and we got to drop so we kind of like that that detailed of a level and the timing on it is such that because EPP has his momentum coming upfield when the ball goes over his head he's got to stop and chase now and Uruguay is already off to the races. Yeah, and it very, very easily could have been the game winner there right at the end. Like, not that it matters that much in the grand scheme of things, but we wouldn't have wanted to concede that there, I don't think, at all.

And another data point on EPB that I didn't mention, but let me just mention it briefly, is there was a good chance for Uruguay when Jedi gets beat in behind by a lovely ball from Vecino in the 80th minute. And then Diego Rossi cuts EPB very casually, I want to say. Disrespectfully. I mean, you can say disrespectfully. And APB loses his footing, almost falls down.

And then it takes a sliding Zimmerman challenge to block Rossi's shot as he glides into the box. And I promise that's the end of my timeline. It was good. That, like, again, you see all this. And that's a good example of having to see, okay, how do we deal with, you know, one of our defenders getting beat, do we have the good scrambled defense to clean it up? Or are we totally like all out of sorts? And Zimmerman came through again and sort of put out another fire.

I think that's been a good look at sort of centerbacks in these two games is like, who's putting out the most fires, who's creating the most fires. Some guys are putting out fires that they've created. I think it's super worthwhile. And also to remember that the measuring stick here is a lot higher. than the measuring stick of El Salvador at home. Yeah. Also,

the bar is quite a bit higher than it is for the backup left back, too. I mean, when we're talking about the second centerback behind, next to Zimmerman, you know, if Brooks isn't coming back, which it sure seems like he's not, you know,

rich, I still feel like Richards probably is my favorite there, but, but, you know, I still want to see, I want to see a little more from CCV. I don't know that I need to see a ton more from Palmer Brown, but I guess I wouldn't object to seeing more from him.

Yeah, it just comes down to how much more can we see in these two games because grenade is not going to test us in anything, you know, close to what we saw from Uruguay. And El Salvador probably won't either. El Salvador, it's going to be more of like, is this a slog bog or is this an actual like, are they actually going to test us? And it seems like the, you know, the bad outcome here is going to be slog bog

rather than, you know, oh my gosh, they just carved us open again and exploited that yard and a half of poor positioning from our centerbacks. I guess my last thought here, because we've covered a lot of the big picture stuff as we've gone, is that even though there are going to be some tough midfield decisions, going away from the MMA midfield in a must-win game is A, still kind of a bad idea, I think, and B, probably not going to happen. I think Berlter agrees that it's that's the midfield and when you know when push comes to shove. But it is wonderful to have a growing list of credible options for how to how to play that midfield.

I think I think Luca Deloire is plenty adequate or most of the time will be adequate. And then I am at least a little bit more intrigued with Aronson. And the fact that Aronson has been played in the midfield gives me some confidence that Rayna will be tried there as well. because it doesn't look like it doesn't look like Waias going to be I mean it's going to take a lot to pull way off that right wing

I think it's gonna it's gonna take some some real something real big if it happens yeah and if it happens think about how great that is think about how great it is that if it happens

it means that something else is better than what Wai is doing in whatever combination that is that's we have a really we have a really good baseline to work from with Tim Waiper yeah So overall, man, two, I think, pretty good games.

We got four points from Uruguay and Morocco. I think we're going to the quarterfinals, baby. We're going to the quarterfinals. I'm not going to get that excited until we score a few goals against Grenada. Give me, you know, once we score goals against Grenada, then I'll know that we're actually good. Okay, Hajie Hat Trick on Friday. You heard it here first. Let me just quickly say

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