Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #287: U20s v St. Kitts recap

Episode Date: June 19, 2022

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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. The U.S. U.20s beat St. Kitts and Nevis 10 to zero down into Gusa Galpa on Saturday. And by golly, we're going to recap it. With me is Matt Hartman. Great friend of the pot. How you doing, Matt? I'm doing great bells. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. Sunny morning in Georgia. So we should mention, I just want to mention right off the bat. St. Kitts, which is short for St. Christopher, has a population of about 50,000. It's two islands, obviously St. Kitts and the Nevis, that 50,000 is about half the population of the size of Davenport, Iowa, which I'll wager is a town many of you have not even heard of.

I can confirm. I have not heard of it. There you go. So, you know, it's a tiny island nation, and we should probably beat them 10 to zero at the U20 level. Before we get into the lineups and the chronology and everything, what's your sort of big picture assessment of this afternoon of soccer down in Honduras? I mean, like you said, it went basically how we expected. There was like a little period before the game where they were showing like Rondos, basically, of the team's warming up.

And theirs was just not very good. They'd accept the stage for like, oh, this is a, you know, this is the type, this is a team that would probably struggle in like local competition in the United States. I'm just given the size of the of the country. So the very little, I think you could take that you can take away from this game other than we should dominate it. It's kind of like a warm up game before the tournament actually starts. and it's basically what we did and how we used the game. Yeah. Oh, you mean in terms of rotating and everything?

Yeah, yeah. Just a reminder that this tournament is, the point of this tournament is to qualify for the U20 World Cup and the Olympics, the top four finishers in the tournament, qualify for the U20 World Cup, and then the top two qualify for the Olympics. You know, which is, it's a long ways away in 2024,

and it's a moment. much higher profile tournament, obviously, than this one. So there's a little bit of a disconnect between like these, this U20B team is tasked with qualifying for the Olympics, which if we don't qualify for, you know, the whole nation will mourn like they did last time. We didn't qualify for the Olympics.

So I don't, you know, even though there is, this tournament is of some importance, we're not going to spend a ton of time talking about this game. Let's just, let's just get right to the lineups. the lineup. We're just going to give the U.S. lineup. It was Nico Carrera and goal. Maricio Cuevas at right back, Marcus Fercranis, and Jalen Neal at centerback, and then Noah Allen at left back.

And the Rokas Pukestus was the number six. And then Alejandro Avarado and Nico Securis were the eights. And the front line was from left to right, Cade Cowell, Tyler Wolf, and Caden Clark. Right. Line up clearly a little rotated. I think if this were a game that we were that we thought that we were going to have a problem winning.

Brandon Craig probably starts on the back line. Danny Edelman's probably in the midfield. And then you probably get one of Diego Luna or Paxton Aronson on the field as well. That's just about as much as you can rotate one of these this team based on the size of the roster. So we basically, in starting Tyler Wolf and Nico Securus, it points to me like, you know, those guys specifically are guys that got this game just to save legs for Canada.

433 formation that we're familiar with from watching the U.S. play at any level recently. Seeing kids, we're not going to go over the players individually, but they came out and, what I think was a 4-4-2. Initially, it looked to me like a 352 because their formation was like almost never balanced. It was kind of hard to nail down exactly what formation they were playing. But they definitely only had two central midfielder's, and it often looked like a 4-24.

So I'm guessing the idea was a 4-4-2. They were pretty disorganized, especially along the back line. Yeah. All right. Why don't we do sort of back and forth on the timeline, starting in the second minute, I think. So you mentioned that Securus and Pukstus, or Sechiris and Wolf were like clear evidence of rotation.

I would agree that those two were kind of the, you know, they're just the most, the least subtle of the players on the field, the most sort of doing the obvious stuff and Pukstus was not too far behind them in that measure, I would say. but Alvarado I thought was as much as you can say anything from this game he did look pretty good I thought and he immediately in the second minute what I'm getting to is he finds Cal he receives a ball in the half turn from Jalen Neal very you know lots of space to do a lot of different stuff in the midfield but there's a competent receiving of the ball and then plays on the half turn and loops it over the

ball for Cowell. It seemed like this was the beginning of what we'd see a lot of for the rest of the half. Yeah, absolutely. It was Alvarado moving the ball quickly and Cowell finding himself in acres of space on the wing and forcing St. Kitts to chase him down, basically, which they would fail to do for the remainder of the first half. So it was kind of like, Cowell was kind of like this pressure valve where if any of our midfielders fell under any sort of pressure they could just immediately find Cowell on the left

wing and Alvarado as he mentioned did a particularly good job of doing it throughout the game I thought he was the better of the three central midfielders yeah and Cal you know he was a real an escape valve for them but also like sometimes he would just be totally unmarked you know just right and this is like the the thing where I like I could really nailed down the formation. It was because that Mills, who was the St.

Kitt's right back, was almost pulled centrally. And he was almost like kind of relying. It looked like he was, he expected help from the right mid, St. Kitt's right mid.

That just never happened. So, Kyle just received the ball with like 15 yards between him and St. kits right back who you know if you've done any sort of scouting on k kowl the way you want to play him is to just you know don't let him receive the ball cleanly at least yeah don't let him

get up to speed or anything like that and they just failed to do that from literally the second minute yeah we get our first decent chance in the fourth minute uh wolf um yeah wolf uh it has the shot on the turn in the goal, but it happens after some scrapping in the in the box from Alvarado and a good save from the from the keeper for St. Kitts whose name was Park, Park. Right, Xander Park. It was a nice save and he had a pretty decent, uh, he had a couple pretty decent saves early on. Um, this time it was Pooxas finding Cowell in acres of space on the left hand side. Uh, no, actually, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Cowell played the ball to Alvarado's feet.

Alvarado kind of got the ball stuck between his legs, but recovered well and gets the ball to Wolf. And then Wolf is kind of standing like at the top of the six yard box and expects a centerback to be on his back. So he kind of like turns with the ball to get his shot off, which was completely unnecessary because all of the sink at centerbacks were asleep on the play and didn't even recognize that wolf was a danger but the turn comes off anyways and a pretty decent shot towards the upper right corner of the goal and forces a nice hand save out of Park it did seem

like Park had a few nice hand saves but his problems came in the sort of box box control department yes so we're just immediately slicing them up right from the get go especially with the left side of our attack, the aforementioned Alvarado and Cowell. And it's just, uh, it's just sort of a super highway of U.S. chance creation up that left channel and left wing. Right. And we, we, um, from the go have a ton of possession. It's, it's like, kind of immediately clear what St. Kitt's is trying to do.

They're athletic and defended numbers, but they're just, they just have nowhere near the level of passing and technical ability to break our counterpress when we, you know, get anywhere close to turning the ball over and are thoroughly uncomfortable with the pressure they're facing and have no answer for Cade Cowell early. So immediately like kind of disarray, slicing them up and left side of our attack, you know, Cowell could basically walk into the 18-yard box on contested. Yeah. Yeah, the next chance I have is, or the next, I mean, there's several chances.

we're not going to cover all of them, but the 12th minute, there's a big chance that starts up the left side again. Cowell does that, what you talked about, just walks into the box and tries to, tries to play an outside of the boot pass across the face of goal. In fact, he does play an outside of the boot pass across the face of goal. Caden Clark is, I think, the target, but he makes a near post run instead of a backpost run, and he can't get on the end of it. Then it's cycled back to Pookstus at the top of the box, and he has a good hit, I believe

with his right foot that is low and hard and saved, saved comfortably, but also well by Zander Park. So that's, that's going on. I think this is a good time for me to say, while, while we did win 10,0 and we're dominant, I do think there's a lot of, probably a lot of improvement to be made in the, I don't know, the final third and, you know, making things happen. Caden Clark, to me, looked like the best player on the field and like when he got on the ball. But even for him, it was, I think, a somewhat frustrating night.

He had his, you know, he has one goal on the penalty kick. And I don't know that he was involved in any goals outside of that. So, yeah. I mean, this chance, the chance that you mentioned, like, this is basically what the rest of the game would be outside of, like, four or five instances where we just completely tore them apart in, And like it's not even transition. I mean, we'll get to it, I guess. But they're just so defensively inept kind of that a couple of times during the game, we were just able to play it straight through them.

But this chance kind of almost look like basketball, right? We're like we have everybody, we have a bunch of guys just like lined up along to 18 yard box. Like it's the three point line. And the entire St. Kitt's team is just in their own 18 yard box, just basically trying their best to put out fires and rotate. to the ball. And it was definitely like a little frustrating with, for for Clark specifically that he didn't necessarily have

clear passing lanes. And then like you said here, if he just makes a different backpost run. If he makes a different run, he probably gets on the end of it. So it's maybe just like a familiarity thing. I thought a good, pretty nice hit from Pukesis at the top of the box.

Yeah. To force the park save. Yeah, I'm not trying to ding park. I'm not trying to ding Clark for the run here. As a team, we were not, I don't think, as clinical as we'd probably like to be in a lot of these situations or as good at building up the moments in the final third. Okay. I think it's a little harsh spells. We did win the game 10-0.

Yeah, three penalties, one own goal, one more or less own goal. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, we did win 10-0, yes. Yeah, the first of those penalties comes here in the 13th minute. Pretty clear penalty to me initially given as a foul against the U.S. Mills, the sink hits right back, clumsily jumps into Alvarado at the top of the box after a series of U.S. corners, cowl slots it to the goalie's right. Golly gets the right way, just couldn't get to it, and it's 1-0 to the U.S.

Yeah, the only thing that I think is interesting about this is the long delay before the call is made. The referee spent, they had like a hydration break, and the referee spent the hydration break standing around and then waited until everyone was back on the field, set up for a goal kick before you went to check the cameras,

and then called everybody back to the penalty air. It seemed like, you know, just like the U-20s, we're all getting reps here. We're getting reps, man. We're getting ready for the big games at the end of the tournament. Just getting reps, including Mr. Referee. Right. I actually thought that, like,

in the moment, like, there's no way he overturns this, right? Because it was such a clear penalty and he was in such a good position to see it the first time. But if you're going to call that a U.S. foul, like, what is the, what is the camera going to show you that's any different than what you just watched 10 feet in front of you? But props to the ref are changing the call, making the right one. Yeah. The goal was actually scored in the 17th minute.

So we're starting to build up a lot of stoppage time. 21st minute you got an item here yeah this was the 21st minute is the lone st kitt's shot of the game it comes on a turnover in midfield that zion is but the uh the saint kitt's number 10 plays nicely in behind for kranis recovers and jeline neal slides over to help him and they force meika garnett um was one of the st kitt strikers into a poor angle to shoot from ends up being a pretty easy save for Carrera and one of like three or four times during the game where he even had to use his hands. That was not a very good shot.

Even despite the, you know, even taking into account the poor angle. 31st minute is when the next big thing happens. Yeah. Penalty given on a St. Kit's handball off a Cowell Cross. This like the first one happened. Like I don't. I guess it happened.

in the 31st minute was when the penalty was given or when the foul happened but the actual penalty kick wouldn't happen for many minutes later because you know just takes forever this one was var again defender basically tried to shoulder the ball and misjudge the flight and it hits him in the upper arm

Kate and Clark would take the penalty this time instead of kick Cowell and he buried the ball even more conclusively to their goalie's right to nothing. Yeah, lovely penalty. Seems a, I mean, I didn't see a close replay, but it seemed a little unlucky for St. Kitts. And again, that, yeah, that long delay was crazy. I guess he got a, I guess he got a call from the, the VAR office as the action was unfolding

after the, after the no call. Yeah. And then the, um, the play by play announcer on the Concaf YouTube page. for this game made what was so far the worst pun of the tournament. And he said, speaking of U.S. coach, Mikey

Varus, he said, I guess why I guess that's why they call him Varus. Yeah, it was rough. Yeah. But for the grace of God, there go I. Right. 40th minute, a couple of good chances

on a corner kick. We just can't get past the goalkeeper. Wolf has a shot from about 12 yards and it's blocked. I just have in my notes that Clark looks like the special player out there. I do, while I am, while I was critical earlier of the lack of clinicalness or, you know, not enough clinicalness, I thought, I thought there was a, there was a speed of play to the way we played, you know, a confidence that seemed like a team that was, that was well coached. You know, everything was kind of happening fast. Yeah, I completely agree, especially with getting the ball to Clark and Cowell on the wings. There basically wasn't a time when they touched the ball where a good thing didn't happen,

as happened on the wolf shot that you mentioned. And it was a sign of things to come because in the 43rd minute, Tyler Wolfe scores a goal. St. Kitt's not set after a restart. Alvarado finds Kuevas free on the right wing with a fantastic clipped ball. Kuevas cross It's kind of like bungled into the goal mouth by a St. Kitt's defender bounces off the goalkeeper's face to Tyler Wolf on the goal line and he slots it in with his left foot 3-0.

Yep. So, you know, basically an own goal. But good service from the, from, I think it was from Securis, right? Yep. 45th minute, Pukestis beats the goalie. to the ball after this was another

corner kick from Sequeur's his first punch sends the ball Park's first punch sends the ball straight up and Pooksus beats him to it and heads it in

as they're you know as they're sort of challenging for the ball six yards from the goal mm-hmm 4-0 yeah I mean yep 4-0 another great corner

goalie just has to do better here there's the first of well maybe not the first but you could probably say He made a mistake on the wolf goal too, but this one was pretty bad. It just doesn't make clean contact with the ball from the corner and then doesn't react well enough to get to the ball ahead of Puxus who has some height on him and manages to slip it by the goalie. Yeah.

Puxus is really, he's grown. He's grown up. He's all grown up. Yes. 47th minutes. Like I said, we're going to get a lot of stoppage time. And the goals kind of keep coming. Quivas picks up the ball on the right wing. I can't remember how it got to him, but it wasn't anything,

it wasn't anything too special to get the ball to him. And he cuts inside on his left foot and hits a really, really nice shot with his left foot. So he's a right-footed player, but he has a decent left foot and he showed it here. Curls it side netting, 5-0. Yeah, Ben, at this point, seeing Kitts has really started.

starting to lose interest in preventing the U.S. from playing soccer. Quaivas is our right back and he barely contested. His run into the box for the shot is barely contested until he's like two or three yards into the 18-yard box. Puts the ball on the side netting goal. He really doesn't have a shot at it. This is basically the end of the game. Yeah.

He was seeing that same kid's goalie. I think of the team mates after this one too. So the 53rd minute, 45 plus 8, you got another, we have another item. Why don't you do it, Hartman? Sure. It's a securest goal from the penalty spot after a sink hits player clips Caden Clark on his follow-through. Alvarado found Noah Allen charging forward down the left-hand side. Allen got the ball to Cating Clark near the top of the six-yard box, where Clark

gets clipped trying to shoot. It's a bit of a soft penalty if you ask me. It was like slight contact on the back of Clark's leg on his plant leg, I think it was. But St. Kitts is basically in shambles at this point. Very little defending happening and Securis gets chosen to take this one and buries it pretty conclusively to the goalies left. The goalie at this point for the three penalties, had guessed the correct direction for each of them

and just couldn't get the spring to get to the ball. They were good penalties, though. Yeah, they were all, I think was a good one as well. Well taken, yeah. I agree that was kind of a soft penalty, but all just academic at this point. Did you have any, at the half, did you have any complaints about the way anybody played?

No, not really. I mean, the game was over probably from like 4-0 in terms of seeing kits. trying to put together any, um, any defense. Um, all right. I thought everybody in our 11 played pretty well in that half. Uh, Clark Cowell, Alvarado and Quivas were this probably the standouts. I thought Pooks has also showed well in the six role distribution while wise, but in a

way it's all yeah, in a way it's all kind of just like academic because it's all one way traffic. It's basically like a drill at this point. Just picking up the ball and they were, you can't kind of grate out a six as having a good game when he was put under like literally zero pressure. And even when he was, he handled it so easily that you wonder,

you know, you wonder about the competition in that way. Like the, even like the cage matches seem to be kind of easy for our guys. Michael Holiday comes on for Kuevas Kuevas was the captain for the team, right? Is that right? Yeah, he was the captain.

And then, so that's really cool. You know, we talked about in the preview episode, how good it would be to see him again. And to see him be like sort of the guy for the team be the captain, and then they made a video, the youth national team Twitter account made a video where he talked about, you know, what it means for him to play for the team. It made me really happy, all that stuff.

Right. And he mentions in that video, and I think the reason why he has the captaincy is because he's the only person on this team who's been through Conca Calf qualifying before because he was on that U-17 qualifying team. Okay. So Halliday comes on for him at the half and Quinn Sullivan comes on for Cowell at the half. Yeah.

And that I think points to Quavos and Cowell probably getting starts first Canada. Not surprising, which isn't surprising. They're both locked in first 11 players. Get them out of here 45 minutes early, rest their legs. Canada, by the way, lost to Cuba in their match. Oh, man. They lost to Cuba is even like nice to Canada to describe what that game was because, man, they, they were horrible.

They they lost to a Cuban team which I think I didn't have any like baseline for how good Cuba would be

but I think played okay but Canada couldn't string like four passes together their best chance of the game ends up getting

the Cuban goalkeeper sent off and they replace they're out of subs by this point and they replace their starting goalkeeper with their starting

striker who was like I think maybe 5 foot 5 and this isn't like the 70th minute if that like something around there and Canada for the rest of the game up a man with a like 5 foot something tall goalie

and that couldn't even get a shot on target so it was really bad they were just they couldn't get anything going through their midfield so it really would be shocking if we don't beat them on Monday and then we're gonna we're gonna be Cuba I assume

So then we play Nicaragua probably in the round of 16. It's going to be the quarterfinals before we even probably have a game to play. Yeah, Canada did sit. They were kind of like rotating a little bit into the Cuban team. And then when they did bring some of their players off the bench, some of those better players, they did start to look a little better. But based off of what I saw from them in that game, I think we shouldn't expect anything less than multi-goal wins up until we up until, you know, the knockout rounds.

Okay. We're going to keep recapping these games and let me just say this is an ad-free podcast. The way to support it is on Patreon. If you are able, thank you to all the people who do support us on Patreon already. All right. Let's quickly, let's quickly blast through the second half. 47th minute. There's a short corner that is, I think.

I think Secuarez plays it to Clark close and then Clark turns in and lofts it into the center of the area. The service we're getting from wide is like almost better than the senior teams at this point, right? Yeah, I'd agree. Yeah, this is another great cross-in. Definitely, I mean, like, again, these are all uncontested crosses, though, is the thing that I'd say, I guess. Like, you very rarely get this against good competition where you don't even have to think about the defender getting a foot on it. But this is a great corner swung in under threat of collision with for Kranas, who is upfield. The goalie closes his eyes and punches the ball straight into his centerback's head.

And the deflection ends up in the back of the net. Not a great moment from Xander Park, the sink hits a goalie. It's the second time he punches the ball off a teammate and it results results in a goal. Tell us what was the next thing you noticed from Mr. Park. So given like the circumstances surrounding this game where it's in Togousa Galpa, there's like literally nobody in the stands. You could kind of hear everything that's going on on the field. And the St. Kitt's goalie for basically like from the 50th minute to the 60th minute was just like

screaming at his players at the top of his lungs, Tim Howard style. So he was like yelling like contain and like effing contain and then asking them to wake up to get together, be more condensed and yelling at individual players. And it did kind of work for a little while because they didn't concede a goal for a little while here. So maybe he needed to be more vocal the whole game. I felt bad for him. That's why I would never make a good, like, professional athlete. I felt bad for those guys in the red jerseys. I noticed, I noticed Halliday, the bright back came on for Kuevas.

I thought his first three involvements were suboptimal. So I just wanted to note that. Yeah, I agree. We got to see, I think, a little bit, how he could be limited compared to Marisao Kuevas and that in a game like this where we don't need to defend and passes into the attacking third aren't being limited in any way. A player like Kwebas who can take advantage of that was better suited to the game. Just not a not a game state that Michael Holiday is going to be all too familiar with. And I think it showed a couple times that he got on the bowl here where he had time and space to do stuff.

and failed to do stuff. So he's, so the way to think about him is just as a more traditional sort of stay at home, defend right back. Um, yeah, like a more traditional fullback who's going to, you know,

get up and down the line, but not play, you know, good defense, but not necessarily, uh, not necessarily do anything that's going to create chances. Uh,

okay. He's not going to have that XG chain, basically. Yeah. Okay. 59th minute, we get Jack. McGrick,

Deagle, Luna, and Paxton, Aronson on for Clark, Pookstis, and Wolf. I think,

I think Aronson was more or less than I, although the false nine phenomenon was in full force. It was kind of, you know,

not super clear who was the nine all the time. Right, right. And, you know, it didn't help

either that, like, every, anytime we got possession of the ball, it was like, T minus 10 seconds until,

you know like we're in the 18 yard box and everybody's just kind of like lining up for rebounds so position will play not really a huge part of the game from us Alvarado dropped back to the six and McGlynn and Luna took over the advanced midfield roles Securus moved to the left wing I guess yep exactly um yeah I interesting little change with with McGlynn and Luna taking over the midfields. I guess I would, this is how I would do it if I had to have McGlynn on the field with a player like Alvarado behind him and then Luna next to him where he's kind of like a true eight at that point, right? where like he's going to help Aluna with the chance creation and get back and help Alvarado when necessary. I mean, it was never necessary here, but if theoretically when necessary.

And I think that's like probably the place you want to use him where he's not like necessarily integral to anything that's going on. But McGlynn this is and but has the ability to to shine in that role when he gets the ball at his feet. He did a little shining for sure in this game. Yeah, all right. 64th minute. You take this one, please. Sure. So it's a simple ball forward from McGlynn that finds Quinn Sullivan and Paxton Aronson

and two against two with the St. Kitt's centerbacks. Sullivan lays the ball off to set up Paxton, who rifles it across the goalkeeper. great work by the Philly kids, seeing kids completely asleep at the back at this point and it's 8-0. Yeah, I think it's a little nicer goal than you're making it sound like, Matt, but it was very ping, ping, ping.

And it was, all the passes, the two passes leading to the goal were straightforward, but they were fast and well executed. And I liked Sullivan's quick layoff to Aronson. And then the left-footed shot was pretty much a perfect finish. you know. Yeah, it was pretty much a perfect finish. And he'd have another one similar to this in this game.

And it's kind of a shot that I've noticed he's he likes to take. He's comfortable taking, which like in where we talked last pot about the comparison to his brother, this was like absolutely not a technique that 18 year old Brendan Aronson was comfortable doing. You know, we like we joked a lot about Brendan Aronson could be like six-year-old. out and would somehow find a way to hit the ball straight at the goalkeeper. But Paxton here from like a little bit of a tight angle kind of like hits a grass cutter directly into the far corner. Yeah.

I don't know if present day Brendan Arnison hits that shot the way Paxton andson did. But, you know, it was already a 7-0 game. The pressure is most certainly off. So it's a little bit different than most of the situations Brendan finds himself in. Right. But boy, we're way far afield here. Like, don't you know that there is no such thing as finishing? Let's move on.

All right. 67 minute, Deiagaluna picks up the ball in an acre of space and midfield. Both St. Kitt's midfielers are preoccupied. One is taking a calm stroll next to our back line. The other is stretching out his hamstring at midfield. The St. Kitt's centerbacks are lost and don't even recognize. Paxson Aronson as a threat until he receives the ball from Diego Luna in behind. And it's a calm right-footed finished, basically like the opposite of, well, opposite side of the field, same sort of technique as his last goal.

Yeah. Paxton buries it for 9-0. Mirror image goal kind of minus the little layoff from Sullivan. Yeah, so that was by my count the third nice goal of the day. So I guess that's what I mean. And we're at 9-0 now. So that's what I mean when I say I wish we would have been a little more. clinical because most of the goals were kind of scrappy or penalties or whatever.

Yeah, sure. I definitely agree with you a little bit, but this is kind of like, like, I mean, there was basically zero defense on this goal where like early in the game, early in their game, the St. Kitts wasn't necessarily organized or anything like that, but they had at least kept numbers behind the ball on this play. Like, Diego Luna basically eliminated seven players. with his pass to Paxton. And it was a nice pass, but it didn't need to be.

Like, you know, it was easy as you like, basically training ground pass. There's like no, they're not putting up any, you know, fight at this point. Okay. Well, let's hear. We cannot let this episode go over 40 minutes. So let's, let me do the Securus goal. It's for Kranes winning the ball. at the at midfield driving forward slipping it to Quinn Sullivan and um and then

Sullivan flashing it across the face of goal for Secures to bundle at home he I think he miss hit it but he did get it he was you know a foot out so he put it in the net um and then let's just go so that makes a 10 zero let's just go straight to your takeaways such as they are and then you know get on with our Sundays here uh sure yeah I think the the takeaway here is that we had a a pretty easy job to do, but we did it well. Whole starting 11 played well. We seemed well prepared and sure of how we want to play, which is a credit to Coach Varus.

Considering he was the youngest player on the roster, at least he will, he is until Vars shows up. I think he turns 17 today on Sunday. I was really happy with Securis that he didn't look out of place in the team. Quinn Sullivan and Michael Holiday struggled to affect the game after they came on in the second half, but I mean, it's nothing to be worried about. They both showed glimpses of their talent.

We know how talented they are and what they can do. Noah Allen went 90 minutes at left back in this game. So it kind of creates this like interest with only three fullbacks, interesting situation for how we want to line up against Canada. with the two most well-rested fullbacks, both being right-backs and Holiday and Quayvost. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens with those guys, if it's Quabas that flips to the left or holiday. Okay. Yeah, we haven't talked about Alan hardly at all, but he did look.

I thought he looked quite competent. I don't know. There's just a soothing, there's a soothing feel to watching him on the ball if you're rooting for the team that he's on. It just seems like things are going to be okay. Yeah, I thought for Kranas, Neil and Alan all played. We didn't have to mention them too much, but I thought they all played pretty well. Again, like we're talking about defenders in a game where they didn't have to defend like at all. So massive grain assault.

But yeah, like super competent player. Like I'm not worried about Noah Allen in this tournament. He looks like he's going to be just fine. Canada at 8.30 Eastern Time, 7.30 Central on Monday. I guess you can watch this on the Conccaf YouTube channel and also on Teu de N.A. God bless Univision. Just like actually televising U20 games. It's crazy. And I think that's going to be it. Everybody have a great Sunday. Thanks, Matt. We'll see you.