Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #300: USWNT v Canada recap, and we're going to the Olympics!

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

Greg is aghast at Canada's defensive shape after the U.S. spent pretty much the whole game running attacking drills at naked centerbacks. We could be sharper in the final third, obviously, but we just absolutely dominated the Olympic champions and weren't troubled at all until Vlatko's self-inflicted tardiness with substitutions.By the way this is our 300th episode in the public feed. Cheers, and thanks to all our patrons and everybody who listens.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 scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. The U.S. women's national team has qualified for the 2024 Olympics, thanks to a dominant win over Canada in the underlying stats, if not in the scoreline. I would say by the eye test as well. And we are here to recap it. Greg, how you doing? I'm doing great. I think that was as good of a performance in a final as you could hope for.

I won't go that far. I'm already backtracking, but, you know, when we go into it with questions, because this is sort of a brand new team, and we're playing Canada, and Canada are the holders of the women's gold medal to put on that kind of performance at the first sort of real question of asking, it felt good. It felt good to see it unfold, and it felt good to see them lift the trophy, and it feels good to know they're going to Paris. Yep. I'm like the World Cup, the Women's World Cup starts a year from today, actually, July 20th, 2023. It's coming right up. And it's going to be in Australia and New Zealand, as many of you know. So that's exciting too. We qualified for that, you know, a week ago or so. In the world of women's soccer, I think we should also mention England faces Spain this afternoon. And I'm rooting for Spain, hoping for the beginning. beginning of an unfolding national disaster on the pitch for England that lasts through November. They're following in Mexico's footsteps. Right. Yeah.

So should I just jump into the lineups or you got any opening thoughts here? No, no, no. Let's hit the line. Well, I'll just want to reiterate because of how I think important this is that this was a dominant tournament for the U.S. where, I mean, in almost every category, we were totally dominant. And I'm going to say again, even in this game, there is still so much room for us to get better. And it's not like we just need this person to play better.

Like there are decisions we can improve that I think are almost like being able to flip a switch, you know, watch some video, address it, emphasize it. It can be, you know, within a window that there are some things that I think we can really improve on. and that's on top of the level of regional dominance that we just saw. And regional dominance here, again, includes dominating the current gold medal holders. I mean, we absolutely rolled them. And the only thing we couldn't quite figure out was the last 12 yards or so. I mean, I'm sure we'll get into that. Sometimes that's just missing a chance.

But I do think there was like maybe some decisions made in the when we had a 4V2 or a 3V2 or whatever that we. There are a lot of those in this game. All right, the lineups. So many of them. Alyssa Neier and goal. Sophia Huerta, Alana Cook, Becky Sauerbrun, and Emily Fox across the back line. Got Fox back from COVID protocols, which was nice to see.

Andy Sullivan, Rose Lavelle, and Lindsay Horan in the midfield. And then Sophia Smith, Alex Morgan, and Mallory Pugh across the front line. That's the front line we like to see right now. at least until Macario is back from her ACL injury. For Canada, go ahead. Well, so right away, you know, I don't think there's any chance that Vlato is not putting out the best team that he thinks he has right here. So Alyssa Neher over Casey Murphy stood out as like the call that he had to make.

And I don't know if it was because that was always the plan because he always raided Neyer ahead, or if Murphy had a little bit of an edge going into the knockouts and sort of squandered a little bit with. with being a little bit shaky against Costa Rica in a game where there were no real shots to deal with. She was just a little shaky in moments, you know, controlling the box, not even crosses. I'm just talking about when the ball was near her. So that could have been, that could have been. It's also at least minimally possible that this is like a opponent-specific matchup, but you don't get a ton of those with your goalkeepers.

So I'm going to lean towards the Occam's Razor version, which is just that at the moment now, Vladko has nears as is number one. I don't have strong opinions about the comparison between those goalkeepers, but I will note that Neyer has a lead foot. And I don't mean she drives fast. I mean, she's just not super comfortable with the ball at her feet. I don't know if Murphy is more comfortable. She didn't look more comfortable in that Costa Rica game.

Canada's lineup was Kaylin Sheridan in goal. She had quite a good game. Jade Riviere, Kadisha Buchanan, Vanessa Gills, I think that's how you pronounce it. Is that how you pronounce it? Did I get that wrong?

I'm not sure, because I don't have the audio on when I'm watching the games. Ashley Lawrence at left back. And then Desiree Scott, Jesse Fleming, and Quinn in the midfield, Christine Sinclair in sort of a false nine role,

and then Janine Becky and Nekyll Prince as the right and left wings. Nikol Prince, us some trouble early but didn't trouble us after the opening 30 minutes I'd like to get into why that was the case and just for folks listening I'm going to be coming back to Desire Scott and Quinn a lot as sort of Canada's two defensive midfielders because I think I honestly think that they were both pretty poor in this game and that that was that was basically

the difference I mean that was that was the cause of the dominance for the US and I don't want to necessarily put it on those two players. It might be, it might have just been a schematic thing that Canada just got totally wrong. But the magnifying glass was on them. And yeah, they just did not hold up. They didn't hold up protecting their backline. They were okay at times in possession. But it was in those defensive transition moments where they were basically invisible or actually adding to the problem.

Well, you know, that's interesting because we didn't really have much. joy up either wing, like through our fullbacks. Like, where to couldn't really progress the ball. Fox barely saw the ball again. So maybe, like, Canada was just selling out to stop the fullbacks and left itself exposed in the middle? Well, I'll make a tackle football analogy here. It might have been that our fullbacks got less involved

because we didn't have time to get them involved because we were so busy running four on two at Canada immediately after a turnover. tackle football, it's like we didn't have many offensive yards, but we had five kickoffs or turned for touchdowns. That's why our offense was never on the field. Like we could, we could never get that big expansive shape because we didn't need to. We were already in Canada's box within seconds of a turnover. Our press was ferocious too. It should be mentioned. I've said this like after every game, but Pew and Smith are so good at pressing. They're, they're just terrific at it.

It's fun to watch. So yeah. So this was a combination of our press and just really almost insanely naive positioning by Canada. We're going to talk about rest defense today, so that's going to be on the test. If you haven't heard it talked about too much, it's like when you have the ball in possession,

what are some of your off ball deeper players, how are they positioning themselves so that they are in the right spot in the event of a turnover? Because most soccer possessions end in turnovers, nowadays it's super important and a huge focus on being in the right position to deny transition moments once you do turn the ball over and Canada were horrendous last night

so they have a very winnable game against Jamaica in the Olympic playoff coming up in like September maybe September of next year right 2023 but I imagine they will be looking at this film a lot leading up to that game and more importantly probably for them going into Australia, New Zealand and the World Cup next summer. All right.

Their transition in rest defense was atrocious. I guess I didn't pick up on that, but I mean, I picked up on the fact that we were running down their throats over and over again off of transition. I mean, we're basically saying the same thing, so you did pick up on it. If you noticed that, then you noticed that Canada's rest defense or rest and transition defense was non-existent. To the timeline, we get a shot in the first minute. to throw in in their defensive third intercepted by Huerta with her head and Lavelle

kind of swivel volleys it attempting to go over the back line. Gillis skims it off the top of her head and Pew races in behind onto it and catches all of it on the bounce from a tight angle and it's just not quite high enough to roof it and really challenge Sheridan. But right away we're coming at them. Yeah, a little bit, I mean, when you're watching this, you're like, okay, maybe it's just nerves. But as we watch more of the game, Canada is just really careless with the ball.

So careless. And I'll take this back to the Costa Rica in my final where, you know, when they were in their low block, they did pretty well holding up against us. It was when they would turn it over before they could set up in their low block and we would get behind them. And so Canada didn't take any lessons from that video and gave us so many opportunities even within the first minute. Turn over and they can't set up in a block. and we are instantly behind them. And you know, on the flip side, we had a few giveaways in the back. I mean, maybe, let's say five off the top of my head.

And there's one that happens in the third minute. Nayer makes a poor clearance and gives it away. But Canada just wasn't going to do anything with those. You know, it just didn't seem like they were going to do anything when they got in, though. Maybe it's because our resting, our rest defense was so much better than theirs. So it honestly is a part of that. Like Sullivan tends to be, you know, protecting the back line. She's on a tight leash with those back two players, with our sort of centerbacks to create that little triangle of a spine.

You know, the healthy triangular spine that doctors look for. But the other part might just be a little bit of a mentality, right? Again, we have a front four at the very least who just want to race. Like they want to get that thing and they are gone. Pugh in this situation, like she's moving long before Lavelle loops that ball up towards Alex Morgan's head. She's already running downhill. A lot of times in our defensive block, even in our block, we set up in like a 424 where

Lavel steps up with Morgan and we just have these four players ready to go. The other feature, I think, of our defensive block in this game, which Canada passed through quite easily at times in the first 25 minutes. was that we would leave like three players up. Sometimes Lavelle, some would join Morgan and one of the wingers, and sometimes it would be Morgan and the two wingers. But we would leave three up, and Canada would spread out in their shape and make this, you know, their four would get big

and it would be too deep with the fullbacks kind of higher and wide, and then they would have their sort of double pivot with Quinn and Scott, and we would just leave our three attackers in between their two centerbacks and their double pivot. And it was, you can say it's a little bit risky, like we're committing numbers, and not respecting Canada's ability to now control the midfield. And if it's a little bit of a gamble, it certainly paid off in this game. Because again, once we turn them over, we just always had this numerical advantage going the other way.

And Canada's defensive mids and fullbacks could almost never catch back up. We were always running downhill and putting the Canada centerbacks in really difficult positions. Pee and Smith are hard to catch up too once you get behind them as well. In the fourth minute, we get some lovely work from Sophia Smith to feed Morgan for a shot. This was a really good opportunity. Smith turns a defender at the top of the box. She's just able to keep the ball just out of reach from whoever's on her back. She did very well, I thought, coming back to the ball and sort of doing like hold-up work,

almost like hold-up nine work in this game. What a versatile player. Anyway, she turns as a defender at the top of the box. She tries to play it a little diagonal pass in the box to Pew. I think she was going for Pew. It was behind her, but Morgan was behind Pew as well. And it just sits perfectly for her to sort of shape a shot at the far post. She curls it just wide.

Could do better there. Could do better there. For me, Morgan did exactly what she's supposed to do. It's the right decision to try to curl that into the far post. She misses it by a couple of feet. Again, I was just happy with Morgan's positional sense. We talk about pitch control a lot. Ashley Lawrence, not enough urgency to get goal side of Morgan,

so that even though this pass wasn't necessarily directed to Morgan, she controls the entire area of that field because Lawrence is on the sideline side of Morgan and can never get back in to make a play. So, you know, again, Canada already playing with a lot of fire here in the opening four minutes. And the fire will continue here. Fifth minute, harassing. gets a pretty good chance to shoot from inside the box. It's an early cross from Mallory Pugh that's dangerous and cleared desperately as far as Lavelle,

who's like pretty much right at the penalty marker. Lavelle gets a toe to it, but it can't corral it and it falls to Horan who's just behind her. She takes a left-footed shot and it's blocked by a Canadian defender. Yeah, and again, what I'm really interested in here is the 30 seconds leading up to this because this was the first example of Canada's like atrocious spacing. Yeah, let's get into it. They'd knocked a long ball. Like they'd had the ball at their goalkeeper.

They'd knock it long over Sauer's head, like all the way long. Sauer's head, like, Sauer's feet. So we are back, we are at like base zero. Canada, this is where you can set up like the defensive block you've been talking about in the days leading up to this. This should be routine, right? There's no surprises here. Canada's front three race up field with this ball.

all the way back to Neer. They've got two players in our box when Neer hits this ball out to Huerta. So she bypasses two right away. It's a, it's not a great ball, and Huerta's not super wide. So Prince and another Canadian player, I think it's Quinn coming up, are able to press Huerta. And they have her in a decent press. But then as the camera zooms out, Huerta solves it. And as the camera zooms back, there are no other Canadian players, like, across midfield with this. So this is where you're like already wondering what their instructions are because Canada brought five players up to Neer when the ball goes back there. And the other five players for Canada sat at the midfield line. There's 30 yards between those lines.

So if we get out of it, which we do here, Querta gets it to Lavelle. And Lavelle is just in an ocean of space. And she can just turn and run up field. And if your defensive game plan is set up to invite Rose Lavelle to get the ball in an ocean of space and run up field at you, like it's going to be a bad night, I think. So, so, so, so, so, so, so, and then, and then the worst part is it's, that's not even as bad as it gets. It's not even like their back players just sort of sat and collected and got back in their

shape. So we're now, we're now running at them, right? LaVelle's running at them and she's got, she's basically has Desiree Scott exposed now. And instead of Desiree Scott recognizing the situation in all this open space and being like, okay, we need to retreat and just slow things down. She actually like steps up towards Lavel, even though she's 35 yards away. She, like, steps towards her. compounds their whole spacing issue by taking herself out of the play.

Lavelle just floats a ball easily to Horan in the center circle. And Scott actually compounds her compound mistake. This is like interest on interest. She jumps at this floated ball. And again, like any basketball player knows if you jump, you're now out of the play. You can't do anything while you're in the air. So while she's in the air, Lavelle runs 15 yards past her. And so she's now eliminated another defensive player.

So this is just crazy to me, right? So, like, discipline-wise, for this defense for Canada. We are now looking at 4 v4 ahead of Horan. Horan has the ball in midfield, and there's 4-V-4 up ahead of her, because Lavelle is now well-past Canada's defense of midfield. And it's four-on-two on Huran's line. It's Haran, our two fullbacks and Sullivan, against two Canadian players. So we are 8v-6 on half of the field.

Like, you don't even run attacking drills 8-V-6 because you're like, this isn't realistic. We're not going to have an 8-V-6. And so this is just the theme. of the entire game. This isn't an isolated event where Canada just messed up this one time. But anyway, we're 8V6 running into Canada's box.

So it's no surprise that the initial ball in gets, you know, weakly cleared by Canada. And of course, it's going to fall to a dazzle camo shirt. In this case, it just missed Lavelle at the 6. Gets all the way to Horan, and Iran has her shot deflected. But you're just like, this can't continue. There's no way Canada will just keep

allowing this all game. You know, they've been fortunate now several times. In the first five minutes. Yeah, in the first five minutes. But they didn't. They just never addressed it. And this was just on repeat for 90 minutes. For 78 minutes.

Yeah. Yeah, the last 10 minutes were maybe a little different. But, okay. That's really helpful because, I mean, that's going to, that exact thing is going to play out a few more times. Yeah. For everyone who doesn't know the inside baseball here, Bells has this chronology, you know, on the dock. and I'm jumping in with all the screenshots of these events and it is just insane how many of these screenshots

are just like hockey style odd man rushes of the U.S. running into open field. It's crazy that this happened against as high a level team as Canada. I'm actually going to go out on a limb and say schematically their defense was worse than any of the other opponents we played in this tournament. They have more talented players, but their scheme here was real, real bad. Yeah, you've really stepped it up.

as a multimedia journalist by adding these screenshots. It makes the document so much more, such a rich experience. For the two of us, no one else gets to see it. All right. Right after the five minute mark, Canada does get a shot.

So they're getting, there's a little bit of a theme over the next 20, 25 minutes, where Nekyll Prince does Sophia Huerta. And by does, I mean, she skips by her and gets a couple of yards to take a shot. Now, it's not a shot from a super dangerous place, but it is a shot from about 15 yards from the goal line. And she hits it right at at Neyer. But, you know, she could have curled it far post and it could be one zero, you know, that it's totally within the realm of

possibility. Yes. Oh, so a minute later, I'll just say she does almost the exact same thing. It's deja vu. Canada patiently worked the ball. They get it over to Prince, and Prince has Huerta on a complete island. So this is what stood out to me because it was the same. in both cases. Querta has no help here. Atlanta Cook is not coming out to stay connected with her. And again, I'm not even saying that this is a mistake by either player. I don't know what the instructions are. It's not good how easily prints shook Huerta because she didn't just, like, create a tiny

window to hit the ball, you know, through a ball-sized window. She is, like, well clear of Huerta and could have continued attacking at the goal in both cases and forced Cook to step out. But what was interesting to me is even as Huerta was getting done this bad, badly, Cook never made a move out towards her. Like, Cook essentially sat in like she was playing second goalkeeper at the six-yard line, just denying angles. And again, I don't know if this is the instruction where it's like, we're just going to let them have this.

And if they beat Huerta, they beat Huerta. But we didn't change anything right away. And we didn't actually change it later on in the game either. So Cook continues to sort of just hold her ground centrally and let the chips fall where they fall with Prince versus Huerta. I mean, so again, you have both screenshots here, and it looks like Cook is very well positioned to block any shot at the far post. Right. In both cases. So either Prince hits an absolute worldly over her, you know, into the top corner, or she's going to, or Cook is just going to head it away if she takes a shot to her.

I guess it worked. Yes. So when it looks like Cook, Prince hits it straight at where, or at, uh, Neer, I'm sorry. Like, that's her only place to shoot it other than curling it around Cook, which I think she should have tried to pull off on one of these two shots, because that is the, I mean, that's what Morgan tried to do two minutes earlier. Yeah.

I think that's the correct play. She just, she just goes for sort of power and doesn't worry about placement. Yeah, all things considered her, both of her shots were fairly uninspired efforts. They were just kind of grounders right at Neier. Eighth minute. Lavelle gives it away. in our half, but I, I'm just mentioning this because I blame,

I blame Sullivan a little bit in this moment. It's the exact timestamp is 705. I blame Sullivan for just not moving to make herself available in, in the buildup. And I thought, even though we did get all this joy, you know, sort of rushing at a retreating back line, we, we weren't super clean in like combination and tight space. And we need, we need a little better understanding there from Sullivan,

into like when when we're well when lavelle or huerta is sort of pinned along one of the sidelines she's got to be quickly moving into the into the passing windows she doesn't in this case and um canada canada takes it off of lavelle well take cana picks up lavelle's loose pass and then gives it right back to us so no i would agree with i totally agree with you that when we were trying to build when we actually had you know to build and canada were in their defensive block. I don't think we were particularly great. You know, it was, and that's, that's somewhat to be expected because it's, you know,

we're playing a good team. But, but I agree it was a little, a little bit loose. And Andy Sullivan definitely isn't like making a case for herself as any kind of distributing number six. Yeah. I was going to make a Jackson Ewell joke, but I'll keep it out. I'll keep that out of this podcast. Querta wins a duel around the 8 minute mark with Prince

So Prince tries to take her To the left to Huerta's right And this time Huerta dives in and wins the ball And then kicks it out for a corner kick So it's good to see her get a little W there In that 1V1 battle There's still no help for her She's still on the island

So again we didn't make a change within Within a couple of minutes of those two 1V1s that Prince won 850 mark Haran just gives it away in the buildup trying to hit a hero ball. And I was, I was frustrated sort of as a, sort of a presumptive frustration that, like, this is what we're going to see a lot more of in this game, where, you know, we have, she had a lot of space on the ball and she just tries to sort of lump it at the backline. But she didn't end up doing it a lot in this game, I don't think.

She, this was, this turned out to be a fairly isolated incident, even if it was kind of a just eff it, here you go, Canada, have the ball kind of moment from Iran. Yes. One of the things I just liked in the buildup again was our ability to sort of exploit Canada's defensive midfielder's positioning because we hit that ball up to Morgan and sort of bypass Iran and Canada's defensive mids are tight on her and she just slips past them for that layoff. So now she's again free running forward. And if she doesn't decide to hit that hero ball, she could have just kept running with the ball. Like this could have been another situation where we're just racing at him with the ball at her feet. Like 5 v4 or something. Yeah. the around 13 minute mark Haran at least in my mind completely redeems herself going for a scissor kick on a deflection

and nearly buries it far corner I don't I did not note the build up for this you may have it off the top of your head but I don't but it was the ball deflect I think it was a shot that got deflected by a Canadian defender up into the air and then and then Haran just

just takes it on the on the volley nearly an overhead kick and and does almost score with it it would have been gorgeous So the buildup here is another transition moment. And it's so it's Canada comfortably in possession. You can see their big sort of, not big. You can see their deep two-man setup where it's Buchanan and Gillis.

I'm just going to say Gillis. Is that what we're going with? We'll change it every time. So Buchanan and Gillis are deep. And then they've got like a five-player row in the midfield. And then two up top in this particular build-up phase. I'm sorry, two, five, and then three. That adds up.

So they have three high, and those three high are spread out, right? It's Prince on one side line. I think it's Becky on the other side line and Sinclair sort of in the central space. And Buchanan tries to hit the long diagonal to Prince, and this is where we have our three attackers, Lavelle, Morgan, Smith, and Pew up ahead of Canada's line of five midfielders. So we are like we are on the attacking side of them. And this ball from Buchanan is a little bit of a hockey.

hospital ball and where to runs in and gets a deflection and she just deflex it beyond Lawrence. So the ball goes past Lawrence. And we are just in that space. And we've got a whole field to run into and it's three versus two. So again, this is just how what Canada was willing to risk by not having one of their defensive midfielders like stay home home and actually be that player to be their third defender. They were leaving just two, two true defenders back. and again inviting these transition moments from the U.S.,

I can't imagine that it was just Bev saying the U.S. are so sloppy in their final 18-yard patterns that we're just going to give them these chances and trust that will come out ahead. Like, they have to, Canada, have to fix this going forward. What could have been the plan? I don't even... There weren't any adjustments.

Their first sub was one of the defensive midfielers. Grosso came on for Quinn, but that didn't solve anything. like Grosso was leaving the space just as open as Quinn was. Well, so a little bit concerning, Pew gets, I think she gets, she kind of steps weird on her ankle and has to get it taped. The U.S. is down to 10 for a while. 17th minute Prince Prince beats Huerta again. This time, Sophia Smith is coming back to the rescue and slides to deflect her cross over the goal for a corner kick. but that's uh i was keeping track it was prince three huerta one at this point

so the same thing when you get the screenshot of prince getting this ball it's uh huerta all the way out with her well wide of the 18 yard box and alana cook is like still within the frame of the goal uh at about the penalty marker so uh you know she alana doesn't go out past the near post she's bound by the near post can't go out past that where sophia you got her out there um and this is one where lawrence over last is overlapping Prince as Prince is receiving this ball and that might actually have been worse

like it might have been she might have been better off just letting Prince have a go at Huerta because that's what brought Sophia Smith into help on the play and Sophia Smith ends up being the one to disrupt the final ball cross yeah I mean I guess Huerta's

I know Huerta's not like a vaunted 1v1 defender that's not like her that's not what she's famous for but do you think does it concern you seeing her get beat so many times like this? Like I'm not sure Akelly O'Hara would do would be better but that's going to be an issue at the World Cup probably. It's worrying so you know part of this is because because there's such a gap between her and Cook that does make it easier for Prince to beat Huerta like and not just because

it's like I mean she can literally take a bigger touch to beat her this was like a big a big touch that she used to curl around Huerta on this play. And she can do that knowing that Cook can't get to it, right? Cook can't come out and clean up the second ball. So you don't have to be as tight with your control. So that probably plays into it. So we can definitely scheme around this to help Huerta a lot, not just by giving her cover,

but by discouraging that player from taking her 1B1 in the first place. But no, there's no way around it. Like, it's not great that she gets, like, dusted three times in the first 25 minutes. The other thing is it doesn't happen really again after this. I know. And I couldn't actually place why. I'll have to do a full, I think what I need to do is watch a full rewatch of Prince's touches

to see how many, because there aren't that many times that it even presents itself. There's like one more where she gets it and chooses not to try to take her. But then from then on, they never really get it out to her in isolation like that again. Yeah. Yep. And again, I don't think we did anything different.

Cook isn't coming out to help. Sophia Smith isn't really coming back, making a concerted effort to get back to double out there. So I don't have a good explanation for why it didn't pop up again. There's a good punch from Alyssa Neer in here that we should probably mention. She did okay in this game, don't you think? For sure. For sure.

I mean, Canada's shots were all fairly tame from distance, but her positioning was solid. she, you know, eliminated to rebounds. And I know she has a couple of dicey, like, moments on the ball, but she also keeps some plays alive with some of those balls out to the wings, which I think, you know, it's useful. She definitely was not like a nightmare back there with her feet. Okay. Even her giveaways were like the safe kind,

where she went extra safe and, like, it may have gone out of bounds, but it's better than missing to the inside where they can just run right back at us. Right. To put it in youth soccer terms. 21 minute mark, the U.S. does well to slowly build up. It's, you know, we go back to, you know, from our back line all the way into Canada's defensive third. And we're just very patient. And then Morgan clips a ball across after some struggle.

And Iran gets bested 1B1 on the end line. But we do have Canada pinned back now for a bit of the game. and I guess I was wondering why this goes back to the whole discussion of the openness of Canada's midfield I suppose but why couldn't we get better triangles around Sophia Huerta like it seems like when she seemed like when she got the ball it was often the space collapsing quickly and then her sort of kind of desperately playing it back to Alana Cook and there was not

much opportunity for combination there I don't understand why So I don't have a concrete answer for you But part of it I think is because of the way that Sinclair plays with Canada's midfield Like she saggs back in so it almost creates like a four player midfield for Canada And we're running three and like Lavelle is very often like up in the attacking line So we just have you know fewer numbers in that midfield space to really combine And I don't know if things would if things would have if we would have like solved it

had Canada not just given us so many other avenues to attack if we had been forced to build more deliberately if we could have if we would have done it effectively and adjusted but it's just one of those games where it's like as it turns out you don't need to worry about it because you're always already you're already running into the 18-yard box yeah I mean that that's about as good of an answer is I'll accept I'll accept that answer

25 minute mark it's a little messy in the back from Sullivan she gets caught on the ball, Cook deals with it. Going down the other end, it's Haran to Lavelle and then out wide to Sophia Smith and she cuts in and cuts him from the left and hits a respectable shot just

wide of the near post. I think when I said Sullivan was caught on the ball, I just think it was a loose pass to cook. Not that she was caught on the ball. She does get caught on the ball in the 27th minute and then Neyer bangs it out of bounds after Sauerbrun settles it back to her. I guess this was one of the moments where I thought

Mayor was not all that cultured with the ball at your feet. But I take your point that it's better to bang it out of bounds than. Well, I was even going to go back to the play before about that Sullivan one. She kind of plays that hospital ball to Cook. Cook kind of just lumps it forward. And again, because of Canada's shape, like even in the little scramble, we emerge with it. And even there, we still end up with Rose Lovell at midfield running beyond. She's already with the ball beyond Scott and Quinn, Canada's defensive midfielers, and it's just four on four. Like it's crazy how many of these situations presented themselves in this game.

Like unacceptable. Like Canada cannot believe that I don't know how you could watch the video of this and be like, all right, this is fine. We've got four good defenders, so they'll deal with it. Like this is the United States and we're just, they were just handing us these runs. It's crazy. I said Prince didn't beat Huerta again after that last one, but there was one more,

and it's a good diagonal from Gillis to Prince, and she beats Huerta again. This time flashes a ball at the 6, but it's dealt with by Alana Cook, who is just manning her post. Yeah, we get the field level shot from the camera operators here, from the producing team, and it's Prince, it's Huerta,

and then 25 yards away at the near post, it's Neier and Cook. Yeah. Well, apparently it worked. You know, maybe this was the strategy for dealing with Prince. The next time Canada attacks, they work it all the way to Prince. We're getting very detailed here, but work it all the way to Prince, one v.1 with Huerta again. And this time she gives it away trying to tuck a little pass inside to Sinclair. I think you mentioned this earlier.

And it's cut out and we're going the other way. And this is when, so I'm not sure. why Prince doesn't try to keep taking Quartan in that moment. But we're going the other way, and this is when Pew carries it, half the length of the field. They don't catch up to her. They can't catch up to her. And she takes a shot from a tough angle that Sheridan impressively catches on the dive. But again, the shot was low percentage, and I don't know.

I looked like Morgan was there for the cutback. Like, I think it was Smith making the run at the goal, but there was definitely a window for Pugh to just play it across the box for Morgan and she had nobody on her. Yeah, and I would have been fine with either choice, but I'm still going to go all the way back to how we get this ball because it's just striking. And this is another perfect example of Canada's inconsistent choices from their 11 on how to set up their defense because they were building comfortably,

Canada building patiently, got the ball out to their left wing in that spot where they were getting some joy. You know, it wasn't like a rapid fire thing. So they should have, their shape should be like set. They should have a good organization here. And when the ball goes out to Prince, she has Lawrence overlapping her to the sideline, and she has Sinclair slashing vertically up the seam. And she tries to hit Sinclair and it gets turned over.

But that's normal. That's something that will happen in soccer. It's very expected. You have to anticipate it. And this is where the camera zooms out and you see just how badly Canada are set up. Because we've got seven back, right? Canada have five up. there shouldn't be an issue here for Canada in transition.

Lavelle is sort of our eighth defender who's near the amoeba, but sort of just ahead of the ball, so she's not ballside. And so what Canada should have. And so that means we've got two players still up high. We've got Morgan and Smith up high well off the amoeba. And Canada have three back for them, right? They've got their three committed defenders for those two, plus one, everything good. They've got two defensive midfielders to corral Rose Lavelle,

who's not goalside for us. They should be fine numerically. Their issue is positionally because their two defensive midfielders are nowhere near Rose Lavelle. They're not defending anything. One of them should be tight on Lavelle to deny that quick release and then a turn from Lavelle and the ability for Lavelle to run. This is where the de facto play is that ball comes out to Lavelle after Canada's turnover

and the defensive midfielder just dumps her and takes a foul and maybe a yellow card if it comes, but you're just like, okay, whatever. but Canada was never even in position to dumb players for tactical fouls. Like we get this ball out to Lavelle and we are just, again, running at an open space. There aren't even defenders in the picture. Because the two defensive midfielder's are close to the centerbacks. Is that what we're there? Yeah, they're too close to the centerbacks.

So they do come up as this ball gets to Lavelle, but by then, like, they can't cut down any angles because they're so far away. And so what happens as they're coming up field, that's still the wrong choice to even move up towards Lavelle. If you can't get there early, like, just retreat. Because what happens then is Lavelle just pushes the ball past them to Mallory Pugh on the wide open right flank because Pugh has outrun both Lawrence, who was overlapping to begin with, so she's out of the play, and Prince, who gave the ball away and is an attacking player who almost never thinks it's her job to come back and defend, because that's what attackers, you know, think. So now it's just Pugh and she runs, what, 65 yards into the

box to attempt a shot. Like just far too easy. Like far too easy. I think we made a joke in the Mexico game about Midge Purse when she had that 80 yard run. And it's like, well, this is not a repeatable way to generate offense. And it turns out it is. We repeatedly turned this into offense against the gold medal winning Canada women's national team.

Yeah, are they, I mean, I didn't, I'm not familiar enough with them. Have they lost anybody since they won that gold medal? or are they missing players? I don't think so. I think this is their squad. Crazy. We're going to win the World Cup easily. Yeah, we'll have to get a couple of the Canadian analysts on here to talk about what went wrong for them in this game or if it's a trend or what's going on here.

All right. So 37th minute, Morgan nicely brings down a lovely long ball from Huerta. So Huerta plays it over the back line. Morgan runs a little, like a little into out run to bring it down. She has a chance to cross, can't get it past Buchanan, then cuts Buchanan kind of beautifully, and then doesn't press her advantage on the end line or isn't able to press it, and it goes out for a goal kick, which I probably should have been a corner kick.

I don't know. No, it didn't end up crossing the line. Morgan wanted a corner because it got, she was trying to cut it back like the outside or her left foot from the end line, and it got deflected back towards the end line. and shared in collects it. Yeah. And Morgan wanted a corner.

It was close. But all the right decisions. More importantly was Alex Morgan, roasting Kadesha Buchanan, who was an outstanding centerback. Yeah. And again, Alex Morgan really with a statement,

for me, all tournament about how she is not done playing soccer at a very high level. If anyone had thought that coming into this tournament. Definitely not. Yeah. Coming into this end of a sales season, I guess. Okay, big, big chance for the U.S.

right at the 39-minute mark. It's Horan nicks a loose pass from Sinclair to Quinn. Races pass them both into one of these aforementioned oceans of space. And it's a legit 4V2 attacking drill at this point. And I think Horan handles the moment quite well. Morgan runs across her field of vision from left to right, which drags one of the two defenders away from, Pugh, who is on her hand's left and Smith is on her right.

So Morgan does really well to open up that space for Pugh. It seems like that's the correct choice to play the pass to Pugh. And Pugh takes it first time from, I don't know, what, 10, 12 yards away, 15 yards from the goal. And just doesn't do well with it. She kind of floats it over the crossbar. She had the whole goal to shoot at. So we're racking up XG, but it's still. Still zero zero.

I liked our execution on this one. We didn't always execute well on these breaks, but I thought this one was great. I think, you know, you could make a case. Horan could have played Lavelle early. But at 4V2, you don't necessarily have to, because if Horan gives that up to Lavelle, then it's like, okay, now our 4B2 is kind of now at 2 on 2, where it's Lavelle and Morgan running at their 2.

So I was okay with Horan continuing to just carry it and leave it at 4V2. And then Alex Morgan makes a very good run across Horan's face, which drags the defender even one or two steps over, has their momentum going the wrong way, wide open set up for Pew, excellent stuff. Just going to harp once again on Canada's just horrendous discipline here. Because, yeah, they're building comfortably.

There's no way that this should turn into a 4v2 rush for the U.S. But as they're building up in our attacking third, up in our defensive third, like Desiree Scott, the nominal defensive midfielder just wanders upfield beyond the ball, almost to like the edge of the 18. So now Quinn, as the only, like, deep midfielder left, chooses to play a give-and-go with Christine Sinclair. So they race forward, and it is, you know, a turnover.

And turnover's happened in tight combination space. That's normal. It's not like, oh, well, we just need to execute better. You have to have a plan for that turnover. And once they turn it over, Canada now have eight players upfield. Like, this is no longer that it's okay to have five. They have eight upfield in a flat line. And we are, we are, it's party time.

It's been party time all half. and it's, again, a miracle that it is still zero-zero at this point. Yeah, it's a miracle. Is it concerning to you that we have? I mean, I know you're not a, I know, I know who you are. I know you're not a conversion guy, but, um, but you know, what's, is this, is this a problem at all? Yes, I think it is. Like, uh, and for me, this isn't about the last touch.

It's not about Pew missing the target. or about Morgan missing the target after Pew's dummy. Like, it's still just more about getting our patterns right in those last moments. So I think this one was a good example. I think actually both of those misses that I just mentioned were good examples of how we can play in the 18, like good patterns. Pew on that first attempt in like the third minute where Pew is running through and dummies it for Morgan, that's an excellent decision and execution from both of them.

And the ball just misses by a couple of feet. this 4V2 I thought was executed well and it's just, you know, Pugh's last shot goes over. There are a bunch of other 4v2s or 3V2s or 5V4s in this game where we don't even get to that point and I think those are the issues

that we can really address and improve on. For me, it's turning more of those breaks into the kind of shots that we didn't convert, if that makes sense. Yeah, it totally makes sense. I think one thing we still had a bit of, to borrow a phrase from you, crosser's brain on some of these, you know, like we'd have a 5V4 and we just kind of hit,

hit a, I'm tired to hear myself say hopeful ball, but it's a little bit of that where you just, you know, you're just kind of whacking it into the danger area. All right. So 43rd minutes, since you're talking about hopeful balls, we get one of those, this time, a couple of them. It starts with Cook in the back under not much pressure, decides that she's going to hit it up towards Alex Morgan, which Canada dutifully clear back up field. But Huerta collects that ball, and then she lumps it forward again.

And there's another scramble, and this time sort of from the top of their box, and they kind of clear it again. But Horan gets on the end of it. She's in a ton of space, dribbles up a little bit to about 20 yards away and has a hit, didn't connect with it well. I think it's an okay place to have a hit for sure. Just doesn't really make goal scoring contact. And then comes another big chance in the 45th minute for the U.S. a good buildup from Cook to Sauerbron to Sullivan. Sullivan does a nice job of turning and playing Lavelle into a pocket of space.

Yeah, and I'm just going to jump in here because this was, for anyone who's been listening to us and can remember the goal that Honduras scored against us in World Cup qualifying, this felt a lot like that where we just had two vertical passes from our back line that completely cut out Canada's front line and midfield. And I think a big part of this is Christine Sinclair for Canada, who at the 44th minute of a game in 90 degree weather just is not going to be able to cover the kind of ground

that you're going to need your, you know, your frontline mid-central defender to cover. Can I say that front-line central defender? Like her cover shadows is sort of just very, she has a very small cover shadow at this point. So we just have an easy switch from Cook to a Sauerbrun and, you know, it's a 20-yard pass and Christine Sinclair maybe takes two steps

in the time that ball travels. And then we get it up to Sullivan and she's maybe taken one more step. So Sullivan just has all the time in the world because Sinclair can't shift with the play fast enough. And that leaves, this time it's not really on Scott and Nguyen, though they could have dropped once they realized how beat Sinclair was, but they're now in no man's land.

So Sullivan can just hit an easy vertical pass up to Lavelle, and just like that, we are once again facing Canada's back line and just running at them. Yeah, and I thought maybe Lavelle, didn't make exactly the right choice here. She could have just played it wide to Fox, who's streaming up the left wing. Fox finally gets up there.

She finally catches up to the play. She could have had some involvement here, and we elected to do the more hopeful option. Yeah. It's not too bad of a ball, but it results in sort of some slop in the box, and then it's recirculated to Horan, and she makes a good decision to play it at the top of the box.

She makes a good decision to play it wide to Huerta and Huerta fizzes it across as she does and it gets nicked up into the crashing Sophia Smith off a defender's foot so Smith is like you know two yards from the goal line running full speed at the goalkeeper and it the ball bounces off her body maybe off like her hip and then she tries to bundle it in from close range but Sheridan kind of wins that cage kind of wins that cage match by pinning the ball between her, you know, under her legs. Still zero zero. Yeah, really good, really good technique from Sheridan on the first one to get down to essentially

sort of meet the ball at Smith, like between the two of them. And then very good instincts from her once it squirms sort of through her body to collect it with like a scorpion leg. Yeah. Between her hamstring and her calf muscle. So, you know, it's kind of just hilarious. this point how many good chances we have. In stoppage time, Pew nips

Quinn attempt to switch fields at midfield with her head. This is another example of Pew being really good in the press. She intercepts it with her head and it plays it in one motion to Alex Morgan who brings it down and then springs Pew down the left.

She rounds the defender and flashes a ball about, I guess, you know, head high just out of reach for Sheridan, who comes out of the goal mouth to try to grab and misses. But it was also out of the reach of Rose Lavelle, who was the nearest attacker,

making a run at the goal. So it skips through and doesn't really result in anything. Yeah, and this is just good downhill mentality from our players to be opportunistic on the mistake. Quinn has an open look like it's a good idea to switch this, and it's just maybe a little bit casual, you know,

where Pew can get a touch with her head. But then once she makes that touch, again, we are gone. And the half comes. Maybe we should speed up the timeline a little bit, second half. Well, I had to establish just how incredible it was the number of these sort of runs we were getting. Because we weren't, again, we weren't getting these kinds of openings against Jamaica or against Haiti or against Mexico. We got some of them against Costa Rica, but not even this many.

This was, again, it was beyond belief what Canada were, how open Canada were. I love to see it. I love to see a shambolic Canadian performance. We had a lot I mean a lot of attacking moments In the second half too Maybe I'll Let's see

I'll go with the ones that have screenshots on them 52nd minute There's still going to be a lot There's still going to be a lot Smith and Lavelle win it in the press Off a Gillis pass Levelle has it running at the box 4V2

So I mean we're just We're just crushing them When they try to play out of the back At this point Yeah And Villas, oh, and so what ends up happening here is Lavelle takes a really heavy touch, and Villis makes up for her mistake by intercepting Lavelle's sort of desperate attempt. Gillis, sorry, Lavelle's desperate attempt at getting it to Sophia Smith.

But yeah, like in this situation, Canada weren't under pressure. Gilles wasn't under pressure. We had our sort of front three again with Lavelle being next to Morgan and Sophia Smith wider and a little deeper, almost like a right midfielder. and Gilles just made a really bad decision, right, to try to, to try to, like, hit it into the midfielder. But there's just no rotation from Canada's defensive midfielers. Quinn and Scott are still both really high up ahead of, like way,

way off of our front attackers. And so when there's a turnover, like, that's it. They can never get back into this play. And it's just insane to me that Canada just kept essentially playing without a defensive midfield presence. Yeah. Okay, 54th minute Rivier gets hurt, but she stays on. And then Canada makes their first sub in the 57th minute.

It's Julia Grosso on Fort Quinn. I think you said earlier it didn't really change anything. No, within seconds. I mean, we're by him again. So, sorry, but right away in the 58th minute, Smith wins it again in the press. And we are behind them. We're three on two, three on one and a half. and Sophia Smith takes just a little bit of a heavy touch

so she misses the chance to get Pew in wide open but it's just yet another odd man rush. So I'm hoping that we spend our next year ahead of the World Cup just working on these patterns and the execution of these moments because this is where we're going to get our goals from. I should say this is where we can add a lot of goals to what we already have. Yeah, this was a disappointing one

because Pew was really streaming into a good, position and it seemed like Smith was probably going to play the ball to her if she hadn't played that heavy touch she might have tried to play it in behind for Morgan too who knows um what happens in gillis does uh come in and challenge and smith accidentally steps on gillis's shoulder and upper arm which looked like it hurt a lot and there was a kind of a big break in the action and Alyssa Chapman comes on for Riviere, who as I mentioned earlier, was struggling a little bit in the 61st minute.

Still no subs from the U.S. Nobody, no indication that they're going to be subs anytime soon. And right now, I'm golden with that because, again, this, I'm not saying that we didn't have subs who can do these things too, but we're running at them. Like, there's no reason to break up what we're doing right now. It is working, despite the scoreline still being zero, zero. That's true.

A nice little sequence down the left from Horan and Lavelle, but you see a little bit of Horan's physical limitations, at least at the moment. Lavelle leads her in a little too much, and she just kind of, it turns into a hospital ball, and she kind of dribbles out of bounds. Yeah, and go ahead. This all started from another terrible Canadian execution with their positioning, because it's Desiree Scott dribbling the ball at midfield into. a trap and when she loses it, I mean, again, she kind of compounds the error because she

has her pass intercepted by Mal Pugh on the left sideline. And then she like steps to Pugh as though she's going to close down 15 yards of space and take it from her. Pugh just, again, a simple push past her momentum coming at her. And it's just Horan. And when you look at the screenshot, it's Horan with the ball beyond midfield on the left in the left channel. And there's, it's three on, it's three on three. Like, wildly open final. Maybe it's because it's a final. Maybe it's because it's the fifth game in 90 degree weather. Canada had not rotated as much as we did. I think that was the word. So maybe that had something to do with it. We get a big chance in the 64th minute.

It's a very nice sequence from the U.S. Becky Sowerbrown bangs it through the lines to Mallory Pew, kind of seals her marker on her back and chests it into Morgan's path. Morgan takes a touch and in a lot of space and then slips Smith in behind with a perfectly weighted through ball. Smith rounds the keeper and then thrashes it off the side netting. I think she kind of lost her footing as she took the shot. But she's shooting at an open goal, but it's a little bit of a tough angle and it's her left foot.

You'd like her to put that one in there. It's her momentum here, right? So it's a, the angle isn't too much of a problem. it's that she's like sprinting with her hips facing the sideline to catch this ball after she rounds the keeper. And so she just couldn't quite swivel them around. Just going to point out once again that in the buildup here, there's zero defensive midfield presence from Canada

and you can get a freeze frame with Alex Morgan and Malpue, running beyond midfield. Canada's defensive midfielder's 15 yards behind the play in pursuit. It's not a recipe for success if you haven't figured that out. Yeah. I think I'm getting it. I'm getting it. We comb down their throats again in the very next moment.

Horan slips it to Morgan who flashes the ball at the back post. Lavelle kind of dummies it and deflects it, but it deflects up over the head of Pew at the backpost. So the ball just kind of flashes through the penalty area. I've got the screenshot of this one too. This is like, honestly, Buchanan and Gillis, if they had held up here and had kept this game zero, They would have built statues of them.

There's a fantastic screenshot of this sequence, where it is quite literally 4V2 at the edge of the 18-yard box. So even Canada's fullbacks aren't in the picture. Yeah. Just scenes. Yeah, it felt like there could have been more from that. Maybe this is an example of us just whacking it at the penalty area. Like there, Lavelle's in there, Pughes there, and Smith,

they're all at the top of the box ready to dart into whatever space is available. I you know what for everyone listening I will post these screenshots like uh just because again this level of openness just doesn't seem to exist in soccer anywhere anymore and like finals are notorious for being like cagey affairs where everyone's being super cautious positionally this is this is as far from that as I have ever seen yeah it was definitely not that do you want to do you want to say anything else about our attacking patterns or or we already covered it. Yeah, we'll save that for another,

for like an attacking pattern episode. Okay. Adriana Leone comes on for Nickell Prince and she looks bright. Prince had been quiet since that opening 30 minutes. I just don't think Canada like even tried to press that advantage for the rest of the time she was on. It's just there wasn't even an attempt.

So I don't know that we did anything differently, just to try to answer my own question there. They definitely weren't occupied with protecting the space behind them. I'm not sure what they were focused on. 71st minute, Lavelle lays it off for Sullivan from the top of the box. And Sullivan has a good crack from 25 yards just over the crossbar. And I just want to point out that this sequence starts not 15 seconds after a Haran free kick from like the top of the box flashed just a few yards wide. So again, this is how much we were smothering them.

that Canada managed to get the ball in play, turn it over and turn it over to us at the top of the box and have to deal with another shot, like, within 25 seconds. Two shots within 20 seconds. They're a bit of a shambles. Yes. 73rd minute, Lavelle tries to chip in Smith after a spell of patient possession at the top of Canada's box.

And I think it's a great idea. The chip is measured just a bit short and it gets cleared away. I loved the patient possession here. I loved the poking and prodding and, like, trust and confidence we had in each other, but I'm obligated to point out that preceding this patient possession was another party time, full field fast break after yet another naive turnover and transition defensive moment from Canada. I don't know what Grossos' instructions were when she replaced Quinn, but it certainly did not solve Canada's defensive midfield issues.

They turned it over, like, in our attacking third as they were possessing, and Malpue picks it up and runs 70 yards upfield with the ball. Yeah, so she ran the 70 yards with the ball, and then we sort of retreated into like a patient possession spell there. Is that basically what happened? Yeah. Okay. So that's what we get.

We get that initial attack to see if something materializes where it's three on three, and then when nothing materializes, then we settle into some really pretty soccer that, again, I think sets a nice foundation for what I'm hoping we start to do, and I just wanted to get a little cleaner, a little more ruthless with an offball movement. Yeah. 73rd minute, there's a little bit of penalty shout from Alex Morgan. She thought she got taken down by Gillis just inside the box on the left side from Canada's perspective.

She takes her shoe off and holds it up for the ref, but I don't think it was a penalty, really. Still no subs at 75 minute mark. Well, we're still cooking, so I'm okay with it. Okay. We get a penalty. Penalty. In the 70, at this 75 minute mark, we get a penalty. And Morgan converts it, as you know.

It starts with a throw. A pew makes a good pass to Morgan. Morgan plays a hopeful ball that, I mean, it's a good idea, but it's kind of glances through a Canadian defender's legs to Lavelle. And Lavelle is sort of racing after it, kind of away from the goal towards the end line. and she gets clipped from behind by Alyssa Chapman, who had come on a little bit earlier. It's a really unfortunate way for Canada to lose from their perspective,

but it was a penalty like 10 times out of 10. If it hadn't been called on the field, it would have been overturned by VAR and called by the assistant. Because as any middle schooler knows, you can clip someone's feet like that into their trailing foot. You clip it and it catches her other foot as they're walking, even at walking speed that's going to put someone on the ground, hilariously. So when you do it to somebody who's running full speed,

like, it's always a penalty. She clips her trail leg as it's behind her in the air, and that trail leg then smashes Lavelle's own trail leg smashes into her plant leg, and that's it. That's a pen. There was a Canadian reporter. I tweeted this, but Canadian reporter who was calling it a dive or a flop. And this is a guy who wrote,

writes for the Toronto son. And he put that was in his, I clicked on his tweet and read his article. It's the seventh largest newspaper in Canada. I looked that up too. And he's just telling, all these, all these poor Canadians are just spitting out their Cheerios

about how much Lavelle flopped and dived. It's total nonsense. Were they doing it after the replay, after they saw the replay, or was it the initial reaction? This matters, because on the initial reaction, if you don't see that foot get caught,

then it might look like, oh, her body and Lavel made a meal of it. Once you see the foot get caught, it's stone cold. No, he posted the slow motion clip that is the most incriminating and still called it a dive. And then went back to, and then went back

to his newsroom and filed that story. Come on Canada. LaValle's not running at goals. He's running at the end line well wide of the goal. So it's a, it's a silly, silly to even risk it, to even like, usually see players have to like change their body

like their gate as they're pursuing and Chapman just didn't do that she thought she could just run straight through and misjudged it the throw-in was actually a Canadian throw-in that the sequence started from Canada threw it to their own player up the sideline that's right that player hit like a one-touch ball thinking that it was going to be like a slick, slick pass to layoff and she just passed it directly to

Mount Pew so this one I'm going to kind of forgive their defensive midfielers they were still slow to react and I think at this point Desiree Scott has nothing left in the tank because again she just she just couldn't catch up with Pew who plays Morgan and then Pew runs past her too so we do end up with again a three on three that we didn't execute particularly well on

no and then Canada sort of gives us the gift of the foul yep and then Morgan buries it left-footed to her to her right sends Sheridan to Sheridan's right boy that was a confusing way to explain that but it's a good penalty no question about it and it's 1-0

that's basically the ballgame although it does get a little exciting in... Yeah, I'm just going to point out that shortly after this, not shortly, yeah, shortly after this, Kadish Buchanan goes down and is down on the ground for several minutes with like a cramp

and receives treatment on the field. It's a long delay. It gives us plenty of time, gives our coaching staff plenty of time to figure out what we need to do to see this game out. And then a couple of, a minute later after play is resumed, we get

the only sideline shot I've seen that shows the entire bench side of the field sideline and the only people standing at midfield are the two coaches and the assistant referee. And that's at the 84th minute. And I'm starting to wonder why we aren't using substitutes to see out a 1-0 game that we now just need to run out the clock for. Right. It occurs to me that potentially in this 90-degree weather we could use some extremely

terrifying attacking players to finish this off. Yeah. Yeah, we were screaming about it on the Discord too. 87th minute, Lawrence does... Lawrence does Lavelle? Is that right? Yeah, so Lawrence gets a little 2B2 situation out on the side. I forget who she's with, but it's Lavelle and where to out on our right flank defending it.

And Lavelle goes out to pressure the ball initially. and, you know, she's got heavy legs. Heron has heavy legs in the middle. Canada executed a nice little give and go that's pretty simple, and that basically creates a situation where Querta is now defending upfield, and Lavelle is our deepest defender on that right channel, and Lawrence just absolutely skins her. So Lavelle's legs are concrete at this point.

And then she flashes one over the crossbar, pretty good shot. Canada's starting to make some problems for us as the clock ticks closer to the 90th minute. Another shot right at Nair and one over the crossbar. So it's kind of making me nervous. 89th minute is when we get our first subs of the game. Yeah, so Vladko tried to sub after Lavelle got done there. And Canada had that little flurry of chances. Then he tried to put players on the sideline to sub them in.

Didn't get him in, I think, in the first two dead balls. But it's like, and then he was pretty upset about it. But it's like, buddy, you had, from that goal, you had 10 minutes to get players up and into this game to see it out. And then once they came on, that was it. We wasted six minutes straight with Midge down in the right corner. Like, she had no problem having the ball with fresh legs. She's already good at that aspect of the game. If we do that earlier, I feel like that Canada's spell of pressure doesn't happen.

Right. Yeah, that's a, that's a mark against Flocko. It was just to tie it up. It was Rodman, Germa, and Perce, who came on from Morgan, Pugh, and Smith. And then I think Cornyak came on at the very end, like in the middle of stoppage time. The only game management complaint I have is that we, after we successfully wasted like four or five minutes in that right corner, we got another corner and another chance to waste another minute and a half. and we actually took the corner into the box, which was baffling to me. So we played them short over and over again and really milked the clock.

And then for some reason we played it into Canada's players and they cleared it up field and actually promptly got their best chance of the game potentially. Not the shot they took from the top of the box that Neer caught comfortably. But because that, I mean, the shooter had the chance to slip in Lawrence overlapping her on the left side unmarked.

Like unopposed, she would have just been in the Man City zone. I chose to shoot it instead, and Nair caught it and that was that. But, like, I don't know why we put that, that corner. I kept going back to that corner kick and wondering why we played a long corner when all we had to do was keep it on that right side with Midge and Trinity. I didn't catch that, but I agree with you. So I guess the only other thing I, so that's it. We're the champions of Conccaf and we're going to the Olympics.

Very, very, very good. I wish we could have scored a few more goals, but it seems like that's going to even out over time. And like you said, the attacking patterns, that's not an impossible thing to fix. And it is fun to think about who we will be adding to this squad when we play in the World Cup next year. Crystal Dunn, Caterina Macario.

Who else comes to mind? We got Sam Mewis coming back. Yeah. Tiana Davidson. I don't know what Julie Ertz's story is going to be, but those are some soccer players. Yeah. And I think Alex Morgan had a baby in May 2020

and was back with the U.S. women's national team in the spring of 2021. So if you go by that, Crystal Dunn had a baby, a boy named Marcel in May. You've got to imagine she'll be back by the spring and Rarin to go in Australia and New Zealand. She probably slots into the midfield, right? I don't know where we will put her.

I mean, she could slot in at any front four spot on the field, front five spot on the field. Obviously, she's been our best left back of a generation. So I don't know. It's going to be, we already have an embarrassment of riches, and this is just going to add to those riches. I still think the midfield's a bit of it. Embarrassment of riches. It's a little confusing embarrassment of riches, I guess.

It's top heavy for sure. All right. Attack heavy. It's an attack heavy embarrassment. All right. Anything else? We should probably wrap this up. Yeah, we should wrap it up.

We'll get back with the women's team as they, I think they have some September friendlies and we'll look through their attacking patterns. Yep. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Oh, yeah. By the way, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. The link is in the show notes. We'll see you.