Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #303: Monday Review — Wes injured, Giovanni return, Aaronson balling

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

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from the USSF approved territories of Georgia and Kentucky, and also from the FIFA approved territory of Brooklyn. This is the Monday Review. Good morning. Bell's Vince and Waki here. What's the top news? Other than it being Greg Burholtz's birthday, he's 49. I think for me, maybe the top news. It's not good news, but it's not the worst news.

Weston McKinney, he's out for it looks like a month with a dislocated shoulder. I don't think we should panic, though. Yeah. Not great news, but we got the, we got the official report from a UVA. They're calling it a capsular lesion, which I have no clue what that is really. Something to do with the shoulder capsule, obviously. But they said he's going to be out three weeks. So considering that the initial report was very Greg Burrhalterian in the fact that they said he dislocated his shoulder to end up getting the news that he's only out three weeks, is great. I spent about two hours on Google trying to figure out of a capsule or a lesion

and a dislocated shoulder of the same thing. It was inconclusive. So we'll need to get some input from the medical community on that. But I'm saying positive. Yeah, all the orthopedic surgeons on Reddit were saying it was, you know, there's a lot of them on the U.S. soccer Reddit page that it'd be four to six weeks at the most and he'll probably get surgery after the season because This is his second dislocated shoulder. Because he had the one, it was a ways back, right? Where he just went up in the air and jumped over a guy and landed straight on his shoulder. Yeah.

I'm hoping he didn't do that again in training. The recklessness of youth back when he was at Shalka. Yeah, I remember that one. That one was when I, uh, that was actually a formative moment for me. Because that's when I realized I was like really, really in it deep. Because I was, I was sick about West and not playing for like two weeks. I was like, for real upset. And that's when I realized like, man, I'm, I'm in it to win it at this point.

Yeah. Because, you know, I've talked a lot about Tim, but Weston, well, West is my favorite player on the team and probably one of my favorite athletes ever, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, really, he should be everyone's favorite player on the team. I mean, I guess we shouldn't be telling people who their favorite player should be, but I'm right there with you. And it should be West McKinney for everyone. Yeah, because you can, you know, naturally I went through the catarrow.

of my mind and try to figure out also how would we line up if we didn't have him at the World Cup you know worst case scenario which you know DeMarzio was saying like four months he's out for four months that's a fairly reputable Italian publication um and you know you can come up with some starting 11s that are are credible and even exciting without Weston McKinney but man without him it's not the same no we don't he it's I mean he's obviously a fantastic footballer but it's like his swagger and his confidence are necessary for this team. Really the personality of the team at this point. Yeah.

Yeah. And when we're talking about the ceiling of this team, like it's significantly higher with Weston to me. Like if we want to not only beat England but really look convincing doing it, like I feel like we need Weston on the pitch. Yeah. Do you think when he comes back, this shoulder thing is going to affect his long throwins? Or should he stop doing them?

He should stop doing them. Yeah, according to the orthopedic surgeons on Reddit. Oh, they have weighed in on that. That's good. I don't know if a single goal has come from him. So at this point, it's like, yo, I mean, it was, we gave it the old college try, but. It was a nice little novelty. He can't throw far, though.

He sure can. Giorana. He returned. He's still good. And it's not a surprise, but he's definitely. still good. He's kind of easing into it though. Does it feel a bit like a trade? Wes is out. Geo's back? That's what I was thinking and that's is a problem we've been dealing with for

years now. We keep, if someone comes in and we'll have another one go out and it seems like basically is just Geo and Weston going back and forth. We'd have to do the crudology to figure out if there's something going on there, but there's a lot of swaps going on. Well, the thing was, I was thinking that because we all tuned in at, what was it, 930 or whatever and started to watch Norwich that, uh, you know, all of our collective anguish and despair from that game actually turned into something and propel Giorina's presence in the lineup. Yeah. You know, and then we, you know, we get the Western news.

But, uh, yeah, it was good to see Gio play, man. He's, uh, it's good to see Gio play. He was, he definitely had his governor on. And I don't, I don't think we've really seen him go full bore for like a long time now, Even when he was playing, when he came back in between injuries, he wasn't going. I say he just should just very gradually loosen that governor up. Don't rush it, though. Do not.

We'll just try a little bit harder every game. Part of it is he just looks kind of casual and smooth on the ball. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say, to quote the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, he was going gently. I mean, I don't do that off. I'm not going to quote Welsh poets very often, especially not in the current climate where we're going to play whales

but it's a perfect phrase for it. He was going gently, but he does, like you said, he kind of does look like he's casual even when he's 100%. So it's kind of hard to tell. Well,

that's the thing. I was thinking about that. He was a midfielder and a 433. Like, I don't know if that's like how he interprets that position or if he is just chilling because that game that he was playing in where he,

I think where he redid the hammy, the third time. when he was playing midfield. It was like that's the same thing going on. But, yeah, Gio, please take it as lightly as you need to. Just find little gaps in the midfield and just plunk her down there and then jog around some. And then do some nice looking controls and passes. A little bit of a teaser.

We hope to record the Iran-USA 1998 recap this week at some point. we hope to. We'll see if that works out. But man, I just got done watching that game very carefully over the weekend. And Claudio and Gio are so similar as players. Obviously, they're blood relatives, but the way that Claudio played back then

is so much like the way Gio plays now. Yeah. I guess the N-O is more, probably more athletic, is the main differentiator. Right? Yeah, maybe a little more technical, too. I don't know.

It's hard to say. He's got, does, did Claudio have that little chop move on Gio does? He does the little chop. He does, he did, he did those, you know, the way Gio will just stroke it with the outside of his boot kind of across the field. And it looks like he's not even trying. Claudio did that a lot too. Very, very ball secure. Like, nobody's taking the ball off, either one of them.

You love to see it. Should we talk about your favorite player, Vince? Let's do it. Who's your favorite player? Brendan Aronson. One, Brendan Aronson. you know he you've been a long time huge proponent of him in every way so to see him go out there and do three assists is really exciting for you and us because we've been really behind him pretty

hard the whole time long time appreciator long time proponent long time advocate of uh brendon arson and yeah like like walkie said he had uh three assists this weekend in a uh in a friendly against cagley it's supposed to be what remember this it's it sounds like calorie i I think we can say Calgary. That's not right. It's phonetically it be Cagliari, but that's not really what it is, right? It's different. Calliari.

I think people get what team we're talking about now. And he, Aronson really, one of the assists, he really threaded it. If somehow I haven't seen that, you should make sure you see it. It was gorgeous. Transition moment, as is his custom. And he plays outside of the bootball. One of those outside of the boot balls where you really put your whole body into it, you know? to get down and put it and hit it just hard enough to slip through.

You put your whole body in it if you're not Giorina. Everyone else puts their whole body in. Yeah, that's right. What did you think of the defending, though? Well, that's the thing. When a pass looks really good, it says it doesn't look like there's a pass there to begin with. And you got to play it on faith and hope, you know,

you play a good path, but you hope for maybe a little bit of a mistake in defending. And we had kind of a perfect storm of all that here. So the key is just to do that a bunch. And it really worked this time. It went between two guys. They're moving. One of them gets kind of stumble-footed and the balls through. Yo, I will say that Bells, you mentioned it was a transition moment.

And I would say that Brendan kind of, he kind of created it, though. That's true. Because it wasn't really, like a, I'm not even going to say the team. But their attack broke down. ball kind of fell to Brendan. And the burst he showed right there was kind of nice to like basically zoom past the people that were around him to create basically a AVP situation where he could thread that ball. But yeah.

And also, you know, we had another yank on the field for leads. Tyler Adams, he was very good. You could easily forget it if you were, you know, just paying attention on Twitter that Tyler Adams was easily. He was not mentioned. And the thing was, like, I was watching mostly, like, I actually didn't see all three assists live. Like, I just watched the first half. And Tyler Adams was absolutely balling in the first half.

He seemed like he's playing really well for leads. Really well. Yeah. Tyler's not a player who drives a ton of Twitter activity in general, except when he went to the very beginning of his Leipzig career, when he was kind of the most exciting thing we had going. on for a while. Yeah, yeah. He's kind of a role player in terms of internet activity. You're not going to get that many likes by tweeting about how Tyler Adams is doing a

pretty good job. Yeah, goals and assists, man. I want to mention that Brendan's other two assists were pretty nice too. One was a little lifted, clipped ball from the right, from the end line, right of the goal, right into the face of the goal for Rodrigo to tap it in. The other was a free kick that was hit wonderfully. and headed in by a guy named Robin Cock, which is a name that was made fun of a little bit on the internet.

Oh, I see why that would be made fun of. Sorry. I mean, I don't know what you want us to do with that, Bill's. Sorry, don't just ignore it. It's Robin. Like Robin Hood and his last name is slang term. Yeah. Like K-O-C-H, like the political figures in the

Republican Party. Need all my scally lads to stand up. So is Brendan worth, was Brendan worth 30 million? I mean, you know, based on the returns of preseason so far, he's looking like an $85 million player to me. He's going to say, 85. Yeah, I mean. He's been 85.

At least, you know, top, top class. I mean, we're so lucky to have a player like Brendan Aronson to warm the bench during the World Cup. That would be. Cannot wait to see it. I will say, you know, sort of reference the point about Weston earlier. I tried to make about Weston earlier. I am excited to see what Brendan does for the national team when he's on the field.

He does bring something special, I think, like with those quick decisions and energy and passing. But yeah, I don't think he should start either. I don't people are going to be mad at us. If he keeps up, if he's playing a bunch and playing well, and is really dynamic. He's got to be kind of hard to keep off the field. Yeah, but we just know that with our current setup and the way our team plays together,

that, I mean, Tim Wea, I hate to keep saying it, but Tim Wea was our most dangerous player throughout World Cup qualifying. And he fits that, he stretches that line on the right side so well, he moves off the ball so well. I can't imagine taking him off. Like, he might not start for us in the World Cup. You mean if Fran is fully healthy and plays right wing?

Yeah. So it's like, I mean, ain't no shame. No shame. Yeah. It takes a village. It will. We're going to have two, if everybody's fully healthy, we're going to have two starting 11 deserving players on the bench.

The other American at Leeds, Jesse Marsh, the coach, gave a typically candid interview after the game, kind of rambly, perhaps a little overly earnest, which we have, you know, a phenomenon we have discussed on this podcast. But he said he was happy with the way they started finishing chances in the second half, which they haven't always done. He also said they need to work on transition defense and that he feels like they're getting better, but it'll be a process and he's still stressed. Which I imagine he is. Lots of positive response to all of that online in the wake of a 6-2 friendly win. One exception I thought was kind of funny was Twitter user Ryan Rhodes, who said, and I quote,

talks bollocks too narrow, can't lace Bielsa's boots sacked by Christmas. It was very British. This tweet was, um, ratioed. And one of the responses to him came from LUFC Kane who said, we've just won six two, you melt, which I just love.

I love to start calling people a melt. Let's do it. I would, that's a great thing to call someone. Let's make sure it's not incredibly offensive before we start doing it. Actually, you know, let's just do it and find out.

Okay. I imagine it just means. like you're, you know, you're turning, you turn everything into a puddle. You're a drag, but it's better. Oh, yeah. You know. Melt. Yeah.

Sure. We'll take it. I was actually just talking about this, watching Love Island with my wife. And I was listening to the people talking. I was just like, man, can you believe that, you know, they believe they're speaking the best form of English? Because it's just clearly not. I thought you meant you were talking about Jesse Marsh with your wife while watching Live Island. Absolutely not.

Because that would probably be pretty annoying for her. I don't know. I think maybe it's just because it's novel to me, but I love the way British people express themselves. I guess I'm just so used to the American modes of communication. So it was, he said, talks, bollocks too narrow. Can't Laces Bielso's boots Sacked by Christmas? What does too narrow mean? Is that a tactical thing?

I think it was a tactical thing, yeah. It says. You kind of just dropped a really specific thing into the kind of vague Britishism. It's tough for an American audience to know, so he should be more clear. The thing about Marsh is if they, I mean, this is very obvious,

but if they keep winning, if they start winning and keep winning in the Premier League, nobody's going to care how much bollocks he talks. But if they start losing and start getting in the relegation zone again, you know, his kind of rambling post-game interviews

are going to be really unpopular, I imagine. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were chanting Bielsa's name. Like, right there at the end of the season where it looked like they were about to get relegated, I think it was one of those games where, like, there was a late turnaround or something. But they were chanting Bielsa's name at one point. I remember this because I was, you know, anti-Jessie Marsh at the time, at the time.

Yeah, you've put that behind you, though. Yeah. He basically just needs to win and then he'll either like him or they won't based on that. Yeah. And talk a bunch of British nonsense in the meantime. More succinct way of saying what I was trying to say. What about Sergenio, Waki? Barcelona is reportedly, quote, listening to offers for desk.

I don't know. It would seem to me this would be something they would always be doing for all their players. And there's also just always reports and rumors around Barcelona. So I don't know what to make of it. But he doesn't appear to be the starter. No. Well, they have all kinds. They need money real bad, right?

Or at least in a fiscally responsible reality, they need money. But yeah, he hasn't played a ton on the U.S. tour. Ronald Araujo, the Uruguayan. Seems like he's pretty clear at right back. I don't have strong feelings about this situation, though. I think Des will play some at Barcelona if he stays. And as long as he plays a little, you know, plays some, that's fine with me. So what it seems like, basically, is the reason why he's not the guy is because of Jordi Alba's

presence. So Javi seems to prefer to play Jordi Abba, you know, in the attack a ton and contributing a ton while the right back is a little bit more defensive. So, and we all know who Sir Gino Dest is. So it seems like he's, you know, it's just kind of down on the pecking order for that reason. But it still seems like that Javi does raid him somewhat. And on this specific report, it seemed like the reason that they were going to listen to offers for Serenio was the fact that they couldn't get rid of people like Umtiti and Martin Braithwaite and, you know, just the dead weight players that they can't sell.

And, you know, even if he is the backup sometimes, being the backup for Barcelona, that's not a bad career outcome, you know, in the scheme of things. No. It's not. So I would really like to see him get a run of games. I would just like to see him level up a little bit. I would also prefer if he played. Yeah. And continue to get better.

Actually, that goes for pretty much all of the players. If he goes to, if he ends up going to like a lesser La Liga club and gets a bunch of minutes, that would be awesome. But I just don't think it's a thing to worry too much about. But that's just me. That's just me. Nah, he's going to be, he's going to take over. He's going to be, he's going to, he's going to be running that team soon. Also, he just doesn't want to leave.

He loves Barcelona. What team is John Brooks going to be running? He's still keeping his powder dry on that. He's not sending any signals out. He wants to keep it really quiet. That boy, going to be a Louisville City. That'd be cool. I mean, dude, it's crazy because, like, he's been,

free to talk to clubs since January. Yeah. What is going on? Some people are tempted to blame Berhalter for this situation. You know, Brooks being without a club, which is kind of wild. Yeah, it's ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. I've noticed that some people that, Burhunter has some critics.

Yeah, some. That are inclined to blame him for things. Sometimes unfairly. Sometimes fairly, but it's often unfairly. ridiculous. I mean, I haven't talked about it here, but I have publicly announced that I'm a Greg Burrhalter stand. Oh, congratulations. That's great. Me too. I am too. Love the guy. It's his birthday, I guess. I mentioned that, but happy birthday. We think you're great, Greg Berhalter. Yeah, for your birthday, me and Greg are now Instagram official. We're riding with Greg, man. That's what

it's what it comes down to. Simple as that. But, yeah, John, I mean, I don't know if he's like waiting for somebody to get hurt on like a good team or something. Like somebody to get like a centerback injury. That doesn't sound like a good strategy, but maybe that's what he's doing. If you're doing that, John, and you're listening, we think you should just go sign for a soccer team. Yeah, John, if you're listening, you should come onto the scuffed podcast. I'm at S, I'm at scuffed pod at gmail.com. Shoot me a note, you know.

Been trying to reach you. I have no idea how to do it. I think, yeah, he seems like probably the hardest player in the entire pool to reach. But I do think the goal of scuff should be specifically to interview John Brooks and no one else. Jay Brooks. Just to sum it up, that's a little bit troubling. Would love to see him get with the club and show himself this fall. Gagaslanina has Fab official signed with Chelsea for $15 million.

He will join them in January. he will join their lone army in January to be more precise. Yeah, he's going to finish out the year with Chicago and then go, I assume, to some, where is Chelsea sending players these days? Good question. Don't know. I guess it doesn't really mean. He could just play somewhere and it doesn't really matter if you're a goalkeeper, right?

Just play. Go a place where people kick the ball at the goal hard. Of course, there's other things too. But like I would I would rather watch less of the championship, but you know, he's probably going to end up in the championship. You've got bad news for you because I think watching the championship is going to be a pretty regular thing. You have to do. I agree. It's rough.

It's a rough and tumble league. I did not expect it to be this bad. But we'll get to that. On a guy, on Gaga real quick, it's just an extremely powerful name. just I mean just like every syllable is not like no syllable is wasted in this name like you could easily see him becoming like like his name is going to give him like mythical status before he even earns it yeah like he's going to be a one name keeper you know what I'm saying like we got to face Gaga today like Gaga sounds like a keeper that you're absolutely terrified

to face and and you know that you might rack up like 4xG and not score single goal Really strong name. Even when you add in the Salina. It's a powerhouse of a name. I don't want to get bogged down on that, but is it really that strong of a name? Absolutely. You're asking, is it a Giovanni Raina level name? Maybe not.

I don't know. Like, for a goalkeeper specifically, like, you talking to your friends, you're like, you know, like, oh, we got guy today. That's true. Like eyes get big. Your mouth gets a little dry. Yeah, that's true. It's fear inspiring. I think Giorvani Rana is a good field player name.

That's not a good goalkeeper name at all. And that's maybe the power of Gaga's name is that it's so specific to goalkeeping. He was basically born to do this or named to it. Like, what I think of Gigi Buffon. That's what it is. There you go. Okay, I accept. One more thing before we go to the break, the scuff podcast can add award winning to its resume.

We are the winners of the world soccer talk, best podcast. 2022 announced today. I have not fully sorted out how to make the most of this glorious victory, but rest assured I am working on it. Are you still kind of processing what must have been to pretty exciting news? Yeah, you know, I would tell my friends and family if I thought they would care or not be embarrassed for me at telling them. Yeah, it's one of those things you can't really talk about.

You can. We can talk about it here, I guess. Well, when I send this DM to Airborne 69 to come on the show, I'm definitely going to put this in there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, good call. Yeah. All right.

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