Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #331: Historic Recap — England v USA, World Cup 2010

Episode Date: November 2, 2022

This is the fifth installment in our historical recap series, which is mostly just for patrons, and in this one we look back at a match against an opponent we face later this month in Qatar. In 2010, we got a draw! But our heroes weren't actually heroes (according to Greg), average players can do a job at the World Cup, and Jamie Carragher is still embarrassed after that Jozy Altidore run. Also the mysteries of the Jabulani, Robert Green's unbelievable error, a lovely stab from Steven Gerrard, a debate about Oguchi Onyewu's performance, the music of 2010, the clothing of 2010, and much more.  0:30 intro, preamble, music, etc.Wiz Khalifa's "Never Been" is the interstitial.12:00 to the soccer!25:00 Gerrard's goal44:30 Dempsey's goal52:45 the half----Listen to the four other historic recaps, and get the Monday Review delivered to your phone every week, by becoming a patron of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedPast historic recaps in the patron feed:#1 Czechoslovakia v USA, 1990#2 USA v Colombia, 1994#3 USA v Iran, 1998#4: Mexico v USA, 2002 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.

Dempsey, one of the stars of the Confederation's Cup. Testing Green again, oh, what an error. Sent to Clinton. We'll trace him getting over. Hey, this is going to be our recap of the last time we played England at the World Cup in 2010, a 1-1 draw that the New York Post famously called our biggest win since Bunker Hill. It was in Rustenburg, which is northwest of Johannesburg, and means Resting Town.

The field had a track around it and held 42,000 people. With that trivia out of the way, let me say I've got Vince, Waki and Greg here. How are you guys doing? Excited. Yeah. I'm also good. I'm good. I'm excited and good. I'm also good. This game was, you know, going back into the portal and watching it was like a kind of a downer. I don't know how you guys felt. We'll get into it, I'm sure. But I am very much hoping that the part two of this in about a month looks a lot better. Really?

So I'm just tipping my, I'm tipping my hand a little bit here on what I thought of this soccer. You know, Greg, man, I'm happy you said it. Because I was on the, so I was on the Discord like last week and I saw Bells saying like, we played pretty well. And so I was like, okay, you know, you know, I'm excited to watch the game. And then I watched the game. I'm like, did we? Like, I mean, we were okay.

We weren't terrible. But, I mean, pretty well is, is a, that's an embellish. I think a lot to you, though. Okay, so we're going to have a little tension. We'll have a little tension. Yeah, on rewatch, I definitely don't think that, like, this holds up in sort of the romanticized quality of performance way. That a lot of us sort of hold it in our mind from when we saw it happen live in 2010. It wasn't quite as moving this time.

Didn't really, I wouldn't even say, I mean, this podcast is going to be fun. I wouldn't say watching it was a whole lot of fun. The first time. Man, I disagree with. I disagree with all three of you on this. I thought I was definitely not moved watching it in real time. It looked like a kind of a lucky draw. Watching it just last week,

I thought, man, we, you know, we kind of deserved a draw in this game. You were less moved? I was more moved on rewatch than on watching it live, yes. All right. Well, let's all take ourselves back to where. we were then, 2010, as we've been doing in these recaps. Yeah.

I was at the Royal Mile in Des Moines, Iowa. I'm not pretty sure. What the hell is that? It's a bar. It's a soccer bar. It's a tiny little bowling alley bar that loves a soccer game. Nice. Nice.

I was in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Doing what? Doing what? I was working on a congressional campaign. What? So I was like in a campaign office and we had a TV in it. It's crystal ball for Congress. CIA bonafides, get thick.

Bro, bro, do you see it? Deep state walkie. Well, we didn't win. So. Well, that's all part of the plan, right? Right, it was a perfect front. It was a perfect front. It was a shadow candidate.

I was in San Diego. My sister was graduating grad school that weekend. So we were in San Diego. we went to a little, like even farther south for the Mexico opener against South Africa. So we got to watch the Mexico game in a giant warehouse full of Mexican fans, which was awesome. And then we're still there when the U.S. played and watched that in just a big, a giant sort of sports bar scene with a ton of people, Jan, USA, et cetera. So, so Greg, you were with your people, huh? Yeah, yeah.

It was really cool. And a bar full of Mexican fans? It was great. Yes, it was. And it was awesome. I was definitely still cheering for Mexico in that game. And then got to turn around and go and do the U.S. side of it. What is it, a day later, two days later?

Wasn't this like a pretty big summer for four loco? Yeah. Or did it make a comeback or something? I just remember it being kind of a four loco summer. So I wasn't really drinking then. Well, yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't really drinking that. But I was introduced to Forloco like fall 2010 when I started college.

Okay. So, yeah, the comeback was definitely in full force. That's my memory of the year. As far as music in 2010, for me personally, going through the Billboard, hot 100 singles of 2010, you'll notice there's a lot of Lady Gaga on here. Does Alejandro make it? I'm pretty sure it does. I'm pretty sure.

It's kind of down there. It stuck in my mind because Ali Badoia was like right on the fringe of making that roster and it's down. Like, every time I'd hear, see his name in the, you know, the articles predicting to me the roster, I would read his name in Lady Gaga's voice. Alejandro. Yeah. So I was a big, big Lady Gaga fan for sure.

I've always been, you know, big in the pop music. And Lady Gaga was definitely being played heavily. other than that, you know, as a high school kid, you're venturing out from the radio. Whole high school really was big on Gucci, May, probably the pioneer of modern trap music. Anyway, I'm not going to get too deep in it. But any rap music that you've heard coming out of Atlanta in the past 10 years, Gucci was the forefather of all this. So very important figure in rap music history. Well, that's perfect then because this, I feel like, was towards the end of the outcast era.

So since I'm doing my outcast check-ins on all these, this was right before the World Cup. And this is also still in like, maybe it's still happening, but tracks would always get like leaked from albums. Oh, yes. And this was this was in my, I'm going to confess here, this was in my heyday of like pirating all media, you know, movies, TV, songs. and so Big Boy had his solo album like a month or started getting leaked a few months before the World Cup, Sir Lucius Leflit, which I think is an underrated classic album. So I've got, so it's nice maybe this was Big Boy, like passing the torch then in the Atlanta scene. Basically, basically, taking over, you know, I was a big ludicrous guy as well. So, you know, Luda Alcast, you know, it was, yeah, the generation was kind of shifting.

and also a big deal. You all probably just know him as like, you know, a guy that makes like radio rap, but, but Wiz Khalifa, his underground days, mixtape days, blah, blah, they're like legendary for people that are like in my, of my vintage. You know what I'm saying? If you were in high school around 2008 to maybe 2014, Wiz Khalifa had a big role in your life.

huge role in your life. You know, if you actually listen to his music, you know what he's about, mostly, you know, smoking a lot of weed. And he had a big influence on my generation. I'll just leave it at that. I'm excited to see which tracks, bells, pulls from. Throw on the interludes here. Did Sir Lucius left foot? With the national.

Does Sir Lucius left foot come out before the World Cup? I think it was officially released during the World Cup. But by the time it was released, everyone already had all of the, like every single single on it was already widely circulated and playing on your various CD players. It's not. None of those songs is in the top 100. I'm surprised that, you know, Rihanna's Only Girl in the World is a song that I remember a lot from then. It's only 47th on the list. How's the goal?

Want you to make me feel. Okay, got you. Kesha's TikTok was number one, which is like, okay. I'm a Kesha fan as well. I actually know one of my coworkers has like a Kesha tattoo on his body. What is the Kesha tattoo? Like the name Kasha or is it a picture? I think it's her like, I think it's her like logo or something.

It's like a lightning bolt or something. She has a symbol. Yeah, yeah, it's something like that. That's cool than what I was in Matt. That's pretty cool. Where were you at on the music front at Wachie? Well, I remember that this was a pretty big time for Mumford and Sons. They were very popular.

They did exist, didn't they? Yeah. That's the band that I associate most strongly with the summer of 2010 is Mumford and Sun. Also, Lil Wayne was very big. For sure. That was the other one. I remember my friend and son's dropping something in like 2011, 2012. I don't know.

Maybe this one was the one that was building up the hype. And then the one that had the one song, I will wait for you. Is that that a song? Yeah. I will. Yes, that's exactly. That's nailed it. I think that dropped in like 2011, 12 or something.

And I remember people listen to that in college or whatever. But okay. Bells, where were you listened to in 2010? I did listen. I was listening to that. We just left foot a lot. But I can't really remember all of my playlist at the time. Party in the USA?

I've had some good moments with that song. Yeah, it came out after the World Cup. Okay, okay. Yeah, because I feel like if that had come out before the World Cup, that would have been everybody's World Cup anthem. I mean, it would have been inescapably linked. if that had come out before the actual U.S. played in the World Cup. Yeah, Greg, I don't know if you remember this, but we were on a bus.

Yeah, we were on a bus out to the USA Jamaica game. Yeah, Children's Mercy Park. And we were singing that song at the top of our lungs on the way out there. Yeah, that was, I don't even remember if it was qualifying or if it was 2011. Was that the 2011 Gold Cup, right? No, that was the 2013 qualifier. We had already qualified. But Jamaica, we were basically there to...

Dead rubber to celebrate. Jamaica home. Yeah. Okay. Beautiful. 2010, man. Great year. Barack Obama was in his second year as president.

I won't get too much into current events. That never seems to go well when I do that. Spain were in the midst of having the world game in an absolute chokehold. They'd won the 2008 euros. And had up until the 2009 Confederation's Cup final, won like, you know, 30 to 45 straight matches. And then after they lost us, they went on to continue winning all of those matches. So Spain were, it was Spain. This was a Spain victory lap.

They turned the World Cup into the same thing. See how I'm living. Yeah. So what's the holdup way to bring the bottle. Get them easy widers rolled up. Self-made. She did everything on my own, bro. In my early 20s, what money?

The broadcast on football iA.a.combeau. The broadcast on football iA.net, which is, I think, supposed to be said, like nostalgia, footballia.com. Is an ITV broadcast, an English broadcast. So they're nattering on about how England has a real chance to win it all this time at the beginning of the broadcast. And seeing the teams lined up in the tunnel, it's a, you know, it's a real contrast. We got Stephen Gerard, John Terry, Frank Lampard, Wayne Rooney, Ashley Cole on one side, Emma Husky and Glenn Johnson. And they're all like these big stars.

And they're all actually bigger than the American players across from them, like Donovan and Charondola in particular, kind of small. So England would fall 4-1 in the round of 16 to Germany in this World Cup, thanks to Brace from 20-year-old Thomas Mueller. But, you know, they had high expectations. Right. Crucially, because they finished second to us in the group, they drew a group winner, or they, you know, they landed a group winner in Germany from another group rather than getting a slightly easier path by way of Ghana. Okay. I remember this because I was excited that we were playing Ghana. I was like, oh, yeah, we got them.

It's not Germany. Right. I just felt good about it. And you know me. I mean, it was just pure, you know, American exceptionalism. I ain't know what the hell I was talking about We did not in fact have them That's how it works

So if it's not Germany If it's not Brazil Argentina You can do it In your mind you know Right It's not one of the blue bloods The field was really fast Did you guys notice that

It's a beautiful field I remember the one ball Bounce into the sky Never to ever come down I don't remember when that was Howard had a punt. Was that the Howard punt that bounced the 18 and launched over Robert Green's head and goal? Yeah, yeah.

That's right. Right before the U.S. goal. England was in all whites, U.S. and Navy kits with white slashes across the jerseys. David Beckham, very handsome on the England bench. Perhaps peak Beckham in terms of his physical beauty, I would say. So was he hurt? He had done his Achilles, I think, playing for A.C. Milan on loan from Los Angeles Galaxy

and I don't know if he would have made the team either way I think he may it he probably would have I mean they weren't strong we're going to go through their lineup so they weren't particularly strong in the wide area so out of all the stars you were listing in sort of that golden generation this particular addition of their golden generation

had some relatively lower quality wide attackers is that would you put Aaron Lennon in that category yeah I think I think I'm comfortable saying he's, you know, for sure, not one of the strongest wide English players historically. Another thing I noticed sort of ancillary is how stark a contrast Bob Bradley is to Fabio Capello. He looks like Bradley looks like he's a high school gym teacher and Capella looks like the

CEO of a fashion house in Milan. Yeah, I would say his fashion is a little more like a broker. convention, but like the best person, like the best dress person at the convention. You're like, Capello or Bradley? Capello. No, Bradley would be at a different sort of. Yeah, he'd be at United Soccer Coaches convention. Right.

Yeah, I think you're sounding Bradley a little short. I don't see high school gym teacher. I see him as like the youth soccer parent who's actually like the most stylishly track suited out of all the youth soccer parents on the sideline. Man, I just can't put stylish anywhere near. The reason is the fashion of the time was to have slightly wider sweat pants. Those don't look good anymore. So you look at it, we look back at it like, no, that's not.

That's a great point. It doesn't look good at all. That is a great point. He was hamstrung by pants of 2010. Yeah, I actually don't know if that's, maybe they were skinny pants back then. It wasn't that long ago. No, they weren't. They weren't.

And we were still ways off from the pants that ended at the, knee for soccer players that were a little tighter fitting. So no, it was still very much the baggy look. I'm so happy you brought that up, Waki. Because yeah, the 2010's style, well, the aughts. That was it called the odds, right? Yeah, the first years. His fashion was definitely a carryover from the aughts.

I'll allow, he was probably a few years behind. But yeah, go ahead, sorry. No, no, no, he was right in lockstep, man, because, you know, very, very, very large clothes at that point in time. I remember that for sure. Like, like we wore in high school, we had to wear uniforms. And so that included wearing like khaki, navy pants, like dicky pants. And you had to make sure that your dickies were as big as possible.

Just absolutely huge. You got to get the double knee so that they're extremely extra baggy. When you walk the bottom of one pant leg needed to be brushing up against the bottom of the opposite pant leg for sure. Yes. Also, Capello, he just looked to me like his assistant coaches just all called him boss. Yeah. I thought he looked good. Yeah, he did.

Three-piece kind of tan suit, perfect hair, glasses. All right. We already mentioned the Vuvazelas. Everybody will remember them. They were incessant in this game, too. So the USA in a 442, right? Right, Greg? 442?

Yeah, both teams, and a lot of teams still. This was sort of the dying embers of the 4-4-2 as so many of us sort of grew up as it was the staple formation. No nonsense. Easy to teach, you know, implement quickly, 4-4-2. Tim Howard and goal. Steve Tarundolo at right back. Oguchi Onyewu at Right. centerback, J. DeMarit at left centerback. Well, actually, were they? Did I have that special

off? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So flip them around. Then Carlos Bocanagra, usually a centerback playing left back. And then Michael Bradley and Ricardo Clark in essentially a double pivot, right? Yes. Yeah. I mean, sort of just the two of them by themselves. So I don't even know if you double pivot didn't really get used that much in Parlance at the time because those were just the only two center mids. Everyone just kind of had two center mids. So you didn't have to call it a double pivot yet. there was no attacking mid ahead of them for most teams right who are going to donovan and i guess i was going to ask a tactical question i'll wait until we start talking about the game okay land and donovan and clinton dempsey as the wide midfielders and then josie altador

and robbie finley as the two strikers can i throw out one historic note here i know belles you're just like we got to get moving here team uh the the carlos bokenegro's left back thing right Like, that was a big deal. And he didn't play at the whole World Cup. He's playing there because we did not have a left back. So this probably sounds familiar to people who came up before the Jedi Robinson days. So this was a, you know, some kind of round peg in a square hole, square peg in a round hole solution. And it didn't even last the whole tournament.

Eventually we benched Gooch, who was coming back from injury and hadn't been playing that much. And Boca went back to centerback. And the player who took the most heat through all of qualifying in this cycle, Jonathan Bornstein came in as a left back. And I'm doing this whole thing because we have so many players we're worried about going into Qatar, right? That could totally screw things up for us. Sometimes a weak player can just skate through a tournament and not have it be like a catastrophe. So Bornstein came in, started two matches in this World Cup,

and had a very uneventful 210 minutes against. Algeria and Ghana. And so I'm just pointing that up to say, it's possible that whoever you're super worried about screwing up in Qatar in 2022, it's possible they can get through a few games unscathed. That's my moment of optimism for the present day. Well, I'm not sure why Gooch got benched because he was very, I thought he was very good in this game against England. And I was going to mention that later that he, he'd been out with an Achilles rupture from

September of the previous year until the tune-up friendlies just before the World Cup didn't play at all for club or country. But he did play in the tune-up friendlies, started one of them, I think, and then played in the other two. And then he was fantastic against England, which I may be instructive in its own way about, you know, say Chris Richards coming back or something like that. If you want to put a hopeful spin on it. Interesting. I'll just go on the record now and push back a little bit and say I didn't think Gooch was all that great against England. And I feel like I'm going to incur some wrath here. Well, certainly no wrath from me.

I won't have any wrath for you either. All right. I appreciate that. All right. But I'll get into that more, I'm sure, as we get into the events. Why didn't we play DeMarcus Beasley at left back at this point? Was that not really a thing yet? We had tried him a couple of times.

and he had a couple of shockers. Most notably against Brazil in the Confederations Cup in 2009 in the group stage. And we were getting destroyed in the first two games of that Confederation's Cup. Italy beat us 30, 4-1, something like that. And then Brazil thumped us as well. 3-1-30, I think were the two scores there. And so we were like searching for solutions. And that was that was Beasley's like.

sort of almost like the end of the line for him and Bob Bradley's setup. I know he got minutes sparingly here and there, but that was the end of him being a key player for Bob Bradley, as I remember it. Interesting. I just want to mention on Robbie Finley that he grew up in Phoenix. He's a player that kind of flies under the radar a little bit in the national team discussion, probably with good reason.

I mean, he's not a fantastic soccer player or anything. But he grew up in Phoenix and was cousins with Mike Bibby. Just a little fun fact. very interesting Mike Bibby was my favorite basketball player really did you think he was white

no I don't I don't I don't remember I guess but I really like the Arizona Wildcats they were in anyway wasn't his dad the coach of the yeah and his dad was the coach

I think they had an acrimonious relationship but that's a whole other right I want to met someone I met someone who started a business with, started a business making misshapen basketballs to practice your ribbling.

I think it was Mike Covey's dad. I love it. You didn't have to miss shape, but you can put things in the middle of them. Is that what it was? Goalkeepers use those. You throw them on the ground, they don't bounce true.

It might have been that. All right. Either way. Either way. I got the story as misshapen balls. Anyway. Well, England was, of course, also, One of four four two.

Robert Green in goal, famously. The backline was Glenn Johnson, John Terry, Ledley King, and Ashley Cole. And then Stephen Gerard and Frank Lampard in the midfield. Aaron Lennon and James Milner were the wide midfielder's. Lennon on the right, Milner on the left. And then the two strikers were Wayne Rooney and ML Heskey.

Let me just throw in here because it's 2010. John Terry had recently been stripped of England's captaincy for dallying in a way that, again, is familiar to U.S. fans after the Harks-Wanlda fiasco. He'd been rallying with one of his Chelsea and England teammates, significant others. Who was the teammate again? Wayne Bridge, who becomes a footnote because he wasn't as good at soccer at John Terry as John Terry. And so Chelsea just moved him along rather than, you know, sort of stand up for him. And I'm not even saying that's the right or wrong play.

Just that it was definitely something that happened in 2010. Well, the heart is a lonely hunter, you know? All right, the chronology. Kind of a choppy, mostly even contest through three minutes. The U.S., I thought, looked up for it. And then England scores a goal in the fourth minute. It's basically the first substantive episode of the game. And I'm going to say it was just a little unlucky for the U.S.

and particularly for Ricardo Clark. Here is the clip. On only the second day of this 2010 FIFA World Cup, better than hanging around and waiting a turn for three or four days. There's chance here for England. Score! The goal from Stephen Gerard is just the boost. England requires.

You could tell from the broadcaster that he wasn't expecting anything to happen because it was just like a loose, so I'll just describe it. Glenn Johnson throws it in. to Frank Lampard from the right. He takes a loose touch about 30 yards from goal. And as Bradley closes on him, Lampard plays a loose pass to Rooney right above the box that misses Rooney. So the miss pass kind of causes everyone to pause.

Lannon Donovan and Gooch both had been checking with Rooney. Either could have challenged for the ball, but they didn't. I'm not really blaming them for that. It was just kind of a weird moment. And it trickled through to M.L. Heskey, who immediately recognized he and he and um gerard were the first to recognize the moment uh gerard starts making a run off of the car off of clark's shoulder

hesky plays a clever first time pass to gerard who alertly uh takes his takes a touch with his right foot and then um in that brief moment where it looked like anybody could could have recovered the pass clark hesitated and that was a difference Gerard takes the pass in stride and then slots it outside of the boot to beat the onrushing Tim Howard and Clark also sliding in from his right beats Clark. I thought it was quite a well-taking goal. The quick stab with the outside of his boot, 1-0 England.

Was Clark to blame on this? I was trying to figure out how exactly where to assign all the blame. I just know whatever happened, you don't want that. Kind of went right down the middle. Got all stretched out and there was a big opening. So this is such a weird time capsule of the 4-4-2. Because when we think of the 4-4-2 now, in my opinion, it's like it's this very resolute, usually kind of like passive, or it can be like this very passive defense where you get your two banks of four

and you just stay organized, keep the defense in front of you, or keep the attack in front of you, don't let them in behind. But back, like there were different ways of playing it, of course, and there still are. But the U.S. played it in kind of like a very aggressive posture. Like Michael Bradley doesn't just sit back in these days. He kind of grew into that. But he's going to go flying out to challenge things. And he went out to flying out of the four to go challenge Lampard.

And then what you have is just this full rotational domino effect where we failed to rotate. So Rico Clark is still out by the sideline by Glenn Johnson. So he's not in the central play. You know, we hammer on pitch control all the time. The pitch we are controlling is not the most dangerous pitch. We make choices by like four players. that are just all suboptimal. So Bradley goes flying out.

That can be fine if everyone else pinches in behind to protect central space. Rico isn't doing that. Carlos Bokanager, the left back, isn't doing that. He's still way out by the right sideline where the ball was thrown in. And then what you have is this ball trickles past Lampart as he kind of gets the pass towards Rooney. Oguchi-on-Yeew abandons his spot in the 4-4-2 to rush up in between the lines to track Wayne Rooney. So now you have a huge gap between demerit and Bocanegro, the left back. Demerits the right centerback Bokerniger, the left back.

And no one's filling other than Stephen Jarrow, who's like, hey, look at this giant gap. I can control all of this pitch. And he does. Hesky just gets the ball anywhere close. And both Bokanager and Clark are too late to get back. Gouch, nowhere in the picture. So if you're trying to assign blame, it's just a full team-wide organizational failure. And this hits us several times in this World Cup.

Both Slovenia goals, the same kind of thing happens. They find that space between Bradley and Rico and Demerit and Gooch. And it's just like one of the Slovenia forward is sort of dropping back in. And we just don't know how to handle it. It just looks like we're winging it in all of these scenarios, which again, very time capsly for this 442 setup. It was the other irony here is Bob Bradley would trot this out as like the stable formation to start these games and try to just like, kill the first 60 minutes of the game in this resolute this resolute sort of formation and then in the second half

he would bring on Benny Fellhabber take off a forward move Clint Dempsey higher and like play almost like a 433 but but even in our 442 we were just really naive and not particularly airtight that's a long that's a long bit on this goal in the in how to apportion blame but that's kind of where I think you answered that very, first of all, very thoroughly and very well. So I appreciate you taking the time. Hey, hey, you know what, Greg? I'm happy you said this. Because, you know, there's a lot of, you know, the narrative going around now is, you know, why doesn't Greg just keep it simple? Blah, blah, blah. So you're telling me this simple 4-4-2 isn't a slam dunk. And it, and it does have

vulnerabilities, even though it is easy to teach and whatnot. The way we ran it in this, in this World Cup, it had huge liabilities, and we see them in this game all the time. And the reason that I think the English commentators during this game were so down on England was because England were so inefficient at exploiting them. But they were there. And when you're watching the tape,

it's very easy to see where we get pulled all over the place and we're kind of like constantly scrambling to try to find our assignments. And again, the Slovenia game, it's the same thing in the first half, where Rico and Bradley, it's basically a tough ask for a Gooch and Demerite to constantly be able to read when to go up with a player into that space between defense and midfield and when to stay home. Who should go, who should stay. So the way we ran it was very aggressive with very little like safety behind.

It was just like, oh, we'll just let the guys behind us figure it out if the team gets between us. I don't really have the chops to disagree with any of that, Greg. But I do think in this case, it's a little bit like the, you know, we talk about this sometimes, like a broken play in a football game where nobody knows, I don't know, nobody really knew how to respond to that. But Gerard and that missed pass from Lampard to Rooney, it just was kind of a weird moment. And then Gerard is kind of in a position to see that it's heading for Heskey before anybody else does. Because I think generally people blame Clark for this goal, right?

I mean, that's been the narrative that Clark just didn't track his man. And that's that. I had never heard. I'd never heard that. Rigo takes tons of blame for the Ghana goal, the opening goal against Ghana. But I'd never heard him singled out for blame here. This was always just chocked up to like Bob Bradley's team start slow, which again, the irony is that he'd start out with the games with that more conservative personnel group.

and yet we still had a habit of giving up goals early in the first five to ten minutes of soccer game. But I hadn't heard the blame on Rico. I know he ends up being the closest man, but he's over-defending near the sideline when it's taken. So, you know, in my chalkboard mind, there's no way he is ultimately, you know, by design, the guy who's responsible for the pitch in the middle of the 18-yard box closest to Tim Howard. Um, so I would just like to say that, that I really like this finish. The stab. Me too.

It's a great stab. It was very nice. And I feel like, uh, Stevie G put his, he put his foot in, in a position to where, you know, his ankle was at risk. His ankle was definitely at risk. And I felt like it was kind of brave for him to go at it in that way. Maybe he wasn't thinking about it like that. Probably not. But I thought the, I thought the stab was very, was very sweet.

It was a very sweet. Yeah, it was a real soccer-y type goal. You know what I mean? Like I said, you got to be like a soccer guy to square a goal. Yeah, soccer gal. Yeah. And also, it seems just based on the commentator, there was a lot of talk about Emil Hesky.

I guess his goal scoring record for England and whatnot. I guess he hadn't been getting it done. I don't know. But that was a nice reverse ball. And I think he did a lot of decent work. He did. that, you know, wouldn't show up on the stat sheet. Kind of the surprise element of the Gerard finish

is a little bit like Creschenio, Cresenzo Somerville over the weekend. Yeah. Not the same goal. I'm not going to say that. This one, I would say Gerard's was better, quite a bit better. Yeah, I agree. It's the perfect start, said one of the British commentators,

almost softly, his voice breaking slightly. And then he said, this is going to be fun. Over the next 15 minutes, we got a few half chances and some corner kicks, but nothing too dangerous. Milner should have gotten a yellow card for a challenge in the seventh minute on Trundolo, who was having his way on the right side. And I thought would for the entire evening. I'm going to need a Trundalo second half cop of when he was having his way, Bells. Okay. Because I feel like Shiree Phillips came in and shut that down.

Again, getting out of myself, but I feel like you could make a second half comp of the entire U.S. attacking sequences, and it would be Josie Altador, and it would be that late one to Stu Holden. And that's what we were. Anyway, anyway, let's keep going in chronological order. Yep. In the 19th minute, the U.S. gets a good chance. After a free kick, we get a bit of a scramble in front of England's box, and Finley plays it backward to Bradley, who taps it wide to Donovan. And Donovan faces up James Milner, who was a mess and didn't even, I don't know what he was doing in this play. He's just kind of running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Donovan faces him up and curls a lovely ball into the box for Altador. Altador's header was, he missed.

He missed the target. He only got glancing contact. It looked like he held back, maybe afraid of bashing his face in the back of Ledley King's head. I don't know. He got too high for it, right? know what it looked like. So we just had Zapruder de Ferreira miss against Japan over and over and how he couldn't quite get over it.

The discussion is like, did he time it wrong or is he too short, whatever? Altador just got way up over this one. And so then had to like drop his head down. And it did kind of look like as he's dropping his head down sees that he's about to drop his head directly into Ledley King's skull and maybe pulls out of it a little bit. Yeah. Which, I don't know. I would probably do the same thing.

He did pull his shirt over his head after the miss. It is really hard to intentionally put your head into someone else's skull. I can imagine. It's hard to do. England came, that was a big chance, though. England came right back at us. Hesky won the ensuing goal kick in the air to Rooney, who held it up and clipped Aaron Lennon in behind in acres of space.

Lennon tried to slide it across the six, and Trondolo hacked it away. Lampard tried an overhead kick on the rebound, but it was right at Howard. Yeah, and this is just some more that Emil Hesky work that I was talking about, like, this header that he won was just ridiculous. Like he took two people out and he's falling over people. People are just like, you know, he's leaving, he's leaving bodies in his wake. Just, you know, just basically moving furniture, throwing his body around. So, you know, I respect it. And, you know, that just seemed to be the way to attack in 2010.

It was just a lot of long balls. Probably that chance that we just talked about for the U.S. probably came from a long ball. I don't know. It was like, it seemed to me that you played a long ball. If you win it, then you basically got your four that are already up attacking. And nobody else seems to join in, really. And you just see what you can do from there. In the 26th minute, Churundalo did Milner again and Milner fouled

him and this time got a yellow card mostly for the earlier foul, I reckon. Donovan takes the set piece from wide and Anyahu steers a decent effort wide of the far post. In the 28th minute, Rooney releases Heskey down our right flank, Hesky fizzes it across, nobody on the end of it. Aaron Lennon gathers it and is defended pretty well by Bocca Negra. The ensuing set piece is also defended well by Boconagra and then we clear it and Glenn Johnson fizzes one across, which Tim Howard gets to just before the outstretched boot of Heskey. Hesky nails Howard's forearm at near full speed. Howard rides in pain for a while and gets a long visit from the trainers,

lots of fizzed balls across and desperate American interventions. In the meanwhile, Capello subbed off Milner for Sean Wright-Phillips in the 301st minute. Well, you know, man, it always bums me out when someone gets subbed out in the first half. It's embarrassing. And I guess this is a, this is James Milner during his lead days, I assume. I don't know. I think he might have been Aston Villa at the time. But yeah, it was real, it was funny to me when he gets that yellow card to see the

ref, you know, to dramatically throw up the, you know, the one and the two. Yeah. And points at the location. You know, I always like when a ref does that to, you know, to pull out the yellow card. And it's like, yo, you had a bad fail over here, had a bad foul over there. You know why you're getting it. James Milner was at Astonville in 2010, but also started at Man City in 2010. So I'm wondering maybe it was right after this World Cup based on probably not getting subbed out here.

But maybe he did some other good things. Yeah, that Aston Villa team just got looted by all the bigger teams because they were like consistently fifth, sixth, back when England had a very, you know, separate, like a very distinct big four. And Astonville and like Everton would kind of hover around. And then Man, City money came in and that was the end of that. So anyway, yeah, Milner was, Milner got poached by City. And then eventually I know made his way over to, I believe at some point played a little bit for Liverpool. Did still play.

Grow up in Leeds. He did. I'm seeing that he did go to Liverpool. I believe he has had a run at Liverpool. In 33rd minute, in a bit of foreshadowing, Altador takes a speculative shot on the ground, which is picked up easily by Robert Green. The commentator on the FIFA plus replay, who was different than the ITV commentator, said Green will, quote, take those all night, end quote, which seemed right at the time. So I'll jump in here too because one thing we didn't mention about 2010 was the Jabulani, and that's the soccer ball that was. revolutionary because it didn't have any seams.

The outside of the ball was somehow like heat sealed, which caused all kinds of chaos for funny idea. For goalkeepers, of course, but also even for like service. So when you this tournament, there were so many like horrendous services from wide. And this is in the era where like wide service was the thing. And you, you know, expected some level of confidence here. And everyone was just smashing these crosses to nobody. but also the ball moved like crazy once it was off your foot.

So we were early in this tournament before I think we really got a sense of how devastating these shots from distance could be. So while shots from distance generally kind of frowned on now in the modern day, not frowned on, but we understand how speculative they are. In this tournament, probably the right thing to do is to just if you got to look from within 30 yards, hit it at the goalkeeper as hard as you can and just trust the job Yulani to do the rest. Was there just some one chaotic person whose idea this was? There's no need.

More randomness into the game? I have no idea. I don't know if they just didn't know about the aerodynamic effects of the Jabilani as they were designing it. Or if they thought that this would add a whole new level of unpredictability to things that was desirable. Dude, it's crazy the things that, like, changes in a ball can do. like baseball's been going through this. It's like, I think it's like a change in like one, one like tenth of a degree or something like that in the depth of the seams can cause the baseball to like fly like an extra

20, 30 feet or something like that. And you see, and you'll see like a spike in home runs. And the ball will still be within the specifications that MLB requires. But offense can be impacted significantly. And the beauty here was I think usually whatever the World Cup ball is, they would have like a full season where the leagues could play with it, but I don't think that happened here.

So it got introduced like weeks before the tournament and everyone was just like, we are playing with a beach ball. This is incredible. No one liked it. The shooters didn't even like it despite the, you know, the extra,

the wild card factor for goalkeepers. Like you just, it wouldn't behave the way you expected a soccer ball to behave. So anyway, shots from distance. I know that's when we get to the, the one, that one didn't even really matter because this was a bouncing ball, not a ball in flight, but just a note for 2010.

And yet the team that the nation that loves the ball the most and loves precise passing the most won the World Cup. Well, because they never hit the ball in the air. They just hit it on the floor, eight yards at a time. So who cares what the ball, like what the seams are made out of? Fair enough. Okay. In the 38th minute, we get some nice interchange from Dempsey.

and Finley to Donovan, who speculates from distance, doing the right thing, draws a bit of a crowd reaction when his shot from 25 or so flashes wide to the far post. It seemed like Green had it covered. Then Shrundelow gets a yellow for a foul on Sean Wright-Phillips, so the tables have turned a little bit, I guess. And then Howard punts it all the way over the England goal on one bounce. It was pretty impressive, actually. It went way over the, bounced and then went way over the goal.

They would start talking about the altitude of Rustenberg and stuff. And then in the 40th minute we get the U.S. goal. Here it is. I'll have a chance here. There are four forward and this could be menacing with a good turn from Dempsey. Tries to get away from Gerardt, Fais. It's hard alone. An desperate mistake by Robert Green, who beats the ground in despair. Clint Dempsey. It's really something to see, you know, even with all the ball discussion. it's unbelievable

that he would spill it that way. It was an England goal kick. Bradley meets it and side-foots it forward somewhat aimlessly. Ashley Cole beats Donovan to it, but his header spills to Dempsey in that little groove of space in the middle. Dempsey dribbles forward and, you know, kind of goes back and forth,

turning Gerard back and forth, buys himself the space to take a left-footed shot and hits it bouncing at Green. Green misjudges the flight of the ball off the grass slightly, and lets it slip around him. And it's a goal. It's classic Dempsey on the ball. Like it's ponderous.

I mean, this is kind of what his reputation was. He wasn't particularly a rhythm attacker. You know, the ball would get into him and then he'd all just kind of stand and watch while he would try some stuff. And so he's trying some stuff here. Manages to create a slightly off-balance, weak-foot shot from distance.

So I don't think. So I actually remember in San Diego in the sports bar I was watching this, I didn't even see it cross the line because I saw, you know, him take the shot. I saw the trajectory going right to the goalkeeper and had already like started the turn to talk to somebody about the next thing. And then the place erupted and the ball was in the goal. And I couldn't, I mean, it just didn't make any sense. And even if seeing the replay, just didn't make sense at all. I remember laughing about how England had Joe Hart sitting on their bench.

But but even then, as I've said before, like, you don't play Joe Hart because you're worried about a Robert Green Howler here. I mean, that's not the goal that is allowed that's like, oh, that's why they needed Joe Hardin. A goal like that can happen to anybody and you just never have that in your plans to pick someone to avoid that goal. I'm saying, don't think. Stefan's not going to give up that goal in Qatar, even if he starts. It's what I'm saying. I wasn't thinking about.

Now I'm, there's always a possibility. There's the same possibility on that one for Turner or Stefan. Is what I'm saying. There might actually be more for Horvats. I feel like he's got a couple of those on his resume already. Did you guys see, one, did you see Frank Lampard give him the chin up, give Green the chin up gesture? No.

Yeah, very English. No, but that was nice of him. It was nice of him. He looked at him, he just, he opened his palm up, put his, like, moved it up and down underneath his chin a couple times, then turned around and trotted off to midfield. Also, Bob Bradley's reaction. on replay. So it's so fun to watch

because he's just full of disbelief. You can just see it on his face. And then he celebrates. Let me play a clip. This is a little bit of a lengthy clip. We'll see how much of it I use.

But this is Dempsey talking about the goal with Robert Green on CBS. I don't know if I talked about this publicly or not, but something people may not really know about is I had a sister who passed away

when she was 16. from a brain aneurysm, but like a few years before that, I mean, probably growing up in the country or something, not having much to do, we would just talk about all kinds of different things. And one of the things we talked about is like, if we ever like had passed away, would you want to come back maybe write something on a mirror or whatever like that? And I'm like, now that would be too scary. And then I just remember saying, like, whatever happened? Like, maybe you could help me out in the game or something like that.

So to me, I look at that situation because really throughout my whole career, that's the only situation that was kind of like divine intervention. And it was almost kind of like it was out of your hands, no pun intended, but there was something special there in terms of why that goal kind of went in. So that's just kind of how I look at it. And that's why it's kind of a difficult situation to kind of talk about. But, you know, things happen in the game.

Does that make it one of the more special goals of your career? For sure it does, because it was a big moment for me. When you're a kid, that's the biggest stage to try to, that's what I dreamed about, trying to be. be in the World Cup and to be there playing against England, the country that I was playing in as well, it's just, it was just a special moment. I just think it's crazy that he, go ahead. For him to say out of your hands, like, like, for him to have the wherewithal to put the

no pun intended right there is crazy. Yeah. He put that, he put the no pun intended directly to Robert Green. He turned directly to Robert. Yeah, yeah. The man who handled the ball into the. the goal and said out of your hands. No pun intended.

He also just told him that he he thought this terrible moment for Robert had been divinely inspired. Yeah, I was going to say he basically told Robert that his sister's ghost did it. You know? Right. Right. Hopefully it brings up some peace.

Yeah. Which in my opinion actually does make this the greatest goal in American soccer history. I don't like I don't think there's any way that anything can compare at that point, whether it's Wambach against Brazil or Donovan against Algeria, like none of those involved the supernatural. So I think we're... This is the only ghost goal that we're aware of.

Though it has to be top. I agree. Yeah. And in that, I remember watching that on, during Champions League coverage or whatever. And Green was talking, you know, he had to talk about all the things he had to do to get over it. You know, the counseling. how he bounced back in the match. And Jamie Carragher was there too, which we'll get on a Jamie Carragher.

But he was saying that he was really impressed with how Green bounced back in the match to not necessarily let him beat him. Because, I mean, you know, we did have at least one more chance in this match that he did all right on. So, yeah, it was just a really interesting thing to see. Yeah, like I said, you know, I don't remember much pre-2018. So when I saw this on CBS, it was cool. It was cool for me. Yeah. For the record, I don't think Brett, I don't think Dempsey was dropping that, no pun intended, on Robert Green in like a mean way.

No, he wasn't at all. I'm trying to be super nice. Yeah. It's just hard to be nice in that moment, you know. Or sometimes where the no pun intended is like not necessary. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know. Like, like, like, Clint, nobody's going to blame you for saying, you know, out of your hands

in the situation that you just brought it up. You're talking about your dead sister and whatnot. Yeah. And divine intervention. A lot of us might not have noticed the pun. Right, right, right. That's the thing. It's like if it's a, this pun is just going to fall into the ether.

but but now it does not because you no pun intended it while looking at the man. For what it's worth here, Robert, Robert Green didn't play in any more games for England in this World Cup. He was replaced by David James for the remainder of the group stage and the knockout game against Germany. I'm just throwing that out there for,

so his last act was the big save that we were going to talk about in the second half. Yeah. Seems like a top gent, really. Poor guy. England scrambled to respond to the goal. I mean, they had a couple of half chances before the half, but couldn't get it going. And as the players head down the tunnel, the commentator from England says, calm yourselves down, England. England still has a better chance of winning this match than losing it. And that was the half. Ledley King comes off for Jamie Carragher in the back. Not sure what that was about. So Ledley King always had health issues. He was like sort of always considered England's best centerback, but he was playing for Totham Spurs at the time. And like the man couldn't train.

He couldn't even train soccer. Like he'd play his game on the weekend. And then they would the next, the entire next week would be devoted to like getting his knees back into playable condition. I don't know if it was like no cartilage or something like that where that was it. He had this total regiment to just play a game, work to get ready for the next game a week later. So I don't know if he was running into minutes restrictions or what. But anyway, just a Ledley King anecdote from 2010. Okay.

That's good to know. In the 47th minute, so we'll get right into the second half. In the 47th minute, there's a yellow card for Jay Demerite for hand of godding it on a clearance. Well, it's not a clearance. It was kind of a ball over the top to prevent Rooney from getting him behind. The World Feat commentator who was, you know, fantastic flying solo, I thought, mentioned that demerit had some eye problems or something? I don't know what type of therapy he was doing, but sometimes his vision would be like

intermittent and how is he playing soccer? Like we had a centerback who can't see and I'm just trying to figure out the mechanics here, the mechanism of how he was playing soccer without being able to see well. It was like a scratch. This was a big deal because there were worried. I mean, it happened right before there were. World Cup, or like that season, 29, 2010. So we got the scratch on his eye.

And so this was after his heroics in South Africa in the Confederations Cup, where he kind of emerged and became the guy. I don't think he was going to be the guy until the Confederations Cup to start for us in the World Cup. And once he became that guy, you know, it was very nervous going through this process following along his recovery from whatever the surgery was for his scratched eyeball. because, yeah, we, Gooch had done his Achilles later on in the fall of 2009. So, you know, we were going to lose both of our sort of centerback towers going into the World Cup,

which I think everyone in 22 can sort of start relating to now. Yep. Well, he thought he did okay. Didn't you guys think DeMarratt was okay, despite being blind? So I thought he was the worst of it, too, to me. Yes. For me with him, I just have the image of him flipping over the huddle, and that's pretty much the only association I have with J. DeMarrette. Following the Algeria goal.

You're talking about it's Algeria goal, and there comes to DeMirate. Yeah, he's not ambitious. He's not an ambitious centerback. He's literally just there to do a job, right? Yeah. Okay, so he did what? He flipped over a huddle? In the celebration after Donovan's goal against Algeria to send us through.

Like a somersault type thing. DeMert came flying up 65 yards from his centerback position where the dog pile had already been established. And it was there for DeMert to jump over Walter Payton style over the entire sea of bodies. See, that's clear death perception issues. No, he nailed it. He can't see, dog. That man cannot see. All right.

He's a legend for that. Aaron Lennon, Roasts Bokanagar on the right and cuts it back just beyond the outstretched foot of Wayne Rooney shortly after this hand-of-godting moment. Then a dipping ball into the box from Glenn Johnson on the right, can't find a head.

Then Rooney gets in on goal from a long ball to John Terry and forces a goal-line clearance from Bokanagra. but apparently, you know, Heskey was deemed offside and challenging for the ball that ended up with Rooney. So that was called off anyway. Greg, I see you have some screenshots in here, which means you have some points to make. So this just shows like how vulnerable our 4-4-2 was on all these crosses that England have. I'm not a big proponent of crossing, but crossing was definitely the thing in 2010. And the thing is, on all these England crosses, England.

England are in excellent position to capitalize on these crosses. Our 4-4-2, the assignments in our 4-4-2, we're just getting blown left and right. So on every single cross, I've got a screenshot of like the wide open England player with a six-yard radius around them for England to have put the ball. And the English player who's crossing under very little or no pressure. So this isn't like, oh, yeah, but who can find that when they're about to get destroyed by? Steve Chorundle. No, like they are there. They can pick their head up and they just, they just happen to miss on these services. So England never gets the clear cut chance that would make it

this game seem exciting, but they were always like right on the edge of that is kind of how I'd say it. So if you think about like the danger in this game, this 15 minute stretch for England to start the second half, they were constantly like right there to be dangerous. And the US were doing like nothing whatsoever. So that's kind of how I see it as England totally in control of this match. I mean, it's kind of a contrast, even the 2002 recap we did with Mexico. Mexico never even looked like they were about to be dangerous. England were like right there.

Danger was there and England just didn't seize on it. I will say all these crosses are coming from the, from our left side. So, you know. Yes, that's Boconagra side. Yeah. And you just see Bradley and Rico are not like stacking up on our, on our center. back to help protect that space right in front of the goal. The space in front of the goal is where we are most stretched out, ironically.

Okay. 52nd minute, Lenin plays Hesky in after Onyewu races forward to win an aerial duel in the center. It just so happens he won it straight to Lennon. And he was running in the wrong direction at that point. And Hesky is racing in the other direction, in on goal. Lennon plays a good pass to Hesky down the channel. Hesky runs onto it and tries from the edge of the box and hits it well, but right at Howard. Yeah.

So this is huge, right? I mean, this is a massive chance, probably the best chance of the entire game, if you're sort of just grading chances. And this is where I'm going to do a little bit of a rant. I do rant sometimes or a whole bit, a spiel, because this is where the way we watch games now is so different than how we would watch games in 2010. Right. We, we didn't have access to these streams. There wasn't like, you know, the, the Twitter discourse where people could post a clip. I think Bells, you were like one of the first people to start posting clip threads on Twitter of soccer highlights. And you were doing it of, you know, 16 year old kids playing for young PSV. Jonathan Gonzalez is the first clipy.

But that kind of thing, that kind of thing just didn't exist, right? You saw it once on the live broadcast. You would see the replay. And then that was it. You would never see it again. no one was the prudering all of these chances. So when Heske gets in on goal here and misses the shot, that's it. The chance is over. It goes away and it sort of starts to instantly fade for your memory. And what also fades from your memory is Oguchi and Yewu, like half-hardly running into a ball with his pelvis directly to an English player and then immediately getting beat in the space behind him. And that's how I think that's another big part of like how we compare current day players to these legends of the past.

because we kind of lionize the players who had a hand in our big successes. But I'm watching this and I'm like, man, Hesky, you know, Gooch does this play and Hesky is in on goal. If any of our current centerbacks that were all like destroying each other over, not wanting to start in the World Cup, has a play like this in Qatar, like they will be savaged. Fair. Maybe.

Like, I mean, Gooch is just unlucky that his... Yeah, there will be defenders. If one of our centerbacks does this, then his side of the proxy war will defend him, I think. But there will be a proxy war. That's the key. What's that? That's the key. The key is there will be a proxy war, and that's the change.

That's all I'm saying. It's going to work that way for any of these disputed positions. Dude, like, I went, so I started, as I was thinking about this, from this play, I started going back through the other, like, World Cup games. And so I'm going back through the 2006 World Cup. And like, Gooch is involved in a lot of the goals that we give up in the 2006 World Cup in a way that, again, if we were to do that for our current pool and break down that play, it'd be like, man, gooch just got caught in no man's land here. Like, terrible angle taken on this Czech Republic third goal in the group stage game in 2006, you know, the lunging in on someone against Ghana to give up the penalty in 2006. And so I'm like, if any of our centerbacks have the entire World Cup that Gooch had in 2006, like they will be destroyed.

And I don't even mean this as like a huge criticism of Gooch, but he's a legend. And I'm just looking at this like that highlight real, if it exists in this tournament for any of our players, they will be absolutely dismembered on Twitter. If either goalkeeper, Stefan or Turner has the World Cup. that Keller had in 98 or 2006, like done. No, that's facts. For sure, because I'm on them. I'm on them. I'm on them.

And Keller's a hero. Keller's an American soccer hero. But if we repeat his World Cup performance, if either of the keepers repeats that performance, I mean, they'll be obliterated. Fair enough. Well, but I've been meaning to make this point for a while. But I will, and this is the chance where I can, I could make it.

Like Tim Howard, he did his thing. He did his thing. And we are, and for me, you know, he was the, the legend of legends amongst the goalkeepers. Um, because of, you know, the, the Belgium heroics. I, so, actually, I think I remember that game too. I remember that game. But, but you're saying he was good in this game. He was good in this game.

He was good. He was good in this game. And I was wondering, like, because at first when you see that shot and how he just caught it straight up, I was like, damn. Because, because, you know, Hesky caught it pretty well. Yeah. And Tim's coming out and he caught it like cleanly, like chance over. And I was like, wow.

But then you see the replay and Heskey just hits it in the one pocket, like the pocket that Tim Howard had created to catch a ball. Yeah. His pouched. Like his kangaroo pouch, right? Yeah, yeah. And Hesky hit it right there, right there. So, yeah, the catch is a little less impressive.

but the save, you know, I mean, he still gets credit for the save. But the catch, the clean catch is a little less impressive. Well, and I'll just, I'll throw this out there too. The remainder of Tim Howard's 2010 World Cup, also not actually that great. Like the Slovenia goal, I'll give him a pass on the first one, the one from distance, because again, Jabilani, I get it. But the second Slovenia goal, like, is kind of a breakaway situation because they carve up our four-man spine. two center mids, two centerbacks.

And so I'm not saying Tim Howard definitely needs to save this little breakaway, but like the mechanics of his approach here in the Slovenia goal. But yeah, Howard in that second Slovenia goal comes out and it like slides like literally the wrong direction. Like his hands are on the wrong side of his body for what a goalkeeper should have been doing, even given like 2010 standard techniques. So this still just all goes back to like some guys are really going to take it hard in, in 2022 for some performances that will not actually be that much.

worse than what we have seen from our legends in prior tournaments. That's a good point. It's a good point. And frankly, I don't know how many of them spend that much time on Twitter watching these debates. So maybe they're not even going to notice. And a bunch of people are arguing about, yeah. All right. In the 59th minute, Carriger, 14 minutes into his appearance, gets a yellow for cleaning

out Finley. It could have been a red. I don't know. I have a screenshot of it. He catches him pretty high with his boots, with the bottom of the wheel. Straight leg. Yes. coming in straight-legged.

VAR can overturn that for sure. Yeah, I think so. Right after that, Gerard gets a yellow for putting a stud into Dempsey's leg. He did touch the ball first, but, you know, also a very high boot. Vince, this might be a bit of a precursor to maybe another event you'd remember from 2010. Do you remember? Do you remember Jabi Alonzo getting the Nigel DeJong treatment? No.

No, definitely not. It might be the most famous moment of the 2010 World Cup. So 2006, we had the Zadon headbutt. 2010, we have Dejong going full Kung Fu with the bottom of his boot into Jabbi Alonzo's heart. So I remember the headbut for sure. I remember where I was when I saw the headbut. You got to check out the heart kick. Okay.

Okay. Got to check it out. I have to check that up. Yeah. And with VAR, you should not do a heart kick. I don't think any of our guys should do a heart kick. Getting harder, hard to get away with them. I mean, the young doesn't even get near the ball with his, the bottom of his boot.

Takes the yellow card for it. Which even if he had, it wouldn't have mattered because you're just not allowed to do it. This is a Dutch man, right? Yes. Yes, this is a dude who wrecks Stu Holden's career. Oh, right, right. We've heard about this. I've heard about this for sure.

He wrecks the World Cup for Stu Holden and Johnny Evans, proceeds to wreck Stu Holden's, the remainder of Stu Holden's career. Yeah, poor Stu. Just real quick, I would just like to say that I was really impressed by Gerard. He's a good, I mean, he's apparently a legend in England. I've heard a lot about him. But out of all the legends for England they were on the pitch, I thought he was the most impressive. Because, man, I'd like, I still be seeing Lampart and Gerard debates till this day.

on the timeline. And I'm putting my stock in Stevie G. I think I'm so much influenced by, I just like his face better than Lampard's face. And that's the only reason I prefer him. Otherwise, I could, you know, take one or the other. Pull up the, like, Steve, Steve Gerard's top 10 goals on YouTube.

It's like one of the most fun things to watch. The dude scored a lot of screen. I'm 63rd minute. The game opens up for a couple of minutes. Lampard chops Bradley, 22 yards from goal and hits a left-footed blast. I mean, chops him as in cuts him. It's palmed over by Howard, but it's a good save. Glenn Johnson gets a chance on the corner when it finds him at the back post. He settles it with his right foot and then snatches at it with his left, sending it well wide. Immediately, we get the biggest chance of the game for the U.S., and it's all Josie Altador. Bocanagra and Donovan Mug, Aaron Lennon, at midfield.

on the left side line. Donovan races onto it and zips a pass to Altador who's kind of flashing across the face of Jamie Carragher into out, touches the ball around him, and then just unmanned Jamie Carriger for 30 yards, shrugging him off and shaking free in the box, coming at the goal from a tight angle. He hits it with his right foot, but kind of drove it into the ground. I could say he scuffed it. But it's still surprised Green by doing that, and Green had to sort of parry it off the post with both hands, and it ricocheted up into the air. So a good save from Green, as he noted later in the interview with Dempsey and Carragher acknowledged. But yeah, it could have been 2-1.

Yeah, I think they play the clip of Jamie Carrier getting done like this on the CBS broadcast, too. Nobody should have to watch that. Nobody should have to watch themselves like that. Yeah, that was definitely crazy. That was, yeah. And you know what? Another thing I remember is some type of like ESPN feature that they did on like Josie Altadour where they went to like a barber shop. It was like a black, it was like a black barber.

And he was some, he was from somewhere where football is important. Like he wasn't like, he hadn't been in America for generations. He wasn't from central Iowa. He's what you're saying. Right, right, right. And he was talking about Josie and he was like, you know, I'm just so happy we finally have like a footballer. I'm just bringing this up. Like these are random, these are all the U.S. memories I had pre-2018.

I think I've emptied the tank now. But yes, well, I don't know when that was, but after I saw that, Josie was also a player I paid attention to. And yeah, this was this was one of those moments where, you know, he brings the real Hooper out. It was and it was again like probably our only real, real dangerous moment of the entire match, right? And it kind of came out of nothing. It's not like we, you know, expertly choreographed the sequence to open a player up. It was just Josie, totally outworking and outdoing England centerback and getting himself, you know, totally free in the box. He wasn't even disturbed by Jamie Carriger as he's taking his shot.

So that's a credit to how badly he beat Carragher here. But this is it. This is the moment. So, you know, when you think back about this game and you feel like we maybe played England even, it's because England sort of had the two chances, the Hesky chance we just talked about in their actual goal and no other clear cut chances. And then you remember this Altador goal. But this was our only even like danger adjacent moment in England. We're sort of living in our box for 30 minutes to start the second half. none of this matters.

I'm just saying it as a way of like we were. I think you're overstating it a little bit. All right. Go on. Go on. I mean, who had the ball? We didn't have it. Yeah, but outside of the Hesky Chance, I mean, I know we have a bunch, I know we have a bunch of instances where they could have crossed it to somebody who's open in the box.

I get that. But like, outside of the Hesky chance, I don't know. There was anything like that. I think you're about to list off a few of them right here. But no. This was awesome. This was a great moment for Josie. And, yeah, this was enough.

Again, it's enough to give American fans like a foothold psychologically in this game is not just the Robert Green moment. Yeah, right. And I think the Altador missing the first half is pretty notable. But yeah, let me get into these other things. The game really open. Real quick, Bill. Yes. First of all, Jamie Carriger will be doing a lot of talking on CBS for a person that got done like this.

number one in a World Cup yeah in a World Cup and number two uh the ball came back to josie like probably like 30 seconds after and he's like post he's like posted up on Jamie Carragher and you can see Jamie like he's he's in you know contact with Jamie and when Josie gets the ball Jamie just backs up he flees yeah he's like he's like all you got it man I'm not trying to get done like this again you starts running back to his goal that's all Go ahead, Bells. That was part of this period of back and forth that happened right after that chance for Altador. Boken Acre has to do, make sort of a heroic challenge in our half to stave off a long ball to Rooney.

Altador gets that ball in the half turn that you just mentioned and then misplaces a through ball. So I thought it was a good idea. And then Lennon crosses it into our box and it's cut out by demerit. In the 71st minute, there's a lovely Gerard ball from wide right. It's just a tad too high for Rooney to get over it. his header goes wide 90 seconds after that. Findley almost breaks through on a good entry pass from Donovan and a quality first touch to cancel John Terry, but his second touch isn't good enough and he gets run down

and cut off by Carragher, who somewhat redeems himself, I think. He just didn't redeem himself against Altador. And then right after that, Rooney takes a big hit from 25 yards, just wide of the post. Now, this was a, this was really close to being a goal, but just because Wayne Rooney was, you know, a world-class player and a seemingly innocuous moment turns into like him hitting it just wide of the post. Yeah, that's all Jambi-Lani right there. And you could see as he's hitting it, right after it leaves his foot, you can actually see Howard take a step towards his near post and then frantically be like, oh, no, this is actually going to arrow into the far post side netting. So he's scrambling to get there.

But that, again, I'm not even putting that one on Howard because that's just the ball. Yeah. And I don't know what point it is during the game, but somebody kicks a ball towards the goal and they replay it. And you can see the ball like spinning and dipping, like very much like a beach ball, like a beach ball would. You know how it does that spin and dip type of deal? It just seems very difficult to deal with. Buttle comes on for Findlay in the 76th minute. Peter Crouch, who is so tall, comes on in the 79th minute.

I guess you all know how tall he is for Heski. There was a chance for England on a give and go between Lampart and Lennon that On Yewu does well to slide and sort of cut out. And in the 87th minute, On Yewu does another one of those rambles from back, from the back, just running forward and making wild challenges. And this time it works. I was going to say, because that last one that you just described was Anyahu coming way forward and sliding himself out of the play.

That's how England got their four on two that ended with that ball towards Lampard. So I'm just throwing that out there again that our heroes weren't impervious to some mistakes. Fair enough. Let's see. What else? Donovan's orchestrating possession in England's half in the last few minutes of the match. Flashes a speculative shot over from 25. Then he helps get it wide to Stu Holden in space on the right.

who has a chance to play a dangerous ball into the box and wax it off a defender. So nothing occurs. The two sides just sort of settle into a draw and stoppage time, and that's it. One-one. It was a game that was played. Kind of notably, Bob Bradley used one sub, buttle for Finley, Like for Like, and then used Holden. I kind of thought of it was a time-wasting sub, but, I mean, he had seven or eight minutes, so it wasn't pure time-wasting. And then Hurt Gomez was about to come on when the full-time was.

whistle blue. But he kind of went away from his attacking shift in the second half. And I kind of assumed that was because he saw it as worthwhile to just collect the point to manage the group stage. And the commentator loved the name Hercules Gomez. Loved it. Everyone does. Everyone should. I feel like we've begun to take it for granted as we've, as we've had him in our lives for longer and longer. But we should pause every time we hear it and say that is a tremendous name. I have been totally taking it for granted. I completely forgot how I'm going to stop. Stop taking it for granted right now.

I will. I will. Any closing thoughts? What does this game teach us about the game that's coming on Black Friday? Anything? Probably not, but could somebody make something up? Well, I'll just kind of repeat the same thing. If our attack looks like the U.S. is attacked in this game,

we'll consider it like Japan-level quality. You know what I mean? Like the Japan friendly. You can push back if you want bells. But we actually created so little in the way of chances in this game outside of Altador's, you know, one moment of absolute brilliance. That we, if we did this against Wales, we'd be like, man, we did not create. We couldn't do anything. The system's a sham.

Like, what did we just spend the last three years doing? Well, it's not. apples to apples how we're going to look against whales versus how we looked in this what about how we look how we look against england if we look like this against england i just mean finley didn't finley didn't have the quality to like consistently do anything with the ball and frankly altador for most of the game didn't either no it was it was very much like donovan and dempsey were the we're sort of our clear talent and that was it they didn't have anyone really helping around them and they certainly weren't capable of in this game of like opening up england's back for

by themselves. Right. That's how it's, I don't know. Anyone else think, think that we would be in the England game this, this November, if that was our level of attacking performance, would we feel like, it's England, what do you do? Or would you be like, oh, man, that was, that was brutal.

And I'm going to definitely be on the brutal side. Definitely going to be on the brutal side. But I just, I just find this all very interesting that, you know, you just, you can't throw some people into a 4-4-2. and all of a sudden the attacking woes are fixed. It's just very interesting. Indeed, it is interesting. Waki, any closing thoughts from you?

I will accept another draw against England if that's on offer. I would just take it. Side on scene. Performance. Well, obviously, performance aside. Yeah. Same here.

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