Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #336: The actual roster for the World Cup

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

We talk about Steffen quite a bit, work through the 26, mourn the snubs (but especially Belz mourns Pepi), and then we build up to Greg predicting a 2-0 win over Wales. ----Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that, get exclusive episodes (more than 50 this year), and gain full access to the Discord server by signing up for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed  Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. The actual roster for the World Cup is out. Greg, how you doing? Bells, I am shocked. There were some shocks, which is tough to do in 2022 to have this list of 26 people. And even though there were some leaks, to still manage to sneak in a couple of shocks, I'm not necessarily upset at some of the surprises.

but I will definitely say I was a little bit taken aback. A couple of our locks from our preview episode were not locks after all. Well, let's just go before we give the whole roster

because everybody listened to this will know the roster about the time they listen to this. Let's talk about the shocks. What's the biggest shock for you? Biggest shock for me is probably going to be Zach Steffen. I think it is the correct choice

soccer-wise. You know, we've talked for a long time about Stefan never really earning the job through his play. It has always felt since 2018 that he was just sort of installed as the number one. Yeah, it was a coronation. Yeah. And it was always strange to me. His play on the field never really seemed to merit that kind of security as being the absolute default number one. But he definitely seemed to be.

And he was up until, you know, Matt Turner Gold Cup in 2021 put some questions for other people in their minds, some doubts. And even then, Stefan, you know, through World Cup qualifying, Burrhalter seemed to lean back that direction towards Stefan to start. Eventually, a healthy Matt Turner was, you know, replaced by Stefan again. And so it was, there was always this question in the air of like, who does he actually favor? and now there's no longer a question about that. I mean, you've said for a long time that you thought there was going to be a mysterious knock for Stefan right before the World Cup. And that wasn't the way it went. They didn't play it that way, no.

No, they didn't seem to at least offer any kind of an out. And they couldn't. Stefan played a soccer match today. So there's sort of no way around it with the busyness of the schedule in the, the tight turnaround to the World Cup, I guess I hadn't thought that through, you can't pretend there's a knock because he's playing soccer games as we speak.

And I wonder if you can pretend there's a knock with the player's complicity if there, you know, if there definitely isn't a knock, you know. It might be, that might get a little tricky too. It was the, Stefan's omission was the kind of the big headline, I think, for a lot of the sort of mainstream media,

for lack of a better term. it was the thing that was asked about by the first three reporters at the press conference. Here's something, here's something, uh, Berlter said. Really difficult. I mean, there's a lot of emotion involved for, for both them and me, you know, me and Zach go way back. And Zach's been there for me a bunch of times. And, um, and to tell him he's not going to be part of the World Cup team was,

was heartbreaking for me. Um, but, you know, those are decisions that we made as a staff. And, um, like I said, we moved. forward and now it's about who do we have in camp and how are we going to be successful? Heartbreaking for Greg Burrhalter. Burrhalter, yeah. So I appreciate that it's the case. I don't know that it's a great PR move to make yourself the one who's heartbroken here

on the question about Zach Steffin's heartbreak. But it may be hard. I mean, I'll take him on his word. It may be heartbreaking. Oh, no, no, no. I have no doubt that it is. I mean, Greg Berhalter seems like a coach who absolutely loves these guys, right? Like, I don't think there's any question about that.

So I do think it was heartbreaking for Greg Berhalter. I don't think it's necessarily the right play to spin that background and be like, oh, yeah, I get it. Zach's having a hard time. But what about me over here? Yeah, I don't think that's what he. And again, even what we're doing now is like almost too like too casually like kind of chuckling about this stuff. This is hard. This is a tough moment for Zach Steph.

And it almost feels like the guy was kind of let on here. And that's kind of going back to our analysis of him not ever really being. the best or even second best or maybe even third best goalkeeper in the pool. Like I've never seen anything from him. And in fact, we've seen a lot of instances where it's like, this guy should not be on the roster. If he didn't have the aura that he somehow built,

there's nothing from his play that would suggest he should be a bulletproof inclusion in a top three for the goalkeepers. And there was just always this weird undercurrent. I mean, the guy got signed by Pepfioriola. That does matter to an aura, right? A lot of people, for a lot of people, that's the main thing they know about Stefan as well. So he, he, he, he, he did, lose Man City some important games in the cup, their cup competitions.

And when I say important games, I mean important games, like a semi-final and a final. Knockout games where he had a huge mistake that lost them the game. And he had quite a few walkabouts for the U.S. I mean, you put, you put the video together. We don't need to make this whole thing a prosecution of Zach Stephan. But the point is, his own. mission actually does make sense and I'm fine with it. Yeah, I mean, in our projection, my wish list was, and it has been for a while, has been

Turner, Horvath, and Sean Johnson. And I think those three are better, I think there are three better goalkeepers than Zach Stefan. He's been better with Middlesborough than he was in those, in the past year of a walkabouts, but the bar was set really low. Right. Again, not, we shouldn't even hammer on it. The big thing here, the big thing.

The big thing here, I think, is for the people who have kind of concluded this about Zach Steffin's goalkeeping, this is a huge relief, I think, because there was still this open question about who will actually be the starter for the U.S. And now one of the two guys in contention, because of what we know about Greg Burholter, trying to read his mind, two of the guys that we would have put in contention, one of them just got dropped completely. It's Matt Turner now. And that's a huge relief, I think, for a lot of people. for me there is no one who raises our ceiling more than Matt Turner for how far we can go into a World Cup now that we know he's a starter. Do you think he not only raises our floor, he raises our ceiling? I think it's both. Yeah, I definitely think it's both. And so to have him locked in as the number one now and not have to sort of, you know, wonder whether or not that will play out.

That's it. Turner is the guy in barring injury or suspension for some kind of a denial of a goal scoring opportunity. Matt Turner is going to be the player playing all the World Cup minutes, unless we qualify for the knockouts after two games, and then give Sean Johnson a game. Let him enjoy that. Right. Yeah, it's going to be easy against Iran when we can kind of rest all our starters. That'll be nice.

I guess that's my big thing on the Stefan thing, is it feels like a relief. As hard as that is to say, the guy has to be heartbroken. There's no way he would have seen this coming at least up until March of of this year. Like maybe by March, he started to have some real conversations.

Berthelter, that would have been after his Costa Rica walkabout. And he also had a couple walkabouts against Panama. And then in May, he would have had the FAA Cup howler. So maybe those kinds of conversations were happening. I don't know. Walkabout,

for what it's worth, is when you leave the goal mouth and do not secure the ball, leaving the goal mouth open. Since it seems like we're going to spend a fair amount of time talking about each of these snubs, let's just switch it up and give the roster. So the roster is in goal, Matt Turner, Ethan Horvath, and Sean Johnson. And by the way, Burrhalter announced the roster from some kind of venue in New York live.

Well, he didn't announce it live, but he came on to talk about it after it was announced live. And then some of these players were there. Sean Johnson was one of them who was there, mostly domestic-based players. Centerbacks are going to be Walker Zimmerman, Tim Ream, Cameron Carter Vickers, and Aaron Long. Let's talk about that. Are you surprised Tim Ream is there? Well, no, because that was one of the big leagues, right? So we kind of knew that was coming, and we knew it was possible.

We were all kind of hoping there had been a shift in some of the plugged-in media over the last month talking about Tim Ream. And usually that stuff matters. They're not just speculating wildly. So there was definitely an inkling that this was going to happen. And I'm glad it did because for the longest time, again, we've been saying we got to have at least one of these ball playing centerbacks on the roster. Even if he's not the starter because we're going to go with some kind of a high line concept, we got to have this in our pocket. And all through qualifying that guy we were arguing for was John Brooks because I think when they're both playing John Brooks is better than Tim Ream. John Brooks and Tim Rene both got banished.

Brooks, when it's time to bring one of them back, is no longer playing soccer. And Tim Riem is. Carter Vickers, I guess I'm a little, you know, I'm not surprised to see him there, but sort of relieved to see him there. Also a little relieved to see Mark McKenzie not there. That sounds horrible, too. So the other question, Mark, again, I'm not trying to laugh and sound callous. The other question mark here was how many will we bring?

How many centerbacks will we bring? Four or five. And going four means McKenzie loses out. And that's tough, but Ream becomes the ball playing centerback. And I guess it's just a matter of if you're going to accept some risk of sort of the, I mean, Ream and McKenzie both have that mistake prone reputation. Ream at the moment has a better track record recently against much tougher competition. We don't have any world-class centerbacks.

There's no world-class centerbacks being left off the roster here. Fullback. There's five of them. And definitely some surprises here. Sergenio Dest, I mean, surprises relative to maybe what we thought a month ago, not relative to the leaks over the last few days. But Serginio Dest, of course, and Anthony Robinson. DeAndre Yedlin got the call.

Joe Scali got the call. And my man, Shaq Moore, got the call. instead of Reggie Cannon. And Burrhalter may have been asked about that in the press conference. I haven't watched the whole thing. I didn't see that. What's your take on that? So we brought five fullbacks and Cannon didn't make the five.

Because again, this was one where we were kind of thinking maybe it would be four. Between Dest and Scali, those guys can both play on the right or left so you can see getting away with four. We brought five, but used the extra slot. We thought it was worth it to go with Shaq Moore. You're a Shaqmore guy. where do you stand on fifth fullback, Shaqmore? Well,

Cannon's been pretty, I think we can agree, been pretty unconvincing in his last few appearances for the U.S. And he's playing, the last I checked, he's playing centerback in a back four for Boavista in Portugal.

So he's not even playing fullback. I think more, you know, more really did a job for us against Panama and that must-win game in Orlando. And we always reward the players who helped us qualify for the World Cup. Oh, man.

We always do. We're recording this late. This is why I'm going to be very chuckly because it's almost like a gallows humor thing where it's like, oh. Yeah. Some of these guys were left off. So Cannon has felt like a staple, right? He has been in everything since the Gold Cup of 2019. He has been to everything, it feels like.

Yeah. So it's a shock. It's a shock for him not to be there. I agree. with the choice. I just, yeah. So from a soccer sense, this is one where I am totally indifferent, right? I wanted Jedi, I wanted Desk, I wanted Scali, and after that, I mean, look, I wanted Yedlin because Mountain Boys, like him and Wea are buddies and Wayas my favorite player in the history

of soccer. So I wanted Yedlin there to be Wayas buddy. To be a player coach. And I think, I think Berhalter mentioned that Waya and Yedlin are like, I mean, he talked about, I don't know if he dropped Mountain Boys, but I think he was talking about Waya and Did he drop the URL? He said they do the pregame playlists. So that's a, like this is real stuff, right? Like this kind of stuff does matter for a camp like this, for an extended World Cup group.

So again, I'm glad Yedlund's there. I did not care at all and haven't cared at all who the extra fullback is in a soccer sense. We'll talk about it more, but like it still hurts like just to think about Reggie Cannon and everything he's done for this program for this cycle to miss out here. Yeah, it hurts. It hurts for sure. I have a point to make as soon as we finish this listing of the roster, but just don't let me forget to make it.

What was that point? Well, one more about Shaqmore, just because he's a good crosser. He gets forward. Good crosser. He could deputize as like a defensive winger if we ever have to do that because we've left one of our other defensive winger options home. he has an occasional left-back game to his name. That might have been three years ago.

No, no. Tenereefe. Two last year for Tenereefe. Two last season and once for us against France in 2018. For Grandpa Dave. Grandpa Dave Serrikin. No, I'm just saying like that it's also a real cool story in its own right. Because Shaq Moore was a guy like we were still following him when he was in the second division in Spain.

and it was kind of like, we'd mention it and just be like, I don't know that Shackmore's any worse than some of these other options were testing out or right back. Like before Sergenio Dest came in and like stole the show, I was like, I don't know, Shaq Moore could still be the guy.

There's nothing that suggests he's way outclassed here. And so to see him come in after that long and make it to a World Cup is like, it does give me a little bit of the warm fuzzies. Yeah. If I remember correctly, The late Daryl Grove and I made an episode of the Total Soccer Show in December 2017, where we talked about both Shackmore and Anthony Robinson.

I don't think we talked about Dest or Scali, though. Well, that's just shot to like the must listen top of my podcast list. Okay. Maybe don't. I don't know. Defensive midfield is Adams and Acosta. No surprise there. Tyler Adams, Kellan Acosta.

Center mids, the more advanced midfielder's would be McKinney, West McKinney, Eunice Musa, Brennan, Luka Deletore, and Christian Roldon. Wingers. Well, go ahead. No, there's really nothing of note here, right? I mean, Roldon getting in can't be a huge surprise. We had kind of eliminated any other eights from consideration. Eric Williamson.

you know, Keaton Parks never got a look. Jen Lucubuccio's been sort of out in the cold for a while. So the fact that we were going to be slim on center mids and the fact that Burrholder is very obviously keen on Christian Raldon, that sort of makes sense. Aronson being listed here, he's been listed as midfielder before and still played as a winger for the actual games.

So I'm only reading into it a little bit. He obviously played center mid in the June window. It's clear he's going to be a possible. swing player for different formation and setups that we could have. Okay. And Raldon, I guess so far for Vives guys, we have Yedlin and Roldon, right? And then the Wingers would be Christian Pulisic, Giovanni Raina, Tim Wea, and Jordan Morris. A little surprised to see him instead of Paul Ariola.

Yeah, that's the other, that's the, that is another sort of. snub, but again, this is where you had guys like Malik Tillman who would be left off of this group as well. I mean, Georgie Mihailovich, some people wanted to get a chance, which is understandable, but it never materialized with injuries and then potentially just Buralt or not thinking it was worth it. But between like Morris, Ariola, Malik, Georgie, I mean, throw a couple of darts and bring them on the team.

Like, as long as we have enough bodies at the end and those fringe spots, it doesn't seem like too much to get worked up about. Also, I've never subscribed to the idea that you need to get fringe players experience for World Cup four years later because the odds of any one fringe player actually still being in the World Cup picture four years later. Tends very low. All right. And then the strikers are Jesus Ferreira, Josh Sargent, and Haji Wright.

Yeah, you kind of called that one earlier this week. Man, that was, I mean, I was half doing a bit. I mean, like I had always wanted a change-up striker on the list because we've been saying Sergeant Frera and Pepe are redundant in a sense, or they kind of give you three the same thing. You know, they're not the exact same player, but, you know, we didn't have a change-up striker. And I think Berlter went with the change-up striker, and he dropped one of the three that he considered was redundant. we've had a striker hat in effect for a while and thought maybe it would dissolve after the September window

and it did not. It was in effect right up until the deadline. Yeah. But Pepey, I mean, you're going to go into it. Peppy was the second biggest shock of this roster reveal. No question. No, for me, it's the biggest shock.

Top two, yeah. For me, it's the biggest shock, yeah. I'm broken up about it. But before we get into that, I think here's the list of who will actually play the lion's share of the minutes. Because I was texting with a friend of mine who's, I mean, he may be a very intense soccer fan,

but he's not sort of in our little world here. And he was just, he said he was mystified by some of the down roster, MLS inclusions. And I said, well, you know, vibes. Come on, vibes. You know, and he said, I wish I would like to get more them vibes from players on the World Cup roster. And I didn't write back to him because I didn't want to argue with him and I didn't

really have time to. But here's who I think will actually play in the World Cup. And I think it's like maximum 15 players or actually play a significant role. And it's going to be Matt Turner and goal, Walker Zimmerman and kind of question mark at left centerback. It would probably be Tim Riem, but I don't know that for sure. And then a fullback is going to be Destin Robinson playing all the minutes. Adams is going to play all the minutes he can at defensive midfield.

McKinney and Moose are going to play all the minutes they can in the midfield as well. Pulisic, Raina and Wea are going to get almost, well, Aronson is going to get minutes too. I'm not sure how that's going to sort out. But let's say the four wingerers are going to play in some way or another. And then I kind of hope it's Josh Sargent who gets most of the minutes at Stryker. but it's going to be he and Ferreira probably getting most of the minutes

with Reich coming on as a change of pace. So, right, I think I just listed off 15 players with two, potentially two centerbacks sharing the time. Yeah. Isn't, go ahead.

No, no, no, you finish. Finish your thought. Well, isn't the truth, like whoever starts the game against Wales at centerback will also start the game against England unless they play very badly against Wales?

I think that's what it would be, right? So barring a shot. So if someone's really bad, they're at that left centerback spot, then their minutes are gone because they're dropped to the rest of the tournament. And we've seen Burhalter do that in tournaments before. Somebody starts the first game. So he clearly is like, this is a guy. And then they're not great, Jonathan Lewis. And then he's just done for the rest of the tournament.

So that is very possible what we see from this left centerback spot. I don't think Zimmerman's going anywhere. But yes, I think I think you're mostly right. And that doesn't mean that injuries can't happen. And we can just sort of shrug that off and be like the rest of the roster doesn't matter. But even like what you're saying with the four wingers between our big four, Pulisick, Raina, Wea, and Aronson, those guys will also deputize in the midfield. So if one of the midfield three goes down, if one of MMA goes down,

it will probably be one of Wea or Aronson coming back into the field and taking one of our very good attacking players and shifting them into a more midfield role, maybe changing our shapes slightly. But yes, I think you're totally right. That's where the minutes are going to come from. That's who's going to see us out of the group. And it's 15. It's 15, it's 15, 16 at the most. My big worry was that the roster was going to have big gaping holes in position groups,

and it does not. Like for me, the roster construction here is totally fine. You can quibble with, you can definitely quibble. There's always going to be quibbling at the margins because as you get deeper to those margins, the gap separating any two players narrows. But the balance of the roster for me is fine. We've got enough players at every position group to get by. We have some weaknesses, but I don't think there are any obvious solutions

who are left off other than maybe. Like the one guy who maybe is left off that could be a different player, it would be Jordan Pfok if he's the actual change of pace striker we need versus what Haji could give us. Yeah. But that's it. I mean, for me, I'm, I am shocked by a couple of these decisions, but not in any way. Like, this doesn't make sense from a soccer standpoint.

Yeah, I think I'll just list off what's encouraging about it to me is the, is the Stefan's omission, even though I, you know, moment of silence for him. Because, I mean, he's poured his life into this. And this got to be, you know, he's going to go down as one of his life's biggest disappointments, you know. CCV making it onto the roster I think is good he's a good solid defender who who takes his job very seriously it's not a perfect player but he's I think he's going to be useful if he's called upon Tim Ream, Shack Moore Joe Scali that wasn't that wasn't something you could say was never in doubt you know Scali was not a given a month ago and Luca Delooree being on there were some rumors even as late as today that he wasn't going to be on the roster.

So I was relieved to see that he was on there. Even though he didn't play well against Japan, even though he doesn't play hardly at all for Seltavigo, we've seen enough from him where he can come in and do a pretty good job in the midfield for us. And I'm glad to see Sergeant too. Going back to Luca, my assumption the whole time was that if he was going to be left off, it was going to be because of this injury that has ruled him out for his club

up through the World Cup. I never thought he was going to be out because of a sporting decision. So, again, our coaching staff has way more information on any of these injuries and recoveries than we have. So that, for me, just him being included, very promising. Same for Weston McKinney, obviously, who's not back yet with Juventus. I don't think he's traveling for their midweek game. So Turner didn't play today for Arsenal, even though they had a cut match and he's supposedly fit. Yeah.

I don't know if this is bubble wrap stuff or if this is really squeaky bum stuff for injury recovery. It's a weird time. Dest hasn't been playing. And did you see his tweet where he put out sort of like a Marvel comic image of himself in front of a giant city? I don't know. It's very dramatic. But he looks like he's, at least in spirit, he's ready to go. All right. You've got really good points on what this roster does have. And again, I think it's balanced enough.

I think our 11, my 11 that I have penciled in for Wales is still intact. I didn't lose anybody for the Wales game from the roster. So I think we can put together a tournament here. I think we can do something. There was a great set of videos where Burrhalter was facetiming the players and, you know, telling them that they were going to play in the World Cup. And I think the one that was the most effective or affecting was the one with Sergeant

because Sergeant was he told Burrhal that I couldn't I couldn't breathe all day thinking about this and then he pulls his shirt over his head because I think to hide the fact that he was welling up with tears probably just let it out Josh

let it out buddy so I mean you know he's he's had a long road a long professional road that is and really really happy to see that his hard work has paid off one FaceTime call that we did not get to see was the one with Ricardo Pepi.

And I'm sad about it, man. I know, well, why don't you tell me what you think first, and then I'll sort of go into my So same thing I was saying. From a soccer standpoint, like I am fine with Pepe being left off. I would have been, I mean, I'm a Frera guy. I would have been fine with Ferreira being left off. If the roster was Sergeant Pepe, Haji, even Haji kind of sneaking in over a fray, I'd be like, sure, that's fine.

Sergeant and Pepe can do the things that Ferreira was doing, and we've got we've got Hadja here sort of his own shot ja. This is a fine soccer, you know, group of three forwards to bring. The Pepe one hurts just like the Stefan one and the Areola one hurt so much because those guys poured so much into the cycle, right? Like we invested in them and it's, it just, it hurts to see that investment that we've made as supporters of the U.S. national team, then sort of get left by the wayside as the team moves on without them. So I think just from the human side, that is painful. It's just a very natural thing to feel sad about,

even though it's just the harsh reality of a roster deadline. And I'm not going to say like Berthelter was just leaving these guys on for nine months. But like, you know, imagine how they feel like they've got the rug has totally been pulled out from them because of sort of I mean, I don't know what that FaceTime's like, right? Like, hey, I've really enjoyed our time together, but I just met this new forward and I'm going with him. Like, that's, it's tough. Yeah.

Well, the crazy thing is when Burrhalter called Pepey in for the September window and didn't call Pfeck or Haji Wright, I mean, I don't know that there was even that much clamoring for Haji Wright at that point, but he didn't call either of them. He said at that time, you know, We have the information we need on some of the players who aren't here. We wanted to get another look at some of the players that we called in. This is not who's going to necessarily be on the World Cup roster. And everybody was like, yeah, right, Greg.

You're just saying that. And he was actually very true to his word on this one. This is a bolt out of the blue that Haji Wright would come and be on this World Cup roster. Well, and what felt like the door was closed was because Pepe was scoring goals. Like, I mean, no two ways about it. The guy is racking up goals and assists. So it's like he's a Burrhalter guy. Like he saved Burrhalter's job in September of 2021.

Burrhalter stuck with him almost all through qualifying. Started to rotate, but not in a way that was like he was down on Pepey. He still started at the Azteca against Mexico. And then he started in Costa Rica. So he started two of our last three qualifying matches. Yeah. So yeah. So it definitely felt like once Pepey started scoring again, got out of Augsburg,

got it to the Netherlands, started. just racking up goals, even though, again, the underlines or the underlines. I mean, I didn't think, I didn't think Berlter was going to be that much of a finishing truther, to be honest, non-truther. Yeah, we talked about that a little bit on the live show. Nick brought up the idea that maybe, I mean, does this all prove that Barrethor is just an absolute, you know, he adheres completely to the underlying numbers? Big ghost stats guy always has been.

No, I don't know. I don't know what to make of it. I actually do take Burralter at his word here that he didn't necessarily need for Air Sergeant and Pepe. So between out of the three of them, he just, it will always come down to like, there's no, there's no algorithm that does it. A coach is just going to say, those are the two that I just feel like give me the best chance to win. Yeah. But well, you tell us like, I get that this hits you especially hard. I mean, for God's sake, Bells, you've composed.

you've composed a whole score. No, yeah, the songs, the songs are 100% cursed. No more songs. Or Busio. Until further notice. Now, McKenny's still, okay. But tell us. Yeah, I think, you know, not only is Pepey a great story, you know, a kid from El Paso

who chose the USA over Mexico and scored two game winning goals in the first two windows of World Cup qualifying. He was after the exclusion of Paul Areola. and then, you know, the chronological order of the roster reveal earlier today. We knew Areola was gone before we knew that Pepe was gone. Pepe was the last Mexican-American on the roster. Christian Rodon is, I think he's Salvador and Guatemalan, and Jesus Ferreira's Colombian American.

To have some Spanish speakers on the team, but no Mexican-Americans. Now, people will rightly point out, Mexico has no Mexican-Americans on their roster either. but I don't know man reading reading what some of the people on the discord were saying tonight I don't know did you see what like Mario was saying oh yeah Jorge and I mean it this is a if you have like 10 roster spots that are really not going to play that much anyway you got to give that we got to give one of those spots to ricardo man I don't I'm not gonna I'm not gonna start a protest over it but I'm just saying like from like optimizing what we're doing as a soccer program trying to make the best decisions for the future of American soccer,

Peppy should have been on this roster. Yeah, and the snub, the full roster snub will hit harder, much harder than, I mean, would it be any better if he was on the team but didn't play for a second because... Yes, it would be better. It would be, right? Because he wouldn't have this moment of being, like, straight left off the roster. Sorry, your name's not called.

I get that. No, I don't have much for it. I totally get it. It's just like... And there are expendable roster spots. When we did our wish list last episode, I went to four strikers, not because we need four strikers on a roster for a tournament. And it was basically Pepe was my fourth, even though Hodgie was kind of this. Haji was taking P-Fox spot for me, even though like one of those two has to be on there.

Peppy was my fourth guy. And it was essentially like the sentimental pick because of what he did in qualifying, because he came through and qualifying as a, was he 17, 18-year-old kid? So young, so young. Making his senior team debut away in a World Cup qualifier and scores a goal. Like he was totally a sentimental pick for me. So I get the, I get the heartbreak for leaving him off. And I also get the angle of sort of, what do we want to call it like ammunition for Mexican-American fans to see it and just say like, yeah, of course. Of course they left him off.

I don't want it to be like a completely mercenary thing. We have to bring Peppy so that we can attract more dual gnats to play for the U.S., more Mexican Americans to play for the United States of America. I mean, although I would like that, I just think it's more about doing the little things we can to sort of move the perception and the culture. And I'll just read something that Mario on the Discord wrote. He said, not sporting wise, but just how meaning. This is a dyed-in-the-wool U.S. Men's National Team fan.

Not sporting-wise, but just how meaningful it would be to see a first-generation Mastizo playing for the U.S. I love that boy. He's special to me. Reminds me of my children and me when I was a child. Hope he turns this into just fire. I don't know. I think that stuff does matter. I do understand that on sporting terms, the decision to bring Haji is defensible and maybe even preferable.

but um well it just comes down to just bring a fourth forward just bring it forth forward you have you have spots to play with um and i don't know i don't know if i don't know how burhalter feels about like uh you know when we talk about jordan morris being there as like maybe an extra player um Greg burhalter probably has like a very specific job he envisions jordan morris performing if it comes to that in the world cup uh so that that's where that's where it sort of ends right is how is he building the roster? What jobs does he see each person playing? He's had nothing but time to game this out.

What contingencies is he planning for? But I get the sentiment. I think it's, it's, it is powerful. I would have loved to have seen Pepey. It would have been an incredible story for a U.S. roster and for Pepe in particular. But I don't have much more, much more. besides that. Fair enough. Fair enough. You're not too mad about Tillman or Pfock, I gather. No, not really. Pfok maybe a little bit. Pfok maybe a little, again, just because I think he could, again, I think he could add something if everything else is falling apart. I'm not sure that Hodgey will add the same kinds of things that Pfok could sort of go in and just do. Pfok is a bulldozer. And so we don't have, we still don't have that unless we're just being like, no, Sergeant gives us that. And Burrhalter might think that.

that sergeant we already have that with sergeant so we're covered um because pfah can't hang his hat on like well he scores he just he just scores right i mean he he doesn't just score and it doesn't seem like union think that he's a guy who just scores anymore he's kind of lost his place there as well so no i mean notice he didn't didn't start today for that there there just really aren't any snubs on a soccer level that like hit me really hard at this point Yeah. Yeah, and I'm with you, mostly for the reasons I just explained, the peppy snub hits me in a different way.

And I'm sad, and the ariola snub, just because he seems like such a good dude. And to me, a more useful player than Jordan Morris, that hurts a little bit. But I don't think either, I don't think Morris is going to play. I don't think ariola would have played that much either. I mean, I hope Morris doesn't play that. much. I'll do respect.

So what's going to come down to is we still have, we still have another round of games in Europe. And so, like, we're, I'm not, I'm not hoping anyone gets hurt. I'm just saying like the, the roster is announced and now we'll have to see if it ends up being the final roster, because we'll have these games, then we'll have a week of training in camp and Qatar, and God forbid anything should happen. We have a couple of guys that if we call on, hopefully we'll be ready to go. Did you know our first World Cup game is a week from Monday? It's insane.

It's insane that this is all happening. It's a lightning round World Cup. Incredible. I want to make a point that Matt Hartman made to me. He tried to jump on the live show earlier tonight and couldn't get it to work mostly because it's probably my fault on the technical side. But he just wanted us to talk about the or to mention the, youth national team influence on this roster.

This roster has nine players who played for us, for us being the U.S. at a U-17 World Cup in the last four cycles. The 2015 World Cup had, that's the 2015 U-17 World Cup, Haji Wright, Luca Delatore, Christian Pulisic, and Tyler Adams were in that one. In 2017, Josh Sargent, Tim Weaa, and Sergenio Dest participated in the U-17 World Cup. And then in 2019, we had Giovanni, Raina, and Joe, Scali.

That is an incredibly higher return from those U-17 teams to the senior team than we had seen previously. The 2014 World Cup team only had two players who had played in a U-17 team, Josie and Omar Gonzalez. And the 2010 team only had one, Jonathan Specter. So Hartman says, just flat out better talent. and player development since 2015. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, the cohorts have been excellent in watching. It also feels special again because of what we've been doing for the past four years with this podcast. We've watched and what Hartman's been doing for God knows how long. Oh, Hartman. Been out of since the late 1800s. He exists outside of time. Yeah, like watching these guys do this for. for the youth teams and now be doing this for the national team.

15 of these guys were Tokyo eligible, which is just a crazy thing, 15 out of 26. Tokyo Olympics, for those of you and... For the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which is a U-23 tournament on the men's side. So an insane number, and it's most of the top end of the roster. The, you know, the fringe veteran vibes guys

tend to be the older guys. This is, it's crazy. It is crazy. And I know we spent a ton of time on the snubs on Peppy and Stefan, but the actual players here are a delight. Yeah. Everybody who I listed as likely to play a lot is under 25, except for Zimmerman and maybe, well, definitely Tim Riem,

if he's one of the centerbacks, he's not. And then Matt Turner is over 25 too, right? He's like 25, 26. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But everybody else is under 25. Children. I mean, it's children. And even Kel and Acosta is still, like, on the younger side of things, this is, this, I feel like we could really just be having this team get everyone, everyone in the country sort of swept up in a wave if they, if they come out and do something against Wales, which they can absolutely do.

Yeah. I mean, we could come out and play, we could play lights out against whales and have a great game and give everybody something to be excited about. Yeah, yeah, let's just be excited. Let's be happy. Are you? I mean, do you have to feign it or are you like? Well, it is a little late where I live. It is, it's after, it's after midnight now.

But I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. I'm feeling. I'm sad about, I'm sad about Pepey. It's going to take me a couple days to get over that. I get it. I get it. There's a grieving process here.

And I don't mean that flippantly. Like, again, we've invested. We invest in these players with our with our with our souls. So but from a soccer sense like for me this roster is is singing a little bit and in the top end are all there you know minus minus like a injury to Chris Richards. But this is this is a group man. This is a group that can do some things. You mentioned earlier that you have an 11 for Wales.

I think you should go ahead and tell us what it is. My snap 11. It's not a snap 11. And it's, it's the, I think I've told it on the setup before, but I guess I'll drop it again. It's the, uh, you expect me to remember that. It's the 21, two, three, two. So it's essentially like a two, three, five, but with, whatever, it's to, it's to combat Wales as a five, four one sort of defensive block setup. And I've got Turner and I've got Zimmerman. And I'm, I have Tim Riem as the last centerback. And then I've got, uh, Jedi and Dest on the right.

But the trick here is Jedi plays in that high line of five, but Dest in possession will actually just kind of funnel into the midfield three. As he loves to do. Because he's versatile, and he can sort of do that, and he can be a chameleon there and go forward when he needs and interact with everyone else. The big twist here is I don't actually have MMA starting here, and it's actually because I don't respect whales enough to play all three of MMA to solidify our spine defensively. and I'm willing to risk it and go full out attack. So I'm only starting two of MMA, and I don't care which two. And then Gio Rana plays as a third center midfielder. And then we've got Christian Pulisik and Tim Wea as the nominal winger's,

but Wea will stay wide on the right, and Pulisic will kind of stay higher and central. And then Josh Sargent will be the striker who will kind of play off Raina and that sort of shifted a little bit to the right opposite Pulisic. My lord I love it It's gonna win It's a two zero win

Two zero win easy With Matt Turner and goal I think Don't you think Baralta will probably stick with the MMA midfield Against Wales Yes

And I'd be I'd be It'd take a ton of time Watching Wales video To convince me that that's The wrong move Like I think you should probably do that The reason you wouldn't

Is if you've watched a ton of whales video And you say I just don't think they can I don't think they have enough weapons to hurt us. So what we need to do is make sure we give ourselves the best opportunity to score goals. Like we've got to make sure we don't waste any possessions. And MMA, for as much as I love them, aren't necessarily as attack heavy as a midfield

with like Gio Raina in it. Yeah. In Timway also on the field. Few midfields are as attack heavy as they are with Gio Raina in it. So anyway, that's my, that's my Wales 11. There we go. I love it. I'm so,

now I'm even more excited now. All right. We're winning, we're winning that game two zero. I'm not sure we struck the right tone here, but, uh, you know,

we do what we can. We do our best. And, um, I do think, I do think by and large it's a good roster. And I, I guess if you think it's not,

I, what, who do you think should be here and why, you know? And beyond that, like, what impact does that change make on the whales match.

Yeah. What impact does that make on the 15 or 16 players who are actually going to play most of the minutes? Right. If you absolutely think Malik Tillman should be here ahead of Jordan Morris, like what impact is that going to have over the group stage is what I'm kind of curious about? Not to go all bad vibes immediately, but how does that change for you if all of a sudden we have like a Zimmerman-long centerback pairing against whales and then.

we start, I know you like Ferreira, but say we start Ferreira against Wales and, you know, he gets crowded out of the game. Long makes a bunch of mistakes. So my, my sort of what I think is sort of the reasonable bad case scenario here. It's not the worst case. Anyone can have a bunch of shockers and, you know, we can have a worst worst case. But what I feel like what I'm most afraid of is actually that scenario you talked about, Ferreira starting and Aaron Long starting. And it's just sort of going to be an opportunity cost issue for 45 minutes where we can't be dangerous. We don't create anything. We really struggle to build because Aaron Long's not the best at building out of the

back. We can't just go along direct because Jesus Ferrer can't play that way. So we essentially waste 45 minutes of clock time. And this is what I'm saying. Like if we think we are the better attacking team, you don't want to waste 45 minutes of attack time. Like you need to attack optimally for 90 minutes to get a one or two. You can't you can't just kick 45 minutes to the curb and just be like, oh, we'll just get them in the second half.

Like that's a, that's very wasteful. So that's where I'm like, if we don't think whales can hurt us, that's where I want to go heavy on the attacking side and be like, no, these are the players that will open whales up and get us goals. And we have enough in defense to not let whales be dangerous. Should have led the whole podcast with me saying this team is going to, this group is going to win two zero against whales. I feel like that's the energy we should have started.

Totally. Totally. We're very bad. We're very bad at that sort of thing. I think one thing that does work in our favor is how bad we looked in September. Everyone's written us off. Yes. I mean, no joke. I can't remember if I mentioned this on another pod, but when I was on the, when I was on like an episode of some other podcast with people from England, Wales, and Iran, They all picked us to finish last in the group. But, you know, if you just went and watched those games in September, man, you'd be like, we're going to destroy these guys. They're terrible.

And I'm not saying it was Greg Burhalter 4D Chess. I'm not saying it wasn't either. Can I throw out, can I just throw out at the end of this hour long now episode? Another Stefan theory. It would be that, you know, one, I think, Burrhalter maybe overestimated Stefan's ability to play the ball

with his feet. But two, if that's what he thought his main strength was, it's possible Burrhalter felt that was a very necessary strength to have in qualifying

and is much less of a necessary strength to have in the World Cup proper if we're not going to be constantly outpossessing teams. And so the September window notwithstanding,

like it might be the case that he's going to lean hard into less of the disorganized the opponent of the ball methodology and more of the let's go out and smash Mexico in the mouth and beat them when they want to try to have the ball methodology. This reminds me. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, Greg. We're all over the place, but I think it works.

I was listening to your Joe Lowry episode, which I thought was really good, the little 10-minute bite. and you said that, you know, there were games where we tried to create scramble moments in the middle of the field. Would you consider the Mexico game at home one of those? Yes, definitely. I thought it was like an intentional tactic to like, we would kind of move it around the back a little bit in a way that wasn't terribly complicated, not hitting it necessarily into the amoeba, just moving it maybe from side to side. And then as we drew Mexico forward, we would sort of loft it not long, but medium. We'd hit a medium lofted ball into like Mexico's right in front of Mexico's holding midfielder.

And then it looked like that cue is designed because our front two of McKinney and Moussa would already be like, they'd recognize the cue that that ball was coming. And they would go race to attack that one Mexico defender. And we would sort of try to swallow up either the first one or more likely just the scramble that ensued after the second ball, win it there. and then outrace Mexico back up field, even with Tyler Adams joining at that point. So I thought it was a very deliberate like scramble ball creation situation. And that's also why, I mean,

I don't know if anyone remembers how the discourse went, but we had so many tackles in that game on the counting stats, like a stupid number of tackles for those three midfielders. And then in the Jamaica game following, where Jamaica did not try to like do anything like that, like there was never any of that. Everyone was like, man, Gianluco Busio has zero tackles

and compared to like Weston McKinney's 15 against Mexico and that was kind of being painted as a way that Busio wasn't living up to McKenny's role and it was just two totally different games because that Mexico game was all about creating tackle moments. Interesting, yeah. I remember all of that somewhat vaguely. But what were the other games where we did that?

We did it almost less intentionally in the goal, in the Nations League final against Mexico. We just weren't too committed to actually keeping the ball. And we were set up in a way that was like designed to just be really hard to play against. With the Acosta. We were just doing nothing in that game. It was like a Costa McKinney double pivot. But no, it was just very much just like,

it was hard-nosed stuff. And then the gold cup was the same way against the gold cup final against Mexico. for me was the same kind of thing. We weren't like set up to try to like disorganize. And that one, it was maybe less scramble ball moments and more just like setting up traps or just sort of setting that standard Burrhalter press that we've been implementing and sort of letting Mexico have it

and then trying to play against them that way. We weren't trying to put together 30 past sequences. So those are the big ones that stand out. And those were, you know, clear, pragmatic moments for Burrhalter where it was a trojanable. Tophie's on the line. Nation's League final, gold cup final. Let's just dispense with the pretty stuff. And let's win a street fight. Yeah. It's what we're going to do. It's what we're going to do later this month.

Yeah, we will for sure be willing to win a street fight in Qatar. I don't think there's any question about it. I don't think Burrhalter will hesitate to go that route. He is not interested in changing the way the worldviews American soccer anymore. He's like, fuck that. Tim Wea. Tim Wea is going to change the way the world views American soccer just by his own charisma. Yeah. Future president of the United States of America. All right. The vibes have been restored. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.