Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #342: USA v Wales recap

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

A bolt of blue from Pulisic and Weah, a big mistake from Zimmerman, and a disappointing draw with Wales at the World Cup. Greg and Belz talk through it.----Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes (more than 50 this year) 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. We got a 1-1 draw at the World Cup on Monday. Our first World Cup game in eight and a half years tied whales. It ended up being a disappointing draw because we led from the 36th minute to the 82nd. And we did control the game in some ways in the first half. But we gave up the penalty late. On a silly foul from Walker Zimmerman and Gareth Bale buried it, the rest of the game was kind of a scramble.

How are you doing, Greg? I'm doing good. Like you said, it's been eight and a half years since we watched the U.S. men play in a World Cup. It was fun to just have that energy all day, all week, I mean, all month. So to have that energy, we got our one World Cup moment in this game, one and a half moments, maybe. So I was really, I mean, again, as much as we love to dive into the weeds here of chalkboards and roster construction, everything else, like watching Tim yeah, do what he did there and send that ball into the goal in a World Cup game after eight and a half years was a really great moment. It was a gorgeous goal.

It was enough for me at halftime. And it felt like maybe that was enough for the U.S. men's national team too. It seemed it. I mean, it's based on what we were getting out of Wales. It seemed like that could definitely be enough to get three points. I mean, it almost was. Let's be honest. I mean, Zimmerman's mistake, you take that out of the game.

Wales didn't have a ton of chances either we probably win one zero I'm fine saying that yeah I mean absolutely like they weren't they weren't pounding on the door they had a they had a couple of looks Matt Turner made one save I think in the match

it's totally fair to say that without gifting them a penalty kick on a non-threatening situation we get our three points there which which again speaks to how I don't know if I want to say uneventful the match was because we weren't lighting their goal up either. We did enough on that Timway a moment to get three points and then we kind of squandered it a little bit.

In our call-in show that we did with patrons on the Discord right after the game, you sort of threw a lot of cold water on my enthusiasm for the first half. But it did feel, the first half did feel really good to watch, for me at least. Maybe it's because I'm contrasting it with the way we performed in September. and just to see us at a World Cup, possessing the ball, controlling the game, no matter how much whales wanted us to do it, was super encouraging, I thought.

I actually loved this game for almost like a study on the psychology of experiencing a soccer game as it plays out. Say more. Because game state has such a heavy effect on your mentality, right? So when we were watching that, game and we were just really bad. We couldn't have the ball.

We couldn't keep the ball. And then Japan scores on us. And then every mistake is magnified. It's like, oh my God, we're losing and we just did this. We weren't, we were definitely controlling the ball in this game, right? So it wasn't like Japan because we had the ball all we wanted. What I would actually compare this to would be the Canada World Cup qualifier in Canada, where we had a ton of the ball, right?

But we were losing for all of that time because Canada scored five minutes in. So now we have the ball, but we're losing. And so it feels like totally different game. We barely did anything against Canada. We barely did anything against Wales today. But in this game, because we had the score, because we scored first, it felt different, right? When we're up one zero and we watch players do really wasteful things in the attacking third, it just doesn't hit us the same way.

It's not as frustrating as when it's zero, zero or zero one. Yeah, or Weston McKinney giving the ball away like three times in a row. You're like, come on, Weston. but that's okay. We're up one zero. Right. We're up one zero and whales aren't doing anything threatening. So it's just like, okay, that wasn't, I mean, it might not even register that you're just

seeing a really wasteful possession because what you're thinking is like, tick, tick, tick, the clock's running and we are on our way to three points here. Because, I mean, the comment I made to the Welsh fan that I was watching this game with, we happen to have a neighbor who's from Wales coming over to watch the game at our place was like, yeah, it's like, I mean, this was probably three, four, the way through the first half. It was just like, you guys aren't even trying to play soccer and we're just playing soccer pretty badly. That was my comment to him. This is before the way the way a goal or after? No, this was after the way a goal, I think. Because that, I mean, that moment was

brilliant and it was well executed. And you know, you could you could actually make a case like pulling that off one time during the half makes it a successful half and I'd buy that. I could give you that. But for me, it also doesn't change how wasteful we were in tons of other moments. that could have just given us more chances at being up to zero instead of one zero. And all things being equal, bells, being up two zero is better than being up one zero. So you can withstand, you know, a really silly mistake from a centerback in your own box late in the game. It did seem like our sense of urgency to get that second goal wasn't quite what it could have been. I mean, maybe maybe that's just mumbo jumbo, mystical mumbo jumbo.

but whether it was a lack of sense of urgency or a lack of just ideas on how to do it, we didn't do it. And it's not like, especially in the second half, it's not like we didn't have space to work with. I mean, we had moments of, you know, semi-transition to try to capitalize on. We just didn't.

Yeah, I thought the entire game, our decision-making and mostly execution in the final third was pretty poor. I mean, you basically just had this one flawless exchange that will get, to, I'm sure, in the chronology and dissect it. But other than that, there weren't a lot of moments that, like, you're like, oh, my goodness.

Or there might be like one cool back heel where, again, when you're up one zero and McKinney pulls that back heel off and you're like, yes, that was great. But then, like, he gets it to Sergenio Dest, who is a dangerous player. And then Desk just dribbles into a dead end and loses the ball. And it's like, okay, well, that's it. So that plays over. But the back heel was pretty cool. Yeah.

Dest is kind of tripped on the ball in that one. But then you just totally like, it just, everything just fizzled. Really badly. It wasn't like we strung together three or four really good moments where it was like we now have whales scrambling and we are about to get a tap in. Like it never felt like that. It never felt like we were completely adjacent to the next scoring touch. Right. We definitely lacked cutting edge.

We kind of have lacked cutting edge for a while now. We'll get into, hopefully get into trying to understand why that is a little better from this game. but first let's do, unless you have any other opening thoughts. Those were pretty thorough opening thoughts. Okay, just one item of bad news. It seems like Gio, Rana, our most dangerous attacking player, likely isn't fit. I mean, either that or Burrhalter is deliberately trying to sabotage himself. It's got to be one of the two.

Burrhalter said Rana felt some tightness in his hamstring. after the game, Geo said he's 100% after the game. So it's a little bit confusing. I think people are kind of taking it however they want. But what's your take on that? Oh, so my take on it is there's no way Geo Raina was like able to play in this game without significant risk. And I don't like I basically have to believe that because to not use Geo Raina in the game otherwise. Like that that can't exist in this universe.

Like I know that I have differences with how Greg Burhol. makes his choices sometimes and I know a lot of other people really have differences without Greg Burhalter makes his choices. I don't think it's possible that Greg Burhalter made a soccer decision to not play a Geo-Rena based on soccer ability. Like the only thing that can make sense to me in this world is that Geo-Rena is hurt. If not like, again, if it was pure, if this is pure soccer choices, then Greg Berhalter should not coach our next soccer game.

Right. Yeah, it's a, and I guess the thing that occurs to me, is if Raina's not fit enough to explode or really trust his legs, this isn't like Major League Baseball where he can hobble up to the plate like Kirk Gibson and, you know, kind of round the bases on a limp. He just won't be able to play soccer the way he knows how to play soccer. And he's not going to hit a two run, home run in the bottom of the ninth. Not only that, but he very well, he's very likely to rule himself out of all of the rest of the tournament.

Right. So, yes, I, like, I'm clinging to that. If that turns out to not be the case, then any goodwill Greg Burr-Altar has built up for anybody over the last three and a half years should instantly evaporate. And it would go down as, it would go down as like the worst coaching decision you could make, especially if we don't get out of the group. Well, you talk about this a little bit on the call-in show. I'd love for you to say the thing you said about his ability to control a game because he didn't play. As you all know, Raina didn't play. And one caller suggested, well, you know, he's not the guy you want to see out a game

because he's not going to put in the defensive effort. You had, I thought, a pretty thorough and convincing rejoinder to that. And you're, you know, of course, in your very polite way. Oh, well, I just, like, I couldn't disagree more. I feel like when we're watching the game slip away from us as early as probably the 50th minute, 55th minute, and we cannot get a foot, like a foothold anywhere. Like, Gio Raina is exactly the guy that gets you a foothold in a game. So whether you put him on as a winger for either pool sick or way.

Wea was starting to already slow down at that point. So it's not even like you're taking out a guy who's flying. But if you want control of the soccer game, you put Gio Raina on there because he controls a soccer game. It's double edge, right? Not only does he give you more possession against Wales's block, but he also prevents like whales from running back at you the other way because he can calm the game down on the ball. And you're just not going to turn it over. It got so back and forth in that second half because we could not string passes together.

And Gio Raina is absolutely the guy who allows you to do that. Right. Yeah. He was a guy, even against Japan when we couldn't do anything. Like, finally we get to G.Rena. He's like, fine, I'll be the grown up and, like, keep the ball. It's like. Yeah.

He's good. He's good, as I like to say, in a cage. So it's hard to take the ball from him. And when it's like a 50-50 situation, he seems to come out with the ball a lot. because he's an elite athlete. Let's do the lineups. Matt Turner and goal, Sergenio Dest,

Walker Zimmerman, Tim Rine, and Anthony Robinson across the back line. We did the MMA midfield, Musa McKinney and Adams. Adams as the 6, Musa McKinney as the 8s, and it really was like that. It was a 433.

No double pivots today. And then the front line was left to right, Pula 6, Sergeant, and Wea. Bit of a surprise that Josh Sargent. sergeant got to start. Not a, not a shock, not a shock, but I think it was kind of up in the air what Burhalter was going to do there. So, uh, all those names I think make sense. Uh, I'm going to say in a vacuum. I, I really wish that Raina would have been fit to start because, you know, one of the things we kept saying was against this particular setup for Wales or 541, what's we'll kind of talk about in a second or, uh, 532. Um, maybe it would be more accurate. Uh, you want to try to find a, guy who can receive the ball in the pocket between their centerbacks and that midfield line of of three or two depending it was kind of an adaptive formation for whales but we almost never found that

we did find it actually on the goal that we scored but we rarely found it outside of that it would it clearly was not like a pattern we were gunning for to find sergeant's feet or to find either of the half space merchants in that pocket like we just weren't hitting it very often or much at all And to be fair to everybody who's not Josh Sargent, Josh Sargent wasn't facing his belly button to the ball very often in this game either. Not too much, no. And so again, I don't know what the game plan was. I don't know what Burrhalter wanted to do. We kind of had just been saying all week with like a Bob Morocco assist, this is the way to attack Wales's setup.

We'd watch Ukraine and Austria kind of finding those pockets and hitting it. We didn't do that. We did the horseshoe, right? We did a ton of passing around the perimeter, very little penetration into the amoeba. Again, certainly not any sign of intentional coordinated efforts to get into whales's setup. That could have been a tradeoff, like a choice to do that less because passing into the amoeba is more likely to create a turnover, right? So Wales thrives on turnovers and then they get out and run at you. So that can be a choice.

You're going to say, we're going to create less. We're going to be less risky. In turn, whales will have way less opportunities to run. of us. And I think that there's an argument that that'd be the best way to win. And we saw whales didn't get a ton of chances to run at us because we kept the ball for 65% of the game. Yeah, whales got nothing in the first half.

They got the one Ampidoo shot from distance off like a set piece that got cleared out to them or something. That was it for the first half. I guess they did have a second shot in the... So I don't know. Again, I don't know if that was the calculation or if we just didn't really try. try to get in there sort of by by mistake. But I'll say,

one of the reasons that I was really hoping Giorino would start because he's the guy that you could play into the pocket and feel pretty comfortable that he can control the ball. And if he couldn't, if he wasn't going to go, the other guy I wanted to see in the lineup was Hesu's Ferreira, because Ferreira can do that coming back from the line. I mean, he wants to do that. He wants to come back and get that ball at his feet and then connect the next pass.

And we weren't getting it repeatedly. Like it clearly wasn't like a rehearsed pattern. that we were going for, we weren't really getting it from Josh Sargent in this game. And I'm not necessarily putting that on Sargent. Again, I don't know what the game plan was. I think Josh Sargent is actually

also capable of doing that, but it wasn't happening. Yeah. No, it wasn't. I mean, and I guess Pulisic was the other guy who was getting the ball in that spot on occasion. I mean, I clocked one time, I think, where he did. What, like three or four times in the game

where we intentionally played into that pocket? That's about what I saw. And ironically, again, as we'll get into in the chronology, breaking it down, when we actually got the goal, I'm not sure it was even like an intentional. I mean, it was like head tennis. It was a weird moment. Yeah. It definitely wasn't like a buildup from the back. Tim Rheim slides the ball into the, our best passing centerback slides it into our target forward's feet coming into the pocket to unbalanced whales's shape.

Like it wasn't that. Again, there just was no, clearly no sign that that was the game plan. We'll get into a lot of it. Wales was essentially in a 3-5-2, Wayne Hennessy and goal, Chris Mepham, Joe Rodin, and Ben Davis across the back line. And then the band of five was Connor Roberts at right wingback, Harry Wilson, Aaron Ramsey, and Ethan Ampadoo in the midfield, and then Nico Williams at left wingback, and then Gareth Bale and Dan James up front. No key for more in the starting lineup for Rob Page.

and he couldn't, I guess Joe Allen was not fit, so he couldn't play either. Not as good of a team as I expected Wales to be today. I mean, they were bad. Like in the first half, they were bad. They were organized and we didn't get a lot of looks at them. But every time the ball, they did get the ball, it did not look. I mean, we talked them up as, you know, there's going to be this counter-attacking team and they're going to, like, they're really like they know exactly what they're doing on the count.

They didn't look like they knew what they were doing at all in their counter-attacks. Like, it was messy as all get out when they would win the ball and, like, run at us. So I don't know if it's like all Joe Allen or if it was, again, a conscious choice by Wales to never really send anybody up and just hit prayers every time. But if you were to say, what is Wales trying to accomplish here? I have no idea what the answer would be other than running the clock out against a fairly ineffective U.S. possession attack. We're going to really celebrate that goal. So this isn't going to all be a sad procession of facts. But there is going to be, I think, a fair amount of criticism of the team here.

So to the timeline, very early on, choppy game. I mean, you could say that about most of the game. It was choppy, both sides. But it was energetic from the U.S. And it was, I think, for me and a lot of people watching the game, that was encouraging, especially after we watched those games in September. we came to play we were ready to give it

everything we had second minute Pulisic wins a foul in the attacking third and takes the set piece and this was a theme on the night hits it waist high into the first defender

doesn't even give our attackers a chance to to get after it and I won't you know I'm gonna note some of the set pieces throughout the game but I just like why is Pulisic taking set pieces

he's just not good at it he hasn't good at it all he hasn't been good at it all qualifying cycle yeah it's been I'd say hit or miss for Pulisick and then today it was just a lot of misses it's hit miss miss miss miss hit miss miss miss I'll but I'll just say the opening minutes

again it just felt good to look like we weren't totally on ice skates the way we had kind of looked in the September window because there was there was a worry at least that like whales would come out and sort of try to Japan us and I was you know I was I was hoping that that wouldn't happen. And it didn't happen. Straight away, I was like, okay, Wales is going to be content here to sit back and let us sort of see if we can open them up.

We might not be able to. But at least we won't just have to, like, totally clinch, clinch through this entire match. Right. In the ninth minute, we get the first real excitement of the game. It was a good sequence from the U.S., the best, I think, of the game outside of the goal we scored. and it starts with Wea and Dest on the right side. Wea plays the ball back to Dest. McKenney checks to Dest in the right channel

and Wea takes off up the right side line. Desk's under no real pressure from Dan James just inside his own half and he plays kind of a rainbowed ball in behind for Wea. Wea takes it down with a touch with his right boot, off his left thigh and then volleys it hard across the penalty area in the direction of Sargent. It gets cut out by Joe Rodin

but his header is just a line drive. I've had his own goal. Luckily for Wales, right at Hennessy, and it bounces off of Hennessy's chest right to the outside of the eight, outside of the six, where Rodin clears it to our left side. Incredible, incredible that this bullet header, uh, from Rodin happens to just go directly into Wayne Hennessy. I guess Wayne Hennessy is a large fella. Uh, so I guess it's not so statistically unlikely that the header would go at Hennessy,

um, but it's, it's still incredible because if it is, anywhere else. It's the best finish that has happened in the Burkhaltar era. He smacks that ball. He does. And Rodin's like the guy for them. I think whales think of him as really the rock of their back line. He escaped two kind of tough moments in this sequence, which we'll get to the second part

in a second. But I was going to say it's pretty admirable that Whale got any sort of ball across the way he did. Admirable is underselling it. This is like a miraculous three touch sequence from Tim Wea. Yeah, I do think the second touch was maybe accidental. You think it was on purpose off his left thigh? I'm going to say it's not on purpose, but it doesn't affect its, it's, what's the word I'm looking for?

It's magic. Yeah. Well, yeah. So you're probably going to come down on me for this, but I was going to say, if you puts it two feet closer to the goal, Sergeant does have a step on, who's he got a step on back there, MEPM.

And had it been a couple feet goalward from its trajectory, it's, you know, sergeant's shooting from the six. Oh, that's probably the case. But again, it's a miracle that Timway delivers a ball at all in like the time frame that he delivers it, because to take this ball over his head,

he's running under it like a wide receiver. Yep. Catches it with his foot while he's continuing to run like a wide receiver, and then the touch off of his alternate thigh, and then to smash it on the next motion, and the ball never touches the ground. Yeah. It is stupid.

Like, again, usually the best case here for anybody who watches Americans playing soccer is that he might be able to try to control this ball, like, over towards the sideline and just hold it up and not lose it. So to do anything even resembling what he did, it continues to make Tim way of my favorite human being on Earth. He's great. He's great, no doubt about it. So the ball, after Rodin clears it,

Anthony picks it up on the left side and races past Aaron Ramsey and Connor Roberts to the end line, just blows right by him and stands a ball up to the near post where Sergeant darts in front of Rodin and flashes a header off that near post. So Rodin just looks completely shell-shocked right after this. And it's a big moment of near glory for. for the U.S. feels like we're in good shape. We're in Wales half.

They can't get into ours much, and now we're knocking on the door. Right. It felt huge because we saw the best of Timway. I mean, first off, the delivery from Sergenio Dest is fantastic. So we saw Wea's incredible movement, which he's showcased all through World Cup qualifying.

It's what led people to say things like Timway has to be in the starting lineup because he offers that ability to stretch the field. And he's not just a track star. Like that touch and technique is stupid. So we got that. And then we get the Jedi stuff where it's like, did whales not watch the video on Jedi to know that you can't just stand there flat-footed next to Jedi Robinson because he just dusts one dude. And then the next dude somehow didn't get the memo still.

And he gets dusted as well. So yeah, like that's promising, right? That's where you're thinking like maybe we are just way, way better than whales. That's what I was kind of hoping. Yeah. It kind of felt that way. But still zero zero. In the 11th minute, Sergenio Desk gets a yellow card for chasing Nico Williams to the sideline after a little way of giveaway and possession.

It was the good kind of possession from within Wales lines. And we just couldn't connect. But Dest, I think, more or less fairly received a yellow for this challenge. Yeah, fairly and unnecessarily, right? So this is not where you need to go clean a guy out. the ball is probably going to go out of bounds or you can just tackle it out of bounds to slide into the back of somebody's legs is not a good time to take a yellow. And if you're not familiar with yellow card accumulation rules, any additional yellow desk picks up in the tournament suspends him for the following match. Yeah.

Up until the semifinal, I believe, is where it resets so that you don't miss the final for yellow card accumulation. If we get to the final, I will not care what the desk does in the semifinal. But it's tricky, right? It's traconian, yeah. We don't want Sir Gino Desk carrying a yellow card for our next, hopefully, three to four to five games. Yeah, yeah, we don't want him suspended for any games because we saw, well, unless we, maybe we get to see Shackmore or Joe Scali. Because I thought Yedlin was fairly awful when he came on. We get another yellow.

This one for Wes McKinney in the 13th minute. He dives in also on Nico Williams as he's dancing on the ball. It goes through the back of his legs. bit with the follow-through, even though he got some ball. It also seems unnecessary to me. It wasn't an extremely dangerous situation or anything. Yeah, it was like the exact same spot on the field as desks, right? So it was like Desha-Boo.

It was a little further upfield. What are we doing here, team? Like, we don't need these yellows. And if you're going to get them, get them for the Kellyn Acosta reason later on in the game. Yeah, wonderful decision by Kellyn. Harry Wilson hit a set piece, and we defended it pretty well. I thought in general, we did a good job. Defending set pieces, well, in the first half we did.

Second half was a little trickier. And somebody nodded across our penalty area, and then it was headed away by Dest to Ampidu 30 yards from a goal. He tries one from that distance and it goes over the bar. That's Whales' first shot. And probably their most dangerous moment of the entire first half. Yeah. They were not doing anything.

They weren't doing anything. You think on purpose? No, no, no. I don't necessarily think it's on purpose. I think it's really just like they might they're probably just not very good. And without Keefermore on there, they didn't have any, any real way to to threaten us or to make us uncomfortable at all. I don't know. Like we were never uncomfortable in that first half defending them.

All right. 15 minute mark. Good pass from Tim Ream into sergeant's feet checking into the space in front of the centerbacks. And it gets taken off him immediately by Harry Wilson on his first touch. He just wasn't 360 enough in his aware. of that moment. But it was a, you know, this is like one of the handful of times where we played the ball into that pocket of space in front of the centerbacks, but behind the midfield.

And you'd like to see Sergeant do a little better there. I would. So I definitely would. I clock this too because, you know, I was looking for the same pattern of that, that specific pass into that specific area. And Sergeant wasn't clean enough with it. It's 360 awareness wasn't good. But also, like right away, you can, I feel like you can tell this was not a point of

emphasis for our team in the lead up to this game because, you know, as Ream has it, if we've been drilling this, if this is what we've been trying to work towards, like find this pass, then you'd have patterns off of it. And that just wasn't the case. Reem has it with a ton of time. Sargent gets into the window, but the next players that Sargent should really be looking for here would be like a layoff to one of the center mids who should know that this is what we're looking for, this pass, this vertical pass up into a sergeant, and who should be

instantly almost like doing decoy movements to like look like they're trying to get open for Tim Ream to keep whales like attached to them. But then as soon as Ream starts this passing motion, they should be like abandoning it to go join the next player, which is what like what I was hoping to see more of. But they don't. Eunice Musa is not like, oh, Eunice Musa is not expecting this ball into sergeant. Tyler Adams not expecting the ball into sergeant. McKenney's the weak side player. So it's not really his job to go get it off sergeant's foot. but this was like my tip off that we weren't drilling like a pattern into this space. I don't think this hitting the ball into this space was our target, was our target objective. We get the ball down to sidelines and try to cross it across that bank of five with three in front of them. And things would just get cut out.

I mean, we had a, we had a hundred crosses cut out that way. So if we're going to go ahead, Greg. The Bill Barnwell stat sheet came out. I think we had 30 crosses in the game, which is a lot of flipping crosses. again for a team that's not like forcing you to cross. It's not like we have the ball out wide and we're under a ton of pressure. So it's like, all right, well, I don't have anything else. I'll just whip it in.

Whales aren't really trying to press you out there. So you have time to pick your head up and then make a soccer decision that's not cross it into a eight-person defensive block. And it seems like we, whatever strategy we had for breaking them down, it wasn't playing into that pocket. of space. Right. So again, this is where I get into. We had the ball a ton, but we weren't hitting,

we weren't hitting the ball into the dangerous spots that would then lead to us collapsing Wales's block so that we could hit it somewhere else where it was now vulnerable. We have some little combination work from Jedi and Pulisic,

Anthony Robinson and Pulisick on the left sideline. McKinney's a bit messy. I'd say he's on the messy end in this game of his normal continuum, which can be a little bit messy just normally. He was messier than usual. And I thought that he got worse

once he started tugging at his growing muscle right after the goal, basically. Yeah. We just have kind of been going in on our crossing tendency. We also squandered some good decent opportunities with some shots from distance, specifically Sergenio Dest, I think in the 18th minute,

sky set ball over from like 45 yards. And it was frustrating because that was the one where Musa had like dribbled up the, the field like we just played it to musa in our defensive third and he did his musa thing and just skips by two players from wales dribbles all the way i mean he probably carried the ball 50 yards uh brings all of whales to that side of the field it's a great switch from the left to the right over to desk who now it's dest and wea in a nice like 2 v1 um and the one defender steps over to dest to close down the 38 yard shot and instead of desks slipping it into timway in the man city zone desk goes

ahead and has the 38-yard shot. Yeah, we have a screenshot of it. It's frustrating. It's not a fun image to look at. That was in the 29th minute. I got my minute. That's okay. That's okay.

We don't have to do all this stuff. It seemed like we had some decent opportunity. I mean, Musa eliminating guys on the dribble and then switching it to desk is one way to move up the field, and it's a great way. But it seemed like we had plenty of opportunity in transition after when we turned whales over in the middle third. But we just didn't, I'm talking about the first half. But we just didn't move that fast or decisively most of the time once we won the ball.

Like we didn't have a clear idea of like how to get after it once we got in that moment. Because I'd be I'd be shouting at the TV. Let's go. Let's go. And we wouldn't really go, you know. Right. The key idea being attack before whales can set up in their in their 5-3 block, right? Right.

Pretty decent chance of USA. USA USA, but the sort of Viking clap USA chant. I clocked those in the 27th minute. So it sounded like we had pretty good support in the stadium. We talked to some listeners who were in the stadium, and they said it was maybe 50-50 whales and U.S. supporters, though the whale supporters were much more concentrated, and then a lot of neutrals in the stadium as well,

which you could see on the broadcast. So we've got that Desk speculative shot where he should have passed it to Wea in the 29th minute. The nice little one-touch pass from McKinney to Dest to bring him into space where Dest surged into the final third and just kind of tripped on it and lost it that you mentioned earlier. Almost the same thing happens with Des and Adams right after that. Yeah, and he had players, right? I mean, he had guys he could have connected with rather than just sort of dribbling until he lost it. I mean, there are times where it's like that we've seen in qualifying Desk have. having to just hero ball his way through people because he doesn't have any other options around him.

That Canada home game in qualifying as an example where everyone's just running away from him. So it's like, okay, well, if everyone's going to run away, Desk doing hero ball is about as good as we're going to get. This wasn't that. This was Dest getting freed with a nice touch from Adams and McKinney. And then as he's running in, the next choice should have been made somewhere. Like Sergeant was coming in to actually play with him a little bit. And instead of finding that and then making the next action and movement,

we just, like you said, we kind of lack, we weren't decisive. So instead we just held on to it until it gets Nick from us and it just fizzles out. And there was just, yeah, that's what I would say. There was just a lot of fizzling. Okay, the goal, right at the 35 minute mark. We should enjoy it because it is absolutely worth enjoying. As you mentioned earlier, it wasn't a pass from Ream into the amoeba. It was Anthony getting on the ball after a Wales goal kick kind of dinks around.

and Anthony dinks it to the head of Pulisic over a Wales defender. Pulisic heads it back to Musa, and then Musa heads it across the half line forward for Sergeant, who comes back to the ball and chests it down with Joe Rodin on his back. So Joe Rodin is pulled way out of position following Sergeant up towards the half line. Sergeant chess it down for Pulisic, and now Pulisic is running past Rodin at an exposed backline right into the heart of the final third.

And Wea comes, makes a lovely run for, from the right side across Pulisick's face on a diagonal line in behind Ben Davis. Pulisik slips it into the penalty area perfectly for Wea. So it's quite a well-weighted pass. And Wea glides onto it. And his first touch is an outside of the boot finish past the onrushing Hennessy to the Welsh goalkeepers left. Just a gorgeous finish. I was losing it.

I mean, I was losing it. So this is like I don't want to get so, again, caught up in the chalkboard stuff. to not take a moment and be like, this was amazing. It was just amazing to experience. The moment like Sergeant kind of gets tackled into that touch, because I don't think it was intentional from Sergeant, just based on his own body movement, you can usually tell.

Like, he touches it with his chest, and it looks like he's still going after it. So he was trying to control it for himself. And then you realize, oh, no, Poulsick's there. And Sergeant has to actually, like, hop out of Poolsick's way for Poolec to take it over. But as soon as Poole-Sick skips free and it's Christian running with Tim Waya running ahead of him, like you start to stand up a little bit in your chair. And then like when you see Waya slashing diagonally, like he's doing it.

He's doing the Tim Wea thing. And then that touch from Poole-Sick was so like subtle and perfect. Once that got free, I mean, it just felt inevitable that Timway was going to stab this thing into the back of the net. But it's not inevitable at all. No, it is absolutely not. It's uh... It felt like it. Like in that moment it absolutely felt like it.

And part of that again is just knowing what Timway has brought to this team on the attacking side. Since his, essentially like since his introduction in October of 2021 in World Cup qualifying, what he has done, the electricity he's brought to our attack. Like this was the perfect moment for this. Like the culmination of all of that in the World Cup finally. I have already and I will continue to criticize.

Christian Pulisic and his sort of decisions and his set pieces, but this was gorgeous from him too. And he is one of the few players on the team, maybe the only one we've seen do it consistently in this kind of way, who has that combination of technique and sort of self-confidence to run through that knockdown from Sergeant, accidental as it may have been at speed to capitalize on that moment. It's, he had to, he had to take a really good first touch and accelerate with, that touch past Rodin to even

to even make the whole moment possible. And I think maybe Raina can do it too. You might see McKinney do it every now and then or Musa, but Pulisic is the one who does it the best and the whole nothing, none of that all happens without Pulisic doing what he does well.

No, and the other thing that adds to it is, you know, he's such a known commodity in this particular field, like at this trait, this skill. And you can see like on the replay, you could see how whales are like panicking. Like he has so much attention. And that's part of why Wea can run in behind, uh, whoever number four is or centerback

who's like Davis. Yeah. Yeah, like Davis could have tried to keep dropping and like try to, try to maybe like split the difference and keep one eye on Tim Wea. Well, but he, but he absolutely is not going to. He is going to be totally dialed in on Christian Pulisick. Uh, and that's why the fullback has to try to scramble to get, get back to waya and just can't make up the ground.

So Pool Sick commands that attention when he's running downhill like this. And Wea exploited that attention deficit from Wales's back line. And it was brilliant. I want to say again, going back to that Sergeant Touch, I'm not really trying to care that much about whether it was intentional or not. What we needed was way more of that tight interplay between the ball and the sergeant and somebody else. And we had like one or two other chances to maybe do it. But Sergeant actually ironically had more time to control the ball.

So he didn't. He controlled it himself, played it farther back instead of playing more of a tight combination that we saw in this exchange. Yeah, I mean, Sergeant did have the nice, I think he did well to get onto that cross from Robinson in the 10th minute. Yeah, that's header. Yeah, that was great movement, great technique. But not the game I kind of hoped for from him overall. And like you said, it may not even be his fault. none of our strikers have really looked good for you know centuries okay the the rest of the first

half is kind of slows things kind of slow down wouldn't you say yeah have you seen the have you seen the john muller uh xg race race chart yes i think you sent it to me yeah that's what i saying you so uh we go we go with a there's like a 40 minute horizontal line and you don't want horizontal lines. But that's what the game was, man. Like we just, we were not actually creating that many dangerous moments. We had this brilliant, brilliant moment. But it was out of the, it was like a bolt out of the blue and there was nothing else even

resembling it. So to say that it slowed down is, in my opinion, like a pretty huge understatement. But again, psychologically, it's fine that it slowed down because who cares? We've got the one zero lead. We've got the three points. We're going to get out of the group with three points here. And that's really what it felt like, too. like given what happened in England or on earlier in the day,

it felt like with this lead with Wales doing nothing because Wales's racetrack on the chance creation chart doesn't look any better than ours at this point in the game. Quite a bit worse, actually. Yeah. It really did feel like, okay, we've got this. Just don't screw up in a huge way. And we are, we've got one foot in the knockouts.

Right. We did screw up in a huge way later. And now the knockouts are still far away. Mm-hmm. Well, I want to clock a couple things before half time. One is McKinney being wasteful in possession after Ream nods it to him in the center circle. And he kind of stretches for the ball.

I'm not sure what he's trying to do, but seems to tweak his groin right there in the 39th minute, right at the 38 minute mark. And I think he looked, he didn't look sharp before that and he looked less sharp after it. And we're pretty sure he's like, he was like hurt going into this game. too. I mean, I mean, he hasn't really been healthy. He hasn't played since October 29th, I think, for Juventus. So, and I think we've all seen the tweets from his dad about how, you know, he's been playing through it for a while. McKinney's dad. Yeah. John. Treasure. Yeah. So, so,

so, yeah, I feel, I feel pretty safe saying that McKinney is not at full strength and then got even less strong, uh, on that sequence. Yeah. Forty-second minute, he gets, he gives it twice in very discreet, discernible different giveaways that both were bad. I mean, and by the end of the half, he's legit not connecting passes. The half comes and it came with a letoff in intensity. It seemed like Wales was glad to have a chance to regroup, and it seemed like we were just happy to be up one to zero. I mean, I know I was happy to be up one zero,

but it seemed like the team was pretty satisfied with that. at least for the moment. And again, I don't even know that that's the wrong attitude to have. We had had a terrible window in September. I'm sure the team was way less affected by that than like we were as fans. But yeah, like they're in the World Cup. Like they're like, okay, this isn't that big a deal. Like, Wales isn't anything.

They're not doing anything to us. And we've got a one zero lead. It was awesome. And we can do it again. Like, we can do this again. There's nothing stopping us from, getting another one over the next 45 minutes. Right, right.

So Kiefermore comes on for Dan James at the half. Kiefermore, a tall, like six foot five striker comes on for small, quick Dan James. But they stay in at least more or less a nominal 352. I know we had some discussion earlier about them, their shape being a back four at points in the game. But that would just be like one of the wing backs and it wasn't one more than the other being up higher for a while. 47th minute, Wales plays more into the channel for the first time, and they get some foothold in our half for the first time,

even though Zimmerman tracked him well. But they could play that ball into the channel, and they kept trying to do it to more. Let's see, what all do we want to get into here? Should we just call it a day on that whole circle in the middle of the game where we didn't create any chances? I mean, basically, yeah, like we didn't have, we didn't really have an attack that materialized. There just wasn't anything.

It was a lot of like what I would call almost like senseless dribbling. Yeah. And even though we weren't necessarily turning it over like crazy, we would sort of like dribble it until, again, things fizzled. And then even if we could keep it and recirculate, there was just, there would, there certainly wasn't any like, combination play. We weren't combining to any kind of effect. Well, yeah, I mean,

there were... By all means, hit back. There were a couple of moments. I mean, we should mention that Turner, Turner, there was a corner kick after another one of those attempts

to play more into the channel. Ream heads it out of bounds, and on the ensuing corner, Turner kind of flaps at it, and there's a foul called on whales. I'm not sure for what. Was it against bail? for running into Turner?

I don't know. It didn't look like Turner took too much contact, though. It's a little worrying the way he didn't catch that ball. Isn't it? I mean, I would have dinged him for it for sure. I mean, I guess he still do ding him for it. Okay. Well, 50th minute, this is where I'm pushing back on the no nice combination,

because there's a nice exchange for Musa and Pulisic down the left side. side kind of a tap, tap, tap, and then Poulosix brings Musa nicely down the end line. And Musa tries to zip it on the ground to McKinney, but it gets cut out by Rodin. So we did combine well, but we just, once we get in the final third, we don't combine well, I guess.

Yeah, I'll give you that. That's fair. I didn't think we had too much problem in the midfield, at least up until, again, about the 55th minute. Okay. We get a professional yellow for Tim Ream, seemed like a smart one when Pulisic gives it away right after that

that Musa attempt to cross for McKinney and Ramsey plays it to bail and Ream just drags him down which yeah seems smart at the moment so the Ream foul was smart what frustrated me again was Poulsick not fouling instantly

because Poulsick lost the ball and then like danced around the guy who took the ball from him for a couple of touches for that guy and it's like we know who whales are right this is of those again where I'm putting it on pool sick but again I'm also putting it on the preparation from bur alder that we know who whales are we know whales are this counter attacking team all you want to do is deny whales counter attacks and that doesn't mean like defend them honestly

that means christian pool sick here as soon as he loses the ball and realizes that we're about to get counter attack needs to foul immediately so that's like it's a little thing but again i kind of clocked that like pool sick foul this guy instantly because that has to be what our defensive game plan is is deny counter attacks as early as possible. Like as quickly as possible snuff out counter attacks, no matter who you are, whether you're a striker, winger, center mid, or centerback. So Ream does the right thing once it gets to him.

Cool Sick should have had this buttoned up one pass earlier. Yeah, makes sense. Wales starts to settle in right around the hour mark and really look like the stronger side. I blame Pulis. Good, right? What's that? Kiefermore looked good.

Yeah. Change the game. Yeah, I guess so. I guess I wonder what the... So there's the argument that it was all a tactical shift and whales, you know, whales started playing the ball along to more and we couldn't, we couldn't ever really adjust to that. And I wonder, and part of it is we weren't putting enough pressure on their defensive players, when those defensive players had the ball

so that they could just play the pass to more. And like that's the whole thing. I do wonder a little bit if, you know, the demands we put on that midfield of ours are really just, there's really just 45 minutes of leash on that. Like we, because we created, we did not put pressure on whales.

We created almost very few of those kinds of turnovers and transition moments in the second half. I mean, because they were just dogging it. McKenney was, like we mentioned earlier, was probably hurt. Musa looked very tired. Adams was everywhere, but mostly he was a fireman putting fires out. I think that's pretty spot on. And I think that probably extended to Waya and Pulisick as well.

Like, I think they were gassed. So it was just really hard for us to keep running at Wales. And I don't know. I don't know if that's like a fitness issue that we just needed to be more cognizant of ahead of time, like as we're tracking their numbers. But yeah, we definitely just didn't look like we had it in us anymore to go back at them. So the control we had of the ball in the first 60 minutes that didn't lead to very many clear-cut chances, those days were over.

And now it really did just feel like we were in like individual survival mode everywhere on the field. Yeah. It's rough. It was rough to watch. And I thought like 61st minute, in this case, Adams wins the ball to Musa. And we have, if you, you know, if you take a screenshot right after Adams intercepts the ball straight to Musa, we have a five on five, maybe a five on six. But it's an open sort of transition opportunity, the kind that you'd think we would be trying to capitalize on. McKinney and Dest just do not join the attack at all.

Like McKinney just watches Musa go forward and he just kind of slides into the middle of the field and waits. And Das never comes into the screen at all. So Musa drives forward. He passes it wide left to Pulisic. And then Pulisic doesn't have, you know, I'm always criticizing him for not passing when he should. Just pass the ball and move. But in this case, there was nobody to pass to. Sergeant wasn't checking to Pulisic.

Musa was just kind of trailing the play and watching. And I don't know if that's because they're like conditioned to just give him the rock and stand aside. But I think more likely they just didn't know what to do or we're tired or something. But so Poozigan ends up stopping, turning around and passing it back to Musa and then we just end up passing it back to the center back. And Wales is back in there 532 just real solid again. Yeah. And this is where again, I feel like it was starting to be evident that we were out of gas. and that changes needed to happen.

And we got a few minutes later, we did get Aronson for McKinney, who again, I'm pretty sure McKinney is hurt. Because in this sequence, the way when you're talking about, like he didn't just not join. Like he stopped and stood in one place

and put his hands on his groin. Like he's hurt and he is trying to like work that muscle. And he's got to be done. And we have to like, the criticism I have for Burralter here, said he was way too slow to take players off. who clearly just had nothing left in the tank. Yeah, okay.

Well, I guess I shouldn't be so hard on him for that moment. I don't know if Sergeant had nothing left in the tank, but he should have shown for Pulisic when he was up there. He was just kind of like running between the centerbacks. All right. There's another nice moment I want to mention, which is that lovely little back heel pass from McKinney to Spring Way. So this is McKinney, basically Kirk Gibsoning it out there.

and he springs Wea and Wea's idea is to hit a first time ball all the way across the field to Pulisic and it's a great idea. It's a curling ball. Connor Roberts gets there first and sends it over the end line. There's a little bit of a penalty shout, but I think it was a fair defensive action.

Pulisic's just a hair late, but it's another nice little moment from the U.S., I thought. Yeah, and it came off those recirculating from that last sequence we just talked about So we built all the way back around to Wea to set up that pass from Wea into McKinney's feet and then Waya makes his run. So that, you know, I'm saying Wayas gassed and I do think he was looking tired already, but he still had a couple of bursts left in him. And that was definitely one of them right there. Whales gets a big chance in the 65th minute.

It's a set piece from Wilson just not dealt with. And it pings around until it falls to Davis, who dives right in front of McKinney and heads it above Turner's head. Turner tips it over. Quick reaction. This was a, how good of a save was this? This is a, I'm calling it a routine save, but it's just one that when done correctly looks spectacular. It looked cool, yeah.

The technique's perfect, the get that top handover. So, yeah, I love this. And this kind of thing, I feel like, is enough to make you want to be a goalkeeper because of how cool it can look to just do a normal goalkeeper thing. doesn't make me want to be a goalkeeper, but to each his own, to each their own. 65th minute, Pulisic is in space in Wales half, a little bit of another moment of transition.

And he's, Matt Doyle is dinging him for not playing Wea into the channel here. Waya's kind of making that darting in run from wide. It seems like it's on. Pulisic doesn't play it to him. He does end up playing it to Sargent out wide left. kind of the ball leads sergeant too far wide and then we just recirculate again. Yeah, I mean, Doyle's right here. This is, uh, we have, we have whales done.

They're dead to rights because their, uh, backline is all scant in this moment of transition, where the guy who's supposed to have Wea is five yards ahead of Wea, uh, and the centerbacks are all holding way on side. This should be like a gimmie to at least springway into that space. It doesn't mean that way is just going to run straight into goal and score, but you absolutely need to spring way into this space to force them to scramble to maybe catch up

and try to make his shot harder but really what this should lead to is an eventual cutback from Wayf for a tap into Christian Pulisick. Yep. Or perhaps Sergeant, although ideally Sergeant makes a hardener post run and draws the centerbacks away from where

Pulisic is going to be. But none of that happens because Pulisic doesn't make the pass. 66 the minute Aronson comes on for McKenney, I thought he brought a little spark, but didn't really didn't really do much.

I thought he was just messy. I mean, he's, but that's his game, right? He's messy going forward, but he makes the other team messy coming back at you. He's sort of the exact opposite of Gio Raina, who I think is, you know, the total composure package.

So in real time, I was you know, not thrilled that it was Aronson coming on to the end of the game and not Gio Raina. And Aronson did a bunch of normal Aronson messy stuff. Yeah. I don't think he was good. I don't think he was like bad.

He's just, it was frantic. He added some freneticism. But we had to get McKinney off, right? So I guess we can talk about this. McKenney had to come off because he could no longer play the game of soccer. Raina, at this point now, I'm comfortable saying, was not available effectively. So, you know, it was either going to be Aronson or Luca Delatore, right? Yeah.

So, I mean, at that point, like, yeah, run Brendan Aronson in the game. And I'm, we're now 66 minutes in. We have only used, like, our best players, and we just haven't been very good. Yeah. Is that fair? Yeah. I mean, as we've discussed, there were, there was one great moment, a couple of decent moments, and mostly not very good. I'm just looking at these notes trying to decide what I want to actually say.

You want me to take it in any specific direction here? I don't think so. Okay. Yeah, there's some, there's some just sort of garden variety action here and there, some cross-es. is getting blocked. Pulisic kind of gets hurt by Mepam. Wayas seems shaken up. We get forward on a mosa inters...

We're cramping up here, right? Like we have a bunch of guys cramping up and... Yeah, what is going on? We get forward on a Moussa interception and Pulisic does well to kind of lift a ball across. And it's in the direction of Aronson. And he just, he kind of jumps for it, but misses it. Might have been a little too high for him. We didn't get a replay on it, so it's kind of hard to know.

It looked like he pulled out of it. It looked like he could have. have run through with his head and at least made contact. Not sure he could have like gotten it, gotten over it to keep it on frame. But it looks like he sort of pulled out of the attempt. Maybe that's the calculation. Had a better, uh,

crack at it. Also, also want to say real quick, you know, when we're watching pool sick hurt and waya hurt, like this is where it started to like occur to me that maybe Rana just was not fit to come on. Because if Rana is fit,

if you can play him, then you don't leave pool sick and way on when they can barely move, right? For me, you don't even use Aronson and center midfield. You use Waya, or Rain, I'm sorry. But then five minutes later, when you're, like, both of your good attackers are starting to, like, cramp up and you have this other world, your third world class attacker sitting on the bench and you're not using him, like, that's the giveaway for me. I was like, okay, things aren't looking good for Geo Raina playing in this game if he's not getting,

if he's not already on the sideline ready to go in. Yeah. And I think there are people who will say, no, no, Burrhalter's just dumb. He preferred Jordan Morris over Giovanni Raina. Dude, he did everything not to put Jordan Morris in the game. Like the fact that, again, we sat on Poolecic and Rana, or I'm sorry, Pool Sick and Waya in this game, in the state that they were in for this long in another 15 minutes because Morris doesn't come in into like the 88th minute.

Burrhalter would rather have had those like our two best guys out there out on their feet, barely moving, then take them off for Jordan Morris. Yeah. I'm just trying to in some way speak to that group of people. Sure. But I don't really know how to do it. There's just no way that would be the case if Gio Reino was healthy. Like if Rayno was healthy, you would have just been like, okay, 68th minute, Wea's cramping up.

He's off. Rain is on. done. We just added a excellent attacking player. But since he didn't, it's because he didn't have him and the thought of putting Morrison at the 68th minute just wasn't appealing to Greg Berthelter.

Does it make you kind of miss Paul Ariola? Made me miss him a little bit. A little. I don't know that Arieola would have added too much more control to proceedings because he's not, in these kinds of games, he's not a huge control guy either.

Yeah. But he would have he would have been out there hustling. Well, Musa goes down with a cramp or some kind of knock and then Burhalter, I think it was a cramp. Burrhalter subs on Acosta, Yedlin, and Yedlin and Wright. So, Kellen Acosta, DeAndre Yedlin,

and Haji Wright for Eunice, Sorghenio, Dest, and Josh Sergeant. That's in the 74th minute. Wright immediately chest down a long ball from Turner and that seems positive. Like, okay, Hodgis out here. He's going to do things. And then Pulisic teases a ball

across the penalty area after he gets that ball from right, but nobody gets on it. It feels like we're just a pass away from being dangerous. Because we were getting into that final third. We just couldn't do anything with those moments. No, we, so towards the tail end of the game, the last 15 minutes, I would agree we were totally there and we would like have a guy on the ball

with time to pick his head up. And then we would just like hit a cross. We'd be like, okay, Yedlin, we got Yedlin in all this space. And he picks his head up with time, no pressure, and he would just like fire it in. And I don't know. I don't think we had the right personnel for that. The guys in the box didn't have the legs for it. And so it just that, for me, as that ball's going in the box, it's like, oh, we're going to get,

we're going to get somebody on the end of this to finish it. It felt very just sort of hopeful. Yeah. You're right. It's, it wasn't, this wasn't something that was happening all game. It was like the last, yeah, 20 minutes or so when it was really kind of back and fourth just kind of open and sloppy. I think whales were starting to tire too.

We're seeing our guys like wear out. I think whales were too. And the guys whales were bringing in not like the highest quality footballers, right? I think they were bringing in like some third, fourth league players. Well, one of them, one of them. One of them was a league two guy, Joe Morrell. Brennan Johnson is a pretty good player. He came on.

Brennan Johnson's. Yeah, you're right. Cross after cross. Anthony Wea even getting in on it and when Yedlin crosses it it's kind of like Dennis Rodman from the three point line

you know just let him just let him cross it that's awesome Yedlin has an assist had an assist in qualifying on a cross an extremely low XG header from Ricardo Pepey, right?

Yes, spot on all right so Hodji Wright had that great touch right away when he got on I don't know if he touched the ball again for the entire time he was out there I'm again not even dingin haji right I'm just saying we we just didn't get our forwards involved that that pass map also from john muller that he posted where josh sergeant's dot does not have any lines connecting to it i think was pretty telling yeah so let's talk about whales's goal it's in the 80th 80th minute oh yeah uh it's a quick throw from the right side and um several people have have noted this but calen costa is the one who gets caught behind Aaron Ramsey. Brennan Johnson throws it in behind for Ramsey.

Costs just a step behind. Ramsey just kind of speculatively passes it across the box. I don't know that he was aiming for bail. It didn't really look like it to me. But it trickles through some bodies and then to bail. And then Zimmerman crashes into the back of him. It's a clear foul. Berhalter said after the game that Zimmerman didn't see bail,

he thought he was going to get to it first, which is kind of what it looked like. So it's a penalty. Bale thumps it to Turner's left, turn a guest right, but Bail just hit it too hard and too well. 1-1. Yeah, it's brutal because, again,

the foul comes in a situation where Bail is not about to be dangerous, right? Bail's, the only danger here is Bail receiving it in the box where he might get cleaned out for a penalty, and we promptly cleaned him out for a penalty. Very clever from Gareth Bale. think to recognize how Zimmerman was overplaying his hand.

And I think bail was very smart to step in the way he did, not try to like take a touch around Zimmerman to keep trying to be dangerous on goal, but instead to, you know, intercept Zimmerman's path to the ball, specifically, you know, effectively looking for that foul, which he earned deservedly. Yeah. It's not exactly the way I expected bail to be dangerous, but it is Baylor. being dangerous. That's the, I mean, again, just different levels of understanding of the game, all of those

calculations that go into every single decision. I think, I think that is how bail earns that penalty. In Zimmerman just wasn't, again, wasn't thinking the game at a high enough level in that moment. The throw-in, do we want to, do we want to break the throw-in down? Yes. I think it's affected by, by the players being a little bit checked out. because they were arguing about an earlier bit in the sequence

where they thought the ball had already crossed the line and we should have already had a throw in. We didn't get it. It stays in play. But even still, once it goes out of bounds here, we have, we basically have four players tight to the sideline.

So it's just poor rotations because we've got Acosta and Tyler Adams and Jedi Robinson. And then, of course, Poulsick, who we barely even count in defensive math. But they're all like closer to the sideline than any Wales player. So it's a very easy throw for whales to just put it into the space behind to get this cut back off. And Brennan Johnson does well, I think, to pick it up as soon as it crosses the line and then turn and just throw it immediately.

So he and Ramsey are kind of both Johnny on the spot. Yeah, that's clever too. And it's like they know that we're arguing. They know that they're losing and they've got a hustle. But yeah, so they get this cutback and then. I'm not saying Arrington really could have done anything differently. He's got to defend the guy running at the near post. And that's who the,

that's who's like dummies the cutback. So again, just little clever moments from Wales, but still they didn't, it wasn't going to be dangerous. Bale was going to have to like lay it off to somebody at the top of the box if we don't clean him out. So it's frustrating.

And Zimmerman had been fine up until this moment. He's been pretty good. He's been pretty good, I thought. And then he very suddenly was not fine. And I think we kind of predicted this that somebody was going to have a, a moment that wouldn't be out of place compared to any of our other World Cup centerback legends

and it was Zimmerman. Yeah. I mean, naive. Naive from him, naive from us on that quick restart. We created that wonderful moment in the first half and then we just couldn't, it just didn't really have the savvy to get it done

after that. I think that's fair. And there's not too much else. I mean, we can keep going with the chronology. But just talking about what it all means now, you know, we're still, again, experiencing the World Cup game is great and having that moment is awesome. Talking more now about what we want to do to get out of the World Cup group.

That is a huge, that was a huge swing. Huge swing for that, from us going to three points to splitting them one one. And can I do my little bit about the group dynamics now? Yes, please. So the group stage dynamics here, for me, Wales are in a much better position than we are now with the order of remaining matches. And that's because England still need to get a result against us and they're going to play for one because a win against us gets them into the knockout rounds. So they're going for that. And they're the best.

By the way, whales beat Iran six to two earlier in the day. Yeah, England beat Iran. As you may know. Yeah. Sorry. So, no, no, so that's where we stand in the group. England's still going to have to go for it against us. Wales presumably is going to get, I mean, what we're kind of assuming here is if Wales beat Iran and we lose to England, like let's say that those are the two most likely outcomes.

Wales will go into their last game against England, only needing a draw to advance. And England will go into that game knowing that a draw wins the group. for them and puts them on the other side of the knockout bracket as Brazil and Argentina, presumably, assuming Brazil and Argentina are in good shape to win their groups. So England have a huge incentive to win the group and Wales have a huge incentive to get one point. And so I feel like we're going to get sort of a UK gentleman's agreement to just see the zero zero game out and not really take risks either direction. And that could be just enough to knock us out, even if we thump Iran.

kind of a non-agreement gentleman's agreement yeah the unspoken yeah yeah so i'm not saying full-on collusion but if if the incentives align like i don't even think it's unsporting it's just like yeah they're not obligated to take risks to benefit us and and neither is england so um really what i'm saying here is we kind of need to get a result against england we need to get at least a point to force both of those teams to be to keep them honest going into that last match day And going into the tournament, I would have said we can get a result against England. Can we get a result against England if we don't have Raina or McKinney? And they look like they did earlier today against Iran?

That's the big switch, right? Because that England was a juggernaut. And I don't think going into this, we would have considered England, like, at the moment, playing like a juggernaut. Their ghost stats, for what it's worth, their ghost stats, were not nearly as impressive as their... as the actual score line. And I think that matters quite honestly. And I hadn't even seen the ghost stats, but I already had a whole bit.

We're not going to turn this into an England chronology, I promise. But the fact that they scored those two quick goals the way they did off their set pieces, like those are not high percentage chances. It's not like Iran were playing terrible. It was like England just happened to score two goals that like Iran wouldn't have expected to necessarily give up on those sequences.

The header, the stupidly good header. and then the Saka, like, worldy, right? Off the Harry McGuire knockdown, which was pretty good, too. Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, like, those aren't necessarily high percentage chances that you're banking on. So once they score those, that flips the game. And then at that point, I think you essentially had a full-on Iran meltdown.

So I think that really plays into how it turned into a 6-2 game, rather than it just being like, England, this unstoppable attacking juggernaut. I sure hope that's the case. Same. I bet Rahim Sterling outside of the boot, volley finish. Right. Right. Clearly the class is there.

But yeah, you don't necessarily bank on them repeating that finishing performance. Right. I guess I see what you're saying. I just, well, there's no love loss between whales and England. They're, I guess they could sort of ease their way to the knockout stage by not trying to beat each other but I guess I'll believe that when I see it I mean there's no there's no prescriptive

information here there's it's not like we're gonna that would change anything we're doing we're obviously going to go into our next world cup soccer match trying to get a result so so it's not like there's anything that this is going to affect other than just as my mentality as a fan like oh man I would hate if we go into the last day trying to catch up with whales as point total knowing that Wales isn't going to play like a true opponent.

That would be brutal. I mean, we need Iran and Wales to draw. I think Patrick and the Discord made a good point. If we lose to England and Iran and Wales draw, then England would actually have the group all the way sealed up. And then they wouldn't have an incentive to even get any points. And then Wales could beat them and knock us out by virtue of beating a totally disinterested England team.

All I'm saying is group dynamics. The group stage. dynamics now don't necessarily favor us in any capacity. We've got to go out and do it ourselves. That's the bottom line. Right. But on the other hand, just the pure math, we're in exactly the same situation as Wales. The group dynamics aside.

We both have one point. We both have to play Iran and England. So. Well, I'm really, I'm really shedding new light on the situation for everybody. I think I might shed new light on the situation because Fox. after the game showed the group table with us ahead of Wales. And I assume that they just chose to do that alphabetically

as obviously we have the same points, goals scored, goal difference. We have four yellow cards and whales only got two. Wales are ahead of us on fair play at the moment. Oh boy. Okay. So we are technically behind them. They're technically and third, I'm pretty sure. And that could matter.

Senegal in Japan and came down to fair play in the 2018 World Cup. Senegal knocked out on yellow card accumulation. That's right. Did you, we should mention that. We should talk about that now that you mentioned it. Did you have a problem with the ref in this game?

I didn't have a problem with him. I thought he was bad. I mean, you get to the World Cup and you get bad referees based on, because most of us are watching like the top leagues every weekend. And so there is a standard of refereeing in those leagues that's pretty high, no matter how much we complain about referee calls generally. And when you get to the World Cup, they pull rest from everywhere in the world, not necessarily at the highest level. So you get this.

And it's not a surprise anymore that you just get some shocking refereeing and they just blow calls, essentially. So there were calls blown. I didn't think there were any real consequential calls blown. Even the throw-in, if that ball did clearly go over the line, I understand, like, in a temporal sense, that would have prevented whales from scoring on the ensuing. But it didn't cost us a goal. It cost us a throw-in. And then we defended to throw in terribly. Was it out of bounds?

I don't even, I know people were talking about this, but I didn't even see this part. It probably was. I mean, you don't usually get that level of like, uh, uh, protest if it's just like hugging the line where they like literally stopped, like Jedi kind of stopped playing a little bit. So I would say probably it probably was out of bounds. I mean, they missed a couple of corner kicks. One for us where in the first half where whales smashed it off their own teammate and it went out of bounds for a clear corner.

There was no one else for us in the nature. And then they missed a whales corner where they called it a throw in. Yeah, we cleared it with the outside of our foot and it hooked out definitely a corner kick and they gave whales a throw in. And that was in the second half after the whales brought on their seven foot giant. So I was like, that's huge that that was a throw in and not a corner game. Yeah. Well, yes.

The referee I thought was pretty bad. I thought the refereeing was bad. But it didn't, I don't think it necessarily affected the game. The big call was the penalty and they got it pretty spot on. I was worried that like way I might get flagged for offside on our goal, but he was fine and VIR would have confirmed it anyway. What was your thought? Like was it frustrating? Do you see him the referee just going to miss things?

My initial thought when I saw the penalty was like, that's not a penalty. But then as soon as I saw the replay, I was, I, uh, change your tune a little bit. Yeah. No, I didn't. I mean, he missed. I did, I did notice the missed, uh, corner. corner kick for Wales. And I know Pulisick was protesting on that one that I think you're, you're talking about

where it went off a Wales player out of bounds and then they awarded them a goal kick. But yeah, I don't, I didn't have that big of a problem with him. I did notice that Bullisick told the ref to relax at one point. Well, because he'd just given two quick yellows to, that was when Destin McKinney had just gotten him. And then Adams came in late on a challenge in midfield. And it was like, man, if we keep accumulating yellows at this point, fair play or nothing, we're just going to be, we won't have a full roster anymore.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Well, here at scuffed, we, you know, patrons can listen to the call-in show from earlier today, you know, such as it is, kind of a nice check-in with people all over the country. And we're going to pretty sure some of us are going to make some kind of episode tomorrow. We're trying to do an episode every day. Big Mexico game. Big Mexico game. Oh, yeah. Argentina, Saudi Arabia at 5 a.m. Eastern time. Dude, I'm just, I'm going to put, no one will have listened to us by then, but this is an actual prediction. I don't know the score. It's going to be like 6-0 Argentina. That sounds about right. I feel like the Saudi Arabia's thing last World Cup was not actually to sit back and defend.

Like they, even though they did that against us in the front, like they were trying to play a little bit and I think they might try to do it again. I think Argentina will wallop them. So we just have to beat England. We need to beat England. It's possible. It's not probable, but it's possible. Anything else, Greg? That will do it for our first World Cup game in eight and a half years.

Hey, thanks. Everybody for listening. Thanks for listening in all these years. We'll see you.