Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #350: Netherlands v USA recap

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

Greg and Belz review the action -- the three big lapses, the tactical wrinkles and adjustments, fatigue, pressing in a 4-3-3 vs setting up in a less confrontational 4-4-2, and our continued lack of final third cutting edge -- all within the context of a World Cup that was all-in-all a real step forward for the USMNT.----Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes (more than 50 this year), plus access to the Discord including live call-in shows and round-the-clock access to other reasonable USMNT and USWNT fans online, 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.

We lost 3-1 to the Dutch on Saturday to get knocked out of the World Cup in the round of 16. It was the biggest game played by the U.S. men's national team since the inception of this podcast. And here we are to review it and try to examine Burhalter's era, which may be continuing. We don't know. Greg, how are you doing? I think, Bells, I think I'm surprisingly okay. I mean, how did you feel? What was your reaction at the final whistle?

Well, I was bummed for sure. but yeah less devastated than maybe some would imagine yeah I don't know what it was about that game in particular

but it was almost just like watching our best players try to do it and sort of just come up short just and also not having like a huge like I don't know

I don't want to call it a Wando moment we all kind of know what the Wando moment is I feel like Like that helps. I'm not calling the Pulisick miss a Wando moment already. So I'm just going to get that out of the way. Okay, good, good. Yeah. But yeah, just like, just watching them and they sort of gave, you could tell that everything was given in that game. And it just wasn't quite enough. And that happens. And I'm not saying that there are no what ifs or no like, could we have done this instead. But at least at the time, even and even thinking back on it, it was it was our best players trying to do what they do and just not quite getting there. Yeah, it was, I thought, a pretty decent performance from our team with three lapses. Three lapses defensively, three goals.

What's the systematic way to stop those lapses from happening? There isn't, you know, those three guys in those three moments. Well, it's actually five guys total, I think, by my count, in three moments. Just have to do better. I mean, I'll give a hint on to what I kind of feel like was our downfall for this game. game was the fatigue. And so I think the I think mental fatigue physical fatigue, uh, definitely factored into almost all of these things. And, and so it's like to not have that happen, we need to be able to divvy more minutes up over more players. Um, but I,

I think that's probably why I was like reasonably at peace with it was, again, just it was, it was so visually apparent as you're watching that there was nothing left in so many of the tanks out there. Uh, and so it was just like, man, they have given, they have definitely given what they have to give here on this field. And in the three like very tough group stage games before that. Exactly. So, so that's where I'm going to, I'm going to lean on the fatigue angle quite a bit. And I mean, we can talk about whether or not, you know, fatigue was avoidable.

We can talk about what we need to do to fix that in the future. But yeah, I mean, yeah, man, they were, they were just gassed. They left, they left a lot out there. and it was fun to watch them go through all of this. So it was like it was an enjoyable thing. It was, I was thinking of this game as house money already. We went in with a chance. Holland put a damper on it fairly quickly.

And then the way we like got sort of right back into it after that. And then, you know, hung in there until the end of the half. And then when we gave up the second, it was just like, then it did start to feel like maybe it wasn't to be. and continued to feel like that for a while. But you never know. And so we steal one back and then actually like really pushed for it

for just the briefest of spells at 2-1. And so again, playing with house money, we didn't look great throughout the game. And so to even be in it at 2-1 in the 75th minute of a knockout game, I was like, all right, this is, we got what we wanted. We got what we asked for from this team.

And they didn't quite make it. If you believe in the concept of the Wando moment, which I don't think you really do, but a lot of people do. I would say the Haji Wright wonder goal is kind of the reverse Wando. It's like the absolute opposite of it. It's a bit of the Julian Greens, right? And it kind of played out similarly. Like we didn't seem like we were in that game at all after the Wando missed. I mean, against Belgium in 2014.

And then Julian Green does that. And then we do get a chance to tie it later in the game. And so it kind of felt the same way where Haji. he gets that ridiculous goal, the incredible goal. And then we were just like one, probably a yard and a half on a through ball away from having a chance to level it later in the game. Yeah. And then some finishing, you know, a yard and a half on the through ball and then some finishing.

The what ifs I think are, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the what ifs are mostly going to come down to sort of longer term stuff that Berhalter has done in player selection and incorporating players at certain positions, which set us up to this point where we have a 26-man roster. And, oh, I don't know, more than a quarter of it, just wasn't even really just wasn't going to play no matter what. And so therefore we have some starters with a lot of minutes on them. I think many of the people in the Discord will have seen the graphic that Susayeta posted

that showed the Dutch midfields minutes versus the U.S. midfields. minutes. Frankie Diyang was the only one who had as many minutes as our guys. The others had been rotated in and out throughout the group stage. Now, that doesn't mean Louis Van Hal is a genius because of that. I think Louis Van Hal had to sort of figure out who his midfield was going to be by the time he got to the USA and he did. And it wasn't the midfield he started the World Cup with.

But, yeah, so I think a lot of the stuff we're going to, at least a lot of stuff, I want to question Burrhalter about it goes back months and months and months. months, why don't we have some backup midfielders who can actually deputize for Musa, McKinney, and Adams? My view of the game itself was, you know, there was like a very strong voice immediately after the game that said, you know, Louis Van Hal, I mean, Hurt Gomez said Louis Van Hal ate Burhalter for lunch tactically. And I think you can make a case for that in some sort of simple ways, but

I'm going to push back against it by and large throughout the game. So there's like the long-term stuff. Then there's what happened in this game. I think there are two different things. Well, so here's my little pushback that I'll give right now. And it's going to be, it's almost going to be even a worse cut into the U.S. Men's National Team than what Herc was giving it, which is there have been lots of different paths to shutting the U.S. men's national team attack.

down that have been apparent over the past several months and years. So the Netherlands tactics, I think, were very effective at shutting down the U.S. men's national team from attacking. And, you know, I think people have been talking about sort of, but the XG was close, and that's true. But if you look at like, this was a weird game for chances, wasn't it? Like, the chances that the U.S. had that we'll talk about in more detail later were almost like occurred outside of tactics.

Like, they were these weird flukes. that it'd be hard to place on like Von Hall's tactics. So it's like, so we got a couple of chances out of nowhere that you wouldn't expect. But in his actual game model, like we really didn't create anything. When you look at that XG racetrack that, you know, over the time of the game, after the two minute Pulisick chance, it is a flat line to halftime. Like we do not get another good looking like real chance. We might have been chance adjacent a time or two.

but like our next shot might be Timuea's volleyed attempt from outside the box that he really connected well on. But, but, you know, like, so I think in that sense, like, I would say that the Dutch did eliminate pretty much any danger that we were creating for that first half. But that just, again, that goes back to like the U.S. have been very good at not being dangerous for a long time. Yes, yeah, I was going to say, like, what danger was there to eliminate? We scored two goals in the group stage. we are not great in the final third and how much that has to do with tactics and how much it has to do with personnel,

I think is another one of those soccer mysteries that sort of meets in the sky somewhere and no one knows where exactly. But I guess last bit of preamble for me, it's going to be no surprise to anybody that my overarching takeaway from this World Cup is that I will continue to be bullish on the national team, on the men's national team.

There are lots of other ways to look at it, but for me, we played the most expansive soccer. We've ever played at the World Cup with the youngest team at the World Cup, judging by who actually played on the field. I know the Ghana roster was younger overall. And we got out of the group and the performance against the Netherlands. In terms of sustainable soccer success was, I think, better than the scoreline suggests. And bodes well for the future.

And that can be true, even with it being true that this game and this tournament in general, If you watch like Brazil or France or, you know, some of these other big teams play, shows how far we still have to go to be like a real, you know, World Cup champion contender. We have a long ways to go. We're not, we're not even close. And, you know, I think that also part of what you're just saying, there also factors into why it wasn't like a such a huge stomach punch to see us go out. I mean, you know, I didn't think we were going to win the tournament.

It would have been awesome to win this game and play in the next round. But this, you know, even losing because of the roster, because of the makeup, because of the situation this program is in, it certainly doesn't feel like an ending. Like, I had no interest in using this World Cup to prepare for the 2026 World Cup. This was the World Cup in its own right and you do everything you can to go as far in this tournament as possible. But as we are eliminated from the World Cup, like we know that we are basically going to see this identical team go through another cycle together. And so that's what's pretty incredible. We'll mourn, we will definitely mourn some of the now iconic elderly players from this team that probably will not stick around for the cycle. But like the core of this team is going to be the 2026 team.

So this feels like a bit of a middle, right? It feels like we're at the top of the roller coaster now and now we get to really ride it down. Yeah. I, yes, yes, yes. but also you never know what's going to happen over the next four years. I mean, you know, injuries can happen. We could have some group stage variance that bounces us from the group. So, yes, it's exciting to think about four years from now.

But soccer can be very cruel and we had our chance here. So I agree. But I also feel like I don't really want to talk about 2026 yet. We'll do that on Friday. We'll do that on Friday. Oh, no, no. And also, I'm not just thinking 2026. Like the other thing I wanted, I want to sort of mention is how like fun it was to just go through the whole cycle, right?

The ups and the downs and like putting the puzzle pieces together. And so now to think about the entire next cycle, you know, not just the end point, but like what the cycle will be and how this previous cycle was so unique. And how now what we're going to be doing is having this weird time where, you know, we had to transition the full team last cycle. And now we're in a position where we basically start a cycle with no transition necessary. there. Yeah. Which is nuts. Like, it's crazy to think about that it's like, oh, we will, now we are starting

from, you know, we have this endpoint of the World Cup and now we basically just get to use that as a starting point for a cycle with almost no, uh, nothing to be replaced. Yeah. So at least in the starting 11, yeah. Uh, you know, minus one Tim Riem. But like this is, it's, it's crazy to think about where that, where we are now compared to what the 29, the year was, uh, for 2019. So, so anyway, um,

We should talk more about this actual endpoint, though, because it is obviously a momentous sort of occasion for this program. Yeah. Well, we'll get into the game in a lot of detail here. Who knows how long we'll take. But let me just say, if you are able, please consider supporting us on Patreon. This podcast is ad-free because people support it on Patreon. And we will be working hard to produce exclusive episodes for patrons in the coming weeks and

months now that the World Cup is over for us, for the USA. Guaki made the joke on Twitter that now that the World Cup is over we can return to our true passion which is prospect spreadsheets it's a great joke with a fair amount of truth to it we'll get back into some of that now that we know we need 10 or 15 more elite players

I'm working on putting together a future draft episode a concept I will not explain now but that long time listeners might recognize all right should we do the should we do the lineups. Let's do the lineups. Here was our savior committee in the flesh at the World Cup knockout round. That's right. Turner, uh, Dest, Zim, Reem, and Antony across the back line. Adams at six and then we played Musa and McKenney as our eights. No surprises there. And then it

was waya, Jesus Ferreira and Christian Pulisic across the front line. So Ferreira was basically the only why unknown going into the game and it was whether it was going to be him or Hajie because sergeant was not totally ruled out, but was listed as very doubtful from Berhalter, at least less likely to play than Christian Pulitzer. After, what did you? He got a pelvic contusion. Contused it, right? That he contused his pelvis.

So got hitting the balls. Actually not. Who knows? Adamantly did not. So should we just talk about Ferreira now because I feel like I've been a Ferreira guy. I know, I know we have like an order of things, but. Yes, yeah, we can talk about him. I want to be fair to you.

I mean, you've been a Ferreira guy who has admitted all along that he might come out and play in the World Cup and not look like he belongs. Like you've said that many, many times. Yeah, and I think that's essentially what happened here. I don't think that's any stretch. He was essentially, he was basically like anonymous as a striker, like kind of tidy as a center midfielder,

and then he had one and a half really bad giveaways. Like nearly disaster. on one of them. And the other one was just kind of like, what just happened there from the, like, well, I'm sure that'll come up

from the timeline too. But, uh, so I mean, he extracted, he extracted some opportunity cost from us in the final third on at least one occasion to that I'm going to highlight in great detail. Yeah.

So he didn't, he didn't contribute basically anything, I would say. I mean, there were, there were like two or maybe, maybe two, three times where he like was involved in,

uh, like a sequence where we were kind of building with some rhythm where he contributed him that way. That's right. But not in any way that was like difficult or anything that Sergeant or Haji wouldn't do. Haji did, had some similar ones in the second half that it was just like, okay, that wasn't anything special, but it was a nice little, you know, rhythm passing sequence that Haji was just a part of.

So, so he didn't really contribute to anything. He lost the ball in some, I would say they're routine ways to lose the ball, but he didn't make up for any of those routine losses with anything positive in the final 25 yards. And then he had his really, really bad giveaway in the middle of the first half. So it was not a great World Cup debut for Jesus Ferreira, and he only made it to the 45-minute mark. He hadn't played any competitive soccer for, what, a month and a half at that point, something like that? It had been a while. So I don't know.

I kind of wish Ricardo Pepe had been on this roster and could have played in this game, but I don't know that he would have been that much better. And also, go ahead. Well, because the other thing that, like, I was watching during the rewatch is that Ferreira certainly wasn't, like, unique in the fact that he was giving the ball away a lot in the final third. Like, that was the, that was the hallmark of every single player that wasn't Tim Wea in the first half of the soccer game. It was just constant final third giveaways. I want to say that Ferreira is, he's only 22. He's still a young player.

He could end up being a great player for the national team. in the future. The Dutch lineup was Knopert and goal, Jury and Timber, Virgil Van Dyke, and Nathan Akeh across the backline. Just fantastic three centerback back line. Denzel Dumfrey's at right wingback. Martin Deroon getting his second start,

I believe, at the World Cup as a sort of defensive midfielder. And then Frankie DeYoung and then Daly blend over at left wing back. And Davy Classen was the 10. in their three, four, one, two, and then Cody Gakpo and Memphis Depai, who was wonderful in this game, not just on the goal as their two strikers. The only difference between this lineup and the Ecuador lineup for them was Deroon for Coop Miners. So like I said earlier, Van Hal was, had been tinkering with that midfield.

He settled on a lineup against Qatar and that's the one he came out with against the U.S. It's worth noting that the angst around the Dutch national team before this game was mostly aesthetic. They weren't playing attractive soccer. And here's what Deroon said, in a quote to some Dutch outlet before the game. The entertainment value is not that important. I would gladly win the World Cup without having played a good game. You prefer to play everyone off the mat, off the pitch, I think is what that translates as, and win five zero. But that is not always the case. We get results and we don't lose. I hope it gets better. The first goal is just to get further. And they did. They did get further. They faced Argentina now, obviously. So we come out in,

the tactics are pretty interesting in this game because there's been a lot of talk about it. So do you want to dive in on it first? Because I have a lot of stuff here, but you are the, you are the tactics brain here. So the tactics were really cool. It was, and it's great because like, I don't know, the World Cup is fun because we get to see these kinds of things. It's not like, like tactics don't exist through World Cup qualifying. But, you know, it seemed like we just saw variations of, you know, the same concepts that you always see. It might be a 4-4-2 or it might be a 4-2-3-1. But it's something like that.

I don't think we had ever encountered anything like what the Dutch threw at us. So it's a 3-4-1-2 with Klassen kind of hanging behind the two strikers. But really, like, they ran their three-center mids as like marking our three-center mids, just man up. And the interesting part here is that their two forwards didn't apply any real pressure on the ball, and they didn't stay central. Like they weren't trying to stay into the interior of our centerbacks. They flipped to the exterior of each centerback. So they were basically like funneling them away from our fullback.

So I think everyone who follows us has probably read all about this by now or seen like the graphs or the images. But it's just really cool to see something like that that's that unique. I'm not sure that it actually surprised us because right away from like the very first time they did it, Tim Ream did what I think is like the correct response to this, or at least one of the approaches you can take, which is he gets the ball and he didn't like panic or look confused. And he just advanced the ball up field on the dribble to slice through that funnel and try to create a, you know, a decision for one of the three man marking midfielers. So I think we were at least somewhat prepared or at least looked like we were. But either way, it's a really interesting defensive organization that we had, I don't think we've faced. in the time we've been covering the men's national team.

No. Well, I think we we tried to deal with in several different ways. That was one way. We brought the fullbacks into the, I guess you call it the half space and the channels to try up higher than the centerbacks to try to get on the ball there and play make there. And had some success with that. I'm talking about success before we get to the final third. Exactly.

Darlington Nagby heat map success. And then we, another way we dealt with it was to bring our midfifference. fielders, mostly McKinney and Adams deep to try to get deep with the centerbacks, get on the ball and try to make something happen. And then we even, on occasion, Tim Wea came all the way back and picked up the ball from the centerbacks and tried to playmaking. So I thought we had some solutions. None of them was so elegant as to like create a goal.

But we were not completely undone by that defensive setup, I guess I would say. Right. And that's why that's why I wanted to like bring. up the fact that, you know, we have a, we have a trend the U.S. does of not being able to create in the final third. So it's not always our problem getting to the final third. And I think that was largely the case in this game as well. Like, we could get there. Not necessarily with any numerical advantages as we got there, but we could get up there. And then we just couldn't, we didn't have any way once we're there of breaking down a pretty resolute Dutch defense.

Yeah, but that's so true. It's like our ability, our inability to actually generate danger in the final third is not new. And I thought there was the added layer of Virgil Van Dyke and Nathan Akey, both playing really, really well. Van Dyke made a ton of just quietly, very good plays on defense. We'll talk about some of them. Which should not be a shock. He's maybe the best centerback in the world.

So that's what the Dutch were doing. And then what we came out with was the 433, and we were pressing pretty high up the field, like all the way up into the Dutch goalkeeper. box. And we weren't sure if we would see that, right? We thought we'd done the 4-4-2 in the Iran game and in the England game to start out. And I thought it was maybe an attempt to conserve energy throughout the course of the game. But I think like, I think we could have done that in this game as well to conserve energy. Yeah. If we thought we were, you know, going into it a little less fuel than we had,

or if we thought we had less than the Dutch might have. But I also understand the idea of just if we think the press is going to be one of the ways that you can generate chances, because we're not very good at doing it the other way, as we just talked about. I also think you can easily defend the idea of starting out in that press when your players are the freshest and really essentially trying to go for a goal that way or trying to create chances that way in the first 25 minutes with the plan to maybe like at this certain point we'll switch back into a 4-4-2. So I don't think it was necessarily like a mistake to start out in a 433 press,

even if it ended up being what undoes us in the 10th minute. Yeah, I guess that would be, to me, that's the most airtight and simplest case against Burrhalter is we should have just come out in the 442 we use against England to conserve energy, absorb some pressure, pick our spots, and then counterpress. You know, we can counterpress after when we get forward out of that 442

and then retreat back to the 442. Instead, we did, like you said, conceded in the 10th, and then we kind of ran ourselves ragged. I think that that argument is sort of the, I think that's the core of the argument for like Burrhalter getting, you know, massively outcoached by Van Hall. I mean,

however you want to frame it. It would just come down and then to Berlter overestimating or being a little overly aggressive, given the stamina levels of the players. Is that what it would come down? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.

And I get that, but I'm also just like, man, at some point you got to like you got to just hope that your players can get through or you got to hope that you get a little bit of the luck bouncing your way on the chances you do create because we did turn them over a couple of times. Our counterpress did give us a couple of chances.

You know, and then when Holland comes and scores on their first shot, it's like, oh man, the luck did not go our way. No. All right, well, let's get into it. First, that, that chance at the two-minute mark, we get a throw in on the right side, Desd throws it to Ferreira,

gets it back from him, and then goes at Daily Blend. He had quite a bit of success going at Daily Blend in the first half, gets to the end line and manages to stand a ball up into the box. It kind of comes off of Blin's leg, I think, but it ends up around the penalty marker,

gets headed away by Daroon, Adams beats DePai and Klassen to it, and then volleys it left-footed over his head, over the back line for Pulisic, who's been held on side, perhaps unbeknownst to him by Daily Blind because Blind was not quick to step forward after tracking deaths to the N-line.

It's a clever pass, and Pulisic is absolutely in on goal. He takes it with the side of his left foot on the half folly as Knopert rushes toward him. Knopert saves it with his left shin. If it's one foot to the right, it's a goal. Now, initially, Pulisic looked offside, to me. We didn't get a quick replay

because the ball stayed in play, but then on the replay, you realize, oh yeah, he was totally on side. It's just one of those moments that the game hinges on, and we didn't capitalize. And I think it's interesting. I mean, we can talk about the chance more, but I think it's interesting that Blind,

who, you know, later scored a goal and got an assist, you watch the replay. He is watching Pulisic from the edge of the box, take that shot, just motionless. He was saved by Knopert. Knopert had been excellent all tournament, continues to be excellent in this game. that blend sequence is a it's a it's an interesting like repeating thing that happens sometimes like

we did a goal like this for Celtic against round Madrid back lines are so well drilled now to like go up as a unit um that you know as the ball gets cleared out on the header they all step up but there are those weird one-offs where like one defender is gone to ground like right at the end line and that's not clocked by everybody so that guy is still on the ground and the whole unit will go upfield, like, in sync. And then, you know, they just don't check it. It happened to the U.S. in the World Cup qualifier at home against Costa Rica, where Dest ends up out of bounds defending.

And then, you know, as the ball gets clipped across, our guys, like, hold the line of the ball rather than, you know, taking into account that we have a defender on the end line. So did Costa Rica score on that play? Yeah, that was like the 90-second goal that they scored from directly in front of Stefan. So, yeah. That's just an interesting sequence, but yes, that was our big chance right there. I don't know how tactics, either side of the tactics debate accounts for that kind of a chance,

but it was a massive one. And it did not get converted. And the game state remains zero zero. Yep. If we score that, I really do think that if we had scored there, I think we would have gone immediately into a four-four-two. Really? I do.

Just because, as we're about to get into, in a little bit, it once the nether one's score we drop back into a four four two for at least a spell okay 720 mark uh there's a long throw from mckenny to pulisic in behind uh just a decent little half chance here i don't know if a quarter chance maybe he whips a left footed ball across aimed at waya arriving on the back post okay heads it to the top of the box ferrera could take it down um but he tries to side foot it backward to i'm not sure who And it's headed for Memphis to Pai requires a sliding challenge from Adams to prevent it going straight to DePy. Not Ferreira's last errant backpass, as you all know.

At this point in the game, you might have turned to your friend or loved one as I did and said something positive. Like, we're controlling the game against the Netherlands in a World Cup knockout game. And then the Netherlands scored in the 10th minute. it's a it's really a lovely sequence from the dutch pure football 20 passes everybody involved and i think even after all that it shows how incredibly hard soccer can be because even after they picked our press apart if adams tracks memphis to pie with any conviction it probably is not a goal after all that but he doesn't track to pie so so um what happened uh it starts way earlier with blend clearing the ball off of McKinney's foot in our half all the way down to, all the way back

to Van Dyke, passes it back to Knopert. The centerbacks pass it around a while. De Jong shakes off some Ferreira pressing in his own box being kind of cheeky. He gets it out right to timber on the right side and then they move it back over to Ake on the left and things start really moving fast when the ball arrives to blend on the left touchline. He finds DePai coming back to the ball on the channel. DePy with Tyler. on his back, cushions it expertly into the path of Darun. It's sort of the right pass at the right weight

to the right foot of your teammate sort of thing. They say it's important. I think the Dutch might even say that. And then Darun does another one of those passes to Classen. And Klassen plays it back to Dupai, and then DePai plays it forward to Gokpo. So four one-touch passes in a row. And then Gokpo takes a touch and drives forward into a lot of space and slides it wide for Dumfries.

Dumfries, who is marked stride for stride by Robinson. Like, Robinson is there. But Dumfries pulls the ball back to the penalty marker behind Jedi instead of whipping a ball in. And DePie arrives at it totally free. The ball just traveling smoothly across the grass. No bouncing. And he slots it far corner. It's a shooting drill.

No chance for Turner. I mean, I got nothing here. It was a minute-long passing sequence. Our press was, our press was right there for the first third of that minute. And then as they switched it that last time from right to left, we were a shade, like, as it went from, as it went out to blend. And Desk was there to, it was supposed to arrive there. Death was a little slow, right? Yep, he arrives just a half a beat late.

And then from then on, every player was like a half a beat late until, until Adams was not even in, in reaching distance, not even within grabbing distance of DePai for the finish. I mean, watching it in real time, you know, like, I was just like, man, when they got it into that midfield triangle and just put Adams and McKinney in the blender, you're just like, this is definitely a level above, right, with the slick one touch passing. We still did have it somewhat contained, though. They go out wide and we've got everything where it needs to be until Adams doesn't track his run. So, I mean, what do you make of it, Bels?

Is this just, it can't be fatigue, right? We're 10 minutes into the game. Tyler Adams has more and longer sprints than what would have been required on this throughout the game that he does make. I don't know, because, I mean, I have the screenshot in our document here. He's, he's goal side of depi. I mean, he's the one on DePi's back when he cushions that ball to Klossin. He's goalside of him at midfield. It just doesn't account for him.

which is, you know, it's a word that's overused in soccer discourse, but it is a little bit shocking. For Tyler Adams, especially because, again, if you are a longtime listener of this podcast, you could go back to, like, 2018. And one of the things that we were, like, harping on for Tyler Adams and his value was his awareness to, like, get into these dangerous spaces before the attacker could. Yeah. Like, that was his bread and butter. it was McKinney usually who we were like sometimes he just kind of like switches off and doesn't realize ahead of time that he needs to be the central mid and that was when he was playing almost as a six for show as well yeah yeah it was like he needs to be like in this space ahead of the defense ahead of the attacker like even before the past presents itself and that was Adams's thing he did that just like automatically and this was not like a hard situation to identify like once they break us here it's very clear to everyone that we're broken and that ball goes out to the flank and everyone one's running downhill. Like there's no mystery about what everyone's responsibilities are here. So it is. It's crazy that it happens to our one of our best defenders in this scenario.

But again, this is how we get beaten this game is our best attacker doesn't finish his chance. And then one of our best open field defenders doesn't do open field defending. Right. Because you think, you know, we spent all cycle like when Adams was hurt, watching our players get beat in these transition moments and be like, oh man, thank goodness once we have Adams, we won't have to work. That's all gone. And Adams was excellent. And I mean, he was fantastic in the group stage. She did some good stuff in this game. I think. And you expect, you know, when Dest falls asleep and Blin flashes in front of him, you're like, well, that's not good, but it's not totally shocking that Dest would fall asleep that way. Like he's, it's within the realm of possibility for Sergenio Des. Des. It didn't. It didn't. didn't feel like it was within the realm of possibility for Tyler Adams, but it was. So I can't explain it. I mean, maybe mental fatigue. I don't know. Mental fatigue for me wouldn't be like, it wouldn't be he doesn't recognize it. He's too exhausted to recognize what he's seeing because of the 270 minutes he put in the group stage. It would be like, you know, anyone who's played

old player soccer over the hill soccer knows like sometimes you just don't make a run that you could make because you're hoping it doesn't matter because you know you don't have the legs for the whole game to make those runs, you know, so you make a calculated risk that they probably probably won't get to my guy this time. So that'd be like that'd be the only, that'd be the like mental fatigue I could, I could assign here. Yeah, he's going to whip it across. Dunfries is going to whip it across and Walker's going to head it over the goal and it's going to be a corner kick and then I'll just settle in and help defend the corner. Right. So doing those, making that kind of a business decision in the 10th minute of a game rather than like

purely exhausted in the 80th minute of a game two different kinds of fatigue if that's if that's what was even happening yeah i mean i don't know that anybody's really asked adams about it or that he's he's explained what happened in the moment but eventually i'm sure he will yeah i bet he would talk about i think he'd talk to john moller about like his uh one was one of the like goals that he was involved in for red bull new york at one point okay broke it down anyway well yeah we'll have see if someone can get that story out of his take on it. All right, so it's 1-0 and the, you know, the winds out of our sails a little bit, but not completely.

In the 13th minute, we get a half, another little half chance. It's a hopeful ball from Pulisic who kind of gets played the ball on his, with this sideline behind him, and then just wax it towards the middle of the field, high, and Van Dyke heads it away, but it goes to Musa and a scramble ensues. Musa can't connect with Ferreira on his first time. pass, but McKinney wins it back to, but it trickles to McKinney, he wins it back to Adams, and then Adams quickly plays Pulisick in again. So for the second time, Adams has played Pulisic in again. He did do some good stuff in this game. Pulisic dribbles into the box. I think his

touch perhaps gets away from him a little bit and then flashes another ball through the penalty area. It just kind of felt like a, just a blind whipping. And it skips through, Waya tracks it down and plays it to desk. And then there's a seat of a chance for the Netherlands, because DeYoung little brother's desk and plays it to DePai, who turns and measures a lovely pass to Gokpo, but then Goppo gets run down by Ream and Robbins and before you can get any real danger going. So there you go.

Nice work, Tim Ream. Yeah, that Adams ball to Pulcic was, I feel like might have gotten lost in the moment. That was a great ball in that put him in with a lot of space into the box. I, you know, I was checking through on the rewatch, like, all of the losses we had, just all the players who lost the ball. Like needlessly is kind of how I was doing it. Tyler Adams didn't actually have that many, if any. I don't know if his name shows up on my list at all.

So it really was just this one massive mistake of not clocking back that he had. I don't think he was really poor the rest of the game. Bummer. Bummer. 16 minute mark. A lovely turn by Anthony in the half space receiving a pass from Ream to eliminate Klassen, I think it was. So this is an example of our fullbacks, like, tucking in to try to get something going.

And he carries the ball all the way to the box and then just doesn't have enough quality. Maybe he could have ripped one with his left foot. And I kind of wish he had. He tries to play a pass to Ferreira. Ferreira's sort of like asking for the square pass, you know, six yards to his right. I don't know, maybe he should have made a run in behind Van Dyke. It just didn't look like it was going to result in danger when he dribbled into the box. No, part of that's just, I think, because of Jedi's ridiculous speed,

that you're like, there's no way he can hit a controlled pass in this scenario or, like, get his feet right for a shot because everything is built up in that straight line speed. It was incredible, though, the fact that he could just run directly from the midfield stripe where he received the ball to the top of the box with really no. interference. So again, just another like check on how, you know, the incredible tactics from the Netherlands didn't necessarily keep us out of this area. That was a pretty simple sequence that Ream just stepped up into and then played the inverted Jedi Robinson and then we were off to the races. Yeah. I mean, this is this spot in the field is where Mbapapé scored like

two of his, what, five goals this World Cup. I can't remember exactly how many goals he has, but it's um you know this is a dangerous part of the field it's just we couldn't couldn't make anything happen with it yeah we just this whole next cycle bells finishing finishing third patterns that's what we're doing for the men's and women's national teams that's right by paris 24 we're going to be we're just going to be ruthless and clinical with our movement and decision making well i have it on my mind let me say uh shout out to japan for beating spain and germany in the group stage what a huge accomplishment that is my friend in Japan has been listening to the podcast and he he scolded me for not shouting Japan out yet and um also shout out to Morocco just who just beat

Spain in the in penalties that's great it's very exciting um but I was going to say the speaking of finishing drills did you see the goal that Lucas Paquetta scored yesterday for Brazil it was so different from when we are getting into that final third coming in from the wing. Venetius, you know, there was like a near post run. He was like, nah, that's not on. There was a back post run. No, that's not on. He waited.

He saw Paquetta arriving late. And he just outside of the boot dinked it over everybody. Piquetta arrives and volleys it in to the side netting. Not an easy shot either. But it just felt like for us, we just, we're just whipping it in there, you know? just cranking it across. That is absolutely the trend, but we are one healthy Gio Arena away

from Brazilian style finishing third patterns. And I'm only like a third joking. Yeah. No, I agree. But, well, we have to talk about Gio too, don't we? We'll get to him. He actually gets to play in this game, so we're getting to him.

Okay, Van Dyck in the 21st minute, tries to hit it long to DePai. So, you know, Von Halle was talking about how they were attacking our flanks and we didn't really adjust to that. And I think that's more or less true. But this was an example of that, trying to play behind Anthony Robinson. Reem does enough, even though he misjudges it to force DePai into like sort of a speculative volley from way, way, way out. And he hits it well wide. Any thoughts on that before we keep moving?

Well, just that we mainly had that contained, right? I mean, they went back, they went through that space several times and we contained it. Like, when we get to their next goal, we contained it to, we lost a throw-in. And then it's, you know, I guess I'm saying less about tactics in that moment on the throw-in, certainly. And even again on the second goal, much more about energy expenditure. Yeah. Concentration. Now, DePy and DeYoung are good players, obviously.

They beat our counterpress in the 28th minute, and DePy is running at Zimmerman in space. So this is on the other side, but I think Zimmerman does pretty well, 1v1 with him, pokes it out for a Dutch corner kick. 30th minute, we get that very poor back pass from Ferreira. It comes right after, I mean, to add to the guilt of it,

it sort of comes right after a ream step on a pass from Dumfries. So we have a little forward momentum. going if he can just, you know, play a one-touch pass to Pulisic or McKinney. I think McKinney's to his left, Pulisik to his right, but he dilly-dallys on the ball, kind of gets nudged by DeYoung from behind as he tries to pass it. And the pass goes, the pass springs Denzel Dumfrey's in, basically to the box. Nothing comes of it because McKinney gets back and cuts out the cutback.

But it's probably the thing most people will remember about Jesus' performance in this first half. Yeah, for sure, because he didn't have any pop. positive moments to outweigh it for sure. McKinney getting back here was, we couldn't see it in the screen because all of his run, this was a tighter camera angle, certainly than some of our other games, which sucked. But, like, as this is developing, like, I'm thinking, oh, my God, they're going to get another cutback just like the last one they scored on. And you can't see our defender in the, you can't see McKinney in the screen.

So for all I know, like, no one's coming back again. And then McKinney flashes in at the last second to smash it into the stand. And it's like, okay, no, McKinney made the necessary run here. Yeah, I will say I used to be really worried about McKinney's alertness to that kind of moment. Less so now, not just because of this one. I feel like he's gotten a little more serious about that sort of thing in general. Well, hold that thought, bells. Okay.

Let's see. I should credit Carl Carpenter for helping me understand this with some of his videos. but we did talk earlier about their Gokpo and Dupai denying access from the centerbacks to the fullbacks. But I want to just highlight one instance here where we do adjust to that. It wasn't, we weren't undone by it, like I said earlier. And here's a good example of us adjusting and then just not being able to seal the deal to even get a good shot off. You know, so it's the 33rd minute. It's a punt from Knoppert and.

Reem settles it back to Turner and we start trying, we start trying to build out. We're trying to get going. West drops behind Dest to pick up the ball. And then Zimmerman, and then plays it over to Zimmerman, Zimmerman, and then plays a diagonal to Moose on the left side. He plays it back to Jedi. It goes to Ream, who dribbles into the center circle and then finds Dest in the right channel. So we're like probing in a lot of different ways and managing to keep the ball.

Dest plays it back out wide to McKinney and then goes back to the centerbacks and then over to Adams, who is now also. dropping deep. And then it goes back to Ream. And Reem and McKinney tap it back and forth a bit. And then McKinney hits a good pass kind of through the lines diagonally over to Robinson on the left touchline. Robinson has enough space to look up and find Ferreira in Zone 14 in the space right

above the box. Jury and Timber, the right centerback had been dragged into the midfield with Musa at this moment. So we have a little something going. Ferreira's about to receive it in a little pocket of space. McKenny is running with a head of steam to his left. Wea is arriving behind him. Pulisic is occupying Van Dyke on the edge of the box.

A lot still has to go right for us to score a goal here, but we have some options, and Ferreira just takes a poor touch and it kills the attack. I mean, I don't want to beat up on him too much, but my point here is as a team, we had some solutions. I just didn't have the quality. And so for me, I know you're saying don't want to beat up on him. For me, this is actually Ferrer's worst moment.

Like the back pass was much worse objectively. But like, as I'm watching this, this one hit me a lot harder because it's like this is what is supposed to be Frere's differentiator from the other guys. Is he supposed to have the technique to bring this down or to give us a chance at controlling this and building from it? It's not unusual for the striker to lose the ball in this moment. Sergeant lost it a few times against whales and like easier situations to control the ball. But I don't care about that. Like Ferreira is supposed to be able to do this. This is what he's supposed to bring.

And it hits even harder because we have had so few chances to actually do this. So we finally get the ball to him after we worked it all the way through here. It's like this is where we need that control. This is where we need that finesse that he's capable of. And the touch let him down and all of it sort of goes wanting. It falls apart right there. And there's so much so much goes into it, you know. So much work and sort of problem solving and playmaking goes into getting that ball to him there.

All right. 37 minute mark. McKenny is deep with the centerbacks again and plays it through the lines to Ferreira who lays it off for Musa. So this is some of his, you know, decent facilitation work in the middle of the field. Moussa drives and slips it into the box for Pulisic. Pulisic plays it back to Robinson and he just hits a bad cross. Like way rainbows are over to the back post. not dangerous.

Blin nods it away. McKinney collects it and recycles it on the right touchline. Immediately we go again. This time, Ream through the lines to Musa. He plays it sideways to Ferreira in the middle. Now, we have a little something going here, and Ferreira had checked his shoulder, and I think he could see that Dest had space to work with

if he could get it out wide to him past Blind. So he tried to take a touch and then flick it out to him with the outside of his boot, which I think was the right decision, but Blinn closed that space really fast and tackled it right off of his foot. So again, Ferrer doesn't look great. We get it back again.

Jedi slips Pulisic down the line. He goes at Jury and Timber, but he cannot beat him. So the cross is blocked out for a U.S. throwing. Yeah, the highlight of this sequence was one of the very first moments in it. And it was just the ream ball into Musa in space. And it was just one of the few times where the Dutch didn't have our center mids accounted for. Right. So we found him in that seam and he could turn and run. And he, you know, he made the simple layoff to Frera and then Ferrer's past got deflected.

So, but that was like the promising moment was, oh, we finally hit one of the Sutter Mids was room to work. So again, like a promising initial phase that the danger is eliminated fairly, fairly quickly. Yeah, like nobody else in the whole world is talking about this play. Like, we're the only ones. That's what I noticed about the, you know, you go out and try to find out what other. people are saying about the game. And, you know, a lot of the, a lot of the stuff you listen to, they're not really saying much at all about the U.S. performance, you know?

They're, you listen to Guardian Weekly's podcast, which is quite good. And the football ramble, there was, one of the hosts for the football ramble was pretty, you know, pretty impressed with the U.S. in this tournament. But when it comes to this game, it's all very, it's like very simple. You know, we got played off the park by the Dutch. Simple as. Well, it's it's an it's an easy line. They're easy dots to connect when there is this cool, uh, tactical wrinkle that Van Hal throws out.

And there is a long extended sequence where the US create no shots. It is sort of easy to just be like, yes, this is this wrinkle work and the US couldn't create shots. Even if it's not necessarily the wrinkle that creates that situation. It more just that's how the US is. We're not great at shots. No. Creating them. Converting them.

So in the 41st minute, we get a nice little moment from Timway. He drops deep to receive the ball from Zimmerman and then one-twos quite neatly with Serginio Desk to eliminate Blind and Aque. So he's dribbling free down the right flank. He gets all the way to the edge of the box and kind of desperately squares it for Ferreira as he's going to ground. But Jesus' touch fails him a little again and it spills to Pulisic with his back to goal. and Timbram Van Dyke on his back, and he tries to play it to Anthony on the left, but the pass doesn't connect. It's not a good pass, or maybe he didn't, he expected Anthony to sort of run into it. Those two have never had great chemistry.

I'm going to editorialize that. And Robinson runs the ball down to the end line, tries to cross it, and it's deflected low into Knopert's arms. Okay, so this sequence was telling for me, because when you say Wea connected neatly on the one two with Dest, He also connected explosively, and I think what would it kind of put into contrast was how little explosiveness we were getting from our normally explosive central midfield. And this is where, again, the fatigue is such a big deal, because we've talked about the Dutch tactics, right, to man mark in the middle of the field. I genuinely think that if our guys weren't running on fumes, and I'm sure Van Hall has

this baked into his approach. But if our guys weren't running on fumes, I don't think there's any way that that is even close to being effective. Because I think our guys would feast on a defense that was going to try to manmark our center mid. And I think like what we saw from Tim Wea here was what a non-fatigued U.S. player looked like because he looked like he was playing in fast forward compared to our center midfielers.

He takes his touch and he is just gone. And I get that when you run past Daily Blend, maybe that's not that big. give a deal because blend is, I think is, what, two and a half years older than Tim Rame? And plays wing back. I don't think he's that old, but he's old and he's not fast. But he also just blew past Ake, right? Like he, I mean, and he blows past him. He is gone. And we'll get, there's another sequence later in the half that won't even make the timeline where Waya came all the way back into the sixth space, into the defense midfield space centrally to receive the ball and did the same thing. Like got it, turned up, turned his head up field.

and then just like waltzed past the man-marking center-mids. And I really think that if our guys weren't running on fumes, we could have totally exploited this man-marking scheme just by virtue of like drawing those players upfield with them. Like let's say we're building out of the back. Our center-mids could drop deep towards the ball, towards Tim Riem and Walker Zimmerman. And as soon as we make a play upfield,

they can just explode beyond their marker. or even like what we saw a way I'd do later. Like if it's just get the ball to Musa and if they're man marking, anyone who's watched San Jose earthquake soccer over the last two years knows if you can just beat one guy on the dribble, like the whole scheme is shot and it's scramble time. Eunice Musa can do that. And so like a man marking scheme on paper is like great for us to go up against

because Eunice Musa can eliminate his man. And now they're going to be in like scramble mode trying to count for who has to pick him up next. but because we didn't have the legs for it, there was just none of that explosiveness to take advantage of that scheme. Yeah. I don't know that Musa did any of that explosives.

I did notice like right at the very end, coincidentally right at the very end of the game, he little brother Javi Simons once and gets around him. But there wasn't a lot of that going on in the game. They just didn't have it in them. Every single like action just looked like it was taking the final toll on them. 42nd minute, real quick.

Dest sausage, sausage, sausage, sauces a bunch up the right side and tries to cross it. It gets cleared to Wea just outside the box, and he takes a touch and rips one from 20 yards. Like you said earlier, good contact on it, but kind of right at Knopert, and he saves it fairly comfortably. Wea runs onto the rebound, you know,

follows his shot a la Larry Bird and tries to pull it back to the penalty marker, but there's no white shirts there. Glasson clears it more nervously than he needs to, I think. I'm not sure there was anywhere to go with the ball there for way other than just whip it across and hope Van Dyke slips or something. And I think this is just a good time to take a moment again to appreciate the aesthetics of Tim Wea. Just because like everything about him, the way he moves, the way he controlled this ball and struck it for the volley, I'm really glad we got to enjoy four World Cup games with Tim Wea in them.

Yeah. still seems somewhat underappreciated in a weird way, but I think he was great. Just to piggyback on your point about fatigue, when Waya gets on that rebound on his shot and tries to pull it back to the penalty marker and there's no white shirts there, you can see that McKenny doesn't seem urgently interested

in getting into the box, and Moose is in the box, but his moving is kind of, I don't know, he's sort of like stepping on other people's runs, not his strong suit, doing that. So there's just no, I guess back to final third patterns. Final third patterns. There's other stuff we could talk about, but let's just get straight to the goal. It's really crushing in stoppage time in the first half. I was almost reluctant to rewatch it because it's,

it is kind of painful to see. It's the second goal we gave up from a throw in in this World Cup just by not being fully alert. Netherlands get a throw in on our left side. Dumpfries throws it to Deroon and Deroon plays it back to Dumpfries It feels kind of like a nothing moment. Ferreira steps in front of Dumpfries kicks the ball away. It kind of trickles through Robinson

straight to Closson, unfortunately, right at the corner of the box. And Closon promptly plays Dumpfries into the Man City Zone. Dumpfries just continues his momentum from when he gets tackled by Ferreira and Tyler Adams stands up Dumpfries in that man city zone

but Dumpfries again pulls it back behind him to about the same spot as he pulled it back for DePy earlier. And Dest is ball watching with his hands on his hips, actually, before he realizes that Blind is flashing in front of him. Blind beats Desk completely, coolly slots it into the same part of the net that DePai rippled earlier. 2-0. Brutal.

Pretty devastating after we'd like got our foothold in the game, or at the very least, had not been very incredibly, like, tested through the rest of the first half at 1-0 because at 0-1, like, okay, it's Holland. We can sneak a goal back and we can send this into extra time or whatever. Once they made it 2-0, the mountain just gets so, like, so much taller. And, you know, watching this again, like, I know Dest had his hands on his hips. When that ball goes out of bounds, it's four, it's, you know, we're into stoppage time. We know there's only a minute.

It looks like guys are just almost like expecting the whistle to blow. As they're about to take the throw, Adams is like got his shirt up over his head, like wiping sweat off his face. I mean, like no one looks like they're ready to play this sequence out, which is just nuts. So they get it into the box on that touch. It's a little messy, but they've got it now in the Man City zone. And McKenny is outside the box just like standing still. I don't think he moves for the rest of the sequence.

Musa is like standing straight up and down on his man. And as this ball gets cut back to the guy that eventually. scores on desk. You can see Musa is also in the process of getting beat to the goal. So if the cutback had gone in between Musa and Ream, like a different Netherlands player would have scored. It's just a series of like lack of concentration. So it's, I don't know, man, it was it was frustrating because we just needed to stay dialed in for just a little bit longer. 20 more seconds to prevent this from happening and keep it at 1-0. And I think, you know, at that point, that's fine, regroup, get back out there, make the changes you want to make.

But yes, so this is, this is, I know Desk is going to take the blame here, and he should be the one to do more to solve this. But the structural problem for me is still the center mids, not stacking up on top of the defensive back four. Like, as the ball gets into this zone, you're supposed to build like a little wedding cake in front of the goal, where you've got your, your big layer at the bottom with the back four, and then those midfielders stack up as the next layer ahead of them. and there was just no stacking. Adams obviously had to go defend the ball, so it's not his job. But then where's, like, where's McKinney? Where is he? He needs to be back in that danger zone, just protecting the space.

In the final moments, yes, then it does become Dest's job to do it. But in the normal structure, Dest would be like back on Zimmerman's line, just bracketing those players in the attacking side. And it should be McKinney's job to protect that space. since McKinney's not there, death needs to read it and stay with that man. But the more fatigued you are, the less you get your structure right, the more you're left with these sort of bang, bang decisions that are costly if you get them wrong. It's so costly.

So, such minor infractions, they seem, almost. And just, just cost everything. You probably disagree that they're minor infractions. That's probably not the right way to say. but they are so much punishment. Yeah, the punishment's huge. And again, even all the stuff that we, you know, didn't do well to prevent this, the window that was open between desks closing foot and Walker Zimmerman's lunging foot

to protect that area of the goal that the ball goes into is tiny. I think it goes off Zimmerman's boot in the end. Does it? I think it spins off his toe. I think it catches his toe. Okay. So Walker Zerman actually gets the last touch of the half. It's a, it is a small window.

It is totally ruthless by Blind to to pounce on that and put it away. There's a great picture, this is not U.S. related, but there's a great picture of Van Hal and Edgar Davids sitting on the bench just coolly watching the team mob blend in front of them. Neither is smiling. And Davids is in shades. It's, uh, it's quite an image. that's it two big chances two goals two to six American players

who didn't do the individual work that was needed to prevent the other team from scoring there was halftime comes and goes Raina comes on for Ferreira so Gio Raina Falls Nine finally gets its day in the sun how about that

so pretty late in the day to try it out but here we are Raina Raina is unquestionably a better soccer player than Jesus Ferre so now it just what we're going to find out is whether or not

he can fill the role do the good things that he can do from the striker position and he did some of them he wasn't always in the spot that we needed a striker but he did some other things

that it's like well I'm just glad that Gio Raina's on the field yeah even you know people are gonna people are gonna be mad at me for saying this but he didn't look like he was going full speed to me, but even at half speed or whatever it was,

three-quarters speed, still a really good player. And maybe this is where we should talk about Raina. The risk-reward decision that faced Burrhalter when it came to playing Gio-Rena was how much reward is there from putting him on the field in his current condition, whatever that is exactly, and how much risk is there that he's going to re-aggravate an injury. Do you think in retrospect he got that decision right in this tournament?

I definitely think he got it right in this tournament, and it's because we got 45 minutes of Joe Raina in the knockout game. Like it would have been much worse to have played him for any amount of minutes in the group stage and not had him for the knockout game. So in this sense, like for whatever other issues you might have with Bert Raltors' in-game management, the fact that he navigated the group stage essentially without Gio Raina is a huge is a huge like positive for him to have accomplished that. And then to have him available for even 45 minutes in the knockout game is a big deal. I was not expecting to see him for more than I was I was thinking we might get like 30 of him.

So when he came on 45 is like, okay, well, we know we know it's all or nothing at this point down to zero. So here we go. We've got Gio for 45. Okay. All right. Well, also, Berguine, Stephen Bergwine came on

for Davy Klausen and Tune Koot miners came on for Martin Deroon. 48 minute mark, we get a chance. McKinney picks up the ball in the middle, kind of powers down the right side,

slips Waya into the corner, and Wayas Cross is blocked by Ake. Pulisic was charging into the box and Gio was kind of loping in. The ensuing corner is a good one from Pulisic, and McKinney gets ahead to it, it, nods it down to off of Reams, outside of Ream's leg.

Tim Ream has a chance to kind of slap at it with the outside of his left boot. And he does make slight contact, goal word contact. It glances off of Nippert's leg and then sort of trickles over towards Gokpo and he clears it off the line. But it looked, you know, in real time, you're like, oh, we're going to score here. We didn't. We didn't score, but it was a chance. Yeah.

And this is another one of our like chances that I guess you say occurs outside of tactics. I know like maybe, you know, the set piece. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a set piece thing. So if you want to get really technical and say, well, if Von Hall invites all this pressure, he's also going to invite more set pieces in his, that he's going to have to defend and whatever, whatever.

But this just seems like a separate thing when you're doing your tactics discussion. And so close in another big save by Knopert. Yeah. Good keeper, I guess. We're finding out. A lot of quality from DePai, you know, he kind of dances past Adams in the 50th minute with a little drag back and springs Gokpo into some space. Gokpo plays it out to Dumfries. They settle down and then Dumfries won twos with Gokpo to the N-line.

Whips went across. This is a scary moment for the USA. Although we had nothing to lose at this point, so I don't know. It wasn't quite as scary as it would have been. benefit was zero zero at the moment. Zimmerman stabs at it desperately with DePie on his back and hits it on goal. Turner reacts well to paw it down in front of the goal where Dest is alert to clear it before Blinn can get there.

Very dangerous. And maybe DePy got whistled for a foul on Zimmerman's back. I don't know for sure. I don't think so. It's just, it was just another example of like, all we got to do is give Turner a chance. Just give him at least a chance to stop the ball and he's pretty good at stop. in the ball. Yeah. And Dest, you know, somewhat redeems himself by being Johnny on the spot there does not fully redeem himself. But I think by the end of the game, I'm ready to say those guys

did redeem them. Dest, Dest and Adams both probably redeem themselves. Like, I know it sucks because their mistakes are what the goals came on and we got knocked out of the tournament. But they were also like, Dest was the whole back line, the back four were heroic on multiple occasions as the game sat at zero two to keep it at zero two. So, you know, I get the test fell asleep for half a beat, but like there were, we were, we were like so stretched out going for even the first goal to get back into it, that the Dutch were running out of there. You could do so many still frames of like four on two stuff with the Dutch running at us.

And these are good players coming at us. And we held up pretty well and didn't make Turner like completely stand up. his head and kept this thing from getting totally out of hand. Yeah, fair enough. 51st minute, we get a little combo going, kind of like the one the Dutch got for their first goal, up the left side. McKinney has a chance for the same cushion pass that DePai played to Derun before the first goal, but it's not nearly as precise.

It gets cut out by DeYoung in front of Adams, and then Adams pokes it back, and we're off. McKinney drives into the final third, plays it wide Dewea, but, but, but, but not accurately, so Wea has to chase it down and give it to Dest at the top of the box. He goes at Daily Blend again and tries to recreate the Columbus Galazzo against Costa Rica and slices it way wide. I am probably making a mountain out of a molehill, but Van Dyke was clapping after the shot. I think he was clapping to encourage Blind in his defensive efforts, but it's possible he was mocking Dest's shot attempt, which went out for a throw in. wouldn't matter you cannot you cannot get under sergino death skin at any point fair enough

52nd minute nice work from mckenny to back heel pulick into the channel from a scramble pulcic cuts in and tries from 20 yards it's very harmless kind of bounces into nopper's arms so he has a couple of those harmless ones and you know like we said he already has a tendency to just kind of smack like smash the ball into the box when he gets it out wide i don't know if it's like a pool stick on the left thing, or if he'd have the same mentality, if we're on the right, I don't know. Like, it's one of those things where he produced in this tournament, right? He set up our goals. And like, it's still just like, yes, but we also will need more. We have to be greedy.

If we want to win the knockout game, we got to get even greedier. So we're really happy with that you've given us what you've given us. Now we need you to give us 10% more. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know who else would make that run for the goal against Iran, you know, from 40 yards away. Like, and like right into the goal mouth. I mean, it's hard to imagine Tim Way of making that run right into the goal mouth, you know. But who would do it? Certainly not Gio Raina.

I'm just saying this, I'm just saying this to say, I agree. Like, I want to acknowledge that I don't know who else would make that run and score that brave goal. he had the assist against Wales, he had the assist turns out he had the assist in this game so involved in all three of our goals and yet there'll be a couple more that we can

talk about okay 53 minute a pretty remarkable moment from Musa on the left touchline he tackles coup miners and then hook slides to keep it in and then springs to his feet and blows by coop miners in one motion

So, I mean, is he gassed? Yeah, probably, but he's still, man, he's still playing it. He's still doing stuff. Dreadling kicked in here. This was, I think this was by far the best moment of the game. In the 53rd minute and then flicks it to McKinney to beat the closing dump freeze and DeYoung. McKinney drives forward and plays a pass that drags Raina wide. So it's a good idea.

The pass just drags him a little too wide. Raina glides him from the wing and plays it to McKinney at the top of the box. He takes a touch and shoots, doesn't get over it. sends it over the goal. I clipped the sequence and put it in the Discord. And I really think that this is like a way that Gio Raina, I'm sorry, is a totally underrated player for us even still. Because this is like exactly what we've just been talking about with Pulisick and Jedi,

when they get it out on the left side and eventually just sort of like smash it across. Raina is like a completely different player. So when he gets it all the way out, he has to chase his ball all the way out to the sideline. And because he's such an athlete, I mean, he is so dangerous that defenders can't like go out there and try to like muscle him off. So the defender just has to sit and try to contain him. And he is just effortlessly, casually, walking the ball out into the box. He gets all the way into the box before he even makes his move. And he makes his move at the exact right time. As two other defenders try to collapse in on him, he just does a really subtle like shift of the ball to his right,

shifts his body to the right and creates this passing window to Weston McKinney at the top of the box. So it's all very purposeful, all very intentional, all very intelligent, and it creates a really good scoring chance. And it's not just like, well, let's smash it into these bodies and see what happens. I get that the irony is that later on, we'll talk about how we just smash a ball into the box and get a ridiculous goal. But in this, I think long term, I want the ideas man. so I want more ideas with like, all right, here's how this sequence is going to unfold and here's how it will result in a goal for us. He has a, Raina has a calm in that area of the field that is, I think, different from all

the other plays. We've talked about this on this podcast before, but I think that that's a big part of it. He doesn't seem hurried or, you know, desperate when he's on the ball in that situation. Aesthetically in that situation, he could not be more different than either Poulsick or Jedi Robinson. Yeah. Okay, let's see. Fifty-ninth minute, Pulisic gets hacked by Van Dyke. Should have been yellow. Should have been a yellow. Gets hacked shortly thereafter by Coop Miners. Coopiners gets yellow. It's a free kick from a dangerous spot, knotted away by Gakpo before it gets to the scrum of bodies in the penalty area. I think our set pieces were maybe a mixed bag, but I feel like still not good enough.

in this game? Well, we have no targets. So, I mean, McKinney got one-to-one, and McKinney's a real target, real effective. So he wins that one, and then that Ream got his shot on, but after that, it's just like, yeah, we just don't have, even if it's a good ball,

like, it's most likely going to just get cut out by the other team in there, four big set-piece monsters rather than our two. Okay. Well, in the ensuing corner, which involves us winning the ball from Bergwold, wine and then giving it back leads to a very lovely

DePai strike at the top of the box where he just sort of like one step curls it from 20 yards good save from Turner 63rd minute Pulisic gets on the ball on the left and cuts in sprays Wea wide so he's doing his good like ball progression stuff from the middle of the field

waya and that's Pulisic that is Waya cuts in on his left foot from the right and has a shot that's blocked fairly easily by Van Dyke. The game is very open at this point. It's kind of like a basketball game back and forth. 67th minute, Robinson goes down with kind of a hip knock, or at least he's clutching at his hip.

Berhalter subs on Aronson for Wea and Wright for McKenny. So I think that meant Aronson went to the midfield. Is that right? That's how I saw it. Aronson playing as one of the midfielers so that we could get, or we could get Giorina out to the right midspace. Okay. It felt to me at this point that we were still in the game, though not particularly dangerous.

The Dutch were not, like, bunkered. They were willing to get numbers forward and then just sort of rely on Van Dyck and company to shut everything down, which turns out mostly worked. Yeah, and they could also, they were also capable of knocking the ball around for minutes at a time. Even, you know, into not just around their back line, because we were trying to still give them like a little bit of the press. You cut a clip of that Yeah, they had like a two-minute possession that went Like all over the field They touched every blade of grass with the ball

And just kept it under pressure So it was It was very much like Yeah, we're going to have to do something different I think that might have been right before we made those The double sub Burhalter might have noticed the same thing I've been like, okay, we need a little bit more energy here

We need some fresh legs I didn't know that it had to be Wea coming off Because like I said, Wea still had legs in him So again in the like what ifs department it was like oh man could we have left way out there for a little bit longer or i mean or as long as we possibly could have and and maybe it could have been musa who came off since he was struggling or could it have just been jettai and we figure out a formation to run with without jettai in there because jettai could barely move uh from now until

the end of the match you think he just could in stomach putting georana in the midfield i don't know i'm not sure like what the i mean you want georraine to close to goal because you're trying to score two goals. I'm just not sure what, yeah, what we needed to do to keep Timway on the field because we were running out of the way. We needed to score three goals. So I don't know. I'm not sure if, again, this is the what-ifs department, but I just know Timway I still

had legs and a lot of other players didn't. And Timway, I was one of our best attackers? So was there some configuration that could have kept him on the field? I mean, hell, he played right back for Lille, the last two games of the club season, and just drop him back a level. Kind of call him a right back, but really he's just attacking. And, you know,

throw and take Jedi off and throw Dest on the left. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I thought Aaron, I thought, well, I thought Aronson kind of struggled to make an impact. It seemed like every time he touched the ball, he was getting shrugged to the ground. That's that.

He's not really a center midfielder, but again, we needed legs. So Weston only went, Weston went about 65 minutes in each game, a little longer in the England game. because that was a lower tempo game. He hadn't played in a month going into the World Cup, so this is all understandable that he didn't have 90-minute legs.

We can talk now. Maybe now would be time to talk about Luca de la Torre. Yeah. Seems to be that Luca della Torre was not fit, wasn't ready. I don't think it was a trust thing for Burrhalter. I think he was injured from what we've heard. So that had a big domino effect on probably on the fatigue. factor for all of these other center midfielder's as well. So if he's not available,

and there are no other center mids you trust. And for Burrhalter, I don't think that just meant here in Qatar with him. I think if there were another eight that he trusted, he already would have brought him along. And I just don't think there are anymore. Whether that's, whether Burrhalter is right about that, I don't know. But at that point, Aronson is the only other guy you can bring on, right? Yeah, he might be, he might be right about it. There might not be anybody, the gap between Musa McKinney Adams and the next guy may be so large that it's almost unfathomable. But he hasn't tried enough.

I mean, that's what you're about to say. He hasn't tried out enough people. So that's where, I mean, I don't even know if I can say that. He tried, he had Eric Williamson for the entire Gold Cup, right? Eric Williamson played in that Gold Cup final in 2021. So that's where it comes down to Burr-Alter rated. He had the chance to rate him. he evaluated Eric Williamson.

Berlter must not have thought that Eric Williamson was good enough to do a job for him in Qatar. I don't know, man. It's hard to watch like Musa barely be able to walk at the end of the Iran game and then in sequences in this game and be like, well, there's just nobody else we can play. It's better to have a player who can't walk. At some point in a soccer game, it's never better to have the guy who literally can't move on the field than a different player. So I don't know.

But one of the other things we said as we talked about the roster and sort of those fringe players was that the most likely outcome if there are injuries, like what happened with Luca and with Gio is if there are injuries, it's not going to be that the fringe player is going to get like a ton of minutes. It's going to be the starters will just get run to the ground. And that's what happened. And it got us to the knockouts. And it got us at least, I mean, it still had us in position to tie the game up in the 70th minute, 75th minute. if we could have executed a sequence a little bit better. Yeah. There's always going to be some what-ifs. 73-minute mark, a good little combo up the right flank. Raina goes 1v1 with Virgil, cuts in on his left and takes a shot that goes way wide, kind of similar to the desk one from earlier.

And then you can say something about that? Well, just one thing you notice on the watchback there is as Raina's cutting in and very under control as he does this, obviously. he draws a crowd, right? Like there's five Dutch players in a tiny space. He also draws a crowd of the U.S. players to connect with, which is good. Ideally, here, what you do is shift this ball all the way out of this super congested space

to a late arriving Jedi Robinson up on the left side. But in this game, unlike almost every other game, Jedi Robinson plays in for the U.S., he does not appear in the screen, right? He does not make that late arriving run. He clearly doesn't have it in him anymore. And this is where we get into like at some point any player who can move is better than a player who can't move. Yeah, we didn't get to see Joe Scali either, who by the way looked pretty good when he came on against Saudi Arabia in September. Like, looked like he gave a crap and was capable of doing some things.

DePai comes back to the ball in the 75th minute after a sexy little, the young back heel and then passes it to Hajie Wright in the box plays him in just like Jesus Ferreira did with Denzel Dumfries except even worse because it's a it's a ball into the middle of the box um De Pai who had a I thought a very good game and Wright

Wright's first touch takes him way wide and his shot is cleared off the goal line by Dumfries I should note that Dumfries had an incredible game I don't know I think the touch was heavy of course but I don't know what else

what Wright is supposed to do there. Maybe like, maybe like dink it over the keeper on the first time or something like that. No, you just take a much closer touch. I mean, there's no. Knopert was coming though. Noteper was closing fast. He's got around the keeper probably, I think is the right play. But you got to round the keeper in a way that doesn't put the ball almost out of balance.

It's pretty simple. I mean, I shouldn't say it's simple. The formula to succeed there is very simple. Executing is not always easy, of course. But this is... He can't go to his left and beat Knopert to Knopert's right. He's got to go to Knopert's left. Yeah, you know, he just needs to not hammer the ball with his first touch.

And, you know, as soon as they hit this pass in, this back pass, I was like, oh, this is fantastic. Haji Wright. Like, this is his bread and butter. He's got very good touch. Like, he's not stone-footed. No. He's pretty tidy with the ball. And he kind of lives on these kinds of open spaces in the Turkish league.

So he's got reps doing this kind of stuff, being one-on-one with goalkeepers in a lot of space. So I was like, he's the right man for this. And then his touch was not the right man for it. But it didn't matter because what it ended up doing was setting up just an incredible goal for moments later. Yep. Corner kick. And so, well, Desk comes off before the corner kick, I believe. Yes.

He does. Yeah, he does. Importantly. For DeAndre Yedlin. And we take a corner. It's knotted comfortably away again, this time by Ake. But we win it back in front of their box to Yedlin. And he plays Pulisick into the channel. Not into the channel. Plosick into the Man City zone, pretty much, in tons of space. Pulisic attacks the box and fizzes it across the six. So I mean, you could say he just sort of slammed the ball across. But it was, he was aiming for Haji. Right. He was trying to. to play it at Haji's feet. And it looked like that to me anyway. And Haji, I think he, who does he have on his back? I think it's Van Dyke.

He gets, he makes contact with the top of his boot. But the outside, like the outside half of the top of his boot, right? Yeah, I think so. I'm not exactly sure how he did it, but, uh,

it's the top, top slash outside of his boot as he kind of goes, to ground and the ball just loops up over into the far corner and goes in. Dunfries tries to, Dunfries tries to clear it but has no success. I think all Haji was trying to do there was keep the chance alive, help the ball along with Van Dyke on his back, which is a good, I think a good thing to do in that situation. He was just trying to help it along.

But it's a goal and probably the weirdest goal of this World Cup so far. It'll be the weirdest World Cup goal we ever score, I think. It's fantastic. So the ball gets cleared out all the way to D'Andre Yedlin. So the header goes out to him. So his first touches to win this back. And he kind of like hits a pass that I think he thinks he's passing it to a U.S. player who's like isn't interested in receiving the pass is actually going to cover for D'Andre Yedlin.

So it's kind of like he just hits his pass into space. And instead Walker Zimmerman races out of the box to like collect the DeAndre Yedlin. half pass and Walker Zimmerman has a perfect layoff. It ends up being this really slick up back through. Zimmerman and Yedlin hits a peach of a slide rule ball. Like you wouldn't think that DeAndre Yedlin was going to hit that finesse of a pass. And then, yeah, the movement from Haji Wright's excellent. This is a great striker movement.

And if there's like the one thing you want to say about having either Ferreira or Raina in there is the false nine, you don't necessarily get this movement for, Haji to even gain the position, ball side of Van Dyke. So that's great work. And then the other really cool thing about this besides the outrageous, absurd trajectory of Haji Wright's touch is that Walker Zimmerman, after he lays that ball off to Yedlin well outside the box, he's like 25 yards away, spins off of it.

And then he is actually the man like racing closest to goal. So as this ball's looping in, Walker Zimmerman interferes with the only guy left who was able to try to clear it and like, gives him a little nudge in the back to put him off. And that's how that's at least a little bit of how Nobert and the defender like getting each other's way. So it's just, I mean, the whole thing is just ridiculous and amazing all at once. And we're in it.

We are in this knockout game with 15 minutes left. Definitely there's some hope. And we get our, we get our chance to equalize right, almost right away. 77th minute. Anthony plays a ball in the air to Raina. And Raina wins the duel. It's actually not too bad winning these aerial duels

Um nods it to the center for Pulisic Pulisic runs onto it Ake is sort of He thinks about coming to try to get to the ball And then he decides against it A little late And so he allows Pulisic to run onto it

Uncontested Pulcic brings it down sort of And tries to play Haji in behind And the pass is just too heavy It's not the DeAndre Edlin slide rule pass we saw a few moments earlier.

And it's not the Gio Raina slide rule pass we had earlier in the half that we didn't even talk about where Haji was just a fraction of a snap off-d-ride. But yeah. But yeah, Pulsick just overcooks it a little bit. Knopert comes flying out and clears it 20 yards from goal. That was it. That was the chance. I mean, we were there, right?

Like, that's, we had another chance to put Haji in. I saw some people saying Haji, like, mistimed his run. but he shouldn't need to. He had so much space to play him into. Just play it softly. Yeah, that's on the passer for me. Like there's no reason that needs to be even close to a 50-50. That has to be a ball that only Haji can get to.

Yeah, if that's DeYoung to DePai, that's a 1v1 with Turner. Not saying they definitely would score or that we would have scored if the pass was on. There's a lot still has to go right. but chances on both ends Burgwine gets slipped in by DePai He doesn't do much with it Pulisic tries with his left foot from 20 yards Does not trouble Nopert

Von Haul looks a little worried When they pan to him on the bench But maybe he always looks serious Raino's playing well Trying to pump everybody up And then in the 81st minute The Backbreaker It's a long ball up to Burgwine.

He chests it to DePai. Yedlin tackles it to DeYoung and he finds Blind out wide. And then there's just a little exchange of passes and it comes back to Blind and he sort of surveys the field and plays a kind of looping backpost ball to a wide open Denzel Dumfries. He side-footed it in with his left foot game over. Yeah, this does it. And this is, there's some dominoes here. Like the, the fact that they're building this out on our left side and Gio Raina is our, I'm sorry, our right side. And Giorina is our right winger at this point in a game where we're trailing in the 80th minute.

It means that Giorina is not going to come back and play defense here. So it's, it's Adams and Yedlin working to defend that flank. And after the ball goes back into the box, they both collapse into the box. And then when it goes out wide again, there's just. a little uncertainty about who's responsible for that. Yedlin felt like he had to track a man into the box. Adams had to chase the ball a little bit, ended up kind of doubling with Musa up at the top of the box.

So as Holland slips gets this ball out to the left, it is just all day for Blinn to pick his crossout. And he just hits it exactly where he needs to because Jedi and Ream are bracketing a player and no one is accounting for the far post. Once again, the center mids are not stacked. up. We have no wedding cake here. There's just all of the bodies.

Brendan Aronson's a defense, the center mid here and the weak side center mid, and he's not helping defend anybody, right? So it's like, this is where those center mids need to be a little bit more on the ball about who needs, where do I need to fill in to help defend this sequence, and we just don't have

it. Jedi like marks the man that Serginio Dest failed to mark in the first half. He like gets tight on him. And in doing so, he leaves the backside post backside runner wide open and that's where blend hits it yeah Turner didn't I don't know I mean Turner may have seen Dumfries but he didn't uh you know vigorously request assistance with that for many of his defenders either um and he should he should be doing it he put his arm out

and like which which makes me think he's calling out that left side uh that weak side player um but yeah didn't get sorted out in time and so yeah so you end up with Anthony Robin and touch tight on the more dangerous player. But it's a player that Tim Ream could have been accounting for if we just sorted it out, right? So we didn't need to be doubling this man up with Jedi tight on him. Just a missed rotation from a bunch of fatigued players.

Yep. I mean, we could talk about it for an hour and 40 minutes, but it really comes down to just like, if there's somebody opening the box, you got to get a man on him and mark him. There's a decent throughball from Pulisick to ride in the 85th minute. Zim tries an overhead kick on the ensuing corner. My wife watched that and she said, that wasn't very good.

You got to tell her that the joy of the bicycle is in the attempt. Yeah, I was like, stop being mean. Jordan Morris comes on for Anthony Robinson. And we actually tried to score into stoppage time. Some nice stuff from Muson, rain up the right wing, and some attempted balls. cross, but nothing came of it and that was that. We were out.

Netherlands ought to play the winner of Argentina, Australia, which was Argentina later that day. Postmortem. Anything? Well, I mean, it's just, it's like what I said. It's, it was of course disappointing on the day to not get the result, like not, not to do the full athlete cliche thing. But it was like, man, it's a knockout tournament.

So we're in it with a chance. We gave ourselves a chance. We weren't good enough. You know, we didn't do enough of the little things right on this day. And some of those little things, the frustrating part there is one is that some of those little things are things we are very much capable of and have a history of doing well. Right. And I think that's what it is. So the final third pattern stuff, I mean, that just comes down to like, we just aren't very good at that.

and we haven't been for this entire cycle. So that really needs to be, I feel like that that's got to be the new aim for this team is to get our final third patterns down. It needs to be Cindy Parlo-Cone's number one priority. I mean, legitimately, I don't know, I don't know what's going to happen with Greg Burhalter, but like whoever we bring in needs to just be like

a final third dynamo on the management side. Yeah, what did, so the latest news on Burrhalter is Doug McIntyre from Fox is reporting. Contract extension talks have begun. Yeah. I mean, that could mean anything. It could mean anything. I'm sure that was like a meeting that was scheduled well in advance. All right.

The three days after your last game, we will schedule your contract extension talk. Yeah, preliminary talks were underway, I think. are already underway. What's your view on that? Do you think he should stay? I would lean. I basically lean no, and it's almost just like a curiosity thing.

Like I would much rather just see what a new manager does. And, you know, at the very least, you know what the floor of this team is because the next manager doesn't have to do any transitioning. Like, you've got the same team. So it will be very easy to see if the next manager sends them out in a way where they suck. badly to be like, oh, no, no, no, we know that this team can be better because you have the

exact same team for this cycle that the last guy had and you're doing really bad with it. Like, you're gone and we'll try somebody else. Like, we will have, it will be very easy to see that because they won't have any transitioning to do. So I would, I would probably lean new manager. I'm pretty strongly new manager. Like, I won't be heartbroken. It won't, like, be devastating if it's Burrhalter.

but I would probably say we should bring in somebody new. Yeah, it's just bad. You know, it's, well, I think a phrase you've used before is it's best practice to switch. Is that a phrase you've used? Something like that. I think I said that. As a matter of principle or something? One of your high-minded, high-falutin turns of phrase.

But even that, I don't actually have the numbers there. I haven't seen the abstract that says second term, coaches are actually worse than first team coaches. I think people say second term coaches usually do worse than they did their first term, but there's going to be some regression bias there because if a coach does really badly their first term, they don't get a second term. So all the guys who did badly their first term are gone. So second term coaches are always competing against a good first term. I mean, France and England are both doing the double cycle thing with the shop. Is this DeShamp's third cycle?

I don't know. He's timeless. And then Southgate, of course, in his second cycle. Yeah, I would rather we hire a new coach. We do have to admit, A, that it's a little bit of an odd job for an elite soccer coach, you know, to coach a national team. So there's going to be a lot of downtime. There's going to be a lot of slow buildup without a lot of energy around it before the next World Cup. So it's odd in that way.

So who wants this job is I think a still legit question. Probably more people than wanted it four years ago. But. And then there's some risk too. You know, there's some risk in hiring somebody new. They could be worse than Burrhalter. It's possible. Oh, for sure it is.

But I want a new coach too. I do. I want to see what a new coach does with, I mean, really, I want to see some of these final third patterns. get cleaned up. And that's not always on the coach. Like sometimes it's just, you know, players need to be better at reading spaces, especially in like open transition moments. But, you know, our actual final third stuff once we, once we get into that zone, in that, even in the Man City zone, just seems like we don't always have the best ideas.

Yeah, we also didn't have Geo Rainer for much of the cycle. So. Yep. What about all the vibes guys on the roster? Are you mad about that? No, not really. Are people mad about the vibes guys? Well, just that we brought players that were clearly never going to play, like Christian rolled on. And I guess Jordan Morris played, but it was kind of perfunctory. Why not bring players who could actually play? So I don't think Burhalter thinks of Jordan Morris as a vibes guy.

I think if he was just going vibes, it would have been Paul Ariola. I think Berthelter wanted Jordan Morris for the exact situation that he had Jordan Morris in. If he doesn't have, if we need one more attacker to throw out there late in the game, like I think Burrhalter rates Jordan Morris as that guy. Not over Gio Raina for anyone who still thinks that. But if you've already brought on Raina and your other striker, like, all right, well, we need another attacker. And my guy here, if it, out of everyone else still in the pool that hasn't been on the field

for us in this game, it would be Jordan Morris. So that's how Jordan Morris gets in the game there. I don't think he's a vibes guy. Okay. Rodon's the vibes guy, but there's no, again, there's no, I don't think there's any other center midfielder that Berhalter would trust. So, uh, the fact that he was never going to use Roldon anyway. Isn't that Burholtner's fault that there aren't any midfield, I know he sort of discussed this earlier, but that there aren't any midfielder's that he trust. I mean, what did Eric Williamson do to, to knock himself out of contention?

I don't know. He got hurt at the wrong time, I guess. Maybe, but he wasn't going to be in that first camp anyway. I remember his, after he got hurt, he had an interview where he said, like, What do you say? He said he'd already talked to Greg and Greg basically told him that it wasn't going to be now, but you never know when you might be needed. So going into that September qualifying window in 2021. So in Williamson, again, for my money, had been one of our best eights in the gold cup. So I thought he would get another run out.

We kind of heard that he was going to be in the picture potentially and he just never, the call never came. So I don't know. And that's another thing where the new manager, I think, might have a lot. of different choices on the fringes. I think that's natural, especially at those fringe levels. So that'd be another interesting thing to see just whether or not there are players who we can get to mesh with this core group. The core is going to stay the core, right?

Like no managers coming in and dropping Musa and Wea. But it'll be interesting to see how we set up our complementary pieces with this core if we bring in someone new. Yeah. Hey, but overall, I got to say I'm pretty pleased. with how we played in this World Cup. It was much better than I think most of us expected it to be. You think that September window was just a master class

in lowering expectations? Well, that was my joke back in October, but maybe that's really what it was. Now, we looked like a competent side. Even in the Holland game, like we looked competent and we were undone on a few moments. Yep. Again, those weren't the only times that Holland were dangerous, of course.

Just so happened that those on the actual breakthroughs, it's easy to point to, like, where the lapse was. Right. Yeah. And I thought we definitely, I mean, we have a little bit of the benefit of watching some of these older games for the historic recaps. This is a different type of soccer team than the one we had in 2010, even. And it's a step forward.

I don't think there's any doubt about that. Yeah, 100% step forward. It's been a fantastic time watching the puzzle pieces together, watching the puzzle pieces come together, speculating about how the puzzle pieces could come together. Like, it's been a lot of fun doing this men's national team stuff. It has, and it's been a lot of fun doing it sort of in community with the people on the Discord and the live shows.

We're going to try to do more of those. But that's been a lot of fun. And I want to say thank you to all the people who sort of do all this with us, if you will. Absolutely. Now we get to run it back for 26. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.