Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #357: New Zealand vs USA recap

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

The USWNT started its two-legged series with New Zealand on Tuesday, and finishes it on Friday. Greg and Belz talk a lot about crossing, and not combining or moving off the ball very well in the middle of the park, but also get to detail some lovely goals. At the end we briefly discuss the January Camp roster.----Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes (more than 50 last year and already 5 in 2023), plus access to the Discord including live call-in shows, by signing up for our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. The U.S. women played a New Zealand B or even C team on Tuesday in Wellington and ended up winning by a comfortable 4-0 scoreline, but it's hard not to feel a little bit nervous about this team based on this performance with the World Cup a mere six months away, five months, isn't it? Yes, which is hilarious, right, because it's a 4-0 win. But we knew going in, this. This was, as you said, a depleted New Zealand team. I think eight of their starters were uncapped going into this game. So they were playing an experimental side. And it's just the first half, right? If the first half didn't exist, then we could take the second half and say,

okay, you know, a totally overmatched New Zealand team, this is what we need to do to take care of them. Well done. Check the box as we move towards she believes in February against real competition. But that first half is there, right? And it's just kind of like picking at you saying, But what if this is what you look like against the good teams? So we have to balance that out in our minds.

Well, even if you look at just the second half, I mean, the goals were nice. All of them were nice, really. But some of the defending on them when you go back and watch was like, what are they doing? This ball from Ashley Sanchez is not going to get through against a good centerback. You know. No, totally the case. What I go back to for that, even, I mean, the Sanchez goal that I can, that comes to mind right away, you know, to just hit a 50 yard ball to a wide open player. It's actually like the early stage of that buildup where it's like, okay, this, at least we're showing like the necessary surgical approach to breaking them down, breaking down their 4-4-2 to even allow Ashley Sanchez to get the ball in that pocket, pick her head up and hit it to a wide open who against better teams definitely won't be wide open.

but that early piece that's what we need and in the first half we were really struggling to have anything even approximating that sort of early staging the buildup so second half there were enough pieces there to be like

okay if this is what we can do in this game that's good to build on going into some tougher games but man that first half is gonna you just can't erase it you know yeah it was like a lot of the the surgical breaking down of that 4-4-2

came via Lindsay Horan who had a kind of a Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde performance. First half, she was Mr. Hyde. And like totally, I thought, ineffective. And in the second half, she was dealing. I mean, she was, what, three out of our four goals were keyed by a very nice between the lines pass from her. Well, let's run through the 11th and the formations because I think that, that actually, I think, contributed to a lot of our struggles in the first half.

and I'm going to say that they were less personnel related than formation and scheme related in the first half or at least it's the most likely. I mean there was a huge switch from first half to second half that affected buildup and it could have also been personnel but I think shape definitely factored in. So let's run through what we trotted out to begin this game.

Okay, goalkeeper was Alyssa Neher Emily Fox at right back, Naomi Germa and Becky Sauerbrown at centerback and Crystal Dunn at left back. And then we had Taylor Corniak playing as the six, which was a little bit of a surprise, I think, with Rose Lavelle and Lindsay Horan in front of her. But, you know, lots of circulation between the three of them. And then midge purse at right wing, Alex Morgan at Stryker, and Mallory Swanson, formerly Pew at left wing. Yeah, so the big switches here are done coming back into the lineup at left back, and then Fox staying in the lineup, but switching over to right back, which she has not really done.

I don't think since like the Jill Ellis era, like when she was still probably in North Carolina. So this is different, right? And we want to see how that works. And then, yeah, Cornic is the six. And she was definitely like the dedicated deepest midfielder, even though Heron would drop down a lot. And then Lavelle, like, wasn't.

really rotating in and that that's the big thing that we ran into here. Do we want to run through New Zealand quick before we talk about how the shapes matched up? Yeah, I'm not going to give everybody's full name here, but I've got Aaron Naylor and goal, Grace Neville, the right back, and Ashley Ward the left back. You notice them a lot in the rewatch just because they're just getting roasted constantly and then... Shuckling, but yeah, there's definitely some 1v1 matchups. A lot of 1V1 matchups. A lot of 1V1 one matchups that were working in our favor. Yeah.

I mean, not even, that's a, that's classic Velasquez understatement. I mean, like, Neville was, she was a revolving door for Swanson to go past. Allie Riley and Green were the centerbacks, Allie Riley from Angel City FC. And then they crossed the band of four in their four, four, two in the midfield. You got jail, Hassett, Daisy Cleverly. very nice name that and then chance on the left side and then the front two were Collins and Rennie and they were in a very 442 442 right I mean this was this was extremely like vanilla shape and I think they got a lot of credit for how organized they were in the first half and you

know it was zero zero going into the locker room which is huge for a team like this going against what is a international juggernaut in the U.S. women. But for me, it was very much just us being poor schematically and how we matched up against them. So we were nominally in a 433, but the way we built out, our buildup phase, we essentially just mirrored them. So like they have their 442, 2 forwards high, and we would split up, when we would build out of the back, we would split both Fox and done wide. and we would end up with just too deep

and it was just Germa and Sauerbren matched up against their two forwards and our fullbacks would basically walk right into their outside mids and be marked immediately by them and then our three in the midfield did not function like a three in midfield. Lavelle had almost no role in the early stages of buildup like next to, I mean none.

She was playing two lines higher. And so we basically just had Corniac and Horan matched up against their two center mids. And so we were building against their 4-4-2 with like a 24-4. And it was so ineffective, schematically. We still had 1-V-1 matchups

that we could exploit and did a couple of times to get us out of there. But we did nothing to help those talent advantages that we had with our shape and scheme in the first half. It was really, really, we struggled badly, I think. We played the ball. I mean, we got to,

a little bit of traction playing the ball to midge purse's feet and then having her beat somebody or or you know just beat one person and then play a pass something and that's what it was that's where it was just the the grown up against a inexperienced new zealand player where midge purse was bullying some people on that sideline yeah but again schematically the first half was not good for us and it was it was a good adjustment at halftime that we can get into but uh we we had no real ideas of how to combine our way through, what again was a very vanilla 4-4-2 defense. Yeah.

And let me just head something off at the past. I think, you know, I tweeted at halftime that that was an alarming, an alarming performance from the women's national team. And somebody said, well, you guys got to chill out. It's like we, it was a tentative half of soccer. It doesn't really matter that much. everybody in the rest of the world is getting better. I think we can acknowledge all that stuff and say,

but still, we have to, well, to use your word, schematically do something a little better to sort of build up and then create chances. And I guess that first half just showed like no signs of life on that front. Right. And this has been our running issue, right? We recognize the amount of individual talent that's on this,

in our pool, you know, through, you know, 15 attacking players' names, you're like, that's a good attacking player. That's a good attacking player. Oh, another good attacking player. It's about trying to figure out, is there anything we're doing to put them in the best possible positions or is it just like, well, let's see if they can run through a brick wall by themselves and create something. And, you know, as you step up in competition, that brick wall gets more and more sturdy.

and this was decidedly not a brick wall we were up against in New Zealand, right? This was a, this wall was made out of popsicle sticks. Ferns. Yeah, we were ferns. And we really couldn't get a lot of momentum running up against it. And again, despite that, we still got some like outrageously clear cut chances to score in that first half. But it was never anything. We were like, oh, man, we are clicking.

And part of that is part of, I think, other thing that factored into the lack of exploiting those, even the individual advantages we had, was the fact that this is the offseason, right? So these players haven't played soccer in six weeks, ten weeks for some of them. So that does matter too. And if you're just relying on individual prowess to beat people, you're going to get less of that with a bunch of rusty players. Right.

So take all those caveats, a teaspoon of this, a tablespoon of that, throw them in the bowl as we talk about it. But yeah, I think the overarching issue remains. So should we go to the timeline? Let's hit the timeline. I just clocked right in the third minute, 245, Crystal Dunn getting caught on the ball. Nothing really came of it, but I don't know of Dunn.

Yeah, go ahead. Well, Dunn's going to be rusty, right? She hasn't played with the national team significant minutes in a while. I know she got back in in those last windows last winter. but she's going to be a little bit rusty, but it's still back to like the scheme around her. And when we get the ball and you can pause it, like when the ball gets to done on the sideline,

she hesitated a little bit. So instead of getting herself out of the jam with like just hitting it back to Neer or all the way back to Germa on her first touch, she collects it. And as soon as she collects it, like we don't have any other options. And you've got three New Zealand players like enveloping her right there.

Because I think another theme that's going to come out here is our combination instincts, or at least our tendons, are really not great. No. And again, Lavelle was not like one of those center mids constantly making yourself available for the ball.

It doesn't seem like that's her role in our central midfield. I don't know if Huran was doing it either. Right. That's the big piece. If you're not getting it from Lavelle, then you're playing with two center mids. They have a lot of work to do

if you're going to try to be this ball dominant team. And it's just those tendencies just aren't there. Like we don't have people constantly shifting, and popping into windows, you know, with that quickness and inevitability to basically rondo our way out of these jams. So Dun got herself in a jam, a little rusty, so she can't individual skill her way out of it, which normally she might do. And so we just kind of turn it over.

Yeah, you really need people showing for the ball with alacrity to make it work. And somebody making that second run off of the, Off of the first, you know, you pass the ball to somebody's feet. It's almost like there's never that. I mean, I'm just sort of repeating what you said and expanding on it, but never that like that quick sort of, okay, the ball comes into Lavelle's feet and then somebody else is showing into the space near her to maybe for the layoff or or some other kind of pass. It's not, there's very little coordination like that going on.

I'll tell you when we get it. And it's team coordination, but it's also individual, like I said, it's some, to some extent, it's individual instinct and tendency. Yeah. And the player who brings it every time is Ashley Sanchez. She's not always like perfect, but she is that kind of player, no doubt. So she is of a type that will give us that. And then it's just going to be about whether her execution is good enough that she could maybe force her way into a lineup or at least start increasing her minutes.

Well, this is assuming Blocko even cares about this topic. I noticed Ashley Ward that number 30 who who suffered some at the hands of Midge Purse was being kind of impudent with her on the sideline. I wasn't loving that. Maybe she shouldn't ask for that. Maybe that was where it all went. It started to go wrong for her challenging Midge Purse personally. Yeah, she sort of like threw her arm at her or something.

4.50, we get a good move up the right from Gers. to purse and then to Fox on the underlap, Fox gets in the Man City Zone, lifts it across. Morgan meets it kind of on its upward trajectory at the near post and bumps it over. It may have drifted to Lindsay Horan on the back post. And I mean, if Morgan had let it right, I don't know. But, you know, you got to think on a chance like that,

Haran would put it away. Yeah, and so this was... Oh, yeah. She would not miss a wide open chance like that in the box. So this was absolutely purse coming back around on Ward and doing her dirty after maybe some of that impudence, right? So we finally find her up the sideline. The buildup work, again, wasn't great. You know, we finally hit Heran in a spot where she has some space in the middle.

And she was in the first half, she was almost like a parody of ball recirculation. Of like refusing to go forward and being like, nope, we got to recirculate this. like a transition moment. She's got half the field wide open to play into. On the left side, she got it kind of in the right half space at midfield. But nope, we're going to turn this ball back around, recirculate it. I'll ride the challenge long enough to drop it back to Becky Sauerbrun. Oh, she loves to ride a challenge.

But we finally get it up. And then we beat the four four two. Again, not with shape necessarily, but we do beat it with a little bit of cleverness. And it's just Fox getting higher than that midfield line. So our fullbacks have been running into their outside mids, you know, as the shape just matched up. But Fox got herself eight yards of clearance beyond the center mid or the outside mid. And we just had a simple ball at the sideline to her. And then what we have next is a nice little run from Perce into out to get to the sideline.

But it still then just takes her absolutely bulldozing or absorbing a hit from New Zealand. New Zealand player goes to the ground and now Perce gets to play a little bit. smart from Fox to continue a run. And then on the actual ball in, the strange part about this is I wonder if Fox was going for the clipped ball far post because it doesn't make really any sense for her to clip the ball to Alex Morgan there. They're like nine yards away. Yeah.

And there's nobody in between them. So you'd think if this was going to Morgan to try to score, we would just slide it on the ground like a cutback from the Man City zone. But we have such crossing brain that we still hit this ball up in the air. and this is going to rear its head again in the second half, but with a better outcome, where we cross the ball to the player who is actually closest to us with no defenders in there, in between,

instead of hitting it on the ground. Are you referring to that first goal, the first Swanson goal? Yes, our first goal comes from Rodman, clipping a ball to a player where there's a clear path on the ground from Rodman to that player. 940, Mark, we get a good move. Corneek plays it through the lines to Lavelle,

who turns and drives forward, cuts onto her left, and then sprays it to Crystal Dunn into the corner. Dunn's left-footed cross is a bit overcooked and gets knotted away. But at least there was some, you know, some soccer happening in that sequence. Yeah, so Corniac. Cornice was constantly trying to work in between, in that 4-4-2, like in between there's two center mids and their two fours. Like, she kept occupying that space.

We just didn't find her with any kind of conviction. Like, it just seemed like our players thought it was too risky to pass it into that pocket for a lot of the first half. When we did find her, she was willing to attempt some line splitting passes from there. She was pretty good, I thought. Not as majestic as Vince would like us to think, but pretty good.

That was a perfect example, though, right? Like when she can get it in that space and then sort of forced the D to collapse on her, it wasn't the safest pass. It wasn't like the most, comfortable pass to hit it up the line to Lovell. Like she had to hit it through a small window. But if we can do that and get it

to Lavel in that pocket and let Lavel cook, that is a good, that's like when I talk about surgical, this is a surgical attempt to get the ball up field rather than just the opposite of surgical progression is like vicinity progression where you just try to hit the ball in the vicinity of one of our

players and hope that their individual talent is enough that they can just win a battle. This was a surgical attempt and it paid off and it went right to Levelle's feet and she gets to cook. So if we can surgically create chances for Rose Lavel to cook, we're doing all right. Although, to go back to what we were talking about earlier, Lavelle cooking often means if she receives the ball between the lines, she turns and then she dribbles for a while. There's never anybody, there's never a sense that once that pass is made between the lines

and then we press our advantage as a collective. It's like Levelle takes the ball, she starts dribbling, everybody runs away from her. Yes, the running away is such a hallmark of our of our play. And that's where I started thinking about like our combination tendencies because so often our tendencies to be like, oh, we have the ball, race upfield. We'll get to a couple of times where we did the opposite, where the opposite of racing upfield is having at least one person pissed in back. So you have some movement going upfield, other movement tracking back to the ball.

And we get some of that on a later Lavelle chance that we'll talk about. Okay. Good work up the right in the 16th. minute where almost all of our attacking in the first half came from Fox to Corneac. And then Cornyick plays a good pass to Purse coming back on the touchline. Purse cuts in and then slips Lavelle down the channel. This is kind of like Lavelle sort of in the messy zone, you know, where she's coming, she's coming across the top of the box with her left foot.

And she just scuffs it slowly. I mean, she creates a good shooting opportunity. She just scuffs it slowly out of bounds. But I thought it was nice from Perce. All right. So we just talked about pistoning. This was like the clearest case earlier, the earliest best case of it in the game for me. So we get that ball up to Midge and then Alex Morgan doesn't run away from her.

Alex Morgan checks back. And it's not a huge thing that she does. It's a small movement. But like if she just drifts up field and runs away, she brings New Zealand's whole back line and centerbacks with her. Just by doing that little movement of being like, oh, I'm just going to show my hips to the ball. Show my belly button to Midge purse here. The defender creeps up to Alex Morgan. And that's exactly the space that Roosevelt runs into and that Midge purse passes into.

If we don't have that pistoning and everyone just runs away, then it's just Midge dribbling upfield until eventually she runs into a cul-de-sac. So it's such a big deal to get this opposition movement. One player coming back so the other person can run in behind. And when we do it, we've got good pieces to exploit it. Okay. So I'm going to talk about the big chance for Huran in the 18th minute, which I sort of, quietly alluded to earlier. Corniac finds a good run

into the right corner from Perce. I think there was some pistoning here too. This is the 1730 mark. Purse collects the ball way out wide, squares up her defender and just dusts her, megs her into the box. This is the same woman she had had the slight argument with earlier in the game.

And then she cuts it back for Mallory Swanson. Swanson kind of whiffs on it. in traffic. But it luckily spills to Haran, who is as 1V1 with the keeper as you can be. And she tries to pass it in with her left foot, but Naylor makes a kick save. You know, we're not a finishing podcast, but this was, she had the whole goal to shoot at. She put it in one of the few places where it could be stopped. Pretty bad miss as those things go.

Yeah. So, but the pissening, the pissing is good. And it's exactly what it was. We worked it out to Fox. Fox is still looking at kind of a, she didn't receive it beyond the New Zealand midfield line, but she gets it with enough time that she can face up. Midge is coming back to her, you know, that movement back towards the ball. And it's not super clean.

We want this to get a little better. Like Midge almost like runs into Fox. She gets a little too close. The spacing's not quite right. But still, a little bit of this is better than none. So Midge brings a freezes that left fullback for just a second. And that's where Lavelle runs into. Again, Lavelle not really involved in the buildup,

but she's in for that next attacking third phase, and we're able to slip her in behind, and that's how we get the ball into the best attacking space. So that's how it starts. And then we do a bunch of other stuff, including some good, you know, willing passing, not just trying to cross it into the box, that ends up leading to this awesome heran chance.

Yeah, I think Purs makes the right choice to play that cutback. I feel like Swanson could have, you know, She could have thumped that ball into the net on another day. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and we shouldn't gloss over how badly purse dusts this, this New Zealand defender to let herself then pick her pass out. Morgan and Pew kind of both arrive at the ball,

so Morgan might have actually thrown Pew off more than any defender did, but it is a clear chance for Pew to put a shot on target here from what I would consider also a surgical cutback from Midge Purse. Well done, Midge. Yeah, very intentional, not just hitting it in the vicinity. We'll have an Alex Morgan vicinity cross later in the game. We've got a couple from Swanson, I think. Have I been saying Pew constantly?

Yeah, but that's okay. I think it'll help people transition from one to the other. Yeah, there's a big, I don't even know if it qualifies as a vicinity cross at the 2230 mark from Lavelle. Corneack plays, like strokes it down the line for Lavelle. with outside of her boot through a really tight window. And Lavelle, you know, she's sort of streaming down the left wing. She has a step and she just overcooks her cross.

I have the screenshot in the dock here. Swanson has a step on the back post. We got numbers arriving in the box. And it's just a terrible cross. And it's like if we're going to be a crossing team, can we at least get some good crosses? So my answer there is not really. You're not just going to be like, oh, we will just decide to hit very accurate crosses. It's just really hard to do that.

So, you know, hit low. Hit it low, you know, like in that space right in front of the six. It's a tough. It's a tough technique here. I'm going to defend, like, the poor cross, if that makes sense. It's a tough technique here for Lavel. Like, she's running full speed to get to this ball. She's not really squared up to the field when she hits it.

It's a swivel cross. That's true. She's well outside the Ban City zone, right? She's closer to the sideline than she is to the edge of the six or to the edge of the 18. So she's got to hit this ball to cover some distance. The other thing we should mention, too, is the field seemed to be running really slow. It did. So that's another reason, like, you can't necessarily try to put this on the ground.

You know you've got to put something behind this. And she has to put a lot of a lot of oomph into this cross to even get it. close and maybe she ends up putting a little just a little bit more umph than she wanted to yeah i know all about the slowness of the grass because people kept trying to hijack the game thread with horticulture discussion turf management before they moved on to chicken sandwiches a lot of a lot of turf managers in the discord uh 26 minute mark lavelle flicks it to morgan coming to the center circle this was maybe the the nadir of the first half for me um it's a clearance from our line, Lavelle cleverly flicks it to Morgan coming back, coming back across the midfield line.

Morgan has purse streaming upfield to her left. So Morgan's facing her own goal. She's got purse streaming up to her left in miles of space. And she lays it off for Horan, who is kind of in traffic. And Haran steps on it, realizes she's sort of running out of space. I mean, Haran probably could have found. purse too, I don't know. And then Haran passes it backward to Sauerbrun, I believe.

Or maybe it was Germa. But it was very frustrating because this is like a, this is a moment where we have, you know, we have five people running forward in the middle of the, in the middle of the field. Morgan, if Morgan just one touches it over to purse, we're off to the races. And instead we're, you know, we're passing it back and forth between Sauerbrun and Germa for another 30 seconds. Yeah. So for me, this is actually peak, uh, Lindsay Horan.

and recirculation parity because while Morgan should be able to lay that ball flat off to purse, that might slow purse down a little. You know, it's a tougher technique for Morgan to lead midge purse there. That's true. Than it is for Morgan to sort of play a classic upback through where it comes up to Morgan. She lays off to Horan whose body is facing upfield. Heran should be able to ping this ball with ease into the space that Perce is running through. And the only reason I wonder if she couldn't do it.

is because she might have clocked the referee who was running right beside Midge Purse as a defender. She might have thought that the dark socks, dark trunks there of the referee were New Zealand player. And so she didn't hit it first time. Did her step over extra touch, recirculate back to the centerbacks? It's a fair point because as I was watching it, I was like, is there a New Zealand player behind the ref there? I wasn't quite sure. I had to rewatch it a couple times. So I shouldn't be so hard.

I'm working about it. On the video, but the reason, the reason I think we ding her in harder here is just because this has become a trend for her. This isn't a one-off thing where like normally you bet you'd bank on her pinging that ball up field. Like she has just been constantly slowing it down, recirculating, killing the momentum or the rhythm of possession. And even that improves in the second half.

Yeah. In fact, I don't know that we. need to talk about the rest of these things in the first half. Is there anything you really want to get to? I mean, there's a, there's some mildly promising stuff. There's a Morgan, Morgan trying to cross it and hitting it out of bounds to the left of the goal.

There's a nice ball from Horan in the 40th minute over the top for Morgan. And she has a shot from a tough angle that she flashes a pretty comfortably wide. And then there's that in the 42nd minute, Swanson takes a free kick and curls it in. And then Haran just elaborately dummies it in front of goal. Is it a dummy or is it just a whiff? I'm calling you an elaborate dummy. Indistinguishable. Yeah, I think the theme here still for me was like it was tough for us to build through New Zealand's very basic defense.

And it did look like a lot of times we would just get impatient and just sort of hit the ball upfield in the vicinity of someone like, all right, well, there's a good play up there. I bet she'll beat this New Zealand debutante. and we didn't do it that much, but we still did it enough to create the handful of the chances that we had here. I'm not counting that as a promising first half. No, I mean, we'd probably deserve a goal in the first half. Oh, yeah, Haran's chance alone is. Yeah.

Between Haran's chance and Midge Purse's cross-goom shot, I feel like. Oh, yeah, which I didn't even mention. She hits the post with a in-swinger from near the right touchline. I don't guess I don't know if anybody's asked her if she meant to shoot that or not. Half time comes and we sub on Alana Cook for Germa. Sophia Huerta comes on for Crystal Dunn, which moves Emily Fox back over to left back and Huerta plays right back. Andy Sullivan comes on for Corneick and Trinity Rodman on for Purse.

And then, well, why don't you explain what you think changed in the way we approached that, like trying to break down that 4-4-2? So we make these personnel changes, which could, definitely also factor into how easily carved through New Zealand in the second half. Also New Zealand probably starting to wilt a little bit as they have a bunch of inexperienced players against a bunch

of seasoned U.S. national team women. But also we switched from going with our like symmetrical buildout shape where our two centerbacks are you know, stay central and then the fullbacks flare out wide into like an asymmetrical

three to five where Emily Fox I'm sorry, Sophia Huerta stays home and creates a back three, Fox goes upfield. And now we have three against New Zealand's front two with Sullivan kind of trying to find angles where we can pass through to her

and Heran helping is needed. But it definitely changes the numerical shape in the buildup. And New Zealand just did not have a response for this. We carved them up for chance after chance like immediately. So not only did we retain our individual strength advantage over almost every player in their lineup.

But now we had a schematic advantage. And it was curtains. Yeah. And Horan was also cooking. Like she really played well, I thought, in the second half. And wasn't as prone to step on the ball and pass it backward. Like she was trying difficult passes in between the lines. And I guess the numerical, you know, the numerical.

advantage we had with our three at the back formation probably helped but it was also it's hard to imagine she didn't get a a word from somebody at halftown that said like look let's just like you know play the pass attempt to play the ball upfield quickly uh no i i'm sure that's the case but i also do think that the the scheme created a much more like rhythmic passing uh environment for for us to play in yeah so right away 48th minute Swanson roasts Grace Neville down the left, puts a left-footed cross on Rodman's head on the back post, and she heads it wide. Probably should have been a goal. I mean, she's trying to head it with the head of the person marking her in close proximity.

So that's probably part of the reason. Anyway, who cares? It's a good movement, though. Trinity Rodman, excellent movement here to, I don't know if you'd say ghost at the far post, but she creates that. little separation for that ball to find her. Yeah. Like it's kind of a little, I feel like she got a little bit of a forearm into the New Zealand players back.

She may have, yeah. 49th minute, so a minute after that, we get a nice pass from Haran through the lines to Lavelle. Lavelle dribbles 35 yards, kind of as she does, and has a left-footed curler from the top of the box. This time she connects with it. She doesn't scuff it. It's just a little bit wide.

And so again, this is where As things stand, us getting the ball to Lavelle And by as things stand, I mean, the way the women's national team is playing right now With a lot of emphasis on crossing Getting the ball to Lavelle in these pockets Qualifies as a much, for me, a much better initial attacking position So this is exactly what I want to see I want to note here too

Alana Cook who as she comes into this game She has a lot more I think conviction to pass between the lines This one wasn't her, but it struck me that as a team, with Cook in there, I think we hit these passes a lot more often. More so than Germa, you think? I don't know if it's Germa or if it's Sauerbrun. Tread carefully. Tread carefully here. With Cook in there.

And Cook had some mistakes in this game, similar to how she's had some, like, moments that stand out as mistakes in some of the other games we played in the fall. but yeah this this pass from heran to lavelle is exactly what we need to see more of uh this it's a surgical ball right like this ball is into her feet in a pocket um it's disguised uh that's another thing we can add a lot more of our first half there was no disguise to our passing um you don't see this past this this past coming a mile away uh right so yeah so we're seeing we're seeing the things that we need to see more from the national team already within three minutes of half time Okay, but I'm going to do, before we get to all the goals, which are going to be fun to talk about, I'm going to do one more sour grapes thing.

And it's right in the 51st minute, there's a sequence that really bugs me. It's a good pass into Zone 14 from Horan, who like I said, was playing, definitely was very good in the second half, I thought. But Swanson, who receives the pass right at the top of the box, seems kind of confused by it. like what's like what's going on here and she and lavelle are occupying the same space and the player and then so swanson kind of gets the ball and then sort of stumbles over it and passes it backward to fox who then overhits a through ball into the box which is sort of beside the point it's just the i don't when i see this i don't know like i don't see what our plan is or like what the what the scheme is when we're up against this low block i have the screenshot in the dock uh

What is going on? I don't understand it. So I clocked this in real time as like a promising moment for the national team for this women's team. And it was because we were trying to actually like intricate our way through it. And it's going to be messy a lot as you as you begin to do this because we don't do it very often. Right. Usually this thing started with the ball. I mean, it started a long time ago.

But right before the moment you're talking about, we'd gotten the ball out to Sophia Huerta out wide. And she could have just lumped it into the box, right? But instead she doesn't. She picks her head up, sees that there isn't like an immediate passing option on, and she puts the ball back into the central midfield to Heran's feet, and then she slashes through the middle of the field. This is all the stuff that I want to see us doing, passing, slashing, looking for feet. And so as the ball goes back to Heran, you've got Huerta slashing through,

and you've got just a mess of U.S. bodies at the top of the box. So it's going to be messy when we try to combine. But Horan didn't just clip a ball in over the back line to see if we could run onto it. She also tried to find somebody's feet so we could keep soccering our way through this block. So I clock this as like a good attempt by the U.S. to try to pass our way through things. You know, we hit the ball into Swanson's feet and she collects it, you know, 22 yards out. This is a good position for us to be in. It's just we got to iron out like the messiness and that's going to take time.

but for me this is like a positive moment for the team in our progress hopefully our hopeful progress to being better at combining through defenses I can see that that take on it but it's just it seemed like Swanson had no idea what to do oh she didn't I mean she absolutely didn't and part of this is and Val had no idea what to do either like if she's not receiving that ball what is what's she's supposed to do who knows right and this is where it's like oh we got to figure this out, but it takes reps, right? It takes reps to create the timing and the rhythm. So as this ball could have just gone straight to Lavelle, I don't know who her

was passing to. I don't know she was passing to Lavelle or Swanson or even Huerta, who's continuing her run. I think the important thing is she didn't just try to clip it over the New Zealand back four. So I'm happy with her. Which is what Morgan wanted her to do. Yeah, exactly.

I'm, and Morgan's like half a body offside, right? Yeah, yeah. So I'm happy that we chose instead to hit it to a very talented attacker's feet. And then again, Swanson literally intercepts it from Lavelle. If we tidy this up even 8% then Swanson changes her run and the ball goes into Lavelle's feet. And Lavelle has a defense collapse on her, but immediately lays it off to Swanson, who is now running past the defense who's all wrong footed. And it turns into this incredibly tidy team shot attempt, right?

So this is where I see this is like a very good thing, even though in this particular sequence, it turns it's a little messy and it's like, oh, we didn't quite. iron it out. I'm, I'm, I'm chalking this up as a very good moment for the U.S. in our quest, uh,

to become the most fluid attacking team in the world. So we, this is like we've completed chapter one of the how to book. Yes. Yes. All right. Um, let's get to the goals because they were,

they were all nice and they're worth celebrating no matter who the opponent and, and what. 51st, uh, 51st minute. We get the first one. And it starts with a good bit of interplay Huerta back to Cook, Cook to Sullivan between the lines, to your point earlier, Greg.

Sullivan plays it wide to Lavelle and gets kind of taken out as she plays the pass. And Lavelle carries it forward and slips it along out wide for Rodman, who cuts in and hits an in-swinging cross basically right at Allie Riley, the centerback for New Zealand. But Swanson is charging at the gold mouth and flashes in front of Riley. to meet the ball and then loops it over Nailer. Very nice goal. I'm totally on board with the cook pass to start this, right?

This is the surgical approach. And then Sullivan with another very clean pass to Lavelle, and we've got Lavelle cooking. And then we get to see Trinity, right? She just had the chance with her head. And now we get to see her instead of just hitting the cross in immediately. She takes her time. She dusts a player, opens her hips up.

I get, this is where it's still just like, I don't know that this ball. needs to be clipped in the air, but it creates a very aesthetically pleasing goal. You're saying the optimal thing there is to play it to Swanson's feet as she arrives in the box. Yeah, I mean, that's what you, you just want sort of a nicely weighted pass that sort of dies right in front of Swanson's path so she can step into it and strike it. But instead, you know, we put it in the air because I still think that's a little bit of just our default is to like, be like, oh, I should cross this because I'm out wide and I'm going to cross it into the middle. So we make it a lot more difficult of a finish. And then Swanson just literally rises to the occasion and scores an absolute blinder with her head.

This is not me complaining about the goal we scored. I mean, it's fantastic. And again, this is where this is our starting point, right? Trinity Rodman is not a super experienced player, but she's a tremendous attacker. If this is where we start with her, we're doing really good here. Well, I am curious what you think of her performance in this game. But maybe we can talk about that in a little bit. bunch of people are offside in the second half when they shouldn't be like Haran and Swanson.

Haran keeps dealing from deep. It's hard not to appreciate what she can do. But what's her role? Is she like a midfieler in a double pivot, ideally, with a sort of a hard woman next to her? I don't know. I mean, that's what she played in this game. And again, it's hard to know because the competition level is not high here. But she thrived in this role where she was the secondary.

option, right? Sullivan was the one that we were like supposed to play to, you know, in the textbook of building through here. And then Horan comes back as needed or just comes back as space allows and it's like, oh, now it's me. And then she did a very good job once she got it of progressing the ball for us. So in this, in this case, she was thriving. And so it'll be interesting to see if we kind of stick with this in February or if we if we try to tweak it a little bit. Yeah. What's what's your take on Heron here? Well, I think she's so, uh, easy to bypass defensively that it's hard to. Are you, are you about to call Lindsay Hurran a luxury center midfielder? A luxury six. Yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know. She, I mean, she had a,

right, 55, 56 minutes. There's a nice in-back through from Morgan and Lavelle off a throw. Lavelle clips a ball in for Haran in the box kind of over the back line and Haran you know Heran's running onto it Her touch fails her, it trickles to the keeper She just doesn't look comfortable as somebody who like stretches a back line Or um

You know sort of like does something very cutting in the final third She is good at playing those passes between the between the lines though Oh reliable Uh no I totally agree Uh I think that's exactly where we are. And so my big question as we get into February especially is going to be will Ashley Sanchez get a chance to show that she can do a Iran job, but also add more thrust, a little bit more rhythm in buildup and whether that's something Vladko is interested in seeing. I'm going to say

the answer to those questions is no. I feel like the answer to some of those questions is yes, but the most important question is probably no. Good clarification, yeah. The answer to the question of whether Vlako is interested in it and whether Sanchez will get like a real chance to do that, probably no. All right, 60th minute goal USA, the legacy ladies show their class. It's Haran through the lines.

Very clever pass to Lavelle. Disguised. We got that disguise again. Yeah. And then Lavelle kind of steps. over it backwards and then back heels Morgan into the box. It's just wonderful, wonderful pass. Morgan Meg's nailer with her left foot from a tight angle to zero. Yeah, and this is absolutely the kind of thing we need to see against New Zealand side

that's debuting eight players, right? We need to see Haran clown them with that pass. So a pass they don't expect, they don't see coming because they're inexperienced. We need to see Lavelle trying stuff. because she's Rose Lavelle and she's amazing. And then we need to see Alex Morgan racing in on goal, you know, finishing with conviction. Which she did, yeah.

Sanchez comes on for Lavelle right after the goal. And the next thing I've clocked is the third goal in the 65th minute. It's another good pass between the lines from Horan, this time to Sanchez. Sanchez turns and plays a diagonal to Swanson running in the left channel. She corrals it and rounds the keeper and sloth. Lots of left footed into the empty net, 3-0. A little credit to Alex Morgan for drawing the centerback's attention with her runaway to Swanson's right.

But the defending from Elizabeth Anton, who had come on for Ali Riley a little bit earlier, was not very good. Yeah, this is where we get into, I don't know what you want to call it, January camp stuff, right? I think a lot of our listeners will be familiar with kind of that idea where the competition isn't always at its strongest either. So still, though, the pass from Horan is the important thing, right? To collect it in space, hit a ball through a narrow window to an attacking player in a nice pocket. And then everything after that is kind of just fun.

Yeah. Good clean fun. Well, let's talk. We've got like three or four more items. and then we'll wrap it up and then we'll talk about the January camp roster a little bit but 69th minute Cook plays the ball in the air to Haran

in the center circle and Haran you know she really feeling it at this point touches it deafly and then volleys it down the line to spring Rodman not down the line but sort of down the right wing Rodman drives at the goal and she elects to cut it back for Sanchez in traffic

instead of squaring it for Lynn Williams. And I don't understand. I don't understand why. Williams has three steps on her marker and she's like arriving at the penalty marker. Rodman has plenty of window to pass her. I'm not like, it's not that big of a deal. You know, the game's already three zero at this point.

But we need Rodman to capitalize on chances like this. And it turns out her, her pass does make it to Sanchez, kind of miraculously, and then Sanchez snatches at it and sends it well wide to the post, which is kind of the, Sanchez sort of steals any embarrassment from Rodman and takes it all upon herself with that terrible finish or terrible attempted finish. But Robin's got to square this to Williams, no? Yes, 100%.

This ball needs to get squared to Williams. Would I still, I'm like, oh, I'm just so glad she didn't try to shoot it. So I'm of the squaring school. so I'm so glad that she was looking for some kind of a cut back here. She picked the wrong one for sure. And then to be honest, Sanchez should have also found Lynn Williams. Yeah, yeah.

So after all this, with everyone collapsing, literally three New Zealand players and the goalkeeper, all like desperately racing to Sanchez. Sanchez needs to pass this ball four yards to her left for Lynn Williams to tap in. But yes, I mean, it's just a miss from Trinity and on the tape if they care about these things.

They'll be like, yep, you see this window. You just got to put it in Williams' path. and we get a nice tap in. Yeah. So both Sanchez and Trin needed to find Lynn Williams here. I'm glad they eventually do. It happens very shortly. In the 74th minute, 7350, another in-swinger from Rodman.

This one off a throw-in where she wasn't picked up. So we throw it into her, she's not picked up on the edge of the box. And she turns, takes a couple touches, and then hits it with her left foot. Lynn Williams nods at Far Post with her head. A good header 4-0, a very difficult header because she's kind of leaning away from the goal a little bit. After the game, she said she got her little butt up in the air and quote-unquote nogged it in.

And I like that. And he's gnaug as a verb from now on. Yeah, we can always use a little bit more finishing vocabulary. So, again, the effort level of New Zealand here is flagging. the way Rodman gets the ball in this at the corner of the box with nobody showing any real interest in defending her. But the key thing here for me is just a really savvy finish from Lynn Williams because that's like an experienced veteran header just to know how to even execute something like that. Yeah, and then to sort of minimize it by saying she just knocked it in. Love it.

Well, yes, happy for her because we didn't really mention this. She's back for the first time in ages. She's been dealing with some really, I'm sure, frustrating injury woes. So for her to come in, into the game late and get her goal, that's just an important, like, human moment. Her last game for the Kansas City Current was in March, I believe, so nearly a year ago. By the way, we are doing some new episodes these days on every other Wednesday called WOSO Wednesday.

Tara and Vince and I are talking about sort of doing like a Monday review style. show on, but only on women's soccer. This was hopefully a way for us to keep our finger on the pulse as we get close to the World Cup. And then of course, we'll be recapping all the women's national team games. Our plan right now is to recap Friday night's game, also against New Zealand, on Sunday. Of course, she believes Cup is coming up after that. Let me make my little pitch for the Patreon.

Just released this morning, Patreon-only episode and Emergency Podcast episode on Chris Richards 90 Minutes versus Manchester United for Crystal Palace. It seemed like a big deal to us at the time. Still does. Still does. It's a big deal. We need better centerbacks. And he's kind of our best hope for that, I think, at the moment.

Should we talk? Well, any closing thoughts on the New Zealand game? Well, I feel bad that it fell on the off Wednesday for Tara and Vince because Trinity Robin gets two assists and they would have been having a joyous time recording following this game. I'm sure they'll manage to remember when the next Wednesday arrives. Yeah, so we'll see what happens on Friday night. I don't know.

I'm listening to other podcasts too, like Diaspora United. So maybe I'm echoing them a little bit, but we're just kind of doing the same thing. Doesn't it feel that way? I think there are glimpses. There are glimpses of like more intentional, uh, surgical attempts to attack. And,

and that, that, that's enough to build on. Uh, it's not, it doesn't seem like we've gone full throttle and being like, no, this is what we,

this is how we're going to play. Um, again, there, there's still a contrast between like the clips that I could clip that I could clip, clips that I could clip. Yeah. From the Germany friendly,

uh, from the Germany friendly of what Germany we're doing where it's like, this is exactly the kind of like dedicated, commitment to for lack of a better way of saying it disorganizing the opponent with the ball and movement

we actually need to change that and movement so I wish that we saw more of it I wish we saw more pistoning more like you know a lot of times shortening the distance between the player on the ball

and their options to pass to connect our way through combine our way through our tendency is still to race away from the ball, especially the players ahead of the ball. But I don't want to make too much of like, certainly just the first half of the New Zealand game. Hopefully it was just really ironing out, or not ironing out, shaking off some rust. Okay, fair enough. That's the hope.

I'm always ready to be hopeful. So let's leave it at that. I think that covers it. The January camp roster, I don't think we need to talk about it for too long. The men play Serbia on the 25th, which is Wednesday. Yeah, it's coming up, right? Yeah. It's upon us.

Women, Friday, men, Wednesday? Anything, everybody who listens to this podcast, already seen the roster, so I don't know that we need to read it off. But who would you maybe give us a starting 11, Greg? I haven't even gone through that yet. It's the exciting thing for me is that we've got, we're going to get some left back data, some looks at a left back. We're going to get some center mid data, and I presume we'll get some Renovask data,

which I think are the three things I'm most interested in. Although the big wrinkle in this is because since it's not a three-week camp, I think we got a little bit more flexibility in who we were able to bring. So we have like a new subset of January types, which is fringe European players whose clubs don't mind them leaving for a week. Yeah, which is not necessarily a good sign for them. Right, right. I guess we had Oolie a couple years ago.

Yeah, yeah. And that hasn't turned out super well. Paxton Arensen, who just moved over to Frankfurt. Frankfort is starting their Bundesliga, the second half of their Bundesliga season this weekend. And they said, yeah, go ahead. So I was like, I don't know. He's maybe the plan all along was for him not to not to have a real first team impact until next season, which is fine.

But I think any doubt about that is sort of erased by this. The Jogo, Jonathan Gomez, it's cool to see him in this camp. I want him to play for the U.S. I think he has a high ceiling. But like he's obviously nowhere near the Real Associated first team at the moment. Do you disagree with that? No, no, not at all. I imagine that that is not eminent.

Matthew Hoppe is another guy who, same. You know, we're, I mean, he's on the bench for the first team every week. So that probably is, it's a bit telling of how necessary they consider him.

But again, he's only going to be gone a week. It'd be much worse. They're like, yeah, take him for the month. We, we don't need him.

Right. And then Sam Rogers playing in Norway, which, you know, squeezes this entire soccer season into the three months of the summer. But no, it'll be interesting. Like we're not going to learn much.

This isn't going to tell us that much. But this might give us a couple of names who make it into the March camp that wouldn't have otherwise. You know, if Tolkien or Gomez shows out as a left back, we basically have a total void behind Anthony Robinson right now. So, you know, they're fighting to make the roster over an out of position right back at the moment. Yeah. I think it's, I'm excited to see Tolkien. I think it's cool that Zendahas is going to be in this, in this camp. Apparently Mexico got fined for playing him in a game.

For playing offensive friendlies. What a, what a mess. Julian Gressel has his U.S. citizenship. Yeah, citizen gressel. Yeah. I'm excited for that. Like, it's probably going to be too late for Julian Gressel to make a huge mark on the national team. if his citizenship had come in six months earlier,

like it could have been him hitting that cross-in to Poulsick at the end of the England game instead of Shackmore. And that might have been the difference. No, seriously. Yeah, and then I guess it's good to see Pax and Pomacall get a chance. Alan Sonora, Sonora, in the midfield. Eric Williamson's back in the team. And we got the same centerbacks that we,

You know, kind of everybody loves to not like Walker Zimmerman and Aaron Long. And then Jalen Neal and Sam Rogers, the aforementioned Sam, Sam Rogers. And I think Neil and Rogers are, I'm not sure why they're in this camp other than just bodies. Yeah, you need bodies. And the other thing to keep in mind here is there is there's going to be a concurrent U20 camp that, and we don't know how those sort of calculations were being made about which camp is going to be better for which players to go to. like maybe Paxton Aronson couldn't have been released for the U20 camp because maybe the dates there might have overlapped in ways that Frankfurt didn't want to let him go.

So it's like, okay, well, you're not going to go with U20s. You're going to go with the senior team for eight days. So you don't know how all those moving pieces are working. But it's at least worth it to keep in mind that that can factor into this stuff. For the centerbacks, like, I know some people might be upset. Like Aaron Long isn't going to be in the 2026 roster. And he won't be for the U.S. World Cup in 2026. but you still need a body, right?

And no one else who's available is anywhere near the first four spots on a roster, right? We're looking at Richards and we're looking at CCV and Tim Riem maybe hanging on. But there's no one else who's like... Mark McKenzie's having a good run for him. Yeah, McKenzie's having a great showing. If Austin trustee were available for this,

then it'd be like, oh, no, we should get trusty in here instead of Aaron Long at left centerback. But he's not. Like the guys that we would bring in here, The first seven choices just are not here. And they're all pretty good seven choices for us at this moment in the cycle. It doesn't matter that Aaron Long is in here instead of the 15th choice centerback. Yeah, I agree.

So maybe they'll, so if the camps are concurrent, maybe they'll be actually sort of joint? No, as far as I know, the U-20s are like in a different state. I think the U-20s are playing some MLS teams in like exhibitions or, you know, tune-ups. A lot of the names that maybe people wanted to see in the senior camp are in the U-20s, and that might be more valuable to them playing together ahead of the World Cup. Yeah, they got a World Cup coming up in three months-ish. My very half-hearted attempt at a starting 11 versus Serbia is Gagaslanina in goal. Honestly, don't care.

Who plays goaling? John Tolkien, I do care about. I want to see him at left back. I think he's clearly the sort of the guy we need to look at here. Aaron Long and Walker Zimmerman at centerback. Bodies. They're good bodies. Yeah, they set a floor that is acceptable for a January camp game.

Julian Gressel at right back, although it could go any direction for me over there. Which direction? Who else is the right back here? I guess you could put DeWan Jones, yeah. Yeah. So again, just to go back to this, the, the, the, if Gressel plays, which I hope he does, because I think it's a fun story. He's not taking minutes from somebody who's going to be banging on the door.

We've got our right back situation pretty steady here between Sergenio Dest and Joe Scali. That we're not like, oh, we need to find the next right back. Like whoever is going to be a guy for us that isn't one of those two players, Dasters Scali, they'll emerge if they're going to. Okay. I'm saying Kelan Acosta is going to play the six. I would like it to be Aidan Morris, but I don't know. I doubt that's what it'll be.

I think it'll be Acosta at the six, probably in both of these games. Who knows? And then I want to see Pomacall and Williamson, happy to see Signora too. And then Zendayaas at right wing, Paul Areola at left wing, and Brandon Vasquez at Stryker. And I will say, you know, with these older guys who aren't going to play a role in 2026, I think they deserve, other people have seen this said, maybe Seuss said it on Twitter. these guys deserve, I think, a fair amount of credit for, like, Ariola didn't get called up to the World Cup.

Yeah, brutal, right? And he's, he gets called into this, obviously. He gets called into this meaningless January camp, and he's like, yep, I'm there. And Aaron Long didn't play a minute at the World Cup. I mean, he was on the roster, so maybe that's all he should, all we should care about. But he also is like, yep, I'll be there, you know. I'm ready to help. They both know full well they're not going to be on the 2026 World Cup roster.

So these guys are they're helping out the team when they don't necessarily have to. And I think that's cool. Yeah, totally cool. Just to throw the one lineup thing that I kind of do want to see, I think your line up would be great. Bells, you've done a great job with it. Thank you. Very important for me. to be praised for this lineup.

Give me Eric Williamson starting at the 6th. If we're running out a similar scheme to what the senior team did in the World Cup, give me Williamson in the Adams role, just to see if you can do it. We know Acosta has been setting that, like, backup floor. Let's see what Eric Williamson does there. Also, everyone keep in mind,

this game is very likely to be super ugly soccer. That doesn't tell us anything, even if we look good, which we won't. We'll look bad. Brandon Vasquez's hat trick incoming. I mean, that'd be fun. It'd be fun. It'd be, again, a nice moment, some nice moments for him.

And it would probably buy him a ticket to Grenada in March. Yep. Some would argue you should have had a ticket to Qatar. And again, this is what it is for me. It's like there are some priority call-ups here. And I think everything else is just trying to build a platform for them to at least show something. So if Vosquez and Tolkien are the guys you really want to see or, some of those center mids,

Pomacall, Williamson, Aidan Morris, then, yeah, you build the best platform around them that you can. And that means,

you know, using the bodies available that are, that set a floor, uh, like an air long, Zimmerman, Ariola.

And, and hopefully some guys outshine them. Hopefully somebody outshine, hopefully, you know, uh, hoppy or whoever outshines Ariola. That's kind of what we want to happen.

It's not going to happen. All right. Hey. Um, Oh, by the way, one other thing about Vasquez, did you see that clip of him saying, somebody asked him if you watched Mexico and the U.S. at the World Cup,

and he was like, yeah, and I noticed neither of them had a nine. Oh, but that's brilliant. So that'll be fun. That'll be spicy to add into the mix, hopefully. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.