Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #367: USWNT v Canada recap

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

Greg and Belz recap the action from Orlando. Perhaps our best performance in the last 12 months. Lots of patient buildup, a ferocious press. Maybe we're on the right track!----Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. Support that and get exclusive episodes once a week, plus access to the Discord and 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. Hey everybody, the U.S. beat Canada 2-0 last night in our opening game of the She Believes Cup down in Orlando. Thought it was pretty fun. Greg, how you doing? Doing all right, bells. I thought it was very fun. I really enjoyed that match of soccer. Our best in maybe a year? Our best game? I think that's fair to say. I thought it was, I thought it was, I thought it was, There was a lot of progress that I think continued from the New Zealand trip and against a much, much more talented side, albeit a side that may not have been laser focused on the match or at least in the buildup to the match. Right.

There was a lot of talk in the run up to the game about the Canadian women's national team players being in a dispute with their federation over essentially the budget, how much money is spent on women's soccer relative. to men's soccer and what is available. It's a little bit murky because they're not like, you know, just like U.S. soccer, not 100% transparent about what's going on in the books. So the two teams met in a circle in the middle of the field before kickoff. Definitely solidarity on all sides. But yeah, a good team.

I mean, Kadee should be canon. I didn't know about her. I was not familiar with her. For real? Dominance. Yeah. I mean, I knew the name. I knew she was a good player, but she wrecked us.

Yeah, she has been a force since, I mean, since the 2015 World Cup, I feel like was her sort of coming out party. So that's going on a decade now of Buchanan just being an absolute rock. Yeah, impressive, impressive player. Which I just want to say, and we'll go through the line of us, but even Canada at sort of a distracted state, I think still is a good enough test, you know, even compared to, say the New Zealand youth team that we played in January. Yeah, you know, and we played Canada in the Conccaf W championship in the summer and totally dominated them in that game as well. It only ended as a one zero, but I guess the level of dominance was pretty similar in this

one. Yeah, it was just a totally different game, right? That women's championship game in the summer, Canada, we're just. just an absolute mess in their rest defense we talked about it at length in this game we still turn them over a ton but it was like it was our

press causing the issues it wasn't just like Canada having a possession and then losing it and then just being wide open it was just like our press and that could have come down to Canada to be sort of distracted not totally dialed in and so turning it over a little easier than usual but it was very much like our press

was clicking and and I'll just jump in right now and say the press has been the consistently successful thing since the Olympics for Vlachco, which is just like, I don't care if we're playing bad teams or very good teams, other best teams in the world. Our press generates chances. Teams make mistakes against our press, and we run downhill often. Yeah. Especially those first 20 minutes, we were just, we had them under the kosh, completely

just wriggling under our boot. But either way, it's impressive. And again, this is minus a couple of key pieces. But the personnel that stepped in did not in any way diminish our press. And again, I think we're very effective in it. They might not have been as flashy on the ball or as clean on the ball as we necessarily want them to be.

But the press, I mean, that's a collective effort. And the collective last night defending was, I thought, incredible. Okay, let's do the lineups. Alyssa Neer and goal for the U.S., Emily Fox, Alana Cook, Becky Sauerbrun, and Crystal Dunn across the backline. So Fox and Dunn is the fullbacks, Sophia Huerta on the bench. Andy Sullivan as the six. It sure seems like Vlako's just going to ride or die with Andy at the six at this point. I mean, it's not guaranteed, but that seems like what he's trying to do.

And then Ashley Sanchez and Lindsay Horan as the eight. the sort of attacking eights, and then across the front line from left to right, Mallory Swanson, Alex Morgan, and Trinity Rodman, although Rodman and Swanson occasionally switched sides. Yeah, and for this setup here, like, Haran and Sanchez clearly not symmetrical roles. Like, Haran was very much, I mean, I would say it was more of a 4, 2, 3,1, with Horan and Sullivan's roles varying slightly, but Haran being more similar to Sullivan than in any way what Sanchez was doing.

Sanchez was like up up, like she was up high in the press. She was way up ahead of Morgan at times. And in the buildup, she was not in any way asked to like come back and help in the early stages. Similar to LaVelle last window, like she was up in the attacking line to receive line breaking passes, which she did on a few occasions. That's true. And Haran was very much tasked with helping to bring the ball up. Yeah, she was like a free player. I mean, she was like the free buildup player to go back and get it where needed to relieve pressure to.

to, you know, do the Horan, ride a couple of challenges to extend possession so we don't just have to hoof it. And that, for me, was the other big notable thing here. So, again, the continued success of the press. But I think for me, the story here is a noted, a notable decrease in like the number of home run balls we tried to play, a decrease in the aimless crosses into the box. And I think, I thought it was such a significant decrease that I don't think it was a fluke. I think that this, I'm hopeful. I mean, I want to believe it.

I think this is an actual, like, intentional direction that we've taken since, since, you know, the New Zealand trip. Positive steps from Vladco is what you're saying. I think so. I mean, did you see it? I don't think it can just be, you know, Sanchez and who's whom I'm trying to be come in and, like, everything changes. And we start trying to, like, play real intentional soccer. I think it was very much like, okay, the game plan today is. to find more soccer solutions

even as we get close to goal and it just looked so much more controlled. Again, it wasn't always clean. It didn't come off nearly as much as it needs to, but to move in that direction, I think, is a step forward and I think that it will, we will make gains there even in the short time before the World Cup. I think Sanchez and Rodman,

they are sort of soccer solutionists and they do, they do make a difference in that way, But yeah, I think we have to give Blocko a little credit for that performance last night. Because we've been pretty hard on him, I think, for the last six months. But this is the stuff, man. This is the low-hanging fruit for me that we can try to fix how to the World Cup. We're always going to get revenue from the press. But if we can add more of this soccer stuff as we get into that last 30 yards,

that's going to be huge, especially as we bring in a few key pieces in Sophia Smith, throws Lavelle, Capamacario. I mean, that could potentially be three upgrades right there on what we just saw yesterday. Yeah. Being able to bring Sanchez and Rodman off the bench, not too bad, not too shabby. Should also note here quick that, as we just did the U.S. lineup, Lavelle, not available for this game with injury or at least ruled out, you know, for injury. And also saw that-

Sotomayor, I think. Yes, also saw that Naomi Germa was a precautionary absence. So if you were reading into the center back lineup, it's harder to do that. Read less. And then Canada's lineup was Kalin Sheridan and Goal had a great game, I thought. From right to left, it was Ashley Lawrence, Cadisha Buchanan, Vanessa Gilles, and Alicia Chapman across the back line. And then what did you say, the West Virginia mountaineers? Yeah, Lawrence and Buchanan both played at West Virginia, just out.

outrageous talent there. Yeah. Jesse Fleming and Julia Grosso would be the, I guess, the double pivot, you know, nominally at least. And then Adriana Leone, Christine Sinclair, and Janine Becky across the band of three in this 4-2-3-1, and then Jordan Heidema as the striker. And I also just point out here for Canada. Again, I know there are caveats for their focus.

But as far as fitness goes, half of Canada. Six of Canada's starters are in-season at the moment, six outfield players, whereas for the U.S., it's just Haran. Everyone else still in the off-season, or pre-season, for the U.S. And, you know, I mean, they had the, Canada had the chance. The Becky hit that drew a good save from Neier. I mean, Sinclair got her head on a corner kick and nodded it over. But for the most part, even when they got the ball going into the attack,

didn't look like they were going to score. They didn't look like they were going to even get into the box most of the time. No, the big, the big chance that Neyer came up with the save one was a, was another Alana Cook, oopsie. And other than that, yeah, I mean, we had, we had four better chances than that that we didn't convert on. So chance wise, this was, this was a totally one-sided affair. What was it? The XG was 1.92 to 0.24, something like that. I mean, yeah, there are different ones. I saw, I think I saw, well, yeah, I think that's probably what I posted. Um, Okay, let's go to the timeline. The first 20 minutes were just scintillating stuff.

I thought the U.S. started going to town right away, immediately on kickoff. It's a cook long ball to Morgan, who rises and flicks it behind for Haran, kind of wrong-footing everybody on the Canada defense. Horan runs into the space. Kind of a little clumsy with her first touch, but ends up slipping it ahead to Swanson down the channel. Swanson touches it wide and tries to go five-hole through Sheridan. It's saved by Sheridan's foot, I think. It would have been a, I mean, it was a tough angle to shoot from. Yeah, for sure.

Horan had the best chance momentarily, but then kind of with the clumsy touch, lost it, which was a theme for us. We had a bunch of those in the box, just a little bit too clumsy. I want to blame it on preseason for most of them, but Horan doesn't have that excuse for this one. Right. Yeah, I noticed a lot of that from Sanchez, too. Soccer solutionist that she is, just a little bit messy.

Just handcuffed. Yeah, we kept handcuffing ourselves with that setup touch. But we're pressing, as you alluded to at the beginning of the show, we were pressing hard and Canada couldn't even get out of their half at the beginning of the game. In the third minute, right at the beginning of the third minute, we get some solid buildup up the left side done, kind of dribbles and then plays it, plays a little into the pocket for Morgan

heading across the top of the box. Morgan turns and squares it across Zone 14 for Sanchez. Sanchez takes a touch and then has a hit as the ball kind of takes a little bounce on the turf and just got all of it, smashed it, and drew a good save from Sheridan. Had the shot been, you know, a yard to the right.

It's unstoppable. But yeah, really nice, really nice stuff from the U.S. Yeah, nice sequence, a little swarming counterpress from us on that left sideline with Dun, Horan, and Swanson. And then lightning quick to make three simple passes right after we win it, which is a huge, like, again, a huge development for us to have that wherewithal to do the little rondo. And then once we get the little rondo to create just a little bit of an opening for Crystal Dunn, she was very incisive carrying it. And then the nice subtle pass from her once she commits a defender into Alex Morgan, away from the goal. like she actually makes Morgan like reverse pivot away from the box, but that's good because that Mitt wrong footed the defender who was trailing Alex Morgan,

and that's what set Morgan up to create the pass to Sanchez. So again, it's this subtlety, like this subtlety that I think we've lacked in the attacking third over the last 12 months that was on display for me. Again, it didn't always end with the shot. We got to string more of it together, but totally the right direction to be moving. You know, if we could just be philosophical here for a second, The subtlety you're talking about is you play the, you play this, you just try to find somebody's feet nearby and then you expect that the rest of your team will join in numbers and somebody will be open to act. If you continue to do that and people continue to arrive, you'll be able to do something dangerous.

Exactly. You're nickel and dimming them a little bit and eventually you're banking on, one, the technique of your teammates to maintain. Because if it doesn't, you know, if there's a technical breakdown anywhere in the chain, the play goes away. But we have the players who can string these chains along. So you're just banking on somebody from Canada, missing a rotation as we're building, falling asleep, somebody from your team of extremely mega-talented players, doing someone slightly one-v-one. And that's all you might need to create the shooting opportunity that we created. What we'd been doing, of course, was sort of not doing all that early work and just being like,

well, I've got the ball, I can lump it in, even though the defense isn't disorganized, no one's falling asleep yet. I'm still just going to lump it in and see what happens. And I think we have moved away from that. I'm hopeful that it is enough to count as a real shift and not just, again, like a mirage. It's going to make Sunday even more fun. Let's hope. Let's hope.

Hopefully Swanson didn't burn all of her legs in that 85-minute appearance or whatever it was. Okay, I clocked a little clunkiness from Sullivan in the buildup right after that, which I note because she's, she was, she was a hard woman in this game. I mean, she was, she was a handful for Canada and she, she made two, like, cinematic crunching tackles. Yeah, that was like, this was like 80s football right here. These are the kinds of circles. That made a compilation video.

But there's always a little bit of, like, can she, is she elegant? enough to, you know, like play on the half turn or does she put teammates in tough positions? And she did it. She did it in this case. I think she kind of played it to Becky Sauerbrun with like a defender two yards away. Anyway, not that, not nothing we need to go on at length about. No. And on the flip side of that, we were, we were hitting some brave passes into like Sullivan and Iran under a little bit of duress and banking on them to play out of it. And for the most part, I think they did. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Cook goes on a ramble in the fourth minute

One of her two really fun Rambles forward from centerback And then I mean it kind of results in nothing She ends up all the way on the end line And I think tries to cross it right Yeah and it was again it's still another one of those The thing that we were finding a lot in this game

Because if you're not hitting the home run ball You got to get the ball up the field somehow And if you're not doing it on the press When you're doing it in possession It was a lot of that pistoning right we had a lot of players coming back to get the ball, whether it was Morgan or Rodman or Swanson. Like they would come back to goal and come and receive a pass.

And so I think we kind of got a little bit of that with, it might have been Sanchez and Cook on this marauding run, where Sanchez comes back to play, Cook plays it up to her, and then a nice layoff back to Cook, and she just has it with a head of steam. So we're not typically going to use Cook probably to do this, but the pattern that like up, up back, and then usually up again pattern was on real display.

in this game. Yeah, we'll get, we'll get to several instances of it. Right around the four minute mark, Cook plays a quick, lovely, like perfectly weighted pass

into the Man City Zone for Fox. It's so, it's nice. It's nice to see that from one of our centerbacks. I kind of stole your timeline item here. No, no, no, it's fine.

And it's just like, again, that kind of penetration, that kind of incisive passing is what I'm all about. And then even though we don't get much out of it from Fox here, we've now pinned Canada deep and since we didn't just cross it and have it

cleared out we then get to wreck Canada on our counterpress and that sets up the next chance right and that's the yeah because the ball's like you said the ball's pinned down in that corner it ends up with Fox and Fox

plays a ball into Morgan's feet it kind of trickles through to her Morgan is Morgan receives it back to goal tries to lay it off. I think she was trying to lay it off for Haran. Swanson comes darting through and kind of steps on it and rolls it backwards to Haran.

And Haran has a shot from, I don't, near the penalty marker and it's blocked, but it's a really good shooting opportunity. Yep. And again, you're looking for that clever bit of attacking play from Mal Swanson there and you get it. She was delivering on more than just the goals. She's in there doing some clever stuff. and this is what we got to have.

We got to give our players the platform to do all this clever stuff. It was just, I mean, we're five minutes in, and it just seemed like we were really firing on all cylinders. And then we get the goal, and boy, it was a nice one. Why don't you explain how we get to it, yeah? So it's simple out of the back. We kind of build it over to Sullivan. On the left side of the field, we center it over to Sullivan.

Sullivan with an easy switch to Trinity or to Sanchez and then Sanchez moves it up the field to Trinity who receives it at sort of the right side line just about just beyond the bottom of the circle so we're still kind of in the middle third here but because we've had this switch

and this nice shift of play Trinity is just all alone with one defender on that whole half of the field and so she's in complete control of the situation and she just walks or eases her way up from the middle third all the way into the Man City Zone, right? And the defender cannot commit to Trinity Rodman because you can't risk getting burned there. So she has to just sort of usher her upfield, let her sort of cat and mouse are all the way into the box.

And it's just, this is where I just want to, again, point out the control of Trinity to Rodman. This is a real asset for us. I think she received the ball at like the 549 mark. She gets into the Man City Zone, retreats back out to the sideline, maybe has it poked away a little bit. and then goes and gets it and then just walks right back into the man city zone against this one defender and ends up creating a passing window, ends up delivering the ball directly into Alex Morgan at 605. So Trinity Rodman in total control of the ball in the attacking third for like 15 seconds. Yeah.

I don't know. I was struck by this. I kept thinking like why can't she roast this Chapman fullback? But I guess maybe that's what you're saying is Chapman. Chapman is playing conservative with her so that she doesn't roast her. And so Rodman takes what she gives her and just sort of walks around with the ball out there. Yeah. And sort of you're picking your poison here, right?

So if Chapman doesn't go after her, then at some point, Rodman is going to pick out the pass that she wants to whichever player in the box she wants to pass to. And that's what happens. Rodman still has a tendency, I think, to hit sort of not pinpoint crosses where she doesn't necessarily know what her target is. but she has this capability to hold the ball until the window opens up for her. And so I think that's what we saw here was she was able to just keep this for as long as she wanted until eventually she gets the window she wants and then she smashes it in. Smashes it into Morgan's feet. Morgan kind of has to stab at it to get it, but she stabs at it and kind of steps on it to lay it off back for Swanson.

Swanson's body control here, like her ability to sort of get her feet set and then get over that ball and strike it is just so impressive to me. I mean, she locks, she, you know, toe down, locks her ankle and just sweetly strikes it. Not into the far corner,

but it's disguised enough that it, and it hit well enough that I don't think, I don't think the goalkeeper had a chance. I don't think Sheridan had a chance. No, because she couldn't, she didn't have time to like even really shift over to where she needed to be for the Swanson strike. So, yeah, the goal is an absolute gem from Swanson. So I know it's, it's, I spent a disproportionate amount of time on the

buildup was from Trinity. But I do think that it's really important that Trinity can give us this, even on a day where she might have been, uh, I don't know, I'm going to say less impressive, but these things are still present. These, yeah, these, uh, these traits, these features are still present for her. I thought she was pretty solid for what we would consider a quiet game. Right. Yeah. Definitely solid.

And definitely like someone who wants to play. Like she makes good, I think she makes good decisions in the buildup. There's a, there's sort of a harmony and a rhythmic component to the way she plays. I thought, like in the final third, there were some kind of poor decisions or like you kind of alluded to some just not. decisions, just hit it, you know. Yep, she still has those. The key for me here is those are balanced out by several sequences where she absolutely did make like the soccer play.

So it's not, it'd be more worrying if she didn't have any of those other other examples to balance it out. But she definitely, I mean, it just, it really just means that she is a volume attacker. She is getting into these spaces reliably for us. Yeah. Now, I, so that's the goal, 1-0, and Swanson, you know, just looks unplayable at this point. I felt like we weren't, after that, I felt like we weren't getting Sanchez on the ball enough. She, she was, you know, she had a pretty clever little pass between the lines to Morgan, I think it was, very early on.

And then she had that great hit. And then she kind of, I don't know, didn't do that much the rest of the game. Yeah, that is about right. I mean, she had a couple of good receptions, we'll call it, where it was either Horan or Sullivan, could hit a nice line-breaking pass up to her in a pocket, and then she would just help it along. She's kind of that kind of a rhythm passer.

But I would agree she was not, she definitely was not orchestrating all of this. It was more Haran than Sanchez. Anyway, eighth minute, you've got an item here. This was just another one of those Trinity kind of quiet passes. We have so many of these now, and that's huge for what we can do, is these quiet little, like, splits. You know, Trinity gets it in traffic. It wouldn't surprise me if this were six months ago, if she just sort of hoofs it up to Morgan and lets Morgan go.

But instead, she's calm on the ball. She splits like three defenders, and it's into Mal Pugh in the center circle by herself, and Mal gets to turn and run 3 v3. Mal Swanson, apologies. So we get going. Swanson ends up overhitting her pass-out. out to Sanchez. Sanchez catches up to it on the end line and again, doesn't just hit a hopeful cross, catches up to it, keeps possession, goes one v one, and has it knocked out for a corner.

But it's this kind of like, again, intentional decision making and execution that it's going to be, it's going to be huge for us. Yeah. We've got to keep doing this. There is a different, I mean, I know Sanchez is not really a winger. She's definitely not a winger for the national team, but there's a difference when you see her track a ball down to the end line compared to when you see P. I'm sorry, Swanson or Smith or even Rodman or Purse. You know, they track a ball down on the line and you're like, all right, now we're cooking. You see Sanchez do it and you're like, well, hopefully she wins a corner. She's going to have some busy feet. She's going to have some really busy feet. You have a could, Cadisha Buchanan note? Oh, yeah. Ninth minute. If you didn't know

Kadisha Buchanan, you were introduced to her, she smashes Alex Morgan with a with a clean shoulder and just drops Morgan. Yeah. Morselist. Left her down for a minute or so. Do you take the next one too? All right, so 11th minute we get

a sourbrun oopsie here. This one's not punished. It's like a loose Canada pass behind our back line because again, they didn't really have any coherent ideas in attack. Sauerbrun just gets it without much pressure and all she has to do is knock it back to Neer, but instead she tries to

hit like a short range pass to cook and trying to get that just right. She underhits it and Canada run onto it. And again, the last thing we need to do to a team that can't create anything is gift them chances. Nothing comes up here, thank goodness. But it's just something to keep an eye on as we have this sort of centerback competition. Really, it's just one point for Germa. Yeah. What it really comes down to is like if the issue with Cook is that she is making mistakes,

then Sauerbrun needs to be the completely reliable veteran that doesn't make these kinds of mistakes. So this is one where it's like, oh, well, if Sauerbrun's going to do this anyway, we may as well get Cook's athleticism and distribution range. It's funny because Cook really only had the one oopsie, which we'll get to here at the end of the first half. Otherwise, she was fantastic, but that one oopsie was really bad.

Yeah, it's a bad one, man. Yeah, we'll get to that one. we've got a 13th minute. I just have, and again, the fantastic composure we showed in buildup. Canada wasn't necessarily doing a high line of confrontation in the first half. It's hard to do that with Christine Sinclair on the field. But they were chasing, you know, they were kind of chasing us around when the opportunity presented itself. And there was a sequence there where we connected half a dozen passes under real duress in our own half.

Nobody electing to just sort of deal with the pressure by hitting a long ball and resetting. like we played our way out of it. And we eventually moved it from, you know, the left side line where we were completely buried with Don and Horan all the way out to the right side to Fox and Rodman. And it's just, it's, again,

it shows a real commitment to finding solutions. Yeah, totally. And I mean, Haran, Haran loves to slow things down, you know? She had a few of those,

man, in this one too, where even in these little like Rondo situation, she'll miss the opening, the Rondo opening that would have freed everything. But even when she misses, she can just hold it for long enough that she'll create another opening. So it's, again, good with the bad with her in. Yeah, it's, she does, like she did that little back heel for Dunn to Spring Dunn after, like, after holding it for a while. But sometimes she holds it for a while and then loses it.

And that's very frustrating to see. But, all right. I think you clocked the first maybe second home run ball attempt of the game in the 15th minute. It's done with her left foot, just kind of lumping it. Yeah, and I wonder if that's just because times she just kind of gets caught without a lot of options. And rather than, I mean, she's just working her way back. That's what it seemed like to me in that case. So it's like, I'm not going to lose it here.

Yeah, feet aren't quite as quick as they need to be. There were plenty of times where she did show off some good feet. But here it was just playing it safe more than really being like. Like the home run ball is what I should try to do. I thought overall done was quite sharp in this game. And so sort of comfortable and reliable on the ball and in possession, it seems like it makes a big difference to have a fullback that good at like receiving the ball and then finding somebody's feet.

Yeah. And again, with the ability when she needs to to knife in with the ball, which I think is really nice to have. just such a versatile player. And so I think, I honestly think with Fox on the right side, you get similar, similar qualities. Yeah. So I definitely was thinking this is a, this is a positive outcome for this experiment with done left, Fox right. I thought so too.

I felt myself not missing Sophia Huerta very much. Nothing against her, but like this was a good fullback pairing. And Fox, you know, Fox had one bad pass in the 15th minute that I clocked where she kind of missed, she kind of overhit. a pass on the ground to Iran and then it was a candidate going the other way. But boy, she left Adriana Leon in the dust seven times, eight times,

just powered past her at will. And so, you know, eventually Sonic comes in in the second half for Dunn and stays on the left and Fox stays on the right. So I wonder if this was Vlato, really just trying to give Fox the full right-back test.

I don't think Sonnet has necessarily jumped to number three on the full-back chart. But if Fox is, you know, a very capable right back, then I think it really opens the door to potentially only carrying three fullbacks in a 23 roster, you know, free up a spot there because you can just bring Huerta in on the right and move Fox back over to the left if you need to if something happens to done. That sounds like a very plausible theory and one that will make the Discord, the scuff Discord happy if that's what was happening rather than Sonnet jumping Huerta in the depth chart.

Well, and where does, again, where does just a different kind of fullback, too? She's not going to be the knifing, like on the ball. She's not going to be doing all that knifing. I think she's much more of the quarterback style player. Yeah, totally. Okay, so 17th minute we get Haran header off the post after some good buildup. Kind of unlucky that it rang the post. It went into the, Swanson kind of dribbled in from the left.

lost it, regained it, played it at Morgan, or maybe she was playing it at Rodman wider, but Morgan stepped onto it and then played it out to Fox, who took a touch and then curled a ball to the backpost for Horan to attack. A good cross and a good header, just wide. Yep, and again, this is another good example just to show the range Horan is showing positionally what the roles do, what is asking of her, because she'll be all the way back, uh, 10 yards in front of Sauerbrun in the buildup, but she's obviously a player who can arrive

in the box and be pretty effective. I noticed right after that, Horan read a passing lane to get and to cut, to cut out a pass and she just couldn't get her feet right to control it. And so she ends up kind of touching it. Helping it along. Yeah, helping it along. And, and, cutting herself out of the play. Oh, well. She was mostly good on the night. Yeah, so 17th minute, we just get a nice, another one of those Haran disguised passes.

She's busted these out a few times now in the last couple of windows. The more of these she's doing, the happier I am. Give me disguised passes over the home run ball any day. And this was one, again, into Sanchez, in the pocket, really clean. Sanchez, uh, freeze, Trinity gets Trinity into the right around the edge of the box. And this was one of those where Trinity just skies across over the goal, out of bounds for a goal kick.

You know, could she have done something else? Probably the cross wasn't a terrible choice. We did have Horan arriving again. So we had numbers backpost. Cross isn't the worst option here. Just execution. It's tempting, you know, when you have the ball out there, you see somebody running at the backpost.

You're like, I can drop it on their head. But again, for me, it's more the buildup, right? It's more of what we did to create Trinity Rodman alone in that space. And that was the Horan disguised pass to Sanchez in a great pocket. So that's totally repeatable. And then we clean up the final third stuff. My, you know, my strong desire to see Sanchez take that next step and become like a really, really good national team player. This was a frustrating moment because she received that ball in so much space.

It was a pocket. you know, it was like a pocket of a very large pair of pants, a huge pocket. And she just mishandled it and kind of lost a lot of the momentum that the moment had. And by the time she was able to play it out to Rodman, a little bit of that initiative had been taken away by just how long she had a dilly dally on the ball just to get it under control. Yeah, bubbled up on her a little bit. And that happened more than once in this game. All right. 19th minute, we get the first of several crunching tackles from Sullivan in the center

circle where she just goes to ground and just levels somebody. And then we win the ball. This is another example of us swarming. Like Sullivan was swarming. Sanchez was swarming. I think Haran was in the vicinity too. Right after that, some lovely buildup with Fox as the chief progressor. She ends up playing a pass sort of through the middle of the field to Haran on the left side.

Haran tries to play Swanson into the box down the channel And it's cut out by Buchanan It just didn't quite connect But the looks good And again the buildup is very intentional We get that up That ball up from Fox I think to Hurran And then back to Fox

Is that what we've got here? It was from Fox to somebody back to Fox And then to Hurran It was actually probably more I think this was Alex Morgan Who did a lot of this Coming back to sort of back Yes, yeah.

But this is exactly what we have to have. And it was really clean, really tidy, good decisions all around, good spacing. So that's what we got to see. So the up back and then a lot of times in this game instead of through, it was just up to the next level for a player to receive at their feet. And this time it went up to Horan who had all the time in the world to use a crystal done overlap as a decoy to try to slip in Swanson. Kind of up back further up. That's how we're calling it from now on So then we

Swanson There was a little bit of a Swanson Injury scare Like she was taking deep breaths And holding her chest After that She clattered with Buchanan But apparently she was totally fine

She came back on Looked the same as she was before Yeah we got to have all of our players Start just keeping a safety radius Around Cadishia Buchanan Yeah All right 22nd minute

another home run ball attempt. This one from Haran, but set up with the up and the back. The ball into Morgan's feet brought the back line up and Dunn had a runway coming from deep. Yeah, this was like classic third runner here where we get this up and back

and Dunn has now created a whole lane down the left side to run into. And to be honest, it just Morgan has, or I'm sorry, Haran kind of just has to like execute this pass because you've got a lot space to put it into. All you have to do is not put it into the body of the defender who's out of position. And this one, she just put into the body of the defender who was out a position.

But it was the right, this was, again, the right decision. It turns out like when you only try to hit the home run ball when it's on, things go a lot better. Canada started to, so that's the first kind of 20 minutes where we were utterly dominant and got a bunch of chances. Canada started to control the game after that, you know, maybe. 20-ish minute on. And I'm not exactly sure why that happened, but it happened.

I mean, it could just be that we, first off, Canada could have just settled in a little bit, again, entered the game with a lot on their minds. The other piece is we could have just started to, like, run out of that intensity, that adrenaline from the way we started. Again, our players are all in preseason. So they could have hit like a slight wall, a hedge, a hedge wall, 20 minutes in. And then Canada probably also just starting to figure some things out. Like they started to get a little bit of joy down our left side, the Swanson Dunn side. It just seemed like our rotations weren't always clean and efficient timing-wise, where suddenly like Canada just had a totally free player up on the left wing that, you know, wasn't accounted for.

But even when they found that player, we would recover in time to not really allow them any danger. Yeah, they didn't. They didn't have it in them to really ask us questions. You noticed something in the, around the 28-minute mark that has some bearing on the center-back discussion. So there were a couple, yeah, there were a couple moments here. One was Cook just getting straight, rinsed, just nutmeged by Fleming. And then she kind of puts her, you know, her trail arm in Fleming's path.

And Fleming went down kind of easily. sometimes you get the foul just because of how awkward it looks from Cook clearly beat decides to slow her down any way she can so I was hoping that would be Cook's big whoops moment but it was just a little whoops moment from Cook

and not punished because there was no foul given and then maybe a minute later it was Canada's turn to actually do some disorganizing and a little bit of patient play in the buildup and a little bit of aggressive stepping from Sullivan and Horan left a big gap between our backline in our double pivot. And Buchanan hit a nice ball into Sinclair.

It might not have been Buchanan. But anyway, Canada hits this nice ball into Christine Sinclair in a massive gulf of space. And it makes me wonder if maybe Sauerbrun just doesn't have the quickness to get up into that into Sinclair's back to prevent this from happening. There wasn't really anyone else threatening in behind. So, you know, we're kind of being too safe with our positioning by staying this far back off of our midfielders.

You would like Sauerbrun to step up, get on Sinclair's back, and prevent that pass from being open. Yeah, I mean, the whole back line could probably stand to compress there. We've got Canada under enough pressure that they can't just pick out any pass they want. You know, they can't pick their head up and hit a cross-field ball if we tighten things up. And again, Sauerbrun's the leader back there. It's not like this was happening over and over again, so I don't want to make it sound like

Sauerbrun was an issue. It just stood out to me in the moment because of how unusual it was for that game for Canada to create that much space. Okay. Okay. I noticed in the 30th minute, Sanchez, we were pressing,

but Sanchez was a little behind in the press and then got dribbled around by Jesse Fleming to turn out of it and Canada was going the other way. She kind of just quit on that play just like half a beat early And then and then try to get back into it after quitting a little bit and couldn't do it Yeah After arriving late to begin with Yeah

32nd minute Sanchez tries a first time past to Spring Rodman and hits it way too hard Just kind of pummel it out over the end line It was a good pattern to create that moment for Sanchez to have But yeah she absolutely smashed it Yeah 33 minute you've got something So we get another brave buildup, and this is like a sweeping team move from back to front, left to right. And I just again noted how willing we were to like withstand nervous moments in the buildup.

And so I hope this continues to be a feature for us. It ends up kind of fizzling out with Rodman at the corner of the box all the way in the attacking end. But that does lead to Sullivan's chance for the really old school hard woman tackle. I feel like the big one of the night. Off the ground, just crunch. She wins it, no foul call. Lovely to see. 34th minute.

Sanchez, so we get that Rodman chance. I guess Sanchez intercepts a pass from Cadisha Buchanan. Again, you just can't quite get the ball right with her feet quickly. Yeah, because she picks us up at like the top of the box. can and just really careless to pass it right to Sanchez. Yeah, and then she passes it to Rodman, but it's kind of behind her a little bit. It doesn't lead her into the space. And Rodman has to stop her momentum and then has a shot, but it's dealt with pretty easily

by Sheridan. Yeah, the pass doesn't let Rodman step into any kind of a shot. So, again, a situation that should be a lot more dangerous, created by our press, created by a mistake that we've, you know, I'm going to say we created the mistake, but we didn't do nearly enough to, like, turn it into real goal danger. Well, we got almost immediately after that, we got, we got our second goal, and it was, you've seen it, if you've seen the game, if you watch the game or the highlights, but it's out of nothing.

And there's really, I don't know, there's really nothing to learn from it. Mallory Swanson just pounces on a mistake from Gilles. She tries to play it back to Sheridan. The pass is off and a little too far out for Gilles and Swanson gets there first and just thumps it into the net to zero. Yeah, I mean, again, not much other than even good teams will make these mistakes in the back. And our press is right there to capitalize. And it's, again, like, I know this is kind of feels fluky, but our press creates these fluky moments. We got goals in the November window against Germany.

in England from fluky moments too because when you put this kind of pressure on teams for 90 minutes like they're going to make mistakes. Is Japan going to make a mistake like that? Probably, yeah. I mean, Japan

is going to try to play through us for sure. They're not lumping it over us. So it's one of those double-edged stores where I really enjoy it and teams can find some joy. England controlled the ball a lot against us in November. Germany had a lot of good possession sequences, but eventually you're going to screw up somewhere and you better hope that like we don't punish it on that play because we're going to be running at you.

38th minute. I'm kind of skipping ahead a little bit. 38th minute, good buildup from Haran to Rodman and then Rodman just a little one-touch pass into Sanchez and Sanchez tries to hit a cross and it's to nobody in particular. And I'm like, come on, Ashley. It's like that it's kind of similar to that one that she like smash super hard where maybe the idea was right, but like the execution is nowhere close. Just gets like a little overly excited, right? Bit of the puppy dogs about her.

38th minute, again, another high turnover created after another good team move forward and Morgan has a shot blocked. This was a bad giveaway from Canada too, wasn't it? Yeah, it was. And it's just showing again that like the team move forward is good. That's good progress. Like our team building forward together in a very intentional way. It does fizzle out, but then the counterpress shows that we have these other ways to get the,

to get our scoring chances. So I thought that's what this game was for me, was a nice balance of the two. Okay. Well, we should mention the Sinclair had her on a corner. She just can't get over it. And then the big chance for Janine Becky,

a hit from distance. Cook has the ball over on the right side, and she tries to, I don't know exactly what she was trying to do, but she tries to play it diagonally across the field, and she passes it right to Becky just on the top of zone 14. Becky takes a couple touches and then smashes one, top right corner. Neyer makes a really good save. I thought it was an excellent save. Yeah, no disputing that. No, no, it wasn't top right corner, top left corner.

My bad. It's ney or to her right, yeah Yeah Yeah Great safe Great footwork I mean I see the I see the Hollywood

Comments come out Whenever keepers do that But that's just what good goalkeeping Technique looks like Like that's a She took a good path to the ball Got herself Got herself long

And it gets there I guess we already sort of We already dragged cook for this So I'm not sure there's much else to say Don't do that It's Again, it's the same thing we talk about that, that we bait other teams into do that.

We bait Germany into doing this against us. You're really good. You will execute that correctly a lot of the times. But if you don't, we're here and we're going to punish you. All right. Half time has arrived. Let me take this opportunity to say. We are an ad-free podcast.

Please join our Patreon. If you are able, you get the Monday reviews every week. So an exclusive episode every week and access to it. to the Discord are us, that's Greg, Vince, and I will be tailgating on Sunday morning in Nashville. We got hot chicken coming and cinnamon rolls from Iowa and a keg of beer and probably a lot of people bring in various things to drink. So come join us. I'll have the scuffed flag on top of my car around 10 a.m.

In lot five. Just got word that that is officially where we will be meeting up. Okay, good. Lot five. I think that's it. Oh, yeah, pick up soccer Saturday night. Tomorrow night at Rose Park, 6.30 p.m. I think we're going to have a decent crowd and you should show up even if you don't, even if you're not a patron, even if you almost never listen to this podcast.

You should come play with us. Get out there stretch properly. Make sure you get all your stretching in ahead of time. No, no, no, no, no. We're there from 630 to 8.30. We got the key for the lights and the bathrooms in case you're worried about that. 49 minute mark. Greg, take it away. Yeah, just another really patient buildup, good composure. Again, some duress that we deal with, move it up the left side, and then around midfield switch it back around to the right, eventually get at the Trinity again at the edge of the attacking third, where she leaves Janine Becky for dead, drives into the box unopposed, squares it hard for Morgan. Again, it's that smashed square low ball that I think is still better for me than just the hopeful, like, chest highball.

Morgan kind of just misses this one or dummies that I can't tell if it's intentional or not. But it goes straight to Sanchez at the six-yard box, dead center of the goal. And once again, her first touch just doesn't set her up to shoot or would have been, you know, just Pass it into either side, free goal. Yeah. But she had a big window to shoot into. Yeah, she kind of extends the play a little bit before eventually she runs into the business end of Kedisha Buchanan. It actually is kind of like a nasty head-to-head collision.

I didn't catch that. Yeah. Just kind of the side of Buchanan's head. I mean, Sanchez tries to turn with her pirouettes and just pirouettes directly into Buchanan's skull. and then goes down like a dropped curtain and Kadesha doesn't even look back at her. Do you think Morgan touched that ball on its way through to Sanchez? Because that would explain why it was so difficult for Sanchez to handle it. Yeah, and it's one where even if she didn't, like, it's coming in hot.

Like Trinidad hits this ball pretty hard. And so even if Morgan didn't touch it, just Morgan being there to make a play on it is going to throw Sanchez off. But yeah, bubbles up just enough. And Buchanan, again, is able to recover from trying to deal with Morgan to getting all the way over to Sanchez before Sanchez can even attempt a shot or any other passes. Yeah, it's tricky to hit a ball like that first time when somebody else is like an inch from it as it passes by them. But again, another, I guess I'm going to call it like a quiet moment from Trinity Rodden because that turn and leaving Becky is not nothing. Like, that's a huge chance created from Trinity Rodman there. Yep.

Fair enough. And then in the 53rd minute, we get a home run ball from Horan to Rodman. Rodman has Swanson running across her face towards the near post and Morgan arriving late. But she sort of passes it to the space between the two of them. It's, um, so just after this, this good play by Rodman, I'm going to say we need better than that from her. Like, pass it, you know, decide who you're going to pass it to and pass it to one of them. Don't just like pass it to nobody. Yes, that's, that's correct.

And it's just, uh, I think this is a, uh, experience one. Like, I think with more experience, you're less likely to sort of pass that to Swanson, where Swanson is and more likely to, to recognize the, uh, you know, the, the, projection in the future of where Swanson will be and where she wants it. So I think that, I think that's coming. I still think that it's a positive here, the way that Trinity shows she can stretch the field. Like she has all the field stretching ability of any of our best field stretchers. Plus, she can do a lot of, plenty of other things with it.

So I still kind of count this as a, as a positive moment for Trinity. Okay. Anything else before we get to the subs in the 62nd minute? No, let's hear who the subs were. Okay, Sanchez comes off from U.S., Morgan comes off for Ashley Hatch, and I would say the game loses some of its interests for me after this. I know you're still going strong, Greg. Well, I guess what I'm saying is we keep all the strengths going. So I know there are no goals coming for the rest of the timeline, but we keep up this consistent level of threat.

and again, it's not just like, oh, it feels threatening because we're crossing lumping balls into the mixer. Like, it's real soccer threat for me. And I just, maybe other people don't distinguish between those two things, but I do. And so for this team to have more of the ladder is important. Well, let's talk about a few of the moments. Why don't you take the lead here? So, like 67th minute, not long after the subs come in, another really simple patient buildup,

Haran drags out to the right side line So a little bit of rotations going on We find her and she easily springs Trinity in behind With a nice ball that sort of Hooks around Lawrence That was a really nice pass And again like it does You don't Trinity doesn't need that much of an edge

To maintain the edge so once she's in behind She's right into the man city zone The one setterback for Canada gets out to Trinity So she squares it into hatch Who is right at the near post You know four yards out from goal and Kadish Bukannon makes an outstanding play coming in from the weak side to put hatch off and I think even block the shot out for a corner.

But another like really dangerous moment from Trinity that can kind of evaporate in your mind since nothing, you know, concrete comes of it. Yeah, I thought, I agree that Trinity deserves a lot of credit for this. But I did think like if she had picked her head up and hit a first time ball, somebody mentioned this in the Discord, but if some, if she had picked up her head up and played a first time ball to hatch, there might have been a little less opportunity for Kadeisha Bekanae to make that play. So instead, Robin took a few touches and then tried to play it at the near post.

I mean, shoulda coulda woulda. Yeah, I won't say that's, I won't say that's a, that couldn't have happened. It's just one where she'd just be transferring the touch because I think if she plays that early to hatch, hatch is still running full speed. She's going to have to take a touch. and if you're running full speed directly at the keeper and take your touch, that can put you in a spot where you just touch it directly to the keeper.

Okay. All right. 70th minute, another high turnover created. It's careless from Buchanan. I guess there were a few careless moments from Buchanan in this game. Why don't you go take it from there? Yeah, this is just Buchanan kind of, we're sitting off of her for a bit when she's got it,

and Buchanan is a good centerback, And so she sees a chance. She's going to try to carry the ball, you know, forward and put a little stress on our, on our defensive line. But we are not particularly stressed by it. So Trinity kind of flashes in to take away one passing lane or driving lane. And so Buchanan adjust to that. And then Christy Mewis reads it from the other side.

And we've got Mao right in front of Buchanan. And so we just kind of harry her into a mistouch. And then that's it. We've got it three on three again going the other way. We're not super clean once we get to the box, but it does eventually pinballed a hatch. Hatch gets it across to Swanson, like, at the 6th, and it just doesn't quite come off.

It's a looping ball into Swanson, and that sort of fizzles out there. But again, I'm just counting that as more threat created by this really intense press that we have. For sure, for sure. And in 75th minute, we get that big chance for Ashley Hatch, 1V1 with the keeper. It's a lovely ball over the top for Mewis. I can't remember who played that pass.

I, Haran, I thought you were doing a little bit of a bit It was definitely Horan It was a whole rum ball from Horan I wasn't doing a bit No, yeah, that's right, it was Horan And then Mewis lays it off neatly for Hatch

A very smart play executed perfectly From Mewis And Hatch is 1V1 But has her shot blocked by Sheridan's outstretched right hand These kind of moments Where you're 1V1 with the keeper Are kind of are pretty fascinating to me because I find myself thinking like,

what should Hatch have done here? Like pump faked and then just chipped it over her? Like, what's the right way to finish? Because she does, she kind of, she takes a little time to wind up and then she hits it hard and low to Sheridan's right. Sheridan just gets a handout and stops it.

Yeah, and Sheridan, again, an outstanding goalkeeper here. But yeah, Hatch's touch kind of handcuffs her. So the ball's sort of right under her feet. And she still tries to do like the quick step and then she just smashes it. So there are definitely more sophisticated finishing attempts there than to just smash it through. But she just kind of, I think with the handcuffing first touch, loses the wherewithal to come up with those.

And it ends up just wanting to get any shot on goal off. Yeah. But the buildup here, the buildup still warrants mention here, because this is, you know, the lead up to the chance is like a full minute of possession. And this is, Canada had kind of gotten a higher and higher line of confrontation. Sinclair had been withdrawn at this point so they can, they have more chasing ability. And we played through it and we played, we were in some, what felt like maybe some dead ends at times and got our way out of them. And then we had this really nice moment in this sequence where it goes back to Fox at right back.

and she hits a really brave pass into Sullivan in the midfield. Sullivan had checked her shoulder ahead of time, sees where the pressure is going to be coming from, has a really nice turn, receive, and pass up to Swanson. Very quick. So it cuts out their entire Canada midfield, forces Buchanan to step up. Swanson just hits it over to Iran.

And now we've just created this gap in Canada's back line that we wouldn't create if we hadn't been as efficient as we had with our buildup. Right. So again, just clocking all of these things and seeing that commitment to playing through some difficulties, that's how you can open up a home run ball. So when Horan hits the home run ball, it's not into double coverage against, you know, like Alex Morgan just running against two centerbacks.

It's Christy Mewis, like running into the gap that was created from the earlier buildup. Very encouraging. Very encouraging. It's like choreography, choreography. I mean, like, this stuff really does matter. I didn't think Hatch was very good. I mean, that one mischance sort of set that aside. It's just, it's not the same when she's out there.

I don't think as even when Alex Morgan is. I wish Sanchez had done more to push her way up the pecking order. But it's going to be Lavelle, Horan, Sullivan in the midfield, I think. And it's probably not going to be year. lineup, Greg, where you have Macario in the midfield. I mean, because it's going to be Swanson Morgan Smith up front. I don't think, I do acknowledge a lot of the good things Robman does, but don't you think it's, Volaco's probably going to go Swanson, Macario Smith up front?

You're talking about this summer? Yeah. I don't know if you can leave Macario off the field. I just, I just don't think you can do that. No, Swanson Macario Smith, so Morgan is coming off the bench. Yeah, that would not surprise me. Wouldn't surprise me at all. And again, the problems we're talking about here are which outstanding player do we keep in

and which outstanding player do we drop? Right. Well, for me, the first 20 minutes were incredible. For Greg, the entire game was incredible. It's a step in the right direction. We saw us do this against New Zealand backups to backups. And it's like, okay, it seems like we're trying a little bit. But who knows?

Because that was New Zealand's backups. And now we just saw it against Canada. So Canada is a real team, and these were their real players, albeit not necessarily like prioritizing the play on the field here. But this was another step in the right direction. I mean, like, sure. Like, everybody's saying that, but like they might have been playing just fine. Right, right. This might have just been us doing things.

So for me, a totally a step in the right direction, another box checked. And if we do it again against Japan, like, that's it. we're cooking. Yep. And all we're going to do is add more talent as they get back from injury. Yep. All right. I think that's it.

Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you in Nashville.