Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #369: USWNT v Brazil recap

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

The U.S. is quite good at women's soccer, but there's lots to worry about. Greg and Belz talk about the messiness at the back, the quality up front, the uneven but improving decision-making up front, revenue from the press, our easily-bypassed midfield, Dunn looking like she's almost fully back.  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. Alex Morgan broke the record for goals scored by a mom as a U.S. player with a lovely curler at the end of the first half. And the U.S. won the eighth edition of the She Believes Cup. They've won six out of eight since that tournament was invented with a perfect nine-point window by defeating Brazil two to one. We are here to recap it. Greg, how you doing? I'm all right, bells. I think I've reached a piece with what this women's national team is. Have you?

I'm curious. I'm curious about that. Somebody in the Discord, I think, put it best. It's like at some point you just put on the beer goggles that you've had for the last, from being in Nashville for six hours, and you just enjoy watching some players with a ton of individual talent, do some really talented things. What is it? That level of individual talent is enough for you to not be too worried about, like, are non-sockering instincts?

I mean, I'm worried about it. You just, but I think at this point, it's safe to say that we aren't, we aren't going to, like, address it in, like, a significant way. You know, I think, I think there's been some improvements, to be honest. Yeah. But it doesn't, you know, we're not going to flip a switch and, and start demonstrating the level of, like, decision-making and organization and coherence that we saw from Japan specifically. Yeah, you came away from that.

US Japan game, an even bigger fan of Japan, right? Yeah, for the last decade, like, they've been one of my favorite teams to watch the Japan women's national team. And almost every time we play it, I'm like, what would it take for us to just poach their entire coaching staff from senior team to youth team and just bring them over and have install them as our staff? Yeah. I mean, maybe a national language initiative.

everybody to learn Japanese. Yeah, I thought we, in this game, the game against Brazil, I mean, we talked about the Japan game in Woso Wednesday, and I think most people who watched it thought it wasn't that great of a performance. I thought this was better. And even a lot of good ideas from us, lots of good ideas in the attack. Not great execution of those ideas, in large, but I guess I've learned from you to be more of a more of a critic of ideas than

of execution. Yeah, I mean, at some point you got to put it all together, right? And I think, I think, you know, that's what we see. And we're seeing, in my opinion, still a little bit of like baby steps. The Japan game, like, for us, ideas-wise, I think was a pretty big step backwards. Because, but again, a lot of the credit for that, I do think, goes to Japan because it's not just their possession, which I love, everything about their possession I love. But their possession, again, is also very modern in the sense that when they lose possession, I mean,

this is like the foundational principle positional play. Like when they lose possession, they're in such good shape to not allow us often to get out and run at them. They were so calm on the ball that we couldn't effectively press them, which is like totally unique. We press everyone well. We press like Brazil, Canada, but also England, Germany. Like we press all of those teams. We press all of those teams well. We get chances against the best teams with our press, and we got nothing from Japan with our press. That's unheard of for the U.S. Women's National Team. And struggled with their pressure a little bit, too. I would say we struggled much less with Brazil's. I don't know if that's – I'm curious what you think. I don't know if that's because

Brazil wasn't putting that much pressure on us or because their press was kind of bad, because I kind of, I noticed sometimes with that 4-4-2 of theirs, it was pretty easy for us to play through it. I think it was more hit or miss because there were some spells in that Brazil game where it was a, you know, we talk about some the oops moments from like Alana Cook and how we get one of those games. We had like five and five minutes against Brazil. And that's one of the other things I think about with our national team. I feel like I have to qualify it now because I've talked so much about Japan. And I do intend at some point, Bell, to try to convert this to a Japanese women's national

team podcast. Yeah, great. The market research is clear that that's a great idea. But in the meantime, like, we, you know, we had so many oopsie moments in, in certainly these last two games that that's sort of another worrying thing for us going into a World Cup. Whereas, all right, we do have just gobs of individual talent. We have a good press that I think will create chances against almost every team we play against. But are we, are we like, more vulnerable this cycle to just giving stuff away. And that was coming from Cook, that was coming from Germa, Sauerbrun Sullivan. Like, I mean, Huerta, we had so many of those sort of cheap giveaways that didn't necessarily

get punished now, but you do that in a tournament setting enough times and, and it's curtains. So, again, this is just where I'm in the team. Our team has an outstandingly high floor. And a lot of that is because of how good we are. and we talk about the wealth of attacking options. Our defenders are good, right? Like Germa and Cook and Sauerbrun are good. Crystal Dunn is back.

Yeah, that's a big takeaway from last night, man. She was excellent. Emily Fox is good. And again, even our backups come in and none of them are catastrophic, right? So we just have to, we just have to like cross our fingers that the oops moments here were uncharacteristic. You know, and Sullivan isn't on roller skates every game. And this last, the Brazil game felt like a low mark for her as far as some of her giveaways. And I don't even know if everyone else thought that she was particularly like,

I didn't notice a ton of giveaways from her. I did notice her and Heron getting just eliminated on the dribble constantly. Too much, right? And that's actually the other thing I was going to talk about with Sullivan's giveaways is, when Lindsay Huran is the other person in your double pivot, you can't have half of your double pivot have those giveaways. because Horan is not going to make up the ground. When you have the cheap giveaway, she's not suddenly on top of the play to catch up to it.

I could be wrong, but I mean, we talk about Haran's ability to write a challenge, which is fantastic. She can write a challenge. But I don't know if she won a single duel against the ball. Like she was just getting, she was just getting sliced past over and over and over again. There's some rough tape for her from this Brazil game in particular.

people will say, well, stop slandering Lindsay, but, you know, she's, uh, she is a very good player on the ball, but against the ball, man, she's not, she's not it right now. And I guess we can protect that with Sullivan as long as Sullivan's not giving the ball away. And it kind of speaks to how we remain sort of between two minds, because if we're going to be this super press happy team, which I think, again, I think that's, that's where we're going to make our most of, make most of our money in the World Cup is with the press. Horan, Haran's a tough one there.

Like, we do a lot of work to try to close gaps that Haran has a hard time closing. And then obviously, you know, when you get into like Rapino, when she comes in at the end of the game, she's not exactly the best player in the press either. And in this particular window, even Alex Morgan was kind of not doing enough of the work, I think, from up front to make sure that press was clicking the whole time. She's a very good outlet once we win it.

when the wings and Sanchez or Lavelle are doing the work, once we win it, she's an excellent target to play to. But I didn't think she was getting, doing quite the ground coverage that we needed. There are caveats here, right? This is pre-season for almost all of these players. And three games in a really tight window. Yeah. And we won all three of them too, you know, less anyone forget.

And that's what I mean about making peace with it, right? Our floor, and we've talked about this forever, our floor is just stupidly high because of the individual talent we have here. At any moment, Mal Swanson can burst past you and being on goal despite us creating virtually nothing in an organized sense. Like Japan makes a couple of mistakes on one play. That's it. She's in and we're winning. Not to mention Swanson has, you know, she has wrestled with the mystical concept of finishing and she has solved it. Yes, she has.

until her first miss in the World Cup where I'm sure we will hear an announcer say, you bet on her to finish that. Yeah. All right, let's do the lineups. Alyssa Neier and goal replacing Casey Murphy, Emily Fox, Naomi Germa, Becky Sauerbrun, and Crystal Dawn across the back line. I think you mentioned that Germa had an oopsie or two. I didn't notice those.

I thought she was fantastic last night. She almost always was. The only reason I caught it is because there was, again, like the seventh minute, we'll get to it, I'm sure, in the chronology. We had like four straight oopsies, like out of the back. Like, we give it away, they get a shot off, and then on our ensuing goal kick, we somehow give it away again. And one of them was Germa.

It wasn't, it wasn't like horrible. It wasn't directly to them in front of the goal, the way we got a good one from Canada in the opening game. But it was enough where you're like, oh, man, we don't want that to happen a lot. Right. Okay. Well, it seems like Germa, Germa might be the first. well, not the first name on the team sheet,

but the first centerback on the team sheet. And it's kind of unclear, right? Who Vlako prefers? But I would guess, I mean, if it were me, it would be Germa and then, I don't know, situational with Sauerbund and Cook. Well, you know, I just talked about Horan and Rapino's being sort of liabilities in the press. Like Sauerbrun kind of is too.

Like, you know, again, and there's going to be a domino effect where if Sullivan does get beaten, her and can't cover four, like we're counting on the fleet footedness of Sauerbrun and her centerback partner to, like, put out these fires. And Sauerbrun's not quite as fleet-footed as she once was.

Yeah. Well, and then point taken, and then Dunn in Fox seemed to me the first choice, full backs, despite, I think, Dunn's somewhat justified frustration about having to play out of a position for the national team.

she and she and fox are clearly the two top fullbacks and it seems like flakco kind of sees it that way now too i think that's how he sees it uh and i think that's probably where i land uh i mean that's that's for sure where i land what what i thought was interesting was in that middle game against japan uh when we did start fox and werta uh you know i'm all for giving sanchise that run out to see if she is there and i think in that japan game she very clearly wasn't there uh and that's where you're going all right we you know volatko made the comment about who done has to compete with to get into that midfield and it is stacked but sometimes it's

Sanchez and if it's like okay if you're comfortable running Fox and where to out there and you're left with Sanchez as you're attacking midfielder that sure seems like a place where you could stick Crystal Dunn and improve but but in sort of the you know the all healthy abstract I think this is probably where we are where it might be done in Fox we mentioned this yesterday but we should also mention that in that interview, he said Cat Macario's would be competition for anybody in the midfield, anybody who wants to play midfield for the U.S. And that squares with what you said last week.

So it sounds like we're going to see Macario as an eight when she comes back, if she comes back, when, when, when. The question is going to be whether she's starting or whether she's behind Lavelle or some combination of her and Lavelle, right? You know, and you've got to ease her in. assume. We're working on some tight time frames here going into the World Cup with players who have not played competitively in Macario's case almost a full year now. Is that right? Nine months, eight months? Yeah. And then, eight or nine. You know, Sophia hasn't played since the end of the

end of the end of ESL season. So, I mean, she played in their friendlies in November. Can I go back to the centerbacks too? Because I just wanted to point out for trying to read Vlato's mind here. Each of the three centerbacks that, you know, that are clearly the three, started two games. So it's hard to know for sure whether people I think were tempted to say this is the lineup that Vladko would play in the World Cup tomorrow, the one he trotted out against Brazil.

I don't know if I'm there yet or if it was just he was going to be rotating in that tournament regardless. Okay. All right. And then let's continue with the lineup. Sullivan as the six, LaValle and Horan as the eights.

You know, Haran dropping deeper in her free role that she relishes so much. And then Rodman, Morgan, and Swanson across the front line. Brazil had Lorena and Goel, Tynara, Lauren, and Raphael, and Tamutis as the back line. Lauren, really good, number 14. Really good centerback, I thought. So the midfield band of four would be Nicole, Ari Borges, Carolyn, and Adriana. And then the two strikers were Beatrice Zanerato, who was a handful.

and Debiania to the timeline. You have this seven-minute oopsie sequence clocked. I do not, but I'll start in the fourth minute when a corner falls to Dunn at the top of the box, and she hits it low and hard, and it gets deflected by a defender, wrong footing the keeper, and then tings off the outside of the post. Nearly found its way in right off the kickoff. Yeah, and again, I'm going to back our squad, unset pieces. I want to say in both directions,

offensively and defensively, I think we have excellent competitors, and I feel like, you know, in those sort of scramble moments, I do think we're good. So yet just sort of another revenue stream for us as we approach this World Cup. Yeah, so many different revenue streams for us.

Well, the two of them, for sure. Sixth minute, nice feathered pass from Germa in the back to Lavelle in a pocket of space. She takes it down with her chest, turns and kind of side-foots it on the half-folly to Rodman. I clocked this because it was really, I thought a really nice idea from Rodman to turn and play a curling through ball

for Swanson in the middle of the field. Like it was on. It was just, the pass was just a bit heavy. And I think, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, I feel like, you know, we're wanting to just see more of that, right? Like a slightly varied version of the home run.

ball. Yeah. It's still a home run ball, but this is, it's a clear window to pass into, and, I mean, she just hit it a little heavy. I thought Rodman kind of struggled last night, but still, still offers a lot of value for sure. I just noted that we're finding, early on, we're finding Lavelle in pockets in the midfield, which is good. It seems like we were able to play through the middle of the pitch. So, yeah, we were finding Lavelle in a couple of pockets. I thought Heran was doing a nice job of hitting those passes on the floor, which is for me, like what her strength is.

So as long as we're doing that, then I think we're in good shape. It's when she starts really starting to just do the lofted ball over the top as her default that I don't think we're getting too much from her. And again, offensively or defensively at that point. At this point in the timeline, I think Brazil started to lean on us a little bit, and we started to sort of invite their leaning with some real mistakes in about the seventh minute

Sullivan kind of gets flattened in a collision with Sauerbrun and Zonaretto goes on a bit of a marauding run to the top of the box and smashes it wide of the post Yeah right I mean anything there that you saw that Well the the production cut to the play right after the collision So I didn't really see it I just know that Sullivan ends up on the floor and Zonorado is off to the races.

Yeah, bad production there. And then while they're showing Zonarado's replay, we are busy giving away the goal kick. And it's just one where we played short to Germa, at least I think by the time they cut back to the live action, Germa is under pressure, like, in the corner of the field, tries to hit a ball at the field on the floor. It's instantly picked off by Brazil at like the top of the box at the corner of the box.

And Sauerbrun is like way over on the weak side of the box. So they do get the ball to Debena right at the top of the box all alone. She just pivots and has a shot that's pretty tame. Yeah, right at Murphy, right? Yeah, so Murphy collects. But again, it's just this liability, right? We as a team look far from invincible. And I feel like that's kind of been, you know, from the November friendlies where we lost, what, was it two straight games?

And it was real panic time. But I do think there's that element. I'm not necessarily worried about the aura. Three straight. We lost three straight. England, Spain, Germany. There you go. It's not the aura for me of invincibility.

It's just the fact that we aren't good enough to be invincible anymore. Like, we just aren't that good anymore. In that sense, we just have too many mistakes that we just sort of invite these chances. So even here, within 30 seconds of Murphy collecting that pass, you know, we try to play out of the back again. And Sullivan, you know, builds to her and she's under no pressure and she just passes the ball one touch directly to. a Brazilian defender and they're running at Becky Sauerbrun again. And we deal with that. Brazil kind of overhits the ball under the box.

Murphy collects. We build from Murphy again and we eventually get the ball to her in our defensive third and where she can normally ride a challenge here, Brazil just takes the ball directly off of her feet and they're coming at us again. So it's just like a sort of a microcosm of how not invincible we are and how we're not great that building out of the back, but we certainly have that as a thing that we try to do a lot, if that makes sense. Yeah.

And then, I mean, I clocked a messy moment in the 13th minute, which is a little while after these that you're talking about, but it was Lavelle passed it back to Sauerbrun, Sauerbrun, but it was, the past was, I don't know if Lavelle was even passing to Sauerbrun, but Sauerbrun runs over to kind of clean it up, and she clears it right off of Dabinia to the corner, and then Don has to go over and do some work to, to, to, win the ball and take it forward, which he does very nicely. But yeah, I agree a bit too much messiness. And I'll just say right now, I'll use this as my little rant.

And again, bring Japan in as a comparison point, like when you watch Japan play, I don't know, where were your seats, bells? Were you on the end line? I was behind the goal that we scored on in the first half. Okay. You know, great seats, by the way. You can see it, you can see it even, you know, at field level, but especially when you get up from a TV angle, like their organization and their structure, just there are a three

pass ahead team, right? Like, you can pause at any point in Japan's possession and be like, oh, here are their next three passes. And I don't mean that in like, they're too predictable. I mean that in the sense of like, oh, there is nothing the defense can do to prevent Japan for making these next three passes. And if they try to, anything they try to do to prevent those will actually open up even more dangerous options for Japan. And you see Japan as a collective understanding this and their movement exploits it. And when you do over-pursue to try to take away one of those obvious choices, they make the right decision.

You know, their decision tree is so sound that they make the right call to then move into this new space that you opened up because you've over-pursued. And we are such the opposite of that, right? We are literally like a one-pass ahead team. We know exactly one-pass what we're going to do, and whoever that ball is going to has no idea what they're going to do with it next. And very often no one around them looks like they have anything, they have any idea what's going to happen next.

And those two things are related, right? If everyone around them knew what was going to happen and was moving into those positions, the player receiving the ball would probably have a better idea of what they're going to do with it next. But we just don't have that in our buildup. Certainly not to the extent that Japan did. I think in the second half of the Brazil game, we started to get to be like a one and a half pass ahead team where we might have had like an inkling. But again, this is why like Horan's ability to ride a challenge becomes valuable when you're a one-pass team

because no one knows what's going to happen next. So Horan can at least get it and hold it and try to figure something out. Otherwise, everyone just sort of receives it under pressure, even when we can play into the amoeba, receives it and just has to like retreat on the dribble to buy time to figure out what we're going to do next. Right. And there are times where somebody tries to hit a second runner or something. It always looks like it's like a novel thing that we're trying for the first time. Yes, exactly.

So when we try it, we basically break down. immediately. And again, when Japan has the breakdowns, you're like, oh, that time it broke down, you saw exactly what they were trying to do. And like 30 seconds later, they will do it successfully. So their success to fail ratio is so much higher. And then, unfortunately, for Japan, like, once they get into the, literally into the box, they can just play their way into the box, then they just start to either run out of, basically they run out of the ability to leverage that into a shot. to an extent. I mean,

they still created shots against us. I'm talking a lot about Japan because we didn't get a chance to record the full recap. It's your passion, really. They created shots against us, right? They created really good chances. And they almost all came on these sequences

that I would sell at least half of my soul for even like a few of these in a game for the U.S. So they had most of their, they created most of their dangerous stuff in the last 10 minutes, I would say. I mean, I'm not disagreeing with how good they were in the first two-thirds of the field. But like that inability to have that lack of cut and thrust is a problem for Japan. It definitely is.

I think what I said at halftime was that basically I would like to just do exactly what Japan's doing with our team with our much, much better players. But I just like that's not something that you can just do, right? Even though I think, you know, Sophia Smith is a better attacker than anyone Japan has, you can't just flip a switch and be like, okay, well, this is what we're going to do next game. Team, we're going to play like Japan. Like, we're too late in the cycle to do anything resembling that. And so, again, that's why I'm kind of like, I'm just going to be at peace with this is who we are. And we're going to get a couple of looks just from being more dangerous.

We're going to get quite a few looks from our press. and then we'll hope that our defense, which again, isn't bad by any stretch. What do we give up one goal in this tournament? Yeah, it was a header on the back post in the 90th minute last night. So, yes. So there's no, there's no like, this is not panic time whatsoever. It's just, you know, coming to grips with the fact that we're not going to build a platform in possession for our wild attacking talent to really get everything we have from them.

Yeah. I mean, it's too late in the cycle. It's, I mean, it's probably too late, period. In the development of the player, right? Yeah. Like, these aren't the player, this isn't how these players play. Right. I think, I wonder if that's the case.

Well, it's okay because we could still easily win the World Cup and. It's pretty nice, isn't it? Yeah. All right. So the, moving ahead to the 19th minute. There's a, I think there was a ball from Dunn to Morgan that was pretty good over the top. But I didn't clock it. Because immediately after that, there's a great ball from Lindsay Horan to Rose LaVelle making a run in behind.

So this is one of those kind of hero passes that we typically don't like, but this one was good. It was perfect. And LaVelle just couldn't bring it down and she was frustrated with herself. But I mean, if she gets a foot on it, brings it down. She's one-on-one with the goalkeeper. It does seem to me like Brazil's high line was a little reckless. Like we, there was space behind them to exploit, and we have the players to exploit that. We just didn't, we just didn't, we didn't bring the precision necessary most of the time.

Yeah, I think that's very fair to say. And I think, you know, you can talk about the next element on your timeline as kind of one of those times. Well, yeah, we get an errant cross from Rodman. it's her third errant pass in the final third, including the one earlier that I thought was a good idea. You have something to say about that? Well, it's just, again, the exact sequence you would cut out to sort of demonstrate the decision-making in the final third for the U.S., right? So this one really kind of shows both sides of the coin for the U.S., right? So we intercept Brazil at like midfield along the sideline on our right side.

I think it's Fox. Simple passing to Hiran, and this is where Hiran hits a great ball into Roselvel. in the pocket and we're doing good. We're cooking. That was probably Morgan. I think she hit into Morgan's feet, but this is good too. Like Morgan coming back, uh,

creating a passing angle so we don't just have to home run ball. We hit Morgan and Morgan swings it out wide to Trinity. And we're in really good shape here. Trinity's all alone and going into the attacking third. Uh, and at first I start to worry because I see the ball go out to Trinity and I see every other US player sort of do our US player thing where they just start jogging towards the goal, like lining up for the cross.

I'm like, okay, here we go. Trinity is definitely just going to, you know, hit a hopeful ball in. But because Trinity is really good at this, she gets and just holds on to it. And she just kind of pokes and prods at that defender 1 v1 to see if she can make a mistake. And while she's doing that, she does it long enough that I think it's Swanson, right? Swanson comes all the way across the field and drags makes a dragging run into the Man City Zone. And Trinity hits the ball into her.

And I'm like, oh, here we go. We're passing the ball into the box. This is lovely. And then Swanson doesn't overcommit to anything. She kind of keeps Brazil honest and just brings it. back out to Trinity. And now we have this awesome 2B2 situation with Trinity Rodman and Mal Swanson against two Brazilian players to get into the Man City Zone.

I'm like, oh, here we go. And instead, this is where Trinity just decides to up and kick a ball to the goalie. So anyway, it's like you're seeing what's possible and then you're sort of seeing what our default becomes. But there's the building blocks there. Yeah. 30th minute, we get a big chance for Brazil. It's a quick counterattack after Zonarado dispossess is done on top of Brazil's box, and then, you know, just puts her on the ground.

And then she puts Lavelle on the ground in the center circle dribbling past her, little sisters on both, I would say. And then races into the final third and slips it to the overlapping Carolyn. And her shot to the far post is an inch wide of the post, right along the ground. kind of scary. Could have gone differently, I think. So we get some rotations here, right? So Sullivan had made her way upfield, and we'd done some nice little cool soccer

on the left sideline. Like, it's good soccer. Sullivan making a pass, pass and move. Over to Horan, who passes and moves. Crystal Dunn is filled in the space in the middle. We get it to her at the top of the box. We're fine positionally and numerically. We're just not fine personnel-wise.

So when Dunn gets smashed to the floor here, and Brazil have the ball running at us, we should still be fine, but we're not because the players they're running at are Lavelle and Horan. I'm putting Horan in this category because she should be someone they're running at. They never really have to run at her

because she's always behind the play. Yeah, she never makes it back to being goal side of the play. Like it takes her a long time to recognize that she should be doing that with Andy Sullivan up playing left winger on the touchline in the attacking third. And then once she realizes she does need to go, she never even comes close to catching a ball carrier who's dribbling for 65 yards. Yeah.

It's frustrating for me to watch that because, you know, we need more from Iran defensively, I think, especially when it's going to come to the World Cup. I will say Dunn, you know, this moment was not great from her getting dispossessed like this. But other than that, which happened like 80 yards from goal, she was, I thought, basically perfect in this game. Like so good. Yeah, I know. It's like you have to say she's doing great at being left back with kind of like that

wistfulness in your voice, right? Because, you know, she, she has personally talked about how it's hard for her to get into that mindset. Yeah. But she was very good. Yeah. It's working out okay. Thank you, Crystal. And then I thought Morgan was doing pretty well coming back to the ball.

She drew a couple of fouls in quick succession around this time in the game. One was a yellow card for Carolyn, and then another foul just efficiently collecting the ball and turning and trying to do something with it and getting wrecked. Didn't think Lavelle had been that great up to this point. I was very hard on Ashley Sanchez and her performance against Japan. I don't know that Lavelle was that much better. What do you think? So I had like I had like three moments between the 25th and 30th where we were finding

Lavel in really good spaces. And again, we would kind of give it away. And I don't know if it's just a Lavel, if it was Lavel mistakes or if it's again, like our movement as we find that pass in the pocket that lets us down. But yes, like it felt wasteful. And in my head, I was like, this is why I want Macario to be in that spot. And I want Lavel to be back a level. and the Horan spot to take some of that pressure off of her.

I feel like she feels like she has to do it all when she gets the ball in those moments. Like she has to create the goal. And I want to just simplify things for her and move her back. I mean, she finds the right pass in a little bit, right? Yeah, she does. I do think, you know, there was one through ball that Sanchez played against Japan that was just like to nobody, you know, just whacked it way too hard. She had a few, yeah. Yeah, a couple of those.

There was one from Lavelle later in the game. I'm like, man, the fans got to start booing when they do that because that is not acceptable. Like, we can't just all be happy and trot back to our spots after a pass like that. That's shambolic. I mean, these are fantastic soccer players. You know, they don't need to do that. No, I'm with you. And it's one where like the players who are making the runs, this is why you see that.

body language so frequently, the geo reina, right? Where you see the language of just like, come on, like I was right here. We get into this position four times in a game against the best teams in the world. We've got to get something out of this. Right. I think in a couple cases it was like a miscommunication on like where was the person running. But I mean, it's so far, and so far from anywhere close to a U.S. player. Anyway, let's keep up.

And I'll just say it was particularly frustrating coming off of the Japan game, right, where we did so little. and then we get Lavel back. Again, she's out of season. She's just back from an injury. There are caveats here. But it's just this accumulating frustration with our errantness, our wastefulness, sort of in these possession moments. Yeah. All right.

So 40th minute, well, I also want to say Germa had been outstanding up to this point, I guess, aside from that errant pass that I didn't catch. 40th minute, Adriana gets a little daylight cutting. She cuts Lavelle. to our right of our box and has a good hit from 22 yards. This is just wide of the post. Adriana, pretty dangerous throughout the night. 41st minute, there's a lovely turn from Rose Lavelle, receiving a little vertical pass from Sullivan.

So we're playing into the midfield again, into those good pockets of space. Then she slides it wide to Swanson. Swanson goes 1V1 from the left side and cuts it back. So for like it goes all the way through right across the penalty marker for Rodman who takes a shot with her left foot and it's stabbed away by a defender in front of goal. But very nice, good stuff, I thought. Good patience from Swanson and wait a good, you know, it's so easy to not find somebody's feet from that spot and she does and I applaud it. So it's two things.

It's Lovell making a really good decision, which is a simple one. You know, it wasn't anything mind-blowing to pick the pot pass out to Swanson, but it's the right one. And then Swanson just hits it through the window, right? I don't know if she picked out Rodman. I think Rodman actually overran the play a little bit. Yeah, I was going to kind of comment on that. Like, as the attacker, it's your job to get into the window that it's possible for the ball to get hit into. And we might not really have that mentality because so often we would just loop that ball into the box.

So you don't need a window because it's going to go over everybody anyway. So we want Rodman to start thinking more about where the wind. window is going to be so she doesn't have to move back away from goal to actually receive that and try to get her shot off. Even in that situation, I mean, it's a very good shooting opportunity. Absolutely. I mean, five times out of ten, she puts that away. All of the Brazil defenders are sort of racing back towards goal too.

So we get a lot of time, a big window, big shooting window there for Rodman. I talked about that a little bit yesterday, that the need to as an attacker or even as a, as a player who's trying to progress the ball to get into the window that it's possible to hit it into such an important part of soccer that nobody told me about when I was a young boy um okay 45th minute uh we get a goal and it gets called back it's it's created by our press solvin picks up an errant touch in the press and hits it first time through the gap between the centerbacks to morgan who runs onto it and just i think she tow pokes it through the keeper's legs with her left foot. She is deemed offside, but it looked ever so slight.

But either way, that's what we want from our press, right? No, no, like, no messing about with any buildup. Like win the ball, get the ball to Alex Morgan in the box, let her kick it into the goal. So just a fraction of an inch here, but this is, that's revenue in my mind. Yeah, and it's sort of a foreshadowing of our second goal in the game, which is very similar situation. Let's go to the goal. It was lovely. Forty-eighth minutes, so the third minute of stoppage time. Lavela picks it up from Sullivan at midfield again, drives forward, gets tackled by two Brazilians, just kind of gets wrecked, and then it sprays over to Haran in the center circle, in space, and she drives forward, plays Swanson into the channel, Swanson goes at three

defenders and tries a sort of perfunctory left-footed shot it looked like to me from just inside the box it's blocked right off her foot it spills to morgan behind her just outside the box morgan takes a touch to her left and just unloads a gorgeous curler at the far post um the lorrainea the goalkeeper had most of the goal covered but there was that one little foot that she couldn't cover and it went in that that place went into that place one zero USA right at the end of the half. All hail Alex Morgan. Yeah, and this is what she's capable of.

Now, lots of players can eventually just hit the shot of their life here. But it was nice from Horan. This was a really good, nice moment from Horan to find Swanson making this run. And then, again, it's a little bit of good luck for the ball to bounce the way it does to Morgan. I don't know. I mean, I don't really have much to add here. Like she creates a shooting window and sneaks it inside the post. It's a great finish.

Yeah. I mean, that's, I guess that's all there is to it. I didn't think anybody did anything really that nice in the play, except for Morgan. I mean, Haran picks the ball up and, you know, finds Swanson's feet. But I think we should expect that of her. I'm still celebrating any of those passes. Okay. like those forward passes on the floor to attackers to play with their feet.

Like any of those, I'm celebrating. So, again, feels a little bit fluky, but we have players who are, I'm talking about Morgan here, the actual shot coming off of a, you know, deflection from three Brazilian players. But whatever, Alex Morgan's outstanding at soccer and we've got her on our team. Yep. Yeah. And I mentioned earlier that she's the, I think this is kind of cool. She broke the record for goal scored by a mom as a U.S. player.

It was her 15th, I believe, and that breaks Joy Fawcett's record. There we go. Yeah. All right. All right, let's get Crystal done working on it next. Yeah, that's right. All right, so here comes the half. We're up one zero.

Scuffed is an ad-free podcast. If you would like to support that and get access to the Discord and the Monday reviews, which are exclusive episodes every week. Join the Patreon. The link is in the show notes. Debenia and Borges come off for Gesa and Anna Vittoria at the half for Brazil. And then we get a big, big strike from Adriana in the 49th minute. A big chance for Brazil.

It's from about 20 yards. It's a pass from one of the centerbacks to Gesa, and then she slips it to Adriana, who takes a touch and just smashes it. Hadnay her dead to rights. but it just it's smashed off the crossbar Sullivan gets so I'm I was kind of trying to figure out what what we could do better here Sullivan gets kind of carved up in this sequence but I don't know that she you know did anything specifically wrong

Horan is I think the one who should be covering you know kind of kind of shading over and trying to help prevent an easy shot here. But she's not doing that, really. I mean, she's a little slow to react. I don't know if I should, am I holding her too high of a standard? Does she even need to react here? I mean, yes. Brazil kind of created a little bit of a perfect storm triangle of defense of Sauerbrun,

Sullivan, and Horan, where they could, you know, everyone's just like a little bit late to get to where they need to be. But also, you know, Brazil did really well to, even create this and it's not a great chance if that makes sense. I know it hits the crossbar, but like, uh, like, is it who is it that made the, Adriana? Yeah. So when we get this ball to Adriana, they have to like lift it over Sullivan's leg. So, uh, or like, you know, it pops up on Adriana. So she's still got a deal with a lot. She's outside the box. We've got Germa there to intercept her if she tries to drive forward. So she's left with a 25, 26 yard shot, um, under duress at speed.

and she just hits an amazing shot. Yeah, I guess I just wonder if we, we just have to accept that Adriana is going to, we play them in the World Cup, Adriana is going to get two or three takes from this distance. Yeah, that's what I'd say. You're not going to stop the best teams in the world from getting a few shots from 25 yards

if that's what they want to do. All right. 53rd minute, a good combo up the left from Morgan and Dunn and Swanson and Dunn slips it. down the line for Swanson and she whips one in. Morgan tries to volley it from behind her into the net. It's just a nice, cheeky little moment.

It nearly succeeds. It's not a scorpion kick. What would you call this? Like a... It's a little flick, right? A butterfly wing? Flick it over her head, yeah. The Dutchman, isn't that what it was called?

The Flying Dutchman? I don't know. Is that what it's called? Really? I swear that's what it was called when you were growing up. Okay. On the ensuing corner, we get a goldmouth scramble after Haran nods it across and Sullivan nearly scores.

Sauerbrun has a crack at it too, but we can't get it in. A good stretch of play, I thought, from after Adriana's strike off the crossbar until, I don't know, until Carolyn rambles into the box in the 57th minute, just not quite refined enough in the final third, even though the ideas are generally pretty good. Yeah, I thought that we had a really good spell in the second half, and I thought it was a lot of good decisions. So again, that's where my baby steps are, right?

Even going all the way back from second game against New Zealand, I thought we looked good. Again, it's New Zealand, but then we came and looked good against Canada, then didn't look really good at all against Japan, but all was not for not. Like we had some decent moments here against Brazil. Yeah, that midfield softness continued to rear its head, though, 57th minute. Carolyn

roast Sullivan in the open field and Sullivan can't get in front of her. So this is like the 5602 mark or something like that. And she won two is with Gesa and she gets crowded out before she can shoot. But it is a tricky little situation and, you know, a more draconian referee could have whistled us for a foul. Yeah, so she does Sullivan badly here. And then again, this is where you start to wonder if

Sauerbrun is the right centerback to clean up these kinds of messes because sourbrun doesn't exactly look mobile as she's good as brazil's bearing down on her here and they kind of get her in like a basketball defense stance and play around her pretty easily uh and it's emily fox to the rescue yeah all right you're i'm i'm now sold on a germa cook center back pairing um okay borriis comes off for martha in the 58th minute uh caroline does Rodman in the 60th minute in the corner after a set piece and rips one at Neyre, it bounces out of bounds. And then we get the 61st minute sonnet on for Dunn. So Fox stays over at right back, I think. And then Williams on for Rodman, and also Brunina on for Tainara for Brazil.

And then we get our goal, 63rd minute. It starts with Lynn Williams poking the ball off of Tamiris. in the press and we're off. Levelle carries it into the box. I will say she shows nice patience. You know, she doesn't just try to whack a ball, which it seemed like Sanchez was doing against Japan on Sunday in situations similar to this. But Levelle then slips Swanson in the box

with a pretty straightforward little pass. I think she kind of has to look her off a little bit to make sure the window stayed open. And then Swanson carries it in the, carries it towards the goal and beats Lorena near post. I thought a pretty, I don't know what she did to sort of disguise her intentions, but it's a nice little finish.

And it's 2-0. Also, Swanson did well to stay onside. Yeah, and this is, this for me is, again, why it's so massive to have Lynn Williams as your option here. Lynn Williams and potentially Trinity Rodman is your backup wingers to Sophia and Swanson because you can keep pressing, right? You can keep this level of aggressiveness on defense, create high turnovers and get your chances on the run this way.

I don't think we get this if it's Rapino as the player coming in. No. Yeah. Although Rapino did come in later, right? Yes. Yep. I just don't think we're going to have the same kind of field coverage that we're going to get from the four, who I think of is our four-wingers who can press.

Yep. Sonnet in the 65th minute slips Morgan in for a decent shooting. opportunity on the left side of the box. Another good disguise pass from Haran to sonnet to sort of key that sequence. It does continue to nag at me how easy it is to bypass the Lavelle and Iran in the middle of the field. Yeah, and I'm over here advocating for Macario and Lavell, and I have no idea if that would be any more defensively stout.

Yeah. What I keep thinking, it's like, if Lavelle is the one who has to like race back because Horan isn't going to be able to race back, then you may as well not, then you may as well use her as the eight if she's going to have to do that tracking back anyway. Right. We get Rapino on for Swanson and Sanchez on for Lavelle in the 71st minute. I thought Sanchez somewhat redeemed herself in this game. She had a bright, had a bright little impact off the bench.

80th minute, maybe my favorite sequence of the game, just lovely work from Sonnet, Horan, and Rapino to break the press down in our left corner. ends with Rapino megging somebody and then trying an outside of the boot. So we're just pinned way back. And it was just ping, ping, ping, ping to Rapino on the sideline. She megs somebody. And then she tries to play an outside of the boot pass to Williams. And it is a lovely pass.

It's just a massive intervention from Lorena, the Brazilian goalkeeper, is what prevents a 1v1 with the keeper. Yeah, give me that kind of stuff every day. Was that our most, was that our closest sequence to Japan of the week? Maybe, yeah. No, that was fun. And again, I'll take those where we can find them. And I thought, so then Mewis comes on for Sullivan and Cornyack from Morgan.

And outside of the throw-in chance that Rapino creates for Cornyak, it was kind of, we're just going to see in the game out at this point. Carolyn cuts through our right side, one-to's with somebody and has a curler from 18, a good save from Neyer in the 82nd minute. And then that throw-in in the 85th minute from Rapino, just a quick throw, plays Corneic into the goal. She's 1V-1 with Lorena and just blasts it off her knees for a corner kick. It was Rapino's second, like, immediate throw-in,

immediate long throw, like into the box. So she had another one, like, right after she came in. That was effective. I don't know. Maybe, I mean, we can't discount her throw-in skill. Well, she's, she's kind of a Russian roulette of experience out there because, you know, as soon as she came on, she plays, like, she plays a ball across the middle to Brazil and they're off to the races. And then she does that sequence where she plays that outside of the boot pass to Williams, like right after that. It's like you just never know what you're going to get when she gets on the ball. It could be, like, a really bad play.

could be a really good play. Yeah, she is like a luxury winger. But I mean, compared to the rest of our players. But like, I hope she's on it. I hope we just bring five wingers because, you know, Lynn Williams can play up top if we need depth there. I feel like we've got, Sophia can do the same. So we've got space to bring Rapino to carry Rapino on the roster.

And I really hope she's on it. Yeah, we only need three fullbacks, only need three centerbacks. So there you go. I think, I probably said this before. but I feel like Sonnet ends up sort of trying out for the seventh defender slot where she's both the fourth centerback and the fourth fullback. Yeah. And I wonder if that's why she was getting so much run to see if Vladko was at least comfortable with her in that fourth fullback slot. That makes sense.

But maybe she's just the third fullback and the fact that she's playing these games over Huerta just means she's the third fullback. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that would be wrong if it were the case. but I guess we can settle that another time. 91st minute Brazil gets their goal. It's Brunini squares up Iran on the right side and then just lifts a ball to the back post. Kind of a hopeful pass it looked like to me.

Ludmila, who had just come on for Zonarado, beats Fox to it at the back post and heads it past Nair. I guess my only question is should Nairnir claim that? Is it just too good of a ball? I think it's just one of those. I really just want to give the credit to the trajectory of this pass where like it's it's hit in such a way that Fox can't get to it. She has to just sort of try to run under it like a wide receiver and can't get there.

And I also don't think Neyer has any chance to get there. I don't think it was ever low enough, close enough to Neyer that she could get there. So then it just comes down to like should she have just stayed home and not done the runout rush and jump that she did and just stayed on her line and sort of collected the weak header that gets directed towards goal. Yeah. Well, I thought Brazil probably deserved a goal in this game, so my sense of justice was satisfied. Overall, through the tournament, we probably, we probably deserve to concede one. We had some really good saves, though. So you got to get, you got to appreciate that Neher and Murphy came up with some saves. Would have liked to have seen French, but it just seems like French is not in the plan, other than maybe just being along for a World Cup ride.

Yeah. I don't know that Murphy's saves were anything really that special. Did you think so from the Japan game? They looked in the stadium, it felt like she was just standing on her head. But then you watch the replay and you're like, but that was actually right at her. You're talking about especially that point blank one that Japan created with the Man City's own cutback? Yes. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you're probably right. She didn't take herself out of position in any of them. Can we say that? Fair enough. Yeah.

You know, if you've been following either U.S. national team, you see that sometimes. Oh, yeah, you do. I think you won that one when it comes to the men's national team. Just pick a goal. He will stay in the goal for me. All right. And the last thing I have is Germa got her head on the next cross from that part of the field from Brunino and nodded it away. So you live and you learn, I suppose.

It's funny because the men's team, you know, we just went through this World Cup cycle. and these games right up to the World Cup, it is hard to, like, take, to draw hard and fast conclusions about what the coach values or about what the coach believes is his depth chart. Because we saw that with the men, a bunch of people involved in that very last window right before the World Cup, then either got dropped completely or barely played or didn't play at all in, in Qatar. So you do have to, like, be careful about whether Flotko is giving reps to his first choices

or whether he really is sort of in, like, bottom of the roster tryouts. and how he's evaluating those performances, because maybe the players who are in were there just to be assessed and failed the assessment. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see. I guess the next games are in April against Ireland, two friendlies against Ireland. And then I guess there will be a send-off,

some send-off games before the World Cup, right? I imagine, and this is going to be huge to see where Sophia is, where Macario is in their recoveries and sort of at match sharpness. Because I think those are, you know, for me, obviously, those are the big players to get back. Other players on the fringes, you know, might be helpful, might not, but get those two back in and they can change things quite a bit. But most importantly, Swanson has learned how to finish. Yes, we can rely at this point, we can rely on 100% conversion rate from Swanson. Yep.

Good, good times. Good times to be a fan. All right. I think that's it. Anything else? Since I haven't had a chance yet, had a blast at the tailgate. I want to thank everyone we saw who made the trip

stopped in at the tailgate. That was great. And I'm hoping, I'm hoping to try to get to one of the games in April, but I feel like it's going to be a long shot. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and rule it out for myself. But, um, but, you know, we'll, we'll tailgate again.

We shall tailgate again. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.