Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #375: Grenada v USMNT recap

Episode Date: March 25, 2023

Greg and Belz talk through the goals and all the good vibes from the Friday night stroll at Kirani James Sports Complex.----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. The USB Grenada 7 to 1 on Friday night in Grenada. We have to admit there won't be a ton to take away from this game, given the level of the opponent, but it was fun. Goals are fun, right, Greg? Absolutely. Zendejas Booth and Johnny Cardoso were cap-tied. A pleasant Friday evening, really.

Yeah, yeah, a real midnight snack of a match, wasn't it? None of it's going to stay with us, but in the moment we enjoyed it. And like you said, we got some cool moments for several of the kids. So between that and the bolligan backdrop, I feel like a pretty solid, all you could expect from a window against Grenada and more. By comparison, El Salvador at least looks like a better, they're a better opponent than. Grenada. Yeah, they definitely are, but also, you know, again, I don't want to like take the, take the result for granted and we shouldn't in the way we play on against El Salvador. But if we lose to El Salvador, it would be absolutely disastrous.

So it's one of those words like, yes, I think we need to respect our opponent and take the game seriously. But also they're weak enough an opponent that if we do lose, it's a shambles. It's a shambles for the result because then we miss Nations League, right? It's both. It's both. Yeah. It's the outcome that we miss out on the playoffs of the Nation's League, which is brutal because we need those kinds of games with stakes.

But also it's a shambles because we should not be expected to lose a home match against El Salvador, regardless of our interim coach situation or lack of ball again. The interim coach situation is, I think, a big part of it for me because, you know, last night there were a couple people who were saying I didn't like our tactics tonight. And I'm like, well, I don't know if I like the tactics. I don't know what we can say about the tactics last night. And even if I didn't like the tactics, does it matter? Anthony Hudson's not going to be around.

The tactics don't matter yesterday. Yesterday for sure. Again, this was a stroll in the park. What I would actually really love to get from this match would be like the tracking data, the GPS and the heart rate monitor stuff. and just sort of compare. We need someone on the show who, like, is well versed in this kind of stuff, like some kind of physio, sports physio, soccer specific,

and have them compare, like, the data from this game to the data from, say, a World Cup qualifier. Because, yeah, this was just an absolute stroll. And I'm not really thinking that we should be reading too much into it at all. I mean, you can maybe try to peek deep into the tea leaves about our setup. and maybe some of the different roles players were asked to play and wonder if those could signal changes and how they're going to be asked to play going on going forward in the hudson era yeah for however long that lasts but man it's it was a

it was a kick around all right well let's do the lineups the u.s. lineup turner in goal Brian Reynolds mark mackenzie austin trustee and joe scally across the back line it really wasn't I guess you know I kept going back and forth on this it really wasn't a double pivot well I guess it was a double pivot in the sense that both McKinney and Luca were dropping in to pick up the ball from the centerbacks but usually if one of them dropped in the other one was further up yeah yeah much further up like it was noticeable and looked intentional because when we'd be working it around the back it would just be a lot of times only one of the guys in the screen,

only one of the pivots. And then if we got under even like a little bit of pressure where it was like, oh man, we need a little bit of help. You'd see the other guy come in and enter the screen. But as soon as we relieved that pressure, even with like a ball back to Turner,

uh, I'd notice it with Delo Tore a lot. He would immediately veer right back up field and leave the frame again. So, so I guess just just starting position. You could tell what their base shape, their starting position was for, for that guy to be high.

higher up the pitch. Right. So really not that different from Berhalter ball in that way, right? No, no, not really. And again, there was never any need to drop a second player. We would, you know, occasionally that pivot would just kind of flex to wherever they were needed, either outside the centerbacks or just collect it in the center circle. There was so little pressure from Grenada.

They were running one up top. We'll get to their lineup, but it was just sort of like a four or five one. and so low pressure that it just didn't matter how we really built up because we could just advance the ball to the bottom of the attacking center circle at will. Yeah. Well, let me, okay, so I'll finish the line at the, in this sort of free role, I think, that you, that you were talking about in the preview of this camp. Yes, and I was very happy to see that.

Let's finish R11 quick, and then we can maybe talk about the rest of our shape. Aaronson Pepe and Pulisick across the front line. So Paul Tenorio was, I think, down in Florida and wrote an article ahead of time projecting his 11 based on what he'd seen in training. And he nailed the front six. And then he went 0 for 4 on the back 4. And my guess is that is sort of not an accident in the sense that if he was basing his 11 on the focus group in training, I bet he got it right.

And I bet we just literally rotated the pre-rotated the back four for this match. and it wouldn't surprise me at all if El Salvador is the same front six we saw in this game with the back four completely rotated. Yeah, it makes sense. Grenada's lineup was Belfon and goal, Etienne, Herrick, Theodore, and Pierre across the backline, Charles Cook and Hippolyte, Miles Hippolyte in the midfield. And then Romar Frank, Jacob, Berkeley, Ayapong, Patterson, and Mitchell. So those were the previous three were the band of three and then Mitchell at Stryker.

Hippolyte was kind of an interesting player, I guess. He's the one who scored the goal. Yeah, we don't have a lot of deep oppo research on Grenada. I think it's, I think I'm okay saying that. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you were really digging into their, into their personnel. No, I mean, they scored a really nice goal. They did.

So we got to give them credit for that. We don't have to give them credit. They got the credit for it. Yeah, and it was one of those where like, again, when you're watching a match this unbalanced. It's like you kind of, it feels condescending, but it's like, oh, nice. I'm happy they got that goal. No, I mean, you watch the replay.

The crowd, it was like an 11-past sequence. The crowd is slowly building in anticipation. And they got their, they got their payoff at the end there. That was great. Somebody in the Discord asked the question about whether we, I should read the question exactly. because it speaks to our shape a little bit. Did it seem like there was a plan of attack for getting space for Pulisic on the left

that didn't exist before? You know, under Hudson, that didn't exist under Burrhalter. And it's going to come up with like all the goals that we basically insisted on playing through the left. I don't know. What do you think on that question? So I don't know if it was designed specifically to get Pulisic space against Grenada

or, you know, I mean, in general. But there was definitely a change in how Poulsick played. And I was curious when we saw the lineup because, you know, with Gio and Bredo on there and Poulosick on there and Scali is the left back, Reynolds is the right back. My big question was going to be, are we still going to keep like that band of five an attack? And if so, how do we sort of finagle it with the rotation from Raina up into that line

and Pulsick in that line? And also like somebody getting. around Poulosick if he's going to be central with, you know, Reynolds being the clear fullback who you'd expect to get forward more. And Scali maybe more as a stay home guy. And the answer was we didn't have Scali up high as much as we would have Jedi Robinson, right? So it turned into Poulosick being the line hugging width in that band of five in attack. So then it would be just refresh me for a second.

It's Pulisic on the wide left. Yeah, then Raina as the 10 would get high up in that line and sort of in the half space on the left side. Aronson was pitching in on the right. We had obviously the striker in the center channel with Pepe. And then Reynolds would be up high on the right. And never getting the ball. How much? Poor guy.

Geo found him. Geo found him once, I think, in the second half. That's a really nice bet. But, but yeah, so the wrinkle was Poole-Sick was hugging the line. Like he wasn't constantly in the middle. He was wide. And so when that player is wide, they're going to get a lot of space. Like that's sort of in the horseshoe that that player can often be providing ineffective possession.

But Poole-Sick was providing pretty effective possession because he could get it wide left with tons of space, start advancing with it at his feet and just waltz past sort of however many defenders he wanted to until he ran out. a real estate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he definitely did some waltzing, that's for sure. It was good,

though. I felt like, you know, if you were watching a heart rate monitor of our entire team, it would be flat line, and then the ball would get to Pulisic

and there would be a little spike. Yeah. Pulisic was our little heart rate spike. Yeah. Well, let's get right into the timeline, because we score right away on a sequence like this. I don't know whether we,

like, and new to get Poulosick in space over there. You know, like in the way we moved the ball around. But we definitely did, and this goal is an example of it, we definitely did elect not to go up the right side and then go up the left side. And so this sequence starts with a throw-in on Poulosick's side. Luca recycles it back to McKenzie at right-centerback.

This is in the fifth minute, by the way. McKenzie turns as if to pass to Reynolds' wide right, looks him off, steps on the ball, and sends it back to trustee to his left, then to Scali, then to Pulisic, very straightforward. Defending is not up to the task of the waltzing Pulisic. He crosses it, and it's a headed goal from Pepe. I think it was deflected slightly. I watched it closely several times. Did you notice this?

I thought it was too, certainly on first watched, I can't sell on the rewatch, but it was a low cross, and two Grenada players had a crack at it, and they both sort of whiffed. one of them may have connected a little bit. Yeah, I think he might have skipped it over his teammate right on to Pepe's head. Anyway, it's a good header from Pepey. Kind of leans into it, puts it low and hard. What a great human moment for Ricardo Pepey, right? Yeah. And like, you know, we can always, we have the tendency to sort of zoom out and look at like the big picture for the program.

But this is a dude who just got left off of World Cup roster and he's here scoring a goal in four minutes. So just a wonderful moment to like. watch and enjoy. Yeah, the definition of you love to see it. No surprise. I'm just going to say to no surprise that we would favor our left side. I don't think it was like Grenada inviting us that way. I think it's just a natural tendency because with Geo sort of rotating into the left half

space, like he has a ton of gravity, you know, and I don't just mean he pulls defenses over. I mean, in possession for us, it was the same rinse 45 minute cameo against the Netherlands. he brings the ball to him. So he's going to bring the ball over to that side. And then our most dangerous attacker, if it's between Pulisick and Raina on the left and Brenda and Reynolds on the right, like, of course it's going to,

the left is going to dominate that side for us in possession. There were times where we had our entire attacking cohort was on the, on the left side of the field, except for Reynolds, you know. Yeah, we'll get there with Brenda's goal, right? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was one of the best examples. And I guess just to, I know we shouldn't get too deep on this stuff, but just to just to sort of round it out.

The thought occurred to me watching that maybe we, maybe what we were doing was, you know, just we take it over to the right side. Because there's another example where Reynolds got on the ball wide and Raina sort of half-heartedly checked to him and then pointed back at McKenzie. And we're just saying, okay, we're going to, we're going to like, we're just going to, we're just, going to circulate the ball over here to create a little more space for Pool Sick, and we're going to give the ball to Pool Sick. Which, like you said, it's not that different from how we played under Burrhalter. Like, we did a lot of what we did through Pulisic up the left. We did have Tim Wea on the other side, though.

Yeah, and the Brenda goal kind of reminds me of how in qualifying, Wea would often be the right side of the half space guy, but he would, if the situation called for it, he would find his way all the way over to the left side of the field to be involved. And we would still have, again, somebody in that wide space, usually desk or shack more, you know, to provide the width on the weak side. But that player, that half space guy on the on the weak side was totally free to come over and come play. And I think we saw that again in this game. And again, there was no risk of just almost zero risk of like, oh, but what if we lose it? Do we need to worry about our recovery shape?

And like the answer is basically no. Yeah. Largely they were not a danger. But they did get a decent chance in the seventh minute. We got worked down our right flank and there was a shot off the post. So there was some, you know, I felt like I needed to zap rooter it a little bit. There was, there was. There were only a couple of moments for Grenada that were prudder worthy.

Right. There was some heading it back and forth over the midfield. kind of some ping pong and then they slid through us pretty easily my diagnosis is because Reynolds kind of tiptoed into a duel and then got caught behind the play and then Luca trotted alongside

the guy carrying the ball not doing enough to close him down that was Jacob Berkeley Ayyipong and he hit a good left-footed shot from just outside of the box low and hard Turner did I thought quite well to turn it onto the post

did just enough in it and it tinged off the post back into the penalty area but got cleared. Yeah, it was a laser beam of a shot. So good on Turner who has not played very much obviously this season to make that play. It certainly wasn't any kind of like a transition or counterattack goal or chance for a grenade, I should say. I mean, they built back from their goalkeeper. I think it might have been a goal kick where this all started. And yeah, it was, I don't want, our right side wasn't necessarily suspect. I don't think you can say that.

But out of the two sides, again, Brenda and Reynolds just weren't quite defensively, aren't exactly defensively stout. So, and I don't know that we get like extra super defensively stout with Dest. I agree that he's not necessarily like any worse of a defender than some of the other players we play there. You know, everyone's going to make some mistakes when they play defense. but yeah Brendo and Reynolds weren't exactly like aren't a dominant defensive pair on that right side

Yeah locked they weren't Reynolds wasn't locked down And then the thing is with Aronson is you give up Some ball security over there Which which rears its head a couple times I should say though This I shouldn't be putting any of this chance on Aronson like the little

It wasn't necessarily head tennis It was just a ball went up And I think McKenzie had the first header And then Wes went for that first header and didn't quite get there. And then again, no urgency from our guys because of the stakes of this match. So he gets sort of caught up field.

Geo's not coming back to cover a bunch of ground, you know, as our third nominal center midfielder in the block. So we're just left with Luca as a lone guy. And even Luca's just like, okay, okay, this is going to be fine. There's no real threat here. And then suddenly there was a very real threat.

Yeah. Very close to being a goal. Ninth minute McKinney, Yanks on Hippolyte. After a good kind of in-back-through sequence from the Spice Boys in the middle, like some passing in the middle, probably should have gotten a, yeah, like I said, should have gotten a yellow. Free kick gets knotted out by a trustee requiring a good leap from him. I promise that's the last boring timeline item I'm going to do.

We give up around the 10 minute mark. We give up another decent chance when Aronson gets little brother trying to corral a brisk pass on the ground from McKinney after McKinney knocks a guy off the ball down in the corner one pass later and it's another shot from distance this one's much easier for Turner to handle. Yeah, we do need more from Brenda.

Like I just, we'll get to his goal here coming up but he was, yeah, he was just sort of ineffective in most phases of the game. So it's not a game that suited his strengths. Like this isn't a game where we're going to be able to press the daylights out of Grenada,

you know, where his sort of harrying and chasing is going to come into play. It's very much like, what do you do for us when we have the ball? And, well, maybe we should just get closer to his goal. So I'll wait until we get there. Well, do you want to wait? Do you want to just talk about it right now while the iron is hot?

I mean, the goal is nice, right? The goal is nice. But in these kinds of games, like scoring a goal isn't really the end-all-be-all because you can basically fall into goals in these games. And we've seen that with, you know, any number of players like Jonathan Lewis has a, like a hat trick in games like this, you're going to get goals. So it's like, all right, do you look like the rest of the game you're an adult playing in the kids league?

And Brendan certainly did not have that look about him. No, he sometimes had, I know it's a bit, but he sometimes had the look of a kid playing in the adults league. I will say he did, I thought he got better as the game went on, you know, relative to what was going on on on the field, a little bit more effective in the second half. on the ball. But yeah, I agree with you. People were saying he was, on this night,

Aronson was better than Raina. I don't know that I agree at all with that. You know, if you watch back. I mean, Raina had a relatively quiet night, but when you look at the goals, you start to go through the goals, you see that he's the guy kind of creating space in the beginning of a move.

And anyway. I also think Raina had a bunch of probably underappreciated little. disguise passes into danger zones, including one to Brenda, into the box, like right at the corner of the sixth. So I thought, I thought Rayno was mostly fine. Again, it was a, he was playing at walking speed as well. But yeah, I don't know.

Again, it's, it's, it's going to be something that's just sort of confirmation bias on the Brenda side to just see him get shrugged off so many times, uh, throughout this game. Okay, we get another chance for Pepe, the chance to get his brace in the 13th minute. It's a ball over the top from Pulisic. Again, just kind of around the back through Scali to Pulisic, or it might not have been through Scali in this case. Sometimes it was Luca dropping deep. Sometimes it was McKinney.

But then Pulisic cuts in and kind of lofts a ball over the top. Peppy boxes out the centerback, Herrick. Then has the whole goal to shoot at on the bounce and just kind of hits it at the keeper. Tries his side footed out of the air. I can't say he scuffed it, but kind of close. Yeah, he passed it. It's like what you do to warm up your goalkeeper before a game.

Good good verticality. Can we call it good verticality? So yeah, so a nice look from Poulsick against a not particularly well set defensive line from Grenada. That happens. You know, we caught them napping a little bit and we hit them quickly and efficiently, which is what you hope to see against Grenada. Etienne was having a hard time with Poulosick. That's how it is. I want to mention one thing in the 15th minute

where Gio tries to combine with Aronson and Pepey. Do you remember this sequence? He's dribbling at the top of the box, plays a wall pass with Erinson, tries to play a wall pass with Pepey, but it doesn't quite connect. Is it where Pepey like badly overhits it to the end line, goes out of bounds?

No, this one, it doesn't get to Pepey. Like the pass gets, like Geo's a little pass to Pepe kind of gets cut out. So there was another one that happened just before that. So we may as well run. of the two of them. It was shortly after the peppy shot. Pouselick plays it wide to Scali. Scali kind of cuts it back to Gio and it's just Gio to Pepeppy this time. So Gio's kind of cutting in towards the top of the box.

Tries try to play just a simple one, two with Pepey and Pepe's touch is much too heavy and runs already in line for Grenada to collect with no real pressure. Oh. You got another combination right there? No, no. Yeah, there was another one. Yeah, I know the one. you're talking about there was another there was another one where it was just try geo you get the sense that geo has that like he's playing at walking speed until there's like a little there's like a little opening i like i like that sort of bob and weave sort of feel to it anyway um it's grenada but i guess i guess the point here is geo trying to combine well uh in the in the danger zones and not

i mean it does matter like in the sense it's like geo will give us this this regardless of difficulty of opponent, this mentality, this approach play, which I'm super excited about because, again, I want to see us move as far away as possible from cross and hope. Right. Yeah, there was that other little combination from Geo and Pepey really early where Pepey croiffed it back to Geo, and then Leo kind of let it ride, and then they got tackled away from him. He kind of wanted a foul. but 20th minute we get our the errantson goal it's it's that whole playing up the left side

uh it starts with like i said rena's sort of checking toward the wing towards Reynolds but pointing back at mackenzie and then it traverses that familiar path around the back and scally kind of shimmies a guy a little bit and pulls it back and squares it for pulisic who's running through the channel running vertically in the channel and when i say channel i kind of mean half space You know. Okay. All right. It's good to know.

Good to keep our vocabulary straight. Pulisic finds Brendan with the outside of his boot in a little pocket of space. Just inside the box. Nobody marking him. Brennan turns, touches it to his right, putting a defender between him and the goal. And then pulls the trigger and Meg's the guy beating the keeper at the near post. It is a good finish. And it's 2-0.

Yeah. Pulisic's pass to Brenda is the right pass. It, again, if this were just a. against a shadow defense, like if you're doing this in training, this all looks exactly how it should look. The fact that we're doing against Grenada, and they still looked a little bit like a shadow defense, it's just funny that we found Aronson in this pocket

where there are no defenders between him and the goal, which is a very unexpected scenario to be in, that he actually does take the touch into the defender. He's like, the pass is on this foot, so I should turn this way, and there should be like these things happening, But instead he was just like, oh, I could have just turned straight to the goal because there was no one between me and the goal and instead like brought it into the into the traffic. Yeah.

I mean, in his defense, if he tries to go into that opening at the goal, he's going to get he's going to get it tackled off him to his right probably. Oh, he wouldn't. I mean, he probably wouldn't have been able to anyway because again, Poulsick's passes to his trail foot. So he has to turn in. Yeah. He can't just like let it run and then run onto it towards goal. So this is how he has to kind of go with it. It's just Grenada's defense is so like at sea here.

It just looks funny on the video. He does well to create a shot, right? Like against Grenada, but he, you know, reads the play well and executes it well. It's just like after this, he just doesn't have any more involvement in the contest. I believe this is his first goal in any senior competition since taking it off the Chelsea keeper's foot. Well, good on him. Let's see that cutting edge, Brenda. 31st minute we get it.

So it's 2.30. 31st minute we get another goal. Pulisic runs a ball down in the corner and does two guys dirty with kind of a reverse elastico. After another straightforward bit of passing down the left side, McKinney towers for the header on a set piece. It bounces off the top of his marker's head. I think the keeper was probably going to deal with that McKinney header. If it hadn't bounced off a defender's head. but it pops straight up and falls back, falls down just back into McKinney's left,

and he follies it pretty sweetly with that left foot. And some people saying, well, that's just a crummy goal. No, that's a pretty nice goal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We love the acrobatic finish. Like anything that shows that level of agility and technique, I'm here for that. That's what we want out of these games in particular. I don't want scramble goals.

Like, I want cool looking technical goals. Pretty technical. Anyway, side-nighting far post, 3-0 USA. And then almost immediately, well, immediately, literally, literally, Grenada get their goal. And it's a well-worked one, as we mentioned, coming on the end of a 11-pass sequence. It gets serious when Romar Frank wins a duel against Luca in the right half space.

He just kind of puts Luca on his back. Luca doesn't get goalside of him. He plays it wide, runs to the Man City Zone for a good clipped pass in return, and then cuts it back to Berkeley, Ayupong, in the box with Brendan on his back. This is not nothing wrong with what Brendan did here, I don't think. And he lays it off for Hippolyte to just smash it in from just inside the box. Great left-footed hit. and the crowd in Grenada at Kirani James Stadium loved it.

It was awesome. And there were at least echoes for me of the first two goals we gave up against the Netherlands, just the fact that Grenada were able to attack the space on the right side of our box and then create just a completely wide open look for a player in roughly the same spot that the Netherlands scored their goals from. So I wonder if Turner was having some flashbacks here. You know, the rotations, if you want to get into it, it's like we don't have three, in this game in particular, we don't have three like ridiculous ground covering center mids because McKinney wasn't like covering a ton of ground just because again, the game lacked the urgency where he would necessarily do that. So you have Luca chasing that ball down deep into the box.

Aronson actually does a decent job of helping to fill in some of these gaps. but you could say he over pursues, but either way they just have created a numerical situation where with Aronson coming to track in, McKenny and Gio are still not really in the play. And so that's how they get this free man to get his shot. Yeah, and I think Luca probably could attract the runner into the Man City zone a little better.

I don't know that it would have made a difference. He definitely, if it's Wes in that duel with Frank, I think he probably either keeps him, at bay a little bit or fouls him. Luca gets little brothered a little bit. Yeah, even that moment where Luca like is over kind of helping with the ball and then you see him check his shoulder and realize that Grenada's man is cutting into that man city zone and like his is quick change of posture.

Even that was reminiscent of a couple of World Cup goals like the cost, the throw in against Wales where it costs was like, oh no, this guy's behind me. That one came in mind. Yeah. And also the throw in goal against the Netherlands where it's like, oh man, suddenly we're beat to this half space and. And that causes the little bit of like scrambling and domino effect after the fact. So the half comes, no subs.

Well, we should at least mention the fact that we scored immediately on them after they scored on us. Oh, yeah. I forgot that. Yeah, in the 34th minute, it's a nice goal. Well, it's a goal from the USA to make it 4-1. Another for Weston, a set piece. It gets fouled 30 yards from goal in a silly way by, by Grenada and he hits a set piece to the back post.

Trusty nods it across and Wes pokes it in. I don't know if he did it with his studs or with the outside of his right boot, but just kind of almost gently just pushed it into the roof of the net. Got there before the goalkeeper. Well worked set piece, right? So Poulsick has been hit or miss and this was hit. I think it's a good play by design to hit Reynolds over all of the traffic racing back towards goal and Reynolds with,

I'm sorry, not Reynolds, this was trusty, right? This was trusty, but we did hit Reynolds a couple times too. Trustee makes the absolute right decision and execution to just put it back across into the danger zone. And yeah, just a really nice improvised finish for McKinney because that ball is up high, right? Like there's no normal way to like come in through this. So he's got to do the little stud.

He caresses it with the studs into the net. I'm sure. that's the first time that's ever, that phrase has ever been said. Caresses it with the studs. Yep. So 4-1 going into the half. No subs from Hudson. He's going for the jugular down there.

Real quick, do we still have the same set piece coach? Because now suddenly we're making our money. So I don't know if the set-piece solution is to just play more games against Grenada. U.S. soccer hasn't sent out a press release about the set-piece coach. Okay. But yeah, set-pieces looked a little better today. The 50th minute we get our fifth goal. So, I mean, there was a nice Gio run in there right after the half where he finds Reynolds wide.

I think you mentioned it earlier. That was kind of nice to see, just to see Gio doing his thing out there. Reynolds, I went back and watched it on slow motion. I don't know what he could have done there, but he hits his ball basically at the keeper. Yeah, I always favor that ball coming back at an angle slightly, not even like. all the way square because it's so hard for guys to get there, be on side to get there and also not have the keeper cut it out. So I was hoping to find a window back at an angle for somebody arriving late to smash in.

But what can you do? Yeah, it might have been on. He could have done like Denzel Dumfries and just Meg the nearest defender. We'll get our goal in the 50th minute. This is some nice work up the right side for the first time. And Reynolds cuts inside and plays a good precise ball into Luca's feet arriving in the box. Lucas settles it and shuttles it wide to Pulisic and he hits it first time, low and hard, kind of just to the keeper's left and it sneaks under him. 5-1.

I feel like the keeper could have done better. Well, good for Reynolds to get his immediate redemption after not using that geo ball well. Because that's a nice little pass. It is a nice pass. Because it's one that's not apparent. Like as you have the ball, there is no path into Luca. So he's got to do a decent job of like anticipating the, you know, the next half a second of who's going to go where and wait to pass appropriately, which he does. So good for Reynolds to be involved here.

Nice seal off work from Pepe in the lead up to create a lot of commotion. And then really what it comes down to is just some really shoddy goalkeeping. After all that, you know, I flutin talk. Like, all right, then we passed it to the goalie and it let it slip underneath him. Well, it was a good, it was a good shooting opportunity, you know, I mean, if Pulisic puts that, um, far post, it's, we're all like, well, that's a beautiful goal. If he bends it into the, just in off the outside of the, inside of the far post, then we're, we're, we're really cooking, right?

Yeah. Variance giveth, variance taketh away. Their keeper redeems himself, too, so good on him. Aronson and Reynolds get worked down our right side and around the 52nd minute they cut it back from the Man City Zone for another good shooting chance I can't remember who it was for Grenada

but he cut through Aronson and Reynolds Reynolds in particular didn't look great on this play Yeah but you get you get like the absolute textbook Aronson where he like literally runs into the player puts both hands into him pushes and the player doesn't move Aaron's and like moves farther away from the player. I don't know why I think that's so funny, but I just do. And I'm going to keep thinking it's funny because we are just all in on the little brotherness.

Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. We get our, we get our sixth in the 53rd minute. It's Peppy running onto a good through ball from Luca. He takes it at the keeper and disguises his intentions and thrashes it near post. I know the Grenada goalkeeper was not very. good at times, several times, but this seems like a pretty good finish from Pepe. And I noticed that Gio created the disorganization of the opponent by drawing the attention of four guys and then just

kind of just kind of gliding across midfield before flicking it over to Luca, who had the whole final third in front of him. Yeah, flicking it just in front of Luca, right? Again, like outside of the foot, real, real cool from Gio. Like he is, I just absolutely adore watching the kid. play. He's really fun to watch. I wish he'd gotten, I wish he'd gotten like a signature moment for him just to, I don't know. Like, I honestly feel like Gio needs it to really feel like he's settled back in with the

group to get that moment in the game. So I'm really hoping we see it against El Salvador. I'm running out of items here, but we did get our seventh goal in the, around the 72-minute mark. It's a long carry from Luca Delatore, who had a few of these. And then he tries to play, he tries to. you know, play it, square it for booth coming into the channel in the middle. It trickles over to Zendahas in somewhat comic fashion.

Alex takes a touch to his left and buries it from the edge of the box. It's a nice hit. First goal for him, for the U.S. on his cap tying appearance. So that's good. For me, that's good vibes. Wonderful vibes, right? Yeah, I mean, the-

What a jaw line. What a jaw line that man has. What a jaw line. And then again, you forget how diminutive some of these players are. And so they get into a big huddle with the centerbacks joining after a goal. And you're like, oh, goodness. Like Reynolds next to Zendaihas is a contrast. Yeah.

Well, we should mention some of the other subs. D.K. came on not long after Pepe's goal. He actually didn't do much in this game. He didn't see much of the ball. Didn't get a chance really to do much. No, again, we were already at walking speed. And then a little bit, one of the other subs that came in, Taylor Booth, awesome to see him, but wasn't a particularly good outing for him.

And a lot of it was just his service from the right where we'd get it over to him on the right side. Pulitzer get kind of gassed up, his delivery, his ability to deliver a ball in. So I feel like he was like, all right, I got to do it then. And then he did not do it. Did Pulisic gas him up? Puse is really strategic in who he's deciding to gas up these days. We're going to read into that. No, no.

He specifically said like he was impressed with Booth's ability to like deliver a cross, which is just unfortunate gassing because Booth miss hit like six crosses or just missed. I guess I wouldn't say miss hit them. He just literally missed targets like on six crosses. And a couple of them like right away he got in. and we fed him on that right side and he had like three runners in against a really horrendous looking grenade

back line like they'd completely forgotten Aronson 15 yards away from Booth and Booth went for this super long ball or at least that's what he ended up hitting over everybody who was running and Zendahas chased it down all the way at the sideline. Oh yeah, I remember that one. So anyway, it was just like, man,

I want to see Taylor Booth again, of course. But this game was hopefully just first game, first cap jitters. Yeah, I'm going to chop. it up to that. I think there was some jitters for for Reynolds too. Not technically, not his first cap, but his first cap in a while. So we'll see. I imagine we won't see either of them on Monday, but I have no idea, man. I, uh, desk doesn't really play 90 minutes anymore. So, uh, I don't know. Like it could be Scali, it could be Reynolds. I have no idea who will relieve him, uh, against El Salvador.

And I don't know who the attacking stuff will be. So if it's Taylor Booth, because he's looked good in the lead up to the game, I would be totally, I mean, I'd be thrilled. I'm going to be thrilled no matter what. There's nobody who I can see come into a game on Monday. We're going to be like, I wish we weren't playing this player. Well, you know, Booth has been, there's been some rumors that he's been the talk of the camp, how well he's been playing. And I feel like that's a little, become a little bit like being on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

Going all right back to Georgie. Yeah, there's a curse to it. we talking about practice there's a nice cut back from Aronson in the 77th minute for Zendejas he meets it with his weaker right foot and it's a good save by the keeper I think

with his leg or something Zendias was Zendaz was dangerous basically every time he got on the ball that was fun to see I would say of all the subs he was the clear standout so if I'm I mean training performance notwithstanding

if I'm Anthony Hudson and like Cendias is the one who's coming in off the bench on Monday. You know, that's totally fair, but like the, the Grenada match itself almost like has equal billing with the two days of training they got leading up to it. Okay, fine. When you're weighing the evidence. What else?

I thought the centerbacks were fine. It's like really not that much to take from it. Maybe a little shakiness. Nothing really to take from it. I don't think on many of the shop. the centerbacks were like at fault so it's just in the run of play it's like were they commanding or like commanding enough to satisfy sort of the the microscope that's placed on them in these in these kinds of games trustee a little more maybe commanding in the air than mackenzie but yeah hard

to say what i thought what you were you're right about west was really was really playing it playing it cool out there. I thought when I say playing it cool, I mean just kind of chilling. It's crazy. It's weird he got the two goals because I don't think he had his best game. It made you,

did it ring you back to that Cuba hat trick? His first half Cuba hat trick. Yeah, yeah. And we all know that after that game, it was smooth sailing. What did happen? Can you remind me what happened after that game? Immediately after that game,

we lost to Canada in Canada. Oh, that's right. Yeah. in Toronto. I think hopefully we won't lose to El Salvador and Orlando. As Waki said, the spiritual and temporal home of the U.S. men's national team. Now, but first, release the GPS for this match.

Release the heart rate data. I want to see it. I want to see who broke a sweat. Have they ever released the heart rate data? No, and I wouldn't know how to read it anyway. We need a Discord doc to run us through it. You need a supercomputer. Yeah.

FIFA releases all kinds of sort of physical data about the World Cup, but it's all in PDF form or something. But this was good. I'm guessing this was our front six that we're going to see against El Salvador. We let them get a nice little walk through. And now we get to sort of see it at, I'm going to call it full speed. That's what I'd say the difference is. The El Salvador game will be a full speed game, regardless of the fact that El Salvador is still not a particularly strong opponent. we're going to get to see now what this team can do when they're sort of going for it.

Give me Zendejas over Aronson on the right side. So it's not just Indejas first sub. You're like, nope, Zendayaas is his job. My views are evolving as we sit here. Dude, my views have kind of been that since, like, if you had a tournament tomorrow, you know, and like a meaningful one and you've got to like make sure that you're not dropping your floor too much. Like,

Aronson's clearly your guy. But we're not in that scenario. We're in an auditioning scenario. And as far as I'm concerned, it's like, even if you slide Gio to center mid, it's Poole-Sick-N-Wa as the wingers, and then it's a hat. I feel like we're in a hat situation for the audition period.

And I feel like Aronson's got to really, like, defend his spot against some of these players because I don't think it's necessarily his and a cake walked away. I think that Poole-Sick-Wa are very, yeah, pool-sick-sick-in-way are very clearly like not in a hat. 100% agree. Game is

Monday again in Orlando should be fun. El Salvador is not a tier one opponent or anything but they did

we did draw them the last two times we visited El Salvador we only beat them by a goal in Columbus that was the that was the night when the finishing

discourse sort of really earnest Right because Jesus had a few good chances

but we only beat them 1 to 0 in qualifying. So, you know, it's not going to be, there's no guarantee we're just going to score four goals on them or anything. No, there's definitely not. But El Salvador is also sort of the perfect variance guinea pig because in those qual, in our two qualifying matches against them, we absolutely dominated them on chances created and chances allowed. Yeah.

So while they did well for themselves to get a point from us and finish 01 on goal difference, like chances wise it was a it was kind of a bloodbath fair enough and now um we'll recap that game on tuesday before that the Monday review is coming we'll talk with the guy who really broke the balligan to Orlando story I think it's so it's it's it sort of has dawned on me slowly how serious of a scoop that was you know and how it's just how ridiculous it is like I'm thinking of it from from JT our guy JT's perspective like how little he should have to worry that he's interacting with an absolute U.S.

men's national team sicko and yet here he was being served drinks by one who in between bringing him drinks was quickly to his phone to keep us all updated on the latest J.T. scoop. Yeah, it's a scuff patron and Discord user named Bass Gallagher. he served drinks to J.T. Batson and got the scoop that there was going to be some balligan news in Orlando back before anybody was even talking about it on Twitter. So, and gave it to us. So we're going to talk to him about, you know, what did J.T. Batson drink? And what were his impressions of Batson and all that?

So that should be fun on Monday. You can get the Monday reviews by joining the Patreon, link in the show notes. Anything else? Greg? Yeah, just on the Batson front because I won't be around for the discussion, but I'm loving how not just Batson, but Cindy Parlo Cohn and now even Anthony Hudson are becoming like instant folk heroes. And it's sort of absolutely like a rising tide situation because, again, you know, landing Copa, landing in the Copa America, reconfiguring Nations League to get rid of these slog matches like the one we just watched. We're not going to have to

play these anymore. And now to get Bolligan into a Orlando to even be able to give our pitch and to get our guys with him in a room where we get to sell this program that I think is absolutely like an awesome program to sell. You know, the fact that we have all the very good players from the World Cup coming back and now cycling through all these auditionees who are all very exciting. There's this tremendous upswell in like optimism. And so we're creating these heroes already of Batson and Hudson and, uh, and a win over Grenada has everyone really flying. Yeah.

Hudson is better than Burrhalter takes. We're flying last night. Like real ones about like the tactics and things. Like I mean, that's where I was like, absolutely. Let's dive all the way in. Right.

What if somebody, somebody said about Hudson, that did that meme of, I'm not the stepfather. I'm the father who stepped up. in reference to Hudson Anthony Hudson Ladies and gentlemen

He's the guy He's doing it He's a good looking fella Like I don't I'm not going to mind Having him on the sidelines For three years Yeah

Three years Yeah Well I mean we can get into that In a more serious way Anyway Game on Monday Thanks for listening We'll see you