Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #383: USMNT v Mexico recap

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

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Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. It was the 75th edition of USA versus Mexico, and let's just say it wasn't in the top 10 all time for the rivalry. We got a draw on a late Jesus-Ferera equalizer, several pretty bad performances across the field, in my opinion. A couple interesting cameos and a wrinkle or two. Well, first of all, Greg, how are you? I'm all right, man. I feel like it would be interesting to try to do a bottom 10 installments of U.S. Mexico from maybe some people who've been watching for a long time.

And be like, what are the 10 worst games where both teams combined to be pretty terrible? Yeah, I bet. I bet we should drop that question on the Discord. There will be some opinions. The game was in Phoenix, and it was, of course, a strongly pro-Mexico crowd. So two questions for you, Greg. Like, what can we possibly learn from a match like this? I mean, we can learn that we can sell tickets for it.

We hold this game in the U.S. and we sold tickets. You know, there are people who are like, why are we doing this? Why is the game on at 10.30 Eastern time? And when they zoom out for that blimp shot, like, that's why we made bunny on this game. Yeah. Soccer-wise, I don't know. I mean, there are things that, like, the soccer nerd in me is going to talk about on this podcast that you can sort of just learn generally about the game of soccer and how

do you how to set up a team getting that I'm interested in that the personnel restrictions that you are dealing with or that you've imposed on yourself because for me that was the second or probably the second biggest takeaway there were I mean there were some individual performances that that I think might matter a little bit but but again like overall the what we saw actually play out on the field no one was expecting it to be. be great and then it was very much not great. Yeah. Are you depressed about a whole summer of Hudson Ball yet?

No, I mean, this doesn't depress me about a summer of Hudson Ball. Like, we knew that this is not what the team looks like. This is not who our team is. This is some of the leftovers of leftovers plus Sir Giniardest, right? Like, and that's very much what the lineup looked like. The summer is going to be fantastic. I still think that. I still think that, you know, he's going to.

going to put good, really good players on the field come Nations League semis and finals. And he matters a little, but like Hudson matters a little. But he's not going to ask him to do, I don't think he's going to ask them to do things they can't do. So, you know, at some point, like those players who have been playing together now for three years should be able to do some things. That's my hope. There was a sluggishness to the way we played.

I thought, I mean, Mexico was also quite bad. So maybe it was just in the air. But it was, there was a sluggishness of thought, I thought, and like everybody's sort of tentatively taking bad touches. And I do wonder if a little bit of that is just, you know, nobody being really comfortable out there or knowing what's going on. Oh, for sure. And that's going to be my big sort of abstract takeaway point to make. So as soon as we get through the lineups, I'll just jump right into that. Okay.

All right. The U.S. came out with Sean Johnson in goal. Yedlin Zimmerman long and desks across the back line. James Sands and Kelan Acosta in a double pivot with, I guess it'd be a 4-2-3-1. Cowell, Ferreira, and Morris in the band of three, and then Brandon Vasquez as the striker. It wasn't exactly a 4-2-3-1, was it? I mean, the way we pressed and stuff, Cowell dropped into the second level. Yeah, defended more as like a 4-4-2.

I guess what I would say here, and before we get to Mexico's lineup, Can we dive into this 11 for the U.S.? So it's not a particularly experimental 11, right? We're certainly not like going youth crazy here. Kate Cowell is a child, but otherwise, these are mostly vets. Vasquez is a vet who hasn't got a ton of look. So this is his experiment. And then Ferreira dropping from playing the nine, which he's played almost exclusively

for the U.S. into a, into a like more free role. is a bit of an experiment. But otherwise, everything here, we've seen plenty of times before, right? You could maybe say James Sands as a double pivot is a little bit new. Yeah, I think that that's a little bit new. He wasn't a true double pivot in that Honduras away match. He was in, it was like a three, like a five, two, three, where it was just him and Acosta, no 10 playing with them, just three forwards ahead of him.

And so that was a disaster, of course. But this was, this was a three-man midfield. nominally with Ferreira in possession. So anyway, like, we're not experimenting really here. We talked in our preview and projection about, you know, there's always a chance we'll just lean on our hard men, right, to play against Mexico. Don't get run over. For me, I saw the lineup, and that's exactly what it looks like to me. This is street fight FC, right? You've got a backline of Yedlin, Zimmerman, Long, uh, Dest, of course, but like those are three, those are the three guys. Des, maybe not a street fighter, but he has to start. Right. Yes.

So you have like wrecking ball FC in the back with that back line plus Acosta and Sands. So you're back, you're back six plus, you know, Johnson, Sean Johnson. So your back seven is like hard men don't get run over against Mexico. It's a game against Mexico, even if it's not their first choice team. The front four is like track meet FC. So you've got your sprinters up top. Cowell and Boris are not like pretty tiki-taka soccer players. Ferrer kind of is, but he's also somebody who can try to put in runners.

and then Vasquez is like a standard number nine. So for me, you're looking at this 11, and it is a coherent 11, even if it's not super exciting on young talent. It just is not an 11 that's going to play expansive possession soccer. So I have no idea why we did. It's like, again, we get stuck in two minds where we bring this 11 in and then say, all right, now we're going to play brave possession soccer and we're going to get big and build out of the back and be methodical. like that is what's abstractly hilarious to me. Yeah, I mean, I don't know that I needed the soccer to be expansive so much as just Sands and Acosta.

Sands got a few passes between the lines and found some feet. But Acosta didn't push the game at all, I would say, in the first half him looked really messy. And then Sands had his messy moments. It's like we just did, we couldn't even like connect a pass from those two to Ferrera. And then when the ball did come to Ferreira, he just, like, kick it to the other team. Yeah. No, Ferreira was a mess, too, and we needed more from him or he needed to show more for himself.

But I'm just talking about the overall personnel that we deployed here in the spots that we deployed them. And then what we asked them to do was hilariously never going to work. What is it we asked them to do, do you think? We asked them to, like, again, play this build out soccer. And it's like, be brave, pass through them, connect. And that's why it looks so aimless. Like if you're going to do that, if you're going to be brave, don't surrender with your player choices straight away.

If you're going to be brave, put Keaton Parks on the field. Put two fullbacks on the field who can pass. Like don't have Zimmerman be your best passing center back. Have him be your second best and put somebody in besides Aaron Long, who is just a human pressing trigger. Like this isn't the group that you put in to play this way. And you didn't have to, right? If you're going to put this lineup out there, just own it and say,

we aren't going to play this way. We're going to play very direct. We're going to play up into our, you know, wrecking balls of attackers. Cade Cowell and Jordan Morris are wrecking balls. We're going to really challenge Mexico physically. When they can't get good clearances off our direct balls, we're going to sweep up the second ball and have Ferreira then try to play quickly into more attacking spaces.

But we don't do that. The few times we were playing direct, it was a result of panicky moments after we'd expanded in our possession. And so when we play it up there, it's not like we had multiple players around the ball. No one was expecting a direct ball. So we're not structured for it. Yeah. So it's just, again, it's just this very like disconnected personnel to tactics that made the whole, that's what made the game feel like a waste to me.

We could have gone experimental and young with Wiley and Winder and whoever else, and that would have been really fun too. Yeah. But we also could have just done a nice little street fight pickup game against Mexico and Phoenix and committed to it. And I would have, I feel like enjoyed that a lot more. As it was, there were still some hilariously entertaining moments here. Yeah, it got fun in the last 15 minutes or so. As a coach, whether it's Hudson or anyone else, like you can have an idea of how you want to play, but you can still react to the realities of your situation and play in a way that actually fits the personnel you've chosen.

It would be fun to see like a high percentage strategy for playing direct and playing a long ball and then having people join that person when they knock it down? It doesn't seem like, when was the last time we saw that from the U.S.? Something like that. There were a few moments like that. And you could see when it would happen, like when we would hit that direct ball. And we did have somebody around it. Like Mexico would win the first header.

But when our guy would get it, you could see how open the space was that he'd win it in. This was shades like the 2019 Gold Cup, actually, the final, where we played very little direct in the second half, but the couple times we did, it was like, oh, man, this would be on. to win a second ball and then just run into these big gaps. Yeah. You know, the other thing is just playing against the ball, because we're talking about when we have possession, even playing against the ball,

there were times Mexico gave it away cheaply to us, to our attackers. Right. And so that's another way that we could have generated revenue. The way I think of it is, it's kind of similar, surprisingly and kind of disappointingly, to the U.S. women's team at the moment, where if you took a still shot of our goalkeeper with the ball at her feet under no pressure and a still shot of the opponent,

goalkeeper with the ball at their feet under no pressure. I feel like we're actually in a better position if the opponent's goalkeeper has the ball at their feet with no, like we're more likely to score in the next 20 seconds than we would be the other way. Right. The rules are reversed. So I think it's the same for our men's team with this personnel group in particular. Like we would be much better off if Mexico had the ball at their feet in their box than we

would if Sean Johnson does. Yeah. The times when Mexico had the ball in our half or in the middle third for a long time, it, it, uh, it got less. The opportunity felt a little less. But, um, all right,

let's do Mexico's lineup. Carlos Acevedo in goal. Israel Reyes, Nestor Araujo, and Victor Guzman across the backline, uh, back line of three. And then Juliana Rao,

the, you know, the Los Angeles Galaxy, former U.S. youth national team player at right wingback. Eric Sanchez and Luis Chavez in the middle. And then Jesus Skyardo at left wing back and then Uriel Antuna, Roberto de la Rosa, and Alexis Vega across the front line.

I, you know, B minus team for them too. Yeah, everyone knows what we're dealing with here on both sides. All right, time in the timeline. First thing that happened was a clash of heads between Vasquez and Arajo. I guess everyone was okay. It happened, the assessment happened fairly quickly, I thought. And then I felt like Barnsley ball to me. Like we,

I guess a lot of it was those panicky moments, but we were just sort of kicking it long, trying to press them, had a little success here and there. I was actually kind of excited about it for three or four minutes. I was too. And again, this is what I kind of thought we would do.

I thought we would do this. I thought it would be the wrecking crew in the back, the track meet crew up front, and then also Sergenio Dest out there, who just didn't make any sense. to be in this game or in this lineup, right? He just doesn't fit. But that's what it felt like.

This is, okay, this is what we're going to do. And then we got a couple of nice track meet moments, right? Right off the bat. Yeah, at least one. Fifth minute, it's a throw-in in our half. Vasquez does well to bring it down with his chest and then dinks it over to Ferreira, who is rushing down the line. And Ferreira does well, it was somewhat deft of him to keep this in bounds and control it.

And then quickly play Cowell straight-out. head into space. Cal takes a touch maybe two and then slips it inside to Morris, whose first touch, I mean, it was kind of poor. I mean, it didn't work because he got crowded out by Julian Araujo coming him from his left, but it was a little bit of a poor first touch. The keeper cuts it out, deflects off of Morris and almost goes into the goal anyway. It just goes just left to the post. Yeah, just a little eager for Morris on his touch, shades of Hajie Wright versus Holland when he's running on. I'm going to bring up some analogs

to some of these plays just to at least keep some perspective that we do see other players make him. But yes, this was not a touch that helps the case for Jordan Morris as a finesse football player. Right. I'm not going to be dogging on Morris that much. I am going to point out where I thought he could have done better, but he obviously did some good stuff too.

We get a nice pass from Sands to Ferreira in a lot of space. Right after this, Ferreira's dribble gets away from him, and he plays a left-footed pass to the feet of a Mexican player. He's trying to get it to cowl out wide. Yeah, was he trying to hit that outside of the boot curling ball on this one? Somehow trying to curl it, and he did not get any curl around the defender just directly to the defender.

Yeah, his touch got away from him, I think, and he was trying to reach for it. Yeah, Ferreira also, I mean, I thought, like you said, had a pretty messy game, lots of really bad touches. is, this was one of them. We get a dime in the 18th minute from Sands to Yedlin, you know, like one of those diagonal balls. So people, you know, this first 20 minute period, people are like,

oh, Sands looks pretty good. Aside from, he had one thing he didn't do well right at right after that. Oh, he almost lost the ball in our defensive third. Yeah. Well, again, we're not, we're not Rondo FC back there. No, we're not. Not our Rondo players. And Sands might have been, might be sort of our best Rondo type out of all of them.

Like he kind of tried to have little touches to create those little windows. But none of those guys back there are like, it's not their tendency to be shifting quickly into the next tiny window in the back line. Yeah. And he, I do think, we'll talk about this later, but I think moving him into a back three with centerback on either side of him, actually did help us look quite a bit better in the second app. There's a chance for Mexico in the 19th minute.

Chavez and Vega combined. sort of in the left half space Vega leaves it for Chavez right outside the box and his shot is just wide. This is poor from Acosta, right? Yeah, I think Acosta's the main guy. He just kind of, when Chavez plays the one two to Vega, Acosta turns towards Vega and then he's just done with the play, basically.

Yeah. Yeah, this was, again, this was a pitch control moment where if Acosta is going to be our grown-up back there, we need better pitch control from him. Yep. I also at this point was concerned that he wasn't, he wasn't playing on the half turn enough. He would receive the ball from the centerbacks

and then just hit, tap it back to him, try to do some rondowing with non-rondo FC back there. And I wish you would have, you know, taking a touch forward every now and then. It would have been nice. Keaton Parks solves some of this. Like as ridiculous as it is to be like, the solution is Keaton Parks.

Like in this game, to try this stuff, put in a player who does it routinely. I'm ready for it, Greg. The next time we play the Allstate Interclassico or whatever it is. 22nd minute Vasquez wins a foul on a good one-touch pass from Acosta. So we get a set piece from 35 yards out to the right of Mexico's goal. It was a harmless set piece, though, unfortunately. Yeah, I was hoping we get more out of set pieces because we, I mean, if we're going to play Zimmerman and Long out there,

Like that's what they should be doing is. I mean, Zimmerman Long, Jordan Morris, Brandon Mosquez, we have some set pieces. Drop it in the mixer. Let's go. There were a few times like that, not even just on set pieces where, again, it goes against everything I stand for,

but when we finally work the ball up to DeAndre Edlin, I'm literally shouting like, put it in the mixer like you have to do it here. This is who we are in this game with these players. 24th minute Arajo lands on Sanz's leg after a challenge. I don't think it didn't look malicious, but Sands seemed like he was in a lot of pain.

Do you just keep bringing up Araujo's collisions with us because you feel like there's this bad blood? I don't really feel like there's bad blood. Do you? I don't know, not at all. I mean, you know, I don't want him to play super well against us. I do. I want him to be great.

I love Arajo and I love playing for Mexico. Yeah, I want him to play wealth in every other way. I want him to succeed in his career. There we go. His hair was terrible, though. Come on. I'm too old to comment on anybody's hair or style. I am too, so I'll shut up.

25th minute, 26 minute, there's an Antunah Cross that's knotted away by Zimmerman. Chavez flashes in, again, and tries to volley it off that header and it goes wide. Just some miscellaneous notes at this point in the game. Acosta Messi. Yedlin, typically non-progressive. Zimmon Long, both shaky on the ball. Johnson shaky on the ball, panicking when the ball is at his feet. it seemed like.

Well, and these are all connected for me, right? Like, of course they're shaky because none of the players around them are going to be able to solve the problem. You don't have Eunice Musa here who you can hit the ball to who like is your easy out. Get Darlington Nagby in this game and it solves a lot of problems. Yeah. But I'm going to zero in on long a little bit here because he hasn't had any big terrible moments yet.

But it's the same thing that we saw in those pre-World Cup friendlies. Yeah. And that is he's a passing black hole. when we're trying to shift the ball out wide, which compounds the uselessness of Serginio Dest in this lineup, right? The fact that we put him out on the left side with Aaron Long as the centerback who would be feeding him is just, it's just brutal. Like, he can't, Long can't hit it to him. And when they take Dest away even a little bit, when Mexico takes him away even a little bit,

like Aaron Long has no ability to hit the ball into the amoeba. He doesn't have the confidence or, and he shouldn't have the confidence too. He shouldn't try. Right. He's wise to not try. Yeah. And so this is what I mean about him being a human pressing trigger. The ball comes back to him. And if he doesn't have an option to hit it long, Mexico knows he can't do anything quickly. He's going to have to like get the ball at his feet, look up, know that he can't actually do any of the forward passing that, you know, another centerback might be capable of. And you know he's going to have to like turn his hips, take another touch to shift the ball into a way that he can pass it to Zimmerman or Sean Johnson.

And that takes a lot of time. you know that is what has to happen, your defense can move a lot in those moments. Blood in the water. Yeah. Yeah. So the defense can all shift on this queue where usually you can't do this unless the defender's got a bouncing baller has to put his head down. You can do it to Aaron Long immediately. As soon as you know he can't hit it, launch it, you can start funneling everybody up. And so that's why the domino effect is everyone ends up looking shaky because Mexico gets to steal 10, 15 yards at a time before he's even hit the pass.

You lay it all at the feet of long, though? Well, I lay a lot of it at the feet of long. Again, no one in this back line. How often does Yedlin find a forward pass and complete it, you know? Not much. I'm just saying Long gets a lot of, I think, justified criticism. But is Yedlin that much better? Well, Yetlin can hit an eight-yard pass into a center-mid and then like dart somewhere to try to get back.

I mean, he's not, he's not going to. That's true. He's not Sergenio Dest, but he's going to at least like do something. And then he's got the sideline for protection. To have your center back do this, do this really clumsy footwork and hip work every time the ball comes to him. It's just brutal. And again, it's something we know about Aaron Long. This isn't an experiment we needed to find out about.

This is don't ask him to do this. Don't put him in this game and then pretend like this is going to work. and you're going to be able to play this way. You just can't. It seems an irresistible combination for both Berhalter and Hudson. Well, Berhalter gave up on it. He did. He ultimately resisted.

But boy, he was persistent in continuing with it. I mean, he did it right up until... Yes, right up until the 11th hour. The actual World Cup. And then the coach who, you know, allegedly loves Aaron Long more than any other coach did not play him a single second, played three centerbacks ahead of him. And so again, we know where Aaron Long actually stands with the program. He's apparently a body that you throw on when all of your other bodies are in Europe and unavailable for the contest.

But we'll get to his competition in the second half for these exact situations. Right. I don't know that he's that much better. All right. Johnson, in the 27th minute, Johnson does get picked off by Vega trying to throw it out to the flat to Yedlin. Kick it out to the flat, I should say. nothing really comes of it, but it was a kind of another ding against, for me, Johnson's play with his feet. Yeah, and it's more evidence on my abstract point of like, what are we even doing here?

Yeah. What's our goal? Should that ball get to Yedlin? What are the next three passes? Yeah, I don't know, man. A chance for Mexico in the 31st minutes, kind of a soft foul whistled on Yedlin. And the set piece, they had a couple of these set pieces that just fizzed just in over the tree tops. and didn't get redirected on goal.

One did get redirected on goal, but right at Johnson. This one just kind of went right through and sailed a yard or two wide of the post. So we didn't get much on our set pieces, and Mexico looked, I thought, dangerous on their set pieces in general. 35th minute, nice ball from Acosta to Morris in space, sort of one of a few bright spots for Acosta. Morris drives forward.

kind of head down, slips Vasquez into the corner, and Vasquez gets dispossessed. I do think Ferreira was open in the middle of the field. The camera work made it a little difficult to ascertain exactly how open he was, but it didn't look like Morris was even attending to the possibility of that pass. No, he wasn't. And this was a pretty big miss, like a huge miss for me. And yeah, the camera angle is bad, but you can pause it immediately when it ships in on Morris. of course because everyone loves zooming in on a wide player while they're dribbling. And then as soon as he releases the ball, it goes back to the wide shot.

And if you pause it right then, you've got both of Mexico's sort of deep defenders trailing Vosquez's run and doing great. So Vosquez has done a great job dragging them across. And there is a window from Morris, just a nice diagonal, easiest pass in the universe. Nothing like Mazut-Otsilish about this to just slide a ball through that giant gap anywhere. and Ferreira is running onto it with no one between him and the goal, but the goalkeeper. So this is a terrible miss. Really similar to the Iran break where Sergeant Wea and Pulisic contrived to sort of muck it up. And by that, I mean, Sergeant missed the Pulisick run and hit Tim Wea instead when Tim Wea made that dragging run.

You play the dragging runner. Vosquez is running from end to out. He can't, he's not going to do anything with this. So you're kind of, you're putting in a spot. He was handcuffed as soon as he got the ball, basically. No matter what, you're playing it to him so he can receive the ball running at the sideline. Like this is a pattern that is recognizable and happens often enough that you've got to be thinking the most dangerous pass here is the second guy coming in late because he's going to be the one facing the goal. So bad tunnel vision from Morris and cost us a pretty big chance.

He didn't even look. That's the thing. Yeah. And again, he just has to know this is transition. This is exactly what we should be looking for. this is another chance that again didn't come from us like patiently building up until we freed it it was mexico trying to build towards us and then they hit a ball into their uh target player at the top of our box uh did a little dummy and james sands just collected the misted dummy uh played it to a cost

who just one touch pinged it out to morris in a ton of space this is what we should be looking for all game in a game like this the half comes and right away we get a big chance for kate cowell uh well i don't big chance maybe a little bit of exaggeration but it was a good chance This is another giveaway from Mexico. Rao passes it right to Ferreira, like a square pass from the sideline six yards in. Ferreira turns and plays a nicely weighted pass to Cowell, who is cutting in on his right.

Just kind of puts it in a spot where Cal can run into it, but Israel Reyes, the centerback on his back can't. Cal shrugs him off as he is wont to do and then has a shot from 19 yards or so. And it looked like it was on frame, but it thwax off the back of, Nester Arauj and the rebound falls to Morris and he tries to volley it, which I'm not going to pretend that that's an easy thing to do, but he miss hits it pretty badly. Yeah, he misfits it badly

and it's great comic effect for the banter. For me, his mistake here is taking like the fullest swing he could possibly take. He was, I mean, he wasn't, he wasn't like, I will try to guide this into the now empty net because the goalkeeper had gone down on Callow's shot. It was like, I must hit this ball as hard as anyone who's ever here to soccer ball and he basically just almost whiffs completely. But the setup for this again is Mexico working it patiently around their back in a horseshoe

and then passing it directly to our attacking midfielder Jesus Ferreira. And again, this is where I wish we would have been more disrespectful to Mexico and just been like, here, Mexico, even though you're Mexico, have the ball. Please try to play soccer against us. You're not good enough to and you will give it to us and we will run at you with our track meet front front.

They really weren't good enough. No. I guess they did have like a late chance that they created through their buildup, but, well, I don't even know if that's true. We'll find out here in a moment. But the hard men in the back, like that lineup, it might have been overkill because, again, I don't think Mexico are that good. But it was doing its job, right? Like, Mexico were getting almost nothing. It's not like Sean Johnson was having to put on a clinic of shot stopping here.

No, first half, a couple of shots from outside of the box was it. And I do that hard men stuff from Aaron Long is real. Like his defending on Antuna on like a long ball over the top, just exemplary, earns a goal kick sort of ushering the ball out of bounds after knocking it off of Antunah and then walks away with a satisfied smile on his face. So he's good at that. Right. Or he's good enough.

Or that's what he is good at. That is what he is good at. It's the best way to say it. But yeah, not defending how he is on the ball. Just to be clear. 51st minute cowl mugs a guy, and he's off to the races, just takes the ball away from somebody on the dribble. And he might have had an early pass across to Morris.

Again, kind of hard to tell from the camera work. It wasn't as open as the one that Morris had for Ferreira if he did have it on. But anyway, he doesn't pull the trigger on the pass, and he gets kind of crowded out and loses the ball. Yeah, I mean, nothing much there. But we want these kinds of things. Like, it was, the, the, I'm just laughing, just because I want these transitions. There was nothing to it.

But it's Cade Gall, like, taking the ball off of someone's feet. And then it's just him running with a sea of green bodies around him, right? Yeah. So we weren't, I'm laughing because of a little while we're giving him a little like, there was nothing there. just wanted more emphasis on these kinds of like turn mexico over and see what happens i would like to see him try the outside of the boot pass over to morris because i've seen i've seen cal hit that pass just to extend the play because you know you're about to get crowded out by four players

unless you're georraine or serenia desks then mexico scores in the 55th minute and it's uh it's kind of a comical it was funny i thought in the moment uh a messy passage of play from the u.s i mean the whole game was messy, but in this sequence, you know, we're possessing in Mexico's half, and Acosta's coming back to the ball and tries to play a long, left-footed back pass to Long, from sort of the right side to long in the middle, long, of course, playing left centerback, so he's on the other side of the field. The pass is off, long, maybe Long's positioning is off too, I don't know, and he has to sprint to reach for it. He attempts to play it to Sands, who is like sort of flashing wide.

Instead, he plays it right into Antuna, and Antuna carries it 50 yards and slots to pass Sean Johnson at the near post. 1-0, Mexico. Oh, yeah. I mean, you couldn't get a better goal for this game. This is exactly the goal that this game required, given the angst over Aaron Long. So we've already dogged him bad for his passing ability, or lack thereof.

Do we want to break this down first and then kind of just talk about Aaron Long? Aaron Long as a U.S. men's national team player. Yeah. Yes, please. All right. So this play is a lot of Kelan Acosta's fault, right? Like we're going through. We kind of have pushed Mexico back.

Calan Acosta decides he's going to relieve pressure recirculate with like that super safe big drop. It made me think of the Danny Williams. It wasn't even any pressure. No, that's what I'm saying. Like the Danny Williams circa 2013 where he hit at like 75 yards back, launched the 75 yard pass back to his goalkeeper. from our attacking third.

It made me think of that because this is supposed to be just like the safest nothing past there is. And Acosta manages to curl it away from Aaron Long, directly between Long and Mexico's weak side attacker. So Kellyn Acosta, not your best moment. And then it's Aaron Long's job here to know that he is not good passing the ball. He's the last man back. Like he's the weakest passer on the team. It's not your job here to do a sliding outside of the foot, like,

lofted ball to your fullback. Like that's not what your job is here. Your job is to deal with the problem. Glair at Kellyn Acosta for a second. Smile and chuckle about it later. But that is not what Aaron Long chooses to do. So what does that tell us about his future with the national team? I mean, I don't think that tells us anything because I don't think he had much of a future

with the national team anyway. Like, if his role is to play in these kinds of cash grab games until a couple other MLS player domestic players Warrant even these minutes Then I just cannot be bothered to care Right That's kind of where I am on Aaron Long Aaron Long in this game is not taking minutes away

From Chris Fitzhirt's camera Carter Vickers Mark McKenzie John Brooks had a good day Yesterday John Brooks agenda He had a decent outing Yesterday because Because again what is Aaron Long supposed to solve if not like the John Brooks Battleshiping open field defense

issue. Right. He's not, he just isn't going to be a key player for us in any way, shape, or form, I don't think, Aaron Long. So it's crazy that Brooks has been frozen out. I mean, I know he had a bad fall. He definitely had a bad fall, but crazy. Anyway. But so the Aaron Long stuff, like, I wasn't mad that he started. I don't even care that he gave this goal up. I won't be mad if he gets another call up a year from now in a similar game, assuming that no other, because which MLS players was he keeping out of the game? It was Matt Miosga, right? Yep. So he's not barring, he's not preventing anyone else from breaking through.

Should we talk about Winder a little bit in the love? Jalen Neal, well, Jalen Neal, was Jalen Neal just not released by his club? I'm not sure. They need him. Wouldn't have minded, I mean, Jail and Neal would have been a fun one. I was kind of hoping for like Neil and Winder both to get called up. But like the fact that a U-17 player playing for Louisville didn't get into this game or start this game, just, again, can't really get worked up about that.

that. No, I can't get worked up about it either. And I don't know how many people have watched any of Winders footage. I haven't watched a ton, but I've watched enough to see that he is not like an immediate answer for the national team. Right. He's, he's a young guy. He's got a lot of potential. But in the universe that Winder does break through for us, it's him, whether he played in this game or not, is not going to be material whatsoever, because he's going to have to break through at Benfica or fail to break through at Benfica and then move quickly enough to break through it somewhere. He's not going to get ahead of CCV

and Miles Robinson or even Mark McKenzie if he's not breaking through for a team somewhere. Right. And it's going to be a tough, it's a tough road. It's going to be a tough road. The one that travels through Lisbon. So the only other guy that

Long is keeping out other than like, again, any other centerback you want to pick out of a hat from MLS, which also would have been fine. If you had just picked any random center back out of MLS and started him in the game, I also would have been fine with it. But it's meosga in this camp and we'll get to miazga once he actually enters the game. But I'm very curious what was going through his head or what he might have been saying out loud while this happened.

Well, so there's a good, so a good tackle in the 61st minute from Yedlin and he gets fouled. Let's see. Subs in the 64th minute. This is what I think starts to make it a little more interesting. Sonora, Alan Sonora comes on for Cowell, and Aidan Morris comes on for Vasquez. So Ferreira moves to the nine. What happens to, Jordan Morris moves to the left wing, maybe? Yeah, Morris on the left.

We also just failed to mention throughout this that we started defending more in like our normal 433 after halftime or after the goal. So like, we got away from the 4-42 defense and started shifting more. It was almost like Ferreira was playing as like one of our eights in our 433. Okay. Well, okay. So that'd be Signora on the right and Cal, I mean, Morris on the left, Ferreira up to the nine. And then you have Morris and Acosta as the two midfielders.

Yes. Once we made the subs, that's what we shifted into. Yeah. And then you have essentially Destin, Yedlin at wing back and three at the back, Sands in the middle with Miazga. Well, Miazga came in a few. minutes later, but Miyazga on the left comes on for long, six minutes later, but Morris, I mean, Zimmerman stayed in the whole time.

So do we talk now about Vasquez? Sure, yeah. I don't, I didn't have a strong feeling about him. Same. And so this is where I give Vasquez an incomplete, because I just don't think that with the lineup we put out there and what we actually accomplished behind him, there's any way to even, like, grade him meaningfully in a game where it's already hard to grade anybody meaningfully. Yeah, I guess I would say he just didn't get a fair shot with this game.

This was, yeah, that's what I would say. It's like this was a nothing game as far as learning anything whatsoever about Brandon Vasquez as our striker. He didn't, on the other hand, he didn't do anything to recommend himself, you know, in an opportunity in the shirt. Look, if Jordan Morris hits that ball to wide open Jesus Ferreira, then we're like, look at that movement from Brandon Vosquez. That's true. We're not. That was a very,

again, a very basic pattern to execute. But, you know, got to recognize that good movement when you see it. I thought it worked

to have three at the back because Sands was able to calm things down among the centerbacks who were skittish all evening. And I guess Miyazga coming on for long helped, but I don't know that it helped

that much. Dude, so talking about skittish, Miasga trots onto the field. You know, the cameras close up on him. The camera goes to wide shot as we work it around the back. Sands passes it to Miazga and Mioska collects it and then instantly passes it directly to the Mexico defender closing him down. So I'm laughing because the whole talk from Miaska was that he was going to stamp his ground. And Aaron Long just had this clown shoes moment.

And Miazga instantly was like, I will also give the ball away directly. And it wasn't his first time. I mean, it wasn't his last time. on the night. Yeah, they both stamped their ground pretty hard over there. 73rd minute, we get a chance. Well, I guess I should mention a 67 minute mark. There's a nice entry pass from Sands to Sonora.

So these are, you know, we're starting to collect a few nice Sands entry passes on the game. A good touch and pass from Sondora to Ferreira and the ball slips under his foot and trickles to the keeper. This one was kind of aggravating to me because it was one of the few times where we played it under control elegantly through the middle of the pitch. It's played to Ferreira's feet at the edge of the box, and he just doesn't concentrate, and the ball trickles to the keeper. Yeah, that was a really good moment from Signora. And then, so can I get into my second bit about this game?

You can get into second, third, or fourth bits. So my first bit was about just, again, trying to, what we can learn about how to set up a team and how to ask them to play, given the personnel. The other takeaway for me is that Frera hurt himself. a lot in this game, I think, despite his eventual goal. And it's because of moments like this, right? It was all over the place. Yeah.

What was going on? The first time. Like, his touch was just terrible. I think he even mentioned after the game. Now, it doesn't mean like you just conclude that his touch is in fact terrible because he's played games for the U.S. in bigger moments, even against Mexico, where his touch has been much, much cleaner. But this was really, really bad.

And for Ferreira, this is supposed to be how he. distinguishes himself from the other strikers in the pool. Like the fact that he got his goal is nice, but Frere is not outstrikering the other strikers necessarily in those moments. So he's not going to set himself apart from Haji Wright because he got on the end of that Morris Cross. Like he's got to set himself apart by being super clean when the ball comes into his feet in tight spaces and creating for other players. The other players running around him.

And that's, yes, he had a couple of nice moments to Cal and Morris. but like overall he was really wasteful. Yeah. I wonder if, I know some people will say this or probably have said it already is that he looks good against worst competition. He looks bad against better competition.

So the games where he's been, I would say that touch problem has really reared its head. What are the two games you think of? Obviously this one. What's the other one? Well, it was Holland. Yeah.

And I mean, same. So that's a tough sample. to be like, well, yes, in the toughest game of our entire 20-22 cycle, he had 45 minutes and he was bad. Yes, he was. He was ineffective at best and then actively bad for these other touches in that Holland game. But, again, you don't necessarily be like, okay, so that's it.

But he's going to need to show a lot better in any of these chances he gets because the field is tough at this point for strikers. Yeah, Hadji Wright keeps scoring. Pepe and Sargent keep scoring not at an incredibly high rate. but Pepe had a pretty decent clip. So, yeah, and I think Pepe and Sargent, I don't know, maybe I'm just going with my gut here, but I'm going to say that they would not play that badly.

Now, you might not get the perfectly weighted through ball to Morris from these guys. There's sort of a quiet elegance to the way that first chance developed from Ferreira. I tried to describe it where, you know, he has to take that touch to keep, Just keep it in bounds and then very quickly hit Cowell for it to be, you know, these things have to happen fast. And he can, when he executes, it's very nice. And I don't know that we always get that elegance from the other two. But man, they're not going to take like seven bad touches.

No. And so the comparison, kind of, it might matter a little bit, but it's like most of his bad touches came when he was playing sort of in the hole when he wasn't out and out striker. So it was him sort of trying to be an actual center midfielder or maestro there. and that's where he was really wasteful. Once he got to striker, he was just involved less, but then gets his goal. But I guess so to your point,

like, in that situation, you wouldn't be competing against those guys. He's trying to see if he could be a worse Gio Raina. Yeah, I guess so. There's a kind of a fake foul called on Sonora for a hand of the face of Antuna. And Luis Chavez goes really close with a left-footed free kick.

I think it tinged the outside of the post. And then Miaska comes on for long. We already talked about his sort of debut moments. But 74th minute, we get a chance. Acosta finds Ferreira. And he plays a well-weighted ball in behind for Morris. Morris squares it on the first touch, but it's a little early for Signora.

He's not quite there yet. On the broadcast, Kyle Martino was saying, he thought Morris could have taken a touch to get past, get his shoulder inside that last defense. defender and then have a little more time for Senora's run to develop. But I just somewhat sympathize with that. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, these are tough.

There were some moments in the first half, too, where it's like sometimes you're just, you're racing upfield, again, in these transition moments, you're hitting it into dangerous runners and it gets cleared out. That's going to happen. You're looking for volume on the brakes. So I just wanted to add to the volume here. Yeah, and it was the right idea, I think, that square ball.

Mexico comes right down the field in Deloosa. has a decent shot from outside the box. It's palmed wide by Johnson. 78th minute. Well, I was just going to point out here on that Mexico coming right back. It was like their clearance. They cleared it upfield down our left sideline. And this was another Miazka clown shoes moment where if it was Aaron Long in this

moment, it would get cut up into clips and be distributed widely because he just like totally overcommits and impacts the play in no way, shape, or form. And now Mexico are just running upfield at us on opposed. I did not catch that. Oh, man. So, yeah, so Miao's going to end up with three of these in his 30 minutes, in his 20 minutes. 78th minute, we get a nice moment from, well, Sonior had provided a lot of nice moments, I thought, or a handful. But he did give the ball away deep in the buildup here.

I just got to note it because he got cute and wasn't strong enough to hold off the two defenders who were closing in on him. He was pretty good, though, overall. Yeah, he did this a couple times in his last outing for the U.S. too, where he could just drop it, but it's almost just like a point of pride to be like, no, I can hold this, ride this challenge and still manage to like leverage my way to face up field, uh,

to pick out a pass. And a couple of times now he has failed to do that and giving the ball away or committed a foul. He's pretty slight fellow. He's, I mean, he does have good leverage. I'll give him that. Like he is decent at this,

but risk or reward here, like just knock it back to Zimmerman or Sands and start over. Uh, Sanchez goes close from 20 yards. with his right foot after some build-up from Mexico, swerves just wide of the upper 90. And then 81st minute is when all the action happens. It's a messy giveaway from Miyazka.

He kind of dribbles. He doesn't even pass it away. He just dribbles it to the other team. Antuna takes it, drives 40 yards, so he's just, Antunas just opening presents over there on that side. and squares De La Rosa Square turns inside the box and squares it for Charlie Rodriguez

who takes a touch and hits the crossbar from 18 This was very close to being 2-0 And Miyazga As it bounces off the crossbar, it hits the ground Miasga sort of volleys it over a defender's head Over a Mexican player's head To into the path of Dest And then Desk dribbles four guys

Pokes it to Sonio Sonora. Sonora plays a nicely weighted pass to Morris, who's darting in from wide left. Morris takes a touch and then uses the outside of his boot to curl one in the direction of Ferreira, who's running at the goal. It's deflected slightly right before it gets to Ferreira. I mean, there might have been a collision of all three, Ferreira, the defender, and the keeper, if the deflection hadn't happened. But anyway, it's deflected slightly, and Ferreira manages to adjust his feet just enough to tap it in, even though it changes the flight of itself, you know, like two yards from him, which I'm impressed with the quickness of feet there.

Anyway, he taps it in and it's one-on-one. Yeah, it's one of those words. It's almost disappointing that he finished it. I mean, first off, rare scoring also leads to some hilarious banter, but it would have been fantastic for the discourse if he had stabbed that wide instead of stabbing at home. You and I have a different idea of what's fantastic. Well, I mean, this was just, it ended up being his elite finishing rearing its head. But, yeah, it's great.

This is Sergenio Dest doing something that I feel like 20 years ago would have resulted in him having both his legs chopped off. He tried to dribble through a Mexico quartet, even in a friendly. But I think the rivalry is a little different these days where that kind of thing can happen. And you can escape mostly unscathed. Yeah. It was awesome. The desk highlights fantastic because that's what you're waiting for from the one really elite player we had out on the field. I mean, I think we can still call him elite, certainly for the U.S. standards.

He'll come around. It actually also highlights what I was hoping would happen every time he got the ball because, again, he was so, he was such an ill fit for the rest of our team that every time he got it faced up against a defender, I was like, you should just be required in this moment to try to try to. dribble the guy. Like, you should not just get it and then circulate. Like, you're the guy out here. Not even, like, I expect you to, you know, carry the team. He was reticent. He was reticent, especially in the first half to make anything happen. It was like the game needs you to do this for the entertainment value because it's got nothing else going for. So I just wanted more, more of deaths taking people on. And then we finally got it here, 80 minutes in. Yeah. So, you know, a mix of things happening in the games on the night for both Morris and

Ferreira, but they, you know, they deliver the equalizer. I don't know what else there is to say about it. It seems like we've covered everything. So I'm just going to cover again more of like a high level, you know, how to view these things because other than Dest, and you could say maybe Zimmerman, but even Zimmerman, I feel like, is going to be battling to maintain his position on a roster for a full strength national team. You know, he's going to be one of several guys who will be, you know, fine if they get called in,

especially if we bring in a new coach. Depth charts, depth charts spots can flip quickly when the margins are that narrow between guys. But Dest, you know, is on his own spot. Everyone else here, everyone is like fighting at best for like backup backup spots.

And some of them are just like, if I have a good showing here, maybe I'll be one injury away from being an injury away from being on the roster. So like this is what it's going to look like. You're not going to see, when you put all those guys on the field together, it's going to look pretty rough most of the time. It'd be nice if it didn't.

You know, if you could do a C team and have it still be an entertaining game of soccer. I think we can get to that point. We could have, again, if we had set up some tactics to, yeah, if Keaton Parks and Tim Tilling were on the field, it'd look different. It would. I mean. I genuinely think so. But even then, you've got to give them a centerback who can pass the ball if you're going to play that way. Maybe we don't have that available.

for this game. It's different, right? When these guys are trying out for their spots, the spots they're trying out for are not like, it's not like when Eunice Musa came in and played a game and you're just like, oh, Lord, this player is, this players are starting 11 player. Like none of the guys that were trying out yesterday

are going to look like that. And when you surround them with 10 other guys who are also not that guy, it's going to look really bad. So, you know, we talk about stock up, stock down, or like, you know, the normal response here of like none of these guys should ever play again. None of them probably hurt their stock that much because their stocks were not that high to begin with.

They didn't, none of them really, like, demanded more looks if they fall out of the call-up rotation. I don't think any of them are really going to be missed. But if any of them are back up on there for gold cups, I'm like, sure, let's see what they can do with a few more minutes. Maybe it was surrounded by a better plan or a couple of better players. Yeah. Well, I thought, I do think Zimmerman's stock probably, I mean, he was very good in the air again, but just the general inability of us to gain some calm and some sort of foothold on the game from the back.

It probably lowers his stock a little bit for me. It seems like you were kind of alluding to that as well, or something along those lines. Even for that, for like any of these guys, the failure to possess the ball doesn't lower their stock for me because none of these guys were. possession players. Like us not being able to, Zimmerman not being able to possess the ball when he's the best passer out of, out of the guys on his eye. Like that doesn't hurt him for me. He's supposed to be the guy who defers to Tim Riem when he plays, differs to the better

ball progressors. It's even better if we can get Chris Richards and Tim Riem or whoever out there and get too much better ball progressing centerbacks. Right. But we already know where Zimmerman is. So like the fact that as a team we couldn't do it, that doesn't really, do much in my mind for their value. Like we kind of already know what Walker Zimmerman is and where he fits in that regard.

And even the same with Aaron Long. Like, I don't think his stock is even that hurt. I think he's already out of the picture for anything meaningful. He's a camp body to fill camps where we need extra players. I want to give a little shout for Aidan Morris to. I thought, like, it wasn't a huge difference, but I like the cut of his jib when he came on. he seemed a little bit more a little bit calmer and more confident than Acosta and Sands looked when they were in the midfield.

That was helped, I think, by having Sands in the back three behind him. Well, also wasn't, Morris wasn't perfect. But, you know, if you're going to move anybody's stock up or down, he probably gets a little bump up. Bump them up then. Yeah, give him, I mean, again, so then that puts Aidan Morris maybe a little bit closer to a gold cup call up. Is that kind of where you're at? Yeah.

Yeah, I'll take that. I mean, I guess then the question is, do you call Morris up over Acosta or Sands? I don't know. I mean, you shouldn't be calling any of these guys up over Tim Tilmer and Keaton Parks. Their stock was helped immensely yesterday. Yeah. Well, hopefully someone at U.S. soccer sees it that way at some point. I think that's it, Greg.

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