Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #394: U20 World Cup — USA v Uruguay

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

A South American opponent in the quarterfinals does us in again. Mikey Varas's team played good soccer down in Argentina, but defensive lapses cost us on Sunday, and we lacked the cutting edge to overcome those. Matt Hartman joins to recap the game.----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 U-S. U-20s fell at the U-20 World Cup in Argentina, losing 2-0 to Uruguay. The sad responsibility of recapping this game falls to me and Matt Hartman. How are you doing, Matt? I'm right. It was always a little melancholy with when the U-20 cycle ends. It always ends in the quarterfinals. The same way, yeah, Groundhog Day.

What were you going to say? It's kind of a weird thing. but like for me like with these with you 20 cycles in particular I would think about these players for so long that by the end of these cycles I'm always like all right let's just get on with it like I just want to start thinking about the next one yeah I mean it is kind of a gift that keeps giving that way there's always a new hope it's the now we're entering the cabin sullivan era are we not that's maybe a little far away the next cycle is 05 so he's an oh nine

Okay, yeah, yeah, all right. Well, thanks for keeping everybody grounded. We ran into a savvy, tough, well-organized team, you know, and we just, I don't think we played a terrible game or anything. No. We had two key moments and we couldn't score. There you have it. Simple as that.

Thanks for listening. The annoying bit about this soccer thing is. that you have to score those goals and you know nothing matters. There was kind of a lot. There's a lot of story to sort of unpack in this game, I thought. Just got off the conference call with Mikey Varus, a brief one. But, you know, he made the point that that early goal really did rattle them pretty good, which I think was evident on the telecast.

And it took half time and, you know, some changes for us to even start to create some danger again. Because we were bright. I thought we were bright right off the bat. It looked pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I don't really believe in, you know, like that thing that happens where people say, like, you can see the bad goal in the group state or something like that.

And it's like, oh, well, at least we got it out of the way. Or like, at least like that's a thing that now we have to respond to prepare us. Like, it did feel a little bit like the ease with which we rolled through the first four games of this tournament. At least three of the four games maybe didn't set us up mentally in the, the best place for going down in a knockout game like we did. Yeah, to go up against those ferocious midfielders and have so much less time on the ball and all that.

Yep. Let's do the lineups. Gagas Lenina and goal, as he has been in every game of this tournament, we did the three at the back again, Justin Shea, Brandon Craig, and Josh Weinder. Michael Halliday got the nod over Jonathan Gomez, which I didn't really have a problem with at right wing. back and then Obed Vargas got the nod over Daniel Edelman in midfield with next to McGlynn and then Caleb Wiley at left wing back and then Owen Wolf was kind of in that sort of weird

midfield slash winger role I don't really know what to call it honestly um and then Luna and Cal were the two the two guys up front yeah um yeah wolf is kind of like a right winger in possession at least until we get into like the final third and then defensively he like pulls inside he's all he was often in the game like the first press man you know like when they broke when or go i would break out they he would have he would be the one like running back trying to slow things down yeah like with the lineup no complaints really of course i'd like to see paredes on the field and i thought danny edelman had been very good for for us in the tournament but i think the the lineup we fielded was completely reasonable the one positional question

Mark, like you said, like you mentioned, like, and as it has been all tournament, was Wolf, how he fits in. But in a game where we could reasonably expect to see lots of the ball going in, I didn't mind starting him on the wing and him pulling inside like he does. Right. Yeah. He didn't have a great game, but I, you know, as Varas said in the postgame press conference, really nobody had a great game for us. Yeah. Uruguay came out like this. They had Randall Rodriguez and gold.

He was excellent both with his distribution and, you know, his goal coverage. He wasn't tested too much, but when he was tested, he made a nice save, I thought. Not as nice of a save as Rokas Pukestus made, but it's still a nice save. The backline was Ponte, Boselli, Gonzalez, and Maturo. And then Boselli was everywhere. I was involved in a lot of stuff. And then Shagas, D.E. Diaz, Sosa, and Delos Santos across a band of four, at least nominally.

And then Gonzalez and Anderson Duarte, Anderson Duarte, the striker up front. Yep. So the big story here is how shorthanded Oroguay is. They are playing down Luciano Rodriguez due to a red card that he picked up versus Gambia. And they were also missing Matias Abado and Anderson Ferreri due to injury. That's essentially their best starting forward line entering the tournament. They also have a six foot four, six foot five striker in the Real Madrid Academy that wasn't released for this tournament, who has like a transfer market value in the millions of dollars. So going into this, I was thinking not having watched all that much of them that maybe they weren't going to have that much. ferocity in attack and that we would be able to

um they you know like I think some even the fullbacks that they played in this game are like Uruguayan fans kind of consider them maybe like eventual fullbacks um ended up not really playing out that way uh Fabricio Diaz is played in midfield for the started in uh did he start in midfield for them yeah started in midfield for them five yeah he's a highly rated

kid has rumors swirling about a serious Barcelona interest and Alan Maturro, the left back, is getting pro minutes at centerback at Genoa in Italy. They're in Serie B right now, but we know from our own team that getting centerback minutes

at any good level as an 18-year-old means you're a pretty serious prospect. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Now, you said earlier some of the players, was it some of the wingerers that Yudigua had in this game are eventual fullback?

Is that way? Yeah, I just, I just went to like some, see what I could find out about some of the names on like Uruguayan forums heading into the game, heading into the game. And what I found was like heading into the tournament, like players like, uh, Chagastias and De Los Santos were both kind of like, yeah, they start as wingers, but they weren't like, seriously, they weren't like the players that they were expected. Yeah, exactly. Okay, okay.

Interesting because De Los Santos was getting a lot of love from the comments. commentator. I thought he was pretty, and he had some nice moments. I didn't think he was like that good though. Yeah. He did have the crucial, the crucial moment, of course. All right. So we, we come out, let's go to the timeline. We come out and we're immediately, you know, switching the ball wide with like big diagonals

and having some success with this. Wiley plays a ball across that it gets played, misplayed by, maybe it was Gonzalez. maybe it was Boselli. I can't remember for sure, but it sneaks through and Halliday just doesn't quite get a foot to it. He had a lot of the goal to shoot out if he just could stab his foot onto it. Couldn't quite get there. Probably didn't expect it to get through.

No, it definitely didn't. Yeah, I mean, basically as good of a start to the game as you could hope, like we had six or seven players touched a ball, moving the ball side to side, more or less uncontested through the levels, pretty speculative cross by Wiley and the Uruguayan defender I don't know I guess it would have been Bosselli's the first defend would have been the first defender if the cross was coming in

from the our left-hand side he just like completely whiffs on the clearance and I mean it's certainly caught both of the the the Uruguayan left side of the defense off guard and it seemed like Holiday was also maybe a bit late to react and you know he just inches away from maybe a couple of feet away from what would have been the dream start to the game. Yeah. As we discussed, we were looking, I thought we looked really good for about the first 15 minutes. And McGlynn was really sharp, you know, doing his thing. We were finding Luna between the lines, finding people between the lines.

And Uruguay did not look threatening at all, I thought. No, I was really happy with the opening to the game, like the first 10 minutes or so. Lots of progressive passing really looked like we really looked like we'd. came to play like it was going to be one of those days where like have we've seen so far in the tournament where we were just we got into a comfortable spot with with possession um and one of the new wrinkles in this game was it was a lot of that early success mostly came from that cross field ball from um we kind of like from full back to full back sometimes center back to full back up on those wings um but as is also usual for this team things kind of

got a little static when we hit the final third. Yeah, we've been talking about it, the whole tournament, right? And it sort of came home to roost in this game. But let's talk about a couple more nice things. We have a lovely sequence around the 11-minute mark. Shea hits a diagonal to Wiley, one of those passes we were just talking about. And then it kind of gets cycled back to McGlynn. He plays a through ball for Wiley.

And I guess this is an example of how things kind of fall apart. in the final third because he just doesn't show quite enough refinement with it. It gets tackled. The ball goes out of bounds or maybe it just went. I can't remember exactly. And then Cowell receives a pass right on the edge of the box like moments later turns and he's trying to have that hit of his and he can't just can't get the ball out of his feet and he gets it tackled away from him.

Right. I thought that this was a little disappointing from Wiley and just not just another instance, like we said of that of this team, just not quite having the final third chops to convert possession in good places into chances. Wiley just doesn't take a good enough touch and probably also takes too long to release the ball once he does catch up to it. The ball eventually, like you said, finds its way to cow, who I thought did really well to receive the ball. He kind of like let the ball run for a little longer than the Uruguayan defender's thought and then kind of like dipped a shoulder to beat the first Uruguayan and just took a little too long to pull the trigger

on that right footed, mirrored iron robin curling strike that he likes so much and just has the ball taken off of him by Diaz who did well to recover. I mean, these are fine little details, but I feel like Wiley, he's got, he almost has to take that first time, that through ball and just cross it with his first touch, you know, or, or find, you know, find the cutback with his first touch. I don't know if he has to do that, but it seems like that would have worked better. I'm clocking around the 15-minute mark

that we're losing a little bit of our hold on the game, finding it more difficult to possess into the final, even get it into the final third. What did you think? And why? Do you have any idea why? Yeah, I mean, I agree. It felt to me like Uruguay just kind of like after a couple of,

you know, where they're 15 minutes into the game at this point, we've entered into a couple of duels with them. They just kind of like felt that they have the physical edge in the game. And they, you know, just they had a couple of like long balls that they had success with, which was like certainly not the case earlier in the tournament. Like even in the Ecuador game where Ecuador early was trying to play like a similar type of ball, maybe less refined than Uruguay ended up being. but like those were almost entirely sniffed out by our defenders and it seemed felt like

or like they ended up finding feet more often than then you wanted to I also think I mean anybody who's listening to this podcast for any period of time knows I'm not like one to complain about the refs a lot I don't enjoy that but I did think that this ref had made some odd decisions and one example was do you remember when that ball there was like a ball played in the air towards Cowell and he he basically gets on the other side of the defender and just pins him with his back, you know? Like so that he's, so that the ball is bouncing,

is going to bounce into space and Cowles off to the races with it. And Cowell gets called for a foul. Do you remember this play? I do remember that, yeah. And it seemed like there were a few of those that went our way right around this point in the game. And I'm not saying that that decides the game, that'd be silly talk.

but it did seem like it affected our rhythm a little bit right in this like around the 15 to minute mark to the goal. Yeah, I mean, I didn't really clock it over the course of the game, but I mean, if there were a game to get a referee like this in it, definitely Uruguay lucked out because I think like they had us for physicality, like across the board. Cowell is like one of the few examples of a guy who Ordovue clearly clocked as like, oh, this is a serious adult human that we can't push around.

But for him to get a call like that go against him, it's kind of deflating. Yeah. I mean, they were just to look like a lot of men, especially across the back line and deep in the midfield. Around the 17-minute mark, Uruguay set piece draws a flick. You know, it's flicked from the edge of the box towards the goal. And then Gaga comes out to punch it. not very convincing he only punch he doesn't he isn't able to clear the box with the punch and then he and winder collide on the play um i guess winder was okay yeah cute little uh set piece by otta

guai like um basically playing it to the first man letting him pop it off letting him pop it up off his own head and like ask a question of uh the goalie like how he's he's gonna react to it i enjoyed it. But yeah, like not, not terribly convincing from Gaga to, but he does get enough on his punch to clear the ball. And like you said, a winder gets up pretty quickly. All in all, I think it could have been worse. Yeah. Yeah. So the, let's talk about the goal for, um, for Uruguay. It was, uh, we're going to find people to blame, of course, but it's, it was a nice goal. Um, it was a, a, a fukundo Gonzalez pass, I believe, just a well-hit. low-driven left-footed pass to the feet.

So from the backline, right into Duarte's feet. And Duarte just plays a quick outside of the boot, one-touch pass into the path of De La Santos streaming in from the left. De La Santos beats Justin Shea to it. Justin Shea goes to ground, as you all know, and gets left behind. And then De Los Santos kind of picks up his head and cuts it back to

Duarte, who had had Brandon Craig on his back, but by the time he got into the box, he was at one point about five yards ahead of Craig. So obviously the overcommitment by Shea was a bit of panicky defending that wasn't good.

I think Brandon Craig, Brandon Craig's plotting attempt to get back was a little bit troubling. I think it was maybe equal parts, lack of speed and maybe lack of awareness. And that was it. 1-0. Uruguay.

And it felt like it was going to be tough for us to come back. Right. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, the plate started with a beautiful line-breaking pass from Brendan Craig. But a couple of passes later, Luna misplaced a pass to an overlapping Obedvargas. And that's a bad... It was basically the worst place in the games thus far that a pass could have been misplaced because with Obit Vargas overlapping, Wolf already occupying his possession wing spot

and McGlynn in a perpetual jog, we have, we had no midfield. So Uruguay is able to play an uncontested ball right into their striker's feet and then their striker being Duarte, and then Duarte fools Che with a one size pass, one, with a first time ball to his winger. like you said, Che just completely fails to recover. And Craig and Winder, too, I thought had a chance to mark Duarte out of the play and just didn't. So it ends up being it happen. Yeah, he kind of scuffed it, didn't he? But the goal was very open.

Yeah, I didn't notice that about Vargas overlapping, but that is interesting. It still was a really good pass. It was a Brandon Craig-esque pass from, I believe it was Gonzales into Lvarez. It was. like it was through like 30 yards of open field right in that. And we and we panicked. We weren't after that moment. We were not stringing passes together.

We weren't really possessing into Uruguay's half at all. Yeah. Yeah. It understandably felt a little like they got punched in the face. Everybody a little less calm with the ball, but more importantly, off ball started to give way more respect to Uruguay and stopped pressing as wildly. Also, we're. in this period after like the 10 minutes after the goal,

Luna touches the ball a couple times. And this is the thing with Luna, right? Where it's like you, for me, you, when you were talking about Diego Luna as like a professional soccer player, it's like the game, the context of the game almost matters so much where it's like in throughout the group stage and whatnot, Diego Luna doing this like fun hero ball stuff is so pleasant.

But it feels so much less good when he's just trying to, to beat three people in midfield when you're down a goal and you aren't generating a final third entrance every minute. Right. So there were a couple of times in here where Diego Luna just like loses the ball when we have like a 3V4 rush. I'm like, oh, come on. Yeah.

Yeah, that definitely happened. I feel like, yeah, Luna, we'll see what happens with Luna's career, of course, but I did feel like in this game, even as the game progressed, there was, he was the one who was most likely to receive the ball on the half turn and then just like just press the issue a little bit you know and I know it's a fine line you know between being the guy who presses the issue

and the guy who gives the ball away and it starts generating counterattacks but I feel like there was still a little bit there was just this timidness from us when we did break a line and then it would just be like we'd like back pass our way back into the Uruguay press you know yeah and I'm just just a sort of half-hearted defense of Diego Luna there, even though I really, I mean, he's probably my favorite player on this team.

But I do acknowledge what you're saying. From a pure, like, a pure, like, fun to watch, like, I want to watch, if I'm going to watch a soccer player, Diego Luna is absolutely my favorite player on this team as well. Good, good, good. We're in agreement. I thought Craig, Craig was looking kind of battleshipy at moments in this game and the bad recovery on the goal. And then there was a time where he just, you know, he just looked like an old man turning around and trying to chase somebody.

Maybe this is why he's not playing that much in MLS or not playing at all. Yeah, that's absolutely the thing with him. It's a lot more obvious into a team like Uruguay, who have legit athletes everywhere all over the fields that we see the concerns that maybe Philadelphia has with him. It's a little unfair to say because he, like, Philadelphia has two of the best. better centerbacks in in MLS but yeah like I mean ever since he was you know going back like four years this is the problem with Brendan Craig you know that he's not

the most athletic he's he's not doesn't have the same athletic profile as even our other centerbacks certainly not Che I mean even in this portion of the game even Wiley has a moment where he just kind of gets a run past on the wing it leads to like a fairly good opportunity for Uruguay to enter our final third. And this is where like, if I was worried when the goal went in for all of the reasons that we talked about where it just felt like the goals for this team were always going to be a problem against good competition and us needing to get to. And then through this period of the game where we just kind of got out, uh,

athleteed for the ball a couple places on the field. It's like, oh no, this, this is not trending. the direction I'd like it too. Yeah. Wiley's a good athlete, but I don't know if he's like a plus plus athlete, right? It's, uh, there's some discussion of that in the Discord.

Yeah, I'd describe him as a plus athlete. I think he's like the definition of that. Okay. 36 minute, I just clock some good defending from Obed Vargas. He's like, he had to like chase somebody down and,

and win a foul from him in the, in our own box. It was good to see somebody. somebody winning a duel, you know? Yeah, this is the defending in the 35th minute. Yes. Yeah, so, yeah, he does really well to recover. This, the need for this defending comes from McGlynn needlessly pulling up for a shot from 30 yards.

Like, he's and a couple other players in this team have been prone to do over the course of the tournament. And the shot just doesn't beat the first man, just like ricochets off of him right to his feet. So now we have like a rush going the other way and mcglin is like dead on arrival in that race heading the other way but vargas does really well to get in front of it ends up being gonzalez their number 10 gets on gets goal side of him and that lets him make the mistake eventually winning the foul to kill the play yeah clock does a good moment by him yeah well and up until this point we hadn't had a single shot on goal uh but right before the half we get a corner of kick and McGlynn plays it hard on the ground to winder and he flicks it and puts it on frame. Just, I mean, if the keeper had been a little more unsighted, maybe that goes in, but keeper had a clean line of sight on it and just plucked it out of the air. Yeah, I'd expect keepers to claim that in most situations. Not really much there.

If we're being honest, it's just worth mentioning because like you mentioned, it's essentially the only time in the first half we asked any question of the goalkeeper at all yeah yeah so the half comes it's not looking great sub we sub on paredes for wolf and you know the crowds on twitter went crazy and uh it did seem like a good decision thought wolf was sluggish but you could like i said earlier you could say that about just about anybody probably no yeah i completely agree um that it's a good decision. I think even in hindsight, it's a good decision, even though Paredes didn't have a great game.

I think that the first half was clearly calling for like another, not only another guy who was going to stretch the field, but also a guy who can maybe make a little bit more happen in the final third. And at least that's what happens theoretically when you trade out Wolf for Paredes. And Paredes did have some, you know, he did make some stuff happen here in the final third. there as the game went on. 47th minute, good counterpress from Vargas and Luna. We win the ball.

Luna plays Cal and do a 1v1 with Boselli and Cowell. Cal tries to cut in him and just gets fouled as he cuts in. It was all this borderline hospital ball from Luna. Yeah. No, I mean, this is what, you know, Cowell offers you, right? He could just turn a ball that like that isn't a great ball in, into his feet by Luna and like you know with a touch he makes you think about like dealing with his the potential of his burst of speed makes you makes you makes your whole life flash before your

eyes exactly yeah yeah right which means I think that this is like a really good play by Bisselli the Urigu Y and right centerback realizes he's not staying with cowl and just American football tackles him um and yeah like I think we could have used a lot more of that softball situational awareness over the course of the game. Yeah, it was savvy because, you know, Cal cuts in. Who knows what can happen there if he allows him to? 48th minute, a set piece from Craig finds Cal and he tries to flick it over the bar. It's a, it's, so Cal was the, essentially the first runner closest to Craig and Craig kind of

whips it in from the left side. It's a good, seemed like a good set piece to me, just didn't quite come off. Yeah, it looked like a free kick routine, right? Like it's like that came off the training ground. But it was like fairly unorthodox. I don't remember seeing I can't recall seeing too many set pieces like that. Yeah, this just like it just like illustrates how worth it is to have Brandon Craig on free kicks. Like the the level of accuracy he had here to put this ball like right on cowl's foot is pretty crazy to me.

even though it's like it's like slightly funny watching Diego Luna lineup with with the crowd on on these free kicks because he's so small yeah he was marked by a guy on this free kick who was like six inches taller than it was just like there was no way he was getting around they could have it was like if it was like an Omaha drill they had would have had to have taken Diego Luna out on a stretcher yeah not not ideal yeah and I mean even as it's you know, as we were pumping crosses into the box late in the game, there was just like no chance, even if Luna wasn't even involved, just no chance we were going to get to one of those crosses that one of those centerbacks was just pounding it away. You know, around the 53 minute mark, it was a good spell of play from us.

We're just putting pressure on them. We're back to sort of looking good again in the game. Yeah, this stretch here was basically our best stretch of the game after the very beginning and very end momentary threats through Cade Cowell and Luna you know as it was always going to be with this roster and I even though Cowell and Luna were able to connect do some fun things none of it was like particularly close to that's true so I don't think Origo I was all the felt all that worried about it but yeah like just another thing where it's like man maybe

It's around this time of the game where you start to think like, did Ricardo Pepe? Is Ricardo Pepepey on the bed? Like maybe something. One more body out there. I mean, do you really think Ricardo Pepe would have made the difference for this team? I don't. Like overall, I don't. I think like a legit right winger.

Like if we have Giorina on the right wing, I think now you're talking. That's like the real hole in this team. And I guess Raina's just like a month too old, basically, right? I mean, he wouldn't be on the roster anyway, but. Yeah, he's a little bit. Yeah, I don't, I'm not sure where in 2002 Raino was born, but I think it was less than 12 ones. Oh, yeah.

I know everybody thinks I hate Giorina, but I basically know his birthday. Okay, then we, we sub on Rokas Pukestus and Danny Edelman for Halliday and Vargas, I guess. At first I was like, surely, you know, we're moving Shay to right back and going to back four. But no, we're putting Puxus at wingback. Yeah, yeah. Pooksat said wing back indeed. And how did that go? And immediately didn't go super well because Uruguay scored coming down his side.

He went to ground, right, and got rounded on our right side? He basically just like, he's onto the field. Ball comes at his side. He just like gets way too aggressive. and tries to like he runs he makes like a 10 yard darting run to try to put like a hand on his man

and he just gets turned and left in the dust yeah and that was only still only about 5% of the blame for the goal because it's not all that threatening cross right in front of the six goes to winder winder swings and misses with his right foot as he goes to ground and his trail leg

catches the ball, sends it at the goal, kind of dribbling at the goal. Gaga can't get more than a finger to it, and it rolls agonizingly across the line. 2-0, Odugui. Yeah, I mean,

this is the type of unlucky moment that only happens because Oduai took the initiative and put the ball into a dangerous place, which is something that we failed to do throughout this game. Not much to say, pretty about the goal itself,

pretty inexcusable from Winder, who just thought about it too much, maybe, and got his feet twisted. So, you know, it just sucks. It happens. Yeah. Dosacero. Don't say that. Yeah, and I was, Winder was pretty broken up about it.

You could tell on the broadcast, and it was good to see the boys, you know, consoling him. They were right over to him having his back. so I like that. And again, before you move on, like this is the type of thing that like, it's just like part and parcel of having a kid who was like literally two years younger than everybody else on the field, you know, play.

Like if there were anybody who the lights were going to be too bright for, it's going to be an 05 playing in this tournament. I mean, you, I'm just curious what you think of Winder's long-term potential now. I mean, he's so young. Yeah. Is the quickness stuff? Is that something that might change by the time he's 23? Oh, yes, I certainly, you know, that stuff changes.

He's a confusing player to me, though. Like, I don't, I've been, like, very cagey in, like, the scouting circles about what I think about Wander, just because, like, eventually in when you watch enough youth players, right? like everybody starts to get like archetypal where it's like oh they're doing this this way in this so that means this and hit the way that he's played so far in like usel and with like it's hard to map that to anything because he like he does a lot he does a bunch of good things but he also does he also does the type of things where like it's like okay it's clear that like you're not going to get away with this level of like the level of athlete he is right now

now in MLS or you know like it's even I think would be concerning for some teams and like he wouldn't be like the best player in next pro either I don't think uh at centerback so it's like just like a really hard thing because we don't we don't get to see him competing against like the athletes that he gets comes up against the USL like the big difference between the MLS pipeline um either like not even just MLS but like the MLS but like the MLS pipeline, next pro leagues, the high level academy stuff, and USL is just like the level of athlete is different. Like that's, that's the, it's not like the technical stuff.

Um, you know, it's just like you don't there aren't there aren't like wingers in USL that can control a soccer ball and run a four or five. Like that's the, that's the big thing. And like for Winder, I think like that's the question that needs to be axed because we don't even, we don't even get to see it for him at at club level. from what we've seen at youth national team level, I'm not convinced that he's going to be able to deal with it. Also, I think the,

the closest, like, equivalent to him that we have had in terms of, like, centerback coming out of USL does a lot of good things, but isn't perfect, maybe has some athletic questions. Hayden Sargis, remember him back in the day. Not on the best path, not maybe having the luck with DC, that I had hoped that he might have so there are definitely question marks I hope to

move to Portugal goes through and goes well for him but but for me I don't he's not a he's not a kid that I'm like writing into any future national yeah yeah well the good thing is he's so young and hopefully I mean he does he does have some there's something special about him there's like a there's like a flare you know the the back heel off the corner kick, even though there wasn't much there, as you pointed out. I mean, like,

it's kind of cool to have a centerback trying that kind of stuff. He tried like a scissor kick earlier in the tournament, made some intelligent plays with the ball at his feet. But he's had quite a few mistakes too. So, all right. 63 minute mark, we get a lovely ball.

So the U.S. is still in it, still trying. Lovely ball from Brandon Craig, diagonally to cow. just can't he brings it down but he just can't get anything across i don't know if there was gonna it would have done any good if he had because there wasn't really anybody in the box um so he just ends up cycling it back to wiley and wiley pumps it over everybody for a throw in which is kind

of like our attacking third problems in a nutshell yeah exactly yeah i mean again like going back to the Brennan Craig diagonal Cowell, like there almost isn't an adjective strong enough to describe how good of pass it was like Craig's ability to just like put to pick out a teammate upfield almost feels super human to me. Yeah, and then Cowell chooses to wait for numbers after bringing the ball down and that as it was the case hold all tournament that was like a death knell of the offensive move because we're We're just like hopeless against the set block. Yeah, once there were five shirts, five blue shirts in the box,

it's like, well, we might as well just kick it out of bounds at this point. Right. It is crazy how good Craig is at passing the ball. Because, you know, I criticized him a little bit for the, in the goal on Twitter. And people were like, but his distribution is so good. Yeah, I mean, both things can be true, you know? Yeah. You can eat like a transcendent passer of the ball.

from centerback position and still maybe not like what a shame if he can't actually be a pro centerback like can he play the six or like what's the i don't know i how do we fit him on the field right yeah i don't see it he used to play fullback that's like very obviously out of the picture now um i don't think the six would work out like you're you're getting into like chris durkin plus territories i think with him yeah as a six yeah I mean I just hope you just I think we just have to wait and see and hope that it works out um at centerback I think I mean that what your question was to see we could have to like can he be a pro centerback he will absolutely be a pro centerback in my opinion but there's a

long road from between pro centerback and uh playing regularly at even an mLS level and what we're going to need for the national team yeah I I didn't put that very well all right 64 six to four minute mark we're starting to put some good pressure on uh what did you see here yeah so this is around this time it's cowl who's who is uh trying to make things happen and it honestly felt to me like he's the only one who even remembered that the ball is supposed to go in the net when you're playing this sport only one with like his head up actually charging at the at the opponent um yeah this is again again one of those moments where like you really start to miss the fact that we don't have another one of him.

And by that, I mean, actual winger on the field who can make stuff happen. Yeah, a minute later, lovely from Luna and Edelman to get into the box, Luna's, so they just sort of tiki-taka through a crowd of blue shirts. Luna's last touch is a little bit heavy, but it's, but luckily, Kyle is right there, and he runs onto it and fizzes the shot low at the near post. is a good shot and draws a good save from Rodriguez. Yeah, good save indeed. This is one of those moments where Diego Luna really flashes that fun, quick interplay that he's capable of.

And Cowell hits it low and hard just like you'd want him to. Just unlucky, it's like basically right at the planted foot of the goalie. It's a good save, though. Must be said, it's like basically one of the only times in the game where I thought that the Oruguayan defense really took the play off. where like Luna was maybe allowed to do a little bit more than he had done in the game because they just let him but some ball watching but yeah definitely like maybe the highlight of the second of the second half for us well there's the there's the pookestus block

oh right right yeah um we get Sullivan on for winder uh poor kid and then Gomez comes on for wiley so Quinn sullivan for winder we're at this point we really are removing a centerback and and then Gomez on for Wiley at left back. It didn't really make that much difference. We're a good soccer team. I think that's clear, but we just didn't have the cutting edge.

And that became even clearer today. I mean, we have talked about it all tournament, but it was driven home in full force today, I thought. Yeah, definitely agree. Got to give Uruguay a lot of credit. The things that they excelled at in this game, like the bite not giving us anything easy, the defensive organization, that's the stuff that really separates U20 soccer from the real thing. And something that like we just looked increasingly up until the very end of the game like unable to to work through.

This Uruguayan team, I thought, very reminiscent of the Ukrainian U20 team that won the U20. World Cup in 2019, where they just like every player on the field basically where it's like, oh, yeah, that's, I don't know how good he's going to be, but that is a professional soccer player. Yeah. Just giving everything, just giving everything to keep the ball out of the net, basically. 78 minute is when we get the big chance for cowl. It's off a set piece. It just kind of falls to him a couple yards wide of the penalty marker.

He takes it down and just, rips it. It's totally going in, but it hits Rokos Pookstus in the chest. He just can't get out of the way fast enough. And, you know, I mean, it would have been 2-1 with 20 minutes left to play, given we had eight minutes of stoppage time. But alas. Yeah. Yeah, pretty brutal for us.

And for Cowell, who I thought really deserved one based on his performance over the 90, he just like was the danger man for us. and I don't know what the XGs ended up showing, but if we got close to a goal, I think it would have had to have been Cowell's opportunities. Definitely. The Pooksas sub ended up having a lot of impact for all the wrong reasons. With that, the goal coming down his side right after he came on for Uruguay and then

him essentially preventing a goal here by just wrong place, wrong time. he looked pretty he looked pretty devastated about it like immediately went up to Cowell to apologize yeah so it felt like it wasn't our night before and it certainly didn't feel like it was our night after this right right

we fell in the quarterfinals of the U20 World Cup again not much of note happened after that chance I mean there was a lot of us just whipping the ball into the box and them nodding it away yeah highly speculative speculative crosses.

Just didn't have the street smarts to deal with the Oedaguayans. You know, I mean, they just seemed like they were a little bit sharper, a little bit more locked into the nitty-gritty details of winning. And we went out, justifiably so. Yep. It's sad because I think it's like one to 21, the most talented team we've sent to this tournament. but there were flaws in the team that we knew going in, that we just ended up just they weren't hideable into a team as professional and savvy as Uruguay,

maybe Pepe and a true right winger and a couple of other players and other places make the difference, but it's hard to make that excuse when Uruguay was out, was missing their four best attackers. So this concludes our coverage of the U20 World Cup, I think. For patrons, I threw the audio

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the full Discord server, which never sleeps. Matt, thanks again. Have a great week. And thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.