Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #398: USA v Mexico recap, plus the Berhalter grenade

Episode Date: June 16, 2023

Greg and Belz recap the beautiful action from Las Vegas, and also react to the bombshell report from Paul Tenorio that Berhalter will be reinstated as USMNT coach.----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. Nations League delivers again. The U.S. beat Mexico. 3A.0 in Las Vegas. Took him to the woodshed. It was a night soaked in glory. Clinton Dempsey brought up Y2K. A kid removed a Mexico bandana from his head after Pepe's goal.

There were also some setbacks. And then the news delivered by Paul Tenorio that Burrhalter will return as the coach of the national team. Greg, where do we start? I'd say we start by hailing, singing the praises of King BJ Kalagnan, Kalagnan. And I don't, I feel like maybe he's transitioned to wrestling coach with his, with his match day polo. But what a legendary moment for him, and for what his tenure with the national team looks to be. Can't do much better than this. No, a first time in 23 years. We've had a scoreline like this against Mexico, I think I heard.

The lads were having fun out there. It came across on the TV. It was, I mean, these are getting to be pretty awesome, eventful, like, spectacles, the Concaf Nations League. Right. And it wouldn't be what it is without all the Mexico fans in the stadium. I've sort of come around on that point of view that it is, it makes it more fun. You know?

I mean, it definitely makes it more fun when you win. Yeah, I mean, it was, the drama's fantastic. The scoreline is fantastic. The players were all fantastic. You know, this is what we, I've been talking on when I said, this cycle is going to be a blast. And I, like the one takeaway, and I feel like I had this within 20 minutes was that I actually, like, feel like we're going to get robbed. because we won't get to watch this team who's now going to be full of players coming of age.

These aren't players getting introduced anymore. You know, they're going to be coming of age and like entering their real prime years and we're not going to get to see them take on Conccaalf and World Cup qualifying. Like I kind of genuinely feel like we're missing out on seeing that because we're hosting.

We don't have to go through qualifying. And then four years from now, the format's changing in like their last. allowing 94 teams into the World Cup finals. And so we won't have anywhere near the drama for whatever drama there is usually in our standard World Cup qualifying format. That's going to be gone. So we won't ever get to see this team faced with that sort of pressure.

And I just feel like we're going to be missing out because, man, did they have some fun yesterday? Yeah, it is a bummer. And I think there is plenty of drama. There was plenty of drama in World Cup qualifying. There has been pretty much every cycle, including failure in 2017. you do get the sense watching this game last night that this team is going to get better at facing Concaf already is better and we'll continue to get better over the next few years. Should we save the Burrhalter discussion for the end or? I don't even know, man. What a, what a bombshell,

what a grenade that they just tossed into an already like cocaine-fueled night. Right. Well, it was Tenorio who reported it, I think pretty much exclusively, right? Has anybody else followed? up on that. Nothing from U.S. soccer I checked this morning. I see no press releases. So it's a tenorio. But, you know, he's kind of at this point, arguably the dean of national team reporters. So people believe it. The ball got rolling when Jesse Marsh's agent tweeted that Jesse Marsh will not be the head coach. And he chose to do that, you know, whatever, an hour before kickoff. And so that got everyone interested because, you know, for him to say that so unequivocally

felt like something was up. Yeah. There's there's footage of Matt Crocker and J.T. Batson, kind of milling about in the shadows of some box at the stadium. They didn't hold up a sign that said true or false. So. But it seemed like it was all hands on deck. Everybody's, yeah, it seems like it's happening.

Burrhalter's going to be the coach. I mean, so first off, the meltdown has been exactly as you would predict it would go. It's going that way. And I mean, there's no two ways around it. The meltdown is entertaining in and of itself. I'm not entertained by the meltdown. No. I don't find it all that entertaining.

Yeah. The meltdown is basically we don't care anymore, you know. Yeah, I mean, Shade, like whatever version of it to disgrace. or whatever else, which is, you know, incredible. Again, I think it's incredible. I mean, so you guys have kind of talked about on the Monday review. And we've seen now this, this sort of a phenomenon like of the, of people turning their whole personality into Burrhalter being a fraud.

And Burrhalter, we cannot reach the next level as Greg Burrhalter, which, you know, depending on what your definition of the next level is may totally be true. But like, I don't know, what happened in actual reality is that Greg Burrhalter wasn't like our demise. He wasn't our downfall in the World Cup, which is the tournament that we care the most about. He was mostly fine. He's certainly not been a perfect coach making perfect decisions over the four years that he's been in charge. But he was mostly, mostly fine. Like it wasn't mind-blowing in the World Cup, but he got a lot of things right.

Right. And so it's just like, okay, well, on the balance of the World Cup and having that be the ending point and now obviously the starting point for the next cycle, mostly fine. And, you know, if people want to get to the next level and they think that like Josie Marino or Pep Guardiola or Vincent Company in my case would be the guy to get us there. Like I get that. And if the if Josie Marino was in the room with his pen ready to sign a contract with U.S. soccer, I would be pretty disappointed in the decision to go to. Berghalter, but when the choices are, you know, Greg Burhalter or Jesse Marsh or Patrick Vieira, like, I just, it's hard for me to get super worked up about any of those choices being the guy in the end. Yeah. That's my whole thing on it.

Like, so it is kind of ambivalent. And I'd say that while one, Patrick Vieira would be a blast. Like I would love to see Patrick Vieira because he's Patrick Vieira and that's really cool and it'd be cool to have him as our head coach. I have no idea if his end soccer product would be better than what Greg Burhalter will bring. And I certainly, it's going to be hard for anybody to improve on the team, like the camaraderie element, right? We basically know that Greg's getting an A plus our met front. Yeah, that's the thing that keeps coming into my head is how many of the key players support him.

You know, we've covered this on the podcast, but new comments from where, last week that were pretty unequivocal. Like, hopefully Greg comes back. And maybe they're getting information. We're not getting surely they are to some extent. But he and Pulisic, it seems like, you know, even Luca Delatore, a player who didn't get on the field at the World Cup, said, you know, he told Sanjay on our podcast yesterday,

two days ago, I guess it was, that he thought Greg should be considered and did a good job and that he did a good job. Yeah. So, it's so different from the discourse on Twitter. It's so different from the discourse on Twitter. It does feel like its own, it's like its own, it's its own world. It's like its own dynamic. It's its own conversation with its own rules that doesn't really apply to like what's

actually going on kind of. Right. And I feel like you see, you just see these shifts, you know, I mean, have. and it is so ad hoc because right after the World Cup, even before the Raina news sort of broke, it was like, well, Greg can't be the manager because he won't be able to get the respect of the team, right? And so that was the line, or at least one of the lines. There are plenty of lines. You can cover Greg Berhalter in a number of directions, to be honest.

But my thought is you'd be able to do that to any of the candidates that we would seriously be able to recruit. But then once the player started sort of breaking that myth, by saying no, we actually really enjoyed Greg Burhalter in the program we have. Now the problem is actually the players like him too much. And this is a bad thing that are best players like Greg Burhalter. And it's just, again, it's just kind of like you got to just chuckle at the creativity of how you can just sort of shift things around in the pursuit of your agendizing. Yeah.

And, you know, if anybody just started listening to this podcast, they might not know that you know, people have thrown back in our, not in our faces, but pointed out that there was a, there's a great clip of you from October 2021 after we lost Panama saying, at this point, no weight should be given to the long-term project. Like, we've been very critical of Burrhalter on this podcast. I mean, vigorously critical of the coach. But like you said earlier, at the World Cup, which is the tournament that really matters, at least this is how I look at it.

We played pretty well. We played good soccer. Maybe we could have rotated a little better, done some things differently. I wish Ricardo Pepi had been there. I'm not a big Jesus Ferreira guy. I know we differ a little bit on that. I kind of wish he hadn't started that game against the Netherlands. There's things that I don't like about what we did.

But overall, we were a team of players who was committed to the project and went out there and played their hearts out. and we're pretty stout defensively. We went toe to toe to toe with England. We made it to the knockout rounds. We got beaten by a better team in the Netherlands. This is my shorthand for what happened against the Netherlands. Got beaten by a better team in the Netherlands, thanks to individual errors.

That's it. So do I, I've never been like saying bring Burrhalter back. I kind of wish we wouldn't just to like save myself the stress. But I'm not going to pretend to be mad if he comes back. It's fine. It's going to be fine. I'll pretend and then probably actually be, you know, online mad. If some of like the things that he was doing that I thought were like almost inexplicable,

you know, in like the 2019, early 2020, and even sometimes through World Cup qualifying, if he just goes right back to those kinds of things. But a lot of those were player pool related that it's just not going to happen, right? Like Michael Bradley's not not coming into our lineup anytime. soon. And that's the whole thing with the player pool. We talked about this when we still had no idea who the coach was going to be. The proxy war should fade. The proxy war between people who think that MLS is controlling U.S. soccer and basically everyone else is just like, they're probably just kind of all doing their best. It should fade a little bit because no matter who the coach was going

to be, the MLS callups are going to almost vanish. They're obviously a big part of this tournament where we have to field a team and we don't want to use any of our important players. We're basically saying our important players should not be here. They should be even their European preseason and like club transfers situations are more important than the Gold Cup. Like we are saying that in almost no uncertain terms. Yes, we're going to have these MLS players. But if you look at, if you just look at the rosters we're calling up, this is who it's going

to be. It's going to be the core guys who played last night against Mexico in a three zero win. And then it's going to be like, a rotating six or seven players at the fringes that may include a few MLS players, but like, it's not, Aaron Long is not coming in to be our starting center back. Like, whoever's still mad about that, Christian Rodon's not going to be playing. Those guys that everyone brings up about Greg Burhalter's flaws, like he didn't play those guys in the World Cup.

Right. We were missing, we were missing Riem and CCV for this big window against Mexico and now Canada. And Aaron Long didn't come into the, into the group to take their place, right? Like he's gone for all intents and purposes other than these you know these tournaments where we just need some bodies right and I feel like the litmus test for this game was you know would Chris Richards start because all the other all the other starters are like basically they're gonna be from Europe there's no two ways about it yeah those were those are our best players yeah yeah it's about it's either Balo or peppy at striker and if ball got to got to got the got to not of course um If Moussa hadn't started, it would have been Luca Della Torre in the midfield.

And Tyler Adams is still coming back, right? We still have Adams to fold into this. So, yeah. There's not going to be an MLS guy in the front seven in a meaningful game for a while, I don't think, unless something crazy happens. So the litmus test in this game was Will B.J. Callahan, who is, you know, essentially a proxy for Burrhalter. He's a he's a Burrhalter assistant. Is he going to start Chris Richards or not? And he did, you know.

He started him over Walker Zimmerman and Aaron Long. So, yeah, I think the, hopefully the proxy war fades. I'm not super optimistic. Oh, it won't now. It won't now. Like, it'll remain simply as just like whatever Buraldor is doing now with the European stars is holding them back. So that will for sure be the line now, which is, you know, maybe he will hold them back.

Like, that's possible. Yeah. They're going to love him, though. Yeah, the players are going to like him. You know, and Charlie Davies made the point about money, which we've made on this podcast, just to get the facts out there. Vlako made $446,495 in 2022. That's the women's national team coach.

Burrhalter made, it was like $1.6 million. In World Cup years. So he had World Cup incentives that he hit. Yeah, it was compared to $1.3 million the year before that. Okay. Not a huge difference. So I know, I think Charlie said that the women's national team coach was making a million a year. And that's not the case.

It's less than half of that. So that's a consideration. We don't need to get into that again. Perhaps I should tie it together. The argument would be like we can't just go spend $10 million on a men's national team coach when our women's national team coach is only making 450 grand. And I think that's a real thing that the Federation has to deal with. Well, and again, you also look at who we'd have to throw that money at if we're,

if we're getting into the $10 million range. And again, some of those players, some of those guys just might be like, no, I'm not, I'm not retiring from my high profile European club job. I want to stay in this business and try to make it into Champions leagues or whatever else. Yeah. Yeah. Like to take the Marino example, I want to, you know, I want to go to Romania and turn mobs against referees in the airport. You know, I'm not going to come coach the U.S. So anyway, you know, out of the pool we had that was seriously, whoever we win or we

knowed it down to on the rumor mill of who was in the running. Yeah, it's hard for me to be super concerned about which of those three or four guys we landed on. Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll see what happens. I guess we were going to do a Burrhalter retrospective. So I guess we'll just have to do it sort of in, in, in, in Medea, res or something. So it sounds like he might not coach the Gold Cup, though.

So we know he's coming. He's not coaching the final. That's going to be BJ's, BJ's trophy to win in the Nation's League. And then it sounds like Burlter still might not. jump in for the gold cup. And on that one, I don't understand it. Do you get why that would happen if that's how it plays out?

No, I don't. That wouldn't make any sense. We got to give him like a month of PTO as soon as he signs the contract after, after we've already been in limbo for eight months. Yeah, I don't know. That goal cup roster is so kind of boring that,

well, I shouldn't say that. I'm going to be interested in the games. But I was going to say I'm not going to, that exercised about it. I want both of those things. I'm not that exercised about, oh, about Burrhalter being there. Like, yeah, just let the Gold Cup happen and then let's get down to business.

The Gold Cup happens and no one shows up to watch it. Did it really happen? Yeah, I mean, that's probably about right. All right, let's do the lineups and then go through the timeline here. There's so much to talk about. It was a dream. Let's see. Matt Turner in goal, Sergenio Dest, Miles Robinson, Chris Richards, and Anthony Robinson across the back line.

Wes McKinney and Eunice Musa in the double pivot, sort of. And then Tim Wea, Gio Raina, and Christian Pulisic across that nominal band of three. And then Fuller and Balligan making his men's national team debut at Stryker. It's beautiful, isn't it? It's a beautiful lineup with a bunch of beautiful players. And this is what we get to watch for the next seven or eight to ten years. Have you, have we, have you seen a more dominant performance against Mexico? No, we do have to talk a little bit about how bad Mexico was, but, uh, yeah, no, straight

away. Like you, you could see almost immediately that relative to Mexico now, we are at least surface level good is how I'm kind of thinking of it. And maybe I've said this before, but, uh, you know, we've talked about how Mexico always has like a very easy competence about them. In no way did they look like that team yesterday. And we very much did. It looked a little different.

Like our easy competence when we had the ball wasn't necessarily in how choreographed our movement was. Right. But it was very much in like this individual sense of we had eight players that we could hit the ball to and they could hold on to it. And for a beat or two beats and find the next thing that needed to happen, we'd rather have it be like more automated, of course. but Mexico couldn't just take the ball from us where we would panic and then have to do something.

All these little feints and leverage moments from our midfielders, Giorina, Tim Wea, Serginio Dest, even Jedi Robinson getting in on those kinds of things. It was just like, Mexico, you can't just take the ball from us. You can't just like make us nervous where we lump it upfield. We have the ball until we are ready to, you know, until we're ready to try to do something with it. Yeah. Especially Eunice Musa, I think. Like he's the, he's the sort of the king of the faint and you can't take the ball for me.

I wish we had maybe lumped it a little bit more early. You know, just to stretch him and keep them honest. Yeah, McKinney had that early one that connected, I think. Straight off the kickoff, we had a nice little routine. So that was like BJ's first 15 scripted plays. Nice, nice touch from him. But that was a neat little interchange. But yeah, we did kind of go along early.

And I won't get too into the timeline yet because we haven't even done Mexico's lineup. But Mexico knew what they were in for, I think. And the tell was on restarts. Every Mexico restart, they took 15, 20 seconds. So I was a little bit behind on my DVR. So I'm able to like, every time the ball goes out of bounds for Mexico, I'm able to just skip ahead 10 seconds and they still haven't restarted yet. US was not that way. And that tells you, Mexico want to bleed the clock because they don't think they're as good at soccer as we are.

And so a shorter game is better for them. which is just, it's just an incredible, like, switch from, you know, recent U.S. nationals fans, well, not recent, I guess they've only known U.S. success. But if you go back a little bit further, Mexico has been the soccer team and the U.S. has been in there to scrap. Right. Yeah. That's not the case anymore.

They're, at least for now, kind of bad. I'll give the lineup. It's, so their goalkeeper is Memo Ochoa, of course. Back three of Israel, Reyes, Cesar Montes, and Victor, Victor Guzman, Jorge Sanchez at right wingback, Edson Alvarez, Luis Chavez, and I guess Oriol Antuna in the midfield, and then Jesus Gallardo as the left wingback, and then Orbelin Pineda and Henry Martine in the, is it Martin or martin. I'm just going to say Martine until I hear someone else say it otherwise.

Okay. At Stryker. And man, they just look like pretenders compared to that. Compared to some of the like you were saying, some of the easy competence of previous Mexico teams. I was like the press. I think we struggled a little bit with their

press, their three quarters field pressure. Like we couldn't get across the half line very easily and we weren't finding people in pockets in the middle of the field early on. Yeah, That's what I thought we struggled with. I mean, we weren't, like, panicky on the ball. We just couldn't find a way through.

So it just was a bit of the aimless passing. Right. Is how I felt about it. Yep. That's exactly how I felt about it. So there was that that we weren't so good at dealing with, but at least initially. But, man, when they had the ball, even getting into the attacking third seemed like a struggle for them. And once they got there, it never felt.

There was one time where it felt like they might score on sort of a, some, sort of a scrappy mess in our box after that giveaway from Turner to Musa in the second half. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There other good chances came from us sort of trying to play out of the back and getting intercepted. I thought that's what I remembered was like, and again, when I say chances, what I really mean is like making you sit up a little in your seat going, oh, is Mexico, do they have something here? And they ended up not having something there. Yeah, like gone are the days, at least with this squad on this night, gone were the days of, you know, very comfortably Mexico building from their goalkeeper

and just sort of easily, if not, you know, taking a series of passes, just getting comfortably into our final third. Yeah, we'd have two people descend on somebody. They'd play the ball into the midfield and there'd be two white shirts on the other side.

And we'd take the ball from that person a lot of the time, you know? Okay, to the timeline. Great atmosphere. It must be said. Love, I'm a big fan of Nations League. Maybe my favorite tournament right now. Yeah, you get rid of the slog of the Gold Cup group stage,

so you get all the best parts of, you just jump right into the intense bits, and it's been a fantastic event. My first clocked moment, so, you know, jump in here with your own stuff, please, but was at the 5.30 mark, a good idea from Gio Raina to try to find somebody on the other side after he plays on the half turn.

So he kind of, he receives it on the half, turn, his touch is a little loose, but Tim Wea comes to it and kind of one-toes with him. It's like an accidental one-two. And then Raina drives into the final third and tries to sort of play a no-look pass across the field into the box for, I think it was, was it Jedi coming in, running into the box? and his past gets cut out but it's it looks like a player with intent

I forgot to mention he has he peroxided his hair it's very blonde and of course as we get later in Joe Scali enters the game Joe Scally followed suit it's nice to see those two

just having that sort of like incredible buddy connection I thought I should mention briefly the the point was made on the TV broadcast, which was excellent, I thought, the Paramount one,

that, well, what's going to happen between Gio Raina and Greg Burrhalter if Burrhalter comes back? Or what's going to happen between Burrhalter and Raina if Burrhalter comes back? And I just don't think that's going to be that big of an issue, probably. I feel like Raina wants to play for the national team. Burrhalter knows he's a good player. They should, I think, I'm off. optimistic that that will work out.

Yeah, I'm totally the same because I think Greg Burhalter really rates Gio Raina, despite what everyone's kind of falling back on after the World Cup, because as probably anyone who listens to this knows, I don't think Giorina was fully healthy. And I think that was the primary rationale for him not playing, despite what ended up being like some real attitude issues in camp. I think basically he was just saying Burhunter just tolerated the attitude for as long as he could. and then still is like, well, you're still going to play when we need you to play because you're quite good.

Yeah. We did try over the top. At the 740 mark, Richards tries Wea and just hits it too long. I think McKenny had one of those two a little bit later. Yeah, yeah, McKenny. We hit a couple balls to Mamo Ochoa. Where again, like the other thing that I'm keeping in mind as I'm watching this is it's a new squad, right? Baligan's never played with any of these guys.

I don't think like Raina, Wea and Pulick have been on the field for maybe like 75 minutes total at the same time. So we are definitely going to have to be figuring this stuff out. Muson McKinney, I don't think you've ever done this nominal double pivot together. So there's a lot to learn as we're playing. So it's no real surprise. And again, it's an intense atmosphere. There's no real surprise if we look a little cagey or a little bit uncertain of where our teammates are going to be throughout. Yeah.

That showed up defensive rotations too. That's a main thing we've got to pay attention to here. And earlier on, there were some questions about who's supposed to cover who. Mexico were decent at times at finding that weak side wide player because our defense, we kind of sat in like a 433, three up high,

and those three midfielders would get clustered together on the ball side in like a tight band. And if Mexico could hit the switch to their weak side wide player, it would just be Desta or like Dest or Jedi out there in this case in the third minute it was Dest coming out and not sure if he should actually come out to the ball or have to retreat because he's outnumbered

so he just saggs back into the box Man on the ball's under no pressure Timway has nowhere close to it like Musa's getting there eventually but they have plenty of time to hit in a cross that Mexico striker sneaks behind between Richards and Jedi and like gets to the ball before Turner he just can't quite reach it.

So that was like this one dangerous moment where I felt like it was a rotation issue that it's just something we're going to have to watch when we run this midfield with Raina involved. It did seem like whenever Jedi got behind the play, he was able to very rapidly, like most of the times when he got behind the play, got played behind or something,

he was very rapidly able to recover. and I felt like that was partly a testament to the toothlessness of the Mexican attack, you know? Oh, yeah. They didn't. He was sort of men against boys a little bit over there. For sure. They didn't, even when they got someone faced up, they didn't seem that dangerous. I guess that's what happens.

Jedi. You could face up Desk. And it was like, we don't think of these guys necessarily as, you know, pure defensive stalwart, Jedi a little bit more. But there was never a time. It was like, oh, man. and that's just got rinsed. I guess that's what happens when

Oriel Antuna is your most dangerous attacker. Ouch. 15 minute mark. Well, there's plenty of giveaways in here. So you mentioned the, you talked about the defensive rotations. I thought Musa and McKinney were both a little sloppy in the first half.

But within the context of us being the better team, good holdup play at the 15 minute mark From Balligan, he gets fouled, providing a little bit of a release for us. Yeah, drawing fouls was an easy game here. And I don't even mean that in a negative way. I know the referee is going to end up probably taking some heat. But he was calling a very tight game, I thought, consistently. So anybody who kind of even touched somebody's back, if you go down, you're going to get the whistle.

And I think that was good in the beginning. And then, you know, as things got out of hand, I don't know if any referee was going to be able to keep that in check. Yeah. Yeah, it got crazy. Let's see. 18th minute, a good interchange from Gio and Wea down the right side. I think the ball's played into Gio's feet and he just one touches it out to Wea and then makes a run to the Man City zone. Wea plays it in there and Gio kind of lumberes to it.

he still looks still looks a little tight in the hamstring area you know at least in this situation he kind of like he kind of gets on his horse like an old man as he runs onto it looking like an old man whose

primary concern is to not pull that hamstring yeah but he gets to it and then whips the ball across across the face of goal balligan's a little bit behind And it just doesn't get there in time to like to get a touch to it. And it skips across the face of goal sent out for a corner by Mexico. But this is the beginning of a nice little spell where we're sort of working the ball through the left side of Mexico's defense.

And then Waya lifts a ball to the back post after Destin, Gio and Waya do some win a bunch of cage matches in their their defensive third. That one's headed out for another corner. Yeah, what I thought was nice to see here is just like in the World Cup, when we did lose the ball after an attack, it was Mexico generally being like under pressure where they did just have to get rid of it. And it would just always, the camera would pan with the ball and it would just end up rolling harmlessly to a white shirt with no one around them. Like our reclaiming of the ball is a real strength of this team at this point. Hmm. And this was, I thought, the point in the game where it started to look like to me, we were way better than Mexico.

We get the 22nd minute. Pulisic beats Sanchez for the first of like 50 times in this game. And, you know, dribbles from the halfway line all the way into the box. He's got his head up, but he plays a pretty harmless ball on the ground in the direction of Ballo that gets cut out. Yeah, I watched that a couple times. I mean, this is going to just happen, but it looked like he thought Bolo, was setting the guy up with a run sort of towards the center of the goal. And then he was, I think pool six was expecting like the hard cut, uh, in front of the

defender that just, it didn't pan out that way. They'll, they'll, uh, they'll work on that chemistry, probably. I mean, that's, that, it's so exciting to think about what, what this team will be, you know, with, with, with a cycle under their belt. Right. Uh, we get a huge chance, uh, in the 23rd minute. this is where Pulisig misses it over the crossbar. But he roasts Alvarez this time.

It's an Alvarez in almost an identical way to the way he beat Sanchez. So he cuts in on a Choa, with Alvarez afraid to foul him from behind. So he doesn't, so he cuts in front of Alvarez and then sits a Choa down as he dribbles across the, like across perpendicular to the goal or parallel to the goal line,

I should say. And then he just, he rips it. Maybe it skips up a little bit on that nearly perfect turf. And he blasted over the crossbar. Would like to see him finish that. At least at that point in the game, it was, it was a disappointment. I was worried that he was going to start developer reputation for missing these Mexico chances because he missed the big one in the Azteca. I mean, just, just like, he put.

But went into Ochoa's right into Ochoa's hands from point in blank or right. Oh, that's right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, it's actually almost a carbon copy of the goal we get for number two. But, yeah, I mean, he just looks unplayable here, right? The way he just tiptoes around a Mexico defender when he doesn't start out with good position or the, you know, the position advantage and he just gains it so easily and then never relinquishes it, even as he has to go around a goalkeeper, like the defender still can't

catch up from behind. This is old school Christian Pulisick. This is vintage. He's well rested, man. He's fresh as a daisy. So it's a reminder that we, for the U.S. at least, at least for now, because even though we're getting better, you know, there's still a tiering of player talent here. You just, you just cannot worry about their form with their clubs as it relates to their

place in the U.S. 11. Like Christian Pulzick is still the guy in the attack, Tim Wea, who, you know, barely plays attacker at his club is still the guy for us in attack. Sergenio Des hasn't played soccer. I mean, what does Sergenio Des been doing for six months? I don't know. Not soccer.

Kind of working out, sort of. But he's still the guy. Eunice Musa almost. So just down the line of all these players who are, who, you know, we've been mourning the last four months of the club season.

And they just come in and look like they look. And I think we can just say, It's just a different story when they come to play for the U.S. Yeah. It's a healthy thing to be reminded of because people were saying, oh, you know, maybe Luca should start over Musa because he, you know, he's playing more. Yeah. I mean, I was even sort of sympathetic.

Yeah, Moza looks real good. Real good. Well, as it happens, the guys are going to get their chances, right? Luca is clearly going to get a chance against Canada. Just going back to this pool of sick chance. I mean, he misses it, I think because he's running the wrong way at full speed after running full speed for 70 yards. It happens. I was really hopeful that as he took that touch around Memo Ochoa and Memo Ochoa goes to ground and he has to almost,

Pool Sick is now shifting his hips almost to be facing Turner's goal more than Ochoa's goal. I was just hoping he would just step out of the way and let Bolligan smash it into the empty net because Bolligan was right there on top of him and facing the right way. So I thought that was happening. I didn't have the exact right angle. I don't know if that would have been the right play. But as it happened live on TV, I was like, just get out of the way. Baligans got this. And then, you know, Pulisic off balance just hits it over.

You think in general, Baligan's a better finisher than Pulisic? I think everyone knows. Statistically, Balogins a horrible finisher from the data we have, which we should ignore and just assume that he's going to finish at about the same right that other players finish. Yep. It would be fun to do like a post of it. I mean, I don't know what the point of it would be at this point is that I would probably make some people mad, but post a video of like all his shots over the last 10 games of the season. Polligans?

Yeah, because he gets in so many good spots, you know, and he doesn't always score. But anyway, you're right. Pulisick was cooking. They couldn't deal with him. He's starting to get fouled a lot. He does take a free kick in the 26th minute, which is not his strong suit. and, you know, kind of hits it softly down to Memo's left. Nemo saves it pretty easily.

But we're looking really good. And then the goal finally comes towards the end of the first half, 37th minute. It ends up being a pretty messy sequence, but it starts with Wea dropping into the center circle to pick the ball up, I believe, from Richards. And then we ping it up to McKinney and back out to Dest. he plays it into Wea in the, you know, kind of in the half space. His touch fails him. It goes, it's loose, goes way past him. But there's a duel between Pulisic and I think Montez that ensues.

And then over the next two, three seconds, it just kind of carums around in zone 14 right at the top of the box until Averaz tries to play it back to Sanchez. Sanchez's touch is loose. And Pulisic absolutely pounces on this. I don't, you know, his, his, um, his ability to sniff that out and run on to that loose touch from Sanchez is kind of surprising. I couldn't, I didn't quite, um, I wasn't quite able to like understand it in real time. And even in the, on the replay, uh, Pulisic's opportunism is impressive. Anyway, he takes a touch to his left, then slots a far post with his left foot. I think it hits a, a little mound of turf on that nearly immaculate field and jumps over Memo Ocho's leg.

Uh, it's a little. a goal, runs over, jumps and kicks the corner flag, one zero, USA. Just brilliant, beautiful, right? Beautiful and messy, but the part leading up to it, like everything leading up to the top of the box was really solid stuff, like good rotations, sort of like, I mean, this is the positional play you're looking for with, with Wea checking all the way into the middle, everyone rotating around that, waya check all the way in the middle to receive it, I think, from Miles Robinson.

Excuse me. So Way is like almost playing like a center mid. And again, everyone just shifts naturally around. And McKenney gets higher. Raina floats out wide and all the spaces are occupied as we just sort of hit a couple of more harmless passes. But we're poking and prodding.

And then and then yeah, we hit that entry ball into Wayas' feet as he'd rotated back up into the area at the top of the box. And that's good. That's what you've got to do. You got to test them. And it wasn't the cleanest. But we tested them and we've got,

we've got the guys to to pounce. It's not easy to deal with this group. So even as we make a couple of mistime touches, we have the guys that aren't just going to let you play out of it cleanly, and Mexico don't, and we're right there to score. Yeah. You know, this entry pass from Dest, which is nothing super special, just reminds me we're really going to miss him against Canada.

It's a big chance. Go ahead, sorry. It's just a big chance for a young Joseph. Yeah. The gap between those two players is very wide, in my opinion. But maybe, you know, maybe Joe will prove me wrong. I'm just talking about in ball progression and stuff. And it's funny that he doesn't, like we talked about,

he hasn't played at all for A.C. Milan since Christmas, right? As he played a single minute since Christmas? I don't think so. I have to look it up. Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it's at least for several months. And, uh, and yet he's, you know, maybe the most influential player on the field. Like, he's just doing tricks out there.

Like, he is, he is totally unbothered by any of it. He's built different, I think. It's fair to say. So we go into the half up one zero feeling really good. And the, and the good times continued right out of the right off, right off a kickoff. Another goal. Um, not right off. a kickoff, but shortly after kickoff.

46th minute. It's an 11-pass sequence, so we're playing a little soccer tennis over the half-field line. Wea settles it, settles one of those headers back to Dest, plays it back to Richards, and we work it around the back before Desk finds McKinney

in our half. And McKinney turns and springs Wea down the line. Just a lovely pass from him from Wes, who up to that point had, I think, a fairly quiet night. Waya takes a touch.

His touch completely eliminates Guzman, and then he hits a sharp ball across on the ground for Pulisic, who is making one of his fully committed runs at the goal mouth. Polisic gets his left foot on it as he goes to ground and sends it over at Cho, 2-0. Notice that Raina is celebrating as hard as anybody here. Pulisic and McKinney do rock paper scissors. Pulisic wins. What a night.

What a night. build up here to this goal is fantastic because we have it at Matt Turner's feet right like on his goal line with three Mexico players in our box to press him and we managed to work it out of it right it shouldn't I mean it's not that that's impossible but you know we know who Matt Turner is that's a that's time to get a little bit nervous yeah but but we don't we play out of it and we get it to Serginio desk who is unbothered and you know he's hitting a ball through a narrow window in a McKinney in a great pocket and then again McKinney with just the slightest of feints as he receives it. Yeah. Enough to drag that Mexico defender back inside so then he can just shoulder shimmy to the outside and clip that ball into Wea. Man, we just got guys who can cook now. I mean, sometimes that's what it is.

We're cooking. I don't know how choreographed all of this was. But again, because McKenney can do that little faint, then he gets to pick his head up and it doesn't have to be as choreographed. Again, I'm looking forward to seeing us add more of those sort of tight rhythm, timing, uh, intricate combinations.

But as it stands, surface level, we just got some really good players. Yeah. Yeah. It's a perfect pass to the weight on it. Um, and then waya just looks like he's,

he's riding a motorcycle and glides, doesn't he? He's riding a, uh, tricycle. Um, 52nd minute, uh,

Raina plays a ball into the box from the left, just kind of lifts it. on to Poulissick's head and he tries to get a hat trick by nodding it in backwards. It's I love the idea. I mean, I'm not I'm I'm I wasn't happy with it in real time. I mean that's that's a classic like you can you can pull this off pool six good enough to pull us off where he's even though he's running he could he could invert himself there and do a little bit of an overhead kick like almost like off balance because it's behind him right the path the past the ball's behind him and it's head height shoulder height that is actually like the time where uh that That overhead kick is the correct. I mean, I know it seems ridiculous to pull out, but I mean, I'm just saying.

I mean, it's the time to do it. You're up to zero. You're on a hat trick. You might as well try that. Yeah, we won't be a true soccer nation until Pulisic tries an overhead kick in that situation. I'm saying. Mexico is a little dangerous in the in the 50s. Antunas skips one on tuna skips one across.

Dest has to help it along. wide to prevent the danger. And then in the 57th minute, Raina, things start to get more dramatic, more chippy. Raina gets rocked by Antuna on a kind of a weird little aerial moment. And Antuna puts his shoulder into Raina's face, gives him a bloody nose. No card given. Yeah, I actually felt fortunate here for Raina because Antunah had to, I mean, he lined him up, right? And I'm glad Antuno went with his shoulder because it was like there if he really wanted to make it make a dirty run of it to put his head, you know, put his forehead in the rain his face and claim innocence after.

So when I saw it in replay and saw it as a shoulder, I was like, oh, thank God he like at least kind of did it cleanly. Yeah, didn't try to kill him. Yeah, it could have been real, real bad. But he did, you know, he seemed like he took a shot out of a yellow card. Yeah. then the next time Raina gets on the ball so Raina's down for a while blood on blood coming out of his nose

the next time he gets on the ball he beats one guy gets fouled by another after he beats him and then leaps to his feet pumping up the crowd uh tissue sticking out of his right nostril it was a scene of things sign of things to come feels good right feels good to see Gio Raina out there doing things

yeah excited I still think he's our most talented player he's he had a good note did he have an amazing night I don't know it was pretty good what did you think what did you think of his performance um yeah I guess I wouldn't put him in the amazing category but uh I mean I gave kind of easy categories to I'm not but that's not trying to knock him like we he was he's good in there he's uh like again he can receive a ball and Mexico can't take it from him uh he was kind of had freedom to flow wherever he wanted, which is what Gio Raina should probably do for us.

And you use Way and Pool Sick as the stretchers. And Baligan, of course. And we got that from him. So he's in there. He'll pull some strings. Like he had to pass negative a lot. And I think that was a lot of, you know, again, we're going to be feeling our own teammates out a little bit for the next several matches. But no, man, like you just, you just see what this group is capable of with Raina as a,

as one piece and then all of these other guys as players surrounding him. And it does, man. If you're not enjoying this, uh, I feel like you're missing out. Why a new hobby? Take advantage of what this team is going to be like for the next several years because laud. They're not going to win every game, uh,

through, through the end of 2026 and hoist the World Cup. But man, like they're going to be good. Um, granted it goes for goal on the free kick, the ensuing free kick, I think and, uh,

you know, misses. but it you know he almost it was I think it was a I appreciated the chutzpah and then 69th minute things really get complicated out there ballo comes back and fights Montez for the ball so um good on him you know good to see big recovery run yeah yeah wins it and then Montes just cynically chops him down like full intent straight red you know, kicks his left leg out from under him. And the ref the ref is immediately sprinting over with showing the red card. A scrum ensues.

McKenny gets surrounded by Mexican players and kind of pushed off, you know, to the, towards the bench, towards the Mexico bench. And his jersey is torn asunder. He walks down the sideline kissing the crest of his ruined jersey, which is just a legendary moment. he gets a new shirt thrown at him from his own bench and then he gets hit with a red card and then you see in the replay he did put his hand on Jorge Sanchez's neck but you know he was surrounded by like five guys I don't know it doesn't seem fair no it doesn't and this is how it's going to go here the irony the irony of of McKinney getting a red card for very briefly putting his hands on someone's neck won't be lost on anyone who's been following the U.S.-Mexico rivalry for a few years now. McKinney's been choked out by several Mexico players who were never punished for it.

Andres Gordado, right? Yeah, right. And Hector Herrera, both, I think. So, yeah, so it's funny. I hope, honestly, if the U.S. would auction off that ruin McKenney, Jersey, I feel like we could probably up our coaching search by one tier. But it's probably too late to do that now. It's a small tier jump, but it is,

It is a different tier that we'd be able to attract. I'm not worried about like the injustice of McKinney getting a red card. Like we're going to look at this as like, you know, a guy standing up for his teammates and like, what's he supposed to do? That shot of him surrounded by nine green jerseys is another like epic moment from this from this rivalry now ingrained. And and, you know, whatever. If the VAR season put his hands on somebody's neck for a second and they decide that's the red, then that's the red. Like I don't, I'm not too worried about that, to be honest. It's a big scrum.

We entered into it willingly. Like, we rushed into it. We didn't, we didn't just let things happen. You know, I'm glad we rushed into it. And we just, you got to accept the red if you're going to get into it. I feel like you're setting up, uh, what you're going to say about the desk red card and putting that in a different category. Um, I probably won't.

Really? I mean, it's, it is different. Like, desks very much. There's no, there's no question about desks. Like, he gets, he's getting red. But they went into his face. The dude hit desks in the face. So he can react if he wants to and, like, put his hands up.

or like hold his face and go down like, you know. But if he chooses in this rivalry game to go back after the Mexico player, I am totally all for that. I feel like BJ nailed it with his comments too. I think he was just saying like, you can't do it. But in the moment, you understand why they did it. And so you just accept it and move on. And I hope that's what we do.

I hope we don't do any kind of like appealing, like begging for leniency here. Just be like, nope, we went in. We'll scrap if anyone wants to scrap. and we'll take our, we'll take our cards if they come. Yeah. What a football coach. What a football coach. Yes, exactly.

But yeah, I don't know why in my head there's this weird, like, honor about it. No, we go in and we take our, we take our punishments. We'll take our medicine. But you're not going to, you're not going to swipe Baligan's foot from under him and just get away with it. Well, you know, I love talking about honor. It's my, I have a weakness for that. So I'm swayed.

But I'm like, you know, we're up three zero, Sir Gino. Oh, we're not even to this. Oh, yeah. Two when McKinney gets this. Yeah, two, to when McKinney gets his, which I think, you know, I don't want us to whine about it to Cock the Gaff either. But, I mean, when it's 3-0 and Sergenio gets into like this pretty meaningless fight with Artieaga, I know he came at his face, but like, we need you against Canada, Sergenio. Well, almost more, like, more than we need it, more than we need McKinney. No disrespect to McKinney.

They're both really important players. but like I'm kind of curious to see how Luca Delatore does in the midfield. I'm not that curious about Scali. Maybe my curiosity will be revived before Sunday. I mean, over the course of the cycle, we got to see how Scali does, right? So we just sped it up by a few games. So I'm all right with it. You know, I just got done talking about how exciting this team was.

And we could we could absolutely lose to Canada on Sunday. And there's definitely a possibility. So I don't know. I'm, you know, this, for me, the silver lining is like, okay, well, next man up and let's see who, let's see if that next man's any good. Yeah. Okay. Uh, 74th minute, Luca comes on for Raina, Pepey comes on for Baligan. The 76 minute is the big chance for Mexico of the game, and it starts with a pass from Turner to Musa.

Uh, it gets intercepted just before it, you know, Musa gets beaten to the ball. And then there's a scrum in our box that kind of falls to Antuna on the game. the right side. His first attempt is stopped by Turner. It's a pretty good save. And his second is, he sort of collects the rebound and his second shot is put off by Miles Robinson when the goal is empty. So I think, well, good desperate defending by everybody involved. I think Richard's got a foot in on a tackle earlier in the sequence. Poor Mexico. That's what I thought when that shot went wide. Poor Mexico. Like, they won't even take the game. gift.

You know, it'll be, I think you have to put some of it on Turner like quite a bit. But also like if you have Matt Turner there and you want to be able to play out of this, Musa does have to do to bail out his goalkeeper here. Like Musa, it's, it's everyone's job to bail Matt Turner out in these situations. You know, that's how it's going to work if we're going to play through teams press with Matt Turner. So he kind of undercooks the ball with his Turner's left footed pass is a little bit undercooked.

And it's probably just to the wrong side of Muso. But Musa's got like a step and a half off the trailing Mexico defender on him. And so this is Musa's bread and butter to be able to take this ball with that slight positional advantage at the beginning and maintain that positional advantage. Right. So he like starts getting some choppy steps. Maybe no one gave him a shout that the guy was that closer, closing down or accelerating onto him. But Musa like did the choppy steps to get his feet right when he didn't have time to do that. So he needed to, he just needed to have more of like the Musa urgency to receive it.

and use that leverage to hold the guy off, and he just didn't do it in this case. Matt Turner could have solved it by not hitting that undercooked pass to Musa. It did seem like Musa wasn't quite aware of how much danger he was in. Yeah, that's how I'd put it. 78th minute comes the third goal for the U.S., and this is just a lot of just Sergenio having fun out there. He intercepts the pass, played down the line.

on the right side and and then beats four defenders. Well, he really beats two and his final ball splits two more. Actually splits two very close to him and then it's played in behind for Pepe. But it's a lovely little moment from Sergenio. And Pepe touches it past Memo once, twice, you know, to the wide of him. And then slots at home at a, like kind of the perfect moment where a Choa can't dive. You know, it's a really nice, like a really nice finish, I thought. Oh, yeah, it routed him super well.

He had MMO stumbling. Like, MMO did not look like the goalkeeper. I mean, goalkeepers are always in a tough spot here, but they have the, they generally do the technique to cover as much of the goals they can. And PEPI had MMO falling down. It's lovely. And Mixed a 3-0. It was initially flagged for offside, but it wasn't offside on VAR.

And GEO is all out. Well, I was just going to say. I'm gonna play full credit to Poole sick for smashing into Pepe to slow his rundown to allow him to be on side. Right. Jenny Ruiz mentioned that as like a, you know, otherwise Pepe would have been off sides, offside. I don't know. Is that, is that necessarily the case? He was, I don't know.

I'm sure he wouldn't. What, yeah, what an awesome moment for Ricardo Pepey, like to get into this game against Mexico and score almost instantly. He's been on fire. He scored the goal against El Salvador. You can count Grenada if you want to, but like, he's coming in and getting it. getting goals. Yeah. Getting chances.

And Gio is just all over his ass from the bench. Once they're able to celebrate, you know, I just noticed this when Gio is happy, I'm going to note it. Gio was really happy. He was getting all up in Pepe's business celebrating that goal with him aggressively. Very happy to see that. And then there was that great shot of that kid wearing a USA jersey but also a Mexico bandana around his forehead.

takes the bandana off in the celebration of Pepe's goal. And, you know, it's a moment I've been living for for years to see that on national TV. Yeah, that's going to be the new banner of the scuff Discord. I'm sure of it. Yeah. Anything else on the goal? I mean, it was, it was a celebration was on. Yeah.

I mean, what can you say? Sergenio Dest is much better than Mexico's players. And as Pepe said, in the lead-up to this game, we just have more quality than them. Yeah. And what a way to back it up. Dude, we got some good options here. Should mention, not all the players have come out in dramatic support of Burrhalter. And I know it was notable when Jenny Chu interviewed Pepe after the game that she said,

she said asked him to comment on burrhalter's return and he goes i have no idea i have no idea i have no idea he said it like three times he was obviously scared to say speak his mind and you know you can sort of interpret that how you want but peppy maybe you know he could have said you know Greg did a good job i wouldn't mind if he came back he didn't say that i mean just for the record yeah and it would it would sort of surprise me if it was anything else like Greg chose someone else over, chose three other players over Ricardo Pepi. Yeah.

After, after Pepe had delivered at key moments in World Cup qualifying. And so, dumbass. For that player, you know, that's totally normal. They got left out in it for the biggest event of their lives.

And they'll carry that with them. But I don't think that means that peppy is going to, you know, either tank the program from within. I mean, he's going to want to play and he's going to want to earn his spot and prove that it was a huge mistake. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. And then the last big moment of the game is Dest, the Dest Arteaga red cards. Dest is over in the corner with Alvarez and Arteaga, who had subbed on as a wide left player. That's Gerardo Arteaga. Desk kind of gets into it with Alvarez. There was some tough tackling going on when the ball went out of bounce. He kind of gets into it with Alvarez. There's some pushing.

Artieaga comes up and just pushes Dest's face and then Desk returns the favor. Kind of like they just like a little bit of a slap fight. And both get sent off. I thought it was, I was disappointed. I'm mostly disappointed that we're not going to see Sergenio against Canada. So for me, the decision making and the experience here isn't necessarily the retaliation in the moment. It's tough when you get smacked in the front. face to not to not respond.

For me, it's that you see the direction this game is going a while ago, right? You see that it's 3-0 now. Mexico know they have nothing left in this game. They're not getting a result. The only thing they have left to do in the time they are still on the field is to try to hurt the players on their most hated rival. And we've seen this from them before, in a World Cup even. So they're coming at you.

And so if you don't want to get into these kinds of situations, You basically just have to get rid of the ball while everyone from Mexico is still five to six yards away from you. Because as soon as they're close to you, they're swinging. They took the full swing at balligan already. To start this whole thing off, Dest is on the sideline. And I don't remember it might have been Montes comes in and takes a full swing at Dest through the ball. Like, yeah, he's kind of swinging through the ball. But he's hoping that there's that foot follows through and connects with Desk too.

And we just have to know that in these games where we've already done the business, start taking a more professional approach and just move the ball around so that you don't take these hits. Later on, Pepe has it down in the corner to kill the clock and I'm like, this is not the situation where you put a guy on the ball in the corner to kill the clock up 3-0. If it's 1-0 and you just really need to steal the result, all right, you've got to sacrifice some ankles. But at 3-0, when all they're doing is ankle hunting, do not hold the ball in the corner. Like, give the ball directly to Mexico if you need to. They're not going to score three goals here.

But don't let them have those free shots. So Dest holds onto it long enough to let them take the free shot at him and then it escalates from there. So that's where I feel like the experience will come in is. And maybe it never will for a guy like Sergenio Dest because it's just not in his nature to not try to pan somebody. He was doing tricks to the very last moment. But in my head, that's what it is. You just got to move the ball away from players who are trying to hurt you. Yeah.

Get rid of the ball quickly and in the most inconspicuous manner possible. but I don't know if that's possible for Sergenio and that's you know I love him for his for his tricks so we're missing we're going to miss him and McKenny against Canada got to imagine it'll be Scali and Delatore who start imagine it'll be the rest of the lineup will be the same right I would I would think so yeah I mean again peppy peppy seized his opportunity so we'll we'll see but I think I think until proof and otherwise you got to assume bolligan's a guy and by you i mean like our coaching staff should probably assume that he's he's probably the best striker we have yeah i think that's uh that's borne out in the numbers certainly um and then you know if you want to join the scuff patreon uh the link is in the show notes we did post i did post a little bit of uh mix zone audio so that mix zone is like the the post game scrum where the reporters are talking to play and Sanjay So Jonathan Kumar who interviewed Luca Dillatorre earlier this week.

He sent me the audio from the mix zone with Turner and Pulisic talking. And I'll just read a part of the quote from Pulisic. He was asked about Burrhalter. He said, is that confirmed? Somebody said, you know, it's been reported. Or actually it was Tenorio himself who said, yeah, well, I'm the one reporting it. And I feel pretty confident about it. And so Pulisic says, I would say I've supported him in the past.

I mean, if you can see today, it's a testament of the work that he's put into this team, and BJ picked up right where he left off. And it's a testament to him and a testament to this team the way that we just continued and put on performances like that. So if that's not enough, not enough evidence, then that's all right. People are going to hate no matter what. And I think that kind of, I don't know, sums up part of it at least. Yeah, I think that's probably about the right summation of it.

Like, you know, you got people saying, all right, but if it goes bad, you know, people are really going to hate it. And I'm like, well, people already hate it, man. We just beat Mexico 30 and people are furious. Yeah. Well, you know, pray for us. Whatever. Like, I'm okay. You don't.

You're, you're an automaton. You can compartmentalize it and just. So I feel like we, we tried to compartmentalize. it a long time ago, right? When when Burralter had some like head scratcher lineup decisions, like formation decisions, it was always like, all right, we're at the point where we just have to sort of evaluate Burrhalter the same way you evaluate a player. What did he do right today? What did he sort of, what was he off on? And I feel like that's sort of the way we've tackled it for a long time now. And I think that's how we're just

going to keep doing it. Like, because it's, for me, it's tedious and it feels like a It's not good faith to just come at it from the agendizing side and just be like, well, whatever happens, I just need to take that moment and try to twist it into whatever serves my case the best. Because that feels like what it is. So that's just going to exist in its own little sphere of people doing that nonstop. They've made their entire personality that. And I think somewhere there's room for like people who are still going to be like, okay, this was good, this was good. This was sort of, I don't understand why this happened. and I think that can still exist.

Yeah. I mean, it's certainly, at least as a theoretical matter, it can. But I guess the thing that's frustrating for me is if you praise Burrhalder for anything or if you acknowledge something he did well, there's like a certain loud portion of the fan base that says, well, therefore you are compromised, you're a compromised voice in our community because you uh i'm talking about you as in myself um because you you can't speak the truth and you you're a shill for a gregg i mean i got called a shill last night for saying i was happy to be alive during the during when we went up three zero against mexico you know

and i know that these are these are probably mostly people with unprocessed trauma who are um like like really dealing with some stuff and they're they're not representative of the of the fan base but you know I notice it you know and it and it drives me crazy so I think it's just I think it's just an easy thing in sort of sports fandom

to pick the one thing and then because you like you like the team right you're a huge fan of the team you got all this passion for the team and so it's just easier to concentrate what you don't like on one or two things and it's like anything that goes wrong as those so then when you see like Tyler Adams failed to track a guy very obviously in a

World Cup knockout game you You can't reconcile that with what actually caused us to lose, which is the thing I hate about that's on this team. And it had to be that that's going to cause us to lose. It can't be anything else. And so, and I just feel like that's where a portion of the discussion is gone and just stays. And we just know now it's going to stay there as long as Greg Berthelter's a coach. Yeah.

It's not a, it's also not like a, it doesn't sell very well to, uh, to say. hey actually our players aren't as good as we thought they were you know like nobody nobody really wants to hear that not even me I don't even really want to hear it not after last night well yeah last night's different but like after after the World Cup where who cares that West McKinney got relegated did you see him right I'm talking about like after after the World Cup where it did where I was both pleased with how we played at the World Cup and just reminded that you know we still have a long ways to go.

Yeah, I think people say there are levels. Yeah. And I think that, that's not, that, that we have a long ways to go part is a lot harder to reconcile with than our coach is holding us back. You know, it's a lot, it's, it's like, our coach is holding us back is something that it's easy to, presumably easy to solve, you know, you just replace the coach. We're going to go to the, we're going to go to the, we're going to go to the, we're going to go to the semifinals in 2026 because we're that good.

And maybe we will go to the semifinals in 2026. But, um, and maybe Greg Berlter will cost us the semifinals in 2026. Like it's totally possible Burlter will screw up and, and we won't go as far as we could have in 2026 because of something he does. Yeah. I just think it's folly to be like, Patrick Vieira is guaranteed to be better, you know, and,

and that's, that's who our sort of pool of candidates is at the moment. And so, yeah, people are like, oh, so you just don't want us to be any better. you're just content with this. I'm like, I mean, I'm content with the concept that there isn't a guaranteed fix for this. So I guess at the very least, we've got a guy that the players will buy into. Right. Which is really important. That's very important things. It seems to be. Seems to be. Yeah. Well, we should, we really should enjoy this win.

We got Canada on Sunday. Canada beat Panama 2 to 0. It was, what was it a Jonathan David goal and who else scored for them? I didn't I didn't see it. I mean, who really cares? But the Jonathan David goal was fantastic. I saw their first goal. That was fantastic. I didn't catch the second one because I was getting everything prepped for the US game.

But yeah, I mean, you got to enjoy it. You got to enjoy that the A team's together because they're only getting these two games this summer. You got to enjoy that BJ is the guy leading them because that is just a hilarious optic no matter what. Like, soak all of this in. Right. Yeah, it was David and Davies who scored. So no big surprise there. And I should mention, it was 11 shots to five for us versus Mexico,

five shots on target to one. Their one shot on target was that very, very tame little header, I think, in the second half. So yeah, soak it in, as you said. Soak it, soak it, soak it. I mean, soak in our success. soak in Mexico's humbling, which I'm a Mexico fan, but there's, I mean, there's always joy and, and again, this sort of sports justice of like when the Goliath falls, it's,

it's always a little bit entertaining, even if you kind of like the Goliath. I would like them to get it together, honestly. Like, I don't want to, I don't know, that would be no fun if we're just, if we're beating them this badly all the time. Humming them over and over again. I don't know. I'd take it. I take it. Okay. All right. Well, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.