Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #400: USMNT v Canada Trophy Recap

Episode Date: June 19, 2023

Greg and Belz talk through the USA's big win over Canada, sans Dest and McKennie and Adams. Still pretty dominant. Chris Richards party, Balo party, Gio party. Let's go.----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. Things of Concaf, the USA beat Canada 2 to 0, Sunday night in Las Vegas to lift the trophy for Nations League for the second time in a row. How you doing, Greg? I am raining. We are raining, Bells, three-time continental champions at this point. Now that we've added random continental championships to the schedule. It's never been Well, never is a long time But man

This is the best little stretch of play Since we started the podcast, wouldn't you say? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, you can't go get a coffee at this point Without running into a Conca Calf Championship That we have been doing Which I think that's a good thing Yeah, 5-0

We beat Mexico 30, Canada 2-0 Could have been more in both games Although Canada was a little, I think a little bit more dangerous than Mexico was a lot more dangerous than Mexico was. And also more resolute, I think. So again, full credit to the lads for edging, for edging them. Yeah, the Richie Larea,

Alistair Johnston combination was quite a bit more defensively stout than Jorge Sanchez and who was the right centerback for Mexico, I forget. I don't remember either. I just know that whoever their coach was at the time is no longer their coach now. Oh, yeah.

Fired. Diego. Diego's gone. That was announced this morning, hilariously. So, yeah, so we are leaving just an absolute, like, havoc in our wake because Mexico's managers out, Herdman just absolutely thrashing his own federation in the postgame conference. Not that that's entirely on us, and obviously, you know, you don't just want to focus on the men's side of that with the women's team having a World Cup coming up and being very vocal about their treatment from the Federation. The resources, it's a lot of resources talk for He's saying they need more money. The national teams do.

Yeah. I mean, they keep having to cancel, you know, international windows, whereas the U.S. are just like making them up. Right. It's like, we'll just play three games, whether it's a FIFA window or not. We don't care. The Keynesian U.S. Soccer Federation, just deficit spending. Deficit spending for growth.

I'm for it. Anyway, it was a fun week. What a fun week is really what I'm getting at for the U.S. and putting our rivals to the sword and really just burying them in a lot of mud. Yeah. Let me, before we get into it, which is going to be a lot of fun, let me just quickly say that the Patreon's been humming the past week. We've got a bunch of mixed zone audio from Sanjay Sujanta Kumar, who was kind of our man

and other people's man on the scene in Las Vegas. He's his own man. That guy is hustling. He gets really cool interviews. and they're blessed to listen to. Yes. Yeah, he interviewed Luca in Las Vegas and Joe Scali. Those are both up on the free feed.

But on the Patreon, we got a bunch of Mix Zone audio from him, which is kind of cool to listen to because it's like, it's so raw and real. And then we've got, well, Vince did a solo podcast on, I think, Friday night about the Mexico, the win over Mexico and the news about Burrhalter. And it's amazing. I mean, he went for an hour. If you're not subscribed to the Patreon, like, okay, fair enough, but subscribe for just long enough to listen to Vince's solo episode, even if you're going to cancel right after that. Get on there and listen to Vince.

Vince is confessional. It's incredible content. How he managed to do that for an hour by himself. My hat's off. That's all I got to say. So anyway, the link is in the show notes. The Patreon is cooking. We've got a John Tolkien interview coming in a few days.

The Monday review will be tomorrow. That's Tuesday morning. So, you know, join us if you are able. I feel like we kick off the Gold Cup later this afternoon. When is our first match? It's coming fast and furious. Let's do the lineup. So it was Matt Turner and goal.

Joe Scali replaced the suspended Sergenio Dest at right back. Walker Zimmerman stepped in for an injured Miles Robinson at right centerback, Chris Richards again at left centerback, and of course Anthony Robinson. left back. And then we had a midfield of Musa, Rana, and Aronson, and then Way and Pulisic on the wings and Fuller and Baligan at Stryker. This was his game where he really came out and showed us what he can do, I think. So B.J. Klognan is showing no respect to the way the positions were divvied up

on the roster announcement graphic. Brennan Erickson was not listed as a midfielder. So it feels like a little bit of a betrayal. And obviously, you know, I think, Everyone, not just because of that graphic, but because of how the past six months of soccer in Europe has played out, fully expected Luca Deloori to be the stand-in for the injured Weston McKinney. Yes, I sure did.

And I was disappointed that he wasn't in the starting lineup. Kind of had to change my tune on that after watching that second half. Man, so Aronson has been through the World Cup and now, you know, in this particular match, has been sort of the minutes eater as a center mid for us. I feel like that's sort of the cross he is currently bearing, if you want to call it that. I don't know that he objects to playing there. I think he's been more effective individually for us playing on the wing.

But when we need someone to just fill in in the World Cup, it was Weston McKinney on a clear minutes restriction coming out around 60 minutes each match. Mostly it was Brennan Erinson taking over for him. And mostly doing like a solid, do-no-harm job. Yeah. And maybe I'm underselling that too. Hopefully I'm giving him his due, but he's not hurting us.

He's not changing the game for us in there. But he's holding his ground at times. He didn't get little brother too much in this game. I will say, yeah, I don't know. He didn't really get on the ball much, didn't have much influence in the attack. But he did, was he kind of marking Davies or at least semi-marking him? He was shading that right side until they had to switch Davies over. Yeah.

But just on the lineup, we don't have to go all the way into Aronson now. Just on the lineup, three, am I counting three Paris eligible players in the 11 with Scali, Raina, well, four, because Balo. Scali, Rana, Musa, and Balo are all Paris eligible. Just keeping, you know, the scuffed youth watch going, despite the fact that we're moving on the cycle to players entering their prime. And then Pepe will eventually come in. So that's five Paris eligible dudes playing in this game. Booth. Oh, Johnny.

Six. Bell six. Six, Olympic-eligible players. Booth would have been seven. So even as we're moving into like we're not the babies anymore, we still kind of just running these kids out. Yep. It's still a very young team.

I guess Zimmerman and Turner, the elder statesman on the field for us. Sorry, last note on the 11. Because again, I think it's fun to think about these things as a sicko of the national team. Like the last home match against Canada was the World Cup qualifier in Nashville and the players we didn't have for that match were all of the front four. Weya,

no, I'm sorry, we had pool of sick. I already got to change it. But Wea, Bala and Rana, we add into this group. Pretty solid. And then Mousa. Musa wasn't in that Nashville game either. Wea Balo and Rana, huge additions to a front seven. It kind of feels like a different era

with Raina and Ballo cooking up there. Canaan's lineup. Moose and Richard also no slouches to just be adding from our previous home match against Canada. Richards has been amazing in these past two games. I can't believe how. I mean, I can believe it, but I'm so happy with how well he's played. Canada's lineup was Milan Borjean and goal,

the ancient goalkeeper for Canada. They had a back three of Alistair Johnston, pretty solid. Scott Kennedy, pretty bad. And Kamal Miller. and then Richie Larea and Alfonso Davies as the wingbacks. They switch sides as the game went on. Ismail Kone and Stephen Ustakio in the midfield. And then with Jonathan Osorio and then Jonathan, David, and Kyle Laren up top.

No huge surprises. I guess I was a little surprise that Tejong Buchanan didn't start, but he came in later. Yeah, and he hasn't been a nailed-on sub for Canada, I think, at all ever, right? He's always sort of been sometimes in, sometimes starting other times, impact sub. Okay. But still, I mean, there's firepower on that lineup, right? I mean, there's no question that for the longest time, Jonathan David was the guy who would have started for us at any point in last cycle.

Yeah, born in New York, for those of you who aren't complete sickos and know that already. He was neutralized in this game. I don't think he didn't really have much to do. do. So to the timeline, we came out, we come out in a 4333. I've repeatedly misidentified this as a 4-2-3-1, including on the call-in show. That's another thing we have on the Patreon, the call-in show from last night. But it's the same, it's basically the same formation we've been playing under Burhalter, a 4-33. Musa was kind of the single pivot, right? I mean, there was triveting, but. Yeah, there's triveting. And it's just like the other ones,

those eights will flare out, they'll flare out to collect a ball. And then they'll just generally. And when I said, I mean, collect a ball from like the centerbacks. They'll flare out wide of the two centerbacks all the way back to pick up the balls like outside of the Miba and then just look up and keep circulating or try to do some long distribution. But yes, I would say we're still in the same ballpark. The big difference, of course, is that we've, we don't have Tyler Adams available for these

matches and we have replaced him with the exceedingly less Tyler Adamsish midfielder Gio Raina. Right. And I'm going to be interested in your, you know, your tracking of the defensive rotations. I noticed one moment where, well, actually in the second half when Raina was already off, where the rotations weren't super great. But I know you've been tracking that for a while. Yeah.

And since we're bringing it up before we even get into any of the events, I'll just say right now, as far as I'm concerned, we, I mean, assuming healthy, which, you know, Raina is already going to put that to the test. Assuming full health, like, I think it should go from MMA to McKenny Moosa-Rena as our midfield. And we do that until it becomes untenable. So we do that until it's like, oh, no, we are a sieve without Tyler Adams in there. We got to get him back in. I think we got to err on the side of game changers.

And Gio Raina is a game changer, in my opinion. And we keep him on the field and we don't do it in a way that sacrifices Poole-Sikawa, who I think it's also fair to say are the game changers for us. So I'm just going to get that out of the way right now Until someone like Makes us prove Until someone proves that we can't do that I think we got to run that way

And just see what we got The stakes aren't as high as the World Cup group stage match Against Wales which would have been like our first chance to really try it out If geo had been healthy So I think for me this is At this point in the cycle we run with it Until we can't run with it anymore And you were I think you were calling for it for the whales

game, right? Yeah, for whales specifically, I don't think I, I mean, and even then I was saying, it would take guts in a World Cup match to just be like, I don't think you can hurt us to what, you know, into that Wales game. I don't think they can hurt us enough that we have to play Adams. Like the MMA midfield was the rock through qualifying because so many of our attackers weren't available. We never had three good elite attackers to try to fit into the lineup. It was always two or fewer. So there was never that moment to really try it out. But once we got into the World Cup, it would have taken a lot of guts to have that be the game to try it. So I get not trying it. And then again, I don't think Rayno was healthy to do that anyway from the start of a match.

But yeah, I think especially with the lower stakes now of the next year and a half, two years, I think we've got to see if we can make that work. Well, just to follow up on that, the main reason we never got to try it in qualifying is because Rayna was injured from the vast majority of qualifying. He played in the first window, came off, I think, in the third game of that window. And then, is that right? Yeah.

No, no, no, Rayna played 90 minutes against El Salvador, didn't come on the field again until, until 2022.

Until, was it, not until we played Panama. Yeah, came out in the last window. And then he was obviously on like minutes restrictions in that window.

And not just that. Poulosick and Wea were in and out of camps as well. So, yeah, we never really had a chance to try to get all three of them on the field at the same time. until the World Cup. And then, yeah, we don't need to relitigate that.

All right, now let's jump into the timeline because we've got a perfect Raina-Wea-M-Movey. Raina wins the ball in the midfield and plays way wide, sort of leads him wide, and Wea just steps on the ball and rolls it backwards right into Raina's path. I mean, they said this on the broadcast too, but felt like he should have just taken a touch

and ripped one from the edge of the 18. He had the opportunity to do that. Instead, he kind of dribbled into the box and settled for a tough shot from a more difficult angle. But in any case, it was a nice promising sequence claimed by Borja. Maybe even Rayno was trying to cross it. I don't know.

Some real nice technique from Wayo, though, on that entry pass. Like it looked almost like a video game glitch. The way that ball seemed like it was going to handcuff him, but then he just handled it super cleanly. And then lovely back heel. If it was maybe someone besides Raina, and there's starting to be more and more guys where I'd be okay, where I'm okay with what Raina did here. Yeah, I hit it first time.

But you're Raina and you're really good at controlling the situation. So you're not going to just, you know, get run off the ball instantly if you hold on to it for two extra touches. And what would that shot have been, 25 yards out if he takes it first time? Not quite that far. I don't think. I think it's not first time. I think one touch and then a shot. Okay.

He probably takes it from inside 20 yards. I got you. I'm going to give tons of grace to geo and to Wea and even pool sick to see if there. can improve their situation. Fair enough, yeah. Now, the other big question, one of the big questions of the day was, can Joe Scally stay in front of Alfonso Davies or at least limit what he can do? And I think the answer was yes.

Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. I mean, that's, that's a task that we're giving. And we didn't say do it all by yourself. We planned really well for, again, for Aronson to shade over there. so he almost always had help. But yeah, you could tell they were attacking that side

to test out that pitch control of Scali Brando. Yeah, and they weren't perfect or anything, but they did. Scali held his own. Right at the 340 mark, they come at that side several times in a row. Richards ends up clearing two dangerous balls across, but Scali's throwing his body in the way.

I was pleased with Joe Scali. Yeah, and you saw right away some of the rotations of Brenda cheating really hard back to that side to help. It wasn't like we were asking way out to get back there. So you could tell, again, we're in that 433 defense where it's asking a lot of the midfielders to come out to the ball side. And there were some times where like in these two that you're mentioning, these two sequences where the ball goes wide, Scali starts to go out to meet it, like just delays it for a second. And then it's almost like a basketball zone where you go out to deny the shot and then you drop as the player near you arrive. So then as Brenda's shading over, Scali actually drops off of the ball carrier.

And that's how one of them ended up with a free cross. So it's not, again, the rotations and timing, not necessarily perfect. But you could kind of see what our plan was for that sideline defense. Hard to get those kinds of rotations perfect when you have a live human being with the ball. You can't control. You're in your first camp together. Right. In the seventh minute, Wea charges 60 yards, shrugs off a guy.

tries to whip a ball across for Ballo, and it's cut out at the edge of the six for a corner. It was just nice from Wea, the physicality, the strength, the, you know, like you're talking about, his control, his ability to control the situation. He gets on the ball at midfield. It's like a bouncing ball, and as he's controlling it, I don't remember which tiny Canadian smashes into him,

but Waya didn't move, and the Canadian guy fell on his back, and then Wea takes off running, and another guy is trying to catch up to him, and in Waya just like it's like a open field broken tackle and tackle football like he just like gets the stiff arm out and like just pushes him backwards and then that guy goes down and it's just way of free running uh who these guys it's it's a fun cycle bells I'm gonna say it over and over again fun cycle not a perfect match for us a little bit probably messier than then then you might remember if you want if you're do a rewatch um but just these moments of like just total like talent uh advantages. Right. Yeah, I didn't think we were, we weren't clicking on all cylinders

in the attacking third in this game. I mean, we had the, we had the set piece. The set pieces were dangerous, and we had a, and Balagan created some danger. But anyway, let's, let's keep going. Yeah, let's get to the set piece. So the ensuing corner after that way of wins gets, you know, kind of ponged around

in the air in the box, and one of the Canadian defenders heads it really high, looping into zone 14 and Zimmerman tries a left-footed full volley and just catches it and flashes it just wide of the far post. But definitely shades of Zinidine Zadon versus Bire Leverkus in 2002. Look it up. It's the exact same thing, except Zadon's just went up for 90.

Yeah, no, and that's the thing that we've been saying this for, I mean, probably since 2018, like if there's a player that you want to compare Walker Zimmerman too, is Zinn-Din Zadon of Rail Madrid. Yeah, somebody's going to get, somebody's going to clip that and then get me on Twitter for it. I'm not being serious. I don't think Zimmerman is similar to Zinnadine Zadon at all. But it was the same kind of strike.

That's all I'm saying. Canada were a bit of a mess on this one. That first ball got cleared out to Joe Scali, and he's able to hit in an uncontested cross. And it's crazy. We have like a four-on-one or four-on-two advantage in the box for that first cross. So Canada were, in a way, like a little bit lucky that we didn't just score on that first ball in.

from Scali. But also strange that we had that advantage and then still had Zimmerman all by himself to hit that volley. Yeah. You gotta wake up a little bit. A little bit sluggish, yeah, from the Canucks. Eight-minute mark, Kone Burns Jedi down the right side, down our left side, which is rare, and then slips Laren in behind Richards.

Just a nice little sequence from Kone. Laren's shot is right at Turner, not too dangerous. I mean, it doesn't feel dangerous because Laren didn't do much with it, but this was like a sneakily good chance, I think, for Canada. I mean, they were in, right? Like, they got behind Richards. And it's, it's Zimmerman trying to arrive to disrupt, but he's not there in time to stop the shot.

So it all just comes down to, uh, Ken Laron hit it in a spot that, that Turner can't get to because he has his, he has his pick of where to put it. And he puts it right. He puts it kind of tamely right at him. Yeah. Yeah. Just a tame finish. And so again, this is where you just chalk, chalk, chalk, chalk,

to you tip your variance cap on this one. Uh, and hope that, hope that things. get cleaned up a little bit in front of the goal. Yeah, what could Richards have done better there? Cut off the angle for the ball in behind a little better? I mean, it just seems like he's kind of in a no-win situation there. I think he is sort of just in a no-win situation. And so it's really on Jedi to not have sort of allowed that play to develop in behind him.

Okay. So, and then also you've got to just know that what Richards does is, you know, Once the situation is broken down with Jedi, what Richards allows Canada to get is the shot from not a very good angle. You know, if you compare that Laren shot to where he gets the shot in the World Cup qualifier on that shanked goal kick from Turner. Like Laren's right in the front of, like,

not dead center, but he's in within the goalposts. And here, he's pretty far outside of it. So that's the shot we allowed. Yeah. What do you get like a tenth of a, a tenth of a goal in XG for,

every yard closer to the center of the goal you get. I don't know. It goes up pretty rapidly than when you get in the middle of the goal. Yeah, as a keeper, you're always happy for any extra step they have to take out towards the sideline. 10th minute, we get a Joe Scali long ball to Pulisic who's making a run right down the middle, kind of reminiscent of the one where he's set up Brennan Aronson against Morocco. He runs it down, brings it down, and then kind of gets shepherded off to the side. But he lays it off kind of cleverly for an overlapping Tim Wea, who takes it at the near post and fizzes it across its cutout.

Alfonso Davies tries to carry, gets the ball in the ensuing moments and then tries to carry it forward and dribbles out of bounds, which is kind of sad for him. Well, he rinsed Scali here. He did. This is the place for Scali to get rinsed, 75 yards up the field or 75 yards away from Matt Turner. Yeah. Although if Davies had kept it in bounds, which I feel like nine times out of ten he does. He's moving. He's moving 75 yards pretty quick.

Yeah. Shortly after this, Aronson picks up a loose ball. Canada pretty sloppy in their half, I thought, and slips ballow into the side of the box. He works a guy. I think it was Kennedy, which is nice to see. And then wins a corner whipping the ball at the six. So we get another corner. I don't know how many corner kicks we had, but it seemed like a lot.

Yeah, and we've now added a guy who, again, can control the situation. A nice entry pass from Brenda into the box, but of course, Balo has to get it running away from goal, so it was back to goal. And for him to create a situation where he is now facing the center of the field with time to pick out whatever he wants to do, that's some skill that we are excited to have in our 11. Yeah, it feels like, is there anybody in the 11? today who doesn't routinely control their situation, I guess

Aronson probably. In this 11? Yeah. Oh man, in the attack? Yeah, it'd be, it'd probably be Bredo. Well. But he makes up for it with other work. We're not picking on Brendo today, just for the record.

12th minute on the ensuing corner, we get our goal. And it's Rana drops the corner kick in the mixer. Richard's runs a little stunt with Zimmerman. and dunks on Alistair Johnston, heads it down and back, past Boreon to his left. Just a textbook headed finish.

Hoover, Alabama, stand up. That is a suburb of Birmingham. Richards' first goal for the senior national team. And, you know, as Vince pointed out in his solo vibes cast, Richards has really improved in the air. Yeah, he's Air Richards now. His nickname now fits. That's right.

And it's a huge deal because Ream remains not that strong in the air. So if we can get to where both our centerbacks are set piece threats, that's going to, and we have somebody who's a little better at hitting our set pieces on the field. Yeah. That's going to go a long way. Yeah. And then when you have Weston McKinney in the game,

you have a third, like, legit set piece threat. It's really nice. A nice corner kick from Raina. He seems like he should be the guy taking corner kicks and set pieces in general. 1-0 USA Richards runs over and celebrates with a big scream and man

just love to see it He had a bunch of big screams He had probably I bet he led the team in big screams yesterday And I can think of at least one other Yeah exactly

And we got Zimmerman He's a big screamer too So we got some roars We got some guys who will roar During a soccer match Yeah let me play Let me play what Richard said on the field after the

game. Here's what he said. Saw it jove. It went in. We won. Simple. Simple. Simple. All right. Moving along. Musa, I thought doing well to take responsibility in the middle. I didn't think he was

like at his sharpest with the ball with the ball in this game but plenty good. Plenty good. And he was really he was taking responsibility defensively and in the buildup I thought. Yeah, and we'll talk about it later, but the buildup is just a little bit different in this game where it wasn't a lot of like hitting the attackers in pockets as part of the buildup. The buildup was more like drawing Canada up, especially after we're 1-0 up, drawing Canada up field and then going past them over the midfield.

So you can say we skipped the midfield, which we did, but we used the midfield to connect four or five, six passes in sort of our own third, brought Canada up. And then it was like, all right, now let's go, let's go over them and see what the, see what the lads up top can do. Did we have much success with that? The lads up top seems like we couldn't get that. We couldn't win a lot of those long balls. Yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't super clean, but we get a couple more and we got a, we got an important one. And then it just comes down to like, how bad do we have to keep doing it? Right, right.

All right, 15th minute Raina works a couple guys through the middle of the field and gets fouled hard by Scott Kennedy. which is a clear yellow card, and I think that does have some relevance for the second goal later. This was one of the times we tried to work it up through the middle. So we had a few passes, like a 10-pass sequence-ish, something like that, including like a ballback to Turner that he hit up over everybody and Raina collected it out towards our left side line, like just lays it off for Jedi and we keep building. Ends up with Musa in a nice pocket behind Canada's front too. and then we're a little bit slow to rotate

to give Musa that vertical option between Balo and Rana, neither of them are quite in the window. So Mousa tries to hit it up to Rana, and because they're not quite in the window, the pass is not, you know, Raina has some ground to cover to catch up to the pass. So it's one of those situations where the pass is just bad enough to end up being good because Rana can still get there first,

but it's very inviting for Kennedy to come in like he's going to get there. Yeah, and that's how Rana ends up caught late. He gets his toe in and Kennedy gets their beat later and wipes him out. And he's got a, he's on yellow until he comes out late in the second half. 19th minute, Robinson is playing bouncer to Leraa, as Vince put it in his podcast, just ushers a diagonal pass out of bounds. It keeps saying no, you can't get in to Richie Lurie.

And I really appreciate Robinson for. for his, just how lockdown he is over there. There was the one time where he got beat by Kone that resulted in that good chance. But other than that, I don't think he was, I don't think he put a foot wrong defensively. No, we were pretty tight through 180 minutes in this window.

Good string of passes from Canada up the right in the 25th minute. Kone slips Lurea to the end line again. Jedi, Jedi doesn't take the ball from him, but he forces him to cross it into the side netting. just not letting anything happen. I clocked Aronson fouling Davies around the 26 minute mark

to sort of prevent a jail break and I liked that. That's important. You know how I feel about tactical fouling. It's a mature move and we got to have a lot of a lot of that mentality in the squad. It's good to see Aronson doing it, you know, need him to be a little bit more cynical in general. 28th minute, another good set piece chance.

This time Raina floats one. into the edge of the box. Not a great free kick, but Scali kind of keeps it alive by going up for the duel. And then it skips over to Zimmerman who nods it across. Balion takes it on his chest above the near post and quickly tries to head it over as Eustachio's head comes into his airspace. So there's a clash. He got his bell rung.

He stays down for a while, but it gets looked at and then goes off the field for a minute. I was just impressed with the power he generated. on that header. You know, so that's an unusual action. And so it's the first example of several of how quickly he can turn and create like a genuinely dangerous shot very rapidly. Yeah, with no room, right? And that's the big thing.

Of course, I doubt I even need to say it, but he may have decided to just overhead kick at first time off the, off the Zimmon Cross, the header. because of how difficult it is to chest it up to your own head. But again, probably just going to give the benefit of the doubt to the professional here. And he does, he does, again, generate a few more of these chances throughout the game with like an unexpected ability to take a touch where you didn't even think a touch could exist. Right. I mean, that's how you rack up.

That's how you rack up the volume of chances, right? Right. Being able to create them where someone else wouldn't be able to create one. Yep. And you can really see, I mean, you could really see that in this game. I'm a huge Ricardo Pepey fan, but he is not as, he is just not as proficient in this category as Ballo is. And I guess, you know, if you look at the underlying number.

Yet. Just keep saying yet for the kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The kids who are slightly younger than the kid who's doing it. Right. 32nd minute corner kick after Pulisic tries to go 1 v.1 with Scott Kennedy and can't beat him. Just, you know, people were pointing out that Pulisic was double-teamed in this game. and that's maybe the explanation,

but he did not, I mean, he didn't really do any damage on the dribble in this game. He got some, he got isolated out wide with Johnston sometimes, Kennedy in this case, just couldn't make anything happen. He roasted Jorge Sanchez like six times against Mexico, but not in this game.

Yeah, there was almost like no getting the edge, right, where he was constantly getting the edge against Mexico. This was more of the, like, what we have seen in the past of, trying to shimmy somebody and then sort of hitting across into somebody's legs. Right. There was a lot of that. He's developed into an incredibly good box arrival.

So it doesn't, you know, it's not like an indictment or anything. It's just something to watch. Well, and the other thing is, if we're generating a bunch of corners and we're actually good at them, then that's a really good thing. In the past, when we were getting these corners and then just, it was futile and there was nothing coming of it. it just felt like a good chance totally wasted when not wasted but a good position wasted as you watch that ball hit off shins and go out of bounds.

That's a good point. Maybe I shouldn't be so disappointed when he kicks it off somebody's legs out of bounds. We try a short corner to Pulisic and he hits it way too long and then I only mention it because Scali does well to get back and prevent a Jonathan David jailbreak by drawing a foul, something he did a couple of times. Yep, sneaks in front draws a foul. Same thing as Mexico I felt early on. The ref was giving a lot of whistles for those where you just get position and then go to ground.

You're going to get the whistle both teams. And our guys were all savvy enough to do that on numerous occasions. Yeah. I got one here shortly after this, 33rd minute. Bourjean thinks he's getting cute here with that little faint to send Bolo flying. But I feel like he may have sort of, you know, just gotten Bolo a little bit angry. Yep. Messed with karma a little bit there.

So that brings us to the goal. Second goal, 35 minute mark. Wea and Raina together settle some soccer tennis and near midfield. Raina heads it to Wea, which is actually a nice little play by Raina. And then Wea just very cleverly heads it back into his path. This like glancing little header.

So subtle. Yeah, it's really, really, that's really hard to do. You know, anybody who's played soccer, like to get that, to get the angle and the weight on that header, right, is quite tricky. And Raina takes a big touch into the space. And at first I'm like, wow, that's a heavy touch. But then as you watch it back, it's a, it's an, I'm totally in command of the angles and the spatial relationships touch because it puts him, it gives him a head of steam

heading towards the box. It's just a big boss touch, in my opinion. and then he drives at the box and slips Ballo in outside of the boot kind of a no look well-weighted not to cut down the angle too much for for Ballo and then Ballo steps in behind Kennedy who as I mentioned was on a yellow card and just with strength thrashes it past Borjaun for the second goal every single thing there inch perfect time to perfection the weight of the touch from Raina takes the first touch for Bolo, I think again,

is how Bercamp says and I go back to that all the time. You can take that first touch for your teammate so they don't have to do anything but step through it. And then it's a lot of work for Balo to put himself in position to be able to just step through it. Times his run behind Kennedy perfectly, onside, by an elbow's length, and then seals him off.

So it gets to leverage. holds them off with an arm and absolutely smashes it. So it has all the body control to do all of this, and we're 1-0 up. Also want to point out, this was a sequence that began with us drawing Canada up, right? After that Bourjean move, they'd hit it long.

I think there'd been like a handball at midfield. We go short, and we kind of dink it around what looks maybe like aimlessly, end up with it with Zimmerman in the box, with Canada, you know, six guys in the frame pushed up. Zimmerman lays it off to Turner,

and Turner hits it up field. and then when the ball zooms over to where it's going to land, you can see how well we set up we are if Canada doesn't get a perfect headed clearance, which they don't. So it's kind of like, I know this is sort of like, it can be a bad word for some people to be like, create these first ball, second ball situations.

But if you draw a team's pressure up and they commit numbers forward, and then you like the talent you have available on the other side of the field, there's nothing wrong with just going up there. and, you know, again, Canada get their first chance at Turner's ball, but it's just sort of headed back towards Raina, who's in a big amount of space with just one Canada player around. It looks like it's Jonathan Osoria, too, so he's going to win that aerial duel.

And then, yeah, how I described it is how it played out. I guess we had a 3v3 there as that ball came down at the Canada centerback with Pulisic on the near side of the field with a guy marking him. So. Lovely man. That is basically disorganizing the opponent with the ball. It doesn't always have to mean that it's all passing on the floor. You bring Canada up and then when the ball goes up field,

you have this little open, you create an open field situation where roles get confused on who's supposed to be with who on the next three actions. And that's kind of where we end up with Raina being able to drive forward as Canada have to retreat. It just doesn't happen without Raina in Wayas Qualified. though, you know, to your point about game changers at the beginning of the, at the beginning of the episode. It's, uh, they're so good.

Not as reliably, right? I mean, not it. Could other guys pull this off? Sure. Like, it's possible. But they're not going to do it as frequently as successfully. Right. As when you have this caliber of player on the field doing it.

You got the next, once you take the next, uh, the next item. So it's two zero, you know, it kind of feels like the game is over a little bit. I know. It does, which is crazy because it definitely is not. But it did kind of feel that way. Like Canada aren't threatening us that much. We've got them buttoned up. But you know, like they didn't threaten much in that qualifier national either.

And then very suddenly, Alfonso Davies was behind everybody and they are tapping it in from the three-yard line. Right. Could have happened in this game, but didn't. I mean, it could have happened like a minute later. Now, it wasn't a tap in. But they get a decent chance here where they get it up into that left channel, right at the edge of the end. 18, about six yards from the end line. Osorio kind of chases it down.

His back is to the goal. Brenda runs up on him and like collides with him, but that doesn't phase Osorio, of course, because it tends not to. And then Brenda sticks with it and overcommits and Osorio kind of panses him with a little nutmeg. And so suddenly Scali's outnumbered there and Osorio connects a little pass

and they get to whip in an uncontested cross. Zimmerman clears it from about the, you know, penalty spot. Then first bottle, then pools it can't fully disrupt it in the scramble and Eustachio ends up with an uncontested shot from about 22 yards out. Richard's a little bit in the way of it, but kind of his jump took him out of the path. Decent shot on frame, Turner makes it look easy going down to his left.

But a little chance here for Canada, out of, I don't want to say out of nothing, but we felt like we had it buttoned up, but lose a little bit of the pitch control with Brenda overcommitting. Canada gets a chance out of it. Yeah, it was kind of a low hit that was going to sneak in at the, sneak inside the post of Turner didn't get there, right? Yeah, never looked like it was a, never looked like it was a, never looked like a blast Turner as it left his foot. It was like, okay, he's got this, but just, yeah, just that some amount of quality that

Canada have where they can, they can find a shot. Yeah, you, Stacchio is a player that Canadian fans have been really excited with. I now kind of hate him because he pushed, because he pushed, because he pushed, Rayna into Alistair Johnston caused that injury. We'll get to that later. We have a good counter-attacking chance lost when Wea kind of steps on the ball and trips on it. He's like he's kind of ready to go off to the races with Baligan racing ahead of him and just makes a little mistake.

So, you know, nobody's perfect. Just got to clock that. 38-minute mark, another Canadian attack down our right side. Aronson and Scali bypassed by Osorio and Luria pretty easily. and it's a good hit from Larea from a tight angle. Another good turner save down to his right or over to his right more like. And then it falls back to Leraa and he feeds it back into the six. Only Jedi stepping in front of David at the last moment prevents a tap-in.

Jedi, as I said, was outstanding in terms of being alert and reliable. And then Zim smacks it out of bounds for a throw-in. Yeah, this wasn't a great sequence for that right side. pitch control-wise, both Brenda and Scali end up managing to defend from the wrong side of their sort of markers body. Aronson allows that pass to be played him behind him and is sort of, again, defending on the chase then. And then Scali's man slips to the interior of him so that he can receive that pass and be able to shoot with Scali trailing the play. It happened quick, but we do need a little bit more. I feel like again, this is going to be on Brenda as that center mid to clean some of this stuff up.

He's doing a ton of work. No one's going to get it right every time. It's not like Wes and Musa and even Adams don't end up on the wrong side of their guy sometimes. But that's just how this one played out. Yeah. Really? I mean, Adams. Go ahead.

Yeah, I mean, you were probably going to point out that Adams did it in World Cup qualifiers and in the World Cup. Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, Adams, who people say is like does the defensive work of two guys and stuff. which I sympathize with. You know, he lost Memphis to Pye for the game's opening goal against the Netherlands. So, yeah, just agreeing with you. And then just on that ball that does finally get whipped in on the ground, really solid coverage from all of Zimmerman, Richards, and Jedi.

They're all in the right spot. So whichever one that ball had gone to, whichever Canadian attacker, they would have not gotten to it first because our guy would have. Well, I mean, Zimmerman had a great game, I thought. Richards just couldn't be happier for him. Yeah, Richards, Richard's era has begun. This is what we wanted to preview.

It was like, I don't know who's going to start. I hope Richards does and I hope he shows that he should be. And I think we're in the Richards era now. Yeah. Probably worth it. It went in. We won. Simple.

Simple. All right. 39th minute, Aronson's a little wasteful on the counter. tries to slip Wea in behind when it wasn't on. It gets cut out. We had a couple of those. Musa had one as well. 40th minute, good job by Scali stepping in front of Laren and drawn another foul in our box.

It's kind of a little bit. It's a through ball, a ball slipped in behind that's slipped in pretty wide for Laren. But good job by Scali. He was savvy and a gamer in this game, I thought. The 43rd minute, we get a training ground set piece. After Raina embarrasses a couple guys in midfield, this was like, like a clip that's going around on Twitter a lot. He's just sort of dribbling in circles and leaving people behind.

But he slips it out to Wea. Wea squares it to the middle. I think he might have been playing it to Ballo, and it would have been nice if Pulisic had left it for Ballo, but Pulisic, it was also right at Pulisic. Pulisic took it, and then tried to step around a guy and got fouled. I don't know what he was going to do if he got around the guy anyway. Something frantic.

I guess, yeah. It's not a dig on Poulzik. He just has very frantic, tripling body language. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I know you're a big fan of frantic body language. You always have been. But anyway, on the free kick, Pulisic just rolls it to Wea, who's running in from well behind. And Wea takes a strike from 25 yards.

Places it well. It doesn't catch it like 100%, but puts some power on it. and Borjaan makes a fingertip save to his right. That was going in. That was going to be a goal if he didn't get to it. Wayas got a cannon. So I like this design. I like the person that we're using here.

Nice disguise from Pulisic to take the run up like he's going to serve or strike a ball in and then to very, again, deceptively, just roll it with the top of his foot over towards Wea, like two yards away. Yeah. Kind of sideways rolls. Yeah, very cute.

This is the kind of cute I get behind right here. 44th minute just clocked a good tackle from Aronson. He has put in a shift off the ball. And then in the 45th minute, Raina gets hurt, gets absolutely wrecked by Eustacchio after passing the ball.

Combining on our left side, he gets pushed into Johnson and their legs clash. Both are down for a while. Raina hobbles off and then comes back on. But then, of course, he gets subbed off at the half with some kind of calf injury.

That was the tweet, I guess. Yeah. And I haven't seen the diagnosis, but I'm totally comfortable diagnosing it from the video clip, which is the responsible medical thing to do for me. No, he gets pushed, and so he's like whipping around, right? He's rotating. So I'm at least crossing my fingers that we're just talking about like a bruise here. I don't think it'd be like a, I'm hoping it's not a strain because it's not like he was,

you know, lunging or reaching for anything, just smashes the back of his leg into the Canadian's leg. Into Johnson, yeah. Yeah, and Gio did not look. He was hobbling about on the telecast in the second half at first, but then pretty soon he's like directing traffic from the sideline, coaching from the sideline. He's all smiles after the game. You've got to imagine he would be a little bit more bummed if he was badly hurt.

Yeah, and if you've ever had one of those big, like deep bruises, you're hobbling. But if it's a strain or anything like an ankle or anything like, they're not letting you put weight on it. is again what I'm my detective work here like the fact that he's walking around after the game too for me I'm like oh that must mean it's just a bruise and it's just going to take a bunch of ice and a little bit of rest until it's till it's humming again third minute of stoppage time scally is again reliable and gumming things up davies blows past tim waya down the wing which is no small task and then but but scally gets in the way of his ball across and sends it out for a corner

So just once again happy with Scali's performance. At the half, Gio comes off for Luca Deloore because of the knock he took. Thought Gio was our best player in that first half. I imagine we're going to be thinking that a lot over the next 10 years. Again, you know, you asked after the Mexico game, like, was Gia outstanding? And he didn't do a ton of outstanding things. What I'm hoping the next 10 years are are not having to worry about any one player having an outstanding game because if Gio's just quiet, he's just quiet in there,

Pulisic is doing something. And if Pulisic's a little quiet against Canada, Gio's cooking. And Tim Wea is always a great sous chef. So I just feel like we've got some things going on here that, again, I just want to stress that I really hope that as you're watching this team, this cycle, you're able to allow yourself to enjoy it. Yeah. I mean, you think about what it's like to defend against us.

if you allow Wea to get a little room and provide service from the right, you've got Pulisic and Baligan crashing, crashing the gold mouth. They're both quite good at that. And then, you know, if you say, well, we're going to defend Wea, we're not going to allow him to do anything.

Then you've got Pulisic going, you know, Pulisic coming in from the left. You got Gio Raina. I mean, it's just, it's going to be hard to play against that, that foursome, I think. Oh, yeah. And then again, you throw in Serginio Dest as Wea's buddy, and Wea and Dest will love to play together. Yeah.

This is just, this is enjoyment. We're just fans at this point. All right. So the second half timeline is going to be a briefer. Right in the 46 minute, 46 minute mark, Davies flies past Scali, drives into the box, tries to slip Laronin and on goal. So, I mean, Scali was good. Scali, I think, did a good job. you're not going to stop Davies every time,

and he got turned pretty dramatically here. And then Davies tries to slip Laronin on goal, but it's an outstanding little interception from Walker Zimmerman to stick his foot out and poke it to, I think Scali, who's rushing back into the box. So good defense from Zim, another good game from him. The notable thing here as Scali gets rinsed, which whatever, no shade here, it's Alfonso Davies,

is as he gets rinsed, Davies isn't looking right at Zimmerman. Davies is actually looking right at Eunice Musa, who is just filled in some, not just space, he's with a Canadian player. But again, that alertness, that responsibility and commitment to just being an extra body back there, not just being like, well, is Zimmerman's job to pinch over if Scali goes out? I think that that's clearly part of the plan in this game to contain Davies and limit how badly people can get cooked and what the consequences are when they inevitably do get cooked. So we've got Eunice as a body there, and he actually kind of gets past unit to,

units too, but it makes him have to adjust to hit his little attempt at a throughball that Zimmerman intercepts. He tries to play the same throughball in a mirror image to the one that, that Raina played, and just couldn't do it, just couldn't pull it off. I mean, you have to ask, is Alfonso Davies no longer the best player in Concaf now that Gio Raina has emerged? I mean, time will tell, but I've, well, yeah. We get a little spell.

of pressure from Canada. Kona hits one at Turner from 20. It's easily dealt with. I mean, it's kind of easily dealt with. He kind of misplayed that a little, right? Yeah, I guess he, yeah, it bounced off his chest, didn't it? No, it was like his arm. It was on the ground and he got down to collect it and it just kind of hit one of his arms

and bounced a little bit free. Yeah. He could collect the second one without a problem, but come on, Matt. It would have been a Rob Green moment if that had gone in, I guess. Well, go in, or if somebody was, was right at the doorstep to hit the rebound. Right. As I said earlier, I didn't mind us dumping it long,

especially up to zero. But it did sort of seem like Balligan was surprised a lot of the times we did it. Like he wasn't there to challenge for the, for the, you know, the ball as it's coming down on the centerback's head. I don't know what that was about. I don't know if that's a strength for Baligan, but while we're on that subject, this was interesting because Hurdman had some comments after he kind of gave the standard losing coach's answer about how the other team didn't play

honorably. He didn't actually say that, but he was like, the U.S. didn't even try to play out of the back. So I guess, you know, if you're happy to be pragmatic, then okay, as though, again, teams to have some obligation to play worse. It's a little bit rich coming from him, you know? But also, like, Hurdman directed his team to discourage us from playing out of the back. Like after the goal, where Canada now need to chase and can't just let us, you know, walk around with the ball.

On all of our goal kicks, he's barking and pointing. And Canada are up on the top of our box with two guys at the top of the box ready to attack us as we play it short. And so the first time they did this, you know, Turner did the weighted, did the hands thing. Everyone just jogs up field and we launch it long. The second time we didn't. We actually were like, okay, well, we're going to try to play out of it. And we did it really badly. And it was just like we passed to Zimmerman.

Zimmerman passed to Scali. Scali was immediately in a dead end and like hit it off a guy out of bounds for our throw. But then after that it was like, okay, we can just be done playing it short. We can just, if they're going to come up here, then we're just going to hit it over. I mean, we'll all reset, but we're not going to at 1-0 and then even 2-0, we're not going to like dink around with it with Matt Turner and Walker Zimmerman without Sergenio Dest on the field. Right.

With Brendan Aronson instead of Weston McKenney in midfield. Like, we're not going to just make this easier for you, Canada. We're going to go ahead and just hit the long goal kicks. Yeah, well, it sounds like somebody got addicted to Burhalter's dogmatism, and I'm talking about Herdman, and, you know, rehab under B.J. Callahan is tough medicine, you know. I mean, I'm hopeful that Burrhalter will, you know, do these kinds of things, and play these kinds of players and these kinds of roles. I'm not sure he will, though.

I'm not either, but I really expect it. And again, as soon as the World Cup ended, I thought the certain evolution was going to be. We talked about MMA midfield sets an outstanding floor. It shows what you can do with those players. And if you can get like for like depth and keep them fresh over a short turnaround in a tournament setting, then you've got a great foundation. If you can find a way that Gio Raina can play in there instead, then that can open up a lot of doors going forward, literally attacking forward with the soccer.

So I really do think that was going to be, I think that was a pretty obvious next step, given everyone's eventual return to health. Yeah. I hope you're right. I think, I, you know, I hope it's so much that I think you are, right. So 53rd minute, Scali gets isolated with Davies again, stays disciplined, forces a blast from a tough angle that Davies flashes over the bar. I think we're okay with that shot, right? Oh, yeah.

We're okay with Scali. We are okay with Davies not taking Scali on all the way. Right. And that's a credit to Scali. 53 minute mark. I really loved this moment. This was the Ballot show. He stays with a play in Zone 14 where the ball is just kind of bouncing around.

And he sniffs it out. You can see him moving into the space where he's likely to win the second ball. And then he does under some pressure. He plays it out to Jedi and then receives the return pass as he's running at the near post. But it's behind him in the box. And it's just a deft left-footed touch to bring it back in front of him. And then swivels and shoots on frame with his left foot. It's blocked out of bounds by Kennedy, but it looked like it was going far post side netting

if Kennedy hadn't gotten a foot on it. And this is just another example of like Baligan. Baligan can do things in those close quarters that I don't. think any of our other strikers can. Yeah, and he's shown off this little swivel move a couple of times already in the, in the whatever 120 minutes that he's played for us, where, which might sound so he'd be like really excited about the swivel, but a swivel means that you weren't facing the goal and now you are facing the goal.

Right. So switch yourself from not facing the goal in an attacking situation to facing it 15 yards out is a massive deal. And so the fact that he's sort of shown that he can do this. in traffic without being able to necessarily get his feet set. And what he didn't have in this situation was anyone to pass to. So that's another thing. Like if he can do this and we have another body,

then he can either shoot or if he's off balance, just tap it over to someone else. It's, this is a big deal. We've simply just added a huge piece to our, to our player pool. Yeah, to a team that was already quite good defensively

and good at getting into the attacking third, good at getting the ball into the attacking. attacking third. We've added a striker who is just a clear level up. And, um, you know, for now, maybe Pepey catches up to him. Exactly. If he's not a clear level up, it's because Pepey is rising, right? It's not because, like, oh, no, he's actually, you know, Balacin's actually bad. Like, I think we're in a spot where if, if, if it's a discussion, that's outstanding news. Yeah. Okay. Let's get, let's, let's get, let's get, let's get, let's go. Fiveteenth minute. There's a way of volley on a cleared corner

that's blocked out of bounds. We got to cook, but we literally just put this in here so I could be like, outstanding contact on a volley. I love volleys. This is a great hit. It was a good hit. I don't know if it was hit hard enough to get past Borgian, but very satisfying. 55th minute, another block shot, this one from Pulisic, who can't get past Johnston,

and then the corner gets launched into the air straight up by Larea, kind of sloppily, and Richards nearly heads it in over Laren. one of those sort of right angle headers. The ball's coming straight down. You head it straight across, and it gets tipped onto the crossbar by Borjaun. On the ensuing corner, Richards gets his head on it again. Air Richards, baby, and nods it across in a lovely way to Baligan. It does another one of these swivels.

He receives it very cleanly with his left foot, spins, and rips one with his right foot that's saved off the line by Scott Kennedy. I mean, just absolutely tenths of a second actions. by him to get this shot off. And Kennedy's just lucky that he was standing exactly where he was. Yeah, very passive voice saved off the line by Scott Kennedy because he knew nothing about it. So, and Bourjean knew nothing about it.

It was one of those that anywhere else besides their two silhouettes and it's three zero and Herdman might get fired. Yeah. Well, he might get fired anyway, right? He keeps talking bad about the Federation. I don't know how they are up there about that kind of stuff. We're good on set pieces now. That's a big, that's a big development from yesterday.

I'm sure it'll hold true 100% going forward. 57th minute, Luca de La Torre gets absolutely wrecked from behind in space by Alfonso Davies, and it's a clean tackle. He gets wrecked in the clean way, and he needs to do better, and he really didn't do better. He got on the ball in the midfield. He was like moments from losing it every time. Yeah, I mean, this probably would go down as a little bit of a shocker. Again, in part, based on how excited everyone was to see him step up, you know,

expecting him to start for McKenny. And he had several of these. And it's easy to say, well, he's just getting out muscleed. But these weren't situations where there should have been any muscle involved at all. Like he has it with a ton of time. And all he needs to do is, like, make his choice and execute before someone catches him. And he was just slow, just slow on his reeds and didn't pull a trigger and ended up on the ground a couple of times.

Yeah, I don't know if he, what's going on there? If he just, if the league is just a really slow league? I think, I don't know. I think it's got to be like national team jitters a little bit. Not that, not that he hasn't played for the national team before, but just like, just that you freeze a little bit because you're not 100% sure that what you're supposed to do is what you're supposed to do because you've just been in camp for two days and you want to make a good impression.

I certainly don't think that we need to write. him off for 45 minutes of looking a little bit turtly here. But it's not nothing. Like he's going to be on him to show that he's not going to turtle up. Yeah, he needs to play a lot better or else his spot at essentially fifth in the midfield depth chart. Well, he's sixth right now because Aronson's ahead of him, isn't he? But his spot is going to be in some danger if he can't. You put an Adams ahead of him?

Is that you're saying now that we're in this new era, 4.3. with Gio as the locked-in attacking mid. Right, and Luca could come in and be that role or he could play deeper, but of the six midfielder's, I think he's number six, wouldn't you say? Tejong Buchanan comes on for Johnston and Sam Otakubby comes on for Osorio in 60th minute, and then Stephen Vittoria on for Scott Kennedy, who was on a yellow. Davies is still dangerous. We're just clearing it.

We're clearing his crosses or they're, or he's not getting past Scali. 63rd minute, a clever throw in from Scali to Luca, who skips it across and Borjan, so skips it across from the Man City Zone. And Borjan gets a paw to it and it falls to Pulisic and he almost stabs it in with the inside of his left foot. But I think it's blocked by,

I don't know, whoever the centerback was who was being dead. desperate in defense there. 65th minute, a nice catch from Matt Turner on a ball floated over to Davies. He had to really come out of his box and judge it well. And it's nice to see him command his box that way. No oopsies from Turner today, right? Or did he have, maybe he had, I think he might have had half an oopsie in the first half. Well, the one that you mentioned that came off his arm could have been an oopsie if something was a little more opportunity.

No big ones. And again, part of that is because 70% of the time, we'll go even higher. 74% of the time we dropped it back to him with any Canada players in the picture he was lumping it Yeah Not a game set up for very many oopsies from him

Larea mostly pocketed Pulisic I thought Yeah I don't disagree with that And like I said it's one of these moments that hopefully we can look back Finally on him be like okay go ahead and pocket Pulisick like Giorina is going to do you Or Tim Way is going to do you

Serginio Dest is coming next time. So I also want to say this isn't the first time that's happened either, right? We've had other games in the past where Pulsick has been off, and that doesn't mean we're doomed. Wea and McKenny have been cooking a little bit when Poolecic was off during qualifying. So we've had it. I just feel like the level and the numbers here now are going up for the players who can be game changers. Yeah, I mean, just adding Balo and Raina.

to our World Cup qualifying situation is like a, it's a 100% increase in game changers. Yeah, that's about right. 66 minute mark, Canada gets a huge chance. And, you know, if this goes in, if they score here, it's a different, the last 25 minutes are a lot different. But it's a big switch from Davies over to Otikugby on the left side. And we don't have very many people.

there are like three black shirts and maybe one white shirt in the box there. Otakugby cuts it back for Laren, who is just wide open near the penalty marker. He tries it with his left foot and scuffs it. Turner saves it. No, I'm sorry, Richards clears it off the line back to him, and then he tries his right foot and hits it over. So I think, you know, Laren will wish he had done better there. I thought both Luca and Bredo were both a bit out to see in this season.

sequence. I mean, it's kind of a broken play that ends up with Davies in the first place over on the right side. But nobody's getting back fast enough to fluster Laren. And I think that's got to be on the midfielders a little bit to be a little bit more aware of what's happening. I think so too. But, and this isn't a defense. This is just the context. It's a set piece. So we talked about that first half corner for us where, you know, or the set piece for us that Scali ends up hitting a cross-in where Canada's confused and we have four on two and then Zimmerman's unmarked somehow also at the top of the box. This is kind of like that where you get confusion on second actions on set pieces of who's supposed to be where and when do you switch back? Because, you know, Brenda is a little bit higher up the field on set pieces, of course, being Brenda.

And Balagan is all the way back in the box defending for the initial kick. And when that initial kick sort of gets cleared out or half cleared, I should say, there is this moment of like, okay, does Balagan stay and is he a defender or does he get back upfield and and brendo switches back and the way this gets half cleared out brendo's the nearest guy to the ball upfield and so he charges up to pressure it so he's moving himself even farther from the uh dangerous traffic area that we're eventually going to need to cover and it's just not in bolligan's mindset to be like oh i need to stay committed right here protect this space uh from from a chance that might arise two passes down the road so so So that's just kind of the context of how Canada end up with a man all by himself in the penalty box for that cutback.

Is Brendo just didn't get back in time since Balo isn't fully committed. Yeah. So it's really, you know, unless you're going to hold Ballow's feet to the fire here, it's really not anybody's exact fault. Yeah. A different, more defensive-minded player than Brando might also have been like, okay, my job is done as soon as I pressure and that guy hits it out wide and they're going to serve it. and I should be getting back, connecting to the centerbacks, again, to protect that valuable real estate. But again, that's also not really Brenda's territory for club, so it's not like that's

drilled into his mind either. Well, Luca also was, I mean, he was on the, from our point, from Matt Turner's point of view, on the left side of our box during this sequence, right, or shaded to the left side. And we have plenty of white shirts over there and not many black shirts. And then all the black shirts are way on the other side of the box. And, you know, maybe need a little more aware. awareness from him too. I don't know. Whatever.

Set piece awareness, though. I mean, again, second action, third action, set piece of awareness. That's what we're talking about here. Okay. Let's diagram it in the film room, get everybody on board, protect the space in front of the goal. Aronson gets subbed off for Johnny Cardoso. He gets shoulder checked by Tejohn for not going off fast enough. And then Pulisic goes over and shoulder checks Tajan. So, you know, just put it in the shit housing chronicles a little bit. Tejohn's made the deliberate choice to be to try to be a Concaf Schittauser right like he was he was doing some stuff in that Mexico qualifier up in the up in the Arctic uh towards the end of the game he started he's a little bit of a chaos merchant yeah he's like doing it on purpose he's like I mean he has made the choice to see how he can get people to uh to react so he's going for it uh Luca loses it again around the 70 minute mark and then wins it back and it's and weigh is off to the races, place Poulosik wide left. He cuts in and has a shot that's blocked.

Just, you know, go ahead, Greg. Yeah, decent transition moment. This is something we got to improve on with our patterns. He might have Bolo early. I'm saying we need to improve on it. I don't know that there was much here to improve on it. It was Canada really committed to shutting down the windows as we were running at him.

So, yeah, he might have been able to play Bolo immediately. But once that was closed, getting it out to Poulosick, facing the goal is a pretty good consolation prize. Just Pulsick doesn't create any windows. Yeah. 73rd minute, Ballow and Johnny work it into the box. I think Ballo kind of going down as if he's fouled, but the ball slips over to Pulsick.

He takes a heavy touch in the penalty area, and Larea pokes it away at the last moment, just as he's about to, as Poulisksk is about to try to strike it on goal. I don't think Poulosick had in mind to lay it off sideways, to Ballo who was wide open, but that's what happened. Oh, hold on. I know you're cooking, but this was, we got to talk about it because we've already mentioned the swivels.

This is another swivel, and this is one where Balo is able to swivel and just keep it alive for somebody else around him rather than swiveling to create for himself. But just to get it facing the wrong way, get everybody facing the right way, it's a big deal. Yeah. Peppy comes on for Ballo in the 75th. He had a pretty quiet cameo. I thought he was good and physical, definitely an active participant

and trying to win the ball back and get things going, but we just didn't get much going. The last thing I have is Canada pinning us down for a while there towards the end, but Richards and Zimmerman and Jedi, just very stout defensively. Musa, indefatigable, which is not something that you could always say about him

down the stretch. And then in the 86 minute, Richards blocks a Davies cross after a nice one, two from Davies and Eustachio. And he blocks it off Davies out of bounds. So we get a goal kick. And he screams at Davies left ear and pumps up the crowd as we take our goal kick.

I don't have much. I just want to say, Canada pinned us down in a sense, but we just set up shop in front of our box. So we brought trusty on for Scali. That's right. I moved to right wing back. So now we got three centerbacks, big kids, good in the air.

And we were just like, okay, do what you want to do. We've got our, we've got our trees here. Take your best shot. And they, you know, did actually still create a really good look. Where they, I think it was David squared it across the front of the goal for, it was very inviting. For Tajan, who was too busy, who was too busy trash talking with somebody on the back post to make the run. But overall, no, I was happy. didn't mind the fact that we were sitting with 10 defenders within 25 yards of Turner.

It was just professionally seeing out the game. So many positives from this game. What are you most excited about? Oh, man. So it's Raina. I just got to say, Raina is the most exciting thing. Richards is right up there. Balo is right there.

So, I mean, I was already excited about Bolo. I feel like I knew what Raina was doing. And Richards was the one, right, where we got to see him come in for the national team. And I feel like it was almost with the expectations or at least the hope that I had for him, felt like he was the guy. He started both these games. And so it was a matter of seeing like, can he hold up to that level of scrutiny and that high of expectation? And I think he absolutely did.

Absolutely did, yeah. It's almost poetic for him to score the game winner in the Nation's League final. Yeah, and I knew Balagin was good. I've watched the clips. I've watched him at Rahm. But to see him actually do it for the national team in a meaningful game, it's really pretty satisfying. I'll also throw in, it's notable. I think we have to note a lot of guys didn't get a run out, right?

And this is something we talked about before of, you know, you have Taylor Booth coming to this camp. might be the only one he's really available for if he's trying to move clubs. But this isn't, we didn't get him in. We didn't play him. So even up 3-0, maybe could we have dropped him in for Waya or Pool Sick when Pool-Six grabbing his hammy? Like, I'm not here to wet blanket anything, but in Booth has plenty of time to prove what he can do at the club level and get other call-ups.

I was like, ah, man, I wish, and he couldn't have really proved that much in nine minutes of mop-up duty when we stopped playing soccer. I just, I wish we could have seen him jump on the field for his sake. Yeah, I suppose. I didn't think he was all that great the last time he played for the U.S., but, totally fair. And when he, you know, when a player doesn't get a runout, sometimes it makes me outraged.

And sometimes I say, well, you know, maybe that's, that's a data point, you know. Yeah. And there's, again, it's not going to make a material difference where, oh, if we'd only given Booth 12 minutes against Canada, he'd know this, he'd know exactly how to play with his teammates later on down the line. Zendai Haas didn't get in, Sonior didn't get in. Both those guys will be at the Gold Cup where they can get all of the minutes they want in the group stage. Yeah.

It'll be fun to see them get that chance because they were, they seemed like they were celebrating as hard as anybody in the locker room afterwards. I mean, I'm sure that this, again, we have a clear tier, right? We have a clear demarcation between the guys and the auditions. And for some of the auditions, I'm sure it's just like, hey, hey, I'm having, happy to be here. I've had fun watching Timway and Christian Pulitzer. Right. Or at least it's like, oh, they have, Pulisick and Waya have emphatically demonstrated why they are the tier they are.

Right. I think that's, that's probably, that probably is what Sin dais and Sonora are thinking. Okay, we better get going. Yeah, Rabide up, those, come on. No, yeah, Gold Cup coverage starts, starts up later this week. And like I said, a couple more episodes coming this week. We got the Monday review on Tuesday for patrons. Maybe we'll make that public.

Who knows? And then a John Tolkien interview from Sanjay Sujai Sujani Kumar. So thank you. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.