Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #413: Gold Cup semifinal USMNT v Panama recap

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Greg, Watke and Belz talk through the loss in penalties, and draw some conclusions from a B roster Gold Cup. It's the end of the line for a certain portion of the player pool.Special thanks to the Sac City Public Library for giving me a temporary recording home: https://www.saccity.lib.ia.us/----Please consider subscribing to Scuffed on Patreon. You get an exclusive episode once a week, plus access to the Discord and live call-in shows, by signing up here for as little as $2 a month: 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. Hey, everybody, we've got this loss and penalties to Panama to recap. Waki and Greg are here with me. How are you? Doing all right. Waki, how are you? I'm doing very well, Craig. Adam, how are you doing? No one ever asks you.

I'm well. I'm well. I'm in the genealogy room at the Sac City Public Library in northwest Iowa in search of a... I think I found a pretty good internet connection in a quiet room. So far, no visitors to look at the, you know, microfilm and stuff. Do people recognize you there? Are they like, hey, are you, are you the scuffed guy? Yeah, yeah, everywhere. Everywhere I go.

I recognize that the dulcet tones of your voice, surely are. You must be. Atabels. Yeah. Has gold, did Gold Cup fever reach northwest Iowa, Sack City? Are they all devastated by the outcome? Yeah, I'm sure. I was a little surprised one of my wife's cousins told me he watched the game on Sunday night,

and I offered my condolences. The ratings on these games? Not Sunday night. Wednesday night. Yeah. What am I talking about? Sorry, go ahead, Waukee. People are watching these games.

Yeah. More people watching in Spanish than English, as usual. It's like a thing we don't talk about a lot, but it's double. It's basically double, the audience. We've got a bit of the summer to ourselves because of the, you know, odd years that we play. There's no Euro, no Copa right now, and no World Cup. So we've got the women coming up, but this is a nice appetizer. So a full helping of John Luca Busio and Brandon Vasquez for America. Solid B-team. Clearly defined B-team. yeah let's get into some let's get into some uh overall thoughts here

I guess the main thing I felt like I learned is that our B team is roughly as good or maybe worse give or take than Panama yep now I I I made the mistake of tweeting that basically that the other night and I had like no less than a hundred people come in and say this is not our B team this is our D team and it's obviously a little bit of semantics, but my thought, my thought is your A team is your A roster, your B team is your B roster. Everybody who was in the first or second string was in the nation's league. I mean, you know, there's a few outliers, but was in the nation's league competition. Now we have a whole

different roster, a second choice roster for the Gold Cup, so this is our B team. I guess depending on what you define as a team, if you define team as a starting 11, not our our B team. This would be like a C or a D team. So I just, first off, I just love that this discourse exists. We had a question. You had a, when we had the Sarah can interview, you had a question in there about what he thought. And I remember that you'd written it as, you know, how do you feel about sending our B team? And I was like, B, you can't do that you can't say B team.

Because if you ask him about the B team, the only thing that people will hear is B team, and they will just want to swoop in and correct you on whether this is a B team. So we had to change the wording to reserve team. Yeah. I wish you had been more explicit to me about your concerns there. Solves all the problems if you just call it a reserve team. I mean, I get the semantics because it's like if we call up a team to like any window and we voluntarily left off six of our best players, right?

You just leave off six obvious locked in starters. Google, Sequoia, Turner, whoever. Yeah. It'd be like, would you say that you're playing your age? If you choose to leave off like a bunch of your best players, it's like, oh, well, we weren't bringing our A team. You know, if you're bringing your A team, you're bringing in the best available players you have in my mind.

Yeah, that's fair. I don't actually want to get bogged down on this, but I actually enjoy watching the bog occur. I just want to say that basically we all agree on what this team is. I think it's the, it's semantics. Yeah, and the other thing you can do, and we did this back in Olympic qualifying, is you can actually just, again,

we're only talking about one player pool here, so it's easy to get as tedious as we want. You can just sort of list out all of the players that you would have brought instead if you were trying to actually bring the best soccer players available and then just look at what that looks like compared to, say, years past and say, man, like with the Olympics, when we left out so many of our best U-23s

to actually pick the players we took down to Guadalajara, like, it was like, holy Lord, look at where we are now compared to previous Olympic qualifying cycles where we pretty much brought all of our best players and they, you know, still weren't very good. Now, the players we brought are nowhere close to the actual best ones and we can list out who they are. And you could do that the same thing here and be like, look at the, look at the players that we don't have for a reserve team.

Well, we turned into a reserve team tournament for us. And that can just be like, this outcome doesn't really have any greater meaning because it is so far removed from what our actual team will look like in any window in the future. Right. Does either of you have, is either of you now swayed by the thought that we should bring a better team to the Gold Cup?

Like maybe we shouldn't have made this into such a low-level audition? I, I mean, I think these guys have been, they needed a vacation. So I think they should, I don't have any objections to what we did here. I don't like it. It's not fun.

I had fun with it. I know it was a slog. A lot of the soccer was a slog, but I still had fun with it. Again, watching some of the, some of the, these, I'm calling them underdogs. I know everyone else can call them like, whatever. There are a lot of derogatory names you can use. I'm just like, all right, let's give this guy a shot. He's going to enjoy the moment.

And, you know, all over other better players are doing more important things. Yeah. Like, signing with A.C. Malone. We got a video of him training. It's coming out. This is all very exciting, but we don't get to talk about that today. Also, well, just one other thing we don't get to talk about is Dest is committed to returning to Barcelona, and apparently Javi's going to give him another chance.

Yeah, which is a little bit of a tricky situation because they change their system. They don't really use right back in the way Desk plays it. They have a centerback who plays over there, and they go to a back three. I read one article about it. I don't know that all the details here. But it's, you know, it's not a clear path for dust here. Yeah, he may, this may not be his last tricky situation that he's in in his career. Well, he has a clear path to living in Barcelona and collecting a Barcelona-sized paycheck.

That's true. Yeah. What else? What else from this loss? Are there some players that are, have, not just this loss, but from the tournament, are still in the mix for Vera. and I don't know how you guys I think I'm more interested in Sands than maybe you guys are.

He did a decent job. Yeah. I'm interested in Sands as a backup to Tyler Adams. I'm not opposed to people being interested in Sands. Does that work? I'll accept that.

Thank you. Like I don't think anybody, Ferreira or something, nobody's performance in this tournament like cemented their spot in the next camp. I think that's like pretty safe to say. There's nobody here, you know, when you work in all the context of who any player here is competing for,

it's like, oh, that guy has to be in the next spot. Like Kate Cowell did a bunch of exciting things, but he absolutely does not have to be in the next window because we have Pulisick-Nwaya and then, you know, Brenda, if you want to, we have other players that are like, now it'd be fine if Cal's not in there. And I think that applies across the board. A bunch of them, it's like, yeah, we probably won't see that guy again.

and I think that's just kind of where it ends up being like they're just a few guys still clinging to the fringes and all those guys now sort of they had a chance like they had a chance to cement a spot in a camp for real and I think now instead they're just going to have to sort of watch nervously while the rest of us watch pretty excitedly as this European club season kicks off and it could be really easy for them to be like

nope I'm not going anymore because Taylor Booth is doing this or because Paxton Aronson is doing this Kevin Paredes like Malik Tillman, all these guys who were already probably ahead of them going into the Gold Cup will still be ahead of them and it will take very little from those guys with their clubs for them to sort of cement an audition spot in the next two camps.

Yeah, I thought, I mean, Ferreira does some good things and I think he doesn't have to be in the next camp, but I think it'd be totally fine if he was in the next camp. Probably the same goes for Sands. What about, um, what about DeWan Jones? Did you think he was

kind of a standout at least in terms of being a backup for Antony? Yeah, maybe. It sort of felt like he's going through the Canon process where Canon came in the Gold Cup in 2019

and was just fine. He was fine. And that was enough to be like, okay, well, just fine could be like our right back of the future.

So we've definitely progressed since there's a pool, but Dwan Jones being just fine might well be good enough to be the left back for a while, the left back backup for a while. But it also isn't something where I'd be like, he has to be there. The next two games are against weaker opposition.

So if we choose to run like Scali out there as Jedi's backup or Dest out there and run Scali at right back, like any of those would also be fine. There's also the possible universe where Tim Wea does such a great utility job for Yuvae that he plays some left wing back for them and he could come in as a possible backup left back. So while I would if you told me right now DeWan Jones will be on the roster in September and actually play the last 25 minutes of each game totally fine with it if he doesn't make the roster at all also fine with it Okay he's and he's just competing with so many players who are

Can play left back that are kind of better than him Better definitely better with the ball than him I mean But he was he's pretty good defensively I didn't see him get Yeah taken much. I only watch when we had the ball. Well,

should also mention Hayes-Ferera is almost certainly going to win the golden boot for this tournament unless there's just a massive goal outburst in the Panama Mexico final, which I doubt there will be. So that's kind of cool, I guess. Yeah, and the context for me for Ferreira

for like a September call-up is we just got Ferreira for five weeks. Like, I don't know how long the Gold Cup lasted. It felt like an eternity. we should probably prioritize in the next window getting more looks at Josh Sargent who we haven't seen since a World Cup Ricardo Pepi especially if he's doing

even like anything for PSV and then even like a Haji Wright like I'd much rather get one of those guys into this camp to be like okay like let's let's get some guys some reps behind flow obviously Balo's going to be 1A until further notice so

I wouldn't actually want for Eric Cullden the September camp, even though he was mostly fine in this tournament. That's a really good point, yeah. Are you going to want, are we going to want, B.J. Callahan, back in the camp, I thought this was a really successful professional development exercise from him. Mm-hmm. I'm glad he got that. Do we know if he is going to be kept on for Haltorsalter's staff?

He said, it's his desire to be on the staff through the World Cup. Okay. Love it, B.J. I hope he is. I hope, uh, I mean, I think it would be a little strange if he's still doing like press conferences, but I think there's a lot of potential for behind the crest to lean into BJ a little bit. There's a whole other storyline that's been opened up there, and I hope they'd take full advantage of it.

I'd take a full spinoff of behind the crest. That was just BJ centric. Yes. If you haven't listened to the review of the Canada game, which was very long, there's a whole bunch of BJ Callahan discussion. We should just call it a BJ Callahan episode, but lots of discussion of him. You know, I didn't even realize we talked about him that much. it just felt so natural

and the right thing to do. Yeah, no, it was. It was the right thing to do. Yeah. All right, let's do the lineups. Matt Turner and goal, Brian Reynolds, Miles Robinson,

Aaron Long, and De Juan Jones across the back line, James Sands at the 6, Busio and Mihailovich ahead of him, and then Ferreira, Vasquez, and Cowell across the front line.

And then, you know, I thought maybe Brian Reynolds would have a better game with some, with, you know, Mahalovich or Ferreira around him, but that was my only real thought about the lineup.

Otherwise, no problems with it. So the winger whackamol continued, and since we didn't like any of the actual wingers' performances to date, we ran Ferreira out there. You know, we'll get into why that didn't really work. Jalen Neal, has reported, had a bit of an injury that he was dealing with, and could be used, same for Sendejas. So we were dealing with those kinds of limitations. So yes, again, it's a bit of barrel scraping already,

and so we're scraping even more. And part of it is like you realize how little faith BJ has in a lot of the other pieces on this roster because so many of these guys ran their faces off three days earlier and now he's putting them back out there in the heat to do it again. Yeah. It seemed to take a toll. The heat did.

The sun didn't cover the... I mean, the shadows didn't cover the field until late in the second half. Panama came out with Orlando Mosquera in goal, Fidel Escobar, Harold Cummings, and Andres Andrade across the back line. Yuel Barcenas, Adelberto Caraskia, Anabal Godoy, and Eric Davis across the band of four in the middle. As Davis and Barsinas kind of wingback, and then Jose Vajardo, Alberto Quintero, and Ismail, Diaz across the front line.

Diaz supposedly the danger man. He wasn't really that impressive, I didn't think. No thoughts on the Panama lineup, guys. Let's try to get this timeline whipped pretty quick. I think we can do it. We'll see. We'll see, it's right. It starts off with a bang.

We're pressing. We force a giveaway. their defensive third right in the first minute of the game. Bosquess picks up his head and squares it for Cade Cowell at the top of the box and he hits a good, clean first-time shot and rings the outside of the post. Yeah. I thought I was watching this with a friend of mine who's a casual fan of the team. I told him, we just set the tone.

It's going to be like this all game. We're going to get all over them. Watch this. Yeah. And it's a bad giveaway from Panama. So you're like, okay, maybe Panama are just really pretty bad. And, you know, we've got this high line. I was curious if we were going to run this way, again, given the energy we exerted in the prior game, given the conditions of this game in the middle of the afternoon of California.

But, yes, we got there, we're up high. We're going to make them make mistakes, and they gifted us one straight away. It was a game with a lot of phases to it, I felt like, you know. There was this opening phase where we were on top of them, and they sort of gradually... took control of the game, basically until, you know, the 75th minute or so. And then we started to take control and, I don't know, probably not worth talking about that much. Ferreira gets played in by a nice Reynolds ball to the end line. So just one of those well-weighted passes to the Man City zone, and he whips one across.

It doesn't find anybody, but Panama looks troubled. And then a few minutes later, Ferreira gets a sniff at goal. kind of soft foots it off balance right at Mosqueta. Yeah. Nice combo from Mahalovich. I thought, I thought a lot he had one there. So I was just going to say,

like, we are still seeing the sort of Cade Cowell we've come to love, which is just what the guy wants to run downhill. And he actually has a little bit of, like, daintiness to him as he's running. You know, he drives at people really well. And then it seems so far,

like once he gets into the box, you return at that point with his deceitiation. decision-making and execution is going to be pretty hit or miss, and a lot of times it's miss. Yeah, in this case, he just kind of dribbled into the box and lost it, right? Yeah, dribbled into the box and lost it. He was on the left side coming in, coming in hot as he does, and again, almost like so hot that DeWan Jones coming from behind can't catch up to him.

So while Calell eliminates one defender, Jones doesn't get there in time to actually create the 2V1 on the next defender. Maybe he does. Like maybe Cal could have hit the little sneaky reverse pass to Jones getting around him. Steady cuts inside, totally fine choice, I think, and sort of dribbles into the shins of the eventual second defender. And, you know, maybe it was his coming in so hot that created the conditions for the jumble that led to the ball getting to Ferreira. Yeah. Can't discount that.

Yeah, no, he definitely leads to some jumbles, I think. Jumble maker. I think that's not I think that I put it. In the six minute, Mahalovich does a nice little turn to leave two guys behind. He plays it to Vasquez in zone 14, and he one touches it in behind for Cowell, who has a defender right on his back and gets the ball stuck underneath him a little bit, doesn't get a shot off. Again, sort of dribbles into the defender,

and the ball kind of flips up and lands right in the goalkeeper's arms. But, you know, that's all in the first six minutes. Seems like we're going to maybe score some goals in this game. Yeah, we're flying. I'm turning to my friend saying, see? Yeah, and it was tidy from Voske. So I was like, oh man, Vasquez and Cal have something here. And then there wasn't a lot there for a long time after that.

Vasquez, that was the last tidy thing Vasquez did in the game, I think. I think you had one more tidy thing. Okay. I just want to make sure we give him credit for the one more tidy thing. Okay. I clocked two moments of good defending from Buccio in the eighth minute. I just wanted to point those out. He shuts down a counterattack after, you know,

we sort of attack up the left side, and then he makes a good tackle a few minutes later to shut something down. So I wouldn't say his pitch control was excellent in this game, but at first it was kind of. Well, and it's notable that he's defending in those wide spaces, right? Because that's going to be, I think the big theme of this is after about 15 or 20 minutes of doing a decent job in this front line. Well, we'll wait. Let's get to one more item here. Two more items. Then I'll jump in with it.

Okay. So, yeah, Panama, as you just alluded to, Panama starts to exert itself a little bit more around a 15-minute mark. We do win it in the press in the 18th minute and get a chance. If Sands wins it in the press, we get a chance off of that. This is where Vasquez does his, a tidy thing. He chipped it to Mihalovich. Oh, yeah. Who tested it.

and then shot it into the defender. Pretty good technique from Mihailovich too, you know. And so again, we're getting more turns from our high line and from Panama not being very good. And, you know, at this point, we're still pretty compact and we get our lines and Panama, you know, give it right to us and we have a little room to operate in.

But then I think we basically fade super badly after this. And our ability to stay compact as the ball moves from side to side just disappears altogether. And there's a lot of research. I think one is The big one for me is actually Jesus Ferreira where normally he is a very game ball chaser

and he'll chase anyone any distance and he'll go like he's running full speed he was not doing that in this game he was like it was a lot of jogging it was a lot of like linemen jogging so we talk about the jog and if he's doing that then the gaps stay are so big in our in our defensive

shape that the midfield has to try to compensate and there's only three of them in there tired and they're not they're not the machines that we're used to with the full strength team anyway covering that ground so they're covering ground much worse and the whole thing just falls apart and we cannot stop Panama from moving the ball at will and we end up sort of retreating into our sort of mid block for most of the rest of the half yeah it was pretty it was pretty grim the rest of the first half and most of the second half a lot of karaskiya caraskiya you know picking up the ball in the middle of the field under no pressure turning and just sort of

throwing darts at the back line. We didn't have it. I don't think we had a shot for the rest of the half. So there's also a huge stretch where Panama didn't either. I don't know what was going on in that game. They get a lot of... It gets back to them, oh, sorry, it gets back to them not being very good either. So even though we can't really impose ourselves on them, the way we'd been able to for

a few other games even with this group. Like we, we just couldn't force them to give the ball back to us. And so they could have it. And they couldn't do much dangerous with it. So our shape in the midblock was mostly fine. They hid like a couple of balls behind our back line that it seemed dangerous. Like, oh man, they got behind Aaron Long.

But like Turner came and snuffed him out. So it's actually, you know, it's not hard to get behind somebody's backline. It's hard to get somebody behind the back line before their goalkeeper gets to it. Yeah. So they did one of those in the 19th minute. comes out and gets it. Good job by him. 22nd minute Davis, Eric Davis, who has a really nice left foot,

delivers a good cross from deep off a throw-in, puts it on Fajardo's head, and it goes over. 23rd minute, another ball over the top gets behind Reynolds. He manages to recover and poke it away. Then there's a cross into the area that's cleared by Jones. It feels a little desperate at this point. And then Ferreira tries to combine with Vasquez,

who loses it, trying to hold it up. At this point, I don't, I do remember there was like a Mahalovich-Busio attempt at combination in the middle of the field, and they just couldn't do it because Buccio just wasn't good enough, you know? And it was starting to piss me off. We were being overrun in midfield. And, yeah, for the reasons Greg has already described. Yeah, be better, be less tired.

Keaton and Barks and Tim Tim Thilman would have really shored things up if we'd had them. Yeah. We need a full investigation. Panama scores in the 28th minute. It's a corner, off a corner, and the ensuing scrum Karaskiah shapes a lovely little ball over the top for Yoel Barsenas. He scores, but he was just a step off side. So same thing there. I mean, I saw people saying like, you know, Aaron Long was saved by the flag because everything that was going to go wrong was obviously going to be

Aaron Long. But it was, I mean, if you're getting saved by the flag, it means you're maintaining a solid offside line. And it's, you know, you're not just like, the offside isn't just the fates up there. And you just hope that they smile on you. Like, you have to actively do it. And I bring that up because we obviously didn't do that in the opening game of the tournament against Jamaica. And it will come back later on in this game to hurt us a little bit. Yep. 39th minute patient spell of possession Ferreira feathers a ball at Vasquez with Cummings on his back and he just loses it 39 minute Mark Reynolds very poorly misjudges a ball a diagonal ball

gets totally eliminated but I think it was Barcinus and he tries to cut it back to the middle and he does cut it back to the middle finds a teammate but the shot is off frame Panamont nearly scores again before the half half, half time whistle, totally dominant from them in the last seven minutes of the half, especially. So BJ came out and took the blame for this, right?

So he set him up wrong. And then made some adjustments to the half. I feel like he said that in the comments, which is just great BJ move. I mean, that's a great way to do it. And I think I agree. Again, I think I can see what he was going for with that high line. And I can see why he would be like, no, it's working because it was. it was working for 15 or 20 minutes.

And then once it stopped working, I don't know if he could have tried to do the exact same adjustments at the 20 minute mark or whenever he decided that, nope, this is definitely not working. This isn't just a short-term thing that we need to power through. Or if he just said, nope, we'll just retreat into the mid-block, not let Panama really be dangerous, and then regroup in the locker room.

How much of, you know, the problem, at least when we had the ball, was that we didn't have Ferreira in the middle anymore. And it was Vasquez in the middle. If you think that's none of the problem, just go ahead and say so. I'll throw out a percentage. This is probably directed at Greg. I'm going to say 30%.

I honestly have no idea. Because again, we found Vasquez a few times, right? Yeah, but he wasn't good. Yeah, he wasn't excellent. But he had a couple, right? Like, he had a couple of those nice little combinations. Then he missed a couple of them. And that's the life of a target forward.

And it's frustrating because, you know, he won in like the open field where it's just a really basic pass and we're off and running and he doesn't convert it. But I don't know. Ferreira misses his too. So I don't know. I feel like I'm making excuses for Vasquez here. But I think we just get a good sense of where he is in this, in the standings. Yeah.

Okay. Well, after the half, Panama gets a big. chance, another Karaskiya ball over the top, and Long gets hurt kind of making a good last-ditch tackle, quite a good last-ditch tackle, if I do say so. He and Turner clatter into each other. Fifty-second minute, there's a Vasquez chance when Reynolds finds Cowell in the box with a nice little square pass from the end line, I mean, from the touchline, cowl kind of wiggles and gets past a guy, cuts it back from the end line. A little hot, but right. at Vasquez and Vasquez tries to volley it in and...

Cal was dealing with the problem of the defender wasn't closing on him. He was just kind of waiting for the cutback, but there also wasn't quite... He maybe could have shot, but he had to kind of chip it up in the air a little bit back to get it to Vasquez. I really like this play. So one of the things that highlights is the changes that we did make it half, which was we moved Cal over to the right side, ran Georgie out on the left, which I think is a good approximation of the position he would play for Montreal, you know, in a different formation,

but sort of in that left half space. And then we move Ferreira to more of the midfield role. And so you get to see what Cowell's wiggling can do from the right side. And so now instead of wiggling and then cutting into his right foot where he dribbles into a crowd, he gets to wiggle to the outside and try to just get the edge. And he gets the edge here really well. And he has to kind of clip it up because that's what the window is. I love that he clipped it. He, he by attacking the end line so close to goal, he'd brought Moscaro all the way outside of the frame of the goal. He'd left the goal to cut down the angle on Cal. Cal picks a great window at 45 degrees.

He has to kind of lift it over defender's leg. And if Vasquez hadn't taken it, Ferrer was right behind him on the same line of the ball, and he would have had the open net. So from Cowell's perspective, this is really well done. And then it's just a technical failure here from Vasquez to convert it, which in happens. he doesn't have a lot of time to react and it's awkward height to get your foot over. Very awkward height, yeah. So we just lifts it, you know, a couple feet over, but a great chance, probably our best chance in regulation. That doesn't, it falls short of being a sitter though, right?

Some people were saying that. There was some sitter discourse going on and I don't think that's a sitter. Well, I think I got the rule right where if you, if you don't like the guy, then it's a sitter. And if you do like the guy, then it's more difficult than it looked. I guess we were at the point in the game where people did not like the guy. anymore. I think so. I think so.

People get really mad when we're losing or not playing well, you know? I have noticed that as well. They don't like it. Even on the Discord. Yeah. Everyone. Like, see, when we went down one zero and extra time, somebody wrote immediately, it's Jover.

And, like, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't over. Okay. Reynolds falls asleep in transition. Ismail gets a good chance on a ball across from Barsanus. So it's a bit of a moment of transition. Barcinus, you know, rollicking down the right channel. And he just curls. I was watching it.

I was like, uh, there's a guy open on the other side of the field. And then Barsanus curls a lovely ball onto Ismail's head. And, uh, I'm sorry, Diaz's head. And, uh, he heads it down, uh, basically, Right at Turner. Good save by him. Bad from Reynolds falling asleep back there. So I'm pushing back on this, Bell, so I'm going to be the transition police. In the Discord, we have counterattack police. We have transition police. So this came right after, like immediately after the Vasquez header. So this isn't transition. This is a, this is a Panama goal kick,

and they kind of dink it around a little bit, and we get our line really high, and part of our really high line includes Reynolds, because they're kind of on the left side of the box passing the ball around and they're left. So Reynolds is the right back is cheated way up the field. Like he is ahead of our center mids up on the right side. And so somehow some combination of like our scheme is wrong here. And I don't know if it's going to be on Reynolds or if it's going to be on somebody else, but there's a lot going on. So as Panama are doing this, we don't have pressure on the ball. And this is where I go back to what Ferreira does and did against Canada where, you know, there are a ton of clips of Ferreira running down Canada's keeper and forcing him to hit

like a pretty rough ball out towards the sideline, usually out of bounds. And Voskes isn't doing that. And I don't know that he's supposed to, but the fact that he's not means that Panama's keeper can pick his head up and look. And when he looks at the weeks out of the field, what he sees is, I mean, just anywhere, the midfield stripe, he's going to see four on three, four Panama players high against three defenders because Reynolds is way upfield and our center midfielders are upfield to sort of set this high line.

And so he hits it to the weak side where it's three on two. And he creates like a fork, like a chess, something Poolecic would appreciate. He sort of forks our defenders where they can't commit all the way. Aaron Long can't come challenge for the ball because if he does, he'd leave a man wide open in the dead center of the field with a clear path at Turner if the ball gets flipped on. So he has to just drop. Duane Jones is now faced with two guys and he kind of misjudges the flight of the ball, then goes in challenges and loses the challenge because he gets there late.

and so it gets flicked to the wide open man that Duhan Jones left and there's no way Reynolds is ever going to catch this play. So you can say he fell asleep if he shouldn't have gone up there to begin with and just fell asleep on like his decision making. But there was no, there was no play for him to get all the way back. Like he's hustling. He's trying. But the way it happened so fast to go from their goal,

their goalkeeper's feet to cross being delivered, there's nothing in it for Reynolds. It's just like a blown scheme and a good challenge from Panama to keep the ball moving in the air to keep it like flicked on. And they just get to roll really fast here. So it's something we got to fix in the scheme rather than something where it's like Brian Reynolds has to be focused here. Okay. Yeah. Totally fair.

It's also a very, very good ball from Barsanus. And that's not always going to happen either. And I just wanted to spend time on it because it was basically Panama's only good chance. of the entire game in regulation. Okay. Right around the 60 minute mark, I just have him in my notes, damn Vasquez has been borderline terrible.

This was a good transition moment that we had going. I think it was maybe 3V2, and he tried to, he received a pass, I believe from Busio, maybe from Ferreira, and just, I don't know, got caught in two minds or something,

and he was trying to maybe play it out to Mihailovich on the left, and he just didn't play a good pass. And it looked like that was something that could have been really dangerous if he could just connect a pass there and he couldn't do it. That's my last negative thing I'll say about Vasquez. He's very handsome. He is extremely handsome. Can't take that away from him.

And his thing is, you know, he wants to get him right in front of the goal, you know, banging in there. Right. Roll-Don comes on for Cowell. Yedlin comes on for Reynolds in the 63rd minute. Reynolds had played a full 120 the game before on Sunday. And then we get a lovely move around the 65-minute mark. It's keyed by a Turner pass to Buccio's feet when Panama is trying to press a little bit.

Buccio feints like he's going over to his left with his back to, as he's facing his own goal, he faints as if he's going to play the square pass. to his left, and then he just turns and leaves two guys behind, carries it a while, or just one guy, I guess it was, carries it a while, plays it over to Roldon, from Roldon to Yedlin out wide, and he cuts it back for Ferreira, who meets it with a glancing strike, and it just shaves the outside of the far post. A very, very lovely bit of soccer from us, probably my favorite of the game. Yeah, best team move by far, instant impact from the two subs, Roldon and Yedlin coming on the right side and combining really well.

Nice from Buzio to identify that turn and then kind of cook the guy. So Buzio still has some legs left. I'll say this. I wish when Roldon had come on, he'd come on for Georgie instead of Cowell. And I don't know if it's like if that was fitness related. Because Roldon could have come on and sort of done the Georgie roll on the right side and Cowell could have switched back over to the left. and we would have had a good, again, he'd been dangerous,

even though the danger never really pans out. You can see that he could create something. So I was a little disappointed that it was Cal coming off instead of Georgie. But the Roldon and Yedlin helped us in the short term right there. Yeah. You know, nothing really that notable happens the rest of the rest of regulation. Miazka comes on for long and Morse comes on for Vasquez. And we go to extra time.

Let's see. Buccio, no, let's just go straight to the Panama goal. I think it's safe to do that. It's another Kadaski pass over the top, and our line is a little bit high, but it's ragged as I'll get out. Yet, well, Greg. We have a running bit on here. We've had it since 2019. about, it used to be Gold Cup group stage backlines because we would, you know, when you're playing, like, what are effectively semi-pro teams and they're having to make all these decisions at a much faster speed against, like, even our weaker teams or against any other middle, middle, mid-tier teams in the region.

Like, they just get exposed. And, you know, one guy panics and drops. And suddenly you have this completely zigzagging back line to exploit to just hit balls through. and behind to runners, which we usually exploit to decent effect. But you always have to take that new account, like, okay, but could we do this against a real back line? And in this game, in the semifinals, we were absolutely the ones holding the terrible line. So it's a bit of pinball, but the ball ends up, you know, Panamon drop it back to a guy at midfield. And as this is happening, Miazga steps up with that pass. But Miles

Robinson is still dropping. And then Miles realizes, oh, man, there are two free runners who are about to run behind Matt Miaska, and I'm holding them all on side. And he like desperately tries to throw his body forward. And he might have just gotten there. Like, you know, you got the mode lines on the field. So Miles Robinson and the Panama Runner are in the center of the dark green line, right? And you're like, oh, this is going to be close. And then you look further down.

And DeAndre Edlin is an entire mode line closer to the goal. But any of these guys, it's like, oh, no. So any hope of the offside flag saving you here, the offside. fates are not smiling on us on this play. And so we have our Gold Cup knockout back line that gives a totally free passage to Panama in on gold. There's a freeze frame of the line

in the note document I'm looking at. It is a straight black back line. It's just severely diagonal. And that is not what we want. We want it to be really perpendicular. Yeah. How did Matt Turner do there, Craig? pretty badly.

We gotta be honest here too. Turner makes his call to come out and he comes out and takes a wild swing at it which turns his body like sideways to the ball and he either whiffs or Panamon gets to touch first but like it's one of those things where

you probably need to like stay square to to it and hope that there's just a big collision and hope that you get the goalkeeper benefit of the doubt and play just continues and you don't get concussed. Which normally is what he's I imagine him doing, maybe he just got in the rhythm of balls go over, come out and clean it up, and, you know, wasn't the right thing here.

Yeah, goal ends up totally empty. I mean, DeAndre Edlin here is the really disappointing one because he just buys a ticket to the whole play. Like, he's just watching all this unfold eight yards deeper than anyone else. And then after that ball actually goes across in our free stream, you don't see it. But there is another dude wide. And Yedlin doesn't go for that guy either. Like he just stands and watches all this unfold. And if Turner had paused and like forced Panama to actually make another soccer play,

they would have just been able to square it to Edlin's guy running in and he would have tapped it into the now vacant goal. So tons of issues here with Yedlin. And again, he's supposed to be the veteran. He's supposed to be the guy who does this. But also he's never been like that checked in weak side defender guy. So I guess that's not a surprise. Yeah. Turner, just to round it off, Turner gets juggled over by Yvonne Anderson,

who then side foot jump volleys it in to an open net. Anderson had subbed on for Eric Davis. This was his first international goal. He plays his club soccer in Venezuela. Yeah, I feel like the announcers had maybe even made a point that he was like third string, which was just, I feel like a much-needed salt in the wound. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, it's not that much of a wound for me.

I feel emotionally unscathed. We get a goal right back. 105th, not right back, but, so that was in the 99th minute. In the 105th minute, we're just, we're starting to do the clipped ball at the box, and Miazga plays one to the top of the box. Jordan Morris heads it over to Jesus Ferreira. It's a really nice find by Morris. Ferreira's unmarked in the box, and he,

Vollies it first time Maybe, you know, maybe the Like so much the top of his foot that you might say it was off his shin a little bit And it nestles in at the far post kind of just slowly travels through the air But it's perfectly placed really nice goal Nuckold I'll feed goal Yeah, I mean there's a change up real real like Julian green vibes here right? Yeah

From World Cup 20th I think he hit it a little better than Green did Yeah, his was probably closer to the ankle than the full shin. But I think either way, like, there is no real ankle shooting technique where you're like, oh, yeah, the guy chose to go with his ankle there to get the right top spin on it. So I think it's going to go into the same banked, banked shot finish that Julian Green's falls into. Right. Not complaining about either of those goals.

No, then we get just one last thing, a Miasga giveaway in Zone 14. and a shot from distance that Turner handles comfortably. So just another, lots of people not playing perfectly at all. And, uh, me also got to join to that club. And then, you know, plenty of possession for the U.S. I didn't think Panama, Panama was as dominant in extra time as they had been in the later parts of the first half. So that's good.

And then we go to the shootout. Yeah. And shootouts that we lose are really just all variants. When we do stuff well, when we win them. It's because we manage here. I don't even, there's not, I don't know what.

Nothing to say about it, really? Yeah, I don't have anything. I'm happy to go through all of it. It's possible BJ just used all of his shootout magic, like all of his tricks in, in the Canada one and just had to take this one basically straight up,

textbook, you know, by the book. Yeah. Which made it a lot more dull. So I'll blame both variants and the minutes we logged in the pretext. in the previous game. Yeah, we were just sapped at that's why.

Yeah, that's for sure why. I felt so good going into it, though. I was like, yeah, of course we're going to win this. So I did too, because, you know, you could see both teams were totally fine playing for penalties by the end of the extra time, even by the middle of the extra time. And I was like, oh, I mean, once we got our equalizer,

and I was like, oh, that's kind of curious, like Panama, even with Matt Turner, even, you know, maybe they just don't think Matt Turner was that good at it. Maybe they like their guy, and they're like, no, he's also really good, and we know that, and maybe you guys haven't heard of him, but we know what we've got here. But I was a little curious that they weren't going to go for it more and extra time, but probably just figuring at that point with everyone's legs shot, they got just as good a chance, so they'd take it. Well, Ferreira misses the first one, which I think sets a bad tone. It wasn't a terrible penalty, but it was, but Mascarra guesses the right direction, saved it easily.

Turner doesn't stop the first one or the second one. Georgie and Jordan Morris both take care of business. But then on the third one for Panama, Christian Martinez, just maybe the worst penalty I've ever seen. It was so bad. It was the run-up, right? The run-up is what puts it into that, gives it that distinction. I mean, just how softly it was hit and how close to the middle of the goal.

Well, and that's partly the run-up. Like, he's doing all these little hesitations and freezes, and he's thinking that he's going to get Turner to basically tip over. Like, the keeper gets too patient and just has to go. And then you can just, you know, side-foot it as gently as you want because you don't have any momentum built up in your run to the open portion. And Turner just held his ground really well. So this was, I mean, this was actually a really, even though it's anticlimactic.

That's a really good play for Matt Turner. And I don't know if he'd been prepped on this guy. I don't know how much video we have. on Christian Martinez taking penalty kicks. But yeah, like, just how it played out, it would shock me if Turner did that with no advance information on his technique. Yeah.

Interesting, yeah. And it is kind of interesting that Barcinus did almost the exact same thing on the next one and did send Turner to the left. Yeah, Barcinus was close. He didn't have as many of hitches in his giddy-up. He kind of just came in steady, still went with the same idea though of just waiting, waiting, waiting.

And then Turner, I don't know if Turner even gave away where he was leaning, but he did kind of guess more or read something. Went to his right. Super weak, passed down the sort of middle-ish, but just to the other side. So, I mean, still is going to also come down to like...

Variants, variance. Variants are just like, yeah, uh, instant split-second reads that a keeper's making that they see something that They think they've got an edge to go one way. Still might actually just be wrong. I do think it's good that Turner got two shootout reps in this tournament. Yeah, that's a good thing. I was trying to figure out, and I'm sure they said it in the broadcast,

but when was our last shootout besides this? I saw a 2015 third place game. Okay. Gold Cup. The Panama, right? I couldn't tell you. That sounds like it could be right. There's no third place game this time.

I know. Cheated out of it because I would have liked to watch these underdogs have another runout. Yeah. I'm not sure I would, but. Well, as you all know, well, it felt after Martinez missed, after Turner Save Martinez, it felt like we were going to take it at that point, like the tide was turning in our favor, but it didn't. Gressel and Miyazga took care of business, but so did the people.

Panamanian penalty takers, and then Roldan misses on the sixth one, and Karaski puts it top bins for the win, or, you know, very nearly top bins. And Turner can't make a second save. Panama wins. They go on to play Mexico on Sunday night in the Gold Cup final for the first time, I guess, in their history. So that's cool for them. Any, I mean, I feel like we covered a lot of the sort of substantive stuff up top, but

any further thoughts from you too? I guess there's some guys who probably just may be the last time they play just because the way the cycle is going to go. It would make sense for them to be phased out. You know, the older guys who aren't that

popular online first of all, but like, you know, you're rolled on. Like, that could have been his last kick of a ball for the national team. Maybe. Yeah, that's a tough one. Yeah, you think about the September window and the only way some of these guys are getting back

is if for whatever reason, we choose to leave the European players with their clubs and sort of just make a blanket call to bring in domestic players, which I would really be disappointed with. I'm all for, you know, in any friendly window, case by case, compromising and letting players, if they need to stay with their clubs. But there's certainly no reason to, like,

have the September window be full domestic and then full European for the October, window, even though the quality of opponent in September might be lower than we think, these are still pros, right? Like, we're playing professional players in September. It's not St. Kitts. It's not, you know, it's not Grenada. Like, we should be bringing as many of our first choice guys as we can.

Yeah, I mean, they're slightly worse than Panama. They're like roughly in that, although Panama is probably better than their ranking. So they may be a good bit worse than Panama. But they're in that range. Yeah, and we need the reps. So I want to see us. I mean, if we're who we think. think we are with our full strength team, I want to see us dismantle a team in September,

or at least play like we're capable of dismantling a team, even if we don't end up fully doing the dismantling. Yeah, I agree with that. And if that's what we do, then yeah, a lot of these guys are probably toast, and there's no, you know, there's not a lot of ways back into a full strength team for them. Maybe a, I mean, January camp probably still happens in January, right? Probably, but it's been leaning younger and younger, and that'll be the January ahead of the Olympics in 2024. So you imagine it'll have a decent Olympic bent to it.

You know, the idea that Herc tossed out for this Gold Cup, like, why didn't we just bring an Olympic team? It sounds easy to say that. But as soon as you start actually looking at who you want to project into the Olympic squad, even taking into like, these guys won't be available because they'll be with our full strength team. almost everyone that people are projecting still got a call up this summer because the U-20s played a World Cup. So if you don't think that the U-20s were just going to be able to also play in the Gold Cup,

which again, very likely that the releases for that tournament were maybe a little handshake contingent on not calling them up again for Gold Cup. There aren't a lot of guys out there. It's like we should have brought in this guy for Gold Cup to make it more of an Olympic team. We got most of our Olympic players

are projected Olympic players in or they're in Europe trying to win a spot in the preseason for this fall. Okay. Waki, anything else? Yeah. Just to say, no, go ahead, Greg. Just to say that come January, we won't have that consideration. Like, come January, all those domestics who played in the U20 World Cup will probably

make up the bulk of a January camp, you'd think, and you'd use it as one testing ground to see how they do in more of an adult setup. I mean, here and there, throw in some of the grownups. I got no problem with that, but a lot of the grown-ups here in this gold cup probably phased out. A few of them maybe to hang on to be the, you know, the role models,

the camp role models, camp counselors, in the next, in the next sort of off-calendar camp. Yeah, right. It's kind of what it feels like. One or two as a role model,

you'd probably keep Paul in the January camp. I don't think he's faced out. Where was he? I lost track of... Pauliariola? Was he in the Nation's League? I can't remember. It's been so long.

He's been hurt forever. I think he's just getting back for Dallas. Okay. Yeah. Great guy, Paul. Well, let me say that... You know, we're... Vince and I are...

Greg and Waki have so far been non-committal, but Vince and I are going to be at the games in October, the one in Connecticut, and the one in... Connecticut versus Germany, Nashville versus Ghana. So, you know, stay tuned for tailgating information there. And it sounds like we're going to play pickup Saturday morning of the Connecticut game. Also, you know, if you are able, please consider joining the Patreon.

The link is in the show notes. You get the Monday reviews and access to the Discord and extended versions of interviews, other stuff. That's probably enough for today, right? Yeah, there's a lot of transfer stuff, but I don't, you know. We'll get to it on Monday. We don't need, we'll do that on Monday. It's not going anywhere. Yeah, this is a nice chapter closing for, I think,

what, like, a lot of guys who played a role in the last cycle. I think the chapter is probably the final chapter. Which I'm a little bit sad about, you know? Like, yeah. You know, that's life, though, isn't it? It's, yeah, we'll call it progress. That's progress. Yeah.

All right. Well, thanks, guys. And thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.