Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #417: World Cup — USWNT v Netherlands recap

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Greg and Belz talk through the interesting draw with the Dutch in Wellington, New Zealand.----Please consider subscribing on Patreon. Patrons get a private feed for the Monday Review, which is, among other things, a run-down of club action for national team players every week with Watke and Vince. Patrons also get our full interviews (recently Dave Sarachan), access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: 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. It was a one-one drawdown in Wellington between the USA and the Netherlands. Greg, how are you? Well, I'm doing all right, bells. We are still mathematically alive, which is what I like to say anytime we are in a World Cup. Some of the math right now is the Netherlands plays Vietnam and we play Portugal. And I guess the fear is that the Netherlands could outdo us on goal difference if they really come. come correct in that game?

Yeah, that's a fear, but for me, the only fear is time zones and kickoffs. Because I'm sort of a coin toss on our opponents for the quarterfinal. We're talking quarterfinal already. We're already skipping the round of 16, which is probably a bit of hubris, so maybe we'll come back and bite us.

But if you're talking about quarter final versus one of Japan or Spain and semi-final against the other one, or a rematch against the Netherlands, For me, it's sort of all awash right now. So I don't think there's a huge advantage there. And really, my math is just don't lose to Portugal and get eliminated from the World Cup. Yeah, yeah. Because we play, you know, if we finish second in the group, we'd play the winner of Group G.

And if we finish first in the group, we play the runner up from Group G. That's like one of Sweden, Italy, Argentina, probably. Yeah, I probably am being way too cavalier about that because Sweden are much better. than the other three teams in that group, I think. So, you know, if you can get a decent drop-off to play the runner-up, you should definitely be trying to do that. All right, let's drop a baker's dozen on Portugal. What's funny is we absolutely can do that.

Right. And I will say, I mean, before we get into the lineups and the timeline and everything, I thought this game was, I was pretty frustrated watching it last night. And then I watched it again this morning. And I felt much better about it. overall. We were unfortunate in that second half. I think it's fair to say.

Fair to say. I still think any game against a good team is kind of going to be a crapshoot for us, but we definitely dominated that second half. Last 20, yeah. Yeah. Yes, I think just to get some big picture stuff out of the way straight up, I think you're spot on

that our team will be frustrating a lot. And if we are losing, it's going to be even more frustrating. Because, you know, we talk about that. psychology of watching your team losing and doing a bunch of low percentage stuff and that frustration building every time. Whereas if you're winning, you just stop caring that you give the ball away cheaply. It just doesn't matter we gave it away cheaply. It just doesn't register in your brain the same way. So when we go down a goal and then we still are playing this a bunch of low percentage stuff, even though we're occasionally getting like the ball into

Netherlands box, it does feel like it's not very organized, in part because it's not very organized. It's not. We talk in possession. We are not particularly organized, coordinated, choreographed. Like, that has been true for a while. It is most likely beyond our reach now for this cycle in the last four games of the World Cup, regardless of what personnel grouping we toss out there. There might be some minor improvements here and there,

but we are not going to look like Japan or Spain in play style at any point in this tournament. Yeah. We got a lot of, I think we got a lot of good stuff just, by smacking the ball at Alex Morgan and letting her do something? Yes, that was a huge improvement in the second half. For me, that was the improvement. I know Lavelle coming in, I think a lot of people marked us to change it. But just being more committed to hitting the ball to Flick Master at this point,

Alex Morgan, was paying off, was really a good attack initiator. Prior to that, I mean, I guess even including that, my analogy early in the match was that we looked like late 2000s college soccer team. I guess there was never a time where you're going to be like, oh, we just put together more than three passes. Like we couldn't, we couldn't even when we were trying. We often weren't trying. And yet, like, if I can, again, stay on the big picture stuff. The Netherlands didn't sit back and try to absorb.

They were pressing us. They were playing high. And that contributed to how sort of we couldn't string anything together. If team sits back, we will do the initial early possession stuff that all teams do. The horseshoe stuff. Yeah, we just don't do a great job of coordinating it. it into the final third. The Netherlands didn't sit back, which meant all our lack of coordination was evident in the middle third and sometimes even the defensive third, which isn't good.

You know, it would be, I would like it more if we could take that pressure from the Netherlands, carve them up and start getting attacks that way. But we can't. We're not cable of it. And the thing is, even if the Netherlands sit back, we still wouldn't be able to like carve up their mid or low block. So that's just not a thing we do as a team in possession. So for me, even though it's frustrating and messy and like, again, that college soccer compared. is not a flattering one and it's not you know not meaning it that way I still prefer it I still prefer that the Netherlands come out and press us high yeah because then whatever sloppy play we have when the ball does break our way in a sloppy

situation there's a lot more space to go into so I'm actually I'm better with that than if they were sitting lower or mid block yeah that's that all sounds right to me what's confusing to me is even when we did when the ball did break our way and we got Sophia Smith running at the back line. We never had, almost never had a numbers advantage. I mean, they were always, they'd always have, uh, maybe 5 v5 with somebody right on the back of the, of the person carrying the ball. Like they, the Netherlands was pressing us pretty high, but they never allowed us to get behind them really, at least definitely not in the first half. No, and I think that will be

the case for much of the tournament. Like, uh, you know, when we're not playing the smaller, weaker teams, the organization will be such that they have the numbers and it's just going to be, can we have the individual talent edge in a moment to create a ridiculous shot anyway, right? And the thing is that that's what we have that showed in this game. We have these dancers is how I'm calling it now. Like it's all sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. And then suddenly Sophia Smith just dances past two Dutch defenders. And she's suddenly an open field because she breaks the line that thoroughly just on the ball.

She did it like four or five times And then I saw a stat this morning That she has like six progressive carries of 10 yards or more in that match Which again, yep, that checks out like that that definitely is consistent with the eye test Yeah And so you have that Trinity Rodman did it a couple times Alex Morgan did it a couple of times And part of that is the Dutch aren't necessarily the fastest team

Not the most athletic team But part of that is just our players That's what they are good at So again, the Dutch playing high up the field and making us look really messy can be frustrating aesthetically, but it's not necessarily going to hurt us. From an effective standpoint, and the Dutch weren't getting much out of it. They weren't turning our turnovers into a lot of good chances, and they weren't turning their possession once they calmed down and they started to possess a little better.

They weren't turning those into chances either. No. They had two really good chances on the night, basically, both through their buildup, which was nice, especially that second one. That was a kind of thing we're not going to do. to like you're saying we're not going to see from the US in this tournament most likely. No, the two minute long possession. Yeah.

Oh, that's pretty. And, you know, what I think happens as you were watching is it felt like they were doing that all game to a lot of people. I feel like, you know, the way the Dutch were eventually calm and confident just passing through little windows felt like they were totally controlling us. But they really weren't. It was really, you know, they had the ball, but it was just bleeding the clock kind of possession. It was very rarely full danger possession until that one moment in the 80th minute where

they did the calm possession and then dialed somebody up from eight yards out. Yeah. Yeah, because they would run into, they would run into like, I don't know, a line at our, at the edge of our defensive third and just almost never cross it. You know, I mean, they'd pass it into the amoeba a little bit, but then it'd come right back out. Yeah, and this is why, this is why, like, that game is a perfect sort of encapsulation of our team and our chances of this tournament, because we can be messy and we can,

can be sloppy, but you still aren't getting much against us. You're not, you know, we're so good going the other way. You have to respect it so much. The Dutch had numbers back every time we eventually got a little break because, you know, they keep numbers back to respect what we can do when we run at them. So we are going to be a pretty tight defensive unit through a tournament and we have ridiculous offensive individual firepower. And that's, that is not the worst recipe for winning a trophy in a tournament.

No, okay Let's do the lineups Unless you have any other big picture thoughts No, I think that's the big picture For me. I mean, you tell me, Bells, Where are you at with your overall feeling of this team After this match? It's pretty much unchanged

Like that we are who we thought we were And You know, we're gonna Let's just hope for some variance to go our way And to limit any potential mistakes at the back I don't know that we had any big mistakes At the back in this game I do want to

I do want to kind of Zapruder that goal and talk about the midfielders That is an excellent goal to Zepruder So if you've been in the Discord this morning We've cut we've cut like eight different angles of it At eight different speeds And clocked each Each player's contribution to it

So it's been dissected Okay good I have not been in there this morning So I'm coming at it fresh Vlako started the exact same 11 that he faced that faced Vietnam, Neer and goal, Emily Fox, Julie Ertz, Naomi Germa, and Crystal Dunn across the backline. Andy Sullivan at the 6th, Savannah Demello and Lindsay Horan at the 8th, Trinity Rodman, Alex Morgan and Sophia Smith across the front line.

So that was a big question, right? Was the Ert centerback just a ruse, not a ruse, but just a mechanism to get her some minutes against Vietnam? or is Ertz number two in the centerback depth chart? And now I think the sign points to Ertz's number two. Again, it could be game by game, could be matchup specific. But the expectation probably now is that Ertz starts at centerback going forward. Is that your expectation? You lean that way.

And I don't mind it at all. If you take the centerback position in a vacuum, I don't mind Ertz over cook. I think she's playing well back there, Ertz is. and she is that she is a threat on set I think a bigger threat on set pieces than Cook is the problem is then it means that Andy Sullivan has to start and it feels strange right to have Ertz there and to then pin your World Cup

outcomes on Andy Sullivan's defensive midfielder again we're gonna she's gonna get she's gonna get hers a prudering in that in that goal that we give up but I think you still have to say overall, if she were an absolute disaster, then there's no way we would have held the Dutch to so few chances. You know what I mean? Like for all of the possession they had,

part of a team not being able to break you down has to be, like, just overall solid defensive shape. And you're not going to do that with a defensive mid who's all over the shop. She wasn't a total disaster. I'm not, I don't think that. But she's just hard to get excited about her performance. The Netherlands had Daphne Van Domsilar and goal, Sherida Spitzha, Stephanie,

the pronunciation on Stephanie's name is a little confusing to me, but I think it's like Vandergracht and then Dominique Janssen. So those are the three centerbacks. Vandergracht was hurt in the first half and had to come off at halftime. I think that was kind of lucky for us.

Jackie Gronin is the number six, the number 14, who was in a battle with Demello, most of the first half. And then Victoria Polova at right wingback. Esme Bruked at left wingback and then Jill Roard and Danielle van derank in the midfield. And then Katja Snoisse and Lika Martens up top. Again, they're missing Linnyth Beerenstein with an ankle injury who is a very dangerous striker.

And it was lucky for us that she wasn't available for this game too. Yeah, we'll take that. But then, you know, that's the nature of it. Everyone's missing folks. I think we have a very deep bench we'll get into how that didn't actually matter for us later. Right.

We got outpossessed in the game, but we're the more threatening side, 0.92xG2.4 for the Netherlands, so not a blockbuster of chances for either team in this game. We outshot them 18 to 5. A lot of fairly low quality shots, though. And like I said earlier, I think really the Netherlands

villains had two major chances, one on which they scored and one on which they nearly scored. We had many more chances. Yeah, and even their goal, I mean, it goes down as a major chance, but that was still really tight windows. I saw the XG race chart on a tweet earlier this morning, and the Y axis can be really deceiving for how dramatically good the chances look on one of those race charts. If the Y axis only goes up to the 1.0 that we accumulated, then the Y axis can be really deceiving for how, those tiny little half chances look like big vertical leaps in it.

When in fact, if you stretch it out to what some of the other teams are putting up, then suddenly these, the half chances more reflect how low percentage they were. Yeah, I think the roared goal was somewhere south of a tenth of a goal of XG. I don't know exactly what the number was on it, but pretty low. Yeah. So, again, and this should be normal.

Like right, it shouldn't be a surprise that when two very good teams play each other in a World Cup. It's not just a track race and huge chances left and right. Right. Okay, to the timeline. I thought it was a choppy opening five, maybe a choppy opening 45 for the U.S. But we did, I thought, initially, look like the better team. I think I would agree with that. Again, I really do stand by, even on the rewatch, the college soccer analogy, where it's

just like we could never string together three, almost never string together together three successful actions. And a lot of times you couldn't even tell what the unsuccessful action was trying to do. Which, again, that brought back so many memories of college soccer watching and scouting. But more to the point, like, even with all this going on, we were basically better at being the college soccer team than the Netherlands were. So our college soccer resulted in a little bit more 18-yard adjacency than what the Netherlands were doing. Yeah.

Okay. So you can jump in here if you have any things you want to clock. But the first thing I want to clock is around the 8.45, 8.45 second mark, a lovely turn by Lindsay Horan, receiving a pass between the lines from Germa. She kind of gets knocked over, but gets up and is off with it. Passes it to Domello in the middle of the field. Domello plays it out to Smith. Smith cuts in from the right wing and plays a lovely little left-footed pass in the direction of the goal.

Domello's arriving at it just as Morgan is, but D'Mell gets there first and takes a swipe at it, hits it well wide. But it's a nice, it's a nice sequence. Oh, it's fantastic. So all my college soccer analysis out the window with this sequence. This was the oasis of slick stuff. The turn from Horan is going to, going to get a lot of play I think on y'all's discussion about it with Vince and Tara

because this is this is her hand right the ability to not just hold a ball but to suddenly get the defender on the wrong side of your hip and then that's it she'll never get back and then her driving forward is you know great but for me de mello's movement here is really subtle and good as everyone's you know driving that Dutch back five that you pointed out is 5E5 we're driving them backwards de mello starts driving them back with it and then she kind of pauses for a half a beat to create a big space where she can receive a ball from her and and fired out wide to Sophia.

And so now we've got Sophia one-we-one, and I think maybe Fox arrives late and slashes across Sophia's face, which lets Sophia cut in. And then it's a really good movement, a late arrival from Demelo, to end up with a really good chance. The issue here, if you want to call it an issue,

is Morgan sort of cuts into that same window to try to receive a ball posting up, which is fine. We still create a really good chance, and Morgan actually serves a purpose to seal that defender off so that defender can't come close de mello if you want to contrast it to that amazing Brazil goal that we all saw and loved that has the back heel in the box to the finish this is where if we had just a little bit

of like that high more sophisticated organization and awareness of how all the pieces are moving then de mello sees and clocks morgan's run coming in and instead of attacking the ball herself for like a really obstructed shot she gives a little bit of space for morgan to receive it as Morgan can and just lay off for her to then blast in from center of the frame. So that's it. She would have had to pause again. Yeah, just a little pause. Yeah.

To read that Morgan has a path to it and it's a total 2v1 for Morgan and DeMello at that point. So you could have, we could have had that Brazil moment. But that's getting real greedy. Don't get me wrong. Like this is still a very well-crafted chance with really good movement from Iran, good execution for Rand, good movement from DeMello on two occasions, and it's good movement from Alex Morgan, too. And of course, Sophia doesn't just loop a ball into the box. She cuts in and does things that

she's capable of that very few other people in the world are capable of. And I didn't, I couldn't tell from the replay how much of, it was definitely an obstructed shot. I couldn't tell from the replay how much of an angle DeMello even had to put it on frame because it may be almost none, you know? Yeah, very little. And that's what I mean about the obstruction. Morgan has to like jump out of way last second and I think I think the shot even goes to the outside of Morgan and who was right on the post so there's just if it had been farther in it's good Morgan's going to block it herself so that's how we just had a bit of a traffic jam that Brazil solves with the the post up

back heel finish really the only majorly notable thing in the opening minutes in terms of scoring chances I I did clock at the 1015 mark a sequence where Rodman overcocks across and Smith kind of settles it and gets a little bit too casual over on the on the touchline and gives it away. Yeah, the giveaways were plenty. Yeah, it's a little unfair to pick one. But Smith and Rodman definitely came into their own towards the end of the game. I thought got really dangerous. But other than that pass from Smith early that we just talked about, the two of them didn't

have a great first half, I don't think. I could be exaggerating a little bit. Well, I mean, it just, again, it just depends, right, on what you think that they're capable of doing as a unit or as individuals. Because there were plenty of bright individual moments. It's just we couldn't, we never string a bunch of them together where Sophia does something really well. And then when she gets it, the next person also does something really well. Be like, oh, that was really impressive from Sophia Smith. Love that we have this player.

You know, she just, she just waltz through two players and then has another one on her heels. and then feeds Trinity, but then Trinity would give it away. So it's like you had these very isolated positive moments, just never enough of them strung together. And it felt to me. That's my glass half full. I'm going to try to stay glass half full for now. Good, good, good, good.

It seemed to me that Smith, when she did end up running at a backline, she didn't quite, she didn't look comfortable making a decision on what to do with the ball. Like, we'll get into a couple of those moments. But let's talk about the goal. Dutch goal. 16 minute mark. It's Vandergracht playing a pass to Martin's feet in the middle of the field.

It doesn't look like an extremely dangerous moment. And she just blows past Andy Sullivan, kind of faints to the inside and then just pushes it past her. And she is, it's kind of a jailbreak from that point on. Lots of Dutch players arriving in our attacking third. So the ball gets worked over to the right side. And Dunn pokes it away. but it goes back out to Pilova who had just had it.

And Victoria Polova, that is, she passes it to Joe Roard's feet. And Roard takes a touch and then puts it away far corner through Lindsay Horan's legs. The thing that I, so I'm sure you have plenty to say about this, but Horan, Sullivan, and DeMello all do get back into the box, but none of them accounts for Roard in a way that prevents her from taking, pretty comfortably taking a settling touch

and then picking her spot from inside the box. And so that's got to, I mean, we've got to be able to close a little faster than that, I think. Yes, probably. This is going to be fun. This is going to be a fun one to break down. Like, we could do a whole podcast on this, on this sequence. So I'm going to go all the way back to the Dutch working around their back three, right? Okay.

So that's how this. Let's go. That's why you listen to this podcast. If you're not for this, you wouldn't still be listening already. Our press was set up high, like we had a high line, but it wasn't super hurried. It wasn't super intense to like try to chase down things. So we have this high line and Morgan is sort of following the path of the ball a lot of the time.

So the wings would kind of sit a little deeper. It wasn't like we had one for one pressing each of their players. Morgan would kind of chase as the ball moved from center back to center back. And you know, she's 34. She's not full speed doing this like a, you know, she's not a puppy dog. And so the Dutch back three are good passers. So we kind of gave them a little bit of time on the ball to pick their heads up and look for these line break.

breaking passes. I'm not saying this right or wrong. I'm just, you know, that's, that's how it kind of comes about. Either way, even as they make this line breaking pass up to midfield to the midfield circle, we still have it buttoned up, right? We have Sullivan arriving right as the ball does, and we have Demelo tracking back to crack down on this player. We've got a great little double team set up. And Sullivan just just whiffs on it. I mean, I want to give credit to Martins for what she does here. It's a terrific bit of skill. But she nutmegs Sullivan, so there's nothing. DeMelo can do. DeMello has her side closed up. This one's all on Sullivan. And it's not just getting megged. Getting megged is fine. Like a centerback can come clean that up as long as you wipe out the player who megged you, which she doesn't do.

She gets megged and then she sidesteps and like, you know, it's like a bullfighter to get out of the way of Martins. And that's like where it's unacceptable. Like you get megged. You just put your knee up into the players they run by and do that like knee into their thigh tackle and maybe take a yellow, maybe not with the way this referee was holding on to her cards. But you got to wreck the player.

You got a demolisher. And again, it's almost as much a pride thing as a tactical thing. So that was the first big, big miss. And then, I don't know if you mentioned or not, but so we're already in like, we got to cover now. Solvin is, our defensive mid is completely eliminated from the play. We are now in like kind of like ocean mode to defend. And then we have another catastrophe where Crystal Dunn falls down in this mode. So suddenly we are trying to, we're in recovery mode and we have another catastrophic defensive failure, you know, numbers wise, where another player falls.

and is taken totally out of the play. And this is where we actually recover really well. Like I'm really impressed with our commitment. Germa has to cover a ton of ground now. She was defending Martins after Martin's skin Sullivan. And now she has to go all the way out wide to where the ball's fed where Crystal Dunn falls down. And she does that.

And she stops the path. That player can't shoot, forces her back to hit a kind of a hopeful square pass into a bunch of U.S. bodies. And it goes right to Crystal Dunn, who's recovered enough now. And we've done really well to handle this. Yeah. Dunn can't do enough with it. You know, she can't get her feet set.

It comes in hot. She stabs it out wide. We still have the bodies back for this. And even as this ball gets played into a player who can take a touch and shoot, Haran is there closing this down. So it's a 19-yard shot, 18-yard shot, with Haran directly in the path of the shooter to the far post. And the only issue here is,

Iran lifts their leg up to try to block the shot. If she keeps her, it goes just inside of her plant leg. So if she keeps her feet together, like most goalkeepers prefer a defender to do in this situation. It's blocked. And if the shot is forced to go to the inside of her feet, then Neher probably gets hands to it. So all of these dominoes had to tip over for this ball to sneak in.

So, I mean, I don't know. It's kind of what it is. It's the first shot we've allowed in the tournament, 17 minutes into the game. So, yeah, there are a bunch of places where one little thing different solves it. and we just didn't do any of those little things. Dunn fell down a few times in this game. I don't know if that's been a discussion point in postgame,

but maybe something with their cleats or... It's been happening in all tournament to a lot of different players, and they fall down in strange ways, like surface ways, where you see their feet like slide, and even as they're falling, like, other parts of their body will just really slide on this turf. It seems like there are a lot of really slippery surfaces through this tournament so far.

Okay, so it's 1-0. It did seem to me like Sullivan was struggling a little bit in duels. I mean, obviously that was the big example, but 21st minute we get a good pass from Dunn to Smith's feet. And she turns... Hold on, I'm Dells. We're probably... We probably got a Zuprooter of the goalkeeper here, too, on the goal, don't we? Okay, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Neyer has a tendency to hug her line a lot, like, tight to her goal line. And she has a tendency to sort of glitch to her near post where, like, she will get to her near post if the ball goes wide, which was the correct positioning as Dunn fell and that ball swings out wide. Because that player's in shooting mode and Neyer's in the right spot there. But what we've seen with Chicago, and we've highlighted on the Discord and broken it down, is as that ball then will get moved back into the middle,

especially via passes and not just crosses. Like, Neyer doesn't get all the way back to her central line where she's between the ball and the center of the goal. Like she very often sort of stays hugging the near post. and that was the case here as well. There was time to read the rhythm of the play and the shooter for her to have gotten another step over. And while I'm empathetic to cheating one way

if you have a defender like Haran who should be taking away a portion of the goal, I thought her positioning was such that she could have covered like another foot and a half wide of the near post, which you don't need to do. You know, that sort of wasting positioning. You can do that. You really have.

You weren't lying when you said you've already Zeprooted this pretty. So she could have cheated probably another foot over. And, you know, there's knock on effects even of that. If she's a half a step or a full step over, she can also change her body shape. She'd change her body shape a little more. She was really square up the field because of how far to the year post she was cheated, which means her dive is parallel to the goal line instead of like out at an angle to the shortest path to the ball.

So, yeah, so there are little details there that are tendencies in there. It's not just like a one-off thing. You know, it's not a common situation. This will not necessarily happen again the rest of the tournament. But this is a little bit of like a liability that Nair brings with her. A liability that coach should know about when they're selecting who to bring to the World Cup as goalkeeper and who to start, I guess, is the subtext there. Yeah. Like I would say pretty confidently.

She's not as good a shot stopper as Casey Murphy. Okay. anything else on this goal? No, I think we got the goal to prove. Okay, good, good. So that 21st minute pass from Dunn to Smith's feet, she turns, Smith turns and tries to sneak a past, a pass, passed Brooks to Rodman,

and Brooks kind of steps in front and nicks it away for a corner kick, mostly clocking it to point out that we are getting, like, as we've discussed, we are getting these opportunities sort of running at a backline because of our individual ability. But it didn't seem, it often didn't seem like there was any sort of concept, of what we're what we should be doing and I also thought Brooks the 19 year old for

who plays for PSB Einhoven was quite good in this game very reliable and on top of things and nobody nobody wants to hear that but she is no no no I was I wanted you to leave it in I just didn't have anything to throw back yeah no yeah that's fine okay any reaction to that no I mean I think that's exactly what I saw to and it was sometimes from turnovers from the Dutch and sometimes again where we would just dance our way past a couple of defenders and suddenly we'd be in the open field. The thing you want to do that you usually create via, you know, overloads and passing, we would just do it a different way. But then once we were in that mode, we weren't converting it into clear chances.

You know, I saw a lot of people saying the shot total at halftime was 9 to 2, but the shots we actually got didn't really come from those moments. They mostly came from corner kicks, which will... We had a lot of corner kicks. How many do we have? Somewhere around 10. 22nd minute we get a good corner kick from DeMello and she she lands it on Alex Morgan's head. Morgan's leaning back a little bit or she sort of has to lean back to make contact and heads it high and wide. I thought the service from DeMello and from Lavelle in the second half was quite good on corners.

The argument there, I'll skip ahead in the timeline just so it'll since we're on the corners, but we had two corners in a row in a little bit. So I'm just pointing out almost all of them we put on our player's heads. One of them was Ertz getting to the near post and she had a really nice flick, flicked header, directional header that she put off of another one's player for yet another corner, which Heron promptly got to for the next one. And the movement for both of them, which will, you know, be foretelling is foreshadowing. They both were sort of just cutting to that near post.

So Erds were familiar with that. She does that all the time. I hadn't really clocked that as a Heran movement, but it was a lot of that. And Haran was doing it working off of a screener. So she'd have a player, a buddy who would be with her, and she would slide out, mesh off that buddy to get to her in your post spot. Julie, you just count on to beat a player to the spot because she's Julie. And generally be Julie going first and then Haran kind of behind her.

Yep, front and follow. So 28 minute mark, there's a poor Trinity Rodman clearance off a Dutch cross where she just kind of heads it back into Zone 14, the area right on top of the box. And Jansen, the centerback, has a pretty good volley from 25 yards. It lands on top of the goal, but it was dipping, just not fast enough. And I thought, man, when that almost went in, if they go up to zero on these two chances, we are, you know, God hates us.

So same thing we talked about Nair's tendency. And I think it's generally a good one for women's goalkeepers. but as this ball gets cleared poorly out to whatever 25 yards out, Neyer has maybe been like half of a step off of her goal line, which is not very much, you know, if you think about when you're watching a lot of soccer games and goalkeepers, they're usually quite aggressive. And as it gets cleared out, she even retreats back even more. I think that is often the safe play to make sure that you don't get beat over your head

to your crossbar because, again, we're not dealing with six foot eight goalkeepers here with nine foot wingspans in 34-inch vertical jump. So I think this is the right technique, the right execution, and it looks like her hand is right there at the crossbar as it goes over. She might even touched it. Did she touch it? I don't think she did. She didn't have to, but...

So you're saying she did well on this one. Yeah, I think she did it. I think she executed this one well. Okay. All right. Good job, Alyssa. 31st minute. Smith gets on the run after a throw from Nair.

So Nair makes it, I think, a wise decision to quickly throw. throw it out to Smith out left. And Smith does her thing and shrugs off two challenges and she's kind of running at the back line again, but then misplaces her pass to Alex Morgan. So earlier she tries Rodman to the right. This time she tries Morgan to the left. Neither connects.

34 minute mark. Morgan dances past two defenders. You alluded to this earlier, into the box and whips it at Rodman, who is crashing the gold mouth. Rodman just can't beat Brooks to it. you know, I don't think it was a bad decision to try to whip it across the six, but she did have Smith and Fox as options for a cutback. I mean, Smith and Fox kind of on a line with each other.

Smith is the one I think she would have seen if she were looking. Yeah, and these are bang, bang, so it's like you need the runners to read what the attackers, the ball carrier is capable of. Like what can she actually do with her body to get her hips around it to swivel? where can she sort of swivel this too, uh, to know whether she can put enough pace on it to like clip it all the way to the far post to Emily Fox or whether she can only get it to the weekly to this sort of near post area.

And I know Rodman had one of those two where she sort of hit a weak cutback, which was all she could have done. Uh, but no one was sort of reading that, uh, that possibility. So they hadn't attacked the space where she could put it. Yeah.

So it's, but again, it's all happening fast. You got to, you got to just make your reading go, go for it. So right in this. period of the game, it seemed like

the Netherlands, like before, I guess before Morgan did that, it did kind of feel like the Netherlands were the better team. That period of the game lasted about, I don't know, more than 15 minutes. And, um,

except they did have a good spell of possession right at the end of the first half, like we talked about earlier. Not threatening. Just good possession. Um, other thing to note is in this part of the game, Vandergracht, the central defender, got some kind of knock, I think on one of those corner kicks, maybe the one where Haran headed it, headed it wide,

and then she would, like I said, would have to come out at the half, and I think that made a difference. The other thing is, 38th minute, Smith does a defender and whips one across. It was a bit of a nervy moment for the goalkeeper Van Domsilar, punches it, and it's cleared. And then in the 39th minute, we get a quick restart to Emily Fox down the right, broadcast didn't show us how it happened.

I think it was a free kick. And she cuts it back into the box nicely, but there's just nobody in the box as she hits the pass. Yeah, we had that one. And then just a few minutes later, we get, we kind of worked the ball kind of nicely to Trinity Rodman. And she's at the left corner of the box. And she decides to scoop a ball in. And you can freeze frame that one.

And like there's, there's literally nobody. We have three players at the top of the box. And she, she's looking up. And she's still decided to like scoop this ball into the box. just, you know, hopefully. Yeah, the moment, that moment of the cross, sometimes, sometimes it baffles you. Yeah, we just couldn't figure out how to carve out clear-cut chances. The other thing is, the last thing I have from the first half is around the 48-minute mark.

DeMello definitely smacks Jackie Grownin in the face and then swipe somebody right after that, kind of losing her composure a little bit. I mean, surprising she didn't get booked. She could have been booked for either of them I feel like people have been given red cards for that smack Yeah, that smack is a dangerous one with the cameras We were we were as a team I think we were kind of getting a little dicey Some of that is the referee who didn't pull some cards out right away like de mellow got her

Ponytail yanked Yes, by grown in right? I think it was by grown in Okay, so yeah, so there were plenty of times where the referee could have given a yellow and then I think dug herself a hole where it's like well I didn't give a yellow for that So I've established that as the as you know, not a yellow. And so the players are savvy. So they see that and they're like, well, she can't give me a yellow then. And so you had a lot of them maybe taking some liberties and daring the referee to caution her, which she just wasn't going to do.

So it ended up cutting both ways. I know U.S. fans were probably feeling like we were taking more of the abuse. But we were dishing some out too. Like Sophia got a smack in in the second half on somebody's ankle. Trinity was kind of getting some shoving. Part of that was our frustration with how things were not going. smoothly, which that frustration led up all the way right until our goal and was boiling over. But yes, part of our response to our frustration was to lash out a little bit.

And so for me, I'm kind of glad that the referee wasn't card happy because of the way yellow cards accumulate in World Cup tournaments. Yeah. Heron was already on a yellow. It could have gotten a yellow couple. I mean, it would have been a harsh yellow for some of the stuff she did. but um and then de mellow so de mellow coming off at the half probably was in the plan from the beginning but it it was a i think maybe a blessing in disguise because who knows what you would have done in the second i guess if the ref wasn't pulling out the card anyway it wouldn't have

mattered but anyway level comes on for de mello at the half and anik now and comes on as the central defender in that back three for vanda grocht i just want to point out there's not there's a lot of like little things happening throughout the game that illustrate this but just germa naomi Germa was very, very good. She seems to see everything happening before it happens and so reliable and responsible. Yes. I mean, for a game against the two defending or two championship teams, so the champion the runner up, like Naomi Germa in her first World Cup absolutely just looked like an adult

on the field, right? Like just the way that things could have been a little dicey, she cleans those moments up and like we'll just knock them back to nair as cool as you like and we it's just solved and again this is against really dangerous attackers uh she she made it seem like she was playing against uh you know in a friendly against i don't want to name a team because that seems disrespectful but some of the friendly opponents we've been playing in in the lead up to this world cup yeah she just makes it look she does make it look so easy that's just what she does um 52nd minute uh or 50 i'm sorry 53rd minute there's a spell of us trying to play through

zone 14. We have them pinned back. We just can't, you know, we're playing it to Smith's feet sometimes or, or Morgan's feet and they're like receiving the ball with their back to the goal right on the edge of the box. And we just can't quite conjure the precision or, or the movement, honestly, to create something dangerous. This was a really good initial play. So it's a, I mean, one, we tried to hit him first in transition and we get it up to Alex Morgan who has another great layoff. She had so many of those to Roselvel. Lavel tries to hit. Sophia is the third runner.

But the Dutch deal with that. They clear it out, but only as far as Haran, who settles it comfortably, and then drives forward, which I think is going to be hopefully a hallmark of the rest of this tournament. And again, Heron is so, like, sneaky, right? She's so subtle. So she gives a little, like, faint that she's going to play it out wide to Morgan, who's out wide now because her and Sophia have sort of switched after that initial combination attempt. And that was enough to just freeze Vandadonk.

And so now the centerback has to step up to Huron. And Sophia makes a really nice movement to post up at the top of the box. And Haran, you know, doesn't try to hit a home run ball, just hits a nice feed into Sophia Smith. And Sophia Smith's feet. And we are looking great. This seems like a really good, you know, possibility to combine. But then our lack of combination chops rears its head. And the ball goes into Sophia Smith.

And you can, I posted this on the Discord for all of us to enjoy. She is surrounded by five U.S. players who do not move whatsoever. Like you have Trinity outright, Morgan to her left on the same line, and then you've got Lavelle, Aran, and done in the line right behind. None of them change shape, none of them move. No one sort of keys any movement with their initial movement. Everyone literally just freezes while Sophia Smith like twinkle toes on the ball for like five or six seconds and then tries to slip Horan in who finally had like done something.

But it is. It's just, it really is small group tactics. and we got to we got to sharpen this up going forward. Yeah, we sharpen this up over the next decade. We get the 5440 mark. We get a little bit of joy in transition. Ert's steps to win the ball and we're off. Rodman hits a pretty decent early cross to the backpost for Morgan.

And it's just a foot short of landing on Morgan as she arrives around the penalty marker. It's close. And, you know, we don't usually like crossing on this podcast, but I thought this was a pretty good, a pretty good try. Yeah, I'm totally okay with that early, early balling decision. It's a home run ball, but Morgan here is not bracketed, which I think is a key distinction, right? Usually your center forward is bracketed by two centerbacks.

So it's like you've really got to hit it perfect to not have her sandwiched out of the play. And Morgan isn't. She just has the one on the ball side hip. And so if this ball just clears that player, I mean, you got to, you got to, you know, put it in the zone where the keeper's not going to come get it. But that zone's there and it's doable and it's super high leverage because if you do it, like you said, it's an Alex Morgan header from seven yards out. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the goal. It's a, there's a little bit of drama around it.

Horan gets cleaned out by her Leon teammate, Van deytonk, Danielle Van deytonk, a few minutes earlier and he gets really mad about it. She's down on the ground over by the sideline. she's mouthing a lot of nasty words on the broadcast and then um after she makes her way back onto the field she seeks out van de donk and and pushes her kind of they push each other but but haran does the more forceful push which kind of forces a lengthy negotiation with the ref which i didn't catch any of and then on the ensuing corner kick uh they did the thing i think they did exactly the thing you described earlier julie urts running at the near post heran right behind behind her and she just glides in and thumps it home at the near post.

A really good ball from Rose Lavelle 1-1. Felt quite vindicating for America as a country for her to score that goal. And her 29th international goal, her second of the tournament, where I felt like we were going to win. I mean, because in part because of the goal arriving immediately after all the drama, right? After all the individual drama. And then Horan says, you know what? Screw you.

So I think all of this actually drama exists because of the advantage rule. This is a drawback of the advantage rule is Haran doesn't get her satisfaction. She gets cleaned out, right? But the ball, after getting cleaned out, the ball just trickles forward. And Sophia runs onto it, and we're in a great attacking spot. So again, psychologically, Haran doesn't get the satisfaction of the whistle and the referee running over and sternly telling Van de Dank that that's not okay, you know, in all. harsh words that referees have for players.

So when all this continues and we get our throw, it just ends in a throw in over on the other side. You know, Horan is left to just still be on the ground. Like, I don't get any, I don't get anything. I don't get anything. Yeah, it's just nothing.

It's a miscarriage of justice. Yes. So, so, you know, she needs to be made whole. And so she's got a, it's the only way she's going to do is by jawing. So she's going to jaw,

it's going to jaw at the ref and be like, there's not, you're not going to do anything. But what is there to do? Like, we got to play. We got to have Sophia Ryan. And so there's just no good solution there. So Horan takes it into her own hands, has her say, and then really gets to have her say on that corner kick.

Yep. That is the solution to score a goal like that. All right. 6425 mark, a lovely idea from Rose trying to redirect a waist high ball from Lindsay Horan. So they're both in the middle of the field. And it's kind of a clipped ball waist high to LaValle. And she tries to redirect it in behind from Morgan. It was on.

it was going to be a great a great pass it's just she just missed the window by you know a yard or two and it was it was cut out did you think we looked you got to let me you got to let me look at this one since you really enjoyed it I love the idea I love the idea and I love the movement from from Morgan because Morgan also was sort of keyed into what Lavelle was trying to do so I think it was a really good idea from Lavelle and I think more importantly it was just another it was like a total contrast of the entire sequence from what we were getting in the first half. Like this was us having angles to play. It was us having bodies that were available that we could see.

In the first half, so many times it felt like every line of sight from the ball ended in orange jersey. So that's why I was like, even if, even though it wasn't successful, I don't even know what they were trying to successfully do. Because anywhere that ball would have gone was going to a Dutch player. And here, we have a really nice buildup with some, you know, changing in positions and all this that we just weren't seen in the first half. And so to end it with that nice little Horan ball into Lavelle, again, a cute little clip in to that pocket where Lavelle can try to operate. So promising. Such a change in sort of aesthetic enjoyment for me. Did you think we looked leggy in the second half?

I did not. And I'm not saying, you know, we'll get to the sub bit, but I think the Dutch were looking leggy. And I feel like that probably played into how we started to get more angles, how we started to, because there wasn't a huge tactical shift, right? I mean, Lavelle for D'Amelo is a fairly straight on thing. We were a little more confident hitting balls early. So, you know, as a ball was coming into us, we would, you know, clip it into a space we expected to be open rather than settling it and then looking confused and then trying to reset, but really just turning it over. And I don't know if that would be attributed to the Dutch slowing down a little bit. But I never thought that we looked particularly like tired, even as, you know, eventually the masses were calling for subs.

Yeah, maybe I was just, I was too influenced by Ali Wagner talking about how much energy we expended in the first half on the broadcast. But I felt like, it felt sometimes like Rodman wasn't quite herself, especially in the, some pretty bad touches in the second half, which I'm going to chalk up to tiredness, not lack of ability. But anyway, who cares? 67th minute, we get a really good chance. I mean, we score, as you may remember. We scored a goal, but it was called back for offside. Rodman gets the better of Yonson for one of the first times of the day, up that right wing, just completely eliminates her after a bit of a cage match,

and then carries it and plays it in behind for Morgan, who punches it home first time with her left foot. I think she did it with the top of her boot, or maybe it was a toe poke. Anyway, it was a really nice finish. Sadly, she was offside just by a hair. I mean, the timing of the run was just, you know, we're talking a tenth of a second there. So I remember this Morgan from Concaf W Championship

where we created a lot of turnovers against weak teams. And it felt like so many times Morgan would just sprint vertically immediately. And it's like, it's like Alex, we just took the ball from their back line. There's no one back there when you outrun them, when you outrun them. That's it. Yeah. Like you're trying to outrun them, which is, the last thing you can do is outrun them.

But this is actually a perfect example for me of how the Dutch looked leggy relative to us. Because Trinity Rodman runs, I mean, like she does not have position when that ball gets played into her. Dutch player has full control of the situation. And Rodman bodies her and then not only doesn't slow down, but like accelerates beyond her once she gets that body on her. So this was like we were, we were doing the business here. And that's, I'm sure, I am certain that that played into Vlako's decision not to sub.

Like when you see Rodman doing that, we had Sophia doing that still. I'm sure he is like, no, they've got them in it. They've got it in them to do this at one time to get the goal. Well, yeah. So at this point in the game is probably a good time to play Vlachos quote about why he didn't make any subs in the second half, any attacking subs in the second half. Here it is. Of course, we thought about substitutes. and Lynn was probably one of the first that would have been on the field if we needed to change something.

But I thought that we had a control of the game, and I thought that we were knocking on the door of scoring a goal. The players played well. We were around the goal the whole time, and I just didn't want to disrupt the rhythm at that point, And because sometimes Sapsid comes in, it might take a minute or two to get into a rhythm. And we just didn't want to jeopardize anything because I thought all three of our forwards were very good today, dangerous, created opportunities, and were a handful. Lynn is, of course, Lynn Williams, who I think most people wanted to see Sub-Don in this game. I mean, he's not wrong in what he says. Yeah, that's the thing, man.

They made it tough. Like, you know, we can keep going down the timeline and it's just going to be chance for the front three. And so there's two sides of it where one you're saying yes, but they weren't converting because maybe they were a little tired and the fresh legs would have for sure converted. But like we were getting behind them. Like we were getting behind the Dutch, which is usually the hard part. Right. So we had the legs to get behind them. So I guess I'm just at least sympathetic.

I still think you go with the legs, to be honest. I think you put the legs out there and say, if these players can do it, after 70, then imagine Alyssa Thompson and Lynn Williams running at you now after the Dutch, who again are not fleet of foot to begin with in the back. Now they're tired and now here's what you're looking at for the last 15. It's tough because when we're just going to run through all of these chances for the U.S., I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, it's true. There were a lot of chances starting with that one, the one, the callback goal. We're getting more transition opportunities. We got the ball in the Netherlands half, most of the last half hour of the game.

In the 73rd minute, we get a chance. Dunn passes it to Morgan's feet, and she flicks it around the corner for Smith. So it's kind of a firmly hit ball from Dunn to Morgan. She flicks it for Smith. Smith takes a good first touch and then kind of gets the ball stuck under her feet. Then she goes to the end line and I think she was trying to shoot, but she hits it over the goal. Yeah, and so this is the question, right? If you watch this play in the 72nd minute develop and you see Alex Morgan hit this delightful flick to Sophia Smith alone at the top of the box where she has the angle in the room to go straight to go and shoot, are you like, as it's happening, are you like, I wish this wasn't Sophia Smith?

Right. That's where it's tough because like as a coach, I can see riding with, you know, statistically one of the best attackers on the planet. Yeah. Yep. 75th minute, another good flick from Morgan to Rodman this time. Morgan, Rodman kind of gets stonewalled and then dribbles out of bounds. But she had a little room to operate before she kind of dribbled to the corner. So another just brilliant touch from Alex Morgan.

So, you know, when we had reservations about her being the player to be the striker. And maybe she still isn't. Maybe you still, maybe we are, right? And she should come in in the 70th minute to do these flicks as the game. game is stretched and we can get people running in behind. But man, are these, like, I feel like underappreciated touches from her with someone on her back to just effortlessly clip it into the path of, you know, our race cars in the front three.

So I don't know, just want to give her more love for what she's adding here and then say, this is something I hope we learn from. And if we can't break teams down very well with possession, that we are okay, sort of abandoning that altogether, that attempt. attempt to do that and just be like let's hit it at Alex Morgan and get our players to run off of her. I will say that I don't want to, I agree with all that. I don't, I don't want to, when I see Smith or Rodman receiving the ball in this spot, my first reaction is I don't want them to be the one receiving the ball in this spot. But I do also, I would have liked to see Alyssa Thompson receive the ball in that

spot once or twice in this game. And conventional wisdom is you, you know, you make a couple attacking subs in a game that's tied in the last 20 minutes, especially when you have that kind of talent. So yes, I can see why we didn't want to take Smith and Rodman off, but I would have liked to see Thompson. I think I did you again, just going with the, I don't know, is it biology or chemistry of who still has, who has more oxygen in their blood between Alyssa Thompson? and Trinity Rodman, but the game just happened backwards, right?

Where we weren't really getting any clear chances in the first half when we were fully fit. And then the players that you would normally expect to be like, all right, they're starting to drag, we got to get them off. They were the ones, it was specifically them. Yeah. Who started generating all these chances. Yep. All right. Let's talk about this Netherlands chance in the 79th minute.

It's like, I think you said two minutes of possession all over the field, up the left side, back around to the right side. and it kind of breaks open with Martin's, you know, Martin's face up to, I think it was done. I guess I don't know, I can't remember for sure, facing a defender in the corner, and she finds Victoria Polova in the box with a good little pass, and then Pelova slips Roared in behind the back line, straight in front of her, and Roared cuts it back for Brux, who meets it well from about eight yards out. but july ertz slides in to block the shot just gets the you know the bottom of her boot to it really good last ditch defending there and the last time that the dutch really threatened the game but boy was

it a threat yeah it was scary oh i mean incredibly like in so far as like again as i'm watching this like we have the safety net of even if we lose this game we just get our win against portugal and we're fine but yes this was this was a scary moment for us all right so you said somebody had had Dunn faced up. Who? Who was defending Martins in the corner when she keys the final play? Was it done? It was two players.

So the way the Dutch end up breaking us down after this long spell of pretty patient possession that we have, you know, handled, right? Our amoeba's solid here, is they finally get it into that corner all the way to the corner flag. And Sullivan is out there defending it one-on-one. And Dunn comes out in. joins her. So we've put two people out on this play, but not in a way that we're going to go tackle her. So we probably over-commit numbers there. And Trinity comes back to help. And maybe this is where

she's a little leggy, but she comes back to help, but not in a useful way either. So Martins is able to split our sort of three players out there and get it to an unmarked player at the corner of the box. And that's where we started to get into scramble mode a little bit. So we have one player, Haran comes out. And so now Haran's defending one on two in the corner of the box, which is not ideal. I think it's fair to say. And the Dutch know how to exploit that kind of a thing because they're the Dutch. Germick, they slide it into the Man City Zone.

Germann comes out to block that and forces the cutback to be back at an angle, which is the correct cutback. It's the correct execution for the Dutch. Everything looking good. And then Julie Erd's just with the last ditch defense. And again, the difference between the first half chance and this chance is that Horan lifts their leg and the ball goes under it. Ert slides with the leg up and the ball hits it and goes out of balance. Right. good thing but yeah you're right even if we had lost we all we have to do is beat portugal to advance um

we get another good chance uh in the 82nd minute it's a dutch coal kick that is won by haran in midfield she heads it to morgan who flicks it on with her head into smith's path path and then smith slips it into the box for rodman who's kind of running diagonally ahead of her rodman takes a shot with her left foot and it's just wide of the far post very good chance I mean, it didn't look. It looked like the goalkeeper had it covered, but maybe not. Good chance. I just want to note that the goal kick comes after the Rose Lavelle shot that went outside of the stadium, just for punsies.

The right-footed one from 25. But this is a really excellent lightning quick thing that the U.S. are capable of. And again, I think in part because the Dutch are leggier than we are. So, Horan with a nice header forward, simple as you like. You know, that's normal stuff. But then the Morgan flick, again, exploits the fact that we are still way quicker to pounce than the Dutch are right now. So her flick to Sophia Smith puts her in position where she's got the advantage. And then a really good run this time for Trinity, we kind of pinged our small group tactics earlier.

But this is a really good run from Trinity, really good execution from Sophia Smith. the two of the players who would have been candidates to have been subbed out. Right. We create an incredibly clear cut chance. So, uh, again, it's, it's a tough one.

Maybe right after this chance we should have subbed. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, it is, it is tough. I was really mad at Vlako last night, but yeah,

the, the, I'm still mad at him, but I, but I can't really explain why. Just him. Um, so there's five minutes of stoppage.

time. We put on a lot of pressure the last 15 minutes. There was a Rodman header on a corner, a Morgan header on a Rodman cross. And then we get that nice through ball from Smith to Rodman in the 92nd minute that the keeper Van Damsalar reads and comes out and clears it from, you know, way out of her goal. That's all I got for the timeline. That's the timeline. So, So again, I understand the frustration because the human chemistry is like get the players in who are fresh. But God, I get why it would be hard, man. I really do. Like even as you're looking at, again, the most talented bench in this tournament to say, hey, we have created four really good chances in the last nine minutes.

I need to make a change. Like I get why that's difficult. Yeah. And the other thing to keep in mind to is it's putting a lot of eggs in the basket for today. We'll also have to learn how he's going to handle that for the Portugal match because that was a lot of miles that he would put on while we were creating those chances. That's a lot of burn. Do we then use our bench in the 11 against Portugal or does he trot out an unchanged lineup? I don't know.

Because we don't want to mess around. We don't want to mess around. Yeah. We got to win. There's no room to mess around. Like it's not like you can't, if you think it's going to hurt your chances, you got to. You got to play your best players. If you think that our bench players are so good that you can start them and it's not,

you know, conceding over whatever condition Trinity Rodman is in going into the game, then you rotate. That game is Tuesday at 3 a.m. Eastern, 2 a.m. Central. So, and I guess, you know, if we win the group, we have a more regular start time for a round of 16 game. And if we get second in the group, we play at 3 a.m. again, I believe, or something like that. So just talking about wake-up times between what's happening in groups A and groups, groups A and B, like we are looking at some early alarm clocks because we got to watch these games live with this much drama and simultaneous kickoffs. So it's going to be quite a few days in a row of burning that midnight oil.

Right. Yeah, next week's going to be a busy week. one. Any closing thoughts? You go first. Yeah. I mean, it's like, like we said earlier, it's, that's, that's, that's the team we are. We're not a fluid attacking juggernaut, but, but we are, we sure do have a lot of firepower. And, um, that's what we're going to see the rest of the, the rest of the tournament. I think, you know, we could have variants go our way and we could like, you know, just destroy everybody in our path for the next, uh, for the next six

games or whatever it is. And we could, you know, we could have variants go our way and we could, also, you know, a catastrophe could strike. It's an exciting time to be a fan because, yes, that's exactly right. We are not fluid, but we are explosive. And there's a lot of entertainment in that. So, you know, you just got to buckle in and ride with it. There's going to be a lot of, if we are losing or even if we're tied in games, it's going to be a very frustrating affair. But just know that the players are there for any moment. It doesn't have to look dangerous at the time and suddenly it is.

So that's not the worst thing as a fan to be watching. I will say my only other closing thought is I'm finding myself increasingly invested in Lindsay Horan as a character, you know, like her smiling at Rapino when she missed that chance against Vietnam and then her scoring this goal to get back at her Leone teammate for crunching her on the sideline. and just like the technical quality of Horan and her desire to do artistry out there. I'm becoming a bigger and bigger Lindsay fan every day.

It's fun. She's the immovable object in both the good and bad ways. There was a ball that popped up in the air in the Netherlands box and she got under it and a Netherlands player tried to crash into her. You know, she's just stationary. She did not move. Didn't move an inch.

Just let that ball fall on the other side of her body and controlled it. I was like, man, this gal is just unplayable sometimes. Yeah, pretty good in a cage match. That you'll do a trick on you, you know, to get out of it. All right. Well, you know, if you want to join our Patreon, the link is in the show notes. You can, we refer to the Discord a lot.

That's patrons talking about soccer all day long. The women's, the women's national team channels have been lighten up for the past couple weeks. So join us there. Posting videos with not a single concern of copyright violation. Yeah, because it's just a private garden. All right. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, everybody for listening.

We'll see you.