Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #419: World Cup — USWNT v Sweden recap

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Full timeline of events from the game that knocked the USA out of the World Cup, our best performance of the tournament (low bar), Rodman iso'd on the right but not as many times as would have been optimal, a crazy round of penalties and plenty of discussion of what it means with Greg and Belz. ----Consider subscribing to Scuffed 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. The U.S. women have exited the World Cup. Thanks to a loss on penalties to Sweden, early Sunday morning on the eastern seaboard. Greg, good day to you, sir. Good day, bells. The party is over. Uh, look onward to Paris 2024. Yes. So many things to talk about here.

Where do we start? What do you say? like the party's over, the World Cup. Like you spend all that time looking forward to it. And then you know you are looking at the cruelty of knockout soccer. And I think with this team in particular, you also, at least we, felt that there was certainly not the inevitability that seemed to follow the team in 2019, where even if they were playing close games, it just felt like, no, they have this in them.

And with this team, it didn't feel that way. And it didn't feel like that for us even before the group stage performances, which again, the narratives that you're going to have following, it's almost going to flip. Like after the group stage, it's almost like the idea was that it was inevitable that we would lose. And some people probably even thought that it was inevitable that we would lose this game straight away to Sweden. And I just, I don't really buy that. I don't think in any way it was inevitable that we would lose in the World Cup. Like we could have gone through four knockout games and won the thing. But it was never, it was never like certain.

And, you know, when we were talking about even the Portugal game, it's like, well, you, Bells, you were having like an exchange on Twitter during Spain versus Japan about how good those teams looked and how scary they would be to play. And, you know, and there was sort of that old line about, like, well, we shouldn't be scared of anybody. And my thought at that point was like, I'm scared of everybody. Like any of these teams left can beat the U.S. in a 90-minute soccer game. And, I mean, that's just kind of how it felt. Like, it felt like there was, there was, uh, we were a good team. We were in it against anybody, but there was nothing about us that was going to like

certainly win four games. No. Yeah. I think the, the thing that's, I don't know exactly how to feel about it, but what's so odd about our exit is it was our best game of the tournament. And, uh, for us to, to go out in such an odd way, you know, like, uh, Megan Rapino and Sophia Smith missing penalties. and, you know, that last penalty just going over by like a millimeter or something.

I mean, we were, the XG doesn't, I don't think the XG really tells the story in this case. And, you know, that's easy for me to say I can just sort of pick and choose when I like to use the XG. But it did seem like. You should always be able to do that for any, for any single game. Sure. Like you got game state, you got, you know, a model that's always trying to approximate things. But when you're just looking at one game and have the luxury of being like, well, let's, let's approve her every single chance. Was it that good of a chance?

Was it not? Which is kind of our thing. I feel like we thoroughly dominated Sweden in the game and maybe didn't get as many clear-cut chances as we would have liked in the final third. But we controlled that game. They had two half chances and then a pretty good chance in the 85th minute,

84th minute. Other than that, nothing really. So I was so frustrated with the way we're playing in the group stage, particularly after that Portugal game, which was just nails on chalkboard to watch. And then, you know, I was quite pleased, relatively speaking, with how we played against Sweden. And then we lost. So it's all very confusing to me. I mean, it's not that confusing.

It's just, I don't know, I don't know what the, I don't know what the big takeaway is from that turn of events. It's kind of like, like you said, knockouts soccer can be cruel. We did play our best game. And then we got knocked out anyway. So that's sports. It's a confusing. I think it's a confusing tournament for those kinds of narratives because in all three of the competitive games, I mean, with respect to Vietnam, that game was never competitive, nor was it going to be.

We didn't allow chances hardly at all. So it wasn't just like in this game where it was half chances, even in the really ugly games. And again, I'm saying ugly as an aesthetic viewing sense. No one was getting chances on us. Listen to Air had one save in the tournament. Is that right? I think that's right. I think there were two shots on target.

Okay. Yeah. All right. Two shots on target. I'm not sure. Oh, wait. Yeah, because one would be the goal. The Netherlands scored.

Yeah. And then Neher made the save. Is that true? Is that true? Yeah, it's wild. That's what I'm saying. That is, I mean, in the shootout, she got that awesome penalty. But that's incredible, right?

Like, what a weird stat to have for a team that gets knocked out in the round of 16 with a ton of talent to give up two shots total on goal. one of them goes in for a goal and we are out of the tournament. Yeah. So, yeah, it's everything about this tournament is confusing and frustrating and it just doesn't feel like it should be over. And we are, here we are out of the, out of the party. Yeah. American soccer now, Elliot McKinley from American soccer analysis ran some simulations. And I know some of you are going to say, oh, this is just the opiate of the nerds, you know?

Like, you guys love your simulations. but I don't know. He ran how many simulations? 250,000 simulations of the USA's 85 shots taken at the 2020-3 World Cup. And only in 1.8% of those did we only score four goals. So, you know, it was much more likely that we score like 8 or 10 or 12 goals in those four games. So, you know, we got a little bit on the bad side of variance. But there's also these, like, fundamental problems, which you have, you and I have

been discussing for a year with the way we play. Those were not, that was not solved against Sweden, you know. There's no, there's no, there's no, there's no comfort there. No comfort there. And really, like, again, we, it felt like a choice from Vlato in those, in those early games to prioritize defense, like we were going conservative. and not even just with how many bodies we'd send forward, but how far up we'd send our players,

even when we were defending. And I think that might be kind of for me, the under the radar story for this team and our lack of goals was all through the cycle leading up to this, we struggled in possession. We struggled to create chances in possession. That was obvious to anybody watching. But one thing we did really well that we were harping on forever was

we were really good at creating chances in terms. transition, creating turnovers high up the field and then running at teams with elite attacking players. And we didn't do that very much in this tournament. We did it every once in a while, but it was not like a fundamental part of the way we were playing. We weren't playing a super aggressive, not quite murderball, but kind of murderball high, high field, like high of the field trap and press. That wasn't there. We sat a little deeper. Our line of confrontation, we sat back a little bit. Like we had Alex Morgan kind of shadowing players.

In this game, Morgan and Horan both kind of stepped up to just kind of shadow Sweden. But it wasn't in any way through the tournament like an all-out, create high turnovers and run at them situation. And so for me, that's like the one good thing we were, the one thing we were really strong at leading up to the World Cup for creating chances. And we actually leaned away from it. You know, we kind of talk about, can we just lean all the way into this and sort of give up on the possession idea.

It's not going to happen. We're not going to be Japan. But can we lean into this press and really go for it? And we did the opposite. We sat off a little bit more and really cut down on the number of those transition moments

that could have led to our players in their most comfortable attacking mode. Right. And maybe the prime player for us at getting the ball in transition and running at the opponent is Mallory Swanson. She's just a killer in that way.

And, you know, Maybe not having her just helped like naturally forced us to lean away from? I don't know. Probably not. I mean, that's fair. That's possible. And again, the other thing is if there's a, there are always tradeoffs in these tactical decisions.

And if the tradeoff was, again, an absolutely iron steel curtain of a defense, that particular tradeoff worked, right? Like, we just gave up nothing. So it's tough. There are, there are always those tradeoffs. I mean, the defensive soundness of the team, and I think the, you know, in the aggregate amount of chances we created, I don't think there's, I have that big of a problem with Flocko saying, like, hey, we're just going to play a really good defense and we're going to trust our playmakers to make things happen in the final third. I don't think that's a terrible plan. If you haven't, if you haven't spent the last three, four years building a coherent, sort of coordinated attack. And we haven't. So here we are. I don't know, I just want to quickly say on the sort of the disc, I know there's been a lot of people yelling at the women's national team players on social media in the past few days. And I, I don't, we don't need to get into that.

But I would say just like if, just let's stop talking about it, you know? The don't elevate it if you don't want to, if you don't like it. Yeah, most of what I see is people who disagree with those people like quote tweeting them, you know. So, I mean, can we can we stop? Right. the model for some of those instigators is to drive that engagement. Like it's what they want. Yeah, definitely elevate the stuff that, you know, that you saw the Sweden players

talking about the U.S. And I think on the women's side there very much is that solidarity from the players because everyone knows that, you know, aside from the actual competitive aspect, there is this, you know, energy to actually continue to build and grow the game and sort of fight for what they deserve to be able to play in this game. And obviously the U.S. women have played a large role in that fight. So there's that sort of thing, too. It's like, yeah, we just beat them in the game.

But we're not here to, like, stomp on the grave. Like, we're going to continue to build up all of the women who are playing. Yeah. And then, you know, just taking the U.S. out of it, the, I know Chloe Kelly, after the penalties with Nigeria, she was over consoling the goalkeeper. and there's a lot of examples of that solidarity, which is pretty cool. Let's do the lineups, you think? Let's get into it.

Okay. It was for the USA, it was a nearing goal, Fox, Ertz, German, and Don across the back. The big wrinkle, the big surprise from Blocko was starting Emily's sonnet in midfield in a double pivot with Andy Sullivan. And then Lindsay Horan was the sort of free 10 in front of them. And I thought it worked pretty well. So it did, in a sense, right? I'm going to be really measured on this stuff because, again, the aesthetics here are that we looked so much better than we did in the other games. We looked like we could actually connect some things, which we were not doing against Portugal or really the Netherlands either.

But there's some fool's goal in that because the Netherlands and Portugal both came up and played against us. Like they both wanted to come up and make our lives difficult when we had the ball. And they were very successful doing that. We had no answers for them doing that. Sweden were not trying to do that. So it's going to be hard to separate how much of this was our structure and how much of this was Sweden just being like, we don't really care to have the ball. We're not a high pressing team. We're not like going to try to dominate you in the midfield.

Even our defensive shape isn't set up the way. Like Portugal's defensive shape was that diamond where they had two up high on our two centerbacks and one up high on our one six. So switching to this, to like a 4, 2, 3, 1 in that game could have made a huge difference. Switching to it in this game against Sweden, probably not as drastic of an actual difference in how the game plays out. Okay. So you think no matter what we did in the midfield, we would have had those big spaces for Sullivan and Sonnet to turn and swing it over to Huran and then for her to swing it over to Rodman? I mean, I think we could have found pass through Sweden. Yeah.

I don't think there was anything about them that was going to be like. we are going to make you uncomfortable when you're possessing in the back, the way we were so uncomfortable in our two real group stage games. Boy, how catastrophic was Sweden then? I mean, like, they, the catastrophic is obviously hyperbole. But, but like, what was their idea? Because we were just slicing through their midfield in that way, you know, from left to right, usually.

Well, oh, go ahead. But then it'd be like Rodman one-on-one with Anderson, who she cooked several, several times and probably, you know, on another day could have scored two goals. And I don't understand why Sweden thought that would be okay. Well, it took us a long time to get there. We didn't do it very well in the early part of this game. And I mean, I don't know that they have an answer. Like when the Discord was doing a rewatch of Sweden the night before the game and like

identified instantly that Anderson was a massive weak link in their 1v1 to 4. or just in their defensive shape. So I don't know. I don't know what their answer is. Like they would have had to have changed eventually, I think, or just shaded more help over to that side. But I don't think we exploited it as often as we should have early on. And by the time we started doing it more often,

I don't know if they were just okay to roll with it. But generally their position was just to sit in their mid-block, hold on until we sort of gave the ball away elsewhere on the field or had to cross go nowhere. And then they weren't really a possession team either. Like they're not a team that was going to try to play through their midfield. They're going to try to play around the outside of the amoeba and then loop it into their like high altitude foreheads in front of the box

and hopefully win a couple of set pieces. They have they have almost no buildup through this whole tournament, not just against us in our fantastic midfield adjustment that we made. Like, you know, you can look at any of their past maps for any of their group stage games. They just go around that midfield and then you can see the horizontal lines for the players up high just trying to hit it across for somebody to get on the end of. Okay. All right.

Well, Sweden's lineup was Zichirah Mousovich in goal, who had a pretty good game, I'd say. Natalie Bjorn, Amanda Illestead, the really tall centerback, Magdalena Erickson and Jonah Anderson, the aforementioned left back across the back. And then Felipe Angledal and Elyn Rubinson in the double pivot, Johanna Riddig-Kannerid, and Kosovares Aslani and Fridolina Rolfo across the band of three and a four two, three one, and then Stina Blackstinius at Stryker, who plays at Arsenal, I guess.

I didn't think anybody of any of them was particularly impressive. I don't know, they're the third-ranked team in the world, but they didn't look that great to me. They just know who they are. I don't know if there's another way to say it. Like, I don't think they were great either. And again, I'm curious to see. see what Japan will do to see if they can really target that left back or if Sweden switched

to a back three and try to give Anders Anderson a little more help. But also, as much as I think like they should be outmatched and they don't do anything, like they aren't great at anything, they're really long and they know what they want to do and they want to get set pieces. And it will be, I would be very curious to see if they can successfully do that against Japan because it's possible. Yeah. Yeah, soccer's a crazy game. We've talked a little bit about the XG. It was 1.29 XG. This is according to Opta, 1.29 XG on the game for the U.S.

0.81 for Sweden. We'll get into that. It seems like Sweden's chances were getting more XG than the U.S.'s chances. But, you know, whatever. To the timeline. First thing I clock is Crystal Dunn slipping, and it's something that happened like three or four times in the game.

It didn't ever really hurt us, but it was, why does she keep slipping? She kept slipping. And Sophia Smith slipped a couple times, too. Something with the cleats, maybe. It's just like pass. At the 240 mark, a good ball from Germa. So we were playing, as you all know, Germa was the one distributing from the back,

and oftentimes she was stepping forward and hitting a left-footed ball diagonally at Alex Morgan's head. this one went over the back line and it looked to me in real time and on the replay that if Trinity Robin reads a little better she could run onto it she doesn't really read it and it trickles out of bounds

but yes this is definitely this is definitely going to be the theme is us working around the back to Germa Germa is kind of driving up and not as often as I wish you would have like using that gravity to just free up a little five-yard pass into Sonnet or Sullivan

but more often looking for that more direct pass. Mm-hmm. And it wasn't, it definitely wasn't pretty, but it, you know,

we got, we got a lot of second balls off of it. We got some, we got some, we won the ball on the counterpress after Sweden, took it under control a few times. So, I mean,

it was just almost like a punt, you know, you punt it up for, up field and, uh, change the field position equation. In the fifth minute, uh,

a nice little triangle. I was noticing triangles when they happen. Decent from Rodman, Sonnet and Horan to get out of the press, especially from Rodman. And Morgan's taking it across the middle field. And she and Dunn just kind of gum it up and we can't press the advantage. I promise I won't have a bunch of tiny little items like this. But this is a notable thing because, again,

we didn't have any of these moments against Portugal and almost none. And this was early on, Sweden were kind of like had that kickoff energy. So they were upfield on top of us here. And we obviously showed a willingness to play through it. And Sonnet is that kind of a player. Like Sonnet wants to play little five and six yard passes. She enjoys that. You can like tell that's something she enjoys doing.

Would you call her a Rondo merchant? I mean, to be honest, out of our pool, like I for sure would call Sonnet a Rondo merchant. Like she wants to do it. And her and Heron will do it. Like they'll just kind of hang out together, trying to pull it off. So, yeah, I'll put Sonnet in the Rondo merchant category. You know, that reminds me, just going back to the lineup, is there a, since you don't think the midfield configuration was really that big of a factor,

it would have been this way, regardless. Is there another midfield configuration that you would have preferred for this game, given that Lavelle was out with the yellow card? No, not really. I mean, it was basically a hat for me. So I didn't really have the big reaction. I know there was a big reaction of what are we doing. It's obviously a strange thing to bust this out in a World Cup knockout match.

I don't know if Sonnet has ever played defensive midfield for the U.S. She can't that I can remember doing so. A lot of trust for Vlocco to put her in here. I think she stepped into this job well. Even if she wasn't like amazing in distribution, she was solid. And it could have been a lot, lot worse, right? Like it could have been a clown shoe situation. And it wasn't.

Yeah. Okay. You take the next item on the timeline. Yeah. So speaking of which, right at 530 mark, there's just an aimless clearance from Sweden that goes right to Sonnet's chest. sort of right at the edge of our defensive third. She brings it down and really calmly

hits a great ball upfield to Haran's feet in between the lines. And this is where I clock this one if it happened because this was the first time that we had a chance to really isolate Trinity Rodman against Sweden's left back Anderson, whose name you're going to remember by the end of this. Because Haran gets it

from Sonnet, gets to turn up field with no one around her. Like the pressure is going to be coming from her back because we bypassed it. And she looks it off. and she looks it off for a long time. She keeps looking downfield for ages and then takes a full swing for like a home run ball to somebody off screen.

And it's like punt blocked right off of her foot that's taken directly off her foot by the retreating defender. And I was like, oh man, like that was, I've been waiting this whole game to just see what we do against Sweden's left back and we had Trinity there to feed it to her. And then it was, it bothered me even more because it happened again like 30 seconds later.

On the second one, it's a really nice moment from Andy Sullivan, who receives it in our defense of third with some pressure. When Sonic got it, she was under no pressure to feed her hand. Sullivan, we had to work for it.

Yeah, that's nice from Andy. Yeah, she's got it with, like, facing our back line to receive it, and she gets a nice little swivel with light pressure on her back.

It wasn't like, no one was coming into a wrecker, which is, you know, nice. But she swiveles enough and hits a great diagonal ball in the air to Heran. Ocean's a space. Heron collects it.

And again, like, has Trinity, 1v1 on the outside, super easy to hit it to her. It said nothing passed to complete. And we would have the best matchup in the soccer game. And instead she looks it off and tries to hit Alex Morgan in behind, who's bracketed by two centerbacks. And it's just super easily cut out.

So for me, this was like a red flag that maybe we weren't going to intention. Maybe the whole game plan wasn't too intentionally target Anderson with our right winger. And again, this was something I was on so hard that I was like, I would love to see Sophia Smith out there, actually, on the right, flip them and let Sophia run at this player because Anderson's so, so weak in her 1B1 defending that she will eventually just start shading really hard to the end line and giving like, you know, like a basketball defender who's really, or like, you know, is going to take away the dribbler's right hand. Yeah, yeah. Just cheating so far over that we needed somebody who's a little bit more comfortable cutting in with either foot, which would be Alyssa Thompson or Sophia Smith in my mind. Yeah. Anyway, two mischances to isolate old Anderson out there.

Okay, I'm glad you clocked that because then it calls into question like was this, did we even scout Sweden? I mean, obviously we did, the Discord did, but did Vlako? I don't know. Who knows? Who knows? But that past that was cut out when Haran looked off Trinity and tried to kind of force it into Morgan, it did kind of get spilled over to Rodman and then Robbins.

And then plays it to Morgan. Morgan plays it back to Rodman. And Rodman kind of shoves it across. I mean, like, tries to squeeze it in to the box. And it trickles over towards Smith. She's tackled. And the weak clearance falls to Sullivan at the top of the box. Who has a try and drags her shot wide from outside of the box.

Yeah. Not a bad look. As hopeful looks go. No. Ninth minute, I noticed a really good punch from Melissa Neyer on a corner kick. And I just want to say I thought we did a good job defending. set pieces all night and Nehernear correct me if I'm wrong didn't put a foot wrong like she was pretty good okay so I don't want to speak ill of a listener because this first off I wanted

Murphy to start this game specifically because of Sweden's set pieces Sweden is so so long and Alyssa Neier is not actually that tall of a goalkeeper I think she's 5-9 Murphy's 6-1 and Murphy plays bigger than Neer so any Sweden set piece I was like if they're going to going to score, this is how they're going to score, had me nervous. And this first one, even though Neyer gets to it well, she did as well as a list of Neyre can do on this play. I'm still just like, man, she is barely keeping her head above water. So I want to make sure that I'm giving Neyer all of the credit I can. I don't think she was perfect on set pieces. Nothing that came back to punish us. But this was, this was she did. She handled this one as perfectly as she could.

And it didn't make me any less nervous, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, She, she didn't, at least she didn't, um, totally misjudge a flighted ball into the box like she did, like she did against Portugal. She always got something to it,

uh, or the player trying to, trying to shoot. All right. You take the next, you take the next one. Uh, so 15 minutes,

we get another mischance to isolate Trinity. Um, and again, this is where I'm like, come on, what are we doing here? Like, give us,

give us a couple of looks at Anderson. Uh, so this time it's Germa, and she's, uh, she's doing that thing where she gets it on the left and sort of carries it beyond the Swedish first line of pressure. Yep. And that same, Horan is in that exact same pocket.

So German manages to clip the ball over to Horan. But Horan decides to try this like looping flick to take it straight out of the air and help it on to Rodman. Oh, yeah, that one bugged me. Yeah, could have just controlled it to the outside of her body where there was no, no pressure. And again, I mean, it would technically be a 2V1 with Horan and Trinity, but you don't even need 2V1 against Anderson, just pass the ball to. Trinity and let Trinity run in a straight line towards the end line and we will beat their back line. So that was another one where I'm just like, guys, make this happen. We are wasting chances to beat their worst player.

Worst player defensively. She's decently the attack Anderson is. Yes, that's her, that's the conventional wisdom on her, right? She pushes up high and then leaves a lot of space in behind. But I mean, as we saw also, even when she is there, she's pretty easy to beat for a player like Trini Robin. Yeah, that's the beauty of this situation is you don't need to do anything. You just pass the ball uncontestedly to a player who's facing her and then let that player run at her. And we have four players who could easily run at her and beat her. And we saw two of them

do it a lot. All right. Well, in this incredibly airtight case you're making against Flacco, you have another piece of evidence. Well, 16th minute. So this is one where Trinity's got her again. We have the ball way on the left side of the field. But this is what I was hoping the pattern would be, I was hoping we would start building down our left and then switch it through to the right where we've brought Sweden over and then, you know, it's not difficult switches. But in this case, like it wasn't as on as Horan just looking right at her. We've got Germ on the left side of the field. Maybe could have hit the long, you know, driven ball herself that Hollywood pass. Otherwise, there's a path there through the midfielders, right?

If we use Sullivan and Sonet, we can get a pretty simple three-pass switch over to Trinity. But again, we're just not looking for it. And that's where I'm just like, okay, this is not something we are actually, you know, targeting. It will happen occasionally, but it's not, it's not the game plan. It's very interesting because I hadn't even thought of, like, whether it was the game plan or not. But, yeah, it seems clear that it was not now to me. What's the next one? Some success. Yeah, we found her.

And it's a nice little sequence. We're in the attacking third this time on a throw-in. and throw it on the left sideline and Sophia goes to get it in the left half space and she gets up with her back to goal and she just slides it square to Haran who's in the right half space and Haran turns negative

and just slides it out to Trinney so it's a nice little switch from left to right real efficient and Trinity's 1 v1 finally with Anderson here we go and Trinity proceeds to hit a low cross first time without testing Anderson at all and I was like dang it

so again I knew that this was not like hey find this player ISO ISO against Anderson and just worker over and over and over again. Frustrating. Because like on the evidence of what we see, what we have seen, the plan was to lump it at Alex's head, right? I mean, it's not all lumps. Like we are trying, it looks like GERMAs.

But there's, there's Germa passes in like through the lines to Sophia in the half space. But it definitely, it's not, it's definitely not like go through Trinity yet. Okay. Well, we do go through Trinity in the 18th minute, 1750 mark, but it's not anything that we planned. It was, you know, Smith leaps and blocks a pass, a Swedish pass on our left side. And it Karam's all the way across the middle of the field for Rodman. She picks it up in a bunch of space and then skips past the defender and then uncorks one from 20 yards. Hits it well, but right at the keeper.

And, you know, three yards to either side and it's a goal. but I know I just not to just harp on XG but the you know the XG value of a shot like this is not that high because it's far away from the goal but when it's a player like her who goes on to her favored right foot and you know gets like a full crack at it and even though she was she had a defender to her right and a defender to her left she still kind of had most of the goal to shoot at that seems like a really good chance and I thought it was encouraging oh yeah it was and it's a it again shows how easily we can create windows against these Swedish defenders because it falls to Trinity and she's looking at the centerback and Anderson as the help on that centerback's left shoulder and Trinity sort of gets around both of those players to the outside to have her shot so we have this we definitely have this like one v one matchup against this team which I'm excited about and I and I'm at this point still hopeful that it's going to pay off it is interesting though that the the first time it really paid off

for us was on a, you know, a totally accidental scenario. Yeah. I mean, it's not accidental for Sophia Smith to try to get in the way of that pass and make some chaos in their half, but nobody tried to pass it to Rodman. Sweden gets a chance in the 20th minute, a chance-ish. They move the ball through us from our right to the middle, and Aslani plays Blackstinius into the box. But Ertz is there.

Blackstanius tries to turn and shoot with her left foot, but it's blocked easily. I think that was their first shot of the game. Yeah, and we did well to smother it, I think. And this was a nice one that kind of showcased our defensive shape, not in the best way. But like we said, Sweden aren't a team that normally try to play a lot through the middle, but they did kind of use their deep center midfielder here. And it's because in our 4-4-2 sort of defensive posture, the weak side forward, at least when it was Haran,

would like drop in and cheat way over towards the ball side to help discourage that any play through the middle. And again, Sweden don't need much discouraging because they're like, yeah, we don't really want to anyway. But in this case, Morgan didn't do that. The ball was on Heran's side, so we're Haran's high. And Morgan didn't drop it all and cheat, which just left their defensive midfielder totally free.

And it was like Sweden had no choice but to use her. I don't know if that was the plan, if it was just supposed to be more Haran doing the work. But Morgan did eventually, like, very late in the sequence, recognize what was about to happen. and you see that like jolt of body language where she's like, oh dear, they're going to find this. I got to get back here and try to help.

But she was just way too late for it. I mean, on this play, it was a really nice sequence from Sweden. Once they got that, it was a really nice, like three passes to get a player in the box. Then we did well to recover and smothered. The pass was a little behind Black Stanias, right? Yep. All right, what's the next thing, Greg?

Okay, so 21st minute, Sweden get another corner. And again, terrifying. Any Sweden set piece for me, terrifying. knockout soccer. And Neyer handles this one fantastically, right?

It's basically what would have been an Olympico. We saw Canada give this up with a very good goalkeeper of their own because she misplayed it. And Neyer

gets her footwork, gets everything right, goes up and like pushes it away and I think gets, even while she's taking a bump, still pushes it far away from goal,

gets the foul call. But this is a really, really excellent play from Neer. Okay. Good. Um, 24th minute Rodman gets fouled, uh, has her arm landed on, which is a little bit scary, but she was down for a bit, but she was okay. 26 minute triangle, an okay one to get out of trouble from Horan, Morgan, and Dunn.

Then Emily Son it dribbles out of bounds. Yeah, this is Rambus even. And it's, and it's not like that first one we identified way back in our defensive third. Like, this is attacking third stuff. We're up the field doing this. but then of course as the sequence continues we neither maintain our numbers around the ball nor switch away from the mass of Swedish bodies

we've attracted with this Rondo like Sonna is the Rondo merchant and ends up with her but Morgan is not a Rondo merchant so after she makes her play she ends up wide through this again good Rondo she ends up on the sideline is our wide option and after she makes her like

pass backwards to Dun she half half speed kind of slashes into the middle which is fine but then nobody replaces her in that sort of Rondo rotation that you need. So like Dunn goes back to Sonnet and Sonnet's actually even gesturing for someone to like fill the wide space.

Nobody does and we promptly lose it. It's not our game. No. Let me ask right. Let's cover this right now instead of at the end of the show. It's never been our game, right? I don't think I would say never.

I think there are personnel groups we have that would do it. and I think you could get almost any personnel group to do it much, much better than we do. But it would take real like intentionality from a coaching staff. And I don't think we've ever had that intentionality from this coaching staff.

Did we have it? Tobin Heath wants to Rondo. Like Lindsay Horan would do a Rondo. You know, like the players we had the past cycle, last cycle, you could definitely get those players in a group and have them keep the ball. Rapino, when she had that a little more burst, could easily do a little,

pass and move. But it hasn't been a characteristic of the women's national team for a while, right? Yes, I mean, even before Vlako. I think that's totally fair. And I'm curious to see if the new generation, if we can get, I mean, again, going back to the old one,

Kristen Press would jump into a group of players passing and be right at home. I don't know if we'll see that with Trinity Rodman and Sophia Smith and the younger attackers we have coming up. I think they can. I mean, you just got to,

you got to, like, make, say that that's what they need to do. Right. Well, I guess that, so the,

this, the big question is, like, is the rest of the world catching up to us? And do we, do we have a, this isn't anything,

any, like, way of picking on the players, but, like, do we have, let's take Spain, for example, they didn't care about women's soccer.

For, you know, until way after the U.S. already cared about women's soccer. Now they do. And they have this incredible culture of soccer to tap into. And so it's taking some time. But now they're going to be producing national teams that can rondo, like in perpetuity.

It's going to happen from now on because that's how they play soccer in Spain. And it's not necessarily how we play soccer in America. Or it's not how we have played soccer in America. and so we don't have that culture to tap into. Like, is, I'm not saying there's like some MLS conspiracy that's keeping the women from, from rondowing. But I do wonder if there's like a, if there's a concern there, you know, how do you think about that? I mean, I think it's a very open question. Like, I don't know if you can sort of get that into a group of players if it's not ingrained.

early on. And so it'd be a matter of like finding the players who do, if that's the style you want, you got to find the ones who do have it, which might mean like, well, we're going to not bring in a better player who plays a different style. Or if it just means, again,

leaning into, leaning more towards essentially the murder ball style, right? Of being like, no, we are going to hunt and we are going to transition teams to death. And no one would be able to stop us from doing that, no matter how good their Rondo sensibilities are. And I don't have the answer. I mean, I'm not even going to pretend to.

Right. It also doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. You can find, you can find ways to, like, connect some passes when it's needed and to transition like crazy when that's needed. Yeah. I think, I think, yeah, it doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. There's a good way to say it because I think some people hear, oh, the rest of the world is catching up and it, and it, like, makes them mad to hear that, or they don't, they don't, they're like, no. were that we're still the best. But I think when it comes to this like specific sort of understanding within a team of how to move and how to pass and like how to possess the ball and then how to how to find interesting passes in the final third, I sort of put all that into sort of the same category is that's something we don't do.

And it's and I think people are saying, well, you can't just blame Vlako for that. That's just who we are. And I don't know. So what I'd say there is, and now I feel bad because I forget who posted the stat. It was one of the normal American soccer stat posters, not the full nerd, like the mainstream ones. And they posted the stat of like our passes per possession, right? Or our number of passes that were X number of passes long, our number of sequences. And in this World Cup, it was abysmal, just abysmal.

And you could compare it. Like they had the numbers from previous World Cups for the, US. In 2019, it was like night and day. In 2015, even 2015, where we were not great through, certainly through the first four games of the tournament, it was still night and day. Like, we were able to keep the ball much better in those tournaments than we did in this one. So for me, it's like a lot of that drop off is manager influence, because it's not like those players in 2015 and 2019 that we had came up playing tons of neat, tidy possession soccer. Like they, it would have been very much the opposite for a 2015 team.

So there's definitely something there, but I'm still basically saying, Vlako out. Yeah, yeah. Well, we can agree on that. Okay, 26 minute, we get another Rodman chance. She picks up another loose ball, so another kind of accidental isolation of her out wide.

Just a terrible pass from Engledaul that goes straight over to Rodman, and she goes at Anderson and has another, this time goes, you know, wide of her. Well, she went wide over the first time too, but it goes wide of her and there's nobody on her right. And another ripped shot right at the keeper.

Very well done from Rodman. Just a bit on the sad side of variance, I think. Yeah, but we're finally getting what we needed, and it's Sweden doing the job for us. So Angledoll showing like Horan what we need to do when the ball gets to us and we have an ability to play it to Trinity Rodman. Because there are no fancy moves or anything here. She dribbled right at Anderson,

then dribbled right at her. but slightly faster, boom, huge shooting window. Like that was the only thing necessary here. So, you know, if we hadn't figured it out yet, I think maybe this was a turning point of being like, hey, let Trinity Rodman run at this player. Was it? No, 26 minute we missed two more chances.

And they're both from Emily Fox, two more chances to get the ball to Trinity de Rodman. And they're both coming off like nice sequences where, again, we start building on the left, switch really efficiently to the right, wish that had just been the blueprint. The first one comes on a switch through Sonnet, which I love. I love it, a switch through a midfielder.

So Sonic gets to just, you know, receives it from the left side, helps it over to the right. And Fox, like, looks Trinity off, has an easy 100% completion pass to Trinity Rodman, 1 v.1 against Anderson, you know, just 20 yards past midfield. But we ignore it, and she sort of just carries it upfield, waiting for something better, ends up riding a challenge, having to turn back,

and go back all the way back to Earths. And then the second one, pretty similar, but the switch this time is from Germa. And in this case, like, we've brought Swin' over to the left, we get it over to Fox, and Fox doesn't play Trinity again with an easy pass, instead hits it into Horan and like the half space under pressure, and nothing really comes of it there.

So I'm getting frustrated. Yeah, I'm getting frustrated just listening to you. We really didn't, we really didn't exploit this. intentionally, hardly at all, did we? Just not as much as I wish we would have. And again, like, you know, it's an accumulation game in soccer. You accumulate a bunch of low percentage chances and you try to make those low percentage chances

even slightly higher anytime you can. And again, we were presented with what I would consider a very good match-up percentage here. And I just wanted us to hammer it as often as possible. It seemed like we did do, we did hammer it a little more with Williams when she came on late. Did that, does that sound right to you?

I think so, and I don't know if it was just a coincidence or if it was like, you know, when you have the opportunity to talk to your sub coming into the game, might have been a little bit more intentional. Okay. We get another Rodman shot in the 28th minute.

This one with her left foot, she combines with Horan, nice little give and go, and then skies it. But it all starts with some pretty crisp switches of play. and then Robin going at the defense with Hiran's help. Yeah, enjoyed the combination here. Lindsay Huran, again, loves to be a combination player.

If you can actually get her up ahead of the ball in these situations, you know, have her hanging out at the top of the box. It's always just a matter of can she get from her deep-lying playmaker spot up to the box in time. And if you just start her out as a 10, that can help you do it. Yeah, yeah. Okay, up and down the field soccer in the 29th minute. Morgan picks up a loose ball and leads.

Smith into the corner. Smith gets stood up, but she persists, pokes it across for Heron, who is in the box right in front of the goal. She just can't get her feet set for a shot. And then Sweden, so gets poked away. And then Sweden goes back at us. Dun & Sullivan kind of collide trying to shut things down. And the ball is progressed forward and then skipped into the box where I think it's Blackstanias has a swing. But it's just cleaned right off her feet. And it didn't feel really that dangerous once it was in the box. It was a good tackle from Julie Ertz too. Yeah, this was a great sequence for Ertz because the whole thing starts with an Ertz power thigh.

It might have been the only one of the tournament, but she power thighs at a solid 15 yards up field, and that's how, that's how we, that's how Morgan picks it up to start things. Nice ball from Morgan. We get Sophia Smith in a little bit of space, and I feel like this kind of showcase the good and the bad that we kind of saw from her in this tournament. she's got her player 1 v1 this is what we need this is when we need her to do something and she kind of her touch lets her down but then the other thing she brings is that wrecking ball quality where even though her touch has let her down she manages to outwork two Swedish defenders around her to keep

to play alive and then honestly like I felt good when this ball goes to heran heran is exactly who you want to have the ball in that situation where she's not quite faced up to shoot but she can hold the ball usually for a long time so I was like oh she'll just like hold it at her feet four yards from goal everyone will panic and then she'll like slip it back to a shooter who's spotted up for a shot from 18 yards and it just didn't quite happen that way no like you think maybe she would backheel it in or something like that she can do she can do any of those things that's what she's capable of right like because you can't get around her to take it but i think she she was actually trying too focused on or very focused on trying to actually create the shot for herself yeah

which understandable your four yards from goal Yeah, and then so 34th minute, Rodman wins a corner doing Anderson again. Anderson gets a foot on it, puts it out of bounds, and then on the ensuing corner kick, Andy Sullivan provides some good service, and Lindsay Horan just pounds the crossbar with her header. A pretty big chance, but you can't solve it. Right, and this is, you know, just more revenue from that Anderson revenue stream. I wish Trinity would have actually pressed the advantage here even more when she started to round her. She hit the cross, like sort of right as she got past her when maybe you could get her to lean on you, get into the box, see if she does something reckless swiping at you.

But, you know, just keep doing it. Volume. Yep. Just volume at Anderson. At this point in the game, XG is equal, but that doesn't feel right. We've been way more dangerous. Yeah, we've had some real looks. we've been in the box a lot.

Sweden basically just have the two block shots and that Olimpico for them. Our chances haven't been like clear-cut gimmies. We've had a couple of clear-cut shots, but they've been distance or from angles that set up keepers nicely. But yeah, I don't think there's any question that we are the more threatening side here

and have been. 37-minute mark a good sequence. It's Smith in a pocket, receives it from Germa as Dunn pushes high and wide. Smith turns and goes. and then plays it out to Rodman. Sweden's defense is retreating. They're on the run.

Robin tries to first time slip it across. The pass is off. I'm not sure who she was going for. I think she had Horan and Morgan at different stages of the trajectory of the ball. It kind of went between them and gets cut out, but a nice sequence of soccer there, I thought. Yeah, and I'm going to be the broken record and say, I feel like we let Anderson off the hook a little bit more again,

hitting it first time instead of just collecting it and creating the shot yourself I get the decision if that ball gets through where she's wanting it to I'm sure she's seeing a tap in for one of those runners

but again I feel like as a team we may be underestimated just how weak Anderson was yeah hopefully none of John Anderson's family is listening to this podcast is you have been ruthless with her she's got like two assists in the tournament

she's having a marvelous tournament she's playing in the quarter final I just this is what like for me this is what you need to do You pick the one spot you have that edge and you just, when it's there, you just, and it's, again, it's there and it's really easy to build to. Like, it doesn't take any extra special building to get the ball to a winger looking at the fullback.

And if that fullback can't handle a winger or several different wingers, you just got to burn them over and over. Well, like, as my favorite football coach and yours, I'm sure Hayden Fry would say, you got to scratch where it is, you know? halftime comes no changes 52 minute Smith turns and does a couple

Swedish players plays it to Haran in the center circle Haram plays it out to Rodman who for the first time can't beat Anderson this time she gets it poked away it's a loose touch from Rodman kind of has her stood up and then

takes like a fake touch but actually actually touches it on accident but even then even with that loose sloppy touch from Rodman all Anderson can do is like desperately lunge and poke it out for a corner. Oh, was it a corner? Yeah, so if that's a bad outcome, like, you know, you got to take that. Oh, I'm not arguing with you, Greg.

Definitely not. 53rd minute sustained pressure from the U.S. Fox tracks it down on the right side after, you know, cross loops over, and then just whips one, you know, takes it kind of to the end line and whips one across that skips through the box, and Horan comes from the other side and meets it first time. so clean. This is just a lovely strike and it's a good save down to Musovic's left. It was that one, that was the one where I, you know, made a lot of noise in my living room at five, you know, roughly six o'clock a.m.

Unreal, unreal strike from Peran. And I feel like that's the, that's the shot we're going to think back on anytime we think about this game and crashing out besides the penalties, of course. it'll be that shot and that save because it's an unreal strike and the save is just stupid good and you know what can you do with tip your hat? Was the keeper also unsighted?

It felt like she was maybe when Heran struck it but I don't know for sure. I mean if she was it makes it even more impressive but just to get that hand to that spot and get enough of it enough purchase on it to just I mean it barely clears that post

but yeah amazing save. Oh, it hurts to think about. It still felt, though, like it's coming. Like, okay, you got that save, but it's coming. Yes, it did. On the ensuing corner, it fell, the ball kind of falls to Smith on the back post. And, you know, she has time to sort of wind up and she just shanks it, hits it back across the box over in the direction of Emily Fox.

Yeah, these little, sometimes those, like, set piece scramble chances materialized so quickly since you don't see them coming and then they evaporate so quickly when she like scuffs it or shanks it that it barely even registers as a chance and then when you see it again you're like oh man she is 10 yards from the goal with nobody around her and she can

choose how she wants to hit this ball with what surface of the foot it's a bigger chance than I remembered for sure and she didn't really have anybody rushing on to her like rushing at her either no no yeah that's what I mean she could size it up And she just like used, I think she used the inside of her foot, like she's doing it, just going to pass it in. I don't know.

She just hits it like almost back out towards the corner. Come on, Sof. 56 minute mark, a good layoff from Morgan on a throw in from Fox on our right side. And Horan rushes onto it, takes a touch, and then, you know, tries a half folly from just inside the box, slices it pretty badly. Great little flick on from Morgan. She's had a lot of those this tournament. This is another really good one.

And again, it's, these, does any, any of these chances are tough bouncing ball? But it's this is like a decent look for her hand. It's a good window. She gets to, you know, she knows she's going to get this shot off without getting blocked or tackled. So when you have that sort of peace of mind, like all you have to do is worry about your technique. And we just, just going to miss it. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder how many, like if she got that exact sequence 10 times, how many times would she put it on frame?

Probably eight. I don't have the number. You're the math. I want to run a lab for sure. All right, 57th minute, good soccer from us in the midfield, from Morgan, Rodman, and Horan. After like sort of a scramble after a Swedish goal kick, Rand does a lovely little half turn on a pass from Rodman

that just eliminates a player. She was, so I will say, Haran had, you know, she had some cinematic moments that were poor, like where she would like stumble over the ball or, you know, She just, her general lack of mobility being illustrated. But I thought overall she played really well. Well, that looping flick thing she tried early in the first half. That was pretty bad too.

But her work on the half turn, you know, the way she can receive the ball and eliminate a player in the same motion. And she did that several times. This was one of those cases. And then she tries to play Smith in behind down the pass, down the left, and the pass is overcooked. So there you go. That's my little Lindsay Haram bit.

I know somebody on the Discord wanted me to defend her. And I'm not doing it just because they asked. I do think she was good. Well, plus, I mean, two great chances. Yeah. But she made a lot out of one off the post and then that one we just talked about. Yeah, the header was also like, you know, she was marked and she was kind of, she wasn't like, sometimes with a header, it's kind of getting teased across in front of you

and you're just running full speed at it and you can just hammer it. She was like basically jumping straight up or maybe a little bit backward. She still generated that much power on the header. What's the next thing? 59 minute. Just another Anderson example. Ball kind of ends up out at Trinity Rodman's feet out on the sideline with Anderson coming up tight to her. And like, not only does she rinse Anderson to the inside, but then she proceeds to rinse Erickson, the centerback,

to have the ball in like the corner of the box where she tries to feed Alex Morgan, running into the near post, and it just doesn't quite come off. But yeah, it's just Sweden are eminently rinsible, I guess is what I would say, is the lesson here. Yeah, because that was actually a pretty decent chance, because if Morgan gets a little touch to it, she can, like, you know, who knows where it goes. And if the Swedish defender, I think a Swedish defender cut it out before it got to the goal line, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is the run.

Oh, go ahead. Well, just if it sneaks through, I think it was on frame. So either a moving touch or it sneaks through, it's a decent chance it's somehow bundles across. What were you going to say? Oh, I was just going to say this Morgan run, I mean, it's like the Morgan run, right, running from the center to the near post. And I love the run. But so many times in this tournament, she ends up sort of wide of the goal, you know, where she's going to have, even if she gets this ball with her right foot, she's going to have an almost impossible time getting it on frame.

and the thing you notice is we don't have anyone else in the box for her to like lay off to or anything like that so it's all or nothing Trinity and Alex here and so it's a tough one to actually make anything out of but the very fun thing to watch is is Trinity just cruise through two defenders yeah I think Fox does the same the same thing over basically the same route

a few minutes like a few seconds later yeah yeah we were getting so much joy obviously down that right side I thought for sure it was coming. Sweden weren't really making the adjustment to help Anderson out. What do you do? I don't know. You bring on Megan Rapino.

She was high stepping on the sideline at that point in the broadcast. So that's it. But I also think there was nothing in the game for Sweden from the blocked shot in the 30th minute until the 80s. Just no chances at all. Nothing. 61st minute, Erds gets away with a potential yellow card foul after Rodman plays a dangerous pass back to her. Blackstanius nearly picked, well, does pick it off, actually,

and then just gets upended by Ertz just outside the box. But the ref, who was reluctant to pull cards out of her pocket on the night, did not card her. 62nd minute, Rodman flicks a floated Germa ball. So Germa's all the way over on the left sideline, and she floats one in the box. Robin gets a little touch to it, flicks it along for Sophia on the back post. She's all alone in the box and just takes a heavy touch before stumbling into the keeper.

Not her night, I don't think. Yeah, not her knight, kind of not her tournament in front of goal. Like there just wasn't that key execution from her right in front of goal. She had a bunch of positive moments farther away from goal, which I'm not going to allow that to impact my take that she should have been striker but a lot of the a lot of the positive she was doing were actually like you know dancing past people and then creating open space to run into right not that we turned any of those into real chances either uh but yeah just the that that last touch in front of in front of the goal just was not there for her all tournament no and and uh fortunately i think

i mean i guess fortunately robin i think was offside on that flick so would have been called back even if she had if even if smith had put it away. 65th minute, got to note some great 1V1 defending from Germa. She just picks an attacker's pocket on the end line.

Just so delicate, like a surgeon, and then clears it up field. She was fantastic, all tournament, but probably a big part of the reason we only gave up two shots on target.

Yeah, I mean, like you said, Sweden's chances have been non-existent. They haven't even been chance adjacent. Like they have had nothing in the box, nothing really even in our

final third. It's been, field tilt has been dramatic. Yeah. When Williams comes on for Rodman in the 66th minute, and boy, did she make an impact. We'll get to that in a second. 68th minute, good grab from Neyer on a set piece from wide left. I'm sure you're waiting to tell me why it wasn't a good grab, but I thought it was a good grab. Yeah, no, this one, this is another perfect execution from Melissa Neer.

it's still really again the margins for her are so thin because she goes up and catches it sort of right behind the heads of a Swedish player and a U.S. player so she's still her interception point is just going to be lower than Casey Murphy's would

but she judges it perfectly gets to it and catches it no I was actually really fussy on this with Alex Morgan for giving the foul way to begin with because like we said Sweden have done nothing all game but the one thing they are excellent at is hitting a ball at their tall players

so this was like a really cheap foul for Alex Morgan to give away in the defensive third and just needless so it's like don't have it happen like this you guys make them earn it yeah they keep dumping balls into the box too right after like soon after this right

yeah there's Sophia Smith actually picks up another kind of cheap foul but this one doesn't seem that bad because it's like in the center circle but even from this, Sweden send all their players up and they're like, well, we know what we do. So they dumped a ball in, we kind of cleared it and they dumped it in again from the center circle. And it is, it's nervous.

We handled it well, but just an example of like, Sweden are going to play to their strengths. Yeah. So right at the 71 minute mark, we have some good buildup from Sonnet to Horan to Williams out wide who roasts Jonna Anderson again and then whips a ball across the six. The ball just sails about head high right across the six.

And there's nobody in the box. There's some people in the box. This is the time when Williams just pushes it past Anderson and just goes on a track meet race with her, which she is, you know, was sure to win. Yeah, there's nothing fancy about it. It's a really good buildup. Again, we get it on the left side of Crystal Dunn. Alex Morgan is actually still switched with Sophia Smith from those Sweden set pieces

we were talking about, where she'd gone back to, you know, be the tall head. So she's a little bit deeper than she normally would be. And in fact, that helps her in the, she's part of the buildup. So she gets it from done, lays it off to Sonnet. Sonnet could have retreated here, like the easy, safe pass would have been to just go back to Julie Ertz and sort of start over. But this is another really good play from Sonnet where she looks that one off because she has a little bit of time.

Instead, hits a really good diagonal ball on the floor to Haran in that pocket that Heron had been in a lot in the first half. And this time, Horan very quickly just feeds it out to Lynn Williams. So Lynn collects it, you know, at the sideline, 45 yards from goal,

facing up with Sweden's worst defender. And again, it actually looks like it takes her a second to remember the scouting report. She's like, okay, I got it. What are we going to do?

And she's like, oh, that's right. I will just kick the ball past her and run at the goal. So that's what she does. And it's easy as you like. She gets a plenty of giant window and then hits it across.

Um, the runner's situation is not ideal. So because Alex Morgan was in the buildup and because she's, you know, Alex Morgan, she does not catch up with the play here. Uh, and she should. Like, I don't think it's a pure physical limitation because when Haran feeds it out to Lynn Williams, Horan and Alex Morgan are on the same line.

Sophia Smith is clear out on the other weeks out of the field. And Smith is the runner who gets into the box and ends up roughly at the six. Uh, Haran gets into the box, but Alex Morgan is still not in the picture when this ball gets hit across. So that means Alex Morgan is outrun by Lindsay Horan on this play, which shouldn't happen

when we have a clear jailbreak situation. Jail break's a stretch, but because of the context of who Lynn Williams was facing, it's obvious that we have to start, you know, committing to getting in the box because Williams is going to beat this player. We need to mob the box in this situation. And I wondered if Morgan was gassed at this point.

point, you know? Because what's the explanation? You're right. She was level with Haran at midfield when Haran played it out to Williams. She just didn't make it into the box. Yeah, I mean, that's what it is. It's a choice because Horan hits that ball to Williams and then she adds a little burst to catch up to the play again. And you can see Morgan trailing until she falls out of the picture. And she never never demonstrates any burst. Even as Lynn burst forward. I mean, Lynn hits that big touch and it's like, oh, we are in now. We need numbers in. Sophia cuts the cross and makes the near post run that has to be made. And yeah, there's just nobody who's joining late. Well, okay.

There are probably players we have who would have the juice for that kind of a run, say, and Alyssa Thompson. But we had who he had. She might play a part, a significant part in the Olympics next summer. might. 72 minute mark. Williams plays it to Smith at the end line. She cuts it back. And, you know, so that's Smith who kind of cuts it back.

And again, there's really nobody there. I could be imagining this, but it seems like Morgan was slow to join again when we're cruising up the right with Williams. Oh, she definitely is again. So Smith starts out centrally, like, again, like almost like her and Morgan have flipped roles. And it's Smith and Lynn Williams exposing Anders. again. This time, Lynn Williams chooses to put Smith into the Man City Zone, and so you see Smith arriving, but Morgan never bursts from that left side. She sort of just soccer jogs

and that left wing into the box. And so when she finally does make her burst as Sophia's collecting the ball, she's just nowhere near the position that she needs to be to get to the cutback ahead of the Sweden centerback. So you can see like she starts, she starts her movement too late, and she ends up about four feet from being where she needs to be. And yeah, it seems like maybe the legs are getting a little heavy. And time's starting to, you know, the clock is ticking at this point. 75 minute mark, another ball over the top to Williams. She beats Anderson to it.

And then it kind of pops out to Morgan after Williams tries to cut back on Anderson, Anderson pokes it away. Morgan plays a smart little pass over to Sonnet at the top of the box, just a square pass, waist high. Sonnet settles it and has one from 20 yards and blasts it over. It's another good look. Again, another like what you'd consider uncontested, right? So it's always nice when you know that as this ball is coming to you,

you will not get tackled and it's not going to get blocked. You get to step in however you want to step in and hit it. And so, yeah, just rises up on her. Yeah. Sweden makes some subs in the 82nd minute. Jacobsen comes on for ridding Canterid and her tip. comes on for Aslani, who was on a yellow card for a tackle on Julie Ertz. Still no subs from us except for the Williams one, of course, which did, you know,

the whole, like, Lynn Williams is the world's best 15 to 30 minutes. So kind of like looked accurate in this moment. I mean, not the implication that she shouldn't be starting, which I don't have a comment on. But the 84th minute, we get a good ball in behind from Horan for Morgan. Morgan runs on to it. and right-footed waxed at the side netting. She was off-side anyway. Yeah, her first touch a little heavy.

I think she had to take two touches to get her shot set up and then just can't quite catch up to it to get it back on frame. And like you said, it wouldn't count anyway. Sweden, I don't know that, I mean, it sort of seemed to me like Smith's legs were a little heavy too, maybe not at this point in the game, but later, because there's a lot more game left to go. So 85th minute, Sweden gets a chance up the right.

A goal kick is settled by Blackstinius, and she plays it out to the new sub, Yacobson, who takes on Crystal Dunn 1 v1, and cuts in on her left foot and hits it directly at Neher with her left foot. Easily Sweden's best chance of the game so far, and their first shot on target, and the second shot on target conceded by the U.S. in the tournament. And the shot itself here has shades of the Netherlands goal,

just for, you know, the location of it and the fact that it's between two bodies. Our midfield rotation wasn't great, but eventually Sonic gets there to close down from the inside and you have done kind of closing it down from the outside. So it's a really narrow window for Yagabtsin to hit, and she basically hits it straight at a listener. Kind of a little bit of shades of the first Rodman shot, too. Yep, yep, similar. Um, 80 ninth minute, a big chance for the U.S.

Williams crosses, so there's a Fox attempts across from deep and it gets kind of popped up in the air and Williams wins it admirably right in front of Anderson. Kind of uses, uses her settling touch to cut past her down to the end line. and then she plays a cross into the six. Finds Morgan's head. This was the one. This was the one. Finds Morgan's head and Morgan heads it on frame from point blank. I think does quite well to put the shot on frame.

And Musovic saves it down to our right. It's just not far enough away from the keeper and not hit hard enough. Yeah. And it's a tough one to put any juice on because, you know, Morgan to do this is like it's a little bit over her head, right? So she's pushing off of the defender. She gets a nice push off, which may have been called back in review. But then she has to jump sort of away from the goal.

She's kind of jumping backwards. So it's going to be tough to get any juice on the header. She does direct it well. The what if scenario is that Lindsay Horan is right behind her with actually like a great runway to run onto it. So she's got all her momentum coming at the ball. And you just wonder if she gets to it instead. whether she'd end up with like a bullet header instead of Morgan's sort of weaker header.

And then we get another similar chance 30 seconds later. Williams again on that right side clips it again to Morgan, who's 1v1 in the box again, and she gets to it. She goes up a little bit higher, gets to it, but even less power on this one. It just kind of loops. It loops it up for the keeper to claim. And that's the final whistle, and the terrifying prospect of penalties are looming. 94th minute Sweden gets across onto Herdeg's head,

but Neyer snuffs it out. She just kind of clatters into Herdig. And it does count as a shot, I think, for Sweden, which is where they get, I believe, all of their expected goals for extra time because it hit Herdick's head. Yes. So this is where, again, not going to slander Neher here because she did great with most of her actions. And of course, we'll get to her shootout near Heroics.

but this isn't her best moment. She had another one that I didn't get the time for, so I haven't seen the full replay, but where Sweden hit a ball in, and she goes up and clatters Alex Morgan, who actually wins the ball, so Neyer came out, doesn't get to it, gets beat to it,

and then hits her own player. So that was a little dicey. And then this one's pretty dicey too, right? So Neier goes up, but she does not get there. She's well beaten to the ball and ends up, like, cracking her dig in the back of the head with a fist.

And I'm really, like you said, it got clocked as, as a shot attempt, but I'm really curious how it's scored. Herdick heads it away from goal. And I believe the other Sweden player who was kind of challenging ends up being called offside, and that's what we get. Oh, well, maybe it wasn't where the XG came from. I couldn't find anything else that it came from, but...

I didn't either. So it could be this. And the thing is, like, I was worried that we could get a penalty review. I know goalkeepers get away with a lot. But this is where, like, the video review can, like, undo the tradition of what referees call because traditionally it's like ah, it's the keeper.

They're allowed to go in and swing as hard as they want and whatever happens, happens. But the video can be like, hey, we have to kind of call this because she punched the, she punched the Swedish player in the head. And generally that's a foul.

So I was nervous. And then I think the other player was offside and it would have negated the punch. Okay. 96 minute Sullivan does well to win it in midfield and plays it over the top for Morgan. Morgan corrals. It doesn't look heavy-legged in this moment.

It carous it, kind of holds off two defenders, and then hits it hard and clean, just like, from a tight angle. This would have been really difficult to make it, but a really good hit. It's just right at Moosevic. And not right at her, but close to right at her. It's a good shot and a decent save. Yeah, and what a moment this would have been for Alex Morgan, like, because, yeah, it's fantastic from her. It's a good look from Sullivan. She had Morgan and Smith kind of making this run around the left side of the defensive line.

And Morgan just says, no, this is mine and holds off the contact. And one of the feder initiates contact, probably. Morgan's almost like stiff arms are out of the way. And then still controls it and still has the balance and the technique to smash a pretty solid shot on frame. So, man, if this one goes in, what an Alex Morgan moment for all of us haters? Yeah. 98th minute Hannah Benison comes on for Engledall and then 99th minute Rapino comes on for Morgan. Smith moves to striker.

I'm not going to go in on Rapino here, but one of her first actions was a ball over the top with her running on, like running onto it and she just takes a poor touch. It wasn't like it was a really difficult touch. She just took a poor touch. it went out of bounds. And I thought, man, what are we doing here? And then Ali Wagner, to her credit, starts talking about managers relying on players' history

instead of their actual form. I mean, she said, that said, Megan Rapino can, you know, open up a game with a single pass, which is true. So, I don't know. Morgan also, I mean, go ahead. I was just going to say, as we've talked about, don't love that Rapino was Flatco's go-to sub

when he did sub for this tournament. Did not expect that. And again, that actually did kind of change my rating of what the U.S. would be capable of when you go to her instead of going to what I consider would be like an incredible wild card in an Alyssa Thompson. You know, I'm not saying Elizabeth Thompson comes in and guarantees you goals or even chances.

Right. But she guarantees you some pace. And it came like this where we were pacing our way around Sweden pretty reliably. I didn't love that we went with Rapino. And you get nothing against the wall from Rapino. I mean, she's just jogging around. It's not like, oh, well, we can't put in the inexperienced player because what does she cost us on defense? Like, Rapino's not defending.

You know, somebody else, somebody mentioned in the Discord, I'm just going to relate this, not make a judgment about it. But if we're talking about actual form, which was the term that Ali Wagner used, Alex Morgan hadn't scored since, I think, I believe it was May 21st. 20, May 20th, and Sophia Smith has scored eight goals since then. Yeah, I don't know what to make of it because I haven't looked at what her minutes were. A lot of the players sort of left camp or left their club team for camp for this USO. I don't know how many games that actually is or how many minutes. But I'll just reiterate, despite my, you know, my agenda that it should be Sophia Smith at the dine. Morgan was solid in this tournament.

Like she was not necessarily like elite. she wasn't creating chances for herself consistently I'll say but she was getting on the ends of things she did have some looks for herself she definitely was setting up other players a bit of bad finishing luck from her a bit of bad finishing look from players that she set up it's tough I feel like it's it's a

it still feels criminal that the player who is again dominating the NWSL as a striker wasn't our wasn't we didn't build around her as our striker not just for this tournament but in a month leading up to it that that feels like gross negligence and it feels even more so as our offense

kind of sputtered again I know that the underlying numbers were good but I just I continue to think that the evidence needed to be overwhelming that Sophia Smith was the wrong player to start to not start her at striker yeah and I'll just add that I agree with all that. But I also think Morgan's been pretty good, like you said. And she's just a warrior, you know?

I mean, she is she's battling out there all the time. And again, got to add once more. Sophia Smith wasn't great in those key moments with the ball in front of goal. I mean, you never know if you just add volume and if she creates more volume with that wrecking ball ability she has. but in the moments that she did have, outside of Vietnam, wasn't the best. But we'll get to when she actually did have a really good chance. Yeah, a lovely sequence.

Well, I mean, she was, you know, she had the big chance to win the game in penalties, obviously. But in the 100, well, what is it? Yeah, the 101st minute, we get a lovely sequence. It's Sonnet and Smith win it in midfield. Smith drives, plays it over to William. And then Williams comes in and hits a nice low shot on goal, far post. And it's, again, this Mousovich person, palms it wide, a pretty good save, I think,

just past Rapino, who is arriving at the back post. So it kind of gets past her. And then it falls to Horan, who turns and tries to clip it with her left foot. And it's headed off, not off the line, but headed away from the frame of goal by a defender. These are big chances, both of them really. Oh, huge chances. And this is where, again, for my agenda, since we were just talking about, Smith absolutely offers more in defense than Alex Morgan.

And so if it were Smith and Lynn Williams and Trinity Rodman, you get a lot more out of that front three defensively. And we talked at the beginning of this about how, you know, those transition moments that we were so good at creating in the buildup to the World Cup were not nearly as frequent in the World Cup. And this is one of those, right? Sophia Smith drops all the way back from Stryker to go and poke the ball away

and then as soon as she pokes it away from a Swedish midfielder she bursts upfield like races upfield to collect the next pass to then drive at them to free up Lynn Williams on the wing and you don't have necessarily that kind of action from Alex Morgan. So if you want that sort of 100 miles an hour soccer then Sophia's the nine

can kind of give you that. And again, tradeoffs are what they might be. You don't necessarily know how the defensive shape would have held up if we were playing 100 mile an hour soccer. But it definitely makes you wonder. Yeah. I've got another, I've sensed that I'm about to be corrected here, but I've got another good punch on a set piece from Neer in the 104th minute. So again, this is one where I'm like, ooh, a little shaky here. But since she's been having a good game, I think everyone's just riding that wave.

Because she kind of comes out over traffic and doesn't quite get there to get unlawful. under it. And so by the time she gets to the ball, she's lunging and like slaps it downward as she's falling down. So now you have a situation where the ball is just on the floor in the box with the goalkeeper on the ground, nine yards out of frame. And generally that would be considered a walkabout, unfortunately for our listener rating. But no harm done because we get to it first and are able to clear it out before anyone can take advantage. But yeah, this one I'm like, I think, you know, they were talking about how she's done. did well here, but I'm like, I don't know that we would grade that out as doing well, but

we're okay. She's, she's, she's, yeah, just barely treading water still, but she's treading. Okay. All right, 107th minute. So after the break, an extra time, we get a good ball whipped in from Williams to Smith. A very good first touch. She, uh, she uses it to get around the defender that's right on her shoulder and she's, uh, she takes a shot from a tight angle.

It's another save from Moussavich, though I don't think it was on frame. Anyway, I look like it was going wide of the post to me. It would have been close. She tries to roof it. Good decision from her to try to roof it from that angle. Great first touch to cushion it and allow her to accelerate to her first touch faster than the defender could. So it actually gives her enough room to run onto it. So that's exactly the kind of moment that I wish we had seen more of from Sophia Smith.

both by her positioning and by her own execution. I wish we had seen more of those things. We get one more scramble, some scramble chances where there's a scuffed Smith shot from the top of the box, and then it kind of falls to William, and she turns and tries to hit it with her left foot and scuffs it right at Musovich. And that was it for chances in the game.

And it went to penalties. Oh, we did sub on Kelly O'Hara for Emily, Fox and Christy Mewis for Emily Sonnet, probably with penalties in mind, right at the end of the game. Yeah, I assume so. And I don't know, again, because O'Hara in particular wasn't one of our first five takers. And so I'm a little bit wondering if, like, O'Hara's job was to be the, like, the leader in the group of players at midfield. Because, you know, so much is now built into the psychology of it. And we'll get to it later.

but like lots of those things are very intentionally done now. Yeah. I don't know. That was my, that was sort of my theory. I don't mind it if that's the theory. I mean, it seems like O'Hara's a good leader in the group.

Auntie Kelly out there to help the girls stay calm, stay positive. Right. The penalties start. And, you know, the first one to go was Andy Sullivan. I was kind of worried about it, having watched her,

you know, try to shoot on goal a few times earlier in the game, a couple times earlier in the game. But man, she buried it low and left. No problem. This is wild. So I think other than Rapino, I had no idea who would actually take penalties for us.

I figured Horan would. But, you know, Alex Morgan has been our designated penalty taker outside of Rapino. So with her out of the game, it was like, okay, Rapino's going to take one. Probably O'Hara and Mewis since they just came in in the 119th minute. But otherwise, no clue. Yeah, Mewis seemed like a slam dunk to me. Just like a technical, you know, sort of a technician of a player.

Sullivan, I was shocked by. So then the Swedish Friedelina Roefo, she buries her hard to the right. And then Lindsay goes up and buries her hard to the left. Berries hers hard to the left. Sweden goes hard to the left. And buries those. There's, it's Elyn Rubinson. And then Christy Mewis hits it to the left and up and sends Moussvich the wrong way.

So the first four kicks before Mewis, the first four are all just like incredible penalties, right? Yeah, really good. Hit hard. Side net and you're just like, oh, it's going to be that kind of a shootout. And then Mewis hits hers, you know, fine, smashes it down, kind of down the middle, which is fine. But like, oh, geez, like, I thought maybe we'd be going a lot of rounds, but I didn't think it was going to happen the way it happened. Well then Natalie Bjorn, the right back, she misses hers, sends it over. So we're up three, two.

And then up comes Megan Rapino. And she skies hers too. She misses hers. Over the goal. All right. So, you know, I have the famous jinx of Giorina for his injury troubles. I'm watching this, you know, with my family in the morning, whatever hour it is, Nrapino is coming up.

And I'm like, I don't think Rapino is missed in her career. and everyone was furious with me. Furious. And I'm just like, you guys, whatever we say doesn't have any. She might not make this, but it's not because of what we're saying in this living room. But that was not enough to have them not continue to be even more furious with me after Rapino, Mr. Penalty.

Well, why? Why were they more furious with you? Because you were like, Sophia Smith's a stone cold killer. She's going to bury hers. They were furious when I said it the first time before she took the penalty. because they were like, you've jinxed it. And then I was like, you can't jinx people, you guys. That's not a real thing.

And then when she actually missed, then they were even more convinced, of course, that it's because of the jinx. I see. Yeah. Well, then Rebecca Blumquist comes up for Sweden. So we're still up 3-2. You know, we're thinking,

well, probably Blumquist is going to equalize, make it 3-3. And we get a wonderful save from Alyssa, or down to her left. It's not a terrible penalty. And she palms it away. So we're still up, we're up three, two. And all we need is for Sophia Smith to bury a penalty,

and we're going on to the quarterfinals. And she misses. She misses wide. Maybe it may have been a little high, too, but it was mostly wide. Yeah. And man, do I feel bad for her. I know. Brutal, just a brutal moment for a kid.

Like, again, felt like it was just going to. be a formality. I know they never are. It's, you know, whatever, whatever the percentages are, but yeah, there's nothing else really to say about it. I mean, mostly I feel bad for myself, but, no, I'm just kidding. I really do feel bad for her. She was crying after the game, obviously. I mean, you guys all saw it. And then Hannah Benison, the youngster for Sweden, she comes on, and she, how did she score? Good and hard, down to the left. I think it was a good penalty. And then

Alyssa Neier comes on and buries her penalty. Pretty medium height down the middle just to the right. She just smashed it. And you know, the only good thing to come out of Sophia Smith missing is that we got an Alicinnair penalty

because that's awesome. Like, it's not like totally unusual, but it's pretty unusual. Yeah. Put the keeper to take one that early. Yeah. So that was the sixth one. And then Magdalena Erickson, she matched Neyer.

And then Kelly O'Hara comes up to the spot. And she pings it off the outside of the post. She misses. Lena Herthig comes up for Sweden. And I thought she missed it first. So Neier saves it down to her right. It kind of pops up. And then she claws it away from the goal line.

We didn't have the angle to know if it was in. It didn't look in from the angle that I, like the broadcast initially showed and then and then we didn't get a replay until i mean like a minute into sweden's celebration and dog pile but like um the ref you know the ref did the like incomplete pass sign with their hands which i don't know how does that equal a goal um and then all the Swedish players run over in dogpile and you know all the american players sort of sink to the grass and then we finally, finally see the replay,

you know, about a minute later, and it shows, you know, the ball is just a millimeter over the, over the line, something like that.

I'm not great. Not even replay that, that AI generated shot tracker. Yeah, it's, yeah, I mean, this is such,

this is going to be such an iconic moment for the U.S. soccer historically because, yeah, it's just madness, right?

Amazing effort for Melissa Neyer. Right after she buries a penalty, an amazing effort here to claw it out because she's, you know, she's wrong-sided as it hits her hands. Shots almost like behind her. So she has to like spin on the ground to get there to claw it away from the line. Good presence of mind to even know that you have to do that. And then the weight as they check their earpieces for the referees. And then like you see Hurtig like sort of in the ear of the referee. And then I don't know, I don't know how you guys were watching it.

Like I was pretty sure it was a goal because you could see the. referee say no it's I thought she was saying no it's a goal like her take was trying to plead her case in the referee was like you don't have to plead your case anymore it's a goal and then she blows her whistle and does the the Inqually Pass which is the game is over games over you know there's there's nothing left to do because it's a goal and it's just heartbreaking and then there's the now famous video clip of a listener and total disbelief holding her hands up in the air and Sweden's woman of the match taking her glove off

and then shaking me the confused hand of a listener before running off to celebrate. Like so many like again incredible moments visually that I wish did not happen to our team. Yeah. But it's again, it's an unforgettable experience. So as sports experiences go, this one's going to be up there. Yeah. I saw, you know, I saw a bunch of family later in the day. on Sunday and, boy, they were much more interested in this than they were in the, in the

Qatar World Cup, it seemed like. And a lot of bummed, a lot of bummed cousins. And, uh, yeah. So, so let me, let me try to get back at this sort of the big question again. I thought maybe we talked about Henry Bushnell's piece about development, but we're not going to do that today. We'll do it another time. Um, but I do think, I do want to ask you this. If the beautiful thing about Japan is that their coach gets the most that can possibly gotten out of that team. What would that look like for the women's national team? Say, you know, a year from now. If we get like the best possible coach gets the most out of this team,

would it be any different from what we saw on Sunday morning? I think it would be vastly different from what we saw on Sunday morning. Because I don't think there's, I don't think in the time we've been watching the U.S., there was ever anything that looked like intentionality of like, oh, this is, we're making a concerted effort to do this. It just felt like everything, we were just winging everything at all times. Like if it was a concerted effort to get to a certain area of the field, it would look like that more.

Even when we'd go wide and do all of our crossing that we lamented for two straight years, we didn't do it in the World Cup as much because we didn't even send numbers up to sort of get into those situations. but it didn't look like it was an intentional thing. It was always just like an aimless passabout until eventually someone was just like, well, I don't really have anything else to do with it, and I mean, I can kick this ball into the box, so I'm going to.

I think I'm not even going to try to say what the right way for us to play would be, but I think it's totally possible for there to be some intentional plan that is easily recognizable while the team is on the field, and that our players are capable of executing. I mean, in Japan's case, we've already seen two different ones, right? We've seen two totally different game plans, both so far wildly successful. And again, I'll reiterate in knockout soccer, that's still not going to be enough necessarily. Like Japan in that Norway game was gorgeous to watch.

They beat Norway 3-1. Gorgeous to watch them try to pick apart Norway's super organized low block. You know, trying to find little gaps into it, seems into it, sometimes hitting crosses, all different ways of attacking. And it still took like a Norway own goal for them to break through. Right. It's still going to take a little bit of luck to get through four knockout games, even if you are squeezing every bit of advantage you can

out of your player pool, out of your game setup. So it's, you know, there is no silver bullet, but man, like, it didn't feel like we were squeezing all that, all that juice. So we were leaving, we were leaving possibilities on the table, and we were desperately unlucky. over four games. So those two things combined leads you to feeling like, I don't know, it's just a lot of like,

it's an unsatisfying feeling. Yeah. I mean, we, my feeling was we just had so much more to give in this tournament. You know, so much more to show like Trinity and Sophia. Elizabeth Thompson. So that's the other thing that I go back to. You know, a lot's made of Lockeau's subs. and like the refrain, and I've said it, I think, too, is, you know, we have the deepest best bench in the tournament.

And the more I think about that, like, the more I actually kind of disagree with myself there, when I'm saying that, I think I'm just sort of thinking of Lynn Williams and Alyssa Thompson, to be honest. Like, we have good players. We have players who are fine. But you remember that sort of a must be nice phenomenon that sort of took over in, like, the heyday of the Spanish men's national team? And then, like, when the oil clubs really started to get big, and suddenly, like, a new thing was a somebody coming off of the bench that was, like, a $90 million player that didn't really exist before. So you just, any time one of those players would sub in in the 80th minute, you'd get a slew of, like, social media posts that was, like, must be nice.

You could search for that. That's what it'd be. The only players I think of for the U.S. like that would be Lynn Williams or Alyssa Thompson, where 70 minutes into a game, you're bringing that player off the bench. Like, the defense has had their hands full all game with Sophia Smith and, and dream and now it's like oh now we get lynn williams running at us and there isn't really anyone else on the roster that that i think of in those terms like no one's like oh no now we have to deal with sophia huerta like no one else kind of would inspire that kind of fear or or awe

coming into a game at the 70th minute right so so i guess in that sense i don't necessarily know that our that our bench was quite sort of as loaded as we think of it's just a really we have a really consistent high floor of player in this particular tournament. Yeah, players like Ashley Sanchez Sophia Huerta are good. They're just not like awesome. Part of that's driven by injury, obviously

without Mousalantin, without Cat Macario. That plays into it. But every team's dealing with those injuries, right? We're seeing Holland lost in Medima in December. England have lost their most important midfielder in the second game of the group and probably have a player suspended now the rest of the way. South Africa made the Netherlands goal stand on her head for 90 minutes and lost two players

in the first half to injury. Like injuries are just going to happen. But like are we, again, kind of going back to your question, are we getting everything we can out of the players we do have? And I would definitely say the answer for this U.S. team was no. Yeah. I mean, the prosecution, it seems like the prosecution of Laco is pretty easy. when it all comes down to it.

Because like, even if, even if you, even if he were to agree that, even if one were to agree that Lynn Williams and Alyssa Thompson are what our high quality bench consists of, the winger who got most of the minutes off the bench was Megan Rapino. So.

Yeah. I honestly think that's, that's sort of like the, that's the guilty verdict right there. Like, yes, he was super unlucky. But you left, you left,

on the table in those minutes that Rapino was getting instead of Lynn Williams instead of Alyssa Thompson and I know Alyssa Thompson's a speculative one but you see the threat she can offer and it's like an immediate threat especially late in the game so yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna still feel like that's a that was that was a that was a self-imposed whoopsie and this has been something you know Tara Tara our Wosso Wednesday colleague has been you know, kind of mad about for a long time. This, you know, the old guard and how unwilling the program seems to be to sort of move past them. But, you know, just to stand up for the old guard here, Morgan, pretty solid.

Well, we have no idea. Again, shrewd of Lottko to never actually play the front three of Rodman, Sophia Williams in the entire tournament. That's the front three that went into the send-off game and just lit it up for 15 minutes. after a pretty dull first 70. So he just never played him. That way we would never have the answer. And he could always sort of have plausible deniability. But yeah, it's hard to know how it would have gone.

But Morgan acquitted herself well. And thankfully, Alyssa Neier, who was the other old guard that I had certain real doubts about. I mean, she showed up huge in a knockout game and scored a penalty and had the moment clawing it off the line. Yeah. I think it, yeah, it's mostly just Rapino. So Rapino will just have to fall back on her two World Cup trophies and her Olympic gold medal and her cultural icon status. Her feud with a sitting U.S. president on her way to winning a World Cup trophy. Yeah.

And her assist on one of the most famous U.S. goals of all time. But this, you know, this piece goes with it too. Time waits for no woman, you know. So yeah, we'll get into some more post-morteming on Wednesday and WSO Wednesday. Tomorrow for patrons, we're going to do the Monday review. So catch up on the U.S. MNT player pool news from the past week. I think that's it, right, Greg? Yeah, the World Cup party rolls on.

Like, there's still plenty. There's still plenty of party left. It's just one of our favorite partygoers has had to leave early. Yeah. I know you'll be, you know, you'll be watching closely and Joey, Joey, yo, young Joey from the Discord is going to keep doing Woso daily, I believe. And so look for that. And thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.