Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #425: USMNT roster reaction, press conference highlights

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Greg and Belz talk through the September roster and highlights from Gregg Berhalter's first press conference back in the USMNT saddle.Please consider subscribing on Patreon. Patrons get a private feed for the Monday Review, which is, among other things, a run-down of club action for national team players every week with Watke and Vince. Patrons also get our full interviews (recently Dave Sarachan), access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. We have a roster for the pair of friendlies coming up against Uzbekistan and Oman. On September 9 and September 12, respectively, Greg Berhalter was back in the press conference cockpit. Greg, how you doing? I'm doing great, man. Burhalter, back. And I can't believe that the Monday review folks were not super excited about this roster. I can't believe Waki had to pull teeth.

to get you to talk about it. Fun cycle. Cycle's going to be fun. Let me clarify. I'm excited to see the team play, but, you know, I don't think there was very much doubt

about who the top 15 players or so were going to be in this roster. And so I didn't want to get into some lengthy debate about Tanner Testman versus Johnny Cardoso, which we will get into here shortly, right? Yeah, you're saving that for with me. Should we run through the roster First, why don't you do it since you're sort of fussy about how you organize it?

Well, I never liked the press release order where that's alphabetical because come on, like we don't see these position groups alphabetically. First off, I'll run through the injured players that we kind of had. And then I'm not, I don't have that tweet in front of me that had Burhalter's list of injured players or U.S. soccer's list because they listed even more. But we're talking about Giorina, Tyler Adams, Josh Sargent, Cameron. Carter Vickers, Walker Zimmerman, Taylor Booth, as guys who were kind of like already pretty obviously injured. I know the US soccer one had Stefan, I think it had Eric Palmer Brown. So a few other names thrown out there as a courtesy to those gentlemen. Yeah, good on them as sort of not in contention. Walker, oh Zimmerman, we already said. So now let's get to the actual

names on the list. Before, well, before we do, let me just say, Sergeant, you know, the news came out, I think this morning that he's going to be out for, quote, months, according to David Fogner. We have a great interview with him that Sanjay Sujah Cuma did yesterday. That's going to drop most likely later today, but maybe as late as tomorrow morning. We'll see. But just look for that. And it's really sad for him because he's been playing so well and kind of a weird injury, too.

super weird and and this would have been a nice little window we don't know for sure that he would have gotten called up if he was healthy but I feel like he would have I like to think so like to think so but all right so we're going to go with the actual first roster in Greg Burhalter's second cycle tenure in goal we've got Matt Turner and then we have two other players who aren't Matt Turner but we're still going to name them it's Ethan Horbath and Drake, Collander. Colander? Colander? I'd say calendar. I still never heard it out loud. Okay.

I don't watch the messy games with the audio on, obviously. Why don't you watch with the audio on? I don't like the atmosphere coming through my TV. Like everything in silence. Do the backups matter to you at all bells? No, no, no, no. It's Turner in goal. He's playing well for Nottingham Forest. You know, maybe some quibbles with his performance over the weekend against

Manchester United here and there, but making big saves and he's our guy. Yeah, the quibbles are at a higher level than anyone else is even touching at the moment. Oh, that reminds me Sean Johnson with one of the listed injured players. Yes, he was. So who knows, again, if that's courtesy and just, you know, massaging the big guy's ego or if that's a real thing and he's still somewhere on this depth chart. Again, it doesn't really matter. We've got our goalkeeper.

Do we talk Gaga-Slanina? Does that, he'll get his chance if he's good, right? No, I mean, we talked about him on the Monday review a little bit. He's, he got his first win at Yupin. He's on loan from Chelsea to Yupin in Belgium. Got serenaded by the ultras up behind the goal. So I think life is pretty good for him, and let's just let him cook, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And again, if he is the goalkeeper, we want him to be, we'll know soon enough, and he'll start being in these rosters. Defenders, nine defenders listed. We're going to break him out by fullback and centerback. So our fullbacks are Serginio Dest, Jedi Robinson, Joe Scali is sort of the returning guard. And then the new faces listed as a defender, which I'm sure you appreciate, Kevin Perettis. And then the very, very new face, one that even the sickos had barely heard of. If you dig into the sicko archives, you'll find him if you do a Control F.

But not a lot of conversations surrounding him. You say it because you're more Scandinavian than I am. I mean, I would just say Christopher Lund. It's probably like Christopher or something like that. But yeah, even like Control F is literally the only way to find information about him. That's true. On the Discord this morning, everybody, a lot of questions, who is Christopher Lund? Let me just give the basics, a Danish American.

So his father is Danish, his mother is American, appears to have spent his entire life in Scandinavia. He won a Swedish title last season and got a move to Palermo in Syria B, so the second division in Italy, plays left back. Should we just play a quick clip from Berhalter about him? Let's hear it. We think that he could potentially fill the void that we had at the left back position in terms of our debt. That's something that we've struggled at for a while. Antie Robinson has been the clear starter as a fantastic player.

but no one's really grabbed that second position and we're seeing what he can do and if he can challenge for that spot there you go and he'll be up against i guess in challenging for that spot up against kevin paredes it appears i mean you know burhalter doesn't always follow the listed positions for players so maybe we'll see paredes come on for some garbage time on the wing but i've always wanted him to be uh fullback for us and try to make a run at that position because uh i feel like his upside upside is higher there than it is on the wing yeah and I'll just I'll just throw this out there I did some did some view in of of young Christopher Olympic eligible I think he's a 2001 and I just want to caution the fan base to sort of

temper expectations this guy's not going to come in and be an instant sensation we didn't we didn't unearth another ball again here but it's it's cool for the kid and I mean, it's, again, it's kind of just a fascinating call up just that we're aware that he exists. Yeah, I mean. Someone's doing their digging. Yeah, it's probably probably going to have to credit Dave Marino Notcheson on big soccer for this one once again. I actually don't know if that's true. I just assume it is.

And what else? Let's see. Yeah, he's definitely competing for the backup spot. He's not going to challenge Anthony Robinson anytime soon. as Perhalter said. And again, just from the Italian footage I've watched him, he's not really, I don't think, going to be challenging for the backup spot, all that much.

Don't put too fine a point on it, Greg. He's got a way to go. No, I mean, you shared a bunch of clips this morning. He struggled in that game. Yeah, it looks like he's clearly got some catching up to do for second division in Italy. And again, this is early. He just moved.

So there's going to be, you know, there could be nerves. There could be any other things factoring in. but it's not someone where you know right now that he would be ahead of Scali or Dest at left back or George Bellow or Sam Vines or you know it's Dewan Jones

it's a cool we're combing we're combing the arc the databases and we've got this kid coming and again it's just kind of fun to throw him in a camp for me I enjoy this yeah I mean Desk can play left back he's playing left back for PSV Einhoven

in a few minutes here that game starts shortly a really important game for them against Rangers and then, you know, Scali can play left back and Jedi is going to start every meaningful game for us at left back as long as he's healthy. How about the centerbacks? Centerbacks were bringing over old man Tim Ream. I was kind of wondering if we would

or if we just try to like extend his shelf life as much as possible by limiting miles and minutes. But he's coming, which is, you know, we're always glad to have him. Chris Richards, who just got his debut this season in a cup match and who will come back to this but Miles Robinson and Mark McKenzie are the other centerbacks listed but Richards is kind of the big news item of the press conference from Burrhalter because he kind of

stepping on Tommy Scoops his toes here a little bit yeah let's play that clip and then there's a few other things to say about the centerbacks but here's a here's a question from Kyle Bonn to Berhalter about Richards and then Berhalter's rather the revealing response. I wanted to ask about Chris Richards. You know, he's called it again clearly an important player to this group, but struggling to get minutes at the club level. So just wondering what your thoughts are on his situation

and how he continues to help the international squad. Yeah, and listen, that may change in the next couple of days, right? That's not set in stone, but you're absolutely right with his involvement so far. He played in the cup game, yes, which they won. That may change in the next. few days. So yeah, it sounds like maybe a move is imminent for Richards, which would be great. I mean, he's, he's a really good centerback. Sometimes when players are stuck on the bench, I'm a little indifferent about it or ambivalent. But in this case, you know, he's a player who

can really contribute, I think, to a lot of clubs. And it's a, it's not right for him to be sitting all this time at Palace. Yeah, certainly not for his own, for his own sake, at his age in his ability level. Like, let the filter filter you where you need to be to get some minutes. The word is, uh, Union Berlin, which, which is nice because what we might get to later is we just lost one American from Union Berlin or are probably going to lose Pfok to Gladback. So Pfeck's going to go buddy up with Scali. And now Richards is going to buddy up with Arensen, uh, potentially at Union Berlin.

Super cryptic from Greg, like, uh, to just throw that out there. I initially assumed that it meant that maybe we already had the starters for this weekend's Crystal Palace match. And, you know, maybe Richards just knew he was starting or, you know, that conversation had happened with between staffs, U.S. and Palace. But, yeah, now the rumors are out there that it's alone. Yeah. And are there? Are the rumors out there that it's alone? Because I was going to say, just to be abundantly cautious, we should say, you know, it's possible Gehi or Yolk-A-Herson is on the move from Palace.

which would free up some minutes for Richards. But you're saying it's the smoke is that he's on, he's on his way out for a little. Again, I don't want to step on Tommy Scoops his toes. Like Burlter didn't, I don't want to step on Watkey's toes because we don't have the music queued up to play it. But this is, this is now an official rumor. Okay. An official rumor.

As for the other centerbacks, you know, Miles Robinson, good to see him back in the fold. Burrhalter said at some point in the press conference, that the Mark McKenzie call up was it was really between him and Austin trustee and they just gave the nod to McKenzie's playing at a high level. These are Berhalter's words at a high level in Belgium. You know, again, we cover, we talk about McKenzie quite a bit on the Monday review. He seems to continue to struggle in some ways, but I don't have any quibble with him being the fourth centerback in this roster.

There's, there's really, it really is kind of between him and trusty at this point. point because Carter Vickers is injured and Walker Zimmerman is injured. So there you have it. Yeah. And I think we actually also saw in the discord that Jalen Neal might have turned down a call up or Los Angeles sort of denied him released due to a groin injury. So that's another centerback that could have been in this hat of, you know, deep in the depth chart centerbacks.

And then, of course, our man, Uncle John, Uncle John Brooks, not not. back in the good graces just yet. It seems it's not going to happen. Let's move to the midfield. All right. West McKinney, Eunice Musa, the two of the three MMA guys who are healthy are in. Luca de la Torre is in,

which was a question mark after he came off injured against Madrid. Last weekend, we'll have to see what he does this weekend for Salta Vigo. Malik Tillman is a great inclusion. Super exciting player. I'm really excited about him.

No idea if my excitement. will pan out, but he has yet to play for PSV. Who cares? Let's bring him. And then Johnny Soccer, who's been capped a lot, still mysterious, still not sure what kind of a player he's going to be. And then the Argentina kid from Miami, Ben Kermashi, who's there to tell stories about Lino Messi.

Is that why? Is that all he's there for? I mean, it's worth it. Like, I would want to hear stories about Lino Messey. Yeah, you don't even listen with the volume on, though. How badly do you want to hear stories about Lino Messey? I would, if the audio was just Ben Kermashi telling stories about Lino Messey while the game was going on, I'd listen to that.

DeAndre Edlin would have been another guy I'd listen to, talk about Lino Messey. Yep. I see, I see where you're coming from. He didn't make the messy story cut. My main thought here, you know, Brahawler said a lot about Kermoski. He was asked a bunch of questions about it. I'm not super interested in sharing those clips just because, like, it doesn't seem like Kramoski's going to be a key contributor yet.

But one thing that's interesting to me is there's no real six in this roster. You know, maybe Johnny, maybe Wes, maybe Eunice. So we'll get another chance that the, you know, which is my long-term dream, the West Eunice double pivot. Maybe we'll get that. And then maybe Malik in front of him, maybe Luca. We'll see. Like you said, there's a little bit of injury concern with Luca.

Maybe with Johnny, too, we don't have solid information on either of those yet. And you got to imagine they wouldn't have been called up if Brawolder didn't think they could go. Yeah, and this is probably going to be the exciting reveal in the 11, who that third center mid is, assuming McKinney and Moose are both starting. And then how they actually kind of what their roles are and how they're kind of used, deployed in the different phases of the match. the odds on favorite for you? Man. I'm going to jump to Malik.

Okay. That's where I'd go. I feel like Malik gives you something different than Luca. And if you're looking for like a reina placeholder, then Malik's what I'm hoping for. I wasn't even that optimistic that Malik would get called up, but he's here. So let's get him in there.

Yeah, you know, that's interesting to think about. Because if Malik starts, then he is kind of a Rana placeholder. And what a bigger compliment could Burrhalter give Gio Raina at this point than to start Malik Tillman in one of these friendlies? I think when he was just getting going at Rangers, I believe he was referred to us to Kirkland Giorina in the Discord. I think that was the...

I think Finns coined that, yeah. Or was it you? I don't know. It wasn't me. It was not me. All right. How about forwards? All right.

So our half space guys, we've got Poolsick. We've got Wetsk. We've got Brenda. No surprises there. And then the wild card here is Kate Cowell. Kind of just thrown in. Not that there was any clear other choice after that. I was hoping that we'd have Colio Show paperwork to spring on everyone.

But we did see that there was at least an official rumor that we did ask Colioho invited him. And he's going to just stay with Burnley, bide his time, make his decision, hear out different offers, et cetera. That information comes to us from, at least where I saw it was Marcus Cherez, citing a source, quote, a source that he wants to stay at Burnley and settle in and make his decision about national team future later, which, you know, totally makes sense. Coliocio would be the clear number four here if he were called in. I think he's a, I mean, it's like with Turner, there are quibbles, but the quibbles are at a much higher level than they are with KedCal.

I'm not there yet, but I appreciate the excitement that other people have for him. I mean, I still have, I still have Dwayne Holmstock as my fourth, fourth guy on this in this depth chart. But, uh, you, you've, uh, you've, you have, uh, surveyed Koliasho and still don't aren't excited about him. I'm super excited about him. Don't get me wrong. Uh, but I just, I just, I just, I just, I'm like, I just, we just got to see more of them. I just don't want to, I'm always wary of, of a, of another Otisoe situation. So I got to be cautious. I'm going to be cautious. He's bright. He is, he does look like a good player, though.

He's bright and tricky and can step by players from Man City and Aston Villa if on occasion. No end product yet, but what about Stryker? So we just brought the two. We've got 180 minutes to split between Fuller and Bolligan and Ricardo Pepe. Pretty exciting time. for your strikers in the U.S. Yeah. It's sad for a sergeant,

but for us, it's fine to have Balagan and Pepey as the two strikers in this camp. Would you, I assume you'd like to see Baligan start both games. We need the reps. We need the chemistry. Yeah, we need that.

And again, I just feel like he's probably the clearly better player, so you run him out there as the starter. get peppy whatever 20 minutes each game and enjoy that too and and again life is good here yeah some other notable things um no ferrera no hasus ferrera are you uh surprised is this a is this a fc dallas is in a is in the home stretch of their season and they they'd rather keep him or is this a clear decision from burhalter so i doubt that we're making all lot of concessions to MLS here.

I mean, it's possible, but it's probably just Burrhalter sort of going with what he wants. Again, I think the forward hat still is a thing. But Jesus and Brandon Vasquez were both in camp all summer. Got a lot of time with the national team. So even if it was close, like you get, you get Peppy or if Sergeant has been healthy, you get Sergeant in, or if somehow you wanted to leave Pepey with PSV, you bring in Hajie Wright and give him a runout. with those backup minutes.

So I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think Ferreira was gonna, would have been the right call up regardless. I think you got to, you got to bring in,

you got to explore, you got to explore a little bit. Yeah. I'm certainly in favor of peppy. The other thing is no, you know, some of the, some of the whipping boys

of the discourse are, are gone. And some of them, it's because of injury, but no Aaron Long, no Christian Rodon, no Jordan Morris, no Sebastian Legette.

I know Roldon is injured. Is Morris healthy right now? Yeah, Morris's plan. I think Ariel is back. But we sort of projected this out back in, I mean, this was as predictable as it gets back in as soon as the World Cup was over. Like, we know who the best 14 or 15 players in our pool are at the moment. They're going to be there. Players 15 through 30, 35, really fuzzy at the moment.

So just call in some of them each camp, let them sort themselves out with their performance. for the national team, with their performances for the club. It's hard to call any player left out of this camp, like a real snub. You're not shedding tears for Paxton Arrington or Haji, right? Guys who are still in the early days of sort of making their full case. So you just got to, it's just going to be fun to sort of be patient, watch the core in action, watch a few auditionees each camp, and then follow the Monday review really closely because there's two

many guys to follow yourself. And again, just in, I'm just really enjoying this, uh, this process. Yeah. It is being, I mean, in the, on Twitter, it is being interpreted as a turning of the page. I, I, uh, I get that it's, it was predictable, but, um. Oh, I do think it's turning the page for sure. Like I'm, you know, Paul Areola is not going to play a meaningful part in this cycle. Like the pages turn from him. Uh, a lot of those guys, whatever value, they had some value in the sense that, you know, I'm, you know, that they're gonna carry their lunch pails, right? Like they're gonna, they're gonna be there.

The new faces that are breaking through now, Malik Tillman, whoever it is, Paradeus, Taylor Booth, they weren't probably super realistic, so you could have taken a chance on them in the World Cup, but as we were getting close to that crunch time, like, I think it's reasonable to have gone with just the players you know to fill out a squad. But any of that value that sort of,

I can just rely on them to show up, you know, do a job and send him home. Like that value is basically gone at this stage in the cycle. You don't need that right now. You have a ton of flexibility now to cast this huge net. And I think it looks like that's, I mean, when you're bringing in Lund and even Kermoski, like that you're casting a net here. Yeah.

Kramoski, of course, we forgot to mention this. He had that assist on the great Lionel Messi goal against Red Bulls, obviously. Kermoski's contribution to that goal was the biggest contribution of all. No, not really. Yeah, you know, it was just an incredible play by Messi. All right, let's talk about the thing that, you know, everybody wants to talk about, which is Berhalter confirmed again that he still hasn't talked to Giovanni. And was asked to go ahead, go ahead, Greg.

Oh, no, I'm just, I just think this whole drama is a, blast as well. Like I feel like this is spectacular stuff because there was just so much frothing about it like and the frothing carried over into Pepey too because I think people were you know following other sources saying that Berhalter's

camp hadn't talked to Pepe and Pepey wasn't actually going to be in this roster. It was going to be Asus and actually Voskes is also favored over Pepey. So again you just had all this preemptive rage at Burrhalter's first roster and I think people just really

really enjoy being furious at Greg Burrhalter, even the imaginary version of him that they can create ahead of time. Yeah. And this geo-rena stuff now is like the thing to really fixate on. Yeah, I do wish Burrhalter would kind of put it to bed just to put an end of that. But hey, you know, it's exciting. So here's, um, here's a question from, he was asked to clarify why they haven't spoken or, you know, something about that by journalist Simon Evans.

and here's the clip. Just to clear up on the situation with Geo, you said in the interview that you haven't been able to speak yet. Is that because you haven't yet put in place a way to reach out to him? You haven't reached out to him, or has he not responded? Just to clear that out, really. No, I wouldn't say that.

That's not fair to say he's non-responsive. That's not accurate. You know, he's been responding, and for us it's understanding the sensitivity around the issues, understanding the right time in the right way. And I think, again, it's for us, we're committed to every single player in this player pool. And for us, it's about how do we maximize communication with them

and target it in a way that we're getting the most out of each and every player. So for this, it's just being a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more sensitive to the past. And I look forward to having conversations with him. I look forward to watching, you know, his progress and hopefully him getting back on the field. And then for us, you know, hopefully to include him in the October camp against, you know, two good opponents.

Why not just call him and sort it out? But yeah, I mean, I really don't know what Greg's plan is, nor do I particularly care. Like, everyone's like, it's been this many months or whatever, and he still hasn't called him. And I don't. I don't care at all. For me,

the deadline for Greg to solve this with Gio is two weeks before Gio's next call-up, whenever that is. That's one it needs to be solved by. They're going to solve it. Right. I mean, Gio wants to play for the national team. Greg wants him on the team.

He is without him. Our ceiling is significantly lower as a team. And we need him to be healthy. Now, important to note, sort of, it's related, it's separate but related. he's played Gio's only played 20% of the available minutes for Dortmund for the past two years past two seasons like he is he has got to get healthy he's not healthy right now he's back in training which which people sometimes sometimes sees on is like well he is available but just reminder back in training does definitely not mean available you can be back out on the pitch by yourself doing non-contact like it

could be still be weeks away from actually being available even for Dorman. Yeah. And I don't know how much money I'd put on him being available in October either, although I'm at least as hopeful as Burrhalter is that he will be. And then the other thing is he was asked by Ron Blum, you know, my personal favorite member of the press corps from the Associated Press about, well, here's the clip. Aside from Geo, looking back at the Howe Institute. talk, do you have to explain either individually or to group the players of what went on and any

regrets you have from going semi-public that day with what occurred? I love that he named the Howe Institute. You know, Ron, I did that immediately afterwards. I sent a note to each and every player and apologize for, you know, this getting out in the way that it did. You know, it was never about names. It was more about an example of our strong team culture. And I felt that if it, if it hurt one player, then it's worth apologizing to the entire group. And that's what I did. Now, some people have interpreted this as handwritten notes.

And I think that's probably a little bit of a jumping of the gun. It could just as likely have been a bunch of text messages, you know? No, it needs to be, it needs to be assumed to have been handwritten. Okay. Handwritten. Incursive. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

This penmanship. is immaculate. A couple other clips from the press conference that I thought were of note. He was asked about Balligan, of course, and spoke favorably about Balligan's Monaco transfer, which was made official after the conference call. Monaco did it with some kind of like race car video. It's very cool. I loved it.

Here's the clip. He's familiar with the French League. He's already performed at a really high level of the French team. and now he's going to a bigger club in the French League. And I think it's a really strong move. You see that, you know, from the reports about the transfer figure, you see they're paying a lot of money for him. And Monaco is a club that is really thoughtful with who they bring in.

So I think it's a fabulous move for him. We expect him to be able to score goals, continue to score goals like he's done. And, you know, having met him and spoke to him, he's he's a really humble guy he's a really um guy who's focused on the on the process and on continuing to improve and he sees this as as the next step for him on his way um as he climbs the ladder in in european soccer so excited about that move for him agree happy happy that his situation is settled right monaco is an escalator uh like a rapid escalator uh up the ladder of European soccer.

Scor. One of Killion Mbapé. Yeah. Was sold by them to PSG. I could not be happy about the Monaco move. Same with the guys who went to PSV because, again, the situation you're in there is perfect. You go to West Ham, you go to wherever, and the EPL, and there's just this immense pressure because of the parody and because of, you know, the scrapping.

And there's nothing wrong with doing, making that choice either. But there's just going to inevitably be a show. shorter leash because of the value of like every point in the the difficulty of gaining those points. Whereas in these really unbalanced leagues, if you move to a team at the top, I mean, Monaco obviously wants to get to a Champions League spot where they didn't qualify last year. But the teams that they will play against are going to be at times really pretty poor. And that means you have a little bit of a longer leash to be like, okay, well, we can afford to play someone who we're not certain about and even if they aren't perfect like we will

probably still win this match so I just feel like this is a excellent setup for a young striker to rack up a lot of chances even if they aren't like always at the highest level yeah I guess there's a that Ben Yetter is is sort of an aging striker I had of him but I don't know if he's out of him I don't know why they pay 40 million dollars for Balligan and not play him. He also, Berthelter also addressed the main, perhaps the main criticism of him on the Scuff Discord. You know, I think with the national team,

if you've seen how the ideas of the game model have evolved, it's, a national team to me is always about fitting the players or you fitting to the players because you have a limited player pool. I mean, he went on to talk about how Balligan should be adjusted to, by the men's national team, but I don't know, I just thought that was that was notable.

And you got any thoughts on that, Greg? I mean, I still think that that's a super outdated criticism. Like in at the tail end of 2019, it very much was like, Burralter had this system and he was, you know, it was almost built around Michael Bradley. And yeah, that is, that is building a system that isn't emphasizing the best players

in your player pool. But at the turn of 2019, He essentially ditched that and then did build a system that emphasized the strengths of the player pool. Like you look at our World Cup 11 and everyone was basically in the spot that they were best at. And those were also our best players. So for me, it's hard to really even say that that's a serious critique by the end of the cycle. That Berhalter was system first, but I know that that still continues to be echoed. I mean, he was pretty much having our best players playing the spots that they were best at.

Yeah, I mean, the team was built around the MMA midfield and the fullbacks and... Cool, sick and way, yeah. Yeah. And then the last thing that I want to play from the press conference is just Burhalter after he was asked about the video he made welcoming Messi to Inter Miami. Yeah, so they Inter Miami asked me to do that. welcome him. I guess as being the national team coach, they thought it would be nice to have the national team coach welcoming

Leo into it. But on second thought, I shouldn't have done it. I heard I got some jeers from the crowd. So now I'm not doing that anymore for Into Miami. I'm just kidding. That's a joke, Andrew. Greg is exactly the guy who says, no, that's a joke, Andrew.

Joke clarification. Yeah. I mean, Greg is absolutely like a giant, dork. Like, he's a total sort of dofess in these situations. But that's all fine. The players kind of either get a kick out of it. You go back to Poolsick like like head and hands laughing at Greg in the locker room. Grimising.

And that's just that is definitely him. He does weird things like consult consultants to figure out how to have this conversation with Gio Raina later. Like this is just who Greg is and it's really again you can either sort of choose to get really furious about these weird quirks he has or you can just be like what a weird dude and kind of enjoy it. Mm-hmm. Yeah, maybe he's just trying to leave New Jersey behind, you know, by going to, going to corporate mediation as a, you know, as a solution for this. Because that, I mean, Tony Soprano would never, you know.

Anyway, games are the ninth and the 12th. It's so like two weeks out pretty much. And, you know, we should, we should look pretty good in these games. think. Do you have a starting 11? I think it kind of writes itself outside of that third midfielder, but I want to hear it from you. Okay, yeah, write to itself, third midfielder, and then also could be a centerback wrinkle here or there. But I think it's, I think it's, I think it's, my guess is Ream and Richards, though Ream and Miles wouldn't, wouldn't blow my mind, or some kind of a split between the two games, or Ream flying home from St. Louis after the first game and just

getting ready for his next Fulham game because again, Ream has not looked great for Fulham. He got his red card. He's got his spot back because the other centerback just got a red card in their last game. But I feel like it's like the nice situation where he's really... Yeah, I don't want him to miss a game when he gets back

because he's really old and that flight takes it out of him. I want him to be like there and not give another guy a chance to take over for him because we want Ream. We want Ream to extend his career, I think. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Reem starts against St. Louis, take your pick between Richards and Miles, and then Richards and Miles start the second game. Again, wouldn't care of McKenzie.

I don't care. I mean, I want Richards to start both games. How about that? Okay. Oh, fullbacks, Jedi, and Dest, I think pretty clearly are two best fullbacks. I'll take McKenny, Musa, and Malik as my central midfield. and then Poole's like in Wayo with Bala up top. I wouldn't be furious if it was Luca in the midfield.

But yeah, I like the Tillman shout. And I guess my only question is for the fullbacks, do they start both games and we just bring them off at the hour mark just to keep them fresh? Or yeah, okay. That's my hope. Done. Right?

Solved. All right. It's going to be a fun cycle. It's going to be pretty simple watching the first team. that picks itself and then it's going to be fun watching the guys come in see if they don't step all over themselves right and i mean just to give you a little a little refresher if you haven't been paying super close attention so you've got this window uh and then october uh faced germany in ghana in connecticut hartford connecticut and then nashville and there will be scuffed tailgates at

both of those games and then um and then in november in austin we have that really important um Quarter five, I guess it's a quarter, it's a nation's league quarterfinal game to get into the semifinals, which qualifies you for the, for Copa America, which is next summer. We have to win that. We have to win that game. And we don't know who the opponent is. Yeah, there's a, you know, there's a grueling competition to make it into those spots among the, you know, Central American Caribbean countries. But we could be looking at like a Costa Rica. Like we know, we can be pretty sure it's not going to be like a Martinique situation. We're going to have a, you know, a real test as our regional tests go. And, you know, one other shout for some other stuff we have coming is you and I interviewed Hugo Perez yesterday. And it was a long, very fascinating for me conversation. But one thing that he said that kind of surprised me is he doesn't seem to care that much about Copa America.

It's all about the World Cup for him. It's all about World Cup qualification for El Salvador. and Copa America, you know, he'd like to qualify, but it's not, it's not, it's not a big deal, relatively speaking. Yeah, definitely, definitely sort of downplaying any expectations that, you know, it's, that everything's on the line. And if he doesn't qualify for El Salvador for Co-America, that it's a huge failure. All right.

Hey, check out our Patreon. The link is in the show notes. You get the Monday reviews and a bunch of other stuff. and you support the fact that this is an ad-free podcast. Thank you, Greg. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.