Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #429: USMNT v Uzbekistan recap

Episode Date: September 10, 2023

Greg and Belz talk through the goals, the sloppiness, the attempts to break down a low block, the defensive mistakes, the pitch control shortcomings of some of the non-MMA midfielders, and much much more. 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. We have recently added patron-only content that will be available every Friday. Patrons also 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/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody, we got a 3-0 win in St. Louis last night against Uzbekistan. Not a great performance from the boys in front of, I would say, not great crowd in the nation's former soccer capital. Greg, how you doing? I'm good. Is it former because after last night, it's had the title stripped or is it former just because it's an old-timey reference to begin with? I would say both. I mean, it's definitely the former capital.

We sort of settled. There is no soccer capital, right? Isn't that kind of where we landed? Yeah, I think that's fair. And again, any claim that they St. Louis tried to have going into this window, I think, is pretty well vanished now. Undercut. Yeah. Sorry, St. Louis.

Any high-level thoughts about the game? About St. Louis? Well, no, not about St. Louis. No. It was nice to have the boys back. It was nice to have the full squad, more or less here. and get to watch them play soccer on a soccer field. Really enjoyed that.

Yeah. I got to admit, I mean, this is often the case with me. I guess I'm just like a lot of people where I didn't enjoy it that much at the beginning, like in live, watching it live. But then on rewatch, it was a little better. We kind of call that the Weston McKinney experience. I feel like, you're like, man, so sloppy, so loose. And then you're watching it again, just paying attention to him sometimes. And you're like, man, that was really nice.

Ooh, that was also really nice. There's some things going on here. Yeah, like every five minutes he does something plus, and you didn't notice it the first time. Let's play, you know, real quick. Burrhalter's opening statement at the press conference or part of it, here we go. I think we use this game as a learning tool.

How Uzbekistan competes, how they go in for everything, how they leave their bodies in. It shows us that, we can improve and we need to improve and we will. But I think that it's a good baseline for us to start and say, this is what international competition from other regions looks like. And so that we use as we go. One thing to note is happy with the three goals,

obviously they had a man down when we scored the last two, but Uzbekistan doesn't concede goals. I think they conceded maybe six all year last year. And with the back five, five, four, one, they're very difficult to break down. So happy with that part. Okay. Yeah. Somebody's been listening to Vince over here.

What has Vince been saying? Can you refresh me on that? He was just running through Uzbekistan's last half dozen games and the fact that they just don't concede a lot of goals. Yeah. You know, we went through some of the video. They don't concede a lot of chances even, like even against better teams, Iran, who's roughly on the level we are right now. We're hoping to catapult past that level.

But watching that video and it's like, all right, 40 minutes in Iran with one shot, you know, it's 5-4-1. It's their goals to create a slog. This is not the Mexico defense that we saw in the Nations League, where you can break one guy and you have a bit of a jail break. You're going to have to be more methodical. There's not a lot of transition to run into. in this if you haven't created that,

if you haven't disorganized the opponent with the ball. So that was a test. And I'd say we had a middling performance in that. But I also think it's not unrepresentative of where we are as a team right now. I think this is about what we look like, certainly without a Gio-Rena level player. And even maybe with the Gio-Rena. I don't know if Gio comes in and totally changes this game.

But this is about what we look like if we're going to try to poke and prod and unbalance a fairly organized low block. Yeah, we could probably go a few more games without conceding two clear-cut chances on mistakes at the back, too. I don't know that that's not entirely representative of where we are. It's pretty representative of where we are.

Would you say so? Okay. I mean, if our guys are going to be a Tim Ream or a Mark McKenzie or Miles Robbins, like we give up. We have some whoopsies. There's no question about it. That is a part of our squad, I think. Tanner Testman came in and added some whoopsie factor, I would say.

Okay, let's do the lineups and get into the timeline. A lot of the other stuff will come up. So we started, as Berthor announced the day before, maybe this is the new custom. Who knows? He told us what the lineup was going to be. It's Matt Turner and goal, of course. Sergenio Dest, Chris Richards, Tim Riem,

and Anthony Jedi Robinson across the back. And then Luca Della Tori, Eunice Musa, and Weston McKenney in the midfield, and Tim Wea, Fuller and Balligan, and Christian Pulisic across the front line. We were hoping for Malik Tillman to start this game, and I'm still kind of hoping for that. Yeah, you thought Luca was okay. Oh, I thought Luca was. Yeah, I thought Luca was very effective for what my expectations were for this. Like I didn't think we were going to be like a lights out squad with this midfield.

I don't think we would necessarily be one with anybody. Again, not named Giorana. Even that, again, there are question marks about. We have all of these questions we need answers to. We have a lot of time to find those answers. But for what this lineup was for the 30 minutes Luca played, I was pretty pleased with the returns. Again, I thought it gave us a lot of ability to poke in Prada, meet an average defensive team. a committed defensive team

and I was again mostly happy with the decisions that we were trying to make and then we still as always just have some ways we need to clean up but it was not the key thing for me was it was not like a horseshoe performance

that we've maligned in the past where we just passed around the outside of stuff like we were very clearly committed to passing into the amoeba here with just about everybody everybody who was in was trying to get the ball into the amoeba so we had a lot of success

with like as you're talking about with say Luca to Eunice or Luca to West and then they're driving forward it's just the like and sometimes Eunice or West would play it out wide and then it would be across into the middle but it like that last step from a driving Eunice or driving West or even a driving Luca to like a goal scoring chance through the middle of the field was not maybe it just wasn't on but it didn't really it never really materialize. as much, would say. No, not a ton of those kinds of chances. No.

Again, the nice thing here with Luca was like, he's very ball secure in this sort of a pass, against this sort of passive setup that Uzbekistan were in. And if he was taken away, our 433 with like the loan pivot, kind of easily morphed into like a 4, 2, 3,1, where Musa would drop down and create that second player to come receive the ball. Again, this is against a passive defense. I don't know how this is going to work against a better, more,

aggressive team. But in this game, I thought that we were sort of adapting well to the spaces available, kind of flooding them, and then being able to play from there up the field. So again, it wasn't like a situation where we're just going to hammer it out wide. It was like breakthrough in the middle, try to collapse the defense. Then if it's on, go wide, get it out to the right side and let Wea and McKenney kind of sauce it out a little bit there, let Sergenio join them and add a little bit of sauce, or go out to the left. and let pool sit kind of lose the ball one-on-one against his man. I was going to say, we got kind of the bad version of Christian for this game.

The gumming it up, but also gumming it up and then losing it. Yeah, it wasn't even, I mean, gumming it up, I don't think there was as much gumming up. Like, this was just him in situations that we want him to be in, and we would, I don't even care that he's taking somebody on 1 v1 in that situation. And we just got the Christian that lost it way more than we'd like him to. So we created plenty of chance that words like, oh, this is good. This is what we want. Now do the guy.

And it's, I feel like nice that we can kind of chuckle about it now because we know that the other Christian Pulisic definitely does in fact exist and we will get him occasionally. Right. But I mean, so maybe I'll push back a little bit on the not coming it up part. Maybe the, maybe the instructions were get it to Pulisic, let him take the guy on 1B1, which I'm fine with. But you see so much more passing and moving on the right side of the field than you do on the left side of the field. There's one time where Pulisik found Jedi on the overlap. I was kind of like gripping my laptop, worried that he wasn't going to play him.

You know, this is that one that skipped through that Ballo was like a couple feet from. Yeah. Yeah. So that was nice. But not a lot of that, not a lot of teamwork down the left side, I would say. No, it's very, again, it's very asymmetric visually, aesthetically, from what's going on on the right side with Wea and Serge and what's going on the left side. with Pulisic and Jedi at like absolutely night and day

as far as like the styles and sort of the actual actions. Okay, Uzbekistan was in something like a three, four, two one. Burhalter called it a five, four one, as you heard. I'll just read the last names,

well, some of the first names. Utkeir Yusupov was the goalkeeper. I think didn't, I'm not the goalkeeper. I'm not the goalkeeper. keeping expert here, but it seemed like he could have done better on at least the, well, the non-penalty goals, you know, both of the first two goals we scored. Nice shots. I'm not, I'm not taking anything away from the strikes, but what did you think? I'm good calling Wayas,

damn near unsavable. I mean, he smashed it. Waya has a cannon, a bit of a how it sort of there. You can, like, see the way he steps into that ball. He's like a volleyball player starting his approach as McKenney's about to, like, tap it over to his side. You can see his shoulders like. You can like churning as he's going to throw his whole body into this. And he just, I mean, he lashed it. It didn't deflect either, did it? I don't think so. I thought at first that it did, but I, we never got this straight on from behind the shot.

Yeah. I mean, where it hits, where it hits the net and with the power it had, I'm fine just being like, man, sometimes a guy hits that if you're a keeper. Like, you're not going to, you're, you're blocking most of the goal. and if he smashes it into that spot, then you tip your cap. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it's just from such a tough angle.

And, uh, but yeah, he did hit it hard for sure. Uh, so anyway, Yusupov's the goalkeeper. Aliklov, uh,

Eshmuradov and Ashurmatov across the back line, across that, those three centerbacks. And then, uh, Koji Akbar, Alijanov,

who is the right wingback. Pretty good player, I thought. caused a lot of problems for us. And then Hamrobikov and Shukharov as the central midfielders, Saifiev as the left wing back, and then Masharipov and Urunov as the band of two sort of attacking midfielders, I guess.

I guess you could call them also central midfielder's, and then Shumaradav as the striker. I thought Jololi Dean, Masharipov, the number 10. And as you mentioned in our sort of preview episode, he stuck out to me too for just being kind of a nice player. Yeah, I think he's our style of player that we just both enjoy watching. Tidy, problem solver, never going to try to do too much, sort of always in control of his situation, even if it's not always going to be unlocking everything all the time. It did seem like, you know, a Legionov, I think, plays in the Uzbekistan Super League.

So maybe some MLS team Shout out Joey from Central PA But some MLS team could pick him up He seemed pretty dangerous I love this It's like a it's like a throwback to the days When you couldn't watch every game all the time So you would like discover teams in the Europa League

And you're like oh who's this guy No one's ever seen him before Make a move on him And you can just base it on the one game Because that's the only video you've got Or that you've really tried to watch Yeah what streaming service do you need to watch the Uzbekistan's Super League.

I don't know. I don't think Martino mentioned it. To the timeline, shall we? Well, let's do it. Okay. Right in the third minute, Wea gets it from Jedi just above the D and tries his luck from about 30 yards,

skies it into the stands, but he's looking hungry. You know, there's something about when you strike the ball from that distance, when you try to strike the ball from that distance, where he's like trying to get it to go up and come down, you know? Yes. He's trying to hit the air valve of the ball.

And like for sure that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to pop that soccer ball. Yeah. And get that dip. Sometimes you get the dip. Sometimes it goes into the upper deck. That's what happened here. And then right away we score in the fourth minute.

I think it started with a throw in on the left after Luca drive down the channel and getting dispossessed. But Poulisik's by the time the camera comes back. to the action. Poulissick's on the ball on the left wing. He just kind of takes a touch and plays a ball into the box about head high. Wes plucks it out of the air, you know, throwing his foot up away from goal. Dances, so brings it down a little bit like, like that messy moment from a couple of weeks ago when he played that diagonal ball to Kramoski and then tapped it in. So it was a little bit like that. So he plucks it down and dances on the ball for a little bit. four defenders around him

and then just gently pushes it out wide to Tim Wea who like you said his shoulders were churning and he came at it, hit it hard from a tight angle past the goalkeeper 1-0 So much to enjoy there So I've heard people call him that Westmove

You just called it compared it to Messey I saw people comparing it to Zadon For me it's Burr Camp A little outside of the foot purewet He's got a couple of classic highlights Where he's doing that in a crowd doesn't actually change his GPS location at all, but still manages to dance around and keep this ball.

And then you'll just see him feed it to like an onrushing Tieri that wasn't even in the frame to curl it in. And so that's what this brought me to. Love to the Luca drive that led to this. Got like a little bit of luck at the end because he, you know, just had it kind of knocked off of his foot that ended to play. But a nice sample early on of how Luca is a,

totally different player than Tyler Adams in that position. So, you know, kind of talk ahead of the game was like, oh, we're just doing the MMA with a substitute. But clearly, like, Luca De La Torre is a different player than Tyler Adams. It's not going to behave the same way with this midfield configuration. So all told, like worthwhile check on what we can get from this group. And yeah, three minutes in, it was like, all right, that's a decent run from Luca. And then you see the outrageousness from West. And you're like, all right, that's one of the other guys that sometimes people consider an all-action destroyer

midfielder who just did that in the box because that ball from Poulosick, like, even though it's a decent ball into McKen, I still consider it a speculative ball because usually it's like, what is your player supposed to do with that, even if it gets to him? What's he going to do? Pull it out of the air and take six touches and then find an open man. And it's like, no, of course he's not going to do that. And then McKinney promptly did that. So full credit to a player who not a lot of people think of as twinkle toes Weston McKinney.

Right. Yeah, now that's kind of a nothing ball really, if we're honest about it. Just kind of a speculation. So we're cooking a bit right after the goal. I thought pressing and nothing super elegant about what we're doing, but we're trying to, we're on the front foot, they're on the back foot. And we played out wide to Pulisic and he's dispossessed, which kind of shuts the whole thing down.

And he gets dispossessed, I don't know, five, six times in the first half out on that left wing. Yeah, I mean, there's times he's dispossessed. There's times he's just like sort of half trying a move, not even fully challenged, and he kind of just kicks it off of himself. Yeah. It's just, it's a messy game. It's sloppy from him. And again, it's nice to just feel like, ah, sloppy day from Pulisic.

We'll have those. And then also knowing that on another day against Mexico, he can just be totally unplayable. Isn't that funny how like playing against Mexico sort of gives us a, I don't know, there's a little bit of fools gold in that and the way they play defense? Because watching that highlights, you posted all the chances from the Mexico game in the Discord this morning. And, you know, that first one where Pulisic blows by the right back, I forget who it was, and then kind of cuts in and then misses from close range. Do you know the one I'm talking about?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was like, that was like, how was that defender out there, you know? How is he out there playing for a national team? He just gets eliminated so easily by Pulisic. That didn't happen in this game. Well, so a couple things, right? So I posted that because everyone was, not everyone.

There was a lot of talk like, oh my God, six months ago, we were amazing in the Nations League with the interim coaches and now we're back to plotting soccer. And it's just, you know, you had Pulisic on one against Mexico, but also like, you know, when Pulsook beat that guy on the sideline on that clip, he's at like midfield and then there's just no one else between him and the goal. And that is not the picture you have against Uzbekistan. When he was losing the ball, they were so deep, so early, it was Beka Stanwer, that you get it out to Pool Sick. And he sort of just standing, you know, still faced up with the guy.

And even if he were to beat the guy that he usually lost it to, there's usually like two other guys standing right next to that guy. So. Oh, yeah. The right centerback's closing him down as soon as he beats the wing back. Yeah, it's a totally different exercise in what we're trying to accomplish. And that doesn't mean that we were like excellent at it in this game. We weren't. You know, we weren't excellent in this exercise.

It's still like very much like we are definitely a work in progress when it comes to trying to make this stuff happen. Yep. Around the seven minute mark, we get a good attack from, so Ream plays it on the ground to Jedi. Jedi plays kind of steps by a couple guys, plays it into McKinney in the center circle, and he drives forward, tries to play a ball over to Pulisic.

So it tries to reverse it over to Pulisic on the left side, gets cut out, by Musa, immediately, Musa plays it out to Poolasix. So the pass, I guess, ultimately gets completed. And then Pulisic Zips it across the six and it's cut out. But, you know, a little bit dangerous, I would say. That, that low left footed ball from Pulisic across the edge of the six. Yeah, I mean, we're in the Man City zone, right?

We'll take it. Like, that's what we're after. We get in there enough times. And again, I still want us to like, clean up our choice always in that space whether it because we've talked about a lot with poolstick a lot of times the choice is head down hit it as hard as you can and a lot of times pool sick that's off of a defender's shins yeah a lot of times out for a corner but yes that's that's that's uh like for me like the acceptable kind of buildup type uh in this kind of a friendly

now do that do that 30 times right not much from balligan in the first 10 minutes I do think He got his moments later in the game, but a few notes over like the next five minutes of the game. Sergenio gets dispossessed out wide right in the 11th minute, a little messy from West, and he gets dispossessed in the 12th minute in the middle. Pulisic gets tackled out of bounds, and the 13th minute can't beat his guy.

He gets dispossessed in the 14th minute after a good buildup where Musa dusts a guy down the left channel and isolates Pulisic out wide. So, you know, it's a sloppy game, at least for some, sections of the match. Oh, yeah. Way had a giveaway somewhere in there where he gave it directly to Uzbekistan for a two-on-one

that they kind of squandered. And that's the other thing. Through all of this sloppiness, Uzbekistan have offered nothing. Yeah. Going back at us. Right. They, I mean, basically outside of number three that a Legionov and a couple of really bad giveaways, the first half was.

there was nothing from them, unless we were playing them a through ball in behind Tim Ream. All right, good moment from us in the 16th minute. It's a good chance, good buildup. West does a lot in this moment. So more, you know, West McKinney prays from us. Richards to Luca to Wes. So Richards plays it to Luca in a pocket in midfield. Then Luca turns and plays it to Wes, who drives forward and plays way into the corner.

all very crisp and then Waya kind of steps on the ball plays it back to desk. Dest steps on the ball and then plays a ball to the back post to which McKinney had drifted after he did that drive and past Wea. So the ball goes to the back post finds Wes's head, he nods it back

across for Baligan and he heads it off the post. And I mean watching the replay, which they didn't show that much on the game in the game. He probably finishes this, I don't know, maybe usually, like he finishes this.

He had a lot of the goal to head out. It's not an easy finish necessarily, but I think he's going to score on that kind of play more often than not. I'm going to go out on that limb. I'd give it that. I'd give it that. That's about a coin toss of a chance for our balligan.

Now, remember, he finishes at a pretty rough rate last year in France for converting actual chances. But this is a really good look, right? And again, I'm just more concerned with how we got to it. So it was a nice play from from Luca to get it to connect with West. So again, we have this midfield configuration because the question is always going to be. For me, the question of this window is, what can we do without geo? So if we don't have geo, can we kind of not even creative in the aggregate, but just can we get enough out of a geoless midfielder?

a midfield to sort of like get a look like this and multiple looks like this in a game. So this is why I think it was promising just because it was Luca involved. It's Wes involved. And Wes picked up a ton of that slack, that attacking creative slack,

if you want to call it that. And so getting him the ball driving in the half space is fantastic for me to see and to see him kind of execute. Do we want to nitpick the execution at all? Is that what we do on this podcast? You think Wes should have put it a little closer to the goal for Ballo?

Oh no, no, no, not that one. It's the initial drive, right? Luca freeze him. He's running between the lines. And what we're going to see a couple of times in this game is, Balo is really good at like an inside out run where he can seal off a centerback. So I'm doing against Canada for that goal from Gio. So as Wes is driving here, he's got a big window between the left centerback and the left back.

And if he wants to take a chance and just sort of try to curl a ball through that window, It's a huge window so he can kind of decide how close he wants to cut it to curve it around that centerback. Balo will often be able to seal that center back off and then just run onto it just him alone with the goalkeeper. Like use soccer style. Desmases a chance to do it later in the game. So that's just a question that I have for the execution is, will we start looking for that more often now that we have a ball again who's excellent at doing that sort of thing? West chooses a safer pass to McKenny or to, I'm sorry, to Wea after driving for a little bit longer and letting their Uzbekistan shape collapse a little bit more. Okay, yeah, I didn't even notice that.

I know people were talking about that in the Discord a little bit. People, West checking off the balligan option and then putting it out wide. So, yeah, I would love to see that pass played more often. It's not just that. It's high risk. Yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going to say it's not only Geo Rana who can do that. I mean, Wes can do that if he decides to do it. He's good at playing a weighted pass and behind.

I've been saying this for like six years. That's him way a pass he had in the World Cup. That way it was a hair offside for. Oh, yeah. A fraction of a hair offside. But yes, even here, in the end, even with what might be the second optimal play, we still get a great look out of it. And Wes ends up turning creator because he's a menace in the air in the box.

Yeah. So good chance. And then let's see, in the 20th, We played around the edge of the attacking third. So I guess maybe this is where people get the horseshoe idea. You have to do a little bit of horseshoing in soccer. That's just how it works. But what?

You don't want me to say horseshoe at all? Well, no. I mean, people are definitely saying that. But this just is not horseshoe stuff. Like, horseshoe is characterized by not passing the ball into the amoeba, right? Center back to the outside back, or you got your center mids who will drift outside of the amoeba to collect it and then make a safe pass back. And you have maybe movement going on that you ignore.

But we aren't doing that. Like we have in this sequence that we start on the, you know, build through the right side. We have like four or five passes alone in this sequence into the amoeba. It's playing it into Wes's feet, into Moose's feet, rotating, Luca into that space. Like there's a lot of good movement and good, again, I call it like poking and prodding. Like you're just testing. You're going to fold that shape a little bit, see how they react to each of these little passes, while never once giving them a hint that they're actually going to take the ball from you.

So to be able to do this and make all these passes look high percentage, for me, this is what we are working towards. And then we're working towards, like, this is the big picture Greg Berhalter disorganizing the opponent with the ball. Like, this is what it's for. And we do all of this to eventually set up a very high percentage pass, an easy switch over to Christian Poolsock at the top of the box on the weak side. So I'm like, this is exactly what I would want to show people to be like, this is what we want to eventually do. I guess I'm just saying like sometimes you do have to be patient and you don't you know you don't play the killer path you can't play a killer pass every Right every time you get on the ball you got to sometimes you just play this you play the square pass and maybe maybe you play it in the I mean it comes back out um anyway I'm definitely not disagreeing with you on that it'd be okay like but I just when people are saying because because I again I don't watch the games live it very much because of all the all the kids running around but uh I follow some of the discourse

live and I'm like, oh man, sounds like we were just doing a lot of aimless possession. And when I'm watching stuff like this, I'm like, this just isn't aimless possession. Like, uh, yeah, it's not, it's not in this, in this sequence, we miss by what, half a foot by the time we feed it over to Pulsick, great movement from Jedi to overlap. We feed Jedi into the box or in the man city space. Jedi has four Uzbekistan, that line of five actually Uzbekistan defenders. Uh, he's behind them. So he's going to hit this ball across five players who are now running at their own

goal. It's not a set defense that we're playing it into. And we have Balagan trying to pick a window to run into. Like this is, this is what you are trying to accomplish. This is how you key an attack. And it's a very good moment of possession leading to a threat. Yeah. I think it's going to be, it'll be a revenue stream. It's, you know, especially if Pulisic, you know, keeps seeing it and playing that pass. And I don't know, there was some talk of that, talk that Baligan wasn't, should have been on the end of it. I think he was, he kind of held his run a tad. Maybe thinking it was going to get cut back to him a little bit.

I don't know. But you can't always get that exactly right. I don't think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. His calculation could have been that it was too tight by that point. Like the ball that Jedi puts in, uh, sneaks through about a ball size window between the center, centerback's foot and the goalkeeper. And it does get deflected too, doesn't it a little bit?

It seemed like it didn't know that one. But I could see. And then saying, if this ball is going to fall to me, it won't fall to me in that spot that it ended up going through because there's no room for it there. So I will go where it might deflect somewhere else and give myself a different chance. You know, all those calculations that those guys probably aren't even aware that they're making at the time they're making them because they've done it so often. There's an Uzbek chance in the around the 22 minute mark. I think it's off a throw in. Again, the camera didn't come back to it until the ball's already in play.

but a Legionov dribbles in from the left. Waltz is past, Luca. So we do have to talk about that a little bit. And has one from 20 yards. Beats Turner, would it be any goalkeeper in the world and rings the top of the crossbar? So kind of scary there. So just going to stand up for my goalkeeper here.

You know, when you say beats the keeper, if it's only like six inches away from your hand, but it rings the bar so it's six inches too high, I mean, did it really beat the keeper? Or did the keeper have everything he needed to? No, it probably beat him. Fair enough, yeah. It probably beat him.

There was an identical, almost identical situation a few minutes earlier on this. Like, I think it was another throw-in. And it was an even worse moment for Luca where he kind of collided with ball again, double teaming. And then the same guy, Elisinov, waltzes past him. Like he doesn't do enough. He's not strong enough. He doesn't have enough control of the moment to, like, prevent that from happening,

even in the kind of, you know, suboptimal situation of your own player colliding with you. So we need a little more presence from Luca in those moments. This one, I'm not sure it could have been like a little miscommunication because Luca, when the camera cuts back on the throwing, Luca's like on the total wrong side of the guy's body. He's like sideline side. And so I don't know if Musa was supposed to have had it.

When the ball goes out of bounds, they've kind of switched spots. So Musa is the inside defender there. and then when the camera comes back to play, it's just Moosa not involved at all in Luca wrong-sided. Yeah, there's just going to be trade-offs in how we set up the midfield, I think. Because Luca does offer something Tyler Adams doesn't offer, but then there's obviously the things that Tyler Adams offers

that Luca doesn't offer. Not that Tyler Adams is always on the right side of people's bodies in these plays. We've seen him kind of find himself. wandering at times as well. You know, another thing about the midfield is Musa was not, I think Vince made this point in the discord, but he didn't offer a lot in the attack, like in the final third.

And it seems like he has a tendency when he gets on the ball, even in zone 14, he just like makes a B-line for the corner flag, you know? Like he's going to his right to the, corner flag no matter well sometimes not even looking to his left you know it's like ah this is this is not really my part of the field i'll just like kind of move over this way and pass it off to somebody and keep it moving and it would be nice if he had a little bit of a instinct to go at the goal or maybe even like rip one from 18 yards you know uh will zuprooter one later on and it so remind me to bring

that up again but bob morocco did some good zepruder in in the discord about about this kind of tendency for musa yeah okay just basically comes down to he needs to have the vision for that reverse pass as he's going to his right to be able to use that gravity that he's pulling everyone to that side with him and just slip a pass against the grain to players who are smart enough to be running into those zones. Yeah, let's get let's talk about that when we get to it. So 25th minute, a good give and go from Wea and West. There's some nice buildup before this too. But Wea pulls it back for Musa who's arriving in the box. And he just looks like he wants nothing.

to do with it, you know. He falls down as he tries to strike it and kind of, I don't maybe hits it with the bottom of his foot out to the right. He's thinking like, if I touch this ball with any part of my body, I get a passing grade. So it goes down as a chance for created for Wea. So that gives

Wea his G-plus for connecting a pass into the box. That's all I've got to do. That's what they're doing after the game. It's just everybody's pulling up their Google sheets and looking at their G-plus scores. But it was, I mean, I mean, I'm joking a little bit, but it's not totally a joke. He looked like he wanted, didn't want to be part of it, you know, as it gets cut back to him.

Yeah. And so all the clips that I'm posting in the Discord about like, hey, we were like building through the middle. It doesn't undo the criticism of like, yeah, but it's with the wrong players, right? Like it's the reason that this doesn't end up being as dangerous is because Musa is not as dangerous in this moment in this situation as, and I think, you know, it's speculative to say this now, but as Amalek Tillman would be. You can say Gio, but Gio clearly can't be here in this window. We don't know what would happen if you were.

Malik is there and he at least at this point has everyone's hopes pinned on him that he could be this player. And so we're all just kind of wondering, would Malick be able to do similar things everywhere else on the field, but also give us a little more cut and thrust right there in the last 12 yards. I mean, he gave us some evidence of cut and thrust late in the game. As long as we're playing against the team with 10 men where we got that. I'm kidding. Good moments from Malik. Yeah.

27 minute mark, good from Balagan. I got more encouragement from this play than I think most people did. But there's some buildup that you might want to talk about, but let me just say what happened at the end of it. Pulisic plays it to Baligan's feet at the top of the box. And he essentially, long story short, he turns and shoots. But it was encouraging to me because it showed his ability to create a little room for a shooting. opportunity. He was able to just kind of shrug the defender on him off to his left and then take a

touch. And he scuffed it, if we're honest, did hit it kind of right at the keeper, tamely. But he was able to create a little like, you know, two, three yard bubble around himself for that shot. And I don't know that everyone on our team can do that. So I thought it was, I thought it was a good sign. Oh, I think so for sure. And it's a nice, he, he, He has like the able to hold a guy off with that physicality. And then also he's just got such a good shimmy, right? We talked about his swivel in his first window with us. But this is like an amazing little left to right shimmy to actually create the shot.

So he swivels and is strong to spin off number three who'd been, you know, pocketing pool sick all game. And then he absolutely sells the centerback who comes over to help with that jab step to his left. So yes, this is, I think, what we know about Balagan at this point is that he can create a shot. Yeah. In situations that most of our attackers probably do not have to just corral it and maybe just extend the play, you know, lay it off to somebody else. So I thought, again, I agree. I think this was a really promising moment. I loved the, this was one of the effective cut-ins that Pulisick had, receiving it out on the left half space,

cutting into the right, and then delivering this ball into Balagin. feet. Yeah, not like an amazing pass or anything, but just a, just a kind of like, let's, let's try to, let's poke and prod, as you would say. Yes, exactly. Let's not just, you know, not always just take people until we lose it. Right. Luca gets his nose busted in a collision in the 30th minute and he's down for a while,

lots of blood. I think it's just an accidental, like, head knock, really. So Testament pulls his shirt on. and he doesn't we don't get him on for another six minutes but Luca's done for the day did he break his nose or? Yeah they said broken nose but I don't think they've officially ruled him out for the next game yet maybe it's just like yeah common sense he's out

it's a friendly he's not playing again but uh I've broken my nose before it's not that big of a deal I mean that's what I think that is at least possible but these are friendlies and I just don't know what our uh caution is going to be here or caution level It's really unfortunate because, again, Luca was cooking. This is probably like a perfect kind of a game for him where there isn't that much coming back the other way that you got to deal with, not super physical until his nose gets broken.

But he'd been able to just like, you know, there were times where he kind of glided past people or split people as he's receiving the ball, kind of splits like a double team and just lets the ball roll and runs on it. And I feel like there are other teams we might play against that would like wreck him in that moment. that Uzbekistan were willing to just sort of hop out of the way of his legs because he'd gained half a body rather than totally destroying him. So everyone was being very professional in this game up until the broken nose. Yeah.

I think the questions around Luca remain unanswered, I would say. Yeah, that's what I'd say too. But in this game, at least, he was doing a good job facilitating things to let our other players get the ball into good spots. Yeah 34th minute Another chance for Uzbekistan A ball over the top To the right corner

And there's a cutback For again Elysianov Inside the box Who's just ahead of I think Jedi So Jedi's a little behind the play And he takes a shot

But just snatches at it With his right foot And drags it wide So Yeah a little bit of maybe awareness Here from the full team Because Tatsman hadn't come on yet And Luca's off

So we're just down A central midfielder And Uzbekistan and is controlling the ball and Jedi gets like touch tight to a player off the ball up at the sideline and freeze the seam that Ream is not comfortable defending in a pie, you know, because he's 35 years old. And so they hit that ball into the seam deep over Jedi. And it's Musa having to try to like recover and rotate back to track it.

And it just made us sort of feel all at sea. But I'm willing to just chalk that up to being down a player and maybe being a little, a little out of sorts. A little confusion out there. Testman comes on in the 35th minute. Yeah. Nice from Wes in the 36th minute to receive. And so he receives a pass.

Was it from Tesman? Maybe from Musa. No, I think it was from Tesman. Receives it with his right foot and then uses his left foot to play Ballo into the box. This is one of those maybe chances for Ballot to seal the guy off, but he gets tackled out for a corner. I thought, I think, you know, I like Ballow in that spot. It's good to put Fuller and Balligan in that position running onto a ball in the box with one defender between him and the goal. Yeah, this pass was from Richards to Wes.

And it's, it's, Wes has to do well because it's not exactly where he would want it. But, you know, Richards gets it to him. And, yeah, just very clean from Wes to hit a pass that isn't obviously on to Bolo here. But Tessman was looking for him. And again, this is the thing that I think was clear. When we talked about when I think Burrhalter and some of the players were saying we were trying something a little different, I feel like it was probably the emphasis on hitting this ball into Wes's feet up in the attacking band. Because we were just doing it again and again and again, just feeding him.

And again, for not having Gio here, I think Wes in this game against this opponent, built up some credit for being able to at least deputize or being one option to deputize, set some kind of a baseline for what he can do in this role. And now we've got to see what other guys can do. Richards, by the way, hit a bunch of these little passes that, again, might feel like nothing passes, but just a little bit brave and take a little bit of technique and willingness. And he was doing it all night.

Did Richards look bigger to you than he has than he did last time we saw him? Like, more muscular? I think so. All these kids are going to grow up right before our eyes. his place. I know. I mean, Eunice Musa is 20 years old. Like it's insane. Yeah. I mean, definitely West sets a baseline for that sort of creator in the band of five. And I love that we're playing the ball into his feet like this.

But I still would like to see him be one of the, you know, make Tillman be the guy up here. Try that with Wes and Musa in, you know, the further back midfielders. I still want to see it. I definitely want to see it. Real quick, just on that no, because I thought it was interesting. I think it's totally defensible to run the Luka formation in here, even though I'm like, I wanted Malik because I'm not the one who has to eat it if it goes bad. But I thought it was interesting when Luca had to come off.

And I think Martino said what they had been doing, you know, because you can't prep for both those things. You can't prep for Luka there and be like, but we'll also prep for Malik there doing something totally different if it doesn't work. right or if Luca can't go because of his calf. So I thought it was interesting what they said was Martino said that in training then, Tessman was just sort of his ride-along buddy where he'd just shadow him for all the activities. So that way, if Luca can't go,

you don't have to change Malick's job, or I'm sorry, you don't have to change Moose's job and McKinney's job to then put Malick in the McKinney role. It's just being like, we'll insert Tessman and hope he can do an able facsimile of what Luca was going to do. Which makes you wonder, is the only way we see Tillman if McKinney comes off against Oman, you know, since...

Well, we got a couple more days now, so now we can train the second iteration is what I'm telling myself. Okay. And there's not all the time in camp, so you can't do both of them before Uzbekistan, but you might have a plan to do one for Uzbekistan and then a second thing for Oman. So maybe... If you do like a walkthrough today and then you're training tomorrow, I mean, there's not that much, not that much time. Yeah. Okay, 39 minute mark, nervous little moment often.

It was back set piece. Number 11 gets it in space after a scramble at the top of the box. It doesn't produce anything threatening, really. Just kind of floats a shot over the bar. But, you know, a better team might, there might be something we like to call a goal resulting from that. Because he had some time. Musa was trying to close him down. All right, 42nd minute, test-given giveaway.

Now we're getting into sort of the two big sloppinesses of the first half. Tasman gives it away trying to play it back to Ream. The pass is just not accurate or maybe Ream's feet aren't set correctly. I don't know, but I think it's mostly on Tasman. And he plays an Uzbek attacker in behind, essentially. And he takes a shot to the near post, get a decent save from Turner down to his right. But he had it covered. Yeah, weak shot, really.

Yeah. but yes this is this is entirely on Tanner this is and this is a little thing we've been doing all game this little triangle with our two centerbacks and Luca most of the time right just building a little triangle around their lone pressuring attacker so we'd been in Tessman also does this a lot and hits this past quite a few times in the game without botching it you just botched this one and it it shows how how consistent we are going to ask this player to be to just do simple things but do them exactly right over and over and over. And I've got to say

Testman, maybe we'll have to hope that it's jitters and we'll have to see how long of a leash he's going to be sort of given to do this again. Berlter, I know praised him after the game, but that's also just something a coach does to a player that they aren't going to

throw in the trash immediately. You don't need to harp on it, but maybe we all know that he had some moments. Yeah. Testament, of course, playing for Venetia in Siri B. At this point, I noticed we're trying Pulisic on the right and Wea on the left. I don't know that anything really major came out of it, and we switched back after the half. But we did that for a minute or 10.

Yeah, no, it was fun because Wea kind of roamed his way over there. So I don't know if that was the instruction to change on the fly at some point. but there was a sign where Waya received the ball on the right half of the field and then like played his way all the way over to the left side of the field. So you got it on both sidelines within 10, 12 seconds because that's what Waya likes to do. But I wasn't sure if that was related or if it was a natural thing where Poole's like then just floated over and they just stayed that way for a while or if it was an obstruction. I wonder.

And then the last big chance of the half was for Uzbekistan as well. It's the Ream giveaway, which you have surely seen. seen by now way too casual just kind of gets his pocket picked with nobody between him and Turner Turner comes out but it doesn't come out too far comes out just the right amount gets big and I think the attacker you know probably could have done better and it's and saved by Turner kind of just smashes it off Turner's shoulder I think yet Turner does very well to not commit early, like stays up for all of the touches as the guy tries to almost like round him in a real, real, uh, long winded way. Um, so turn it does well there. All that's going through my

head here was our preview question about Tim Riem because the idea was life on the line. Do you, do you go with Riem or are you at all worried about father time catching up to him? Uh, and so for sure, this is what I feel like this is what anyone who listened to that would have been thinking. Yeah. I was thinking about it. We got, we got a, we got a, we got to wonder, right? This isn't, he's not 27s where you just go, oh, that's a weird mistake. You got to, like, at this point we're saying,

is he done? He was good through, like, the entire rest of the game. And he made some big plays. He stood some guys up in 1 v1 situations in open field, a big header in the second half to deny a headed tap-in. But in this moment, you're just like, oh, oh, oh, Tim, do we got to, what do we have to have a talk? Where are you at?

Right. Yeah, it's something. to watch for sure. Let's see. Let me play. So it's halftime. Let me play Jeff Carlisle question for Burrhalter and his answer. How would you assess some of those middle segments of the match where they did have some chances and there were some mistakes?

Yeah, I think that a couple things. So we gave the ball away in some tough spots. That was the first thing. The second thing is when we were building and we were methodical about our build trying to attract the opponent. I thought then we lacked the speeding up the attack once we broke through that front five, and that could have been better. You know, back five is always difficult to break down, and you saw that they just drop, and we wanted to get behind them.

We didn't do that often enough. And then the other thing that I'd note is that, you know, our press after loss, defensive transition, you know, needs to get better. I think we gave them too many opportunities to get behind us when we could have been positioned better. better to win the ball immediately after we lost it. Any of that ring true to you? I mean, the Uzbekistan chances definitely were straight off of our giveaways,

like total gifts and things that we shouldn't have to worry about or if we do have to worry about them, it means that those players will be removed, right? I mean, like, if the Tessman giving that away isn't pre-game or first game with the grown-ups, jitters, he has one other cap in like a January camp. This is his first game with the real crew. if that's the thing that he's going to do regularly, he'll just be done. He'll get phased out pretty quickly,

and that'll be that. Same with Ream. If that becomes a thing that he starts doing routinely, that'll just be the end of Tim Ream. And we'll hope that the next guy who comes in has fewer the whoopsies. What did you think, I mean, do you kind of agree,

or do you think we were just, like, I don't think at any point our defense was susceptible to Uzbek's team. No, I agree with that. I guess the part about how he didn't think we were attacking fast enough once we beat that first band of, I guess, five is how he put it. I don't know. I don't know if it's a matter of speed or I guess I could see it being a matter of everyone joining the attack with speed and then there being a lot of options and a lot of people arriving.

Maybe that's an issue. I didn't notice it myself necessarily, but I still want to know why we can't be a little more precise in the final third, you know. And it seems like that's a, that's what he's getting at there. And I'm curious what your reaction is to that. So on the speed, once we beat like their, I guess their initial line and we're just looking at it's, it's almost like the John Herdman AVP. Like once we are facing their back five, like there's an element of that risk reward where, you know, when we talk about that, that past McKinney makes, instead of hitting ball again in vertically right behind their back line, we hold it a beat and then play a slightly safer pass to Wea,

where it could just be like, no, you have to make the decisive play, even if it's lower percentage to actually succeed, it's much higher percentage to lead to a goal. And when we've got them on the run, when we've got them moving backwards, like that is the time we have to do that. And we cannot sort of like slow down waiting for a higher percentage decision because that actually hurts us big picture.

Yeah, that makes sense. And maybe that's what he's saying. And if that's it, I guess I agree with that. Okay, Pepe comes on for Ballo at the half, Ricardo Pepe. Yep, pregame he talked about Pepe coming on because Ballos didn't have a preseason with Monaco. So he's not quite 90-fit. We set a sloppy tone right off the bat in the second half. Way it comes back to the ball, draws a little attention over to Testman.

And he plays a too heavy pass to Ream as we try to shift over to the left. And we lose what little advantage we gained from that backward. way a dribble under pressure. It's just a small thing, but um, you know, they're like that, connecting that pass from testament to the center back. We got to have that be like automatic. I feel like. Yeah, he had a couple of those where he just kind of wrecked the rhythm, like a pass to desk that's a little bit behind him after we kind of again, uh, created this, this big space for desks to run into, but since the past is behind him, that that space is full by the time desk actually gets it. And that's not to say testament was uniformly bad.

had several sort of like moments he chuckled at his big diagonals that he smashed either out of bounds or way path but he I mean he had a couple of decent moments I think it does just sort of show how consistent that player has to be because it stands out so much um even just the little miscues that they have yeah I didn't not think testament was horrible or anything I mean he can't be doing that through ball to the Uzbekistan attacker but um Musa gets played into zone 14 in the 47th minute by a clever West McKinney pass, and he dribbles gradually toward the right corner, as you alluded to earlier. He just waves that old final third white flag and taps it wide to weigh up for a cross that bangs off a defender's shins.

But in this case, I mean, he had, I don't know, one defender between him and the goal and like some space to try to do him or, you know, maybe he had some people to pass too on the back post. I don't know if that reverse pass you were mentioning earlier was on. in any way, probably not in this case, but... No, this is the one where it's there. Oh, okay. The key from, again, the for sure positive of this moment is the West Pass, because the West Pass to Musa, you know, we can see it looking from above.

Like on the field, this is, it's got to be so hard to see this, to sort of see where Musa is now and to see what Space he's about to go into that's going to be available for a pass to hit that weighted ball in where he can run onto it. So really nice from Weston, again, being... the Gio stand in. And then it's not easy. I mean, you think of like a scrambling quarterback. It's hard to keep your eyes downfield.

Musa has to have this ball. He has to feel the pressure coming from the back left side of his body. But he's got Pepey running ahead of him, dragging across the field. And then he has Pulisic, who has inside position on both of the other Uzbekistan defenders who are on that half of the field. And so he's got to read, like what has to register here is if the centerback goes with Pepe, then there must be no one left. go with Poolsick.

So I've got to hit this reverse pass to my left to Poolecic and just let him make a playoff. Don't even have to know exactly where he is. Just get it there. And again, it's tough while you're running full speed downhill as a 20-year-old player. But that's the pass we need Mousa to see if we're going to get that kind of creative juices out of this kind of a midfield configuration. Right. And I guess the window is really tight, but it's there if he maybe plays it like slight. if he maybe plays it

slightly behind Poulosix so he just reach his back with his foot and draws it into his path okay Richards gets a yellow for dragging down number 10 on the turn kind of gets dusted a bit there ensuing free kick arcs off of Poulosick's

head onto the back post where number 15 meets it on the volley and flashes it wide of Turner's far post I thought I noticed a very lovely who's back passage of play in the 51st minute where they break our press pass all the way through it to the far side the ball is crossed and then helped over to number helped over to um elizanov and he steps past jedi and rips one which

flashes wide of the far post again but another kind of dangerous moment yeah really nice from Uzbekistan they they have it all the way in their deep right corner uh defensively uh and play their way out of pressure uh three or four moments where uh you know really toe in a line but also us being maybe a little bit late to get to the ball carrier, kind of reminiscent of the Netherlands goal opener in the World Cup where it's just like everyone's just a hair late, but it's adding up over time to suddenly spring the wide open left side of Uzbekistan's attack. And then really nice moment from their number 10 to stand on the ball,

pause for a beat and allow the overlap to get down the left side line. And this is the big Tim Ream header because they deliver a nice ball in and Ream has to track it well and get a little flick to help. put it on its way or that back post runner gets to smash it in one of those where uh there won't be anything for turn it to do okay 53 minute mark there's a richard's giveaway you know we're dingin everybody for their giveaways this one's trying to play a line breaking pass through the middle Uzbekistan just picks it off but they can't punish the mistake the the the through ball for the running attacker is is too long um which it was kind of how things went for them seem

like yeah but we like we like that richard is trying them yeah Keep trying them. The Hugo Perez model. Don't be afraid to make a mistake. 60 minute mark, a good Pulisic cross after he runs down a good ball from Jedi in the corner. So Jedi doesn't often play a pass to spring somebody, but he did this in this case.

And Pulcic cuts onto his right and hits way near the penalty marker, kind of leaning away from the goal. He makes decent contact, but misses the, you know, wide of the far post. Maybe he should have helped it along for McKinney arriving at the back post. I think Wes thought that as he walked away from the play.

But, um... I think West just wanted him to leave it. But, I mean, because that'd be a real tough flick. But, uh, this is another pretty good chance for, uh, as headers go. Mm-hmm. We've got, we've got like a little three on three in the box. So, uh, decent choice here. Um, Musa had slashed right ahead of McKen.

right ahead of OAS, so it might even been three on two by the time the ball gets there. So again, as crosses go, this is a decent time to attempt one. I like the ball from Jedi too. 61st minute Jedi gets beaten on a curving diagonal ball to Alijanov, not from Zone 14, but from a little further away. And Alijanov tries to beat Turner Nearpost with his right foot and draws a good save down to his left. Are we already taking Turner for granted That that's just like

Oh that's not gonna that's not gonna score A little bit I think I am Even in the moment Not just after he says like well of course he said Like even in the moment you're just like Oh well they won't be able to score from this This shot It's great

I mean Switch keepers for the two teams And I don't know It's probably They Beckastown probably wins Turner saves that way a shot in my opinion A little messy in the box from Wes

And Tanner in the 62nd minute just noting it for posterity. Nothing really bad happens, but we're not real clean there. And then Aronson comes on for Wea and McKenzie comes up. Just so everyone's clear, you're talking about in our own box, eight yards from that Turner. Yes, in our box. Just decides that he's going to pirouet and then just pass it to somebody a yard and a half away from him. Right. Yeah, it's a little casual.

So then McKenzie comes on for Richards, who's on that yellow card, and Aronson comes on for Wea in the 64th minute. I don't have much to say about McKenzie's performance in the timeline, but I thought he was pretty good. And at least, you know, mistake-free, pretty clean. Yep, avoided whoopsies, which is a nice shift for him. I mean, it's notable that he was the guy who came on, comes on ahead of miles. So whether that's just an audition to see if he's jumped where Beralter has miles or Berlter thinks McKenzie's passing or in general overall play, maybe shades him a little bit ahead of Robinson at the moment.

I guess we'll just keep finding out. Yeah. I don't have a strong feeling about it. I'd be okay with that. A few quick notes at this point, Pulisic to foul. Pulisic gets fouled. It's a very poor set piece. Tesman gets bodied in the middle and is saved by Ream.

We get a decent idea from Pulisic to try to whip a ball onto Wes at the backpost, but it's claimed by the keeper head high. And then Musicketts goes down for a while after getting wrecked in midfield and giving it away. Tillman is readied on the sideline. 70th minute, a good attack up the right from McKenzie, Tessman, Brenda, and Wes. Back to Brenda. Kind of in the Man City zone. Can't beat the first defender with his attempt at a cut back.

Pulisic gets a decent corner kick on the ensuing set piece. let's see 72 minute mark Ream gets rinsed in a buildup from Uzbekistan It plays it out to it's played out to Masharapov Dest is 1v with him Masharapov gets a decent shot off

but it's dragged right to the goal Yeah probably Reem's other low moment But you know sometimes you're going to get shook And then I appreciate the cleverness of Mesharpov to Did he Meg Dest with the shot? Yes.

I think so. I'm going to believe that he did. So yeah, that was nice. I like my guy. I like watching him. I'm just saying. Yeah, yeah. I like playing against teams

where I like a guy to watch. 73rd minute Dest does a couple guys himself, has a shot with his left foot from close range, blocked off of his foot. However, it was not likely to be on frame had it not even been blocked, right? Okay, but yeah. I think you're totally selling this.

chance short by saying it was going to, I mean, this was incredible from Dest. Like he gets it at the edge of the box and then like zigzags his way to like directly in front of the goal six yards away and then somehow totally miss hits it, which is why it gets blocked. The guy blocking it might not have even been blocking a shot on goal, but he was blocking the shot off target that Dest actually hit. So it's a biff at the very end, but just an amazing Sergenio Dest sequence to get to where he got. If you were to monitor the ooze and oz from the crowd, he probably brings the most of those, or at least did in this game. Well, and it's also one of my favorite classes of move where he's got

the ball. At some point, he cuts the guy, you know, at the corner of the box as he's advancing on goal. And now the ball is just rolling towards goal and death's, you know, running with it. And he takes like three jab steps, but never actually touches the ball, but still gets the guy to like, jump off of his line, off the line that the ball is going towards to free up the shooting window. So yeah, like I said, maybe I just have too low of a bar at this point for what I enjoy watching the U.S. team do. But I just did not have like the same negative vibes that I think were permeating the

conversation around this game. I was like, this is fun, fun stuff right there. It probably has to do with you watching it on delay. So I'll just say again on the desk chance. Like that is a stupidly good chance. I've got it on my large TV screen. It's not a large TV. It's just not my little tiny monitor, my computer.

And I'm like, oh, man, at the moment of contact, you've got a great angle of it. And he is, yeah, he's nine yards away from the goal with two-thirds of the far post to shoot at. And I'm just like, this is an amazing chance. So I know the narrative became like, oh, we got our late goals. You know, it's 3-0. So everyone's mad about a 3-0 win. And it's like, well, yeah, the goals came. late in the game, and I get that.

But this is a really good chance that's not when they're playing with 10 men. And so it's just like, yeah, sometimes these chances don't go in. But this, what we're trying to do is create as many chances as we can. And this is a fantastic look for one of our best players that I'm pretty happy about. It's the Brenda effect. Brenda drawn a lot of attention over there on that right side. He was my dark horse player projection. And he came in off the bench and did really well.

He did good. I agree. He did well. 74 minute mark. Pepe was kind of up and down with his connection play in the middle. But in this case, he made a good layoff for Aronson. And then Aronson plays it to Wes on top of the box.

And then he plays it back to, West plays it back to Aronson for a shot that's blocked. Never looked likely to travel to the goal. Pepe tracks it down. That was on Wes a little bit. Wes's pass. Wes had to do a little pirouette. So it's not just like he passed to West and West passed right back to him.

No. Does like a full body faint or he's got his hips facing to keep it going to the right side. Yeah. He's looking for options over there. Does a real nice spin and now has Brenda wide open and his pass to Brenda is a little bit behind Brenda. So Brenda can't shoot it in rhythm. He's got to take a prep touch that lets the window pretty much close.

But go on. Sorry. Okay. Yeah. No. That's fair. Pepey tracks it tracks down the deflected shot off to the left and then flashes it across for Puliswick, who does get a foot to it, but I think it gets nicked right before it gets to him and can't get good contact.

It kind of pops up on him and then he tries to head it at the keeper, but it's just a, it's like if you're a defender heading it back to your keeper, that was that kind of header, like just cushioned it over to the keeper. That's just a devastating takedown of Pulisick's attempt to score goal here. It's really hard to, I mean, when the ball is like just falling, directly down to you, like how can you generate any power on that kind of header? No, you know my stance on it, right? You have to, for that situation, you have to turn around and you have to overhead kick it. Like, that's the only way you're going to generate power is to actually overhead kick. Brenda, you know, we kind of were talking about him.

Brenda comes in and if you want to talk about like fast attack after you've beaten the first wave of defense, like that's what Brenda is offering here, I think. Like he is, he is not a plotting deliberate player in these moments. He is like, let's go, let's go, let's go. So, you know, he contributes to this play, contributed to that last sequence with Wes. Like, he is adding some forward thrust to just the energy of our moves

once he comes in this game. Hmm. Like he basically is adding that Brendo freneticism to the full attacking sequence. What a puzzle for Burrhalter to put together here. 80 first minute. Tillman comes on for McKinney. Christopher Lund making his debut

comes on for Jedi. Yeah, you know, decent little recovery and slip pass from Tillman to Aronson. After a throw in, Aronson can't beat that first defender with his cutback attempt. 85th minute, Tessman's a little messy coming back into the box. Andres Contor says

I don't have TNT, so I'm watching on Peacock. And Contor in a hoary voice says, Ah, Tesman. Ah, Tessman. The contour is a legend. Love that. Tessman probably deserved quite a few Ah, Testaments.

We also in this spell when the subs were coming on, and even just before that, one was right when Jedi got hurt, where before you had to come off for Lund. We got two good shots, sideline shots of old BJ. They're keeping BJ in the frame on purpose. So when Jedi was down, we got the exact one that we wanted to see, which was BJ. in Greg's ear, like doing the hand motions, like very urgently saying some stuff. And Greg kind of just like processing it. And then before Tillman and Lund come in, they cut to BJ and he's given them the instructions with the tablet. So BJ's going to be a fixture.

I don't think, I think BJ's a real part of the fate of the brand now. Yeah. That's a good sign too. B.J. Callahan is good vibes. I think we all agree. 87th minute Tillman, Dest, Aronson kind of get worked a little bit down the left side

and there's a hooked cross into the box from the left volley attempt and some nervous moments as a foul is called on the striker as McKenzie shields him from the ball and Turner comes out to claim it off of the ground. It's kind of whatever at this point but Tillman was a little bit easy to eliminate

in this game I would say. Testman is what. Well, but yeah, and Luca a couple of times when he was in. And I mean, if you listen to this pod, you know my feelings on shielding the ball for your keeper. You just, you just never do that. You kick it out of bounds directly for a corner kick if you have to. You just never, if you have to shield a guy, he is too close to let the keeper come get it because it takes a little toe poke while the keeper's coming.

Yeah. And it's the cheapest goal you can possibly allow. Yeah. Okay. Another good Tillman attacking moment in the 88th minute. He gets it on the half turn just inside midfield from McKenzie, drives into zone 14. He plays, I don't know if he'd call it the reverse pass that Musa hasn't played,

but it's in the same ballpark. He plays a ball on the ground, a firm pass over to Pulisic arriving behind. I guess it was probably Elysianov, or maybe they were down to 10 minutes, at this point. Maybe he's behind one of those, the right center back. Anyway, Pulis got a chance to take a touch and be in on goal. And he just, his first and second touches just aren't delicate enough. And he kind of bundles himself over as the ball spills to the keeper.

Yeah. And so that's what we're hoping to see from Tillman. And when I say hoping to see it, we're hoping to see it even just a little bit cleaner where the pass isn't behind. Because that's like the constant hypothetical here, right? like Wes is hitting a pass into somebody but it's not quite there so you say would Geo have hit a better pass or would Kirkland Geo Malik Tilman hit this better pass so here's the chance and he gets it to Pulisic but not in a way that that would take anything besides

like a flawless collection and shot from pool sick which he's capable of but the idea is again you want to make it as simple as possible for him so it's not easy not easy receive receiving moment. So we just have to keep wondering and we just keep giving Malik some chances and we just find out more and we try to enjoy the ride. Speaking of Malik, he gets worked in the 89th minute through the middle. Results in a chance from wide right. Claire cuts in and curls one at the backpost, a bit wide of goal out for a goal kick.

And then 91st minute we get the goal that rescued the evening in St. Louis. Greg's rolling his eyes. from Pepey. Starts with a ream long ball to Aronson. He brings it down nicely. But then loses it. So he brings it down cutting across the, cutting across the field from right to left.

Then loses it trying to cut the defender just inside the box. There's a lot of scramble stuff that happens. And then Desper recovers it over on the right side, rounds a defender with the outside of his right boot, slides it to Aronson, who's set up just inside the box, and Aronson squares it neatly for Pepe. It's possible he was playing it back to Dest.

know, but it sat up well for Pepe, who steps into it and smashes it on goal, just left of the center of the goal, or, you know, a little, just right of the left corner, I guess is probably a more accurate way to say it. And I think the keeper might have done better, but it's a solid strike from El Tren, and it's two zero. So the, the, uh, in-betweenness of Aronson's pass, where you're not sure if it was to desk or to Pepe may have, may have helped to throw the keeper off, because Dest kind of stumbles on his on his movement off of Aronson here where like he plays it to Aronson and he's trying to continue his run for that you know nice little layoff but he stumbles a bit which throws off his timing if he doesn't he probably meets this ball at the same time

peppy does and the keeper might have been following that motion to sort of set himself and not realizing that peppy's there and peppy wallops this ball too so uh with confidence yeah yeah So I'm having a hard time putting it all on the keeper. Like he gets a hand to it, a stronger hand does. And Matt Turner saves it, of course. But, you know, not everyone has Matt Turner laying around. So you got to play what you have. And good on Peppy for being really opportunistic and just taking a layoff in his vicinity and smashing it home.

Yeah. No, boy, the goalkeepers union. Right. And the goalkeepers union is real strong today, isn't it? in it. Pepe with eight goals for the USA now, tied for 31st all time, just behind Josh Wolfe,

Alexi Lalas, and one Hugo Perez. He also has the highest goals. What's that, Greg? Good company. Yeah. He also has the highest goals per match at 0.47 among all players

with 10 or more appearances, with one exception. Can you guess who that is? No, who we got? Jesus Ferrer Jesus Ferre Yeah I would

I was I was right there And then we get the goal For Pulisic on the penalty It's a ring Ream long ball to Aronson again A nice diagonal All the way on the right wing Erinson slips it to Tillman

At the top of the box Uzbekistan Not quite as resolute at this point In the match as they were earlier So there's kind of a lot of space there He dribbles around Number 15 and draws up penalty Pulisic buries it to the

Keepers right. 3-0. That's Poulosix's 26th goal. He's sixth all-time behind only Dempsey, Donovan, Altador, Winalda, and McBride. Well, there you go. And, again, not to take, Uzbekistan Reda-downe player at this point, but also, like, again, they're going to play the game where they sit deep the whole match and try to absorb.

Like, you're going to keep giving up chances, and we kept getting some chances, and then we capitalized on the two late ones, and I'm glad we did. I love a 3-0 scoreline. I don't know. Like, what's your overall feeling of the game? I still don't think it was great, but I think you agree with that, right? Yeah, for sure. I want to understand better why we can't be more dangerous in the final third.

Like, maybe we'll just do like a special episode on that sometime. But, yeah, I don't, you know, I, I gather that the discourse has been pretty predictable since the game, more or less. Like, before, before, before Burhaler came back, we played free-flowing soccer. Now it's back to the plotting stuff. Right. Which is, again, like, this wasn't, this wasn't the Japan-friendly. This wasn't South Korea, or even Saudi Arabia. Like, this was a, I mean, this was a.

pedestrian performance where we won three zero right against a team like burrhalter pointed out and Vince has been pointing out I guess that doesn't concede a lot of goals well yeah they don't concede a lot of goals because they don't play a lot of good teams I mean that's that's definitely a part of it yeah so and they're not very good you know like that there's a reason that they weren't creating a lot of chances on their own they had like one or two looks that they created and then they had two or three very good looks that we gifted. So on that side, that's about how we should expect it to go down. We shouldn't let Uzbekistan threaten us.

And we should be trying to generate some chances. I was hoping to generate more chances for the strikers. We didn't get a lot of them. Although, yeah, Baligan had what? Do you only have two shots, the header and the... depends what you count that one from McKinney, where McKinney slides him in, and he kind of hits it as it's in it's sort of deflected out for that corner. But that's not a ton of good looks, but the headers point blank, that's a real good chance.

I mean, I haven't seen the actual numbers, but like John Lord said, you don't actually always need to see the number to sort of know a good chance when you see one. Right. That, that I think we can comfortably say is a very good chance, whatever the number comes out to be. Did Pepe? Pepe only had the one shot, the goal, right? Yeah, I think so.

What his conversion rate's just unbelievable, isn't it? And so, and so that's, yeah, that's also not like, Peppy didn't have a lot of, neither of them had a lot of, like, threat adjacent moments. You know, there was a cross that we fizzed across from Jedi that Balagan was close to. And then Pepe had the ball, he kind of smashed intentionally across, that ended up being deflected for Pool Six, really meek header. So just kind of even thinking about their overall adjacency to threatening moments wasn't super high.

We do have to find some ways to solve like that dilemma, right? I think the, you know, us trying to play it in behind for balligan or even peppy instead of, you know, playing that higher, that lower percentage but higher reward ball in behind is something I'd like to see on Tuesday. death fed peppy that ball against mexico right where uh where peppy gets in the the intentionality of that i think is somewhat questionable but oh no it's not the intentionality of the past the intentionality of peppy being on side because didn't run into somebody yeah yeah but but the idea being like let's just slip the striker in centrally like let's see let's see that and then uh and then the question just becomes uh huh like does malik tilman

give you pitch control issues, which I think, you know, what we kind of talked about and saw was there were some. There definitely were some. He will. He will give us pitch control issues. Yeah. And is that, is the tradeoff going to be worth it? Or do we even care against Oman? Or do we, do we just want to play some saucy football and we just say, who cares if he does? We'll find out one way or the other. No, I think we got to, we got to, we don't want to just go into Oman play saucy football for the sake of playing saucy football. We got to figure out how we're going to set up against good teams. Who are you, Bells?

Give me the saucy football. What's happening here? I mean, we'll get some saucy football anyway, but, but, um, yeah, no, I think we got to use every opportunity we can to learn more. That's my, I guess, extremely boring perspective on it. Well, that's fine. But Tessman was like the boring option and he came in for Luca. And I get it.

Again, we talked about how you can justify that with, we prepped for Luca and Tassman was the Luca. stand in for the prep and so you save time using him. But what we found out was maybe Testman's not ready. And if Luca's not ready, then we've got two days to prep. I don't think it's even just being saucy for saucy sake. You could say throw Brenda in there as the as the mechanic. I don't think you can throw Brenda into the Luca role.

He's too frenetic. Luke is like the opposite of frenetic. So I guess my question is, do you throw Brenda in into that more attacking? I'm sorry for making it confusing. Yeah, I would go Malik. But I would say, you know, I hope they have a conversation where they're like, look, we're going to be watching the tape with a fine-tooth comb. We do not want you getting eliminated on the dribble more than like two or three times all game, you know. It's not even the dribble.

Like it's, he gets illuminated before the pass gets made a couple of times. I'm not hammered on him. It's, it was happening 55, 60 yards from goal. But it was like he'd overpursue a guy and the guy would just slip behind him and they'd just play that center mid the pass in that space that he'd over pursued from. So yeah, that's That's a lot It does Like that's what he's going to have to clean up

Bels, what about the other guys? Who else do you want to see in this next game? Obviously, I know you want to see Paredes At some point, probably at left back Yeah, I don't particularly care too much I was just, I had to come up with some kind of answer on Thursday To some kind of question But I want to see Balagin start again

I want more Balagin I'm a big peppy guy as you know But I want more Balagan off this I want us to start him and give him another chance to really make a big impact The 45-45-45 was nice that's a nice way to have a good way if one guy's not fit and you can kind of go that route I was I was thinking about you when Lund came on when Jedi kind of was hurt I was like oh that was that was gonna be the Peridus moment but they're giving it to Lund yeah curious what the plan is for game two I shed no tears about that

I really want Pulisic to, we got to find a way. This has been a problem for a long time. And Pulisic is kind of a paradox for me because he scored that big goal at the World Cup. He made that 45-yard run. He plays with desire and fire and he makes things happen. But like, I don't know. The soccer is not beautiful around him, you know, in general. and we've got to find a way to level that up

and it probably mostly has to do with him but maybe about, I know, I mean, maybe we're so committed to this asymmetry that we're going to have all the soccer happen on the right side and then the left side is going to be put your head down in ISO and go at them. But I don't know. I'd like my aspiration is for us to be a little more

harmonious on the left side. All right. Well, I feel like Paredes could offer that. as that as the he's a more harmonious player I would say like Jedi wants to overlap and then he's going to fire a ball across right like that's that's what we're going to get fredis could give you a little bit of that desk on the left could give you a little bit of that you got some you got some possibilities there it's not it's not it's not it's not doomed and again doom's a strong word when you're talking about like Jedi Robinson being

default option I mean Jedi's been good Jeddies just continues to be very consistent I think and and solid not a perfect player of course course. Not a world-class player, but for us he is the,

he's extremely valuable. All right, so you want to run it back, same 11 versus Oman, except Malik

I want to see, maybe let Ream have a break. Wasn't that your suggestion, send him back to Fulham for the second game?

Yeah, send him back, let him, because if he doesn't go back now, like, I feel like there's no way they start to Riem in Fulham's

first game after the break. Maybe I'm wrong, but, uh, he's, he's, he's grizzled. Let's,

let's, let's at least, if we don't send it back, you know, let them enjoy the locker room vibes. Let's run McKenzie or Miles next to Richards. Yeah. I want to see Richards again. I thought he looked a little bit like a player who hasn't played much yet this season, but also a player I really enjoy. And as you pointed out, doing a lot of just brave maybe is too strong,

but there's some ambition in his passing that's nice to see. All right, Oman on Tuesday night. We'll recap that on Wednesday. Oman just beat Palestine, two to one on Wednesday in Oman. So they're making the trip over here. Now that game is in St. Paul, St. Paul, Minnesota.

All right, anything else? No. Nice to see the fellas. It's good to see the fellas play some soccer. I really, like, again, if you can not get caught up in some of the vibes that are out there, like, it can be fun and just watch them playing. Yeah, I agree.

And one other thing is, check out our Patreon. The link is in the show notes. This podcast has no ads and you can get them under reviews. And now we're doing a Friday offering. We're going to try to do it every Friday, have something for patrons. And then you join the Discord, all that stuff. Link is in the show notes. Check it out. Thanks for listening. We'll see you.