Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #439: USMNT v Germany recap

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

A fun first half including an outrageous Pulisic goal, a second half full of hard medicine, and a bunch of unanswered questions about our midfield.Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! Patrons get a private feed for the Monday Review, which is, among other things, a run-down of club action for national team players every week with Watke and Vince. We have recently added patron-only content that’s 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. We lost to the Germans 3 to 1 at an old airfield in Connecticut on Saturday. It was a fun game to watch, a fun and interesting first half especially, and then kind of a bad second half as we got ground down and ultimately played off the pitch by Demandchaft. Greg, how are you doing? I'm good. I'm feeling sad not about the result.

this game, but about not being able to participate in the second annual tournament of Rose's football contest that you guys are playing in the morning. That's what, I mean, I feel like we need to first hear how you performed before we can talk about how the U.S. men's national team performed. Me personally. Yes, you personally. I played it.

I played all right. Okay. Yeah, I do want to, so there's a couple, a few people who need to be shouted out. Well, there were like 15 of us. you know, so we played 7V7 for basically an hour and a half. And it was a lot of fun. But I got to, I got to say there was a guy named Ian there, who was a real player, a real, like a, I didn't even talk to him, but I got his name and he was a good player. And doing a lot of lion with his eyes and his hips, you know, and just making a lot of good decisions.

It's good. It's good to recognize that subtlety, you know, and see how. how much it pays off when you're actually playing. Yeah, yeah. And then there was a guy named Ryan from New York City who came to the tailgate with his wife and two kids. He was also quite good. I was up against him and I just could not take the ball from him. You know, you know how frustrating that can be, you know?

Yeah, especially for a self-avowed cage match enthusiast. Like, you did not be able to do anything in the cage. That must have killed you. Yeah, I mean, it was like, it was like I was in a cage that I couldn't get out of whenever I was trying to take the ball from. And then my brother-in-law, Peter McCrory, who lives in New York City and was a huge help to all of the tailgating stuff. He was good, too. Nice. Okay, so the foots all went well and then the tailgate itself, I'm sure it was a smashing success.

Yeah, got to recognize Paul Douglas for. leading the caravan from the comfort in parking lot to the, to the parking lot at the stadium and claiming some really good spot. He did a lot of behind the scenes work. And then Jackie brought a Borg. I still don't know what that is, but it's like a liquor drink, you know, made of a lot of different stuff. And it's like a jug that you pass around.

That was the beginning of my problems on Saturday. Yeah, it's just fun to see everybody. Sean Foreman was there, the founder of, you know, baseball reference and FB. That sounds so awesome. You know, a lot of, Sanjay, Vince was there, Tara was there, and lots of people from the Discord. You know, it's fun to put names to usernames, faces to usernames, I should say. No, that's fantastic. It's such a cool, like, thing to get that soccer game going on those weekends.

and then obviously the tailgate and then, you know, bringing a bunch of energy to the stadium. Was there a decent vibe in the stadium? Yeah, you know, the field was gorgeous. You know, it looked really good. It's an open-air stadium. You know, no roofs.

So it kind of feels like you're in a college football stadium, which you are, you know, because that's what it is. But it was nice. I didn't have any problems with the stadium. And the rain only came down lightly. in the second half a little bit, wasn't a problem. Nice. Yeah.

All right. Then last question, because you were there. What was the, did the, did the mood like, get elevated when the lineup was announced? This will maybe lead us into our lineups. Um, I could, if it did, I, I think I remember being excited about geo starting, but not, you know, was it really that much of a surprise? I kind of expected it. I didn't perceive an increase in the mood. Okay, okay.

With the lineups. It did feel, like, the first half was really exciting. I mean, we were sitting on the side that we were attacking in the second half, so we didn't get as much of the action. And it was really far away, but it just felt like we were constantly, like, scoring goals that were called off or, like, you know, almost scoring. and but it was all very far away. You know how it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're close to field level and you're looking at the field vertically. It's kind of, it's a new way, it's a different way to watch soccer than what you're used to if you watch a lot of it on TV. All right, man, it's awesome. You're there and we'll have similar, hopefully, reports from Nashville. Yeah, from you, from you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're going to be in Nashville. Yes. So is it. I'm not sure what I'm gonna be able to do we'll talk about that later we'll we'll solve the Nashville stuff yeah no yeah it's all good um so I mean overall what'd you think what'd you think of this game uh so for me the the midfield was the big thing to watch right I mean you could say well this is kind of new to get Scali on the right and desk on the left they haven't played together very much I think Jordan's a fantastic little worksheet shows

that they've played like 30 minutes together total. So this is a new set. But I mean, I'm just not that interested in it. Like Musa McKinney-Rena. That's the interesting thing for me. And like, how do they play? How do they rotate? Are we an absolute sieve that can just be carved up with ease?

And what I'd say mostly is that, I mean, I feel like I've seen a lot of negative reactions to it. And I just want to say that I'm giving it an incomplete, which is what I really expected to give it. I thought it was really unlikely that it would come in and just be instantly cooking and being like, oh, this trio in the midfield dices up Germany, you know, new rebounding Germany. And I also thought it was kind of unlikely, but maybe a little more likely than us carving up Germany, that we would be carved up repeatedly.

And even though Germany did get some joy, I don't think it was like ever catastrophic to the point that we're like, this must be abandoned now. No, yeah. I think the way Beraldor put it in his press conference was it was just, the game was just too open. And we allowed it to be too open. And when you play a team as good as Germany, you can't let it be like that. I think that's about right. Yeah, I think that's fair.

And also, yeah, watching back in the times where Germany would, in the first half when it was right out there, when they would like kind of slice a little bit, it wasn't like wide open spaces they're slicing in there. They're slicing through some pretty narrow passages. And it's just like, man, they're, they got some quality out there. I know we'll get into the detail on this, but the thing that struck me is how easy it was. I mean, it seemed like Musiala and Sane were just kind of gliding right across the top of the box at will. And we were like almost like we were conceding that to them, which seems not very wide. and then we'd have like a line of like seven defenders like two steps inside the box and I and and then eventually somebody has to jump out and like engage you know with one of these dribbler people

dribbling across the top of the box and then things would just fall apart you know once somebody jumped out that line of seven was hilarious and it was like it was like McKinney and Musa dropping like exaggeratedly deep as the ball went wide right so it was like oh we are they've been, it's been stressed that like, no, you guys have a defensive job. You must get back. And they would get all the way back. And you could almost contrast that with, you know, remember when we played Canada in March, so March.

And Brenda was one of the midfielers, right? And he was like, when he would go, when that ball would go out wide to Alfonso Davies, like the thing everyone saw right away was that Brenda would go right over there and like collapse on it with the right back. So we had this whole, I think it was scally. So it was like scallium and that just was definitely not what the rotation was in this one where it was like when it went out wide to sane it was like death on an island and sonnet would just cut in and there would just be emptiness to the in just to the inside like horizontally there would just be no one there and it would just be then sonny running across that line of six defenders. Right. And then I mean we'll talk about it with the goals but the goals that we conceded but sometimes it was Chris Riggins. who would be the one who would jump out and try to engage. And then, you know, something might, something would happen behind him, like what happened

with the first goal. And people would say, well, that's on Chris Richards. I'm not sure that's on Chris Richards. I mean, it's partly on Chris Richards. But somebody has to, I mean, if nobody, if, if Leroy Sane is at the top of the box with the ball at his feet, somebody has to go out and challenge him. and if nobody's going to do it, you know, I don't know. And this is why I'm saying this was, I feel like, always going to be an incomplete

because we shouldn't expect this midfield where, you know, we've removed Tyler Adams and we've, you know, divvied his job up between Musa and McKinney and sometimes Chris Richards. And we shouldn't expect it to look like the finished product today, right? We should be like, okay, well, how did it look? Are there things that are within these players, you know, ability to, improve on or is it like no they literally just can't do it and I don't think we would be at that point so I feel like it's like okay we take this video and we're like okay how do we how do we fix some of these rotations what are the choices we

make next time and we run it back you know like I'm really hoping we see the same midfield against Ghana to start and again we've got some we'll have some manageable games manageable yet important games in November with some wiggle room that we should be able to keep running it out in November too. Yeah, all right. Let's get into it. The lineups first. Turner, Ingle,

like you said, Scali at right back, Dest at left back, Chris Richards and Tim Ream as the centerbacks. And then it was a Musa McKinney, Raina midfield, with way on the right wing, Pulisic on the left wing, and Fuller and Baligan at Stryker.

Germany was Tarsagin in goal, Jonathan Ta, Matamels, and Antonio Rudiger, and Robin Gosens across the back line. And then Pascal Gross, Ilkay Gundwin as the two and the four, two, three, one. And then Florian Werz, I guess it's Verz, Florian Verz, Jamal Musiala, and Leroy Sane in that band of three. I guess I kind of mix it up. I think Verz was on the left and Sane on the right. and then Nicholas Ful Krug as the striker. What a career he's had, because he was like,

remember he was competing with Josh Sergeant? Yeah. Competing with Josh Sargent for minutes, and he's kind of been a late bloomer. Look at them now. Look at them now. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a, you know, Germany,

I've read somewhere that Germany has to, like, Noglesman job is to re-market the German national team to the German nation because they're so disillusion. because they're so disillusioned with them. But like, so, you know, like really hard times for them. But they're still, foof, really good. There's some good names, and they did some cool things with the soccer ball. Yeah.

Yep. All right, to the timeline, if you don't mind. No, let's get into it. Right in the fourth minute, Pulisic scores a goal, but it's callback. McKinney plays it over the top to him. makes a little curving run in behind brings it down nicely and then slots it past Steggan but the flag had been up I guess the whole time

um Burhalter said in the press conference he didn't think he was offside I thought it was a thought it was a back and unfortunately for us like we didn't get a good replay of it from the TNT broadcast or the peacock the broadcast I had didn't even show a line of Germany's full players they just showed

showed the one that was closest to the angle. So that guy wasn't keeping him on. But no, Burlter, I think what Burlter said was they have the video, they have a shot. So it's not just him being like, you know, in real time I thought he was on. It was, they got a shot on it. Shades, Shades of 2002 when we had Donovan in on Germany and he was incorrectly flagged offside and cost us probably a World Cup trophy in 2002. Yeah.

And similar level of significance, too. Yes, yes. But it was a nice run. It was a nice ball for McKinney. A revenue stream that we should continue to pursue. Yeah, we got some ballers. We might not have exactly the ballers that Germany have, but we've got a few. Germany was pretty patient early.

It didn't seem like they weren't pressing, you know, they weren't just like flying into the press against us. but then when we're in possession, they would just sort of gradually constrict the space as we passed it around. I clocked Musiala dribbling across the top of the box, uncontested for the first time here. Ninth minute. We work it through the middle by Pulisic,

cutting him from the sideline just inside our half, and then he tries to pass it to Musa, and it's kind of cut out by two German players, but squirts into Musa's path in the center circle, and he's just free running at the back line. He plays it wide to Raina, who slips Waya to the N-line and then Wea cuts it back. It's a nice cutback.

Pulisic and Balgant both arriving on it. Again, we didn't get a great replay, but Pulisic, it looked like Pulisic got a foot to it, and it just popped it right up at Terstagan. And Balgan was kind of hoping it would trickle through to him. He had some other unfulfilled desires in this sequence, too, did me? Yeah, and this was a nice danger-adjacent moment for us. where that's, again, that's good joy. And we got decent decisions and execution from most of the players involved.

The one thing that Balo and everyone who's now watching for every time Bolo might be open, early in buildups was probably frustrated with was that ball squirted through two German players, Moose is running onto it, and Bolo just is instantly making the read that he can break behind. And we could, if we had the mindset of it for it, We could have hit it fairly simple. I'm calling it simple. It's tight. We could have hit a ball into the seam

between two of Germany's defenders and ball gun is in on goal. So it's just this weapon baller provide presents where you can skip so much of the buildup if you're looking for and ready. He is on, like he is just on those starter blocks and he's ready to go. Like I get, I sympathize with Musa here

because what he ends up seeing and playing very quickly is a wide open geo reina running into space, right? Like a super achievable pass, not difficult at all. And it's a very good situation to be in. It's just not as high reward. There's not as much upside as that ball that is on and does put our ridiculous striker in against the goalkeeper. Yeah, I didn't even catch that balligan was on,

was available to Musa in that, like when I watched. Oh, yeah, it was a nice. So it was Balo and McKinney both actually had inside position if we just slot that ball in between. But again, it's got to be an instant read. You have to know it's on. You have to like identify it and play it almost instantly. And if you miss it by even a hair, then it's like, okay, well, I'm going to do this really easy, very easy thing out to a good player like Giorina. Right.

I want to say one thing about Raina here. his pass to Wea is pretty straightforward, but there's a little bit of suddenness to it to the way he plays the pass that I appreciate. Like it's just the pass leaves his feet like a beat, like a half beat sooner than you think it's going to. And of course it's perfectly weighted too. It's still a Desma pass against France in the U20 World Cup, right?

I mean, I'm kind of not kidding. It's just where he's gliding and then suddenly it's just like you don't even realize he's going to touch it and he's just touched it. Right. It was almost part of his stride. Yeah. So then we get another decent attack in the 10th minute after Richard steps and pokes it away from somebody to Baligan and we're running at him. Ballo plays it out to Wea. Wea tries to cut it across the box back to Ballo and Gunnwin just manages to block it out.

of bounds. I mean, Wayo was trying to Meg Gundewin. And I think he got it with his trailing foot. But I'm sure in the stadium, this feels good, right? Like, it feels like we are running at Germany. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how fellow watching it. Yep. 11th minute, big chance for Germany. Full Krug plays it into Verz in the box and he kind of dances around, turns and lays it off for Pascal Gross. And he hits the post. He kind of kind of guides. it with the with his instep hits the post from 20 yards ricochets off of Turner's hands

after it hits the post seems like there's just a little bit of space in front of our back line that Germany is traveling through relatively unmolested yeah and this this space came about on on a broken press and it wasn't always like this a lot of times it was our block was kind of we were setting up in like a mid block with geo up high next to ball again kind of creating almost like like a four to four. But in this one, it was, it was right after that corner we just earned from Wea. And Germany ended up with the ball in that corner.

And we kind of were like, oh, here's a chance to press. We already got some numbers around it. So we kind of do that. And we've got them decently pinned. But they still end up playing out pretty easily because, you know, like one person will miss the memo here was it was Scali who starts retreating when everyone else is constricting. And that's like a no-no, you know, and everyone's got that trigger. like you all got to get tight, touch tight to the guy that's the easy outlet.

And so as he starts retreating his man who was kind of jogging upfield with him, breaks back to the ball, receives it pretty easily enough to take two touches before Scali can arrive and make a simple pass to the totally free man. And that's that. That guy's just running at us. Musiala, I think, is a free runner. And he just gets to run 40 yards before we even slow him down. I should also note once they do break that press

and he and Musiala is running at us like a lot of our guys were recovering at friendly speed Yeah I guess this is what This is what we're going to have to wrestle with Is like Not even Tyler Adams is perfect about

recoveries as we know as we've talked about On this podcast But like Our Musa and McKenney going to be able to, I don't know, not able to, but do they have the, do they have the sensibility to be like constantly on the alert and, you know, jockeying for position with somebody who's running off the ball?

Like that. Yeah. Yeah, McKenny made a 75-yard recovery run, but he did it like never quite going, opening it up the whole way. So he's kind of jogging and basically just gets there just in time to not be able to defend the shot that hits the post. It's a friend. I mean,

Jock can sum it up to friendly intensity. Yeah, I thought Musa, I don't know why I put this in the notes at this point, but Musa was not super sharp, even on the ball in this game. He had some good moments, but he had,

I think, performance that's not as good as what I've come to expect from him on the ball. This might be, I'm trying to, like, run through the midfields we've been up against. This is one of the best midfields we've probably played against. even though it's a friendly.

So again, just that quality eventually bleeds through when we play these teams. And so yeah, so if Musa's a little bit off, some of it might be Musa and some of it might be, there's some really good players that he's trying to do some of these things against. Goodwin's a fun player watch. I mean, he was really just running the show. Okay, you got a few things here in the timeline. What do you got next? So the 12 minute they break through our block again and it's a similar pattern to what they'd been doing

earlier in the match which is they set up in kind of like that 3-2-5 that most American fans are familiar with in possession and they're able to just sort of hit it into those two and those two can just hit like a lightning quick short three-yard pass on one touch that just totally freeze somebody up and in this time it was Goody Yund. Say it for me again, Bells. I think it's Gondowin. Gondowin. It's just from one of the, I think it's Hummel, just hits a vertical pass into Gondwin, and he'd already checked the shoulder, of course,

and he sees that Verts is dropping back out of that front five, and he just hits an outrageous little, like, one touch pass, two Verts, who's arriving, and then that gives Verts enough time to, like, spin out to the open side of the field, and hit out to Sane, who's 1V1 against death with, like, 25 yards between any other American player.

And again, I just like, it just, it brings me joy, even though it's Germany doing it. I'm just like, oh, that's fantastic. It's one of those things that we keep saying that we're going to need to be able to do if we want to be able to play that kind of possession game. Like you have to hit the vertical pass to somebody and then have that pistoning effect

and be able to immediately have a little layoff or something that can then free you to advance with speed into the open space before the defense. can snap back into shape. It is a beautiful thing to watch. And there's just a, I don't think this is just me sort of dreaming something up

based on the scoreline, but there's like a, quality is not the right word, but there's like a composure to the, like, all the German players across the pitch. You know, even when things weren't going super well for them,

like when they were down one zero, they're just all kind of like taking care of business, not exerting, not exerting energy wildly, but then when they did exert energy like in a sort of precise and efficient way

is how they would do it. And Burhalter was talking about managing the tempo of a game, controlling the tempo of a game and managing energy and how he thought, like we used up a lot of energy with all our attacking in the first half, but weren't able to like stay consistent with like

our defensive shape and how to like you know and it seemed like Germany was maybe a little better at that than we were well you mean you can think about the the players on the field right and so we really like our players and we think these are really good American players on the American scale uh and then you think about well they're all children like this is this was a u23 team when they were playing at the world cup uh and and so the or the u23 cohort that could have played in the olympics prior So you think about like, okay, what will these guys look like four years from now, our guys? And presumably they will get better. They will have four years of experience and additional savvy that they can bring to bear.

And then you look at Germany's roster and they're 11. And it's like they are those guys four years from our guys four years from now, we hope. Right. So they do have, they already have that savvy. I think they have a couple of 20 year olds playing, Vertz and Musiala. But the other guys that are out there in this lineup are 27, 28, 30 years old. they have all that guile built in already. They've accumulated it.

And we don't have that level of guile yet that those, that problem-solving acumen that these guys all possess. We still have to build that up. And it's not like any of our other 27-30-year-olds have it, where we could be like, oh, well, we should just plug in our problem-solving 27-year-olds. We don't have them. We have really talented 23, 25-year-olds who hopefully will get to this point. That little carve-up sequence didn't even really amount to anything.

Dest held up pretty well, 1 v. 1 against Sane. Eventually they gave it to Musa. Musa actually gave it right back to him and then they had that little scooped ball into the gap of our back line that they'd created, you know, that Richards had kind of stepped out a little bit and they scooped it behind him. But it was an awkward bounce that went out for a goal kick, I think. Was that the one that Mott's Hummel's was trying to chase down in our box? Well, it in Turner like Meta, or maybe a Reefell?

that was there to escort it out yes I think so 13 well 14th minute Waya roasts gosens up that right side who was it was lovely to see and I don't think anything really came of it but he did he did put him on the ground and then I noticed we're creating a little set piece danger we had a it seems like Pulis Hicks were pretty good in this game just generally speaking. Richard's got a shot on a corner in the 15th minute that was blocked off his foot.

16th minute, we get that Scali bloop cross and McKenny reels it in over on the back post and plays it back to Wea, who kind of skitters across the top of the box looking for a shot, which he finds, but it's not that great of a shot. It's deflected softly into Tersdagan's arms. I like this sequence because we got Raina doing some Raina stuff

early on, which set up Scali's, run and it was just this little like leverage pirouette on the ball at a nice entry pass into pool of six feet at the corner of the box and that's when pool six found scally um so again it's just i enjoy watching reina geo rena play for the u.s national team and it i think this is where he's gotten the most minutes uh in the calendar year so we'll take him yeah no i i thought reyna was so good i i guess some of the reviews were mixed but um Man, I thought he was really good. Sane beats 17th minute Sane beats Desh to the inside and then hits a shot.

That's way, you know, he tries to uncork one from 25 yards. And it's way off. But I think this is a, you mentioned this earlier in the episode, right? Where there was just a huge amount of space to the inside of Dest. Yeah, so Desk comes out of the sideline to meet Sane, 40 yards from goal. and Germany are, again, very intelligent, very efficient, almost a, you know, a stereotype that holds up. And so they've got, they immediately have a guy slash into the space that Dest is left to come meet the ball. And so McKenny's following him there.

And so we've got, you know, there's no center midfielder's left. Musa's 60 yards away on the other half. And Geo Raina's not going to be in this picture. So it's just a totally vacant central midfield for the U.S. And so this is where we've got to see, all right, on the first draft of this midfield, how do we, how does Burhalter and the team like interpret these kinds of moments and how do they adjust them for the next time we do it? Yeah, because wasn't it, didn't Baligan chase Sonny down and try, he applied the pressure?

Yeah. Yeah. And that seems untenable. Like, I don't think that's what we want to have the rotation be. Right. you can kind of see in the screenshot, Richards is looking across the field and across this lake of green,

just kind of like, oh, crap. It's not normal. And again, you're doing this with Tim Riem as like the left back. And so one of the reasons we identified this in the last window is, you know, when our left back steps up or out of their space,

Tim Rame's going to be really reluctant to stay connected to them because he's going to naturally want to stay a little bit closer to goal and not leave himself exposed with a lot of space, behind. So you have a couple of different factors working against each other here. Hmm. You've got the next timeline item too, I think. Okay, so right after that wild shot from Sane, we just have an outstanding passage of buildup play from the goal kick. It's turn her out to Joe Scali. Scali's like getting constricted here by Germany who aren't, this is probably, I mean, this would basically be a

pressing trigger where Germany are coming after us here. Scali hits it to Richards, who's under real duress and Richards very calmly almost like overly calmly like drives a crossfield ball to Sergenio Dest we end up with like seven more passes to players who are under real pressure and incurring decent risk but execute their way through it and we end all of this with like a bolligan layoff to Weston mckenny who's now racing upfield unopposed and he uh I think maybe Bob Morocco has a still shot of this where he could have played it into into Bologan again, but he ends up just hitting out to Poulosik wide, but just the way we played through all this, again, it's not incredible, but if you think about what it was like watching

U.S. men's national team for a long time, this was a real impressive passage of play. It's the, it's doing that in the final third. That's where at, because one who got to Pulasik, he kind of just drove it across to nobody, and I think it was skipped out of bounds for a goal kick. Yeah. 22nd minute, big chance for Germany. Musiala has a speculative shot from the edge of the box. It deflects right to Ful Krug, and he's alone in front of Turner,

and it hits it pretty much right at him. It's a very up and down game, you know, like kind of like a basketball game. One side tries to score or the other side tries to score. Yeah, and give Turner some credit for the save. I know it feels like it was right at him, but Turner gets down real well in these moments. So real good work to keep it clean too, no rebound.

Okay. Dest has a shot in the 22nd minute from the edge of the box and Terstagan covers it comfortably. It's a curler that curls a little too far towards the center of the goal. And Ballo wanted it played to his feet and let Dest know, I think. Yeah, I think he was letting two separate. I think he let Des know and I think he then turned and was like telling Musa again, and like, hey, you missed me.

So this was another bad Germany turnover that keyed the sequence. And Moose just ends up with the ball alone again. And right as we turn it over, he's got a big lane to hit Pulisic or ball again. This still shot in this moment actually took me right back to the Home Canada World Cup qualifier, where we were so reluctant

to like attempt any kind of incisive forward pass. And it would be a lot of like still shots of Sebastian Lijet, like looking at somebody having a lane wide open and then choosing to go somewhere else. So this was just another one where Balagan, Balagan wants that thing instantly. Like he wants an immediate ball into him on so many of these, either transition moments or right after we break a line.

It's like hit Balgan, hit him in, he wants it. And we know Burrhalter's telling him that because or at least he's saying it publicly. So it's got to be a point of emphasis. And we're still kind of missing. Yeah. I mean, we didn't play, he barely saw the ball in this game. 26 minute, we get a lovely move from the U.S. off a throw-in.

Battle gets involved in this one. Scali throws it to Rana. Rana just taps it back to him, and then Scali plays it up the line to Wea in, like, under a lot of pressure. And Wea just kind of, like, volley back heels it into Raina's path. And Rana, you know, just glides forward as he does. slips it to Balo in space. This is a sort of like up the, kind of an up-the-gut pass,

you know, like in between two defenders. And it's just weighted perfectly and Ballow can run onto it. And he squares Pulisic for an absolute 1v1 with the goalkeeper, Tirstagin, who comes out. Pulccccccc tries to round him, takes a little bit of a heavy touch,

look like to me, and then goes down on, I mean, I think what he thought was some, hoping for a penalty. Ref says no. I would probably say no too if I'm being objective. And so it's a chance wasted. Yeah, and don't want any of the penalty drama cloud the fact that this is just a really wasted chance by Pulisic.

I mean, we just have to say that's what it is because this is a brilliant sequence and we end up sort of getting nothing from it because of the really heavy touch from Poolsoc. Are you making fun of me or? No, no, no, no. I'm not at all. It's really what it was. Like, this was a, everything about this was brilliant. And then Pulisic takes that really heavy touch that, uh, he's not rounding him. Like the touch was going to take him to like, he's now having to run to the corner flag.

So, uh, it's not like he got the passman and got a little unlucky and caught a little bit of Steeke, Ter Stiggan. So it was, it was just a squandered moment, uh, which happened. but I just mean the sequence was amazing. So appreciate the sequence for what it was. And then just be like, oh, we needed a more lethal Christian Pulisic in that moment. Right.

As you know, he somewhat redeems himself shortly. Somewhat. Germany comes right back down. Full Krug sits scally down and has a shot from a tight angle. This one's saved by Turner. This was, I gather,

a pretty good save too. Yes. I mean, Turner is, he's so good at staying big and not like gambling, even though you could kind of say he maybe does that later in the game,

but just such like poise in these moments where he sort of draws the shot into his stance. And then here's the goal. 27th minute. Poulsick cuts in from the left. Just gets it tapped to him by Ballo who's kind of coming over towards the sideline.

And then Ballo's moment. momentum kind of carries. I mean, he sort of brings some defenders towards the sideline with him. And then Pulisic just burst right through him, leaves them all behind, mostly Jonathan Ta. And then drives at the, you know, drives right at the goal. And then as he's arriving at the box, he just unleashes one. I think uses

Rudeger to kind of keep the goalkeeper unsighted on the shot but just a lovely lovely hit still rising as it goes into the net in the top corner

I did not it's like that goal he scored for Milan a few weeks ago the first one he scored for A.C. Milan where he ripped one from the edge of the box. I had not seen him score a goal like this before. It's awesome.

It's a worldly, yeah. And it balances out the squandered chance from earlier, totally. Because, you know, probably not a super repeatable kind of a shot, but yeah, just beautiful to see, like, beautiful to watch it happen. It's against Germany. We've looked dangerous and threatening, and now we hit that shot. He pulls that out of the hat. and as we say, you gotta enjoy the moments you can when you watch a national team.

Yeah, it's gorgeous. Better even than the one he scored for A.C. Milan in that season opener, I think. I just have sprinkled through my notes. Just Raina is good. Raina is good. Well, he had that moment shortly after the goal where it was another driving run from him where he hits it into Tim Wea and Wea has another slick little back heel. and rain is off and running and Germany have to be like

the bad guys and like tackle him down Oh yeah they found him that's right We're not looking for I noticed in 33 minute We're not looking for balligans runs in behind Still dust has a chance to slip him in And Alex to tap it out wide for Pulisic Who then kind of whips a ball Into the mixer

And uh Balgan looks a little frustrated Yeah and just like with that That uh the first one that Where Musa missed him At least we're when we we're missing it right now. We're like missing it for another good attacking moment

and we're not just like looking them off and then turning around and recycling back to Richards and Ream. Like we're taking a slightly safer but still attacking pass option because again, the look of it like as you're playing, pools like looks so wide open that it's just so easy to defer to that as the pass you make. Rather than being like, I could hit this through the three yard seam

and potentially get my ball again in. It's going to make him pull us more dangerous if we start doing that more too, you know, because it'll open up more space for him and then he can make runs off of Balagan. I kind of right now don't see it as like a terrible, I mean, I want us to be trying to find them, but what I see is promising is that they exist. These seams are there, and Baligan is half creating them, you know, like with his really good movement. And being able to be choosing to hit them, I think, is just going to be something that we, grow into. I don't think it's like, oh no, we just can't do this.

I think we'll grow into it. I like that. I like that optimism, Greg. 35th minute, more chances for the U.S. Wea beats Gossens again and cuts it back. Just a tad behind Ballo. It's cleared out to Raina. He tries to maybe shoot from a tight angle. And it's handled with some difficulty by Tursdagan with Ballo trying to volley it out of his hands. So these are the chances

These are the real like danger adjacent moments of the first half right And it's a lot of these with way Or somebody from that right side like firing a ball in That's just behind somebody or And I feel like because we're gonna obviously talk about the numbers And the expected goals was heavily heavily in Germany's favor And they created a lot of really good chances that have very high expected goal values That they hit mostly right at Matt Turner

But this is why it didn't feel like it was one-sided in the first half is because we had so many moments with the ball fizzing across Germany's six-yard box With US players in the vicinity right after a bunch of very intentional attacking Right Right leading up to it What was the expected goals? I haven't seen that yet I think it was pretty brutal I think I mean that I feel like one of the numbers I saw for the end was like three to point three And even the first half was like something really high for for Germany and only like point one for the US.

Cause Pulisix is a, you know. Yeah, it's a worldly and he didn't get, he didn't even get a shot off on the, on his one v1 against the keeper, so there's nothing there. And then the one where he was offside, he was quote unquote, off sides. Right, yeah, a lot of air quotes on that. 39th minute Germany scores to equalize.

It was Soné cutting in on desk, and then we're just kind of, we have that sort of flat line of seven, across the you know in the box there's nobody really challenging although Musa does pop forward to challenge

Saneh but he squeezes through his challenge and Rana's challenge from behind and kind of shifts it over to Gondowen who's arriving with you know nobody on him Richards pops out to challenge Gondowen and he plays it in behind for Sane

who's 1V1 with Turner Turner turns it away from him but Gondowin arrives and just side-foots the loose ball home I am really curious what you think happened on this goal yeah this is another one of those that's fantastic to Zeprooter because like when you have those seven US players all in a line like you can watch it seven times and just focus on each of them for for the

entire time and like see something new it's I mean yeah it's not I don't think it's the optimal way to defend to have that row of players for the attacking player to just sort of dribble horizontally across. Cause then when Musa does step up, like he can just keep dribbling that same horizontal direction and get around Musa. Like you need defenders coming at him

from two different directions to create the dead end for him. And when we don't get that, we still have them kind of held off. You know, and then it takes an absolutely sublime path from Gundawan to find the guy behind us. And then what we have is we just have all seven of those guys,

who are standing in that line are now ball watching as it's slipped in. And they just keep ball watching for the rest of the play and except for Tim Rie and Matt Turner. So that was the big frustrating thing here and hopefully this is friendly stuff. But again, none of those midfielder's have that defensive midfielder mentality

and Serginio Des doesn't necessarily have a defend all hypotheticals mentality. And Joe Scali kind of gets caught ball watching a little bit green here. So yeah, so the ball gets slipped in and, you know, Matt Turner does an excellent job to like extend the play by standing it up and actually getting a hand to it. Kyle Martino makes a comment on the broadcast says, and at that point no one quick enough to react for the U.S. And it's because by that point it's too late. Like if you're ball watching for one and a half seconds leading up to that key moment, you're going to lose to the players who weren't ball watching.

It doesn't matter what the reaction time is anymore. you've given up the high ground to four Germany players. So that was a frustrating part. It was, I mean, I don't, there was a lot, I feel like there was a lot of talk about, like, did Desk do enough to keep him from cutting across the top of the box? I don't really, I mean, Desk was fine on that. That wasn't what the danger was.

The danger was when Des stopped playing soccer afterwards. It didn't end up being his man. The guy who scores ends up being Scali's probably a guy that Scali should have tracked throughout the play. but that's just sort of luck of the draw. If you have four guys ball watching, one of them is going to be the one responsible for the man who scores.

Yeah, I mean, Gunawen ran past Richards who came out to meet him, and then he ran past Scali to get to the ball for. So he ran past two U.S. players. Yeah, and Richards gets a little bit of grace because since he's stepping up, his momentum's going to make him the easiest guy to get past. So then it becomes the next guy's job

to, you know, track the run. And we just, we just didn't have that from anybody. McKenney's just kind of watching the whole thing go down. Moosa's on the ground at this point. Musa still hadn't gotten off the ground by the time, by the time, by the time Gino and took the shot. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't understand that. And McKenney definitely statuessque in there. And I, But nobody tracks Sane after, you know, after he played it. I don't even know if he intended to pass it to Gondwin. And just kind of ended up at Gondowen's feet. But he could, but then Sani kept running and nobody followed him when Richard's popped out to engage Gondwin.

But yeah, this is, this is like where we just have to ask if the, if the midfield mentality is going to be enough, given that some of the other defenders aren't always going to have the alertness to protect the goal at all costs in these scramble situations. That's why it feels like, oh, it's a little bit of luck for Germany and that'll be the theme. But that luck happens because we aren't aware of all the danger and already trying to snuff it out before it sort of presents itself. And I'm feeling defensive of Richards here because I think he's the one who's probably been called out the most for, I mean, for this.

skull and maybe for some other ones for the was it the second one or the third one that i don't know but like i feel like at least in at least he's trying to do something in this case you know he's like he's going out to like try to snuff out a problem and um you know yeah it's it's not it's not good i don't think when like your centerback gets has to feel so impatient about the space that's afforded in front of him that he just is compelled Like, to be like, no, something must happen here. Somebody has to go pressure this, so I'm going. Yeah.

I'm looking at the screenshot. It looks like Gio's like giving someone instructions. Wow. I've got to pause at the moment that Sane is about to hit at Turner. And, Gio's telling Turner what to do. Gio's saying, Matt, go to your right. Dive to your right. 47th minute

Dest is a bit casual Trying to dribble out of the box And he loses it to Sane Or no he loses it to Mousialla maybe And then that sets up a Sane Shot with his left foot Which was going in If not for McKinney

Blocking it I think pretty clearly And then Musiala gets a good chance Right after this And Wes blocks that too So good desperate defending from Wes Yeah from Wes And like no desperate defending from Dest again, where the play is extended by McKinney's block.

And so Desk kind of gets back into the mix. And then you see the body language. He just stands straight up as the second shot starts to get created in his space that he should be protecting. And McKenny has to work extra hard to block a second person space. So, you know, him turning it over. Yeah, him turning it over at the top of the box being super casual with the ball. Totally fine.

That's surge. Like, that's what we want from him. We want that aura, but we do need a little bit more urgency from him in these desperation moments. Yeah. So add that, but keep the ridiculous, unearned casualness in the box with the ball. Yeah. All right. The half arrives.

Luca comes on for Raina, which was a pre-planned substitution. I think this makes a big difference for us. I mean, not that Luca Deletore is a bad player or anything. I think he's a pretty good player. but not having Raina we were not nearly as good yeah not nearly as good and also again the rotations remain kind of a mess for the midfielders

they turn into kind of like a trivet like they kind of defend in like a three a flat across and they're constantly like finding themselves playing defending in like wingback spaces McKenny does a little bit Luca does a little bit and it's it's not great so you know if

If the first half midfield gets an incomplete, this group gets a probably lower grade than that. I don't know how the grading scale works. An incomplete minus, I think. We didn't create any chances really from the run of play in the second half. Maybe we created some. I think that's fair. I think that's pretty fair, actually. We had the Moose's free header on a corner kick

And a couple other like sort of half chances There was peppy Peppy took it off of somebody by the penalty marker And had a moment where he could have maybe toe poked it in But yeah there's this second half time on it I guess I'll kind of keep it brief because it's mostly Germany stuff Yeah You don't need to just keep constantly detail all of Germany's good stuff

They have a chance in the right the 46 minute mark A cutback from the right Richards wins it off of full crew, but right, it spills right to Gondwin, who shoots it. It looked to me like it was right at Turner, but I'm sure you're going to disagree with that. Greg? That was right at Turner was through like five bodies, was through a maze of people, and Turner once again, like, gets down and collects it, no rebound, nothing. And I just feel like people probably take that for granted at this point.

I mean, I obviously do. 49th minute Full Krug gets another chance Gundwin swipes A Wea past to Musa So we're trying to probe a little bit And Wea tries to play it to Musa in the half space Gunniewan takes it

He's off to the races Slips it out to Full Krug on the left And he just hammers it at the near post Good save from Turner Might have been going wide anyway But you cannot You know You can't hope for that

If you're the goalkeeper Not only can you not hope for it, but that actually makes it even more impressive that Turner is able to cover that much. So this is, yeah, another great save from Turner. He's outstanding. And this is the big midfield question for this group, right? It's a question like, what are the assignments here? What are the reads and rotations that we're supposed to be making? Because it's a way of giveaway, but way it gets this ball after like a driving run from Luca De La Torre.

And Luca received the ball by dropping all the way back to pick it up from Chris Richards. So it's like Luca's, you know, the deepest player at the start of this buildup, then he drives forward, like, to the right side of the field and kind of hits it to Joe Scali, who for some reason is rotated higher than Wea. That's neither here nor there. But so Luca hits that ball of Scali and then continues his run as a soccer player, you know, but like no one's filling in for him when he does that. So neither of McKinney or Musa then recognize that and drop back. I don't know if that's a failure of recognition or if that's just not built in, which would be unusual because the one thing Burrhalter has done a massive job stressing is our rest defense. And that portion of the rest defense is just non-existent.

So at the moment of this turnover, because of the rotations and running, we've got a front three of McKinney, Balo, and Luca. Like McKinney had rotated higher than Christian Puliswick. Moose is trying to receive the ball in the space that like a 10 would get it. So on the turnover, our transition midfielders are Tim Way and Christian Pulisic. And they defend about as well in that moment as you'd expect them to. And we end up relying on a Matt Turner master class. Right.

Yeah, there's just no, I mean, does Pulisic even try to help? No, and he wouldn't, he wouldn't recognize that he's needed. I mean, he probably should. But yeah, like McKenney is high and wide. Luca, yeah, it's This is like just a really messy moment from midfield In a game where all eyes are kind of on our midfield rotations with Trying to find non-tyler-Adam solutions

It's a really really easy Sequence for Germany Once Gondon gets on the ball and starts driving forward There's just no resistance until Matt Turner's hands arrive You know, I mean It didn't look right It didn't look good. Yeah, I guess that's the question.

So this is just like somebody's not doing their job there? Like what would be the natural rotation? McKinney, recognizing that Luca just made this sort of driving run and he just sort of starts filtering back into the middle. Or like what? So, I mean, the way they were doing this here, clearly not because McKinney is already rotated with Pulisick. And so McKinney is playing as a widest forward.

It'd be something like, I don't know, why Scali would have needed to rotate with Way at the same time. So I guess if you're going to have Joe Scali on the field, you'd have him filled in the midfield and try to help gum things up in transition. But he ends up trying to chase the play back on the turnover and doesn't do that good of a job on that either. So I don't know.

This is something that roles are going to need to be more clearly articulated to these players. Yeah. I wouldn't that impressed with Scali. me miss um miss jettie even more there was some there was some ball watching from him for sure well and then just like on the ball just not not a ton of forward progress you know yeah it's again it's tough here because the rotations were kind of a mess everywhere uh there are plenty of times and we'll clock we'll clock another one later where um he definitely doesn't like help us solve

the rotation issues but i think it'd be harsh to put it on him you in particular. Okay. Okay, 53th minute, Dess is struggling with Sane a bit. Sani beats him and rips a ball across. Turner dives to palm it away. So he beats him to the end line

and then rips it across with his right foot. Turner dives to palm it away, out to Gondwin, who tries on the volley and misses the frame from 20 yards. Musa gets, like I said, I didn't think this was his best game. He got a yellow after giving it away in the center circle in the 56th minute.

he was just holding Vertz back to prevent a jail break. 58th minute, Germany gets what would be the game winner. Ginoin plays Verz down the right and his ball into the box, just sort of a straightforward ball across the penalty area, kind of clips desks heel so it finds its way to Musiala on the deflection, just inside the top of the box. Moseala kind of freelances a bit, deft touch to bring it under his spell off that deflection

and sort of arc it over himself. And then he volleyed it with the outside of his boot over to Gosen's who played an extremely precise and fast little pass first time with his in-step to Ful Krug, who was all alone behind the centerbacks, just all alone. He was held onside by Dest, who just wasn't alert.

to the line that Ream and Scali were holding. Because Richards had popped up to address Musiala, and this is easy finish for Full Krug. Too easy of a goal, really. So, yeah, kind of easy, but man. The pass from Gosens was not easy. That's the one. So Dest is the easy scapegoat here

because he's the guy holding him onside by a yard and a half. But again, structurally, there's a failing before that, right? there's a failure here that allows Fulcruig to just be, Fulcruge to be unaccounted for. And it's not a matter of like, well, he's unaccounted for because he's offside. Like he's on account for because he's found a gap in our back line. And then he happens to be offside.

So for me, the problem is still like center mid mentality. Because when Vertz squares that ball from out wide where Dest has him, he hits it right along the top of the box. full crew is driving both centerbacks deep which is the normal thing for the centerbacks to bracket that forward but there's no American center mid

trailing that to defend at the top of the box that the centerbacks are running away from so when that ball goes to the top of the box to Musiala Richards now has to change his momentum and stop chasing Full Crew and try to jump up to Musiola with no help from a

from a center mid and like Full Crew then just moves away from Tim Reem who holds his left centerback space even though there's no longer a right centerback and that's that's just bad news and that's how Ful Krugge ends up all by himself and where you see

on the replay is just that Luca DeLotori just doesn't have the awareness to protect that space near the top of the box as the play develops because it's not a super tidy sequence to get that ball over to Gosens who then does the really tidy thing it's deflected by desk

on its way over and then And Musiala like pops away the F up in the air. And this should be where if Luke is, you know, paying good attention, he would be there to arrive and totally disrupt a guy who popped the ball three yards into the air. But he's just late to do it and he isn't a natural disruptor to begin with. Because even arriving late, you should still be able to like kind of destroy this guy. The ball's up in the air. Just smash into him and win the ball and take it.

But we don't do any of that. And we let him hit his technical pass over to Gosens. who does the business to get it to Full Krugge and that's that. So we got to we gotta just really hammer into these midfielders like when you're in the role of a disruptor even though you're not one.

You got to be one. You got to fake it. Yeah. Well, not long after that goal, Musa got a free header on a good pool sick corner kick and just doesn't connect well, heads it over kind of,

I know, can you scuff a header? Kind of scuffed it a little bit. 61st minute so very soon after that second goal Germany gets their third this is more Musiala just dancing around at the top of our box gets nicked off him by a combination of McKinney and Ream but Reem so McKinney

kind of nicks it away from him then Ream tackles it off of him but the ball ricochets off of Musiala's leg so Ream kicks it off of Musiala's leg and then it bounces over to Ful Krug and a bit of good fortune for Germany and Ful Krug kind of slips it through Turner

and Richards over to Musiala who had continued his momentum even though he had the ball taken from him and slid to put it home just ahead of Tim Riem. I thought it was pretty unlucky but 3 to 1. Yeah, it's unlucky but also not unlucky

And it's like it's a bit of a pitch control thing that we we talk about, right? Yes, it's this weird deflection. But the deflection is into an area that you're supposed to be in control of. As is like a back line. And we don't have control of it because their guy ends up being free in that space because our rotations are just a real mess. Like in the lead up here, Germany worked out to their left side in the attack. And we have Luca and Chris Richards chasing players.

and the ball way out past the box, like way out to the sideline. And Joe Scali will just kind of ends up sitting in no man's land. And then when Germany works it back to the middle of the field, like now we have Luca and Richards chasing from the wrong side in ways that are just unnatural. Like as you're watching, it doesn't seem right for our centerback to be running dead horizontal

across our zonal shape. Like that's not great. So he's still running horizontally. As this ball is getting like defrable. reflected back across his momentum. So of course, he's never going to be able to get to it first or even be able to make a play on it. And that's kind of how we keep finding ourselves wrong footed,

is that we keep messing up our rotations. So guys are defending from ways they're not used to defending from. So what's the way to switch it? Like, what's the way to handle this? I mean, so in this moment, the way Germany unbalanced this was just like they're weak

their player on the left side who was high up the field checked back and Joe Scali checked back with him so then again Germany make the textbook efficient run of racing a guy from the middle

into the space Scali vacates and that's who Chris Richards chases all the way to the sideline and so then once that ball comes back off of that player like it should just be Scali drops in

as a centerback momentarily and Chris Richards becomes the right back but we don't make that we don't make that rotation we don't communicate what we're going to do instead Scali just kind of holds his right back space and there's just a gap between Scali and Ream for a while and that's what Richards is trying to run back into

and he's just I mean he's basically what it amounts to is he's late he never gets back into into the zone and can like get set in the zone and then be prepared to defend whatever comes his way he's he's caught while he's still running and that's how that's how Germany end up with a free man and able to get to the deflection first he did not to pour salt in the wound but Richards did get megged on the assist from full crew too okay well then I guess he did technically get back in time to make some kind of a play on it I mean yeah small consolation right um so yeah 3-1 subs peppy comes on for balligan erringson comes on for wea and ccv good to have him back comes on for richards

in the 65th minute. At this point, Germany is just allaying us. They're dealing with our press comfortably. I want, 70th minute, Full Krug comes back to the ball. You know, we're pressing pretty hard, and they're under a lot of pressure. Full Krook comes back to the ball, you know, takes it,

collects it with, I guess it was CCV on his back. Cameron Carter-Vicker is basically playing like an eight at this point. Right. really we're really pressing high and then Fulcruc just lasers a ball down field for Musiala into like

all kinds of space Musiala cuts in on Luca Deletora ends up being the guy defending Musiala he cuts in on him and squares it for Sane who just misses on a very good shooting opportunity wide left but just wide

and he hit it really well look like it was going to be 4-1. Yeah, I don't think that was depressed the way we drew it up, but it was... It was a really good sequence from Germany, honestly. Like, a lot of good passing before it went to Fulcruig, too. That is true. That is true. They're good. They're fun to watch. Yeah.

Then Paredes comes on for Pulisicic and Cardoso for McKenny. In the 75th minute. I don't have many other notes. Just 79th minute, Brenda gets a ball across, kind of, you know, finds its way into the penalty area. And Pepe Knicks it off Asula, I think. And then maybe dally's a bit on the ball, gets it taken off of him.

I thought he maybe had a window for a toe poke there. But didn't get a shot off. Well, I'll say I'll still count it as a good moment for Pepe to go from us not having the ball to us having the ball to six-yard box is a good transition. I thought Pepey had quite a few bright moments, little things here and there, but enough to be like, all right, that's another solid outing for Pepey against a very good team. So I think a positive showing from him. And I'd say also positive showings for definitely Cameron Carter Vickers. And also Johnny Cardoso, I thought, did well.

Like maybe one or two shaky things, but overall like for what this Opportunity was for him I thought it was really positive. Okay, that's good because I couldn't I kind of couldn't see past how much we were getting dominated. Oh yeah, we were totally getting dominated. You got it you got to basically just look at just Cardoso discrete actions. Yeah, and just like all right. That was that was nice like he was able to take the ball away from a Germany player and then hit a nice disguise pass into an attacker's feet. Like it was a couple of those where it's just like, all right, that can work. Good. So, Pappy and Cardoso,

did you think Paredes was all right? I would say, all right, yeah. I mean, the same thing. Like, I mean, that really is how it goes. Like, he had, he had like five things to do and he did, he did three of them where I was like, all right, that was, that was okay.

Yeah. It's, there's a U-20 playing in the, been a friendly against Germany. Brendan did some nice dribbling before he drew that foul. You know, he was dancing around with like four white shirts around him

for a little while and then got fouled and then hit the free kick off the wall. It's getting pretty late here in Georgia. We got big Nashville stuff coming up. Yeah. Looking forward to the game on Tuesday. Still working out the details, but what we are going to take.

Some of us are at least and this is where so up my seats are gonna be like kind of I think close to the coaches like to the benches So this is where I'm gonna try to get in early and like watch the warm ups and like try to really hear what the instructions are I'm gonna get my okay all right my get my like microphones out there and try to pick up any any audio I can You got one of those big you know like those things they hold on the side yeah I got the boom mic I'm bringing a boom mic Good good I'm sure they'll allow you to bring that into the stadium All right, well, there'll be more to talk about as we wrap up the window, you know, next week or later this week. But for now, thanks for listening. Check us out on Patreon.

The link is in the show notes. We'll see you.