Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #446: A Michael Bradley retrospective with Watke and Bob Morocco

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Bob Morocco joins Watke and Belz to talk through ten of MB90's most memorable moments, what kind of player he really was, how much responsibility he bears for the failure in Couva, whether the 2014 team would beat the 2023 team, the chip at the Azteca, jawing with Suarez at the U20 World Cup, the Slovenia goal, the Confederations Cup run, and much more. This is the first 20 minutes or so. The rest of the episode is available only to patrons.Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! Patrons get a private feed for two episodes a week, including the Monday Review with Watke and Vince, and a Friday show usually with Greg and Watke. 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. Hello, this is the Friday show. I've got Waki and Bob Morocco with me for the show today. And mostly we're going to talk about Michael Bradley, who just retired from Major League Soccer and joined his dad, Bob, at a club in Norway. I guess I should introduce, everybody knows Waukee. I should introduce Bob a little bit.

Well, first of all, welcome Bob. Thanks for having me, Bells. Thanks for being here. Bob is a big soccer legend. He's been on there for a long time breaking things down. One of the most rigorous soccer analysts in the scuffed community, probably the most rigorous. I think that's not too hard to say.

It's also possible you've been challenged by his rigor on Twitter and some debates in the replies. People need to get out of their comfort zone. They need to push themselves. I'm just applying like a continental level of rigor. He does things that's sometimes difficult to know what to do where you'll say something and I'll ask you a question. Yeah. You're not exactly sure where he's come at from.

You don't even know if he's agreeing with you or disagreeing. Right. You're like, oh, I've got to think this through. It's tough. I know my limits and I do not ever directly challenge Bob. Just for the record. I don't either. Yeah.

Like patrons will know that Bradley, Michael Bradley got a little bit of a raw deal on the Monday review from us a couple weeks ago. I'm not, I'm certainly not happy with my performance in that sequence. So I want to give him a proper tribute. Not going to shy away from the negatives or, you know, lionize him inappropriately.

At least that's not my plan. But I personally feel like I got to acknowledge his contributions with more specificity. So that's what we're going to try to do today. Bob, what should my overall impression of Michael Bradley be? When I think of him, I'm mostly just struck by how the visual of him, his bald head, his, I think, pretty upright posture and a good midfielder. But I don't know how he, how to really think of him as a player. Sure, and I think, you know, we're going to delve into the eras and how that evolved.

I guess we could say intense and competitive and somewhat like the perfect cautious sun product success story from that early modern era of American soccer is like the encapsulation of how people in the game in America viewed themselves and viewed how it should be played. Yeah, that rings true to me. He was a very good player for the national team, but kind of a good player from a different era of the national team. Oh, obviously, that's true. But don't you think, Bob, we kind of would want our midfielders to be better players, today, not that they necessarily are or aren't.

I'm not saying anything about that. But our aspiration is for our midfielder's to be a level higher than, a level or two higher than Michael Bradley was at his peak. Isn't it? Shouldn't it be? Yes. I mean, he's like a, to use, he's like a Scott McTominy or a Darren Fletcher type guy or maybe even Jordan Henderson.

Like a really mobile, larger two-way guy who is a water carrier for better players. So he's a little bit of a utility guy who can fill in, do a job, and cover minutes. And really, that's kind of how he peaked out at Roma, is they had some injury. I think Streatman and Nangolin, the Belgian International. The guy with all the tattoos who scored the bangers. Both had injuries, yes. Yep. And he was able to be an effective fill-in-the-gaps midfielder.

And obviously, you want someone who's a difference maker and a star. And Mike was not that. So like going back to the earliest era of Mike is when he was a youth player. I think he was younger than all the other youth 17 guys. It was little skinny. And the initial reports on him were that he was more of an attacking midfielder. And this could be totally wrong.

This could have just been, you know, some non-legged big soccer players. poster saying this, but, you know, it was like he's not super athletically developed. He's kind of skinny. He's pretty technical. And, you know, for an American midfielder at the time, he was. But he's, you know, he's not Claudio. He's not Tub. And then when he finally got drafted by his dad in the league, he was, you know, had filled out. out a bit and seem to be more of the coach's son as a player and deserve to play at the MLS level young.

But, you know, his talent never jumped off the screen. He never really made you think he is certain to be playing for a Champions League contender in a big four league. He was a hard runner. I mean, we've covered a lot of this, but hard runner, tough tackler, very alert player, eager to drive forward with the ball. I would say capable of orchestration from the center of the park and capable of a moment of class in the attack,

which we'll get into that when we talk about some of his memorable moments. But yeah, he was not a liquid footballer. There was always, I think, even in footage from his younger years, a plotting quality to the way he played. But man, was he a workhorse? Not only did he do all types of dirty work all over the pitch, he did it over and over. He played almost 13,000 minutes for the national team,

more than twice as many minutes as any other U.S. midfielder between 2006 and today, which is pretty remarkable. He just didn't get hurt very much, right? A few other kind of bio things, 151 caps, 17 goals for the national team, key player in two World Cups. And then also a key player, in that Confederation's Cup run, which we'll get into, where we nearly beat Brazil in the final

and did beat Spain, the eventual world champion in the semifinal. He was 18 when he left the Metro Stars for the Aere de Vizzi. And then I would say by 2013, Bob, I'm curious what you think of this, but by 2013, he was perhaps the greatest American success in Europe. At the time, I mean, it's highly debatable, but he's at least in the discussion. Yeah, for domestically raised players, I'm trying to think of,

I think you probably, if I'm remembering what season had happened, I think you probably have to still give it to Clint. Yeah. Clint had two double-digit seasons from the wing and seemed like top 10 Premier League attacker in his best season. Yeah.

But Mike was, Mike was very close. If you're considering every American Germain played for Shalka when they were still good. Making runs in the Champions League and stuff, yeah. I guess, yeah,

there's no doubt in my mind that Dempsey is the bigger player than Bradley. But you know, Bradley did play for Roma, which with all due respect to Fulham is a much bigger club. He didn't play there very long. And Gladbach is also a pretty big club, too.

So just to just to sort of round out the bio stuff, he succeeded at Herein Vien in the era of division. We're going to play some music from that at the end of the podcast. So, you know, look forward to that treat that Waki dug up. Bob dug it up, I just like the music. Oh, okay. And then, uh, then he went to Gloub. He had a difficult loan spell at Aston Villa, but then made his mark in Italy, something nobody had really done.

I mean, again, with respect to Alexi Lalas, before he returned to MLS in 2014. 76 appearances in the Bundesliga, 76 appearances in Syria, a nice symmetry there. He won an MLS Cup in Toronto with that dominant side, led by him, Jovinko and Josie. Lots of good soccer played there. We're not going to talk, unless Bob Orwaukee brings it up, we're not going to talk about it too much, but that was a golden era for Toronto FC. So we have to mention, of course,

his stature in the national team discourse suffered greatly when the team that he led failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. And as we talked about on the Monday review a couple of weeks ago, he did have that giveaway before Ronaldo's equalizer at the 2014 World Cup that was frustrating in the moment and still kind of frustrating to contemplate. Correction. Rinaldo assisted the goal, but it was Sylvester Varela who scored.

Should we get into some memorable moments? Yes. And stupid. All right. So you guys can add more as we go. Please do. But I have these organized from 8 to 1. And the first one I'm going to bring up is his playoff clinching header versus Chivas USA when he was 18. his first MLS goal. Like Bob mentioned, he got,

Michael got his debut in MLS under his dad, Bob Bradley, but there's some nuance here because he was on his dad's team the entire 2004 season as a 16, 17 year old and didn't get a single minute. He was on the bench a few times at the beginning of the season, but didn't see the field. The next season, he started almost every game,

but his dad got fired at the beginning of October after a really bad loss to DC United. Michael remained a starter for the interim coach of the replacement. And then it was, his first MLS goal came on a glancing header against Chivas USA early in the second half for a game winner

that put the Metro Stars into the playoffs. And I'll play the audio here real quick. Lisi into the box ahead of. And Bradford. Ironically has scored off his head. Michael Bradley puts the Metro Stars up. You use the perfect word ironically. And I'm sure Bob Bradley's at home smiling right now.

Not a lot to smile about Laley, but that's a great header. Look it in the face as well. So it's ironic because his dad got fired. Is that definitely ironic? We don't need to get into that. Well, maybe we should. How ironic is it, really? I'm not sure.

This was a very young-looking Michael Bradley and he had hair. Yes. Notable, notable hit up here. And it got hit in the face and didn't react. Right. Even a little bit. He was a little surprised that the ball went into, I think. It's a cool moment because, you know, these charges of nepotism sort of follow Bradley around his whole career because his dad was his coach there and then out with the national team.

But in this case, you know, this was a brave, important goal, but it's also important because This is a nice way for him to say early in his career that, you know, his dad wasn't the reason he was on the field, which is my belief. This was his coming out party, you could say. Even at the Red Bulls and then also Achivas, the father was doing kind of the empty bucket still, where he had two sixes doing an actual double pivot, if we can call it. at that, where they both stayed at home. And then there were two attacking midfielder's ahead of them kind of in the box, and those two defensive midfielder would largely stay home. And so Mike playing in that position, you know, he could roughly hold his own.

He was playing well for a really young kid. but, you know, he wasn't running games, he wasn't dictating play. You know, he didn't look like Jude Bellingham at Birmingham. And then he came up big in this big moment, and big moments is kind of the theme of his career. Okay. So number seven for me is, and these are not. not chronological, is the assist on Fabian Johnson's run and rocket versus Turkey in a World Cup tune up June 2014. This has special significance for me, just because it's one of the

love, for me, it's one of the loveliest goals I've ever seen from the U.S. Men's National team. And Bradley had a big role in it. Let me just play the clip real quick. We get to get a little Taylor Twelman taste here. Reasonably good goal, disallowed. Fabian Johnson. Put in the treasure trove for Fabian Johnson. And then a ridiculous, ridiculous ball for Michael Bradley.

But it's... So what happened in that play is he chipped it over... One, two, or he chipped it over the backline. Yeah. Shaped his body in the same way as he did when he chipped Memo Achoa at the Azteca years later. But yeah, it was a perfect pass, perfect little one to incredible finish from Johnson. I'm a fan.

Yeah, and it's kind of, you know, his passing strength, especially an attack, or kind of these quarterback like plays where he's in the middle of the field, like between 30 and 60 yards out, and he can hit a runner, just loft a ball for a runner. That's like the Julian Green assist in the World Cup. You know, throughout his career, if you looked at his advanced attacking passes, that's kind of, that's where he made his biggest attacking passing impact. That squares with what I, with my instinct about it. He loves hitting a long diagonal, doesn't he?

Always has. Number six for me is the Golazzo versus. versus Scotland in May of 2012. Here it is. So this was a fairly meaningless goal in the grand scheme of things, but just a hell of a strike. Donovan clips a ball into the middle.

Do you know who laid this one off? No, no, somebody laid it off. But Bradley just takes it on the half folly on the bounce and blasts an in-out, Bender into the top corner from 25 yards. Commentator called it a slice. I think I was a little bit unfair to the... Well, I mean, he's a golf commentator now, so...

Okay. Who was it? Isn't that Saudi Arabia's own Arlo White? Oh, yes, that's right. Huh. It might have been the other guy, though. It doesn't matter. It'll say Arlo did it.

I've got for number five, a goal for Roma, where the guy is just... The commentator's just screaming about Lex Luthor. This was a pretty significant goal. It was his only goal that... season, the 2013-2014 season in which he moved in the middle of it to Toronto. And it was an 82nd minute game winner. And, you know, an okay, a nice enough strike from outside of the box. I mean, it's a good strike.

What am I talking about? It's a good strike. Here's the clip. Timor, the gachcha of Strottama, see in the area of rigore. Strathema, provas ch, maledition. Tocco per brother and the... Kha! K!

K! K! Lutz! Luter! Leklutor! Lek sludor! Lex Lutor, go to Cheregrace with

Chalryry Chalde bradley. There's no one really close to the Italian goal calls. Yeah, they're in a league of their own. No, especially like

the local announcers. When he was at Romo, what was the level of excitement from the people back home in America? What was the experience? How much game watching?

was going on. I assumed less than now. Yes. I want to say, I think Syria at the time was on the Fox Soccer Channel. So it was decently distributed, but obviously they prioritized. I'm trying to remember that might have been after they lost the Premier League. So it might have been their main main thing at the time. So, you know, it starts out he is behind like Piannich, Nangolin, and Sturttman. And so, you know, you're not sure if he's going to start. You're not sure if he's going to play. And then, you know, coming off a season where he was pretty much in every game starter for a

Kievo team that puts Valencia and Juventus to Shane when it comes to how much life they could suck out of a game. If you cared about compact defensive positioning, it was interesting. Maybe they'd get two or three counterattacks a game, and that's what you had to survive off of. And this Roma team was like much more free-flowing up and down. not a typical Italian team. They had Mycon, the Brazilian right back. Yes, yes.

It was just an amazing player. They're now in Syria D, by the way. I didn't realize that. Kiev was? Yeah. That's where Bradley earned the nickname Il Generale. General Bradley. Yep.

Yeah. You know, we helped him out in World War II, and they gave him this nickname. We helped them out in World War II? I think so. The Italians. Depends what side you were on. Like, the Lazio fans, not so much.

We didn't help them out in World War II. Right. You know, if you're from Sicily or some other parts, you know, get that boot off the neck. Yep, yep. Until then, we did our own CIA assassinations against some of those same people, but, you know. Should we just pivot and talk about World War II for a little while?

I mean, we're about it. at that age. Angleton got his start in Italy at the end of the war. He was doing some pretty unsavory stuff. I guess people don't know who Angleton is. Yeah, who is Angleton? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Incredibly paranoid.

I forget his nickname. He, well, he looked kind of like a ghoul, like or a skeleton of some kind. It might have been related to that. He's the guy that control in the Le Corre series is kind of based on. Yes. And good thing Bradley did not get that. nickname because sometimes he does look a little skeletal. Not as gaunt.

Angleton died just two months before Bradley was born. Interesting. So compared to Kievo, people were excited about a problem. Let's take a little break and we'll come back and talk about the chip at the Azteca, the Confederations Cup run, obviously

the goal versus Slovenia. and some other stuff. That's all available on the scuffed patron feed. The link to become a patron of our podcast is in the show notes. Please enjoy this audio from a two-minute highlight reel of Bradley's hottest streak at Herein Vien. Thank you for listening. We'll see you. Breyer, Eire, right, he'll reach a panel. Bradley, yeah, he placed the ball.

Good goal from Here Veen.