Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #450: USMNT v Trinidad & Tobago recap

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

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Welcome to the Scuff podcast, where we talk about U.S. soccer. A pretty fascinating night of soccer across the Western Hemisphere last night. Uruguay, coached by Marcelo Bielsa, gave Argentina a 2-0 slap in the face at the Bambonera, and then Colombia beat Brazil on too late Luis Diaz goals. Oh, the drama in Barranquilla. And then Panama humiliated Costa Rica at home, 3-0. And then in Austin, we got a comfortable victory over Trinidad, right, Greg? I mean, I feel like the way you were reading you were going to say,

and then we lost to Trinidad in a 3-0 victory. I should have said that. Yeah. It did feel like that. You know, we've talked a lot about the psychology of watching games like this where you don't get your goals until late, even if it tends to feel like they are coming. And that's what my experience was.

I don't know. maybe other people didn't think that there were going to be any goals coming, but when you don't have them yet, the accumulated frustration can be a lot. It can take its toll. Yeah. I think for the players, too, I think you see the body language and like,

you know, when you're watching our guys and you see, you know, once we score the goal and we still want more because of the nature of the tie, like the body language, there's a shift and suddenly instead of like flailing, we're like hunting. It is still aggressive.

It does feel that way. But now it's like, oh, now we are after it. I had a little fear creeping in the second half as we, you know, I was like, are there really only 10 minutes left? We still don't have a goal. I want to know how many people were double checking the Nations League rules to figure out what the playoff would look like if we don't beat Trinidad in this two-legged tie. Like, all right? So if we lose this, then we just have a one-off playoff against another loser to still make the coper, right? Right.

Is that what it was? Because I didn't look it up. I didn't bring myself to actually Google it, but yes, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. The losers of these four quarterfinals will play, and I think two of them still make it into the Copa. Well, in the cold light of day, well, in my case, rather warm light of day,

it was a pretty interesting game. There was some interesting stuff to talk about, don't you think? Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, it's interesting and also not necessarily much that you can apply to other games. Yeah. But there's things you can learn about players and their ability to solve a kind of tricky problem in the moment, you know? El least that's how I look at it.

Should we jump right into the lineups? Yeah, let's talk about who we played. It was a great lineup announcement for us. Yeah, it was like exactly what we wanted, right? Yes, absolutely. Turner, in goal, Dest, Cameron Carter Vickers, Ream and Jedi across the back line, McKenny and Musa as the, I guess, is it okay to call it a double pivot, Greg? I always hesitate with that, but. I think I'm fine calling it a double pivot.

Okay. I'm no problem with that. I mean, it's fun to say double pivot, so whenever I get a chance to, I want to say it. And Raina as the, you know, I guess the 10, Tillman, Balligan, and Perettus across the front line. Paredes on the left, Tillman on the right, notably. In attack, our band of five was, I mean, I think the base band of five was Paredes out wide left, Raina in the half space, left half space, balligan, Tillman in the right half space, and then Dest at wide right. Although, you know, Jedi did get forward quite a bit too.

Yeah, and Jedi would get forward, but not necessarily always wide, right? Like you would get forward, sometimes tucked in, sometimes wide. Yeah. Jedi in the half space is a little bit confusing to me, but. But yeah, definitely notable, like we talked about when we weren't sure if it was going to be Tillman or Rain essentially. I mean, we weren't sure if Tillman was even going to be in the 11. But, like, you could pause at almost any time we were in possession. And it's very much like Tillman and Rain almost symmetrical playing right underneath Tobol.

Never the case that Tillman was being like a winger out there. Right. Yeah. And then Trinidad and Tobago had Denzel Smith and goal, you know, an extremely low block, especially. I mean, not especially. It was a low block the whole game when they had 11 and when they had 10 on the field. It was kind of the same, basically the same thing going on. But anyway, Denzel Smith on the goal, Shannon Gomez, Alvin Jones, Justin Julian Garcia,

Aubrey David, and Andre Augustin Raymond across the back line. And then Ryan Telfer, Andre, Andre, Rampersad, Daniel Phillips and Noah Powder in the band of four, and Malcolm Shaw as the striker. But they got everybody behind the ball a lot of the game, and especially after Powder got sent off in the first half. Yeah, we talked about our worry level. And, you know, I very adamantly was not worried coming into this game because we, you know, rinsed Trinidad so frequently since Coova. and this was a totally different differently focused Trinidad and to their credit

they were very committed to staying together in this low block they were very committed to not venturing forward whatsoever and the way the match unfolded their sort of focus and commitment was rewarded for a long time which tends to like add to the amount of time that you can remain focused

and committed. Wait, what do you mean adds to the amount of time you can remain focused and committed? Basically, you don't get broken, right? You don't have your will broken. You know, you can do all this thing, and if we happen to score the, you know,

that first shot that Paredes hits into ball again, that's it. Like, you come in thinking, we can do this, we can do this five minutes at a time, whatever, you know, slogan is helping you stay focused and committed. And then if you concede, it's very easy to just break and be like, we didn't do it.

All is lost. Yeah. And you can sort of lose, you know, you lose one player even a little bit and then the domino effects will spill over. And because we didn't, because we didn't convert any of our chances, you know, you can almost see, you can see a team even get more like into it. Like, oh, we can, we can pull this off. We're going to do this. We've got the miracles in front of us. So, again, I do want to give them credit for having that mentality, having that organization. and then not entirely give us a pass for not breaking their will sooner. Yeah.

They did seem a little bit like they were growing in belief as the game went on. And they almost did it. Yeah, to do it with 10, to be doing it with 10 players is. Yeah. Yeah, that would have been, it would have been remarkable. Well, so that probably leads us to the central question, which is why couldn't we break their will earlier? how much should we feel terrible about that?

And I think we'll get into it. To the timeline. So one minute in, we're already sort of knocking on the door. And let me describe what happened here because it's kind of interesting. It's some work from McKinney to split defenders and find Gio in the half space to the left. And then Jedi and Kevin Paredes kind of almost lose possession. it gets recycled back to McKinney and then he hits a diagonal

very similar to the one he hit to Dest in the Iran game in the World Cup and Desk tries to head it across like he did against Iran and he does the ball gets to Ballo right at the edge of the six

and the bounce trajectory is a little tricky for him so he tries to take it off his chest and volley it but he gets closed down before he could get a shot off but you know within 60 seconds we had an intentional pass to Fuller and Balligan at the edge of the six. Not bad.

Yeah, no, not at all. And again, I think there were actually a couple of the next item, too, where we even in their low block we gave, we managed to give Trinidad a couple of wake-up calls like, oh, we are already too stretched out. We got to tighten this thing up even more. Yeah. Well, what are you thinking of as the next thing?

So that the big ream ball. Yeah. Which was great. What a great ball. In the fifth minute, a good long ball from Ream to Dest. diagonally, he settles it and lays it off for Tillman right at the edge of the box. And Tillman just kind of casually blasts it way over the goal. Yeah, and so this one, again, I think let Trinidad know that they were going to have to

drop their line in confrontation even further. Like we were just kind of knocking around without too much intent behind our half line. And so Trinidad might have been falling asleep for a second. And then very suddenly Serginio Dest is in behind them. good first touch from him, really good laydown for Malik. I don't necessarily have a problem with Malik taking the shot here. In hindsight, watching Malik's whole game, I'm like, I wanted to see more clever stuff from him, right?

He's a clever player. That's what we're hoping is that he's a lock picker for us. So instead of just taking this first time from outside the box, can we use the talent of desk to Malik and Bolligan, who are all within eight yards of each other and create an even higher percentage shot? Yeah, that's a good point. But I also, at least in the moment, and up until you said that, I had no problem with him taking the shot.

I just had a little problem with the execution. And I think it kind of built, you know, he had some execution problems pretty frequently, I would say, in the first half, even though I think the ideas were good. And that, I think that built up. And some people were saying he had a terrible game. I don't know if I'd go that far, but I want, I want, I want. better from him. And I actually expect better from him. I think he will play better the next time he goes out there in the shirt. I think that's where I'm at too. Not terrible, but kind of ineffective. I think one of the ways I described it was he ended up playing really safe. And again, this is where I

wish I'd seen more of that clever incisiveness that I think he does have. But there were plenty of times where I think he just picked a safe play. We weren't as bad as like passing all the way around out the outside of their shape. But we didn't necessarily, outside of Giorina, uh, try the slightly higher risk plays with much higher reward. As often as I wanted,

certainly didn't execute them when we did. Yeah. I mean, Tillman had the one, the little Kroif attempt. That was, um, that was, uh, uh, an attempt, you know. But, but, but yeah, he did, he did, um, he did just kind of play simple.

and sideways and backwards a lot. In the six minute, Musa's a little loose, kind of gives it away, and as a result, McKinney goes into a challenge that leaves him limping a little bit. I thought Musa was not his best last night either. Yeah, one of the things we talked about in the call-in was just that this isn't necessarily going to be

a great game for Musa's existing strengths, which are, you know, to help relieve pressure from like a high press where he can advance the ball through a press sort of on his own. There was no such thing in this game, right? Like we were facing the lowest of low blocks and so we could kind of walk the, there was no need to have a player who can walk the ball up. So what this game presented was an opportunity for Moussa to show us a little bit more

attacking Verve and, you know, whatever, mixed results, which I think is going to be the case with Moussa for most of the cycle. You know, we're going to be seeing ups and downs from him as a more attacking player that he's going to have to be for us compared to what he maybe is for A.C. Yeah, he still is, he still looks a little reluctant when he has to attack the box. I mean, he doesn't look reluctant going from our defensive third into the middle third and into the attacking third. But once he gets the ball in the attacking third, he's kind of, he has that feel of like,

whoa, wait, I'm supposed to attack now, which we also talked about on the call-in show. seventh minute, a rare instance of Geo eliminating somebody on the dribble in this game. Something else I noticed, he played, Geo played very much within himself, you know, for the most part. He's not trying to do too much out there. He slid it out wide to Dest after beating a guy. And then Dest draws kind of some ooze and oz from the crowd by, I don't know if he mended it as a cross or as a shot, but it was generally in the direction of the goal and forced to save from Denzel Smith. that was acrobatic

yeah geo was playing in his typical fashion that looks super simple but he like peppers in just some outrageous passes that don't even necessarily come across as outrageous

while he's doing it this wasn't one of those but like he has he has some of those in this game so uh definitely yeah he definitely wasn't trying to uh be a one man show he's he's trying to be a little puppet master out there

and I definitely appreciate watching it oh yeah yeah I thought he was great again. Yeah, he has a way of setting up the defenders around him with all kinds of different, all kinds of different tricks of deception. And then doing something that's just a little bit surprising. Eighth minute we got Gio out left.

He flashes it across the top of the box to Malik. And Malik takes a poor touch. It pops up on him. though he's in a pretty good pocket of space right there at the top of the box. He tries to volley it over the back line for Ballo. It's kind of a mess from his first touch. We went a corner. We have a good corner routine.

This is kind of interesting. Geo plays it on the deck to Malik just inside the box, who kind of drives at the near post and then cuts it back to Kevin Perettus. Who makes decent contact first time with his left foot. It's kind of hard to tell live, but it was definitely blocked by Balagin. foot, but I'm trying to get out of the way,

just couldn't get out of the way. Did you think it was going in? I have no idea. The camera work in a lot of this game was shocking. I don't know what's going on with the production. But I love the routine. I don't know if it was rehearsed or fit. Because again, with Gio,

he's so clever, you just never know, because he's just standing on the ball like he's about to set it and then back up to take his corner. And he's just standing there watching. And he just, again, he's just always processing. He's such a good processing. So he just sees a window, no pullback at all.

Like he's just standing right on top of the ball and he just fizzes it into Paredes his feet. So he keys it with that decision. Again, maybe it's rehearsed and maybe this is all part of it and everyone knows. But Gio comes off looking real clever there. And then I'm sorry, to Malik, not to Paredes. And then Malik does really well here, right? As he's getting bodied. He's not getting bodied in like a little brother way.

He's getting body to like holding off the challenge while still executing is really nice pass. Yeah, it was nice. It was probably Malik's best moment of the game. It might have been, yeah. Yeah. We get a good, you and I kind of disagreed about this on the call-in show last night, but I thought there were times where we had, it felt like we had a little bit of an opening to attack Trinidad when there's a slight amount of scrambling back going on.

and we weren't always, I don't know, the swashbuckling risk takers that I think we could have been in a game where there was just no chance of them scoring. And so I noted this moment in the 10th minute where we had a good quick attack. Geo puts a precise ball out there for Kevin, sort of a guilt-edged AVP against a retreating defender. And he just promptly dribbles right into the defender. and that's that's it yeah and so I think I think what I was trying to the point I was trying to make wasn't that

we executed these well it was just that I did think we were looking for him and the pass here from Gio I think is an example of that like we win it we turn him over or whatever in midfield and it could be slow and lumbering and again Gio looks like he's going to do something slow and lumbering because that's just the way he moves but he just he just receives a nice pass from McKinney that's, you know, nearly vertical.

And then very quickly, like, just lets the ball run past him. And then with his first touch in stride, fizzes it into Paretas's past running into the box. So I just, in my mind, that is like the direct play we want. We didn't, we didn't sort of plot our way around. It was like, boom, to geo, boom, we're in the box. And then our execution once we got there tended to be not great. Yeah. And I was pretty disappointed in Kevin Paredes' performance, I got to say.

I think I'm back in Team Brenda for Monday. Because, you know, as we've dinged Brenda for a long time, that's Brendan Aronson, for not controlling the space around him very well. But there's a little bit of game state to mention here. because it was late in the game and Trinidad was exhausted. But when you could see, I could see a difference when Brenda was on, that he was actually quite a bit better at controlling the space around him than Kevin Bredis was, you know, even, maybe not in the kind of physical way that somebody like Gio can do it.

But at least he was sort of in control of the situation when he had the ball and made some good decisions in the attacking third. Kevin had some nice moments, but he had a lot of not very nice moments too. Yeah. And I'm going to, I'm just going to remain. on team waya and stay above the fray and I'll let team brenda and team brettis like in team

Zendajas I'll let y'all like all battle this out uh Taylor booth as a as a faction uh you guys can do the whole anchor man thing and I'm just going to chill with waya there is no there is no team waya because he's written in pen you can't be on that team

uh no but this does kind of go back to something we've I've said this a lot of times like uh Paredes is having a nice start to the Bundesliga this year. He's doing some nice things. If he's going to eventually be like a whale level player, we'll kind of know.

Like, we'll see it happening. And right now that hasn't happened yet, and it's fine. We're going to keep giving him, I'm sure, opportunities. And it'll just sort of be on him to prove it. Yeah. Plenty of time. Plenty of time for him. And for any of the other guys, again, it could be Taylor Booth.

I'm not saying their names as like a mocking, condescending way. I'm saying, they've just got to kind of show it. And right now, none of them really have. People have their favorites. But right now, none of them, including Brenda, are really, I don't think, anywhere near the way out level. Again, Game State is a big factor here. But I mean, Brenda's nice things done per 90 is pretty high for this game. We'll get into it.

But go ahead. Well, I was just going to throw the caveat that we really haven't thrown in yet. It's Trinidad and Tobago. Like, this isn't a good team we're playing again. So I get that Brenda's did some really nice things for 90. But just because other people were bad, we still can't, like, overweight what's happened here. Like, remember, this is the team. This is the team that Jesus Ferreira dropped three on.

And no one was saying that that's proof that he should be getting a look. It literally, like, got him more mocking. He became more of a punchline because. he scored three goals in this game against Trinidad and Tobago. So I just want to be careful about like, you know, when we're talking about who's having good moments here, it's a bad team. No, I'm only talking about Brenda in relation to Kevin Peretz. Okay, fair enough.

So, like, I wanted Paredes to start the game. I'm saying now I don't want Paredes to start the next game. I want Brendan Aronson, too. I'd be happy with the exact same lineup except for Brendan Aronson. instead of Kevin Predus. That's all I'm saying. Don't back down. I don't mean don't back down because I just actually want to see more minutes with him.

I wanted this is the lineup I wanted kind of, like I kind of wanted Gio to be flipped with. I wanted Paredes to be on the right so that Jedi could have full run of the wide space on the left. And Desk could be more free to go wherever he wants rather than Malik being central. And then death sort of not having like being forced to hug the touchline, but doing that more often. Anyway, I don't want to just quit on the Malik Perretti's train after 90 minutes here. I'm bringing Malik back to the starting lineup for sure, but not, but not Perides. Like I just wanted to, I want to be like, you got to, Malik, you got to unlock some things.

Like that's why we're playing you. We're not playing you to just like hit the next safe pass. You are in there to pick locks. Yeah. Sorry, I jump from Malik. I jump from from Paredes to Malik on you. No, that's all right. They're the two most controversial players in the game, I think.

Well, they're the auditionees, right? I mean, out of everyone in this lineup, those are the two that have the least amount of, other than Balo, but Balo is all as a guy. Paredes and Malik are the ones who are really sort of trying to make the case. CCV maybe. Yeah, not hard to make a case here, but, you know, CCV was pretty good. 12th minute, we get a long sequence of probing attack around TNT's body. What are you laughing about?

I'm just laughing about the extended diatribe I just went on where I named nine players and you're like, we have 78 minutes left in this. The long sequence ends with a decent cross from left to right from Raina. I mean, we did our, you know, we gave a good college try, trying to probe our way in for something.

And then finally, Raina just tries to hit Tillman arriving at the back post. It's actually not a bad ball, not a bad run. just pretty well defended and sent out for a corner. Yeah, I'm glad to have this one here. I have clipped this whole sequence. I got to post it on the Discord at like two times speed because it's like a minute and a half, right?

I mean, it's long. Yeah. And it moves from right to left. It moves into the box, out of the box. I mean, I don't even know if our half line ever appears in the frame. But it was just another example of like, I know we ended up hitting a ton of crosses in the second half. But that clearly wasn't like what we're trying to do to break down this low block.

Like we're looking. for ways in. That's desks with several chances where he could have crossed here but doesn't. Jedi gets it out wide and almost in the Man City Zone doesn't just fired in like tries to find a soccer solution. So we're trying, but we aren't really there yet. And so, you know, there's a lot of talk about like the tactics and whether or not Burrhalter has set us up well. And for me, like the tactics are, it's hard to really have a real discussion about tactics in a game like this because when they set up as low as they are, It kind of flattens everything into one phase of the game. It's not like, okay, here's how we're going to set up in this phase,

and here's how we're going to transition from this phase to this phase. It's like, this is all it is. It's just this attacking drill over and over and over again. And so for me, the manager's role is primarily, like, which players do you pick to do it? And are you putting them in spots to do it? And so I think his choice, which I was not unhappy with at all, was GEO and Malik are going to be the guys who unlock us here. And we've got some other good pieces around.

them and it just didn't really happen and so it's so you know there's the expected like uproar about burhalter's failures here because it sort of a lot of it always gets pinned back to burhalter but for me the players were the players I wanted to see do it and when they don't do it some of it is just like yeah malice just didn't really do any of the things that I was hoping to see him do and I don't know that I would necessarily put that squarely on the manager yeah I haven't seen a compelling argument about the tactics. Like we should, we did this,

but we should have done that or something like that. I haven't really seen that. And to your point about the, you know, we just didn't execute well enough. Here's, I have a long paragraph here of misconnections and poor touches that were piling up at this point in the game.

I just sort of threw them all together here. So Jedi to Kevin Paredes, a misconnection on the left side. Musa to Kevin Paredes. Misconnection. Peres just gets blown up and kind of, you know, curls into the fetal position. Giovanni to Baligan doesn't, the pass doesn't hit.

Musa to Tillman and a poor touch on the half turn from Malik. And then Desk gets dispossessed trying to cut him from the right side, dribble past the guy. Paredes almost dies in a challenge with Alvin Jones. I was terrified because, you know, we talk about being worried. Wasn't super worried about the actual outcome for most of this game, was always worried that somebody was just going to get wrecked and have that be the end of their season. I'm still worried about Weston's ankle.

Like, it didn't seem like that was good. Pretus runs the wrong route on a set piece routine. Did you notice that? Like, he gets bumped by the corner back. He gets pumped inside the five-yard cushion and can't get out of it. Jedi has a place a pass to the balligan. It gets cut out. Musa misses desk out wide on the ground.

Musa and Balo miss a giving go were just not sharp enough in the tight spaces and I think Greg Burhalter said something Greg Burhalter said something about that at halftime or even in loose spaces we weren't that weren't sharp enough so I think that's a big part of it I don't know how to explain why we weren't

sharper but we weren't yeah and it's it's difficult like you don't have a lot of rehearsal time with these players to know the intricacies of everything. So you're really just relying on sort of general best practices of how to combine around a tight block and you have to get a lot of things right all in a row or the, or you get frustrated. And again, speaking from T&T's perspective,

doing this for 90 minutes is really difficult, doing it down a player for 50 of those minutes, even more difficult. And they weren't able to do it, right? They gave it their best shot and they still conceded three goals. And effectively the tie is over and we will advance to the Copa America. Well, I say confidently. Well, but I mean, that's really always makes me uneasy.

Like, this was a super frustrating game and it was so frustrating and yet we still walked away three zero winners. And it's kind of like that's how that's how difficult the task ahead of Trinidad was to be able to do this. And they almost got everything right and they still lose three zero. Like that's, it's hard out there. Yeah. It is. So Wes turns his ankle in a challenge in the 18th minute.

It's kind of scary. It seems like he's okay, but it did hurt a lot. He had his, that's his second time he was down for a minute. 22nd minute, a good sequence from us. It's Ream plays it on the deck to Jedi. Jedi slips, ballo in on a diagonal run across the face of goal. So this is a type of sequence that we saw over and over and over and over and over in this game. But this is one where we executed reasonably well.

Ballo settles it with his back to goal and just plays a little reverse pass into Kevin, who has drifted into the box to the inside of Ballo. And then Kevin squares it for Malik. It's a nice movement from Kevin. It's a nice choice to play that ball across to the penalty marker to Malik. And Malik tries an outside of the boot right-footed flick on goal. and skies it, I mean, or sends it over the goal. I think he could have, I mean, there's some debate about whether his feet were set up right for it,

but, you know, the traditional thing there is to hammer it with the inside of your left foot right at the goal, maybe at the near post. He didn't do that. He tried this other more non-traditional technique and didn't work. But it's a nice moment from Kevin Paredes and a good little moment from Ballo and Jedi, I thought. Yeah, and if this is, so this is where I'd say, if Malik was a worst player, I would definitely want him to just use the inside of his left foot. I mean, if it's like a kid that me or you were coaching, that's what we tell him to do. But Malik is a good player who has a lot of different surfaces that he's probably comfortable with.

So I'm just like, yeah, if he's got the technical ability to use to see that he can use the outside of his right foot to get the shot off a little quicker, half step quicker without having to plant. What, I'm totally fine with it. It didn't come off in this moment. So it's the obvious play is to be like, well, he should have done the other way instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If he puts the top ends there, I worship him. Right, right, we're losing our mind, and suddenly he's on the, he's the new fun side. Yeah, what was notable about the sequence to me was that it was another chance of us being able to quickly break behind Trinidad's block before they set up.

And it came after another long spell of possession for the U.S. where we'd kind of work side to side, you know, poked, prodded, lost it. And Trinidad didn't really like have a run out at us, but they did have one guy kind of dribb near the sideline that CCV handled with ease. But they did have like three other guys kind of half-heartedly jogging up with them

and the whole team kind of jogged up half-heartedly with them. And that was like all it took for us to move it from CCV to Ream up to Jedi. And then we did quickly, again, identify that we can get in behind their block can we got it done. Like this was a good example of how we didn't have a ton of transition opportunities, but if you count this as one, we were trying to go. Like we talked about our decision tree and it needs to be like, look up quickly. Can we get up quickly?

Usually to bolligan, but in this case, I mean, it was like Jedi was the first sort of vertical pass from Ream. So we were looking just that tiny little bit of execution at the very end. Yeah, it'll be. wonderful one day when we have that the ruthlessness to just like hit those seams hard in um and score goals in bunches in games like this may you know maybe it never happens who knows um 25th minute tilman plays a square pass to nobody really just right to a white shirt and his shoulders kind of sag got to pick it up malik got to pick it up i mean sorry i feel like this is another one

that stands out and then i'll have more in the second half the other thing to remember about like mistakes like this is you know the blown routes that we had when you have 75% of the ball all of your different kinds of events will probably go up so your mistakes will also increase like it'll just have more you just again you just need to have a couple of really good moments

should also increase and that's that's what we're missing yeah we had 76% possession 648 passes completed to 22 which almost sounds like it underestimates the amount. And it wasn't a horseshoe, right?

This wasn't this wasn't CCV and RIM passing it back and forth. Like CCV, again, probably spent maybe one and a half minutes in frame. I don't know if he was in, he was never in the picture. Yeah. Yeah, we would, I mean, there was, of course, a horseshoeing effect. When you try to probe on one side, you can't figure anything out. And then you pass it across the top of the box and you move it across the box. So it's like a, it's a very wide horse shoe.

shoe and a shallow one, you know. Yeah, I think I saw some other things about like, oh, here we go again, like our strikers isolated. And I was like, I do not know that I can call a single player on our team isolated when the whole game is happening in a 35-yard vertical space. If that, yeah, yeah. Good pass down the seam from Jedi to Paredes. Pradesh just takes a too long touch and it runs himself out of bounds.

Poor touch from Gio on a pass into the pocket from Jedi. The past was a little behind him, but he can, you know, he can handle that. He was frustrated. I don't know if he was frustrated at himself or at Jedi. It doesn't really matter. 28th minute, Jedi takes a shot after a West ball over the top to Ballo. Ballot kind of battles for it. It gets cleared weakly.

Jedi runs into it, onto it, and just lashes it wide from 20. When you see the camera angle from behind, it's actually a really good chance for Jedi there. And who knows, maybe if you just... just keeps attempting those kinds of shots something good could happen you just cooking in that left half space we have a 29th minute good move left to right through geo Jedi west and dest we win a corner kick when desk slips it to malik and he wins he wins the corner get nothing from it but that was a little bit that was a little bit of like i mean did that bring a little bit of the fun side feeling to you like that just the ball kind of pinging around

on the right side? You mean on the left side? Oh, sorry, this was one of the left. I was thinking this was one of the ones on the right where we did get a little ping in action. Well, we had an almost metaphysical discussion last night with Bob Morocco about like the collective will of a team and the collective, you know, decision to attack and collective ability to regulate the tempo of a game.

And you didn't really weigh in on it, but, and not that you have to. But I did notice this moment from this sequence was a good example of Gio. Not like, he could probably dribble by a couple guys and break into the the Trinidad half on this sequence. But he receives it, he receives it way down in our left corner. And he just kind of plays like a, almost like a lazy little pass backward to the Jedi to the left.

And it just sets Jedi up in a place where he can easily, step by the defender who's nearest him and then play it to Wes and then Wes is just wide open, you know striding into the middle into the center circle. Yeah. I like, I really like that from from Gio because it's a, it's a

counterintuitive kind of thing to do. Yeah, and if you, if you heard, if you were listening and you heard lazy there and like think of it as a negative thing, it's not at all. It's like, it's like an effortlessness that he always has. So he's, he's striding, geo is striding forward and he's forcing the defense to retreat with him.

with them having no like possibility whatsoever of actually taking the ball from him. So he's pushing the whole team backward. And as he's doing so, he essentially just leaves it behind for, for Jedi. It almost looks like a hockey sequence when one guy is skating as hard as he can at everybody and then just leaves the puck behind him for. Yeah, it's like that. So yeah, so he's got that sort of just total, again, total control over the proceedings. Yeah.

We're going to have spent a lot. of time over the next three years. Just talking about Gio. Just adoring Giovon Arena. It's true. Let's see. We got to talk about the real quickly about the Kroif attempt by Malik. McKenny dribbles in from the right side.

McKinney was, I thought, pretty good in the game. Maybe the, maybe the least, you know, besmirchable of our players. He dribbles in from the right, squares it to Gio. He plays a good, Gio plays a good pass on the. the ground to Malik just inside the box and it was a nice sequence and then Malik tries to Croiff it to Balo in behind and it's just a little behind him. And Balo might have been offside too. I don't know.

Just didn't get it quite right. But it could have been great and you do need that kind of stuff in that moment to break a low block. Yeah, it was, I love the choice. We actually had like two guys in the vicinity of where the Krofe was headed. So we had a nice numbers situation even if it weren't. exactly where it need to be like it definitely could have come off so full credit to malique love love a love a kroif love any kind of sauce um i'll go back to the fun side bit a little bit because

uh i genuinely think that without waya out there with surge doing their ridiculous stuff totally unnecessarily um i think we did lose a little bit of like our swagger so we're we're playing fine but i feel like that swagger is contagious and i do think we're We're missing a little bit of it. Yeah. Well, speaking of that, fun side, I have three items in a minute and 30 seconds here between the 3350 mark and the 3520 mark. Dess is dispossessed by Raymond.

He misses Musa, gives it away with a pass, and then he misses Ballot's feet. You know, just got to call balls and strikes here, folks. 37th minute, Wes blows by Noah Powder, gets tackled from behind in mid-fellow. field and it's the second yellow for the 25-year-old from Edison, New Jersey. He gets sent off. He plays for, I think, the Northern Colorado Halestorm in U.S.L. League one. And that's it for him. They're down to 10 men.

It didn't really change the game that much, if we're honest, though. I mean, it made created more work for Trinidad. Yeah, that's what I'd say. It didn't change the flow of the game, which just continued to take place entirely at Trinidad's end. It absolutely changes the job requirements. acquired of Trinidad, of each Trinidad player. Yeah.

Yeah. Specifically, the now three in midfields, because they basically just moved to like a 5-3-1 instead of a 5-4-1. So those three guys had to do a lot of shifting. That's a long penalty kill. Yeah, man. How many more hockey references are going on here? This is all we're doing.

We're going to keep doing it. 39th minute, we get to see some of Jedi's limitations. Gio plays a tim at the edge of the box to Jedi, so he's working in this half space at the moment. Jedi tries to slip Ballo in. I mean, it's on. The run is on, the pass is on. If the weight is right,

Ballo just runs onto it and lashes it with his left foot. But the pass is just hit with a frying pan. It's way too heavy. And that was that. Yeah, and so this one came up on the call-in show because one, just love Geo again, effortlessly doing this. Two, the idea from Jedi is great here. So when we talk about our ideas of how to break down the block,

like this is exactly, this is a fantastic pattern, right? Like the timing is all there, and it's just a mistouch from Jedi when a really subtle one was needed and he just hit a little too much on it. And so then just like with finishing that we talk about a ton, like no one is going to execute perfectly on everything they attend. So it's just about the volume. So we didn't we just didn't have enough even of these

In our comfortable three zero win with 26 shots on on Towards target I'll say We didn't we didn't have enough of these like types of moments where the even the thought was there like we still have to Add more Soccer brain stuff to our games I mean and I do think that a lot of that for me a lot of what was missing was from Belique because he's the guy who we all think has those ideas

and he's gonna have to put some of them onto the field he does have them I mean we've seen him with PSV do these things and I mean I know the competition he's playing against is not that great but it's not worse than what we played last night the Hailstorm

it's not but also again this is where this is a different style than what I think Malik because Malik is generally playing. Like, Air Divisi is not famed for their low block defenses. Right.

Those games get wide open. They spend a lot of time up two or three goals where the other team is already either checked out or spread out thinking they might try to at least score one. So this is a different sort of a nut to crack. That's true. Yeah. 40th minute, Kevin does well to dispossess a guy

just inside our half, but then drives forward and dribbles into a car. crash with big centerback, Aubrey David, both players down for a while. Turns out they were okay. And then in the 44th minute, he gets the wind knocked out of him by the ball. I just wanted to reach through the TV and hand him a Capri son right then and there. But he, you know, that's it. He's young.

He's young. Got to say also on the other end of the age spectrum, Timbreen was good. I mean, not much to do back there, but. defensively, uh, defensively not much to do. But you really appreciate, I really appreciate the quality of his distribution.

Like the weight is always pretty good and it's to the correct foot. And, uh, I just kind of marvel at his ascension since the summer of 2022. It's, it's fantastic anytime the camera pans to him because we have such a, I mean, our team is all children. And then you,

you know, get a close up of Tim Rame. It's like, we have one. his old player out there. Yeah. Grandpa Timothy. Okay, yeah, there's some other stuff in the first half,

but I don't think we need to get into it too much. I wish we were better in the critical moments, but it wasn't that bad of a half for me on rewatch. So I'll just, I'll say, I wish we were better in the critical moments. I also don't think that we created enough of those critical moments. So I'm not saying we're off the hook. I just feel like it's not like an easy one to just be like, it was all this player. So I don't even want, even when I'm saying, I want more from Malik.

Like, we just, we just, it's going to take a bit for us to be like, all right, we, how do we get from where we are now to getting some of these moments, creating more danger, specifically when we don't have Tim Wea or a Christian Pool Sick who's been known to create some danger out on the field. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you need a semi-critical moment to go right before you get to the critical moment, you know? You need to have a, you need to be good in this sort of critical moment. And I don't think we were good in those moments either. I mean, generally speaking. So one of the Bob Morocco comments that I think hit for me was when he said, We need to have at least like two geo level critical moment guys. And that's definitely paraphrasing because I've combined things.

But since we already have one geo, we aren't necessarily just going to have another one because we aren't blessed that way, especially if Malik isn't going to be that guy. But at least like in the aggregate, can a few other guys sort of combine over the course of a game to give us that. And that's what we're missing. So I'm coming down hardest on Malik, but it could come from, you know, Kevin Perretus needs to have a couple more of those moments where he does it in a game like this. Yeah. I really have confidence that Malik will sort it out, much more confidence than I have in Peretis sorting it out. And I'm totally open to Paredes sorting it out too.

Okay, good, because someone will come after you if you're not giving me. Oh, yeah. I know one guy in particular who will come after me. He's going to come after me for what I've said already. There's no going back. Okay, at the half, Neville Hacksaw comes on. He was the portly one for Ryan Telfer at the half. Gotta say, he wasn't too bad, Haxhaw.

He was sturdy. I appreciated that. And let's get into the second half timelines. A lot, a lot happened. 52nd minute, decent sequence. Jedi strides forward, squares it for Gio. He slips it out wide to Dest, who dribbles into the defender. I kind of wanted Geo to just shoot from the edge of the box once in this game.

I don't think he did, if I remember correctly. But, you know, I like the unselfishness too. Boy, we're a long ways from that 2017 World Cup. You say classic unselfish geo. Yeah, I said, yeah, the 2019 U-17 World Cup. 53rd minute, good slip past through the lines from West to Tillman. and Tillman let it run when he maybe could have just reached out

and taken a touch and it gets smothered by the goalkeeper. It's tough. I mean, like, I'd got to say Wes overcooks it just slightly. Oh, so slightly. Yeah, so barely. It's one of those where maybe Tillman gets a touch, maybe Wes should just get the proper weight on it.

When he gets a header on a clipped cross from Geo, that's pretty tame in the 54th minute, Did it seem weirdly tame? Like this seemed as it was developing I was like here we go We have Malik Malik And he's gonna he's gonna get to this

Like the defender can't stop this Yeah he's got Just seemed really Really soft I think he was trying to go back across You know completely back I don't know I know maybe some weird spin on it

That's the weight he put on it He put the weight on it As though he was gonna nod it down For a teammate But he was doing it to the other team's goalkeeper As a defender would if they were trying to give their goalkeeper a ball to collect. It just seemed weird.

I'm not, again, these are difficult, so I'm not trying to say, like, he effed this up. But it just, it was, it was a, it was visually strange to me. It was a very, very tame header, Greg. I agree. Some more Giovanni adoration on top here. 55th minute, a zipped ball from Jedi across the penalty marker for Gio. He turns, it's not the most elegant turn,

but it is effective. He turns with like three defenders on him, takes a couple touches and has a shot. That's pretty respectable, low and hard. It's just right at the keeper. But that work in tight space is special, I think, even against an opponent like this. So this is the one where I both ding him

and I adore him because the ball comes in. It's coming to not, but it's handleable to get a shot off before the three players collapse on him. So his first touch lets him down a little bit here. And honestly, I think that's what his post-shot reaction was. He had like a frustration moment. Because if he handles it cleanly with his first touch, he gets to pick where he wants to shoot.

And instead, since he has to now swivel, which again, it's incredible that he can still do this. He swivels and manages to beat three players to create a shot anyway. He has less choice in the matter. So then it ends up being fizzed directly at the goalkeeper. Yeah. could have maybe gone far post. I guess that's what you'd call it, the post to the right of him.

Dest, I just noticed Dest is really getting into crossing mode here. Oh, it's incredible. So Dest had one cross in the first half, and then starting in like the 50, yeah, 55th minute,

53rd minute, he has, I think he has 12 crosses in the last 40 minutes. Is that right, 12 of all? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. He's just doing the David Beckham, like, stand still and whip it in. Gio was doing it bad.

Gio was doing it pretty bad in the first half where Gio and McKinney both are very confident in their ability to like stand right on the ball, pick their head up, and then like clip it directly onto the head of somebody 35 yards away. They're not necessarily that great at it. But they both are sure that they can. And so they do that a lot. And then so Desd definitely got got that bug in the second half for the last 30 minutes. Yeah.

It was, you know, mostly ineffective. 57th minute, Musa has that hit from distance, reminiscent of that one that was called back at Valencia a little bit, not hit quite as pure as that one, but it's a good hit and a good save from Denzel Smith. Right? It was a pretty good save, wasn't it? Yeah, I give them great. A lot of credit for that.

Good save to push the rebound well clear of anything, because that's what we get a lot of times against some of these weaker teams is those little goalkeeping things where they might make the save, but the rebound that gives is real ugly, and we get to pounce on that. And there wasn't really any of that, partly because so many of our shots went out for goal kicks.

That's true, yeah. I just noticed that he had his feet firmly on the ground at the moment of contact when Musa hit it. There you go, good power step, good extension dive. 57 minute mark. Reem misses that header on the GEO set piece after that Musa hit. I mean, miss is kind of a harsh way to say it.

It was close. He just almost skimmed the post on the far post. A bit of a handball check from the studio, but not enough there. And play continues. The handball would have been on the defender marking ream if it were to have been called. Yeah, we definitely seem like we're knocking. And this is where I was starting to feel pretty good that something was coming. Yeah.

Yeah, I think I felt. the same way, roughly. Perides and Jedi combine in the 60th minute and Jedi slides a square into McKinney, who gets taken down from behind in the box, a penalty was awarded and then retracted. Wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been a nice way to get the winner, I don't think.

But it was probably a penalty, in my opinion. I think that tells you, like, where we, how worried we were when people are just like, oh, we don't want to win it like this. I'm pretty sure we're going to score a goal the normal way. So let's earn it instead of taking the penalty. Yeah, that's true. 64th minute, McKinney floats another one across from the right this time,

and it skips through to Kevin. He takes it on his chest and then leans back and volleys it over the bar. Then we get some subs, Peppy for Tillman and Brenda for Kevin. And our subs were, generally speaking, better than theirs. and we did start to grind them down. 68th minute, a lovely little find from Gio to pick out Brendan in a pocket in the box. This is, maybe you should describe this because I think you were really impressed with this in the moment, right? Yeah, this was probably my favorite play of the game.

And it's just, you know, the question is always like, how do you break down a low block? How do you break down a low block? And again, sometimes the answer is have Gio Rain on the first. field, right? And so the idea is we'd love to have a second player who does this. But it's nothing. Like it comes from nothing. It's just we're passing on the outside of the block. Raina, little triangle with Musa and Pepey hits it in, Raina gets it back, hits it in the McKenney's feet. We're still outside their block. We don't have anything, right? McKinney gives it back to Geo at the corner of the box. He's outside of the box. And Trinidad's block is fully set. It's still fully committed

in a zero-zero game. And Raina just, just like dribbles forward in total control, approaches the perimeter of the block, and then just ever so delicately, lifts the ball six and a half yards to Brendan Aronson in the midst of this sea of bodies and puts it on Brenda's shooting foot from 14 yards away with a totally wide open shooting lane.

And Brenda does everything pretty much right, curls it just past the far post, so it misses by a foot and a half. But this is like when you want, to know how you break down a low block, it's you have geo rain out there and you give him the ball and you let him make decisions. Yeah, it was a, it was a surprising pick out, you know, he didn't ever let on that he was going to do that. And then he just all of a sudden, the outside of his boot just sort of struck out. And yeah, like he said, lifted it over to

Brendan. And a good first touch from Brendan, just couldn't, just couldn't bend it enough to get it in at the far post. Yeah, in the past, like directs that first touch from Brenda. Like, Brendan doesn't have to kill it dead. I mean, the pass brings it across Brenda's face to let him open his hips up. And it's just perfect, right? It's absolutely perfect. And we were, for me, it's even like, it's a better chance than the one we end up scoring on to open things. So this is how you, if you want to, if you want to know how you're going to like beat teams that are packed in, it's with this kind of thing.

Or at least this is a very good way to do it. Yeah. I just love watching Geo Raina play. I can't understand, you know, there are people here and there who say he's playing poorly or like he's not our best 10. Man. Well, we will keep saying this too. It's because he's so effortless. I mean, this doesn't look anything crazy, right?

But you think about what is actually created, what the picture looks like when he receives the ball, and then what he creates with like no fanfare whatsoever. Right. It's just fantastic. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. No fanfare. 69 minute mark, just desk is just cranking the ball into the box, just over and over and over. On this one, he hits, so he does like two in a row.

One gets like sent back out to him, recycle back out to him. And then he hits Ballo square on, like square on the waist. And Ballo tries to volley it in from about the penalty marker and whiffs. So everybody, you know, nobody's perfect. 71 minute mark, Jedi whips another one in and it meets Peppy at the penalty marker. He can't control it. It kind of short-hops him and he loses possession. You know.

So it's not just, yeah, definitely is not just Desk who goes cross nuts here. So we had three times as many crosses in the second half as we had in the first, three times as many shots as well. So some correlation there. This also, of course, coincides with Trinidad getting tired and being a player down. But I was pausing on a lot of these crosses, and a lot of them weren't like terrible crossing situations. Trinidad just, even with all of their commitment to the low block, you could look and be like, okay, well, when Geo looks up here, he sees either three on three or sometimes like three and a half on three, three on two and a half numbers wise. So it's like, all right, you can see throwing it in there and seeing if we either get the first one

or are able to pick up the scraps. And the other thing that keep in mind is there's zero threat of Trinidad coming out on the counter. So one of the drawbacks to crosses is, you know, you send your players running into the box, cross it, and it's cleared out 30 yards by big header, and all your guys are running the wrong way and you're at risk for a counterattack.

Zero risk of any counterattack here from Trinidad. Right. There was, well, I'll just skip ahead to it, but in the 80th minute, a really, I thought, bad cross from Eunice. Yeah, he had a couple. The decision and the execution. Yeah, I mean, he was in like a 30-yard island of space.

Like, nobody even near him. And he's just like, oh, I'll just whack it into the box. Well, okay, we got a few other things here. 73rd minute desk steps around a guy at the top of the box. It has a good left-footed shot from there. I mean, hits it really hard. and it's saved by the keeper but right in front of him

I kind of wish Pepe and Ballo had been a little more Johnny on the spot there but maybe it wouldn't have mattered but it's not a good hit from Dest Yeah we like that and that might have been our rebound opportunity from this keeper who was otherwise pretty solid

Yeah 78th minute A lot of stuff happening now But I did notice that Gio He tried to skip around Hackshaw The Portly guy And couldn't get a shot shot off. I mean, he, like, Haxhaw actually bodied him a little bit. You know, everybody's making

fun of Haxhaw, but like he's, he's in a like a 1v1 against our best player and forces him to square it over to Wes. Wes lifts it across the box and it kind of skips through to Jedi. He squares it for Brenda at the penalty marker. And Brenda scuffs it first time with his left foot. There's another scramble in front of the goal with Pepe and Ballo both there, but the, but the keeper smothers it and maybe one of them was offside. I couldn't tell if the flag went up. Yeah, but this was, again, another one of those sort of sneaky good chances that evaporates and we're also frustrated

that you kind of don't appreciate it for what it was, but a decent buildup there. I mean, yeah, Aronson has a pretty much uncontested first-time shot from 11 yards away. Right. It's not terrible. We're not like, we aren't just banging our heads against a wall here. like we're getting looks. Brenda gets another chance to shoot on another cross from Dest in the 79th minute, and he rises and makes good contact, flashes it wide, kind of similar to the way Reims went wide.

Good pace on the header. And then let's get to the goal. 82nd minute, 8105 on the clock. Jedi has the ball on the left side, just like he has a hundred times before. after a speculative cross of his was cleared to Geo and then headed over to him. So, Geo just one time heads it over to him, first time heads it over to him.

Jedi picks up his head and Pepey darts from the penalty marker to the near post. And he just waxed it at that near post. Pepe meets it. I've watched the replay a lot of times. I think he got it with the bottom of his foot and redirected it.

Perhaps on goal. perhaps just off the leg of the defender who is marking him and then on goal and then it's just coming at the goalkeeper so fast he gets a forearm to it but you know it's all happening in like a tenth of a second it's a really difficult save to make

and it's a goal one zero USA insane insane like improvisation from peppy here just to have the wherewithal to get that boot up for the little flick towards goal to even directed that direction.

Fantastic. If it doesn't sneak in through the keeper, keeper's probably not going to get it clean. So all good outcomes here from what Pepe's done. And we happen to get the best one. Yeah. Another game winner from Pepey, his 10th goal for the national team.

I think that breaks him into the top 25 all time. That's amazing. And, you know, I'm thinking of like some of his game winner. He had a game winner against Jamaica and World Cup qualifying in Austin. Obviously the game winner against Honduras at Honduras to get us back in that game. And then this game winner here, which, you know, if we don't score at that point, maybe we'd never score.

You never know. You don't know. Because it did, because the chances were already coming thick and fast, but then the goals started coming as well. I thought Brendan looked pretty good. I just wanted to say that at this moment in the game. It's just looking at me just saying something without evidence. I can't remember why I thought that at that moment.

But the next goal happens at the 85 minute mark. Geo lifts another cross into the box. It's headed away and collected by Geo at the top of the box. He takes a touch and has a hit and puts it top ends. I think it grayed the defender's head. between him and the goalie? It does, but there's still no, it doesn't, it only takes away a little. It's still a fantastic strike.

I think, again, I like this decision from Jedi. It's, we miss the long-range shot, you know, that's kind of being phased out of the game. So you just have to appreciate them when they actually happen and score. Well, the thing is, it might have gone right at the keeper if it didn't graze, the defender's head. I thought the keeper was already working to dive towards the post, and I thought the deflection just lifted it slightly to where either the keeper just had no hope of getting that far out and that high, or it already started to go like medium height, and it just went, the deflection took it over. So that's why I'm still giving Jedi a lot of the credit here.

Okay. It's important to know, to determine how much credit he actually gets for the banger and how much is. Yeah, out of 100 credit points, how many points does he get? I'm going to say 74. We get a fantastic backflip from Jedi, just full acrobatts, and then they go hunting again. Yep. Get a nice chance for Pepey in the 87th.

Musa kind of reluctantly dribbles into the box and, you know, dances on it and then pokes it to Brenda, who does have, this is maybe my favorite thing from Brenda on the whole. game a clever little layoff in extremely tight space just plays it with his left foot over to peppy who is right in front of the goal i mean there's a lot of bodies between him and the goal but this is a great shooting chance and he takes a shot with his left foot it gets deflected wide of frame again uh you know my condolences to the to the producer but i wish we could have gotten a replay of this uh a better replay yeah uh but again really nice and this was this was probably moves

his best attacking move of the game. This is what we've been looking for. This was his opportunity, this whole match, to do things like this. But he was, he was, he was threatening. Like, he was in there, like, doing some stepovers, getting some people to move. I don't know if it was his intention

to get it over to Brenda, but it worked out. I don't know either. It definitely was Brenda's intention to play it back to Pepey, I think. Real good stuff from Brenda to set up Pepey there. And, again, probably a better chance than the one Pepe canvert. So balances out now.

nicely. 88th minute, Ballo misses a chance. Geo slides it out to Jedi. You know, you go back and look at all these chances, I don't know how many of what percentage of them, but a lot of them, the past before the past comes

from Geo Raina. Anyway, he slides it out to Jedi, Jedi whips it across, Ballow meets it at the 6th and just pops it over and has a smile, you know? Should have put it, could, I'll say this, could have put it on frame. he'll score his share

I had I had to like take a long hard look because before we'd started scoring all these goals I had maybe made a comment in the discord about Tim Wea perhaps becoming our new left back and then within within like minutes it was like Jedi assist Jedi goal Jedi sets up Balo for a sitter Jedi sets up Brenda for a shot from eight yards out and then Jedi entry pass into Gio Raina dummied for Bolo Gun. You take it from there. Yeah. Well, yeah, this was the, this was the nicest goal of the game. Geo dummies it right in zone 14. It goes to Ballow. And Ballow just real quick thinking. One touches it into space for Gio. The weight on that pass is perfect.

It just kind of, it kind of nestles on the grass right in front of Gio. And he takes, he takes a first time smash with his left foot and then at the near post just flowing gorgeous soccer and geo doesn't even celebrate he's just running back he's like we need more boys we need more um i do think maybe his shot was deflected too did you notice this i didn't know i didn't notice it was deflected i was still just in awe of the technique he uses here with that left uh it's like a strange like uh rubbery foot to really slap it uh because i mean he's not really really running up, he kind of has to run away from goal just ever so slightly to get to that pass. And so he like rubber foots his leg to get his leg moving more towards the goal than not.

I don't know. I was just like, man, I'm going to adore this kid for several cycles. He has a lot of different techniques. I'm not, somebody's going to disagree with me. I'm not 100% sure it's deflected, but on the replay from behind the goal, it kind of looks like the ball was heading maybe like he was trying to go far post. and it got redirected near post or maybe like trying to five hold a keeper or something

He would say Do you think he would ever say? Do you think you would ever say it was deflect or not? No, he's not interested in the discourse. You know? Well, yeah, we didn't get a, I mean, we've seen a lot of celebrations from him that we've, you know, dissected.

So I wish we could have gotten one, but what we end up getting is like the It reminded me a pool sick in one of his Chelsea games where he scored like three times against Liverpool and their big comeback and he was just like he gets the ball and he's just like nope no time to celebrate like winding the team up let's go let's go we got to get more

they were down 3-2 in that game I think right and then ended up losing 4-2 I believe so that made it 3-0 and you know there was some other stuff that happened but that's pretty much it game over tie over series over At 2-0, it's like, all right, miracles can happen. At 3-0, that's it. We're into the Copa, guys.

Yeah, I'm hoping that we have a more fun game in Trinidad than we had in Austin to watch on Monday night. I mean, not very likely, but, you know, anything can happen. We play them Monday night, Port of Spain to, you know, officially punch our ticket to the Copa. and then we've got to make plans for Nations League in March in Dallas. I mean, it sounds like Austin was a good time, so I guess for the fans who went, so I'm sure Dallas will be as well. I don't know that too many people are going to Port of Spain, but... No.

Well, I think Max and Montana is... There we go. But shout out to everybody who came out last night and met up with Vince at Turnstile. They jumped on the call-in show. It seems like they were having fun. And, you know, any closing thoughts, Greg? Give me, you got to give me your 11 for Monday. Or do you even think it matters?

No, it matters to me a great deal. Yeah, same 11 except Brendan for Kevin. And Kevin can come in off the bench and continue to grow as a player. But I want to see, I want to see how it looks with Brenda out there. What about Ream? Does Ream get to play again? Or do we pack Ream on ice? storm

yeah I guess I should say Sam 11 with Brenda replacing Kevin and I don't care who the centerbacks are Richards and CCV I'm I actually strongly want Richards and CCV

to get minutes in that game even though I don't think they're necessarily going to be tested it'll be more there'll be more things to worry about in that game than there will be in this one even though the score line

is basically settled I assume I assume like again just quality of field just adds like the surface, if the surface is even a little bit dodgy, that adds so much stress to defenders' lives. So you can't take anything for granted. So I want Richards and CCV in sort of that slightly more stressful situation.

No own goals between the two of them in Trinidad, I think, is what I'm calling. No, I want Preda's to get back out there. I feel like we got to let them go again. And like prove it one way or the other. Either prove that you can offer more or prove that you can offer more or prove that you're fine, but you're not anything that we, like, have to have on there right now.

Again, he's, he's, what? He's 16 years old, so. He's not 16. There's, there's plenty of time here, but if he wants to be a guy that we have to have right now, like, show us a little bit of something. Yeah.

I guess I can see the argument for that, but what about consequences, you know, consequences for actions, Greg. I demand punitive justice for, for being somewhat ineffective. Because, again, that's, that is sort of the other thing. Like if it's 3-0 when some of this stuff is happening,

Pretus, what he's doing isn't really going to stand out because mostly he's just not standing out. He's not like doing a ton of terrible stuff. He just doesn't really standing out, and it's frustrating when it's like, we need you to do something. It's like you have to be somebody who is doing something. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I want Brenda to start. All right. But, um, but I, I see Brenda. Anybody need a break on Monday? Does Gio need a break? Does Wes? It wouldn't bother me at all.

We gave anyone up to everyone a break other than CCV. Like, CCV's got to play. Give me CCV. And I really want Malik to play. But, and obviously Predis. But everyone else could, like, you could put Luca for McKinney, you could put Scali for Des. You could give me big goofy Lund for Jedi.

Maloney. Can we get Maloney in there? I wouldn't Maloney for Musa. That would all be fine for me. Just go out there and give us some competent soccer. Carry each other over the lake that surrounds the field and then give us competent soccer. Yeah. I really worry about how the team looks without Dest. It's just not, I mean, I know he's not the,

he's not perfect player or anything but and scally for desk i think that changes who we are as a team dramatically maybe not in this game where we're we're just like shoving it down their throat the whole time but well it's not and i guess what i'd say is it's not gonna change us to a team that gives up three goals to trinidad i don't think so that's where i'm like let's let's give scally a chance to like seize it you know he's got to he's got to give me something positive instead of, you know, where I feel like right now people are at is just, Dest is somewhat of a liability. So we'll default to, I guess, better defender Joe Scali.

Like, I want to see Scali do some stuff. Yeah, I want to be entertained on Monday night. And therefore I want Dest to start. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. Check out, check us out on Patreon. If you are so inclined, lots of stuff on there. Link is in the show notes.

Have a great weekend. We'll see you.