Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #483: USWNT v Canada recap

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Another She Believes trophy for the cabinet. Some good progress in this camp, a midfield setup that works, and we now look forward to the real beginning of the Emma Hayes era.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. 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/scuffedOTHER LINKSScuffed on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAoundrEkZUgZ13IE5XIqrgWe’ve streamlined and revamped the merch we’re selling. Check it out: https://www.scuffedhq.com/storeScuffed on Discord: https://discord.gg/X6tfzkM8XU Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody. USA 2, Canada 2, we won in penalties to lift the trophy, the She Believes Cup trophy. Greg, how you doing? I'm doing pretty good, Bells. You know, I've told you, I'm a simple man. I enjoy the side of freshly fallen snow. I like listening to classical music, and I like beating our rivals to the north and consecutive shootouts. I miss the one about watching rain fall out in open window.

I missed that one. Yeah, I guess it wasn't as good of a game, in my opinion, as how we played against Japan, but still, you know, quite a more, if this was our first game after that Gold Cup run, we would be pretty happy about it. I think quite an improvement on that. Would you agree? Yes, 100%. And again, my bar has been low. from what we sort of went through last cycle with our ideas.

And straight away in this game, you could see at least we were trying to have some ideas. And so that's what I'm hoping. That's what I want to see. They weren't as clean. It wasn't as fluid as the Japan game. And I'm sure we'll get into why that might have been the case and how we can get it back to being cleaner and more fluid.

But the intent is clearly there. And for me, that's going to be half to battle with the quality of players. we have. Yeah. That's more than half the battle. That's like the battle. That's the war. We won the war.

Now, Sophia Smith, of course, with a brace, I'm sure we'll get into that on WOSA Wednesday next week because there's sort of been a running controversy between Tara and Vince and me over how we rate Sophia Smith. And, you know, she certainly put the team on her back, especially with that first goal. Just kind of made it out of nothing

and showed why she is so dangerous. Let's do the lineups and then get into why. Maybe we didn't look as fluid. Because I have a couple ideas. I have a couple ideas about why. Goalkeeper, Alyssa Neer, Emily Fox, Abby Dalkemp, Orteena Davidson, and Crystal Dunn across the back line.

And so Dunn replaces Niswanger. And then obviously, doll Kemper replaces Germa, who is out with some, kind of thigh knock, thigh tweak, coffee and sonnet were the double pivot, and then Haran,

the more advanced midfielder, and then Shaw, Morgan, and Smith across the front line. Shaw and Iran pretty similar in their roles. Yep, in possession. And then similar to last game, the attacking mid, the nominal 10 in this 4-2-3-1 plays up high in defense in like a 4-4-2. So Haran and Morgan were now sort of

the line of confrontation with a four-person roving band behind them. Which is an interesting choice to have those two be the ones sort of as the tip of the spear. Yeah, you don't have, you don't have a, like a great chaser from those two. Morgan's willing, but she doesn't have, she doesn't have 80 minutes of chasing in her, of course. Horan's willingness is up for debate, I guess. I'm going to talk about it today, but I love the way Lindsay Horan plays,

so we're going to talk about that again. Caitlin Sheridan and goal for Canada, Jade Rose, Vanessa Gilles, I think is how you say it, Giles, and Cadesha Buchanan across the backlands. It's a formidable three centerback group there. Buchanan and Rose both quite good.

And then Ashley Lawrence, Simi Awujo, Jesse Fleming, and Janine Becky, in the band of four, and then Deanne Rose, Jordan Haidema, and Adriana Leone across the front line. Leon, of course, scored two goals. Any thoughts about the U.S. lineup before we get into the timeline?

Yeah, I mean, we saw this, and even when we see this, because of the versatility of some of the players in our group, we don't know exactly how it's going to line up, right? We don't know what it's going to look like. but just like i mean i thought haran was going to be more of a 10 in the last game when i saw the lineup this game i felt more confident about that given that coffee and sonnet are definitely your double pivot midfielders if you're going to be playing two midfielders so yeah it was it was pretty clear

that heran was going to be the 10 she kind of was that player and i think that was a huge change so if we want to get right into like what was different between this game and the japan game uh i don't want to oversimplify it and say this is everything but this for me is clearly the biggest change, the biggest factor, because you lose so much forward passing by moving Horan out of that double pivot.

Yep. And that's what it felt like to me, and we'll talk about it in the timeline, but it just felt like we were laboring when we moved the ball around the back. I mean, we could. We could move the ball around the back. Five. You know, we set up in like a three, two buildout with Fox staying home. Crystal Dunn became the high

advanced left-sided width. And, that was a new thing. We haven't seen Dunn play that role for me since before the World Cup. And then she didn't do much advancing in the World Cup. So this was a shift to give done that, that task. Fox staying home. And then, yeah, we just kind of would kind of hit it around aimlessly. We get a decent amount of progression from Dahl Kempter and Tierna. Yeah. I like to where both of them pass out of the back. Yeah. Neither of them have the same kind of superpower that Horan has, where she's. She can do it with somebody like draped on her. And that I think is a huge difference because it's, it's how you,

that's how you sort of disorganize them. You hit the pass that, uh, no one thinks you can hit because you are under total pressure where somebody is supposedly like it sure seems like that pass is being denied. Uh, and instead she just finds it anyway. And so sign and coffee are not hitting that pass regularly.

No. Uh, so we lose quite a bit. I think we lose a bit there. And then I also actually think, uh, ironically, we lose a bit by having heran as the 10.

So not only do we get worse. by moving Horan out of the pivot, but then we're actually worse upfield as well with Horan and the 10. It all tracks for me. I mean, it's not just that she hits passes with people draped on her. She hits passes into tiny windows, like the one she played to Shaw before the second goal. And she does so much little subtle stuff on a play like that

that you don't notice on the first go-round of watching it, or at least I didn't. But she disguises her intentions on that pass. 75, 80 yards from goal. She's making as if she's going to play like a floated ball to the sideline and then she just clips it right through a two-yard-wide window

to Shaw and keys the whole move. And she has to lift it over the, because the defenders were so tight on her that if it's hit on the ground like how you normally think of hitting a pass to someone's feet, like it gets, and you see those passes from players all the time, but Horan just does it so often for us

and so few other players are doing that. I feel like it's a really good lesson to have, to have these two halves of this game to look at as a side-by-side compare to just be like, okay, if you need it any more convincing, this should do it. This is the lesson. This will be a fantastic takeaway of this is what we get from it. And Lindsay Horan is one of the two in the double pivot,

and she is not one of the tens because it also is starting to look like, we got some gals who can be that 10 and not have to have Horan there. I mean, it could have been, at this point, I'd rather put anybody in the front line in that 10 role and make Iran play deeper. Also, just to put myself in Twyla's, Twyla Kilgore's position, she's thinking, I'm guessing, she doesn't want to, she doesn't want to overwork Trinity and Mal, the two wingers in the game against Japan. So what are the knock on effects of that? Well, of course, got to start Emily Sonnet, you know? that's what that's what it comes down to you got to put emily sonnet in the in the double pivot and i just think sonnet is she's not up to it man she's not she's not quite good enough

and um and i don't know that i don't think i mean we had this discussion in the discord a little bit i don't think corbin albert is necessarily good enough either in that role um i mean she might be a little better than sonnet but i don't i don't see a big difference there so yeah it's got to be, it's got to be Haran as the, the second, the second midfielder in the pivot. And then just figure out somebody else who can play in that as the 10. Yeah. And so then I think the question, like you're talking about Sonnet and Corbin, uh, is, okay, so Horan's definitely in the pivot. Does it have to be coffee or is coffee for sure the starter? And then this was a game where we get to see what Sonic can do is like a backup option. You know, this is because Sonic played the second half

next to, next to Horan. And we were still, we were fluid, right? We could do it with. So in my mind is like, okay, you can stick anybody next to to Iran and you can just lean so hard on what Horan does for ball progression that the other person can be mostly a passenger, as long as they're not a calamity out there. Can you get away with that? Or at least

can that be enough for your backup? So if Sonnet was, if this was like her backup audition for the Olympics, do you think she passed? Is this, are we too early to be having this big question? I'll have to, you know, have to comp all of her involvements, but I do I do think

I agree that maybe it's possible that anybody could fit in next to Haran in that role of the three I guess possibilities at this point Sonnet Albert coffee but I'm partial to coffee I think she plays a little bit more in rhythm than the other two

she's not she's not as elegant as Horan but she is there's some elegance to her game you know the right pass the right weight as the late great Johan Kroif said is that's it. That's really important. And I think coffee brings that to a greater degree than Albert or a sonnet.

It's going to be so fun. Again, this is Twilis Swan song. It is going to be just so exciting to see what happens in June when Emma comes in to see if like any of this meant anything. Because I think it did. I do think like, I think you got a really good base here with Horan and coffee. And I'm so, I'm going to be so curious to see if it is literally all out the window. and there's something completely different,

or if that's where Emma sort of starts from. I hope it's where she starts. And if she likes watching soccer as much as I assume she does, you know, she would have learned a lot from these games. To the timeline. How about it? So I already said first two minutes, we were attempting some soccering. So that's great to see. The Velocco era was marred by like instant crosses.

Within 40 seconds, you'd see us crossing the ball like three or four times. And here we did some great rondowing on the left side line within 40 seconds. Within two minutes, we had, I think, Dunn had played Alex Morgan into like the Man City Zone. Didn't come to anything. But you're just like, okay, we are trying. This is who we are now. I'm sure of it.

Emma's not throwing that all that away. Yeah. Although we did get away from it a little bit. You know, we did some banging it over the top, which is fine, which is fine. this is going to be a little bit of a sparser timeline just because of our time constraints as people, me and Greg, me mostly in this case. It also makes sense because this was a lot of us trying to play

a little bit of soccer, but not doing it exceedingly well, especially as we get the last 40 yards, and Canada kind of doing the same thing. Like Canada is not doing a lot either. And so it's a bit of like a stalemate. And I do want to focus on Sophia Smith a little bit in the timeline because I think we kind of got the full experience from her.

We got the absolute brilliance on the first goal, especially, and then the second goal is a good finish on a lovely team move. We also got some kind of she doesn't know what, sometimes it looks like she doesn't really know what to do when she has the ball at her feet in transition. But we'll get to that. Seven minute mark. I want to note a lovely stop, start, dribble from Crystal Dunn

to give herself the space to hit a, ball from the end line. And so this is her being up high and wide left in a way that she hasn't been much in the last couple years. And I liked her up there. I like her in that role. I think it makes a lot of sense. Now, I don't know how much, if I like her as much as a defender as I do as an attacker,

but she did this. She played a nice ball across. And it kind of just inexplicably sort of goes through. the box, I think Smith could have attacked it, but kind of just doesn't commit because it's like going right over Alex Morgan's head. So maybe she thought Morgan was going to get to it on the ensuing corner. Horan takes a heavy touch at the eight-yard line. That ball kind of skips, it skips all the way through and then like Fox gets to it, sets it back for coffee. Coffee kind of drives in a cross that could have just been a pass, should have just been a pass to Horan instead of just like a blind

driven ball. And it kind of, Horan kind of bashes it 10 yards away from her. Okay. Good find from Smith in the ninth minute to find Horan in transition in zone 14, but the through ball for Dunn is way too hot. So this is an example of Smith doing something useful in transition with the ball at her feet. Canada's pressing a little bit, not ferociously, right? I mean.

Yeah, no, it's, they're not, there's not a lot of triggers where they're trying to trap us. We have our, we have our, we can build from our leisure. And something Vince noted in the Discord that I'm pretty sure for me between the first half and second half, I think we were intentionally building to Jaden Shaw's side because we were going heavily down the left in the first half when she was at left side of number 10. And then in the right, when we switch and she's now in the right pocket in possession, we go heavy down the right. It looks like there's like an electric underground fence that the ball, like we can't have the ball go across this line to the left side. and we build into candidate's pressure, you know, when we have our choice of whether to go to Fox on the right

or Tierna Davidson on the left. Which is what we should do. We should build through Shaw. I mean, talk about somebody who plays, passes with the right weight, you know. She does. Let's see. Smith gets a chance 1 v.1 in the 12th minute after some good buildup left to right involving Shaw.

It gets over to Smith. She's 1V1 and just can't beat her defender, loses it. Sonnet and Fox get real messy in the 15th minute, some compounding heavy touches, and then Fox fouls, whoever it was, effectively killing the break. Or was it a foul on Canada?

I don't know. I looked like we got the ball, but it looked like it could have been definitely a yellow on Fox there. Yeah, Fox was a mess for a lot of this game, too. And the last game, too. I know. So same thing here.

I'm really hoping Emma can come in and be the fullback whisper because I think we have, I think Emily Fox is a really good player. But if you were watching the last two games and just comping Emily Fox, it'd be like, she looks like the one who's lost out there. Yeah. Yeah, and Sonnet was messy too.

I guess we don't need to belabor the point. In the 19th minute, we get a good corner from Sam Coffey. Heranas just inches from it with her head. she gets put off by a Canadian shoulder as she's jumping for the ball. And then there's a, Morgan gets called offside. I think, was it Fox who played to the ball?

Yeah, that was a really nice, that was Fox's best moment, I think, in the last hundred or so minutes where just a really quick transition and she just threads it perfectly into Morgan's path into a goal scoring area of the field. And I'm not even sure Morgan was offside.

No replay evidence on the TV on the TV. 24th minute. Smith is tentative and a little uncertain on the break. Leads Horan into a close encounter in the middle of the park. And then when Shaw settles it to Smith out wide again, she kind of just has no ideas. At this point in the game, I'm like, man, she's not playing with any confidence,

or at least she just can't find a rhythm in the game. Obviously, she did find a rhythm in the game. But I totally agree that first half, she was like, she's like a shell, right, of the attacking dynamo that she is with Portland. And it really does just seem like it's like she's, she's tiptoeing. Like she just doesn't know what's expected of her. What's going to, you know, be the wrong thing. And it looks like Sony playing constantly afraid of doing the wrong thing. Right.

It does look like that. And we just, again, we just need, when Emma comes in, we just need her to be the striker whisper. And I honestly think. we're going to have it. Like I really do think that it'll be like, okay, here's how, here's what we want you to do, Sophia, like, here's what you're good at. Feel free to do it. You like, you do this.

And then I'm hoping that we see even more return from, so from two goals score, Sophia Smith. Yeah. Yeah, it is. I mean, I'm focusing on some of her bad, their bad stuff. But I, but I did think at that point in the game, at this point in the game and even later, and what is wrong? What is going on with her? So, yeah, Emma can whisper to her and to the fullbacks.

Who doesn't need a whisperer? Jaden Shaw probably doesn't need a whisperer. Rand. She's... Rand doesn't need a whisperer, yeah. Nail and Garma. Yeah. Okay.

29th minute. It's just a lovely moment. It's a Morgan flick into the box. The flicks we've come to know and love. and she puts it in the box. Shaw's not really like tracking it right away, but she kind of finds her feet, tracks it down, juggles the defender who is closing on her,

so juggles it over her, rainbows it over her, and then right into the mouth of the goal, takes a little bit of a touch that leaves it close to the keeper on that second juggle, and then tries to poke it through, still gets a chance to poke it through, can't quite get it through the goalkeeper. A good play by the goalkeeper by a Sheridan in there.

Yeah, this is great because it's all San Diego, right? This is Dahl Kemper hitting the ball in to Morgan with the flick. And then Shaw, Shaw's body control, again, amazing. We pointed this out last game when Emily Fox had a chance if she had anticipated how good Shaw was with their body. Like, Jaden Shaw was on the floor and then just in one, in like one powerful move is suddenly upright and sprinting past the backline. And Fox didn't anticipate that. Here, like, she is getting knocked down by a defender as Morgan flicks this ball on, like has to put her hand on the ground and still manages to like power her way past the

defender and get behind and get position and maintain it to do a ridiculous technique to go over the next defender. So there will be another one. I got a freeze frame later of the same kind of thing of Shaw just being like totally, it looks like she's out of the play on the ground. And then you're like, oh, no, she's actually behind everybody instantly. So it's tons of good awareness And then obviously, to go back to it,

shared and also for San Diego making the save on the poke. Yeah, very close, though. 30th minute Soff intercepts it. She actually made a lot of good defensive plays in this game and then drives forward 50 yards with the ball. Again, doesn't quite know what to do or how to do it. Maybe she needs some more inventive off-ball movement from her teammates, but she just gets mugged from behind

and Andres Contor says in English, watch out. Because she's slowing down, right? You're watching her like slow down when you're Sophia Smith. Like you raise past people. You're the bowling ball who has that innate ability

to like dribble into people and still have the ball bounce off four shins and fall to you. Like you're good at this. Don't slow down and just get wrecked from behind. Right. Yes.

100%. Um, 32nd minute. a good doll Kemper ball through the middle toward Morgan's feet as she checks back. Horan darts in front of Morgan and takes it smoothly. So this is a nice pass into the pocket. I think she was going for Morgan, but Haran gets it. She tries to play Shaw with a little slip pass between the defenders and it's cut out.

It wasn't really on. Needed some more patience or something a little more inventive. And then here comes the goal from Canada. 40th minute. And we'll get the full Velasca. as Zepruder here, but ball over the top from Jade Rose for Ashley Lawrence, who just races past Tierna Davidson, kind of troublingly, so I would say. And then Neyer comes late to the edge of the box.

And, you know, the ball skips up from her collision with Lawrence. It falls to Deanne Rose, who kind of swipes at it and squibs straight to Leon. Leone, maybe Rose intended for that to happen, I'm not sure. and Leon near the penalty spot just sweeps it home into the empty net. I mean, through a couple defenders, but no goalkeeper in the frame at that point. So, Greg? So this is an easy one for me. We don't ever get an angle that shows where Nair is as all this is happening, her starting position,

her initial reaction, where her first steps are. But what we do have is a good shot from the back that shows our press, right? And we have been pressing like crazy. this was a build up from Canada's goalkeeper. It was after an injury. So the ref just drops the ball. There's no pressure. Canada builds it up around the back.

Gets her over the right sideline. We're swarming over there with our numbers. Shaw's arriving as the player hits the long ball. And when she hits this long ball, Lawrence is on her own half, right? On the sideline. She's literally like boots on, like chalk on boots. Crystal Dunn had moved up to deny a pass into Lawrence's feet.

And so Lawrence reading that breaks behind. and that's when they hit this ball over the top. So you can be like, oh, well, done overcommitted. But we're a pressing team. Like you have to commit here. You can't say, okay, Crystal Dunn, we're going to press. You need to be up on this player. But also you can't let a ball get behind you.

Like, that's not a thing. That's not an instruction. So this has to be a nothing play. They have to be able to hit balls over us that just get cleaned up by a sweeper keeper if we're going to be pressing. And so if you look at the geometry of the math here, like ninth grade physics, Lawrence is at midfield And the point of the inter,

when the balls hit Lawrence is at midfield. Yes. When Lawrence gets to the ball to take her touch, she is standing on the top of the 18-yard box. That means a listener, even if she had started this play, standing on her goal line, which of course she wasn't,

only needed to run 18 yards to get to the ball where she met it. And Lawrence had to run like 45 or 50. So there's no way that this ever should have been a contested ball where Lawrence gets to make. a play on it. This is, this should just be an easy sweep up for our goalkeeper. If we're going to press, you have to have your keeper come sweep up the long ball, like smashing into the stands, whatever, it doesn't matter comfortably. Right. There's, there's just no way it can, again, unless an Ayer somehow slipped and we didn't see it and like fell and then had to go

again. There's just no way this should have been like a contested interception meeting point between these two players. Because Lawrence didn't even make a touch until just outside of the box, right? I mean, it's right. And so. And it wasn't one where she like caught the ball early and then just ran alongside it. You know, you see strikers do that. It's like, oh, well, the keeper couldn't come because at any point, you know, Lawrence got to the ball as early as she could have gotten to it to get that lunging, oh, all she could even do was poke it because her and Neyer got there at the same time.

And it's just, so it's either Neyer just read it terribly and just didn't think it would get that far, which could have happened. Or it's just terrible communication from Neier and Tierna, where Neer thinks Tierna is going to get to it. and leaves it for Tierna. And that's also the wrong play. Like Neyer needs to come out facing the ball and just clean this up for us. It should be, this should have been super simple. At worst, throw in for Canada on our half at best like Neer coming out early disweighs Lawrence from even chasing it.

And it's just like, oh, we just have possession now. Right. So we've got to fix this for if we're going to be a pressing team. Yep, for sure. I did notice that Davidson, you know, Davidson didn't put a body on Lawrence at all, didn't try to box her out. I'm not, I think Neyer probably misjudged it or maybe he thought

Tierna was going to take care of it. But later in the game, similar plays happened, Tirna does put a body on the player. So I'm not sure what was going on with her there either just to sort of add to the very clear Neyer indictment here. Yeah, Tierna slowed up, right?

I mean, I feel like you can tell from the video that Tierna slows down for a second. So you don't slow down there if you think you're going to be the one to come play the ball, which again, that's some kind of miscommunication between the two of them, but it needs to be, this needs to be ney or taking charge and solving it for it.

Well, Alyssa, Alyssa, you know, she's, she's an adventure because, uh, you get a lot of stuff from her and then she comes into these penalties

shootouts and it's really fun. She does a great job. Yeah, we, we ding her quite a bit, but, uh, the fact that we have a goalkeeper who takes penalties for us means she's,

I don't care, she's still my starting goalkeeper. It is pretty good. Do they count double when the goalkeeper scores a penalty in a shootout? Probably psychologically. There is a little bit of added value. I think so. Okay, we'll get a scramble ball chance in the 42nd minute on a coffee set piece from the right side.

Horan nods it back across. It's cleared very badly by Jesse Fleming. Sonet kind of trickles past Sonnet. Morgan takes a touch, shoots it off a defender for a corner. And then in the 44th minute, we have a nice chance. And this is good from Sophia Smith. It's a throw-in for us deep right. Morgan flicks it, and it deflects off a Canadian defender kindly to sort of put Smith behind three players.

She drives 40 yards with it, then tucks a little reverse left-footed pass into the box for Shaw. This is what I'm looking for from Sophia. 100%. Yeah. And Shaw strikes it, and it's, I mean, it's deflected off her foot. for a corner, but it's a great chance and it's good stuff from Sof. Yep. More of this, less of the indecision and we're cooking.

Yeah. In stoppage time, I just noticed that Davidson does box out her, the person trying to run onto a long ball. And I like Fleming playing it over the top for Deanne Rose. And then Nair just comes out and claims it cleanly. So I think they all kind of got the message, I guess. I don't know. 48th minute, so 45 plus 2.5. A lovely little dummy from Shaw. Just got a, I love a dummy.

And it's a ball from Davidson. Shaw just leaves it from Morgan. It works out beautifully. And then Morgan takes a touch and falls on it. Yeah. And this is exactly the one where, as that ball's traveling to Shaw in the pocket, she has a dummy, but she's brought Canada up to her. You know, Canada was moving up to meet her to defend, not anticipating the dummy and she doesn't just dummy it and get it to Morgan she spins off and she

breaks past three Canadian defenders like it's nothing. Yeah. It's just kind of a bummer. Elite awareness from Jaden Shaw. Yeah. It's so fun to watch her play. Okay, the half comes. Swanson comes on for, Mal Swanson comes on for coffee at the half,

which is kind of odd, right? But yes, yeah. I don't know. Again, there could be minutes here. here that she's being that Twyla's got some obligations to clubs who've requested, I don't know, I mean, that's the total speculation. But, or it could be Sonnet being tried out to say, can she do this? Because if so, she becomes a decently valuable piece for the Olympics. Or it could just be that Twyla thinks Sonnet is better at this in coffee.

I don't know which of those things it is. Well, what happens is Horan moves deeper, which we like, as a result of this substitution. and Shaw moves into the 10 spot, the nominal 10 spot, and Swanson goes onto the wing where Shaw was. So now we have Swanson and Smith on the wings, Morganette Stryker, Shaw is the advanced midfielder, and then a double pivot of Horan and sonnet.

Also, Jordan Heidema comes off with some kind of injury at the end of the first half for Canada, Chloe Lacasse comes on for her. And I think we look better immediately with Heran deeper. Am I just going crazy here? I don't think so at all. We get like instant returns. We get we get Horan picking the ball up from deep, driving forward.

It's like a little bit of a transition moment, sort of some room to drive in. It's a nice vertical pass into Shaw's feet. And again, I think we're going to be living off this. Iran vertical passes to Shaw's feet. And in this instance, Buchanan was on the spot and just smashed into the back of Shaw. And even here you see like Buchanan's an excellent defender. And she's smashing. Usually like that's just going to be Canada's ball.

Buchanan makes contact there. But Shaw keeps possession and just circulates like it's nothing. Within two passes, we've hit another vertical pass to Morgan, like into the space that Buchanan's had to leave to go body up Shaw. So, like, you can see how this is going to move things around. Morgan does an excellent job here of like receiving and then swiveling and playing Sophia Smith in down the line. We have Sophia Smith into the Man City zone. No, we're calling it the cutback zone. My mistake.

Either way. Into the cutback zone. She takes two cracks at service. Neither of them are great. Canada don't do a great job of clearing either of them. We end up with a really nice shooting chance for Mal Swanson with her left foot from 18 out. Right. Yeah, that understanding between Iran and Shaw, that is what America needs right now.

50th minute, we get our goal. It's the equalizer, and it's just a really great solo effort. I mean, there's some little things from us. other players, but really this is just Sophia Smith, putting the game on her shoulders and scoring a really nice goal. She goes at the defense from Wide Right, tries to shove it into Morgan's feet. Actually, Morgan does really well to turn and get a shot off. It's blocked by, I think, Gilles and Karam's to Horan, who, I mean, kind of could

have taken it first time. Yeah, a little flat-footed. Little flat-footed. It happens again later. Yeah. Takes a too casual touch at the six. I mean, yet another reason she should be in a double pivot. To be fair, I like Rand's inventiveness usually in these situations.

I do, too. It seemed like it was jarring that she looked so unprepared to do anything. I'm like, do you want to score or what? It's so she takes that casual touch at the six. It's poked away and then cleared just badly by Sammy Owojo, right to Tiana Davidson, who plays it to Shaw's feet on the right corner of the box. Shaw does a cute little one-touch layoff for Smith. So there's just a little, just a subtle little bit of quick thinking here.

Yeah, there's some soccer. But Smith still has a lot to do. She lets it run across her to kind of juke Fleming, who thinks she's probably going to go to her right, takes two touches to her left, one with her left foot, one with her right foot to set up a shot, and then just buries it far corner with her left foot. She scores goals like this all the time for Portland.

Keeper's a little bit unsighted, maybe by Gaelus attempt to block it. Anyway, I don't know if she would I don't know if she would I don't know if she would have saved it anyway so 1-1 Sophia Smith to the rescue Yeah, she might get to it if she's not unsighted the unsighting we've had a run of these She's you can see her from the angle from the back she's having to like lean to that she's already set up pretty tight to the near post so she had a bit of the near post bug That we ding that we ding neyer for and then she's still leaning even farther to like look past her center back and then by the time she recognizes the shot, it's all over. Canada's not going down without a fight here.

They're pushing, probing, mostly up our left side. Nothing too dangerous, but, you know, that's what you say until there's a goal, I guess. I mean, like you said, that first goal should have been a nothing moment, right? Well, in Canada, once they got into our third, they were pretty cross-happy. They're kind of a cross-happy side. They're kind of like what we were, you know, back in our, back in our naive days. Yeah, I wouldn't, I mean, aren't a lot of teams cross happy? Like, I would say, yeah.

And I feel like it's probably more prominent in national teams where you don't have time to rehearse all the ideas you want. So it's like at some point you get impatient and the cross just looks like, oh, this could work. But our centerbacks actually really held up well and dealt with a lot of what, again, a lot of crosses. The reason you do them is because they feel so dangerous. But our centerbacks did a nice job of turning those moments into nothing moments. Swanson occurred to me at first didn't look quite as sharp as she did against Japan, and I'm not sure what to attribute that to, but then she kind of got it going. Yeah.

I mean, she's just back from injury, right? So let's hope that's what we're dealing with here. Yeah. 55th minute lovely stuff after Haran wins it deep to Shaw. Shaw turns and puts a well-weighted pass in front of Swanson, and Mal tries that first time curling left-footed ball. all the way across the field for Morgan. It's just a, I don't know, two feet short of being an absolute dime.

And it gets, but it does get cut out. But it's a nice quick move forward from us. And I noticed it, especially because moments earlier, we'd had a break on and Smith has Mal ahead of her down the sideline and just way over hits the pass to her. So I appreciate that just a little bit of refinement from Shaw. It's also what I appreciate about coffee. But I think that's the last negative thing I have to say about Sophia Smith for the day. No, you'll probably have one more, I feel like.

Will I? Oh, the Swanson ball, right? The breakaway. I don't know if you'll have, I don't know if you'll read that as a negative. I might not, I might not have that in here. Let's see. 60th minute, a good win from Dunn in the box defending Leone, but then she gives it away right into Zone 14. I am curious what you think of done as a defender, as a defender.

Like, I mean, obviously she's a world class. She's been a world class fullback in her career. She probably still is, but she just need a whisperer. She just need a fullback whisperer? I mean, it's hard to know. Like, we went through that Brazil tape and of the Gold Cup, you know, the final. And the whole talk was like, we're going to use the width. You know, Twyla was talking about using the width.

And Dunn and Rose Lavelle did clearly such an ineffective job of providing any width. and you have no idea who it's on. Like, you don't know what's going wrong here. So that's been, for me, that's been the theme of Crystal Dunn and Emily Fox too. Like, I don't know what they're really being asked to do in possession. Are they just supposed to be like placeholders? But we're not getting a ton from them. And so I am just really wondering what it's going to look like, whether Dunn will be like the veteran that we rely on or whether it's just going to be like, nope, you're not really giving us that much.

Nice one. Or can give us the same out plus a little more. and she's she's we will have for the next seven years so i i don't know how it's going to shake out i don't feel strongly about any of the fullbacks and for me that at the moment includes emily fox which i feel like is uh blasphalage almost yeah yeah yeah let's just table it and uh you know figure it out or i mean it's not going to be us that's that figures it out but um uh lovely turn and through ball from swanson in the 62nd minute so she got cooking uh it was a it was a it was a ball from

Dahl Kemper and oh yeah you're right this is the one this is the one you were talking about yeah nice ball from

doll camper right up the gut Swanson meets it like running pretty fast to her left takes a touch into space

and then just plays a lovely pass in behind first Smith into a really big window so you know when you have a pass

up the gut like that and you hit a midfielder or a winger or whatever doesn't matter what position they play, somebody who's moving fast in that space.

And you can just cut the other team open. And we did. And then Smith gets swallowed up from behind, just kind of like not knowing what to do with the ball. Or just, you know, hesitating a moment with the ball. Yeah. But she's like in on goal. She's in on goal. Exactly.

This is this one play is the both sides of Sophia Smith. If she didn't have the, if she didn't have the two goals to talk about, you'd be like, oh, man, like there's something up. here. Like this is what she can offer. This is the tantalizing part of her just racing past a back line. And again, we've seen this. We saw this in that Brazil final. Like, she didn't have a lot to do, but the first

thing she did when she came into that game was just take a ball that gets looped over the top and ran past Brazil's back line and turned it into a 1v1. It's like youth soccer stuff. Yeah. This was better. This was more sophisticated than that. The doll kepper pass was excellent. Like she's in our

box, I think, when she plays it. to Mal and she advances us half the field and then Mal advances us the rest of the way. So it's a really nice lightning strike. A bit of foreshadowing for what we're going to get later too. But man, like if you're a coach, if you're Emma, you're like, Sophia can give you so much and then she can somehow like get in her own head or whatever is happening here and bottle it. Yeah, she bottled it. I mean, she had a defender coming in from her left.

She had a, you know, the defender that was chasing her was coming in from her right. And I just don't, I just think she could, she didn't, maybe didn't feel comfortable committing either to going on her right foot or going on to her left foot. And since she kind of just went on to neither and then it got poked away from her. Okay, so that's the last thing I'll say. That's negative about Sophia Smith.

Because pretty much the next thing on the timeline, well, Robin comes on from Morgan. She forgot to take her penny off and Morgan, kind of smilingly removed it from her like a mother would, you know. And then we get our goal right at the 67 minute market. It felt like the game winner at the time. We were the better team, I think, in the game. I think it's always subjective, but that's how I think of it.

But here we go. It's a lovely goal. Horan, like I said earlier, disguised her intentions and just plays it right up the middle for Shaw through two defenders from, you know, not too far in front of our own box. Shaw plays on the half turn. You know, it's the balls in the air. Like you said, had to be clipped to get through those defenders.

So Shaw takes like a touch and a half to kind of settle it and then just plays a lovely left-footed pass right through the Canada defense. Kind of like the mirror image of the one Swanson played to Smith. And, um, and, uh, Rodman, Robin takes one touch and then just nudges a delicate outside of the boot ball into the box for Smith right into her path. Smith meets it first time, low, hard, through the keepers, through Sheridan's on rushing legs.

It's a wonderful goal to one USA. So I think the takeaway here is you just set Sophia Smith up in positions where she doesn't have to make any decisions. You just get it to her where it's run on to it, beat everyone to it and smash it into goal. Maybe that's why people are so keen on her being a striker and not a winger. I think it's all going to, I think whatever like yips we think we're reading into her play, I think they're going to, I think they're going to be gone as she gets more, more playing time as like what I assume will be like a featured player rather than, you know, I feel like Alex Morgan's understudy.

Yes, yes. So let's hope. But yeah, this is brilliant all the way around. Canada, I don't know, they didn't pick up on the warning sign from how we found Mal moments earlier in that giant sea of space. So they left Shaw in a giant sea of space. You can't really late to try to close out from the back line to take it away. So that's something Bev's going to have to figure out before Canada gets the Olympics. But yeah, just really well executed all around to identify those passes. Like finish the playoff and we love it, right? We talk. talk about how can we be a team that carves people up vertically? Can we or do we have to, you know, are we resigned to just playing lump ball and then crossing it in and then taking our, getting like generating chances off the press.

But no, we can do this. Like we can, we can be remarkably efficient keeping the ball on the floor. Yeah. It's such a beautiful goal. I mean, what a great team goal all the way, all the way across. We always talk about stringing together

Excellent actions And in that case We strung together four of them You know Yeah I mean I didn't even Trinity's passes Just so delicate right Just like perfect

Yeah Um Shaw comes off Well I got a ding sonnet For her first time pass on On the play In the 74th minute Where you know

Robin takes us kind of a squib shot from the left side and Haran can't quite poke at home in traffic. But how we get to that squib shot with the left foot is, you know, Haran dancing past two defenders from the right side, just imperious in the way she just kind of like shrugs off defenders. And then she taps at to Sonnet, who has, you know, a huge window to play Trinity Rodman, maybe not exactly into the Man City Zone, but definitely towards the end line to a dangerous a spot and she just like shanks it almost out of bounds forces rodman to go like you know to

retreat like 10 yards to get to the ball and that's when robin like you know does tries to drip cuts in and has that left footage shot like sonnet come on you know sonnet is going to be on this roster in paris because she's mediocre at everything like i can just see your eyes glaze over just having to hear this. But the key is Sonic can make your eyes glaze over at three different positions. That's really valuable. That's really worth something.

Then you don't have to bring three separate players who make your eyes glaze over when you think about having to put them in the game. You just have to bring one to fill all those roles. Because that is. That really is the math here for the Olympics. You can't. Did you see the Sam Mewis bit on whatever the podcast? She was talking a few

days ago about how the players that, when she was playing, she would keep like, she's just like us. She has a little spreadsheet that she keeps like the depths chart in to figure out where she is and if she's going to make the cut. Like who's definitely in at each position? She said she would do it on a piece of paper and then like destroy the paper so no one could find it. She's actually writing down.

And with the Olympics, you don't even get to do that. Like it's not that neat and tidy where it's like, okay, well, here's the lock and here's their backup. Like there aren't backups for every position. You just, you don't have enough spot. So if you're not great and you can always. only back up one position. You are a hugely expensive person to carry on the roster.

Like if you're not great, you better be able to be not great in several positions. Yeah. So that we can we can fill you in. I get that. They should change the rules. They should just change the rules for the Olympics. Let them bring 23 players. I mean, what are we doing here?

Yeah. No, Sonnet. Sonnet exists for the 18 player roster. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Shaw comes off in the 75th minute. Corbyn Albert on.

Horan moves back up to more of an advanced midfield role. I thought Corbyn sort of stayed more as a 10, and Horan and Sonet stayed buddyed up. Okay. If that's what you thought. 78 minute mark, well, I mean, I should say the game is just gets more choppy without Shaw out there, I think. And there's not that much that's fun that happens after the,

sub. I mean, Haran gets a decent left-footed shot in the 78th minute. Albert has a similar shot a couple minutes later. Both of them saved pretty comfortably, and then Dun concedes the penalty. 85th minute kind of crashes into Leon's leg, like chasing her into the box. I can't really fault the ref for calling it. I mean, it look like a penalty to me. Yeah. And Leon's clever here. And all the angles working, Leon's favor where Donne's body is in between Dunn and the referee. So when the referee is going to see Dunn move into Leon and then however much contact there is, Leon's going to, Leon drops over.

Like there's a lot of contact. Yeah. So, you know, I guess credit to her. And then we just, we just got to be smart about making any contact when there's no need to. If you got help, what's the, what's the actual danger of giving her just a little bit of room? but it's tough. You don't want her to tee up a left-footed shot from here, I guess. Right, exactly. Right, she could just get it into that wide open far post and I'm sure

Neher was leaving. Yeah. Soccer. This one, it happens. I don't think this one made the timeline. But there is a fun example of Neer's near post guarding where she like makes a save on a ball that's like five feet wide of the near post. It can see the corner.

Yeah. It's the one where it's the one where, like, Leon is just striding through the middle of the park and nobody's picking her up. And then she takes a left-footed shot from just inside the box, I think, right? That's about right, yeah. You're saying it's like four feet wide of the post when Neer palms it away. Yeah, because that's how Neher sets up where she can make a collapsed dive, cover four feet wide of her near post. Well, it's also kind of interesting because on the ensuing corner kick, which Neher can,

neyer concedes by you know saving a shot that was already going four feet wide and so in corner kick Kadisha Buchanan just hammers it off the crossbar with her head jumps over Haran so they like they nearly scored nearly made it 3-2

right there at the end of regulation I don't know that's it that's it for regulation and um and then of course it goes straight to a shootout as it should in a in a cup like cup tournament like this um you know you guys all saw the shootout canada makes theirs robin misses hers it's like really really a

bad penalty from her um leone makes hers smith makes hers so that's it was a really good penalty from smith and then canada misses do you remember who it was who missed them i don't i remember it was it looked like uh trinities like it was just weakly hit to the right side yeah most of their misses were like really bad ones too um so and then ne'er takes hers ne'er takes hers on the third and what fun it is when a goalkeeper takes a penalty in a shootout she uh hers is not you know i remember she did it was it the concorda cafe championship last year where she put it like low and to the keepers left like down to the right and just and just buried it was it i don't know was that the w goal cup yeah it might have been just

been in the gold cup yeah yeah i think it was uh this wasn't as good of a penalty as that one but it was it was good enough hit it hard and it went in um over the keeper's right and then uh another canada miss another another save give it a safe we got a that's important for you're right you're right extinguish miss versus save that's true they didn't in both of these ones that i just called a miss were um were saves so it's a save from there she made makes her penalty and then she makes another save, which is quite a sequence of events for a goalkeeper and a shootout. And again,

which is why for all I'm talking about with her near post habits, her adventures coming out of the goal, you get to keep starting when you do this in consecutive tournaments. Yeah. Horan makes hers, elegant little side foot down to the keepers left, I think, right, I think. And then Grosso for Canada. good left foot to hit down to Nair's left totally unstoppable

and then Sonnet misses over the bar to keep the game going. I could have it right there. Yeah, could have won it. And I knew all the Sonnet fans were going to have something to say about a missed penalty, but sometimes you just miss penalties. Yeah. Vince has a great video from behind the goal of it in the Discord if you want to join the Patreon.

And then Canada makes theirs. So it's back to an even content. test again. Dahl Kemper buries hers, Canada Miss, and then... Foxy. It's Foxy. Yeah, Emily Fox. The win.

Yeah. There we go. I care so little about shootouts that it's probably the worst three minutes of timeline stuff ever. No, it's just enough where I can talk about this because Iowa high school soccer on the girl's side, regular season games have to have a winner or a loser. So you'll play a regular season game. And if it's still tied after like some sudden death overtimes, you just do a shootout for no reason.

And it doesn't matter. It's so ingrained in people that shootouts are dramatic that like after one team wins and nothing meaningless shootout, like you still get the like team racing to meet the goalkeeper and the big celebrations for a second. And then everyone's kind of like, oh yeah, this is just there's just nothing. We didn't advance. The other team didn't get knocked out. We just won this game. That's what it feels like for a friendly, for a shootout following a friend. Right. Yeah. MLS, I think MLS Next Pro is doing it too.

At least that's what they did at the game I went to between Chattanooga FC and the Birmingham team or Huntsville team. I mean, what you got any closing thoughts on, she believes? Well, what I would say is, you know, we're talking about how brutal this roster for the Olympics is to cut it down to 18. Who do you think hurt their stock? Do you think anybody, do you think anybody, hurt their chances of making this making this team anybody who played somebody who played like you could say oh well the fact that multery didn't play maybe means that she's

she's you know just not doesn't quite have a way in but out of the players who played do you feel like anybody hurt their chances well I mean I would say if if you're going to be you know would take it with a blank slate

sonnet and Morgan probably both hurt their chances. But life isn't a blank slate. They have a lot of incumbency on the roster. And, you know, I mean, if Twilight Kilgore were in charge, they'd definitely be there for the Olympics. I don't know if Emma's going to have the same approach with that. I hope not.

But you seem to be happy with Sonnet being there on an 18-player roster. I'm happy with Sonnet being there if it like essentially not like freeze up a spot for an extra exciting player you know that that's kind of how I see it like it might be where I see. You bring Sonnet plus this person. It's always going to be combinations of players now.

All right. So you want you want to get rid of Sonnet who takes who fills in in addition to you know you got to now you need another midfielder plus maybe another fullback because Sonic can be a fullback and a midfieler. Can you leave Alex Morgan off this roster? I mean, like, who gets a call, who gets an angry call at 11.30 at night when they find out, you know? J.T. Batson? Batson? Cindy Cohn. So Morgan's like the...

Joe Biden? Morgan is like the line, right, of a player. She can't, she's not, she's not going to play more than one position. So if she's not your starting striker, you'd be bringing her for, like, a very specific job. Like, she'd be going in to be a backup striker and only a backup striker. You're not going to put her into play the right wing or the 10. So that becomes the dividing line. Like Alex Morgan is a different caliber player than Emily Sondit. So she could make sense as that backup player who can only do one thing. And I feel like that's going to be the question is, do you do that or do you decide if Sophia

Smith is your starter or Gatorina Macario is your starter, then do you also need Alex Morgan in addition to all the other wingers who could maybe deputize as a backup striker? So I feel like she does become like if she's not the starter, she's the real question mark of whether you can carry that kind of a backup. Yeah. I do think. I'd bring her. I'd bring Alex Morgan to the Olympics.

I value veterans to an extent. And I'd be like she's one you bring. Do you? Do you value quote unquote leadership? I do when it's real. And I feel like Alex Morgan is like real. Like she's she's won gold medals. She's one World Cup.

Alex Morgan is a 10 minute sub. For me is like a, that's a roster spot. Okay. I'm just so eager to see the team play, like start, do like a run of games where she doesn't start all the time. You know, let's just, I just would like to see what that looks like and experiment with different strikers. But Kilgore did not see that as her. mandate. Well, to be fair, she wasn't even going to bring her to the gold cup.

Like, Fissel did her, that's true. A.C.L. And we had the, you know, the lowest point of the new cycle with the loss to Mexico. And so she was, she was kind of, I don't know what you'd say. She felt like she was in a corner maybe or just said, no, Alex is just a little bit better still. Yeah. That's true. That is true.

It's a fair point. Yeah, that's it for me, Sona and Morgan. I don't know who, you know, like we've talked about, the fullbacks weren't great, but. But there's no one. There's coming up behind them. They're not bringing, I don't think we're bringing where to back in. Maybe Carson, you know, there's some, some shouts for Carson Pickett here and there, but it just doesn't seem likely or, and I'm not, I'm not anxious to see it or anything. So, yeah, the fullbacks, the fullbacks seem pretty safe.

But how many? That's most the key. I don't think any of them in these games. I don't know if that's fair. Could Emily Fox? There's just no way, right? There's no way Emily Fox is not on the Olympic roster. I mean, what about Tierna Davidson?

Is she, you know, I do like the way she passes the ball. She's not very fast. I don't think she did anything here in these games that would be like, she's just not the right player. Like her getting beat for me is, it's even questionable. to say she got beat. Like we gave up a super narrow angle shot against Japan and they hit it. Congratulations.

And again, I don't put the Canada opener on her that much. It would be better if she were faster. I would like that more. But, you know, again, if you're going to press, you can't be like, you also have to be able to win a 70-yard sprint. Like the idea is you can't make your defenders have to win that long of it. They've got to protect some of the space, but you've got to have your keeper pick up some of that slack.

I guess this is what's saying. Maybe Corbyn Albert. Maybe Corbyn Albert, you know, take all the, you know, all the noise out of it, just the on-field stuff. She's probably competing with Sonnet for that spot, right? And she's, I don't know. I'm not, I don't think she's, there's no gap between them in the way they play midfield. For me, I mean, there's a little bit of a gap. but in like us doing the kinds of things we want to do on the field as a team.

I don't know that Albert helps us any more than Sonnet does. And I don't know that she can play right back or center back or all the stuff that Sonnet deputizes as. Yeah. So I think the question, you know, asking the question sort of does, for me at least just maybe you be like a lot of these calls are interesting and I can't wait to see where they go. but they'll also just be sort of like shoulder shrugs. Like, all right, it's Sonophen instead of Corbyn or it's Kruger instead of Dunn or Nyshunger. I mean, like, it's just something like, all right, I can see that. I mean, the big calls are, are we going to start the midfield in a configuration that makes sense?

And obviously, our view is that Iran should be in the double pivot. And then the other one is striker, who's going to be the striker and what knock on the field? What do you add? How much whispering can we do? Yeah, we better get out of here. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.