Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #504: Copa — USMNT v Bolivia recap

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Full recap of the somewhat encouraging win over Bolivia. We took care of business. They weren't very good. Our centerbacks are making too many mistakes. Strikers miss chances. Next up is basically a must-win against Panama.———Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon! Patrons get a private podcast feed that includes all episodes on the public feed ad-free, plus the exclusive Monday Review every week with Watke and Vince, emergency podcasts and call-in shows. Plus you get the full experience of the Discord server, which is our nearly 24/7 chat community where we plan tailgates and such: https://www.patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hello, hello, here we are with our recap of USA's 2-0 win over Bolivia. We saw some attacking Verve, Pulisic made big plays. We got three points in our first group stage match at the Copa America in front of a decent crowd, announced attendance of 47,000. Greg, how you doing? I'm doing great. I'm excited that Bolivia was comprehensively dispatched.

And I am now looking forward to not looking past Panama. Yeah, don't look past Panama, guys. Don't look past them. I do feel excited. I'm excited to discuss Bolivia in the detail that we usually do. But it is kind of this, we're right back to where we were in the last window of qualifying, where it's like just beat Panama. Do the business against Panama.

And we hit our next step. That's right. Like, again, to be honest, a little bit nervous. I just get nervous in these sort of. of games where you have to get a result. And again, I guess we don't have to get a result here, just like we didn't have to against Panama, but like in qualifying. But I don't want to, I certainly don't want to be leaving it to get a result against

Uruguay. I hope we compete and get a result against Uruguay, but I sure don't want our advancing depending on that. Right. Totally. And Panama's going to be tougher than Bolivia, I think, by a fair amount. I mean, Bolivia, so we're going to, celebrate the good things that happen in this game,

but we have to acknowledge, I think. Bolivia was really bad, like as advertised, as bad as advertised, maybe worse than I thought they were going to be. I think that's absolutely fair. I think, you know, to put it in sort of U.S. context where we've just been doing sort of nothing but Concaf

for a whole cycle now, now that all those European leagues go on all the time, and qualifying was compressed for everybody last cycle because of the pandemic. So I feel like, you know, everyone now has a good sense of what the Conca Cat fixtures are like. And Bolivia was like maybe the first Gold Cup knockout game. They weren't as, they weren't as bad as, you know, they're not Guyana.

They're not Grenada. But they're not even like Jamaica. No, they're not as good as Jamaica, I don't think. Curacao, maybe. There you go. There we go. I don't know. It's going to be important to flesh this.

out in more detail. I mean, the one thing that's really stuck out to me is the individual battles between our wide players and their wide players. I mean, we won almost every single one. Jedi, Jedi was just toying with the people he was up against. Tim was just toying. Tim Wea was just toying with people. And they're both good players.

I mean, that we, that are important players for this national team. But they're not that good, you know? They were just totally dominant over those. those wide defenders for Bolivia, that really stuck out to me. The total lack of threat, even when we... Yes.

Even when we passed the ball to them in our half, which we did a few times, that was also notable. Yeah, I think that's... That hits it right on. There was never any danger that they could present, even if we tried to gift-wrapped danger for them. And, yeah, on an individual basis,

it felt very sort of professional against hard work and amateur out there. Yeah. So I guess lots more to talk about with all that, but let's go to the lineups. Turner and goal, Scali, Richards, Ream and Jedi across the back line. That seems like it's the back for, at least for now, for the U.S. Adams, Tyler Adams gets the start, played a full half at defensive midfield. And then Wes and Gio also in the midfield. And then Tim Weyer, Bowler and Balligan and Christian Pulisick across the front line.

I guess the only real surprise here is maybe Adams starting, but that's not even that big of a surprise. No, no real ways to surprise. Again, I think there are a couple of coin tosses. It wouldn't surprise me if this exact lineup runs out again against Panama. But there are definitely like, I guess what I would consider some marginal calls where if we have somebody flip. I mean, really it's the Adam's spot, right? whether that's Moosa or Johnny, if we run any of those guys out against Panwatt,

that wouldn't surprise me at all. And it wouldn't even surprise me if we swap Balagan for Peppy. Especially after that Robona attempt. In spite of, the Rubona attempt is how I'd put it. I mainly say it just because I saw the look on Greg's face, Greg Burhalter's face after.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. I don't think we would see Sargent, though I would love to. I don't think we see him start because I think there's just no way we'd ramp him in that way to go from not playing for a long time

to be like, here you go, you're starting. And again, a game that we can't afford really to slip up, you know, in the sense of how we approach that Panama game if we're talking about lineups, I would definitely be going all out to win Panama and not in any way doing any kind of pre-rotation for the Uruguay match.

Take care of business against Panama and then figure out how you want to handle Uruguay. Yeah, if it were me, I'd run the same lineup but with maybe a slightly different midfield, but maybe not even a different midfield. I don't know. I feel kind of ambivalent about that. All right.

Bolivia's lineup was Guillermo Viscara in goal, Jesus Sagredo, Luis Hakein, and Jose Sagredo across the backline. The Sagredos both just really in hell the whole night. Lionel Justiniano as the six, he put some tough tack. tackles in and then a band, you know, a nominal band of four, Diego Medina, Roberto Fernandez, Fernando Salcedo, and Gabriel Villamil, and then two strikers, Bruno Miranda, and Cesar Menacho.

So, you want to cover anything sort of big picture before we get to the timeline? No, let's get right into the timeline, because again, And if you're looking for a lot of big picture takeaways here, I don't think there are many, just like there aren't going to be many when we beat a team in the first knockout game of a Gold Cup. Yeah, I think that's fair.

So immediately from kickoff, we're going right at him. I like to see that, like to see the, you know, us sprinting out of the gates. We win it in the midfield and it's out to Tim Wea, who just beats his guy for pace down the right, just an easy sort of turns and pushes it past him. He whips it in. There's a diving punch from the goalkeeper. Pulisic then crosses it from the left side.

It's headed out towards Joe Scali, and he tries it from distance, kind of shins it right into the box at Ballow. Turns out Ballo is on side, even though he's behind the box because there's, I think, the left centerback, kind of late to rush forward. And he just has a heavy touch,

and it kind of pops up off his instep, allows the keeper to fly in and karate kick it away. But, you know, Ballo actually had a lot of bad touches in the first half, which is not super characteristic. I don't know that I've seen a game of his where he was like this before. I mean, it was sort of all but one touch was heavy. Yeah. The one very good touch.

This was an incredible chance, 20 seconds into a match, really reminiscent of the pool sick chance against the Netherlands where it just catches the defense in this sort of totally disorganized moment as they're trying to get up out of the box on a weak clearance. And Bolo just totally unaccounted for. And even with this bad touch, I mean, which was horrendous, this particular one was really bad, probably his worst one of the night. He still almost gets there. Like, that's how much room he had. Yeah.

That with the worst touch of his time as a U.S. player, he can still almost get to this ball because there's everyone so far away from. if it had been even just a regular bad touch, he gets to pick his shot against the goalkeeper and no one else. Yeah. A bunch of different ways he could have struck it. So, I mean, it doesn't take us long to get to make up for it. But yeah, this was quite the missed chance here from Balo, quite the mischance to create a chance.

Yeah, a big missed opportunity. But then, like you said, we get our goal almost immediately. right around the two minute mark Jedi wins it to Pulisic you know tackle somebody wins it to Pulisik Pulisik drives forward plays it up to Balo Ballo running in the channel kind of gets tackled for a corner again his touch is a little heavy

even on the goal he scored later it wasn't like the cleanest sequence but anyway short corner to Pulisic he kind of drifts inside nobody really steps to him and he just has one bends it toward the top corner far post.

Keeper Viscara gets a touch, but only enough to glance it off the bottom of the crossbar. 1-0 USA and Pula 6 flying. He runs over to the sideline. He says, where's Gianni Vio? Where's Gianni? Where's Gianni? They point him out to him in the crowd,

and he points up at him. That's the set-piece coach, Gianni Vio. So we're back when it comes to set pieces. I love this set piece. So I love the whole construction of it, right? So first of all, we take it a little quick in Bolivia, weren't quite ready for it. They didn't have their second player out there.

They were trying to send it late once they recognized we had two. So Pulisic takes the corner short and then overlaps. And because Bolivia only have one, you know, we're two on one. If they had sent two, I still like that. And a lot of times they do send two in this game. And then we just serve it in. We don't play it short once they send two. And I love that too because the other guy who comes short is usually way out on these other corners.

You'll see him. As we're about to take it, he like races back into the box. Yeah. And this seems like it might seem like nothing. But when the other team sends two players out on a set piece like that for a corner, just like with the wall on set pieces that have a wall, defenders get really tunnel visioned on set pieces about what their initial job is. So so often you'll see do players go short and then when the ball just gets served in, they'll just stand there for like a second or two seconds.

So they'll just kind of stand and turn their body into the box and like watch the play happen and not actually be soccer players on their team trying to like, you know, defend as much pitch as possible. And so if you bring two players out and get your guy to run in while the other team is not paying attention, like that is a tremendous numerical advantage that you've created over a general corner kick setup. So it's finding little edges like that that you hope will pay off over, you know, 20 to 30 corner kicks is a big deal. In this case, since they'd only sent one, we didn't drive it and we played it short. Pulisic gets the overlap and cuts in. And then even as Pulcic hits his shot, there are so many good things that can happen. He's hitting it through body, so the goalkeeper's going to be obstructed with their view. And even if the goalkeeper's not obstructed with the view and Pulisick misses this, you know, wide to the far post,

We just have all of these players crashing because they know it's coming. So as that ball is getting to the keeper, you'll see McKinney with inside position for a rebound or anything off the post. Bolligan and Richards, I think, are the other guys there. And we just have, we've created the shell around the goalkeeper. And anything besides a clean catch or a deflection over the goal out of bounds is going to be very good for the U.S. So really well designed, great execution. and I don't know how many times we'll get to, you know, play this exact corner kick routine off,

but pretty happy with what we saw there. Johnny deserves his love. We did it over and over again, at least the way, you know, way of starting at the hash mark or whatever it is and running out, like racing out of the frame. But, yeah, seems good. I'm glad you explained that.

I put a call out on the call-in show for somebody who understood what we were doing with our set pieces to call in and explain it to me. And nobody did. Ah, well, there we go. I have you, Greg. I have you. All right.

So that's one. Oh, sorry. Keepers should have deflected that out for a corner. I mean, if we're doing goalkeeper assessment here, it's fine. It's a great hit from Pulisick. He forced what would have been a good save. Not an unstoppable shot, though. Keepers got to have a little bit stronger finger tension there.

Yeah. Yeah, it seems like he didn't get his feet under him to really explode at it. Even though it wasn't like ripped, you know, it was kind of... He makes up for it later. Keeper makes him plays, we'll say. Okay. Fifth minute, Adams concedes a set piece out wide, right, and there's a, on the free kick, there's a rip at the near post, which is covered by Turner,

Bolivia's first shot. And I think one of, maybe only two in the first half. Yeah, two in the half. and I believe the average distance was 33 yards for those two shots. It was not an assault on our box. No. All the shots were outside the box, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And the number of touches the teams took inside the box, Bolivia was single digits for the match. They were not a threat. Adams, I'm just going to talk about Adams a little bit. Adams loves captaining, doesn't he? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like capital C captaining out there to the point where I'm like, hey, I know that you love to do this, Tyler,

but instead of captaining right now, please, please, please just move into the position for the next play. Doing a lot of demonstrative stuff. And like looking away from where the ball is to captain, to somebody, to the ref, to whoever. And I'd really like it if you would just help create our shape again to either get him in, Like when we have the ball to be able to possess or to defend the space that Bolivia might attack. Like, do you think in this particular moment, somebody should have been in the wall or, like,

or you're just talking about later in the game? He wrecks a Bolivia guy, and he wrecks a guy where he's having to go cover on the outside to help. Probably unnecessary, like, it's probably some unnecessary wrecking. It is unnecessary. It looked unnecessary to me, yeah. And you don't want to give a bad team, like, more chances to set up and fireball under the box.

But whatever, you know, he's a defensive mid. he wrecks people. But then right after he wrecks him, when we don't have a lot of numbers back, that's the whole reason he was over there to help in the first place. Like, he stops playing soccer for a little bit and, like, turns his body away from where Bolivia could execute a quick restart. And we saw Brazil quick restart us several times in our last tune-up match. And he's just, he's not a soccer player for a second.

He's Captain Tyler, you know, doing his big captain stuff. Yeah. Part of me is just like, buddy. it reminds me of like Tim Howard stuff Tim Howard is very demonstrative after big plays but he can do that because he's just knocked the ball out of bounds for like a corner or whatever or the ball just sailed over our head for a goal kick

and he does the big you know all the big stuff is like okay he's got a little break because he can decide when the ball goes back and play Tyler you got to you got to just go do your job now yeah it does cut both ways because like he he it is good to have him out here to like confront

an opposing player who who tackles Gio Raina hard. And like we do miss that when he's not out there, but I hear what you're saying. Yeah. And okay, so Adams claims an errant pass seven minute mark in the press just inside Bolivia's half. He squares it to Raina.

Raina plays it between the lines to Balo. It goes over to Pulisic. Pulisic has it tackled away, but it just, it's like a perfect pass over to Tim Wea, who's running him from the right side. And Wea tries to square Balo. and it's knocked back to him just, you know, with an outstretched foot from the center back. This is desperate moments for Bolivia here.

And it goes right back to where he hits one hard at the near post and draws a good save. So we look threatening. Bolivia doesn't look very good. Did you, well, any thoughts on that sequence? I really like the sequence. And a big part of it is because it showed, I think, a real urgency, just from the kickoff, like you said, there was a tremendous urgency from the U.S. to attack. Like this was, there was nothing plotting or particularly deliberate about the way we were playing

in this game. Like we were, we were going at Bolivia. And Bolivia were not sitting in like a deep block. And I don't know if it was just because we scored early on them or if they had no intention of sitting in deep block, we'll kind of never know now. But this was, this was another in a long line within seven minutes of us just getting the, winning the ball and racing up. field at speed with numbers.

People trying to join in the race, filling lanes. Again, incredibly close to a tap in for Bolo. It just way as cross catches the trailing leg of that last defender. And then even way a shot, I wish you would have tried to roof it to the near post, which is the near post shot I love. But I tried to laser beam it low,

sneak it in there. But yeah, I think part of the reason we looked sloppy for a lot of spells is because we were trying to do this, like frenetic, frantic, go, like go forward. And, you know, the reason that our deliberate play can hold the ball so well is because we're taking fewer chances. And in here, we weren't taking as many chances.

We weren't waiting for the perfect thing to open up. It was just like, nope, go and make the best of what the advantage is that presents itself. Yeah. You think that led to some of the what, some of the sloppiness of the game. I think that was a ton of the sloppiness of the game. But I don't, I don't think it's bad. Again, the tradeoff is the chance that we got here. The tradeoff is the goal we'll get to in the 40th minute.

Same kind of thing. Like, nope, just go. Yeah. And let's see if Bolivia can hold up to it over 90 minutes. It definitely could not. We did do a lot of crossing, didn't you think? Like kind of Vlako Andanovski style looping it into the box. It seemed like that to me.

So it wasn't where we were crossing against like a set Bolivia block two or often. There were plenty of those times. We'll end up putting together a crossing compilation because I know that was that was a complaint. It kind of cropped up was too many crosses. A lot of them were like the right kind of crosses. Like we are racing forward ahead of their block and then we try to serve it in, you know, behind their back line where anyone can run onto it.

But we also, yeah, we also did a lot of like almost scoops. We were like scooping the ball in the box from, you know, where we're maybe short. passing combinations would be better. We were trying to just like lift a runner in that did sort of stick out to me. Yeah. Are you thinking of like the Weston one that went over everybody?

Oh yeah. Yeah. A bunch of them. We would like combine, combine, combine, race forward and then somebody would end up, you know, getting pushed out to somebody on the outside of the box and just like, oh, I'll scoop it in. I do a 12-yard little lift and see if we can get somebody run onto it for a volley. Yeah, so let me, I don't, rather than go through every single one of these timeline items, let's just talk about a few players.

Because I've got a nice entry pass from Richards to Raina in this eighth minute clocked. And then Raina plays it over to Pulisic and we do a few, I would say, speculative crosses that come to nothing. One of them might have been the West one that went over everybody. I can't remember. But I guess my main concern from this game was the messiness of the centerbacks. Both Richards and Ream seemed to struggle a little bit. I clocked a nice entry pass. Richards actually had a few on rewatch, like four or five nice entry passes.

Again, we're not playing against the Marcelo Bielsa Press or anything. It's a different kind of animal. but he also had three, four pretty bad giveaways. Ream had three or four. So between them at least six, seven, maybe eight. Again, we're not punished, but I don't know. I was a little concerned by that. How about you?

Yeah, it's too many, right? And so then the question becomes, are they sort of challenged and given more license to attempt these because of the opponent? And even on Thursday we'll be a lot more conservative and, I guess, intelligent. That's sort of where I'm at is, you know, this is the game. Yeah, you can try more of these things when there's less room for error to actually execute the touch, but a lot more room for error when you actually make an error.

Yeah, right. Well, it seemed to me like the centerbacks were of two minds. Sometimes they wanted to play through the middle, but it wasn't just the centerbacks who seemed like they were of two minds to me. And I'm curious, what do you think of this? There would be times when Ream or Richards would have the ball. They would tap it back and forth between each other a couple times, but there would be no real, like, not a ton of urgency to give them options in the middle of the field.

And then they would just bang it long to ballo. it happened enough times where I thought well maybe this is by design we're doing this on purpose but if we're doing it on purpose maybe Ballo is not the right guy to be like you know hoofing the ball to to do a battle

with the centerback so I I was a little you know we won two zero we scored two nice goals we had a lot of chances to score and not like complaining too much but that was a little bit of a concern to me too I couldn't figure out what we were trying to do possession. So I felt like there was a lot of sort of trying to take what Bolivia gave you.

So when we were tapping back between our centerbacks and they did sort of Bolivia would station a guy right on Tyler's hip and then Gio would have dropped back to create like a little double pivot. They put a guy right on Gio's hip. We definitely weren't trying to necessarily add a third player like Wes wasn't then dropping in to see if he could bring a Bolivian player into that midfield too. Where we then hit him. We were either trying to find a ball on the floor up to Balo or yeah

like we would just hit it over the top and I'm fine with any of those options I feel like those are taking what Bolivia are giving you and we did that a lot right we hit it either up to Bala in the air

or we would hit it all the way wide to Tim Way in the air a couple of switches out to Jedi we weren't particularly effective with our execution on those long balls but I think I think it was on

and I think trying to hit those was sort of the appropriate play I wonder if we didn't expect Bolivia to be as high as they were. I wouldn't expect Panama to sit in a low block, but I did expect Bolivia to sit in a much lower block than what they showed for us. Okay, so maybe there was some confusion with that because we prepped for them to be in a lower block than they were.

I wonder if that played into it. But again, I thought there were plenty of times where we made their correct choice to go long, and I'm glad to see us do that rather than being like, nope, we're playing on the floor, no matter what Bolivia does, we're playing on the floor to our midfielders. I thought the choice is to go along when we did

were generally the right choice. Okay. All right, well, there's a Ream giveaway in the ninth minute, but then just Hustiniano just kicks it out of bounds in the counter. Pretty messy from Wes. I mean, Wes came in for a lot of criticism all over the internet after this game and the previous ones. He was, he's not playing his best soccer right now.

Although he had plenty of good. moments too. I don't, I don't, I don't, I, do you have a strong opinion on West, how Weston's playing these days?

Nothing other than, I don't think you bench Wes. Yeah. I think, I think he had, you know, like, I think it's just like the World Cup.

Like, he wasn't his best against Wales. Uh, and you're like, all right, is this what it's going to be? And then he was very good against England,

uh, and sort of just kept being good the rest of tournament. Uh, so, I mean, I think you just keep, keep rolling with Wes in the line.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that's definitely going to happen. Increasing his match sharpness by degrees, just like our opponents get more difficult by degrees. Speaking of increasing match fitness, it does seem like Gio is getting a little, he didn't look quite as exhausted when he came off. It matters.

The stuff matters a lot. So, yeah, we're ramping up our players. Sargent's the next guy, man. We need that one to hit. Because when you talk about having a guy up top, He's the one. Loft balls up to. Sargent's the guy, for sure.

Yeah, just pushing that caboose around. And, yeah, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's a, he's, he's, he's, he's a shot off, but it's blocked. This was really nice This was really nice, right? No, this was another one where we were just kind of tapping it around the back. This wasn't like a transition moment. We were, you know, comfortably in possession of the ball for 30 seconds before this.

And then it's just like, okay, at nothing, Jedi's wide marker, like, takes a step towards Jedi off the ball. We read it very well between Ream and Jedi, and we just play them over the top, and we are in the box with Bulligan. and Balgan kind of doesn't create the best chance he probably could have. Yeah, his touch is a little, I think his first touch was a little heavy. Another heavy touch from him in the 13th, this time near midfield coming back to the ball, or trying to receive on the half turn, he just kind of lets it get away from him, and we lose possession. In a moment that had a little bit of promise to it.

A few moments earlier, he and McKenney had stepped on each other's toes, and the ball went out of bounds, and there was an over-hit, overhit switch from Scali to Poulosik on the left side, just goes over, just goes out of bounds. So it does, it did feel like after 15 minutes that it was a pretty messy, you know,

I guess the explanation may be that we were just, we were just going for it. But it was a pretty messy opening 15, kind of lipsticked by that goal from Poulosick a little bit. So it cuts both ways there too, right? So it is messy. And the Poolsick, it doesn't feel like we're in any danger because we're sitting on that one goal

lead already. but the messiness is like again the messiness is Bolo wasting a chance 20 seconds in for a six yard shot right the messiness is way as cut back in the eighth minute thing just hits the trail leg and then way out gets another chance

we don't quite finish and then it's just this one from Jedi we get Bolo into the box and we have it so it's nice when the messiness is shifted at least gets us into the box so we're kind of the messiness is happening in the final time 12 yards. Yeah.

Yeah. And we, we can see, all right, we just need to clean this up. And we do, I mean, we create much better chances in the second half than the first. It's true. Yeah. We get this nice combo in the 16th minute from Tyler and Wes right up the gut. It's kind of one of those moments where Tyler Adams is like, oh, okay, I'll go. I'll go for it. Here we go.

And he, they do like a give and go. And then Tyler plays Wes into the box. He kind of gets it caught underneath. him a bit but gets a shot off with the outside of his boot and wins a corner. Now, not a criticism of Wes here, just me dreaming, but if you look at the play again, if he just steps over that pass from Adams and dummies it for Balligan, it's maybe one of the nicest goals the US M&T has ever scored because it's arriving to Ballo at the penalty marker for him to just take it first time with his left foot.

and he's got a step on his guy. He's on side. I mean, I mean, it's a goal. As long as his first touch is clean. His first touch is a shot in this case. This was,

I mean, this was, and I'm calling this an important sequence for Tyler Adams. Ooh. Because when, you know, when he gets this ball,

just collects it from the right side line. He's in the center circle and he just collects it with tons of time in the center circle. Again, another tendency of the U.S. has been to play wide and sort of take the easy pass out wide. And this entire sequence, Tyler has very easy options to play out wide.

So he gets it in the center circle, and there is the biggest passing window he has is Gio Raina to his left in the left channel. And that'd be, again, the easiest read you could make is he'd be like, oh, I can just hit this ball to G.O. Raina, and that, you know, gets the ball. I mean, it's set out the whole time. Yeah. And instead, he just does not do it. He, he, like, charges right into the teeth of Bolivia's shape and holds it and long enough for Bolivia to react to what he's doing.

And they'd sort of jump Christian Pulisic, who's dragged across the field to the right side of Tyler. And he uses that movement to then hit the window of McKenny. And again, having Gio the whole time doing full Gio arms, too. So it's not like Gio Raina is ever inconspicuous when he's open. He is the most conspicuous open player you can have. He's the most conspicuous player even when he's not open. on the soccer field. So Tyler is, you know, choosing to hit the vertical channels here to play Wes.

The give and go sets up, they eliminate a couple of defenders. And then even then he returns it back with the outsider's foot to West when Jedi is all by himself running into the man's city zone. Yeah. And Geo's out there too. I don't even know the Jedi pass might even be the better one if it could go Jedi, hook it around to Bolo who's got, you know, on your freeze frame. You can see Balo's got the, uh, he's got a step. Yeah, he's got a step on the far post if that ball goes out to Jedi.

But it's just, it's, again, a clear choice by Tyler to be like, no, we're not playing it out or on the outside of them. We're going directly through them. We are carving them up. And we carve them up into Wes and the box. It's like we're going on a bear hunt. Can't go over it. Can't go under it. Oh, no.

We've got to go through it. So, yeah. So Wes has the dummy here. Or Wes could also actually slip it to Jedi who could then hit it to ball. Like if you're thinking a couple of passes ahead, what are the different? chess moves here. We were in a really good spot there as West is receiving that ball. Yeah.

Yeah, it was a good sequence too. So you think, do you think that's Tyler's instructions from Burrhalter? Or is he saying, I will be, Andres? I think it's Tyler hearing people say that he can't progress the ball. A little bit of me thinks that that's what it is. Well, okay, 18th minute. Tyler's a little messy, plays it out to Scali, but trying to sort of settle a bit of a scramble,

but just drills it over his head out of bounds. We get a good Gio carry in the 22nd minute. He plays Bala down the channel. Ballot cuts it back across the penalty mark. I like this sequence, too. Gio just kind of takes what's given to him. The guy kind of, the marker on him kind of shades to his inside to deny the pass inside. Geo just carries it forward and then plays that like sort of casual outside of the boot pass to Ballo.

Then there's a cut back. It doesn't find anybody, but it's a dangerous ball across. It's the kind of ball you want to see us playing across the middle of the box. Right, exactly. And again, on the stat sheet, that's going to go down as a cross. So when you see us racking up 25 crosses or whatever was on the barn. It's Barnwell, right? Barnwell's big stat spreadsheet.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I actually have that pasted in here somewhere. It's not Barwell. Who am I got the wrong? It's Bill Connolly. Is that who it is? Connolly. Yep, that's it.

I got to get that right. It's amazing work that he's doing. But yeah, so you see all those crosses and you're like, oh, man, all we're doing is, you know, chunking crosses. But that's not a Vlato cross. And that's not a last cycle Burrhalter cross either. This is like we have disorganized the opponent. We've gotten the ball into a good spot. And now we need a better one.

We need a better executed decision of where to cross it, I guess. And if we can't do that, then we shouldn't hit that cross. Right. The actual like build up to that, I think a cross there is often a fine choice. I agree on this case that this was a, this was not a Vlachco cross. Now, for anybody who doesn't know what we're talking about, Vlako Anatovsky, the former U.S. women's national team coach presided over a regime

in which the lumped cross, the lumped speculative cross seemed to be the primary means of creating goal scoring chances for many of the games that we played. I thought actually a lot of our crosses in this game, you know, Poulisic had a few, not against a totally set block, just like lumping it in,

but somewhere in that gray area between like a set block or like, you know, taking advantage of a completely retreating defense and hitting it behind them. It was like borderline. There was a lot of borderline ones. Yeah. I think so, too. I think there's still plenty of room to improve on those decisions. And again, just be willing to just extend the play if it's not on.

Like, okay, there's nothing special about this cross. We're just going to work it around until we can create a better opening somewhere else. Okay, 2430, there's a Matt Turner tries to whack it ahead and he just hits a red shirt. inside our half. What results is a bit of a scramble, and then Tyler, there's a handball on Bolivia, but Tyler turns and kind of remonstrates at Turner. Like, what's going on? Why are we doing this?

I mean, I didn't hear what he said, but it seemed kind of like that. Well, and so for starters, this is the proper time for remonstrating. It's our ball. You're probably going to be the one who takes to kick, Tyler Adams. Remonstrate away. Lay into anybody you want to lay into. Turner gets kind of hung out to dry here by Chris Richards' backpass. This is just like a long ball from Bolivia.

Scali kind of flicks the header backwards a little bit, and Richards goes to clean it up, and it should be easy, but his back pass to Turner is sort of softly hit, and Bolivia's striker is able to sort of run down and just add some pressure, you know, the footsteps. Turner, hearing these footsteps, should not, I don't know what pass he's trying to execute here. He, like, hits an inside of the foot,

chest high ball up the field. in the general vicinity of Tyler Adams, but not to him and not anything that Tyler could control even if it was. So yeah, decision-wise, if you're going to come out for this Turner and you hear the footsteps and you don't have any clear pass, this is where you do smash it with the top of your laces

out of bounds at midfield. Like there's, you got at some point know who you are now and just do the thing that's not going to lead to Bolivia or a better team coming right back at us. Yeah, yeah. And I wonder how much of that is contagious. a little bit, the uncertainty with Turner's feet, maybe bleeding into Richards a little bit.

And like, I don't know. I'm worried that they will gift more chances before this tournament is through. I'm quite sure you're right. All right. That should be an easy one on tape to, like, go back to Matt and be like, this is where you can be done being a, we can be done playing it out of the back.

Like, this is an easy example of nothing on, footsteps coming, smash it. Yeah, you don't even have to smash it out at midfield. Just smash it at the corner flag on the other end of the field, you know? Directly perpendicular to the sideline would be fine, too. I mean, any of them, avoid a deflected clearance. Don't hit it where the ball stays in play. Yeah.

An inswinger at the end line is what I'm looking for. There you go. Raina fouled hard by Hustiniano in the 27th minute. Adams confronts him, like I said earlier, which I think his energy we miss a little bit when he's not out. there. Everybody's just a little too nice when Tyler's not there. But Gio was fine. Thank goodness. Which is good because he is the adult in the room in possession for us. I feel like I got to shout him out again. We talk about Lindsay Haram being that for the women's national team.

Gio is that for us in the U.S. men's national team. And I think the more you watch this game, the more you appreciate Gio's performance. I think he was just, he's just quietly very good. at soccer. And that's especially huge in a game like this where everyone else seems like a little bit off frantic-wise. You know, the franticness throws off the timing a little bit, throws off the spacing a little bit, all over the field we're seeing it. And Gio is able to just hold the ball while a couple of players work out their own little, you know, freneticism.

Like, no, you're in the wrong spot. Get to the right spot while I just very, well, my heartbeat stays at 30 beats a minute. And I'm able to hit a controlled pass wherever I choose. choose to. Like, that's a, that's a huge deal. It is so big. Yeah, because Eunice also has the ability to, like, buy himself a little time on the dribble. But he doesn't have quite the precision that Gio has when he passes the ball.

I mean, they're different players. But I think Gio is pretty kind of singular in this way for this team. And Pulisic actually is, is, is, was very adult like in this game as well. But not, not getting on the ball as much as. Geo. So, good buildup from us at 30-minute mark. Jedi finds Ballo's feet, and he leaves it for Raina. He's fouled again. This is another yellow card this time, it's Luis Hakeen. But this is when it feels like Geo's starting to really impose himself in the game. Let's see. Wea Cook's Sagredo a few seconds later. It's just too easy for him over there. A little square for Wes. He keeps the play alive, a little square for Ballo. he does that sort of patented swivel and hit with his left foot shot is blocked

I noticed some good defending from reina he's doing the he's doing the dirty work I know everybody thinks I'm just a rena partisan over here but I do I do honestly think rena is playing better defense for the for the men's national team than he has probably ever played which is not an extremely high bar but well and he and he's in a different totally different position too I mean when he was playing as when he was defending as a winger Again, we're constantly reiterate. Raina never played winger for us when we had the soccer ball ever. He's always been a go wherever he wants to midfielder when we have the ball.

In defense, he used to defend as a winger, and it was very much less was asked of him for cage matches. And now he's got to do some real pitch control cage match stuff on a regular basis. Not as regular against Bolivia, but we're sure going to see if he can do it in the next few matches. Yeah. Let's go straight to the next. I mean, there's a good diagonal from Adams to Wea. Wea tries to zip it across, but it's just cut out ahead of Ballo. I don't really, going back in Washington again, I don't really fault Ballo's effort on getting there.

He did what he could. It was just timing was just a tad off. Yep. Defense made a play. Yeah. And then there's another diagonal to Wea immediately. This one from Raina plays it back to West. and this is when Wes kind of scoops it over everybody over the goal mouth.

It's kind of to nobody. It's kind of Wes's first half in a nutshell a little bit. Scali helps with some good buildup in the 38th minute, from right to left, plays it to Pooley to Wes, and then it's over to Ballo. He can't quite sort it out. He wanted, so he's sort of facing his man up just outside the box. Kind of wanted a darting run.

run from Pulisick at the at the near post Pulisic wanted him to hit Jedi overlapping out to the left for a fissor across, just didn't didn't sort it out but that's okay. There remains to me like enough attacking

like intent here, forward intent that like I'm not having any real concerns for anything. No. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean it's not everything you do isn't going to go perfectly in the box and I and I think I kind of to see what Ballot was trying to do.

He tries to kind of turf it. Yeah, he's trying to scoop it. Like, he's trying to, like, lift it, lift it up, right? He's bouncing it off the turf on purpose? Yeah, I look like it to me. Because he's trying things. Like, everyone's, like, we're, even at 1-0, we're comfortable enough ahead that we can all put on our Sergenio

desk hat for just a second and try something. Yeah, the whole game was an homage to Sergenio. And we get the goal, the second goal, 43rd minute. There's a Bolivia throw in down our right side. Ream flies in and wins the challenge to Scali, a quick square to Gio. Gio, a quick, precise pass to Pulisic between the lines.

Pulisic drives and then just dishes left to Balo. He takes like, I don't know, three touches to drift onto his left foot, and then, again, bounces it off the turf, far post with his left foot through the defender's legs, beats the keeper. He scuffed it. Let's be honest. But he scuffed it perfectly.

And it's a 2-0 USA. And he runs over and does a chest bump with Christopher Lund. Yes, the chest bump. I mean, the chess bump deserves mostly attention on this, right? Wagi made a whole video about it. Yeah. I'm sure. There's a great photo that somebody posted on the Discord of it.

You've probably seen it elsewhere too. from behind the line of, it looks like there's a bunch of players lined up for the chest bump ride that Christopher Lund is currently taking. But yes, Christopher Lund, what a personality we have added to this group. Love a good vibes guy.

Oh man, what a vibes guy. He is, I don't know, maybe we've already made this connection, maybe everyone else in the world has, but he's totally Kenneth from 30 Rock. He could not be happier to just wear that page uniform to every U.S. camp that we have.

and no ambition whatsoever to be anything more than this, but couldn't imagine a more perfect existence. Yeah, I mean, it's great to have him. You know, it does seem like, I mean, Waki pointed this out, it does seem like there's some special bond between Ballot and Lund. And, you know, that needs to be studied, as the kids are saying these days. The sequence itself wasn't anything out of the ordinary from everything else we were doing in this game, right? This is exactly what the game has been so far of trying really hard to push

with some urgency. Big window for Scali to just tap it to Geo, big window for Geo to hit Pool Sick. And then, yeah, we're just, we're just running. And this isn't even like our, this isn't any more of a good chance than what we've already created, right? This isn't like a terrific looking shot. And it's just the kind that happens to go under the reaching leg of the defender trying to block it, which is a perfect place to scuff a shot if you're going to scuff a shot. Yeah. Yeah, it was not one of our even our better chances of the first half

and the second half we just poured the chances on. It's also, I'm not trying to downplay it. Like, this is a decent chance. Like, and it's great that we converted it. It's just, you know, we get a little break. We get a little race downhill where a bunch of people are joining. We feed it to Balo and he creates enough of a window to get a shot off that,

a lot of times we'll get blocked, a lot of times saved or hit wide, and this one went through the legs and sneaks in at the far post, and we just got to keep riding again. It's a good reminder to always try to hit it through the defender's legs when you shoot. Yes, anticipate that block because too many defenders do that reach. Like, for defenders, remember, it's not your job to block the shot. It's your job to take away a portion of the goal. That's your job.

If the defender, if the attacker hits it into you, that's great. If they hit it somewhere else, trust your goalkeeper. Okay, yeah. I mean, so many goals are scored this way. It's like, and so many goals are saved when you try to avoid that outstretched leg and shoot. I'm thinking up, you're thinking it from the goalkeeper's perspective. Yes. From the hapless attacker's perspective.

So, yeah, not a lovely first half, but the scoreboard was what we wanted. and I do think we played with good energy. Let's take a break, come back to talk about the second half. Okay, we're back. Just a little reminder to join the Patreon. If you are so inclined, the link is in the show notes. I won't give you the whole spiel today, but rest assured you will hear the spiel before too long.

Okay, Musa comes on for Adams at the half. Immediately a pretty strong presence, it seemed to me. 48th minute, I thought Gio did well to cover for Jedi who kind of gets left behind up in the on the sideline. He, it gets played up to Pulisic.

Pulisic races by two guys and shoots from the edge of the box and it's blocked. But, you know, a lot of Pulisic sort of cheat code stuff going on here. Go ahead. And Jedi, too. So this is already Jedi's, Jedi's, just in the opening two minutes, Jedi's second, like, full foray into the attack. Like, within, within a minute, he'd made, like, a 90-meter sprint up that left side

and gotten a decent cross-off. So, yeah, Jedi has been given the green light, and he's, I mean, he loves a drag race, right? Like, he's going to go. Yeah, and he never gets tired. It seems like he never gets tired. So Wes gets a yellow card. I was kind of mad about it. I didn't think it was that.

I don't think it was a yellow card foul. He maybe got a hand. hand on the guy, but it's a pretty clean poke away of the ball. That's in the 49th minute. That could come back to hurt us, you know? Yeah. So when we talked about, you know, treating the Panama match as the match, go all out to win that, there's also going to be the yellow card watch for Wes, where if we're

winning that game 2.30, 2.0 even. Late in the game, do you find a way for West to take a time-wasting yellow card? Get himself suspended for Uruguay, but clean slate for the knockout. Yes. Yes. The answer is yes. Just a totally irrelevant tactical foul, you know? Yeah. Or a time way. It's a fine line because if you do it too blatantly... You might get a red.

Yeah, well, not get a red, but it might be sort of looked at afterwards as, you know, Spirit of the Rules type stuff and just tack on an additional suspension. I think Real Madrid went through a couple of those when Marino was. coaching in the Champions League. So you got to be, you need plausible deniability here. Yeah. I'd approach this with care.

The other thing to remember about this yellow from Wes is it's, it's a Chris Richards disaster of a giveaway. Where we're passing around the back, we've got our big expansive shape. And he just passes it directly to a Bolivia player before it can even reach the next line of our players, which means Wes and Musa now are both like racing back to try to defend,

catching the play from behind. And so the fact that West slides in from the back, even though he pokes the ball, that's how it ends up looking kind of like a tactical foul. And it is 100% on Chris Richards to have given it away like this. What is going on with Chris? I don't think he is,

I think he's got the yips or something. The national team yips? I don't know. He's not been, this is the worst I've seen him. play probably, you know, the last couple years. A couple windows in a row for him, right?

I mean, even going back to when the Nations League matches were like, there was a time where his controller just shut off against Jamaica running back to his own goal. Oh, yeah, that's right. I mean, a couple other giveaways in that window. So, yeah, so it's been, he's been kind of sliding and maybe bailed out by the fact that when Cameron Carter Vickers came in for a cameo, he immediately did the same thing, only worse.

and we know Mark McKenzie has that sort of history of whoopsies. So, yeah, we definitely don't have a whoopsie-free centerback option at the moment. No, we don't. Waiting in the wings. Okay, so 50th minute we get throw in from the left side. We catch Bolivia napping a little bit, play it to Gio. And he's just kind of striding free across the top of the box and sprays it out. out wide to Wea on the right side.

I think the pass actually megs the defender halfway between the two players, and then Wea shoots it, wide left, even though he had Ballo arriving at the back post, and Ballo thought he should have played it to him. There's no doubt that this ball needs to get played to Bolo. Yeah. Right? Like, again,

it doesn't even need to be curled to him. The natural curl that you'd hit with your right foot here would help, but he has a full square pass available. Like, the easiest thing to execute ever. and he tries to just rip it at the end of those. As pretty as it is to watch Timway play with this,

with his technique when he steps into a shot, this was definitely the wrong choice. And it's, again, it's pretty costly. Like, when you know that the reward for hitting a very easy pass and then executing a very easy finish from Balo as a goal, like this is a big miss. Yeah. I'm going to, like with so many other things,

I think Chris Richards is going to play better. when we play against a better team. And I think Timway is going to make this pass when we play a better team. So that's my position, and I'm sticking to it. We get a Pooley giveaway back in our defensive third in the 51st minute

and a Bolivia shot from distance from Roberto Fernandez. It's an easy save for Turner as, or should be. I think he actually spills it a little bit, but a lot of, All the shots from Bolivia were like this, kind of right at Turner's feet. 53rd minute, best move of the game from us. It is, Richards plays a good pass into the center circle,

which I know he's capable of to Ballo. One touch from Ballo to Wea, one touch from Wea to Wes. Wes kind of cooks a little bit, plays it to Tim. He backheels it to Wes, running past, you know, everybody at the box. Wes kind of slollums through two defenders and then slips it back to Tim Wea into the cutback zone.

He squares it for Ballo this time goal. Unfortunately, chalked off, Tim was just a step offside on Wes's slip pass. But this is really nice soccer from us. I mean, the aesthetics here, right, are just fantastic. And the pass from Richards is great to initiate it. First off, even Ream, like dealing with the light pressure that's on him to move it over.

over to Richards. Nothing difficult, but like, okay, we're keeping the ball here. The pass from Richards with the disguised hips, you know, like he's looking over towards the right side line, but cuts it back right to the dead center circle. Just love that, yeah. Yeah, we all love that. And so that's a good start. But then it's that, it's that, I feel like what really starts it where you're like, oh, we are, we are doing something here is the way I touch. The back heel. Not even the back heel. It's, it's, the ball goes into balligan.

And so then ball again, like, fires at one time at the angle over to, and it's just coming in so hot. And the way Waya like takes that ball coming in hot and just like pinballs it over to McKinney in the way Waya moves while he does that where he doesn't actually change his rhythm as he's moving to ping it to McKinney and just like continue his spin. He's doing like a pirouette and he takes that touch. For me, that's the sign that we're like, we're cooking something up here. And I feel like that leads into why Waya chooses a back heel because it just has.

is that full sweeping movement feel to it, where it is. It's contagious when that starts happening. And everyone's getting in on it. It's like, okay, here we go. We're doing real soccer here, boys. And so, yeah, the, what's not to love about it? The fun side.

The fun side was back a little bit, even without Serge. McKenny doing his little twinkle toes on that, on the, after the back heel. Scali is present. I thought Scali had another pretty good game, you know? He totally did. just in this sequence. He got the best seat in the house for watching a little sauce here. It's true.

And yeah, again, Way I here could have taken a shot if he wanted to, tried to hit it over the near post shoulder up into the roof, but instead makes the right choice, just like we talked about what he's capable of. Great finish from Balo. You can clip it, you can clip the highlight and keep reliving that, even though you know the goal doesn't come.

Yeah. So sad, too bad. 56 minute, Ream looks a bit shaken. He kind of drops to his knees and grabs his, you know, rubs his eyes. Vince joked on the call-in show on the Patreon the other night that he was just trying to decide if you really wanted to carry the load of distribution for both him and Chris Richards. And he's like, all right, I can do it.

I can do it. Which is... It's totally a still shot of a dad who just can't. believe his kid has made yet another poor decision. Right. Everything I've tried to teach this kid. Yeah. I told you to wash the dishes and you left like all of them out on the table.

Which I mean, you know, on rewatch, I do think Richards actually did some distribution in this game. He did. He totally did. But there were times where he was, where it looked like he was like, just please. don't make me do this. You take it, dad. We just talked about it in the very last sequence that's going to, again, be on rewatch for the U.S. for a generation. There are a couple, you know, you know the sequences where you're just like, I'm going to watch

that over and over again. And for all we're talking about, Richard's having a couple of rough windows. I don't think they're going anywhere. I think this is our pairing for the rest of the tournament. He's got a root for him to clean it up, basically. 58th minute. A nice move. up the left, Gio floats a ball for Pulisic, he takes it down cleanly, goes out his guy. I mean, it's so easy for him to eliminate people from out wide there. For him to eliminate Bolivians from out wide there. I just, I just don't want to keep that caveat always in mind.

No, that's what I meant. That's what I meant to say. Okay, okay. And then he slips Wes in. Wes swivels and tries to square it for Wea, but it's just cut out behind the penalty marker. Another bad Richards giveaway. I'm going to try to hurry up here. the 60th minute.

Pulcic cuts in and goes past two guys and rips a shot well. I mean, he just absolutely hammers this shot in the 60th minute. It's pawed desperately away by Viscara anywhere, but right at the keeper, and it's probably a goal. Again, I mean, Pulcic looking like a cheat coat out there against Jesus Sagredo. Yeah, and again, our intent throughout this whole game for me has been satisfactory, like our attacking intent, and even most of the ideas. and then it's just sort of execution has been inconsistent in all game, but it seems to be getting a little bit tidier as we go.

It does, yeah. And I just want to shout out Joey Clamps. Scali didn't have to apply any clamps in this game. There was no reason for it, but he was winning fouls, battling. Not always pretty, but a solid presence out there. I'd be surprised if he doesn't start again on Thursday. Peppy and Johnny come on for Ballo and Chief. Gio at the 65 minute mark, and it's an immediate chance for Peppy.

Peppy had just an embarrassment of riches in front of goal in this last half hour of the game. Eunice breaks down Bolivia on the dribble as he does and tries to slip Pepe in, who's making a run sort of away from the goal in behind the line. The pass gets sent right back to Eunice, so he plays it out to Pulis, and then he plays it to Jedi on the overlap, Jedi plays a good ball across, Pepey kind of flails at it, goes wide. Not an easy chance to be fair to him, but it's a chance right in front of goal.

It's an easy chance if you believe in clinical finishers. If you believe there's like the clinical finisher, which we have heard a lot that Pepe is in sort of the big forward debates that have existed, this would be a gimmie, right? Good finisher hits this every time. Oh, yeah. Hazes Ferreira misses this chance.

Come on. No, you never hear the end of it. And it's not the best chance he has. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't think Pepey is a bad finisher because I don't really think that there's going to be a measurable difference between any of our strikers in the moment that Pepe just missed here. Sometimes he'll miss a lot of times he will miss those, as will any striker. And often enough, he will convert them.

And like I said, back in qualifying, after a match D.S. Tech, I took some heat because people thought I was like celebrating PFOC missing his chance. But what I was saying was, you know, what I thought would be a good thing coming out of Pfox miss was that people would start to realize like every striker misses these chances. There aren't going to be, you know, with very few exceptions. There aren't going to be like, oh, that's the guy. This is the U.S. guy who will bury a chance if we create it. for him. Like that U.S. player doesn't exist. And so again, my hope if there is a silver lining coming out of peppy missing a bunch of chances here is that people will understand that he also is probably not one of those guys in the soccer universe that you can just say,

create a chance and he buries it. He's clutch. He delivers when you create a chance. He's going to, his job is to get in as many, in the positions for as many good chances as possible. And then he will convert them at probably about the same rate as Sergeant, as Bolligan, as Pfok, as Ferreira, as Vasquez, like, just get in the good spots. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy because, like, I don't see how I, I mean, I definitely agree with you. I, on that there, that that player doesn't exist, that, you know, is so clutch that they bury the chance.

But it is funny how, like, um, even on the big broadcast, You know, they talk about it like it's a mystical thing. Have to be. Yeah, everything is talking about that. And like Carly Lloyd said last night that she doesn't think Brazil has anybody who can put the ball in the back of the night. She called Lucas Paquetta Paquita, too. No, it, like, it amazes me that this is still happening, right? And again, because it is now shifted where the guy who was the answer, because, again, we watched, the big thing during qualifying was Ferrer was missing those chances.

So it's like, wow, he misses him. Peppy makes him. Peppy is the guy who finishes. It's got to be Peppy. And you could have any other, like, number of conversations about why so-and-so should start over so-and-so at forward. But so much of it was one guy bottles chances. Pepe scores them. And now the guy who scores them is like missed three outrageously high percentage by soccer standards chances.

And so again, I'm just curious that the conversation is still like, how it's going to be. I think tons of Burr-Halter questions are like, how do you feel about not having more goals after that? And it's just like, what are we doing here? Like, yes, I would have preferred that we would have scored every shot we took and won that game 11 to 0. That would have been better for our goal difference,

for our chances of winning the group. But I think Berhalter had the perfect answer, which is, you know, we think we created a good amount of chances. We think we denied a good amount of chances to Bolivia. and we move on. Like, what else are we doing here? Yeah. Well, if you miss a chance, so if I was the coach, if somebody missed a chance,

I would make them put their hand on the desk and then I would smack it with a ruler. Yes. You know, for each chance you miss. I assume they still do that. And I assume that's how you get people to finish even the chances that they do. It's because they know there is corporal punishment. Corporal punishment at the end of the day. If we want to Zepruder, the actual chance, this one, before we get into the other ones,

he doesn't, the ball kind of goes, is just missed by the defender. Yes. You know, it's just ahead of the defender. So there's a little bit of, there's a little bit of confusion there. But he also, I mean, Pepe doesn't open his body up. He tries to, he tries to put his laces through it at a perfectly perpendicular angle to the trajectory of the ball, which is basically impossible. I mean, it's almost impossible to do that.

and make good contact. You know. Would have looked sick, though. Would have looked sick if he slashes that in. Yeah. So, so that, so the technique he chooses is, I think, wrong there. You know, if we're going to get into the weeds even further than we already are. Okay.

No, that's fair. And, again, what I'll say is, if we had drawn or lost this game, we would absolutely be like, what if, what if he had made that? But from, like, from an evaluation standpoint of are we, are we doing well as a team? team, like getting to that moment basically is the job. Yep. I still can't get over. Carly Lloyd saying Brazil doesn't have anybody that can put the ball in the back of that. Venetius Jr. is the best player in the world right now.

Anyway, 68th minute Richards to Pepeppy dropping in. So another good pass from Richards. He plays it over to Scali. Scali does well to kind of, you know, trundle his way forward, keeps the ball. beats a guy, then hits a looping ball to the back post. Poulosick tries it on the volley and turfs it wide and high. But I like the, you know, I like the ambition with the strike there. Yes, absolutely.

And this is, this is, uh, Scali's, I think probably is like his sexiest moment in the game, right? Because he does shoulder the guy off enough that he can then pick his head up and see Christian Poulsick all alone on the far post. Right. With a big window to put the ball into for Poulsick to attack it towards goal. He does a great job of it. And yeah, like, this is a chance for another. Again, it's low percentage to take this volley,

but it's soccer-wise, it's a relatively good chance for a wide-open volley. I think we see Columbia score this a couple of days ago or yesterday. I can't keep my day straight. I watch the games all out of order. Yeah, I was thinking maybe, you know, side foot volley on that, go far post, but come see, come so. Yeah, and I have no problem defaulting to the, again, defaulting to the best aesthetic,

which would be laces, smash it. This is one you can put the laces through, not like the peppy chin. Okay, another chance for Pepey. Johnny to Tim Wea in a little pocket. He plays on the half turn, slips Pepey in. Pepe tries to clip it and over a sliding defender and kind of gets it wrong.

It doesn't quite quit. I don't even know if it would have worked if he had gotten it over the defender. We get a crucial sliding challenge from Scali to end a counterattack in the center circle in the 71st minute. I absolutely love your including crucial in any thing that is happening. Well, it was actually kind of a jail break. Yeah.

But, you know, probably wouldn't have come to anything. You're right. Another Richard's giveaway, this time trying to play it out wide right. It leads to a Miguel Terceros shot from a distance. He had a few of those. He plays for Santos FC in Brazil. Seemed like a little bit, offered a little bit of brightness for Bolivia off the bench.

But this was not a great effort from him, saved by Turner. Richards plays a great diagonal in the 76th minute out wide to Jedi who just steps past his guy. It's so easy. I've said this like 40 times, but it is really easy for him to get past people out there. He cuts it back to Wea, who is Ara, who's kind of, you know, ghosting in from the right side, and Wade sort of tries to hit it with his left foot,

just misses the near top corner. But it's a good, it's a good attempt. I liked it. Yeah, Way is kind of getting more involved here as we go with that setup to Pepe, and this is good moving from him to cut across as Pepe is driven the defenders deep, so Wea has that sort of second higher lane to run through, not far off. Good choice from Jedi to play it to him. Good move from Wes up to Eunice, back to Pepe in the 77th minute,

and Pepey tries to slip a little pass in for Pulis. I really liked this idea from Rico. It gets cut out. And then Luca Del Artaire comes on for Wes. It's kind of a good-to-night for Weston. sometimes it may be good sometimes maybe not that's the

that's the English translation of it did you translate it back to Italian and then back to English yeah this is I mean yeah and at this point the whole game just has the

feel of like we're in a friendly right this is the last 20 minutes of a friendly now attacking drills yeah yeah and I'll describe probably three more of them

another direct ball down the left for Pulisic from Jedi, beats his guy, squares it for Pepey. This time, Pepey makes really good contact from just behind the penalty marker, but the shot is kind of right at the keeper and pawed away.

Peppy cuts in and rips one in the 81st minute, draws a good save from the keeper, down to his left. That actually was maybe Pepe's closest one to actually going in. And then, you know, Aronson comes on for Way. There's not too much to say about that. But the big, big chance for Pepe,

the one that I think most people will say is his best one comes right before the end of regulation. It's a good move from Pulisic. A good team move. Pulisic plays it to Luca from the left sideline. Luca Deletore is showing into this giant hole in the Bolivia defense there. Luca turns and carries and then plays it,

slips it in for Jedi and behind. Jedi squares it to the front of goal. and Pepe just slams it off Viscata. And then it bounces back off Pepe's knee back to the goalkeeper and then he paused it away again. And then you could tell Pepe is really not happy with himself after that one.

Which, yeah, which is going to be normal. Yeah. Jedi over here, like, needed, I feel like deserved to cap a game off with some kind of statistic. but it wasn't to be and again, what do you do? You take your two zero and you move on to the next game.

Does it change anything for you for the pecking order? You go ahead. I got one to hear what you say first. No, I think I still, I love Ricardo Pepe. I've written a song about the man. But I do think Ballo is the better choice right now for Striker. Yeah. And I and I this doesn't it's not because it's not because peppy missed chances yesterday.

I would have thought it probably anyway. Exactly. And I have no, I have no questions about his mentality, Peppies. I have no questions about his confidence, which are kind of the things you see pop up after a game like that. I also don't think that because he got those chances, that even like the, you know, the XG side of it,

like the nerdy side of being like, well, he got the chances. maybe he will jump, uh, Bolo, because I think it also is just like, Bolivia have given up, you know, like it's, it also was sort of last 20 minutes of a, it's mop-up time, essentially, and, uh, the chances are just free flowing. It's not, it's not like an accident that Pepe was getting good looks. Um, but yeah, I don't, I also don't put a ton of stock in like, how do you not start him after five great chances in 25 minutes? Right. No, it was a, it was an easier game when he was on there than, and it, not that it was a super hard game when Bala was on, And Ballo didn't even have a good game.

So it's just, why do I want, the listener may be asking, why does Bells want Ballo to start over Pepe? It's because I think Ballo is able to control the space around him a little better. He's better able to, like, receive the ball and keep it. He might not have quite the instinct for combination that Pepe has, but he, in my opinion, but I do think he is better able to get a shot off.

his movement is a little bit more ruthless and you know he just plays and has excelled at a higher level than Pepe in his club so I think that says something about all that so in other words we're basically I mean after this Bolivia match for the striker sort of just defaulting to priors right that's effectively what it is yeah just like everybody else

and hoping that Josh Sargent actually gets some minutes to see if he can bust his way into the starting spot? I don't know. I think I would like to see, I mean, if we're going to end up lumping it long, I do want to see Josh Sargent up there because he has a giant posterior and he is very good at, like, just wrestling for the ball.

And he's a good player. He's a good soccer player too. It's not just, he's not just all physical. But I don't, you know, we used to joke about Sergeant getting his shots blocked all the time. which happens to everybody but I do think that little bit of quickness quick release quality that Ballo has

puts him ahead of Sergeant like he's going to get a shot off when Sergeant might not and those little tiny margins are what's going to be the difference in a game against Uruguay or Brazil or Colombia

so the hope here is whoever starts Thursday Bolo, Peppa, your sergeant they're going to be good enough for Thursday and we're going to take care of business. And then we get a bonus game against Uruguay, who's a very good team who won't be, who definitely won't be sleepwalking because by all, there's a real possibility here that there's at least some possibility that in the first knockout game, like Brazil could,

could, could not be involved in the knockouts. It's possible. Because Brazil tied Costa Rica Zero zero. Yeah. We didn't, we haven't brought that up yet, but congratulations to Los Dicos, you know, doing Concaf proud. They got completely dominated. I think they put 0.03xG on the board. I think they had two shots on goal.

Not on goal. They had two shots. Two shots. Yeah, neither on target, right? I don't know. I'll have to double check that, but it was a bit different than our draw against Brazil. And that after our draw were saying we had chances to win it. And Costa Rico would not be saying we had chances to win.

No, it was different. a different kind of draw than the one we had against them in the front leg for sure. But yeah, now it puts Brazil in a situation where they have to beat Columbia to win the group. And, I mean, pretty much, right? And a lost, and the other thing it puts them, a loss to Colombia could knock them out of the Copa,

depending on how things go for Costa Rica's game. Costa Rica's game against Padagua, because, I mean. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm rooting. I would, I'm rooting for it. Because then it would be, you know, being second-in-group means you play Costa Rica in the, or Paraguay in the quarterfinals. And that is much preferable to Colombia or Brazil.

So anyway, the whole point there is Uruguay are not going to be like, all right, we're just going to, you know, we're just going to coast because it doesn't matter whether you get Brazil or Colombia. Because that's kind of how I was feeling, going into that Brazil draw against Costa Rica. I don't think you, I don't think you prioritize or build everything on, like, giving yourself the best chance at Brazil or Columbia, either of them. Because I think you're just like, all right, we don't even know who's going to win the group.

There's no way for us going into our game against Uruguay. We won't know which of Brazil or Colombia is going to win the group. So why, why, like, go out of our way and jeopardize or deprioritize our own sort of fitness management to try to get the result we think will help us in the knockouts when we don't know. So my thought was if we were... So you're saying start Sergeant against Uruguay if he's healthy? Well, my thought was if we beat Panama and Uruguay beats Bolivia, then treat Uruguay like a dead rubber, like a complete dead rubber in whatever sense that means.

If that means let's give Sergeant a start and give him 60 minutes because we think you can handle that, go for it. But basically it's a friendly, and you get to use that time. It's a friendly with a good opponent who will not just be like conceding the game, which is a great, great time to get guys some minutes. But treat it like a dead rubber even if Costa Rica, you know. No, that's what complicates it, right? Yeah.

I think we still have to go all out in the Panama game for the three points and not do any pre-rotation. Yeah, for sure. But it will complicate things if somehow Costa Rica are still looking pretty alive. going into the third match day on the other side. I mean, they're not new to this. This is their, you know, they've been down this road before. Yeah.

I mean, they got the luck they need. They got some of the luck they needed in game one. And I do love the Roarshock effect of this, which isn't really Roar Shock at all. It's like you definitely have some voices talking about how this totally undermines the draw that we got against Brazil, which doesn't really matter anyway. It's a friendly for World Cup before tournament. But you don't hear any of those people saying maybe this, maybe like maybe just beating up on Concaf teams isn't as easy as we say it's supposed to be. Like you're not, you're not really, there's not really any of that train of thought going around. Mm-mm.

Just, just Brazil maybe aren't very good. Yeah. We, you know, we sort of got, you know, took advantage of how bad Brazil is to get that draw. And it's the same with Uruguay, like Uruguay against Panama. Uruguay were up 1-0 going into like the 85th minute. So it didn't just bulldoze Panama. And again, you're not hearing like, oh, maybe like we shouldn't expect to bulldoze

every even Concaf teams. It's more like, this is why I think it's obvious we should expect to get a result against Uruguay. Yeah. Well, you know, can't pay attention to everybody, you know. I hope we look organized and create some chances. Yeah. Hey, on a more personal level,

you're going to be in Kansas City for the game against Uruguay. So I hope it would be awesome if it wasn't a dead rubber and then we won the game. That'd be really cool. And to give ourselves a quarterfinal spot against Paraguay or Costa Rica. That would be awesome. But also, there are closing in on 200 people signed up for that tailgays. For Kansas City? Yeah, and then it's like over 150 for Atlanta on Thursday.

So come join us. We'll be at the A.O. lot, 550 Mitchell Street, Southwest is where it is. Everybody's welcome. And, I mean, a lot of people will be there. A lot of people listening will be there anyway because they're going to go to the A.O. stuff. And then in Kansas City, we're going to meet up in Lot G sometime after 3.30 p.m. The game's at 8. So we don't want to get started too early.

Right, right. You're able to make great analytical points after the game. No, but also in Kansas City, there's a morning event too, right? Oh, yeah, pick up for both games. Pick up at 11 a.m. in Atlanta, we're partnering with soccer in the streets, soccer in the streets, which brings soccer, rec soccer for free to kids who wouldn't play soccer otherwise, which I think is an awesome thing very much in line with the, you know, sort of sensibility of scuffed.

And then, so you can come, I'll put out a link for that. If you're a patron, you should have the link already to sign up for pickup for that. There's only a certain number of spots and it's $8 and that money goes to soccer in the streets. You can also donate to them as, you know, in a more generous way if you'd like, which is available. That link is available there too. I'll put that link out to the public later, maybe later today. And then in Kansas City, we're going to play at 11 a.m. at Longfellow Elementary, which has a little sporting KC mini pitch. The school is closed now. I mean, it's closed for the summer, but it's also closed permanently.

So we haven't reserved anything or anything. We're just going to show up. It looks like we can. So show up there, 11 a.m. on Monday. 11 a.m. on Thursday for the Atlanta pickup at the West End. Marta Station, 11 a.m. Monday at Longfell Elementary in Kansas City. Lots of information just has been communicated, but hopefully you got it all. Start drinking a lot of water right now. I'm going to tell anybody who's going to these places. I am. I am. All right, anything else on this game? I don't think so. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. We do appreciate it. We'll see you.