Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #506: Copa — USMNT v Panama recap

Episode Date: June 28, 2024

A full recap of the 2-1 loss to Panama in Atlanta from Greg and Belz. Pretty frustrating! Lots to break down. 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. Ooh, boy, not a great night at the ballpark. Not a great night in Atlanta, period, if we're honest. But when it comes to the soccer, the throbbing, fluorescent light of Mercedes-Benz Stadium took on a cruel tinge as Panama went ahead late. A busy night for Dr. Joe, a night of madness for Tim Wea. the long-standing theme of our inability to deal with adversity or adjust to a new game state. It seemed like it was kind of recurring.

Maybe you'll disagree with that part, Greg. But anyway, how are you doing? I mean, we warned not to look ahead to Panama. We warned people not to do that. Like, seconds before we spent a tremendous amount of time looking past, I'm sorry, to not look past Panama right before we spent a lot of time looking past Panama and talking about Uruguay. and talking about Uruguay and the quarterfinals. And now the quarterfinals are a bit hazier and feel like they might be out of reach.

They're not, of course. We shouldn't concede that they're out of reach. We're not eliminated. No. But it's going to take some doing. Yeah. We really need some help from Bolivia because even if we beat Uruguay, that doesn't guarantee us going on to the, you know, not getting grouped.

Oh, I'm seeing people saying it's not technically in our control, but it is. I mean, like, it is. We just have to keep scoring goals. So if we score an infinite number of goals, then we will stay ahead of Panama. Yeah, if we beat Marcelo Bielsa's Uruguay 5 to 0, we should be good. That's all I'm saying. Like, we'll have the score of the other game. We will know what we need to do.

It's not like, okay, well, if we win and Panama wins, Panama have a point. point ahead of us. Like, we'll be level on points and we control our own destiny. So control it. Yeah, except that Bolivia has nothing to play for now. And they just gave up five goals to Uruguay. So we have a plus just to get down to brass tacks. We have a plus two goal differential lead over Panama going into these last games.

So, you know, that's the cushion we have if we beat Uruguay. if they put four or five up on Bolivia, we may be in some trouble, you know? So, just got to root for a resolute Bolivian defending showing on Monday and then us to get our win, our signature win, that we need so badly.

Look, if we meet Uruguay 4-0, we finish ahead of Uruguay. So there you go. We control our own destiny. I know it's like people almost are hedging because it's assumed that that kind of a thing is impossible, and I will grant it is very unlikely. likely, but our destiny is firmly in our own hands.

Okay. By the math. Yeah, I kind of forgot that if we beat Uruguay by a lot, then we would surpass even them. But, you know, I guess I wasn't thinking about it because it doesn't seem at all likely. It doesn't seem likely. But who knows, maybe they'll gift us a red card in the first 20 minutes and we'll go from there. Right. Yeah, lots to get into.

Tons of video review. penalties called and then called off, goals called back. Let's start with the lineups. Matt Turner, Joe Scali, Chris Richards, Tim Ream, and Jedi Robinson across the back line. Adams gets the nod again as the defensive midfielder and Wes and Gio are the other midfielders, Tim Wea, Oler and Baligan,

and Christian Pulisic across the front line. No big surprises. It's the exact same lineup we played Bolivia with. Yeah, so, you know, you thought maybe we'd rotate Adams because he was kind of obviously on a minute's restriction. It was also entirely possible that Adams' minutes could have been ramped up to 60. He didn't know what to expect

going into this one. But not super surprising that this is a lineup it feels like, you know, when it came out for this being the group against Bolivia, kind of felt like, okay, this is who Burrhalter thinks is his best team. It would make sense to run that team again against Panama, knowing that a win against Panama

puts you into the knockouts. Yeah. Yeah, I feel pretty good about the lineup. I guess the only quibble I would have is Adams. Minutes restriction or no, but I think that ship is somewhat sailed, at least in the Burhalter era. Orlando Mosquera was the goalkeeper for Panama,

Michael Murillo, Edgaro Barina, Jose Cordoba, Roderick Miller and Eric Davis across the back five, and then Cesar Blackman, Christian Martinez, Alberto Carasquilla, Edgar Barsenas and Eduardo Guerrero Round out the 11

What do you say about Panama? Pretty much better than Bolivia. Still not an amazing team. And I think had we not gone down a man likely would have ended up being a fairly comfortable evening for us. But I mean, I don't know. Yeah, you don't know.

Like we're better than them talent-wise. what I thought was interesting from the limited amount of even game state, 11 on 11 soccer that we had, was that Panama were sitting in a low block for the first 15 minutes. Only like eight of that 15 minutes was actually soccer being played. The rest of it was all video review and injuries. But, you know, going into the tournament, Bolivia had been the team sitting back in all their games against teams that were better than them. And Panama had not really been doing that going, you know, again, like several years back. Panama would like try to play soccer a lot.

Gold Cup that they did so well in, they played against Mexico, against us. They came to try to play. But they barely, at least early on, were not doing that. They dropped deep into a 5-3-2 and it looked like they were going to sit in and then try to hit sort of balls over the top and they got, we'll get into the timeline, but they had minor successes early on before everything kind of went sideways for us. So I don't, it's really hard to say. we have had enough just absolute baffling decision-making from any number of players over the past month,

even going farther than that, even going all the way back to November, that it's hard to say like, oh, we definitely would have just taken care of business and done the thing because we don't feel like a team that does that right now. No, we're definitely not, yeah. You know, Vince made this point in the call-in show, which is available to patrons right now. It's a very long sort of time of commiseration and condemnation. But he makes the point, you know, we've had a lot of pretty wild behavior from our team over the past few months. Of course, there's the famous surge meltdown in Trinidad and Tobago.

Nations League a year ago, he slapped a Mexican player, got sent off. So Serge accounts for a fair amount of it. He was not involved in this game, obviously. But then, you know, we had, we have this from Tim. What do we have in the Nations League in March that was silly? This seems like there was something there. You could say just giving up the goal 10 seconds into the Jamaica match. It's a little bit ridiculous.

But that's mostly soccer stuff. Wes had a red card and a bust dust up against Mexico under the beach. And I don't know. It's like a combination of inexplicable soccer stuff and non-zoccur stuff. and non-socker stuff. So a way I'd call non-socer, but we have plenty of examples of like Chris Richards

and Cameron Carter-vickers doing slapstick soccer stuff. It just makes no sense. We don't. We aren't being like professional about the way we're going about things. Well, in CCV ballerina dance along that line a little bit in this game too.

So yeah, it's concerning, obviously. Everybody who watch the game is of course concerned and frustrated. Let's get into the timeline. First thing I've got is one minute mark, one ten minute mark, long ball down the left from Panama,

gets crossed in and then headed up in the box by Jedi and then Barsanas tries an overhead kick. And it goes just over the bar, not that bad of an effort. So a little bit of a warning sign right there in the opening minutes. Yeah, that was like their, They're only real, I mean, it seemed too easy for them to get the ball in the box, right?

Just a long ball that they just outrun Tim Ream to, to Matt Turner's right side of the post. And then they just have a little two on two right there between Panama and Reem and Jedi. And of course, it would actually have just been just our luck if that bicycle kick had gone in because that seems to be how to be. Right to script. One other moment right before that, because the refereeing is going to be a big deal. 30 seconds in. Tyler Adams comes in late on a challenge right at the edge of our attacking third

going towards Panama. Gets a little bit of shin with the bottom of his studs. It's just called a common foul. I just wanted to point it out in the sense of you could make the case that that's an early indicator of the ref not raining things in,

but also like he's not just gunning for us with the decisions he's making. Right. Yeah, he did. He left his studs in. got him up on the shin a little bit. Like he said, definitely a yellow card foul. If you're being strict about things. Yeah, you'd have no complaints.

It's just be like, oh, really? Early 30 seconds in, but sometimes, you know, you want to get things under control. Panama's doing those long balls down the wing, but so are we. It seems like we're trying to hit that big switch over to Jedi or Scali. Scali wins a free kick in the fifth minute.

it on the right side and uh and pulisic curls it in nicely richards attacks it uh great to see this on a set piece attacks it and uh kind of heads it off the shoulder of his marker i think draws a very good save from muskera um it pings off the crossbar and down and then tim ream is kind of lurking in there behind he pokes it back to mckenny at the penalty marker and he just side-footed in with his left foot into the roof of the net very good finish from west but Ream, who got the assist, was offside when Richards made contact with the header. So the goal is called back remains zero, zero. Yeah, they let this.

I was just going to say in the stadium. Well, in the stadium, you just have no idea what's going on, you know. Like, it's striking how little you know what's going on because they don't show replays. You're like, what could possibly have been the reason that that was called back, you know? And then you need all these replays. And on the telecast, it's pretty obvious. Riem was offside. But I had no idea.

The broadcast strung us along too for a while. I mean, because they stayed before they got the replay. You know, they show the full, like, there's a script for how to handle goals. They showed like the full 30 seconds. It's usually about 30 seconds. I know this from Wyscout because when you watch a goal and want to see the replay, you got to go out 30 seconds forward before you can get to all the different angles. We got our 30 seconds of West celebrating with everyone he was celebrating with,

like close-ups on him. So you didn't get the, you didn't get the, you know, the evidence that this was going to get looked at again. Pretty, yeah, very clearly offside. Really smart play from Tim Rheem. Really savvy in the box decision to extend the play. He obviously does not have a shot himself,

but he can extend the play to someone who is facing goal. We'll talk about that more later. Because it is, it's just such a, it's a really clever moment from Tim Riem. Yeah, just happened to be a half step off on the header. Pretty unfortunate. But it felt, man, the stadium felt good. Like, we, you know, we scored.

It got called back, but we did score, so we're probably going to score again. Yes, that's the feeling. Yeah, that was the feeling. A couple Richard's giveaways, right, in the ninth minute, and then, I'm sorry, in the 10th minute, and then in the 11th minute, he almost immediately after the other giveaway, he plays a hospital. ball back to Turner. So Richard's, I thought Richard's kind of cleaned it up after this, but, you know, again,

the oopsies keep happening on that back line, particularly from Chris. Luckily Turner was alert to this one. He got it, he got to it and cleaned it up, but not good. Not good. Yeah, they stick in the mind because he's had several in the past games, but I think you're right. I think from that moment on, he was pretty solid. And again, we were asking a lot of those guys for seven minutes.

Okay, well now, you know, if you don't want to relive all this, turn it off now, because now the bad things start to happen. Panama ball is floated in from the left by Barsanas after some nice skill on the left sideline from their captain, Eric Davis. Cesar Blackman just plows through Turner as he jumps out to claim it. Turner gets upended, lands on his shoulder. It seemed like, I don't know, it seemed like kind of a dirty play. Maybe Turner needs to be a little more vicious. and the way he comes out here? I don't know.

What do you think? Yes, he does. Daniel Smith pointed this out too on Twitter. Turner's collection technique here is not ideal. He jumps, so he's facing his right sideline, which means his right foot is closest to the goal. And ideally, what you'd want to do is jump off of that foot to go collect this ball,

set your left foot, the one facing the field and onrushing players. You can lift up your leg and sort of give a big broad target for anyone to run into and and sort of like disincentivize them from running full speed into your knee. Yeah, by having your knee as the point of contact, right? Yeah, but he doesn't. He's jumping off. He's jumping off of that left foot.

And he just kind of almost goes straight up and he's kind of floating and drifting. And he's basically just completely exposed. Everyone is furious that this isn't given a card. And I think you, I think what Barton's interpretation of here, what he's interpretation of here, what he sees is I think he sees Jedi's forearm going into Blackman a little bit and giving him just a tiny little nudge. And once that happens, it's like tackle football where if you block a guy into the kicker, it's like, too bad, man. Like guys are running full speed. You give him a shove.

There's not much they can do. They're going to smash the kicker. Right. So I'm kind of sympathetic to the referee's decision here. I don't know if Blackman, you know, feeling that shove decides to take some liberties and, and, you know. wreck a guy that's exposed to getting wrecked. But it's a real tough moment for Turner. And again, he could easily have gotten hurt even if he does come out with the correct technique

because it's just a... There's a lot of momentum coming from Blackman there. Yeah. Well, it turns out to be quite consequential because Turner comes off at the half for Horvath. And, you know, we're still waiting kind of on an update on his status, the injury status for Turner. Almost immediately after the Turner injury stoppage, we get the worst news of the game right in the 16th minute.

Tim Way is kind of dancing around on the back line with Roderick Miller. They come together a couple times. And then Tim just, you know, I mean, I think there's other ways to describe it, but I think this is probably the simplest way. He punches him in the back of the head, you know. Miller goes down in a heap. It's initially a yellow. They look at the replay.

Each replay looks dumber than the last. And as a great friend of the pod, Joe Machinick said, Dr. Joe. Yeah. It's 100% a red card. And that is, I think, true. Come on, Tim. Yeah.

Like, you don't get it, right? There's no explaining it. I feel like everyone's going to try to explain it in some kind of, like, mentality way. Like, you're hearing, like, the guys are just so comfortable. because there's no competition for spots. And I don't know how any of that really gets you any closer to understanding the decision here. Like how do you explain Zadon headbutting a guy in the World Cup final? Like it just is a weird thing that happens sometimes.

The provocation didn't even look that extreme. No, it didn't. It looked like Way was just trying to reach out. It almost looks like Way is just trying to give a little shove because, you know, like tough guy shove. And it's almost like his hand like he's just too tall and his hand sort of slips over the shoulder blades and go into the guy's head. And that's it. I don't think he was like, I'm going to punch this guy in the head.

It looked a little more like I'm going to punch this guy in the head to me. Do you think so? But maybe not. I don't know. I mean, he's not going to do any damage. Like, again, like watching a tackle football player taking a swing at somebody still wearing a helmet. Like, you're going to hurt your hand here.

And you're not going to do any damage and you're going to get sent off. Yes. I've got nothing. Like, this wasn't after, you know, six. minutes of provocation from Panama. There hadn't really been anything in this game. We talked about getting drawn into these kinds of things in Concaf games, but there's nothing.

Like, yeah, they wrecked Turner. I don't know if it's trying to get back at them for that. Yeah, that thought occurred to me. That wouldn't really make that much sense either. No. Yeah, it was just like two guys jostling, and, you know, Tim looking to make a run in behind and kept getting kind of, you know, bumped at the line.

if you're a American football fan. And then he just punched him or accidentally hit him in the head with his closed fist. I guess however you want to say it. So after the game, big pro U.S. crowd had the win taken out of its sales there. I think it's fair to say. And then after the game, Tim posted some paragraphs to his Instagram story. He said, I'll just read it in its entirety because it's a big moment and a very big deal for this team. Today I let my team and my country down.

A moment of frustration led to an irreversible consequence, and for that I am deeply sorry to my teammates, coaches, family, and our fans. Moving forward, I am committed to learning from this experience, not allowing an opponent to provoke me and working to regain the trust and respect of my team and supporters. No matter what, I will always fight for my team in my country till the day I'm no longer needed or capable to.

I sincerely apologize to everyone, heart emoji. My love for this team goes beyond just football, and I'm so sad and angry at myself for putting my brothers through what they went through tonight. So there you go. Yeah, that about does it. So immediately, we've taken a, we've taken game that again, we don't know if we would have handled a business.

We would have been favored to. And we've just made it super interesting. Like, incredibly, we've just taken the difficulty meter and turned it to the right by quite a bit, which, you know, one of the problems, if you want to call it that, if you're a total sicko and think of games like this, with this Copa America draw is that it was going to be very, like we weren't going to learn anything about our team, we thought, because it's going to be easy game, comfortable game, potentially difficult but meaningless game, and then like super difficult game and we'll probably lose in a knockout.

And we won't know if we're actually getting better because we're jumping straight from, you know, regional minnows to global elite with no measuring stick games that are like intermediate. And so what we've done here is we've added an intermediate difficulty match 20 minutes into the Panama game. Yeah. Yeah. You saying we took the difficulty level and dialed it up. Kind of makes me think of that scene from Princess Bride, where Prince Humperting comes

into the pit of despair. And it's at, you know, they've been testing it at level one. and then he just like cranks it all the way up to level 10. And they're like, not to level 10. I think everybody knows the scene. Yes, we definitely got to level 10 by the end of the match. Yeah. 21st minute, really nice sequence from Raina to solve a scramble

and then swinging it out wide to Scali. This was actually very nice from Raina. And then Scali drives forward. And I've got the screenshot here in the notes. He's got Pulisic to slip into the box. It looks pretty straightforward. You know, Poulsick has maybe a near post shot attempt in the offing. Instead, he plays it behind him for a giveaway.

And Poulosick was not happy with that decision. Yeah, it's like a common error for people who aren't in these attacking reps very much to pass it where the player is rather than where they're running to. So he passes it right where Poolec's standing. But obviously, in a second and a half, Poolec's not going to be there anymore. So it's a little question. yards pass the spot. Just of note here, we're still, like, after the red card, we kind of switched into a 4-4-1.

So Poulsick, I'm sorry, so Giorina is still very much like a center midfielder with McKinney, and Poulsick had bent on the left side and kind of dragged all the way across the right side to try to get to this space. You kind of just, Scali was kind of just helping fill in. I'm sorry, Giorina was like the right side of the right side of the right. side of midfield or still, but he kind of was shading in. Okay. Where McKinney and Adams were. Poulsick was on the left.

Poulsick had dragged all the way across in this moment. Okay. I'm just bringing that up because later, even in this half, before we make all the halftime changes, you see a total, like, shift in our shape with respect to GEO and Pooley. Oh, yeah. So I am interested to hear more about the shape, how the shape evolves over the game. Definitely. I think everybody will be.

But first, let's talk about the U.S. goal. we murder ball our way to one. Jedi floats one to the corner for McKenny. He battles, and Farina plays a ball up the line on the ground under pressure from Wes, and Jedi steps in front and takes it on the fly, as he so often does. His touch goes straight to Ballo.

Ballo kind of backboards off of Jedi somewhat incidentally, I think. You know, Jedi just kind of reaches a foot back to kind of get some contact, and it goes, It goes kind of back in the direction of Ball. And Ballad just steps into it with his left foot and hits kind of a curling banger all the way off the far post, pings off the post and in, totally unstoppable. 1-0 USA, we're back. We're shooting ourselves in the foot, but we're doing okay.

It's funny because we shot ourselves in the foot several times on this exact sequence. It's a transition moment. We take it from Panama right at the edge of their attacking third going towards Turner. and Adams is on it and he actually like misses Bolligan early right and when you're playing 10 on 11 if you have a chance to get a guy in behind even if it's super like pretty low percentage

it's better than what you're going to see for most of the game so Adams actually misses a chance but Boloan sort of recirculates back to Jedi and Jedi's like well nerds to this like we still have two guys willing to run Weston's going now Bolo's going to go again I'm just going to float it up there and we'll see what happens so you know we don't get much out of it initially it's a turnover.

And then excellent step from Jedi. And then it's four straight mistouches, right? Jedi's big heavy touch to start this is certainly not an intended pass to Bolo, but it works that way. And then Bolo trying to like hit it to Jedi on the run is not very clean. It's a little behind him, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's a little behind Jedi going full speed, which somehow ends up working because it just

deflects off Jedi essentially, but we'll count it as a pass. for Jedi to set up Bolo, and now it's the shot of the ages, would be a shot for the ages if we get out of this with a draw or win. I mean, this would be the Bolligan goal. Yeah. Yeah, well, you know, if we're looking for silver lining, which I always am, Baligan's performance on the night was quite encouraging, and I think he's sort of erasing any of the striker controversy.

Maybe there never really was that much of one. But he looked really good in this game under very not ideal circumstances. So I guess silver lining is he's going to come into that Uruguay game full of confidence, I would think, and playing really well. Yeah, he was immense for us. And I am, I mean, we'll get into it later, but I am super curious as we get to it about what his data tracking was

for his like, uh, sport science stuff for his fitness. Like why he came off? Yeah. I mean, right? He was,

he was doing all the things that you need your striker to do in a game where they, they have almost nothing to do. But when it does get to him, they got to do something. And he was doing some things. He was like 100% receiving the ball. I mean, I may have been forgetting some things,

but it seemed like every time he received the ball, something good came from it. I'm often got to show up in these. Yeah, I'm sure they'll show up in these timelines. Yeah. Okay. Well, the fun from that goal doesn't last very long. The 26-minute Panama answers.

So inside of five minutes from our goal. Adams and Raina are for some reason both pressuring Christian Martinez out wide to our right. Martinez finds Karasquilla in a giant open area in the middle of our half. We're pretty disorganized. He turns and plays it to Blackman, who is not marked because Wes is attending to Karaskiya. Jedi has a wide player to tend to and the centerbacks haven't really sorted out that they are about to be hung out to dry at the moment

so we still need some things to go against us for this to be a goal and they do Blackman who has a player out wide right and like totally free to play it to he elects to take a right-footed shot it's blocked by Jedi but falls right back to him he takes a touch with his right foot across his body to his left

and then just kind of slides and shoots it with his left foot. It goes through Richard's leg, Richard's outstretched legs, and sneaks in low, down to Turner's right. It's one-one. Talk to me about Tyler Adams on this sequence. Okay, so this is a transition moment.

The whole thing starts with our goal kick, which we loft up, you know, three quarters away up the field, a little bit of head tennis, falls to Gio Raina, at his feet, he's got it under control. usually where Gio is our, you know, grown up, you can never take it off of him. He kind of gets laid down.

He kind of, somebody kind of runs through his right where his shoulder meets his back. So it's real close to being a foul. I think they actually look at it again before they give the goal officially. But, you know, they don't always get called. Gio didn't have any help to his right side because we're down a man. Scali wasn't up there yet. So he didn't have a lot of options. He just took a challenge and went to ground.

Panama now have a little bit of transition because Gio's on the ground. Pool Sick was up, Bala was up, McKinney was up. So Panama's running down our left side. I'm sorry, our right side, their left side. And they're attacking Joe Scali. They get an overlapper. But Tyler's Tyler's Tyler. He covers the ground, gets there to make it two on two.

Joe tracks the overlapper. Tyler now has the ball, forces the backward pass, right? So Tyler makes the guy pass backward. Everyone's done their job well. McKinney's tracked all the way back. He's filling the space ahead of the centerbacks. We've done everything right. The only problem now is as we force that backward pass, Tyler's job is sort of done here.

And his new job is to snap back into shape because Gio Raina is right next to the guy that they just passed it backward to. He's not under any real pressure. So just get our shape back. We watched the U.S. be super disciplined about shape against Brazil. Like this is, we are now, we're up one zero, we're down a man. This is just shape central. All that matters here is like maintain your defensive shape, make Panama go around your forefell. four one or try to go over it and discipline, right?

But Tyler just gets a little bit antsy. I don't necessarily know if I want to call it an extension of sort of that posturing that he likes to do. It's a bang, decision. He watches this ball go backwards and he's four steps away. Maybe he just doesn't know GEO's there and he thinks it's his job to be the next man up.

We don't have to come up in pressure this ball. We can easily just sag back. We killed off the transition, get back into a shape. you know, move, move, just move the amoeba around with the ball. But we don't. So Tyler runs up with it. Now we've got Gio and Tyler both standing right in front of a player who has wide open passing options. He makes the easy pass to the middle of the field.

Tyler turns as he makes the pass and like does Gio arms because he's like, why isn't everyone working as hard as I'm working? And Gio, I think is just like, well, why would we? Like, that's not what we're doing, buddy. We're down a man. our only job is to we're not doing murder ball like get out of murder ball mode so uh panama have mckenny pinned and and this isn't entirely on this of course this isn't on tyler adams entirely uh panama are still 40 yards from the goal um what happens next is a failure to act on the urgency of the situation so mckenny mckenny's half pressuring the ball he's in no man's land uh the pass gets made to the top of the box

behind mckenny and this is where mckenny and Gio both. Like, yeah, Gio can be frustrated that Adams kind of went rogue here. But once it's happened and you recognize that we're now, we've abandoned that area of the top of the box,

like we have to get numbers back there extremely quickly. There's a lot of urgency to do that, but we don't act with that urgency. So that penetrating pass goes to the top of the box, and McKenny and Giorina both just stop and stand straight up, which is, again, like, that's also totally unforgivable in a 10 v. 11 situation. So Jedi comes in from the outside to play this ball.

Tim Reams also there to help take away a shot. And McKenny should be able to disrupt immediately from the back. But he doesn't. He just stops and watches, Jedi. And the weak touch moves the shooter farther over towards Raina. And now Raina should be able to disrupt from the back. But he's not there either because he's also just stopped to become a spectator. And again, this is just for me, like Cardinal sins.

Like you cannot have guys be spectators in a 10 v. 11 soccer game. Richards is actually pretty desperately unlucky to not block this. We talk about blocking angles a lot, taking things away. He kind of actually does like a proper technique of like genuflecting. Like goalkeepers will do this too in point blank shot situations. And somehow the ball sneaks like right under his shin and nutmegs him as he's doing a genuflect. Like really unlucky not to block. this and of course that's the one spot that Turner can't get to because it's just inside the post

Richards was nominally taking it away. It hurts, man. That's my goal breakdown. Yeah, it sucks and you're still just like, okay, well, at least we got our strike out of nowhere, our bolt from the blue, so we're not losing at least. Now let's solve this. Even with all those failures, you know, from the midfield to track back, essentially, well, after the Adams kind of going rogue, it still,

was an extremely unlikely goal to be scored, you know? Yeah, we still had the shooter accounted for. The shooter is still accounted for by Ream and Richards. Like, they're both there, and he just gets a shot through them. But we could have had more disruption for the back. And again, you know, when we go back to 2009 in that U.S. Spain game, like, that's what you see. You just see guys so committed.

We're not even actually in like a low block in that game for the end. But once we are beat in those desperation moments, it's that commitment to desperation. defending that we have to have here in the 25th minute of a game 10 on 11. Yeah. Well, even when Jedi blocks the first shot, it's really unlucky that it just fell straight back to Blackman, too. What a bummer. Let's take a break here, because there's actually a lot less happening in the second

half that's, I think, discussable than in the first half. So let's do, let's take the break here. We'll come back and talk about the rest of the game. If you want to listen to scuff without any. ads. We're doing ads now in case you didn't notice. Come on down to the Patreon. All episodes are there without ads. Plus you get the Monday review. A group of hundreds of people to tailgate with at big U.S. games and access to the Discord server plus other perks and advantages.

So keep that in mind. We'll be back in a moment. Okay, we're back. And at the 27 minute mark, I'm going to say Turner's distribution continues to be pretty bad, plays a ball right to Martinez inside our half, leading to a chance coming right at us. And Panama is just kind of passing around the horseshoe, lumping, lumping crosses in for this portion of the game. Yeah, so just a quick minute on that 27-minute thing, because that is literally the kickoff. We kick it off, and this is embarrassing, too. When we take this kickoff straight back, as, you know, you take kick-offs, Tyler Adams and Weston McKinney are standing, like, holding hands. I was just like, what do we, we got ourselves in a spot where we have.

have terrible spacing on our own kickoff. It almost leads to a Panama chance because the knock-on effect is West scrambles to get it back to Richards, who like has to scramble to get it to Turner, who's under pressure. Turner should do better with it. But it's just a, like,

it's terrible. I mean, it's, it's, again, it's, that's another sort of like borderline slapstick moment that we took the kickoff while no one was actually ready for us to take a kickoff, 10 against 11. Oh boy.

this is getting worse you're not helping Greg you're not helping anything the the horseshoe stuff Panama was doing um I totally agree with that it sort of always felt like it might get dangerous because you know they're flinging balls into the box but it was really mostly just danger adjacent right there wasn't it was a lot of like crosses that would just harmlessly float out of bounds it wasn't a lot of like oh thank goodness uh you know we got somebody just got their head to this cross before Panama got onto it so they kind of got it and like what felt like it was going to be dangerous but then as soon as that ball actually went into the box, there wasn't a lot of danger for the next 15 or so minutes.

I think that's right, yeah. We do, however, look kind of rattled. Ream gets beat on a bouncing ball in our hour left corner. It's a cut back to Barsanas. The shot is blocked. It goes out to Davis. And this one actually did look dangerous. He whips a ball into the mixer.

It kind of sails through before Jedi touches it out of bounds. But, you know, there were a couple of points along the trajectory of that ball where somebody could have come in and tomahawked it in. Yeah, this one I'm caveatting because Ream gets beat on the bouncing ball and then he just stops playing. Like he just thinks the ball's going to go out of bounds. And again, we're back to like, we're back to like slapstick stuff. Like Jedi, Jedi is very angry once he has to clear this ball out finally for the corner.

And it looks like he's being angry at his full teammate Tim Riemere. Okay. You can't, like we cannot do, we cannot be inattentive to stuff. we're defending for our lives for the next 60 minutes, guys. Like, get with this. Yeah. You know, somebody on, I know Ream talked about the shape in the second half and what they were trying to do and what we were trying to do, that is.

And it just makes me think of this guy on Twitter Dom, or of bands, who is kind of a firecracker out there in social media, but he called when he he quote tweeted timway has instagram post and he called it a paragraph fc you know like like enough with the explanations let's just get it done you know yes like enough with the posturing like if you want to like really be the team it's not it's because you're in the right spot at all times not because you're like showing everyone how tough you are right or you know explaining it in detail afterwards So 33rd minute, we get an Adams turnover in midfield that leads to a bunch of those, I think,

danger adjacent crosses. And then a yellow card for Jedi. Yeah, Jedi has to take a yellow immediately after Adams turns it over. So this is another chance to break. I mean, this isn't Adams a strong suit, obviously, but he misses an early release to Christian Pulsick who, when Tyler Adams can give the ball to Christian Pulsick with a six, it wasn't like to put him in behind. It would have just been like shoving it seven yards ahead to a much.

better transition player. Or he could have just like sort of stepped on the ball and then switched it out to the right side to Geo, who had space out on that right side. Anything besides, take your own space, eliminate all the space you have with the ball and dribble into a tackle. Yeah. Then Jedi rushed in to try to eliminate Panama's transition moment, wrecked a guy and took a yellow once the whole play fizzled out.

Hmm. So it's been a couple of moments from Tyler Adams. Yeah. Okay, 37th minute, Ballo wins a free kick down in the corner. It does well to do this, I think. He's getting fouled by two guys at once. And then we get another good set piece from Pulisic. This is, I mean, another tiny silver lining is I think our set pieces are definitely better than they were a year ago.

Wes rises for this one, and I couldn't tell. They didn't really show a replay of it, but it either got headed away by the guy in front of him or he has just put off enough in his jump by the marker that his header goes wide. But it goes well wide. I do like the quality of the set pieces right now, though. Yeah, this is a dangerous one. I mean, if we're going to get a goal, we're going to get it off a set piece. It kind of felt like at this point, you know.

Or a Balo, another Bolo Thunderbolt. Yeah. I actually kind of thought Bolo didn't even get fouled on this play. There's some real good Western Hemisphere Tusslin in this match. Balo had a whole fistful of Jersey, stiff arming the guy the whole way into the corner. But yes, like grown man soccer from Fuller and Balagan. For sure, yeah.

And he, like I said earlier, he's having a good game. I think he draws another foul. There's another one later. We get in the 40th minute, a ball into the box for Pulisic from Raina. That kind of catches the production team by surprise. Pulisic, so it's a floated ball from about midfield diagonally into the box and Pulisic gets kind of bundled over as he tries to bring it down

maybe he's trying to shoot, I don't know, but no whistle it's claimed by Mosquera. Didn't seem like a big, you know, a big controversy of a no call to me, but there was a little bit of a shout, I guess. Yeah, and you're getting into like aggregate frustration where, you know, with the referee, people are frustrated because the Turner thing, probably even a little bit, even though it was obviously correct on the Ream off side on the disallowed goal.

Bolligan getting kind of the tussling. But I mean, partly it's like cowboy up. Like we know, again, we know what this is. We know that Panama aren't going to like be soft. We know that we can't count on like help from a referee and we shouldn't be counting on this stuff. Like we are the better team. Like cowboy up, take it and play, play soccer and like beat them with soccer. I don't know if I feel like an old man yelling at baseball unwritten rules or what, but

like all the all the begging for like Panama should have had more yellow cards. Like so what? Like how's that yellow card that somebody got going to help us? Yeah. I do think they probably should have gotten a yellow on one of the fouls on Balagan in transition. But yeah, it doesn't matter that much. Or really at all, to your point. So like instead of like moaning about the referee not giving yellow,

be like, hey, why don't, why are we as good at fouling as Panama were in this game? Panama is a master class up until the last seven or eight minutes until the ridiculous red card and then some danger set pieces that they probably shouldn't be giving us. But otherwise, like, they were, they were fouling brilliantly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, like when it comes to that kind of savvy, it turns out to be men against boys in this game, you know? The talent, talent only gets you so far. So we had a great chance, two and a half minutes into stoppage time.

It's a lovely ball from Joe Scally to balligan in behind. Ballo's second touch, maybe takes him a little bit wider to the right than he wanted, but he just smashes it. He goes for the Velazquez trademarked near post roofer. Post up top. Yep. Yeah. And smashes it off the crossbar.

Very close. Unfortunately, AR said he was offside, so kind of a moot point. But well, not necessarily moot because they waited. They waited to see if it goes in or not. So it's not moot. If it goes in, they're going to check it with lines. And if he's on by the technology, then we're up to one on another out of nowhere Thunderbolt. Okay.

So not moot. But I guess the check is moot because it didn't go in. Yes, there you go. Ballo, but Ballo, again, quite a good game from him. So I kind of want to get into the shape a little bit. Now, if that's okay. Well, let's get a half when we talk about the subs. Because then we'll talk about how the first half shape evolved

and what it looks like to start the second half. Okay, so yeah, the half arrives, and the substitutions are Horvath comes on for Turner. Again, he's probably hurt to some extent. CCV for Raina, a little odd, in my opinion, but that's what we did. And then Cardoso comes on for Adams. So tell me about how the shape changed in the first half and how the second half changed from the... So we talked about after the red card,

we went 4-4-1 was sort of the immediate response. After the halftime subs, we very obviously went 5-3-1. But after Panama's goal in the first half, you know, because there was that midfield disastrous play from

Adams, G.O. and McKinney. And there's some pools to get involved and even Bolligan, like the way we keep everything tight in that transition moment wasn't great team-wide. But the consequence or what started to play out after that goal was,

and I don't know if this is an instruction from the bench or if it's just Geo's sort of tendency towards energy conservation. But Geo basically became a de facto right wingback as we'd defend. So we would see a back five

for about 25 minutes of that first half, the last 25-ish. He sort of played that wingback role. The rest of the back line got to space out accordingly. So Jedi kind of shifted on the other side all the way, you know, towards the sideline.

And everyone kind of just evened it out. So it was kind of like a back three with Scali as the right centerback, essentially. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Scali sort of became a right centerback. And it was mostly working. Like it wasn't like Gio was a huge liability. But the trick of it was it was kind of like an adaptive 531 because at times when Panama would start to switch from one side of the other, Gio would step up into like the midfield

line and it'd go back to being like a four, four. one. And I thought this was, on the rewatch, I was like, oh, this is great because Geo's not expanding a ton of energy. It actually saves pool sick a little bit of energy for having to, you know, shift all the way across the field if we're doing three, if he's part of a band of three. The one consequence is it sort of does eliminate Geo as a transition, as an option in transition because he's so far wide and so far back in a sort of defensive posture that he's

not really going to be available right when we went it to find his feet and then have him move the ball up. But it's, in my mind, it's working. Like, this is, this is working. After that bolligan shot off the post in the 45th, 47th minute, this is when we do just sag completely. And Poulsick, again, I'm fine with this. It's like, okay, they see the clock in the stadium and it says 45 minutes. I'm fine with them being like, we're done basically playing soccer until half. Pool sick sag is back. And that's when you get the still frames of us having a six-man back line that I think the players talked about as as one of the reasons for the shift because that's you can't I mean that's too deep you can't you can't just sit there with six

two and then two midfielders so but that was that was just the very end of the first half that we got that we went to that sort of six-man back line so is it an explanation from the players that you don't find all that compelling since it's just like something that showed up in the very end of the first half well I mean again I don't know if that's the entire reason so So you think about what it looked like with Gio as playing sort of the wingback in its five. Panama still got some crosses off. Geo got like not skinned once, but like he overcommitted once and gave away a free cross. The cross sailed out of bounds harmlessly, but it's like, oh.

And then there was one other moment in the half where Panama did get a look where they hit a ball to the wide runner. They had the wide runner racing in on goal. And Gio left him for Scali. And Scali didn't quite catch it or was a little late. And so they did get a guy free, you know, towards the end line receiving a cross and trying to hook it back across for a chance. And so I don't know if something like that sort of Berhalter clocks that and sort of scares him. It's like, okay, Gio and Joe just it's not going to work to rely on Gio as a wingback. You know, why would we do that for 45 more minutes?

I'm just trying to figure out what went through Berlter's mind when he makes the choice to switch full on to a 532 with an extra centerback. Okay. Well, I guess that makes sense. So that's the 532 would be obviously CCVs back there, Scali and Jedi, the wingbacks. And then who are the two? It's Reema and Richard. So Ream is 11. 531.

531, I'm sorry. Remit left center back. Richards at right center back. And so this is, for me, this is really conservative. Which is it's not like obviously wrong. So that's what we're going to run into here as we talk about other alternatives is the other alternatives are going to be speculative. And the thing we actually saw in the field, we're going to have sort of the outcome bias because we know it did not work. We lost the game.

So the end result is we lost the game. That doesn't mean that these other alternatives would have been better decisions, even though they might have had better outcomes. I'm kind of just hedging there to say, I don't think we needed to take Gio Rain off the field at halftime. I think he was I think he had got we'd kind of solved it which however we got how we got we kind of had solved the spacing issue um geo wasn't going to like run himself silly it could have helped pool sick not run himself silly uh and really importantly our sub situation was brutal because we had enforced subs for Turner and Adams uh and we're down a man so to use a sub for geo reyna who still has legs um is really it really kind of hurts our

our end game scenarios. So we could have, we could have kept Gio on the field and still had him available for however we might need to use him later. I know the goal they scored was so late that it might not have mattered anyway, but you don't know that. Like if you might be able to be like, well, if we give up a goal in the 65th minute,

we still have Gio Raina on that. We haven't removed G. G.O. Raina and we can still, you know, reshape ourselves so that he's in more of an attacking role as we chase a goal. So anyway, I'm just, I'm just kind of putting that out there because that was, that's sort of one of the big decisions Greg Burrhalter makes in this game is how we're going to make the full-on adjustments once we take this red card.

Well, it certainly, yeah, well, it certainly wasn't, the conservative nature of that decision wasn't vindicated in any clear way. I mean, like, we didn't create a lot of chances in the second half. So the vindication would come from Panama's chances. Did Panama get a ton of chances in the second half? And that's where, you know, I would say no. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think Tim Riem said the same thing. You're also, again, as you're trying to judge these hypotheticals against what really happened, you also got like sort of another shocker from the centerback who comes into the game in Cameron Carter Vickers. So if you know he's going to have a shocker, you don't do this. But you don't really think he's going to have a shocker when you make this change. If he has, you know, a Walker Zimmerman last 10 minutes against Iran performance, then probably everyone in this community is having a totally different conversation today

than what we're having. He had sort of a Walker's in room last 10 minutes and into Wales performance and now where we are where we are. It's not, it is not entirely on Cameron Carter-Vickers. I want to make clear. But, you know, that's going to go into how you judge the decision is how CCV actually played as that extra man who came on

as we removed GORRA. Yeah. Yeah. hindsight doesn't look great. So, I mean, we might as well get into that right away. The first thing that CCV does that's not ideal is he gets whistled for a penalty in the 62nd minute. Martinez floats a ball in from the right side, from Panama's right side.

It's knocked down in the box. And Fajardo gets there first, Jose Fajardo, the eventual game-winning goal score. And CCV goes hard to ground. and the ref it looks like he gets him in real time. The ref says whizzles it as a penalty, points to the mark. But on video review, which takes a while, it's taken away because basically the ball was gone before there was any contact between the two and it didn't look like it looked like Barado just sort of fell on to CCV.

So not really a foul, but I think just from an optical point of view, kind of a reckless way to go into a challenge there. from CCV. It's like kind of studs up. Yeah. I mean, it's super reckless. I mean, you could say he just knew that he was going to not run through the man

so he knew he could go in, you know, with a ridiculous blocking posture. But, you know, he'd already, this was his second video review for a penalty. He'd already just gotten away with with one, again, probably the correct call five minutes earlier at the edge of the box. This was after a

Johnny mishap. Johnny came in. Oh, where he gets, where he gets, You're talking about the one where CCB gets magged and then he pokes it away. Yeah. It's maged and then really scrambles to try to get a touch on it and does disrupts it. But it's real tight. And you're just like, okay, he did it.

So again, it's that fine line between great recovery and technique, I guess, and reckless. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, Johnny. What about John? Adam's overcommitting. Johnny was just as guilty of it for his 45 minutes, if not more. So we didn't look like a team that had the right mindset for protecting our goal in a low man block, which is what we obviously elected to do.

When we went 5-3-1, we were like, we will just protect and we'll see if maybe Jedi, Pulisick, McKenny, and Bolo can get out on the run at some point and make something happen. But everyone else, your job is to protect the goal. Yeah. you know, the more I listen to you, Greg, the more I'm thinking or halt her out. Like, it doesn't, like, what's, uh, it's a lot of problems. I, I think, I think it's perfectly defensible to, to make the 531 choice.

Uh, I think it gets, the enforced subs do make it trickier to take Gio Raina out, but there are plenty of, uh, universes where this game does finish 1-1. Uh, and, and you say, yeah, it was the right, it was the right choice to go with, you know, the ultra-protective route. But I also think there was a combination of choices. So going to the 5-3-1 is defensible, but then I don't think it was defensible to leave the three as the three for the full second half. I think that's where it's like, if you're going to do this, you have to know they can't,

like Christian Pulisick in particular, is not going to be able to keep up like the energy necessary to be in that three-player band and be like one of the few guys that we can counterattack through. and cover as much ground as we're going to need to have him cover for 45 minutes. Again, comparing to other sports, that felt very much like a baseball, an American baseball manager leaving a pitcher in for one too many batters. Yeah, which can often be a fatal decision.

Cross sport reference. The game continues and it's pretty choppy. as you might imagine. Horvath plops one out of bounds with his clearance in the 69th minute. I only notice it because he just does not look confident back there. And I know you'll probably chalk that up to Bells being a mystic, but it doesn't. He just looks, he has the look of a deer in the headlights a little bit.

Oh, he has the look of a sort of an inflatable marketing tool outside of a used cardiorship. His limbs on that save he had are just going every which way. I have no idea how he's got those things under control. I do want to hear about what you think about the goal, but we'll get to it. So 70th minute chance for the USA. Pulisic works a couple guys on the left side. I think there was some nice buildup,

which I'm sure you'll describe for us. He plays Ballo in with a nice little reverse, you know, sort of sliding past through the line, through the back line, Ballo runs onto it and then cuts onto his right foot and has one that bends and just misses the far post. Really, I mean, by the standards of this game, a very good chance.

And I think Balo even had some, you know, potentially some runners in the box. Not much to look at there, which is why he shot, in my opinion. But it was a good shot and it didn't miss by much. Yeah, it would have taken, like, elite vision for him to see Poulsick cutting, knifing through, like the grid of Pan-on players

because we did not bring players up for this attack. And we shouldn't. This is the right thing to do. It's just to be like, what can Pulisic do? The build-up wasn't much to speak of. It was CCV in the box, you know, collecting the ball, just playing it out wide to Jedi.

It was just wide of our box, and Jedi just made a simple, you know, around the corner pass to Pulcic. So Pulcic collects it in our defensive third. And this is just all Christian Pulcicic. And this is, again, sort of what the hope is. The hope is that the, 531 will be defensively resolute and then we will get some kind of an attacking miracle

from our elite attacking player and he just I mean he just about delivers here so he he dribbles through four players eliminates him and then has an outstanding reverse against the grain pass to bolligan on his run and bolligan does really well with his footwork to even create the shooting window from a really narrow angle and and it's close right? Like if it was a little bit worse, then maybe McKinney does sneak onto it at the far post and tap it in. But this is really what you're hoping to get out of a 45-minute game, down a player.

Right, right, right. So then Ballot gets taken off for Pepe in the next really meaningful moment in the game, 71st minute. So this is where I think this is where I think this is, like, effectively I think this is a pretty, big mistake. I think it's a big mistake. Again, I'm sure there would be arguments that it's not, but if Bolligan isn't fitness, like a fitness withdrawal, I don't understand using a sub here. When you've already had to use three subs, PEPI is not, in my estimation, like a signature

talent at any one area of the game that he is going to help you here, whereas Bolligan very much is clearly a talent in this way. So even though PEPI contributes to scoring chance, like later on, like using the sub is really expensive in my mind. So if we are going to sub Balagan out, I wanted to bring in a midfielder. I would have brought in Eunice Musa and then move Pool Sick up top. And again, that's just to save Pool Six legs. If you track who is covering a bunch of ground, Balogan mostly gets to stay in a, he's got to be alert, but he's staying in a pretty tight radius of movement as we're in our

low block. So moving Pool Sick into that block or into that roll saves his legs and you keep on the field should you need to chase a goal later and you replenish the legs in that three-man band that is doing so, so much work. So I thought this sub was a mistake. I didn't understand the rationale for it. Yeah. And also, I mean, just on a more sort of layman's level, Ballot was playing really well.

And yeah, unless he was, you know, unless there was some secret science behind it. So even if there was, even if there was fitness and he had to come off, in my mind is like move pool sick up there right pool sick rest up top and musa on and you've got you've got you've got some another player who can who can create a downhill run uh on his own which right have some value in a game like this and if there's one player on the team you'd rather you you you maybe slightly prefer to balo running onto a ball in behind it's it's pool of sick you know like if we're going to play a long ball to somebody pool six a good one to play it too so i feel like that's sort of the last big decision.

You know, once we give up the goal, Sergeant comes, but whatever. And they're all the ones we've talked about, I feel like they're marginal calls. I don't know that any of them are, would be super definitely mistakes for what Burrlder's doing. I think, again, I think the peppy one is, but I mean, you're bringing a striker on late in a game.

It's not unheard of to do that. So, I don't know. It's, it's a, it's a tough one for the, how did Burrhalter handle the match stuff, but I feel like the combination of choices was definitely not ideal to put us in a position for the last 20 minutes of the game. When at this point, again, even after this run from Pulisic,

I feel like this took a lot of his legs away too for what he's able to do now, defensive shuttling-wise. Okay, so Panama gets a pretty good chance in the 73rd, cutting through our left side after a peppy giveaway on his first touch. but no goal 81st minute long ball from Jedi to Pepe this is I think the chance you're referring to that Pepe contributed to

Peppy flicks it flicks it wide for Wes with his head does well there West drives at the end line and then stands a ball up to the back post for Pepe I mean you know sort of a zipped Tim Wea cross here probably probably Pepe gets a better chance to score

but as it was he's he tries to head it kind of leaning back on a ball that doesn't have a ton of velocity on it and it's just sort of claimed fairly easily by Mosqueda. Another, you know, should have could have, maybe Pepey should have taken it down with his chest and then decided what to do. He had enough time probably to do that. But really our last, well, other than a set piece in stoppage time, our last chance of the game. Yeah, I mean, I'll be a little less forgiving in the sense of what the decision was.

Like the decision in my mind is a bad one from Pepe. It happens and it's going to be magnified in a game like this where we are creating so little by design effectively. But Pepey has to know that he cannot score with his head with the way it's set up. And what he effectively does here is the same thing a good centerback would do in this situation, which is to nod it calmly to your goalkeeper. So he ends the attacking play that we've done really well to create when he either, if he wants to score first time, you know what I'm going to say.

if he wants to actually put power on a shot from right here, he needs to do a bicycle kick. And you can kind of say I'm taking the piss, but that's not an impossible technique to execute there to put power on the ball. Otherwise, he can easily extend the play by instead of directing his header towards goal, directing it back to the six-yard box

where Poole-Sick is waiting all by himself. So if this is Olivia Giroux, this is, he nods this down, no questions asked, nods it down and pool six smashes it from five and a half yards the only defender there's one defender with pool sick and peppy both he commits to closing down the cross where peppy's going so he's racing to the cross it would wrong foot him and it's it's us taking a lead if we just nod this down to christian pool sick dang it's it's mean it's it's one chance you you got to create a lot a lot of chances to get

everyone to do everything right every time or one time i should say so um yeah this is just a the wrong choice in a big moment by Pepe. Man, I'm very sad right now. 83rd minute, Panama scores their goal. It's a, you know, sustained spell of pressure in our defensive third, lots of blocked shots and resoluteness from us.

But it falls to Ayurza, who had subbed on. Actually, he kind of heads it to himself out wide and then just turns and whips it across to Fajardo at the near post. It totally catches CCV by surprise. He's just asleep for a couple beats. And Fahardo gets there with room

to spare, sweeps it right at Horvath on the half folly. And it goes right through his hands, and it's a goal. Just disastrous, devastating. And I mean, CTV knew immediately that he hadn't been lively enough. I wonder what you think of, could Horvath have done better there? I mean, you got both hands on the ball. I don't really put it on Horvath. He got hands to the ball, but it's hit with a lot of venom. The guy's like five yards away. It's changing direction so quickly from the cross to the shooter.

I got a lot of leeway for goalkeepers in that situation. So, yes, he can save it. It would be a really good save if he puts enough on his tips, fingertips to, you know, get it over the bar or just wire to the post. But it's not anything I'm going to be like, it's certainly not a howler or any kind of a shocker. So we needed, we needed him to come up with a save to get a result and he didn't, but it's not changing my rating of Horvath on this play. Okay. I imagine you are unhappy with CCV though.

I am. He's the fresh legs. Like this sequence is just a who's who of who's got heavy legs. for the entire thing. Once again, it starts off on a Panama throw-in. We have our issues with throw-ins under this regime. So Panama throwing at midfield, the announcer said that it looked like the U.S. thought it was our throw-in,

so that's how badly caught out we were. They'd get it behind Jedi. Ream comes over and mostly deals with it. And then he just kind of, he's tired, so he's stopping. We try to rondo our way through it a little bit. So I guess we deal with a throwing initially. And then we try to do a little rondo on that left sideline, ends up with pool sick. He gets it kind of nicked from him.

And now it's like, now it feels like a 45 second hockey short-handed like desperation sequence where we are like trying to throw bodies in front of whoever has the ball in between them and the goal. But we're always a little bit late. You know, they tiptoe right past Johnny on the on our right side of the box in the sequence. Jedi and Ream are sort of standing straight up at times because they just, I think they're gassed. Pool sick is wiped out. So right before the cross, that ball does get kind of floated back in the box

right in between Jedi and Pool Sick. And neither of them have like the explosiveness to get there and win it. This is after Jedi's already hit a really weak cross again, and most likely because he's got nothing left in his legs. And so not only does Jedi not win. win this ball in between him and Pulisic to deny the cross, but he kind of can't, he kind of tries to win it in a way that takes him out of the play completely.

And Pulisick doesn't have anything left to sort of make up for Jedi being out of the play. So you do just see the fatigue kicking in. And it's where I think we, we did need to make, uh, we needed to replenish that back line with a sub. And we just, we didn't do it.

The back, the back, uh, eight somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, CCV is not, Yeah, I mean, I know I'm going to fixate on the crucial moment, but CCV, I don't know what he's doing.

He's like kind of pointing behind him for somebody to pick up a different guy as the ball is played. And I mean, a little bit of credit to Iarza here. He kind of is very alert and just kind of quickly plays a ball that I don't think is super expected by everybody, you know, for him to just swivel and whip it in. Yes. Oh, for sure. But, you know, CCVs got to, he cannot get beat to the spot by two steps like that. I mean, it's, it's, um, come on, man. Yep, he's, he's got to be tighter.

Dempsey said this and Dempsey was 100% correct. Like, Ccv has to be tight on that player. I think, I think he's trying to set up, uh, a shape because RIM kind of ends up totally out of the play. So CTV, CCV is trying to like organize now that, uh, Reme is out wide. Rames kind of taking himself out wide towards the edge of the box. And so, yeah, so CCV needs to know that, like, he has to be touch-tight on that man because you're not bracketing anybody anymore. You have to, you have to be directly on that player.

Yeah. But it's just, it's rifled. Like, it is rifled into the top of the net. So, I'm saying for Horvath. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Only other really notable things are Karaskiya sort of in a moment of extreme cynicism.

I don't even know. Is it even cynicism or madness? I don't know. Just chops down Pulisic from behind just totally swings and comes right through his foot. Straight red. Pulisic's furious. Calls him a B word as he runs up and shoulders him in the chest, knocks him down. Richards gets a yellow in the ensuing scrum. I'm not sure why to this moment.

I guess he was like talking to Kataskiya where he was on the ground. So Kareskia sent off, which I, you know, that, I mean, maybe that helps us with the Bolivia result. It does. It does. Yeah, it absolutely does. For sure. So Panama's got to rack up goals and they've got to do without their best player. So that matters.

Yep. So thank you for that, Alberto. And, you know, tactical yellow on Farina, chopping down Jedi on the break. look like maybe a little bit of a promising moment. And then we get a set piece, which is our last action of the game, really. Pulisic curls it in. Richards has a chance to steer it on frame. He just can't quite get over it and pops it up in the air.

And that was it, pretty much. On to Arrowhead Stadium. Yes. See you in Kansas City. Pretty devastating. So we're now going to Uruguay. Again, we're not out of the tournament. We've made the job a lot harder.

When the groups were announced, it sure felt like, okay, we will get out of the group. And maybe we still will. We've just made, we'll just have to do it the hard way. Uruguay basically already through. And, you know, now I'm hoping that the temperature just keeps increasing on the forecast because I just want to have Uruguay not care because it's 110 degrees, whereas we will run through the discreet. comfort of that heat because it's our only way to stay alive. So that's my big hope is that the heat and humidity put Uruguay in a different mindset.

Yeah. Biels is known for taking days off, right? Yeah. I mean, he's like saying, I saw a quote from him on Twitter earlier where he said basically, we haven't accomplished anything yet in this tournament. We have everything to prove. I'm like, what a humble, what a humble guy. Yeah, so let's pray for no thunderstorms to come through and, you know, break the humidity and the heat and for it to get worse and worse.

It does, you know, I said this on the calling show last night, but somebody at the tailgate was saying after the game, you know, from their perspective, it's a win-win. Because either we get, on Monday, either we get grouped and Burrhalter gets fired or we have a moment of extreme glory. the national team and beat Uruguay. I guess I'm not so much frustrated with Burrhalter because of the specific decisions

in this game, you know? Like to your point earlier, it's just the, like that first goal, the sort of all these like piled up missed responsibilities and lackadaisicalness.

It can't, we can't just keep having that happen. Like, to a certain extent that is on the coach, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And, yeah, setting the team up to defend, whether it's, whether it's full on, you know, down a man situation or whether it's just in a short term localized, you know, transition moment where you're down numerically. Like, you have to be able to make those decisions to prioritize the most dangerous areas. So, I mean, again, total. discipline issue there from several players, not just Tyler Adams, who sort of laid a lot of it at, but it's lots of players who didn't prioritize the most dangerous area. Right.

Well, in Geo, you were talking about how Geo wasn't there to cover when, I'm sorry, when Blackman makes that touch to his left. But also, Geo could have noticed that Tyler was maybe a little overextended and then rushed over to get in front of Kataskiya, which would have allowed West to rush. over and get in front of Blackman. But there's just none of that like urgency, like you're, you were saying, that's, you know, that's a big problem. And it was, it was a part of the, yeah, I was going to say it was a part of the Netherlands thing, the Netherlands lost. So having that, having those center midfielder's, our most defensive-minded center

midfielder, we tend to think of as being Tyler Adams is also sort of our least disciplined in the positional sense, where he'll, he'll go. flying out because he's so confident in his ability to disrupt whenever he arrives. And it's like, well, you're not always going to. And if, you know, you're relying on G.O. Raina to cover you every time, like, maybe, maybe that's not good math. Yeah. Dark day. Are we going to, do we talk about then what the, what the Burrhalter prospects are? Do we wait and wait and let him finish the test? The test in my mind once he's, since he was rehired, was always about like, okay, well, you know, assuming we didn't

get totally embarrassed in games against Mexico and Nations League stuff, it was going to be the Copa. Like, that's the test, and we'll see how he evolves from the World Cup to now. So the test isn't over yet. Again, he's, he's left himself very few outs, but they exist. And if he gets, if he manages it, then in a sense, does that prove that he can manage it? Or is it just a, does it stay awash if we get out of the group? Because it's like, yeah, he did something difficult, but he made it difficult.

his group. It's his program. I don't know. To your point a few episodes ago about how ugly that Columbia loss was, and even if we do get out of the group and sort of do the, you know, essentially the bare minimum, which is required of us, I think, in this tournament, he's still probably out. Am I quoting you correctly?

That's what I kind of figure. Especially if it was just like non-competitive bare minimum. So we beat the easy teams and then we're non-competitive against the tough teams. But this kind of throws a curveball, right? Because to get out now, we have to compete. Does it does not matter because the team we're going to beat could be on vacation and that could be why we beat them. And then if we get rolled in the quarters non-competitively.

Yeah, I don't know. I would, you know, to be a fly on the wall of Cindy Parlo-Cone's hotel room, I don't know what she thinks about it. They should be making calls. They should be putting out feelers yesterday. To me honestly, probably should have been doing it again right after the Columbia game. Like get some, start making the connections for Wilfred and her,

Irv. How do you say it? Probably Irv, yeah. Ev. A spot on for both of us. Perfect pronunciation. dump a little bit more funny into the, into the Rhino recruitment plan.

Yeah. Rhino being Pellegrino, Matarazzo. There you go. Just for those of you not tracking with that. Yeah. It's just frustrating to see, like, we're not,

we don't have the urgency we need. And, you know, playing pickup, if you'll indulge me for a second, playing pickup yesterday, it seems like a lot of times, the distance between a player who, sort of recognizes what's happening in a moment and, you know, is like rushes to address it. You know, you can see that at every level.

It's like, and this is obviously very high level stuff to say, oh, Tyler's out here. And I mean, you know, not talking about it from the blaming Tyler point of view, but just for, let's say, from Geo's point of view, for him to say, oh, Tyler's over extended over here, I have to rush over and put pressure on Kadaskia. That is like really, you know, you've got to be really thinking through the game or at least, you know, so I don't think it's easy stuff. But like at the lowest level, the ball gets played to you. Do you notice that somebody is coming? Do you step to the ball, you know? That like little bit of recognition is a big part of soccer. And for us to consistently not do it at this like really high level is frustrating to me.

and I think it ultimately falls on the coach, ultimately falls on the coach. I agree with that full stop. Like, you know your player tendencies. You know that Gio might need a little bit more coaxing. Again, he certainly wasn't like a zero defensively or anything. No, no. But just, again, in those most urgent moments,

to not turn into a spectator. And whether that's Gio, again, West was doing it against Columbia. Wes was pretty solid tonight, but he did kind of coast on that first goal for a minute. That's, again, that's the margin.

Yeah. And then that's not even getting into the, I mean, I guess the key thing here was obviously Timwaya getting sent off for, for sure. Like no reason. Yeah. So.

One other little bit, because it kind of, it kind of like doesn't come up in the discourse anymore. because the players he's selecting now are not like the obvious scapegoats. But player selection should still matter here, right? So, you know, like he chose to put in CCV instead of any other alternative centerback. And CCV had a nightmare against Columbia and CCV had a bit of a nightmare last night. And I feel like there is this sort of tendency to not specify which players he's picking that are screwing up now

because a lot of them are like the players we have wanted to see for a long time. Like we wanted CCN. He comes in and doesn't do it. And it's like we got to say, all right, we've kind of asked for CCV. We've asked for Johnny. Johnny was rough in his 45 minutes too. And so it starts to be like, is, is it on, do we, that criticism should be of the players, but Burhalter picked him.

Like Musa is sitting there and we know what Musa can do. So even going Johnny over Musa, that's Burholter. call. And so even though a lot of people have been really high on Johnny, was he the right choice over Musa? It does seem like just for the game state and everything, Musa is, this is a game that's perfect for him, not perfect for him, but he is the perfect person to do have the most impact for us when we're down a man, you know, his ability to carry the ball and cover ground and everything. I don't know, man. I have no doubt that

that like even as marginal as these calls are I don't think it's just going to be a straight like he didn't get out of the group so he's out I think you definitely have to assess you know what pieces led what you know what caused us to not get out of our group I mean maybe not maybe you don't have to maybe it literally is as easy as saying no we're the US we're playing the cop on in the United States like yeah he's gone we got to we got to just move on that's the right corporate play

at the very, you know, at the very least we'll be able to find somebody as good, which is almost certainly the case. Yeah. I think a lot of people, you know, nobody likes to, a lot of people don't like Alexi Lalas, but I think he said something towards the beginning of the Copa that is true. He said they, this team needs to show people that they should, you know, needs to show people that they should be excited about this team and show people that there is like a,

like something to really. get taken with, get swept away with. And I feel like people want it, you know? There's like the stadium last night. It's full of kids, you know, like a very, I know I always talk about this stuff, but a very diverse crowd, mostly wearing U.S. jerseys. It's like, people are ready.

They want to get excited about this team, but, you know, that's not going to do it. And getting grouped at the cope is not going to do it. And so yeah, I think, I don't think there's enough time even just from like a plain like on paper like optics point of view. You got to fire him if we don't get out of the group. Yeah, I think that's the case. And again, I think there are options out there that are attainable. That would be sort of easy.

I don't want to say easy, but I think I think you could get them. I think that, you know, Aerve is a world traveler, so it's not like we are at a lot of, a lot of the coaches that get floated, the names that get floated, you know, end up coaching like in their home country

or like right next to their home country. Erv will go wherever. We can get air on a plane. Yeah. We can get a meeting. He'll take the job for sure. Maybe we could convince Wilfred to do it too, you know. He would do it.

I feel like you would. I feel like going from MLS to the national team in the United States, I feel like that is a coaching status upgrade. And, you know, the U.S. soccer is sort of legally obligated to hire their coaches from the Columbus crew. It's a perfect synergy. For the record, I don't. No, I'm sorry. Hopefully we get to have this exact same conversation heading into the quarterfinal.

That's what I'm really going. Okay. Yeah, then it becomes even more complicated, doesn't it? But yeah, I don't, just for the record, I don't think it's a win for us to get grouped at the Copa. I don't think that's a good thing. I was just quoting somebody else. Oh, I got you.

I'm glad you clarified. Yeah. You actually do need to clarify. I'm sure there are people who want us to get grouped at the Copa. Yeah, well, there are people who want that just to get rid of Burrhalter. I'm not exactly in that. I'm not exactly in that group. But anyway,

Everything to play for on Monday And you know Greg you'll be there I'll be there Vince will be there We should have a great time Maybe a bit more tense than some of the past Tailgates But we'll be there Lot G

Arrowhead Stadium starting around 330 I wonder if it'll show up in the pickup game I wonder if like the pickup game People will be like if that edge will be there for everybody I'm wearing chaggars I'm going to get sent off like three times Yeah

No I'm not I don't I'm not a touch tough tackler for the record at the right age of 41. So thank you, Greg. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.