Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #508: Copa — USMNT v Uruguay recap

Episode Date: July 4, 2024

Full recap of the loss to Uruguay -- a decent performance in a vacuum, but again we see the naivete of the USMNT in contrast to the focus and pragmatism of the Uruguayans. Plus discussion of potential replacements for Berhalter. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the SCuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody. USA's Copa America is over, out with a one-zero loss to Uruguay in Kansas City. Greg, how are you doing? We're still in a bit of morning, I think, Bells. How are you all? I'm, yeah. I'm still sort of trying to figure out how I think about it all, but, you know, people are demanding that we take a stance on Burrhalter. Oh, that won't be hard. Psychologically, again, it just feels like we shifted our must-win game for this tournament, right? We knew after we saw the draw that we were going to be like probably looking at a must-win game against Brazil or Colombia in the knockouts because we kind of took for granted that we would take care of business against Bolivia and Panama.

Uruguay would just kind of be a fun bonus as a last group stage game. but because of our pants beating against Panama, we now just moved it up a scale. And Uruguay is a similar caliber team of Brazil, Columbia. So it's like, okay, well,

now this is our first knockout game. And we lose the bonus fun game against Uruguay, and now we just have our actual must-win game against an elite opponent one game sooner. And, you know, the caveat being it's not a must-win game for Uruguay, like a knockout game would be. for Brazil or Columbia.

Like, very obviously, Uruguay were here to watch a clock tick for 90 minutes while playing extremely good soccer and then get out of there. Yeah, yeah. The instinctive game management from Uruguay in this game is pretty, you know, sort of team-wide, collective understanding

of what is required and then execution on that front. Pretty start. contrast to the USA in this tournament. And I guess that's, well, go ahead. No, that's a, it's a huge takeaway. Again, where we tend to just like complain about refereeing and that stuff when we're presented with opponents who engage in this kind of very savvy play, these other squads are

just, again, handling their stuff. kind of made a half joke in the Discord that other teams are even better at complaining to the referees than we are. We complain to the referees in ways that can actually really hurt us competitively. Yeah. And other teams just seem to have a better knack of like managing, managing, massaging these situations. Yeah. That sounds right.

And, you know, in a vacuum, this performance wasn't that bad. It was, we put, I think it's fair to say, O'Duguay a little bit on the back foot early, and they decided to foul us every time we got, we dribbled into the attacking third. I think the referee should have shown yellow a little bit when you get like six fouls in five minutes of the exact same type. But like you said, you can't just sit around complaining about the ref.

You got to do something about it. Yeah. So Uruguay slowed the game down in that way, dared us to beat them on set pieces, and we couldn't do it. And I guess I sort of liken it to Uduay defending set pieces. You get the sense that that's like some kid in Indiana in the 1970s learning how to box out, you know? They're just right at home, right? Yeah, that's like that is that that is they were born for that. So even though we were, even though it was exciting to see us pushing for a goal and being energetic and, you know, having the right level of intensity, which we didn't have against Panama, I don't think.

It still didn't really come to anything, you know? Right, right. Well, it obviously didn't come to anything, but it didn't even, none of the set pieces, even though they were a lot of good deliveries and everything. We just weren't really that close. And again, I feel like there's some, the real savvy here of Uruguay. is, yeah, they're daring us to beat them a set pieces. But they're also like daring the referee to keep calling it. You know, like we see this in other sports in the U.S., like, you know, in basketball,

if you keep getting physical, referees just don't want to call a foul every trip down the floor. Right. Eventually they start to shade their calls. And this ref started like waving our players up more and more often. Now, to be fair, it's hard to know. I mean, some of them might have just been borderline. Yeah. Again, that's just that's savvy stuff from Uruguay, I think, to, one, recognize a ref who's in way over his head, just totally out of his depth, which I'm fair.

I think it's totally fair and obvious to say that. But then, what do you do with that information? Once you recognize it, what do you do with it? And yeah, Uruguay just are, I mean, the guile, it's like almost a skill. Some of it, I'm sure is cultural, like growing up with the game, you just, that's just absorbed, it's just ingrained almost. But we lack it in a lot of areas, in a lot of key moments. And that's the, so to move to the subject of Burrhalter,

which like you said, it's not going to be hard. I think we're both pretty clearly Burrhalter out at this point. I mean, I am. And let me explain why. I think Burrhalter has actually accomplished some things with this team. I think he has elevated, has helped the team, elevate its ability to play with more ambition.

So I think we are more likely now as a group to take the game to a team like Uruguay than we would have been four years ago, five years ago. And maybe that's all just because of the quality of the player pool and it has nothing to do with Burrhalter.

But I don't, I think Burrhalter's emphasis on playing with the ball, you know, famously disorganizing the opponent with the ball and trying to get good at that has actually borne some fruit. And so I sort of, I credit Burrhalter a little bit for that. The problem is that that's not the only thing you need to win soccer games. You know, you need a lot of other things.

You need a consistent level of intensity, even against Panama, you know. And you need to adjust. You need to be able to adjust when things don't go your way. against Panama. And I don't think, I mean, there's no evidence that we are anywhere closer to being good enough at those things than we were four or five years ago. So, yeah, we need to change. I mean, we need to change just for the pure optics of it. You can't go out of the group in the Copa America and keep your job. I mean, that's just it. Like, it's done. But I think on a more substantive level, I think the other parts of the game, the game savvy, the sort of in-game adjustments that

we need to make. They're not, they haven't been good enough. And, um, yeah, we, we mail it in too often. We are a little bit too mistake prone and, um, naive. So for those reasons, I'm out. Okay. All right. Uh, so I'm going to, I'm going to, uh, half agree. I'll just kind of, you know, when you talk about, we're more likely to try to disorganize the opponent with the ball. For me, disorganizing the opponent with the ball to create scoring chances has been close to an abject failure through Burrhalter's reign of doing that. I know we have like the nice highlights against Iran, a nice goal against Iran. But, you know, we've been able to disorganize the opponent sporadically with the ball for every manager we've had. I don't think we have consistently disorganized opponents with the ball to set up, you know, good to elite opponents with the ball.

Any really better than what we've seen from a lot of other eras in the U.S. I think what Burrhalter's big success is is through that possession, through that possession shape and most of the roles that people have in that shape, he's created an incredibly stable structure that denies opponents wide open spaces to attack in. John Mueller, dummy run, asked that great question in the press conference after one of the friendlies. I don't know if it was Brazil or Columbia. It might have even been after the Bolivia match. But he basically asked, I mean, he mentioned that first comment from Burrhalter about disorganizing the opponent ball and he said do you feel like now you're more of a rest defense team like are you a program

that is basically just you know all about rest defense and i think that is precisely what we are and have been for a large portion of the burhalter era uh we we don't give up a ton of chances uh in our losses and our wins and i feel like that's actually led to uh almost like a stabilizing effect on our outcomes too. The whole signature win discourse, right, is about why haven't we beaten an elite team? And again, most of the times in the U.S. historically, that has basically just been a function of luck. Like we've had a really good goalkeeper performance stood on their head, denied, you know, Casey Keller against Brazil, Tim Howard against Spain. And combine that with like some elite, like incredible finish on a

nothing chance, like Josie Altador again. against Spain. So Bob Morocco put this really well. It's like basically Burrhalter, what Burrhalter has never had is a really lucky game in a high profile moment. And he's had fewer chances to do that because we don't have Confederation's Cup anymore. We can't even really get friendlies against the good national teams. But the other thing that Burrhalter hasn't had a lot of is bad outcomes where we were particularly unlucky. Like when we've lost, it's been like, yeah, that's about what would happen there. So we haven't had like good outcomes when we we haven't had a good outcome because we got super lucky.

And we haven't had a bad outcome because we were really unlucky. Kind of maybe right up until this Panama game where the luck is Tim Wea hitting a guy in the face in the back of the head 15 minutes in. So this is all to say sort of that the way that Burrhalter plays, I think reduces variance a little bit in the sense that we don't create a lot of chances. we don't give up a lot of chances, and it's just going to kind of, you know, just be this even keel streamed outcomes. Well, that's not going to bring people to the stadiums, you know. I have produced a lower variance system with a stable rest defense.

Everybody's like, I will be there no matter what. But mostly, so, yeah, so my stance on this was he's, he, after the World Cup, you know, where he played our players in spots that made sense. We were organized. We, you know, did the things that you'd expect our talent pool to do. Again, our talent pool is significant limitations even on that with injuries and health and fitness. It seemed fine. The players like him, it seems fine to bring this guy back.

There's nothing where he's been a catastrophe where we have to get rid of him. A lot of the concerns that people had when we brought him back. especially after the geo drama was one, Gio Raina won't be part of the team anymore, which would be a huge deal. Yeah, but of course that didn't happen at all. That was complete nonsense. He was instantly back in the team as soon as he was healthy.

The other thing was that the fringe players that Berlter would bring in, who were not particularly good at soccer, but just filled essentially roster locker room roles because we were still waiting on other good players to emerge, that they would suddenly be key. parts of this cycle as well. And of course, that didn't happen either. Aaron Long hasn't ever been on a roster.

Christian Rolda, Jordan, Morton. None of these guys have been on Greg Werholtar's roster. So none of those things happened either. Berlter sort of just had a really unlucky moment in this Panama game and that Tim Wea chose to hit someone. It created an opportunity for him to have some revelatory management techniques to get us past Panama.

it wouldn't take a miracle to get past to get a draw or a win against Panama with 10 men. But it's also not like, oh, anyone else would beat Panama with 10 men. You know, the coaches we're going to be talking about here is possible replacements. I'm not at any point. Like, this guy absolutely gets us path, like gets a result for sure. Right. Ten men against Panama. But it was a chance for Berlter to do something that, you know, made it happen.

And then he has a chance to give us some kind of management revelation against Uruguay, which we didn't really do. There's no real, like, shame in that, but it's also you didn't make any kind of positive, affirmative case to maintain your position. Right. So this is, again, all kind of a long, boring way of saying, like, at this point, I totally think the right move is effectively change for change's sake.

Even though I don't know that any other manager would have us play any better against Uruguay or would have done better against Panama with 10 men, I absolutely think you dump Burrhalter at this point. This was sort of the referendum. Make your case. And even though I don't know that he did anything obviously wrong through this entire tournament, I still think you make the change

and bring in someone who is probably also going to be a replacement level. You go for a home run, right? You go for the big names. You make your calls. You do your very best to get somebody who you think is going to be an outstanding coach. but there are so many other candidates that you could also just bring in. And a lot of upsides for it. One, you're just going to inject a little excitement into the,

into the program. Like, that matters going into a World Cup that you're hosting. Yeah, new manager bounce, baby, you know. Yeah, and we won't get too much into the new manager bounce being often just a regression to a mean. But I mean, I guess we can do that in a way. Your results here, if you're the Fed, hiring a new coach, are almost guaranteed to be better than the actual results that Burrhalter just got because he got like the worst result you can get.

So this will happen a lot, right? Like the bad coach is going to have some bad outcomes in part due to bad luck. But then it's like this is the safest time to do it. You get rid of him now when the luck was bad that caused a bad result. And then you're you're much safer to expect a decent result in your next set of matches that are important. Yeah. And I feel pretty confident that the Fed will fire Burrhalter now.

However, BJ Callahan left the national team system to go take over the Nashville SC, MLS team. And I noticed in the press release from the Fed, they were very careful to point out that this has been planned beforehand. The strong implication being this has nothing to. to do with the comprehensive review that Matt Crocker is going to do of our Copa America performance, which does, you know, them taking pains to clarify that does set off my shenanigans radar a little bit.

Like why are, come on, you know, let's just get it done here. It should. I mean, it should do that, but it's sort of also designed to do that because, again, I think, I think the Fed at this point is run by competent people and competent people won't, won't just like tip their hands that they're going to can a guy. They're going to do all the public facing, you know, comments about due diligence. And again, I could be wrong. They could decide that, no, this is a guy to win and give us the best chance at advancing in the 2026 World Cup.

But I would be pretty surprised. Yeah, I would too. Yeah, and I just, you know, from a podcast point of view, I just want to. have somebody new to talk about, you know? It'll be so exciting. It'll be so, like, just again, the curious, the fascination. It's the same reason we want to see, I want to, I still want to see Dwayne Holmes get called up in 2024.

I just want to see how he does. Yeah. Like, just show me what this guy will do. It'll probably be nothing, but I just want to see it. So there's absolutely going to be, I will be so fascinated with a new set of eyes. Because like we talked about, most of these players in this group have played for no U.S. manager other than Greg Bertholder. It's like just Pulisic at this point, isn't it?

Sean Johnson, who've played for any other U.S. manager? Something like that. Tim Ream, of course. They've all played, yeah. The weird thing is they've all played for so many different managers in their clubs. So it's like they know about different managers. But yeah. The players won't be phased at all here by Greg being fired.

Like they might be like, I mean, you know. It seems like they still like him a lot. But yeah, yeah. I just mean professionally, I'm sure there's just going to be some attachment. It'll be like, ah, it's too bad. But as soon as the new guy is in and they have their first camp, the new coach is in, guy or girl, they'll have their first camp. They're going to be like, off we go.

Yeah. I do want to jump back in and say, Greg is not the only manager for a lot of these because I do want to give Grandpa Dave his full credit. He introduced, he debuted a lot of these players. Yeah. They said coach, the church, the true hashtag the coach, Dave Serrikin. Well, we should also... All this is more important than the Uruguay timeline.

Yeah, the Uruguay timeline is going to be a little bit truncated. I'll just warn you about that. But let's go back and talk about Tim a little bit, Tim Wea, because that was the fatal blow that we couldn't really recover from. And I saw somebody in the Discord, a scuffed listener, was in the airport and said they saw him. and he looked devastated because he gave him just a dead eye. I looked right in his eyes totally expressionless.

Didn't say anything. I can't remember what the guy said to him. And it's kind of like the picture of Tim on the U.S. soccer website where he's just kind of like deadpan. And maybe it was because he was devastated, but also he gave me the same look when I shook his hand at the hotel. in Dallas. So maybe that's just his look.

And, uh, and, and, yeah, I, I, I, you might have a screw loose, you know? I say that as somebody with a, with a few screws loose in his own head, you know? Uh, I really think Waya and Dest are kind of similar characters. I could be way off here. I'm just, you know, yeah, we're just, shooting the breeze here. But like, I always love thinking back to,

desk in his very first camp for the U.S. senior team. We played Mexico in that window, and he just got absolutely rinsed. He was playing left back for us, like nutmeged. Oh, yeah, by Takedito, right? Okay. And so they, you know, like, somebody asked him about it after the game, he's just like, it was a good soccer action.

Yeah. He's not carrying any weight from it, you know. And I, I mean, I don't know, I feel like I'm kind of channeling Vince, who I think would have a much different reaction. Or, you know, I feel like Vince, when we hear him talk about it, I bet he'll want way out or like really feel it. But I feel, I'm okay with way out just like knowing that it was a mistake and sort of moving,

moving on and sort of focusing on the next play. Like almost just saying it was a bad, it was a bad decision that hurt the team, which he did in his apology. And then like, okay, get on with it. Yeah. Which I think you'll do. I definitely don't. And we haven't seen it.

I wouldn't expect to see, like, the kind of fan reaction that you see watching documentaries about David Beckham in 98, thinking about like Wayne Rooney in 2006, like that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah, well, it was a really big mistake, and I bet Burrhalter is frustrated about it in particular. But that's what put us in the situation where, you know, against Uruguay, we played pretty well. but not well enough and it was it just kind of felt like we went out with a whimper at the end because

what are you going to do? Yeah, when you need two against Uruguay. To bring it back to Uruguay in that performance, I know a lot of people are really down on the even that performance saying well we sort of knew we would have to score at least once and obviously once we concede.

We definitely know we have to score. And we didn't rack up many chances, many actual shots. And while I agree with that, and I do wish we were more threatening, Uruguay are really good. In Uruguay, when they don't have to attack very much, are probably going to be even better at protecting their goal. So just a little bit of context for Uruguay.

They've played six World Cup qualifiers so far this campaign, and they've conceded five goals on those. And those six games include Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador. So they're playing like the good teams and the good teams don't score a lot of goals against Uruguay. Oh, yeah. They beat Argentina 2-0. They beat Brazil 2-0 last fall. So zero goals conceded against them.

But, and yeah, and like you saw it towards the end of the game when we actually did put together some decent chances towards, like right towards the end. But they just had people flying all over the place to get in the, you know, to get into the window. that we were trying to shoot into. And in the end, I don't know that we ever drew like a clean save from the goalkeeper. Every shot was deflected or blocked, you know. And this is where you can say that that commitment level, right? We posted a shot in the Discord from the 95th minute of us kind of, it was Malik's little zigzagging run through a little traffic after a scramble,

like close to the edge of the attacking third. And then he gets the shot blocked that one? Yeah. So, you know, he wins it there in like a bunch of bodies fall. And you look and if you still frame it, Uruguay have four guys. You know, they have their line of four in the back. And it's sort of Malik breaking through the whole rest of Uruguay's team. And like you see then if you watch that sequence play out, you see the sprint from Uruguay.

And like that body language is so obvious of like four players who are not part, who are not behind the ball yet. just bust and tail to get into the box and you just add bodies behind the ball in those situations. And it's something we've harped on, you know, the Netherlands, the Netherlands goals we conceded. That was like our huge thing about it was we did not put center midfielder's between the ball and the goal.

They didn't get tight to the set to the back line and just create that traffic that you need to create. And we kind of chalked it off to like they're exhausted. They're dead on their feet. Musas can barely move. but it's still been a theme. It was a theme in the first goal we gave up to Panama. It's not something that we just do either by our nature or by instruction.

And I absolutely think that is something that's coachable. Okay, yeah. Yeah, you saw even just to further bolster the point. Remember the chance in the first half where the, or was it this first half or this? No, it the second half? Where the goalkeeper for Oduuguay comes out for a long ball and kind of clatters into Jedi and one of his defenders and spills it. And then Wes has, the goal is open. Wes has the ball out wide left and he chooses to play it to Pepey in front.

Square it, yeah. Which is a fine decision, I think. Maybe he could have gone. Maybe he could have just shot it from there. But anyway, the rapidity with which. Uruguay like snapped back into position

after that a pretty clear mistake by their goalkeeper to come out and you know end up on the ground not with the ball in his hands

they were like everybody was rushing back so fast there was I don't even think Wes's decision to pass it to Pepe was a bad decision

it was like it was a pretty solid decision but they were there was no time there was no time to do like you have to

you have to punish immediately or else they're going to have eight people behind the ball. And then sure enough, by the time it went out to Poulosik, he had a shot blocked by one of the people who had retreated from further upfield.

And then it deflects over and then there's two guys on the goal line to head it away. So, yeah, we don't do that. We don't do that. Yeah, the guy blocking it off Poole's six foot. Yeah, the two guys like, and you can tell they're in their like goalkeeper stance

ready to do whatever it takes to keep that ball. And then there's another guy between the initial blocker and those two guys halfway to the goal. And you're just like, guys are those guys are there and again you can say maybe that's maybe that's the be elsa uh code but again i feel like this has been uruguay's calling card right that seems to me that this is just who uruguay is and it's not who we are and um but i think we need closer i do think i do think it's something you can i think again national team coaches uh aren't the ones developing players they

have them you know for a vanishingly small amount of time but what they choose to emphasize definitely matters. So I do think there's there's an element of us. You know, when you think about the full field tactics and a lot of what our midfield does, it's very much like you're giving them freedom to do a lot of stuff to go hunt defensively and then get shape and they do a ton of work and you're asking a lot of them. But that those moments as the ball goes into our box, what emphasis are we putting on what they do in those in those moments. And that's something where I do think, like, I'm hopeful that whoever does come in, assuming a new manager comes in, that they have a heavier emphasis on what we do there.

Now, you don't, so you don't think that the way we play with the ball under Burrhalter is a step, is a step in the right direction compared to previous, previous eras. Let me, let me just say it this way. If you look at how we lost to the Netherlands at the World Cup compared to how we lost to Belgium, at the World Cup in 2014. You know, I mean, it's a, it's a different kind of thing. It's a different type of performance. The end result is the same, you know, which is eliminated.

Part of the problem. And around a 16th. But we went up against the Netherlands, one of the better teams in the world, you know, one of the great soccer nations. And we could have scored early. We gave up, we gave up, we shut down on defense in the way we were just sort of talking about. a few times and gave up three goals, but we were playing soccer with them.

And I do think, even though that's not enough to make us a really good national team, it is something we do need to keep improving at, and I do think Burrhalter pushed us in the right direction there. No, I would agree with that. And I'm not saying we're doing the wrong things or we're trying to do the wrong things. I'm saying we never got to a point where we did them particularly...

In a way that resulted in, like, serious chance creation. Yeah. I mean, you have to. Like, we've gotten into tons of discussions about people saying you don't just don't do that.

Why don't we just play in transition more? And in so many of the games that they're talking about doing that, it's against a team that is you can't just transition behind a team that does not let you play behind them. You know, if a team decides to set up deep, which the Netherlands did, you can't just say,

we're going to, you know, we're going to transition you anyway. Like, it's not there. They're not playing a game that allows for that. And so you have to break them down somehow with the ball. Or you just pump the ball in the box to Jordan Pfuck.

Like those are sort of your two options. And we kind of did a hybrid of that where we would keep it for a while, but then eventually pump it into the box, which maybe not our ideal setup there. But no, we're going to have to do what Berlter did. And again, the flip side is there are these tradeoffs. And I think there is a, I think overall it was a net positive for us in that we were very in control of transition moments

coming back at us. Transition moments. I'm going to be really clear. Against everyone. Against everyone. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Transition moments, like actual changes of possession where we're in our shape and then we lose the ball. We are not like so stretched out that the other team just runs downhill at us very often. Right.

Other than, again, like those absolute gifts of turnovers where we're in our shape and then, you know, Richards has the ball intercepted by the nearest, uh, defender. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

All right. Well, when we, uh, when someone carves Burhalter's gravestone after this, after he gets fired here, they got to put rest defense on the, on the monument.

That's sort of what he's left us with. And again, it sets a floor. This is, it really does, it is a floor setting tactic, I think. Uh,

you could say well how good is the floor if we didn't get out of the group with Bolivia and Panama in it and I guess the answer is don't take any cheap red cards because that will take whatever your floor is and maybe drop it one to two sub-levels yeah no margin for air no margin for a 22nd minute red card no it was like a 16th minute red card right yeah yeah um okay Let's do the lineups and then a fairly abbreviated timeline. I do think we will try to come back to this, you know, come back to the, we will come back to the Copa America performance in general as a topic in the coming weeks. But let me say, oh, go ahead.

I was going to say, do we wait for the full alternative coach options for when he actually gets fired? Or are we going to breeze right through them? Well, let me, let's take a break and then we'll, maybe we'll come back and talk about that and then do it with the timeline. But first I want to say thank you to everybody who came to the tailgate in Kansas City. It was really fun. I think it's fair to say everybody had a good time. It would take too long to thank everyone individually who contributed to the event because there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. But specifically, I want to thank Bilal from New York for organizing the food, order, and sort of fronting it.

That is a true labor of love, and we can't thank him enough for that. It's an amazing amount of hassle to order food for 200 people. Also, thank you to Baker and Nora Jane from Brevard for all the free beer. They spent a good portion of their Monday morning driving around with me in the rain on Monday morning, picking up the goods. That's a huge service to the community. Thank you, Baker. And thanks to Liz from Dallas for driving people around

and helping set things up and take things down and her forbearance with me when I wanted to save some of the meat. And then also thank you to Nate from Oregon for doing a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes administration and coordination. There's a lot that goes into that stuff, so thank you guys. Event planning. Thanks to everyone who came out in the rain and spells of lightning to knock a soccer ball around, roll back the years. Yeah.

That was a blast. Yeah. And we're going to take a break. If you want to go ad free, join the Patreon. Link is in the show notes. We're back. Let's push the timeline back even a lot. little further and talk about potential replacements for Burrhalter?

Who do you like? So I still like Rhino, like Montero, if we can convince him to leave the club game, which I just don't, again, I don't think this job is as desirable as a lot of people think it is. The slow pace of the international game for somebody who's in that day-to-day club scene could really feel like a letoff. And again, a lot of these coaches are going to have. ambitions of getting of having a like Monorato probably has

ambitions of doing really well with Hoffenheim and then getting scooped up by a next tier team a team even higher up the chain so he's got the Europa Conference League to think about right or is he or did they qualify for the Europa League it might might be no I think their conference okay

we'll confirm that but but like I don't know I don't know if we can if we can get him I don't think we can take him I'd take him yeah I'm at the point where I'd accept just about anybody. Just give me something new. Right. I'm pretty much the same because I actually think the results will be pretty similar.

But it'll just be kind of interesting. And that's the other nice thing is we definitely know what a Greg baseline is. So we'll know if it's a lot worse. We'll know if we're seeing worse performances. And it should be easy to be like, well, somebody else can at least do better than this. I mean, Wilfred Nancy would be great. cool in a lot of ways. The way they play soccer is really lovely.

And you imagine he would take a totally fresh approach to the player pool. And we might see, you know, we might see some new things we hadn't even thought of. And same goes for Irv Renard, the international man of mystery. Just a gorgeous human being. Yeah. And he would, you know, he would. I think he would be interesting in a lot of ways as well. I just don't know what, like, I don't know how U.S. soccer thinks about these things.

Do they, what do they, would they hire like sort of a guy who's seen as sort of a mid-level national team mercenary? Journeyman. We're going to say journeyman. Mercenary is too loaded. Yeah. I mean, you know, you've got to make a living somehow. So, right, that's the interesting thing, right?

Because we just, you know, we started with moderato who, uh, checks the American box. Because it felt like last, last time around after Qatar when we were doing our search, it did feel like being an American was a big deal. And part of the reason I say, I know we, you know, Vieira was rumored, uh, to have even gone part way through the process and been in negotiations. Um, but for me, the American bit has to have mattered. because if you kind of end up with Marsh or Burrhalter, then America has to be a big factor

because they're so dissimilar in coaching style. So if coaching style was your only criteria, then there's no way those two guys are the two guys at the end of the search together. So being the American, I feel like, had to have trumped quite a bit of other focus areas. Well, I mean, wasn't a big thing for Crocker, like believing in the project, believing in the larger project of American soccer, and contributing to that was an important part of being the coach.

And I'm not sure how that manifests itself exactly in reality, but I mean, maybe that's the whole American requirement. I don't know. All right. Because is her Bernard going to come in and say, I'm going to change the future of American soccer? You know, I'm going to change the way America is viewed. It won't matter what he says because he's going to say it in this incredible French, like broken English accent, heavily French. And it's going to be, it's going to be amazing television. People are just going to be mesmerized by his jawline.

They really will. And I'm only half kidding when I'm like, this is great to juice the publicity going into a World Cup that we're hosting. Yeah. So as long as you think he'll at least be fine, I'd have him up there. And I really do think that after, you know, after Burrhalter didn't really move the needle, going into the second cycle, I feel like that gives Crocker and company plenty of latitude to ditch the American soft requirement. We'll kind of call it that. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. I hope so because I don't really, I don't know. Who would be the other American options? Well, Marsh is coaching Canada. be like Jim Curtin or somebody. Right. Trondolo, we keep kind of joking about Ben Olson. And, you know, there's so many things.

The old boys network, I feel like, is going to be less influential on the scale, too, because it's not the old boys running things anymore, right? It's not that those guys are out. Cindy Parloch owns a little bit of an old boy. I mean, she... Maybe. Yeah, I mean, she's part of that whole ACC world. You know?

I get that, but I think there's probably a little bit of insulation from the men's side to the women's side, from the past eras. Fair enough. Well, here, I mean, I don't even know exactly what I'm hoping for, but here's hoping that they, you know, hire somebody that checks their boxes and isn't terrible. Another one we thrown around. Remember, like last time around, we were big on. I was big on Ange, because Ange had, I don't know if I'm pronouncing anybody, any of these names, right.

He had been a national team journeyman for a while. He, national team coach journeyman. So I thought that was, that was a realistic thing. I really think Aerev is a realistic option. He hasn't, like the U.S. hosting the World Cup going into that would be the highest profile men's position that he's had. You know, the France women's team going into the Paris Olympics is pretty fucking high profile, too. And what's interesting there is, again, that was a situation where he came into a completely toxic overall situation to take over the France women's team.

They had a bunch of players who were going to boycott the World Cup in 2023. It's a little bit flipped because there the toxic part was the locker room, right? Like that's what was horrific. Whereas now he would be coming, ever would be replacing someone who was actually popular with the players. but just not getting the job done to the extent that, I mean, I feel like it's almost been unanimous. Are you seeing any media or anyone saying, no, Greg Burhalter is the right guy,

and it's important that we stick with him. No, nobody's saying that. Yeah. Even the American Outlaws came out and called for his head, you know, in really nice terms, really friendly language. But, yeah, I don't see anybody saying Burrhalter should stay. Last one, Grand Potter out of a job right now, I believe.

I don't think he's coaching anything. He's had some success organizing teams. Yeah. Otherwise, though, like the same thing we talked about last manager search. There are also dozens of coaches that you and me and U.S. men's national team sickos aren't really aware of. We can't follow all the coaches and know who they all are and what they're all doing. with their clubs against their relative level of competition. But there are plenty of them out there.

And someone who is doing a comprehensive search, I hope is uncovering some interesting names to explore. Somehow I doubt it. You doubt it because last search we came down. We spent all the money on a consultant. And we came down to Marsh versus Berthard. Yeah, that. Yeah, I just don't know how.

I think there are some, I think there are, I don't fully understand them, but I suspect there are some public relations considerations in who the coach is ahead of 2026. And there's going to be the thought like what, like what will they think on SportsCenter? You know, we just hire, like if we hire the guy who was just the coach

of the French women's national team. I know that that is not a knock on Renard. But like in the general sports, landscape, people might say, ah, we fired Burhalter and we hired a coach from, you know, from women's soccer. Like, what are we doing, you know? I think, I think Renard's an easy sell. Again, I don't know if you, I have no idea if he will be any better than Greg Berhalter

and getting good performances out of the team. I think he's, most of these guys we're talking about are just as likely to be a little bit worse as they are to be a little bit better. But it's certainly possible. And, like, I think Renard's an easy sale to the public because he's got that win. He has that, you know, win over Argentina in a World Cup with Saudi Arabia. And the nerds will all be like, yeah, but that was, I mean, it's not a recipe you can, you can repeat where you score two goals on two worldies and you don't take any other shots in the match. But that's how you, like, that's not.

But who cares, right? Like any casual fans and even most, even plenty of the diehards are just going to say results, results, it's a results business. And he showed that he can punch above his weight. I mean, he's won two African Cup of Nations, the two separate countries. Yeah. On the club side, he's had a lot worse issues. Or worse issues. He's had worse performances, worse marks on his resume.

Relegation and, or, you know, relegation battles and quick sacking. But who cares? Like Burrhalter's club resume wasn't sparkling. No, I wasn't. And Renard's done some things. I do, you know, if we don't give the men's national team to Emma Hayes as well, then the next best option would be here. I mean, I don't know what the best option, but I'd be happy if it was Renard.

For me, that makes him a good option. I think people would be happy and excited. And again, it's the guy who, the guy beat Argentina. Yeah. Or Yergen Klopp, you know, if we can get him. Let's bring them in. We should do the lineup and line up in time. Before we run out of time here.

It was Turner, Scali, Richards, Reem, Jedi, Adams, Wes, Musa, and Pulisic, Ballo, and Gio. So really the only decision here was who's going to play on the wing in Timuea's absence. Berhalter elected to put Gio up there, you know, ostensibly, nominally as a winger. and then Musa was in the midfield. So we're MMA, and I wasn't surprised at this because, like we talked about right after Qatar, MMA did set a floor for us as far as being hard to play against. Continues to do that. Yeah.

The question was always like, okay, can we get enough attack with Rana wide and MMA in the midfield, or do we do better bringing Rana in and adding another attacker, which, again, to be fair, Greg Berthorlter did not really solve that in a way that looked like, reign as a midfielder while he was effective at doing the things he wanted team-wide we didn't have some explosion of offense making that change

so you mean oh you mean bringing Joe into the midfield didn't create an explosion of offense right so him going to MMA didn't surprise me here as sort of like when everything's on the line

running this group out yeah Musa had, I'd say, a little bit of a sloppy game. But, you know, he doesn't always. It's just happened to be how he played last night or two nights ago. The Uruguay lineup was Sergio Roche and goal, Nahita Nandez, Ronald Arajo, Matisse O'Rejo, Matias Olivera, and Matias Vinya across the backline, Manuel Ugarte,

and Federico Valverde in the midfield. and then I guess it was a nominal 4231. So Fokundo Pellistri, Nico de la Cruz, and Maximiliano Araujo went out with a concussion protocol in the band of three, and then Darwin Nunez up top the Liverpool striker. They didn't come out, I think you alluded to this earlier. They did not come out desperate to score or impose themselves on us. They just didn't want us to score. And we came out with good energy.

energy, intensity, it seems like we knew what we needed, you know, that we needed that in this game. And we did bring it. And I think the crowd, the crowd got excited, you know, it was, I think the crowd picked up on that and fed off that in the first half hour or so felt encouraging. I think it was almost like right up until the ball of an injury. So we had, we had a half dozen set pieces, probably three or four fouls in a corner that we were. in their zone and you're just like it could happen right we could deliver this ball and somebody could get their head on it and we could score on Uruguay from this um and none of them were actually particularly close to doing that uh but again it just when you get those repeatedly it feels like feel like one of these could come off yeah yeah yeah uh the fouls you know um geo took it from a guy took it from police tree after he after a poor touch strode past

Last time in around the three-minute mark got chopped down. No call. Scali got foul just inside. Uruguay's defensive third in the sixth minute. Pool six-fowled by Nunez in the 10th minute. You know, like foul, foul, foul, foul over the first 15 minutes. The one that I thought was like probably where I was like, this definitely should be a yellow was in the 14th minute when Ballo kind of does a guy on the right side.

I think it was maybe it was Olivera but they pulled on his shirt and we got the foul but that's just a tactic to me that's a tactical foul and should have been a yellow and it would have probably changed things a little bit

if he had shown yellow on one of these fouls in the first 15 minutes but he didn't show yellow until he gave one to Richards I don't think I don't know I mean I know the ref was a big topic after the game. It's not, he's not the reason we lost, but he didn't help us either.

I think that's fair. I mean, the ref was a, was a, like a theater of the absurd situation. It's so out of his element. But, but I would totally agree that in no way was the referee in this game or against Panama, the reason that we got the results that we did in either of those matches. I immediately need to correct myself. So the, the, Adams got a yellow. in the 16th minute. This was a really nice pass from Richards into Adams, sort of running through the center circle. Adams first touch is heavy.

He goes into a challenge with Olivera, and looks like he catches Olivera. But really what happened was Olivera caught Adams, stepped on his ankle. Anyway, Adams got a yellow card and was astonished about it. Two fouls in quick succession, Raina by Nandez, then Jedi foul by Nondez, then Jedi followed by Nandez after Jedi gets past him down the left side.

This is in the 19th minute. Still no yellow. So it's chippy, right? Like, both, it's chippy. It's hard to get a rhythm. We do have a couple of moments where we kind of do have some quick transition stuff. 13th minute. Yeah, 13th minute, we get that just kind of Jedi's in kind of a cage match at midfield,

just on the left side of the circle. and then Adams kind of like takes it from the cage match. He just slips into the cage match and escapes with the ball. Yeah. And does a nice little, nice little touch for Tyler Adams. Very, very nice. A little double touch pendulum. And he hits it wide to Raina.

And Raina is able to run with it. Raina's on the run. It's like a three on three. And Raina hits a really nice looking ball across Tobalo on the floor, but it's intercepted by the goalkeeper. Nice looking is probably stretched. It was about where it would have to be for Bolo to get to it, but it was just too small of a window and it's collected.

Yeah, Bala is making a very determined run at the mouth of goal. I wondered, like, could Rana have shaped his body to make that pass, which is what the goalkeeper knew he was going to do. Yeah. And then just rifle it in at the new post. But if he misses that, then everybody hates him, you know, everyone's mad at him. The only other play there is if Balo can do some kind of a – because Bolo's running on the back post shoulder of that defender.

So the ball has to curl, you know, around that trailing center back, which gets it too close to the keeper. The only other way is if Bolo does that hard step to the back post shoulder and then tries to knife in front to be able to arrive before it gets to the keeper. And there's just not a lot of room there. Yeah. Nice play by Roché, I think, to read it and cover it up very assuredly. And then basically nothing else until the,

28th minute, where Jedi wins it in the press. It's another kind of transition situation. And he, you know, shapes him, gets composed enough to hit a nice vertical pass up to Geo in our left half space. And Geo just has an absolutely delightful pass square to Weston McKinney. Just the awareness, because again, it's a transition moment. All of the pieces are kind of in flux. And for, this is just sort of Geo's understanding of the game to hit.

that first time almost like blind no look square ball into Wes who has all the space in the world to pick out Bolo running in behind and Bolo is a fraction of yard offside and then just gets wrecked from behind into the goalkeeper and he's hurt. If he's not offside, it's a pen. He definitely is offside. He tries to do a little at the last second like jab step back towards midfield to try to bring himself back on the little fish hook move movement, not enough.

And that's it for Bala. I mean, no, he tries to play through it, but it's not going to. No. He, the pass was so quick and precise from Gio that like no kind of blind square into Wes. I think it took everybody by surprise, including Ballow. Because he was like, because Wes's pass was first time too, wasn't it? So he just, it's a first time pass into the.

Yep. And, um, and Bala. just doesn't have time. Just doesn't have time to get back on side. Everyone was being as efficient as possible. Yeah. That was a nice sequence, though. And then ended with that injury to Ballot.

He played for another 14 minutes and then comes off for Pepe. Okay, so Uruguay doesn't get their first official shot in the game until the 32nd minute, and it's the one where Richards gets yellow-carded for a late challenge in open space. There's a ream past. Pulisic gets blown up straight to Nunez. and he plays it to de la Cruz. Richards arrives pretty late and just chops him down

as the ball exits the little situation. Nunez immediately puts the ball down and plays the free kick, and the ref plays advantage even as he is holding up a yellow card for Richards. Then Nandes tries to chip Turner over to Nunez in front of goal. Ream flies back and volleys it away at the last moment. I think you have something to say about this situation. Yeah, and we don't need to spend too much time on the referee. I feel like everyone understands the referee, again,

was sort of the theater of the absurd here with the play-on signal after actually blowing the whistle already, which is not how play-on gesturing works. But I'm actually not concerned at all with their referee here. I'm much more concerned with our players and their reaction, the immediate reaction, not the reaction to the referee doing the yellow card play on bit. It's the immediate reaction,

and we can't actually use that yellow card as a full excuse for why we got caught out so badly on the quick restart by Uruguay. In fact, Uruguay can feel like they were kind of a little bit hard, they would have been a little bit hard done by by having to stop the game for the yellow card. Because, like you said, this is Uruguay getting a downhill run, getting a huge, like their first real momentum in an attack in the entire match. They have the ball running at Chris Richards, their last defender.

He chops the guy down. The ball gets past him as he chops the guy down. So everyone in that exact moment turns towards the ball, and they're all facing away from the referee. And then you can tell when the whistle blows, they all, everyone immediately stops. And Chris Richards turns to face the referee. Tyler Adams, who is running, who's chasing Chris Richards down to help recover, does like completely, comes to a stop and is like putting his hand up, like wagging his finger, like, no, no, no, it wasn't a foul,

when actually it's like closer to a red card than not a foul at all. Because Richard's definitely chops the guy down. And like his only hope of it not being a red is that Joe Scali is in the vicinity to cover. Tim Ream is chasing down to help recover as well. and, you know, as the whistle blows, like, he's right on top of the ball. He's about to clean it up. But he kind of gets, he kind of is going to run into Chris Richards. Anyway, the point here is no one actually deals with the soccer ball from the U.S.

As the referee blows the whistle. And we don't know yet that the yellow card is coming out. So all we know right now is there has been a whistle. Richards has done the immediate job of blowing up this downhill attack from Uruguay. But that's all we are right. now. No one on our team takes the next really, really important step, which is to secure the ball to deny any kind of a restart and actually fully end this attack. Because in soccer, it's not over until you've actually dictated the tempo of the restart. So you need to either

Chris Richards could grab the ball with his hands, you know, and like protest that way, like turn around and be like, no, no, no, look, I got the ball or whatever. Whatever, you just play dumb. Richards or Ream could have just swight the ball. ball back to Matt Turner or towards the corner flag and moved it 40 yards away from where the restart has to take place. But nobody does any of those things. And instead, we all actually take our eyes off of the only thing that matters, which is the soccer ball.

And Uruguay are just totally ready instantly to take advantage of how naive we are. Yeah, Nunez doesn't even stop. Like, he doesn't stop the whole time. Again, striking. If you look at the screen, I mean, the screenshots are. pretty clear. Nunez and Nandez are like, yep, we're going and nobody notices that they're doing it. So yeah, so again, the yellow card can absorb all of our attention because it is so ridiculous. But from the actual, like, if you're the coach watching the tape of your own team,

which is who you care about, because I'm not here to assess the referee performance, you are just furious at the total, like, lack of concentration by your play. on the only thing that matters, which is competing in the soccer game, right? Which is creating chances for yourself and denying chances for your opponent. And we just stopped thinking whatsoever about what the danger is for our opponent at our own goal. So, again, it's, I don't know if it's a matter. It's hard to say it's a maturity thing because it's Tim Riem, who's right there too, right? It's just like, it's just naive.

I don't know if it's just not part of the DNA growing up here where you just absorb that kind of gamesmanship. But, you know, like, I don't know, I don't know. It's just, it's telling. I feel like this was a really telling moment. But all anyone was really concerned with at the time was, again, the travesty of referee mechanics. Letting them play advantage when you're holding a yellow card up.

Yeah, it was a bad call. But yes, also, this is sort of our tournament in a nutshell, you know. Yeah, we don't. We're pretty good, but we're. We don't even complain to referees like we should. Like we're bad at complaining, whereas other teams are good at complaining. They complain in ways that help disrupt things. And, you know, we're bad at it.

We complain in ways that actually make us more likely to lose. Yeah. Well. On with the first half. Around the 38-minute mark, Christiana Olivera, a Lafc player who subbed on because of that Araujo head injury or potential head injury. He crosses up Scali after a corner kick and rifles went into the box for Nunez. This is a pretty decent chance for Uruguay.

He shoots wide first time with his left foot. However, they're putting a little pressure on us in this late part of the first half. Yep. I feel like that Nunez shot is exactly. what they coined half chance for. It was absolutely a half chance there. Which means it was probably like a less than a tenth of a expected goal. Yeah.

Then another, I guess you could call it a half chance for Pellistri on a cross that skips over to him at the back post. He tries to volley it with the top of his boot and skitters it wide. Was this a header? The cross under the box, Adams skims it with his head. Yeah. Which takes it over Jedi, which is how they've got a man wide open. I think Jedi had moved away from his man to make a play on the ball, and then Adams flicked it over him. Okay, okay.

It's still dangerous because it's not like anyone, Adams didn't make the wrong decision. It just kind of was one of those that would have happened to be really unlucky to give Uruguay a wide-opening look. I thought maybe you were, you know, barrister Greg putting together his prosecution of Tyler Adams. No, not in this case. No, not in this case. Okay. A decent little moment off a long-turner goal kick. At the end of the first half, we win it to Gio.

He heads it down to Pepe. Pepey finds Wes' feet and he plays Gio into the top of the box. But Raina tries to Meg the defender arriving to his left and gets, you know, loses it. But, you know, some pleasant stuff to watch there. Yeah, Raina strikes me kind of in the same way. as Wea, not somebody who's just going to actually, like, totally rinse a guy to get to the other side of him. You know, when he takes a guy on to try to, like, meg him to get past him, I never get the feeling like, yes, Giorina will just skip past this player. Yeah, I wish he would have just planted that left foot and, like, just had one with his right foot.

Just hit the shot of your life. I mean, it wouldn't have been the shot of his life. It would have been, yeah. Yeah, he's got some shots. Nunez gets a yellow card for cutting down Scali So the first yellow card against Uruguay In stoppage time, Pulsic pleads with the Uruguay bench about it Scali gets some treatment

Pulcic's very demonstrative and kind of upset about the ref The whole game pretty much Which I mean is understandable But then the only other thing in the first half I have is we get that nice volleyed pass out wide from Geo Which was maybe the highlight of the game for me. It's the most aesthetically pleasing. And it was just like, what was it?

Adams had the ball? I think it was Adams on the ball. Geo's standing like eight yards away from wide open. I think we're all just like, just give it to Geo. Geo's the player we want to add the ball. And he doesn't, but then it somehow gets deflected back out to him. And that's when Geo does is just real saucy, like what just laces it out there. Oh, yeah.

It's gorgeous. And then I think Jedi just like crosses it in and nothing. and really comes of it. And the half arrives. So early in the second half, we get our first shot from the run of play, which is, I'm not trying to put lipstick on a pig here. I thought we did some good stuff. We still didn't really test the goalkeeper pretty much the whole game.

But we did get, so our first shot comes, 47th minute, a rifled pass from rain so rain is over on the left side receives it takes a couple touches and just rifles it into the top at the top of the box to McKinney McKinney's first touch is okay takes him towards the goal as a defender is he kind of eliminates the defender who was kind of hoping he could step in front and intercept the pass but couldn't quite get to it but as he carries the ball forward

he gets it stuck under his foot has to kind of pirouette around the defender back away from goal and then he tries with his right foot from 20 yards but he's leaning back and it was not close, well over, well wide. But that's our first shot of the game from the run of play.

I think there were shots on set pieces. Like Ream tries to head one in, but they weren't counted as shots by a Y Scout, I guess. Yeah, yeah. We connected with the ball a couple of times and glanced it towards the frame. But yeah, this was a real shot in anger, and it did feel like a shot in anger

because it did seem like he was going to have his shot earlier in his touches, McKinney did. But, yeah, getting it trapped under him, sort of turned it into a more of a desperation attempt than a controlled one. Yeah. I don't really mind the attempt, but, you know, wasn't close. More nice buildup from Pepe and Raina in the around the 52nd minute. A good Richards pass to Pepe's feet. It lay off for Geo, a nice pass to release Jedi down the left. Cross-blocked.

Another sort of our game in a nutshell. We get into the attacking third, but couldn't really get it done once we were there. Yeah, basically like always still two passes away at least. Outside of the moment where Balo got hurt, that was the one where it felt like we were there. Yeah. That's not true. We're going to get to a couple of moments where it's like, oh, we have it. We have the chance here.

Yeah, we had the Haji chance is kind of the big one. I will say Richards definitely deserved the yellow card on that foul. Maybe worse. He did have one early pass back to Turner that was a little soft and kind of dangerous. But he had several nice passes into the middle of the field. I'm not giving up on Chris Richards. And I don't think, I mean, we don't have a choice. We can't give up on him at all.

but I want to go back and watch more of his tournament in full because I don't know he I don't know that he was as bad as the general impression is I bet that is correct I bet it was a couple of really memorable back passes and and passes around the defensive back the connections with Tim Rheam that you're just going to be like man and he'd been shaky kind of coming into this for a couple of windows with some bizarre mistakes. But I agree. I think he mostly cleaned it up and was pretty reliable in all facets.

And the passes into the amoeba, as we like to say. There were, you know, three, four of them that were pretty good in this game. Anyway, Scali almost gets subbed off for Shaq Moore around the 56-minute mark because he gets, I think it's because of that tackle by Nunez, right? Yeah, yep. And we needed that. We needed that sub badly because whatever the Burrhalter discourse is right now, it would be so much better if Shack Moore had played in the game of the Uruguay.

Yeah, well, he didn't. He didn't come on. Scali persuaded the coaches he could keep going and he got his hip sprayed. We get word in the 63rd minute that Bolivia has scored, drawing even with Panama. This is great news. So now with a zero-zero-zero draw, the U.S. advances. If my math is not mistaken.

That's correct. All you have to do is see this thing out and also assume that Bolivia will see it out on their end. Two things that I'm sure will happen. Yeah. 65th minute we get confirmation that Bolivia's goal counts and Raina Fowles Nandez, I'd say a little cheaply over on the right side,

just kind of sticks a leg out. I mean, everybody's doing it in this game, but it didn't seem like a moment that really called for this foul. Anyway, Burhalter tells everyone it's 1-1 in the other game. As Uruguay sets up for a free kick from wide right, De La Cruz swings it in. Arajo just dunks on Tim Ream and hits it pretty well with his head towards the near post. Turner dives to his right, saves it, but right to Matillas Olivera, who bundles it home over,

over Turner's prostrate body, essentially. It looks like Olivera is off side when Araujo makes contact on the replay. But the ref and the video assistant review team don't think so, I guess. Goal stands, 1-0 Uruguay, and a whiff of desperation. comes into the stadium. And I mean, in a sense, it's like those Champions League games when they still had the away goals rule. It was like, well, really, if you just pretend like Bolivia hadn't scored, nothing changes.

We still just need one goal because one goal from us would tie it up and put us back into advancing or one goal from Bolivia would put them in the lead and set us up to advance. So it was like we just wasted Bolivia's goal, but we still got a chance at this thing. Yeah. The safe from Turner isn't great, right? It's like, first off, yeah, we should also be tracking our guys. Like any goalkeeper is going to be like, okay, yeah, it wasn't a great rebound. But why are there two wide open Uruguay players standing facing me with no U.S. players around them?

That's also not the perfect way to defend us that beast. Who are you pinning that on? I know Scali was in the vicinity. I want to say it's Raina and Pool Sick as the guys who, are the weak side players and sort of just stand and turn do the old. It's tough because if the video technology is what they're using for the euros, it sounds like basically this would probably be offside. And then you're not mad at the weak side players for not being as attentive

because it's like, yeah, but they kept him, they kept him off, which happened in some of our. our games leading up to this for some of the restarts that we've talked about for the U.S. But generally, you don't want the players to be relying on an offside. Like, you're not really trap. It's not a trap. You're not intentionally setting up an offside line for the second ball. You know, like for the header shot.

You're not like, let's set up so that we have everyone offside when this guy shoots on goal with his head. You set your offside line up for the initial take. And then it should be like, break hard to the goal. and try to protect it and don't get beat to any spot. And we just get badly beat to the spot. So, yeah, you're right. It's Raina and Scali, not Pulcic.

I drew Pulcic on the bus here. But the thing with Turner's rebound, though, is... He's got to push it wide, right? Yeah. And it's like, if it's too hard to push it wide, it's because there's not enough pace on the shot. Like, that means he would have to generate all the pace. Usually when you see guys push those shots out,

they're coming in with such venom that it doesn't take much on your head. on your hands so it just flies off of them. The reason you can't push it that wide is because the header's not hit that hardly. So it's like, then you just got to collect the header. You can't just sort of have it graze off your hands and like settle it. Or yeah, or you have to just aim your push better. And it's essentially like just push it around the post and concede the corner rather than keep it in play at all.

Is it a catchable header, you think? I think it is absolutely a catchable header. And I don't know if Matt Turner prior to his Yips episode tries to catch it or not, but it's definitely a catchable header. Well, he's dealing with an injury, which, you know, maybe another little bit of naivete that we need to talk about is Daniel Smith pointed out on Twitter in the last couple days that after Cesar Blackman, you know, went slamming into Turner in that Panama game.

He didn't get fouled once the rest of the game. So no retribution was given to him for hurting our goalkeeper. Just throwing that out there. Seems relevant. Just soft. Just soft. No, it's, again, it's not like a horrific rebound from Turner. He didn't actually drop it like direct.

in front. He kind of did, didn't he? More front than side, for sure. Yeah, yeah, we'll put this one on him. He kind of, like, he even shaped his hands to, like, kind of contain it so it didn't go out wide. Now, again, in his defense, when you look at the freeze, he did push it to the guy directly in front of the goal to score. If he had pushed it wide, that was where the other Uruguay player was who would have also scored, but just from a tighter angle. Yeah.

I think they were both offside. But, you know, can't cry over spilled milk, I guess. Sergeant comes on for Musa in the 72nd minute. Ream in the 74th minute plays a ball over the right back into the left channel for Jedi. I talked about this one a little bit earlier in the episode. It's where Jedi kind of clatters into a defender and Roche. And Roche makes a bit of a mess. Goes to ground.

The ball spills to McKinney. The goal is open. If you look at the screenshot, you can be able to be. maybe chip it in from there. I mean, give him a chance. It comes to his left foot, right? Like, it first goes to his left,

which just means he can't clip it with his left foot to that part of the goal. He has to curl it in with his right, I feel like. Yeah, it's a much more difficult to curl it in with your left foot, but totally possible. You think if he tries to do it, it gets headed away by the

defender between him and the goal? I honestly think just degree of difficulty, probably just gauges as the wrong choice. Yeah, maybe so. Yeah, I won't insist on that. So he plays it to Pepey close to the penalty marker with his back to goal. He lays it off for Pulisic.

Pulisic takes a touch and shoots it. His shot is partially blocked and then headed away by one of the two defenders who had rushed back to the goal line to cover for Roche. Just kind of a clinic in snapping back into place by Uduay. Total commitment and defensive. vigor. Yeah, absolutely. And this is,

you talk about McKinney's decision too. When he looks up and is deciding, I'm sure, whether he's like the instant calculations he's doing, whether to try to curl this in with his left foot, which would curl it away from the goal, or whether he would play at a square across.

There's one Uruguay player in the box, right? Like, that's it. Or in the vicinity of the goal. So he's squaring it to Pepe with only one Uruguay defender. And Josh Sargent is, next to Pepe and Christian Pulisig's coming. And by the time Pepe like takes his touch and corrals it,

there are five Uruguay players between the ball and the goal. That's crazy. That is, again, it warms the heart of any former goalkeepers out there. Because the goalkeeper is not one of the five year of Y players between the ball and the goal. Yeah. It takes him a while to get back over there. Okay. So, Hadry Wright comes on for Scali in the 78th minute.

And I got to say, you know, on the rewatch, the crowd is into it. Boys are pushing hard. Just not able to do it. A good ball from Raina to Sargent, running into the channel, and his cross is blocked. A nice move up the left. And Jedi plays it into Haji in the box, and he just takes a heavy touch and kind of loses it. But the crowd was enthusiastic and, you know, really hoping for a goal. And then we get where Panama has scored a third at the 84 minute mark roughly.

So it's 3-1 there. We still need two goals. Yeah, we got to win. And again, even these chances are close, you just know you're not going to... Quarter chances. Yeah. You know, like, Uruguay are not just going to give it to you. This isn't going to be like they're just going to be.

be like, okay, we're done for the day, whatever happens, happens. Like, they are intent on competing. Yeah. Which is just a lesson I hope we can internalize. Yeah, can we internalize that lesson? I don't know. Probably. 86th minute, really nice chance put together by Pulisic and Raina late.

Pulisicic actually has it tackled away from him twice in the sequence, once in the center circle. It gets it back from Tyler Adams, and then he gets it tackled away from him kind of in zone 14 above the box. Raina runs over and gathers it, then plays a lovely one, two, with Pulisic. So Raina steps by a guy, and then outside of the boot over to Pulisic, Pulisic releases him into the box, and Raina's decision here is very nice and clean. He finds Haji right near the penalty marker. Haji takes a touch and has his shot blocked. Now, oh, and then it's just collected by the goalkeeper, with a row ho also behind the ball trying to clear it off the goal line.

Now, it seemed like Haji had a couple other options here. Obviously, it's all bang, bang. It's really hard to do this stuff perfectly. But he had a chance, I think, to take it first time, maybe with his left foot. It was coming in a little hot. And then the other thing is he had Pepey out wide right. very wide open as he shoots. Of course, he did neither of those things.

Took a touch, had his shot blocked, and I don't know, that was probably the best chance of the game for us. I think that's right. I mean, Pool 6 with the keeper out of the frame would probably go down as a slightly high percentage chance. But this is the best-looking chance we built. The Raina bit with Pool-Sick is fantastic. Rana does a little.

eliminate a defender pretty much here. Now, when he eliminates one Uruguay defender, when he first gets the ball out on the left, close to the left touchline, he's quickly swallowed up by two other players, which forces him to do another impressive technical outside of the boot, like outside of the boot, like wrap around pass to cue the one-two with Pulisick. You could say he needs to take a little bit of something off of the pass to Haji, but it's tough.

Like he's got to make sure it gets past a defender to get to him. And then the reason Pepe gets so open, again, is because of the commitment from the Uruguay player who's on Pepe to cover that eight yards to get over to Haji to end up blocking the shot. But overall, it's a really good chance created and another sort of deflating moment when it's not capitalized on. And of course, like, as this is wrapping up, then Uruguay's got another player on the ground to, again, completely take away any rhythm of a soccer match. How'd you try to go low, far post, I think, with it. And it, you know, it almost snuck through the legs. Nah, that's, you know, that's pretty much it.

I mean, Pulisic gets a couple more sniffs. Tillman gets one, too, as we push for a late goal. But, like, again, Uruguay in defense, just throwing bodies around to get in the way, totally committed. We can't find a goal, let alone the two goals we needed to get through to the knockout rounds. And we get a long shot of Greg Burrhalter looking very worried late in the game on the telecast. And that's it. Summer of soccer is over for this team, for the U.S. men's national team, the A team. Got the Olympics coming up, which I'm working on getting

excited about. On the men's side. The women's side's is going to be a blast. Yeah, the women's side is going to be incredible. So, I guess you know, to your point about

is that in our DNA that like will to compete or whatever it is, I don't know. But I do know that long term, we just need more people to love soccer in this country.

You know, like if we're going to get as good as them, as good as Uruguay. Do you remember the guy sitting next to us at the game who said, who called Turner a burro? Yes, probably on more than one occasion. Anytime he passes back to him and Turner hit it directly out of the admittedly narrower than what he's used to soccer fields.

That guy was having a blast calling him a donkey. Yeah. So one of their players made a bad touch. and I just yelled burrow really loud at him. And I did it too vigorously. And I could see the look in his eyes. He was like, do you want to, you want to fight me? Like he was not pleased with my.

It wasn't banter. He wasn't taken into his banter. Yeah. And so I went immediately over to him and I was like, look, man, I came in too hot. I respect you. I respect your country. I respect the way you guys play football. And he said, it's okay.

it's okay. You guys are learning, you know. Which is actually just some amazing southern shade that he just dropped on you. I think he was talking about our culture. You know, you guys are growing as a soccer country. No, I know, which is, again, still just a total bless your heart situation. Totally, yeah. Y'all come see us now. Yeah.

But, you know, I think there's, he's. He was, he's right. You know, we are, we are kind of a ways behind on that front. So I'm just going to put on my usual call. Go help your rec soccer program in your community improve in whatever way you can. You know, help more kids fall in love with the game. Yeah. That's it.

Yeah, and in the meantime, I mean, like, as we've kind of been saying in all the signature wind discourse is like, we don't have the players or there isn't a coach out there who is going to buy this next world cup make us favorites in a game against Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Spain. We can shift percentages and try to work as many probabilities as we can and then hope on the day it can be enough

to get an all-time result. But that is definitely what we're looking at. We are not in a spot where it's going to be like we've got the magic code with this group of players that's going to I don't think. I mean, I could be wrong. And when we get a new coach announcement in the coming weeks or months, again, still just speculating.

It's funny. Like, I feel like both of us are like, we need to constantly be checking our social media because our coach can be fired as we're recording this. Yeah. Let me check my inbox real quick. Yeah, not yet. Okay. But, I mean, that just isn't, I don't think going to be a thing that happens. We're not going to see that.

We're going to, you know, beat about. the same place and we should beat the teams that we've been beating and be competitive. We should be competitive in pretty much every game. Yeah. But yeah, there isn't a magic set of tactics that's going to turn us into one of these teams yet. Nope. Which is sobering, you know, but. It doesn't rob me of joy.

I don't know how other people watch this stuff, but it certainly doesn't make it any less exciting or entertaining or again, soccer as much as we get into the exos nose, like the community and celebratory nature of soccer is always there for me. So the stuff that's going on before the game, in a stadium, the discussion during a game with people that you like watching with

is still going to be there. And it's still going to be about picking apart, like what else could we do? And a lot of the stuff we pick apart is like, this stuff is controllable. can control, you know, our attention levels during, during a transition during a restart. Yeah. That's stuff that we have to be able to improve.

And I think, you know, some people will say, well, like, O'Duguay had several players from Liga M. Eke's teams. I don't know about several in the starting lineup, but at least one or two. And then, you know, a few in the Brazilian league. So why do our players who are in top five leagues struggle against them? I just think it's way more complicated than all that, you know, than the badge FC stuff. And you see, at least historically, consistently, MLS teams,

falling to League of MECI's teams. Let's take this last year out of it because of the food poisoning situation. But because they get, like, out-savied, you know? This happens repeatedly in the Concaf Champions League. And, yeah, we just got to get smarter and a little more pragmatic and concentrated to use your word. Yeah, just the second game, you know, like the game that you have to play to make sure that you get a chance to play the actual stuff. Right, right.

and that's not even mentioning the, you know, the total disaster on that front in Panama, headlined by one Tim Wea. So on that note, I guess, anything else? No, I feel like it's just going to be a waiting game. I don't know, again, I don't know what the working hours are for the U.S. soccer folks. I don't know if they have a crisis team that'll work through the holiday weekend. or if we'll get an update. And they'd have to do an update, right?

Like, they don't just not say anything. Like, or if they keep Burhalter, is there an announcement saying we're keeping our coach? Probably, yeah. All right. Yeah. Well, you know, a comprehensive review may take a little while. It won't.

It won't. It shouldn't. Even that wording is hilarious. Like, what went wrong in this tournament? Like, we all know what went wrong in the tournament. Like, we picked up a red card in the highest leverage game of the group stage. Like, we could have lost to Bolivia. That's the best part about this. If we had done one, if we had pulled that against Bolivia and we lose to the worst team in the group,

we probably still get through comfortably, comfortably being like, because if we beat Panama and then it's just us in Panama with one win each on three points. Yeah. And the moral or the sort of momentum equation is like if we had lost to Bolivia, we probably came out, would come out and play a really good game against Panama. Intense at least, yeah. Yeah. But we just can't, we can't string two of those together in a row. Well, all right.

Well, everybody take care. Thank you for listening. Thanks again. Refresh your phones. Yeah, just refresh your phones constantly for the next week or so. Don't do that. Don't refresh your phones constantly. Just track all flights into and out of wherever Erv Renard is currently residing.

Yeah. Turn on notifications for all your apps. Yeah. Come on, Herve. Irv. Ev. We're all going to learn how to say it the right way. It's, yeah.

It's going to feel really ridiculous to say it the right way. But we'll go for it. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. We do appreciate it. We'll see you.