Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #516: Olympics — USWNT v Zambia recap

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

A romp for 30-odd minutes against an overmatched opponent, a red card for Zambia, Soph subbed off with some kind of knock. It's on to Germany on Sunday. 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. Okay, we beat Zambia, 3-0, a scintillating opening 30 minutes, I would say, from the U.S. Women's National Team, just lovely to watch. And then they got a red card, things kind of, I don't know, slowed down a little bit. Or did they? Did they even slow down that much? I don't know. But we didn't score again. So 3-0, we start the group off on the right foot. Germany on Sunday is a big one.

But we got the three points. Greg, how you doing? I'm doing good. It was fun to watch the group kind of get a bit of a walkthrough. It was fun to watch Barbara Banda. It was fun to watch us button her up for the most part. Yeah. So it's the Olympics.

It's a party, and this was sort of a good happy hour living here at the party. Yeah, yeah. Banda, a lot of fuss about Banda, you know, giving all her goals in NWSL. but yeah, she wasn't really that much trouble for us, I wouldn't say. You can't do it by yourself. I think that's the lesson here. Yeah, and I don't know if, you know, her massive Olympic success three years ago in Tokyo

where she scored multiple hat tricks in, like, hilariously high-scoring contests. I think they lost 10-3 to the Netherlands. I feel like there's an element of like she did literally come out of nowhere. no one was expecting a player to be able to cook them like that all by yourself. But once you kind of know about her and you just say, we will dedicate two and a half players to making sure that she is accounted for. And you can do that because Zambi don't have, you know, you can put two and a half of your players on Banda

and not really have to worry too much about how else they're going to hurt you. She has been pretty successfully buttoned up now from the World Cup last year and now. against the U.S. in this match. Yeah. So let's jump into the lineups and then get into the timeline. So Alyssa Neyer in goal, Emily Fox, Naomi Germa, Tierna Davidson, and Crystal Dunn across the backline, so Dunn at Left Back. And then the midfield was Coffee, Horan, and Lavelle,

and then Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith, and Mallory Swanson across the front line. What a wonderful front line that is. So the big news that came out Not too long before kickoff Was that Jaden Shaw was not going to be on the active roster for this match Replaced by alternate Croy Bethune And again in the Olympics now For this edition

You can bring an alternate in And then take the alternate back out And put the injured player back in for the next match So it's I have no idea what kind of documentation you need to show that a player is injured Or if you can literally just say app she's this player's injured you just submit it it it's done um if that's the case again it's

effectively just a free wheel and depending on how how loose your program is going to be with rules like whether they think that they're bound by ethics of uh fair competition uh not every program feels like that um but i feel like you know there's probably some wiggle room with these injuries yeah i'm sure Canada you know they're they're all they're all over the place with this stuff. I'm sure they'd very strictly. I mean, a player would have to be injured because Canada's not going to just bend a rule. You'd have to get it.

You'd have to get a ruling from the Canadian Medical Association. I'm sure. What a fiasco. Hilarious. For Canada. I mean, you know, I, it's still hard for me to believe. Is John Hurtman just a really not that good of a person after all? I don't know.

He seems so earnest and kind. Oh, man, he can really, you know, he can hold a, he can hold a presentation together. Yeah, he sure can. So anyway, Shaw out, Shaw out for this match, not available. Dunn is the left back becomes sort of the only, the only question mark, or the only sort of surprise, and it's not really a surprise. Dunn and Nice, Wong, or split the friendlies leading up to the World Cup,

or, yeah, leading up to the Olympics. I'd rather have gone back there against Barbara Banda, honestly. I think so too, yeah. I mean, I wouldn't have minded Kruger and Fox's spot either, to be honest. But this is a solid group, and they came out and pretty well dominated. But, you know, the injuries, I'm glad you mentioned the Shaw News, because that's really interesting. And the injuries are kind of maybe the big story outside of the three points here, because Sophia Smith, who was so good, I thought, in this first 30, 40 minutes,

she went out holding, after going down holding her right ankle. I don't think we know. This is, you know, we're recording at 945 Eastern Time PM. We don't know yet what that injury is or if it's serious or not serious. But she did come off and then Lynn Williams came on. And that's a big, that's a big downgrade right there, I think. And if we don't, if we're going to be, if we're going forward in the tournament without Sophia Smith, that's a massive blow. It's, it changes everything, I think.

I totally agree with that. And it'll be, again, curious if that's the case to see how we adjust. Because I don't know that Lynn Williams straight in for Sof will be what Emma lands on as the, as a, if she has a, if she's preparing for a match ahead of time. Well, hopefully it's Shaw. I mean, Shaw would be, you know, my sort of back of the envelope pick there, but.

I'd put Swanson there and put Shaw in a Swanson spot. But yes, I mean, there's, yeah. I would like to add, I would like to add Shaw to the 11 if so if Sophia can't play. Yeah, same. But again, we don't know what Shaw's, we don't know what Shaw's fitness is just because she makes it, if she makes it back, we don't know what she's got in her.

Right. And she hasn't, I mean, if we're honest, she hasn't really looked like herself for, you know, a couple months maybe. Well, here's, like, here's the thing that I think tip people off. It's in that last friendly before the Olympics. Lavelle was scratched as a precaution from that attacking midspot against Costa Rica. And we started Corbyn Albert there. And, like, I don't know. It's really hard for me to believe that that Corbin Albert is going to be better in an attacking.

mid position. I guess Haran kind of stepped into it and Corbyn played deeper, but for Corbyn to come into the 11 there instead of Shaw, I think is pretty clear that Shaw is not fully fit or wasn't fully fit then. And so, yeah, Emma would have some decisions to make about what Shaw's capable of, even if she does come back, if Sophia can't go. Yeah, I guess when that happened, my thought was, okay, maybe Hayes just wants to see more of Albert and give her more reps and more different spots because she is like the backup in a couple of spots but but yeah i think now i know in retrospect it does seem maybe pretty clear that shaw wasn't fit then gombo musole and goal for zambia esther siamfuko pauline zulu lushomo wimba and martha tembo round out the back line that's from right

to left and then grace chanda prisa chilufia helen chanda uh rhen chanda uh Rachel Kondananji and then Kabanji Mupopo and Barbara Barbara Banda, of course, in the, you know, up front. Banda is the big, like the big famous name here and the one providing most of the danger, I think. Yes, on without, without question. So to the timeline, it's just immediate dominance from us off the, and I do want to hear your thoughts on like, you know, how much of this is us being. good and how much of it is Zambia being bad. But, you know, immediate dominance from us, a ball down in the corner from Germa to Swanson.

She plays, you know, interplays with Dunn a little bit, and Dunn goes to the N-line, cuts it back from the N-line. Can't find anybody, but it falls ultimately to Fox, who plays kind of a delayed one-two with Rodman, and then weaves through the box to the N-line, fizzes it across, ran slides and stabs at it,

misses the frame by inches, as the keeper sort of flails outside of the goal mouth. So 30 seconds have not even elapsed yet in the game and we're already like nearly scoring. Right. I already have a tap in and then we just tap to the wrong side of the post. Right.

I mean, it is to be honest, mostly Zambia being bad. Like it took us a while to even adjust to how sort of stark the difference in quality was. The amount of space that we were afforded to whoever we passed the ball to was just crazy. And it was like our players wouldn't even expect

that they would have that much space. At some point it was like, hey, you collect the ball. Just assume you have a lot of space and turn and look and pick out whatever pass you want at your leisure. And then once we started to do that a little bit later on, then it did just start to turn into just an avalanche of chances. Yeah.

I do work. We got several chances in the first five minutes. Yeah, we did. We'll go through most of several of them. I guess I Well, okay, let's just keep going through the time So Banda gets tackled in the open field by Davidson As she tries to push it by her and go, go, go

Down the line In the second minute, it's a free kick from a dangerous spot You just see why there's so much fuss about Banda here But no real threat on the free kick We move Fourth minute We give up a little bit of a chance on a throw Just not enough quality from Zambia to make us pay

There's a shot from the edge of the box but it's not even, you know, doesn't really bother Neyre at all. Fifth minute, nice combo from Smith and Swanson. Swanson clips it across for Smith, and her first time shot is right at the keeper, so it's Swanson clipping it across for Smith from the right. This is a really good chance. I mean, like, I don't know what the XG is,

but this is creating a chance like this is, if we do this in a game against a good opponent, and so that's a real success, you know? Yeah, and this is another one of those sequences. is it just kind of highlights how at sea Zambia are. Swanson, like, comes back to get it. I mean, her and Lavelle were kind of swapping left, right half space at will. Swanson ends up sort of in the right half space, feeds it out to Trinity, and Zambia

literally just abandoned her. Like, they just all retreat. So Trinity has it with time. Like, she can just stand on it. Watches Fox make a run through and take one player with her. And then it's just Mao still 10 yards away. It's not like she was far away. and like moved hard to get into the spot.

She just passed it kind of waits. Everything clears out around her. And Trinity can just pass it right back to Mao with like a lane into the box. They're just rolling out of carpet for us. Yeah. And again, I think it was a backheeled piece that kind of laid out that Zambia simply

have not had the opportunities to play soccer games. I feel like I think that I saw that they were, they've played the fewest games of any team in the Olympics since the World Cup. They're just not going to have the like the reps to be organized in a way that's going to challenge the U.S. in this game.

Yeah, all kinds of problems behind the scenes there with them which I'm not qualified to get into in any detail but like, you know, stuff with the Federation, the coach not good, I don't think. Doesn't sound good, at least the way

they described it on the broadcast. Yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't say we're playing really that clean, but like you said, lots of lots and lots of space. If we were playing, if we were playing clean, this game would have been like 8-0, not zero. Yeah, after 10 minutes. Yeah, and I don't just mean because like we'd finish the chances. We missed some chances, but I just mean, if we were playing clean, we'd triple our chances in this game.

Yeah. It was. Well, okay, so 8-minute Mark Smith mugs the left back, Martha Tembo and the press, and then plays a quick ball across to Trinity in the box. Trinity's alone with the keeper And she takes it on the half-folly And hits the top of the post It's a good, I think a good attempt Very nearly 1-0

Still 0-0 Then we get a shortly after that We get a good done shot From the edge of the box That goes just wide And let's see 10 minute Heran wins it in the press

Plays it up to Smith She tries to cut it back for Lavelle But it's cut out But she's got cutbacks on her mind, it seems, which is good. And she was really dynamic. I mean, well, we'll get into it with the first goal, but she deserves it. Go ahead.

I'm glad the cutbacks are already coming up because I don't have a lot of takeaways soccer-wise for this performance. But in the last friendlies, you know, we talked about how there were so many cutbacks available and that our execution on those cutbacks wasn't great, like our identification and execution. And I did feel like right away, the cutbacks we were attempting here were more purposeful, more targeted. I have no idea. I mean, I will say right now we will not get this number of looks against Germany or probably Australia.

But it's good to know that when we will get our looks, that we will have some idea of what we're trying to do. I think I think I saw like some evidence of that. I feel like we still need to do a better job of filling the lanes in the box when we cut it back. but yeah I agree with that So 12th minute lovely back to front

possession sequence Horan and Swanson do the hardest part I mean Dunn helps too and Haran is often running through the midfield She plays it to Lavel Over on the right side

It goes Fox Rodman and across Dunn flashes it across So Dunn meets it on the back post and sort of volleys it back across with her left foot. It's headed away only as far as Horan's feet. She takes a touch and shoots.

It's blocked by a sliding challenge from Zulu, I believe. There'll be some negative stuff in this timeline. Right about now. We're going to get one. Thirteenth minute bad giveaway from coffee. Just whiffs on a pass. And now Banda's off to the races. This is exactly what we do not want in this game.

It's the only thing you cannot give up. This is like the only thing is a is a totally free ball to Barbara Banda running at your backline. Yeah. Pretty frustrated with coffee for that. I mean, I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight, you know. A couple of players had that ball rolling into their feet. Like, again, ironically, if coffee makes the same mistake against Australia, it won't be as dangerous as it is against Zambia. Right.

This is the one game where you just can't make that kind of mistake. and we got away with it a few times. Yeah, we had a few. And I thought coffee did not have a particularly clean game, which surprises me. I'm generally a fan of how she plays, but not her best night. Hopefully she gets it out of her system.

14 minute mark, just a bunch of goldmouth scrambles all in one. It starts with a Vlako-era lumped cross from Lavelle from the right side. I think she just has that instinct where she's just like, okay, lump. And she lumps it in, Dun corrals it on the other side of the box,

and then goes to the end line and curls it across with the left foot, a really nice, really nice cross and a free header for Swanson. She brings the crossbar. It comes right back out to Haran. Haran takes it, in my opinion, beautifully on the half-folly

with sort of a sidewinder, you know, going down to her left. and her shot requires a goal line clearance from Zulu. Then Lavelle pokes it back to Rodman, and her shot is very firm and on frame, draws a save, and wins a corner. So, you know, at risk of staying the obvious, it does feel like a goal is coming.

It does. It's also a hilarious continuation of our zero-zero-zero draw against Costa Rica, where we are just pelting it, and everything is happening but the ball crossing the goal line between the posts. And again, all I can do, all you can do is laugh. Like, if, if this had somehow continued for 90 minutes and we crash out of the Olympics because of this result after, after doing this nonstop, then it's just the universe working against you.

Yeah. I mean, like the ensuing corner also gets cleared off the line after a Horan header. And then the goal comes. And it's, it was, uh, it was a true joy to watch. There's sort of a loose ball at midfield. Sophia does some very nice work to bring it down with a really clean first touch and then race past somebody. She finds Haran sort of running parallel to her just to the inside,

in the half space. Haran plays Rodman into the box. It's a good pass. And she takes it on the Croif turn with her left foot to shift onto her right foot and just basically lose the two defenders who are bracketing her. And then she just slides it through the keeper's legs all clean. And it's one zero.

I'm going to call it a go-lato. And I don't care what anybody says. All right. I'll be the wet blanket on our six-pass sequence leading to a goal. It mean, it's just like an example of how it doesn't actually have to be clean because there's so much wiggle room. You know, there's so much margin for error. like the ball from Horan to Rodman into the box,

it's behind Rodman, right? Rodman has the step. Rodman's in on goal. If we hit a better pass here, then Rodman just gets to go in and score and not have to do the beautiful Croix turn. I'm glad it's underhit, so we get the croif. And even the croif is like a little bit farther away from her than she'd want.

It might be where like Mal just takes it away, takes it from her instead, and it turns into a nice little pass. But it doesn't matter because Trin can just beat. the two Zambia players to the ball because she's so much more athletic than they are. The same way Sophia could just run past the defender on the sideline to cue the whole thing.

There's just, there's nothing Zambia can do to stop our players. Well, I mean, if they are clicking and on, like sort of clicking on all cylinders, I don't know that there's anybody that can stop Sophia and Trinity and Mal when they're, you know, trying to race past them. So it's not just Zambia. No.

it's not it's not it's just again you uh you have a lot more a lot more margin for air you can you can mess up your touch and it just doesn't matter you'll get there anyway because uh zambia just aren't in the right spot at the right time fast enough right well don't get me wrong i love i love a game of nonstop chances this is this is like uh i have a blast watching watching team miss a ton of chances uh score it doesn't matter just give me all these uh goal box action is what I'm after. Yeah. I said it was a, she crofted it with her left foot.

I think that's wrong. She crofted it with her right foot, didn't she? Right foot, I think her right foot. Yeah, I'm trying to do, I'm doing the math. I'm doing the geometry on it in my own head. It doesn't make sense for her to do it with her left foot. Okay, we get a, 20th minute, we get a Lavelle diving header attempt on a good ball from Rodman from out wide right. Just can't get enough purchase on it.

Shortly after that, Smith takes a shot After winning a little cage match on the left side, shot is blocked. So again, we are exploiting the gap in talent here. Like we are creating looks over and over and over again. Yeah. A couple things on the defensive side, Germa does well against Banda in a foot race down the left.

And, you know, Germa doesn't strike you, I mean, at least me as a television viewer as like extremely fast. but she always She just always manages to do enough You know She probably is fast Yeah I think she's I think she's got to be

Outrageously fast because No one else can stay with Banda And Germa does it the entire game Bar like one thing where she wasn't just wasn't in the play But otherwise she never lost foot races And always disrupted The play at the crucial moment So

She's just so languid I guess She's so untroubled. It doesn't look like she's trying that hard. That was a good showing for Germa in a game where we just, again, mostly dominated. Zambia did have three or four dangerous moments that never turned into shots because Germa was there with like the same poke away every single time. Like the inside foot lunge poke. The timing is just perfect.

Yeah, that's an art, really. 23rd minute, right at the beginning of the 23rd minute, Alyssa is just way too loose with a pass out to Davidson. Lucky it wasn't Banda, who was the, you know, sort of the closing Zambian attacker. But Davidson does manage to sort of lunge and poke it away before it's taken from her. But I don't want Neer to be doing that.

Yeah, and that same scene with Tehran just takes a heavy touch and has it taken away from her right in front of our back line. And again, some of that is just like how much, much space are affording us like I swear it like throws us off it's like oh I can

I can actually take a big touch forward and then the touch gets a little bit farther than you expected yeah hope it doesn't throw us off too much like going

into the next game I don't really know how that works though um the 24th minute we get our second goal and this is this starts with a long ball

from Zambia at our back line done nods it down to coffee she finds Smith's feet uh with a vertical pass I don't know, 25 yards ahead. It's not a really fast attack, but this is one point in the game

where even I could see that Zambia wasn't really doing the right things defensively because, you know, Smith sort of takes a few touches and then squares it over to Lavelle on the left sideline. And then there's just this huge giant open space

in the middle of the field that Haran is kind of, I don't know, almost reluctantly, coming into. Right. It's essentially like unearned space, if you think of it like that. Like, we didn't do anything to earn this space. Zambia somehow just vacates the entire center of the field.

They've got like a decent line of four in their back. And then they have two defensive midfielers, but both the defensive midfielder's on like the opposite side of the vertical center of the field from where we're playing soccer. So her hand just gets it looking at nobody and can just pick her head up and hit whatever pass she wants. And she hits a delightful pass. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's the kind of pass that makes me want to get up in the morning. But Helen, I was going to say Helen Chonda is the midfielder, who is like kind of close to the centerbacks in this sequence. And she, earlier in the sequence, she identifies that Heran is coming into this space, but she doesn't step out

to mark her. Instead, she points at her as if it's somebody else's job. and then she stays on the back line. And then once Horan gets it, yeah, like you said, she's got all kinds of space and time. She does that beautiful outside of the boot, curving pass into Swanson's path behind the back line. But I'm like, what is Chonda doing here? Like, she's got to take responsibility there.

Anyway, Swanson takes a touch to her left and then sends it up and near post past the keeper. Nice finish. Two-zero. It's game over. It's game over. Like, I know they have Barbara Banda, but at two-zero.

with the amount of chances we're getting, the contest is decided. It did certainly feel that way, yeah. And if it wasn't, then it didn't take long to fully decide it. It took about 30 more seconds. I mean, 45, 50, who knows. Third goal comes almost immediately.

We win it in the press. Kind of lucky for, I think, Horan tries to, Horan recovers it and tries to play a first time pass to Swanson. I think, and just ricochets off Swanson's knee really hard but goes directly to Roosevelt. She finds Smith running in on the left side,

and then Smith plays a really smart, precise pass to Swanson running at the goal, another touch-pass, this time a touch-pass the keeper and she passes it in, 3-0. But I want to say I really like this from Smith. There's like a composure to it and, you know, correctness to the way she plays this ball that I think is going to serve us well. Outside of the foot for this one too, right?

Was it outside of the right? I think it's outside of the right foot. Okay. Didn't get as good of a replay on it, maybe. Yeah. It's pretty to watch, again, when this is what you want to see, when you're playing a team,

it's not very good, not very organized, not very experienced at high levels. You want to, you want to see your team just totally obliterate their sense of space. And I feel like that's what we were doing. Yeah.

well let's uh i mean so should we do we should we go through all this stuff or or talk about does it matter like outside of the enjoyment of the moment of watching us put on an attacking show or we don't score any more goals but we still just have an attacking show in the olympics uh is is like is there any takeaway yeah well What did we learn, Bells? Well, okay, let's first let's take a break. If you want to listen to the scuff podcast, add free, and join our vibrant chat community on the Discord server

where there's, you know, people are talking about the women's national team 24-7, join the Patreon. The link is in the show notes. It's like $5 a month. Think about it. We'll be back in a second. Okay, we're back. We're up 3.0.

row. We haven't been particularly awesome, but we're a lot better than Zambia. So see, 28 minute mark, a lovely Haran ball in behind for Rodman. Her ball across to Smith at the back post is cut out. Another really dangerous moment.

I do want to clock in the 29th minute. Rodman Lavelle kind of miscommunicate on the ball. They both kind of want it. They both kind of don't want it. And then they they both lose it. Did you see that? Yeah.

So, uh, I don't know. We assigned blame who needs to get like benched? I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to say, I don't know.

So then 30 seconds later, like, again, the game was over at 2. 0. It was totally over at 3.0. It was extra totally over. When Zambia

had take a red card. Yeah. Did you think this was, uh, I mean, I guess, the strict rules of the game it is a red card, right? I mean, I thought it was a super soft foul call to begin with,

but unless you're going to relitigate it and say it's not a foul at all, then I feel like the ref felt obligated to give the red, again, there's enough wiggle room, I feel like, where you could say it's not obvious goal scoring opportunity. Like if she doesn't. Keep her might have got to that touch first. Right, right. And there was another defender.

there was another defender coming in from the center of the more like central position in the park. But it definitely, I felt bad for Zulu. I got to say. Exactly. You feel bad for Zulu and you don't actually, I mean, I don't know how you felt. I didn't actually even want the red card, not just because of the, you know, the emotional aspect for that player in the Olympics to be ejected. But like, from a sporting perspective, I didn't want the U.S. to be playing against 10, 10 players, Zambia.

I wanted us to be able to keep playing against at least a full squad. because it was already not a great exercise for us. And now it just became, I mean, I think I would describe it as a clock killing exercise that occasionally bled into really good scoring chances. It almost made the game a little bit more of a struggle, I think, when they went down to 10 men, even for us. You know, I can't explain why it felt that way, but it did feel that way. But maybe it was more that we just lost.

Sophia Smith. Yeah, that could be it. Zambi gives up any pretense of really attacking. Anytime they would get past midfield with the ball at their feet, they would just shoot instantly. Yeah. Like 30 yards way. Gotta shoot it. 50 yards.

So. I mean, to describe the play, Dunn plays sort of a curling ball in behind for Smith. This is just one of the many ways that Smith is a weapon. and she's got uh she's got zulu kind of on her back shoulder so that tries to sort of swim in front of her and hits her in the face with her arm so that's that's the foul i think and um and then smith goes down yeah too bad when they were when they were when they were doing this extended review if if i heard correctly i never heard the booth like even speculate that they were looking at it for a dog so red no they were they were they thought they were looking at it

for in the box or not the box yeah yeah so uh they spent so much time on it and it clearly wasn't in the box i thought i didn't i also didn't never clocked me that it was going to be a dog so red for zambia i was like did they think did they think uh that we caught their them in the face with an elbow like uh that's what i was terrified of was that um smith was sofia's arm Sophia's arm went too high and hit someone's nose with her elbow, and it was going to be like a flagrant too, and she was going to be gone for the Germany game, which she might be anyway.

Yeah, I mean, I hope not. There's a shortly after that, a handball shout against Davidson. Again, I don't know, there's a lot of subjectivity in this sport. I mean, her hand was in a fairly natural position. It wasn't called. Greg, obviously, you don't want to talk about that.

Banda gets Haran pretty good with a stomp. It seems incidental, but right at the same time, so we're like, is Huran hurt? But right then Smith goes down, like we said, holding her right ankle. Doesn't look like she's in a ton of pain, but she comes right off for Lynn Williams. And you know what?

We're not the same team without her out there. No, I mean, we absolutely aren't. And I don't know if, Emma's going to see this tape from Lynn Williams and say Lynn, maybe we can't, we just can't play anything close to the same way with Lynn at Stryker. Again, we talked about maybe Jaden Shaw becoming the replacement of Sophia can't go, but you could still put Lynn on the field. It could just be that Lynn plays in like a sideline hugging role and somebody else is playing that central role where you get a little bit more fluidity, rhythm, link up than you get from Lange. Not that Lynn didn't have some moments, but I don't know. I don't know if it's just Rust.

She hadn't been playing much before the tournament. She just came back from injury. She's got the giant brace or rap or whatever it is on her leg. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think it's Rust. I just think that's like she's just a more straightforward type of player. A ton of her value comes in her defensive.

Yeah. energy, which in the game like this has no value because there's no defensive energy for our front line to exert. Right. Might be a lot more useful against Germany. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair, too. I hadn't really thought all the way through that for Lynn at Stryker.

But I feel like, I like for the national team, like Lynn in a wider role. I know she can do it in a pinch up top in the center, but let her hug out wide, use the sideline as sort of a teammate. Yeah. And, you know, if you care about the aesthetics, you want her out wide, you know, the aesthetics of the soccer, I mean. So yeah, she comes on in the 43rd minute for Sophia. Trinity beats two people with that straight up, push it past them and run fast that bandit did to Tierna. She gets fouled by both of them. The second foul gets called. You get some shots of aggrieved Trinity Rodman, which is. sort of becoming a familiar sight.

She picked up a yellow just before this, right? Trinity got her yellow for running to the back of a player. Did she? Yeah, so we got to hit that because, again, Trinity is Trinity. And even in this game, at 3-0, it was like, obviously that's a terrible foul to take for yellow cards for accumulation in the group stage. But again, even in a game like this, with Trinity on yellow,

I'm worried that she's going to take another yellow in this game. Right. She's got to calm it down a little bit. So now she's going to be on a yellow through the group stage. And I actually don't know when they reset in the Olympics. They have such made-up rules here. Yeah, something to watch. So then comes, well, Trinity also then misses that free header on a swanson set piece from wide right.

I mean, just horrible marking from Zambia on this free kick. And she's like, you know, she's bright in the day. danger zone, like, has all the time and just, you know, hits it wide. Happens. It happens. I'm not criticizing her, Greg. I know, no, no. Just pointing out what happened.

That's all. I wasn't going to weigh in on the value or not value of the header. The set piece, though. I liked the set piece. And it was mentioned in the broadcast that, uh, the U.S. is using set piece coach for both national teams. Uh, you know the guy. Is it Johnny?

Yeah. Yeah. Johnny Johnny Voh. The famous shot of Pulisic saying, Where's Johnny? Yeah. But I really like the design. I feel like any kind of wrinkles you can throw it.

Teams on these are great. We set up with like six players in offside positions. Yes. Essentially all as sort of decoys. Trinity just before the kick moves into an onside position. And then like all of the offside players just sort of get out of the way. so it's not to, you know, make a play on the ball. And then you have Trinity and Horan, like, kind of both free.

Yeah. Coffee free, too. Like, we got a lot of free players. And part of that is just going to be Zambia. They're, you know, less of a professional side. But I like any kind of, like, unique approach to a set piece like this. Totally, totally. So that's the half.

at the half Corbyn Albert subs on for Lavelle What did you make of Rose's performance? I mean If we're, you know, we're going to dig deep into what we learned from this match. I thought she was fine. I thought she kept plays moving around the box. She was involved in a number of like the dangerous moments that, you know, just barely didn't come off.

But there's just nothing really to learn here, especially if I've ever played her like Rose. I want to see Rose against Germany where spaces are compact and I want to see her do something really fun. Yeah. Okay, 53 minute mark Fox. We have an Emily Fox giveaway

in the attacking third springs a counter. Banda gets played into the box and she's tackled really well by Tina Davidson. This is a little bit dangerous. And clocking the Fox giveaway because it kind of just keep happening, you know? Yeah. She was involved in a really promising attack, 30 seconds into the game we talked about.

Otherwise, not too involved. She was. Everyone was involved. That's the thing. We had so much space to pass the ball that we had plenty of sequences where six players looked comfortable knocking a ball around. And Fox was that player on numerous occasions. Totally. But this play did stick out, this weird giveaway where then she was like on the floor and stayed on the floor for a long time as Zambia ran back at us.

Yeah. Chances still piling up for us in the mid-50s of the game. Rodman plays Williams in. Can't quite get a clean shot off. Nice little reverse pass from Rodman. Horan plays Alberton. A shot from a tight angle saved by the keeper. 57-minute mark. Good job by Germa, keeping up with Banda again. Pokes it back to Neier.

We get the Rodman Curler in the 59th minute. Build-up's a bit lucky because it falls. to her after a misconnection from Heronan and Williams more vertically it slides out to Rodman she cuts in and hits a you know it's a shot a lot like the one

Michael Alisei hit for France against the men's Olympic team yesterday it's just a little bit wide and then 60th minute Swanson beats two defenders in a cage match and then goes to her left and hits one with her left foot goes wide and high

so yeah lots of chances still I guess on initial watch I was like We didn't do that much in the second half Not true, we did a lot in the second half Um 64th minute Clocking this because Banda gets a look On a quick restart

A throw from the left And neither Horan nor Albert picks her up So she just sort of like receives it Maybe 30 yards from goal turns Takes a few touches And then rips one The shot is pretty comfortable for Nair But I'm still kind of raw

when it comes to restart alertness. Restart alertness. And then also, again, I don't know, I don't know how we're going to look against Germany and Australia with the Horan coffee sort of defensive pivot. But they're not well suited to a Zambia-type game to keep a player like Banda from just like racing past them. We got raced past a lot and actually left quite a few,

situations for our centerbacks to have to kind of deal with. So, you know, those weaknesses of both Horan and coffee, sort of the fleet footedness, that was on display here. Yeah. Yeah, and I feel like in this case it was just, like, we didn't account for her, you know? 65th minute, Casey Krueger comes on for Rodman, which moves done up to right wing.

Emily Sonick comes on for Horan. Nyes Warner comes on for Swans And so we're just in full sort of Whatever mode Like whatever Yeah Game's over Yeah

We're we're running Kruger and I'm sorry Don and Nice Wanger as our wingers now And even doing that Like we weren't sitting back like Oh with these defensive players playing attack We'll just sit like we were still just pushing numbers forward as much as we wanted Yeah it's like

Hey he's just throwing the full backs of bone you know, letting them play a little winger. I mean, Dunn is probably going to play plenty of winger in this tournament, I would imagine. But is, have we seen Nice Wenger at Winger before this? No, we're in the realm of trivia. No, we did, but it was like, it's a similar situation. End of a game. We just moved another fullback on, pushed Nice Wonger up.

Get a 68th minute giveaway from Tierna to Barbar Banda, which is, again, what you do not want to do, just a square pass to Germa that isn't very careful or accurate. Germa does a pretty decent job shepherding her out wide. She has to pass it, and then the player she passes it to gets bundled off the ball pretty easily, mostly by Sonnet, I think. And let's see, 71-minute mark.

Good build-up from coffee. So a nice moment from coffee doing some kind of tiki-taka stuff through the middle. plays it out to Dunn, Dyn slides, slides it across, just out of reach for Albert. I would like Albert to maybe be a little more committed to getting to this pass. But in the scramble, it falls to Nyeswonger. She takes a shot with her right foot

from about the penalty marker. That shot is blocked. I feel like I'm doing a lot of talking here. It's a parade of attacking chances. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kruger Cupback gets cut out after that. We can't We just can't quite score

Against 10 player Zambia It does It feels a little like the Costa Rica match Except we're up 3-0 Right that adds a lot of comfort psychologically Yes 78 minute mark another Fox giveaway

That kind of leads to a bit of Streaming forward from Zambia You know just clocking it for the Chronicles And She was she was not alone in the giveaways. Coffee, we already kind of laid out the

giveaways. Corbyn-Albert, a bunch of giveaways. Sonnet wasn't as clean as she needs to be if she wants to, like, be the player who can step in and just not screw up. That's your job. It just,

none of it mattered in this particular match. It could absolutely matter in three days. Yeah. Well, Greg, you're on the hook for the last ten minutes of the timeline, so the floor is yours, my friend. 80th minute, a little decent possession on the right flank in the attacking third.

Dunn ends up with it in the corner of the box and has Lynn Williams, Jennaiswanger, and Kruger all queued up at the backpost. Like, again, people are just out for a goal at this point. And so we get the cross off. Kruger's volley is blocked, and of course, now we're a little bit exposed. So this is what, like, we did allow for a lot of end-to-end stuff over the last 15, 20 minutes, which you kind of are sort of the whole thing. you don't want in a tournament setting like this where it's tight turnarounds before games.

You don't want to have people have to make 75-yard recovery runs in a game that you're winning comfortably up a player. Right. There's kind of no reason that this is happening. But I'll allow it because it's fun for pullbacks to be in the box trying to attack. So, yeah, so after that block volley sonnet, Tierna and Gernah kind of shepherd that two-vers, 2 v3 and end up just conceding a weak shot at the edge of the area that Neyer catches almost like comically comfortably like plants her feet in the ground and just stones it dismissively uh 88 minute we get another clock killing possession that bleeds into an outstanding chance um coffee is just you know the amoeba is pinned deep coffee's got it and feeds nice one who looks very comfortable moving into the interior of the amoeba

I agree. She kind of gets it into the left half space. It's a vertical ball into Williams' feet at the arc. And Williams kind of takes a touch back towards nice, Wong, or so she can then flip her hips and hit a nice diagonal through ball into Kruger, who's racing into the box. Kruger clips it across for Dunn, who's point-blank header, sails just wide of an empty net.

Another one that's almost like a gimmie butt for, I'll give Dunn a little bit of a break. the ball just missed skimming the defender's head. So maybe a little hard to read for Dunn coming across. Yeah, would have liked her to put that one away. Would have been nice for Dunn to get that. Yeah. So what do we learn?

We need Smith. We need Sophia. I mean, we could maybe get it done without her, you know, with the right front line. But we're going to miss her, that's for sure, if we're missing. Hopefully, you know, hopes and prayers. that it's a, you know, just a really smart precautionary substitution in a game that was already over. But we just don't know yet.

We still have plenty of whoopsies. I feel like if we crash out of this tournament, it's going to be because of the whoopsies in the back. We're trying to play soccer, which is incredibly encouraging to me. Again, Zambia makes it easy with the amount of gaps they leave, the space between the lines. lack of like shape and structure, but we tried to play soccer through those gaps

and didn't sort of just result to home run ball. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Germany game is 3 p.m. Eastern on Sunday. What else? Anything we need to cover? No, this is, again, this was happy hour. We enjoyed it.

It was nice to chat with the people we don't always go out drinking with it. But the Germany game is going to be kind of the real thing. Germany beat Australia 3-0 too Worth Worth mentioning Those were the only two

The only two matches so far In the opening round What six games The Olympics That weren't one goal Deficits So US and Germany The big winners

Yeah I mean it should be great It should be a great game I think we should change the house style From Zone 14 to the arc I like that You learn that from Spanish language broadcasts because they always talk about the ARCO. Do they? Yeah.

And I'm like, oh, because Zone 14 is nobody, people, you know, every six months or so get an email or a message from somebody's like, can you explain what Zone 14 is again? And I like that. I like the arc. The arc is very clear. And you know what that is. I actually grew up with it being called the D. It was called the D. Yeah, I can't do that anymore.

No, I feel like you got to go with the arc. Yeah. I like the arc. All right, let's build some sequences into the arc against Germany. Let's do it. All right. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.