Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #520: Olympics — Under-23 USMNT v Morocco recap

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

Watke and Belz recap the humbling loss to Morocco in the Olympic quarterfinals. 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.

Well, our sort of young men's soccer teams run at the Olympics has come to an end. Pretty convincing defeat at the hands of Morocco. It's me, Bells. I've got Waki with me. How are you, man? I'm good. I'm not feeling too down about it. I'm just excited to talk it through.

Feeling a little bit down at first. Then I watch some badminton on TV, which I don't get to do as often as I'd like. That lifts you right up. What a wonderful game. Yeah. I haven't watched any yet. Was it, um, who was the semifinals? So you better get on it quickly. Yeah. My chances, my chances, the door is closing, huh? Mm-hmm. And then I was just kind of working through, and then I was just kind of working through reasons why Morocco won. Let me hit you with the few I came up with.

Yeah, please. They're better. Yep. I think that's true. The crowd? Yeah. They appear to be maybe a team of destiny. They have that whiff about them, don't they?

Yeah. And then on top all that, they got a first half penalty. Let's say we gave them a first half penalty. We can get to that. But first half penalty plus all those three factors, you know. Yeah. It's going to be tough to overcome. That penalty was often.

critical, or at least in retrospect, seems awfully critical. It was, uh, it does feel a little bit like, well, we're just a little naive. We're just a little sloppy. What it was, it was a situation, a kind of common situation in the box that calls for a heightened awareness. And we did not in that moment have it. Yeah. He doesn't need to kick. I mean, at first I thought, well, that's just unlucky for him to get whistle for that penalty but he doesn't need to kick his leg up through the air like that in that situation it's a combination of unlucky but you got to know your airspace

yeah yeah yeah you gotta be on top of that at all times yeah add that to the list of things a soccer player needs to understand well air traffic control but then i was thinking through the but then i was thinking through the positives which i think is important to do yeah our guys got to go to the Olympics. Yeah. Even Paris at the end. I mean, not bad, right? Experience in a real international tournament.

A youth one. But this felt real to me. Yeah. Made it out of the group. That was a success in my mind. You know, I wasn't sure they were going to be able to do that, as has been well documented. And then one big one for all of us, we have not come out of the summer. with any misplaced overconfidence.

We've been put on maybe an appropriate level. We've been humbled. It's good to be humble. Yeah. I had not thought of that, and maybe that's the best thing about this summer is we're coming into the next year and a half. We have to feel like underdogs now, right?

If we didn't already. I don't know why we wouldn't have already. Well, because we don't. do that. We'll never learn not to. And in six months for now, we'll think we're about the ninth best team in the world. But that's okay. For right now, we know we're about, you know, 20th or whatever it is. And it's good to just reset going to the fall. Yeah. Yeah, everybody's got to get back to the, get back to work. Get back to the drawing board. Let's do the lineups and then go through the timeline and see, you know, see what happens.

So it's Patrick Schulte Engel, Nathan Harriol, Walker Zimmerman, Miles Robinson, and John Tolkien across the backline. No surprises with those five. Tanner Testman and Jack McGlynn get the nod in the midfield, you know, along with Georgie Mahalovich. McGlynn is the surprise here, I think, well, not surprise, but it's the decision that Marco made, Marco Mitrovich. It was, Bousio, Bousio got hurt. he was not available for the last one or this one and Maximilian Dietz started the last game

but he didn't get the nod tonight I was excited to see Jack I like I mean watching Jack McGlynn play is fun right don't you think yes he's a beautiful player yeah he had he had some we'll get to the sequences but he was just diagonal that way

diagonal that way now I'll just go short keep giving it back to me Yeah, he needs a lot of the ball. It's good for him to be on the ball. He barely got on the ball at all in the first half. We'll get into that. And then it's across the front line, Kevin Perretus at right wing,

Paxon Aronson-Sin plan as a nine sort of nominally, and then Griffin Yow, Griffin-Mittormand Yao, at the left wing. Morocco's lineup was Munir and goal, Akaroff Akhakimi, you know, pretty famous right-back, playing right back for them, of course. Usama El Azuzi, Medi, Bukamir, and Zachariah El Uadi across the back line.

And then Amir Richardson, a, you know, at one time potential U.S. dual nat, and Usama Targeline in the two in the midfield. And then Ilias Akomak, Bilal El Canus, and Abde Azalzuli across a band of three. and then Sufian Rahimi at Stryker. Akamak and Azalzuli, both pretty good players, I would say, in La Liga. Akamak at Villarreal and Ezalzouli at Real Batis. So, yeah, they were better than us, as you said. Any other thoughts on the lineups, Chris, before we go to the timeline?

No. Was I supposed to prepare a thought on the lineups? No, no, you didn't need to. You didn't need to. Uh-uh. Just, you know, sometimes things come. Well, I can look at it. I'll look at it and see if, I mean, love Kevin Paredes out there.

Yep. He, I think he can hold his head high after all this. Don't you? Well, he would have held his head high even without your permission there. But yes. I think I would also say he should hold his head high. Yes. He didn't have a terrible game.

It's, I guess, what I mean. and, you know, we get into it. I was just taking you too literally there because I apologize for that. I'm for it. I'm for it. It's fine. It's fine. Kevin does not need my permission to hold his head anyway or any other part of his body for that matter. You know?

That's weird. But he doesn't need permission for any part of his body either. Yeah. Seven minutes. Nor would we give it. All right, to the timeline. So the seven minute mark, we get a chance, chance for the U.S.

Kevin does a flop out on the right wing, and we get a McGlynn set piece from Wide Right. He sends it in there, Zimmerman nods it back across. To Paxton, he's free in front of goal. He misses the frame, and it turns out he's offside, which he shouldn't be.

He shouldn't be offside there. Come on. Come on, Paxton. For two reasons. First of all, being on side would have made it easier for him to kick it in. Right. He would have arrived at it. Yep.

And then the second reason is that it doesn't count, it doesn't count if you're off sides. It's illegal. A really important reason. Yeah. And I wouldn't call Kevin, I wouldn't call that a flop. I would call that a delayed dive. Okay. What's the difference?

Probably, I think it's more of an art distinguishing. the two than anything. But he was moving, he was running forward and went forward. Flokers, you're going to more go backwards or straight down. Okay. It was kind of a neocortex. That was the delay in it because it's a, there was logic running as opposed to a reptile dive, which you can also do, which is just contact, you're down with how to thought.

Yeah. He has both of those, kind of the triune of dives. He does those two. he doesn't do the limbic dive, which is the emotion one. Which is one of my favorite things about him. Who does the... Go through the tape a lot. Tons of players, but I'll say go through the tape with him.

You won't find an emotional dive. Okay. Interesting. All right. Polisik does emotional dives. Does he? Yeah. It's mostly you see the emotion afterward.

Hmm. Because you have seen a lot of... You have seen a lot of Paredes tape. So you know. Mm-hmm. Do you have like his Loudoun United Games? Do they just do moments from his Loudoun United Games come to mind? Well, his Loudoun United Games were when we were watching USL, you and I.

So I'd have all of it just in my noggin. That occasionally I can just, a play will just run through my head. I don't really remember. Wasn't that, what a time that was. What a time that was. Just pulling up ESPN Plus at 2 in the morning. this guy is going to play for the national team someday. We should watch him.

He's one of the 30 that is in position. Yeah. Yeah, he's in the picture, for sure. I don't know that the same can be said for the whole team today, but. And then, so it's, I didn't make this clear really, but as Al-Zuli is up against Harrio and Paredes, and this is an interesting matchup. He's got a lot of sauce. He's coming at them.

Beretta's not afraid to defend. Also going at Morocco. You do get the sense immediately in this game. It's a totally different level than the last two games. I mean, Hakemi has a lot to do with that. They were bearing down on us with pressure, and we were the ones trying to get out. they were being pushed on by the crowd.

It was a heavy blanket they were putting on us out there. We couldn't. We couldn't toss ourselves out of. They have a good short corner routine at the 12-minute mark. A bunch of intricate stuff up the right side. I mean, in that right corner leads to a shot for Akamak. Saved. But a little dangerous.

It was a good save. by Schulte and on the save replay when Tim Howard's doing the commentary he says Schulte was unsighted as opposed to saying

he was screened and I thought that was an interesting way to put it kind of subtly shifts you know whose perspective we're seeing it from

we're seeing it from the keeper's perspective yeah because it's the players out there are screening it's a keeper who's unsighted because when we say

the keeper is screened. Is it really the keeper that's screened, or is it the ball that's being screened? For the keeper, and I think that's what Howard at his point is. It's unsighted. Yeah. He centers the goalkeeper, doesn't he?

It's a nice... And he did corrective. Yeah, 14, yeah, definitely. 14 minute mark. Yao can't beat Hakimi in a foot race after Paxton tries to spring him on a counter. it's a little bit of a

Did you think he should have caught him there? No. I think we shouldn't have even tried that in that moment, but it turned out he didn't beat Akram. He's not faster than Hekimi. A little bit of a come-down-to-earth day for Griffin, wasn't it? I mean, if you're going to call it a play where he didn't... I think this was a little unfair of a first-mentioned form.

him. What would have been your first mention? I don't know, but not this this play, this innocuous play, that there's no way he should have been able to... I'm sensing an anti-Griffin agenda from you. You're saying his middle name every time. And I think you're just reacting

to how excited people got about him. I think this is more about the people than about Griffin. Let me plumb the depths of my soul here. He looked really good against Guinea. And I thought it was, I thought some of the talk from Howard and others was maybe a little much,

but I guess mostly, to be perfectly sincere here, Chris, mostly what I, why I clocked this play is just because it's a different, it's a different kind of ball game, you know? You can't just play the obvious through ball down the line for Griffin and he's going to beat his guy to it. Hakeemie says, no, this is not happening right now. And it just didn't happen.

Not that it was a dominant recovery that there was no prospect of that play ever working. And I think that's an important point. Yeah. That did stand out. Another thing that stood out is McGlynn getting beaten dead to rights on a 1-2 over on the right side, 16th minute. Yanks the guy down from behind, kind of a horse collar tackle, gets a yellow card there in the 16th minute. I was like, man, Jack, you better do some really good stuff on the ball. because that kind of defending's not going to,

not going to do it, not going to cut it. He got caught a third man running back door. So that's some pretty sophisticated action, but it was just the man standing right in front of him. I guess I made it sound more complicated, but there was a lot going on there. There was, but we had enough, we had a, they didn't have a numerical superiority over there.

It was, we had the, we had the bodies. Okay. They had, they created dynamic superiority. I remember reading about that on the German tactical blog. Spielvergarsion. I believe is how it's pronounced. That's perfect pronunciation, I'm sure. Okay.

Yeah, dynamic superiority. That is a good phrase. I don't know that this actually would count as dynamic superiority. I think he would have needed to be running sooner. I think this is just some sort of outer superiority that was just being a better soccer player. Yeah. Fundamental superiority.

First long spell of possession for us in a while happens just before the 20-minute mark. McGlynn hits it from 25 yards, and it kind of ricochets over to Georgie, and he does a handball to, I mean, kill the attack, I guess. Let me give you another. framing on that is he nearly saved the attack with a handball. It would have gone who knows where else and he was also kind of testing the bounds of

where the shoulder is and isn't. Yeah. And he went a little bit too low on the arm by a good measure. Fair. Peretti draws a foul in the 21st minute. 30 seconds later draws another foul after doing Ezelli. So, you know, he's getting his in. He's battling.

Yeah, he's not impotent out there. Oh, okay. Yeah, so we got a set piece. Can you tell us about it? Yes. So, I can't. The key move is Paxton. He's standing offside with Walker and someone else.

I can remember who it was. The Walker and the other guy are just, they're just distractions. Pakistan is going to, they're going to run back on side. He's going to immediately loop around his man and run right back in. All of this is on the near side. So he's running in angled at the near post or inside the near post, but at the near post. And that's all time to a little dink from Georgie. That was very well executed.

He just hit a little bit too long. Yeah, a little heavy. I do wonder about, I mean, so it was interesting, but what's the, is that a high percentage design set piece? Like how often is somebody going to get that dink right? And then the player, what do we expect Pax to do there? Like an over-the-shoulder volley on goal? Or maybe he brings it down and sends it a cross.

I'm imagining a swing in that right leg hitting it into the, you know, at the goal. Just hit it at the goal. Okay. But it's coming. kind of guiding it forward. Okay. Yeah.

I don't know. I think Georgie, his main job is to nail those things. So if I was certainly one guy he did it, it would have been him, and it wasn't that far off. And he was wide open. Yeah, that's true.

He was open. By the way, on that first one we talked about, Walker was wide open. Yeah. Unmarked. Backpost. Yeah. You mean?

They weren't even shading toward him, though. Yeah, he was on the back post. Clean header across. A very solid one, but clean. Yeah. I love the, I love having Walker out there for that reason. And I mean, we did it. We sort of gave them their flowers already,

but I think we should do it again. I appreciate Miles and Walker's service to this team as the overage centerbacks. I know a lot of people are really unhappy with how the team played. I mean, did you spend any time on Twitter earlier today? It's very unhappy. No, Lisa. I did this performance. Okay, good, good.

You know what I'm finding is you don't need to. Yeah, you don't need it. You don't need it for news anymore. You just, you can just go on the scuff Discord. Oh, yeah. But, you know, it's good, it may be good to have a balanced media diet.

You know what I mean? No. No, there's nothing good you need on Twitter. Okay. All right. Interesting. I've made this shift, and I think other people should consider it.

Reddit's interesting too. I think Reddit, I always find Reddit to be a good place to just sort of take the temperature. Miles does hit, I mean, there's a couple dimes in here, one from Miles to Kevin, then one from Zimmerman to Yao, but we, you know, we're not getting anything out of these switches over to the wing. Yao and Aronson just utterly, utterly ineffective in this game. I'm not sure it's all their fault, but it's at least partly their fault. but it's at least partly their fault. And then we come to the penalty.

Kind of the pivotal moment in the whole game. 27th minute. It's a bouncing ball in the box. And Ariel just swings up through Rahimi's outstretched leg. You know, Rahimi goes down. Would you call it a neocortle dive or a reptile dive? I'm not sure. Well, I mean, I think I...

I tend to not necessarily apply one of those if it's a clear, there's no choice but to go down. I think the physical force of that leg coming up, so maybe, you know, it's reptile, but I wouldn't show this as a key example of a reptile dive. Okay. Well, he goes down and it's a penalty. It is a little unlucky.

It's also naive. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't, I mean, Rahini was sticking his leg out at the ball with his back to the goal. So it's not like he's, you know, there's not like there's imminent danger of a goal being scored. I guess this is where we come back to your talk about understanding your airspace.

Yeah. But those ones do always hurt when they're away from the goal, not facing it. Yeah. It hurt us. Yeah, Rahimi slots at home, down to Schulte's right. Nice penalty. Zero.

And we're, I feel like we're still totally in the game. But I'll just have to warn you. There's not that much in this timeline that's really all that positive. There's one really positive moment, I guess. We can turn some of them into positives. Okay. We'll go through them and I'll turn his. as many as I can, into positive.

Okay, I like that. I like that. Tolkien gets, so the next thing I have is Tolkien getting whistled for a foul, and, you know, he doesn't appreciate the diving. He did a really good, basically, a standing fish impression to express his not liking the diving. He's kind of simulating a dive, but just as a fish jumping. Yeah, with his arms tightly against his body. That was nice.

I really liked that. I liked it too. I just, you know, I was like, do you know that your teammate is Kevin Paredes? That's the thing. It doesn't matter. It's no, they're not journalists out there. They have no obligation to be balanced.

Yeah, you're right. In fact, we don't want them to be balanced. So that's the half. And we'll take a little break. Come back in a minute if you want to skip the ads. It's at war, you might, a war without honor, I would add. Right. There's no chivalry.

It's totally tribal. Unless a player's injured, then you kick it out of bounds. There are some very specific examples where you must do things, but outside of that, there are no rules. Yeah. Do you think it's different than other sports that way? I think they probably each have a code that's each distinct, but have similar things about it. like hockey seems to have an elaborate code involved the fighting

I don't know the details of it but there seems to be a lot going on there just in like fair play outside of kicking the ball out of the out of bounds if somebody really gets hurt and you don't want to do like a tackle that actually hurts somebody that's

I think that's generally considered out of bounds yeah no intent to injure no spitting at this point we're just telling people about this sport that they already They know.

Well, I do think it's interesting. Like, it occurs to me, is soccer different from like basketball and football that way? Where you do in soccer, gamesmanship is a really important part of the game. And winning advantages

in all kinds of little ways is, it's a really important thing. I don't know if it's the same way in basketball and football. I don't know. We'll have to tackle, maybe we'll have to tackle this subject another time. It would be a good.

topic. Yeah. To get some basketball experts. Yeah. Maybe a, you know, Dallas Mavericks reporter. Oh, yeah. Half time. We're going to take a break.

We'll back in a minute. If you want to skip the ads, you know what to do. Go to the show notes. Find the link to the Patreon. $5 a month. Gets you all of these episodes ad-free, plus the Monday review, plus a bunch of other stuff.

48-minute mark, we get a decent chance. on a McGlynn long ball, Paredes comes back to it. It's kind of like a short long ball. Comes back to it, cuts across the top of the box, pokes it over to Paxton. He tries to shoot,

but he just, his shot is blocked off his foot from the edge of the box. It's about as good of a slide tackle block shot as you're going to see. Yeah. And I kept re-playing the play to see if Paredes could have maybe

played it a little bit in front and Paxson could have turned the corner. I'm not sure. Even playing it as a FIFA, controlling it as FIFA, I could have done it. Yeah.

So I have no notes on the play. I mean, the shot was going on frame. It looked like it was going on frame on the replay. The problem of the play is just the way it worked out. Paredes is dragging

all the defenders toward the place that he's passing it. Yeah. It's good point. So he's building in a dynamic advantage for that defender. That's another technical concept that I just shared with you. That's two in one episode.

What was that blog you learned it from? Spieler fonts. 54th minute. Good move from us, mostly from McGlynn's diagonals. Paxton floats one over to Perettus and he tries a big flying scissor kick. I love it, but it's blocked by the first defender. That's why you, I mean, you're at the Olympics. What's the point of being at the Olympics if you're not going to go for that?

Yeah. That was a big Olympic moment. And it was a time when I was reminded that these kids are all filled with the Olympic spirit out there. We're down, but we're not out. And we're fighting. Do you think they stick around or do they just go straight? I guess, like Kevin probably just goes straight to Wolf's, from here.

I mean, it's already August. We're in a weird time right now, aren't we? August 3rd? You would think normally they'd have a week off, but you might want to just get there. Maybe they took their time off before the Olympics. I bet they go straight there. Yeah.

Which maybe that's really exciting, but it's also kind of like kind of a letdown, I would think, to head to training camp. Maybe training camp for Wolfsburg is really festive. 57 minute mark, Perettus draws a yellow card. Yeah, it's when they're getting out of the zone. This one was probably a real foul,

but I do want to still give him credit for making sure that man now misses the semifinal. So just the last little thing he did here. Yeah. He's getting him out of that next game. He says you might beat us 4 to 0, but we're going to exact a price. You will not be playing.

Yeah. The 59th minute, the 59th minute, our best chance of the game. Some really good stuff from us. It's like patient possession. We work it up the left through Jack, who pirouettes his way to some measure of redemption for his anonymity in the first half. Kevin shoots it.

I mean, so McGlynn plays it to Kevin. Kevin shoots it. It's blocked. He recovers it ahead of Azalzuli. and then recycles it to Tessman, who floats it to the backposts, kind of a curling, left-footed in-swinger, over to Zimmerman, and Zimmerman nods it back across again, as he does, to his centerback partner, Miles Robinson,

who's arriving at the penalty marker, just a golden chance with his left foot, and he just slices it wide, right? That's when Tim Howard says, with all due respect to... To center backs. Yeah, to the center back position. Yeah. That's why he's a centerback.

It was both the centerback position that was at fault and Miles Robinson. Yeah. That's a centerback because he sliced it far enough wide that it's not entirely on his position. No. No. It's too bad because that is still one zero at this point. Could have tied it. Had a chance.

And there isn't, even though it did go as far wide as it did, there is still a universe where Miles Robinson is an Olympic hero right now. Absolutely, there is. And by there is, I mean, a potential, there is a potential universe. I don't actually think there is a universe where he is an Olympic hero right now. Do you? It's been about three years since I listened to an audio book about that type of thing. So I couldn't tell you exactly why, but I know at one point I did think there would be another universe.

Okay. And I'll either have to listen to the audio. book again or have to get a physicist on here to discuss multiple multiple universes with us. Well, just, you know, from a, from a 10,000 foot level, 10,000 feet level, we're talking about infinite variations. Essentially, right? Yes, we'll just say that. Okay. Get a, I mean, at this point, again, at this point in the game is 1-0, Morocco, we have just almost scored.

Yeah. And I kind of consider everything we've talked about so far For me is really the important part of the game And the rest of it was Just something that can happen Sometimes in a game when you're chasing a goal against a quality team But we got the worst of it, scoreline-wise I think, yeah

I gotta say there's also some of that Some wilt going on You know? It's kind of the same thing that happened against France I think part of the wilt be built into something that can happen. Okay. When you're chasing a goal and now you've conceded and now here comes another one and the

Olympic dream is crumbling in front of you. Right. Which isn't to forgive it. Yeah. Well, one more positive is a huge tackle from Zimmerman after, it's a negative and a positive. There's a testament giveaway in the middle, pretty profligate from him there. And then they're coming at us and Zimmerman makes a very,

precise, desperate sliding challenge to knock it away from, I think it was Rahimi, but I can't remember for sure. But good job by Walker. And then 63rd minute, we get Morocco's second goal. And it's kind of on Nathan Harriol a little bit. It's a goal kick. Ariel gets just beat,

just absolutely annihilated down the line by Ezell Zuli. So he's free on the end line, dribbling at Walker Zimmerman who's backing up trying to, I don't know, trying to keep all the angles in mind. And he zips it across the six, and Akamak is just flying in at the near post and just belts it, belts it in the net. Totally unstoppable.

Maybe it was Tolkien who was tracking him. I don't know. I still had some hope at this point, but less. And it turns out I was an error. You know when Harriol didn't have the best game. Did he? And when his problems, I think, started was earlier in the first half

when he kicked it out of bounds when he could have done something different. Remember down at the N-line? There's a defender running on. In case, there's a defender running on and he tapped it over the N-line. Oh. When he had some other options.

Yeah. That's not the right mentality. I don't even think, I think he looks a lot worse than he probably deserves. because of these penalties, but, I mean, the game is what it is. You know, you can't concede penalties. You can't get beaten in the lead-up to a goal.

So, yeah, it was a tough game for him. He should have tried to keep that ball in bounds. That's a simple fix. Next time. Booth comes on for Yao and McGuire comes on for Georgie in the 66th minute. I don't, you know, at this point, it seems clear. None of this was going to make much difference. We do some decent, a decent move up to left side in the 69th minute and Tolkien cuts it back.

It's cut out. And we move up the right and a booth ball across is cut out for a throw. We're in it. But still not really, I mean, still the best chance easily of the game for us was the Miles one. And then 70th minute, Hakemi scores his goal. Paredes goes flying into a duel with him on a bouncing ball at midfield and Hakemi just comes away with it. A little bit of variance there, but he wins the duel, and he's just driving at the goal. Nobody picks him up, really.

And as he comes to the top of the box, he just slides it in at the near post, all casual, with his left foot. It's the kind of goal you watch the team you're rooting for concede, and you say, that shouldn't be that easy. You know, it shouldn't be that easy for him to dribble that far. It shouldn't be that easy for the ball to roll past Shulte. but maybe this was the point in the game where we just kind of we wilted. They were thinking ahead.

They were thinking ahead to getting on that train to it, Wolfsburg. Yeah. Watching the badminton. I went and got some ice cream too. Did I tell you? No. What kind of ice cream do you get?

We got black raspberry ice cream. Sounds nice. At nighttime or in the afternoon? Mid-afternoon. Well, Penalty on Harial in stoppage time. Obviously his second one of the game. This one is for having his hand out slightly as Akamak shoots.

It's not called initially, but VAR gets it sorted out. Ref points the spot. And it's a goal for El Medi Maboub, who had sub-dawn. And, I mean, this one seems even harsher than the first one on Haryl, isn't it? I mean, his hand was up a little bit, but... I'm telling you, he got thrown a lot of swords by kicking that ball out. So that's it. All eyes turned to the women tomorrow against Japan.

Maybe two questions for you, Chris, which I have not asked you to prepare for, so we'll see how it goes. But one, how do you feel about us not managing to bring more talent to this tournament? like a reina or a musa or a tilman well I think it seems like it felt like it would be a cool moment to have one of a star guy show up yeah but then when you look at all their situations it doesn't quite work for a lot of them and Pulisig must have just not wanted to do it

he's got a new coach yeah so in every case you could Malik, this needs to be his year. Gio has been Yeah, Gio doesn't, who knows where he's going to be. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the overage players,

well, I mean, pool of six got to be in Milan with the new coach, or I guess they're in America right now, but that seems like a no-brainer. And they don't have to, of course, as most of you know, they don't, the clubs do not have to release players

for these tournaments, but, you know, somehow PSG allowed Hakemi to play. play and there's But he also didn't have a tournament before. That's true. They probably only would have needed a break. I think it's good for them to get a break.

But that's a lot of what people are talking about. Like, why didn't we bring Joe Scala? The other question I wanted to ask you is who, you know, who has caught your attention in a new way from this tournament, who on this team? Like who could be a factor? for the national team. For the next manager?

Yeah. What I hope the next manager does, send a big message. He calls in like seven of them. Said, hey guys, they're here to take your spots. So, give me,

give me the obvious seven. You pick them. Okay. Kevin. Kevin. comes, Tanner, Tolkien. I'll say Paxton. I'll do the rut, Paxton. Give me Yauza.

Yeah. This is to send a message, remember? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yowsers is coming in to send you a message. Christian Poulosick. Seven might have been too many. And then Walker Zimmerman. We're up to six. Zimmerman's in.

Miles. Easy. Yeah, Miles. There's seven. Yeah. I'm excited to see Tolkien, like, where Tolkien goes with his career. Could be time for a move over there

to old Europe way. Yeah. It just doesn't, I don't know how much sense it makes for him to go to play for, you know, Wester Lowe or something. Probably not that much sense. You know what I would like him to do? You know how none of our players can seem to

make it in Portugal for whatever reason? I think he's the guy to go and do that. I don't know what that does for his career, but I think he has it in him to go make it in Portugal. Well, there's a lot of sea life for him to... Right on the ocean. Explore. Yeah.

I mean, I do agree with Vince. Vince is talking about how Testman is, like, has gotten a lot better on the ball, a completely different player than he was two years ago. I think that's true. I think he was maybe a little gassed today. Didn't have a great game, but... We included Testament in the seven, right? Uh

If we didn't, we had Kevin We're going to take a real shalacking No, we did, we did, I said, I said Tanner. Thank God. Yeah. So, that's probably it. By the time you're listening to this, we'll probably have a result for the women's game too.

That's against Japan. And Greg and I are going to recap it on Monday. So, hey, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.