Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #534: USMNT v Canada recap

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

It's a joint Greg, Belz, Vince and Watke review of the demoralizing loss to Canada. 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, we're going to do it. We're going to recap that game, and it's going to be the Monday review. We got Greg here, and Vince, and Waki, and Waki's train. We're talking like coal train here, Waki? What are we talking? It is a, well, it's a, I don't know what it's carrying, but it is an industrial train. With the track, about 10 feet from my window. Okay.

All right. You feel that then, don't you? I do feel it. I can feel the train in my feet right. Remember, you might need to go inspect it for one Mauricio Pocitino, see if he's hidden on there. Smuggling him aboard. They've done well keeping all that under wraps, kind of.

Yeah. I mean, I guess there's been like 12 or 13 people semi-reporting on it vaguely. and it seems incorrectly. But, yeah, I feel like they've kept it pretty tight this time around. Yeah. But all signs point to the deal is almost done. Maybe it'll be done by the time we finish recording here. But in the meantime, you know, we lost to Canada, two to one.

And in pretty much empty stadium in Kansas City, Kansas. Vince, you were there. I was. What are your, what's your high level? impression of things? Well, first of all, you know, I'm going to talk about not things, but the thing. The reason that I made that trek to Kansas City,

and it isn't just a nice drive. But Jesse Marsh's downfall, I've been praying for it, hoping for it, you know, meditating on it for a while. Ever since he took the Canada job, couldn't wait for this opportunity. but when the game kicked off, it was pretty obvious that the USM&T could wait for this opportunity. So really, it wasn't as devastating to me as I thought it would be.

You know what I'm saying? It was like when you watch the team come out and they start playing and it's like they're not up for it whatsoever. And I'm just like, okay. Like that's just what we're going to do, man. We're going to capitulate the Jesse Marsh somehow. And yeah, I was I was able to take it in stride. I don't know why. I'm so calm about it.

Well, actually, I do know why it's just because it's my nature. But more so just when I saw the team and, you know, they, they weren't fighting, man. They weren't fighting. So why was I going to get upset over them not coming to play? just disappointed. Just disappointed more than anything, man. You know how it goes. We got some fathers here on this call.

I got to say, Vince, when I was watching it, it did feel like I was kind of watching it as a betrayal to you personally by the players. I mean, it's crazy. To let Jesse Marsh, I know Bells was gracious to say Canada defeated us 2-1. Jesse Marsh defeated us 2-1. And I did read that, read that as a betrayal to you. from the players. And then I had to go into the press conference and stare him in the eye. And he gave me a look that could be, like, it may have been an annoying look.

It may have been annoying. He looked at me. I don't know. Maybe it's because I'm a black man in this press conference. He might not have seen. He might have been surprised. He might have been surprised. I don't know.

I did have on a nice hat. Maybe he liked that too. but it did seem like when we locked eyes there for a second, he knew. It seemed like he knew. He didn't give me a smirk or nothing, but it was just like, you know, but I had to,

regardless, I had to sit in there, watch him crack jokes, you know, like Stephen Goff got the first question. He's like, look at this guy. He did my first MLSS game. Like, he's in there having a great time, cracking up, cracking jokes. Telling us about how how Ali Ahmed

kicked our tails and the one other dude that plays for a club that I had never heard before. The midfield, I forgot. Bro's name. It starts with a C. Juanieri, I think. It's a Grasshopper FC, okay?

And Switzerland did not know that that was a club. Had not heard of it. But yeah, I had to hearing Wax Poetical about what he did to the national team. I mean, yeah, just, it is what it is.

It must have been hard. It is. You did good work. You did good work in Kansas City, though, Vince. I feel like you're designed for the mix zone for that kind of stuff. My take, my take has very little to do with Jesse Marsh. Like, sure, I get that that's the thing. But a thing for you in particular, and it's like a headline for everybody else.

But this was just men against boys, man. That's all it was. Canada's a bunch of men We were a bunch of boys And I mean, I'm sure coaching had something to do with it But it didn't seem like the main thing to me

I mean Like they just They just they just bullied us Like in every Facet Yeah Yeah And I'm disgusted by that

That was the main takeaway And the fact I mean But you can't take away The Jesse Marshall of it It's like bro, this is the most obvious thing that was going to happen in this match. And somehow you were still not ready to go for this match.

And then when I'm in the mix zone and I ask Polly, specifically about how the team is going to match the problems that the Jesse Marsh team is going to pose. First of all, I mean, I've never seen a more exasperated dude in my life. I mean, that's something that really comes off when you see him, you talk to him in person. It's just like, man, he is really just there so he doesn't get fine. hates doing it, hates being the face of the national team. To be completely honest, you know, I'm not casting aspersions on his character or anything like that, but just he just doesn't want to do it.

But anyway, I asked him about how they're going to deal with Jesse Marsh Pressure. He's like, we've done it before. I'll do it again. And then they go out there and they don't do it. You know what I'm saying? Teams rudderless. Tim Reams talking about intensity and stuff. but like, where are the leaders of men within this group as it stands currently?

You got your other leader doing other things. We'll get to that later. But, yeah, I'm done talking. I'm done talking. Well, I'm wondering if we had discussed how this is such a big game, and so the players would be up for it, we somehow missed that they wouldn't be. So I'm wondering if we just need to take some... like kind of look at ourselves here.

Do we do a, are we doing our job all enough before we, we're about to come after these guys? We afforded on us. Yeah. That stadium's going to not have many people in it. And that's when they can tend to put it on autopilot. I mean, you're asking the question I'm, I'm afraid to ask, which is like, do we care too much?

When we care way more than the players. I think the answer is probably yes. unfortunately. I mean, I mean, this game was in my backyard. It never even occurred to me to go to check out the tickets for it. So I don't know where I fall in the,

I mean, I'm obviously like, you know, following it watching it, but if Pachitino had been hired already, I think then like the day they announced the hiring, I'm on there trying to buy a ticket. But I do think that,

I don't, I don't want to let the coaching off the hook, just to kind of do a little bit of the tactical stuff. for how buttery we were. Because we saw this in 2019, too, when we played really buttery tactics, and it just feels like we don't have any fight in us. But sometimes that fight is a symptom or a consequence of the game plan.

So, yeah, we put out what I, you know, you said we got bullied all over the field, Men versus Boys. I don't disagree with that, really. But we put out a bunch of bulliable players. And then we put them repeatedly in situations where they were just asking to get bullied. And I'm talking about our sort of insistence

on playing this passing game from back to front. And it's not like I mean, I literally mean like the goal and what we were trying to do was pass the ball from the back on the floor all the way to the front with the whole team coming up. And we were terrible at it and we just kept getting smashed around. And

I just think there were real obvious ways we could have used the Jesse Martianess of a team against them that we didn't. Like Vince said, we played right into it. And it And it put us in these in these situations over and over again to just get smashed and have no joy whatsoever. Okay. I hear that, Greg.

I do hear that from you. And to let you know that I do hear that from you, I had thought about this while watching the game and seeing the 4-4-2 we were running. And I was like, it does look quite similar to 2019. You know, so I agree with you there. But for me, it's like, it just seemed to, you know, Canada is making those extra one or two or three steps to make sure a person feels you on their back. You know, and we weren't even doing it, not even like around our own box. You know, the Alfonso Davies chance where he crosses across to Kyle Laron. It's like, we are not like pressuring the ball in situations where it should be obvious to like, yo, we need to.

not let Canada be so comfortable here. So I don't, that's just my, that's my one thing. And, and like you see a situation where, like, one of our turnovers, right, is Musa versus Matthew, Belsay his name one time, Chonnier. I mean, I'm not sure I'm saying it correctly, but Chuanier. Eunice Musa, receiving it, the ability to go on the half turn versus an unrushing, Matthew, Schwanier, that plays for grasshopper, for F.

Eunice Musa loses that duel. You know what I'm saying? Like, is it, I can't put that on Mikey Vars, you know? Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. The actually losing once we get in the cage match is a different thing. For sure. I just, again, watching the game play out just being like, why?

Why is this the approach with this personnel that we're taking? Like, it did kind of like, again, knowing that this is a Jesse March team. This isn't like some team that came out and surprised it's because they're like, whoa, they're flying. We thought, you know, they were going to feel outgun and they would sit back and let Chris Lund and Joe Scali have their, you know, have their whatever they want. So that's what sort of surprised me the most was, yeah, just how unprepared we were to exploit what we knew Canada were going to do.

How would you? It was, okay, so yeah, so the how is. exactly what we talked about those five years ago in that friendly against Mexico in 2019 where we like we called out ahead of time like Mexico knows that Burrhalter wants to do this you know disrupting disorganizing with the ball stuff and they are just going to come flying at us and that's what they did and we just kept trying to do it we just kept gifting Mexico shots and eventually goals and it's like at some point you can't just let Jesse Marsh cheat this drill and you have to just be like all right Canada have six and a half players

at the top of our box while we pass around, we need to just launch this ball over. And I know that we did a couple of times and they ate us up pretty well, but it has to be like, it's because it wasn't the plan to do that or it wasn't executed as though it was the plan. Mike even kind of said he wanted more of it,

but we weren't playing it like that was the plan. Like we can connect five passes in the back if the goal is to connect those passes to bring Canada up and then launch it over to players who can not get Little Brothered. We don't want to be launching the ball up to Brenda against Alfonso. Like that's not going to, that's not going to be a good plan.

Yeah. That's a personnel error. Yeah. We have, you know, players who would work in those situations, including Bolo. And again,

I know Canada did really well dealing with Bolo and we would get the ball up to him. But you still, like that is sort of a reliable plan over the course of 80 minutes. To be able to bring Canada's numbers forward because you know they want to,

four or five passes are on the back with the end plan of being hit over them, get Poolecic on the run, get Malik joining from the midfield, and then maybe Haji instead of Brendo, or even Cade Cowell in that situation. Or even Sergeant instead of Brenda. Yeah. So anyway, I feel like that was sort of the obvious way to give yourself more footing in the game, is to not just try to keep the ball on the floor, playing through the midfield with Johnny,

Musa, and Malik, and Brenda coming in and joining him in midfield too, and just sort of trying to actually do some soccer chalkboard exploiting what your opponent is going to do. So I didn't cut the clip, but Ream said himself that, you know, he was asked about this, I think by Sanjay. And he said, you know, that to a large degree is on the players. You see what you see the near, you see the medium, you see the far. You have to make decisions and take what the game gives you. He said we did it a little better in the second half than the first half. but we, you know, obviously didn't do it well in the first half.

So this is where I will give a little bit of credit to Jesse Marsh because, and this was also off the back of a Sanjay question in the press conference. Sanjay, I forgot what exactly the question was. Well, basically it was about having a high line, leaving space behind and how do you protect it? And Jesse was like, you looked at Sanjay. He was like, you know, you say high line. But within our defense, I want to make sure that we're all very compact. And that's something I noticed, like, from the advantage point in the press box, like,

it's on the field, like how they kind of accordioned. Like in any situation where it looked like that second line, that middle line in Canada's defense was going to be broken, they would all retreat, retreat back towards the defensive line. And then that would give us a little space. Like there's a pocket somebody play a ball into. Maybe they feel like that. they can receive on the half turn. It's exactly what happened in the Musa Charnier thing, by the.

And once they recognize somebody in the pocket, boom, they're shot out of a cannon and going that 10 yards to put the pressure on him and win the ball back. And so I can kind of see how it would give you some delusions of grandeur. You know what I'm saying? As a player, like, hey, okay, this guy in this pocket here. I'm going to play it to him. I checked my shoulder a minute I checked my shoulder a second ago

wasn't nobody there I'm gonna go ahead and receive this thing look up see what's going on boom it's off you're running etc but but yeah and to so there's a little bit of so there's a little bit of bait and switch

in that accordioning you're saying like you know giving them giving the US the impression that there's something available when there's really not Um, essentially, essentially. And, uh, but, but yeah, Mikey did say, and this was when I asked, because after Johnny's turnover that led to the, that led to the goal, uh, Mikey called Johnny over. I don't know if they show this on the TV or not.

Mikey called Johnny over and talked to him for about 30 seconds. And, uh, I asked him what he said to him in the, in the press conference. And, um, well, first of all, he told him like, calm down. It's okay. etc but the second thing and like the actionable tactical thing was just telling him Johnny just to in situations where you feel

a little bit unsure just take a touch or maybe don't even take a touch his first time play those blind balls to the back line you know Johnny has a passing range where they be the balo I mean unfortunately Brindo's on the field so it might have to be Brindow

pulley but just just hit that thing let it go and I agree blind balls are especially, you know, everybody's playing like some version of like positional ball and whatnot. Like, I feel like blind balls are very underrated, underused tool.

But, but anyway, we can, we could talk more about stuff as it goes on. Do we have a log? Do we have like a podcast log of the number of times Vince has given credit to Jesse? This is, it's got to be number one. I think we've just started it. We've just started the log.

And I'm impressed that you've, you know, maybe your thoughts are starting to evolve on Jesse. You can become, turn into kind of a big Jesse guy coming up here. I can see how somebody could be charmed by him. That's what I would say. I have to see in the press conference. I mean, Canada were well organized, I thought, and I mean, well coached. And again, they're well coached to do the things that Jesse Marsh is going to do. So that's always, that's always been the rub.

If you hire Jesse Marsh, if this is the way you want to play and you think it's going to fit your personnel. And you're just going to sort of go for this. And it fit. Let's do the lineups. Patrick Schulte and goal for the U.S., Scali Richards, Ream and Lund across the backline, Cardoso, Musa, and Tillman in the midfield, Aronson, Balligan, and Pulisic. So a diminutive front three, as we have already alluded to. Canada was

Maxim Cropot Engel Alistair Johnston Moise Bombito Derek Cornelius and Alfonso Davies across the back line not diminutive

at all really very robust and then I guess essentially in a 442 Ali Ahmed Matthew Schwanier

Stephen Eustacio and I got who's the other one? I got the wrong name here. It was the left-sided midfielder. It was...

Shuffleberg. Oh, yeah, and Jacob Shaffelberg across the band of four, and then up front, Kyle Aaron and Jonathan David. I just got to say real quick on their centerback, I thought their centerbacks were great. They did deal with anything they got thrown at them by Baligan.

They're both playing in League Aung, but very recently. So Cornelius just made the move from Malmo to Olympic Marseille in the summer. He started two out of three games for them. Bombito is at Nice signed from the Colorado Rapids like two and a half weeks ago, August 19. And he started his first two games got, so started his first two games there. Interesting thing about him is that he was playing at Iowa Western Community College, as recently as 2021.

So he was like playing games in Fort Dodge and Spencer and, you know, like the music, all the music man cities, you know. I don't, I didn't, I haven't wanted to brag about Iowa being the soccer capital of the U.S., but I think it's probably pretty obvious at this point that it is. Well, somebody was like, that's a Jucco powerhouse. And I was like, yeah, well, okay, fine. No, they were saying, hold on, they were saying Iowa Central was actually the Juko Powerhouse, which they were. But I think, I mean, that was 15 years ago when I was in school. I don't know. I haven't kept track of the Juko landscape to know if that's still the case.

Because obviously, Iowa Western, I think, took it to him. Yeah. We'll end up with a spinoff Iowa Juko soccer podcast. Yeah, Powerhouse Juko Conference, that it may be. I think it's a pretty cool story for him to be playing for the team that finished fifth in Liga-A-A-A-A-H. a mere, you know, three years, less than three years since. So back when Gio Raina was having his first major hamstring injury, this guy was playing games in Mason City in Marshalltown, Iowa.

And now he is pocketing Balligan and Pulisic in an empty stadium. Man, it was so empty. Well, I mean, I guess you can tell us how empty it was, but I just noticed when they sang the national anthem, it sounded like they had two misaligned audio files for the national anthem. Because it's just so echoy. Yeah. Yeah.

It's crazy, man. It was, it was quite empty. It felled in and actually got pretty loud, like, as we were, you know, 60th of minute on, basically. There was some noise being had within the stadium. But, yeah, it didn't get any more than, like, a, six-year. 60% field, I would say. But at kickoff, I mean, it looked like it was about 15% fill, I would say.

Yeah. It looked, it looked brutal. Can I just jump on our lineup again real quick? So again, just as you read these names off, I want to go back to again what our plan was. And our plan is to, like, possess our way up the field. And I just want to kind of reiterate why that feels like such a low value proposition. Because you're like, let's possess our way up the field to really, buy time for everyone to get up there so we can add Joe Scali and Chris Lund into this attack

and really open them up. Like that possessing up the field might make more sense when you've got a Serginio desk and a Jedi Robinson that you're trying to like bring up with you. But it just doesn't seem quite as desirable once we go get into our into our backups. Like I really feel like one of the things we learned last cycle was you can't with the US in our current top, very top heavy depth chart,

you probably can't run the same tactics once you're into heavy backup territory as you run with the first team. Unless your goal is just to, again, get data on some of the backups to see where there, where their sort of limits are. Do you reject the whole mentality thing? Because that's what,

you know, I have clips of Ream talking about that and Mikey. He famously, it's not famously, but he has, as many people know at this point who are listening to this podcast, he said, mentality's on the players. I can't, I can't make them run and sacrifice. No, I think there's definitely something to it. Like when you watch the, when you're rewatching the clips, and again, the way, I love to watch one clip nine times and each time just watch one player to be like, what did this player do for the whole sequence? you're like, oh, he just stood there with like his feet didn't actually pick up off the ground either foot for the, for eight seconds leading up to, you know, a scramble in the box. And it's like, that is really, that really like just destroys the soul of any goalkeeper who's, you know, who's doing everything they can to cut down all these angles and like you see the keepers who are on the ground and then diving off of the ground and you're watching like another dude, one of your 11 players on the field.

only get 11 and they just stand there and waste an entire person, you know, wasting 9% of the personnel you have on the field. It's, it's infuriating. So, no, we definitely, that was, that was a theme, which is not acceptable. But again, I do think part of that is a consequence of like you, you start to feel like you're not in the game when you play in a way that keeps you from getting a foothold in the game. Yeah. I've tried to keep this timeline briefer than usual, but let's go for it. I just noticed immediately Ahmed jumps into Balagin's back

like two minutes after kickoff kind of clatters him, ballagins on his back for a while. And this totally sets the tone, I think, for the whole game. We're just an easy mark. You see the USMNT on the playground, you're like, they're not going to fight back. And we didn't.

Like, this is like over and over and over again. We Every moment Every I don't know You know Waki you're kind of a deadball specialist When it comes to like The dead ball moments

Or the slightly off-field moments It seems Correct me if I'm wrong It seemed like it was just I used to be a dead ball specialist But this team doesn't do anything interesting Deadballs anymore to your point Okay

No boring group of players Bring back Kellyn. Yeah. Please. At least Kellyn would like would bring some personality when the, when there's like a scuffle or something. Yeah.

I mean scuff. Like that time when Balagan gets kind of like sandwiched and pulled down by La Rea, Lund goes over, this is in the second half, so I'm jumping ahead. But Lund goes over there. He looks like a neutral third party. He looks like he's, uh, I don't know, a social worker arriving to sort of solve whatever dispute is happening. He's just going to observe and take note.

Yeah, exactly. Pulisic is there, but he's, I don't know. He's just, maybe sighing or something. And Laren just shoves Pulisic away. Ballon's obviously furious, but he's just trying to control himself. He can't do anything about it. Nobody else shows up. Pulisic gets shoved away by Laren easily, like offers no resistance.

Lunt's taking notes. It's, and it's a small moment. moment, but it's every single moment of the game was like that. And I do just on that play, some credit is O'Dorea. He's all, he's the best at all this stuff. So he's good. He's going to win that. As a program, we just really, like, hit these two unacceptable extremes,

or we just either do nothing and are totally, like, submissive, or Sir Gino Desk boots a ball into the stands. He's already on a yellow card. Or Timway up, like, just takes a swing. swing at somebody off the ball. Like, that's not the way you do it. That's not the, that's not the, that's not the Uruguayan fight back. Like, you got to have, I mean, maybe that's a poor example because of Uruguay.

I got a bunch of guys suspended for going, but they did that. They did that after the match when it doesn't matter anymore. You know, like, you got, during the match, you got to fight back in a way that shows you know what you're doing. We never, we have, we don't do it. We simply don't. It's crazy. And, I mean, Bill's this whole, uh, moment, the, to, I'm not.

Ahmed jumping on baller guns back. This comes from the kickoff. They get a corner off the kickoff, just because Alastair Johnson basically pokes a pass up to Ahmed against Christopher Lund. And it's just a bouncing ball, you know, bouncing. And, you know, Lund just lets Ahmed, you know, box him out, get position, get the ball to where he's able to, like, you know, get to the end line and hit it off him for the corner. But it's just like, I mean, yeah, that whole little sequence right there was just,

It just let's It just like that what time. It's a game in a nutshell kind of. Yeah. Canada gets a huge chance right away. Fourth minute. Bad giveaway from Johnny in the middle. Trying to play it on the ground to balligan in the center circle after a good little outside of the boot pass from Musa springs in between the lines.

So we're doing the thing you were talking about, Greg. Trying to pass it from back to front and bring everybody into the attack. But Johnny passes it right to Eustachio. And Eustachio finds Laren's feet. He plays a basically blind ball. This is a gorgeous pass, actually. Blind ball to the back post for Jonathan David. David meets it on the volley.

Thrashes it. Really nice save from Schulte, I think, right? Down with his left hand? It looked like a great save to me. I marked it as a very good save. So, I mean, if you're asking, if you're asking, I thought. I'm asking you. Yeah, if it's a goalkeeper question, I'm asking you.

Yeah, no, I thought it was excellent. actually. I'm asking you about a lot of things. It was a bad giveaway from Johnny. I didn't think it was like one of those blind passes. And if it was, it was just really like a naive one. Because if you're going to hit the blind pass,

the whole point is you clip it up over into the space behind. You don't try to like drive it low through a seam. I thought he was trying to hit a seam like a nice threaded split to somebody's feet. And he just got it all wrong. Yep. Yeah, the blind pass in this in the sequence is. Laren's, the one to David. Yeah, which is...

And again, it's that nice clipped ball. You just put it in an area where it's like, my guy will probably be running into that area. Let's try it. Beautiful. Um, is there anything on Chris here? Um, you know, that ball kind of goes over his head. Should he attract...

Should he track that better? I mean, Laren didn't even look in that direction. He was dribbling the other way. I mean, maybe, but... What do you thinking, Vince? You're thinking, uh, you're digging Chris a little bit? Um... I thought Chris played really well for the most part in this match.

But, yeah, that was one play, one of the plays I ding him on, I think. That's what I was thinking. I'm able to be swayed. I'm not necessarily convinced of it just because it does seem like a difficult play to diagnose and stop. but I lean more towards hat tipping to the delivery and the execution of the hit. So to be able to find that one trajectory that does get it into that spot and then for your attacker to run onto it and hit it first time like that, that's going to make it difficult for a centerback to be able to deny a shot. Yeah, same here, I think. Baligan, I think, is worth mentioning,

he gets out in space a couple times in the first 15 minutes, so it's not like we didn't ever sort of get behind the middle of the Canadian, you know, sort of shape. But in both cases, he was fairly easily corraled by Bombito. And, yeah, I don't know. Just couldn't make Canada pay. Pool Six getting dispossessed casually.

pretty repeatedly in this game. It's not just that our midfield wasn't good, but we just couldn't pose any threat when we did get a chance, which was not very often, I admit, but when we did get a chance to go at them, we couldn't really make any money. 16th minute, another chance for Canada.

Ahmed makes a nice tackle on Pulisic as he tries to race past him down the sideline, kind of threw a bouncing ball. Ahmed slides and cleanly takes the ball, then steps towards the box. A real simple pass, just finds Eustachio's feet inside the box, a little horizontal pass, eliminates Johnny, Eustachio turns and blasts it just wide of the far post. It looked like Schulte had it covered, but scary. And why is it so easy for them to just, for somebody to receive a pass inside the box, turn,

and have a shot without anybody contesting him? bro so this is the one where it's like Johnny and Malik just standing there and they let the pass right you know and this is where the mentality stuff comes into play right all the other stuff understood

but like in these moments it was like okay like what are y'all doing Johnny Malik y'all are standing next to each other in a straight line and

the gap in between you you all is where the ball was played to Eustakio for him to get the shot. Like, what, what's going on? What are you all doing? They did, they did such a bad job. It made me doubt whose job it even was to be. Like, were you watching it? It's dreams.

Like, is that his, what's going on? Yeah, that's definitely one that you don't put on Mikey in the tactics. Like, that is just, and we've seen this from Malik a few times in that Columbia game, like just him in these moments sort of as the blanche. lot gets lower, which lane to step into, which space to fill, definitely has not been a strong suit for Malik for the U.S. so far. My offensive line coach just say, you're going to make a mistake, make an aggressive mistake. You know what I'm saying?

Like, Malik, do something, bro. Do something. This is why you get pulled at half time. You know, like, Malik did good things in this match, right? But this is exactly how it looks when he plays against I-X or whatever and doesn't come out for the second half. Yes, he does the Malik things, but then he also does these things too that lead Pete Tabash to lose his top. Yeah, well, you end up having here, like what he was kind of saying is neither player gets goalside of the closest player Canada have to the ball carrier. So he's accounted for at first, and then both Johnny and Malik.

sort of drift away from him or hold their ground as he drifts away and they stop accounting for him. And again, a more aggressive centerback that we might have, like a younger one, might come out and close this down sooner than Ream does. But I think Ream's tendency is going to be to stay home more. And so, yeah, so Ream just isn't exactly the mess cleaner upper that you're going to need if you're going to be using center mids in big, in key defensive roles. we're going to kind of have some messes. Also to the mentality point, just want to point out when Malik makes that, you know, the last play, the Malik chop and carry up the field,

the pass to Balo. I paused it at one point, and there are four U.S. attackers in the screen and eight Canadians. Like, Eunice, dragging behind the play. Johnny, dragon behind the play. Like, everybody, dragging behind the play. It's just Brindow, Pulley, Ballo.

and, oh, Malik, obviously. And they don't have a chance. We don't have a chance, man. Like literally, in the picture,

there are no other U.S. shirts getting to the scene. It is just Canada. Swarming us. Like, what? Yeah. Okay. Anyway,

that's good. Let's continue. Yeah. Yeah, Malik, that was a nice carry from Malik to play Balo. And then, you know,

Balo just, that's one of those ones where Ballot couldn't make anybody pay. The goal, comes from Canada around the 17-minute mark. It's their third big chance of the opening 20, so it kind of feels like it's coming. And again, it's from transition.

Of course, Ream plays Johnny in the press, and he tries to one-touch it to Malik towards the left sideline. Just miss hits it badly. I mean, like, just a terrible pass right to Eustachio. And it's full panic mode. Eustachio plays to David. Well, I mean, it should be full panic mode. Eustokio plays it to David.

David sort of, it's good stuff from Canada once they win it. The pass from you stock you to David, then David pass across the box to Schafeberg, who's wide open on the left, he takes a touch, finish, under Richards outstretched, right leg, Shulte is helpless, one zero. So, yeah, I mean, you guys all seen the goal. What's there, is there any additional detail to add to that?

No, I mean, we can, I think, I heard Mule made a point of this already, but just our shape in how we're setting our build out here when the ball's at Schulte's feet isn't ideal. We end up with Schulte in a straight line with Ream and Richards rather than being deeper. So as he passes that ball to Richard, to Ream, I'm sorry. That's a massive trigger for Canada to be aggressive because they know Ream can't drop it to the goalkeeper anymore. So Ream has to stand on it until he can play forward. That ends up not really costing us because Ream finds. a really good pass to Johnny.

But it's just sort of a structural issue that is apparent sort of if you're breaking down the film and you want to pick out everything. But no, this is really just a horrendous pass from Johnny because it's a great find from Ream. Like, we beat the press. That pass beats the press. And Malik recognize it and he starts taking off to advance and it should be a nice cushion. It comes in a little hot.

Like, it's a little hot. Ream has to fire it to get it through that small window. but if this is just a nice cushioned ball from Johnny towards Malik, it's Malik running downhill, and we're doing great. It'd be a great setup. I hesitate to call these, like, gifts. You know, when we recap the Columbia match where we lost by 1,000,

like, those were, like, gifts we were giving Columbia. Like, Columbia weren't doing anything to get those, and we just were, like, have the ball in our box to score. I don't want to do that here, because I don't want to, like, undersell what Canada were doing really well. Like Canada set up to create these situations for themselves. Like Columbia weren't really doing that. It was us just, you know, inexplicably making mistakes.

These situations weren't like inexplicable. This is what Canada are trying to leverage and turn into chances for themselves. Yeah. Just because, you know, the other goal comes from like a bad dream giveaway. And I want to make sure it's not just like, oh, well, we just gifted them those chances. We should because it was, it's not quite that. Canada aren't just like passive actors in this. Right.

Yeah. And you could... I see the difference. At this point, you know, we talked about the giveaway earlier. I also clocked a moment at 9.40, 9 minutes and 40 seconds. Where Johnny received the ball in a in a pocket and had the opportunity to turn, didn't turn, passed it back to Chris. And this. And it's like, you can just.

He's not seeing the picture now. You know, Malik was there where Johnny hit the ball. But then as things developed, Malik was no longer there. And it's just not processing things well. I thought Johnny was supposed to be our half-turned guy. I know. Yeah. Whoever said that as an idiot.

Well, in talking about the big picture for this game, It's still like Johnny had a kind of a shocker and you still don't really know if it matters because it's not it's not for the coach that is going to be doing the decision making. So it definitely changes the fan estimation and I feel like definitely a bunch of fans are already, you know, wanting Aidan Morris to start against New Zealand. I don't know if anyone's like maybe this is why Tyler Adams was starting despite being kind of injured in the Copa America because you just for as much as we hope Johnny is that guy. like he isn't necessarily yet or at least he still has to kind of he has a lot to prove for the U.S. to sort of be that guy. Yeah, that's true. I guess the way I look at it, it's very difficult to play that way and not make mistakes sometimes, you know.

I think Tyler wouldn't make that mistake because he wouldn't try that pass, not very, not as often, you know. but it's unacceptable to make the mistake, especially twice in the first 20 minutes of a game against Canada. It's just really hard, man. It's like that's the hardest thing in the game. Receiving that pass between the lines and making a progressive solution. Yeah, that's Jesse Marsh's math right there. I mean, we let them try it and they'll fail enough times

that we will turn those failures into a couple of looks. and hopefully by minute 75, we have at least some legs left. And that's always going to be sort of the Jesse Marsh question. 22nd minute, we get our best chance of the first half, really our only chance of the first half. Nice settling action from Malik after Aronson gets kind of just blown up in a bit of transition. Malik chips and kind of curls it over the top for Balo. He side foot volleys it across the two defenders who,

are coming towards him for Pulisic, who is free in the box. He takes it down with his chest. It's a little bit of a tricky ball to take down cleanly, I think. But the touch carries him well wide, right? He rescues that, I think, sort of suboptimal touch with a really nice half-folly. It just misses the far post. Very aesthetically pleasing from Malik. That's the languid delivery that makes it all worthwhile.

It's just his little delivery into Bolo. Yeah, it was perfect. And then also coming in very languidly and cleaning up that Brindo duel there. Like, Brindo actually, I think he did a good job on, like, we had just given the ball away. You know, we were kind of kind of pressing. Brindo does this thing. He kind of gets to about three guys. And whoever that third guy, I want to say it was Yistakio, you know, gets him.

Actually, I think it was Charnier. But anyway, whoever it was. gets them to dealing with Brindo, which, if it was just a 1v1, you could tell that Brindo was getting swatted, as you said, Bels. But yeah, Malik comes in on the back end, throws his big frame into the situation, and comes away clean with the ball. That's what we need.

And, of course, yes, the ball is very nice. Yeah, just some duel winning, right? Like, not that that was exactly a duel, but we got beaten in duels basically, like, 6D40. And I think that the eye test matches that if it doesn't surpass that. You know, it just felt like we didn't win duels. So Brenda had a nice play shortly after that.

Settles a sky ball with a chop and slides it in for Pulisic, but he gets Shepard out of bounds by a Bambito on the break. You know, this felt like there was something on. Somewhere in here, Johnson comes off. Lera replaces him it right back. Like you said, Waki, he's one of the best when it comes to gamesmanship. And also there's just no drop-off for them when they go from Johnston to Lorette. That corraling that Bombito put on Pulisic, that Pulisic doesn't have many plays that look like that.

That was kind of impressive. He didn't know how good of a centerback he was trying to get around. Yeah, that's a good point. Because usually he can race past people or at least race along them enough to get a shot off. Yeah. Yeah, can knife in and at least control the ball. Yeah, that, like, watching that very much felt like Paul Ariola, 2019.

Sorry for Paul Arroyola catching strays just late in the game, but that's what it looked like was just totally outmatched in the cage. Tell you what, Iowa soccer powerhouse. I just was struck by that, the fact that when Luraya came on, they could replace one right back with another one and have almost no drop off. We let Wes and Jedi have a break for one window and we spend the full, the whole team spends the full game whimpering, you know? It's like, what? We need John Brooks back. That's what we need.

I guess. I mean, Bells, I kind of agree with you. But, like, you watch this, like, the right back for Canada is not a load-bearing position. You know, I mean, they're not doing a lot. I mean, yes, they were able to corral pulle. I mean, pulleys kind of, he can't be corralable, particularly when, he's not really getting in those half-spaces and getting to work. Yeah, when he doesn't have a platform to operate from, he's, I think, pretty easily neutralized.

Yeah, Vince is trying to try to not remind us that, like, we've seen El Salvador Corral Pulisic for the entire games. Correct. Speaking of which, Larea and Eustaccio sandwich him at full speed in the 28-minute mark, Eastakio takes a swing, like a full-speed swing at Pulisic. This is the same guy that sent Geo to the training room for months. Summer ago or two, was it, with a late challenge. Pulisic goes down for a while. He's in obvious pain.

All the U.S. players just stand around. I'm sick. Yep. Nobody confronts Eustacio or Lurea. In fact, Cardoso gets little brothered twice in the next 30s. seconds. So one of those was by Ustakio. Yeah.

Ustakio is just absolutely fathering us out there. We look like a JV team facing the varsity team. I mean, like a talented JV team, but still a JV team. Then Chuanier steps on Lund's ankle

in the 32nd minute. Lund just goes down in tears. That's when as he plays a back to Ream. Ream gives it away right back to Schoenier. Lundz is still on the ground, sad and in pain.

Chuanier curls it in behind for Laren, and then he gets a really good shot off under some duress from Richards on his left shoulder. I think this was another good say from Shulte. Greg, was it? And then let's talk about Richards a little bit. Well, I also just want to say,

were Lund's tears visible bells, or is this sort of you just like letting your emotion Just me taking poetic license. Like, bleed through. I don't think he actually cried, no. He was down and he was not getting back up and they were going the other way. Yeah, and it was like a late, like the ball was already off his foot when he gets stomped on. I'm sure it hurt a lot.

Yeah. I'm putting this down as a really good save that also like is like a little bit of luck. I don't even know if I want to say that. Like any goalkeeper save in that scenario is going to require that the shot is put in a saveable spot, you know? So the reason I'm saying that is because Schulte is leaning a little bit to the far post as a striker hits this. So he's cheating a little bit.

But he does, I mean, what that means is you don't want him to cheat. But then the recovery from cheating is excellent. So the recovery from leaning to the right, but then getting back to the left and getting that hand to it, that's an excellent play. So on the net on that play, Schulte is getting a. really good grade for me, and I'm hoping that he starts against New Zealand. Yeah, I mean, you guess if there's a silver lining, Shulte had a pretty good game. Hey, he's a large fella.

He's a solid, a solid 6-4, legitimate 6-4. When I stood, you know, across him and talked to him after the match, I was taking aback. There's not many, there's not many soccer players I've got to look up it. And really, what better thing could we have had to happen? than a goalkeeper play well. Truly. You're going to make them some saves. So, like, I'd take this.

Saturday was a huge success. Nothing else matters. Yes. Well, and again, like, we talked about wanting co-cat, or I talked about wanting coaching, not super seriously, but also, like, if we're going to try to pass against the Jesse Marsh Press, like, do not put Matt Turner in the game and then have him do that. That would have been, you know, horrendous. So we didn't.

We put in a keeper who wasn't the Barcelona kid, but was still. comfortable with the ball at his feet. So I think you just keep riding it. He did pretty well. There's no downside. My favorite goalkeeper pass is the, are the chips out to the fullback? He had those going.

Easy money. This game could have permanently destroyed Matt Turner. Yeah. It would have been the end of him. So he dodged that. There's a second good thing. We got Schulte out there, got him going. Matt Turner's at least,

still his psyche still contained. Yeah. It totally could have. Kanda gets one more chance. Davy squares up Scali right before the half, does some stepovers, then the boss skips through to,

plays it on the ground, skips through to Laren. He had just sort of pushed Ream, like get off me, and he side-foots it on the ground from four yards out. Not a very good hit. Shulte saves it. But, you know, it could have been easily two zero. Oh, so Laren pushing Ream made me remember we didn't talk about Chris.

Greg, real quick, what do you think about Chris on that play? The Laren Chance, the Shulteysave, before that we were just talking about. Okay, on the Luntier sequence, no, Richard's gets, for me, this is not great from Richards. And it's because he had a chance to make a play. The sequence I think it reminds me of is. is CCV at Trinidad, where they get their goal,

where he comes in and he stays shoulder to shoulder with the shooter, but doesn't in any way prevent the shooter from actually taking his shot. And that's, but I don't think CCV actually really had any opening to take, take the ball or actually stopped the player from advancing. He was just going to be there to try to cut down on angle and make sure that he was felt. Richards had enough time here,

I thought to come in and actually make a centerback play besides just being present. And he didn't. He ended up just being present. So in my mind, that's sort of like from what he could have done to what he actually did, there's a gap that you wish he would have done better. Okay. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, that's fair.

That's fair. Like he could have come in and what we saw Bambito do and just corralled it and eliminated the danger. and instead he was just there to make sure it wasn't more dangerous, I guess is what I'd say. Yeah. We've done some discussion of this this morning in the Discord. They have a nice replay on the TV from like overhead where like you can see that Richards does move Kyle Lairn, a solid like, you know, he moves him further outside. Like, because he starts off in the like inside left third of the six yard box if you draw a line, you know, and moves them outside of the six yard box and the shot ends up getting taken from there. which I think helps Schulte there.

But yeah, I mean, he does get off a solid shot and all that, but understood. I mean, the centerback debate is lively these days, and so I guess that's why we're talking about it. But my worry is maybe he didn't take a bad angle. He just isn't that quick, you know, like he thought he was taking the right angle, but he's... So you can see him read. direct and think he has an opportunity to get the ball. And that's what causes the confrontation. When he first starts out, he has the ability to get to a better position than he

ends up in. But to go into this chance, too, I thought the centerback were a problem on this most recent chance we just talked about, the one that Davies slides it across and ends up with two Canada players having a crack at it and Schulte making the save load to his left. Basically, the centerback should be, you know, as this ball, is getting closer and closer to the end line. The center back should be tightening up on Canada's two central attackers,

and they don't. Those two attackers end up bracketing Tim Ream with Richards in No Man's Land, where he's not there to do anything to Davies. He's sort of covering Scali, but not... I mean, there's already two players. Scali and Brenda are both there with Davies. Richards never checks over his shoulder. This should be Ream calling it out. This should be Shulte,

trying to call it out as much as he can, while still. keeping tabs on Davies, so Davies doesn't smash it near post on him. But we don't get ourselves situated here. And Davies had the ball for a while, you know, looking down at doing twinkle-toes stuff before he slides it across. And so I got issues here with Richards and Ream as well. Oh, brother. All right.

Let's take a break. Come back, talk more about the second half and sort of, you know, wrap it all up. Be back in a second. We're back. Second half. We got a chance for Ballo in the 49th minute. Apulisic corner falls to Malik. He backheels it to Valo, not his first backheel of the game.

Balagan gets a good opportunity with his left foot from a tough angle, I think. But he's got a clear window to shoot, and he just kind of scuffs it. I think it's pretty comfortable for Cripo. Great for Malik. And that's like the shot. we've seen Balo really be dangerous on is that very little wind up and he can really can put some mustard on it and this one was just a little unseasoned. Said mayonnaise.

No mustard. 51st minute. Good chance on the break. Lund drives, I don't know, 45, 50 yards and feeds Ballow through the channel. He's making his sort of textbook folder and balligan run off the center back's shoulder. Excellent first time. Left footed shot. saved well by Cripo.

Rebounds out to Lund, who is still in the play at the top of the box, takes the rebound with his right foot on the half folly and just sends it up into the seats. He was pretty upset with himself. I appreciated how upset he was with himself. Yeah. I like a guy making a really long, hard run. And then he must have been only tired. That's why he hit it so high.

But then he shows us that he wanted to do better for us. Yeah. Waki, can I get your take just on Lund general? I mean, this had to have been the most involved Lund has been for us in a match, like on the ball. So there were a lot of Lund full action moments. So usually he's just such like a kind of there and there for the celebrations. But now he's actually playing soccer for us. It was a little bit, it seems like he was playing too much soccer for us.

Don't we want him to be doing less? They kept being attacks. that were going kind of well on the first half, and then Lund would get the ball. It's not that he was doing a bad job. Just he's not about to open up the everything for us. Do we want him more being supportive from the bench? Yeah, he wasn't really, like you said, he wasn't bad, really.

He might have been our best player for stretches. And he does do this thing where he cuts into the infield with the ball. It always makes me nervous when he does it. It makes me nervous when he does it, but he pulled it off. He had a good game, right? I would say that as good of a game as I think where you should expect from Christopher London. Yeah, sure. Because once again, Ahmed was given on the blues.

We didn't go over every Ahmed play. But specifically in that first half, like Chris, I don't know if he won a single duel against him. I mean, it was tearing that ass up. So, uh, what do you call that when Greg does that where he says it's the best we can expect Christopher Lund to play? It's not exactly a backhanded compliment because it's not a compliment at all. He's a master. I've called it out a few times on the pod. He's a master, man.

A master of word manipulation. a master of roast in you but the roast hits like five minutes later when Greg's already gone that's true because I heard it as positive I heard it as positive I still kind of feel like it was but no if I think about it

yeah it leaves you with the impression of positivity is trash but he's not he's not trash and this is almost like the this is almost like the Joe Scalini Copa America summary too.

Joe Scali was pretty much fine and that's about as much as you should expect Joe to do and if that's what you ask him to do then that's if you're like but we also need a ton of attack from Christopher Lund and Joe Scali that's where you're going to be left wanting I think that's kind of what I'm saying and it does seem like

in those times where we could get a five going or an actual attack in this match that Chris was the one in the attack out of the two, just for anybody wonder. And that might have been Canada induced. Like Canada might have preferred that and

arranged for that, like set up to invite that space. Like, okay, who are we going to leave is the extra man? We're going to leave Chris Lund as the extra man open for the U.S. to play too. Oh, this is a mentioning that Lund would dribble in with the ball that one time.

Just remind me of a unrelated note but important. he goes in, the ball goes out for a Canada to throw in. We have our left back out of position. Our ball boy is just firing it to Canada. And he's turning and flying. We don't, we need to be aware of where our defensive, if we have a defender getting up field,

slow it down a little bit, ball children. You got to assume that these were not Peter Vermease trained ball boys, if that's what they're pulling. Like we must have brought our own, we must have traveled our own ball children. I don't give us any credit. Yeah, I don't give us credit for training our ball children up as well as Peter Vermece would. Yeah. Just top to bottom, naivete.

Tell you what. Ballot gets a yellow for an elbow to Cornelius's face. It was, you know, I think it was a justified yellow. Maybe not entirely on purpose. But I was happy to see that we could at least get a lick in now and then, you know. 57th minute Canada gets their second goal Pretty demoralizing A ball squirts to Ream

I mean that's actually a bad pass from Ahmed Trying to find David I think it was maybe And Canada goes immediately into counterpress mode Right in front of our box Ream tries to pass it to maybe Aronson Maybe Musa I don't know who he was trying to pass to Either way David pops out from behind Cardoso and nabs it.

He's got, now, here's where you see a grown man dealing with a challenge, because Musa is all over him, and David just sort of carries him like a running back crossing the goal line into the box. That's a tackle full ball reference for listeners. And then he tries to Meg Richards, and actually does, but not the way he intends. Instead of it going behind Richards for him to run onto, it ricochets off the inside of Richard's leg over to like in the direction of laran who gets you know sort of he and lund and the ball meet at the same point good tackle by lund unfortunately it spills directly back into the path of david unfortunately

david is all alone because everyone else stopped tracking him once the ball went away and he just coolly blasts it over shulte from you know three yards out a nice finish he goes over wagging his finger to the corner flag and it's two zeroes And basically the game's over. I mean, you know, we had, I guess we had a chance. The game wasn't over, but felt over at the time. Bells, I appreciate the rhetorical, like your rhetorical construction here, you know, unfortunately for Lund and then unfortunately, this guy's all alone.

But Lund's, it is unfortunate that that ball goes right over towards the score. But it's not unfortunate that the score was all by himself. That was very much lack of intensity. Like that's a, that is a choice from all of Richard's, Musa and Tim Riem because all of those players have position as that ball nutmegs Chris Richards. And then none of those players have position a second and a half later when Lund makes an outstanding last-ditch desperation defensive play. And he's the only one trying to make a last-ditch desperation play. That's a game for that goalkeeper frustration sets in where it's like, what were you guys doing for the last second and a half?

What did you think would you could do that would help us not give up a goal? and they all have to say, well, I thought it would be good if I would just stand straight up and turn around and watch what happened behind me. And that's usually just going to be a bad answer in the film when you're watching this.

So you have to have to have to have players who, I mean, that's the quit, right? Like that is the one spot where BJ Calhann tackle football coach is going to be like, finish the play. Like you must finish these plays if you don't want to give up uncontested tap-in.

Yep. I feel like it's more on Musa in this case than on Richards, because Richards is heading the other direction as he gets megged. And, I mean, it's on Richards for getting megged, I guess. But Musa's actually with David. He's like tracking with David. He has like both arms around his waist at one point. So this is one thing that, um, go ahead, Vince.

Uh, I forgot who made the case. Actually, I think it was Mikey Vars. Nah, I think about it. I didn't listen to anybody else's post-game reactions. It was Mikey in the press conference when talking about the mentalities on the players and stuff. I think he did mention the fact that, you know, it didn't fall in transition. You know, sometimes it was available. Like, this would have been a perfect time to just, Eunice.

Let's go ahead. Let's go ahead and chop that man down. You know, I mean, he wasn't that close to the box. There was a few seconds where it was pretty comfortable. You could have went in and chopped Jonathan David down. and let's reset and defend the set piece. You know. Yeah, just go to ground, trip him up, you know, or something.

I don't. Wrap him up. Like you said, he's already wrapped up. So Musa already has him. Just tugged, like, hold him. And for Richards, the blame he gets is the old defensive rule of ball or man, but not both. So if the nutmeg happens and he gets by you, okay, fair enough, the ball's beyond you.

But the man still, you still have goalside for a fraction. of a second. So you turn, you like reverse pivot into him and throw your hip into him. And even if you don't knock him all the way down, you make him take three steps out his way for most people. Again, the way we were getting grown up little brothered, uh, maybe, maybe we wouldn't have put him off of his run. But that's, that's what you're trying to do. Like, you either, you just blow him up as the ball goes through your legs. And so we didn't get that from Richards. And, uh, Riem is the other centerback in the vicinity also sort of just lets him run free. It's just

It's It's brutal to watch back For a goalkeeper I'll say that Man So can I ask you what's What's happening to Eunice man I mean

You know He was already A limited player But very good at what he At what he does But now he doesn't even do that that much You know I'm talking about ball carrying

And making people miss and stuff Doesn't do that a lot anymore And you know He brought some dual winning too And that's just not It's just not existing anymore I'm wondering about the man because this has been the case for about a year now.

Kind of. Really? Half a year at least. Got to study that. I got to study that. I would have just said maybe he really does calibrate himself for the caliber of the match that he's playing. Well, I mean, we have not,

whenever it's been like a Eunice, where Eunice is supposed to be like the grown-up in our midfield. never gone will. You know, Jamaica way. That's true. Panama way. Um, et cetera. But, but this is, this is even past that.

Like, I'm just, he's not doing the, he's not doing the Unist things anymore. I think we're just all really putting a lot of eggs in new coaches going to have turn all these guys around. Yeah. I don't, I don't even, I don't even know how many eggs I had. I, like, I genuinely kind of think so. If we can take a minute at zero two against Canada at home to say, like, I don't think of and like, I don't feel like it's actually a crisis for the U.S. national team.

Like, I don't know if that's just naive or wishful thinking. But I feel very similar to how I felt when the women, after having their worst World Cup finish at all time, then proceeded to lose to Mexico at home in a competitive match. And I just didn't feel like it meant that the pool is somehow, much worse than what we thought the pool was. I don't think we're going to go win a trophy like the women did. But the women lost Mexico. It was like, my thought was this team with this pool is where they are now after that loss is gold medal candidates, contenders, one, you know, six months later.

And I feel like for our national team with Pachitino coming in and the pool we have, we are still round of 16 contenders where we will I think we'll be right in that round of 16 zone with a chance where we'll have to upset a team to get to the quarterfinals. I don't think we're like, oh my gosh, we're actually terrible. Agreed. Yeah, me too. The one thing it's changed for me, it should have happened sooner, but it happened this weekend.

I think for the first time began to accept that this game is never going to become easy for us. it's just going to be a struggle all the way. And that may be just how the game works. But I think I decided I'm going to start embracing that. It's beauty in the struggle. Yeah. Bell's what you mulling over, bro.

That seems to really. I don't know if you were really bothered by that or you're just thinking about something else. No, I'm just trying to think of what, like, where is, what do I think. I don't know. Yeah. I think our players... We might be terrible. I guess here's what I would push back on what you said, Greg. I mean, it's definitely going to be a struggle. No doubt about that. And maybe I hadn't quite thought of it that way, but I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Are we suddenly terrible, or are we now terrible when we weren't terrible back in Qatar? I'm a little more open to that possibility. But if we are terrible... I think we were too good at... Go ahead. Waki, go ahead. I think we look too good in guitar for stretches that we would have become terrible. Too competent, at least. We at the very least, we're like organized and competent.

And yeah, I just, I don't see us like having lost the ability to do that. Yeah. That's essentially where I say. I mean, if we have to start this group of 11 players in a round of 32 knockout game in 2026, I won't feel great about it. I'll say that. But I think we have some some pretty quick personnel fixes

or upgrades available to us. And actually, I think this is an outstanding outcome a month before you bring in a new hot shot coach. Because you absolutely set the bar so low that Pachitino's going to come in and just get tons of love right away.

because he's going to fix so many easily fixable things, mostly just by, you know, starting three better players than we're in this 11. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say the same thing because people are like, oh, he's going to see this and say, oh, never mind. I don't want to coach that team. Obviously, people are joking about that. My thought is, oh, man, what an easy, what an easy sort of road.

Yeah, great runway here. Not that he needs it that much, but, you know, people will be like, he's a genius if we do well. Yeah, I've seen people talking about like, yeah, the hire of Maricio Pachino is going to let us know if coaching matters. But, you know, the main coaching matter take was made when we were competent. You know what I'm saying? I was like, okay, it was almost like Greg,

you all tell me if I'm wrong, but it's like when we were competent and playing coherent ball, it was like, okay, has all the juice been squeezed out of the. this team. I mean, we're in the final third all the damn time. We can't score goals. Is that, is that, is that Greg's fault or is that the team's fault? And, you know, I think most of us kind of fell with, hey, it's, it's the players at that point.

Like, hey, you just got to, you just got to make some stuff happen. But now it's, it's, yeah, the runway is there for Pach to just come in and look like the grand pooh-bah once we get this thing going. I do think there's a there's a cycle of fandom to what like to your point, Waki, where the new fans, the ones with the most energy and the most, the most sort of obsessive energy, which I would have been, I would sort of put myself in that category like five years ago. I wasn't a new fan of the sport or the national team, but on the sicko level, I was

new to it. They, you do sort of have this dream of it being easy someday. It's going to be whatever easy looks like. Like it's going to be easy for us to beat Concaf teams. Even if it's not easy, we're going to look good a lot. And yeah, it's not like that. And I guess you've come to realize that. But then there's a whole bunch of people who don't realize that who think it should be easy.

Pacitino's going to make it easy. And that was me three days ago. But I've just matured a lot over the weekend. I still think it's going to make it look easy against most Concaf teams. Like I basically think a really terrible red card against Panama in a Copa America, in like, again, the highest leverage match that you can take that red card, has totally disproportionately sort of filtered everyone's perspective of the team and what it's capable of.

And even like what the level has been like. How nice to watch soccer on a spreadsheet. right. No, you're right. So what I'm hearing is maybe I should, I should revise. It might become easy. I mean, we were, we had, we had been handling things. Not, not like, I mean, it's still, it's still going away. Playing matches away has never been, like, uh, comfortable for us.

But yeah, like through the, through the cycle, playing at home with the, when we had our good players out on the field, it's like, oh, these guys look good. These guys are playing slick against, you know, pretty average competition that we're playing against. I will give Jesse Marsh my second compliment and say that Canada has been making it look pretty easy against, you know, the competition that they should make it look easy against. And even competition that they should not make it look easy against the U.S. Minnesota team.

It looked easy. It seemed like it looked easy for them on Saturday. We've had a rough summer, you know. I do think at a minimum it's not going to look easy. It's not even going to approach looking easy unless we have everybody who we need healthy. We are... That's facts. Thin.

I mean, people are going to get on me, but I got to speak my truth. Brendan Aronson, I mean, come on, man. Come on, man. I mean, at least Paul Ariola was actually fast. You know, Brenda just like, speed, strength, obviously just not there. He's quick, okay? Don't get me confused. He's a quick guy, but, like, he gets hogged down all the time.

I know Alfonso hawked him down, which, you know, is, it is what it is. But this is a regular occurrence. You don't see Brenda winning a lot of races against anybody, really. Yeah, he's tricky between the lines, but he doesn't have to. Trickey between the lines. He gets into those duels. but he just gets swatted at like a fly.

You know what I'm saying? There's nothing brought to the party when Brindo shows up and nibbles around your feet. Everyone knew where I stood with regards to Brindow, but I can't take it no more. Well, and then I don't even think, like, Hodji didn't look that good.

Like, when you get him on, get Hodgie on the break, he just plays a pass straight to the goalkeeper for Canada. I mean, yeah. I mean, he did have the nice slide We'll pass to Pepe.

But so, but yeah, let's, let's talk. No, he's, I mean, I'm surprised we didn't see Sergeant.

Was, did I miss something? Was he? So I was, I think he was, he was warming up. I did wonder, like,

I don't know, this, this is total speculation, but he's had some rough goes with injuries at the end of last season, where he was, you know, either unavailable or playing through injury,

where it was clear like he wasn't 100% and they were like, well, we're just going to, uh, play him anyway at Norwich. And he wouldn't come play for the U.S. if he was hurt. So I wonder if it's just like really extreme

caution for this international break where it's like, we're really going to like barely use him if there was some agreement. But that's all just made up and it could just be that Mike thought Pappy was the guy in this case. Yeah, because I was watching Balo Bambito and I was like, man, I mean, at least get Bambito a challenge.

You know what I'm saying? Like Josh, sorry. Sergeant putting that badonka don't on them, you know, that might have changed something. It must be. I was just sitting here thinking about his badong-a-dong. It took us an hour and a half to get to Sergeant's badonk. Thanks for having me on, by the way, guys, where I can just run your runtime. Totally out of control.

We haven't even gotten to our subs yet. Well, let's do, we'll squat, Waki, were you going to say something? I was just going to say it must have been a caution. The sergeant, think it does not. makes sense that he wouldn't play. There's no way Mikey Vars doesn't think Josh Sarshan would not help against Canada. I mean, really, he probably should have started that game,

given what we know now. But, you know, hindsight is 2020, yada, yada, yada. 62nd, no, so in this, yeah, second minute Morris and Delatorre come on, Deletoria come on for Cardoso and Tillman. Greg, I think you have an item here. Oh, we just get Musa's first, like, real slalom, like, moments later, where he gets past Canada's onrushing pressure.

And you're wondering, oh, maybe Canada's starting to flag a little bit. Is it too late at 2-0? But also, as Musa's doing his slalowing, the camera kind of pans over to the attacking third force, and you just see our absolutely, like, horrendous setup, positionally where, like, if you're familiar with the tenets of positional play, We're violating like every single one of them. As Musa gets to pick his head up finally, like driving downfield,

where Brenda and Luca and even Balo are all like behind a single defender's cover shadow. Pulisic and Lund are both like 50 yards away, both occupying the sideline. And Musa predictably dribbles directly into a defender before he can release a pass. Now, we clean this up like almost immediately and improve, I think, quite a bit with Luca and Aden kind of moving around Musa. So even though this was just kind of funny to see the first time Musa does one of his trademark slaloms,

like within a couple of possessions, we are looking a lot better. That's right. And the goal comes. 65 minute mark. We played around the horseshoe kind of over to Lund. He plays a nice little ball into the, cutback zone for Pulisic, who runs onto it and just rifles it across the six.

Baligan is just a beat late to stab it home, but Scali collects it on the other side, cuts it back for Morris, who's arriving at the top of the box. He tries to take it first time, I think, but whiffs. But keeps his feet and somehow keeps the ball and kind of pirouettes as he slams into somebody, and then the ball just kind of skids accidentally over to Luca, who's all alone behind the back line because Bompito kept him on in what's essentially a broken play. He side-foots it in.

I mean, he just turns casually, side-footed in, far post. 2-1. And Morris gets credited with the assist. It was raucous in Children's Mercy Park at this moment. Was it? Because I was sitting outside part of the press box.

I was able to, you know. Oh, that's nice. You know, the final action. on the goal were a little bit fluky, but this was like a really nice buildup. It was like 35 seconds of us knocking the ball around with decent shape.

Again, like stuff we hadn't really seen for most of the first 60 minutes. You know, moving right to left, poking and prodding, and then really good movement on the Lund-Pool-Sick interaction. So yeah, so this is like, okay, we can play a little bit

and nice little audition for Aiden and even Luca, who hasn't, who's barely played soccer, was really involved in the buildup, um, the buildup play for this. Even Luca. You don't have to play a lot of soccer to be good in these games.

I think Qistakios started one out of three games for Porto. Yeah. It's like, you know, all the reasons people give. Pollocks. Oh, but you know what plan?

you know, who has been helped by playing, I would say, is Aiden Morris. I'm becoming Aidan Morris Pild, ladies and gentlemen. He did provide quite a forward thrust. We were suddenly able to play through the middle of the pitch, which once again, as Greg just said, it could be because Canada's flagging. It probably was. But, I mean, him getting between the centerbacks and basically passing the ball of Luca over and over again. I mean, that was, it was helping us quite a bit.

Yeah, I thought there was a chalkboard improvement in that sense, Vince, of like, which spaces he'd occupy. And then, yeah, you don't know if it's Canada running out of a little bit of steam where they can't close down as quickly, cut passing windows off as quickly. but you know you get the chances you get and Aiden did well with what was presented to him he also ran somebody over one time which was nice to see you know I just love it that's Bells's beat well that's my beat for today yo and so part of me to come at Aida Morris Pild is well well first of all it was it was the last game you played with Little Middlesbrough combined with this match Right.

You know, I've talked a lot about him squaring the ball a lot. But forward thrust. And then when I talk to him, first of all, just a, you can tell this is a serious fella. When you just see his demeanor, the way he carries itself. I mean, bro is solid. Solid as hell. He had a bag with him in his left hand, by the way, with like five muscle mucks in it. You know, after the match, ain't nobody else.

Everybody else got their little Gucci toiletry bags and shit. Ada Morris, no, I got a jacket tied over my neck. I got a, I think he might have even have one in hand and then a five more in the bag in his left hand. But, um. Like a CVS bag? It was a see-through bag. I don't think it was CVS. It was more that, uh, it was more like, uh, of the elite plastic.

You know those ones. It's not the, it's not a crinkly one. But, but anyway, um, it. And then when I talk. Like the kind of bag, you're, the only kind of bag you can bring into an NFL stadium,

like that kind of guy? No, no, no, like a level below that one. A level below that one. Okay. One of those solid ones with like the two handles,

with, with the hand, like a plastic. Anyway. But yeah. It was a good, clear bag. Right.

And when I talked to him, I'm like, bro, you know, you came on, you did a lot, et cetera. And he's like,

yeah, that's what I do. Essentially. And then I, so what I was looking at when he said that, I was like, okay, well, do you feel like you made a statement? And he just looked at me. He was like, there's a lot more to see.

That got me going. I'm sorry. After the disappointment of that match, us being punked. Yeah, man, I'm an Aid Moore supporter. I like the way he reacted to that question. Did you feel like he made a statement? Because he kind of guffaws, right? He's like, surprised and laughs at the question.

And then, ah, there's more to see. It's nice. Yeah. All right. Hold on. Just on the Aidan Morris front, because I want to give him some credit here. I don't think he whiffed on the first thing. I think it was a mistouched, but I think it was a choice as the cutback was coming to try to drag it.

It was such a late choice that I think he dragged it a little poorly, like didn't get full control of it. So it kind of looks like a cross between a whiff and a... But I think he saw the person coming out to close down the shot. and realize that that guy was out of control and that he had to drag across on. So I think the whiff is a little harsh. I don't think the pirouette was on purpose. Well, yeah, fair point. And whether he intentionally decided to do something else besides shoot or not, he didn't whiff.

Whiff is not the correct word because he touched the ball with his foot. Fair enough. I just want to throw that in. I'm going to put my hand up here and say, I need to be better. Richards gets a header It said it does sound like you're still saying there was essentially a width He is incidentally touched the ball So I don't think you guys have quite I don't think you've quite agreed or

Haven't reached a Can I also can't I also be noncommittal with my language sometimes Yeah I think that's fair I think he whiffed on the on the shot fake attempt But I don't think he whiffed on a shot attempt Okay Thanks for pointing that out. Yeah, I thought the listeners would just want us to talk about that for about 25 more seconds.

Richards had the header. Pepey got his big chance. Tries to chip the keeper after that Haji run. Haji does make a nice pass to Pepey in this case. I don't think Pepe did anything terribly wrong here. He tries to chip him from close range. Keeper does well, I think, to keep it out. Final action of the game, Ream gets outrun, and then Meg,

before a shot from sub Tani Oluasei. Yep. And we lose the game, two to one. Deservidly, of course. Reem also got turned by Tani before that. It was him, left him in Aiden in the Dust. Aiden. That is where Aiden's, his physical deficiencies kind of come into play a little bit.

Like, you see him chugging, chugging to get over there, but it's like he, like, Tyler Adams would have been there. you know, to provide a little bit more pressure there on Tani. But with that being said, I expect Aidan Morris to fix those physical deficiencies. The muscle milk's going to help. And he was there, Aiden was there enough to have done something. And he kind of, he kind of, like, ducked out of the way. I mean, he didn't intentionally duck out of the way, but the choice he made effectively had him

faint out of the way and Reem like fainted out of the way the other way and they both just kind of got split when they needed to just sandwich the dude. I think deficiency might be too tough a too tough a word. Forgive me all. But you know what I'm saying.

Also just a few more things. Well, not a few more things, but something that happened multiple times was Alfonso Davies running that left side as Kate Cowell tried to get on a couple balls.

Brendan Arrington tried to get on a ball. Jesse Marsh talked about that press conference. But yeah, it was just like, nope. Like, because Kade comes on. Nothing was happening over there. K comes on. I'm like, okay, like, you know, this is a late game. Like, this is K time.

But then, like, I realize, oh, he's on Alfonso. It's like, okay, it's a wrap. I think there's one more thing you want to bring up, Vince? Yeah. One more thing. game ends, you know, somewhere. And I don't know where these two lads are, but there's a post-game show.

From the Men and Blazers Network, Roger Bennett, and one Tyler Adams on the show, providing his analysis of the match, I guess, which I have my own, just in general, I have my own thoughts. It's just, it's not something I agree with as far as, like, Tyler, you are currently a leader on this, on this current national team as it, as it is right now. And you don't think you should be making a postgame podcast about the game. You're ostensibly talking to an outsider, you know, as an insider, as a member of the locker room.

You know what I'm saying? As a part of a brotherhood, a circle of trust. and I think well so based on our play right now we got a lot of dudes that don't care about a lot you know you can tell right obviously it just exudes off of them like I mean Tyler's just doing a podcast

but I think in a lot of locker rooms there might be some issues there there may be some issues there I don't necessarily like it but but the the funny thing is it seems fine to me Greg, how you

To do the podcast Let's go ahead and round robin it Greg Bills I just so my thing there is always going to be like how how honest and thorough can he be to do like a full analysis because you let you I wouldn't want him to be fully honest like I'd want him to be like diplomatic and

you know not be doing any bus throwing under. It doesn't seem like that's what he's doing. He's not doing full analysis. But, you know, he is getting on the horn and chit-chatting about the game afterwards. I could see some players not liking it. Okay. Should I put the clip?

Yeah, let's go ahead and get right into it. Let's play the clip. He's one of those guys when I was coming up through the youth national team that you always heard of. You know, I never got to see him play, never played with him, but he was just one of those players that Luca Deltore is going to be the prodigy. He has so much talent. Okay, so this is Tyler Adams talking about Luca Deletori goal scorer in this match. He says, I don't know.

It's just, I find it weird. And a lot of other people have also found it weird that Tyler Adams is talking about Luca Deletori as if he's this, he's this man in the shadows that he's never met before. and while coming up through the youth national teams, his talent was always bandied about, but he never got to see it with his own eyes. But they went to the youth national team, they went to Youth World Cups, U-17s, U-20s, twice. And I'm just wondering, what the hell's going on?

I mean, you know, I have my whole Tyler, Tyler Diatribe, which I confessed privately to Bells and Waki, maybe I shouldn't have did, at least on the public feed. Patreon, Patreon for sure. But I don't know. I'm feeling, at this point I'm worried. What the hell's going on? So it sounds to me like he was just saying he was reflecting back to a point where he hadn't played with Luca Deilatore before.

I think probably he meant that he at a point in time in the past, he had heard about him a lot. And he was like this, this sort of well-known figure. Okay. He's just trying to think of something to say on the podcast. Oh, he's trying to think of something to say on the podcast. But he was able to think of something to say when pressed by, an Iranian journalist on the fly and gave a answer that was shared throughout this entire country

as an example of how to be composed when being pressed in an uncomfortable situation. So in a very comfortable situation, when talking to Roger Bennett, you're saying that he somehow couldn't find the words to talk about his friend, Luca Delatori, who he knows probably very well and went the two youth World Cups with. Is that what you tell me? I think he found words just fine. When he said, obviously not because people are confused. Your first duty as a communicator is to communicate effectively. I do think that Was it Raj she was talking to?

I do think Roger needs to press there and you can't just let him say he hasn't played So I really think I don't know what kind of cross-examination I don't know if Roger ever served as like a prosecutor or district attorney but like he's got to he's got to cross-examine that a little bit better

like hold on here you said that you don't And then like pull out the rosters, like have it already. Like, it's a few good men. Like, I do think Roger has enough TV chops to know that that was his opportunity to really add some drama to that moment. I'm just wondering what's going on, man. He's very strange. This is the most innocuous turn of phrase thing.

He said, this is the most, there's nothing to talk about here. Why is there not? I don't understand. Well, here's what I would be curious about. So do you think that Tyler is like trying to cover up that he has had a prior? He's not he's not trying to cover up anything. I'm just saying he's doing bad at communicating. He's doing weird stuff in the first place that I don't quite understand what the motivations are and what the risk for war calculus is in his head.

Which, which because like to even be on the podcast. Yes, yes, because my risk for work calculus would tell me that this might be a bad idea. So with me thinking it's a bad idea and maybe him thinking it's a good idea, I'm thinking maybe I'm just worried for him. That's all I'm saying. What's going on? It reminds me a little bit of me not remembering that Waki and I had the same birthday, you know? Just every year, every year like, oh my God, Waki, your birthdays? My birthday is also coming up.

Like, you guys literally do this every year. Now, imagine being at a youth national team World Cup with somebody and playing. land on the field with them. No, but because, because I would say, if he was going to say, talk about this talent. Can you play the clip one more time? People probably, if anyone is still listening this, I don't know what you're doing, but. He's one of those guys when I was coming up through the youth national team that you always heard of. You know, I never got to see him play, never played with him, but he was just one of those players that Luca Del Tori is going to be the prodigy.

He has so much talent. Okay. So Vince is saying he's denying. Luca is claiming, denying that he ever played on a youth national team was Luca De La Torre. Like real biblical stuff, good Friday stuff. What he's saying is he was just talking about how Luca was this exciting prospect that he hadn't seen play yet. It was so exciting that he had heard about it. He'd already heard about him.

People were already talking about Luca De Laotry. Even before he played with him, he knew of the myth of Luca Dela Tore. And I think we have to admit we don't know. We do know because he did not forget that he played with Luca Dela Tora. Yeah, I mean, it would be wild if he did. They scored a really nice, they combined on a really nice goal together. The Josh Sargent swivel and left-footed smash. So just as a highly rated fellow, would there be a youth national team that Luca Della Tore was on,

that Tyler Adams was on, that Luca Deloori was not on. He said youth national team. That's all I'm saying, man. Started U-14, U-15, and then maybe at the beginning. He's at the U-17 camp. He's been hearing about Luca a lot. He's about to meet him for the first time. Hey, man, you know, let's just get Tyler on the pod.

He's a professional podcaster now. I think that's what we need. He's following the Jesse Marsh footsteps, becoming a professional podcast and then getting into the coaching ranks, it seems. So, yeah, let's just get them on, see if you can clear and stuff for us. But until then, I'll try. Until then, at the very least, both Johnny and Tyler need to be cleaner.

Like, Johnny needs to be cleaner on the field, and Tyler needs to be, if Tyler isn't going to be able to play soccer, he needs to be much cleaner in his podcast responses. I think that's totally fair to say. Yeah. and we got New Zealand tomorrow. We'll see how it goes. Well, now everyone's very Aiden curious, right, for New Zealand? That's right. Aiden and we'll see if Malik can do a bunch of fancy stuff

in a game where we should be a little bit more in control. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm... Aiden will begin to start based on Mikey's comments from a post-match where he was basically like... I mean, he even said it was probably a mistake on his part to not start Aiden after seeing how Aiden played. And he was like, and that was a great response from Aden.

You know, if I don't play you, when you get in, it's on you to show me why I'm wrong, et cetera, et cetera. He went on that whole diatribe. So, yeah, we will be getting a dose of Aidan Morris tomorrow. Maybe a little Caleb Wiley. Maybe some more Christopher Lund. I know when I was talking to Sanjay, Sanjay wants to see some centerbacks. I don't know if we'll get them, but we'll see. I mean, that's another parallel to the U.S. women against Mexico.

Like, that was Becky's retirement match. And you wonder if this kind of game is Tim Rheim's retirement match. Because the whole thing with him is, like, you play him because you think he'll bring, like, a real elegance in class, given his experience in the high level he's played at. And if he's not bringing that, then he's probably got to go. Correct. So McKenzie. It's McKenzie's game, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, he's got to go until you start thinking about the other options.

Well, but that's the thing. And then you're like, does he have to go? I don't know. It's like the worries that McKenzie's going to have. Yeah, yeah. But if the worries McKenzie's got these oopsies in him, like, he's at least, he's at least going to, like, run things down. Tim Riem isn't going to be able to run things down. He's not good in the air.

So you're not getting, I mean, so essentially what are you getting from him? if he's not going to be that just like mistake-free, which he's never really been mistake-free. Nobody's mistake-free. To quote a great man, to paraphrase a great man whose initials are MCB, everybody has oopsies, you know? There's going to be oopsies. Right. If Ream's giving him to you at one and a half per game, that's what you're worried McKenzie's going to do. So then it's just like, well, McKenzie's at least going to give you some.

Ream got to go, bro. What does McKenzie give you that Ream doesn't give you? he's maybe a little better maybe a little better in the air Tim can't move anymore yeah it's foot races that's very clear Mark can't move Mark can't move that well He can't he's gonna flip his hips better than Tim can It's a rap

I mean we saw how you know Tim was doing all that Like that Netherlands like last ditch of defending All that's gone bro It's long Tim had a I'm not like some big great big Ream fan I'm just trying to be realistic about the rest of the options Ream had a great sliding last-ditch challenge in this game

in the second half. McKenzie is not that quick, and he's, I would say, less alert than Ream. I don't even want. Give me well. I'm going to respectfully disagree with you all that. Remem is like McKenzie is some automatic upgrade on the non-oopsie category of soccer. I'm fine with that too.

I'm not saying he is, but you also, I guess what I would also say is, what's the upside if Ream's given you the oopsies and you know that the World Cup is still 20 months away and Tim Ream is older than you are Adam Bells he's not he's four years older than you I remember like you. He was buying you beer like you have to you have to at some point just be like okay I'll take the guy who's about as good or just as good

who's not going to be 44 When we host our next competitive tournament. That's fair. Like, why are you holding on? I'll take Zimmerman to your point, Vince. I'd love to see Zimmerman. I don't even like Mark McKinsey like that. I mean, y'all know this.

I'm not. But yeah, somebody can sit Tim Riems as to Edinburgh. It's a rep. But the blue eyes are striking. When you see him, I mean, yeah. Tim's? Yes. Yeah, Ream gets, it's great that he basically gets like to, when he leaves,

it'll be as a legend now because of him being the like the father figure in the World Cup. Like him just kind of swooping in. That's so he's got a wonderful career arc for the U.S. Fens national team. But yeah, I just don't see at this point. And he need to hang on to him. Love you though.

Captain, Captain Tim. All right. Let's get out of here. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.