Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #542: Mexico v USMNT recap

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Gotta show for the ball with energy and intelligence if you want to beat a good or even committed pressing team. We didn't do it. Soccer 101 eludes several of our national team players when they get a chance to impress the new coach in a game against our biggest rival. Greg and Belz ruefully recap a barren evening in Guadalajara. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Ooh, buddy, not a pretty sight in Guadalajara on Tuesday night. Mexico 2, USA Zero. Mexico gets its first win over the USMNT in any competition since that 3-0 drubbing back in September 2019, early in the Burrhalter era. It truly had been a good run for us. Greg, how are you doing? I'm doing good.

It was certainly an enjoyable run. And again, a point I made in the last pod was never, never let, never intentionally undermine your own joy. And there had been a lot of that going on. I feel like during that game in Guadalajara, I was, you know, half a long timelines. And I don't think I saw a single use of historically bad describing Mexico, which had been used a lot all the times we were beating them to undermine joy. So I just wanted, like, I really enjoyed while we were beating them. I enjoyed this game a lot less. Yeah, this was not that fun.

Yeah, they were historically bad a few days earlier when they drew the Valencia B team, right? Yeah. But not historically bad on Tuesday night. We just kind of fell apart. Potch called it a learning experience. A lot of the old guard, Alexei Lollis, Casey Keller are criticized. I mean, Tim Howard is. well are criticizing him for sending Pulisic and McKinney home before the Mexico game.

People are publishing color-coded depth charts. So I love color-coded depth charts. The pundits kind of hitting out at, are they kind of specifically saying, Pocch, or are they calling out Poul-Sick? I have a hard time reading all of the things that are questioning character. In the same way, just like after Panama, I have a hard time trying to, or trusting people who are trying to eyeball the amount of fight a team. has. I feel like this kind of shows why I'm wary to do that because, I mean, unless you can just pick and choose when you want to fight, which kind of goes, for me, goes against the nature like, are you a fighter or not?

Right. This, this game might not have backed up the change in fight that we, that some people might have believed they saw. On, against Panama on Saturday. Yeah. I don't know who they were coming after. And honestly, I, I don't, you know, you're in this, you get in this take game. for five, six years. And you just, you see, I see the, I see the tweet about Keller or the tweet about Lallis or the tweet about Howard. And I'm like, they're just, it feels a little like play acting. Are they really upset?

I don't know. Maybe. With the fan base, Pachitino's going to have plenty of honeymoon. I've no doubt about that. And again, he should. Like, he's, he's a proven good coach. It's like, it's like Poulsock can have a bad game. And it's not like you're going to be like, that, that's it.

he needs to, we need to move on from Pulisic, whereas some of these other guys have a bad game, and it's like we might very well move on from them. They have, they have less rope. But no, Potcha's going to have tons of rope with the fan base, in part because the resentment towards Burhalter was so extreme. It kind of reminds, there's an old motion picture. It's probably about Josh Sargent's age, starring Benicio del Toro and Luis Guzman. It's called Traffic. Oh, yeah.

I know that movie. It's got this parable in there, like a parable about succession and leadership positions. It's great. So you have Benicio del Toro's character, and he's talking to Luis Guzman. And he's like, all right, you know, my old Boston, when I was taking over him, he sat me down. He handed me two letters. And he said, when things get really bad, you open the first letter. When they get really bad again, you open the second letter.

And so Luis Guzman is like, all right? And so then Benicio del Toro says, things get really bad, right? Things got bad for him. He opens the first letter. and says, blame everything on me. And I feel like that's what is going to still happen for at least another window or two for Potchitino. If things aren't looking great, it will be, things were so bad under Burrhalter that we got

to undo all this damage. They never tell us what's in the second letter. Oh, that was a mistake in the film, but they just kind of ignored it. Do you have any guesses? What's in the second letter? I don't know. I don't know. I think that was one of those Hollywood things where they just wanted Luis Guzman to carry

that mystery with him for the rest of the film. I like it. So yeah, I think I think that's what we got here. It's like there's plenty. The old, the end of the Burrhalter era was so, so low from an outcome standpoint. And then we had the interim disaster against Canada and New Zealand. That Pach has a huge runway to kind of like get his group together. And I expect he will.

Again, like he's not getting paid to come out and win this game right away. He's getting paid because he's a good coach and he'll get paid to look at these games, look at these players. and even in this game, figure out which of the players over an overall team mediocre performance can step in and help once we get more of our core players back. Because that's what we're after here. None of these guys, some of these guys had a chance to show that maybe I could be a core player right now. And I would say none, none of them showed it. No. I mean, I almost feel like nothing really changed in the information.

And I'm not ready to like send anybody home forever based on this. Are you? Right. Is there anybody you're like, oh, that guy should never be called up again? I don't think so. And it's, you know, we're in, we're in the midst of a pretty significant political season. And so we're all familiar with this from polls too. If you have a clear frontrunner, which we might not have right now.

But if you have a clear front runner, then no change is good, right? As you get closer to the election, if there's just nothing big that happens, that's a good thing for the front runner. and that's sort of the takeaway from this window. All of the guys who are the guys who weren't here did not get gained upon. That's true. Yeah. I would say, I do think the one exception maybe for me is Mark McKenzie. Like I thought he played pretty well against Panama.

And I'm more confident in him than I was, you know, two weeks ago. But then, of course, he got hurt. He got hurt and didn't play against Mexico. Right. And that's the one. That's what we needed to see. The one we needed to see was McKenzie against Mexico to see if that progress was real or if that progress was a Panama Mirage because it's Panama. And we just didn't get to, we didn't get a chance to see that, which I wish we would have.

Yeah. The white knuckle, the white knuckling approach from our team when facing adversity, which I think I discussed, I think we discussed that. And the Panama recap where, like, the last, you know, 20, 30 minutes were just kind of like, oh, boy, I guess we'll, hopefully we'll see this one out. And then we almost didn't. Once again, it's very much in evidence, I thought. As soon as, as soon as Raul scores that really nice free kick, it wasn't like we fell apart completely immediately. Like, we still had a little, we still had a little bit in us. But definitely from that point on, Mexico increased in strength.

We decreased in strength. and it wasn't until the subs came on at the hour mark that like we even showed any signs of life. And that, that I just find incredibly frustrating. I don't know. I don't know what the reason for that is or how that all works. It's a little bit beyond me, but it seems pretty clear on the television screen what's going on. This one you could eyeball. And if you couldn't eyeball, the numbers were there to help you where you're watching this in the 60th minute of Mexico beating us 2.0 and see that the shots taken are 15 to 0.

15 to zero and you're thinking to yourself, again, this is not a good time that we're having. No. No. We might have a lot of work to do, but this is, this is, this is bad. This is a bad day for us right now. Yeah. Really disappointed in Malik for not, Malik Tillman, for not stamping his ground for not gaining on anybody above him in the depth chart. pretty disappointed in how things shook out for Josh Sargent.

I mean, maybe we should just go ahead and get into the lineups. Sure. And yeah. So it's Turner and Goal, Joe Scali, Miles Robinson, Tim Ream, and Jedi across the back line. So Miles Robinson was a late ad after the late scratch from McKenzie. I had some like muscle, like muscle pull, I guess, in warmups. And then Bousio and Morris get run back out in the, midfield, and then Musa, Aronson, and Tillman across the band of three, and then Sergeant

up top, which I like, I mean, basically fine with the lineup, no problem there. Yeah, just a little bit of a switch here. Musa's still on the right, but in the Panama game, Aronson was in the middle attacking roll, and Pulisick was nominally the left, and in this one, Tillman was a central guy, and Aronson was nominally on the left. So that's a, that's a, that's a, okay. I mean, it's a little wrinkle, and so it's kind of interesting to see where, Potch sees the pieces fit together when that's who's available to put Tillman in the middle.

The McKenzie thing, the other thing I was kind of laughing about, I feel that kind of speaks to the honeymoon is, you know, because this was Potch's first window, even the press conferences were getting a ton of attention. And one of the big, ridiculous comments that got way blown out of proportion during the press conference

conferences was a Tim Rine comment about these being the longest training session. that he'd ever had in his 14 years of the National League. Everyone kind of losing it, but losing it in like a, what were all the other coaches doing? Yeah, they never practiced. They never practiced before Potch. You know.

But then Potch is getting the honeymoon because at no point then after like six players were sent home for injuries from this camp, did anyone really try to speculate that maybe that's related to overtraining? Yeah. And I think, go ahead. My guess is just POTCH is going to be, he's obviously shown to be extremely cautious and not going to push people. He'd much prefer to just send them back home and be like, take care of yourself, get back to your club game. And I bet, again, I bet most of these players who left early will jump right in with their club teams.

Yeah, totally. And I think, you know, just a good reminder that we can't take everything at face value. He did say that friendlies are the same as World Cup games. He obviously doesn't believe that at all. all, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise. Mexico's lineup, Luis Malagon and goal, Jorge Sanchez, Cesar

Montez, Johann Vasquez, and Jesus Angolo, across the back line, Edson Alvarez, and Andres Guardado gets his testimonial in the midfield. He got 20 minutes. Came out just before the Raul goal. Roberto Avarado, Orbelin Pineda,

and Sinclair, and Cesar Huerta across the band of three and then Raul Jimenez at Stryker. Jimenez has had been on fire for Fulham, I think three goals and an assist in his last four games just started starting four games ago for them and he's back. For Jimenez, first time he's played against the U.S. since the March qualifier in 2022. So we have not seen Raul Jimenez since before the World Cup. Oh, that's the game where Gio did the long dribble and Pfok missed the sitter. Yep, Pfok's miss sitter, Pulsick, missed sitter.

Speaking of which, going back to playing in Mexico, that game was in Mexico City, first loss in Mexico for this national team since 2009. None of our players playing for this national team have lost a game in Mexico. So it doesn't have that sort of boogeyman. I feel like it can't have that sort of a... mythical venue that say Costa Rica might still have for us where we cannot win or draw. Maybe it's good to get this kind of thing out of the way now, you know, to lose, to be humbled. I mean, we've certainly taken a lot of humbling over the last few months, but maybe it needs to stop at this point.

I mean, it just felt like, go ahead. It sets a stage. It sets a stage for Pachinos to really, again, bring this team from the ashes. to see like, okay, this is where they are. This is where they are for his first window. In that way, it's nice to, I mean, we sent everybody home, so we really got to trot out. You know, it's not, it's not full on, like, fringe players. A lot of these guys would be clear second guys in their, in their depth chart slots.

So, you know, you talk about Moose. So you talk about Brenda, Musa played a ton for us last cycle, nailed on starter when healthy. Brenda was our first guy off the bench at like five positions. So we're playing a squad here. A couple of these guys are key squad players. Yeah. And the other ones, I would say, are all really, it's important for somebody like them to emerge as a serious option for the first team.

And I guess that's where the color-coded depth charts come in. Like, maybe we just don't have that many good players, you know? We don't. Nobody wants to hear. but this is this is how you end up running i mean this is two years on from guitar and this is how you end up running uh uh your midfield to death in in a world cup because you just do not trust the options and we're we've certainly been hoping that a couple more guys show up and we might have a few um but but they haven't announced themselves fully yet uh in any real way other than

maybe maybe bolligan yeah i i thought after the initial watch that maybe Boosio was slightly better. I mean, he maybe was slightly better than Morris and, you know, maybe a little bit, maybe offered a little bit more. On rewatch,

you know, I'm not, I don't feel that way so much. He's like, he was, he was so soft when he gave that ball away leading up to the second goal, you know? And obviously, a lot of dominoes had to fall before that turned into a goal. but you can't just kind of fall over like a, you know, like a bundle of wheat when you get

tackled like that. And yeah, so I don't know. And I guess just in general, I want to say Mexico came into this game. They were leaving a foot in on every tackle. They were putting elbows in. I mean, Huerta scratched Miles Robinson in the face while he was on the ground. And they came in to kind of punch him. in the mouth.

And we once again just look like a bunch of deer in the headlights when faced with that kind of aggression. Deer in the headlights. Yeah, a lot of like us on the ground in the aftermath of getting some tussling done to us with the arms outstretched looking at the referee. And you could, there cannot be a softer posture than that. Yeah. Yeah.

International football for an away match. A supplicating posture. Yeah. Okay, to the timeline. What did you see right off the bat, Greg? So right off the bat, you know, looking at our structure and possession, and short goal kicks are a good way to figure that out. We've got a goal kick in the first minute, and we take it short.

And the other thing we haven't mentioned yet, field was really choppy. And that was obvious with both teams in the way they had to really look their first touch into their feet, which can really slow down rhythm play. Mexico dealt with that a lot better than us, not by playing in rhythm, but by their guy on the ball playing at. as a grown up when you had the ball to control it, absorb the first contact,

and then still make a play after that, whereas we did not do that well at all. But in this sequence, just standing out on our short goal kick, as we're trying to play out of this, is the space between our front four, in this sort of 4-2-3-1 or 3-25, and the back line.

And so we go out of the back. Ream and Miles are standing right on top of Turner, which is, you know, fine goal kick positioning. And then we play the easy ball to Ream. And then Reem knocks it out wide to Jedi on the touchline, who's within 18 yards at the end line. And the camera angle, you don't see any of the guys in the line ahead of them.

You've got Morrison Buzio on Jedi's line, but really far away from him. And then you've got no other white jerseys ahead of the play in the screen. You've got six Mexico jerseys in this press. It was obvious that Mexico are going to come press us, and we should be expecting that because that's, you know, they've been playing murder ball against us for a while. And we just have no short option. So I don't know. You know, at first you're like, okay, well, maybe the instruction was to be hitting this long.

So our attacking players were expecting this long. But the amount of help that those front players are giving our back line is nil. And I do actually think that the trend for the game, the reason that we just struggled so badly, was that we did not have any fight. I'm going to talk about a fight here. We did not have any fight or urgency or desire off of the ball. ball to move early to give the guy on the ball options. And so for the entire game, the guy on the ball just looks like a,

uh, like completely clueless. They have nothing to do. They hold it until they get tackled. Um, and it's because we so rarely had options. When you're playing in Mexico, the wind, we talk about this all the time. The windows are going to be smaller. The time on your ball is going to be less before pressure arise and it's going to be real pressure, you know, coherent team-wide pressure that they're bringing at you.

Uh, and so sometimes that requires you to hit a ball through a smaller window. and be really brave. In this game, the windows weren't there. You don't look up and say, oh, he just didn't have the confidence to hit it into this window. You look up and say, every line of sight ends at a Mexico jersey. There's no one for the U.S.

who is broken into a pocket where they are the relief valve. And a lot of that's Aiden Buzio, but then it comes down to those band of three in the attack where one of them at some point, and it can change, it'll change throughout the game depending on the situation, needs to be moving hard to be that. option.

They weren't moving hard ever. No, no one was ever moving hard. Yeah. So I don't know if it was the fatigue. You know, these guys all started in that game against Panama. Now they come around to altitude and play on short rest against Mexico. But it was, it was like, I mean, it was non-existent. And it was, for me, that's, that decided the tilt of the field and decided the match.

And that's how you end up being outshot 16 to zero prior to subs being made. Why? What's the explanation for that? They're just not, they're just, they're just mine is too full of Fortnite and they can't, like, figure out how to get off the ball, like move off the ball. I don't know and it's hard. Like, I wish I knew what the instructions were from Pachitino. Like, are we trying to play out of the back? Because what you end up with is it looks kind of like we're trying to play out of the back.

But again, no one's doing that really key explosive urgent movement at the very end to get into the space that's needed. Because then when we would hit long balls when we'd run out of room or when we finally get to our possession cold a house. we didn't have the right numbers up where we'd hit the long ball either. Mexico didn't play a bunch of pretty passes through the middle from back to front. Like they would pass around their back too, and then they would sort of launch it, and they would just have more players up to win the second ball. And if they didn't have more players there, they just outmuscled our players pretty handily. And so they just owned it.

Like they owned the midfield, not by, again, not by their really good technique, but by just overpowering us. and then once they controlled it there, then they could sort of walk it up the rest of the way. Yeah. And once you've done that, then you actually have that space behind you to use as your relief. So once they possessed in our third,

then they could control it comfortably because they could always go back, whereas when we're building out of the back, we have no relief. You can't go back anymore because you're as far back as you can. You have to eventually just launch, and we would just launch it to nobody. Yeah.

For me, that was the game, the field tilt, the shot, discrepancy and I don't know who again I don't know who you put that on but it's fixable for sure yeah totally I guess I put it a lot on Tillman

because he's the guy if he's the central guy um and you you just there were I've clocked a few examples of like say Jedi gets the ball out wide we'll get to it he's in space he's carrying it forward he's got like two shirts closing on

and, you know, Malik is just kind of walking and watching the play on the other side of the center circle. It's like, dude, get over there and show for the ball. Like, what are we doing? This is the one where I just tapped it right to Mexico eventually, right? Yeah, he just, like, he didn't have anywhere to go. Yeah. Because Brenda, I mean, Brenda at least was trying to do something. He was like trying to make a run down the line.

Sergeant wasn't even in the screen. I don't know what he was doing. I know exactly what we talked about. Bousio's driving a guy. Buzio has a guy on his hip. He's actually taking him out of the play. And then Aidan Morris needs to be the other guy in the sequence who's just being a son about wanting the ball.

Like you've got to be the guy who wants the ball all the time. And he just didn't. He was hiding a lot in this game. Clearly fatigued pretty early in the match. And yeah, we just, we didn't have any of those. Other than Bredo, which ironically, Brendano got on the ball a ton, which unfortunately for Bredo, the more he was getting on it, the worse he looked.

Yeah. No, it makes him look bad because he always, he was just falling every time he got the ball. And he was actually getting fouled a lot, I would say. You know, on that like a pure definition of, is you, are you being fouled or not? He was getting fouled, but the ref just wasn't calling it. And so he just looked like a, you know.

Worst possible, worst possible combination of factors for Brenda. Teammates not working hard off the ball, playing a super aggressive team that's looking to get. into your heels and do anything chippy. Referee who's kind of letting them have a little bit of that. Yeah. So Brenda's going to, and Brenda with the one guy who comes and actually wants the ball for us.

We just need an adult out there. You just need an adult out there to sort of like assess the situation and start doing things to make it better. And we just didn't. We didn't have that. Mexico had a bunch of them. All of ours were watching from TVs in Europe. Yeah.

Yeah. So I mean, do we need to go through this timeline blow by below? I don't know. It did seem like my impression was before the goal, we were, you know, the field tilt thing was real, but at least we were in the game. We were playing hard and it was a choppy first 15, 20 minutes. I remember when Guardado subbed off, I went downstairs, said good night to my wife and told her that it was a good game.

So far it had been a good game. went back upstairs and then the goal goes in. And, you know, from then on it was not a good game at all. So, boy, did I feel silly for saying that. So embarrassing. How, yeah, she was, she's never going to let me hear the end of it. So, yeah, I thought Buccio seemed like up for it physically. You know, he was bodying Huerta a little bit, giving him a wry smile around the 11th minute.

There was a good hold-up moment from Sergeant. in there, like, in around the 11th minute, where he holds, he just, like, you know, he's just getting dragged to the ground, I think, by Montez. But he holds it up for Brenda. Brenda runs onto it and then just gets, you know, run over. And the ball goes, the ball goes back the other way. We did that Ream to Jedi thing down the line in the 14th minute,

which I think is a good, you know, sort of avenue of attack. Just ream play a long ball down the line for Jedi. He wins a corner off of it. at this point it feels like her energy is pretty good and then you know Guarado Grado gets subbed off for Luis Romo his testimonial is over and then we get the goal for Mexico

and I'll describe how we how it happened so Guardado had just come off the broadcast was focused on him hugging everyone on the touchline I noticed Rafa Marquez you know who's kind of an assistant coach for Mexico right now was totally focused on the game like dude was locked in he's like enough of the testimonial nonsense. Like, let's beat the USA here. Let's get back to clip and heels and coconut ice. Yeah. Yeah. So we're trying to build it out of the back. And this was one of, like,

I guess you've already described it really well, but one of the big problems is like, we couldn't. Ream taps it over to the right and it ends up with Scali. He's in a dead end, plays it back to Turner. And it just feels pretty feckless. You know, Turner over to Miles and the space is constricting. Miles plays it over to Scali again. Space is constricting even more. Scali plays it back to Miles. It's kind of like we're just desperate to, I don't know, what are we going to do? And then he just bangs it towards the middle of the field. It's headed down to Alvarado, so it just immediately cut out, and they're in our final third.

Alvarado is surrounded by three white shirts. He's just kind of shifting the ball around, and he gets fouled by Morris pretty, I would say, recklessly. There's no reason to just come flying in and step on his foot like that. Now, if it was Brenda, there wouldn't have been a whistle. but for Alvarado there was a whistle and it's in zone 14 gives them a free kick from a dangerous spot Jimenez just hits a gorgeous one

I think I saw some people saying maybe it got deflected off of Jedi's head I didn't see that So it's Ream, it's Mambon and it's hard to know how much it moves off of it versus how much it's just again just a gorgeous hit

I'm sure I've talked about this before on these kind of set piece situations but Turner does something here that I feel like I see goalkeepers do all the time. And it's, it's, you know, when that free kick beats the wall,

it's always going right at the post. And the keeper's got a long way to go, which means they're going to be moving really fast by the time they get there. You know, it's going to be a big power step, big plant, big push. And every time,

because of the, it's a free kick, they are setting up right on their line, which means their movement is taking them directly at the upright. And they're like pushing and diving like as hard as you can, as hard as you can propel a human body. directly at like a stationary piece of metal. And I always think that you see in this like this subconscious self-preservation from goalkeepers

where their body's telling, you know, they're trying to move as quickly as they can and push and go as far as they can to the post. But some part of them is resisting every motion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it always seems like, yes, he's leaning, he's stretching that arm out. Like you see that little bit of like turtle-tling where I don't really want to go because I know at the other end of this dive and it's me smashing into the upright. And I don't think that's just a Turner thing.

I swear you see it all the time from Keepers going that way. And I'm always like, would it be better if they started a foot and a half off of their line? So they just give themselves a little bit of mental safety to dive in front of the post. Yeah. But anyway, that's why I'm always like, I think he felt like he had it. When he was leaving the ground, I thought, I'm like, he probably thinks he's got this. And then because of body fights it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because his body fights him a little. little bit. He ends up like three inches off from where he needed to be to get it. It's a really good hit. I'm not I'm not really putting this so much on Matt Turner. Yeah, it was a good hit. Um, what do you do? You know, you don't foul somebody there when they got three white shirts around them, I don't think. And it wasn't Morris's only boneheaded thing he did on the night. Uh, the buildup, though. The buildup is again, where all this looks sloppy and it's, uh, getting it out to Scali. We're still okay, but they're, Scali doesn't have any good options and he makes matters worse by like stumbling on the ball because the pitch isn't great and he's Joe scally we don't have a bunch of technical wizards out there uh and so he ends up literally having to stand directly on the ball and turn his back to the pressure that's coming while standing on the ball he's not like taking a touch negative where he you know can still play so this is just giving mexico a ton of triggers to start rushing at everybody uh yeah so scaly slides it over miles and even then Miles could if he had the composure and the trust in himself and in Matt Turner.

I could easily just play this forward to Matt Turner's feet. That's like the avenue we did have. Yep. Yep. But it's also not something we would have to do. And then Turner would have just kicked it out of bounds. Yeah, Turner would kick it out of bounds or, you know, launch it into a, hopefully a more controlled area than what Miles ended up doing.

But yeah, totally. We just, we, we aren't, we weren't a group of personnel equipped to be doing what we were doing there and have a lot of success. It's not like we were doomed to give up that. goal that we gave up on the sequence or many like it, but we certainly weren't going to be going from Joe Scally at the ball to his feet there up into the opposing box

and creating a shot very frequently with this group. Yeah, we really miss Sergenio Dest a lot. I mean, we miss a lot of players, but we really miss Sergenio a ton. And I think somebody in the Discord said, you got to remember it's not just about

you know, this is why he doesn't like this person in the score doesn't like the discussion of like offensive players and defensive players because when you do have sergenio out there he he's able to progress the ball he's maybe he's not quite as solid defensively as scally i think that's debatable but let's say maybe it's true um you you don't have to defend as much when you have desks out on the field so it's like you get kind of it gives you some control in the game and uh if you don't have like a player like that you don't have as much control. I mean, there's lots of other reasons we didn't have control besides Scali. I'm not putting it all on him.

But it just reminds me that we need desks a lot. And it reminds me that we really just need everybody to be healthy, like real bad, to have a chance of doing anything at the World Cup. Yes. Yeah. I know Matt Hartman made a comment about, you know, talking about the Panama game and kind of being forgiving because it's like, well, yeah, we're missing so many starters. And Hartman's making a point, you know, to paraphrase what he's saying. Okay, yeah, we're missing some of these guys, but we're always going to be missing these guys. So, like, we're not far away from this being the group we send out. And he's not wrong. And what it just means is like, if that's who we send out, then it's exactly what you said. We aren't going to get very far. Pachitino, Pachitino Magic Juan, notwithstanding.

This is not a team that is destined for great things if you're talking about the group of players we had in Guadalajara. I mean, McKinney, Pulisic, and Dest are, you know, Absolutely indispensable for us to play against anybody good and do anything well. Well, you talk about international soccer and so much, so much of it, it is hard to automate because you don't get a lot of time with the group, right? So it does become who's going to be a grownup? And that's exactly what Mexico were doing. They weren't playing a bunch of automated patterns.

The ball would come into one of their guys when he would have time and he would win it and he would control it. And we'd hit him and he'd absorb contact because it was from maybe a weaker contactor. and then he would make his decision and execute. And we can do that against Mexico when it's McKinney, when it's way out, when it's Musa in the midfield. Musa didn't touch the ball playing as the right wing. And Potch did eventually shift that 30-38th minute after yet another Mexico chance. Malik shifted over to the left.

It was musical chairs. Malik to the left, Musa to the middle, and Aronson over to the right. But there wasn't too much time before half time. But anyway. But I mean, that's a little bit on Musa, too. Like, you're, okay, you're playing on the right wing. Go find the ball, bro. You know?

I mean, you can't just be like, well, I'm on the right wing so I can't, I don't have to touch the ball. Like, go get it. Yeah, we had some, we had a bunch of guys in this lineup that were auditioning for fringe. Like, they're auditioning just to be considered fringe players. And then we had a few guys, Malik, Brando Musa, Sergeant, who were maybe auditioning for like, I want to be, I want to, I want to be closer to a starting lineup spot. And so in that sense, when you said you were disappointed in Malik, I think that's exactly right. I think those are the guys who are going to be the most disappointing because the,

what they were trying to, what, what they could have gained was so much greater than what a lot of the, you know, Aidan Morris was set to gain here. Yeah, yeah. Or what Aiden Morris could provide us big picture. I don't think anyone was thinking, this is going to be, this is going to be the guy. We finally have a Tyler Adams upgrade. I don't think anyone was really thinking that about even Morris. No, not an upgrade at all.

Let's take a break. If you want to listen to the pot ad free, join us on Patreon. We'll be back in a second. All right, we're back. Like I said earlier, it's not that we fell apart immediately after the goal. We still were playing for a little while, but we never got into the game from there. And we were just sort of increasing in bewilderment over the next 40 minutes. Um, that Jedi moment that we talked about earlier happens in the 26th minute where he's carrying it, nobody shows to him, ends up giving it away. I guess we already described it, but kind of, kind of emblematic of the game in general. Uh, there's a great, sort of great is the wrong word, but an interesting moment in the 29th minute where Aronson goes down for like the third time with, I think arguably,

having been fouled, hoping for a whistle and not getting it. And then Scali turns and looks at the ref and he's like, dude. And then he turns and looks at Brenda and he's like, dude, you know? He sort of like sees the both end of the situation. Like one, why don't you call the foul, but also, yo, Brendan, come on. Stop falling down. You can see it pretty clearly on the broadcast. Then Scali gets that very intentional elbow to the ribs from Paneda on the side of the

line. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah. Just another example of Mexico just coming in to like punch us in the mouth. Which is what we need. We absolutely need that. And that's, there's no better test. Again, Panama, for guys looking for, for, uh, to move up in a depth chart, doesn't do it for you.

Like, you got to do it against this, this Mexico team that's a little meaner. Yeah. And nobody, yeah, nobody, nobody did it. Nobody did it. We get the best touch of the game from the U.S. when Potch, well, I guess, Vasquez's touch is a close. No, don't undercut your own event here on the timeline. It's beautiful.

Vasquez did have a really nice touch on that long ball. But Potch's volley in the 35th minute, 32nd minute. We'll volley over to Scali. Morris stupidly tries to take a free kick through an opponent who hadn't given him 10 yards in the 35th minute. Expecting to the ref to what? I don't know. Give him another free kick? instead it's a counterattack and then he gets megged and he files a guy 30 yards from goals

gets a yellow card for dissent i think i'm not sure what the yellow card is for um Mexico wastes the free kick but let's not do this kind of stuff anymore i mean that's exactly yeah that's exactly the kind of terrible posturing tough guy stuff that has that has been a hallmark of this team and a lot of our players like we are so bad we're so bad at like concacacafing when we do try. Almost without exception. This is when Raul really starts to feel it. He does the flying scissor kick that doesn't get anywhere close to frame,

but still an impressive leap and some of the pictures are going to be nice. He's got the Robona. Oh, yeah, the Robona was in there. That leads to a corner, and then he has another overhead attempt from like the end line on that corner. So he's, I mean, I'm enjoying it. I'm like, welcome back. Like, this is great.

They're dominating. We can't connect a pass. We look naive. Morris gives it away and deep in our defensive third in the 43rd minute, having a bit of a quicksand game. And then Huerta scratch his miles in the face. I don't know if it was a scratch, but he just dragged his hand across his face. So once again. And then Robinson's like holding his arms out at the ref, and the ref tells him to get up, which, you know, how humiliating.

is that. But this is the kind of, I mean it sincerely, this is the kind of humiliation, like, some of these players need. Like, it's not going to be given to you. Don't ask, don't ask for it. Don't beg for it like this. Like, you get in there and you take it if you want to move up for this U.S. national team. Yeah. Yeah.

Hopefully the lesson is learned. So Zendayaas comes on at the half for Musa and Lund for Jedi. So if there was any doubt, I mean, maybe Zendaya was an improvement over Moussa actually in this game, pretty significantly. But at least when the subs happen, I'm like, whoa, like, Potch does not care about this game at all, you know? And maybe that's not fair. So in the 49th minute, we get the second Mexico goal. Buccio does well to recover a second ball in their half. It's one of the few moments where we have somebody moving forward with the ball.

even in the middle third. He drives down the line, kind of gets, kind of pulls up, circles to his right, and then just goes over so soft under a Luis Romo tackle. And Romo turns and plays a clipped ball to Paneda,

who's found a little room between Robinson and Ream, who seem a little bit flat-footed here. Then Panetta takes it down and quickly plays a good ball over, sort of over to Raul. And then Ream tracks him down in the box real nicely, takes it from him, which is a really good play.

But then he tries to dribble out and just gets caught from behind with a really nice Raul tackle who slides and tackles it over to Huerta. Huerta touches it inside of Miles, who's maybe a tad flat-footed again, and tucks it past Turner to zero. Everyone just a little sluggish for us compared to the, you know, the just locked-in nature of Raul and Huerta here. Yeah, and Raul just knowing that he can do whatever he wants. He's definitely like, he's definitely used some codes here to be able to play the game

whatever way he wants to play. And this one, I don't know if you felt it. It brought me right back to the 2009 Confederations Cup. And it was Raul doing his Clint Dempsey impression where a ball gets kind of sprayed over to Sergio Ramos' feet right in front of the goal. Ramos collects it like things. okay, I've got the ball now where we've solved it and he's about to like make his next pass and Dempsey from his blind spot just with a little sliding poke to put it into the open goal

two zero game over. Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely like that. So anyway, not everyone would want to hear a cheerful, a cheerful memory. And I think, you know, I don't think Riem had a terrible game or anything. This was a mistake. This is a mistake, but I don't know. know, people who are like, well, that's it for Ream. I never want to see him again. Like, what are you, what are you, who are you thinking is going to be, like, way better than Tim Ream in this game? Yeah.

I don't, I don't think this particular event is, uh, is any evidence for the reasons that some people have for thinking it's time to move on from Tim Ream. You know, I don't think this happened because he's like extra slow. Like, this was just an unawares situation, not a speed situation. He had time to make plays, uh, even, even at his. his rate that he can move. Yeah. He could have just, he could have toe poked it out to touch, you know, done anything.

But he was trying to be, you know, trying to see some control in the game, which I appreciate. But anyway, two zero. Miles had, Miles had a chance to make a play on it. And getting caught flat footed, yeah, everyone is going to get caught flat footed in that moment because you think, you know, you can at least breathe a little bit. And then as that ball suddenly gets shifted right to a Mexico player who's wide open, eight yards from goal, what Miles ends up doing is like the panic close out, right? He just sprints right at this,

which you have to do because you cannot give that guy. You have to close as much angle as possible from eight yards out dead center goal. But he just doesn't keep himself quite under control enough because he kind of already is lunging with his left foot and kind of spraying it out wide. And then when Mexico, the Mexico player takes the touch over to that side. basically Miles can't reset enough to go close the angle on the other shots. He doesn't get there in time because the Huerta hits it.

I mean, he scores on Miles' side, so to speak. So Miles essentially was not, ended up not taking away any of the goal. It was a nice play by Huerta, too. I mean, real, like, clever, tidy finish. Subs come on in the, like, around this hour mark. It's Brandon Vasquez for Sergeant, Hadji Wright for Tillman, Tanner Testman for Busio. Uh, Sendejas had been bright, I think, and he plays a nice, a lovely in-swinging ball from the right side, and it finds Lund on the back post. And I thought we're going to score here, actually.

I mean, as the ball's in the air, I'm like, whoa, we're going to get a goal, get one back. And Lund just kind of misses it. I think maybe there was some dip on the cross or something. I'm just trying to be generous here, but maybe there's some dip on the cross. And because he thought he was going to get it with his head, and you can see him sort of change his body shape. try to get it with his left in step. But in any case, he basically whiffs on it and it goes right out of bounds. Yeah, could be some top spin from Zendajas.

Could also just be, we've got a second division fullback in that moment. And that's not exactly the person that you want to have that chance to fall to. No. Yeah, it was too bad. Subs definitely gave some energy. I thought Vasquez and Brenda are chasing a guy down in a corner there. we didn't play I thought as scared

and as soft after the subs came on you know at least at least Brandon Vasquez was up there I don't know providing something and same with Testman Yeah Vasquez is probably the one guy who you'd say like tried to make a positive case for himself but then unfortunately I mean he also feels like he might have

had the lowest starting point in the coach's hierarchy I guess I guess that's speculating. You know, that's, that's weighing a lot of previous hierarchies for the forward depth chart. But it's like, will that be enough to get Brandon Vosquez into another camp when, when everyone's healthy? Do you think Vosquez is coming in November based on that performance? Well, Balagan will still be out, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah, why not? That's fair. I don't think, I don't think, I mean, Hajie's an enigma because he has, you know, he scored some important goals for the U.S. but you throw him in a game like this and it's like what is he what does he offer you know like almost nothing and you try to imagine him in a like a high intensity game against a really good opponent it's just hard to imagine him like what is he going to accomplish in that game i don't know you're talking about world cup knockout goal score haji right i am yeah i am talking about

that um some people would say the same thing about sergeant i guess i i see so much good stuff from sergeant in the championship. I do not want to give up on him, even though he, I don't know, he's given, like, he's given me almost nothing to argue with in a shirt, in the U.S. shirt, you know? I do want to mention. How personally, how he's, like, disappointing you in particular. It's not just me. There's, like, four of us in this category.

I don't think, I don't think Hodge would be considered a striker in the, in the debt chart anyway, for call-ups. I feel like he'll always kind of be in the winger pool for now. as like if you have to you got another strike or two which is great so i feel like three strikers and ball is still hurt it could definitely be sergeant peppy brandon mosquez i think it probably will be yeah i do want to mention um oh wait some a little more controversy angulo kicks out at sendejas then touches his face in the sort of alvarez does edson runs over and does the old like arm wrap around fish hook well i think he push fish hooks him yeah that's even

I'm saying Angolo does this even before Edson comes over. So, I mean, there's just all kinds of shenanigans going on. And at least Zendayaas is showing some spirit. And I was happy to see Haji Wright come over. And after Edson fish hooked him, Hodgear Wright was kind of the enforcer who said, no, Edson. And Edson doesn't try to, you know, do anything to Haji. You know, he's kind of a, he only picks on the little guys. Fosquez got in there too.

Vasquez, it was Edson gets to fish hook. Vasquez gives Edson a pretty strong shove and then Hajie is right there to give a secondary shove which is a key, I mean that's a key moment because everyone can kind of hold up to the first shove but when you're already a little bit off and then Hajie comes in and gives him a shove, I think that neutralizes Edson

for the rest of the exchange. Yeah, it did. It totally did. Totally did. Really nice pass from Brenda to Vasquez for I'd say our second best chance of the game in the 79th minute. I didn't really see, we didn't really see the buildup because the broadcast didn't show it.

But I think it was a throw in to Brendo's feet. And then he does a nice little outside of the boot pass, perfectly weighted. Good hit from Vasquez on target from a tight angle. Draws a save from Maligan. I mean, he got all of it. It was dipping Maligan, you know, didn't even get a hand on it. I think it hit his shoulder. Yeah, just smash this into it.

And this is, again, why it's, why it is so important from those zero angle ones to go roof. because the keeper just standing there will save a lot of them. And that's what happened. He didn't know much about it and just smashes into his chest. But it's a really good connection and it's really good for Vasquez to turn that into a scoring chance in a game that was just barren for us in the box. Very barren in the box. I think that's enough. I don't think we need to keep talking about this.

Do you? Anything else? No, I think that's fine. I think we end up just kind of repeating the same things, which is there were cases that some guys could have made in this window. And I don't know that any of them really did. And so the big winner is Brandon Vosquez, who may or may not get called into the November game. Right. I think Tillman remaining a largely untapped resource is maybe the biggest frustration, him and Sergeant, both biggest frustration of the window for me personally.

I'd say Sergeant gets at least a little bit more of a pass in a game like this because you have to have something that gets up to Sergeant. You don't always, Tillman is the center mid, like he can go make something happen. Like that's sort of what he can go do. If Sergeant's doing it, you've got real big problems. But Tillman should be doing more demanding of the play here. Yeah. Hopefully Potch have some real serious talks with Malik. about this stuff.

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