Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #547: Takeaways from USWNT v Iceland & Argentina

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Greg and Belz do a more general and less timeliney discussion of the last two games. Timeline items on the goals, then ~10 (mostly positive) takeaways from the window. 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 doing kind of an unusual recap episode here where we're going to deal with two games, the second Iceland friendly, which we won 3-1, and the Argentina-friendly in Louisville, where we won 3-0. Greg, how goes it? It's going on right, Bells. We just keep racking up wins, keep racking up goals. And, I mean, we rack up a lot of debuts. we rack up quite a bit of, I'd say, on-field joy.

I would say so, yeah. We're going to try to do sort of things we learned these last two games slash the entire window. That's going to be sort of the guiding impulse of the episode. But I guess I'll start by saying, you know, before we get to the lineups and the time, very truncated timelines for the games, I guess I'll say my sort of really big picture takeaway is

the United States of America, women's national team is just sort of extending its dominance in these, you know, just quietly sort of expanding its dominance with all these debuts, with these wins, adding set piece goals. It feels pretty good, like everything is in pretty good shape. Yeah, there's definitely like a comfortable dominance to us. And even in the game where, you know, we're going to talk about where we have to make a big comeback, biggest comeback of Emma Hayes' U.S. Women's Nunes.

national team career. We just look, we just look like we are, we are in control. Like way better than Iceland. Who is the, who is the 13th ranked team in the world? And I mean, you know, rankings are what they are. But they're not, they're not chopped liver. They're a solid national team. Yeah.

And I should dig more into this, but I'm assuming Iceland has been investing in their women's team. When their men's team made that sort of storybook run in the Euros, almost a decade ago now, it's almost a decade ago. Maybe it's not a decade ago. Maybe it's just the four years ago. I'm not going to check to see when Iceland made their run in the Euro. No. Let's not talk about how old they are or anything like that. Introduce the boom clap to a grateful world. But you read, like, there were a ton of stories about what Iceland were doing.

And it was essentially like because they're so small, because their population is, you know, kind of in mostly one place. Like every kid who was playing soccer was basically getting standardized soccer education. And like there was a team. The whole country was just this team, basically. And I imagine being a Nordic progressive country that the women were sort of going through the same systematic process. Yeah, I was going to say exactly the same. I don't know that for sure, but it seems like probably they were, yeah. So anyway, you could see how, I mean, they were such an organized unit playing in this game.

They didn't have a ton of, like, eye-popping talent. But, yeah, definitely, like, they were an organized team that we had to figure out a way to break down. Yeah, super organized. By the way, this game was in Nashville on Sunday. Casey Murphy gets the starting goal. Casey Kruger, Emily Sonnet, Emily Sams, and Jen. and Iisswanger across the back line. So no Germa in that centerback pairing for the first time and, you know, for a long time.

And then a midfield of Sam Coffey, Corbyn Albert, Olivia Moultrie, and then Yasmin Ryan gets the start at right wing, Jaden Shaw, and Mallory Swanson across the front line. Any surprises there? No, I mean, no, because, again, Emma is in experiment mode here, and she's in, what would you call it? She announced after this game, I believe, that she was being very deliberate with the minutes she was giving players,

not just so that she could see them. I don't mean that. I mean, in the sense that she was rotating them so that she wouldn't overplay anybody ahead of important NWSL fixtures this weekend. So it was very much like all hands were going to be on deck because we weren't going to play Naomi Graham for 270 minutes in the window.

So it was fun. I mean, and that's interesting, right? We get to see, okay, what does, what do four players look like who have very limited national team experience? This will be kind of cool to see. Yeah. And it was cool to see. And it wasn't great always. No, it wasn't.

What's so nice about it again is knowing that Emma Hayes does have a plan. We've seen plenty of opportunities already for the U.S. women where they've shown their embracing, trying to play a little bit different, more sophisticated soccer. Not crazy sophisticated, but just. some kind of a coherent purpose within the team in possession, which is, again, a big departure from 2019 through 2020 through 2020. So just knowing that that's the case means that if it's bad, then we know that that's going to register with Coach Emma,

and she'll either be making changes within the personnel, or she'll say some of this personnel maybe is not the right personnel, and we'll see adjustments at half or in the next game. Yeah, yeah. I mean, even in this game, which was pretty hard to watch, not a really fun game to watch, we were patient. I thought we were still pretty patient in the attack.

It just didn't work. It just didn't work out. We couldn't get anything going in the final third. Yeah, first half was really, really rough. And so you just went through the lineup, and the shape of this was, we've seen some different shapes in that era. In that first Iceland game,

we were building almost with like a real back four, and we did that again in this game, where you could see our fullbacks. It wasn't the asymmetrical stuff we've seen where it turns into a 3-2-5. It was like kind of a real back-four horseshoe with coffee right in the middle of it, sitting sort of deeper. So kind of a back-6, if you include Casey Murphy and Sam Coffee. And then there was a huge separation.

And that was, for me, the big issue of this match was the first half being so ugly because no connection, almost whatsoever, between that back-six and the front. five. Corbyn and Albert slid up with Moultrie to be like dual tens for the most part. I mean, it's not like she never came back, but she was not in any way like a real effective connecting eight that brought the ball up into the final third. No, she wasn't. I spent a good deal of the Wosso episode a week ago, you know, praising Albert for the way she's played for PSG lately, doing the kind of stuff that she just didn't do in this game, you know, connecting. playing on the half turn is a little pretty disappointing.

Yeah, and I don't want to put it all on her, of course. But the thought for me for that first half is, why aren't we connecting? Like, that's the big question that we're going to have to solve. Is it, is it Maltry? Is Moultry just not able to sort of get open? Is it coffee and Corbyn just don't have that desire to get on their foot on the ball the way Lindsey Huran does that maybe makes everything else work? Because if it's, maybe if it's Corbyn, coffee, and Moultrie, we just can't do it.

Jaden Shaw wasn't fantastic in this game or against Argentina. And if we need her coming back as a, I mean, again, she's kind of playing in like a false nine or forward role. Maybe she would have been better if she were the actual 10 instead of, you know, trying to read the game and when to come back. But no one was really doing that job. So I don't want to say it's Corbin. I mean, as a team, no one was doing it. Who did we need to do it? Who needs to do it better?

I'm not sure what the answer will be. But I know Emma sees it. She made a change even within the first half where she flipped Moultrie and Mow to see if that would help. And then in the second, right at halftime, made subs. And Mal stayed on as like more of a 10. So she was basically saying,

I think Mal's good enough that she can play the 10 and we'll get more connective juice going. And we did the second half. I thought we got a lot more. Okay. I mean, we can do some tape. battles, but... No, I don't want to...

I don't want to do a big battle. Well, I think, and I think, honestly, Horan comes on at half, right? And I think Horan coming on at half also just makes such a huge difference if you're going to try to play connecting soccer. Yeah, I blame both Maltrey and Albert. I mean, but maybe...

Do you think maybe it's the scheme was the issue or coffee wasn't getting it to them? I guess that's where the uncertainty lies. Yeah, and I was hoping... I was hoping M would do like a full five-minute X's-N-O's breakdown. especially when Vince asked her the question about the central midfield roles and responsibilities, I was like, maybe she'll do it.

Maybe she'll actually nerd out for all of us. But of course she didn't. She opted not to, yeah. But yeah, because that's what I'm most curious about. Is it just Corbyn's tendencies? Is it Moultrie's like, again, I don't know that Moultrie's going to find pockets in the same way Rose Lavelle does, in the same way Kat Macario and Jaden Shaw could in that role. for the national team.

So I was, I'm not sure. Yeah. Well, I will say Albert looks when she plays for PSG like she knows what she's doing to get. She knows how to get open. She knows how to get on the ball.

She tries to get on the ball. She didn't look like that at all in this game, I didn't think. Why don't we do, why don't we do Iceland's lineup real quick? And then, so Cecilia, round Runner's daughter is the goalkeeper, was the goalkeeper, Hlein Eric's daughter, was the right back,

Glottis Pirla Vigos daughter, Gudrun, Arnar daughter, and Amelia Asgear's daughter across the back line, and then Selma, Solma, Magnus daughter, the goal scorer from a few days before. Ingebiorg, Sigurdar daughter, and then Hildur, Anton's daughter, across the midfield, Goodney Arna daughter, Svendis Jane John's daughter,

and Carolina Leia V. Helm's daughter across the front line. She's the goal score of the last one I said. Greg's over there smirking a lot. Yeah, mainly my notes on the first half are we can't connect through Corbyn or Olivia, getting heavy touches from everybody, pretty much.

Albert Moultrie and Shaw in particular. And I did notice Sonnet does well to help. This is right before the goal actually, does really well to help Emily Sam's in the open field, drives an attacker over to the sideline, and then tackles her out for a corner kick. I just was really impressed with Sonnet kind of across the board in this camp. And it makes me feel a lot.

That, among other things, makes me feel better about our centerback situation. Yeah, I mean, if Sonnet sort of, made her case in the in the Olympics right like uh I was I was kind of defending her I'd be a relatively considered a sonnet defender I think uh leading up to the Olympics just by saying I could see how we could use her on a 18 player roster and that qualified as like effusive sonnet praise uh in the narrative and uh you know there was a lot of like if sonnet plays were were done for sonnet like if she's on the field then things have gone horribly on and she did they didn't she played a lot she I mean probably played over half to knockout minutes for us in the Olympics.

And she was fine. Like, she was okay. And I do think that she has some things, some strengths that don't necessarily pop on screen, like helping to organize, just always trying to be available, even if once she gets the ball, she's not going to do anything mind-blowing with it. Yeah. That trying to offer safety valve, I think, can help a lot. And defensively, she's not, again, she's not like on clown shoes.

She might not be super quick. She might not have a ridiculous top end speed, but she's not a complete catastrophe. Oh, man, she sets a really high floor, I think. And I think her ability on the ball, especially with the way we have to play so often, which is everybody pushed forward into the opponent's half, to have a centerback who can collect the ball cleanly, collect the ball in different types of situations, and then distributed in different ways.

Again, not in a mind-blowing manner necessarily, but different ways get the ball to other people. It goes a long way. I guess we'll get into that more later. So the goal for Iceland comes in the 32nd minute, 30-second minute, and it's an Olympico from Wilhelm's daughter. Casey Murphy doesn't do too well here, does she? No, it's a mess.

It's all footwork. She's obviously got the length. You know, we're, we continuously take hits on this goalkeeping front because all through the Olympics when we're, you know, not the Olympics, I'm sorry, the World Cup when we were going to get matched up with Sweden. I was like, man, set pieces. We got, we got Casey Murphy, who's 6'6, and we've got a listener who's 5'7. I think we should go with the 6'6 goalkeeper.

Those aren't their real heights, but I can't double check what their heights are now. Casey Murphy's got some height on Neyer. And in that game, and in lots of games since, Neier has done extremely well and multiple occasions has had to reach her absolute highest point to keep balls

out of the net, and she's done it really well. And then we have this moment for Casey Murphy, where she doesn't have to reach her absolute height. Like, this isn't because somebody hit a perfect shot that only a super tall keeper could get to. Casey Murphy just botches her initial read of the trajectory of the ball. steps out towards where the corner kick was taken

instead of being able to intercept it at a reasonable height and then ends up trying to jump backwards while running forward. And if anyone's even a little bit athletic who's attempted to do that, you know you don't get a lot of purchase on your jump in those moments. Yeah, it's a tricky technique. So yeah, so she just kind of, it's a bit of a howler, to be honest.

Yeah, you can see in the broadcast, there's an old man with a gray beard behind the goal and he's just kind of like, you're kind of looking at Casey like, oh man, come on. If she doesn't, if she doesn't take that quick step towards the ball,

if she just stays in the exact spot she starts in, she catches it without jumping. Yeah. Higher than anyone else could have it. So it's a bad read. She'll, she'll know and she'll, you know,

just have to, it goes on her, it goes on her like evaluation sheet, right? Oh, man. That's something Emma is going to be like, okay, well, this is, this is a thing that just happened.

We, it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's too bad because Iceland wasn't really, you know, really threatening that much in this game, just like they didn't really threaten that much in the first game. We come to the half and it just seems really static from the U.S. I guess we've already sort of covered it, but not many good triangles happening.

No, there's too much distance. Yeah, too much distance between, uh, that again, anyone who collects the ball in the back six, even if they're collecting it at midfield or past midfields. too much distance between like let's say let's say it's out on the right and we've got the ball at the right fullback

coffee might come over and play but even if we pass it to coffee Corbin and Moultrie are so far away from coffee that it doesn't matter she's not going to have like oh here's the next pass here's the next like you see the sequence sort of develop with that bird's eye view you just never see anything developed because

there was no movement or coordination to play with yeah it's a little bit Vlocco-ish there. After the half, we get, Haran comes on for coffee, Thompson comes on for Moultry, Swanson moves to the 10 or 8, whatever you call it. Fox comes on for Nicewanger and Kruger moves over to the left.

So a lot of subs and, you know. Corbin drops to the coffee roll, like that sort of deepest midfielder. And again, I think just from that, for me, like right away within 10, minutes you see within two like two minutes you have heran coming all the way back she drops out of iceland's shape and that's what corbin wasn't doing again whether that's instruction or tendency i don't know but haran's just like no i'm getting out of this mess of bodies and i'm going to come get the ball from whoever has it and when she does that because corbin's in the role where corbin always goes to the ball because that's her job is that sort of deepest lying midfielder then

you have a triangle you have haran going to get it you have corbin close by her by her role you have whoever's on the ball. So you've got three people and you can do little passes and you can kind of try to fold Iceland around and see how they react. In the first half, we just never made any Iceland defender ever really make any choices on whether they go or stay in their shape. So you saw basically as soon as the kick off in the second half things were looking better for us? I thought so and I thought you could tell because we could essentially just walk our way into the final third in a way that we just were not doing in the first half. In the first half, it was walk our way to the edge of the final third, not have any ideas. And it was.

I don't know if you noticed a lot more lumping balls in towards the box than what we're used to seeing from this new and improved U.S. women's national team. Even in the second half or just in the first half? Mainly the first half. I think we were still doing it more in the second half, but it was after like lengthy poking and prodding, which I think is a good thing to have more of the poking and the prodding. Oh yeah, yeah. Big fans of that. Yeah, even Julie Fowdy noted the lack of movement on the broadcast. And just not enough breaking into pockets of space with energy.

So Smith comes on for Kruger in the 66 minute, and now we have six attackers out there, two centerbacks and Fox in the back, pressing hard, going at them. And then as Knight fell in Nashville, we started scoring goals. The 72 minute is the first one. Smith wins a long ball and it falls to Thompson running down the line, or maybe she plays it out to Thompson running down the line.

Thompson runs at her defender and gets the end line and then kind of cuts it back with a little clip pass for Sof, who's running to the inside of her. Sof takes it on the half-folly and just kind of biffs it, misses the frame completely. But it goes over to Emma Sears, kind of flies over to Emma Sears. And she does it. This is actually pretty, maybe the nicest thing all. camp from Sears. She lays it down real nicely for Lynn Williams.

And it's totally intentional if you look on the replay. Lays it down for Williams, who is just on side. Williams turns and she's all alone in front of goal and strokes at home, no problem. 1-1. Yeah. And I'm going to, of course, as my nature, I'm going to go back even further in this sequence. Please, please do. Because like we talked about, Haran coming in makes such a difference.

This started with like an Iceland long ball up into the edge of Casey Murphy's box that Sonnet chases down calmly and as Sonic collects it in turns she hits a pass into the end of the space right in between her and Sam's to Lindsay Horan who's broken all the way back because Lindsay Horan wants the soccer ball at her feet

so Haran gets it does a turn and then she just drives a 45-yard ball up towards Sophia Smith who collects it so we kind of Iceland tried to try to transition on us. We win it and then very quickly transition directly over the top of them again so we don't let them sit in their block. And then Sophia does her little bowling ball routine where she might have held the girl gotten away with it. But it's just what Sophia does where

in the mess she just ends up coming out with the ball. And that's how it ends up with Thompson alone in the cutback space. And Thompson hits a really good cutback here back to Sof. It's a little difficult to deal with. It would have been better if it were rolling nicely instead of sort of high popping a little bit, which probably contributes to Sophia's big shank. But again, the sequence here is, in my mind, keyed by Lindsay Horan. And Lindsey Horan's absolute, like, demanding of the ball all the time. So it's a big deal having her. And that's going to be a big question mark we'll get into in our takeaways.

And, you know, I think Sophia probably you give her. this clip pass 10 times, she probably puts it in the goal six times, you know, or at least puts it on frame six or seven times. Yeah, this is definitely the worst of the 10 for her, for what actually she manages on this situation. Yeah, it's totally the bottom end of the distribution. But yeah, it is really nice, really, really nice from Sears, because that is intentional. And it's really tidy from Lynn Williams, because she gets it coming in kind of hot from

short range with her back to goal. So it would be really easy for her to not even be able to fashion a shot out of this. And have to try to lay off to somebody else. But instead she just gets it really calmly. And again, like you count the fractions of a second for her to get this shot off. Yeah. She's work from Lynn. Very fast.

And she wasn't done. She wasn't done with goal involvements. So a little over four minutes later, we get the second goal. It's a free kick from Wide Right. So the first of four set piece goals in this window. Floated in by Swanson, skips to the backpost, and Williams is just charging at that backpost, meets it real nicely, kind of cushions it across the mouth of goal

with her left in-step, and it's just the easiest finish in life for Lindsay Horan. Taps it in from the goal line. Great work by Williams here and a nice ball from Swanson. Yeah, this is really nice from Williams. In the last game, she'd had a chance to put a ball back across, and she kind of way overhit it. This is just perfect from her. So, you know, we said she was a little off in that first Iceland match.

Absolutely on point in this game today. Yeah. Over the weekend. Also going to go back farther in this sequence just because it's hilarious. This free kick was somebody running through the back of Sof and kind of like a send-a-message way. And while Sof was still on the ground and that player, the Iceland player was kind of walking past her, kind of being tough. Haran just walks past and like blindsides that player And Horan picks up a yellow card

While the play is dead And then Haran goes on to score this goal So there's shades of the Holland World Cup game here Where Horan's kind of doing some enforcing And then scores immediately after You know, she did some enforcing against Argentina too Which I have in the timeline Well Lindsay

Lindsay bringing a lot to the party A lot to the table here I really thought the big On my initial watch And I'm going to stand by it I really thought the big winner from this game was Emily Sams I thought she was quite good At centerback

Sonnet also was quite good as we As we talked about But man I Well We'll get into it when we talk about our takeaways I guess That's a good teaser though Bels

It's a good teaser right there Everybody's on the edge of their seats The attack was too predictable I still thought in the second half, a lot of ISO, watch SOF or Alyssa or YAS or Sears, just dribble at somebody. It seemed like it was the game. It didn't seem like it was the game plan, but it seemed out things sort of shook out throughout the game. But, well, go ahead. Yeah. No, I think you're totally right. And I think you're right to sort of say that it feels like sort of the Vlato era again.

And to be honest, again, that's what we did in the Olympics. Like, the Olympics were not a super fluid, free-flowing attacking. demonstration of football. It was very much like our stars are going to do something starworthy, and we're just going to be tight everywhere else, which won us a gold medal. But what's exciting is it definitely seems like Emma wants to build in a different direction. Yeah, let me play one real quick clip from her, which I think will do make every scuffed listener's heart warm.

I still don't believe we're generating as much XG as I think we can. We're still limited a little bit with that, but I think that will come with a bit more time, and the team knows the gaps that I want to close. That's after the Argentina game, but it could describe, I mean, it kind of describes the whole window to a certain extent. Absolutely does. And yeah, and the XG stuff is great for us nerds, but it's no different than a coach 10 years ago saying we just weren't dangerous enough, we weren't threatening enough, because that's what you're after. And a three-goal score line can easily kind of obscure that. But, Eminos, we've got to get more good clear-cut looks.

You can't just, you can't rely on long-term over knockout games. You don't just be like, well, Alyssa Thompson will carve someone up and smash one to the top corner from a narrow angle. Trinity Robin might have done that in Paris, but you're going to want to get more clear-cut looks. That's the goal. Yeah, and even this last goal in this game before we get on to the Argentina game is, I mean, it's actually a pretty good. good attacking moment, but it's a little lucky that it ends up over at Sears. So we get our third goal in the 93rd minute. Thompson gets a nice pass into space from Haran on the left, cuts in, sort of kind of carries

the ball across the top of the box, has a shot, and this is a good shot, and it hits the post. Smith gathers it left of the goal, tries to cut in and shoot with her right foot. Her shot is blocked right off her foot, but just skitters over, straight over to Sears. and she takes it first time with her left in step. Perfect finish. 3-1, and that's the game. So the lesson seems to be our best offense is Sophia Smith blowing chances.

If you just create chances for her to mess up, we will end up scoring goals. This is great because it's another great moment for Sears, right? I mean, this is an awesome debut. Your goal in a game like this is to do something that makes it hard for Emma not to call you up in the next window. and I mean, I have no idea what Emma thinks of Sears overall, but it's really cool that she scored a goal and gets an assist in the first time she plays with this group of women. Yeah, it is really cool for sure.

But I'm curious what you really think of Sears. Is it in one of your top secret takeaways? Yeah, it'll get addressed there. Okay. Let's take a little break, come back and do the Argentina game real quick, and some takeaways. We'll be back in a minute. Okay, for the Argentina game in Louisville on Wednesday night,

Mandy Hott starts in goal. She had replaced Jane Campbell after Campbell left camp with a muscle injury. Backline was Haley Mace, Eva Gaitino from PSG, Naomi Germa and Casey Kruger, and then Hal Hersch felt in the defensive midfield position. Roosevelt and Lindsay Horan back in the midfield. and then Emma Sears after her, you know, big performance the game before, Jaden Shaw and Ashley Sanchez across the front line.

So if you're playing Personnel Sudoku with Emma's comments, you knew that this was going to be some players playing out of position because the Friday NWSL gals were ruled out. Other players were ruled out of the 11 because they'd already racked up enough minutes that it would have violated Emma's 180 minute cap. And we kind of got that, right? With Sanchez kind of being a nominal winger, Shaw being the forward again. It's, it's, we knew we were kind of out of attacking forwards since we couldn't run Mal.

And so it's kind of what we got, a bit of a Frankenstein front line. And for anyone who missed a lineup announcement, you would have been certain that that was Emily Sonet playing right back and not Haley Mace. Because they just look identical on the broadcast. Even though I think Haley Mace is just an absolute monster of a human being. And once you saw her sprint. you might have realized that that was not, in fact, Emily Sondon. Yeah, it was, it fooled me for a while. Argentina's lineup, Argentina, really not very good, not as good as Iceland.

They just packed it in, didn't threaten at all, really. Solana Pereira in goal, Adriana Sox, Aldana Cometti, and Sophia Braun across the backline. Comeddi had a rough night. She's the captain. and Catalina Roggerone, Vanina Prininger, who got into it a lot with Lindsay Horan, Sophia Dominguez and Milagros Martin across the midfield, and then Mariselle Pereira,

Kishi Nunez, and Dalila Ippolito across the front line. I noticed a really nice combination in the 17th minute where Gaetino plays it through the lines to Shaw. She lays it off to Hirschfeld. Hershfeld 1-2s it back to Shaw, and she's in the box, tries a clipped ball to Sanchez at the back post, It gets punched away and then Horan clips a ball into the area for Sears,

but she overruns the open space a bit and it goes just over her head. I know she did this twice. I'm like, does Sears just kind of gaslighting whoever crosses the ball to her? Yeah, because I mean... The open space you're talking about. I mean, she was all by herself. There was a big radius. And for any pitch control nerds out there, like that's probably a Sears mistake.

Because if you're, if you station yourself right in the middle of that big space, space right there, than any ball that goes into the space beyond you, like Haran's cross did, means you can't get to it. Certainly you can't get to it in a way to score. So, yeah, so if you can, if you can stay a little closer to the back stick, then you can attack any ball that comes between you in that next defender. So, yeah, so Sears kind of narrowed the number of trajectories that Haran could hit, and Horan didn't hit the right one.

When I saw her do it again in the second half, or maybe later in the first half, I forget exactly when it was. I was like, she's doing this on purpose. She just doesn't want to head the ball. It would have been cool because, yeah, all alone. That's a real good look if she controls more of that area. And a really nice combination from all the players I mentioned, I thought, you know, even Hirschfeld. There you go. Even Hershfeld.

That's important to note. because I don't think she, I don't think Hershfeld came into this camp with a reputation as a combiner, right? Right. Nice set piece, clipped ball to the back post for Heron, and she,

I mean, just is a free volley, and she misses it pretty badly, and then she gets saved by the offside flag. Then right before our goal, she gets into, she gets into a battle with Vanina Prininger, I think,

first Prinding her steps on her ankle. as she's like dribbling down as the ball departs after Haran passes it. And Haran gets her on a sliding challenge. They both slide and you know, Prangir is at least appears to be quite

hurt by this. Then Pranninger fouls Horan in the open field again leading to a free kick. I mean, they jaw at each other for a while and then Praninger fouls Horan in the open field again leading to the free kick that leads to the goal. So I'll just say, like, obviously,

Haran is, you know, we talked about how she will do some enforcing and often getting on Heron's bad side for whatever reason leads to a hilariously timed goal immediately following. But also, I don't know exactly, but I think if Hal continues to play for us, I would just not talk bad about any American players on the field if I was within 10 to 15 seconds run of Hal Hirschfeld. What a figure she is.

She's got the tattoos. She looks like she will absolutely skin you alive if you... And she'll be furious if she gets called for anything for skinny you alive. Like she wrecks people and then is just so mad that they were soft enough to get fouled. Yeah. And her body language shows it. Yeah. I want to talk about that more momentarily.

But the first goal comes 37th minute. It's a Germa header. It's, I mean, you used the phrase clown shoes earlier. This is clown shoes from Komedi and the goalkeeper. Komedi basically sticks her boot into the space that the goalkeeper has to jump into to get the ball. They collide. I mean, it was dangerous. It was a dangerous place.

She could have got a red card if she was an attacker. And it just pops up. Germa's there. Can't believe her luck. Just nods it in from four or five yards out. And that's her first national team goal. what a moment. Yeah, that's awesome.

And it's like, you know, it has felt so much like Germa has just been collecting the torch from Becky Sauerbrun. And Becky famously never scored for the U.S. despite like people just drawing up specific plays on set pieces to get Becky a goal. And so for this to be Germa's first goals and just be the absolute easiest tap-in that you'll ever see, just feels like some kind of a cosmic lesson. and I don't know, I guess I was almost anticipating that Germer would have a sour run-like run of just being an absolute nailed on shutdown defender who, for whatever he's never scores. And that is not going to be the case.

Is it a little disappointing that she's not going to have that same thing? No, not at all because even though this one was a fluke, we'll get into the next one, and I'll just kind of get ahead of myself anyway. Her movement on these set piece situations is really clever, really smart, and it's actually more like Julie Hertz, who I always was so impressed with when she'd go up and be like, oh, her, like she is constantly thinking about where the next ball is going to fall, where she should be

so that she can get on the end of a scrap. Like there's a skill to that for that scrap to find you. And I think Germa might have a little bit of that, which is really valuable for your goal revenue. It seems like she's going to score a lot more goals before it's all said and done. She almost scored against Iceland in the first game, you know, with that left-footed strike on a set piece.

second goal comes well Hirschfeld destroys Nunez in the 40th minute I don't know what Nunez did to provoke this but then there's a set piece from Argentina where Herschfeld makes a goal-saving challenge so this was actually a little bit of danger

but man we do have an enforcer in her 44th minute the U.S. gets the second goal it's another set piece and this one's an own goal. I mean, Germa flicks it on from the near post, makes a near post run, flicks it on, and the general direction of the back post. Maybe it's on frame if it like spins and kicks towards the goal.

No, not even in that case. Yeah, not on frame. Cometti just puts it in past her own keeper. Tough night for the Argentina captain. Yeah, no combination of spin or gale force wins. We're going to put that ball on frame. but it doesn't matter. Germa's joy is palpable,

her reaction is going to spawn dozens of memes, so we get the thumbs up from the double thumbs up with the goofy smile, the big grin. That's going to be, that's going to be by far

the longest lasting takeaway from this match. Well, and then the last one is a real goal from Germa. I mean, this is a nice header. It's a clipped ball from Malinson on the left. I mean, a lot

other stuff happened before it, which I'm sure we'll get into. But Mallinson clips it in from the left, and Germa kind of attacks it mid-flight, you know, not like at the end of it where it's like sort of coming down and then you hit it. She attacks it mid-flight, which is there's a little bit of surprise in that and just bloops it over the keeper. It's a really nice header. And that's a brace for the woman who was robbed of the Ballandor just a few days ago. Yeah, she's sending a message, right? Like, that is a message to all the European voters who choose who the Ballandora is.

Yeah, absolutely. So, no, German doesn't need. The best thing about German is she exists beyond individual awards. Like, this is not a person who is troubled by individual awards. And what she'll end up with is a room full of gold medals and trophies. That's right. That's right. I don't know.

Is there anything else to say about this game? It wasn't, some similarities with the Iceland game where our attack wasn't really that good. And I thought, well, yeah. Yeah, and I think that's what we'll kind of get into on some of the takeaways here is, I mean, obviously what we're kind of looking at here is in this game, the notable feature is Mal, Trinity, and Sophia are not in the 11. Like that's going to be kind of one of the big things we talk about. Why don't you do your first takeaway? Oh, I get to go first. That's huge because every time we do these, I live in just terror that you're going to swoop in and take mine.

Okay. So my first one is going to be that we need, the U.S. women's national team is going to introduce a new horse meme. If you're familiar with the picture of the fancy horse in the back that gets more and more cartoonish as it gets to the front, like that doesn't apply to us because the back of our horse and the front of our horse. and the front of our horse are both really fancy, and it's the middle of our horse that has to be a little bit cartoonish once you get past, once you get past,

like our starting midfield. So what's the solution to that? Just keep trying people out. Yeah, we got to find that connective tissue, the right balance. And again, even in the Olympics, it wasn't great. So fine-tuning it even with

whatever group plays with Lindsay Haram. in the midfield. Because I'm just going to put it on. I'm going to say, when she's in, we can do it. When she's not in so far, we have not been able to very well. So that's going to be what it is. Finding the players who can complete the picture of the horse, because the front of the horse and the back of the horse are ridiculous right now.

Rendered in incredibly fine detail. That's a good one. Yeah. Okay, I guess this is kind of related, but I think one of my takeaways is we can get more from Jaden Shaw. It could be that she isn't fully fit yet, but despite that moment of brilliance for the goal against Iceland, which was undeniably brilliant and a few nice sequences,

particularly in the Argentina game, she's been a lot of, a fair amount at least, of the last two games, which were both starts for her, just getting tangled up on the ball in traffic. Yeah. And both of those games, she started as the forward, as the nominal forward. So I think that's going to be the big asterisk for it for everyone who's like, well, if you're looking for sort of an excuse for her,

I think that's going to be the one you can lean on pretty readily. And I should be clear, I'm criticizing Shaw here in a way that I'm not going to criticize lesser players because she is, I think, she's in the team. You know, she is a, she's pushing for a starting spot. She's like right there. She's that good. So it's sort of like from whom much is given much is required sort of thing. But I just think she needs to be, even if she, with the nine asterisk, she needs to be a little cleaner with her idea of what she's going to do next and her execution when she's in those in traffic moments.

Yeah. And so we talked about in that Argentina game, we didn't start Malso for Trinity, right? those three are not, that triple espresso is not there. And so it was maybe like a chance for Jaden Shaw to say, I am a force of nature that can do this even without them. And yeah, definitely wasn't that. And you can caveat it with she might not be fully fit. She's working her way back to fitness.

And she had just started the last match in a similar role. So maybe she was running out of, run on a little bit of like a low tank. And again, not quite the position where she's going to maybe be. at her best. I'd say definitely not the position she'll be at her best. I'm bullish on us getting more out of her. Just identifying that it needs to be done. What's your next one?

All right, so we just talked about triple espresso, and I think one of the possibilities here is that real possibility that Alyssa Thompson might be the fourth pole, where she can come in and be not such a massive drop-off. because I think that's the other thing. There is a pretty clear drop off, I think, at the moment from those three. And again, there's some evidence. Emma thinks the same thing based on her substitution patterns

or lack of substitutions in the Olympics where it's like, no, this is who we run and no one else is close. So Alyssa Thompson for me was impressive. Yeah. And we talked about you can't necessarily rely on her cutting in and hitting a worldie, but also you can probably rely on her cutting in and getting some shots off. Like, you're going to get shots off. You can rely on her to cut in and hit a worldly.

I mean, she almost did it again against Argentina. I don't know if worldly is the right word, but that would have been a really nice goal, and it was like two inches from being in. Yeah, yeah, and she cut to Argentina. I mean, she eliminated two defenders there to get that shot off to the inside. Even when one was supposed to just be the inside help, like she still cut her to get that shot off. And so I do think you can say, we'll get a couple of shots of game from Melissa Thompson doing this. So that's at least going to make up a couple of chances.

Those can't be the only two chances of a game long term, but it's nice to be like, this is good for a few, few looks. Well, and she also has the ability, the reps, to go to the end line with her left foot and flash it across. I mean, like she did with SOF ahead of the Sears goal. Yeah, and I think even her cut. I think she'll keep cleaning up. I don't think they're like amazing right now, her decision making and her execution on those cutbacks, but I think her ability to get into a cutback zone

is going to be Rodman-esque. So I think we've got such a great potential there of Thompson being that player. Yeah. Yeah, I was, that's a great one. So my next one is just that the player pool is getting bigger and I do agree Thompson is the one who provides the smallest drop-off at wing. And I'm definitely not clamoring to put like Ashley Sanchez or Alyssa Malinson or Emma Sears in a World Cup roster.

But they all look like none of them look like they'd be out of place. The list of players who can give a credible performance for this team is growing. And it's going to keep growing with this January futures camp, I believe. So that's great news. Yeah, I think I'll just combine mine with yours because I think that's exactly right. And I'd say that we're going to have so many margin calls here that are just going to be super just subjective and almost, I don't want to say inconsequential, but just like we've got a really good factory of supporting talent where we're producing it. Because that's how I felt too. And again, the thing you can you can fall back on too, we were all, a lot of us were super worried about like an Emily Sonic caliber play.

player and she stepped into the Olympics and did totally fine. So it's like we can put those pieces in next to the pieces we already have that are absolutely elite Naomi Germa, triple espresso. And we are going to be fine. We just have to make sure we don't have like huge gaps. And I just don't think we're looking at huge gaps. And the hope is fullback. I mean, not the hope.

The worry is going to be the connecting midfield that we talked about. And then maybe, maybe fullback, yeah. Yeah, what was your take on Malinson? Malanson, I'm not sure exactly how to say it. I mean, again, she was fine. She did, I don't think she did anything that, like, we haven't seen nice Wong or do, which is good, right? She wasn't, she looked clean on the ball.

She did a couple of different jobs, whether it was staying wide or there were plenty of times where she found herself pinching in, which looked like kind of a tendency of hers. I see, I say that as a compliment. Like, she's comfortable coming in and be like, I'll step into the midfield if it helped. or leave if that's where I need to be to be a possession hub for a couple of passes. But there's no way to know in a game like Argentina whether she's really going to be up for it. You know, and the same for even against Iceland.

That's not telling you everything you need to know. And so this is why it's going to be such a subjective thing. And it's nice to know that the person making the call is Emma Hayes. Based on what she's seen in training, what she's seeing in the games, the particular attribute she's identifying. It's so easy to just trust her and be like, okay, she thinks this is the person to do it, then let's roll it. Yeah, it is easy to trust her. And she says she's not going to experiment much with the lineup in the next window, which makes sense playing at Wembley against England, playing against the Netherlands at, I'm not sure what location exactly.

But we're not going to, they're going to be subjective calls because we're not going to see Malinson probably play left back against those two teams. Well, maybe, I guess I don't know for sure. That's what's so fun is. When she says that, we don't know in a couple of those spots who she thinks is going to be the starter then. Because it's probably not going to be Crystal Dunn. That's the question, right? Is it Dunn?

Because Dunn was our Olympic left back, or is it Kruger, or is it Nyswanger, or is it Fox? Yeah. I mean, if Dunn's available, it's her. But, you know, the question is, is she available? Is she going to be available? I don't, it doesn't seem like it. Did you do your next one yet? Yes, I kind of piggybacked on yours.

Okay. We just have a, I mean, it's basically the hat is in full effect for a lot of these positions outside our elites. Yeah, it's a big hat. But it's a nice hat. It's well-made, well-constructed. Yeah, beautiful hat. It's dirty seamwork. My next one is Hal Herschfeld is the quintessential destroyer.

we've been missing and it seems like she has a place in this team going forward. I don't know if she starts, but man, she came on and messed some people up in that first game against Iceland and she didn't play in the second game. And then she got to start against Argentina and she's just committed and tough and vocal. And I like what I'm seeing. I also think she's pretty good in possession. I didn't have any big problems with her. Maybe she put somebody in a little bit of a tough spot with the past.

here or there, but it's, again, not a huge test of her, but I thought she was pretty good. I hope she's in every camp. Yeah. I hope that that energy is available for us. I mean, I'm going to be honest, especially against the English. She seems like such an English player. Like, that is, that's blood and thunder. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we need, I think, I think, she does, she has a little bit of the sauna energy, too, where she wants to get on the ball. It seems like she likes to get on the ball, and she's like pointing for where people should go with the ball. I like to see somebody with that attitude come onto the field. All right, well, that's perfect, because that leads me into my next one, which is that Emily Sonnet is a treasure.

Again, I don't know what her on-field role will be. It's nice that she can do a bunch of things competently in different positions. I assume she's going to start slowing down. she's at that age and she's not particularly lightning to begin with. But if you haven't watched the behind the crest, miced up, Emily Sonnet video, like take a couple of minutes and watch it because she is just fantastic. Yeah, my favorite moment is when somebody offers her water and she goes, I'm all right, I'm trying to quit.

Sounds like something you would say. She is a delight. And it's something we've talked about before is that she seems. to have an excellent like locker room presence, uh, locker room personality. So I think she's going to, I think she's going to be on the team in 2027. I think so too.

That leads in nicely into our, my sort of big picture point about that, which I think our center, center back depth is rounding out nicely. Like there, we don't maybe have another all world centerback laying around like, like Germa, but Sanae is a good partner.

Um, we've sort of discussed that already. I thought Sam's was basically perfect in her. her Iceland start in the second match, very much up to the physical demands. I mean, just looks like she's kind of on another level physically from everybody else. Eva Gaetino, I thought, was also quite good, like pretty good at passing between the lines, composed with the ball. She played, I mean, she's basically parked in the middle of the Argentina half, most of the game.

But she played 20 passes successfully into the final third as Argentina sat back. and let her do whatever she wanted. Didn't have anything to do defensively. But overall, I think we got, the centerback situation seems like it's improved a lot just in the last week. There you go. Certainly our perception of it's improved a lot. And we still got Tierna. I mean, we'll be, I assume, the nominal favorite to be Germis partner when she's ready to go.

Yeah. But she should be looking over her shoulder a little bit, I think. She's going to have to score goals. I mean, Tierna had two goals herself. And I didn't call her the next coming at Julie Ertz. Yeah. Two goals in what, the June game against South Korea out in Denver? That's right.

So yeah, centerbacks. Maybe that's the big development. Our centerbacks are just going to start racking up goals. Which brings me to my last takeaway in that there is just a boatload of joy on the team. And you saw it with Germa's goals. You saw the team's reaction. I'm using Sophia Smith as my gauge here. Sophia Smith, leading up to the World Cup and even after, when she would score, like,

there was just like a, it was almost like this relief. You'd see relief in her body language. And now when anyone's scoring, you're just seeing this unbridled joy from her and the whole team. And I do think that that is a real difference. And I think it, I don't know how much it will matter to our on-field performance, but it is a blast to watch. and there's a ton of personality with these ladies and watching them just like being able to express themselves and really enjoy what they're doing.

It's so fun. Yeah, it is pretty palpable. And I think you got to credit Emma Hayes a lot. You know, she's created, she's obviously created an environment where everybody feels comfortable and at least some of the key people feel comfortable. I mean, Soph is a bit player in every social media, media video now. She like she jumps in and joins Emily Sonnet at the end of her mic'd up. You know,

she jumped into Naomi Germa's Mix Zone interview to like congratulate her on her goals. I mean, Sof is just happy, happy, happy, totally different from the way she was in 2023. And, yeah, that's awesome. So it's a blast. And it's a blast to watch them again every time out because whether we're good or bad, you know that we're going to work on something and the gals are having fun and whatever is happening is going to inform what we do in the next half, the next game, the next window, the next tournament. So the gals are cooking. Emma's cooking.

Yeah, they really are. My last, I got one more, which is much less exciting than the one you just said. But set pieces, they're getting better. We nearly scored in the ninth minute against Argentina. Heron got that free volley in the 31st minute. and then we did score three times on set pieces in the game. So even when we're not getting the XG, we can find ways to score. It just seems like something is developing every time we have a free kick deep in the opponent's territory.

There's like something going on. It's not just a floated ball and a hope. And yeah, like I said earlier, four set piece goals out of the nine in this window, that's a good thing. It's a good thing. and it's also concerning. It's both of those things. Not concerning in a real way, because, again,

we're doing most of this window without any of triple espresso in the front, in the starting lineup. But it's something, obviously Emma's identified too. Like, we need to create more, and we can't,

it can't just be set pieces, and you know she's going to do it, and we're going to do it. Yeah, they're both goals. I mean, she said being more dangerous on set pieces is a goal for the team. They're getting some results there. Now they're going to increase the XG who knows what it'll be by the time we talk again a year from now.

7 XG per game, something like that. November's going to be so fun. Again, now we're going to see in, I guess, less high stakes moments than the Olympics. Olympics was really suffer ball. Now it's going to be like, all right, these are highly competitive games, but low enough stakes that it can be, how do we want to play? What's the ideal way for Emma to try to play these games? Who does she want on the field? And I'm super, super excited about this.

Yeah, I can't wait for these games. So November 30th at Wembley. Mark your calendars. Hey, I think that's it. We'll be back with the Monday review on Monday. Vince and Waki and me, hey, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.