Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #553: USWNT v ENG & NED recaps

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Greg and Belz roll the recaps/catchup episode into one. Whose stock is up after this last window of 2024? Whose stock is down? Thank you Alyssa Naeher. 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 got our last two matches of the national team calendar. The women drew England at Wembley on Saturday, and then it was a smash-and-grab job of a win against the Netherlands on Tuesday at the Hague. Greg, how you doing? Belt, I'm doing all right. I think I did manage to enjoy that sort of de-calf version of the U.S. women's national team. It was definitely missing some explosiveness, I think it's fair to say.

You're of course referring to triple espresso. None of them were involved in these games, and yeah, we definitely, definitely missed them. Alyssa does a reasonably caffeinated job out there, wouldn't you say? No, I totally agree. That was one of our takeaways from last window, and I think it holds up after these two games. I mean, she provided a couple of our best chances of the window. So, yeah, so the first game I thought was actually kind of a sleepy affair. You know, I even participated in the hyping up of it.

You know, you don't get many friendlies like this. One versus two and the FIFA rankings at Wembley. But I don't know how much there really is to draw from that game. And then this game that we just won was a really pretty bad performance from the U.S. I know. I know. And it was. And yet here we are winners.

of a team that hadn't lost in like eight games for the Netherlands. So again, it just shows that we are such a competent program. We have such competence, sort of top to bottom of the player pool, where you can just sort of trot an 11 out there that can change from game to game. You can be missing your three best attackers.

And you're not just going to get blown out. The number one's first half might have felt like a blowout. It did. But, like, yeah, you can tweak a couple of things, and it's like, oh, they're fixed, and then you're fine, and you're in the game for the second half. Yeah. The England game was totally drab, wasn't it? And I don't know if it was just two managers being real conservative.

But, yeah, that was a really drab, pretty much fair zero-zero-zero game. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, if Thompson gets a little better contact on that shot early, Maybe it changes everything, but grabs the right word for it. Let me play what Emma said about the game against the Netherlands. And then I guess we'll get more chronological here. Go first through the England game and then through the Netherlands game. But here's what Emma said about the Netherlands game.

And I felt like second half, we got our foot stuck in, which for me is like a basic. And so I'm pleased we got that part right. But we also, yeah, Rodet, like we're not sitting. here and Sam, we were the better team, but you can still win football matches and not be at your best. And I thought today we demonstrated by not being at our best, both in and out of possession, but finding a way to win is a sign of a great team. I think that about sums it up. I'm not going to sit here and say we were the better team because we, I mean, we definitely weren't the better team.

We were, we couldn't even, I mean, even in the second half, which was much less of a, like, repeated jailbreak scenario. It was still really choppy. We didn't put five passes together very often, unless they were just kind of going around the back. Yeah, that was the window. And the window was very much an exercise and going around the back and not having a real effective,

certainly not an effective execution of ball progression from back to front. I'm hesitant to say plan because it's MAAs we're talking about and so I'm just sort of defaulting to respecting her plan. but mostly I don't think it was a great plan. And the silver lining is because it's Emma Hayes, you totally trust her to see what happened,

make adjustments and be like, okay, this is what will work better and to implement something that works better in the future when it matters. Did anybody, in your view, raise their stock in this window? I definitely have somebody in mind, but... So first and foremost, a listener who, this was her send-off now unexpectedly. So her stock goes up because she gets to walk out

a legend, of course, like with that gold medal Olympic performance where she was crucial in crucial moments, just massive. So a great ending for her. She gets to leave with the shutout against England and then some key saves made in her final match against the Netherlands. But mostly everyone's just going to remember the Olympics

that she goes out as a good. gold medal winner. So I shouldn't say that. I mean, her whole legacy is, is going to be pretty solid. Even the World Cup crash out, I mean, she gets a lot of love for, you know, the performance in the shootout. She obviously has a World Cup, two World Cup trophies, but one where she was the starting goalkeeper and made crucial saves in knockout games of a World Cup winning run. So, Alyssa Neher.

Yeah, Stockup, Ms. Neyer. And she's stepping away when she's When she still probably would be the number one for a while You know so there's also some I don't know, that's something cool about that Right, yeah, absolutely there is And not forcing the manager to like gamble on when she's going to hit her age cliff Yeah

Just be able to okay, now we move on to the next goalkeeper Which that's going to be a really fun thing to see who that goalkeeper is Yeah, it's kind of a really fun thing to see who that goalkeeper is. Yeah, it's kind of open competition feels like. My main stock up is Yasmin Ryan. I thought she was outstanding in the Netherlands game, really our best player on the night.

She of course created and assisted the goal that Williams scored to win the game, but she also just in general was an adult with the ball, to borrow a phrase from you. She could get on the ball, she could keep it, she could find a pass, and that was all in short supply, I think, in this game. Yeah, good soccer ideas from her. And it helps where, after that totally drab, first half, especially against England, I know we're talking about the first half against another one's being bad. The first half against England was really, really dull.

And, you know, from like a aesthetic perspective, but also just from like a tactical perspective, it was just very, very, We weren't trying a lot of things. She came in a half time of that match and immediately, like, opened the game up with, like, one pass. You talking about the one to Rose, LaValle? Yeah, yeah. So that kind of thing had just been totally missing for the whole first half. She had jumped out at me in a last window where she played on the ball.

She just had some real good soccer ideas, and she has some real capability of executing them. So you're combining two things that are, what I would say, are in short supply for our player pool, which is kind of a strange thing to say about what is probably the best women's national program in the world. Yeah. I mean, she doesn't quite maybe have the electrifying speed of a Swanson or a Rodman, but she's plenty fast to, I mean, to your point about her being able to execute her ideas. Like, she has the physical capacity to do a lot of stuff out there. Yeah.

And she is quick, too. So just on the ball, she's got the quickness, the subtlety, the little faints to create little windows. The tiny, you know, soccer spaces you need to create to pass to an open teammate in an unexpected way. And she's got that. So I really feel like between her, Alyssa Thompson, and then probably Lynn Williams, we maybe saw some of our triple espresso backups getting set here in this window. Anybody stocked down for you off of these two games? Oh man. We're going to put the wet blanket right on it, bells?

Yeah, why not? I mean, we got these interminable timelines to get through. Let's try to have some fun first. Okay, so the easy one is Nice Wonger, right? Yeah, she got rinsed. Yeah, that was an absolute Thanksgiving Kids' Table performance from Nice Wonger. I don't think she really has like a huge body of work that you can fall back on and say this is totally unlike her. Like there are, you get moments like this from her a lot.

So it's like she might not be cut out for being just that full on badass fullback that we're looking for. There were questions about going into the Olympics. I think it was an open question whether it would be hers the starting fullback or Crystal Dunn. Yeah. And then it was clear right away that it was that it was going to be done, clear when Emma Hayes started Crystal Dunn. And I think it's clear why. Crystal Dunn is much more of that just badass. Again, adult.

And Nice Wonger just didn't look the adult part year. To be fair, to be fair, I mean, I agree with everything there. But to be fair to Nice Wonger, to be totally even handed. Loister had kind of had her way with Davidson a little bit in the second half too. That's a good player. Yeah. It's a, she plays striker for PSG, but man, she thoroughly eliminated her on the dribble four times in the first half and each time cut us open, like wide open. That was a big part of why that first half felt like such a blood bath was because of, because of NiceWonger's lack of resistance over there.

Yeah, no, I think, I think the good news for Nice Warner that she can take is that she probably won't lose a lot of minutes to Tierna Davidson. at fullback. But I think she probably will lose a lot of minutes to the field, whether it's Casey Kruger or whether it's just a new, a new test. Because, yeah, that was a tough. That was a tough outing. Yeah. I don't have anybody else stocked down, really.

I mean, everybody just kind of holds for me. Maybe, maybe. I didn't think of one person who might. Anybody else for you? It's Horan. Yeah, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.

Like, we are, I would say collectively as a podcast, or certainly you and I, high on Lindsay Aran as a soccer player. Go ahead. I like the best version of Lindsay Horan, yeah, for sure. Going into the Olympics, all our matches going into the Olympics, even like the limbo era where we were with Twyla, like, Horan was so often the grown-up. Like, she was the grown-up on the field, she could calm things down. but she can do that from a very specific place on the field,

which is sort of like the connector between the back and the front and buildup. And if she's not in that space, I think she loses a lot of value. And I think overall our program loses a lot of ability to get the ball from the back to the front. So not only is she, I think, less valuable herself in that roll up high, but as a team, we don't have anyone else doing that. And I think that was a huge part of why that first half against the front. England was so drab is that, you know, I was cutting, I was cutting a comp for her and all of her

touches are that she's getting her way up field. There are none of those times where she's coming back out of the, out of that front line to come help Sam Coffey build us up. And Sam Coffey can't do that by herself. And our back line isn't really going to cut things open. Like Lindsay Horan needs to be that player cutting things open. And if she's just parked up field, man, like she's not giving you much. She's giving you nothing on defense. So it's just, I'm super curious to see how Emma will respond and how she'll use her,

what use she'll make of her in the next window she's at. Yeah. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I guess the reason, one reason you wouldn't want her to be in that back connecting, the further back connecting role, facilitating role, is because she's so bad at defense. Right.

If she's not just, if she's not totally dynamic on the ball, it's really, you start to run out of reasons to have her out there. Yeah. So that stock down one would just be structure. Like if that's going to be our structure, I think she,

her stock just moves down. But then also her level of play, even in the structure we were in, when she would get it, Um, she, she looked way off the pace to me. Like her, her speed of decision making, the actual quality of the decision she was making, and then the execution, all looked a little bit off. And I don't know if that's like, uh, a situation where, you know, she's just really leaning into the things that she is good at, you know, holding onto the ball under, under duress or under

pressure, but she was holding on to it for too long, missing sort of the rhythm passes that you associate with her, um, missing, missing the little subtle windows that develop. that you kind of count on her and only her for the U.S. national team to hit. Because, again, you can call up anybody if they're going to ignore small passing windows. Anybody can ignore those. Like, you need Lindsey Horan. You call her up because she'll find it, she'll anticipate it, she'll know that window's about to materialize,

and she'll hit it through there as soon as it does. And when she's not doing that again, like, okay, Lindsay, what are you going to give us then? Yeah, what are you doing? Yeah. And we'll say, so we'll say, sticking on her hand, she had a really rough Olympics for as high as we were. Like, we won a gold medal, getting like nothing from her. Not just like no goals, no assists, but like no string pulling. No, no collection of passes behind the past.

Like, she just was really a non-factor for that entire run, which is madness to think about. And again, in credit to how good triple espresso can be to just create things out of nothing. But I was, you know, the hope was that that was just a blip and we get the good Lindsay back. So far, so bad. We'll have to see, yeah. She doesn't play competitive soccer for most of the year. So she's at Leone, who is one of the best teams in Europe. But again, it's a real globetrotter situation.

I think domestically, there were like 10, 15 games into the season. Their goal difference in the league is 40 to 2. 40 goals for, two goals against over like 12, 13 games. Like that's, that's an insane thing. They don't, they sleepwalk through the entire fall. Yeah. They will, the Champions League, they are, I think their goal difference is 12 to 1 through four games. Like they don't have challenging soccer.

They don't play challenging soccer until, until April. And they'll, you know, they'll play between three and seven difficult games. All right, well Keep an eye on Lindsay, I guess She still tried a bicycle I mean, I need to point this out Of course Lindsay Horan is going to attempt a bicycle kick

She's still she's still Lindsay Horan She's still very valuable to my heart Yeah, it is maddening that I I feel like I really started taking a stand On behalf of Lindsay Horan and her soccering Like I really started to be like feel like I was somewhat distinctive in that stand right before the Olympics. And then she doesn't do any, she doesn't do that stuff for, for months.

Yeah, let's work our way through the game. First, the games, first the England game, and we'll go quick. Neier, In goal, Emily Fox, Emily Sonnet, Naomi Germa, and Casey Kruger, across the backline. I would say that backline has probably emerged as the first choice backline from this roster after the Netherlands game. And then Coffey, Lavelle, and Horan in the midfield. And then Emma Sears, Lynn Williams, and Alyssa Thompson across the front line. England had Mary Earps, Lucy Bronze, Jessica Carter, Leo Williamson, Alex Greenwood, the one who got the handball called under that was chalked off.

And then Kira Walsh, Georgia Stanway, Jess Park, and the midfield. Beth Mead, Alessia Russo, and Jess Nazz across the front line. They're also missing some players. I don't think they're missing as many good players as we were. It's basically impossible for another team to be missing three, the kind of accumulative quality that we were missing. Very few other teams have three players who can reach that level of cumulative power. I'm thinking of like Beaver Jones.

She always shows up in the Chelsea highlights and looks good. she wasn't there or she didn't play so you know right at the beginning we get maybe is this our best chance of the game one of our best chances of the game yeah best chance of the game yeah fifth minute

Sears Rose gets it in a pocket from Sonnet Sonnet striding forward from the back England so England didn't apply a ton of pressure on us and ended up just kind of bunkering a lot of

of the game. But Sonnet plays it to Rose in a pocket of space. She turns and sprays it out to Emma Sears, and she goes at Greenwood and then slides it across. It's a real nice. It's a real nice cutback pass. It slides right through the penalty area over to Thompson, who's kind of coming back from the end line to get to it.

And she takes a touch, and she shoots and kind of just softly hits it a little bit. It doesn't get all of it. Erps makes the save off to her left. is pretty stoked with herself and zero zero yeah it's a real good save it's a comfortable it's one of those it's the comfortable height it's not it's not a laser beam and it's sort of right at her range where that's as far as erps is going to be able to get it so uh yeah we could push it another foot and half plenty of space to sneak that in at the far post and and have the big big celebration from thompson um and we know she can we can count on her for uh for those kinds of shots cutting

into her right foot. So this was a positive moment for me for Alyssa Thompson. In a pretty positive moment for Sears, she didn't pick Thompson out by any means. I mean, she just kind of gained a yard and a half, or not even that, gained a foot and a half on the edge and just kind of hammered it across low to anyone who might get on the end of it. You know, it kind of reminded me of one of the Denzel Dumfrey's balls across that the Netherlands scored on against us in the Men's World Cup. You know, it was real nice. Sears, I don't think, had a very good game outside of this, but this was good.

That's it for the England game. So on to the Netherlands. No, we get our second reel. England's doing nothing. Nothing. They don't bring almost anything at us. Yeah. There's a little 10 minute, not even 10 minute, like six minute stretch in the second half where they apply some pressure.

But that is really it. 32 minute, we get our second real chance of the game. Kruger plays Haran into a pocket, and she turns and sends Thompson down the line. Thompson maybe tries to shoot, and it's blocked off her right foot, straight to Kruger, you know, arriving at the top of the box, and she has a good hit. Draws a diving save down to her left from Erps. I mean, she got all of it, skipped it off the ground, placed it well. Williams pounces on the rebound, but isn't able to get her feet set for a shot.

It gets circulated back to Fox. She loops one in with her left foot and Horan tries for that. This is the one where she tries with a bicycle kick, right? Yeah. That's fantastic. It's wasn't for a foul as the ball spills. It's, I mean, Horan needs to start making contact on some of these. Like, she goes up for him a lot and it's like, you're good enough, Lindsay.

You're going to get called for the foul here, but like make some kind of contact with the ball. Yeah. So that was it. It really was. So I just want to talk about our shape here. Please, please. The same shape we busted out for the Netherlands first half. And it is, again, it's super conservative structurally.

It basically is a 4-1 where Fox and Kruger stay home. They kind of flare out wide. And you've got a little horseshoe there playing around Sam Coffee. And then for so much of our buildup, some of this might be the camera angle. But no one else joins the picture. Like, Haran isn't coming back out to even be in frame. Roosevelt is not coming back to be in frame. And so, like, I don't know what our, I don't know what the plan is.

I'm not, we have to, again, we kind of have to guess what they're doing just outside of the frame. But we just look blankly upfield and can't come up with anything and just kind of knock it around until eventually we just sort of chuck it up towards Lynn Williams. And it's, again, it's not using some of those. superpowers that Lindsay Horan has. Yeah. Yeah, what is going on? Why are we doing this? It's Vlachcoitis creeping back in?

I mean, so, a little bit. Vlato wouldn't keep his fullback set. He didn't keep him that deep until the World Cup, and then he got super conservative with his fullback deployment. But he was, we constantly had the fullbacks bombing up field, whether it was done on the left or Fox on the right. Like, we were always getting the fullback.

up into advanced positions. Then they would just, you know, chuck the ball into the box, first opportunity they got. But here we were just so reluctant to, we weren't bringing them to the middle to add a player for coffee to sort of try to connect with.

So even when we would move the ball upfield to somebody, the spaces were so big between that player and any option. No one breaking hard to the ball. Like, it just looked like a very stagnant team on the ball. Yeah. I guess that's the part that

feels like Vlako is nobody's showing for the ball, you know. We, I mean, coffee got a, collected a loose ball at the top of the box and in the 44th minute, it kind of traveled across the arc and has an off-balance hit with her left foot. It's actually not half bad. It just goes right at Earps. And that's the half, really. I mean, there's, I'm not really exaggerating. There's really nothing.

It was a soccer game, you know? So I've cut Horan's clips from there, and what you notice is, She does, again, she's only getting it in these advanced positions. She's almost never getting it in the buildup. So she's not doing any real quarterbacking. When she gets it, she's trying to, like, she's hitting it through seams that basically don't exist. So she's just kind of like, oh, this will work. And this is where I'm going to like kind of take the easy explanation of, well, these passes probably work against the bottom half of the domestic French league.

Or even maybe against Argentina or something. Yeah. where you can just hit it in between it. You see, oh, there's a window between these two defenders. I will just hit it behind them, and we will race onto it. But England was just kind of collecting those, no problem. Yeah, and the Netherlands, too. I mean, boy, did they cut out a lot of passes that we tried to play through the lines.

So Ryan comes on, as you mentioned, for Sears at the half, and immediately does her thing. Right at the 48-minute mark, we have a goal called back for offside, but it's nice work from Ryan. We're working around the edge of the area. starts with a throw-in. We're in total territorial control at this point in the game.

But not very threatening. Coffee goes back to Germa. Germa plays it into Ryan at the top of the box, and she turns Lucy Bronze. It's a real nice touch with her right foot to her left to slip past Bronze. Bronze retreats. Leah Williamson advances,

the centerback advances towards Ryan, and Ryan just slips a lovely little pass between the two of them. to Lavelle, who takes it first time with her weaker right foot. I'm curious what you think about this. Did she mean to pass it? Was she trying to shoot? It ends up being a really nice pass to the back post for Huran, who lunges and side,

puts it in, but she's, you know, two steps offside. She's very, she's well offside. So, call back. I think Lavelle is shooting this. I think she's just trying to curl it with her right foot into the far post. If she were passing, I don't see any reason that she'd clip it in the air like that, basically. Or curl it, like, it's curling away from the player she'd be passing to. So I think she's trying to first time curl this into the far post,

which is, I think, the right decision. She scuffed it. Yeah. But, yeah, this is all about the, I mean, the Germa pass into Ryan, too. Like, we were missing this kind of thing, just passes into pockets like that to feet. So it's nice from Germa to get it over to Yasmin, Ryan. and then real good deception

and again just that unexpected execution from an attacking player the bar was low during this game and I don't want again I don't want to be too much white blanket this is one of the best teams in the world

we're playing at their home stadium like it's not easy to just carve up you don't just go oh well we should just why didn't why don't we just carve them up more like that's hard to do so it means something when a player does it yeah I mean, I think from, you know, from Hayes' point of view, even though this game that we're talking about right now was a sleeper

and then the game that we won was a really bad performance from us, I mean, Hayes made the point in the press conference after the game. She learned a lot. Many of you have already seen these quotes. She's going to learn more from a game like the one in the Netherlands than she would in a stadium full of sun with a lesser opponent. And, I mean, it was raining, it was cold. but also she got to see some younger players and some newer players

and I think Yasmin Ryan again I mean her stock is up and she's like the revelation of the of the camp I mean she was also good like you noticed that she was good in the previous camp too but she was I think even more prominent in this camp and she's a great I mean she's a great backup for one of the triple espresso wingers she can even play in the midfield you know I mean I think she does for club So it's a really good It's a really good thing

You know amid all this All of our sort of coveching Yeah I do need to We're just a coveching type podcast I think because this is The big picture is These are great games to have

What was it like 80,000 people Watching the Singling game So when we say a sleepy drab game It's not a sleepy drab like Empty Stadium Players just going through the motions Type of thing It's just drab because of the

It's drab almost in this case because of how cage it was. Like, I think the teams really just didn't want to... Yeah, they didn't want to lose. I think I really do think that the players are up for this kind of game on both sides. Yeah. We're at the state in the women's game where when you play in front of 80,000 people, you might not play in front of this big of a crowd again. Yeah.

And if you're England playing the U.S., like, this is a chance to be like, we are better than them. They are not the powers that they used to be where they're on. touchable. We are at or above their level. And obviously for the U.S., like, this is an awesome opportunity to play, England. Totally. And Sleepy is probably not the right word. KG. is more the correct word. But if you're watching it on Saturday with like lots of nieces and nephews running around with the volume sort of slightly down, you know. It's not enthralling. No, it looked. It didn't, it didn't, uh, yeah, it didn't enthrall.

So let's go to 54th minute. Nice combo from Lavelle and Horan after Kruger wins ahead her at midfield. Lavelle plays in Ryan. She tries to tease it across for Horan and it's cut out. Horan just can't get to the near post. And I think her run is a little, a little bit guileless. She's just kind of running straight at the near post, but not that fast. This is when England has their little...

flurry from the 54th minute to the 60th minute. First, it's a corner kick that Williamson gets a tame header to Leo Williamson, and it's collected comfortably by Nair. Then there's Georgia Stanway's hit where she kind of collects it at the top of the pox, gets a cutback, I think, takes a touch under her left foot and then just rips it. Neyer had it covered to me, but Sonet headed it away. anyway. I'm inclined to agree with you that Neher had it covered, and I went back and watched it and

actually noted how Neer hadn't glued herself to the Near Post on this occasion. We talk about how that's one of her tendencies. And when you look at this one, she was like, she was floating way off that thing. So she's really letting loose now that it's one day to retirement. She didn't think Stanway was going to try to sneak it in at the Near Post, I guess. No, but then also Sonnet does get to credit. We talk a lot about blocking angles here. And she's making little micro adjustments to her positioning.

And she is perfectly placed to block exactly the far post. And then she's in, I mean, this sounds ridiculous, but like she's in a great blocking stance. Like this is what you want from your outfield players. Like she looks like she isn't a goalkeeper stance. We'll see this again from Naomi Germa in the next game. But she is basically playing this exactly like a goalkeeper would play it with her body positioning in shape. And then just reacts to it with her. head really easily to

keep it off target. Yeah, nicely done, Emily. And Emma said that she brought Emily Sonnet on in the Netherlands game at the half for her backline leadership. And it does seem like Sonnet.

I don't know. I don't know if anybody starts over her in a must-win game at this point. What a moment this is. In narrative history. Yeah. She was sonnet was buried discourse-wise. She was.

Six months ago. 59th minute, then England gets there to a goal-mouth scramble after a Lucy Bronze Cross. Fox kind of tries to back heel, volley it out of there, and it just kind of dies behind her. And Alessia Russo turns and bangs it off Sonnet. And then it skitters across the face of the goal over towards Germa, who has to slide to clear the danger. It all does feel a little bit random, I think, from England, but it was definitely possible for one of these to go in,

and then we'd be singing a different tune, I suppose. Yeah, a little bit different tune. I think that's probably right, but partly the reason that we feel okay about this game is because it wasn't us getting carved up repeatedly by England. No. I think Weissout is to be taken with a grain of salt on this, but generally the ratio is about right.

And they said, the U.S. had 1.14 XG and England had 0.24. So. Well, and this is one of those moments where there's no shot that England even takes. The danger all comes, really, for being honest, from an Emily Fox miscue here. Like, she's... Let's get into it. I don't want to get into her.

But this is, you know, like, it's clearly going to get to her first. No one else had to play before it gets to her. So it's hurt, ball. and I'm going to say this relative to World Cup, you know, winning fullbacks like Emily Fox is. I'm sorry, Olympic winning fullbacks like Emily Fox is. Like this is a pretty straightforward play to just clear the danger. And instead she like adds a tremendous amount of danger. She does.

By just whiffing. I mean, she just kind of whiffs. And whiffs in a way where the whiff actually makes contact and ends up being a perfect settle for England. Yeah, it was an elite hacky sack. And I, you know, I'm not going to hammer on Emily Fox because I don't necessarily think we have, like, somebody waiting in the wings that's going to take over and do away better. But I feel like I am much lower on Emily Fox than most people. Like, I don't think she is really anything for us, but a usually stout defender. I think she's a pretty stout defender that we can rely on.

I know in this case, she makes a really bad mistake, but that will happen. My beef is really more with her in possession where I just think she is an empty uniform. for him. And I think, I feel like just, that's a pretty extreme take in the, I mean, she, she can, the thing I know that I feel confident that she can do well is carry the ball, a ways, you know? It does, it's not always going anywhere in particular, but she can carry it forward and not lose it, at least, uh, with some consistency. I got, I got nothing. I'm, I'm not even there with you. Like, I'm, yeah, I mean, I am really low on her, uh, contribution to the attack. And I feel like that's an extreme take because I feel like the consensus is that she adds, she's like a totally capable all around, you know, can carry it, can pass it. And I'm just like, man, I don't see anything from this player that you would not absolutely be able to replace. Like Casey Kruger.

I don't see any difference quality-wise between her and Kruger, which I also think higher of Kruger than I think most people do. So it's kind of this balancing where I'm bringing Kruger up relative to the discourse and I'm bringing Fox down. and they kind of meet at the same place. Now, it is important and meaningful that, you know, Emily Fox definitely will not hit an age cliff before the 2027 World Cup, and Kruger very well could. I also don't think it really matters because I think you should just play them both at the same time, and both of them can play right or left, which is pretty valuable too.

Yeah, that's kind of cool. All right. I thought Kruger was pretty good in this game, too. Overall, I really enjoyed that hit. I've heard what you didn't notice earlier. Oh, the strike on goal. I thought you were talking about the hit that she delivers at the end of the game. The hit later is good, too.

Yeah. Yeah. So we kind of get back in charge of the game, I think, after that. Coffee pokes it away from Stanway in the press in the 64th, right to Williams. She pokes it over to Yasmin Ryan, who shoots, and there's a called handball as the ball ricochets off Greenwood's core and onto her arm. lots of deliberation with the video assistant referees and everything and the penalty gets chocked off, which seems, I mean, it's fine, you know. It's totally fine and it's chocked off.

What sucks is that after the deflection from body to arm or even just body, the ball felt right back to us. And we had tapped it over. I think it was either too Horan or back to Yasmin Ryan. And one of them tapped it to the other one. And we are still looking at getting a shot off from 18 yards. somewhat uncontested. I mean, there's bodies around, but, like, we've got the ball 18 yards out

in clear possession. And the referee blows the whistle to give the penalty, which seems great. And then when they take it away, she does a drop ball straight to Earps, like an uncontested drop ball to England's goalkeeper. And you're just like, this feels, this feels, like, unjust in some way.

Yeah. Yeah. For a friendly, it doesn't matter, but I don't know. I was just like, come on. Like, we don't get the penalty. I get it, but you sure did end the play right when we were about to. to get another shot.

Yeah. I didn't even notice that. I didn't even think of that. Corbyn Albert comes on. Seventy third minute, gets booed pretty thoroughly. I think it has to be acknowledged by the crowd in London. I think London just hates Notre Dame. Yeah, that's what it is.

Because of the fighting Irish. I think that's, I think there is, I think, I could be wrong, but I think it's an English Irish thing. Yeah, that's probably it. 77th minute, the only other real chance. was then when coffee wanted in the press and played it over to Haran, over to Shaw at the top of the box, Shaw slips rows into the box, and she just couldn't really get any, couldn't even really get a shot off. So we didn't create a ton, but the good news is England created even less.

And, uh, you know, that's it, pretty much. Well, we're not going to, I'm not even going to let Haran off the hook this easy. I'm still wet blanketing here. So on that, on that play, we get it to Huran. who does get it over to Shaw, but it could have just gone straight to the unmarked Rose Lovell flying around Horan's left side. Instead, Iran went to Shaw, who then had to try to force it through a smaller space to Lavelle, which she did eventually, but it sure should have just been Lavelle the first time from Lenton. And then there was a moment a few minutes earlier than that where it gets to Horan at the top of the box back to goal. And she could have again helped it over. It would have been to our right side of the field to two wide open players.

at the top of the box. And it's almost like she got paralyzed picking between which of the two she would hit it to and ended up just standing on it and not making either pass. She's like, Lindsay, like, you got to do things at Horan speed. Like, we know you can process this game. You're a magician here. Like, do those things, please. Yeah.

Got to pick it up, Lindsay. The only other thing I think we should talk about from this game is when Chloe Kelly got a hit in on Kruger late, late in the game. late in the sequence comes flying through her legs as she kicks it. And now, Chloe Kelly, you may remember, is the one who scored the winner at the Euros, right? I believe so. It's a fake tournament. And then Kruger went up and body checked Kelly on the next sequence, which is great. You know, there's an aerial ball just happened to be in the vicinity of Kelly, and Krueger went up and gave her the what-for.

I love this because I actually think they're both like honest cheap shots. Like I'm willing to give the English gal like some credit here for, I thought she hit Kruger High. Like I thought she went in hard with the shoulder. Their whole body, their whole side of body's connected side of body. But that's just like, man, when you're an attacker and you get that chance where the defender's not looking at you, they're on the sideline, they're 70 yards from goal. And you can run full speed and arrive like just as the ball's leaving or just after. like that's a great feeling to deliver that hit. You're not going to hurt her.

This isn't ending anyone's career. You don't care if you take a yellow or, you know, they might not call it at all. You might get a yellow. None of that matters. So I appreciate the opportunity she had and I appreciate that she took it. That's just what you do. And I love that Kruger got up and smashed her within a minute.

Yeah, it was like 40 seconds or something. So love to see it. We go away with a zero zero draw, a little bit anti-climactic, but, hey, not every game is going to be a masterpiece. And the next one won't be either. Let's take a break and come back and talk about the Netherlands game. We're back.

So the Netherlands, we face them with Nearing goal, Emily Fox, Naomi Germa, Tierna Davidson, and Jenna Nysewanger across the back line, coffee and Albert, and I guess, Horan in the midfield. And then Ryan and Lavelle were the right and left wing, and Jaden Shaw was the Stryker. Now why does it not work with Jaden at Stryker? What is going on? Is she a little off?

Yes. Yes, she is. I'll answer each question as you pose it. Okay, so she's a little off. Is she isolated up there? Also, yes. I guess those were my only two questions. Well, and it also still doesn't work just like with the Ingle game,

because without Horan in like a pivot in possession, you're still relying on Corbin Albert and Sam Coffey to move the ball up the field. And that certainly isn't going to happen consistently. Right. I mean, feel like you can't put them in the same category either. Coffee a little better at moving the ball forward than Corbyn, in my opinion. She probably is, but she's certainly not going to alone.

in that 4-1 base shape. So, again, like, you've got your four defenders flying, like, surrounding her, and then just her sort of jogging side-to-side trying to pick the ball up and then have to do something with it. It's difficult for coffee to even get on the ball. Like, if you're going through her actions, you can go two, three minutes without her touching the ball, and you're just like, that's not great for a team that's building out of the back a lot, and her being the one center mid in the picture. Like, it's just really easy to keep her from,

getting it. Corbyn Albert is still a player who doesn't particularly want the ball. Yeah, she does. She still doesn't. She doesn't play like those players who desperately have to get involved in the buildup or who want to be that solution. That's just not her right now. And it's hard to know whether she'll develop into that player, whether you can kind of coach it into her to want to be that, offer that availability. But we don't see it. So again, Jaden Shaw up top isn't like, oh, well, that was the problem. Everything else was clicking and we just couldn't get it. Shaw would just, you know,

be the black hole where everything stops. It was a structural problem and also you could see when Jaden Shaw was involved. She's lost like a little bit of step, right? It does seem like it. I mean, Vince was saying that the other day.

I noticed that she got played in behind. I mean, this is just sort of a clear litmus test of your step, but played in behind by by Rose Lavelle in the second half of the Netherlands game. And she just gets totally outrun by Berman. Yeah.

The centerback, I mean, the centerback gets like, like ads. They start off even. And by the time the young centerback for the Dutch gets to the ball, she's like two yards ahead of Shaw. And it couldn't have been in the second half because Shaw came off at the half. So it was in the first half. I don't know. She did some nice things here and there.

but there's like a kind of a low volume quality to her actions too. Well, and we said she's off. She's also not a striker. I mean, I don't think that's... She has played some striker for San Diego. I mean, yeah. But I definitely think that we're moving her out of her preferred space. So I think that factors into it too.

This is where you're just like, okay, well, going back to the Huran bit, like if we're accommodating Haran and giving her that sort of nominal 10 position and moving a Jaden Shaw up field, like, is that worth it? Or do we at some point need to test out, you know, once Jaden Shaw looks like she's got her fitness back,

does she get more minutes in that sort of midfield spot? Yeah. Well, you know, blessings on her as she heads into the offseason, is what I'd say. And hopefully she can get all the rest she needs and everything, and get back to tip-top shape. The Netherlands lineup is Van Domsilar and Goal. It's Casparais, Jansen, Bormann, and Brucht across the back line.

Capitaine, who plays, I think, at Arsenal, or no, at Chelsea, and Jackie Gronan, who is Corbyn's teammate at PSG. And then Romay Loechter, I'm sorry, Danielle Van Denonk, and Jill Roared across a band of three with Lily Beerenstein at Striker. Loishter was the real drinkster for the Dutch in this game, for sure.

That may have something to do with the fact that she was lined up opposite Nice Wonger. I didn't mean to just talk cool. Really, it's also a matter of like, they had a lot of players stirring some drinks in that first 30 minutes. But yeah, I think it was a lot of that right sort of flank space.

They're right side. They were very cohesive and tidy and, like, in our face when we got the ball. And I think they had us rattled, you know? Even some of our, I mean, everybody on our team was playing, it seemed like oftentimes playing backward with the ball in a way that created more problems, but they just like immediately go back and then it just kind of compounds on itself that each player who gets the ball has less time than the one before it. And then it goes back to Neyer and she just boots it long, you know?

I think, like, that's sort of exactly the right way to put it, Bells. And that's what I was looking for in this game. And that's the player that Lindsay Horan usually is. It's like if you're grading these players out, you say, who out of this team was putting their players in a better position than when they had the ball? So, like, all right, we've got it here. Now, on the next phase of play, who actually improved our position and who didn't? And it was, again, it was yes. Yeah, it was Yasmeen.

It was Alyssa Thompson, sometimes a lot of times creating for herself. But, and I'll give Lynn Williams some credit too for in the Netherlands game, especially being able to be that player that we could just chuck the ball up to when we didn't have a lot of options. And she would come back with her back to goal, hold a player off, you know, do a simple layoff. But we still then had the ball in more space farther up the field. But it was not often. And again, it's the Netherlands away. England away.

Like, they aren't easy, they aren't easy to just keep chopping up. So you, you don't expect them, expect us to just do that over and over again. But also, like, you're looking for the players who can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Where's Lindsay? What happened? What happened to her?

I mean, Lavelle, too. Like, that's, that's what, when you see the lineups, those are the, those are the season veterans, right? It's Horan, Lavelle, Lynn Williams, but it's hard for a striker to sort of be that player over and over again. They're just not as involved. But you do think that, I did think that Horan and Lavelle needed to be those grownups

and like get the team where it needs to be. The first big thing that happens is Lavelle gets a big chance immediately in this game and she kind of soft shoes it the way Thompson did against England. Four minutes in, Viasmi Ryan takes the ball from somebody over on the right side line and then skips past another. This is real kind of, she's different than everybody else on the field for us in the way

she was able to do this. Finds Horan in the middle of the park in lots of space. And then Iran kind of carries it a little bit and then plays it. She does have Lavelle open. Maybe this is similar to that one we were talking about earlier. She had Lavelle open. Instead, she plays it to Shaw in some traffic. And Shaw is able to, I don't know if it's intentional, or if it's just an accident, kind of one touch pass it over to Shaw, I mean over to Lavelle, on the left side.

And Lavelle just takes it with her, takes the shot with her right foot and just doesn't hit it very well. Goes right at Van Domsilar. Oh yeah, this totally is the one I was thinking of that I described in the England game. Yeah, this is absolutely... Yeah, it's confusing to talk about two games

in the same episode. Well, yes, it's definitely a situation that Horan needs to have made the right choice sooner. and it's a miracle touch from Shaw to get it over to Lavelle. It does look like she's trying to touch it. Like she's going down. Like her ship is going down. And so she knows she's hitting the ground and not going to be able to do anything with a second touch.

So it's just like do something with this touch to help the play. And Lavelle's got to do better here, you know, I think. Like hit the ball hard. So it's just chance after chance for the Netherlands here. Nice Warren gets worked by Loishter and. then Joe Roard receives and swivels, gets a good shot from inside the box in the 11th minute. Gruden loops a ball in for Beerenstein, who knocks it down for Roard. It's a good volley in the 12th minute goes right at Nair, fortunately.

And then right after that, the Nellon scores. 15th minute. It's just a corner kick, and it goes over to Veerla Berman, and she heads it in, kind of off a teammates back, kind of banks it off her. her back over Nair, totally unstoppable for Nair. Corbin is the one marking Berman, and I would say she's a little soft in her marking. But, you know, I mean, it's a scrappy set piece goal. They're going to happen.

Yeah, I'm going to agree with you totally unstoppable, I mean, mostly unstoppable. And it's because of that deflection where I think that really is going to throw Nair off because it comes off the head, like moving, almost like coming down. Yeah. Yeah. So she's probably already, you know, already reacting to that. And, like, there's going to be a real subtle shift in her body. And then she's got to readjust to it popping up and looping over.

So, yeah, I'm definitely not holding the goal against her. And I wouldn't anyway, because it's her last game. Yeah. Do you hold it against Albert at all for, like, she's just kind of a spectator, even though she's the one marking Borman? I mean, it's a lucky finish, too. Yeah. It's, no, I don't.

And I don't give too much blame to, like, Germa for getting knocked over. I think the way we defend these is we have it set up where Germa is essentially, like, free. So she's not marking anyone. And it was the same against England. And she gets up and wins, like, 70% of corners, I feel like, because she's the free player. So I like how we set up here. This one actually just happened to, like, get delivered directly at where she is standing, which almost makes it harder for her because she can't get any kind of a runway.

Instead, she's just, like, planted under where it's going to be. And the Netherlands player has the runway and actually kind of hits her and puts, like, Germa's on the ground when the ball goes in the goal. Okay. There is a nice sequence from Shaw in the 18th minute, which comes back to the ball to get it from Fox, and sprays Yasmin, Ryan, down the line. It came to very little, but it was kind of a rare moment of Shaw looking sharp out there.

so I clocked it. Loister does Nice Wonger again in the 22nd minute, and they cut us all the way open through Vandadonk, and then she slides it crisply across the box to Roard, who gets it caught under her and has to swivel and shoot with her right foot. Had she taken a good, clean first touch with her left foot, she has a better chance of scoring there, I guess I'll say that. At that point, she gets to pass it wherever she wants into the goal,

if she just takes a cleaner touch. So, yeah, a letoff because of the first of the point. poor first touch. But good work from sort of Fox to do that last-ditch defending. Yeah. Also feels like Fowdy at this point in the game is just being a little chicken little about the whole thing. She's just running around saying this guy has fallen on the broadcast. But it turns out she's right because it just keeps getting worse.

It just keeps getting worse. Bruked plays a lovely cross-field switch for Loishter in the 23rd minute, and they get another few bites at the goal in the ensuing sequence. Loishter eliminates a nice swunger on the dribble down on the end line, and Tierna has to step over and put it out for a corner kick. Yasmin has a blot on her record here where she gives it away in the 27th minute and cuts down Beerenstein from behind. It's a yellow card.

It's a good mature foul. It's a good mature foul. Like, okay, I screwed up here. but I'm certainly not just going to let the play continue. That's true. Then there's a really, really dangerous set piece again. Vandadonk, so it's taken from wide left. Vanadonk and Dominique Janssen, the centerback,

kind of run a stunt on Germa, where Vanadok kind of ghosts in front of Germa and Janssen, the one I think she thought she was marking maybe, goes behind her. And so Vandadonk just has like a free hit. It's a really nice. delivery free hit at the near post and she just puts it wide. She left a few chances begging in the game, I would say.

But how did you feel doom-gloom-wise here, Bells? Kind of gloomy, I would say. I mean, I didn't feel any doom and gloom, but it did seem like we were getting it handed to us, which we were. I mean, easily, the most we've been played off the pitch since Emma Hayes took over the program. Yes, without a doubt. Without a doubt. What, shots 14 to 1 at one point?

these weren't like speculative efforts in the metal list. A lot of them were on frame. Relatively comfortable saves, I think, for the most part. And there's more to come. Beerenstein gets played in behind past Tirna, shoots from a tight angle, and hits the corner of the crossbar in the post in the 30th minute. Nice one concedes a free kick, almost getting skinned again. And then we get a water break, which is really nice.

So it's not a water break technology, right? It's literally just Neyer being like, I'm going to sit down for a second. Oh, yeah, that's right. So Uncle Neer, the mature, wise one, knows that we are in need of a little bit of a timeout here. I think Neer has a basketball. I feel like when they show the team playing basketball in the behind the crest. Yeah, she's just like, they're playing like knockout or ever and she's just, she doesn't miss. Hmm.

Got like the good, got the big form. Posting up Alyssa Thompson Back in her end of the paint And then the U.S. goal comes right at the end of the first half, 44th minute. I mean, we didn't get a lot done in the first half, but we came away with a goal, and it's because Yasmini and Ryan won a free kick. She actually was kind of cooking out there.

Meg somebody stepped around her and then got pulled down. The ensuing free kick gets swung in by Tierna and Borman, the one who accidentally scored for her. team on the other side kind of, then also accidentally scored for our team. Just kind of, I don't know, the ball kind of hits her more than she hits the ball and it just nods it far corner. Yeah, she's looking upfield and the ball like hits the back third of her head and goes loops right over their keeper.

And again, you want to just talk about getting the run of luck because not only do we get a super lucky goal, but we are let off the hook with a lot of finishing. luck the other way. And now it's one-one, and you get to get the team into the locker room and give them like a light scolding. But more importantly, like, fix the things that are just really not working very well. So what did they fix? What did Hayes fix in the second half?

Well, again, Emily Sonnet was a rescue. No, Emily Sonnet and Lynn Williams coming on made a pretty big difference, I think. And I know it's a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of. like pseudoscience mysticism here, but that backline leadership can matter a lot, and not just for like how the back line sets its line, but getting things organized ahead of you, even

in possession, players moving the right pieces around. So I don't know how much of that is like Emily Sonic comes in and that happens, but you do just see a marked improvement from us in our shape and structure. I thought in both directions.

It certainly wasn't like perfect, And again, we didn't just turn into a peak Spain, peak Japan, playing through the Netherlands in the second half. But there was more. We were able to compete in the second half. And it was, I would say, a pretty even game. After the game, Hayes also discussed the importance of having somebody on there to stretch the lines, which is what Williams did.

Like you said earlier, you could just kind of dump it up to her and have her, like, hold on to it for a little while. Shaw couldn't do that because she couldn't outrun anybody. She wasn't stretching any lines. Okay. Fox does take a shot to the head. I'm always thinking about her head. It's so strange.

Even when she's not, yeah. Even when she's not getting hit in the head, I'm thinking about her head. Because like, she's had a lot of concussions, you know? Does she just find herself, like, in those situations more often? Does she put herself in those situations where it's just, it's that ball that isn't it's barely moving it like bounces off the ground to head height so it's just sitting there moving in slow motion she just got like a shoulder right to the face basically from brooked yeah i mean she's had a lot of concussions and it's not you know this stuff's not not to be messed around with um so anyway uh she stays on Alyssa Thompson, Hal Herschfeld and Lily Johannes come on for Rose Lavelle, Corbin Albert, and Lindsay Horan. So we get a real look at Lily for the first time since she made her debut, and Alyssa comes on to terrorize that right back.

Can you imagine playing like 70 minutes, and then Alyssa Thompson comes in fresh off the bench? I mean, it's horrible. It's horrible thinking of it for the Netherlands, like two days ago. imagine it if it was triple espresso you've been dealing with for the first 70. I mean, no disrespect intended to the Lavelle, Shaw, Yasmin, Triumvirate. But it wasn't as stressful. It wasn't particularly stressful half for the Netherlands. If you were just under constant terror, in constant terror for 70 minutes,

and then it's like, okay, Alyssa Thompson coming on, there is this, there definitely is this sense of. of what could be if we can get all these players healthy. Yeah. And then maybe Cat Macario, get Cat Macario back here. That was not a doorbell or that was just me knocking on wood. Two things happen back to back that are sort of the pivotal moments of the second half. Tierna gets beat on a long ball over the top to Loishter and she slides it across for Vandadonk.

This is in the 70th minute. Vanadok making a very determined run at the near post. Emily Fox's doing, I think, a decent job of staying with her, but not quite enough. And Vanadok gets there first, hits it on the slide, I mean, punishes it on the slide. But Neyer saves it with a trailing foot as she sort of dives to her right. This was close to being 2-1. Yeah. What an amazing sequence of events here.

So I agree. I can't get a good enough angle on the run of Vanadong to tell whether Fox misplays it or whether she just never could get across. She's like running side by side with her, but always like just to the wrong side of her body, never does enough to sort of try to get across her where she would get to a ball for, basically where she would beat her to a spot for a cross that is inevitably going to come in. And my thought is she should be doing more to body her, disrupt her to like, grab her if she can, you know, to do the arm stuff that you do as a defender,

especially off of the ball where they're not paying as close attention to you. But it is also possible that I just don't have the right angle and there's like a yard and a half between them and there's no way she can even, she could ever grab her or get across her body. So can't tell. Can't tell from there. But she definitely is running alongside her for a long time. Yes.

It doesn't ever get an advantage. It's a great safe. Sorry, great save from there too. Like, this is a great save. And it's just about, I mean, it's luck in the sense that you're just being big in blocking as much as you can and then hoping the ball hits you. But that's a thing that you have to do right. And she did it right. And the ball hit her.

Yeah, what a great way to go out, man. What a great save, a game saving save to go out on. and then immediately we score in almost the exact way up the Netherlands side. So Neyer plays a long ball from deep. It's won by Berman, but she wins it right off of Lily Johannes's head. And, you know, did Lily know that she was going to cushion it right into the path of Yasmin and Ryan? I don't know, but she does. So the ball kind of bounces, it goes off of Berman's head, off of Lily's head,

and then back over Berman to Ryan. And Ryan, her first touch is a header that sends it in behind, which is a nice first touch, I think. And she's just driving at the end line, straight at the end line. And she comes into the box, or almost into the box, she whips it across. and Lynn Williams meets it on the slide, I think with her left foot, right?

I will have to find a super slow-mo replay of it because it took me the longest time to even be like, yeah, that was definitely Williams hitting it and not the Netherlands player. So let's just plead the fifth on which foot she scored with, but she pokes it home. No, I think you're right. I think it's with her left,

and I think that makes it an even more difficult finish than it looks. Borderline impossible. Yeah, I mean, because she didn't like, she had to intercept the ball, if that makes sense. She couldn't just sort of let it run into her and, you know, sort of slide the way Vanadon could, which is the right play from Vanadon. Like, she had to actually meet it perpendicular. So the timing there has to be, just has to be incredible because she is running full speed

and she's got a player right on her hip that is about to clear it out. So it is like a really good finish from Lynn Williams here. Slots it in real cool, like, right at the near post. and it's 2-1. Better scoreline than we deserve, as Emma said earlier, but, you know, sometimes you win when you don't play that well. And again, I want to keep giving Lynn Williams credit here because we just talked about Jay and Shaw maybe missing a,

kind of losing a step. Like, it took every step that Lynn Williams had to get to that spot. So I do feel like probably Lynn Williams has cemented, at least a tentative spot. Can you cement something tentatively? I think so. Okay. I know what the style book said about that.

I do feel like we've got our backup. Yeah, Emma said she's the best backup in the world. There we go. So Lynn Williams is going to get sort of the chance that Alex Morgan never did, which is the off the bench for 15 minutes player and get to sort of play that role really well. Yeah. I mean, Williams is a really frustrating player for me to watch

because most of the time when she touches the ball, it's kind of a mess, you know? But then she comes out and does, like, she presses really well. She does provide an outlet, as ineligent as it may be. And then she scores goals, you know? She just does. So, I don't know. Well, in the theory, one of the things,

theories we kind of floated on the discord was that, you know, we've got triple espresso, and they are basically one, two, three at every one of those depth chart positions. So like if Sophia goes down, it might not be that like, okay, now Lynn Williams is the striker. It might be where like, if you think Alyssa Thompson is maybe the fourth pole, then it might be something avids to Sophia. You just move Trinity up to striker or mal to striker, and then Alyssa Thompson comes in on the wing. You could see something like that happening where like Lynn Williams then becomes like your fourth string striker, which is just an incredible. I mean, you think about that. Who wouldn't be happy with the Lynn Williams as your fourth string striker?

Yeah. I'm happy. I mean, I'm happy even if she's the real second string striker, you know. Because she's a, she's a worker, you know. She goes out there, she gets it done. Allie Settner comes on for Yasmin Ryan late. Ryan was kind of flagging a little bit. I did think that.

I thought she was kind of running out of steam. Okay. Maybe even 70, 65th minute thereabouts. I was thrilled to see Lily get some minutes. I thought she looked a little raw maybe. Did a couple good things, but also a couple kind of giveaways that kind of stuck out. a through ball to nobody really and then that one time where she tried to do

like a Croif turn and then just turned into a defender but she also connected some nice passes I thought she was fairly useful out there so I know you were locked in on Lily and I think I agree with most of that assessment I was

I was able to then focus on on how and I thought I thought how was real solid did you yeah I didn't think she was that solid. So, I mean, then I'm going to have, I'll have to do the Hal Comp, too. I'm going to do, I've already started Horan, we got, we got some of hers out of the way.

I'm going to do Fox, just because I'm stubborn. Again, I don't even think Fox should be dropped. I'm like, yep, it should be Fox and Krueger's are fullbacks. But I do think people are like too high on Fox. And I just don't think, I don't think they should have that joy. So I want to try to undermine it if I can't. But I want to do Hal too, because it was, It was little stuff, but it was, it's the little stuff that, like, I definitely appreciate from a destroyer, which is, like, destroy and get it to somebody else at the same time.

Like, destroy and get it to a teammate quickly where that moment of transition where Netherlands don't quite know it's destroyed yet, you can exploit and try to try to get going the other way. And again, with the personnel we have, that can be huge for us. Just hearing you say that makes me think, it's no wonder so many Germans have spent so much time. time pondering the moment of transition in soccer and come up with new words for it because it is it is kind of a magical moment where everything is in everything is up in the air the thing i didn't like about herchfeld is i thought her passing was a little um i mean i sort of par with the rest of the team for the day but a little imprecise like that one time when she she sprayed it out to thompson and it was only thompson being like a superhuman athlete being able to keep it in you know

was what allowed her to keep it in. And then there was a couple where she just, her pass was cut out. But, you know, same thing happened to Lindsay Horan, and you don't hear me complaining too much about that. We complained a ton about Lindsay here. Yeah. Senator buzzed around, won some tackles,

had a shot with her left foot that was respectable. But I would say in general we saw the game out in what was a lack of style. Yes, I think that's right. No, there was a spell there where, I thought, like, coffee and how were doing just a fantastic double-pivot job, like exactly what you want to see, super professional job of, like, killing off a game. But that professionalism, professionalism didn't extend across all the positions. And, like, Yasmin would just do something silly and give it back to the Netherlands.

But, yeah, so, I mean, they had some looks all the way through to the last minute. do want to point out the the Germa block the Germa like pelvis block out for a corner chest out for a corner Oh yeah I mean just a ball whipped in I forget the scenario for it

But she kind of chested out It kind of looked like it went in the goal Yeah because Neher Neer just finally decides to come for it But either I mean these These moments have always been a little shaky for Neier So Germer either doesn't hear her or there just is no call.

So the goal is vacated by Neyre as the balls are reaching Germa. But no, Germa just like sonnet in the last game, is in like a perfect stance as that ball's coming across. She looks like a goalkeeper. And I think keepers would appreciate this. She basically executes like a collapse dive to her left and does everything a keeper would do to get our body behind it efficiently. She just isn't able to use her hands.

So she just lets it go all the way into her body and gets the angle right to put it around the bar, just like a goalie would do. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sure looked like it went in the goal at first, but it was, how far was it from the near post when she, you know, pushed it around the post? It's a solid couple of feet. And I trust that Germa had done all the calculations necessary there. Yeah. I mean, if anybody's done the calculation, it's hurt. Vanadon gets that big chance at the end on a bouncing ball and behind the back line and skies it, basically a free volley.

And that's the game. Two to one, years over, 2025 coming up. There's going to be a futures camp in January, I guess. Do they really say what that means? Is it just a fun branding exercise, or does it really mean, like, nobody who's currently in the picture? It can't mean that, right? Greg, can you just enjoy a fun branding exercise every now and then? I really want to know if Jaden Schaul is going to be there if she's going to get the whole, like, off season off.

I feel like she should get the off season off. get back in the lab and frisco you know all right we better head out anything else I disagreeing with you I want Shaw there

I want Hal there get Lily there she doesn't need to be in in IAX playing playing her Globetrotter games uh her hand should stay at Leon because they actually will start to play real

real competition now I just want Shaw to be healthy, that's all. But if everybody thinks she can do it, then I'll be happy to see her in the camp. I feel like she needs the camp for the rehab. She didn't just play a full season where now she needs the off season. Like she needs to start ramping up. That's my thought. Okay.

I retract what I said earlier and I agree with you. Yeah, hopefully we'll get to see like Claire Hutton, Riley Jackson in that camp. I guess it depends on how much of a fun branding exercise. it is and how much it's really a futures camp. I mean, yeah, because you can stretch it so much, right? Like, Alyssa Thompson could be futures, even though she'd be like the most accomplished attacker for the national team at that camp. You know, speaking of that, I don't know what the budgetary constraints are and how many players

you can bring and everything, but surely there was some good revenue generated by the game at Wembley, you know, with 80,000 people in attendance. Yeah, I mean, how much of that do you think the U.S. is going to? collect. What's that negotiation like? That's a good question. Yeah, we'll come play it, but you got pass. Yeah, some of it. Fill your stadium. For sure. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.