Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #603: USA v Switzerland recap

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

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Welcome to the Scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody. Greg and I are here to recap the loss to Switzerland on Tuesday. It was a bit disappointing. A bit disappointing. Greg, how are you doing? Good, Belt. I genuinely can't tell if you're going for understatement or if you're just like,

just a bit disappointing. It gets hard to know out. Going for understatement. Trying to get a chuckle. It was definitely a pretty horrendous performance, and so then the disappointment level is what becomes really user-defined. Yeah. So how do you as a user define the disappointment level? I was modestly disappointed.

The echo I had, we've been doing this long enough that all these games, performances, narratives surrounding it all have echoes for me. this felt to me a lot like... Let me guess. Let me guess. Are you thinking of the Mexico 30 loss? No, no, no, no. Okay. I mean, I see we're going, we've had a lot of bad losses in the time we've been doing this. But this was a loss that, you know, the Mexico 3-0 loss was the friendly, I assume you're talking about in 2019.

After the Gold Cup. Yeah. Just pulling that. Yeah, this was early days in the Burr-Halter pool. experiment when the cupboard was admittedly bare. But no, that's not where I was at. I was because that was like supposed to be our team, right? That was Berlter calling up the players that he thought would do it.

This is our best shot at this. Yeah. And this friendly is of course not that. It's not, I mean, as soon as the roster was released, it was like, okay. These are some fellas. And then when the 11 is released for Switzerland, it's like out of that group that was already incredibly, you know, underwhelming as a fan.

I'm not saying it was necessarily like necessarily wrong or the wrongs roster, but it's an underwhelming roster. Then it's an underwhelming 11 from that roster. Yep. You're dealing with levels of well-dedness that are, that are pretty low. So the echo for me was, I'm going back to, I'm going to say March 2021.

You put yourself in your own shoes of March 2021 bells? Costa Rica. You're thinking of the Costa Rica loss? No, we're not there. We're not in Costa Rica. Oh, that was March 2020. Yeah. This is sort of shortly after travel aloud from the pandemic.

Okay. Man, who did we play in March 2021? There's a, there was a pretty big event coming up that summer that was going to be the previous summer, but then they had to push it to the following summer. for younger players. Ah, the Olympics. Olympic qualifying, March 21. We failed to qualify, and it hurts.

It's an embarrassment when you lose a, you know, in a knockout, one-off game to go to the Olympics and now you don't get to have the entire Olympics. But it doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily a bigger statement on the entire program beyond that embarrassment. because it wasn't our team. And in fact, it wasn't even our real U-23 team. Like, if you were going to make our best Olympic team, that ended up being the team that we signed to Qatar for the World Cup. So this loss to Switzerland is embarrassing. The performance was pretty bad.

It's not our program. Yeah. It doesn't mean that we're all fine. Like, we still have a lot to answer for two straight Panama losses with what we would consider our lads that we were at a team winning. But this game is just not that, and it just sucks because it sits on top of these other A-team losses that have sort of put us all in a downward spiral. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. The sort of Chrysian disaster of a lineup roster that we had in those Olympic qualifying games is kind of reminiscent of this.

I think the reason the 3-0 lost to Mexico makes, there's a parallel there for me is that what we were doing in that game was we were working on playing out of the back, right? So we had like a plan to execute that wasn't necessarily a plan to win the game, you know, or like a results-oriented strategy. it was more of a process-oriented strategy. And this feels a little bit like that in that, you know, Potch was talking about how he, you know, we need to give everybody equal time. Those aren't his exact words, but we're going to give everybody minutes in this camp.

Everybody's going to get to play. We're going to change the roster's role. And so he just kind of like did that without regard for humanity, you know? Yeah, go ahead. Well, and so there's like this sort of like rigidness in, decision making going into the game and in the game that isn't really oriented towards the game itself or the experience for the fans, which I think was a really kind of a sad thing about this game in Nashville.

I don't know. The stadium was maybe half full. That's the perfect time to do it then. I guess. He probably looked at the ticket sales and was like, oh, here we go. Here's our chance. This is a closed door exhibition. Right.

But the problem is it does, you know, you have like 15,000 people in there who come away not feeling real enthusiastic about going to another men's national team game. You know, certainly there were a lot of sad kids in there. There was a really sad kid sitting next to me, not part of my party, but, you know, he was pretty frustrated watching it. And his dad was trying to sort of comfort him. And I don't like, I don't like that, you know. Yeah.

It's kind of a bad. It's never fun if you're bringing your family to the game decked out in your Washington General's gear. And then it's, it's a little bit harder when you've built it up that way to enjoy the skill of the globetrotters. Yeah. Funny enough, the kid was wearing a Washington General's shirt. Unbelievable. How did you know?

But that's, that's almost like the lens that, you know, it's not just a 15,000 people disappointed. There's obviously a rabid online community of national team fans who are not particularly impressed with the lead-up, the context, and then the performance on the field, who are not in a great place for the program one year out from a World Cup. I'm not saying that those people are experiencing this program the wrong way. my disappointment or whatever you want to call it is mitigated because I feel like I can sort of shift that you know watch it through a different lens you know if you've ever had to be like a scout like you know college coaching staff you're doing recruiting

so you're scouting games right you go to a game and scout it you're looking you're usually going for like one or two players and you're scouting those players if other people do great if other people are impressive then that's wonderful you might have a that's gravy, but you're basically just like, let's see if these one or two players are good. And that's what you're watching. You're not emotionally affected by the team that those players are on looking terrible.

Yeah. Well, this kid's all right. We could use this kid. And that's what you walk away with. You don't go, that was so bad, such a bad game. The team got rinsed. Like, that just isn't part of your emotional experience. And I know that that is different, but that's, I'm able, I'm sort of able to just watch the team in these moments and do that.

because my big picture experience for this program is, what are you going to do in the World Cup? What are you going to do sort of when it matters? And so that's kind of how I'm like, yeah, I can pretty easily shrug off what that was on Tuesday and just say, this guy was all right. Diego Luna actually looked okay in his minutes. And it doesn't mean he's nailed on to anything or that he's there.

But certainly like relative to the other fringe players that we saw, Like this kid's going to keep getting call-ups and probably keep getting looks. And that's a box I'm happy to check after all. Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask. So who else besides Luna do you think came out of this having improved their position? Or at least, you know, consolidated what position they had in the death chart? Well, like almost every sort of fringe heavy match in U.S.

National Team history, the players who win biggest are the ones who are not there when those fringe players have a real test because almost in very I mean that's that's how the fringe auditions are going to work you're going to audition 10 people and most of them are not going to be good enough and I don't mean in 10 people in one game I just mean over the course of auditioning you're going to have more auditionees than you're going to have deliverers there are going to be a lot of people who just don't deliver but that's okay you sort of discard them for now put them to the back of the line or off the pile and either move on to your next audition or circle the wagons around the core of your team that you already believe in.

So the big winners are like, I mean, Joe Scali ends up a winner. Now everyone's back to love and loving, love and Joe Scali because we saw the really rough right back play and left back play. So Joe Scali ends up being a big winner. If you're just talking about the people in the camp, though, which I kind of assume is what we want to get to. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I'm trying to think of other winners. I mean, maybe Ladesma wins a little bit here. Scali.

I mean, you can't tell me Ladezma would be worse than Haryl was. I mean, he could have been. I genuinely, I genuinely don't know who else gets rinsed that way. It's a real bad rinsing. And Doi is, I'm not sure I'm saying that correctly, but Dan and Doi, number 11, Switzerland is a very good player. We have to be clear about that. We watched him.

rinse A.C. Milan in Rome a couple weeks ago. Yeah. And again, we have, we have a, we have a history. Our early days were, we were trying at that point back in 2018 to be like, hey, just because Jedi got rinsed by this Brazilian winger doesn't mean that he even had a terrible game. It's just a high profile optical rinsing. I remember that conversation. And we got, you got a, you got to fold into context. I don't think, uh, I don't think Harriol just had the one one bad moment and everything else was gravy. So I'm not, I'm certainly not saying that.

I still think Joe Scali is a big winner from this camp. Okay. But I'm not ready to say Richie Ledsmo would have solved everything. No, no, you can't say that, of course. I mean, you could, but. Duan Jones, he's still the guy. I'm like, oh, man, how can we not get more looks at this guy? Even though, again, I know he would probably also not measure up.

But I keep thinking for the longest time I've been like, this is a guy because he can play right and left. This seems like a guy who could at least help. a floor for a backup role that we still haven't improved on from Christopher Lund from a year ago. Yeah. What did you think of Tolkien is half? I don't know. I mean, I thought he was pretty fine.

Like, I think that he was fine enough that it wouldn't surprise me if it's Tolkien and Freeman as our fullbacks for the key Gold Cup matches that we're going to play. Yeah. And so this is another thing that's kind of discouraging about it is, We go from these two tough opponents and not performing particularly well, even in the first game, but definitely not on Tuesday, to like three games that are not going to show us that much. We're not going to learn that much from likely, unless it's negative stuff. And then, and so it was, so it's like we go from these failures to like things that you can't really succeed at. Yeah.

to, I guess, to the knockout rounds. So I, the knockouts will be meaningful, though, and that's the takeaway. So barring, I mean, if we don't get to the knockouts, then it's, you know, we're obviously full crisis and we'll be looking at a new manager for the September window. But the knockouts should be meaningful. Like, in the hope is we don't crash out at our first meaningful one, which should be Costa Rica in the quarterfinal. I mean, could be Mexico in a quarterfinal. Yeah. And, you know, I think a crash out is very much possible.

I don't know about you. Oh, 1,000 percent. I mean, the Gold Cup we won in 2021 with the, you know, it's the backups. It was still less of a mishmash than what this group is, I think. But that 2021 team struggled through the knockouts, struggled mightily through the knockouts and sort of rode the Matt Turner wave that brought Matt Turner into our World Cup starting spot. So absolutely that the group we have here could lose, especially if we're dealing with any additional injuries to the list we brought.

So again, we're really counting on a guy like Malik to be like, hey, Malik, do not let us lose a Gold Cup quarterfinal. Like, don't let it happen. And it doesn't seem, I mean, Malik's been, I think, more or less fine in these two games. But he has not been, he's not a guy you look at. and say he's not going to let us lose. You know, he's not playing like that right now. Not right now.

So he's got to turn that corner. Anybody else come out, anybody besides Luna and Joe Scally, come out with improved stock? It's difficult because the second half, all the guys in the second half look pretty fine. But then how much of that is, you know, what they were doing to make a difference and how much of it is Switzerland walking through the last 45 minutes of a four

zero game. I'm going to say it's 85% Switzerland walking through the last 45 minutes of a four zero game. They were on vacation out there. Speaking of people going on vacation this summer, I was a vacation. And, you know, when I saw the lineup, we were doing that little live stream in the parking lot outside Geotis. And my thought was, we were asking somebody, what do you think of the lineup? And I said, what do you think of the lineup outside of the fact that we're going to score negative three goals? And I stand by that, man. We just do, no threat.

Very little threatening soccer from us. Very easy for Switzerland to deal with. We had zero shots on target. The shots that were off target, I don't think any of them was really high quality. I mean, we got a couple headers on, we got a header for Mark McKenzie on a set piece that was also not on target. But it was a good chance. But man, we just, we had no teeth, no cutting edge. Yeah, I mean.

And that was obvious when you saw the lineup. Oh, it was, it was on the field again, it's, again, it's almost like a fascinating watch to just see how fully little brothered we were for that first half. I'm certain we didn't invent the phrase little brother. I know, I know, we, we, Waki turned Brennan Aronson into America's little brother. before it was Brenda, we were using it for Christian Rodon and Paul Ariola in like 2019. And the whole idea was like, you know, you can all picture it's like the cliche where the nerdy little brother's been in his room working on a project for like three months.

He's built a little robot. And then the older jock big brother walks in and he's like, what's this? And just grabs it. And the little brother's furious. And the older brother just puts one hand out and holds a little brother at bay. Not even paying it. He's giving him one arm's worth of attention.

Like not even really, he's looking at the robot like, what is this gizmo? And the little brother's just furious but can't do a single thing. And that was our team in the first, on both sides of the ball. So when we're like frantically pressing and we'll get into it, but I completely disagree with the Martino and general punitry about the effort. Like our boys are out there running that little brother is like fighting with all of his might. Yeah. To make any kind of impact. And it just is nothing.

It's doing nothing. Like we're chasing like crazy in the first half. And Switzerland barely see a heart rate increase as they just kind of, and it's a sophistication thing. They weren't working extra hard to have to beat us. It was just like, I see where this player is running to put pressure on. This is going to open up this space next. I'll just move over here. And then I will receive a medium difficult pass that my teammate has to make.

And then I will make the next medium difficult pass as someone races on to me. And it can be fun to watch a team execute like that and just blow pot, blow by a team hustling as hard as they can on a press, but not being quite good at it. Yeah. Well, so one thought on that is I was with one of my uncles came to the game with me. And after the game, I was like, man, I'm sorry. This was like your first national team game. He's just like a 79-year-old man, you know? 77.

And he said, well, it was, it was, it was fun to see Switzerland, you know. There you goes. It was fun to watch them. Yeah, when you make the other team, the Globetrotters. It wasn't, it wasn't a slog in that sense. Like Switzerland moved the ball around and did a bunch of cool skill stuff to rent some of our guys. And you're just, you're just looking at a team that knew what they were about and knew what their opponent was about. and we're like, this will be a pretty easy day for us.

Yeah. They're not, the thing is, they're not like a bunch of Galacticos, you know? I mean, they're obviously better than us, that this team of theirs is better than our team that we put on the field, of course. But, you know, outside of, I don't know, Jaka, there's nobody who's really like a household name in Manuel Kanji is. Yeah. He plays at Man City. But Kanji and Jaka, and then the rest of the team, you know, they're all playing at like mid-table clubs around Europe and stuff.

Fryberg, Bologna. I don't know. They do play together more. I mean, they've played together a lot, so there's like a cohesiveness to them. I'm trying to find an excuse for, like. Yeah. It's just, we just looked really naive. Like, I know that our lineup was, again, super overwhelming.

And like you said, we're going to score negative three goals. but we certainly didn't have to open ourselves up the way we played to just give Switzerland massive areas of space to attack. We made, what we essentially did was created medium small areas for them to play in their back third as they'd sort of knock it around fairly casually. But then once they got through those medium, medium small areas to beat our press, then they're attacking massive swaths of area against Max Arstyn. and Nathan Ariel. And that's where it's like, this is going to go very, very poorly for those two guys.

Yeah. Like if we had come out with that same lineup and at least tried to like do a Panama where we're like, okay, they're better. They've got more, you know,

more soccer brains, more soccer experience, more soccer technique. We are going to sit in this block and we are going to just concentrate. And we're going to do 90 minutes of concentration in this space. and we'll see where that gets us. Again, I'm not even saying that's the right way to do it

because the outcome of this game means nothing. But doing that, I think, would have been a more respectable, it would have led to a more respectable loss. We lose better. And that could change what people's opinions on the game are. And you can get that heroic sense about players then, you know? Like, you can build that sort of reputation or legacy from a game of like, man, that guy was just stuck in for 90 minutes.

Yeah, we lost one zero on this on this goal, but those guys were battling out there. Yeah. That'd be something good to take away from it. Yeah. What we got was the very opposite of that, where, you know, we just put, we put really huge talent gaps on pretty huge islands. And it was kind of a bloodbath. Yeah, man, Mon Bonzi, Johann Monza.

Tommy, sorry. He just was licking his chops, looking at Max Arsson over there. So one more question before we get into a couple other things. I mean, a lot of other things, honestly. But is Potch trying? Like, this is the question that I am worried about a little bit. Is Mauricio Pacetino mailing it in? Because, well, yeah, I'll just leave it at that. So we'll get into some of the off-field choices here, but potentially, at least potentially for this game, I don't think he was mailing it in for Nations League. I think he just sort of expected the 18 players that he put out there in the 11 against Panama to be able to solve Panama's block, like without having to be like, oh, we have to apparently focus all of our attention all camp on what I need them to do here, you know, from his halftime speech. in that or comments in that game about like someone has to do it

someone has to do something you have to go towards the goal and make something happen so I feel like that one kind of surprised him but we just don't have that mentality I mean I could I can absolutely say he's not really trying in this Switzerland game because it's not I can see it just being like this game isn't the thing this isn't the thing this is the game to give everyone

playing time ahead of the tournament where I won't do that where I'll be like nope these are the players playing I'm okay with that mentality from a coach to be like if I'm bringing the players in if I'm bringing you here you're going to get to play and this is actually fan happiness notwithstanding like this is a game that doesn't mean anything so this is a game they get to play and it might turn into a bloodbath yeah but I'm I'm okay with that outcome okay yeah I guess so we'll get into the let's do the lineups because I want to talk about

some of the players who weren't called in and I promise I won't just rant about Richie Ledesma the whole time. But our lineup was Keaton Parks. Keaton Parks. Dwayne Holmes. Also not in this camp. You may have noticed. He's coming back from Broken Leg, I think. I don't think he's

played for Houston yet. I don't want to be watching that. Okay. Houston's where all the stars are aligning, really. Lineups, Matt Turner & Gole, Nathan Harrell, Walker Zimmerman, Mark McKenzie and Maximilian Arfston across the back line. We had Johnny Cardoso and Sebastian Burhalter in the, you know, nominal band of two. And then Quinn Sullivan, Paxton Aronson, and Brendan Aronson.

So the Aronson brothers get to start together in that band of three. And then Pat Ajumong at Stryker. Brian Weiss. Oh, yeah, my bad. Ajum came on at the half. This lineup was obviously not good enough. And, you know, like we talked about, Potch said he's just going to give everybody minutes.

But I guess that's an opportunity to focus on the uncalled players who could have helped in this game. So Josh Sargent was left off the roster for White and Ajamong for, I think, pretty clearly sporting reasons. I didn't like this initially. And now, in retrospect, it looks even more dumb. It doesn't make it. It's like a real.

Just a really bad decision by Potch. Right. So you're getting into is it sporting reasons in like the, I got to convince this guy he needs to do more. Sporting reasons. Or is it sporting reasons like Josh Sargent playing his best game is worse than Brian White playing his best game. Which would be a crazy thing to believe.

Right. Like I know where I land on that. And so it'll be interesting. Again, there are examples of this where we know they're not, always going to be transparent as obviously with all the pool sick kerfuffle like the comments that we got at the roster selection and announcement press conference were not 100% transparent. You know, we get more information as we go. So you never you never know what those discussions are.

What's going on there? That 2021 gold cup team that won it. I remember like Donovan Pines made that roster as a centerback. Cameron Carter Vickers did not. Like, there was no, there was no, there was no part of me that was like, Greg Burhalter just thinks Pines is better than CCV. It's clearly like a, there's compromises going on. And players are, players are going to get, especially European players.

Um, there's off season considerations. And it's like, this player might just be better off with an off season. Um, and, and that could technically fall under like the sporting decision umbrella. Like, it's, these are big picture decisions with a lot of moving pieces. It could be like a, again, it could be a motivating thing or it could be a recovery thing, or it is possible that Potch just simply thinks Josh Sargent is not very good. Yeah. Yeah, I guess we won't know until next summer, really, or at least leading up to next summer.

Other omissions, Tanner Testman, and I should add Aidan Morris in here. so they were both left off the roster as midfielders. Instead, we get Sebastian Burhalter and Paxson-Earinson. I don't think either of them was terrible. Actually, Pax was more or less fine. I think he was less Little Brother than his older brother and some of the other players on the team. But again, no, I mean, no forward thrust out of this bunch. Yeah.

And Little Brother, Brando took Little Brother to a number. a whole new level because he's so again the optics of his little brotherness are just off the charts but mostly what it is what it meant to be was like like on the ball when you're on the ball you receive it for several players that we've had and still have there's like a clock right that's just ticking down and you can see the defender approaching them and you know that the minute they approach them and get within a certain distance it will take them a fraction of a second and our player will be dispossessed if they haven't moved the ball yet um There are other players that we have now and that Switzerland have that when they get the ball, you see that, you know, the clock starts sticking down, the defender approaches them.

And then that player is able to reset the clock with feints, shifts of the, you know, leverage. Malik is one who can do this. Absolutely. He did it the other night. And when he did it, it was so different from everything else that had been happening on the field from the blue shirts that I almost like stood up and started clapping, you know. Exactly. It's that ability to create separation ahead of time to receive the ball. And then also, once you've received it, you can sort of set your own clock.

You can't just decide exactly what you're going to do and hit any pass you want. But you can set a clock or reset the clock so that you do not get dispossessed after X amount of time. And X is not going to get any bigger. It's only going to get smaller. So that's more of the Little Brotherings original essence. So there was tons of that on display where it's like this player is going to get, is going to lose the ball. or they will just have to, like, they got to get rid of it fast. And it gets really hard to disorganize the opponent with the ball, for lack of a better phrase,

if all of your players are that player. You got to have somebody, Malik, a Dest, even Musa does this stuff, McKenny, Wea. We have a bunch of players now who can do this. Even Luca Delatore does it in a certain way. You know, he's able to get by himself a little bit of time. Yep. Jedi can do this. So we have to have more of those players in an 11 Or no one's going to end up really looking like

Like they can do much of anything Because the whole team is just smothered and swallowed up Yeah, it's just a panic festival So yeah, Ledesma and Scali Before mentioned are, you know, We're both left off the roster At right back In favor of Nathan Harrell and Alex Freeman

Again, Freeman promising young player didn't look too bad definitely look good defensively against turkey um but harrioles harrile's injury replacement right for jones do i have that right uh yes that's right and so again that that would at least be consistent with the with the motivating you know move if if botch is like not calling scally because the idea is to motivate him uh or to you know send a message if that's what's happening then when jodes goes goes down you don't go all right fine Scali you're you're in now like you got to you got to double down and go farther down the list and and that's how you can end up with someone who's like oh this guy there's no way

Potch actually thinks this guy's given us more than what Joe Scali gives us whatever Joe Scali's limitations are and I feel like that that would be consistent with like shoot I got to stick to this now so no that makes sense it goes not coming Josh isn't coming if you're going to motivate you got to you got to stick to the plan and then I was I just wanted to bring up the Testman thing too because I like Testman and I don't know that he's a motivating guy but it's also one of those like we talk about the fringe players who aren't at real tests always end up being the winners but but you're kind of bet just back on that mediocrity carousel where it's like okay mediocre performance is here and then people are like we should have had Testman as

though we haven't seen Testman put in a mediocre performance yeah yeah yeah yeah a worse opponent so you're just in this uh infinite regression of mediocrity yeah but I mean at least you feel like with Tesman, I've seen him do good things against good players in Ligang. He's not always good. He definitely has played mediocre

for the U.S. at times, most of the time, probably. But you can envision him actually doing some productive stuff in that game against Switzerland. It's harder to envision that from you know, Seba, Burhalter. but I'll give you that's just my bias talking.

We are still. We're still on the test. I mean, we're still mostly on testament strain. He was, you know, going back to the Olympic qualifying, he was a guy who came on as an injury alternate.

I think for Ullianas, let's do a full scuffed circle here. And got like 10 minutes at the last game. Yeah, came in in desperation time and looked fantastic. Like a guy that could have easily helped us win, win an Olympic qualification if he'd played more than nine minutes. Right. Yeah, I guess the only other one, omission is just Tolkien not starting this game. So Arfston, we're changing all the players around from game to game, except for Max Arfston.

He starts both games. And, you know, he gets eviscerated and sort of cinematic, widescreen, high-definition television. twice once for the I think that second goal the second goal was the real backbreaker and that was really all on him well Harry I was going to say Harry will try to we'll get the Zuprooter I'm sure but Harry will try to help take some of the spotlight off by falling asleep at the back post yes he did that's true so it was a double fullback yep the fullbacks wanted to split the criticism for this match and they I think that's most of what it ends up most of what you're hearing is fullbacks yeah that was a

Yeah, how was that? Let's do, okay, real quick, the Switzerland lineup. Gregor Cobol in goal, he plays at Dortmund, Isaac Schmidt at right back. He's Brenda's teammate at Leeds. Manuel O'Conji and Nico Elvedi at Gladbach. So Akhanji at Manciti, Elvedi at Gladbach,

where the centerbacks and Ricardo Rodriguez, I feel like this guy's been playing soccer for a hundred years. The left back plays at Real Betis. Granite Chaka is the, the single pivot and then they had Johann Monzambi, Arden Jasheri, Mikhail Abyshire, and Dan and Doi across the band of four, something like that. Jashari, I mean, all, I think Manzambi and Doi were kind of like the main danger men here, and then Breelambo, Monaco Streicher up front.

Manzambi plays at Freiburg. He's only 19. He seems like he has a really bright future. and, you know, and Doi plays at Bologna, like I said earlier. Let's take a break and come back and we'll talk quickly about the Donovan versus Pulisic spat because I know you're just tracking it with baited breath, I'm sure. And then we'll do the timeline and we'll get out of here. Back in a second.

Hey, if you want to skip these ads, join the Patreon, links in the show notes. We're back. Okay, I know you love talking about this kind of stuff, Greg. so we have to bring it up. But there's been a quite a tiff between some high profile players and former players. So Donovan said, quote,

it's pissing me off, end quote, that people are skipping the Gold Cup. He didn't name any names, but he did cite Cristiano Ronaldo's commitment to Portugal in the UEFA Nation's League, which they won in penalties over Spain a few days ago. Mark Pulisic posted a chat GPT screenshot explaining Donovan's sabbatical in before the 2014 World Cup and saying a few kind of ragey things like you're never going to get an interview or, you know, why don't you be brave and name names or something like that. Or this is because you didn't get an interview.

Yeah. Mark and Christian are such different people, you know. father the it turns out the apple does fall rather far from the tree because pulithic responded on jimmy conrad's podcast in his sort of generic passive way very different from his father so sleepy i mean he's basically donovan from when donovan was playing yeah he disagrees with the criticism i think but only in the most vague and uninteresting terms uh while there's like a ceiling fan rotating in the background behind him. Some kind of rude Goldberg device that pool sick assembled himself.

Drop him goldfish in a pond or something. I'm sure it's like more than I make in a year. So yeah. I like that he's his apartment together that way. Yeah, it looks like a nice place. And then I guess Dempsey also said he, you know, he wouldn't have wanted to miss the gold cup. That wasn't his mentality.

So, you know, lots of things going around. Oh, yeah, and then Pulisik said he wanted to play in the friendlies. Yeah. But he was told, you know, if you're not coming for a goal cup, we don't want you for the friendlies either. And he didn't really agree with that. Again, most passive, generic sort of disagreement you can imagine. There's no hard, definite edge to it. It's just kind of like general shruggy.

about it. Yeah, but there's a lot of, that shrugging has generated thousands of comments. And I was some of those comments. So, I mean, is there, is there anything to learn from all this? I mean, should we just move on having,

we'll, lead out the basics. Again, I'll kind of toss in, like, I totally get people being disappointed that we don't get our best team for any game that we could have had our, you know,

best team for, because even the Club World Cup guys could have been available, like, in fact, I believe obligated to be released if we'd call them for the friendlies. There's a lot of people playing in the Club World Cup that are playing international games right now. Right. It's happening all over the world. I think against the U.S. in some cases. Yeah.

So I get that. Like, it's always more fun to watch our better players. Like, actually, every day, every day. every morning, Bells, what happens for me is my child wakes me up and I'm sure they're adorable, but I ignore them and grab my phone and check

to see Sir Gino Dest is playing soccer. And when I remember that he's not or see that he's not for any team, I'm like, oh, this isn't a Sergenio Dest day. And then I'll go like make breakfast for my children. But there's that level of disappointment because you just love to watch your favorite players play.

But you also at least most times can understand. Sergini Odest can't play soccer for me every day. He's a human being. He has other things he has to do. And so Christian Poulsick and even the guys who would be willing to come play in these friendlies, they do have other things that they do. And I can at least see that it could make sense. It's defensible in my mind for Pachitino to say, I don't need to bring these guys here for a friendly. And again, I do think you can learn things from them from

friendlies, but there's no escaping at this point that friendlies will have a preseason NFL level of commitment for most players, from even energy on the field. Like we say, oh, they should just give everything for their, for the country all the time, and everyone should always work hard. But that isn't really reality for any professional athlete. Like it just isn't. You're not up for this for any friendly the way you're up for Mexico in a nation's league final.

That's, I think that's a fair description of reality. So to get everyone together for these friendlies, I could see doing it and getting something out of it. I could also see being like, nope, we're just going to give them the break. We'll let them go do the things with their club and be a full part of that. We'll let them have their offseason.

We'll concentrate on the guys who are going to play in the tournament. That's a, for me, if I'm Botchitino saying, that's a fine use of this window. Even if I know the outcome on the field against the good teams is going to be Bloodbath City. Yeah. Emma Hayes, Emma Hayes weighed in before all the,

before it blew up completely, indirectly, because she was just talking about what she's going to bring to the next set of friendlies for the women's side. And she just said, I'm not going to bring any of the European players in their offseat. Other than Germa, who's just back from injury, they'd need a break. Like, this is their last chance for a break before the World Cup two years from now.

I'm going to give them that break now. And that's exactly where I stand is like, look at the calendar, like zoom out, look at the full calendar for the cycle. When is a player going to get their break? do they have one? Because they need one physically. They need one mentally, or at least some players will.

And I certainly am not in the business of like policing whether a player truly needs a break or not. Like, well, no, because look at Poole's six minutes compared to what Dempsey put together in 2011. Like, I mean, because Dempsey would have played in this third straight summer in 2011. But it's just like, man, if Pula six says he needs a break, like, you got at some point just believe he needs a break. Yeah. I'm totally fine.

I'm totally fine with him taking a break. I applaud it. And I'm even... I could even be talked into feeling good about Sergeant missing this Gold Cup so he could get a break, you know? A break and a move. I mean, this guy, the sergeant's probably going to be wearing a different uniform. Yeah.

In a couple of months. Maybe it feels like he needs to do that to get pot. I mean, Potch doesn't seem to care what club you play for. It just cares if he's had you in camp or not. that's why we're getting these January camp lineups in June. Yeah, okay. It's just, it is kind of what everybody's talking about. I don't find it that, honestly, that interesting.

But I'm still, like, I find it more interesting to watch this spiral of reaction. I mean, I always kind of think of that of, like, the mentality that seems to me, like, that fans of a team kind of think their favorite player. should be stored in a closet until it's time to bring that person out to perform in an athletic competition for them. And then they should go back into the cupboard until it's time for their next. Don't have any fun. Just get better at soccer every day, every minute. The outrage over like he's posted in pictures of himself golfing.

It's like, man, if you need a break, golfing with your girlfriend is a pretty good way to have a break. Yeah. Yeah. I can't imagine being mad at him for that. I do wish that we had maybe balanced it a little bit. So like give Pulisic a break, but find a way to like give us a good roster for the Gold Cup while, you know,

going through all the compromises that need to happen to give people rest. It doesn't, it seems like we went too far on the, I don't know, just like giving everybody a chance. and it's going to be, the team's just not really that good. Yeah. Yeah. We are fulfilling,

we are fielding a team to fulfill contractual obligations. Yeah. Plus Malik, Johnny and Tyler. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're still going to get our centerback looks. We're still going to get Diego Luna.

No, you're right. We got Richards. I mean, I think if we played roughly the turkey lineup, the rest of the tournament, I think we could be fine. How far into this are we? before we get to the, it's going to be an abbreviated timeline.

I just want to tell listeners that right now. Yeah, we're already 45 minutes in, so, and we're just starting the timelines. So we're going to have to keep it abbreviated. I'll summarize my first five minutes of items, which is by just saying we looked actually pretty decent right off the bat. And it was Brenda, no, Brenda had that really nice back heel for Arfston to spring him down the left in the third minute. He fires a low cross that's cut out.

Quinn gives the crowd something to cheer about, pirouetting through two players, and I think he loses it, but he's doing some good stuff. Another good thing from Arfston in the fifth minute, him, Sebastian and Brenda build up the left. Brenda slips it inside to Arfston underlapping, and his first touch is heavy, and it's cleared off his foot by Cavetti. And this was my point with Vince in the last recap is, yes, Arston is actually pretty good in like in the buildup like he's not bad um but is he so good at that that you can um accept his not being not very good at defense at all and i don't think he's that i don't think he is because

when every time he gets in the final third it's kind of like it feels a little danger adjacent like he's trying to he's trying to fulfill his contractual obligation to shoot the ball or cross the ball but it's like just completing the action is what needs to happen. You know, completing the action is sufficient. The attempt. Attempting the action. Yeah.

There you go. Yeah. I think that's at least fair for now, where he hasn't, he has certainly hasn't stamped like, oh, he's an elite attacking defender. So we can carry him and just, you know, maybe give him some protection when he's, when he's defending in our box. I think that's fair to say. Yeah. If Lund were to replace him for this tournament, I'd be like, I would shrug. Yeah, it doesn't.

I mean, it would probably be a little bit of an upgrade, honestly. I don't think you mentioned Caleb Wiley yet. That's another one. People were kind of like, where's a Wiley? No, Wiley's a big winner in this camp. That's right. We get cut apart for the first time in the seventh minute. It's just really easy to play through our press.

Our press, I don't think, has it ever been good under Potch? Has it ever been something that's been formidable for the opponent? No. No, I'm going to say it has not been. Do you have any, like, do you have any like a diagnosis on why it was so easy for Switzerland to play through our press? So I do think there's an element of one, it's not super well coordinated, which I wouldn't expect it to be with this roster, and not just. just the personnel. I'm talking the turnaround time you have with a completely one-off group of players. But also that the little brother aspect of even if we have the man there to apply the pressure right as the guys receiving the ball,

Switzerland players being the high-level pros that they are, are just going to leverage their way through the danger. Like they're just going to hold the ball, absorb that player who's, you know, leaning on them, and be unfazed. as they're able to manipulate it, pick out their next pass, and hit it. And it's just like blitzing and tackle football. Like if you don't get there, the other guys elsewhere on the field are at risk. And so if that guy who's there in the right place at the right time can't actually disrupt the play at all, you are going to be in some trouble because there are open areas of the field that Switzerland can now pick out. Yeah.

It's a Jimmy's and Joe's problem, basically. A little of it. Yeah. Again, asking Jimis and Joe's to do the hardest thing to do coordination-wise for an international team. Second-hearted thing. First, first artist is probably actually playing through a very organized price. Second hardest. I mean, they're just two totally different things that require different skills.

We could have lined up that same group and just been like, again, be hard to play through. That would be the 2018 France Echo where we draw world. Cup winners, France, a month before they win a World Cup. Yeah, and then we'd be, I'd probably be critical of that if we did that, too, because it'd be like, well, you know, we got to be more ambitious. We've got to try to do stuff. Arson, going to get criticized a lot today. So I have to mention the eighth minute.

He was very committed on defense, won a duel with Monzambi. Good for him. 12-minute mark, Switzerland scores. And this is, you know, in the stadium, I thought, man, what a dime this is from Ardon Jashari, like just a perfect pass through just a forest of legs. And it turns out it was deflected. I didn't realize that until rewatch the game. Very slightly, but enough to just make it up.

So Cardoso sticks his foot out, which is good. He should do that and tries to intercept the pass. and he just gets a toe to it and it goes off course and falls perfectly, just perfectly to Endoy running him behind. Easy finish for him.

I mean, he has like the entire goal to shoot at 1-0. But this is a little bit unfortunate for us that it, because I think the pass was aiming for Abyshire's feet maybe. And, you know, it goes by everybody, it goes to Endoy,

but it was, there was some misfortune on our part there. There is. I'm still going to point out a little bit of us being naive, just because that's the theme of the day. So as Souton are working up their left flank and then they, you know, they bring it back to the middle, they're making passes that aren't really contested. But then even with that, the way that they even open up the chance to hit that incisive pass that deflects off Cardoso is just that little faint, right?

They get it to a guy who we've got, we've got two American players closing down. I think it's Quinn and Sebastian. Quinn from the sideline side, Sebastian, perfect, you know, goal side. position to just come out and usher the play away. But then Quinn like gambles. And so Switzerland shows like they're just going to hit a easy layoff backwards. And Quinn like veers off his run. So instead of closing down the player receiving the ball, he veers upfield. And that lets the player like, oh, well, then if you're doing that, if I notice this slight change in your weight, then I'm just going to shrug that way and actually now be able to turn my hips upfield

and hit the Lindsay Hernandez guys pass. So he gets to do that instead. And those are the little differences. Like that might seem like nothing, but those little shrugs and feints that reset the clock and allow you to look to see which new windows are open. I mean, that's like the ball game in possession soccer at least. So you just see these little things. And then by the same token,

and Doi is what, I mean, he's just, these guys probably aren't even having to watch. They're just aware of all the different movements of the pieces around him. And so when Harriol's looking at the ball, and starts to close down the man to his left shoulder, and Doi just takes off and runs behind Ariel and sees, oh, this guy's weight is moving forward. I can go behind him and he'll never catch me.

And if the ball gets through, I'm in. And so you just have these little sophistication gaps in my mind, these little soccer IQ gaps that exist everywhere in this game. And they just add up. And over the course of, what, 35 minutes, it was worth four goals on that particular day. Yeah. And again, you know, Arden Jashari, he plays for Club Bruges.

He's not like, you know, some $100 million player, but he did do something nice and subtle there. And the pass was still an interesting pass, even if it hadn't been deflected, and it had just gone to the feet of Abbasher or whatever. So 1-0. 14-minute mark. Brian White draws a foul, and Burrhalter is a little bit of a strange foul call, but anyway, Burrhalter bends a good set piece

onto McKenzie's head at the 6th. Cobol makes a save down to his right, but the header wasn't on frame, and none of the stats companies think it was on frame. But this is a really good chance. I mean, it's like a free header, right? On top of the goal, you know? If he nods it back the way it came towards the near post,

it's easily a goal. I think this is our best chance of the game, right? And one of the takeaways here is that, like, we have improved our set pieces from like five different players from what we have seen in the past year. So I'm not going to say directly, like, as soon as pool sticks, it's not taking them, everyone else who takes them, because Malik will have one later. Everyone else who takes them is an upgrade. But I will say that. They have been, they have become more dangerous. So I'm going to leave out the word because and just say they have been more dangerous with other players taking them.

Maybe you're pointing out a correlation. That's right. Not a causation. And even my correlation is probably poorly researched. So someone can easily say, no, you have, there's some selective memory going on here. And I would say that's very possible too. But they seem like they're a lot better now that Pulisick's not taking them. They do.

Yeah. And we wouldn't have learned that if Pulisick was in camp. So that's going to be the big takeaway. That's going to help us in 2026. Yeah. I hope. I mean, I'll believe it when I see it, him not taking a set piece when he's out there, you know? Seems like he's pretty set on that.

And Doy Meg's Harial, this was, this drew some, a big reaction from the crowd. It doesn't come to anything, but it was kind of insult to injury there a little bit. The nutmeg again just adds to the sort of that embarrassing. quotient where it's like, man, that's a tough look. That's globe shot or stuff. But even going back like a minute and a half before that, it was again, that theme of Switzerland just unbothered by us. They were working the ball around for a minute and a half before they get it over there. And it's not for lack of chasing. Like we're chasing all over the place, which is how you end up with a fullback totally isolated by a guy because Switzerland

does all the things they need to do to invite our pressure elsewhere. And then now they've got this wide open player that they can hit a ball to and we're faced up. That's not excusing Harold. We got to have guys who don't get rinsed routinely. But that's just that that's the theme. And then on this one, also want to point out, getting rinsed in that particular way is devastating for your covered defense too. Because, you know, everyone's basically in the business at that point of shading one

way or another. I'll take away this. I'll have helped take away over here. When you get meg like that, they have gone directly through the area that you are supposed to be taking away. So no one's there to cover it. Cardoso does well, in this case, to pretty casually in a good way, read it, react, and get over to block what could have been the second goal.

And that would have cemented Ariel's poor optics. Hmm. You know, so Johnny makes a nice read a little bit later, too. Yeah, on the ensuing corner. So he gave up, I mean, his deflection on that last one set up the corner. And then on the ensuing corner, and the play that leads to it, he makes another stuff. Because it gets, it's a short corner, right? Yeah.

It goes back to the, I think, to Rodriguez. And then he spots Isaac Schmidt descending at the top of the box, and he plays the ball on the ground. And it's just rolling across the penalty area. This is at the 1640 mark. And Johnny, Johnny's marking somebody else. He jumps out. He nicks it. I think with his right heel, and Schmit's kind of like getting his feet set, lining up this shot, like he's going to just smash it.

And the little Nick from Johnny makes it squirt up off his shin and out for a corner kick, which it's not the prettiest defensive play, but totally effective. And I think he gets points. Johnny gets points here for reading it while he's marking somebody else. and making a play. Yeah, two blocks back to back. And even the short corner, just an exhibition in how naive we are. They have a short corner.

We send one, which is not going to be enough. Once they play it short, they are going to have a two-on-one one. They bring a third play over there. We do bring the guy who was marking the third player goes with, but now they have a three-on-two. And this went on for like five, six passes, and we never sent a third player out there.

So, like, at some point I'm putting that on, like, Zimmerman, McKenzie and Turner. You guys are the grownups. Goalkeeper and centerback. It's your job to organize. I'm not busting on Haryol for not making this stuff happen. I'm talking about the guys who have been to World Cups. Get players where they need to be.

Get your guy with single-digit caps and who's not the best defender. Get him some help out there. I don't even know if it was Haryl actually who went out because it's so grainy. It's such a grainy production. It's killing me with all these Anglo kids with brown hair. I can't tell you all apart. I haven't recognized your gait yet. Like I can tell when,

guys we've been watching, I can see their run, but these guys, I don't know what they run like. Right. And Paxton and Brenda have the same genes. But anyway, yeah,

just like leaving that, leaving that guy exposed for that long of a time. It's just, it's poor. And so that's like concentration. I don't think of that as effort. I think of that is just like, Who's got the know-how here?

Where's our know-how? Give us some know-how, boys. Come on. We start to struggle with their press a little bit. I just hate when the ball goes back to Turner's feet. It's just such a not-confidence-inspiring experience. One time he kicks it out of bounds. McKenzie has a giveaway in the 20th minute.

He does recover to claim the through ball. I don't mean to cut you off before you get to talk about Turner there, but. Well, it's both of them. It's Turner and just the press in general, the McKenzie giveaway. Like, we don't get separation. Like, those central midfielders aren't getting separation. It's hard to see what's going on out of the frame with the guys up top,

whether they're moving smartly to give, whether we can skip a line in our possession. Certainly none of them feel like threats to get behind. So it's not like we're going to roll them to sleep and then hit. somebody on the break. So it's it's so easy for Switzerland to just be this weighted blanket, just slowly smothering us back towards their own goal if we're intent on keeping it. And so that's kind of what we get left with. Zimmerman stands on the ball for like a dozen touches several times. And I'm not even like, oh, Zimmerman just isn't good on the ball. He's looking. And there just is nobody at any point who there's no rotations that are like, oh, now this is the ball to hit. And then

that guy will be able to hit this one because we've there's just nothing there there it looks like there's uh there are no passing lanes uh certainly there's barely even like a single passing mean much less like here the next two passes yeah what did we we played it into white's feet maybe five times in the game and um i mean i think they're all going to be in the timeline here but uh which we promised was going to be shorter hey uh so um next the next moment is 21-minute mark. Really, really nice play from Brian White. We have to say this.

I think he should not be here in this camp ahead of somebody like Josh Sargent. But he brings down a 70-yard ball from Turner's feet over the shoulder with a juggle touch. Yeah. This was nasty. Legitimately impressive moment. It was so cool. And then he backheeled Sullivan into space.

So it's like he, this is a plus action. Yes. From Brian White. But then Sullivan immediately. gets crowded off the ball by Manuel O'Conji and Jaka. You know, he's running into some grown men there. Yes. Again, that clock was ticking as soon as Sullivan ran onto the ball.

He had a one-time first-touch opportunity to slide it out to the runner on the left. Once he missed that, it was basically just curtains. Yeah. For that possession. Yeah. Swistling scores again in the 23rd. Manzambi, it gets sprayed out to Manzambi, a wide right, and he just goes at Arstyn. skips around him on the end line.

Arfston puts up very little resistance. And then he just squares it for Abyshire, who has ghosted in to the inside of Nathan Haryl, and Obesher thumps it in from point blank. So, yeah, our fullback's not covering themselves in glory. Newsflash, and it's 2-0. Yeah, this was both fullbacks. It had fought for the final seconds of the play.

The move, I mean, when Haryl got Megged, Like, that was a move. We saw a move. This wasn't even really a move. This was just like, I will just pass it to one side of you and run by the same side of you. You get past Max Arston on the end line. So that's discouraging. But more than that, again, this is the theme.

And I won't hate it for every event on the timeline. But Switzerland knocked the ball around for like a minute and a half before this. It was literally directly from the turnover from Quinn Sullivan after that Brian White master class. of the back heel. Like Switzerland have it. They win it. They knock it around, including like four passes from their goalkeeper while the U.S. have like three players in the box pressing.

Again, this isn't just like us going for a walk in the park and Switzerland doing something. Like we are trying to take it from them and we can't. They knock it around with ease, totally comfortable and eventually like demoralize us into dropping into our mid block. But our mid block is a mess because through all the chasing, Brennan Aronson has ended up as our striker. And Brian White has ended up as sort of our left wide player. And in the mid block, I don't know exactly what the left wide player's assignment is,

but he leaves Arston with a three on one. Like there's no pressure on the ball once we get into our mid block, Switzerland knock around. And they actually just send like, they're on the left side of the field. They send three guys out wide, like a Trips Right situation while they're doing this. And it's kind of interesting. You don't usually see this. They just line up like it's a kickoff.

and those three guys just take off down the field and they just float it to the widest one. And so Arston, I mean, you can't do anything about that. We still get numbers back and we're still okay numerically until Arsting gets totally rinsed. And even then, Ariel should be in that high, that high priority space to deny the tap in. So yeah, I mean, it's sort of just a mess, mess all around,

but it's, again, Switzerland just being like, you guys just like, keep trying guys. Like this is an important step. We were all here at one point. You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll learn from this. Yeah. As they, as they examine the robot and say, what does this gizmo do? We look shell-shocked after this, once again, having trouble passing through the press,

which I wouldn't say is ferocious or anything. No, it's that slow tide. It's just a tide moving towards us. Brenda taps it back to Walker and the 29th peels off. for a run behind. Decent attempt at a ball in behind for Brendan from Walker, but Schmidt the right bag gets ahead to it, wins it. Arfston does well to recover and block a shot after a lovely crossfield ball

from Ricardo Rodriguez to Molo in the 30th minute. So Mbolo's in space and kind of makes a meal out of it, but good on Arfston for getting back and blocking the shot, ultimately. Let's see, a clever pass from Quinn to Wendt to Wendellow. White's feet in the 32nd minute, and this was not a master class from Brian. He turns, he's got, it's a promising moment, you know. He's received the ball. Brenda is running in behind Schmidt, and he just passes it right, White just passes

it right to the feet of Schmidt. I actually think his performance was mixed, but he did have some good stuff like what we just talked about, but this wasn't good. And it really did, I think, stick out for the viewer this pass, because it was sort of just a, you know, a symbol of the futility of our performance. And the disappointment in the stadium was pretty audible. I don't think there was any booing at this point, but. It's that disappointment where you're like, I don't, of course, of course.

Like, I kind of expected it, but I'm still disappointed. Right. Damien Downs, another big winner. Yeah. And like not really to do with what he did on the field. I don't know if he touched the ball. Yeah. It did a couple of times, but not much happened.

All right. Goal, Switzerland in the 33rd minute. This is Jacques out to Rodriguez on the left. He carries it into our final third, steps toward the corner of the box. Obasurer makes a wide run to draw Ariel's attention. Johnny doesn't close fast enough from the inside. Rodriguez just strides to the corner of the box and has a hit. Just has a go.

It's low and hard. Turner goes down and palms it to his left. and essentially goes right to Breel and Bolo, who reacts faster than McKenzie, and thumps it in, and it's 3-0, and now the booze start. And I'm interested in years of prudering of this goal. I mean, how does Turner need to do better here? Oh, 100%. This is definitely in the shocker category for rebound.

And it's not even just rebound direction. Like, there's really no reason this needed to have a rebound at all. but I will again get back, get to the buildup, and it's Switzerland at several points, having the ball at their goalkeeper's feet before this goal with U.S. players around them and just being unbothered by all of that until they can eventually swing it out to a wide player with three quarters of a field to play in against Nathan Ariel.

So I don't even think Harriol did anything wrong here. It's just like, Switzerland are going to get some joy out of this, you guys, if we keep doing it. But yeah, all that to say, yeah, shocking attempt from Turner on this one. And that's the kind of attempt, given where everyone's at in their club situations, that'll lose you the starting spot for a tournament. Like at that point, and that's what happened at Forest. Like, you have a shocker like that, they're going to go with the next guy.

And ironically, the next guy actually gets more of a leash. So you go with the next guy and sort of run him until he has a shocker. And even then, you're like, well, we already made the switch. guy's got to be extra bad to switch back. So I would basically expect Reese to have the job for important games in the tournament until he has multiple shockers. Something to look forward to. Yeah, booze raining down in the stadium. Arfston does get a shot in the 34th minute.

I think this is our first, I mean, after the McKenzie shot, it might be the second shot. I'm not sure. It's a good pass from Zimmerman to White's feet. White does well. He turns and finds Arfston darting in from the left, takes a touch, and then kind of slaps at it. It goes well wide. Yeah, you didn't feel like he was going to score, but he was in the box, you know, and he did take a shot. By definition, he is an attacker in that situation.

Yes. He has attacked. 35-minute mark, Switzerland scores again. So it's already 3-0 if you're keeping track. Sullivan and Burhalter lose it at midfield. I think Deshari plays it out to Johann Monzambi. Just wide on Switzerland's right side of the field, just wide at the middle of the field.

And he cuts in at the top of the box past McKenzie and fires it into the top corner. Really just like a quick action from him. Turner waves at it but can't make the save. I don't know that anybody makes that save. it's 4-0 and you know it's over yes it was it was more over at this point it's just it's a miscommunication thing wide receiver quarterback uh checking off different routes where in the midfield for the turnover where it's i think uh burhalter is the release valve as solvin receives it on the sideline so he's

behind him or level with him and as the ball's approaching solvin ber halter actually breaks upfield but the last time solvin saw him was where he was standing and so he passes it where he was um And that's the turnover. And then just ruthlessly efficient from Swiss, you could, you could, and I'm sure you would really like break down Zimmerman and McKenzie's decisions on this. But even then, it's like, it still shows you the smart movement from Switzerland, where as they're receiving the ball to top of the box on the right side, it's 2 v2. and the off ball runner drags across the face of the player of the ball, and Zimmerman chases him, so now McKenzie has no help on the inside. And you see us actually screw this up a lot where we stay in our lanes and don't make

that dragging run. So Zimmerman would have been able to stay goalside of his man and be the help for McKenzie on the ball side, or on the goal side, I should say. Hopefully everyone stayed with me on this, but. So if the runner runs, how is he oriented to Zimmerman when he makes the run? So it's basically 2 v2 and we're matched up when the guy receives the ball. And their player is on our left side. McKenzie has him, like in basketball.

He's based up between him and the goal. And Zimmerman is between his man and the goal. But Zimmerman is also in a space where if the ball carrier brings it to the central area to get a more dangerous shot, Zimmerman can help with McKenzie. So he can be like, okay, now I'm here and it's one on two. You know, like I can help play this. When Zimmerman's man runs across the face of the ball carrier to the sideline, Zimmerman goes with him, and now McKenzie has no help to the inside.

And that's just, it's the run that I feel like we ignore too often for the U.S. Or misplay the passes that it opens up. So anyway, really good movement from Switzerland to take away McKenzie's help. And now it's just McKenzie all by himself. and he does not prevent the shot, and the shot is excellent, and Turner doesn't make an excellent save, and it is 4-0.

Yeah. Yeah, you'd like McKenzie to do a little better here, but it is a nice play by Monzambi, you know, and it's difficult, I think it's difficult to defend somebody moving like that. I mean, yeah, I don't know, am I being too harsh on Arfston and then not harsh enough on McKenzie here?

I don't know. No, I mean, McKenzie's got a full field, the full 18-yard box to defend in. And the help arrives only at the moment that the shot's being taken. So, yeah, he could probably do a little bit better to take away, maybe be able to take away some of the goal. When you see the moment of the shot, McKenzie is taking away none of the goal. Turner has to cover everything right to left. There's nothing being denied. You'd like your defender to at least be in position to deny something at the last second.

and we don't have that here. All right. So one more Bredo, one more white moment. Brenda wins it in the press to him in the 37th, and he, and white turns and plays, tries to dribble forward, has it taken off his foot as soon as he dribbles forward, which is a little bit of a theme for both Big Pat and Little Brian,

just not being able to dribble once you have the ball. Just, Bell's just casually destroying Little Brian. That's who we're. That's what we're going to go with with the whole gold cuff. Just like that offhandedly. I don't know. I just was trying to have some symmetry with Big Pat. Yeah, it's a little bit too much probably.

He's a good, you know, he's very good at soccer. He's a good MLS striker. He scores a lot of goals. He had that incredible touch in the first half, but come on, man. Stick with Little Brian until he, now he's got to prove otherwise. I mean, Big Pat is definitely, you wouldn't have watched his second half performance with even a couple of minutes, been like, oh, there's a little Pat, getting a little brother out there.

No. Wouldn't occur to you. Arston gets done again by Manzambi in the 39th, and there's a scramble in our box as the ball is clipped across. Switzerland is just kind of casually sniffing around the edge of our box for the rest of the half, and the stadium is emitting a low hum of discontent. And that's the half. At the half, Ajumon comes on for White, Luna and Tillman and Ream.

are on for the Aronsons and Sullivan, and Tolkien comes on for Arfston. So with Ream coming on for one of the midfielders, we go to three centerbacks. So Tolkien and Harrile are now playing wingback. We're pressing in something that looks to me like a three-four-three roughly. I don't know. I like the changes.

I like this. I don't know if it was like scheduled to get all these guys out, like, well, we'll give them 45, you know, satisfy the requirement to play everybody. And then they just didn't. But more likely, it was not that specific of a plan. And we had players sort of earn their way off the field. Or shape-wise, we just needed to do more to protect the two fullbacks.

And so going to 343, I think, really gave them a lot of protection. That actually does make a lot of sense to me, the protection of those fullbacks. 49th minute, they carve us up again. Mbolo plays Monzambi in for a chance to scoop it over, turn, but you can't get enough lift to make it 5-0. Turner makes a good save. This was, so this was, uh, I know we're rushing through this, but the same little faints in the buildup from that first goal.

Like a guy at midfield gets it and we're, we're closing them down and he just gives a little shrug. And this time it's Quinn Sullivan who breaks upfield on the shrug. And then he just, the guy just holds on to the ball and now Quinn Sullivan's out of the play. Uh, and that's not the, the key moment, but it's a moment that allows the attack to continue and progress towards goal. And so again, they're stringing these along.

And even when they get the ball into the box to Mbolo, we don't get to in time. Like Cardoso kind of gets there and he's got McKenzie with him. So we should be able to, Cardoso should be able to go in pretty aggressively here since he's got covered. But he doesn't. He goes in and stands off him just a yard and a half but doesn't commit. And Mbolo literally can just stand on the ball and look. And he just watches and watches what develops. And what develops is Zimmerman shifts his weight slightly up to the top of it.

of the box off of the ball to like get tight to a guy and their guy reads that and then breaks in behind Zimmerman and now in Bolo because he's not under pressure and is just staring at all this can lift a delightful little three-yard scoop between McKenzie and Cardoso to the wide open player going at goal and it's just it's just those sort of levels of understanding and execution that are just on display for for a good portion of this game. Yeah. Let's see. I mean...

It's not our full team. It's not our real team. I don't think our real team looks this naive. We just, we looked a little bit naive a few times against the Netherlands in 2022, but not this naive all the time. Right. Right. I'm trying to figure out what else to talk about here. 60th minute, nice passage of play from the U.S. off a throw.

I mean, there's a lot of negative stuff here. Ajumang does earn that yellow against Elvedi, where he turns him, you know, uses his strengths to turn him and go and then Alvedi drags him down and gets yellow. That's a nice play from Pat. A nice pass is to play from the U.S. off a throw. Cardoso to Luna right in front of him. This is in the 60th minute. Luna turns, plays it to Pat's feet vertically. He gets it back from Pat and then it's a quick pass to Sebastian Burhalter to his right and then Burrhalter turns and plays it out to Malik and he fizzes it across for Luna who's now making a near post run. He tries, I think, to leave it for Pat, but doesn't connect and

Swiss are out and running again. These are all great, great examples, though, of those clocks we talk about, the personal clock. For Malik, Luna, and even Big Pat, it's a different kind of clock now. We're working with a little bit better clocks. Pat's is funny because you just don't know how much time's going to be on it,

but it's not necessarily dictated by the defender. It's a clock that swings wildly. Like sometimes Paul comes into Pat's feet and just his clock is zero and it goes flying out. But other times, it looks like he's got nothing, and suddenly he is on the other side of someone, and Alfonso is out for six months.

Yeah, it's true. That's a good point. A good-headed flick from Luna for Big Pat. He tracks it down, cuts in and has a shot that's blocked off his foot. That's in the 63rd. The crowd is starting to appreciate our intent a little bit. No way we're going to redeem this evening,

but at least we've got a couple positive sequences in succession. Yeah, there's more chance. There's more some decent stuff, some liveliness from Luna and Tolkien. Tolkien tries to rainbow it over a guy and down in the left. He also had a nice moment where he receives a ball on the short hop and then just like sort of spins it over the defender right in front of him and then goes past him. So, I mean, Tolkien has a little bit of a clock too, I think. These tokens are started right for Gold Cup? Boy, I hope so.

I guess I don't know. Max is not going to get done presumably against Trinidad. So if you want to be like, Max, go out there, attack for a while, buddy. He's going to have some games to do it. But in the key games again, in the competitive games, I feel like Tolkien should have a chance to earn his way into that spot throughout the group stage. And he might just need to do that by showing, hey, I can attack too. Yeah.

Which he totally can do. Absolutely. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Arsson scores a hat trick against Trinity. at on Sunday and then um potch is just completely mesmerized by that you know uh yeah that that attempt to scoop it over lucas blondeel in the 81st minute is my last item on the timeline uh we get we get another set piece where malik whips it in this time oh yeah it's going directly to walker zimmerman this would have been the capper zimmerman in nashville at least like some like okay we did

something guys. The fans can smile about something. And then Cardoso coming back away from the goal, that makes a great clearance. He's making clearances, desperation clearances all night, and he gets another one right at the end. And Malik was not pleased. He throws his hands up in his aspiration. Zimmerman, if you watch closely, even with the poor resolution of the video feed, Zimmerman also isn't pleased, but he's displeased in a very Zimmerman way. Like, Zimmerman's not going to give you Gio hands. He's a No reminiscations from him.

Thank you very much. Like leader of men like you just see the his sort of like muscles tighten up around his shoulders because he wanted that one bad. Yeah. I didn't notice that he was lurking in the background. I just saw,

I just thought, hey, that's a good set piece. It found somebody's head. Yeah, so Trinidad and Tobago on Sunday night in San Jose, 6 p.m. Eastern Time.

We'll recap it on Monday with Charlie Bowm. And when I say we, it's probably on me, and Charlie. Don't listen to anyone who says that the guys who do really well in that game are going to suddenly get their stock go up. That really doesn't happen. We've played a lot of group stage games for the Gold Cup and had some big blowouts.

And no one who was a big part of those blowouts has suddenly seen an increase in stock. They either already had pretty high stock or you just high five of them for that game. and then what really is going to matter is a knockout. And even those knockouts, like, they matter a little. Yeah. But don't get caught up in like the, oh, great, now. Now everyone thinks Brian White's actually our starting strike. Like, that just doesn't happen.

Well, it didn't happen in the past, but you never know. You never know. I mean, Podge likes to touch and feel. You got to really do it, you need to score those goals against Trinidad with a mask on your face. You must have There's like an occipital has to have been blown up It's not just the goal Like you have to do it with a prop of some kind

Okay something you're carrying in your shorts maybe yes Okay Any closing thoughts Greg where we get out of here It's been kind of a long recap for us I know I'm sorry No don't apologize No closing closing thoughts are just like a man There are still tons

unanswered questions. There would have been no matter which group we'd fielded here. And it's just, it's just going to be an interesting ride. And we're all now just like moment in time. World Cup's just a moment in time. We have, we have a pool of players who has proven they can compete in a World Cup. Will they compete in 2026? Yeah. Moment in time. I love that. That's the, that's the John Pullis theorem. Well, and we, speaking of theorems, we've got to talk about the copy paste theorem at some point. Oh, yeah, I know. Not today. Not here at the 145th minute of this podcast. Honestly, I needed Malik to come good,

Malik and Johnny to help strengthen the copy paste here. The moment in time bit, I do think there's something to that. And I know that wouldn't necessarily be consistent with all the stuff we were saying last cycle. But last cycle was such a unique thing where we didn't have, here's the players. How will they do at the World Cup? It was like, who are the players? Yeah. And now we have, again, we have players who did it at the World Cup.

besides Reem and maybe Zimmerman and I guess Turner, like none of them are like significantly worse players than they were before. And I'm only saying those guys because mostly for age. I'm not saying like they've all. Yeah. So it's like we've got the pool. Now it's like will those players get a little bit of support from some new guys? And then how are they going to show up in that tournament?

So that's why this is a sort of, I think more applicable to lean on than it would have been last cycle. Yeah. Okay. Hey, thanks, Craig. And thanks, everybody for listening. We'll be back on Monday. Charlie Boehm, probably me and Vince. We'll see you.