Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #606: USMNT vs Haiti recap

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

Greg and Belz talk through ALL the details on the 2-1 win over Haiti. Malik and Chris continue to be a cut above. Big Pat is a phenomenon, in both negative and positive ways. Everybody else is pretty much failing to distinguish himself.Clip Notes for $5 patrons: https://www.patreon.com/posts/132197415?pr=trueSend us a voicemail: www.speakpipe.com/ScuffedPodcast 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. A 2-1 win over Haiti, a nine-point group stage for the USA, and now Costa Rica looms in the quarterfinals on Sunday in the Cavernous Stadium where the Minnesota Vikings play. Got Greg here. How you doing, Greg? I'm good. They do loom, don't they, Costa Rica. Oh, I'm terrified of them. Even missing a bunch of good players,

they still have Kailer Navas. that's who looms the most, I think. And I think the looming is affected by the group we have here. That it's a little easier to cast a shadow over. Yeah. Yeah, I will say my initial thought after the game and watching the highlights of Costa Rica, Mexico, which, of course, it's like, it wasn't actually a packed house for that game, which surprised me a little bit.

Well, I don't know if it surprised me, but I noted it. And it was a much more intense game, you know, as it always is when you're playing in front of more people against Mexico. So my initial thought was like, we're going to get smoked by Costa Rica, unless we have like a dramatically better performance against them. I watched the game back. I did a little more research on Costa Rica. I'm a little more optimistic now. I think it's kind of a coin toss, you know. What happens on Sunday?

My super scientific numbers have us at 60, 40 to advance. Okay. Don't share the model on that, please. It's basically entirely based on Thurnum putting three goals on them. Yeah. Which they could have done more. I don't know how closely people watch that game, but Suriname very unlucky to not get a result in that game.

lost 4-3. We're down to zero. Costa Rica went up 3-2. And then, I'm sorry, Costa Rica was down to zero. Surin-on went up 3-2. And then Costa Rica got two goals in the last 15 minutes, I think. So let's do the lineups and we'll do some takeaways and then, you know, give a little bit more detail on what we can face, what we can expect to face from Costa Rica. So we put Matt Freezing goal.

Alex Freeman got the nod at right back. Chris Richards, Tim Ream at centerback. That seems to be Pott's pairing for the tournament. And then John Tolkien got his first start of the tournament in place of Max Arfston. Tyler Adams started, so apparently not as injured as everyone feared at the sort of earlier. Luca Deloitte d'Lotore again in that midfield. And then we had Quinn Sullivan, Brendan Aronson, and Malik Tillman in the nominal band of three. and then Pat Ajamong, who is definitely Pott's choice for Stryker for this tournament at Stryker.

Anything strike you from that lineup? No, nothing surprising. I feel like it was going to be hard to be surprising here. This was essentially, I mean, by all everything but the mathematics, this was a dead rubber. I would have taken like a five goal loss, something like that to not even win the group. So we knew that this was a free game. So there are dozens of ways that Pachitino could have set his priorities for how he wanted to use it, what he wanted to see, whether he wanted to arrest people. You had a couple of guys on yellow cards that didn't start Luna and Burhalter.

That could have factored in. So it was really just like, all right, what's he going to do? And then who's going to come in here and try to make it look like no one on Haiti can play with them? Yeah, a dead rubber. But for our purposes, I think pretty meaningful. in terms of like figuring out who can help the national team in the future. Oh, 100%. And for these guys, that's one of the things that struck me watching it was, like, I want to be able to tell that when I'm watching Quinn Sullivan that he thinks every single step he takes,

determines whether he gets another call-up or not. Did you think he did give that impression? No, not particularly. He did some fun things, which I enjoy. but I'm almost using like the Paul Ariola model where I'm going to give Paul Ariola some love here where you know in the last cycle he was an easy guy to sort of beat up on because he's not super good but it's like a guy like him knows I'm not super good I've got to hit like every mark that I'm supposed to hit when I need to hit it to be useful for this team I'm not you know if Tim Weas

screws up somewhere and kind of like throws his hands up and does some little walk or like a little tantrum or whatever you can get away with it because it's got that like he's the artist artists get away with more yeah paul aryul is not the artist uh most of the guys here are not trying out to be the artist for the u.s national team they are they are very much uh the high the high like the hired help this is terrible things I think it's fine I think it's fine yeah like they're carrying the bags like they carry the they carry the bag of balls uh and so that that's what I'm That's kind of what I'm looking for too is, well, that's not telling you.

We were looking for guys who would just blow up, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. To date. We haven't seen a lot of that. Well, okay. Yeah. I think, I think Malik is, and not so much in that he's, like, dominating games, which, you know, you could argue whether he's dominating games or not in the group stage of the Gold Cup in which we are now, what, 43?

one in five or something. But he is, he's definitely, it seems like he's growing more comfortable on the team. Yep. More, he contributes all over the field in all kinds of ways. I mean, he's probably, it was probably our best ball winner in this game. So when you,

when your best chance creator is also your best ball winner, that seems like a good thing for that guy. Yeah. And, you know, we used to call him the Kirkland, the Kirkland, Gio Raina, but, you know, if you had to choose which one you wanted in a game right now, based on Gio Raina's form, which is basically he doesn't play, it's got to be Malik, you know.

So maybe maybe the discount brand is better than the name brand. No, I'm still picking Gio. It's just Gio is one of those restaurants where like it's run by a bunch of college kids and they're set hours, aren't really their set hours. So you can, you know, I don't know if that still plays with the Kirkland metaphor, but you show up to that store and it's like, oh, they're just, they're closed. They've decided to go home. Yeah.

I still take Gio, to be honest, I'm still a truther. But the good news is we won't have a chance to really make that decision until after Malik gets the real games. Like, you know, we talk about this is the group stage of the Gold Cup is all dress rehearsal. Like there's nothing you're going to do here that's like this guy's a star. Like, you could, you can easily, if you, if you flub all of your lines, that's going to be pretty concerning. But, but you're, you can't, you can't make it here, you know, so, uh, Malik is, you just love a theater metaphor, don't you? We're all over the place.

Playbills, flubbing your lines. Oh, so Malik has, Malik has done a lot and he's, he's eating up a lot of scenery. But, but, uh, but we still have to see it. We get to see it now against real, like real competition between what hopefully is multiple games, Costa Rica, either Panama, Canada, and Mexico. We've got some, we're going to get some real info here on Malik, which is great. I'm really excited about it. And I think he's going to, I think he's going to deliver a little bit. Yeah, I do too.

But you've got to go back to it. We've got to win the game on Sunday. I mean, no. It'll be so disastrous. And it's, it's so possible that we won't get through. But yeah, to kind of say, I do think. that Malik is the guy, and obviously Chris Richards being the other one. But it's hard to say that those two guys have really blown up because, like,

Chris Richards was already written in Penn on the starting lineup of the full strength team. And Malik was very obviously the next guy you'd expect to be from this group to really challenge. Yeah, that's true. But, and maybe this is just vibes and sort of mystical stuff, but it does feel like both of them are like more and more comfortable. comfortable on the field. And I think there is a there is a sort of blooding period when you play for a new team like for the national team. And obviously Richards has gotten a lot of caps including World Cup qualifiers. But in he does feel like a leader on this team. Yes. And it was harder for him to feel like to look like a leader when you had like West McKenney Christian Pulisick out there. And yeah, I don't maybe that's all part of the cultural reset that Potch is doing. But I like, uh, I like that Richards feels like he is sort of boss out there. And tons of, tons of, I mean, we'll get into it,

but tons of good passing through the lines from him against Haiti. I get that it's not the best competition and all that. But, you know, you can only play who you're in front of. And we were, I disagree with the idea that we weren't trying to play forward in this game. We weren't trying to ask questions of the defense. I just didn't think we had enough juice in the final third from most of our attackers for most of the game. I think we framed our questions the wrong way a lot of the times. But we'll get into that with the tactics and the shape and all that.

I will just say Richards and Malik looking so much the grown-ups here is like the other reading of that. It's great that they are the grown-ups. The other reading is, again, it's just a slight, maybe slight for now indictment on the rest of the group. that the other guys haven't like you haven't had a lot of guys step up even even be like just one tier below it's like those two look so much higher than everyone else everyone else is like in a clump a cluster way below that in my estimation so far yeah yeah you're just you're just hoping like you're hoping that one or two other guys there was no one in particular maybe Luna but there was no real one in particular like I just want to see this guy I expect that this is going to be the guy next up It would be Luna, right? Yeah, I would say Luna is the biggest disappointment of the tournament so far for me. And it was punctuated by his little cameo on Sunday where he comes on. And he ended up doing something really nice, right at the last action of the timeline, which we'll, which we'll get to in a minute.

But he is, I don't know, like his fourth touch, he just is like, un-understandable giveaway in the middle of the field that leads to a counterattack. I'm like, Diego, come on. Like, this is your chance to sort of see something. And I don't know, he feels like he's maybe thinking too much about how every step out there matters for his national team future. I think maybe several of the players look like that. But he's the biggest disappointment. Yeah. Because he's one who you thought might rise out.

He might lift himself out of this cluster. I still have hope. I still have hope. Of course. Yeah. Again, this is the dress rehearsal. I know the legend is even Christopher Walken was was kind of sleepwalking in more cowbell dress rehearsal and look what we got in the real thing, right? It can it can be different once you get to the knockouts.

The guy I'll say who has been so invisible, his whole presence at the Gold Cubs has been so invisible that we even forget him when we're talking about disappointments is Johnny Cardoso. And he wasn't supposed to be like coming up out of the, he should have already been ahead of the above the cluster. and just sort of establishing himself in the way that Malik is doing. Yeah. And it's just been not that for the whole window friendlies included. Yeah, I mean, that that giveaway, that wall pass into our own goal early in the, early in the window, it really, I think it really messed him up. Must have.

I don't know. You know, somebody can, somebody can correct us. But he's been very uneventful for the U.S., which can be good. right? But you're hoping to get some good events out of him. I feel like before that wall passed into our own goal, his last big eventful outing was the Columbia friendly, which was sort of more bozo stuff. Yeah. He didn't come in in Copa when we were running Adams a half and then Cardoso coming in for him. He never came in and settled things in any recognizable way. Or you're like, oh, Cardoso's presence has just really changed the demeanor of the team. So you're

really just going from like in different performances, kind of peppered in between the two bozos. But again, he's going to have the knockouts. And we'll see if Pachitino trusts him to start the knockouts. We also, you know, at least I think he may be dealing with some illness. So maybe we got a little built-in excuse for him. But we're excuse-making. Like you hope not to be excuse-making.

He's got mononucleosis probably. So yeah, you don't want to be doing a lot of excuse-making through a gold cup. No. Kind of the Zendayaas effect. But that's the thing is he, that's a good point about Cardoso, because he and Tillman are the ones who are performing so well for their clubs and have not really put it together for the national team. It's why Malik doing it, at least looking like a leader on the field,

is so encouraging to me. And then, yeah, on the other side of the coin is Cardoso's, Cardoso's invisibility is a big disappointment. Haiti. Their lineup was Johnny Placide in Goel. Placid, I think is how you say it. And then Carlin's Arcus, Ricardo Adé, Garvin Metusala. I kept wondering, is that a reference to the oldest man in the Bible, Methusel?

Has to be. Got to be, yeah. Martine Experianz, across the back line. And then Lucius Don Dietzen, former Atlanta United play. I think we, I think back in the day, we sort of had some hope for him as a, as a youth national team guy. I think he got a couple of caps back then. I can't remember for sure. For the youth teams?

Yeah. I feel like he might have, but I will, I didn't catch the broadcast, English or Spanish, but I can only assume they did mention that he used to make the playbill back when he was playing for Hobro. Yeah, Stu mentioned that. I'm sure. He was playing with Sabi and Cappi. Capis? Capis.

Yeah, Capis. Cabus. So, yeah, so Lucius, it was Lucius Capus and Sabby all on Oro. OK. And they might have even had a goalkeeper that was American back then. Yeah. Anyway, you know, we'll get back to Deaton. Yeah, scored a nice goal.

Leverton, Pierre, Dan Lejean Jacques, and then Ruben Providence. So we had experience and Providence on the left side for Haiti. And then Dukens Nazone and Franzi, Pierre. is the two up front in a nominal 4-4-2. So let's talk about the shape of the U.S. a little bit, and maybe let's get back to your point about we're asking the wrong questions of their defense. Yeah, so we're in a 3-2-4-1.

In possession. Yeah, in-possession. I know sometimes we'll say 3-25, but I think with Big Pat up there, it's not a 3-25. Like, he's definitely the one up ahead of the 4. That was my sense, too. Yeah. And so it's Tolk in that band of four, you've got Tolkien,

Brenda and Malique, the sort of double tens. And then it was Quinn as that wide right player with, so Freeman is playing that stay home right back in possession that we've seen a lot. And then Ream and Richards being the other two in the back three, with Luca and Adams being sort of the two-man engine in the midfield. So why were we not? So it seemed, I guess I'll put it this way. It seemed to me that Adams became much more active in the buildup in the second half.

And I don't know exactly why that was, but he got on the ball more. He was more proactive. He was doing more stuff. He had more space. Maybe that was partly because Haiti was wearing down. But how were we trying to attack them in the first half? Did we change anything in the second half? I honestly didn't recognize a lot of changes.

And so other people who did see them can jump in. But what it looked like to me was we were being very patient in possession with our back three kind of knocking it around. And we weren't necessarily like constantly carving them up. They were Haiti, I want to give Haiti a lot of credit. Like they were defending in their 4-4-2 picking up pressure right at the edge of the middle third. So a fairly high line of confrontation, certainly not like sitting in a low. block. No.

And the danger, as Trinidad found out, was if you do that, you need to be really committed to then getting back deep once we break your mid-block and get behind. And Haiti, we're very committed to doing that once we beat them. So they would have numbers really work hard to get back to their own box once we kind of got behind them. I think we could have gotten behind them way more often in way more dangerous ways because what we're kind of doing, we're patiently knocking around the back. and you could you kind of see the camera was nice where you could kind of see what was happening with the front line front five and those wide players

Tolkien and Sullivan would start to engage with the wide players on Haiti's back line they'd like cheat way up high get them to sort of commit to them be like you're with me we're paired up now and then they would like drop back as as Ream and Richards and Freeman were knocking around and they would bring that player way up field with him so Haiti would send their wide fullbacks upfield off the ball to sort of anticipate and press our wide players, which for me is an invitation to knock it up between now that basically knock it into that big space that that fullback has just left and let Big Pat just go after it over and over and over again. Because Big Pat is he has some limitations that people pointed out on the internet, some more harshly than others. but what he is very good at is sort of flipping the math on a 50-50 ball between a striker and a centerback where they're really not 50-50 at all.

They're 90-10 to the center in most cases. And Big Pat turns into, I don't know, I don't know exactly, but it feels like 60-40 to Big Pat's advantage. I'd give him more 75. 25. Right. Certainly against the opponents we're playing now, where when that ball goes in, you need to have a huge. step on him and you need to be savvy enough. The best play that I've seen for most players is just get into a ton of contact and then go down because

referees are so ready to give the foul against Big Pat and against strikers in general. You know, defenders tend to get the benefit of the doubt there. So this was a ball that I thought we could have just been hitting nonstop. Just keep hitting it into this channel, let Big Pat go. We kind of even felt like not knowing our personnel well enough where like Brenda was actually breaking from the 10. So it was good.

It's nominally like, theory is good pistoning where Tolkien goes upfield, gets the wide defender's attention, then checks back, and then Brenda races into that space. But Big Pat was kind of going at the same time. And for my money, I would rather have Big Pat in that scuffle chasing a ball down the channel than Brendano. You've always been a wise investor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally.

I mean, Brenda just, I mean, can't win a physical battle at all. and yeah I'd be surprised if we see a ton of him for the rest of the tournament honestly but but you know stranger things have happened okay so that's the shape and what kind of what we're trying to do I felt like I wish we were trying to do I don't think we were doing it that often or I think we should have been just doing it as like our default reflexively and I think we weren't doing a lot we still did it a few times and a lot of them will probably make it on the timeline because we get a lot of joy out of it.

Yeah, they all will pretty much. And I guess one thing I noticed is when we were knocking the ball around, we would play it into Pat's feet, whenever we played it into Pat's feet or anybody's feet. But often with Pat, he wasn't really ready for it, you know, or he wasn't, he wasn't sort of seeing the play developed the same way Chris Richards was or Tim Riem was. And that was that was frustrating to me because I feel like he you know his he is he does offer a lot of good things and he scored a really nice goal. And like you said, he he bosses the centerbacks we've played against so far. But he's not a great dance partner.

I don't think not just because of his touch, which, you know, his touch in tight space has is uneven. I had some good moments, but also it's uneven. But it's his like his recognition of like when to go and where. to go to get there. I mean, there's a, we'll get it to it in the time. There's a moment where I think Luca played a pass out, or no, it was Tolkien played a pass, a one-time pass from the left touchline into that channel, into that open space that had been vacated in the way you described.

And, and Pat just not seeing it, you know, he's not, he doesn't have that muscle memory to, like, say, oh, that's there, let's go. Because he breaks off his run, and then it looks like a pass to nobody. but it was actually, I think, a pretty promising moment to get that kind of joy we were talking about. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And some of that will just come with. It's all a brand new squad playing together.

But yeah, I think there's a great deal of it being just not necessarily recognizing things early enough and sort of on an individual recognition level. Yeah. Okay. Let's take a break. Let's take a break and then come back and do the time. If you want to skip all the ads and get the clip notes, which are already posted to the Patreon, which is like almost every item in video form that we're about to talk about, join the Patreon.

Link is in the show notes. All right, we're back, and we're getting right to the timeline. So 22 seconds in, Tyler Adams gets a yellow card. He leaves his feet into a 50-50 ball and scissors, Dukens Nazan's plant leg. I mean, much-deserved yellow card right away. Maybe you can get away with that in the Premier League, buddy, but not in Conca Calfa. Yeah, this is really bad conca caffing, right? We've talked about it at length, so we don't need to hammer on it too much, but that's not really what the Conca Caffery is all about.

I feel like Conca Caffee gets this reputation, but it's generally done in like a more clever way. Like, that's the whole point. There's a cleverness to it. And leaving yourself totally open to a red card in a dead rubber game 20 seconds in, uh, seems like not, not good conca capping. No,

yeah, it was definitely orange and Hugh, the card. And yeah, I get he's trying to send an early message and, you know, be physical, but this is ill-advised.

Thankfully, he, you know, he managed that. The rest of the game didn't get another booking. All right, so fourth minute. This is that nice incisive pass I noticed from Tolkien from the touchline where Pat breaks off his run. Defender gets there first, clears it right to Brendan, and he shifts it over to Luca and we're off.

But Luca, we have not discussed him yet. But as he has done way too many times in these past couple weeks, I think he just kind of waste the counter with a pass that can't avoid a white shirt. it's right to the right to the feet of the defender who's trying he's trying to account for both brendo and pat so brendo's out wide pat's running the channel it seems like a pretty promising moment wasted yeah it's it's just under hit it's not hit with enough pace so uh because pat's got the inside position on that particular defender there's another one coming from the inside to help so it's not like luca can put it anywhere but it does have to hit it with enough pace that that defender can't sort of like, which what ends up happening is the defender holds up his stride to let Pat go even further and then cuts in behind him to intercept it. Yeah.

Okay. Richard sits a big, so I think we got to talk about Tolkien a fair amount here, but Richard sits a big diagonal over to him at the 440 mark and he just can't keep it in bounds. This one was maybe a little tricky, but it is colored in retrospect by Tolkien's continuing struggles in the first half with the touchline. he one time a much easier one he doesn't keep it in bounds and then another time he dribbles out of bounds so um that's too bad yeah it's too bad and again when you're when you're the guy who probably isn't clearly favored by the manager in the sense that started arston in every game leading up to this uh you've got to be decisively better for the most part or you just need to pray that the other guy has some really real shockers uh so i don't i don't No, like, I'm fine. I like Tolkien, but it's, again, it just kind of goes back to, like, you're playing Haiti. If you really think you're the guy and people really think, like, Tolkien should be the guy.

I do. Yeah. Yeah. Then you got to deliver more when you get your chance. Otherwise, A.O. Wiley ends up being the big winner for the Gold Cup. Who is, for the record, not there. Not at the Gold Cup. Yeah.

I thought Tolkien, I thought Tolkien settled in. You know, he had his three bad, the three dribbles out of bounds, and then he had the, they wasted a corner kick. But as the game went on, he was pretty steady defensively, you know. And I thought, I think I'm a little higher on his performance than you are, but we'll get into it. I think he was perfectly serviceable, but I just am curious if that's going to be enough. To this place, Max Arstyn.

Yeah, I mean, we platoon Sam Vines and George Bello on our way to winning a gold cup. Yeah. four years ago. Like it's just you just you're going to have, I feel like you're going to have to do more. So you got, this is, this is your dress rehearsal,

Tolkien, you got to, you got to pray that you get another shot, uh, under the bright lights of the knockouts. And then you got to like, you got to do something, buddy.

Yeah. Yeah. He'll get to the assist, but yeah, it was very, very Sam Vines-esque, the assist. That's crazy that we did it with Vines and Bellow,

players who, um, nowhere near the national team anymore. Six minutes, a good back-to-front move from Haiti, starting with Placid, the goalkeeper. They cut through Brenda and Luca and Malik on our left side. And then Nazone does a little wall pass with Piero and chested into the box, kind of out of control. Richard's bodies him and he flops to the ground. There's a penalty check, which I was a little worried about, but no penalty.

And I think probably the right call there. Yeah, the worry here was how easily Haiti gets through us. You know, we talk about how we've kind of struggled against weaker teams. But when you talk about like even the Panama loss with our full strength team, the one in Nations League, not the one in Copa. There's a lot of Panama losses to go through. The Nations League won. It's not like Panama were like dicing us up and getting all these chances.

And we were lucky it was zero zero and then they scored their late winner. Like they did nothing, right? Panama did nothing for 90 minutes, 92 minutes. Haiti, five minutes in. does something and it's decent and we made it look a little too easy. It's a high line of confrontation from us. We've got a group of guys around the ball. And in this case, what's a little different from the Switzerland game where we were trying

to do high lines and confrontation, Switzerland made it look easy. They made it look easy within the front field, like where we had our front guys around the line of confrontation to beat them and then they would start attacking the next line. Haiti here just skips over all that with an easy pass into a guy sitting right. right in front of our back line. So they find a huge gap between Adams and Luca and our back four. And so that's the next thing we're going to have to solve, if we're going to play like this,

is I don't know if it's going to be Adams having to stay home more or if it's going to have to be Tim Rame getting more comfortable stepping up into that pocket, into the hole to put pressure on that player who saggs in. Because Riem, I think, his tendency is to stay deep because he's our age and he just knows he's got a like account not quite not quite but close oh so that's what i picked up on that it didn't happen over and over again but it's just something where we're going to have to see what those two center mids can do and how far up they can get and still trust that ream is

going to be able to step in and destroy behind them as needed hmm do you put it do you pin any of it on Brenda and and Malik and Luca? I mean, there's always an element of that, right? Like, if the blitz gets there late, it's harder for the guys downfield

to maintain coverage. It's kind of the analogy we used in Switzerland. So, because we were running a lot of not, not necessarily speedy, powerful guys. But I don't know, man. Brenda, Brenda's a good presser. Like, yeah. Like, he's going to arrive.

He might not slam into people and take the ball from the way Malie. does, but he's going to arrive and make him put their head down. So this one, I'm going to put this one more on the back line, not quite recognizing like Adams is way up field. If one of us doesn't step up between Ream and Richards, they're going to have this, they're going to have this out. Yeah, interesting.

Haiti continues to cause us some problems. We throw it in deep on the left side of our field, and then Quinn gives it away in our half with a header that's behind Luca. you know, kind of trying to combine to get out of pressure. And then Freeman, you know, ball works over to the, to our right side. And then Freeman does well, 1v1. I thought Freeman had a pretty solid game, maybe even better than pretty solid, a good game. So he does well 1v1, knocks it out for a throw.

And Haiti on the throw works it in the box and then back out. And then Pierre, one of the midfielders, bends a gorgeous outside of the boot ball. And I just learned this phrase from Melissa Ortiz. on one of the Club World Cup broadcasts with the three toes, the three outside toes. Isn't that nice? Yeah. And it's just bends like just over the head of Piero. But man, it's a really nice ball.

It kind of eliminates everybody if it's like a foot lower or two feet lower. I mean, he could, he's got a free header from the six. So, yeah, a little nervy. Yeah, so we kind of have to talk about this because this is Ream getting beat. And it's easy to just sort of move on from it, as you tend to do in watching soccer games, because they don't score or even get the shot that forces a save or anything. But this is a tough look for Tim Ream here to get wrong-footed this badly, where he is shifting his weight upfield and the pass comes in behind him. Because that's his man. There's no reason that a guy should be wide open.

It's not like Ream stopped because he's like, this ball's just sailing over everyone. he is beat and a better service is a free header from five yards out that no one else can make a play on. So, I mean, it's just like Ream is stepping up here for us in a lot of ways or is being forced to just keep himself in this role. But he's not like, he's not a flawless center back right now. He hasn't had, I wouldn't say he's had a Chris Richards group stage. No. two demerits for Tim Ream on this one. 820 mark, really nice entry ball through the lines from Freeman to Tillman.

He turns and tries to play Ajamong in and passes right to the centerback. You know, he just needs to bend it a little further behind him. I don't know that we need to dwell on it too much, but this is nice. I love the disguise from Freeman on this pass. He's thinking, he's looking for a solution. He's got, it's not an easy pass to make. It's just to the left of the defender right in front of him, just to the right of the defender that's halfway between him and and Tillman.

And then, you know, you back Tillman to execute this pass most of the time. Yeah. The impressive thing for Freeman for me on this one, too, is he's standing right on the ball. So he's got it kind of waiting, watching Haiti's movement and our movement. But he doesn't have to take a second prep touch. And it's a, I mean, it's like a 25-yard pass. And he fizzes up to. Yeah.

So, I mean, that's just a technical thing that's nice to have in your. pocket if you can you can fire that from a standstill with the ball right under you. Totally, yeah. And he, this was not his only good pass upfield like this in the game. And then we get our goal in the 10th minute. It's a good, uh, hooked ball at the back post and a perfect header from Tillman. The ball comes from Brendan Aronson, who I, you know, I do acknowledge that I criticize him a lot.

This was a really nice pass. So it starts with Big Pat tracking a ball down the left channel. we don't we didn't see in the broadcast who played the pass so we're just going to have to live with that unknown um but it kills me by the way get me up inside and i'm not joking yeah so he tracks it down and then cuts it back for brendo and it's kind of behind him and he kind of gets it stuck under him he takes a shot but it's kind of it's it's It's perfunctory, and his shot is blocked. He and Luca collect it, and then he's got it out at the corner of the box, and he, you know, he faces up his guy, kind of dips his shoulder, and then goes to the inside, curls it to the back post. Both Tillman and Quinn Sullivan are on the back post.

But Tillman's header is, I think we can't underrate how good of a header this is all the way back across the face of the goal, off the, not quite off the post, but just inside the post. and it's 1-0 USA. Yeah, aesthetically magnificent finish from Malik Tillman. So that is fantastic. I'm going to go back as I do in these goals because the Big Pat moment, I think, is still the biggest thing to take from this going forward because it's that ball into the channel. And by the time the camera cuts, yeah, we don't see who played it.

But we see that Tillman, or that, I'm sorry, Big Pat does not have like the position to get to this ball. the ball's moving out to the channel so it's between Pat and the sideline and the defender is also between Pat and the sideline. So the defender actually has the inside ground but it's a bouncing ball so it's

up in the air which means that in the time before it gets back down to body level Big Pat just like runs the defender past the ball so now Pat has inside position and his position is literally inside to the goal and the defender literally falls down,

bumping back into Pat. So, like, this is the math we're talking about, where almost any other striker for the U.S., you know, puts in an effort and maybe tries to force a bad clearance or makes a defender hit it out of bounds. Like, just ends up with the ball, facing goal with the defender on the floor. Yeah.

And then fails to execute in a way that really helps us once he does that. Right. It's something that, like, I get Pocitino liking this. And I don't know how far it'll carry once the full strength guys are back. But this kind of a moment is like, man, this is useful. And for a national team where you can't get all your tactics right, if you can lump a ball forward and have some hope that your forward can literally just turn that

into a good attacking moment, that's going to stay with a coach. Right. Yeah, because I'm so glad you made that point because I would, I focused as my timeline items suggested on the past that was behind Brenda, a slightly, behind him. I still made it to his feet. But yeah, I don't think, I don't think Josh Sergeant gets to that ball. And I'm, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big fan of Josh Sergeant. I wish he was in this camp. But I don't think he does. And I, and I, and I don't think Rico does either. Maybe Fuller and Balligan. But I don't know. So yeah.

And those wins, you know, turning into that productive of a moment, comes with the Haiti caveat. But what can also stick with a coach is Big Pat five minutes into a Switzerland cameo. after they switched at halftime, flip the Switzerland center back and easily leverages them and leaves him behind to the point where he has to the guy has to rack him up from the back,

drag him down and pretty good tackle football tackle and get a yellow card. So those, that's sort of like, I could see that again, staying in a coach's mind to be like, this guy has something. He's going to be frustrating a lot of the time. But man,

there's, there are going to be those moments where I could take that. I could use that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Haiti threatens a little bit up our right side in the 14th minute, quick little combination in the box,

a good intervention from Ream to send it out for a corner instead of letting the guy shoot from inside the box. So Bell's like, I'll jump in again. Okay, okay. I mean, I kind of got to ding Ream a little bit here, too. It's a good intervention, so he gets the credit for that. The reason he has to intervene sort of so desperately is because he's late to join the party as Haiti are combining on that side. He leaves the gap between himself and Richard's too large.

Richards eventually has to step up to the top of the box to defend, and they combine behind him, which is sort of predictable outcome when Richard steps up to challenge. And Ream should be there a little sooner, and even Tolkien should be a much tighter. Tolkien's kind of out wide, too, where he can't help where all of Haiti's traffic is. So there was no other player that Ream would have been leaving.

There was one guy wider than Tolkien that Tolkien could account for, even if both Ream and Tolkien are Five. Rime could have been five yards closer sooner. Tolkien could have been seven, eight yards closer to the play. So just little details that hopefully kind of are just more alert to as we play better teams. Again, some of this could just be dead roberification.

It's Haiti. You're just... I mean, Ream's in the same situation as everybody else where he needs to play well to keep his spot. So I don't know if we can blame. am dead rubber fification. That's probably true, but I don't know what, I don't know if, like, Potch is just, like, ream, you're my guy for this tournament.

Like, I just don't trust anyone else. You're the, you're the vet. Yeah. Okay. Another demerit for Tim. 16th minute, Tillman wins a tough challenge. Oh, I got to, I got to say, so the ensuing corner on that goes short. Haiti threatens again.

The ball is hooked to the backposts and then nodded. it on a loop to the penalty marker. Adams rises to head it away, but it only goes, he doesn't head it far enough to get out of the box. So it just kind of comes down just behind the penalty marker, and Nazone meets it on the volley, smashes it. But Tolkien does well, I think, to throw himself in the way and block it out

all the way to midfield. Hey, go, Tolkien. Yeah, way to go, J. Mai. And then 16th minute Tillman wins that tough challenge at the edge of our defensive third. He plays Aronson into space. Aronson plays Pat into space behind. He's wide left. I do think, in fairness, this is a ball most of our strikers could get to.

You know, it's not a 50-51 or a 75-25-1 or whatever we want to call it, 90-10. But he's wide left. He cuts onto his right foot. Maybe he had Sullivan with the early rifled ball with his left foot. Maybe not. I don't know. But he squares it to his square to Brenda inside the box, gets cut out. Malik wins it back again just outside their box, plays it over to Brenda, and then he tries to go around his guy and just pushes it out of balance.

So this is another one that I think people are going to seize on for clumsy Big Pat. Big Pat's real clumsy, right? For sure. That's kind of a, and I don't think that's an unfair description of Big Pat in a lot of moments. But this is a tough one for him because the way our guys move in this small group attacking moment isn't very good. So we've got a four on three is kind of what it shapes out as. And I actually think the best chance, given everyone's movement that we could have had, would have been Big Pat just taking the narrow angle shot initially.

And that's kind of disappointing. That's all you can get from a four on three is a narrow angle shot. So, you know, me, I love the square ball. Like I've always like, you've got to find a way to square it when you got the bodies. But we didn't move any good way to create a square ball. So by the time, Big Pat's getting it. uh, Brenda and it's Luca,

right? In with them. Uh, they've put themselves on the same line. So we just didn't fill the right gaps and make the right slashing runs. No one cuts hard to the near post. Um,

you can watch it. It almost looks like the old school video game where the guys off the ball will do the exact same motion, you know, and when all the, the, those games couldn't do three different animations at once. So you got to have certain guys doing the same animation.

Yeah. Uh, kind of like cheer leaders. Yeah. Yeah, the crowd all does the same stuff. Brenda and Luke are both running hard into the box, and then they literally both stop at the same time, and then both backpedal two steps at the same time,

which is a fine move for one of them to do. But when both of them do it, you're turning your four on three into a three on three, and then Haiti have, again, good commitment to get numbers back. They add three more guys to the mix, and now it's four on six, and they cut out the attempt of the pass. Yeah, yeah.

I think he had Luca, I think he had Luke, I mean, a really narrow window for like a split second where he could have hit Luca. But yeah, you'd like to see more sort of more double moves from everybody. Yeah, more crisscrossing. You know, we saw Switchone do it to us where they run across your face and drag a defender just to make the defender even change their weight where now they can't react to a pass or dribble the other way. And we just, we didn't quite get that here. Even the pass to Luca, I agree, he could hit that.

But Brenda's right in his view. So he looks up and sees Brenda before he can see Luca. It's just tricky. Yeah, it's a confusing sight to look up and see. I mean, maybe if Quinn makes the run, if Quinn, Quinn's probably thinking, get it to me on the backpost. Yes. But the thing he needs to do is make the near post run since he's the most advanced of the runners, which does clear out the space for Luca. Yep.

So even when Pat stops, Luca's coming into like an open. space on the back post. And if that run happens and Quinn drags that defender towards the near post, then it's, then what I expect you'd see from even from Big Pat is just a little clipped ball. Then you clip it. Then you're not trying to find the path on the ground. You clip it anywhere between Luca and the goal and he just gets to, he gets a nice little volley tap in. Or he settles it and then passes it to the goalkeeper's feet, which is what he did later.

Luca catching hypothetical shade. Well, he's just his final third, him and the final third, it's like we always give Eunice Musa grief for him the way he plays in the final third. I just, I'm not sure Luca is that different, you know. I buy it. 17th minute, good shoulder dip from Aronson, so got to give him credit here in midfield. When he gets the ball, he eliminates a guy on the dribble, which you love to see. The game is about eliminating. A lot of the game is just, can you?

eliminate somebody on the dribble and create some chaos for the defense. And he does this. He plays it out to Quinn on the right. Quinn goes to the end line and then just smashes it across the six. It's the right. I think the right idea. Tillman is there. But it's a little too high and a lot too hot.

And it goes out for a throw in all the way on the other side. Yeah, this is another good example of Haiti racing back just because by the time we get that ball up to Quinn, he can't hit it. Tillman's the only guy can hit because Haiti have got. seven people back at speed to get any late arriving players. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just watching it back again. And if he hits it just a little softer and with a little more curl,

it is a tap-in for Malik on the back. Yeah. And then we get the goal for Haiti and it's, I don't know what there is to analyze here. Well, there's some stuff to analyze, of course. But it's a freeze howler. Matt Freeze gets his howler. So we would have loved to go the whole tournament

Without something like this, but we just couldn't So it's a long ball from Adé in the back One of the Haitian centerbacks Ream runs it down ahead of Deedson Plays it back to freeze with his right foot Freezes in a bit of a tight spot But the ball's bouncing too So it's not an easy pass to handle Or to one touch out of there

And he sees Tolkien available out to his left And I think it's not a bad idea to just play the pass to him. And he just scuffs it. And it goes right to Deedson. Deetson says, thank you very much. And shifts it on to that left foot and then bends it in beautifully at the far post 1-1.

Yeah. So I've said, I'm on the record saying that it's a tough ball in from Ream. And I think that's true. But it's not, it's certainly not an unplayable ball. So it's a tough ball from Ream if you're going to try to play it out to Tolkien. And so what we need in a, in a more competitive game, what we need here from Fries is just a little bit more humility, is how I'm going to say it. You know, I mean to say Fries has an ego.

But the humility here is you have to be willing to embarrass yourself a little bit with your decision to then say, I'm just not good enough to make the pass that was open. Like, Tolkien is clearly the open guy. Deetson has chased Ream all the way to the end line. There are other attackers right on Chris Richards, who's right in front of the goal. There's no one else coming. So Tolkien at the corner of the box is wide open. And if Riem had hit this pass, you know, the one that you see a lot where he literally just cushions it perfectly and now is rolling really smoothly to your goalkeeper and they can set their feet. Then he hits this ball to Tolkien, no question.

But because it's coming in with the spin and it's like skipping, he can't take a touch because the guy who's next to Richards would be too close to him. A bad touch means you're done for. So he has to hit it one time. But he just has to concede that I'm not good enough to hit a skipping ball. that's spinning one time, a high enough percentage of the time through the window I have to try it. And he doesn't really have time to think all that through because it's, you know, it is all tight. And so he just hadn't done the math sort of ahead of time in that situation to be like, I either have to lump this up in the air straight out of bounds, which still isn't actually that easy to do because he can't set his feet.

Like the embarrassing play here, the humility play is to hit it directly out of bounds for a corner kick. Yeah, just foul it off. Just foul it off. Keep the bat alive. Which everyone will also mock you for and be like, oh my God, you couldn't like look at Tolkien. But you have to just hold your hands up and be like, I'm sorry, I'm just not good enough to do that. And then you have to actually say that. Yeah.

I mean, literally, you just have to hold up your hand and be like, I just, you know, with my feet, not good. So that's the play. And I mean, like I give my goalkeepers, any keeper I've coach, I always give them permission in games. like you can always do this. Like I will back you. Afterwards, we can talk about your risk assessment, whether we think it was, you know, too cautious or what.

But in the moment, if you're, that's your mind, hit it out for a corner and apologize for the corner, but the other embarrassment is much worse. Yeah, better that than a goal. And, yeah, we got the goal. So, I guess big picture, my thought is, it's good for us to have a mistake punished like this. We've had some mistakes go unpunished in the group steak,

I also think and hope, I guess hope is the better word, as listener Wayne Warner suggested, that this will be a good reset for freeze. I don't know. Does this make you want Turner back? No, but I mean, I'm fine with either of them, but I don't, I wish this wouldn't have happened. I don't mind a mistake getting punished. And again, in this situation, it's dead rubber. I'm glad Riem tried to force it rather than just rem making the safety. play in hitting out for a throw.

I'd rather take as many, give yourself as many chances as possible before you have to do the safe play. So again, Ream wasn't trying to skip this ball into his keeper. He was probably trying to lay it down nicely on the grass where, you know, Fris can take his three-step approach to it and either launch it, hit Tolkien, or if he has to, hit it out of bounds. But that's not happening. But this is the time to do it.

And now in the knockouts, now we can all change our, decision making great finish from deetson no uh yeah like even after the turnover it's it's not like oh well this is this is now a gimmy like fris is still in position because because of the the angle of his giveaway he's in the right spot to be and deetson just it's a great curler so i kind of i kind of love that for luci yeah totally i mean it's a really nice goal um i mean uh he had he had one place where he could put it and that's where he put it. Let's take another break. Again, skip the ads, get the clip notes videos, join the Patreon, at least the $5 level.

The link is in the show notes. And we're back. So 24th minute, huge chance for Ajamong. Reem wins it on a Haitian ball through the lines on the ground, taps it to Luca. He kind of goes forward hesitantly. I'd be interested in your thoughts on Luca deletore so far in this. you know, this last month or so. But I thought he was too hesitant too often.

But anyway, he plays the right pass to Ajamong. It's just a little late. It looks like he's off on the replay. But he's in on goal and the flag stays down. So he tries to beat Placid near post and it's saved out for a corner. And then Tolkien sends the ensuing corner over everyone, which I think contributes to the – I feel like the first 30 minutes of the game matters more than anything in what your impression is of a player.

And this contributes to at least my initial impression that Tolkien was really not playing well at all. But Ajamong's off, right? It's kind of a moot point. Yeah, yeah, he's off. But it's not moot for our purposes because we're evaluating what someone can offer. And what he offers is just a breakaway that he misses,

which is people who have listened to us for a while, no, I'm not really holding that against him too much. like unless there's unless there's some like really inexplicable decision for what technique to use. You know, it's possible that the little finishing subtleties like maybe he stared down what he was going to do. Maybe he opened up his hips too much and let Hades Keeper get that big jump. It's a really good save. But maybe that's because he, you know, he tipped it a little bit, tipped his pitch and let the keeper get that jump. But what I will say is the clumsy pat for me isn't the,

miss. The clumsy pat for me is like the footwork ahead of the run. So as Luca's doing this, he doesn't have like that striker like fish hook efficiency of holding as much as you can to give yourself the best chance of staying on side and then breaking.

Like he's doing kind of a really clumsy shift of his body like a 360 as he started dragging the cross from right to left. And then he kind of like spins the other way because the ball didn't come right away. And then Luca hits it as he's in the middle of his sort of spin. And it's just like, you got to do the fish hook. You got to kind of like take two steps hard back to the,

anticipating that they're going to try to take you off, pull you offside here and then break. Because you've got all the room in the world if you're, if you're two feet closer to Luca de la Torre as the pass is made. Yeah. The fish hook as in like you, when you're fishing, which I, you know,

don't do very often. But you're fishing and then you pull the, hook hard like to no I literally just think of it as like the shape of a fish yeah if you if you draw the the red line following the player it just looks like a jay

where they they take two steps back towards the half line and then go hard to go on the touch okay apologies to all the anglers out there Tolkien uh tries to hit a ball into the channel for pat but they're not on the same page again

uh that was one that brendo went at the same time. Okay. He darted diagonally out from the 10 spot towards the sideline towards the corner flag. And I think maybe I couldn't tell which guy Tolko was trying to hit, but I was just like, that could have been why Pat checked his run in another time where it's like, Brenda, don't go. You're going to take your guy back.

And also, you're not going to get there. Like, let back get this. Yeah. 27th minute. Richards wins it, taps it up to Malik. He tries to play Sullivan wide, but he's not gotten back on side. After the previous sequence, this is a ding against Sullivan. I'm like, come on, buddy.

You haven't connected a lot of passes in the first 25 minutes. Now you're not getting back on the side. I don't even know why he was up so far up in the first place. So he had been making that. I think there's the one where he was making the run past Big Pat. And we had a nice little chance of combination of Pat's pass goes is poor. So it's another one of those like, ah, Pat, like throwing your hands up. But then he just keeps running.

You know, like the pass gets cut out. And he does the thing where like you keep running like, oh, I was so close. It could have had me. keep running like he just won the 100 meter dash at the Olympics yeah and then he stops and like just turns and is going really slow back and this is where like I just caught this one so it's a little thing but I'm like like get back on side like Haiti's not going to keep this ball forever like get to the next spot you need to be at and and we didn't even win it back that fast uh Haiti connected two or three passes and then we win it and then we connect a couple passes and then Malik finds him out in that wide open space and he's trotting back and he's offside so yeah I was I was I was a little fussy about it. Yeah. I think he did the, I think he does the Robona just to try to make up for this. He had the off sides definitely in mind when he did the Robona.

We get a nice ball through the lines from Freeman to Tillman again in the 28th minute. Tillman sprays it out to Tolkien and he can't keep it in bounds. This is one we've discussed already. He should have. This was more frustrating, I think, because we had a semi-promising thing going. semi-promising, I say, because it was like a three-on-three, you know. Yeah, it's a chance for you to, again, this is where you have to step up. And I don't just mean the mistake.

I mean, you're looking for this chance to have it at your feet running at a retreating Haiti to be like, I can add something here, coach. Couldn't do it. So now twice he's gotten on the wrong side of the touchline. People were making the joke. Maybe he struggles with the struggle with. the curvature of the field, you know? He's a funny guy.

Did you see the video of him in the Dallas Cowboys locker room? No. He's like, I got it. He's like, I'm trying to find a helmet to take, you know. 30th minute, Luca finds a little pocket of space and Ream finds between the lines. And, you know, this does ultimately result in a good moment for us. But I see as he, I have the screenshot in the document here, as he receives the bar, as he receives the ball, this is like a time where you, like, just press the issue a little bit. You have a bunch of

space in front of you. You can take it and you can, you can force someone to commit to you. Maybe, you know, you got Tillman sort of coming in on your right and you got Pat right ahead of you with two guys on him. And then you got Tolkien out left. And he just plays, I don't know if he even looks forward after he receives the ball. He just like sort of automatically plays it over to Tolkien. And again, so it, it, it ends. up being okay because we sort of knock it around and then he plays Tolkien into the corner and then Tolkien plays it back to him in space and he whips a ball in and Quinn Sullivan who is way out wide right arrives and does a kind of unorthodox but pretty cool volley just ahead of the defender and hits the crossbar

so it turned out okay but the this moment from Luca is why I'm a little frustrated with his lack of uh protagonistism you know yeah and I think that's totally fair like we desperately need our program in these moments drive forward, right? Like we are one of our key problems is not pushing transition as much as we as we need to. So when you create, and this isn't technically transition, but when you create, when you've broken them, you've got your break, like you have to press and he just kind of passes a responsibility on to that simple pass out to Tolkien, which doesn't, he could have pressed right into the middle of her trading back line and he steady plays it out wide, which if I'm a retreating back line, I'm very happy about.

Yeah, by the time Tolkien, like, traps the ball, it's now, there's now seven defenders between him and the goal. Yeah. So, so again, we end up it in a recirculation mode where we get something out of that, but I would much rather see us as a team, just drive right at, right out of a team that's retreating. Yeah. The ensuing corner after the, I mean, he, It hits the crossbar, comes back in, and then Malik tries to settle it, and then hits it off somebody for a corner.

So on the ensuing corner, it's played by Malik short to Sullivan, and he was about to go on, like, his best five-minute stretch of the game. He rips one at the near post and draws, I think, a pretty good save from Placid. It was on frame, and then it comes back to him, and he curls one at the back post, and Richards can't get a meaningful touch to it. Even though he's there, I think maybe because Plessi got a finger to it, we didn't really see the replay on this. but I don't know why else Richards would have whiffed on this. So, I think that's going to make up for that offside call. Like, he's like, I got to do, I got to, that's a bad one.

They're going to, they're going to call up Paul Ariola next, next window if I don't do something about this. Well, the thing is, I thought Sullivan, by the time the game, by the time he came off, I thought, not a great first 30 minutes from him, but I thought he, he, He can give us something off the bench in this tournament. You know? Can he give us something off the bench in the World Cup in Los Angeles next summer? That's another question. But I thought all in all, he settled in as the game went on and did start to actually be a meaningful contributor.

Yeah, I mean, again, it's, I'm using Paul Arieola, but it's also the, I mean, it's the Matthew Hoppy line. It's a Nico Giochini line. Like you got to do a lot just to even get another call up. And most of those guys didn't even end up with another call up. Or if they did, it was, you know, not much going on. So yeah, he's got to show us something to get one more call in this tournament and then turn that into another call and another call. And I don't know. Yeah.

He's not, no one is demanding it, right? Besides our dear Malik and our Chris Richards, who weren't really a question. marks to begin with. Yeah. Well, we're looking at like a four-hour podcast episode here. So, so we save, we save all our longest ones for the most inconsequential games. This game will be so forgotten by next week. Well, okay, another good Freeman pass between the lines. Also a Freeman giveaway in the 34th minute. Let's skip ahead to 44th minute. Richards plays a delight. football to Pat's feet for some holdup. I mean, this is a disguised pass after we just knocking it around for an interminable period of time, it seems like.

And Packets pulled down, no foul called. But I think this is one of the examples where Pat's just a little slow to recognize that there's a window here. Richards recognizes it pings it to him on the ground. And Freeman does well to win it as Haiti counters the other way. which I think is notable because he's pretty solid defensively, unlike the way he was in the game against Saudi Arabia. Ajumang gets a chance right before the half, a good turn and vertical little pass from Sullivan.

After a little tapped pass from Adams as we're knocking it around their box, Ajumang takes a shot from a narrow angle with his left foot. It's blocked out of bounds for a corner. And, yeah, this is the other, this is the player, right? These are the things that are going to keep a coach going back to If that's what Pachitino decides, it'll be this kind of a thing where he's back to goal and he spins the guy. And like there's there's no, like there's nothing better than a guy who can do that where you don't where you don't have to have all these tactics to free somebody up. The guy gets it defended and then gets on the wrong side of it.

It's Kat Macario, like who does it for the women all the time. Yeah. Like you can't. Yeah. It's a ridiculous scheme shortcut. Yeah. Like in that cage match, he is the, he's the king right now. So that's the half. I mean, Haiti got three corners right at the end of the half, some scrambles in our box, nothing too dangerous. I feel like, you know, Malik scored with a deft finish on a lovely ball from Brendan and a chance that was ultimately sort of built on a foundation of Pat's ability to,

win battles, win physical battles. And then we gave up an unforced error. I don't think we got enough in that first half from Luca or Brenda or Quinn in the run of play, even though Brenda had the really nice assist. But we need more from those positions, I think. I think that's fair. I think that's, those are the notes I'd give the guys after the dress rehearsal. Who's the choreographer?

I guess that's, no changes at the half. No big shock there. Haiti wins a corner right off the opening kick. It's a little casual from Tolkien, I think, right in the 46th minute. And then they get a decent chance on a short corner, headed over. 48th minute, an excellent ball from Richards

through the lines for Tillman again in a good pocket. Tillman plays it in behind for Aronson. And he mishandles it. And we didn't see a replay of this part. It might have been nicked by the defender on the, way through. But if he gets a good touch on this, he's in on goal for a left-footed shot. I mean, the way he's, the way he operates and the way people can sort of bully him on

the field, you imagine that space will get closed down really fast. But this was a nice pass by Tillman. Aronson does manage to corral it, but like going away from goal and he gets, he gets pulled down in the ensuing scrum. it's a free kick, Tolkien and Tillman both stand over it, and then Tolkien hits it with his left foot. He's left footed, of course, just wide. The good news here is us pressing an advantage.

This is what I kind of see it is, and this is what we want more of. Like, it hit a risky pass, you know, like hit a difficult pass. There's not a huge window here. Like, don't just be like, oh, well, it's too small window. We've got to recirculate. So Malik, I think, is a guy willing to do that. And then at least give us a chance to be disappointed at our lack of execution once we do it.

But press, please, go. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Tillman is, I mean, that's one of Tillman's great strengths. This is his willingness to press advantages, I feel like. There's that Pierre Free kick that's saved by Freeze down to his right in the 52nd minute. This shot was not on target. I think it was going off the post or at best going off the post. but you know

goalkeeper can't take any chances it was a Sullivan foul that led to the free kick a kind of I think a little bit naive hand to the back barely touched him but Nazan went down and got this chance any thoughts on that or should we just keep moving keep it moving

Sullivan shot from outside the box after a token clipped ball to Pat so this is again Pat Pat doesn't even doesn't even settle this ball but it's all him because he gets pulled down and as this click ball from Tolkien

kind of floats towards him and it hits his chest and then kind of dies on the grass right in front of him and then he goes down and the defender who pulls him down also goes down and then Luca just, you know, races onto it and he's got like all kinds of space to run into. We're off, we have a 5V4 but Lucas Pass is behind Sullivan out wide

and this really kills the momentum of the whole thing. It slows us down. So this is a tiny little, I mean, it's not a tiny detail. I think most people understand how important this is. But when you play the past behind somebody on a counterattack in, uh, in wide in space, it's like it's game, it's over, you know? It's like the whole thing is gone in a flash, in a twinkling of an eye. And, um, Sullivan and Brenda try to tap, tap their way into something out wide, right, but it never looks dangerous. And then, I think, you know, Sullivan does take a shot from outside the box, but it's not, it's like 10 yards wide of the post. But again, we went for it.

Lugo was trying to press it. And that's like, right now that's the bar. And I'm like, well, at least we were trying. And then it's like, we got to be a lot better at soccer. We're trying. The bad thing I love because you remember those games you play in training where it's like, all right, it's two touch, everyone. And then someone would take their two touches, but the ball is still right next to them. So they had to just shield the defender until someone else came.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. He was like, I can't touch it. I just have to keep backing this guy up, but he backed him up for like nine yards. Just cleared out the whole space. Yeah. I expect better from Luca here, you know? I mean, he's a student of the game.

He knows he's got to put this on on Quinn Sullivan's front foot. Yes. And there's nothing stopping it. Like he doesn't have, there's no defender who will intercept this. If he overhits it the wrong. way and goes out for a corner, that would happen before anyone could actually stop it from from overleading him. Like he couldn't over lead him unless it went out for a corner. Right.

For a goal kick, I'm sorry. And there's like several different ways to shape the ball, too. He can clip it over him. He can like curl it around him. He can just fizz it straight on the ground. So, I mean, it's not good enough. 58th minute Freeman and Adams draw in three Haitians. Oh, wait.

Yeah, let's just go to that. 58th minute, Freeman and Adams draw in three Haitians, and then Richards plays a lovely pass up the gut for Tillman with his left foot. Tillman collects it. He gets bodied, but he absorbs the contact, and then it kind of just shifts it over to Luca who's running to his left. Luca plays it out to Tolkien, out wide left. He flashes across through the area, and it gets deflected maybe.

It goes all the way through to Quinn. He faces this guy up, and this is where he hits the Robona that pays for all his sins. Yeah, Pat's direction. And that gets cut out. But it's close. It was pretty close to finding Pat. So I like all of this, especially Tillman's resiliency in the middle at the beginning.

Because, you know, he gets blasted and he takes it, you know. A ton of that is great. The pass from Richards to Tillman, and I mean a ton of what Tillman does. That passed from Richard to Tillman, great. Tillman getting blasted, never actually letting the guy get position on the ball, even while he takes a knee, is great.

And then standing up and just shifting it a yard and a half over to Luca Tillman running right off. I'm sorry, Luca Del Torre running right off of him. Like a little like rugby handoff almost. I don't know. Like he's running the counter, triple option stuff. So he's just, yeah, he's just a different, he's a different sophistication of player. Totally, yeah. And yeah, so we're looking better now.

At this point in the game, it feels like Adams is doing. a lot more, like I said at the beginning of the show, we're just not getting much juice from the AVPs. This was my analysis, not much juice from the AVPs, which was, you know, a John Hurdman terminology referring to when an attacker is running at a backline in space. I do kind of blame Aronson and Sullivan the most, but nobody is really killing it on our team.

And let's get into the chalked-off goals because they're both pretty nice. So 64th minute, a chalked-off goal for Tillman, of course. Richards plays a ball over the top for Big Pat. He's on. His first touch is pretty wild. It takes it way out wide. And then he slips and just kind of sprawls in the grass.

And Quinn races onto it. And he goes to the end line and he just smashes it at plus heed it. Proceed. Defender tries to clear it off the line and then smashes it off Malik at the back post into the net. But it hits his arm, kind of his shoulder, but like basically his bicep. So it's not a goal. And I guess I didn't know this rule that like, you know, if a defender has his arm down next to him and the ball hits it, that's not a penalty. But if an attacker puts it in the goal with his arm down next to him. The goal is chalked off.

Yeah. And Malik knew, too, because he never celebrated. And he was, you know, he was even telling Luca Deletoria hit my arm. Did he say that? Yeah. Okay. I thought maybe the lack of celebration was, again, just like the ridiculousness of it, that I'm not really going to celebrate that. That wasn't, that was me.

Just like Big Pat didn't celebrate his goal that Luna kicked off of him. But yeah, I mean, this is what it is. It's more for the clumsy Big Pat narrative. which is, again, pretty spot on, I think. Yeah. For his, he's able to get behind, but Lord knows he can't. That doesn't mean we're there yet. There's a lot that's still going to happen once Big Pat's in behind.

So, yeah, I mean, that's, for me, this is still the story of the group stage is Malik doing in Malik stuff, which is good. Big Pat showing a lot of the stuff that will get you excited. But then all the things that you're going to go, yeah, but he still probably isn't going to be able to be the guy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And he might be the guy. I mean, like, do you throw him on facing a goal because you can just lump, because you're going to just be lumping the ball up field?

You know, I kind of, I was kind of disappointed that he came off of the game when we only had a one goal lead. Again, I know it didn't really matter that much if we won. But because when you have, when you have to protect the lead and you want to send everybody back to play defense, it seems like that's the perfect. That's the perfect moment to have. big pat because you can uh yeah it's not when you're like pressing for a goal it's more like

when you're when you're you're you just need somebody to take the game the game on their shoulders by themselves um okay another good chance for the u.s in this at the 66 minute mark it's a good move up the right adams dribbles out of a tight spot in front of our box strides forward plays it to lucca he one touches it to malik it's a bit of a hospital ball but malick does i think extremely well to dance around a guy and send it up to Sullivan. He squares for Luca in the box and he gets a shot off, but a really tame effort at the keeper with his left foot, which I referenced earlier.

Yeah, it's more great Malik stuff where you have to see the replay to be like, what did he just do there? Like how did he, how did he get that ball up? And I don't even think we got the replay for it. Didn't get it. We just have to guess.

And again, with Malik, I'm almost always going to give him the benefit of the doubt that that was intentional. Like, yeah. I feel like he, whatever his touch. was like he knew what he was doing and just pulled it off perfectly like running full speed

has to touch it and somehow only like nicks it so it goes forward two yards to to get past the other guy yeah my my thought was either he meg the guy or he tapped it from right foot to left foot and the left foot touch went around him you know either one would be something that would be worth a replay yes if any if any fans are out there who are getting video on that sideline, send us a video. Yeah, we'd love to see it. 68th minute, Malik has a goal called back again. Tyler and Freeman are tapping it back and forth.

Tyler loops a nice diagonal ball over the back line from Malik, who's lurking on the left shoulder of the wide defender. He takes it down, swivels and buries it far post past a defender and a keeper. It's a low shot, but he was offside. He was way off sides. just went a little early. I'm curious what you think some people might blame Tyler for the little hop before he hits the pass. But mostly I just think Malik mistimed his run.

So yeah, still won one one. I'm generally on the camp of like sometimes you're just going to be a little bit off. Yeah. And when they've got the lines. Fair. I, the reason I wouldn't blame Tyler here is because, uh, like his last three steps.

are very predictable. You see his three-step approach to the ball, and then he kicks it. So you can time your run for all of those steps. But I'm not mad at Malik for being a fraction offside because you got to go, you got to get it. If you go late, no shot develops. So you can just do your best

and hope that you're accidentally on side. We get another nice move, starting with Adams dribbling around a guy and then passing it to Luca. So this is in the 70th minute. I love the way I do like, like I said earlier, when we eliminate somebody on the dribble, and Adams actually did it a little bit in this game, get a good entry pass from Tolkien into Pat, posted up at the edge of the box, he takes a touch.

And then I think this is one of his nicest combination plays of the game. Nice little pass to Aronson making a run inside of him, like to the inside of him. and Aronson is going into the box and gets closed down immediately doesn't get anything off out of it but that's kind of the

Brenda experience I know some people hate when I say that stuff but that's just it and then we get Lou go ahead Good big Pat moment I mean that's good big pat right there

definitely yeah Luna McGlynn come on for Brenda and Quinn in the 71st minute Luna gives it away that just unconscionable give away on like his fourth touch, which I, you know, it was really sad for me to see.

But then Freeman races over and saves the day with a sliding challenge to win a goal kick after a really heavy touch from, I think it was Nassau, a wide left. And let's see, 73rd minute Tolkien acquits himself well on defense again, running back to win it on a little bit of a counter from Haiti. And we settle it. And Adams gets it in so much space in the center circle. plays a good ball over the top for Tillman, similar to the last one, but not exactly the same, more vertical. And Tillman plucks it down out of the air,

like we've seen him do for PSV. Like, just watching him do that in real time, I gave me a torn hamstring, you know? That's like the kind of thing he can't really, at least somebody of my make and model, can't really do at the age of 43, 42. But anyway, he plucks it down, of the air like we've seen him do for PSV and then he side-foots it and just misses the far post

this is gorgeous stuff from from Malik he was on side um and I and like I said on Twitter earlier I think he's uh he's coming for everybody's heart you know he's gonna be he's gonna be a favorite before I mean I was I was like shocked when it trickled past the post I mean I know he's in he's in such control of a soccer ball uh just like oh yeah There we go. I was almost, I mean, like I was already celebrating. I was too. I thought for sure that was going in.

But it didn't. So then we get the goal. 75th minute. Tolkien, we're knocking it around back there. Tolkien curls it in behind for Ajamong. It's a nice cultured pass, in my opinion. And Pat takes a lovely touch, I think, around the keeper who's arriving, arriving. Maybe he's hesitant.

to have a head-on collision with Pat Ajamong, but Ajumon cancels him with the touch around him and then just slides it into the open net from a tight angle. I think a really nice goal from Pat Ajamong there. 2-1 USA, great ball from Tolkien. Sebastian Burhalter is the first to arrive to celebrate with Big Pat. Let's go, baby. Yeah, great for Pat to get the goal because it's been mixed.

You see all the good stuff that can happen. You see a lot of the frustrating stuff. But for Big Pat, I mean, I just love it. I love that this kid's scoring goals from the U.S. national team. Yeah, D3, from a D3 soccer to scoring a game winner at the Gold Cup in what, like two and a half years or some three years. Let's say it's four years. I don't know.

It's not been that much time. You know, to break down the X's nose, like, especially, I mean, almost for Tolkien. It's a lovely ball into the space. It's very much the Gold Cup group stage back line rearing its head. I think Haiti's losing concentration. You've got four guys in a straight line. The straight line is not parallel to the end line. It's very much a diagonal where the weak side fullback is the deepest,

which means, you know, there's just a massive cushion here that can kind of mask the difficulty of a a pass like this in the next match and the match is going forward. Fair enough, fair enough. Yeah, Tyler goes down and unties his shoes and then ties them back up again, which is kind of a fun thing for him to do after he collides with Ream. So he's doing a little bit of concafri there. White and Cardoso come on for Pat and Luca, and neither of them makes an impact on the game.

We do get a little something from Luna in the 80s. fifth minute, which is the last item in the video that I posted to the Patreon earlier, where Luna receives a pass from Ream real nicely and then turns and plays a lovely ball in for White. White is, you know, he's not going to win a foot race with a centerback here, but what I ding him for is that he just doesn't even know, it doesn't seem like he knows what he's going to do or when he's going to do it and it just gets knocked out of bounds, even as Tolkien arrives to his left for like a little you know you could just shift it over to him and Tolkien's like I don't know Tolkien has a lot of options there so that's too bad

but yeah it's too bad this is the resetting clock that we talked about after Switzerland like once white gets this ball with great position like he's got position on the retreated racing the centerback racing back behind him he never he never puts himself in in any kind of a position to do what he would want to do whatever he would want to do It's just the clock ticks down until the centerback arrives and kicks it away from him. He can't protect it. He doesn't like he's not able to use his body to maintain the advantage he has. It's just it's just heat death as soon as that centerback.

So so like that's it's a perfect contrast for what we've been seeing for the 80 minutes leading up to this and what you get from Pat compared to Brian White. Yeah, that's true. I hadn't thought of it quite like that. Yeah, I mean, Brian White's a, Brian White's, it's not really his game. I mean, what is his game exactly? It's like, he's a poacher. Yeah, that's it for the timeline, I think.

And I feel like we've given the takeaways that we're going to give, haven't we? You have any more? No, no, this is, again, it's hilarious. So we just talk for 90 minutes about the dress rehearsal. Yeah. That's why we get paid the big bucks, Greg. Not to Costa Rica.

They just drew Mexico, just a little bit of context on them. They got a bit shelled by Costa Rica, by Mexico. But Kalo Navas is eternal, and he had a great game. And they did threaten a little bit, and they do play with intensity. I think the one to watch is NYCFC's Alonzo Martinez, who has scored eight goals in MLS so far this season. I think he scored twice as many as that last year. Like we said, they gave up the three goals to Suriname,

But one was just a lovely flicked header, I think a pretty much unstoppable goal. One was a gift-wrapped situation from Francisco Calvo, where he just slipped on the ball and handed it to an attacker who then dribbled in and squared somebody for a tap-in. And then another was a penalty on an unnecessary handball. To contradict myself a little bit, Cernom was dangerous in the last 20 minutes. So this was a nail biter. And then it was another penalty. So the Suriname gave up two penalties to Costa Rica.

Two of their four goals were penalties. Costa Rica will also be missing Manfred Agaaldi, who scored 17 goals for Spartak Moscow this past season. He will miss the game with yellow card accumulation after a very silly booking late against Mexico where he just like slap somebody on the head kind of. and then left back Joseph Mora, who started all three group stage games,

will also miss with the Elkhart accumulation. And then there's a couple guys injured, including Ariel Lasseter, with like sort of serious injuries who are just not going to play. But yeah, you're giving us a 60-40 chance of winning that game? I think it's,

I'm willing to go up to 66, two out of three. Like, do we, Do you think we're going back to the competitive group stage lineup? Do you think it'll be a mix between the dead rubber and the competitive? I think it'll be, I mean, I think Tolkien did enough where he, Potch is going to say he's, he's our guy left back now. And I know he had a, he had a rough, some rough moments in the first 30 minutes, but I think he, I think he's good enough where he's going to, he's going to get the call on Sunday. I sure hope he does.

Otherwise, I think we're going to go, I don't know what he's going to do with that band of three attackers. I mean, certainly Tillman's going to start. Yep. Tomen and Big Pat starting, right? Tillman and Big Pat are starting. Tyler Adams is starting, I think. Outside and then I think the back four is definitely going to be Freeman, Richards, and Ream.

I hope it's Tolkien. It might be Arfston, you know. And then I don't know what's going to happen with those other four. Yeah, I mean, I think free starts again and goal. I do, my hunch is that Arston's going to get the start. I feel like Potch already rated him and I don't know that Tolkien did enough. I feel like for a lot of us, Tolkien with what we've already seen of him at the club level, we feel safer with Tolkien in the back.

I certainly would. I just continue to think the craziest thing. Because again, Quinn Sullivan or Jack McGlynn, I'm not too bothered. Brenda or Luna. I mean, I guess it could be Brenda and Luna. That's not possible, right? Well, I hope it's Luna and McGlynn and Tillman.

Okay. On that band of three. That's what I hope, but I have no idea if that's what it's going to be. And I don't know that I can make that strong of an argument for it. Yeah, that's what I feel. I feel like it's Tillman and Pat and then pick two other names to set next to them. Because I just don't think Luna has done anything to be like,

I'm, you need me out here if you want to score goals. But the crazy one, again, is the guy next to Adams because it could be Luca, could be Burhalter, or it could be Johnny Cardoso. And I feel like Cardoso is the least likely guy to get picked, which is insane. Yeah, no, it's probably going to be Burrhalter. I would guess it's Burrhalter. Potch loves him. Well, he loves his intensity.

He loves his team spirit. What's not to love, Greg? I mean, I don't know. It's, again, it's great for the storyline because it just adds a hilarious, a generational arc. It's incredible for U.S. soccer. But it's just, it still remains crazy to me that that Johnny Cardoso and Tyler Adams

are not, and Malik Tillman is not just our nailed on midfield because those were the three guys that were so clearly head and shoulders above the rest of the roster. Richards. Yeah. You got to make it happen when the after the whistle blows and as we

all know, Johnny hasn't done that. I won't be mad if I started, I start certainly won't be mad if Cardoso is starting, but I will actually be surprised if Cardoso is starting a knockout game in the Gold Cup. Same. So we'll figure out next week's going to be busy because there's that game and then the next game is Wednesday and then the next game after that is Sunday. So they're giving us a week break and then they're and then we're going on. Yeah. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.