Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #637: USA v Australia recap

Episode Date: October 16, 2025

Greg and Vince wrap up a pretty good window for the boys. Full treatment of the 2-1 win over Australia in Commerce City.Clip Notes for $5 subscribers and up: https://www.patreon.com/posts/clipnotes-usa-v-141371074 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 when we talk about U.S. soccer. The boys put some shrimp on the Barbie last night. A 2-1 win against Australia and Commerce City, Colorado, in front of another seemingly full house. No cases of the bubonic plague reported, but a couple pulled hammies that we learned after the match. It's Vince, once again, this time of Greg Velasquez. No Chuck B. this time, Greg, are we good now?

Are we good now? I don't know. But I'm going to go right off the bat saying and asking, Vince, is Christian Roldon good now? That's a great way to live it back. You know what? I don't have any evidence to the contrary. You know, this is the only time I see Christian Roldon. You know, he could be doing terribly in MLS.

I wouldn't know. He could be doing great in MLS. I just wouldn't know. Unfortunately, no offense to the Seattle Sounders. Sounder at heart, Jeremiah O'Shan, et cetera, et cetera. You know, great thing y'all got going up there. But at this point, I got to say, he's not ass. He's not ass.

And getting out of that purgatory, that's something to applaud. Well, we get the MCB updates. on the daily. But I feel like we have to start here because we can't pretend like the discourse hasn't been what it's been because we've been a part of it. You know, we've been active contributors. We've been active members in the U.S. men's national team. Sick O'Bubble for the better part of a decade now. And Christian rolled on for better or worse and often worse has been a key fog.

in that discourse. And I feel like this is just a delightful moment to enjoy, if you let yourself enjoy it. I know there are some people who are so invested in that he has to be terrible and that he has to represent everything else that's terrible about certain parts of the U.S. men's national team culture that they won't let themselves enjoy this. But I enjoyed the hell out of what happened just again, if nothing else, for the narrative purpose of it, which is Christian Raldon, starting and delivering two assists in this two-one Hey man, it ain't no fun when the rabbit got the gun.

You know what I'm saying? And Christian Rodan has turned it around. You talk, I mean, you want to talk about mentality. You want to talk about mentality. Look no further than Christian Rodon. Victory cigar, he is not. That was never in doubt. That's the best part of us is that cheerleader, he is not.

That part of it was never in doubt. Like it was always, we're talking about a real soccer player here. We were getting kind of hammered for being an apologist back in 2022 for just at the tail end of the cycle just being like, yeah, sure, bring him whatever. Like it seems like, it seems like the. lads love him. The guy carries his own bags. He seems like a good camp body. Bring him to the World Cup. Let him be a camp body. It literally is vibes. He's there for the vibes. And that became like a running Joe. But it seems like he is good for the vibes.

It seems like it, man. And so therefore, and, you know, there's another thing. When you do it over two managers, you do over two managers, you know, when you get a set of eyes, that a lot of people, before he got into the role, would have deemed him as, you know, a representative of the global standard, whatever, et cetera, et cetera. He's been to the highest levels of the game

that you can go for club and country. And here we are. Once again, back to Christian Rodon, and he's playing better than he's ever had before. So that's one thing I do want to bring up, just like, you know, I asked you, are we good now? I'm not sure that we are.

I'm not, you know, the window, we're making steps, but we regress to a point that now getting back to respectability is almost like, you know, it's kind of like we should have been here. Yeah. Kind of thing. But the fact that we are getting respectable performances with, let's say, our less than desirable players, our non-A team or whatever, This is progress. This is something that we haven't necessarily been able to count on over the past, what, six years? Yeah, it's wild, right? Because, again, we are very piled in and, again, actively maybe even contributing to the pendulum swing of enthusiasm around the team.

and I think for me still largely the team and what the team is capable of hasn't changed that much I actually wish it had changed more from 2022 for sure and some of the players that we wish had really jumped in and taken the steps had taken bigger steps and more of them had taken them

but I think I think really we are probably in about the same spot which again some of you might be frustrated about that I think it's I think it's like all right we're in about the same spot plus we've got bolligan plus we've got malik tilman as as the guy who I think has maybe taken a step

or at least there's a lot of evidence that that step has maybe been taken where he can kind of give us some stuff so I do think we're in a better spot but overall I think when things were down which a lot of people say they've been down for a long time it wasn't down

that bad like there were some real bad results in some real big moments that were not great for us as fans. Right. But we, I mean, I was kind of being like, man, that was just a, that was a tough break. Like we put ourselves in a bad spot and we didn't play our way out of it and that sucks. But it doesn't mean that all is lost. And now we're doing like, okay. And this is probably about where we have been the whole time.

Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I basically agree with you. I basically agree with you. But still, but still, though, I mean, how many matches did we come into where it's like, okay, you know, we did, you know, the, what we ended up taking away from it is like, well, we're just, we just stink without MMA. Yes. You know, we just, we just stink without blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, creating chances, good chances, guilt's edge chances, still an issue. Yes. Right. Still an issue, for sure. Against an organized defense. If we're not playing a catastrophically organized defense, a Jamaica at home in the Nation's League, if we play someone who's organized, a team, A minus team, B plus team, we are not going to be getting look after look after look.

Yeah. And that's where, you know, people taking steps. That's where it's kind of hurt us a little bit, you know. Yeah. No Giovanni rain on this match. As anybody listening to this podcast will know, no Malik Tillman in this match.

It picked up one of those hammies I talked about to start off the show. But anyway, yeah, so any other background about the game you got before we get into the lineups here, Greg? Just knowing, you know, as soon as the 11 was announced, when Boligan's not in, when Malik isn't in, you know we're going to be we are for lack of a better word hamstrung at that point

and at the same time there was like a certainty about some folks reaction to it that was just like oh this lineup is terrible like this lineup won't be able to do anything and I think again I think that certainty is misplaced and I think

it's still like the carryover of the Burrhalter era where everything was so binary in people's minds and they reacted to the team. Like, whatever was happening was the worst. And so it was like, you see this lineup where you see players in these positions, you know, like, they can't do it. And I just, I just feel like if you let yourself be a little bit more open,

to like, some of them might be able to. Like, like, Adjie Wright is the striker. He's been playing, you know, striker for Coventry. It's at least possible that he can do something. And Australia is not an amazing team, but they're right on the cusp. if you look at like FIFA rankings of of a pot two, pot three team. They were in the round of 16 in the last World Cup.

Like this is a this is a team that is, again, it's a round of 16 team. Like it's a weaker round of 16 team. But this is a team that you could see in a round of 16 of a World Cup. And we were playing them with a mixed bag of a lineup. And some of the guys held their own. Some of them maybe didn't make a strong case. But overall, like, they went out there without some of the star power that we need

to make a deep run in the World Cup and they and they like kind of did some things. Yeah. So it's so much hedging. Vince like I feel like we're just like. Look, look, but, but I mean, I think I can summarize it. It is, it is progress.

It is progress. It is progress. Because we're getting people throwing their names in the hats where we thought maybe you know, we could just predetermine those names and, you know, Podge has been adamant. He's been adamant. No. No, you cannot.

We don't want anyone resting on their laurels, et cetera. And at this point, you know, you have to, you got to give it up to him a little bit just because he is finding diamonds in the rough. I mean, you know, Christian rolled out. He took that lump of coal and, uh, I don't want to go too far.

I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was, the week. match of the two but but uh hey hey he performed he performed and uh big ups to him so lineups um let's start with australia first uh formation wise gregg what you calling this i'm calling a 5221 and i think it basically mirrors our 5221 okay agreed uh in goal Matt ryan um from left to right we got jordan boss Cameron burgess al as Sondro Sikati, Jason Geria and Jacob Italiano. The deep two, the double pivot, Maximia and Ballard, and Aidan O'Neill. The two in front of them, Martin Boyle, Connor Metcalf, and then Nicholas Daghistino striker.

For the U.S., we have Matt Fries and Goal from left to right. Tim Wea Mark McKenzie Chris Richards Miles Robinson and Alex Freeman James Sands and Christian Rodon

in the band of two Wesson McKinney Christian Polisick as our dual tens and Haji Wright up top you mentioned Haji I even tweeted this

from the scuffed account I called my shot Greg I was excited I was excited to see Haji Wright run some channels we didn't I think we'll get

into this a little bit in a few minutes, but we didn't get as many channel balls as we would like, I think as Posh would like, just because that centerback three, they were keeping, basically I think

Australia manager wasn't trying to give those up. Yeah. And so, the two centerbacks around Circadi, they weren't following Christian Polisic and Weston McKinney, even though they were theoretically manned up on them. They were staying back as Weston McKinney

and Christian Polisic, you know, drop down a couple lines to receive the ball and try to make things happen, et cetera. So I didn't get to see him run that many channels, but the time he did, the one time he did, baby. So anyway, match facts. The XG, 0.99 for the U.S. 0.75 for Australia. Possession 64% U.S. to 36 Australia. Shots 11 to 9. So, you know, and I think you can see this in the match, you know, it wasn't domination. No. And it wasn't pretty from either side whatsoever. It was muddy.

It was a muddy match. I would say overall, like, you compare, I know we didn't create a ton of clear-cut chances against Ecuador either. And he made a great recounting of how many we kind of settled for from outside the box in that match. it was it was really difficult neither team in this game could really do anything to like build through the middle against ecuador we were kind of cooking a little bit doing some uh doing some fun combination stuff through the middle of the field uh again malik was cooking straight away every time he got it was kind of like something was happening um it didn't always come off but there was like this fun there was a funness about it and we couldn't really ever do any fun stuff in this game tonight Yeah, yeah, not too much. Not too much. We'll get into the reason why. But before we get into the timeline,

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But the first 10 minutes, you know, the match starts. Not a lot happens. We're kind of trading the ball back and forth. Australia matching our shape is causing us trouble, progressing the ball. You know, the defense, you can see they got like a three. to match like our centerback three, two to match our double pivot. And so I'm thinking to myself, did we go wide and try to use wide overloads? Because we kind of have easier access to Tim Wea and Alex Freeman over there on the wings.

I noticed we're trying different things. James Sands dropping back into the back line. Pully dropping deep into the midfield quite a bit to try and overload those first two pressing lines from Australia. And, you know, like I said earlier, I noticed that the wide two centerbacks aren't following our dual tens into these spaces. So we don't have access to the channel ball to the striker. So, you know, like you said, it's muddied up. It's real muddy. In Australia, you can tell, are totally fine with it.

They're totally fine with McKenny or Pool Sick dropping back to collect the ball. They're not at any point like, oh, no, we need to deny them the ball. It's very much like if Christian Pool Sick is picking the ball up, 10 yards, from Chris Richards. We are going to be very happy with that. We are not bothered whatsoever by this. Because it wasn't, there wasn't even like the pistony. You know, we talk about

pistoning a lot. It wasn't like cool sticks dropping back and then rolled Don a streaking forward into try to, it was literally just like, cool stick would drawback or McKinney to add another body, which would be available. But once they got it, like, what are they going to do? There wasn't any

next three passes that were that were going to unlock anything. So I just see like Australia was very content with what was happening. And to be honest, we didn't, we weren't playing like we had particular urgency to do much about it either. And it was, so it was just, it was a very, I mean, it wasn't super entertaining, right? Right. I mean, it wasn't necessarily bad soccer from any particular player.

It was just like, oh man, no one's doing anything here. Yeah. No one's doing much of anything. And so in the 11th minute, we get our first real interesting action of the match to me. We get a 1-2 from West End and Pulley, deep in our own half as they have both dropped to help the build. And just the easy as you like, 50-yard-long ball from West to Alex Freeman, who's streaking down the right side of the pitch. He brings it down in stride off his chest, but boss is with him every step of the way. So Alex stops, turns around, dribbles back.

a little bit and slides a square pass to Christian Polisic in the middle of the field about 40 yards away from goal. He takes a touch inside and finds a streaking Haji, making an end to outrun across Sakati's face in the box. Haji tries to receive it and as he receives it tries to like stab it behind him so he can turn back onto it. But he falls over trying to turn back onto the ball. It's a good look though and probably a more penetrating move than many of the ones we'll

talk about tonight. Yeah, it was. But even in this move, it's telling because Pooley and West, you know, drop back with Sands in Roldon to connect and create this long ball from West. And so when he hits it up to Freeman, it's Freeman. And then you see Haji in the box, too. But that's it. It's the two of them because Poole Sick and McKinney, our dual tens, have dropped back into the same line that James Sands is on.

So there's no one else to play soccer with these guys while they're up there. And that's why Freeman has to just retreat. And also because it's, it's Freeman. It's not Sergenio Dest. So once he gets it here, you know, he's not going to like, be like, I'm going to make something happen even though it's two on three or two on. You know, he's very much just going to be like, my job is to not lose the ball at this point. You know, I made the run, but I got to just hold things up.

So it felt like that, right? It felt like we couldn't ever really, or we weren't consistently getting a flowing move where the whole team has now upfield ready to try to connect in the box. And to Australia's credit, they condensed the line so tight once we beat their press, their initial line of confrontation. Like they were tight.

At that point, I would call it a 5-4-1. Yes. Yes. We would get like outside of the box and boom, there are nine people inside that box. Line of five, line of four, stocked right on top of each other.

Yeah. So that was different than the Ecuador game, almost reminiscent of like what it would have been, like playing Panama on the Nations League where do we have the personnel to defeat this really tight block of players? Yeah, and that's kind of like the discussion I wanted to get to at some point. It's just like the profiles that we had out there on the pitch. You know, James Sands needing to have his hand held a little bit when it comes to progress

in that ball. You know, like Weston had to come back and hit that ball. James Sands, I don't think, tried. one in this match. You know, he's pretty limited with the ball. Alex Freeman, wide right. You know, he's done well playing the, you know, the Miles Robinson elbow back,

but whatever you want to call it, centerback in possession, whatever. He's done well doing that. Do we really want him holding the width on the touchline? In the attack, right? In the attack. Yeah. that's a question

and then for him scoring the two goals you know he's not flow as far as just somebody to play with and somebody is going to eliminate a centerback and just help and really get us off and running in the buildup just out of nothing

kind of thing so yeah we had it was tough sliding a little bit it was really tough and the contrast between this game and the Ecuador game was I think significant And the biggest thing for me in the Ecuador game, the most promising thing for us against Ecuador was not just like a willingness to try to hit a ball into the amoeba rather than sort of like taking the space that Ecuador's amoeba was inviting us to take. Instead, we were like, no, I'm going to hit it into a player who's right in the teeth of their defensive shape into their block. It wasn't just a willingness.

It was like an eagerness. It was like I was certain watching it that this is like. like a point of emphasis. Like, you don't just, you don't just hit it to this guy out wide because he's got a bunch of space to play with. That's where they want you to play it. That's why they're giving him that much space. You hit it into Balgan's feet and you trust him to not give it away, even though there's

three players within two yards of him. Like, there's a lane there. It'll get to his feet and he'll find someone else. Malik will do the same. Weston McKinney will do the same. And again, to be fair, even in this. this game against Australia, those windows were even smaller. And the players you'd be hitting it to would probably be worse at it.

Yeah. Yeah. And to add to that, to my profiles thing, just Timway on the left. You know, but we'll get to that in a little bit. So recurrent theme in this match, we get a tough tackle from Garia, Geria. I mean, in the 15th minute on a pulley, two-footed kind of scissorsed his leg. wrapped around his ankle. It was a pretty nasty tackle.

I'm defending Australia here, and I'm going to do this a little bit. I'm not going to do it a lot for a couple of reasons that I'll get into later. But on this particular tackle, this wasn't pool sick controlling the ball, you know, standing on the ball, planted leg, and a defender sliding into it. The Australian gets to it first. The ball's coming in, he slides into an unoccupied soccer ball. So he slides into it and Pulisic like steps into his slide, which is it's a little difference, but it matters in the sense of like it's not dirty.

I don't think this is any way of like, I've got a chance to, to, you know, do Christian Pulisick's ankle. I'm taking that chance. So just a little subtle thing. But the outcome was certainly Christian Pulis's ankle getting twisted a little bit, which is nervous moments for all of us. Yep. Yeah. We get a Freeman giveaway in the 17th minute. At least Miles Robinson winning a race against Martin Boyle down our right side.

Martin had a couple steps, but Miles recovered pretty easily. I just want to note that out because, you know, I'm going to come down hard on Miles later in this match. In the 18th minute, surprise, surprise. Australia scores. Starts from an Australia throw-in from our right side, deep in our half. A boss throws it in. It's met by James Sands his foot. He pops it up and everyone stops.

They just watch the flight of the ball. I think James is the only one I'm not going to blame here. James, I blame James more than anyone. Oh, really? I mean, I can blame him for the weak clearance. But I just don't think he knows where the ball goes. Okay, okay. If that's the case, all right, I'll give him some credit there.

I'll cut him with some slack. Yeah, that's what I think. Okay. So they just watch the flight of the ball as it rises and drops just inside our right side of the box. Boss realizes no one's moving towards it. Remember, he threw the ball in. Yeah. And he takes it upon himself.

He charges onto the ball, takes it off of his chest, breezes past Chris, who stuck a timid foot in. You know, he's in the box. Doesn't want to commit a pen. Bowles over Rodon who tries to clear it, but it ends up just hitting balls. Some people think it was a handball. I'd watch the replay a few times. I'm not convinced.

I think it hit his shoulder. And he takes that final ricochet from Christian Rodon hitting off of his body and meets that with a half volley with his left foot, caught it sweetly, right past, freeze, into the goal. One nil. So you got questions for it, Greg. So I got questions for Sands. And if he pops up and doesn't see it, okay, fair enough. I thought he popped it up and like expected Miles to just take over after the deflection.

I was like, okay, I popped it up. Now I'm the midfielder. It's past me, so Miles is yours. But Miles was doing like a hat for hat, tackle football, blocking out basketball kind of thing. He was like, I've got my guy. And I'm just going to, I'm going to keep body in him so he can't get to it. Freeman doesn't take the thrower who just runs past him. but I mean, that's, I'm not, I'm not putting it too much on premium.

Sands was like already moving that way. Like, as a body moved towards the ball to deflect in the first place, I thought he would just naturally carry on to catch up to it. So I've got Sands as my biggest defender. Then I've got Richards is my second one for the, for the really like half-hearted stab. I know you've got to be careful putting your foot in, but that just means don't reach a foot out.

It just means move both feet and deny. Yeah, you can move your body. I deny the guy to pass the ball And they'll go, oh, nothing like it. It reminded me when I played defense against my my six-year-old kid to let them score. You know, like, oh, I reached, but I couldn't get it. Now you're in on goal. Like, you've got to move.

You can move your body and do some things. And then Raldon ends up looking the most foolish. But really, Chris Richards just owes Roldon a huge amount here. Roldon did do like a thing where he, like, fainted towards the top of the box the last second. Like he thought Boss was going to maybe tap it back out to somebody else to shoot, which didn't make any sense to me. And if he hadn't done that, maybe he gets a stronger foot to it and can actually disrupt it. Because he obviously does get a chance to disrupt it. He just hits a really weak.

No, like you can't put any leverage on it. Ball into the attacker's chest. But it's clown shoes all around. And this is, I don't know how this has stayed the theme for the U.S. of throw-ins at the edge of the box being a huge issue for us. But we're at the point now where it would be better for us to concede a corner than to concede a throwing. If you're not sure what you're doing with it, like hit it out for a corner before you hit it out for a throw-in on that sideline.

Because we are somehow abysmal at being switched on for these throw-ins. Yeah, I mean, Australia's second best chance of the game comes off of this same exact situation. That's a little bit of foreshadowing. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. It's a yeah I mean it truly is insane I just don't I think one thing that was

that came to me while rewatching this match is just that we just needed our back we need our back line to handle business yes you know it's like I could I could excuse the inner Valencia goal that was just a sweet play all around and it's like if that happens

if that's a one off it's just like okay that's a great player making a great play we move. But it's like in this match, multiple times, it's just like, we have our backline. I mean, I mean, we got, first of all, we got three of y'all out here. Okay? And we have y'all in position to make some plays and just not handling the business. It reminds me of like the women's national team where it's like everyone's clown shoes except Naomi Germa.

We need we need someone to step in and be that to be just the serious adult. Like when they show up like, okay. all right kids it's time to go to bed I was I was I was thinking about German too because I feel like after the gold cup I feel like Richards was starting to get like a Germa Germa level like status in people's minds but it's not like there's a crisis

of business handling from these from all of our centerbacks and it's not a good sign when like Chris Richards and Tim Rheam are your best business handling centerbacks because they both as much as we love Tim Rame and Chris Richards and big things are ahead of Chris Richards for sure. They are not, they are not like immune from clown shoes. They don the clown shoes a couple of times a game.

And it's just scary because, because again, you threw the XG out from this game. The XG from Ecuador was similar. We don't concede a ton of chances. And the ones we do concede just seem so like, so unnecessary. It's like how did we not solve that at any point along the way? And there'll be a bunch of them. I know you're going to hit Miles hard and you should for the rest of the game.

Because it's like this is exactly what you are on the field to prevent this kind of stuff. Yeah. And when you don't handle business, it begets chaos. Yeah. You know, I mean, that's what it comes down to. And I'll say too, we haven't had in two. half years now. We haven't had a goalkeeper who deals with it either, which

I know it's a lot. And I'm the goalkeeper union guy here. But like, that's the whole thing of the goalkeeper union. That's what we live for. We live for cleaning up that mess and then shouting at everybody when the other team's got the corner kick because that's our chance to shout and put on a big show about how we just bailed you out. And we'd love to do that. And we're not really getting that either. Like our goalkeepers aren't bailing people out and then shouting at them. They're just getting scored on and then being mad. And I,

that's the worse that's that's worse yeah so uh well hold on so are you saying freeze could it do something here not on this one okay okay i don't think so i don't put this one freeze at all that even even the shot of tent like i don't know if it hit the guy's arm it's like chris richards might have even like gave it a little poke as it's as it's up in the air there's there's nothing here nothing here for freeze uh okay all right uh 20th minute right after the restart basically We get a good McKenzie ball over the top to Pully, who's made a run from the left half space. He kind of checks and goes, leaves Garria in the dust.

It drops over his shoulder into his path. He collects right in front of the in line on the left side of the box with circotti on his hip. He turns around and tries to find Westin at the top of the box, but the pass is cut out. Chance over. So, you know, you talked about the part of the five and the two holding minutes. Neither of them are like dropping back with McKinney or Poussick when they drop back to get the ball. But I really thought a ton of our joy came from just being like,

well, nuts to all of this, I will just clip it over the back line and see what our guys can do. And I think, you know, Wes had the one to Freeman. We looked for Haji a couple of times. We hit this one to Pooz. I really do think that in this kind of a game, that is probably on for us. It's so hard to know if it's going to have any future value,

knowing this because the personnel presumably will be a lot different all over the pitch in a game like in a World Cup game against a team like Australia. I hope we're not too proud to just be like, well, let's just hit the long ball. Let's just take our chances if it comes off great, if not, whatever. But there's nothing, it's not beneath us to just go long ball. You don't have to be like, oh, well, we can't play through the middle. you don't have if if Australia's just clogging everything up but they're not elite at defending a ball over the top just hit a ball over the top and see and see what our guys can do about making life difficult for Australia as they're retreating to their own goal yeah and I mean I thought I thought we kind of got over that when Potsch came in I mean if we you know whenever whenever we're on the roster whenever we do get Anthony Robinson back because I just remember I mean that Panama match when we I think Pott's first match, yeah.

We just hit it over the top to Jedi over and over and over again. And he was great. Can't wait until we get him back at some time. But all right, 23rd minute. We get a nice bouncing ball from Chris Richards across the grain to the left wing where it finds Christian. He dribbles the ball into the box and tries a teasing ball in that's blocked. That's another chance over. Yeah, and Pulisic was rough through his 30-odd minutes.

In this particular kind of instance, this is a pattern for him with the national team. And I'm really attuned to it because, again, we struggled, we suffered through this kind of decision forever with the women's team too, where it's like Christian Pulisik is an excellent player. And anytime you get the ball to him at the edge of the wing, faced up against a fullback, you want him to try to take the guy. on and he's going to try to take the guy on. And then if he can't get past him, rather than just resetting, which he does every time he does the same thing at AC Milan, instead of just resetting when he doesn't get past him,

he'll just try this blind cross that almost like always deflects off the nearest defender or the second defender goes to nobody. He's not like picking out of four on two at the back post. He's just like, I'm Christian Pulisick. It's my job to create something. So I'm going to take the guy on. And if I can't beat him fully, then I'll just beat him enough to create a crossing situation and I'll just hit a hopeful cross, which is just not great for odds in a soccer game.

So I feel like he's less likely to reset for us than he would be for A.C. Milan. Because for A.C. Milan, he's resetting to other A.C. Milan players. And for us, he's resetting to, he's going to reset to a player who's much worse than him. And I do think that's, like, in his mind that, like, he has to do something. So hitting a terrible cross in his mind is still better than just resetting to somebody else behind him. Yeah. And like we said earlier, even in a situation like this where this Chris ball can cut out, you know, six defenders or whatever, by the time, by the time Pulley gets in that box and he's playing that cross, there are nine people in that box. Yeah.

So, yeah. a couple of minutes after this or basically the same time we get a throw in I just want to note this because Australia gets to throw in in their defense a third they kind of just try to loop it over towards the sideline and James Sands actually is

involved in a scrum here and I'm just noting it because we'll have an effect for later on Sands absolutely stomps on Dagestino's foot and it's clumsy and it's bad and it's a no call like Dagostino is like down in a heat and it's right in front of their team bench so they're all losing their minds

and it's just absolutely a no call and again like it's not like we apologize and say no we stomped on him you guys should have the ball like we just keep playing which is what you do I just am pointing it out because later on I think that I think that plays into some things that happen eventually okay okay understood I mean what look that's what James Sands is in there to do He was. He was knocking people around. He was delivering some hits. He was, I think pound for pound or cage match for cage match. He might be our best cage matcher. But it's sometimes about him getting to the cage match, which that leads us to the cage. That leads us to our next timeline item, 25th minute. Australia's building from the back.

There's a pass from O'Neill to Ballard, kind of right up the gut, that cuts out our midfield line. So when Ballard receives this ball, receives it on the half turn, just before the halfway line, and he takes off. You know, he's on our backline. And here we are. Backlines retreating. Everyone to scramble situation. He gets to the edge of the box. The chance fizzles out.

But I mark this just to note how James Sands was physically incapable of getting back into the play once he was bypassed. That was eye-opening for me. Well, I guess not eye-opening because, you know, if you listen to this pod, you know that I peruse the top speed rankings on bundeslega.com or whatever. They're very generous with that information where most leagues are not. James Sands, you know, and I've used this to talk about G.R. Raina. James Sands is below G.R.ana. His top speed is slower than G.R. Rana. This is without a litany of hamstring injuries that I know of, that I know of at least.

And I think after seeing this plate, like, and just thinking about every. It just made me realize why he was like that tweener between centerback and midfield. Yeah. And for St. Pauli, you know, they play a very, they're very compact. And James Sands basically has this like, you know, 10 feet behind and in front of him, like radius to like command. And he does it. Because if it's any farther from that, it's someone else's ball, right?

If it's over my head or beyond me, I got a center back to chase it. It's ahead of me and it's somebody else's job to chase it. Right. And, I mean, and he controls that space that St. Pauli tells him to control. And he does it very well. Like I said, when he gets into the cage match, he's convincing with the wins. But in a situation where, like, I mean, it seems like Pottch wants us to press a little bit. We get high.

We get stretched in these types of situations. He just does not have the recovery speed. Like Christian Rodan is, I mean, he would be. James in the dust. You did on this play. Roldon got back and cut it out at the top of the box. When Raldon actually was starting out pretty far ahead of Sands in this buildup, Roldon was actually like trying to move people around to prevent the

unpressured delivery through that scene that Australia hit. And it was notable. And that one stood out. I think I have a feeling. A ton of people remember that burned in their brain. Because I even remember reading people saying like, We were getting carved up through the middle, and we really weren't. Like, that was the one.

Like, I knew exactly what it was. Australia wasn't getting any joy through the middle either. They might find something, but they could never turn that something into even like one or two more passes. That was the one time they got it through the middle and then got all the way out of the edge of our box and actually had like box danger. That, to be fair, researchers, I think, snuffed out at the top of the box and forced Augustino to slow things down and try to go around. It was never terribly threatening. But yeah, that. Yeah.

At recovery speed, I was like, oh, boy. Like, because, you know, it's early season, like, when you're looking at these top speed stats, I'm like, surely, James Sanders is faster than that. No, no, he's not. So right after that play, Christian Polisic, not Christian, Rodon. He makes a nice turn on Geria and his hack down. yellow. Police hurt leaves the match. And we're still waiting on that report.

Yeah. Because that's the thing. It's like, you know, when you see these files that have happened on him so far in this match and remember the reporting before the match or whatever, what was going on coming into camp, you know, inflammation in his ankle or whatever. So you're like, oh, okay. Even if he does have to come out the match, it's just he'll be all right. But no, turns out it's not ankle related at all.

We got a hammy. We got a hammy, ladies and gentlemen. So we await those scan results from Italy. We'll see what happens. We've got to compile our hamstring history here, Vince, at some point. Because I know Tyler Adams lost like a full year to the hammy. Tim Way I lost over a year to the hammy. Gio Raina was lost a time with his hammy.

Pool 6 lost hamming time during, I mean, that Liverpool hamstring injury. It is, for us, it is the hamstring. me. So, yeah, man, I get, I get nervous. I just, I just hope that if we lose Christian, it's, it's just in the service of bringing G.O. back

from the dead. Yeah, we'll see. Surely, it shouldn't be that serious. I mean, the way, I mean, the man just walked off the field seemingly without much pain, you know, so hopefully it's just

in a little grade one, maybe a cheeky grade two, something like that. But I'm hoping, I'm thinking he's all right. I don't know. But I do wonder if you get hurt. Do you fly back on, fly back in first class? You get the Polaris, first class seat, you know, able to stretch out and all that. But anyway, I remember back in 2010. That was a big deal for a Gucci-Ayevo flying to South Africa because he had just had that

Pateller tendon rupture. And so there was a lot of talk about even the flight because the pressure and the gab and all that. So they're like, this is a big deal. We got to get some kind of way to prevent this from the flight blowing his leg up even further as we want him to be as ready as possible. So I'm sure they do take that kind of stuff into consideration. Eight hours or whatever with your knee flex at 90 degrees. Can't help. 30th minute.

We get a nice little move up the field, decent one touch. ball movement gets us up there. Sands to West to Alex Freeman who stabs it to Haji coming back into our half right around the center circle. We're down a man, mind you. He receives and turns up field holding off pressure from circadi with relative ease. Gets it out to Tim Wea, streaking down the left. Tim takes a few touches, cuts inside of Italiano and rips one with his right foot from 20 yards. Curling, but not too dangerous. Parry to strongly by Ryan for a throw-in. And this one stuck out to me because I think it was, again, a trend for us.

You know, we talked about how organized Australia were and how hard they were working. And they had this high line in confrontation. And even when we could bring them over to one side and we could play our way out of it, we weren't, we weren't clean enough. Like there's that little subtleties with the passes where, you know, if the pass out of that pressure to the open man, You find the open man, you hit him. But if it's a little bit behind him, right, then he doesn't get to break into the space that Australia's left open

with their sort of aggressive... Full-steaming. You know? So we'd have to slow down and wait. And Australia were so committed that while we were waiting, they were all working really hard to get back. And so even here, when Haji finds that pass to Tim, way out on the left,

way has got a ton of room. But the pass from Haji to Tim is just a little bit undercooked, and Tim is literally like waiting for the ball to get to him. It's not put out in front of him where he can run onto it and then be attacking the box. He's got to wait for the ball to arrive, hold up his run, collect it. And now he's still one-on-one. It's still a good situation. But it's not quite as good as we create it, if that makes sense.

Right. And that's how we end up with a shot from 22 yards instead of Tim in the box driving at a guy. And it's those little things that sort of add up over time to sort of cut down from your X threat to your X-G. Right. to get as nerdy as possible. There's, yeah, there's a few of those instances. All of them from the right coming to the left, for the most part. It was Christian Ballisica receiving the ball one time.

It was Tim Wea, like it was a West ball that goes right kind of behind Christian where he has to, you know, reach out his right foot and gather it to get going. Yeah, it definitely happened more than once. So 31st minute, pulleys cooked. We get Diego Luna in. I thought this, I actually thought we needed this. Not necessarily for Christian Pulisic, but it's just if our half spacers are dropping back into this midfield line,

I felt like we needed somebody that could actually distribute the ball when they got it. And, you know, Christian, that's just, I mean, it's not his game. You know, I mean, and it's not a shade on Christian or whatever. If he didn't get hurt, like, we could have took a. somebody else off made a different move whatever and once again this is kind of because James Sands is a little limited there

like I said it's a profile thing that kind of made me think hey we need another string puller in here yeah you know and so I actually think this kind of worked out well for us and I thought Diego played pretty

pretty well yeah yeah ideally you you'd love this to be Malie Tillman I think or yeah yeah because Listen to the pod, no, Giorina. We would love to see. Exactly. Because you get one of those half-spacers that can actually, you know, pull strings from deep, you know, and come back, handle their business there. They can spray the ball wherever they needed to be sprayed or whatever, then join the attack, et cetera.

Yes, we may get there late. Once Australia has fully fortified their defense, but we needed help getting up the field consistently. So 33rd minute We find the equalizer Right after when it comes in I feel like it's not a coincidence Vince you're right It actually comes from a giveaway From Timuea

Trying to connect with Diego On the left touchline Metcalf collects and tries to find Agostino That pass is cut out by Chris Richards He directs it to Christian Rodon Christian Rodon who trusts it to West West gets situated

He kind of gets the ball like caught under his feet a little bit turns up field and finds Raldon ahead of him Christian receives with the outside of his boot and uses his second touch to slide of delicate little ball into the box to Hajie

he gets on it scoops the ball with his right foot from about 14 yards away into the goal 1-1 Beautiful It is beautiful And there's so much going on

that I love talking about here one, Wes, Wes's ball into Roldon. It took two to tango there to find it because Roldon creates, you know, he knocks it down for Wes. And then he recognizes that he's got a burst up field.

You know, if we're going to try to threaten it all, you know, if we're going to create something here, all right, I've got to go fill this. So he does that. And then Wes doesn't just take the easy pass.

There's a bunch of Australian bodies in that, in his line of sight between him and Roldon. But it's still just that, again, players with that eagerness to be like, no, we can still hit a vertical pass here. We can still move the ball vertically up the field, despite traffic around it.

So his willingness to do that, Raldon, being able to collect it, and then just having enough time to get it up to Haji, which I'll come back to. But then Haji, with a lovely punch of a finish. I don't think it was a towball. Artino was calling it a toe ball. I don't think he towed it. I think it was a little right outside or top of the foot of the right foot punch. but I absolutely do think that that threw off the keeper who wasn't expecting it to come

at that on that step, Phajee's. I think he was expecting the right foot to come down to plant and use his left because of how it all sort of was transpiring. So really well done from Haji. Going back to Roldan, because we kind of gave him some love earlier. But this is,

it was an excellent read to create the space. Excellent. I mean, I mean, it is an absolutely excellent pass to Aji Wright here. And yet it still will highlight, like, the concern I have about Roldon. So I'm just going to use it to kind of do that now. Okay. In that it is, he still absolutely cannot reset his own clock.

It's not a slam on him on this play. It's not saying, you know, he did anything wrong on this play. But this play kind of illustrates it, whereas, where so many of his actions are going to be like, he used all the time he had to get this pass off to the point where he's getting knocked over as he's hitting it, right? Because that's going to be Christian Rinald on. He has, from the time he receives the ball, he has exactly that amount of time to get rid of it.

And that time will not change. He will not buy himself more time to do anything else. And in this game, he had sort of, I think, calibrated his own clock and corrected it from the Japan match that we saw him start last time, where I thought he was a little, little off. And in this game, he was doing,

even before the assist, I thought he was doing everything like to the exact second that it needed to happen to the moment. And the worry continues to remain that he has to do everything that perfectly. He has like no margin for error. Because if he holds on to it a little bit longer than he thinks he can, he's going to get knocked over

and it's going to be going the other way else. That's basically my whole world on bit. You're like, he's living right on the edge, but he's a smart player. And if you trust him to know where that edge is for himself, then you might, you might sort of try to

ride that his math, his internal clock and be like, he can do a job at least to an extent for us. Yeah. And we'll take it. The one thing I did notice from Christian on this play is when he

chess the ball to Weston, He's actually like hold his hands out like, you know, like, like, Wes, go ahead and pass that thing back to the keeper or something. You know, he's like, he's like, all right, we got the ball back. Let's take it. Let's take a break. Yeah. Let's take a break. Let's take five.

Water break. But, you know, Wes gets collected and is like, like, no, we're going up the field. So it was good from Christian to read that after, after the fact. Like, once he realizes Wes is actually turning around and that he wasn't. you know, fumbling with the ball to pass it back to Chris Richards or whatever. He gets moving. And this is where I do want to bring up Diego Luna just because he makes a movement. And I think a lot of people follow Diego.

They think he's the one getting the first ball. And Christian kind of finds the space in Diego's wake. I'm not saying it's like some type of super intelligent movement from Diego Luna or anything. Just that's kind of how the space opened up for Christian as I saw it. Well, and that's huge. That opening up the wake is huge. That's a key piece of the movement. We'll see it later to get Diego Luna a shot in the second half from Brendan Arrington, not the big one, but the second one, where Boligan does it, where Boligan creates that wake and takes off. And it's such a huge piece of coordinated movement to be able to have that one guy key it with that first initiative and then have the second guy run into that open space that's vacated. again nice on all pieces there it's a really it's a really nice play yeah it's a nice goal

it's a real nice goal good good step from chris richards too I mean you know we we've gonna be hard on our back line but yeah good job getting us started there so 36 minute yeah we get a Christian Rodin shot

from outside the box after a throw in wasn't too far off I think West squared it over to Christian Rodon but once again another shot from 20 yards. 40th minute. After working the ball around for a bit, we get a Luna ball over the top

to Alex Freeman as boss. Kind of loses him a little bit. He collects around the edge of the box, carries inside, and finds a little left-footed pass across the box of Tim Wea. Tim receives it and passes back to Mark McKenzie who shoots the ball,

but it hits Haji who's offside and it's not. There's a lot of body. on the box I think was not was not scoring. I just got to throw this in too because we've been talking about him. It wasn't Freeman here. That was a Roldon. Luda

Luna found Roldon. There'd been a little interchange there and it was Roldon again. He was popping up everywhere for like five minutes. You said I was Roldon and hit the ball off the top. Yeah, Roldon Luna clicked it over to Roldon and then Roldon clicked it over. That was okay. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. That's what I mean. He literally was like, he was everywhere. I looked at this clip a few times because I was like, it doesn't look like Alex Freeman, but I was like, it can't be anyone, but Alex. Okay,

so that makes sense. That makes, because I was actually just watching that. All right. Yeah, right at the beginning. He was doing things. He is,

I mean, I don't know. Again, if this is something that's going to upset you, I get it, but also Christian Roll-Roulbounds going to the World Cup. Look, we need,

so, when Potch was talking the big game about we need to everyone needs to fight for the spot blah blah you know I think all of us kind of brushed it off like yeah but you know whatever because if you don't have the guys if you don't have the guys that can kind of back up your talk you know if you're Potch then it's all it's all like a mood point so this is a good thing

okay we need good performances from anyone that posth decides give minutes to you know if the intention is to raise the level and raise the competitiveness or whatever they need to actually believe that potch will put somebody else on the field and so um we need them to perform well you know in this theoretical whatever they you know at the end of the day i think our good players are going to be our good players you know we don't this is the scuff podcast we don't uh prescribed all that mumbo jumbo jumpo but anyway uh uh uh uh Right at the beginning of 42nd minute, Christian Rodin wins the ball back after James Sands gives it away.

He plays a ball out to Tim Way on the left. This is one of those balls that Tim had to reach behind itself to collect and kind of slow down the momentum. He tries to take on Italiano, doesn't really get a step and tries a cross that gets blocked out for a corner. This is just where I say my little thing about Tim Way on the left. It's just, it's just, it's, it's just, not it. It works against

Real Madrid where you can get on the break. Like, you know, Tim Way on the break, I back him to make something happen. But that's not this, necessarily. Yeah. And I could live with it if it was, if the right side was being manned by Sergenio Dest.

It was like, okay, well, I like Dest out on the right, so it's fine if we, you know, have way, I struggle a little bit on the left. But it's not as, it's not as appealing to me when you're watching the right side just be like nothing when it's when the right side is miles Robinson and out Freeman yeah that's that's not where you want to also be

watching Tim way a struggle out on the left yep well on the ensuing corner Luna plays it on the ground to Tim who's at the top of the box on the left side he slides a ball forward to Roldon who's basically like the left corner of the box he turns and fires a curler from 17 yards away just over the bar Yeah, the amount of times I've written 17, 16, 21 yards are they in these notes over the past two games that, yeah. You still see the savvy. That's a savvy attempt from Roldon because he was. It is nice.

He was caught off guard a little bit, which is, that's on him. He shouldn't be caught off guard by that pass from way. It almost surprised him. So he just sort of kills a dead of his feet. but then once that of his feet, that is exactly the right decision to do the Dennis Burkamp clip

towards the top far corner. So good on him for at least recognizing that and being like, well, here's the play now and taking a decent shot at it. Yeah, it looked very clean, very smooth, and the shot was nice, and you need those plays, you know, to build your man of the match reel. It's like you get the two assists, of course,

but then it's like oh he was really cooking look at the rest of the stuff he's doing you know he got the shot earlier got the gets the ball in behind earlier this shot and it was like oh he's he's truly everywhere so we'll take it man uh and then last five minutes a half australia come into a few hard fouls against james sands everyone gets angry chris pops is top and um yeah the the refs was was under some duress. Yeah, yo, these were some, now, I understand James stepped on the foot. These were,

these were some fouls, man. These were some. I'm still giving Australia a little bit of grace here in that, like, he came in high, but he came in hot, I mean, D'Agostino on the first one,

comes in high from behind him. But it comes in high in a way that's like sending a message, but he's not, He's not smashing into the side of somebody's planted leg. So I am saying these guys, there's a certain honor among the goons here, where they were being total goons about it. It's, you know, it's men's league stuff.

But it's not, I'm going to try to ruin a career. I didn't think. And so it's like, I'm going to piss you off. I'm going to do something that's wholly unnecessary. Degasino had to think he was going to get called for a foul. It's ridiculous that he didn't get called for a foul on it. But it had to just be like, I'm just going to wreck him, take the foul and like, you know, be the tough guy over the top of him. But I don't think anyone is going to get their career ended.

Sands got a little unlucky on the first one because Degasino's contact from behind then pushed it into another guy. And like they had their knees hit, which that would hurt worse more than anything else that happened. For sure. So that was brutal. And then the second one. I think again, it's just full credit to Australia recognizes the situation being like, perfect opportunity to be total goons here and take the guy who just got off the ground from being, you know, kind of knocked over and taking another crack at him because that will piss off everybody.

So I think that's full credit to Australia recognizing how to get under our skin, but also a little bit of credit for us for responding in a way that wasn't total. like dumb. Like we crowded their guys. We crowded the referee, but we didn't do anything stupid. We didn't retaliate in any real way that cost us in the game.

So I think I think it was sort of like good all around and the other thing is it turned it into a game that absolutely suddenly mattered more to everybody which is a great outcome in my mind for friendly where it's no longer no one at that point is going through the motions.

Like we are mad at their guys. They are dicks. And that's actually a great situation for a friendly that you want to get something out of. Chris Richards. He had this quote here. They're lucky it was a friendly. I was ready to go. And if the ref didn't give me a shit yellow, I probably would have killed somebody.

So, yeah, you know what? I'll take it. And I'll take it. Our future captain, Chris Richards, you know, you got to be forged in the fires. You know, you got to have this. And like you just alluded to, you know, our response, we're showing, first of all, we had to respond. And I'm happy we did respond in the way that we did. But yeah, we didn't do anything too crazy.

We didn't boot a ball at the stadium. We didn't two-piece somebody as we've done before. We didn't, you know, I don't know. What else have we done? I mean, we didn't smack someone in the forehead. Yeah, exactly. So handed ourselves, you know, the way that you should. And I think the ref was taking it all in stride.

He seemed to be a good sport about the whole situation. So he understood what was going on. And so, yeah, fair play all around. That's the half. It's definitely a soccer match. Your thoughts, Greg? there was there was very little to do right uh you're right it was a soccer match and what i'll say is i thought james sands looked look the guy most off of it for us yeah um which again you want to

give guys grace because james sands hasn't played for the national team in like two years hasn't played for Pachitino yet. It's a big ask coming in. That's a lot of pressure on him. Like, everyone knows the situation. He certainly knows his situation. Eight months, the World Cup is right around the corner.

This is my 60 minutes. This is my 90 minutes. I have to do it here. And I think it's natural for players to not necessarily do it in that moment. To have a little bit of nerves and not necessarily deliver their best performance. And so now the question for him will be whether Potch says, I'm good with what I've got. Thank you, James. Appreciate you coming in. Whether he says, hey, I get it. You know, first game jitters and all that.

We'll give you, we'll give you another run out in November. Or if that's just, he's, he's going to go join the ranks of Leonard Maloney and enjoy his, enjoy his Bundesliga career. Yeah. Reckin people, but not necessarily being the kind of soccer player that Maricio Potchino wants. for the team. Yeah. You know, he could do that. It's just if he could if he could move a little bit better, man.

I would take that wrecking ball. But yeah. So anyway, on to the second half. No changes out of halftime, first of all. And in the 46 minute, we get trouble from another Australia throw it. It's boss.

Once again, throwing it from our right, throwing it in from our right touchline. He throws it into O'Neill, who lays it off under pressure from Sands. Boss then carries it, goes past Freeman and Sands. Kind of loses it,

but Boyle taps it back to him so that he can continue his run. He then makes Miles Robinson. First of all, boss, he plays for Fire Nord. He was, I think he was on the opposite side of Brian Reynolds for Westerloo for the last few years

before making this move. to fire an ordn? Seems like a player. He does. But also, he's not going to Liverpool next year. He's not going to be at Bayern Munich in the next. Like, the fact that he just absolutely embarrassed three, four, at least three players, by the time he sends this ball across, there are five U.S. players defending him and no one else in the sequence.

It's, this can't happen. it literally cannot happen somebody has to slide in and handle the business handle business I would I mean if all else fails you would think by the time he gets to Miles Robinson big bad Miles Robinson you know what I'm saying that they could that it would be like okay chance over I'm I'm you might meg me but I'm a shield you off the ball immediately um you know it's going out for a goal kick our ball type of thing but no he got pants worse than anyone else in the series. Without a doubt.

So on this run, he gets right outside the box, cuts it back to Metcalfe, who shoots it's on frame, but is blocked by Mark McKenzie. The ricochet falls to O'Neill, who catches it at the top of the box while colliding into James Sands and puts it wide. Yeah, we already talked about Malice, but also I don't think Alex Freeman had a great window.

No. I agree with that whole. hardly. It should be a good window for Joe Scali, but who knows? We'll come back to Freeman real quick because I just want to hit Sands again because even even getting like taken out of the play early on. I mean, he got taken out of the play twice. The guy who he was initially defending on his back who they threw it into like goes to the ground and is laying down and he still manages to take James Sands out of the play. and then Boss comes in after throwing it in, and then just goes right around James Sand. So James Sands has been eliminated by two different players in the same play,

and then he doesn't get back in the play. And this is what's actually most unforgivable for me, again, as a goalkeeper. Like, okay, you got rinse twice. You got to work hard to get back because the play is going to extend, and you have to be ready to help with the next sequence. And Sands doesn't even get back into a position where he should have been able to do more to disrupt the final shot. And what he ends up doing is probably some of that VAR would have looked at for a penalty in an actual match.

So it was a really tough sequence for Jimmy here. But yes, getting back to Freeman, tough on the ball, tough defending. I mean, where are you at with him? Do we trust him in a World Cup game? Can he go in and play if Death has to come out for any reason? So I have long been on the no train. And I was starting to come around a little bit. I was just like, well, I mean, look, he had enough rough moments in the Gold Cup where I was like a strong no.

And then, you know, Podge kept his faith in him. And he's like, he's a young player, right? You can make a big leap tomorrow or whatever. And so Podge kept trusting in it. And he's putting in solid performances. I'm like, okay. like maybe but uh yeah i just i i wouldn't feel comfortable with it i do not feel comfortable with it no not as it stands right now and we'll get to a moment later but um you know i kind of thought

that alex freeman was like some freak athlete but jordan boss showed him a real pace and power looks like in this match so so it's like it's not like he's like some super imperious um He's not Jedi, right? Yeah, he's not Jedi. He's not Jedi who can just get by on the athleticism that could cover up whatever technique issues or whatever that he has. He's a good athlete, without a doubt. But he's not Jedi.

And that's on either end. I mean, even when he's streaking forward, it's not like, oh, man, Freeman's got a step on this guy. Like, that's it. No one can get around him now. Right. He might be able to, like, make a run and gain you some territory. But he's not making a run that,

can't like that a defender can't recover and get get to the other side of one yeah there's not people bouncing off of me you know just making those one of those you know where it's like bull in the china shop he doesn't even know what to do he's just so physically talented he's he's kind of just parading through people and then you know it's it's not that type of situation so who knows if we will actually have better alternatives by the time the world cup comes around especially if we keep Scali in exile. But we'll see. But yeah, like I said, just not a good window for the man.

Not a good window for the man. So I'm, uh, especially, because, you know, people want to try him in, and, you know, the Miles Robinson role. No. No. He'd be worse than Miles Robinson was in the Miles Robinson role. No. So.

Yeah, that's where I stand with that. The good thing about Joe Scali is, you called Joe Scali the day before a soccer game. Be like, hey, you got to come in and play right back for us. And he would come in and give you exactly what he would give you if he's playing every minute from now until then. Like there's not going to be anything surprising about Joseph P. Scali. That's right.

That's right. Solid six out of ten, six point five, maybe a seven point five on his good day. or eight he gave us an eight in that Brazil match I'll give him that so 47th minute Chris Richards

foul after being out muscle to a bouncing ball by Dagestino you remember this play Greg I do because I think this is actually Richards being concapped a little bit

like I do think he got goaded into this by all the all the handbags from earlier like I think The first half Dagestino stuff led to Chris kicking him from behind in a situation that he didn't need to, in a place on the field that he certainly didn't need to.

Like you want to do that in midfield, do it and connect him. And any extra you give him, you get to pass off and be like, I was going for the ball. I'm a centerback. It's not even a tactical foul. No cards here. But don't give him a free kick from 22 yards out to do that. Yeah. And this is just tough.

This is not handling business right here. You know, bouncing ball. Chris has the position on it. Dacostino just puts his body in the Chris, pushes him a solid two, three yards, and all of a sudden he has position on the ball. He big padded him. Yeah. And then once he has it, yeah, that's when Chris gets going to because he just, you know.

I mean, it's like when your guard on a basketball team just makes a simple reach file. It's like, but you did not need to do that. Yeah. And you knew you were going to call for it. Like you chose, you decided that you were. We're just going to foul the guy. Would definitely like to see better there. Nothing came from that free kick,

but it's a very dangerous free kick to take right on the edge of the box, you know. 51st minute, we take the lead. Comes from a simple foul on Alex Freeman from boss as he's receiving a ball down the line from miles. It's kind of posting up. Fowl is called. And the quick thinking,

witty, coach on the field, Christian Rodon, takes it quickly, finds a streaking haji right down the right channel. He runs onto the ball in the box, chops it onto his left foot, drops Burgess,

who had a despicable second half, and curls it into the goal from 14 yards out. It was quite nasty. And that's 2-1. And that was the haji we've seen in the championship. That was the haji we watched play in Turkey, where somehow you get highlights of him just running one-on-one against the guy in 40 yards of space over. That is Haji.

For real. So he made such easy work in that replay of Burgess with the perfect angle where you get to see him totally horizontal on the grass, like just looking back as Haji gets to tee up whatever trajectory he wants to put on that ball. It's fantastic. We also got the great replay. from the end zone cam of Roldan hitting the quick replay, which we needed because, as you'll be quick to point out, they cut away during the actual sequence of us hitting

Hajie Wright for the match-winning goal to just show an Australian player close-up. And there he was. That was him. We saw him close up. Right, right. We get the end zone cam replay. And it's brilliant because I certainly did not know from the sideline cam the English that Christian Rihaldaun put on that ball. And that's fun. I mean, again, that's just fun soccer stuff to enjoy watching him curl a ball that quite frankly might have gone out of bounds and then come back in to curl into Haji's path. Like that's just, that's just good physics.

Yeah, that's the good stuff. That's the good stuff, man. good physics on the on the past and on the strike man like hazy turned hosy knew he caught that thing yeah turned around before it even hit the net um but yeah that's haji and that's why i was excited to see him get this get this shot because it's like well if it's going to happen for him it's going to happen for him in this in in the way that we use our striker um with these poach teams you know running these channels whatever like i said we didn't get to see it time after time after time

like we got to see it in the Gold Cup like we got to see it in the Japan match like we got to see it in the Ecuador match because of the way Australia was playing it but the one time yeah we got it Hajie did the haji thing and that's that's good stuff man that's good stuff yeah because I will I will say against a committed deep block haji's not my first choice

but the first goal it was a little transition moment where again we We, you know, Richard stepped in and knocked it and we went quick. And that's what let Haji run into that scene. And then in this one, yeah, just really good awareness from both him, Raldon. I don't know if Freeman for sure, it looks really cool in the replay too, because Freeman does a thing where he falls on the ball, like grabs it, you know, and gets the whistle, which is, that's savvy. And I saw Raldon congratulating him afterwards, too.

But then he, like, it looks like he literally, like, turns his body over and, like, sets the ball down. Like a football placeholder Who decided for a field goal And Roddon only has one step Like he only takes two steps So I know we were talking about Tasman Sanjay's interview with Tesno was great Talking about place kicking

That looked like a place kicker From Christian Rodon Like he took two steps from a standstill And hit that ball 60 yards So good aesthetics on our two rules Yeah And then we got some quotes from Potch On

Haji and Christian Rodon, on Haji, real quick, he said, it is what we expect when we give an opportunity to the player. That is good news to have players that can compete for a spot at the World Cup. Every time we have the opportunity to provide a player that didn't play too much in the last year with us, the important thing is to say, I'm here. I want to play with this team. And then Rodon, he said, it's what we need. We need players with confidence, with self-belief.

but a little bit of arrogance, a little bit of being naughty, being competitive. Maybe Christian Rodin is an example of how if you want to build your perfect player, he has a little bit of everything. Again, I mean, we talk about it at the beginning because

it could not be a more perfect full circle situation for people in this community who have, you know, weighed in and out of the discourse all the time. For Christian Raldon to be that player singled out. I mean, you could not ask for better from a content standpoint. It's hilarious.

It is actually hilarious, yes. It's true cinema, man. But yeah, with the haji stuff, what Pach said about that, I just, I'm just really happy for him. Because I just know, you know, we talked about James Sands earlier and him not necessarily taking the opportunity. I just know how it is, man, when it's like you got that opportunity. You know, for my brother or whatever, it'd be like that the fourth preseason game when all the backups get to play. You got people playing for a spot, you know, on a 53 man roster or whatever.

Haji here playing for a spot to put his name in the striker hat officially eight months out from the World Cup or whatever. And he delivers. Christian Rodan, same thing. You know, but, and, you know, it's not always, it's not always going to be fair, you know, the amount of minutes you get or whatever. Maybe, you know, you're dealing with injuries during the window, whatever. But when your number was called performing like that, I know they got to feel good right now on the plane. Well, Hajie on the plane back.

But, you know, Christian, too, on the plane back to Seattle, wherever he's going. I know it has to feel good. So just happy whenever I see some stuff. whenever I see some stuff like that. And in Haji in particular, he was so involved in his whatever 10-minute cameo against Ecuador. Like, he was right in the mix of a ton of attacking sequences. It almost felt like he was, he might have been part of the reason those attacking sequences didn't come off in the moment. Where it was like, oh, man, Haji's not getting it done.

So to have this start and then to deliver, it feels, it's, it's, he's got to be thinking like, I'm a guy, Potch. I'm a guy, you can bring me. You can bring me to this tournament. Yeah. All right. 56 minute. Chris Richards cooked by boss on the left wing. He doesn't even really bother to, well, I think Boss Megdam is that.

Yeah. He didn't even bother, like, turn around. He just grabbed the man, foul and a yellow. Once again. Business handling. So I watched him go out and do this. And I was like, is there just something weird? again, we talked about it, but Richard's plays over here in his three-man defense for Crystal

Right. This is why I didn't have much, like, time for excuses in the sense of like, is it just something weird about this? And that's why Robinson's getting cooked this way too, because Miles kept getting cooked as that sort of flank edge defender. And then Richard Zwitton did the same thing. I don't know, man. I'm going to chalk it up to altitude until.

Okay. I think maybe that Denver air just the guys are like, No, can't turn, can't turn, can't accelerate, no burst. Oh, for real, because that's what it looked like on this next play. I mean, Miles, he just kind of hacks Boyle, like Boyle oversees the ball, kind of gets it, tries to go in field a little bit, and Miles is just like, nope, I'm not going to move my body. I'm not going to try and get this ball from you. I'm just going to hack you down.

It's a pretty, they get a pretty dangerous free kick opportunity from it. You know, they're 20, 25 yards out from goal, whatever. So really, the one who doesn't come under too much scrutiny is Mark McKenzie because they didn't come down outside for whatever reason. Boss was on the left. Future Bayern Munich Star. I think that's all it comes down to. Yeah, that's all it comes down to.

So 60th minute, we get Yazbek, Roustic, Irankumda, and Toray, in for Ballard, Metcalf, Dagastino, Boyle in the 64th, Tanner Testman, Brendan Aronson, for Lauren Balagan, and for James Sands, Tim Wea, and Haji Wright. Brenda, left wingback, Vince. Yeah. It's an interesting call from Potch, but like a famous U.S. manager says, anyone can play left back, so let's toss Brenda back there.

Well, you know, I was thinking about it because, like, when we talked about, you know, the profiles we had on the pitch or whatever, I'm thinking like with Malik out, it's like who would we put at a wingback if we were to take, to not have Alex Freeman playing wingback, you know, like if we put Tim over on the right in his rightful place. Who's going to play left? Brenda seems to be the only option because Zendajas has hurt. You know, it's like, I mean, everybody kind of got an injury, man. attackers at least um so 69th minute um weston releases uh flow down the left touchline

after getting a second ball um nothing happens with it but yeah it was just a nice pass down to down to flow in the channel it's just good to have flow in isn't it yep it's good to have flow in and i know it's just it's good to have west on the pitch too i think um yeah we we we're I think we just need his quality on the pitch. Figure out how he gets on there. When everyone's fully healthy, I assume we slide him back into the double pivot. It's going to be the most interesting thing.

If we get everyone healthy, is how that box, the double tens and the double pivot shape up. 76 minute, our press is broken pretty easily, and the ball comes over to boss. Once again, who's kind of come infield slightly to receive the ball in his half, and he goes on a 60-yard run down the middle of the pitch.

Alex Freeman is tailing him the whole way. I mark this because it's an interesting data point here for me. Like I said, Boss showed that man what real pace and power looks like, man. It was a son of an other – he must have been a son of an Australian football player or something. You know what I'm saying? So, Alex, we play the real football over here, brother. I want to check. I feel like maybe boss plays at altitude.

I feel like whatever team he's playing on is actually secretly at altitude. He's used to playing at 5,000 feet. Is there elevation in Fire Nord? Yeah, yeah. They're the lowlands, but they're the one play up in like a high rise. All right. So 76 minute, Arf, is. Max Arston, Maximilian Arston, is in for Wes, and Aden is in for Christiane Rodon.

And moves Brando out of the wingback spot, because Ars takes his spot there. And then the 78th, we get Miller in for Italiano. All right. In the 79th, after a long spell of possession, Miles Robinson finds Diego Luna in the right half space with a square ball. Luna pops the first time to Brenda in the box who receives it on the turn with his chest and kind of eliminates Burgess with that move.

It looks like he has an advantage that he can press and maybe kind of hold off Burgess and get a shot off or something. But, you know, I think Brenda shows some good self-awareness here. Maybe he would have got mulled over by Burgess or something. So he doesn't press that advantage. He stops, pauses for a second,

lets Burgess back into the play. and finds a streaking Diego Luna right in front of the six-yard box with a pass on the ground that Meg's Burgess, like I said, he had a tough second half. Diego tries to stab at home

first time with his left foot, but it's denied by Ryan. Great chance and great work from them. It is. This is really good all around. From Brenda's first touch to drive into the box, to his patience,

not all around. Australia has two defenders who both sort of freeze up in front of Brenda. So it kind of looks like a video game glitch where all the crowd does the same motions. Because if you have two players right there, the guy behind the first one should be telling the first guy. You go. Like you can commit. You don't have to worry about getting burned because I'm right behind you. So even if you overcommit and he dusts you, I'm here to take it.

So we can't both just stand here and let him pick out whatever pass he wants. Brenda does the right thing and picks out a very good bet. it was smooth I mean this has to be our best chance of the match Oh by far Solid 0.5 XG or something Maybe more Maybe more

I mean of our 0.99 We'll get the scientists out here But yeah But like we just talked about You know we did the posh quotes about Christiane and Haji Like Brenda Brenda did not get a lot of gold cup minutes

Uh Here he is in this window, and I know the game is stretched, but he's trying to make his case. So good on him. Yep. And, you know, Diego Luna, too, who's been consistently popping up and providing moments in these times he gets on the field. Like, you know, Japan could have had that assist for Damien Downs or whatever. Like, he, you know, had the dummy from a glen. Dummy from a glen.

Yeah. And I'm not the biggest Diego Luna guy in the world, but hey, he keeps finding a way to be involved with chances and moments like this. And there was actually another one where there was some good, like, one touch play in the second half where he tried to find Haji with the final ball that kind of got cut out. But he was the one at the middle of that orchestrating that whole move that was pretty nice as well. you know, he keeps doing stuff. And as long as he keeps doing stuff, then, you know, you got a spot on this team, brother. Yeah.

Vince, out of all the guys that I don't want to see play meaningful minutes in competitive World Cup matches, Luna, Brendo, Rodon, Dendejas, I'm fine with any of those guys being on the team to not play those competitive minutes. I think those are the guys, like, on top of my list. To not play. Yeah.

The vast universe players that I don't want to play. I think those guys are like the very top. Yeah. We got to always record late at night. It's like we've been glad. You've outdone yourself with that one, Greg. Because I always say you're the king of saying it without saying it. Anyone still listening an hour and a half in.

All right. So 80th minute, you referred to this earlier. Game is stretched now. We get a lunar shot from the top of the bottom. box assisted by Brenda that we really didn't have to do much work for. A few passes, Brenda was in 40 yards. He carried it up there, squared it to Diego. Now, you said, Flo created the space for the shot?

Oh, yeah. Flo made the great run first, and then Brenda, to his credit, ignored it. Because he could have played Flo in, but Flo's run was, you know, taking it from the center of the field out to the edge of the box. So it would have been like that pass that leads him into the corner, which you can hit, but it's not going to get you anything. So Brenda ignores that one and finds Luna coming in second, and that's what created a much better chance.

So credit to Brenda. I mean, all three. It's a good choreograph sequence. All right. 89th minute, we get Mitchell Duke in for Miller, who was, I think, one of Australia's subs, but he, yeah, he cooked itself, I guess, in the 11 minutes that he was on the pitch.

89th minute this is another egregious situation Miles Robinson cooked again this time by Iracunda Iracunda Iraconda gets the ball after a giveaway from Freeman who was collecting a second ball he turns and starts going downhill he shrugs off Aiden

he shrugs off Miles in the process And then he, and then after he shrugs those two off, I mean, Miles falls on his face. Miles falls on his face. He gets into the box, left side of the box. And after a couple stepovers in the box on Chris Richards, he gets a pretty good shot at Matt Freeze from about seven yards away that Freeze does well to get down to. But that, I mean, easily, that could have been too, too. Yes. Yep.

It's a good say from Fries. I don't know if it's a full toe poke from Iraconda here, but it's the one that if it's sort of anywhere else, Fries just can't do anything about it. Yeah, not from sexy hours. Yeah, I'm basically forgiving Fries for if that ball had gone in just being like, yeah, what do you do? Like, we didn't disrupt him at all. He wasn't put off on his shot. He just, it's kind of like Brenda's pass to Luna, but at the goal instead of passing to someone.

Like, no one was stopping him from doing that. He was just waiting for his moment to try to poke it past Richards. And he took his moment. And, yeah. So, again, it's how the game ends who won because because that one doesn't go. I mean, we had, we had our looks too. Luna's didn't go and then this, and then this one doesn't go. But it was, yeah, we got to, we got to solve it.

We got to handle some kind of business. Like, that's, if I was going to coach a high school football team, our preseason training shirts would say, handle your business or short. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, man, we desperately need some business handles. And, you know, I don't want to let Aidan Morris off in this because he's the first one to get shrugged off. And I think he might even, he, I think him getting shrugged. Duff made this a harder situation for Miles Robinson, kind of, who was kind of collateral damage and Aden fall into the ground kind of thing.

But, yeah, Aden is supposed to be a business handling. So any opportunity that you have to handle business and you don't do it, which he didn't do it a lot in the Ecuador match. I mean, you know, what can you say? Yeah. It just comes down to like, I'm not going to be mad if Edmund's in November camp, I'm not going to be mad if Edon Morris is in November camp. I'm going to be mad if Aidan Morris is on a roster for a World Cup next summer. But if he's, if he's left off, it'll be like, and you got to just got to just handle your business.

Yeah. Yep. That's what it comes down to. So, yeah, he is behind Brindo, Diego, the rest of the people on the people that Greg would like to see on the team that will not play. Well, he's not, I don't think he's really competing with Roldon, though. I think, I think Rol D. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Yeah, of course. competing for a spot. That math probably checks out. Yeah, and it's, well, we'll get to it. We got one more time. Yeah, get your boy, because that was impressive. Pass at a window. Okay, I'm going to go ahead, call it now.

91st minute, Tanna Tessman. I mean, bro, nice pass. Nice pass from the left touchline. Had a crowd around him. This comes off of a corner. that was cleared and we kind of, you know, cleared, reset the ball, moving it around a little bit. Tanner receives on the left touchline from Aidan Morris, actually. Aidan continues his run and just a little, just a little scoop pass, toe poke, whatever, just out of this little tight area that is marked by the touchline, you know, and puts Aiden in right on goal.

It's him 1V1 against Burgess who gets done once again. So Aiden receives it. On the left side of the box, he cuts inside onto his right foot. But his touch is heavy and it kind of gets away from him to a point to where Aiden kind of panics. And by the time he gets back to the ball, he like lashes at it. Lashes at the ball. Lashes at the ball. He doesn't really have, I mean, I assume professional soccer player.

He knows where the goal is. but he's not able to get his technique right on the shot because of because he's Aiden Morris. Can we just say, yeah, because he's Aiden Morris. This isn't his game. He is not expecting this whole thing to happen.

When he collects the ball at midfield, just kind of shoves it over to Tessman at the left, at the left sideline. And even Tessman is 50 yards from goal. And Aiden is making like a perfunctory run beyond him. No one is thinking, this is going to be a 60 yard give and go that puts me on goal. It's crazy

that happened. And credit to Tanner Tessman for the slightest of feints. Like he has it and it looks like he's just going to hit another harmless ball up the left sideline to the next man off the field, probably Arston, I assume. But instead

he uses that little faint to get everyone to fall asleep for just a second and then he creates a goal, scoring opportunity. So Testament I thought was a little bit off for some of this cameo in this game. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

But I think totally redeemed himself. Yeah. It's just like when you can pull out quality like that, it's like now, I mean, this is like, you know, we reserve this kind of pass for like our top echelon of players. That's Gio and Malik, right? That's the pass we want from them. Exactly. I'm going to throw West McKinian there too.

But, yeah, from, from. our top line players, you know, that's a pass that, you know, people would tell me only they can hit or whatever. And before we saw this from Testament, I would have agreed with them. But yeah, the fact that Tanner just adding, like, I always saw this in him to be able to develop. But he's getting more consistent with it and it's coming fast. And if he can add this type of quality to a match, then yeah, he's leading my list of people that I do want to see on. on the pitch that wasn't a that weren't on the pitch in the last world cup let's put it there but yeah that's our last chance of the match and that is the game winners once again two one uh in denver yeah viz i love this because without belts here like the rain it rain things in it's just like y'all are going to be listening for two hours well and you know i didn't think

we do this over this match. You know, I was rewatching it back. I'm like, yeah, there's not a ton that happened here. But real quick, you know, that's a window down. We got one, two, three, four, basically four windows if you count the pre-world cup window as a window. So November, our next games are against Paraguay, November 15th at Subaru Park. What's that? That's Philadelphia.

Right. And Uruguay, November 18th in Tampa. So Paraguay, a respectable team. Did they qualify? Yeah, Paraguay's in. Okay. We're playing World Cup teams. This is great.

Okay. Playing World Cup teams. Yeah, so we get another shot. Hopefully, we'll see. I'm, police probably going to be out. But hopefully Malik isn't too injured. We can get him back in. Real quick, before we go, can we get him?

get a stock up, down from the window? I feel like, the easiest way I feel like it's going to be stocked down and it's probably just, it's mostly just relative. But, like, I think James Sands might not be a November window. I think Aiden Morris could be, but it's going to be tight. And it's really just going to, because there's not necessarily anybody trying to knock him out other than. Johnny who's hurt perennially.

He's hurt as much as Gio. And Eunice Musa, who we still don't know if Pachino just, whatever his, there's so many things that it could be with Moussa. It could be Posh just doesn't rate him. Could be Posh just kind of rates him, but wants to see some of these other guys that he kind of rates too. Could be the Gold Cup, Musa decided not to do it,

and Posh isn't happy about that. It could be that Mousa literally just moved on like the last day of the window to a really high profile club and he needs to, and Potts just wanted to let him work his way in. We know Potch does that kind of thing because he did it in September window. So with Musa moving on the last day,

maybe it was like, all right, this is just, we just delayed, we got to push any Musa callups until he can settle in. So we don't know. But he's, I feel like he's a midfielder that could knock somebody out, but I feel like he'd just knock out sands, right? Yeah, knockout sands, but I mean,

we got to remember Tyler Adams. Oh, that's true. Adams. Adams is the one of those. So we got Adams and Musa and Johnny to potentially work in. So I think sand's gone. I'd drop Freeman's stock only because we got a Joe Scali sitting right there. It's perfectly serviceable. But just don't know what that rationale is for Potch, if it's soccer, if it's golf cart related.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's it. I mean, I guess I would say up for Christian. For sure. Up for Tanner Testament. Who, I mean. Hajie up.

Hajie up. But yeah, give me your testament love because you've earned it. I mean, I don't need to say too much right now. We need to end this pod. But I'll just say that going back and forth, like, look, Christiane did enough in this match. Like I said, you know,

he really got those moments in to put together a full highlight package of post reel or whatever when you're showing the highlights and the TNT post game show, you know, when they're standing around the table on the pitch. But Tandotasman did it against Ecuador.

I didn't have Casado. You know, there's a lot of mitigating factors, but I'm trying to think of how to weigh these two performances. But look, I think both of them have earned their way into the next camp, I think. And so that's cool.

That's cool because we got, you know, I think we've, we might have raised the floor on our midfield pool in this window here. It's not dropping out completely. If we miss a Tyler Adams, Weston McKinney,

etc. Yeah, the floor is not dropping out from under us. If we can replace it with a Tanner Testament Christian Rodon, I think I'll be pretty happy with that. And yeah, Haji, scoring those two goals. We didn't see Big Pat. I know. So Big Pat,

Big Pat didn't play. CCV didn't play. And the other centerbacks didn't cover themselves in glory. So you necessarily thing is you never know. I know we're getting out of here. But you don't know because Haji was at the Gold Cup camp. Didn't really play, barely played at all. eventually got sent home injured and, you know, whatever.

Maybe he was really injured. Maybe there were quotation marks around it because he didn't come in in September either. And so it's like maybe Bosch doesn't rate Haji. And then Haji starts. And now Haji is probably in the next camp and, you know, maybe the number two until someone else takes it from him. So the same kind of thing can still happen. That's the thing.

We're not so close to the World Cup. that CCV, even though he didn't even play in these games, doesn't come in and just handle business and be like, okay, he's a business handler. Thank you, CCV, we've got you. And you're now either in the lineup or, you know, the next man after Tim Ream. So that can definitely still happen with some of these guys. But CCV didn't play, Big Pat didn't play, and then the injury, the injury guys didn't play.

Yeah. So while we were sitting here, that, while you were talking about that, I was just thinking about that January camp. I wonder if the European dudes, I'd be trying to fight getting to that camp, man. I'm going to be disgruntled for a week. Go off to Carson, California, whatever. Or maybe they're doing it in Atlanta now officially for this. Maybe this will be the first time they do it in Atlanta.

I don't know. If Geo can't get minutes, if Geo can't get on the field. Yeah, yeah. Get down this. Yeah. Come on down, brother. But, all right. That's it.

a good window. A good window. I think we're feeling good. It's time to get excited. Like I said in the last episode, you see these crowds starting to show up. I think everyone, I think it's starting to hit everyone. We're eight months away, ladies and gentlemen. Eight months. So we will see you.