Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #648: USA v Uruguay recap

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

We wiped out a historically-good national team, coached by Marcelo Bielsa, in Tampa! Greg Velasquez and Belz talk it through. Gio's return, a caution against certainty, a tetchy performance from Poch in the post-game press conference, and, you guessed it, some classic Velasquez wet-blanketism.f Clip Notes on Patreon, for $5 subscribers and up, coming soon. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff podcast where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody, we played an entirely rotated 11, Don't Tell Potch, against Ouduguay and beat them 5 to 1. It was a rare treat. Some are calling it a signature win. Greg Velazquez is on the mic today. Another treat. How did this happen? Can you help us understand the miracle at Raymond James Stadium?

You know, you can't explain a miracle, bells, but you should. sure as hell should enjoy them. And I really enjoyed this. I feel like my bit for this is going to be that this window, this whole window, I feel like, was a nice lesson in uncertainty, right? In the sort of humility that maybe you should come with that. There's an old film from the 1900s that had a line about dealing in absolute.

The 1900s. And it turns out that it's both the, the Sith and USMNT Twitter that tend to traffic in these. And we'll start with our favorite, which is Gio Raina. And I feel like going into this window, there were so many people who were certain that Gio Raina just can't figure for the national team, right? Because he's not playing. Why would he, why would he be a part of this team?

He's not playing. He would credible people. Credible people were saying this. Yeah. It's just, again, to me, it's a completely different way of like understanding, even probabilities. Like there's no way he will play. He can't.

You know, he's, he's not playing. at all. Like yeah, but surely there are ways that he might start playing for his club and then surely they'd. But he, you know, we've been adamant. He doesn't even necessarily need to do that. To make an impact for the national team. And that was maybe

on display in this window. There are people who were certain that the lineup we put out yesterday was the worst lineup. It was a waste of a window. You know, the initial roster was a waste of a window. What are we doing? We're wasting this window. Yesterday's lineup is wasting a chance.

to play against a good team. And I'm just like, I'm curious how much people are going to be like, maybe, maybe there are some things that we just got to kind of find out as we go. Yeah. We aren't sure exactly what some of these guys are capable of and how they should be set up. I mean, it's almost as much of a rebuke to me as it is to anybody, you know? I mean, I feel differently about Max Arfston now than I did in the summer. I think he's a quite solid contributor and maybe even better than that.

I do want to play, you know, I was pretty low on Burrhalter, pretty low on Austin trustee, still kind of bearish on Diego Luna. But, you know, all these guys, Luna scored a goal. Burrhalter obviously scored a goal and assisted another one and had like had a huge night. I thought trustee was really good in this game against Uruguay. And this was not your, this was not O'DoGuay's B team. They were missing Darwin Nunez and Federico Valverde, but outside of that, they had, I think, everybody, maybe goalkeeper is another one where, which maybe we'll get into that later. This was not their first choice goalkeeper between the posts.

But anyway, it was a pretty strong Uruguay team. And then we go out there and we beat them with this lineup and beat them soundly. It is crazy. a crazy game. And again, even to extend certain things more, like, just to be cautious here. I hate to already have a wet blanket ready, because this was fun, and it's fun to watch the lads go out and do this

to a good team, to a manager that, you know, was always sort of in the murmurings of should we get in for the U.S. Men's National Team Manager, and to really pants them the way we did. But there are some shades of like the Morocco friendly before the 2022 World Cup that summer before we kind of pants Morocco a little bit.

where the numbers were a little flattering. The actual goals scored were a little flattering for us. That probably is in play a little bit from last night. And then also, maybe the intensity that Uruguay was bringing in this game was not that high. Just from the rewatch, I'm like, oh, man, this is, this is rough. This is really rough stuff from Uruguay. Like, they're a mess. They're not actually trying that hard and they're a shambles structurally.

So it's going to be like, we also shouldn't be certain. now that the guys who did well yesterday are keyed in contributors at a high level or that Pachitino is like, fix everything. And, you know, it's all this culture stuff that he's been preaching and it's all fixed. And we are a force to be reckoned with. Like, we just got to be careful on that takeaway too. Yeah. Yeah.

Don't get too high. Don't get too low. I do want to play. This is kind of a long clip from the press conference because, and I'll give the context for it. Doug McIntyre, great friend of the podcast. And then Paul Tenorio. both asked questions. They were different, but they were both questions related to, you know, we don't have the regulars here.

We don't have the, nobody said the words, but the first choice, 11. And, you know, McIntyre asked about that. Potch rejected the question. And then Tenorio asked about it, like sort of piggybacking off that. So, like, what does it say about the program that you can, you know, that all the parts seem pretty interchangeable now? So Tenorio, and then Potch misunderstood, like, Tenorio was just trying to, like, keep going with this, where the regulars question, and he got really mad. And then he got a question from Stephen Goff, which you'll hear, and he responded sarcastically to that. And I just want to play the whole clip because there's a lot of sort of, I appreciate all the reporters involved because they elicit this emotional response from Potch.

It's almost better for there to have been this misunderstanding than for him to just, to understand the question and say, yeah, we've worked really hard. We want, we're going to be good no matter who we throw out there. You know, we're going to, you know, whatever he, whatever sort of. Coaches on. Vanilla answer. Yeah, he could have given to that. But the fact that he misunderstood and then got mad made it pretty cinematic.

So let's just listen to it. It's like a minute and 20 seconds, I think. So here we go. Maybe I am tired and I don't understand the English now or your English question because I don't, to be honest. very disappointed in the first two questions because I don't know what do you expect what I'm going to say when you say no natural players playing today or the another day or in the gold cup or I don't know when very sad very sad situation keep going I'm received please please the pressure is great Okay, so on the first goal, Sebastian plays it short to Sergenio.

So in a situation like that, do the players have the freedom of thought to come up with that? Or is that something that you work on as a second play? Yeah, it was coincidence. Yeah, that's it. I mean, he was, if you could see his face through all of this, which you can, you go on YouTube and watch the video, he's so exasperated with everybody. And I think what I like about it is, I don't, I mean, everybody knows this isn't like on paper or even in reality of first choice, 11, including Marcelo Bielsa, as Felipe Cardinus

reported, Bielsa said, in no way should the best Uruguayan players lose a match against the second string group of the United States. He said this after the game, you know, Bielsa, of whom Pachatino. is an acolyte, you know, said this after the game. So what I like about this is the depth of feeling Potch has about not, one, disrespecting the players who are on the field. And two, sending the message, I think this is what this really comes down to, continuing to send the message to the whole player pool that there is no, there is no free lunch. You know, there is nobody who's going to like walk into this World Cup roster. I think that's primarily what's going on here.

And it's very theatrical and everything. But I think that he's even after a 5-1 win, he is not forgetting like his core message to the players, which is you're all competing for a spot to go to the World Cup. So you better keep working hard. And I like that. Yeah, brilliant. I love it. I loved it the first time he said it where he said, who's, whose players? Your list?

Do you have a list? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's been very consistent. that's his story and he's sticking to it. So I guess that's with that, let's do the lineup, you know, unless you got something else on that. Oh, just that I absolutely do have my list of players, Potch.

But again, but what I love is, and we all do because we're all nerds about this, but what I love is, again, that uncertainty of like, we've talked about this too. Like once you're kind of moving down to some of the players we've been including, then it's not, it shouldn't really be surprising that Timmy Tillman gets called in. Because, you know, Timmy Tillman's just another guy, but we're at the point where we're just calling guys. You know, we're not, we don't have 23, as as Bodge said, we don't have 23 pales out there, like that we're not calling up Maradonis. Like, we just have a bunch of guys. So if it's rolled on, if it's Timmy Tillman kind of coming in and they make a case, like it can't be that crazy that they're making the case when, you know, Aiden Morris is one of the other guys.

Yeah. Yeah. And I would just say Morris, not that impressive in this window. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I feel like it's stocked down two windows in a row for Aiden. He's got, he's going to, I feel like he's the one who's going to be really, really having to scramble as we get closer to June. Yeah.

But it's okay because so many other guys are stock up. Let's see. Matt Freezing goal, we'll get into his stock in a little bit. Alex Freeman got his brace in this game. He played right back. So I guess we're calling it a 4-1, 2, 3 maybe. Is that fair? Something like that?

Well, it's different in possession and attack. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, Freeman was the right back, the right back, right center back in possession and the right back in when we were defending. McKenzie, trustee, and John Tolkien across the back line. So a completely rotated back. line and then Aiden Morris, Sebastian Burrhalter and Tim Tillman in the midfield, and then Dest at right wing, Hodgey Wright at Stryker, and Diego Luna at left wing. Only guys who

started both games in this window are Dest and Freeze. And amazingly again, Dest starting both games at right winger. Yeah. Right. Along with Potch saying he needs to get better at defending, which I think probably has is why he's playing right wing. I assume so, right? So we don't, again, with Posh, this whole time he's been our manager, we have had massive personnel deficiencies as far as like who's been available. Sometimes it's been forced upon us. Sometimes Potch maybe it's sort of made the call himself to leave like out the regulars.

Now we got a second guess it every time we say that. the first string players. But we don't know if Dest playing the right wing here is because we're so thin in impact players there for this window. Or if it's because given everyone fully healthy, he still maybe just doesn't trust Dest as a right back to do the job. Yeah. So many questions that we just keep not getting answers to. Yeah, well, I mean, I'll do the Uruguay lineup and then let's talk about the shape a little bit

because there's more to say about that. But Uruguay was Fierre Marine in goal. He plays for Telema in League of Emekis. He has two caps or had two caps going into this game. I don't think he had a great game. Nahitan Nandez, who plays in the Saudi League, Ronald Arajo, who is often the captain for Barcelona, Matthias Olivera from Napoli and Matias Vina,

Vina from Flamingu across the back line. and then Manuel Ugarte from Manchester United and Rodrigo Betancourt from Tottenham in the midfield with Rodriguez Rodriguez Salazar from Braga in Portugal at right wing Georgian de Arascaeta from Flamingo easily the most impressive player of the game for Uruguay as the 10 and then Maximiliano Araujo from sporting in in Portugal at left wing and then Federico Venus Vignes from Real Oviedo at Stryker. So, yeah, again, no Valverde, no Nunez, but a pretty decent 11, much stronger, at least in the Badge FC category than the one that drew Mexico a few days ago.

Yeah, yeah, very good players. Again, not sure, not sure how motivated they were. I wanted to bring up to you the comparison from this game to the Copa matches where every single Copa match we watch, you walk away, it's almost like gladiatorial. Those matches were so visceral in their intensity. This could not have been farther from that for Uruguay. Yeah, it was not like that.

I mean, I think we were a little more gladiatorial than they were in this game. We got a lot of fight out there, Greg. I know you love talking about that. I do think it matters. I mean, I do think we're battling. Like, I definitely don't think there's anything soft about the way we were approaching this match. Yeah. And there are whispers.

I mean, I don't know if this is true, but there are whispers that they want Bielsa fired. And, you know, they may have been motivated in that direction. Full-on tanking. Yeah. I mean, I don't think so, but it's obviously not a squad that's like clicking on all cylinders right now, or at least not last night. Well, when you run into one of those squads, you absolutely pants them. And that's what we need to do. Because even, I mean, you can even run into that situation at a World Cup.

Yeah. It's not always likely. But you can hit a team in disarray at the World Cup and it kind of cracks under that stress. And you've got to score the goals. Yeah. They, you know, they possessed a little bit in our half for some stretches in the first half, but really not much. And the goal was like a moment of brilliant from them was a moment of brilliance in a, in a bit of a scramble. Let's let's go to the, let's go to the shape. So I thought it was a something like a 3-1, 4-2 in possession and basically a 4-4-2. in defense. Is that about right?

Yeah, that's what I'd call it. I mean, you could maybe call it a 4-4-1-1 with Tillman kind of lagging behind Haji. A lot of times up in the same line as him, but then as Uruguay, depending on how their build-out shape was evolving, he might sag back to sort of shadow some of the guys off the centerback's line.

And then there actually were moments. I know we've been adamant that through all this talk of three at the back that I feel like is surrounding. us in some of the other national team discussions. Pach has very much been doing four at the back, pretty standard four-back systems, with the exception of South Korea's second half, Japan, basically, a full match, and then a little bit in the second half against Ecuador. But it's basically been four-backs, and he's just been playing weird personnel there.

There were times where it started to look like a little five at the back towards the end of the first half, but it kind of seemed like it was more just Diego Luna taking breaks. the back line next to Tolkien. If he got back there, he was just in no hurry to get back up. And we weren't really pressing. We were pretty passive in our block. So it didn't, he didn't need to be. He wasn't leaving anyone out to drive by sitting back there.

And it might have been beneficial for both him and Tolkien. Yeah. So he would have been like the wing back and a five, a five back formation, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. I thought right away again, like almost every soccer game, it was pretty choppy in the first few minutes. but a particular bit of messiness from Tim Tillman and our defensive third around the three minute mark.

He had two of these on the game. Neither was punished, but I mean he's got to be a little cleaner than this. Nothing came of it. I think Burrhalter like won it right back after he lost it. Yeah, he won't right back, gave it right back to Tillman and Tillman like popped it up to somebody again on a short pass. It was a rough stretch for Tillman for two straight touches.

But then he had some clean ones in the buildup. later on. Totally, yeah. And I think we kind of emerged from that early scrappiness, a little bit on the strength of Sergenio Dest, who gets played in behind down the right wing right at the end of the fourth minute by Freeman. He shoulders a guy, puts him off balance, and then collects it, and then sauces a little bit on the right touchline against Vinya and Arraskayeta. the crowd appreciated it and it kind of settled things down for us. And from then on, we kind of, we work, it seemed like we were comfortable in possession. All of this is going to be in the clip notes, by the way, which you can get if you join the Patreon at the $5 or more level.

Seventh minute, good work coming back to the ball from right on a trustee pass. Trustee was not afraid to play it on the ground into the center circle, into midfield, which, you know, I'm sure, I'm sure has something to do with the level of intensity from Uruguay, but also it's nice that he's, you know, hitting these passes. He's much better at this than I thought he would be. Wright's really strong, keeps it, finds feet on the left touchline. So his back-to-goal play, I think, is a little bit improved over like a year ago, as Vince has talked about repeatedly on the Monday review.

But I think you saw that a little bit today. doing more striker stuff, right? Being more of a nuisance to centerbacks, which is huge because it really is a battle for Bolo's backup right now, it seems like. It does seem that way, doesn't it? Pepey didn't even get in to this game. Eight-minute mark, we played it to Wright's feet,

and he turns and shoots from the edge of the box. It's blocked, but again, some solid work with his back-to-goal. And we look, you know, pretty good as the 10 minute mark rolls around. Yeah, and we are looking good. We're making composed decisions. It's not always super clean.

So again, there's a ton of opportunity to afford it us because Uruguay just, like their amoeba basically is terrible. They just have a terrible to the point where they kind of don't have one, where especially when we start building from deep with goalkeepers and centerbacks in our own box, that was almost the best time for us, the best place for us to have the ball. because they just were not connecting at all. The forwards would come all the way up, and the midfield line would either come up with the forwards

and leave a huge gap between them and the backs, or they'd stay with the backs, and we could just easily bypass their forward three to the midfielder's, like to Morris and Burhalter, and it was just such a simple task. We weren't necessarily earning it the way we had to against Paraguay. Paraguay's lines were really tight, like it was impressive how little room there was,

And every time we threaded a ball in from the centerbacks to the midfield, it was sort of like earned. Like it was tough. Someone had to execute something, you know, minimally impressive. And it just wasn't the case here. It was just like, it was a stroll in the park. It was, I saw a comment saying, why does it seem like the US have 12 players? And sometimes that can be as a result of your own tactical genius, you know, like legitimately. Like you've put together a really good plan that has done that.

Sometimes it can be your own nuance and talent. Like when we watch Switzerland carve us up repeatedly in that friend. It was like Switzerland have this subtlety about them and their understanding of the game that is really on display. We didn't have to do any of that yesterday. What we didn't, we didn't, we didn't, it doesn't mean we couldn't have done it, but we didn't have to do that yesterday to just get the ball upfield running downhill. How, how does a Bielsa coached team end up in such disarray, if not for some level of self-sabotage, you know? Yeah, so it's either, I mean, I'm not jumping all the way to self-sabotage like we're done with this guy. want him out. This is how we're going to show it on the field. I mean, it could, it could just be, again,

total indifference, which you don't, you don't associate that with the BELSA team, but it's a friendly. They've just gone through the, you know, the gauntlet of qualifying. Yeah. South American. So it could just be like, these are the friendlies. This is, we're on, we're essentially on vacation. We're just cruising now, cruise control. Uh, once we get to the World Cup, things will, you know, be back on. Um, but this is a, this is a stroll for us. I don't know. It might, I mean, it could very well, be the end of Bielsa. Yeah, that'd be sad. It was fun to watch him just impassively sitting on that water cooler the whole time.

Like, he barely moved from that spot. Potch barely moved from his seat either. I don't know if it was a little bit like not celebrating a goal against your home team the way he didn't celebrate any of the goals, but he just sat there and kept his own counsel after every goal. Okay, Wright wins another one at midfield. at the 12-25 mark. And, I mean, it's like a long kind of driven pass.

He juggles it really high up in the air. And then it just kind of, as he's, like, battling, it bounces off his back to Luna. And Luna can't, Luna has Tolkien, you know, in miles of space down that left wing. Nobody even close to him. And he does try to pass it to him, but he can't connect.

I mean, it just hits it off the head of the nearest defender. And I feel like this is a theme for Diego. It's just he scored a goal in this game, and it was a nice, like, one of the cleanest side foot finishes you'll see all week. But he does not connect passes when you feel like he should, you know? Like, there's another way to, there's other ways to get this ball to Tolkien than to just bang it off the head of the nearest defender. Yeah, the screenshot you have here is exactly kind of what I'm talking about Uruguay's Amiba, too. So we is a pruder to death as we do. The goal we gave up to Paraguay, right?

Where, and we're using words like, how are we so bad at defending? How are we so, you know, how do we make this so easy for Paraguay? And we're talking about like leaving a guy on side by like half a tibia. And him running full speed, McGee having to run on the dead sprint one time volleying a ball across the field as the only play you could have to keep their scoring chance alive. And now we're looking to the screenshot of Tolkien, who is held on side by like four yards by an absolutely ragged Uruguay backline,

like not even a backline to speak of. No one within 10 yards of him. No one facing the right way to defend him. And this was just like I was stopping the screen every minute and a half to like pause and be like, what is happening here? That was the defensive shell that Uruguay are employing in this match. And it was upfield midfield defensive third. Like it was everywhere.

Huh. And that kind of goes back into why I was saying we weren't as clean as we could have been. We had, they were giving us a lot of these, uh, downhill looks and we weren't executing. But then the flip side is we executed the hell out of the last 20 yards to the goal. Yeah. Well, we even got some lucky, I mean, I don't want, I'm not, I'm not wet blanketing it. I, I had an absolute blast watching this game and I'm having a blast talking about it. But we, some of our execution even in the final third was like, for instance, the Tillman

cut back for the Luna goal. That was aimed at Hajie Wright and it just took a perfect deflection into Luna's path and we had a few other cutbacks from that from that area of the field that were you know cut out with you know a casualness that was breathtaking

for Uruguay. I mean like not they didn't we didn't test them at all in times when we could have tested them. 1000% when I'm talking about the execution I'm literally talking about as the ball left our foot and then the ball traveling into the net. Okay. Got it. That execution was spot on yesterday.

Yeah, excellent. We should do that all the time. So 14 minute mark, Tolkien wins a ball, played into the right, the right wings, feet, you know, just kind of crashes into him, wins it straight to Haji. Haji drives at the left side of the goal and wins a foul just outside the box. and on the ensuing free kick, Burrhalter whips it in, but the ref wants to have it,

and I think it gets headed in by a Uruguay player, but the ref wants to have a chat with Ugarte for body slamming trustee, so that gets chocked off, and then we have another chance, and this time we do like a training ground routine, which is what Stephen Goff asked about, and Pochitino sarcastically said

it was a coincidence that that happened. Burrhalter taps it to Dest Desk taps it right back to him and Burrhalter just whips it in at the far post A little bit reminiscent of Tony Kroes At the What World Cup of that was that? That was 2018 right?

Okay 2018 yeah Didn't get him into the Didn't get him into the knockout round so It was all Mexico That's right I mean the goalkeeper Burrhalter whips it in at the far post goalkeeper flaps at it, but Wright is also rising toward it right in front of him, and it's all up in his space.

And he doesn't really have a chance for Halter take a bow. I love the conception and the execution here. 1-0 USA. Yeah, it's fantastic. Really slick. It's a maybe a underrated touch from Dest to just cushion it the way he did. I know it sounds ridiculous, but like he, it's, He has to do this kind of perfectly so that it doesn't handcuff Berhalter.

And Haji challenging for this is also huge. And I think he's on side at the time of the shot. So I don't think he's off. If VAR thought he was off, if there were VAR, if this was a World Cup, they'd definitely look at it because if he was off, I think it'd get called back. Or if they thought he fouled the keeper would get called back. But I think he did just enough to be on side and not foul the keeper, but make the keeper do the not quite full extension dive.

You see it a lot when they dive at their own post too Where you keep that shoulder turtled a little bit And don't really get that full arm stretch Because you're bracing for the contact And I think I think Hajj affected him Yeah, because you think about your you have your ribs totally exposed While somebody's like jumping at you You just almost almost impossible to avoid the instinct

To turtle up a little bit Yeah, I think it's like your spine Like you're almost like turtling to protect your, as you don't want to crash head first into another person's body. Yeah. So good on, Haji. Well, done,

Haji. Now, as I'm watching, I'm like, well, here comes the Uruguay Equalizer, for sure. That seems to be our pattern.

But it wasn't to be, it wasn't to be a 19 minute mark. So less than five minutes after the goal. We work it to Burrhalter's feet with space in our half. and he loops through that sort of shambolic amoeba that you've been talking about. He loops a long ball down into the corner for Tolkien. He wax it off some Uruguayan shins and we went another corner. And this corner is just as straightforward as you can imagine right at the end of the 28th minute.

He hits a good set piece, Burrhalter does, to the back post. Freeman rises over Betancourt, the Uruguay captain, and nods it back to the near post. really good really good header to generate that enough power and and the right placement to make make it impossible to stop two zero USA freeman's first goal for the u.s what a night for him and the entire freeman family yeah and we're at this point we're feeling great about our about our set pieces right that's two set pieces we've capitalized on that has been sort of a point of emphasis for us following the team as something we have haven't been getting a rich vein of goals from. So again, we'll have to see if this is something that can translate. And the big question, of course, because the guy we associate with the failure of set pieces for the long time now has been Christian Pulisic. Someone who we assume Pocino considers a regular. And so we'll have to see if Pulisic comes back and is put on set piece duty or if he misses out.

Well, I'll tell you what my vote is. take Pulisig off set piece duty I mean the amount of the amount of danger we've left on the table by letting him take all the set pieces for the last I mean it's basically five years he doesn't take all of them

but most of them it's a travesty because I don't think we score either of these goals if he's taken the set pieces I mean maybe maybe we do that maybe we do the same the same training

training ground routine as we did with Burrhalter and he curls one in from that angle, it's not impossible. But yeah, I think, I think, I really do hope Potch replaces him on the set pieces. And I think it's probably going to happen. The other question is going to be, are the guys who are taking these set pieces going to be in the 11? So is Burrhalter going to be in 11? Or Maximilian Arfston, who takes a pretty nice corner? corner kick. Yeah. John Tolkien. Yeah. That's an interesting one. Tolkien. So you talked about,

you know, during the summer not being sure about where Arsden was, maybe having that much confidence in him. And the guy that a lot of people wanted to see more of was John Tolkien. And we still don't know for sure if Tolkien is, is good. And now, I mean, you hate to say, but you have to wonder when we start thinking, well, we're going to need a backup for Arstyn because Jedi is not going to be available and we need two left backs. So maybe John Tolkien has a path into this squad. I thought he played really well last night, too. I mean, you may disagree, but I especially love his, well, it's coming up here in the timeline, but his two actions on the, what was it?

Yeah, his two actions on the fourth goal were, like, really clean and nice. I mean, he had plenty of time, but he still had to do it exactly right. Greg's smiling at me, because, which means he. I'm laughing because I'm thinking about that sequence on that fourth goal. And it again, it is such like a, what is happening here against an elite, storied opponent.

Yeah. John Polkin has just somehow forgot about, again, that college wide receiver situation where it's like, do they not know he's, do they not know he's on the field? Yeah. Trusty kind of threw a fade at him on the sideline.

Wasn't necessary because he was wide open. Okay, so now we're up to zero and we want more. 24th minute, nice first time ball on our recovery from Morris and our half out to Luna wide left. He goes at his guy into the box, loses it, Burrhalter wins it back, gets poked away from him. Morris arrives and shoots far post with his right foot, draws a good save at the far post, and right tracks it down at the end line and wins a corner. Yeah, I guess it's all invalidated, but there were lots of nice passing sequences sort of from front, from back to front.

And I don't want to invalidate them totally. I don't know how much we're going to see them translate against our next really good opponent. But the mentality to go forward when we would turn them over, I think is meaningful. I think that matters. And to push and to be like, okay, there is a window. We're pushing through it.

We're not just going to be like, okay, well, what we do now is reset, regroup, get our shape, start working around until we can, you know, try to, work through them. It was like, no, go. We just took it from them. Go. I think that matters. Again, we weren't necessarily very clean with it. This was one that came off. But the mentality to go, I think, is good and meaningful. Yeah.

28th minute Uruguay wins a corner and it gets cleared by desk out of a crowd at the penalty marker. And Arraskayeta meets it from 30 yards. Absolutely smokes it off the top corner of the crossbar. What a hit. That thing is still shaking, but still two zero. And then we score, we score again. 31st minute. Tolkien takes a corner that was won somewhat harmlessly.

And it's cleared out. Dest recycles it over to Morris. Morris over to Tillman, over to Trustee, who's kind of in a left-wing spot. And he plays a good pass into Burrhalter. So this is one thing I liked about Trustee is like he was picking out passes and hitting him. with some competence even in the final third. Burhalter loses it. Tillman makes a good sliding challenge to win it back

and then passes it to trustee who plays a delicate little one-touch pass to spring Freeman into the box and then he puts on his ski goggles and slollums pass Barcelona captain Ronald Arajo, holds off Ugarte and then shoots. It deflects in off of Olivera's outstretched stretched foot and makes it

unstoppable as it goes in at the near post. As I watched the replay, I was like, mate, it might have gone in anyway, even if even if Olyvera hadn't stuck his foot out because the keeper was, I'm not sure what the keeper was doing, but he was kind of. He was kind of doing genuflect.

So he was genuflecting in the last second to try to, you know, stay big but protect the five hole, the nutmeg. So if Freeman smacks it straight at the keeper's chest, is saved. If he goes anywhere else with it and it's on frame, it's probably in, because it almost looked like it was going wide of the goal, right? Like it was going to be very much in at the far post if it doesn't get elected, pass the keeper to the near post.

So, I mean, it's just a scramble and Freeman hits it hard towards the goal and it goes in. But the slalom's great. It's a good reminder that even, you know, because we watch our centerbacks not handle business and comment on it quite a bit. Richards against Australia comes to mind as sort of our centerback one and we were not thrilled with that kind of performance. It's like, man, sometimes those guys just don't handle business. How much do you think Potch is thinking, is like assessing the intensity of the Uruguay performance and their like in their shape and how much, or lack of shape, I guess, and how much he assesses the players on. his team, you know? He must be right. I imagine it factors in, yeah. I don't think that Oche thinks that Freeman is now going to be a slaloming, desk level slashing attacker with the

ball at his feet. I don't think he's going to think that Aidan Morris and Burrhalter are now two guys who can carve up a Uruguay caliber opponent moving the ball at the midfield, or that Tim Toeing can drop a line and do the same, kind of play, float. between attack and center mid. So I assume he's just happy that the guys stood up and were, you know, representing us well. Like I think that's a big deal for him. And they absolutely did that.

But I don't know that he's necessarily going to, I think he's already thought that they can do that. You know, that's, that's his whole thing, right? Like, he believes in people. So these are the guys who've sort of, he's filtered up into the stay in the program through the gold cups and January camps and Nations leagues. And so I think you. already has that belief in them.

And so, but I don't think that this is going to necessarily vault anybody super high up his, up his, packing, packing order. If he, again, if he even believes in that premise.

I mean, he has to, he has to essentially make calls. And we now have between these players and the players left off of the roster, we have more than 26. So he's, he's making calls. He's called up 71 players,

I think I saw somewhere. And, you know, Maybe we should do like a, maybe we should do some kind of draft, some kind of bracket to see who makes it to the, to the World Cup. But what, not that he could have done anything. Okay, so he was genuflecting, which is maybe all he could do at that point. He seemed like he was a little bit in no man's land to me. But what did you make of the Uruguay goalkeeper's performance overall?

So I don't really put him on the first four goals. Fifth goal, he's a mess. We'll get. Yeah. break. But no, not, I mean, there isn't really, he couldn't come out and claim that. There's not much you can do when your centerback gets rinsed four yards from the goal. Like, you're not coming out before the centerback has a chance, his opportunity to defend it. So you're at home. And then once he gets beat that badly and Freeman is just staring now at the goal from six yards out, you know, there's nothing you can do.

You take your big step forward, hoping that you close the angle down, you stay as big as you can. and then you're just praying that he hits it wide of the frame or hits it at you? I mean, we saw Uruguay hit their best chance wide of the frame. I know the post gets all the attention. They're shot off the woodwork. But they had their best chance was that little tap from six yards out. Yeah, also from Araskaya on the, after the Aden Morris giveaway. Yeah.

Yeah. And so you don't say Fries did anything amazing on that play. The guy just missed his target. 36 minute, really nice. sequence for us ends with, which there were many of, ends with an errant Luna, Luna pass. I just wanted to clock that, the 3535 mark. And then 38th and 39th minutes, we're probing. Tillman cut back, gets cut out. Haji cut back gets cut out. Death dribbles into the box and loses it. 41st minute, a real nice back-to-front possession sequence for us ends in a Burrhalter cross

that's claimed by Fierre Marine. But six to ten, players touched six out of ten players touched it and we worked our way from trusty to the edge of the box and then 42nd minute we get our uh what are we at now this is four third this is fourth goal yeah fourth goal we switzerland come i know uh trusty carries it across midfield he does that that fade pass that we're talking about for tooken and he gathers it and plays tillman into the box with the with two elegant little touches and tillman cuts it back and writes gets deflected to Luna and he meets it with a clean side foot finish that dives under the outstretched legs of Vena. Vina actually does like a, I don't know, he goes to ground but throws his legs up

to try to, I think, maybe with the thought that this shot was going to be smashed by Luna, but he just, he played it like it just skimmed across the grass and nestled in the net. And it's 4-0. Hard to believe, really. Yeah, 4-0. We are flying. It's really, that's a really aesthetically pleasing tuck of a goal to just tuck it in that way. I just love that.

I do too. As a late runner, it's so pleasing. Again, making note of the way we got possession on this was, you know, because we were talking about, people were talking about like, well, Uruguay didn't get a lot of chances, right? They had that one we just talked about that they poked wide. They had the crossbar, which is like, if they hit that, what do you do? That's nothing on our defense. They eventually get their goal on a bit of a mess. we'll get to.

But it was like, are we, were we just defending really well? And it really also was like, Uruguay just didn't care to, to commit to attacking. The way we get the ball to, we regain possession for this sequence,

was Uruguay's keeper has it in possession, rolls it out to his, like, right center back, who just takes a touch and then just slams it up to freeze. Like, under no pressure. No one's making a run.

Like, he just slams it over his entire team, like he's returning it to us after an injury. I didn't notice that just get it and roll it out and you're just like what is what's happening here like what is what kind of paycheck collecting performance

is this to just sort of like all right you guys run your possession pattern again see what you can do so I was just I was just like because I always want to see how we get the ball how do we how we force or why to give it to us and sometimes you just

you just sort of take what take what they give you yeah No wonder Bielsa was so, uh, looked so grumpy the whole time. I mean, when a team quits, this is what it looks like. Yeah. Ooh, okay, 44th minute chance for Uruguay. This is when Aiden Morris, the one we just talked about,

Aidan Morris gifts them this by playing a pass across the top of our box, kind of to nobody, and it goes right to Ugarte, and he dinks a little pass in for Arraskayeta, who is darting in from the right. And he kind of takes it down. and tries to poke it far post with his left foot and just misses wide. This is a pretty, I think a pretty significant ding on Morris. And McKenzie was hot about it.

Mark doesn't usually, Mark's not a guy who flies off the handle all the time. He was pretty upset. Yeah. It was Morris's second giveaway like this. He had an earlier one that he just, like, from deeper in our box towards the end line that he just passed straight up field to Uruguay. And they didn't make anything of that either. But yeah, McKenzie's, I'm sure, fussy because he's like,

don't make me look like the idiot here because he ends up being the one closest to a guy unmarked at the box to tap it in. So he knows how that looks on the tape. Everyone's like, McKenzie again. Same as trusty. Trusty got trusty had to come out and play because of Morris's giveaway also meant he wasn't in position as a center mid. So trusty had to kind of do some covering and pull himself out of position.

He was the one trailing Arraska, at a box. Yeah. Yeah. Yep, because he'd had to kind of fill Morris's spot. Timmy Tillman maybe could have done more to help in that moment to become a more defensive center mid. So as a keeper, I'd probably dig him a little bit. But yeah, Morris just has to be a little cleaner. Also want to point out, this chance came immediately after a foul that we committed around midfield.

And Adjee Wright was right next to where the foul was committed and just stepped over the soccer ball. And you might remember from the Uruguay Copa game, their fast restart on the first start on the that non-yellow card yellow card against us. Yes. We made a huge deal about restarts and like yellow card, no yellow card, whatever. Control the ball on restarts. And Haji didn't do that. And Melissa, the sideline commentator, made a point that Ochatino was on him.

Achino and Hesuz were on Haji for stepping over that ball and not controlling the out-of-play ball to deny Uruguay a fast restart. Just pick it up, basically. Anything. You just start dribbling it, act dumb, like, oh, I'm just juggling. Anything you want to do to not let Uruguay take the ball quickly, set it down and play. So whatever you want to do, you can pass it back to somebody. Like, oh, I thought the play was still going on. Sorry.

Well, like, do anything. Play dumb. But just keep Uruguay from restarting it. So I love that because that's something we talk about a lot about just the basic dark artsing. And so that's obviously the thing that Botch is emphasizing if he's hammering Ahaji for it at 4-0 in the first half. Yeah. That's awesome. I didn't watch the HBO broadcast, so I didn't hear any of that.

The biggest takeaway from the game, that's the biggest thing we'll get. There's an emphasis on the dark arts. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about the Uruguay goal. It's a, it's speaking of a long lumped pass, I mean, this is, Ronald Raho gets it in his own half and then just takes a touch towards a sideline and just bangs it like into our box. But it's at a depth where it's a little bit tricky. Like whose is it?

Freeze comes out. He doesn't claim it. It slides past him and like he and Freeman sort of try to avoid a collision, I guess. And then it's cut back across. Trusty desperation poke to get it out of there. And then it goes to, I think it's Vinyas, Vina, and he takes like four or five touches to the end line, clips it across. Trustee heads it up, but over towards the backpost to Zalazar in Zalazar's direction. He jumps up and forcefully heads it back across the face of the goal, and Arraskayera bikes it past the head of Mark McKenzie into the goal.

I mean, just textbook bicycle kick action here. What a strike, four to one. All right. You know, I appreciate the bicycle kick. So kudos to Uruguay. That is fantastic. The initial mess for this is, it's again, sort of one of those perfect storms where Arajo's ball, he hits it like from the sideline.

And it's got that devilish tail to it. Right? Like it's like by the time he gets to the box, it's actually moving horizontal. Exactly. Yeah. And so on the audio, I don't hear Fries call for it and I don't hear Frees say away. And that's this big mistake. If that's, that's really what happened because he has to do one of the two.

Since he doesn't, it leaves it open to interpretation in McKenzie and trustee just try to hold off the lone, you know, sort of half speed moving Uruguay attacker. Instead of because they McKenzie easily could have dealt with it Like just just give it a little flick towards the sideline And jobs done will go defend a throw in Or maybe chase it down Yeah Because we outnumber them

So any touch from McKenzie solves it But he thinks Fries is just going to get it with his hands probably So I can just leave it Because it's got that horizontal movement Fries misplays it And then he's free still could have But now he's coming He's going to collide with his own player

And he does the turtle And sort of pulls back his arms and doesn't go through his own man to get the ball. And it's 4-0, and I'm glad no one gets concussed on this play. But it's a mess, and it's all because Fries doesn't call for it initially or call for someone to play it away. Okay, yeah. I mean, it looks like it's Fries' mess as you're watching in real time.

Does Trustee get dinged at all for the first? I mean, somebody mentioned this in the Discord. And I was like, well, where else should he head? that, you know, it's like it's a clipped ball. I mean, should he head it out to the top of the box? I don't think so. I don't know if he's going to be able to generate enough power. Just head it out for a corner kick, maybe.

I don't ding trustee for this petter because I think he heads it high enough. He doesn't want to, he can't head it out like the back of the box towards the side line. He can't get enough power on it. But he heads it high enough and far enough in that direction that I think you'd say for him on that moment, his job was done. then it's then it's like head tennis and Tolkien's got to do a little bit more and then even that ball back across

McKenzie misses it like McKenzie goes up and he doesn't get beat to the ball by the bicycle kick and he doesn't pull away because of the bicycle kick he goes for the header with another Uruguay player they duel for it and it goes over both their heads so McKenzie just misses the trajectory if he had gotten it right he would have gotten kicked in the face I don't know if he would take that trade off But yeah, he misjudges the head tennis. Okay. All right.

4.1. We also got to point out Freeman got rinsed on the, on the, Uruguay player attacking the end line to hit the cross in. That's true. A little naive. He races up at the guy and then it's like, oh, no, I am moving too fast in this direction. Not other guy's moving the other direction. And he has passed me now.

Yeah. And then trustee, going back to trustee, he could have had a better clearance initially after the freeze mess. Trustee had a chance to poke it out, and it looked like he was trying to like poke it under control into an area for Dest to get onto it instead of just sort of doing the, you know, use soccer, get it out anywhere.

Just kick it like 30 yards out of bounds on the sideline. Yeah. Okay. All right, so a little blame for trustee on the initial clearance, not on the header, and some blame on Freeman for getting rinsed, and mostly a lot of blame on freeze for creating the whole mess in the first.

place. Yep, it's voice. Got to use your voice. Big boy voice there. Okay. That's the end of the first half. We're going to take another break and come back with the second half. I would ask you if you've thought about becoming a patron in the past to take action. We want to do a good job covering and celebrating the World Cup and that will require some investment on our part. Travel, lodging, maybe even tailgates on the west coast for once. So we need your help. Join the Patreon. If you do, You get all our episodes ad-free, and if you join it $5 a month or more, you get the lovingly crafted clip notes videos of all the key actions in games like this one or from the weekend of club action. So consider joining. The link is in the show notes.

We'll be back shortly. And we're back. We didn't come out transcendent in the second half, but it started to look like Uruguay didn't want to be there anymore. And you're saying they didn't want to be there from the beginning. But I mean, it really started to look like they didn't want to be there in the second. second half to me. But they did make some subs. Brian Rodriguez, Joaquin Piquera, and Rodrigo Agide came on for Zalazar, Vinya, and Venus. And, you know, trustee is passing well. Luna is not passing well in the early part of

the second half. There's a Dest Robona that really, I mean, we got a replay of it, but really not. not an effective action from him. The effect is a Robona itself. There we go. It exists unto itself. Yeah. What is that quote from? It exists unto itself.

I feel like I've heard that a lot lately. I don't know, but I just, again, I love that that probably is how Deaths thinks of it. He's like, now there's a video of me doing this Robona, and that is valuable. Nico Contor appreciated it for sure. 48th minute. Nice step from Freeman finds Tillman in midfield. He plays in Haji. And this is like Haji in his wheelhouse, dribbling at a guy, left side of the box, going at the goal. He cuts in on a row ho. He has a moment to shoot. Can't quite get his feet set and takes another touch. And then it gets poked away, like near the penalty marker. Burrhalter wins it back, as he did so often in

this game, to Tillman. Tillman takes a touch to his left and shoots well from 20 yards, but right at the keeper. It's fun. It's fun. I mean, there isn't much to analyze. It's just fun attacking stuff that's pretty messy, all told. Yeah. I guess this is one where I'd like to see Haji get a shot off. Because if he does, he's going to, he gets a shot off here. He puts it on frame. Really good chance he scores. He's just good at striking the ball. It just needs to get a, like, you know, have that plan be a little bit more air, tight for getting the shot off. Yeah, this match resembled more

his cameo against Ecuador than his run against Australia. Yeah. So now we get into some really messy stuff. Betancourt steps on, stamps on Tolkien's foot in the 50th minute gets a yellow card. Pretty bad game for the Tottenham

man. Fifty-seventh minute extended pressure from Uruguay in our defensive third. It ends with Araskayeta, testing freeze at the near post. So I think this one on replay might have snuck in, but Freeze

palms it out for a corner. You want him to make this save, I would think. For sure. If he didn't get there, then it'd be very much like a caught napping situation to not have the near post covered. Or again, like too afraid to dive towards his own post. But he, despite, you know, the standard turtle effect,

has pretty comfortably got this covered. he did kind of his head ran into the post his head and shoulder so it looked like it kind of hurt a little bit

um the 58th minute a throw in from Freeman down the line for Burrhalter and some nice work from him to sort of hold off olivera or I think he holds off piquera and then

splits him in olivera and then gets uh chopped down by piquera in the final third for a dangerous set piece but a good little bit of dribbling from him him 60th minute Tillman gives it away just outside our box trying to Meg Betancourt and he takes it and rips one that goes like six yards wide of the post but and but from the original angle it looked like it was closer than it was

yeah and I don't know how you were experiencing this game but I didn't I didn't have the full grasp of like how indifferent Uruguay we're playing and you know they're starting to get some shots I didn't feel did you feel like oh it's safe it's 4-1 wanting to go on and we're cruising. It was like, don't let them back in. It very much felt like, come on, come on, fellas. Like, don't give, don't give something up because we're not good enough to just know that we can hold on even at 4-1. So it didn't feel to me like it was game over. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I didn't watch most of it live for various boring family reasons, but by the time I watched it, by the time I watched it start to finish, I knew what would

would it happen. Okay. So I didn't have the same. You didn't have that tension. All right. Yeah. I just, there's something about like,

I think it probably goes back to the, uh, confederation's cup final from 15 years ago. Sticks with you. Oh yeah. It's Brazil. Yeah. Up to zero losing three two.

Yeah. Yeah. Like you cannot let you, you give up one more and like, we're the U.S. We'll fray. We'll start to. Yeah.

To show us to nurse. But again, To our credit, I don't think there was much fraying. And I don't know that year ago I was pushing it the way a team would in a cup final or even a group stage match next summer. But it was calm. It was a calm, messy performance. I mean, soccer is just such an interesting game. The way each team is like an organism and the amount of effort you put in isn't even like you're saying even on the initial watch, it wasn't like you weren't.

It wasn't super clear to you. Maybe I'm reading too much. No, no, no. I wasn't super clear to you that that would go I wasn't trying that hard. But if you're not trying hard, it just, it's like sort of, I don't know, something, it affects everything in a, in kind of subtle ways that ultimately make you not as good. And if you are trying really hard, it affects you in a positive way, in the opposite way. It's very, it's a subtle thing that you don't always see right away, but.

Yeah, and it can sometimes you might catch like how intense team is. Again, the Kobe America, you can't escape it. It is envelopes you. But if you're, I was kind of distracted and you're always just kind of watching the next thing. So a guy gets it wide open. And then you're just like, oh, what's he going to do with it? You're not like, how did he? How did that happen?

Why is he that open? And then the second you do the rewatch and you back it up 10 seconds, and you're like, oh, no, like they are, they are really phoning this in. Then you can't, you can't not see it for the rest of the time. I'm like, oh, that, that, that, that midfielder is just walking 10 yards behind the play. There's no thought given to involving himself and what's going to happen here. So, yeah, live, live, I didn't have that sense. It was very much like, come on, come on, boys, like, don't give this away.

You guys have done, you've got this, you've built this. Maintain, please. That is a really good point how, like, and when you see Tolkien get the ball down the line and there's nobody near him, you're like, all right, this is exciting let's go and you don't give any thought to like how did he how did he end up here okay

um subs ballo comes on for right Tesman and Raina come on for Destin Luna so Burrhalter moves to the right side in our 442 defensive shape Raina's I think more in the

two up top with right at this point I mean I'm not I don't even know why I'm saying that I'm not even 100% it's true. I'm sure it's true, but. But the important thing is Raina came in as the first sub, right? Like that's massive for this podcast in particular. Yeah, for me.

For us personally. Yeah. We are so glad to sort of, I don't want to say be vindicated, but just to like, because I didn't know if Pach just didn't believe in Raina or if, you know, there had been some kind of off-field thing or if he just doesn't think that a player who's not playing very much should play. But the early indications here are that Pach is like, Raina's pretty good. Let's get him some more minutes.

Yeah. Plus, I mean, we- And we know Raina doesn't do a lot of tight turnarounds. So to have him playing it all, also, you know, fingers crossed, he's available for Gladback's next match. I know. I mean, fingers very much crossed, just sweatily crossed. He played 100 in, what, five minutes. in this camp, which is, you know, I guess he's played 146 minutes in the Bundesliga so far this year.

So he almost equaled his club total and just in this camp. And there's a straight red for Betancourt with sliding into a challenge on Burrholder, there's studs up, foot over the ball, right into Seb's shin as he's swinging through, extremely dangerous. and I think a pretty straightforward decision. So he's off. This wasn't two yellows. This was a straight red. And 68th minute, we get another good entry pass from trustee that's dummied by Raina to Ballo,

who kind of flips it up in the direction of Tillman, who battles for it, and then tries to cut it, cut it, tries to visit across, and it's cut out for a corner on which we score another goal. This one is played short by Burrhalter to Tolkien, and then he just taps it back to Raina. He takes a touch and curls in. A nice ball. Testman meets it. At first, when you watch it happen in real time in the game,

it looks like kind of a glancing header. But it's more of a, I mean, he kind of thumps it in at the, in-passed the goalkeeper, who is well behind the play. at this point. I mean, he's kind of, he's like, he's like picked a point in the trajectory of the ball that is, that Testament intercepts by a good two, three yards. Tessman's first senior goal, Rana continues to, you know, vindicate all who love him and support him. 5-1 USA.

Yeah. And again, it's hard to know how much takeaway there is from like Rana just clipping this ball in. It is, it is, we've got good numbers. again Uruguay are head down as we're getting the ball into the corner so we take it quickly while they are still trying to organize and by the time rain it hits it I think it's four on three at the back post so his cross eliminates the three near post Uruguay players who are not defending anybody and and so good on us to outnumber them and good on Tassman to rise because we've talked about him improving his aerial abilities usually in more of like a winning aerial duels but we'll take this too if this is something because he's a large he's a large lad hey six three right yeah he should be

he should be putting him in the goal with his head um and this is the one where you do blame the goalkeeper for being in the wrong place a little bit yes yeah I mean it's like you come out sometimes and don't get it because you miss and he came out and I don't know what he was thinking like the ball will definitely get this low where I am to catch it And yeah, it was such a terrible read.

So that was a rough one for him. Okay. Raina gets a yellow fur, a pretty cynical chop on Nandez after being dispossessed by him. We get Arstyn on for Tolkien. I mean, there's almost nothing left in this game, at least from a timeline point of view. Arstyn for Tolkien, Brenda for Tillman. At the 74 minute mark, there's the in the 75th minute where Balligan smash. Brian Rodriguez in the face and bloodies him pretty badly.

There were Uruguay players surrounding the ref lobbying for a card. Bielsa was just sitting on his water cooler with his hands folded looking at his hands while this was all going on. He's definitely contemplating some of the choices that he's made. And I mean that, I mean, it looks like a man who's like, should I be here? Is this what I want to be doing? Yeah. interesting I wonder what he's really thinking

um 81st minute nice combination from us leading to Balo getting it at his feet in the box where I think it comes in I forget where it came in from from the left side and he tries to lay it off for Aronson it's a poorly weighted pass

and it leads him out into the into the corner and anyway they call a foul because somebody fouled uh fouled Aiden Morris on his way in for the beginning of this play so that's it for the timeline are we are we back Greg we yes again like for all the I feel like we've mostly stayed pretty pretty central as a pendulum swung both directions now in the past two years year and a half because I do think

for the most part we are solid we're not we're not 5-1 World Cup knockout solid i don't think over uruguay we're not going to beat uruguay 5-1 in a knockout game or seems worse than uruguay so uh it's it's it's nice right we get our four set piece adjacent goals um we get we get we get a what i would say through the throughout the window again uh i think a good defensive performance i think i think i think a really solid defensive showing uh paraguai got their goal which again we's a pruder and even as we're assigning the blame it's like these aren't huge mistakes. These are these are little things that I'm not I'm not really digging anyone that hard for. And they didn't really have much else. So Uruguay were a mess, but you know, we

between two games to only allow what we allowed in front of our own goal, I think is a solid, solid job for the structure of the team and the performance. Who do you think did the most for their stock in this camp, like maybe two or three guys? I'm going, I'm going to go with Gio. Yeah. Because again, as much as we. Okay. We'll go ahead.

Go ahead. Speak, speak on. You know, he had his, he had his contributions, but you can also say, Seth Burhalter had contributions, right? Goal and an assist. So those are good counting stats for him, is he, but I do think that there's, there is just that subtlety that Gio brings. And people can mock us a little bit for maybe overplaying it.

But the little like Flixie has that make his teammates ahead of him put them in such good positions that we have, that we usually have to labor really hard to create, I think was obvious and present. So I think Pachitino knows what he's got here and is probably excited to sort of have him back in the fold. That could be proved totally wrong. Again, when next camp comes around and Pach just doesn't calm up, but I'm feeling good about Gio. Yeah, Gio's going to be here. And I do think probably even if he only plays 15 minutes a game the rest of the season, he's probably coming to the World Cup. He's just too good. And Potch knows.

What about Austin Trustee? Do you think, I mean, he at least gets another audition after this. It wouldn't surprise me at all. Because, again, the centerback is a lot like when we were talking about the center mids where sure, it can be rolled on. Sure, Tim Tillman, come on down. any centerback who is playing soccer who is American right now, I feel like, could step in and I don't think we would really notice.

So trust he did it in this game, and he didn't do anything like really nice. I love that he had that pass for the assist. That's great after, you know, a set piece where it's just kind of a, everyone's in the wrong place. Like, what's Freeman even doing there? I don't mean wrong like they're in the wrong.

They flow to where they should flow, but they're in places it. You're not going to have them pop up. But I don't know. It wouldn't surprise me if trustee's not called into the next camp. If Potch is like, okay, that was cool. Thanks for, thanks for doing that. I've got a couple of guys I think are probably ahead of you.

I don't know. I wouldn't mind, but I wouldn't mind seeing Austin trustee in the next camp or in the 11 in June. Like that's just where I'm at the centerbacks. There isn't a centerback that would surprise me to be in our starting lineup because whoever they would be replacing also hasn't done much to be like, yeah, that guy needs to be on the field. Okay I'm trying to think Who else come to mind As having helped their stock

I mean besides geo Basically Well it's just some of the guys were so low That like John Tolkien and Tim Tillman I love that Potsch gives these guys The starts They both like just held their own So they went from zero

And again I don't want to over index Because of the intensity of the game But it's a nice game for them to be like Hey I'm here You can call me if you need me And I will show up and, you know, give you a dependable performance. So those guys kind of just get that boost from being here and being part of it.

And not falling on their face. Right. Freeman, I mean, even outside of the goals, one of them, a good set piece header and one kind of a... Twinkle toes. Probably a bit of a unicorn for him. But even outside of that, he had a... He did get rinsed before the goal. but, you know, it's going to happen sometimes.

He had a pretty good game, I would say. Like, I like the way he can carry the ball forward. I like the way, like, that opens some things up. He seems mostly pretty solid in defense. Is he, is his stock up for you? Not really? Well, I think it probably is, but again, it's just, I wish, I wish, or I would have done better. Like, I wish they would have pushed our guys more.

Yeah. Because I think the whole thing I had going into this window was I was really excited to see some of these guys who are definitely competing for roster seats against really good teams. And so I wish Uruguay would have been better. Paraguay, I think were. I think Paraguay were Paraguay. And so the performance we got against those guys, I put stock in whatever we saw. It's like, that's good data. And here is just like, man, I wish these guys would have been pushing Aidan Morris more. I wish that Burrhalter would have been pushed. It's because it's also hard to take much from set pieces other than like that's an improvement on our set piece taking.

We're never going to be like that guy's good for a set piece goal game. So it's just it's the increases they're going to be so sort of marginal that it's hard to have takeaways from scoring four set piece goals. Well, I mean, at least we get with Berhalter, we get a chance to score a goal from our set piece. You know? And I don't want to overstate how bad Pulisks are. I just think he's like, I think, I don't think, and I don't think Berhalter is some superhuman set piece taker. But he is, I think, above average and I think Pulisic is below average, even if he does get to take him for A.C. You know?

So. Yeah, you just really wish that a more nailed on starter was the guy who was setting himself apart on the set pieces. Because if Burhalter's not on the field, then it's not. like then who then it's like oh well it's not said so i guess pool sick you're as good as anyone else i guess yeah geo maybe um it's i guess it's not going to be west because you want west in the box and uh i don't know has he ever taken a set piece in his life maybe not i don't know i don't know yeah it's a good point it's it's it is so hard to predict what uh what potch is going to do and i guess do you just default back to like he's going to he's going to ultimately

do with the World Cup roster what we all thought he should do to begin with? Oh man, I have no idea. I really don't. I don't think of Seb Burhalter, despite his set pieces, as being a guy that we have to have, because it's sort of like Brad Davis from 2014. Like, I don't know that he's good enough to get on the field for the express purpose of taking set pieces. So then it's like, he's out, you know, but I could.

But Potch could totally think differently and he's in and Tassman's out or whoever it would be. So I really don't know how Podge views this stuff. I mean, I kind of at some point believe him philosophically when he says we don't have regulars. He just doesn't want anybody to think they're regulars until like the World Cup is until the roster is announced. But I guess my thinking is he is essentially going to call up the guys. that he got so mad at in March. Like, that's what's ultimately going to happen. I think most of them, yeah.

I think, I think, like, I don't think Pulisic has left off the roster. I don't think the way I's left off the roster. I don't know where Joe Scali lands, you know. But I guess the thing that we're seeing through this window, through South Korea in Japan and through Ecuador and Australia, is, again, very few guys hurting their cases. So then it just becomes, what does Pach consider? is like solid enough that maybe uh non-socker factors or fit um jump someone over a guy that we all consider sort of just better overall and and like unis musa is kind of that guy right now where

it's just like yeah unis maybe just isn't isn't anyone but the idea of being it could ash could make that call about anyone else too yeah i guess yeah it does feel like unis is probably the going to be the odd man out but now but there's going to be more there's going to be several odd men out that's the that's the thing with all these guys not being bad with so many people not falling on their face uh there's going to be guys who have done solid for patitino who get left out it's going to be peppy again yeah it might oh man that would be so sad but it might happen well we should do a roster episode like a projected roster episode in the next few weeks if we can. You would do. That was a fun game. I hope everybody enjoyed it.

We sure did. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, everybody for listening. We'll see you.