Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #677: USA v Belgium recap

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

Poch and the boys put on a solid if unspectacular display for 40 minutes, and then, as Vince said, didn't handle business in our defensive third too many times, and paid for it. A long recap of an interesting but discouraging outing at the Benz. 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. Hey, everybody, we are here to recapitulate the 5-2 loss to Belgium on Saturday. First of all, you know, thanks to everybody who came out for the tailgate north of the stadium. Fun to see so many kids out there and familiar faces from other tailgates over the years. Great to put new faces to names. Pick up on a crisp Atlanta morning under the rumbling Marduk train on the West End was. a lot of fun. And, you know, there's more, I guess there's more to say about it.

But Vince, how you doing? I'm good, man. I'm good. Good weekend. I feel re-interjusted. And yeah. You know, once again, I got to make this disclaimer every time. It's a lot more fun to dive into the messes, the hot messes than it is to recap.

I don't know. Of course I would rather than win. But, you know. Yeah, I think. Seema went wrong because I thought. That's true. There's always like, there's always some fun in that. I would say a good win is just as fun, if not more fun to recap than a bad loss.

But kind of an ugly win or like an undeserved win, I think I'll take a loss when it comes to the recap mechanics. I do want to say one more thing about Atlanta. What a pleasure it is to be there and see a game there. What a cosmopolitan soccer public that city has. Yeah. And the bends, even though I don't love the foggy half-light that it sort of dwells in in there, it is a nice place to take in a sporting event. It's a nice stadium.

It's a real nice stadium. And, you know, Atlanta, like you said, cosmopolitan soccer public. You know, you go to a match in Atlanta. You see some types of people. I have never, I mean, you know, never seen at a soccer game before. In the other places that I've been to, you know what I'm saying? If everywhere could look like Atlanta, then we know we've made it.

We know we've made it, you know. Yeah, this is spoken by a proud resident of the Ohio River Valley, too, you know. That's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But I guess before we even get to the game or anything like that, you know, pregame, pregame, I was walking around the concourse about maybe 50 feet from my section. I'm walking by the, I'm walking by the, you know, TBS desk. Oh, yeah. We are, we are, we are the chosen ones, et cetera.

Make me want to sing it, you know. And somebody ran up on me and said, hey, you know, you. going to be on TV. And I was like, yeah, why not? And then he just took me behind the, behind the TNT desk. And lo and behold, I was on TV. There's a video of it. I've tweeted it out.

I've skeeted it out on Blue Sky as well. And, you know, what a moment? It's kind of a, it's kind of a, what do I do with my hands type situation? Like, they put me behind this desk, and it's not like it's crowded. You know, you've seen, we've seen these types of situations where, like, for, I don't know, college football, basketball, whatever. Hundreds of people, hundreds of people in the background. Hundreds of people in the background behind Stephen A. Smith or whatever, whatever's going on, you know what I'm saying?

This wasn't the case. It was... It was just you. It was kind of me fighting for my life. And so, and I ain't in no cues or nothing. Bro, grabbed me, put me back there, and then just looked at me and gave me like a thumbs up. And I was like, all right, bet. And so I saw Brian, Brian Dunn, I was in between Brian Dunstiff and the host, whoever it was.

It was Brad Guzan, Brian Dunstiff, the host. and Kyle Martino on this desk. And I parked myself between Brian, because I feel comfortable around Brian Dunstiff, first of all. Brian Dunstiff, probably the nicest guy in U.S. soccer media. I don't want to say media because everybody from the print side has been great. But like TV guys, I guess I would say that, TV guys, Brian's my guy. So anyway, he kind of saw me while I was walking over that gave me like an acknowledgment,

acknowledging look. So anyway, I parked myself in between him. because I was like, that's my guy. But anyway, so I'm like, what do on my hands? I'm like, well, I got this, I got this Hollywood Keeper Kid on, which turns out the entire team wore into the stadium. And maybe during warm-ups, during warm-ups, during the match, you know, you get a shot of Chris Richards and Miles Robinson

in the infirmary clapping because Weston McKinney has scored a goal, and they got the same shirt I got on. But anyway, you know, the badge is centered than that. So I was like, Vince, what I'll do? I was like, you know what? Let me just pop my shirt a little bit. pop the crest. You know what I'm saying?

I don't even know if I'm on TV. I just know that Dunny's talking. So maybe the camera's on him. So like, start popping it. You know what I'm saying? Et cetera, et cetera. Next thing I know in Discord, they got the video up.

Shout to Discord. But anyway, anyway. That's pretty cool. Good times. It's, you know, I was properly lubricated for the situation. If I wasn't, I might have turned, I might have turned a situation down. But anyway, it was.

It was fun. Yeah. I got to send it to. You know, the thing, like, this isn't a big deal, right? But to your, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a big deal. Yeah.

Yeah. So I got to send a video around and stuff is fun. Yeah. I mean, you know, speaking of the soccer media, Charlie Baum came out to pick up. I got to shout him out. He's a very solid player. And, you know, I got some ideas. is out there.

I got to get in the lab. I got to get in the lab. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I hopped out there. First of all, I ain't had no athletic clothes on. I mean. You have out there in some crocs. I think that's what they are, right?

Yeah, yeah, some crocs. Some crocs. Try to get to it. Touch is popping up on me. Something crazy. I mean, simple passes out to me. You know, I'm just holding the whiff. Yeah.

On the whiff on the touch line. Assily. The only person, the only people who would have come up to you after that and said you looked like Dooku would have been people from Italy. You know, people were wrong. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, really, if they wanted to be, if they wanted to be more apt to the level of play that they saw on that pitch that day,

it would have said I looked like Drewski. I don't know if you've seen the skit. I haven't seen. People might post a video off a real soccer player has like a shambolic performance, but Drusky is a, I don't even know what the theme of the skit is. but he's working construction with some people of Latino descent. And so I guess they're on break or something in like this unfinished house and having a little kickaround. And, you know.

He doesn't look too. I mean, you know, African American, not a real soccer player type of thing. But just having fun with your coworkers, you know, doing it. Well, hats off to you for getting out there, man. I respect that a lot. Look, it was, the Atlanta morning was so crisp that I was like, man, let me get out there, do some moving. Because, like, you know, I didn't have any backup clothes,

so I'm like, bro, this is it. You know, if you get out here and get musty, you cooked for today. But the morning was so crisp that I was like, I can afford to get out here and I won't be cooked for the day. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that was a blessing for me, too, because I didn't want to go hose off at a warehouse in the West End like I did the last time we played.

So the fact that it was crisp Made it easy to just throw on some different clothes And go to the tailgate Where Sanjay was there Jonathan Tannenwald Got to meet him for the first time That was kind of cool He's a cool dude man

You know he's a I make fun of him for always I make fun of him for always asking about the Aronson brothers On the press conferences But maybe I'll stop doing that Because he does seem like a I felt a little bad stand there talking to him No, he's just like a good, genuine guy.

And he just loves talking ball, you know, and holding court and just talking ball. You know, whether it's the time I spent around him, you know, it didn't matter if it was NWSL, women's national team, Ms. National team. Like, and that's the thing about, I guess, being around the press court a little bit. Like, you realize he seems to just be, they're on the beat. And then as part of that beat, you got to understand what's going on. Yeah. Whether it's with the national team or in the greater soccer world.

So it's just like, you know, it might be some remembering some guys, like a classic, you know, dude bonding activity. Or it might be, you know, it could never know of the conversation. That's what the tailgates often become. Remember, people always want to talk to me about Mendez and Ledesma, you know. Yeah. And Nathan Mansell was there with his son from Charleston. Nathan, one of the trainers for the youth national teams over the years.

Great friend of the pod. And, you know, Jesse Howe. I mean, I'm naming names now. Yeah, yeah, I was about saying. That's a dangerous game, brother. Yeah, because if I don't name somebody's name, then I'm in trouble. But, yeah, lots of, lots of fun to reconnect with a lot of people. Just to close this, just much appreciated.

Yeah. Always. We do appreciate you guys just be in there. And then I appreciate everybody helping me carry all this stuff From one parking lot to the other But we won't get into all that We won't get into all that

To the game To the game Big picture Was it You know on rewatch On loving rewatch Was it Like as bad as you thought it was live

Or was it better Or was it worse What do you think? It was better. I don't know. I had trouble fall on the game in real time for whatever reason. And it wasn't because of the... Lubrication?

The kick clash. Yeah. No, it was... I think it probably was because of the lubrication. It wasn't because of the kick clash. Dude, the kick clash bothered me. I mean, even on rewatch, I'm like, why are they wearing the same color jersey? This is ridiculous.

Where were you in the stadium? I was... I was on the end, towards the end that we were defending, looking essentially straight down at the, at the edge of the 18-yard box. So pretty nice, pretty decent seats. But how high, though? I was in the mezzanine, so it felt pretty high. $200? Yeah, I was in the 200 level.

And then I was on our left side, so Jedi was right underneath me. Okay. Yeah, I was just wondering, because I could imagine, like, because I was with A-O and kind of down, like, I was, like, close enough to where I could really make out the different colors of the shirts, kind of. And I do wonder if you were, like, in Section 300 or something, like, where I sat for the Panama Magical America, so I'm like, you probably really would have had a time. I mean, if you study the jersey of the person you're looking at, you can figure it out pretty quick. Like, just to take a snapshot of the field and see, like, where's the, you know, where's the space here? Where's the opportunity? Where's the danger?

It's pretty hard. It was pretty hard, I thought. Yeah. But overall, first of all, I want to give this disclaimer. I am pretty positive on the first half, but we can't keep doing this, bro. But what? But, like, what do we? I mean, they, where they hit three shots through people's legs?

No, I'm not even talking about that. I'm just talking about the appearances. You know, the appearance of losing five to two. The appearance of losing however much we lost to Switzerland, et cetera. Yeah, Belgium did take their chances really well. Like they earned those goals. You know, the XGOT was really high.

and something that you could get five goals out of. You know, it was in like the fours. They're expected goals on target. But, yeah, I'm just talking about appearances in general, man. We just can't keep having this, man. Cannot keep having this. And it really doesn't matter, right, until the World Cup. But, you know, for the casual, just tune in and see a five, too.

Yeah. We're trying to. But do we want people going into the World Cup with, like, a fall? I mean, I guess, I don't know. A false feeling that we should just go, we should go beat a team like Belgium, you know, more often than not. I don't know. I mean, look, we can lose. I'm just saying lose respectably.

Yeah. 3-1, 2-1, you know what I'm saying? 2-3, you know what I'm saying? 5-1 at a point, you know what I'm saying? Laffer is just like, come on, bro. You got 60,000 people in the stadium, bro. You lose 5 to 1. Predominantly, U.S. crowd, you're losing in 5-1.

Overwhelmingly. You know what I'm saying? I mean, there's probably more people in Atlanta than there are in – well, it's not quite that bad. But two Atlanta's makes one Belgium population-wise. Anyway, yeah, it looks bad, and the game was over when it was 4-1, and you could feel things kind of die in the stadium. Because there was some buzz. There was some excitement in the first half.

And people were into it. I think the team was playing hard and playing fairly well for the most part. And then they get that goal right at the end of the first half. And like from then until it was 4 to 1, it was pretty much all Belgium. Right? We had some chances. I think we came out all right. In like the first, basically up until the second goal, I would say.

And then even after the second goal, I thought we were, in Belgium's second goal, I thought we were pretty decent. Yeah. Like, I guess I would say at no point with the kind of first choice lineup that we started and kind of kept in at the beginning part of the second half, At no point was Belgium just completely running us off the pitch, I think. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, because we had that big, we had a nice quiet first five minutes after the half,

and then that big chance for Pulisic where he beats a couple people and then totally gets his shot all wrong. And then on the ensuing sequence, Belgium comes down and scores their second. And then we get two more good moves, like after that, you know, as a response to Belgium second. Yeah. You know. So there was give and take, which you'll get in a good on good game, of course.

Got to get, got to ding Tim Ream here a little bit. I feel like in the story of the game, it's 2-1. We still have signs of life. And then he does the handball, which is not necessary. You know, it actually makes the save harder for terms of. Turner because he hits it down into the ground earlier than it would have gone into the ground from its initial from its initial trajectory and then it bounces up higher as a result of that and Turner has to adjust to all that and still palms it over the crossbar.

It was going right at him pretty much. Yeah. And go ahead. I do think the call is a little harsh. but at the same time I mean, arms in a natural position you know he hit it with his fist I mean you can tell from the way the trajectory

of the ball changes Yeah, but at that point I could almost kind of argue that the arm at that point that it makes contact is kind of in a natural position but you know, whatever Yeah, okay

well it didn't need Yeah, okay It's one of those ones It's one of those ones we're in a big match, you know, that if people really cared about it, you could get a nice tweet off by saying games gone. And you know, you might get,

you might get 2,000 retweets or something. You know what I'm saying? It's just fun. Yeah. But, you know, first half XG was, you know, allegedly 1.17 to us to 0.56 for them. And then second half, XG, they blew us away. they had 1.62 and we had 0.29.

But, you know, part of that XG in the second half for Belgium is their penalty kick, which was the result of the play we were just discussing. Yep. So, I mean, outside of the penalty kick. So about half of that. Right. So outside of the penalty kick, we're talking about a pretty even game in terms of, like, how the mathematicians assign value to shots in various situations.

Yeah, and I mean still we kind of have this we kind of have an open play issue you know because I mean I first have

probably say a good 0.8 5 like the two Western chances mm-hmm mm-hmm and so other than that we probably created a solid 0.6.7 XG

from open play yeah I mean the the Jedi shot from distance is not even going to break a tenth of a goal, you know, on XG. And that's not really open play either. It wasn't. You're right.

So, yeah, we still, similar themes and threads, popping up throughout this match. Similar themes to the ones that we were discussing four years ago, you're saying? I mean,

yeah, I wasn't thinking that far back, but yes, you are correct. And I kind of was thinking that while watching this game and I think about it all the time, you know, for people that thought and getting GigiG out of here and replacing him with whoever, name your coach.

You just magically, you know, ordain everybody with creativity and freedom, and that would suddenly result in a bunch of chances. Yep, not the case. Yeah. Let's do the lineup. So Matt Turner started in goal, a bit of a surprise, because Matt Freeze has started, I think, every game for, you know, a while, eight games or something like that. Longer, longer than that, right?

Because he started all the games at the Gold Cup. Yeah. So Turner and goal, Tim way it right back. He was in for, he and his colleagues, in for a difficult night facing Jeremy Doku, the left winger for Belgium. Mark McKenzie, Tim Ream, and Jedi Robinson across that back four. Obviously not a back four in possession, but the back four became a back three in possession, usually with a midfielder dropping between McKenzie and Ream. So, you know, it's not really a back three, guys.

Johnny Cardoso and Tanner Testman in the midfield. And then Weston McKenny, Malik Tillman, and Christian Pooler, across the band of three and Fuller and Balligan at Stryker. It's about as good of a lineup as I could have hoped for, you know, for this game. What about you? Yeah, man, I mean, you know, some people said we were being whimsical by, you know, in our lineup prediction and our little preview episode by saying that, you know, we would put Tim Wayette right back and look what happened.

Mr. Pachismo himself puts him way at right back. And, you know, I think that's what we need to do. I think you think that as well. That's what we need to do to get all our best players on the pitch. We were wondering how that would work out with Tim Wea and Jedi Robinson available. What would Potch do as far as, you know, the fact that we've been keeping a fullback back to be in that back line of three? And this is why, once again, it was always important to note that this was not a back three. because what is Paj Duh instead?

He just drops a midfielder in in the three and boom. We got the same situation going. We switched off. Johnny did it a lot. Tanner also did it a lot. Christian Rodon came in. He did it a lot. And so it freed up Tim Wea and Jedi to be our with pieces.

And we got some joy from it. I mean, you know, we got some, we got a lot of, once again, expected threat, but converting it to XG is, seems to always be our bugaboo. Yeah. There is a certain magic in that, like turning it from turning threat into actual gold dangerousness. And we seems to be in short supply for us against a really good team. Yeah. Yeah, okay, the Belgian line up.

Send Laman's in goal had some nice saves, I thought. Thomas Munier, Zeno de Bast, Brandon McKale, and Maxim de Kuiper across the backline. Kuiper, maybe is how you say it, not Kuiper. I think it's Kuiper, yeah. And then Nicholas Raskin and Amadu Onana as the two in the midfield. And then Alexis Salamockers, Kevin DeBrona, and Jeremy Doku across the band of three. I mean, DeBrono was all over the place, of course. You know, Charles De Kedellari, that's striker.

That's a pretty good front four, I'd say. Some pretty good players there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we mostly neutralized that DeKedalari for sure. I mean, you know, he's not really a striker. He's the one that was the most quiet out of those four. but yeah. He still had that really, really nice one-touch,

backboarding moment with Doku that... Oh, the one-two. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, because Doku fizzed that into him, and he just, like, delicate little touch with the inside of his left foot right into Doku's path. All right, let's get to the timeline.

Two-minute mark. There's some stuff happening on the right side. Salamacher's backheels it for Munier. And he cuts it back for, it kind of gets spilled to Raskin. Outside of the box, he gets a big shot from the edge of the box, sends it over the goal. But, you know, an early chance for Belgium. Yeah, and this comes off a throw-in from the left touchline, an R-half, like a Belgium, Belgium throw-in. No, I were throwing in it. I think Jedi's throwing in it.

But anyway, ball comes in. there's kind of a scrum situation that kind of kicks off this whole little sequence. But Johnny should have been tracking Mounier here, for sure. He falls asleep, doesn't track him whatsoever. You know, Munei gets the ball in the Man City's own chance ensues. Yeah, it's a cup act that actually gets cleared but not too far away. And it does seem like a lot of chances for Belgium They result from

It's not like some big jail break You know It results from this kind of moment There's not much going on And then all the sudden Here let me ask this Before we get Before we go on

How many times Did they get a big chance Or a goal When we had like seven guys back In the box But they were all up in the six. You know, they were all in the six-yard box,

and then the ball comes out to somebody who is somehow comes out, sometimes purposely, sometimes accidentally, to a Belgian player who is just all alone at the top of the box. I mean, I tried to Zeprooter this with one of the goals, and I was like, man, there's seven guys back, plus McKinney is tracking another guy.

That really only leaves, like, Ballow and maybe it was Tillman who was further upfield. Like, do we really need to put 11 in the box to not give up goals? It's like, what is happening there? But this is why we have to keep the respect on Tyler Adams' name. Because we just, I mean, we just don't have business handlers, specifically from the people that you would want, that you need to be business handlers the most.

You know what I'm saying? Your centerbacks, your defenders, In this case, I mean, you know, Timway, a Timway, I mean, you know, he has a ways to go to be declared a certified business handler. Definitely did not handle business necessarily in this match. You know, I'll give the, I'll get the title to Jedi. But other than that, it's like you got Mark McKenzie, who is often, to me, like, two sheets to the wind. As far as, like, actually defending and pitch control, I think he really does not excel at that. Tim Ream, who's

Tim Ream. He's good on the ball. He's good on the ball, but yeah. Man, multiple plus moments from Tim on the ball in this game. But not a certified business handler. And then you got Tanner Tesman, who is not a certified business handler. And so, you know, when you... Fortunately not.

You put all these things together. You put a lot of non-business handlers on the pitch. You potentially get calamity, which is... what we had at the bins on Saturday. And, you know, Tyler, we get on him for doing all different types of things that he does from time to time. But also, he handles his damn business. He handles his damn business. Like, think about that, just because I was watching the clip notes of the other day of this one, it's in my brain.

Panama, when Chris Richards gets skinned down the sideline, Tyler Adams comes over, cleans that thing up. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. He could have walked away and just, you know, patted his hand. hands off, you know, just because it's just, he makes things that other people look, the other people make look difficult. He makes them look extremely easy when he comes over and handles. And there's no question as to whether, you know, decisively handles his business.

Yeah. And we don't have another one. We don't have another one. Like, you know, Greg was kind of able to develop some, you know, like when Walker Zimmerman and particularly Miles Robinson were really going there in that cycle. I mean, they were handled their damn business, bro, defensively.

When it came down to it, clear their lines with the plumb. Yeah. Alacrity. Yeah. Get that ball out of here. Get that out of here, bro. And like, Tim Reed. Richards helps when he comes back and he's healthy. But is he, would you call him a certified business handler?

No, that that's a, think about it. That's why. Yeah, he can, he's not, he's not a guaranteed business handler either, unfortunately. So, and that's just why we need Tyler Adams on the pitch, man. Yeah. And maybe we can have a No Kai Banks miracle, two miracles, one, him choosing the U.S., to him becoming a certified business handler in the next two and a half months.

Yeah. because he's not either at this point. Maybe getting there. Let's see. Right before the four-minute mark, really nice stuff from Cardoso, Pulisic, and Tillman to spring Jedi down the line. He cuts onto his right and crosses it,

but it's cut out pretty easily. I would say in general, his crossing, his service was, it was not effective. I don't know that that was necessarily his fault, but it wasn't. Yeah, go ahead.

I mean, there were some decent, there were some decent balls from him to your point about it. Maybe not necessarily being his fault, but we know what to expect from Jedi in these situations. But it is nice to have him in his just forward thrust that he brings. But this was another throw-in this time from Belgium. And, you know, the throwing comes in and we kind of get, you know, a volleyball situation. get it headed once. Tim Way heads it away. Then Onana heads it.

And then the third ball is basically an aerial door between Malik and KD. Malik wins it. And then Johnny brings it down very smoothly. And an extremely tight space, you know, touches where it needs to be. Kind of settles it over to Pooley. Yeah, yeah. Settles it, gets it to Pully, who gets it to Malik. And then Malik with a nice little.

what's that? Outside the boot with his right foot, a little side wander down to Jeddah. Yeah, it was a nice sequence by the stuff. That wasn't the only duel that Malik won over KDB2 for what it's worth. I mean, I'm going to sound like I'm just like trying to blow sunshine up everybody's, you know, backside. But I really do think we played well in the first half. given who we are and who was on the field and who we were facing. Six-minute mark, Tillman gets it from McKenzie in between the lines and then plays long for Wea.

So this is something we were trying to do. It was something Belgium was trying to do. Just spray it to the winger's. Wea gets to the bouncing ball right at the end line and hooks it across for Pulisic right at the penalty spot. And he tries to head it from there, running full speed at a ball, like, you know, maybe a foot. a foot above head high for him. It's a really difficult header, and he just kind of loops it over the goal.

Yeah. I mean, you know, we get a replay from like, kind of like the touchline point of view. And it's like, bro, he is far away. I mean, to get that on frame with enough power to trouble the Belgian keeper, I mean, that would have been. It would have been incredible, yeah. Dooku starts, this is when Dooku, well, I mean, Dooku did start dribbling up that left wing

immediately after the kickoff, but this is when he starts kind of doing our right side over and over again. And I mean, and everybody, everybody kind of suffered. It wasn't just Tim Wea. And Tim Wea actually held up reasonably well the times when he was one-on-one with Dooku. At least he did better than, say, Cardoso did the one time.

He was isolated with him. But, I mean, do you agree that mostly Tim mostly did all right in that matchup? Yeah. I think, I was, yeah, all right, it's fine, you know. Okay. He got, like, he got thoroughly skinned, maybe twice, yeah, twice, three times. I thought it was okay. I thought it was okay.

For the most of the first half, the reason why I think we were playing so well in the first half is because we were just doing a good job providing Tim with support to where Doku had to go towards the end line because we'd had somebody there, whether it was Weston or Tam, man. We had somebody on the inside to take it away, and he wasn't trying it, you know. He wasn't even trying to get passed off there. He was just taking his Which that's how you know how nice he is bro When he can still Have that help You know Tim knows he has that help

And he can still get to the end line You know he did it on Tim Way I did it on Mark McKenzie Omar McKenzie had a Had help to the inside You know he's not He's not a one speed dribbler You know he can slow you down

He can stop start Yeah Yeah Talk about Twitchy Yeah, yeah, brother. Good grief. 730 mark, we're going for the long ball this time, reamed to Jedi down the left side and we win a corner kick from it.

This is where the point in the match where I get like a kind of a good idea of what Belgium are trying to do defensively because it was kind of hard for me to tell at first. To even really understand what they were in. I think I settled on kind of like a 433 or like a... 412, 3, something like that. They definitely had three up top, pressuring R3 in the back. For the most part, specifically through the first half, you know, they kind of let off this in the second half,

which allowed Rodon to have some joy a little bit. But they had two marking our, you know, Johnny Tanner. And then they left the wingers in this situation. our Y pieces, Tim and Jedi were one V1. All the attention was on the middle of the pitch which is, you know,

Balo and our two in our two tens, Westin and Christian. Which I just said, I just said Johnny and Tanner and the two. It was either Johnny or Tanner in one spot and then Malik

as the base of two because one of the midfielders is in the back line, right? But anyway, right, right. they really made sure that we did not have a lot of joy in the middle of the pitch and tried to and made sure they matched our numbers or even or even outnumbered us in the middle where there was sometimes they would bring like a fullback into the situation other times you know you would have their centerbacks aggressively marking uh western and christian and that's what we got on this play where if you watch it onana has dropped

has dropped to a center back spot damn near, Mark and Ballo in order to have both Belgian centerbacks follow Pulling and West into the pocket. And because of all this focus to what's going on in the middle, we have Jedi and Tim out wide 1V1 all day, and that's why you saw those long balls to them consistently. And this is also why I made it a point to continue mentioning how Potsch used Jedi and,

his first match against Panama in Austin, Texas. Because we're seeing it again now. I know, I mean, they mentioned it multiple times on the broadcast hadn't played for the U.S. for 435 days or whatever, like, whatever. And so,

yeah. And two things on that. It's good to have him back. It's really good to have Jedi back. But also, you know, when Doku is isolated 1 v1

with whoever's out there Waya or maybe it's McKenzie it's I mean it is a disaster right I mean it's a pending disaster yeah and but when Tim Wea as much as I love him

and Jedi as much as I love him are isolated 1V1 with De Kuiper or who was the right back for them again I forget the right back Moonier yeah When they're isolated with them, it really is not that big of a deal.

You know, I mean, did they ever skin? Did either of those two players ever get skinned in this game? Wea got a skinned? No. Like, skinned for me, like, one time Jeremy Dooku had Tim Wea with a face full of newly implanted Bermuda Gras. You know what I'm saying? You know? So that's skinned to me.

Because one time, you know, Tim did have a nice rep against De Kuyper's where he, you know, face him up and got a nice cross-off that I think came close to meeting Weston, I want to say, some point in the first half. But mostly no, no. Like to your point, as far as like, you know, you see the amount of danger. They create an amount of attention that even the threat of danger that Doku presents can create. Yes, we do not have that within the boo. of Anthony Robinson and Timway against a really good team. Which is, you know, it's not, people will say, well, that's not a fair comparison, but it is, it does allow you to. Levels in it.

Right. And it does allow Belgium defensively to create a lot of congestion in the middle. Right. Because it's not that big of a deal when one of them is isolated out wide against one of their fullbacks. Anyway, let's see. corner kick that we won off the long ball to Jedi, which is, I think you brought up the congestion in the middle because that was like the way we would try to attack. The ensuing corner is short. It's Tillman to Pulisic and the Pulisic back to Tillman.

And Tillman's kind of striding across the left side of the box and he lays it across for Jedi just kind of smoothly. And Jedi from about 25 yards has one. It's a good, strong, right-footed hit through traffic. but it looks like Laman sees it the whole time and saves it down to his right. I mean, he parries it, but it looks like he, you know, he was well behind it when the shot was trying to get in the goal. Yeah, for sure. And right after this save, a Belgian counter ensues, and we get a really good Western McKinney recovery run to track down Salamachers and stop the counter in its tracks. It's something I noticed just like in the stadium and then also on the rewatch

It's impressive. Boy, the man's moving. Yeah, you get you get the sense because of that that we're here to play and Right, right. And we're working hard as a unit and we're threatening their goal in some ways. I liked what I was seeing in real time and in the rewatch. I liked it even more. That said, Salamacher's cooking.

He looks good. One thing I noticed about him and Doku, Doku is the more, obviously, the more dangerous of the two, but we could not take the ball from either of these guys, like the whole game. Right. They have the ball. The only way to get the ball off their foot is to foul him or to pass it,

for them to pass it to somebody else. It did not get dispossessed. 12th minute Turner long ball to Jedi. This is a good pass for Matt Turner. Yep. He, and this was actually a really, really close to being a big chance because Jedi just cuts it back in front of the defender who's squaring him up across to Pulisic who was ghosting in the box unmarked.

And Onana just, you know, reacts just quickly enough, has just enough athleticism to get the tiniest touch to it with his right boot, sends it, you know, like screaming up in a way that Pulisic is not prepared for. and he can't handle the ball across. But, you know, had it gotten through to him, that's a huge chance. So good on Jedi there. I mean,

Onana, just a good player, I think. 14th minute, Ream plays it to Wes's feet just inside Belgium's half. This is a pass with Ream's right foot. It's a nice little layoff for Pulisic. And he's like, he's racing forward off this little layoff and drives to the top of the box, has a shot from a spot where he has scored some bangers

over the last couple years, particularly for A.C. Milan, and he just scuffs it. What's that? I said the United States too. Right, right, right. And it's, he scuffed it. Just a harmless shot, drags it wide. It gets almost none of it, and you could tell he's upset with himself. Ballo made, Balo having made one of his maybe,

Baker's dozen of sort of fruitless runs in this game. Yeah. They were extremely fruitless in this match. Mostly because, you know, I mentioned the fact that both centerbacks had followed both of our tens into the pocket on that one play. But that didn't happen a ton necessarily.

Like, Ballo was mostly bracketed by two centerbacks a lot of the time. and if we had some joy through the middle where somebody has received the ball and is now carrying it through the middle of the pitch those centerbacks were not coming off were not really coming off of flow

you know to like to stop the ball carry or anything like that like no they were relying on like oh not under recover which you probably can't do when you have him in the midfield and make the play so yeah there was just nothing there for him like the whole night really I mean he had the one shot

which we'll get to but yeah um and then those that that defense for Belgium was always

whenever we got in behind one of their full backs or whenever we got down to the corner with the ball always a well-organized bank of four

and the ball comes in they just nodded away but but that's the thing though it's like because you brought up you know Tim and Tim and Jetta in their

I guess, lack of decisive actions from evad tagist attacking situations or whatever. They, you know, I kind of had the thought in my mind. You know, you think about it,

it's like, would Belgium have this any other way? You know, this is like by design, right? By design, Tim Weya and Jedi are 1v1. And so, what we see as potentially good attacking situations, you know, the fact that the reason that they were able to stay so organized

is because they didn't have to worry too much. This is what they were, this is what they were allowing to be given up. You know, this was the game plan. Like, yo, if they hit this ball over the top here, you know, you do this, you do that. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's not, maybe it wasn't as dangerous to them as it potentially seemed to us, you know, as far as these situations in these spots that we were getting in. Yeah, maybe not all AVPs are created equal.

Right, right, exactly. This is good work from Wes here to find some open space and some leverage on Raskin, who's chasing them around. That's another thing. In the situations where the centerbacks were not coming up on the tens, then they were kind of being manmarked. So Wes, who was our right ten, has kind of drifted over to the left side, Tim, Reem has the ball and positioned his body in a way to where, you know, he's in between, he's created a passing lane for Tim Ream. You know what I'm saying?

He's essentially sealed raskin off. He's got some leverage on him. And Tim plays the ball with the right pace, right weight, into the right foot. Wes lays that thing off, and then we're off and running. So that's good stuff. Yeah. St. Kroif would have loved that pass.

You know, Ball hadn't touched the ball yet at this point, but it did seem to me like we were looking good. This was another decent combination. In the 15, I mean, after this came another decent combination in the 15th minute, and McKinney up the right side, McKinney ball is across, is cut out. So in a 1545 mark, Pulisic joins West McKinney in the Lunch Pale Club, tracks down the Ketalare on defense and gets a big attaboy from Potch who comes on the field. and slaps at his butt as he runs by, and then Vallow and Jedi combined to put Jedi in the cutbacks on. He tries to kind of backheel, soul roll it into Pulisik's path, but it gets knocked out for a corner by the defender.

Yeah. And I just wanted to know here, this team gets, I mean, there's so much forward thrust from Jedi. You know, it's like the situation dies or whatever. Jedi gets the ball. He kind of like, at first he's like not in a rush, And then he looks up and realizes like nobody's going to close him down and like challenge him for the ball or anything. And he was like, well, you know what?

Let's go to the other side of the pitch, fellas. And he just takes that thing down there. Yeah. It's true. We get West nearly scores on a corner kick in the 7th, 17th minute. It, uh, I think it was a Tillman corner and it kind of skitters across the face of the goal with a little help from the top of Testman's head. Yep. And McKinney stops it with his chest and then volleys it hard.

I mean, he just gets all of this. But it's a really good, strong right arm saved by Laman's. I mean, you could say, well, Wes has to bury this. It's got to go to one side of the goalkeeper or another. There was a foot closing in from his left. It's not quite as simple as all that. But anyway, it doesn't go in. It was a big chance.

And then he gets a pretty harsh in my, opinion yellow for pulling on Dooku's shirt. I mean, he did pull on it, but... He pulled on the shirt, but we had a lot of numbers behind the ball. You know, that could have just been a common foul, man. Yeah, I agree. Good defending. I think you noticed this in the 21st minutes.

Some good defending from Jedi Johnny and Pulisick down in our left corner after a KDB long ball. We're just like... Yeah, go ahead. Well, yes, I guess I'll just tell the listener, you know, after the game in Atlanta, going back to the Bell's compound. And, you know, we got a, we got a little bit of our first rewatch done.

Me and Bell's just sitting on his couch watching the game, you know, like two old ball coaches. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? We're sharing the remote, whatnot. But, yeah, so at some point within the first half, Christian moves within our 4-42 from up top with Balo. to the left midfield.

Yeah. Left midfield role. And I have to say, he did a lot of good things within it. You know, there were a lot of notable defensive moments from Christian Polisic within this first half, from that left midfield position specifically. And this is one of them. This is Belgium, a big switch from KDB over to probably Munya, I think. which, you know, in a switch situation,

you're moving the ball from the strong side to the weak side, everyone's shifting over, and then you also usually get like a late runner, somebody coming from deep on the Belgium side, etc. It can be, I mean, I'm not saying it's crazy, and anything crazy to sort out, but at this point in time, it's like, you know, the switch happens, and we have Jedi over there,

Johnny's made his way over there, and then we got Christian, and it's like a three on three small side of game, type of thing, and everyone kind of seamlessly source it out. Yeah. And, you know, it's nothing really to write home about, but, you know, it's notable that Christian can be a part of that situation and he can sort it out along with Johnny and Jeddah.

Yeah, I mean, I love seeing that. I love seeing the way Pulisic was playing defense with his whole heart. And I'm going to note a point in the second half when he didn't. do that and it hurt us. Hydration break at the 21-minute mark, even though it was kind of cold inside the stadium. Yeah, it was kind of crazy. Maybe they're just getting used to the cadence of the World Cup games.

Maybe that's the whole point of that. Fair. You also got 11 subs in this match, you know what I'm saying? I don't know if you need it. But anyway, anyway. 29-minute mark, a little messy from Pooley, trying to combine with Jedi in midfield. he just leaves a pass a little bit too far behind him,

and then it's a jail break down the right side. It gets whipped across, and Tanner can't really deal with it, skipped ball across. It gets caught under him and falls to Salamockers. Who shoots tamely down to Turner's right, and he makes a diving save to save it, even though it was going a yard wide of the goal. Yep.

Another positive defensive moment for Christian Polisick here, the ball from KDB that was played, they ended up skipping across the top of the box with skipping because Pilly Hustled back and got a deflection on it. Okay. All right. What next? 29th minute.

We got our first Balo outlet of the game. Ream tries to find him making an end-to-out run on DeBost, but the ball was just a touch heavy and DeBos takes care of it. The space opened up because as Tim receives the ball on the left side, both Jedi and Christian checked to the ball. when it gets to Tim, which occupies Moonier and Salamarkers, I think. And so that gives him the space to run and, you know, run the channels, which he doesn't get, I think because we had Jedi and Tim so far up in this match,

he didn't have a lot of space. You know, I mean, you've noticed so far in this recap and in the game, if you have rewatched or whatever, that most of our balls in behind have went to Jedi and then Tim gets some as well as we go on in this first half and this is our first one of flow and you know this has been

our kind of bread and butter throughout the potch regime well as it's developed from what gold cup on yeah specifically it's been the bread and butter of the successful matches in the potch era

yeah yeah is our ability for our for our strikers to run channels and receive the ball and help get our team of the pitch and also create danger from those moments as well. And we haven't seen, this is our first attempted one to Balo. Yeah. In the 30th minute, we get a nice Johnny Cardoso ball out to Tim Wea. And this is the rep I was talking about.

he takes on De Kuiper and whips a ball in that's this close to West but centerback McKelley Let's just go with that, yeah. Yeah, deals with it. I mean, it's really close to either Wes's chest or head.

It's a classic, you know, if you picture a Timway across in your head, a Timway a take on and crossing your head that we've been seeing since 2021 or whatever. It's that. Okay. Just another, like, 40 seconds after that, Tillman shrugs off KDB in the middle and then strides past Raskin and shovels it over to Pulisik. And he drives at a pretty organized backline, turns, recycles it to Wes.

Then it goes to Jedi, who's past, like, he tries to pass it straight forward to Pulisic and it just goes through his legs. I don't really know what's going on there. Is the past too heavy? Is Pulisic just not expecting it? And then Mounier gets it and tries to clip it forward, and it goes to Salamacher's, and he heads it right to Tillman at the top of the D. And then looks at Muneer like, why did I just do that? Or why did you just pass me the ball like that?

But Tillman then does one of his classic little side foot knifed passes between the lines. For Palo, who takes a touch with his left foot, cuts onto his right, and shoots. and I mean, he doesn't really get all of it, but he does draw a decent save from Laman's down to his left. Yeah. Malik, I didn't notice this in real time, but he was a cooking, bro. He looked comfortable out there, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I wonder, I mean, it begs the question for me. Like, is this the best he's looked, I guess a good opponent in a U.S. shirt? Hmm. I don't think it's an incredibly high bar. right? So probably yes. As far as I can remember, yeah,

that no, as far as it being an high bar, but, I mean, because he just started playing well for the national team, like, recently. Yeah. In the first place, you know, we were kind of having some struggles there. I mean, just scored and stuff, you know, he didn't score or assists for a long time. But, yeah, this was,

I was very pleased with what I saw from Malik in this match. You know, we had projected that Gio gets to start, whatever. Gio did not get to start, Malik did instead, and, you know, I cannot say that that was the wrong decision. I thought he looked. No, not based on the evidence of yesterday's game. I mean, Gio didn't do anything positive in his, what, 25 minutes, 30 minutes on the pitch.

To be fair to him, nobody did really, I mean, other than Pep be winning the ball off of, I think it was Telemans. Yeah, yeah, it was too limited. To Big Pat for the second goal. I don't know that anything positive was done in the last 30 minutes by us, but... 30. Yeah, probably not. But, you know, it was funny. I came home today.

I got to, I was talking to my wife for a little bit. She said, she said, babe, is Gio watched? Like, she was watching the game. I guess she was expecting to see something from Gio, man. And she didn't. She didn't. No, no. There was nothing to see.

Yeah. I don't understand. I don't understand if he's like, does he just come into a game like that? And he's like, well, this is over. We're just going to see it out. You can't, I don't think that's the right attitude. I think he needs to go in there and say, like, I'm going to, I'm going to do some stuff and make sure I'm on this World Cup roster.

I would hope that's not the case. And I would lean towards saying, no, that's not the case. You know, I would assume that no professional athlete, would look at the situation, you know, with all the context that you just laid out kind of as far as the World Cup and all those different type of stuff. I don't think. Well, force the issue, Gio, do something, you know? Yeah. 32 minute mark, more committed defending all the way back to our end line from Pulisic, kind of holding a guy off.

Yeah, to win a goal kick, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, man. You're saying this is a new, are we saying this is a new thing? from Christian to actually put in some work on the defensive end? It's probably a new thing that he is just left midfielder in a 4-4-2 in the first place.

Yeah. You know, that's probably the newest thing is that. You know, I'm trying to think of where he was. Seems like he's usually been in the two. What about that? Didn't we have Tim Wei and Hajie in the two in the World Cup at one point?

Man, you are. You are testing me and I am failing the test. All right, all right. We can go on. But, yeah, as far as I can remember, he has not been there. And so because he is there, you know, I mean, you got to do some defending over there, man. I mean, the left midfield, I mean, the right midfiel on the other side was tasked with, you know, double team of dooku anytime he received the ball, you know, type of thing. So, you know, that is a spot where you have to defend.

and he did it for the most part. You know, I've seen some stuff like Matt Doyle's been taking aim at Christian Pulitzer's defensive effort. It wasn't all, it wasn't all roses, but I think there was more positive than negative, though. Okay. Within this match, specific. Okay. Well, 34 minute.

We're almost to the U.S. goal, and then I think we should take a break. But 34 minute mark, real nice sequence. from Pulisic, McKinney, and Jedi combining on the left side under some pressure, and then Jedi lifts a ball, a right-footed ball, down the line for Wes. This is a good soccer from us, and Wes tries to go at Munier and tries to dribble around him, and he just, Munier just sees the ball out of bounds for a goal kick. So this is where TNT sports has decided to give us a new wrinkle. you know what I'm saying they had a new they had a new tricks of their bag

Adam Bells where not only in this match did we miss like multiple goal kicks or like long balls from Belgium that we kind of didn't know what led to different situations um now while we're getting this nice combination down our left side they pop up a they pop up a little like widget like his damn American Idol who who do you think she's? be the striker for the World Cup. And they got the three answers right there. I don't know if you were supposed to text it in or called a toll-free number at what was going on.

But it's like over Weston. Like you can't even see how Jedi, the technique that Jedi used to deliver the ball to Weston. You can just see the flight of the ball. Yeah. The way his leg is. Yeah. Yeah. So that was interesting.

Yeah, I don't care. I don't care about your quiz. just show us the game, you know? Please, brother. But in the stadium, go ahead. Well, just taking a page out of the League of Mekke's broadcasts. They got widgets flying all over the place on those games. I had a good advantage point on this one,

being behind the goal that we were attacking in the first half. When Wes gets the ball, he looks up and he wants to find Ballo. he wants to get rid of it. He looks up, he looks up once. And then he kind of like looks up again. He wants to get rid of it. He wants to find Balo before he takes Mounier on. Like he didn't go into that situation.

Like I'm going to take this man on. Which Munei is like a Munei. He's like a six two athletic fellow. You know, unfortunately, West McKinney's not winning that. but Ballo doesn't really give him much to work on here. If you look at his run, he's kind of like, there's nothing decisive.

He doesn't go decisively to the far post. He doesn't threaten to go far post and cut near post, anything. I think even still, West should have just probably played it, played like a little cutback while he had room to do it, and just let Ballo run onto the ball, you know, type of thing. Like make the pass. make the run type of thing. But Ballot wasn't decisive enough here.

Then once West looked up twice and didn't like what he was seeing, he was like, well, I guess I got to try and get around this man. And then he just kind of got shepherded off the ball. Yeah. I feel like, yeah. Well, 37th minute Turner passes it. He's got it at his feet after some passing around the back. And he passes straight to DeKyper just inside our hat.

So he floats the ball, but not to one of his teammates. No. So it's like halfway between two American players straight to the Kuiper. He side-foots it directly to Doku. And we've got like a bunch of people sort of leaning forward because our goalkeeper just kicked the ball forward. So now all of a sudden they're running at us. Doku absolutely Roasts Johnny Cardoso

And then just whips it across the six Turner dives and parries it Right into Dekadilar Who gathers it and thumps it home You think it's one zero But apparently he handled the ball You know like it must have hit his arm There didn't seem to be any disagreement from him

So a bullet dodged But uh Belgium had a few more bullets in the chamber Turned out Yeah they did They did And, you know, Matt Turner. I think he's cooked, brother.

Do you? Just. I mean, the distribution experience is terrifying. It really is. It just never, that has never really gotten better. No, not really. And this is, I mean, yeah. Just delivering it on a platter to Belgium is crazy.

It's crazy. And, like, yeah, Johnny got cooked. But, I mean, yeah. I don't expect Johnny to not get cooked in that situation, unfortunately. Yeah, that's not his situation. I mean, whose situation is it really? No one. Like, Doku, he does this.

You know, and this is something that I don't like is when people say, you know, he does this to everybody, you know, type of thing. But it's true. It's true specifically, and this is, like, Doku really does do this to everybody. He makes everyone look. silly, you know. Yeah. Quite a player. Plays for Man City, as all of you know. 38th minute mark, Wes and Ballo win a floated ball from McKenzie at midfield together.

This is actually nice from both of them. And then West tries to play Ballo in. He does enough to win a corner against DeBos. So this is him running the channel kind of, getting a ball sort of curled in behind. Yeah. And he does, I think his strength and, like, his leverage that we talk about, you know, every, almost every episode of this podcast is actually, actually does play a role in us winning this corner because I don't know that another striker would have forced DeBos to, like, he just put his shoulder into DeBos and then DeBoss kind of like accidentally knocks it out of bounds, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

I'm with you on that. But for me, there's more special sauce to, this specific play. This sequence here is, it starts with a long, long ball from McKinsey to Wes's head, who Wes is on the right touchline when he heads this ball to Ballow, who lays it off to Johnny.

Johnny traps his ball that he gets from Ballo with his left foot. He is under immediate and heavy pressure from De Kuiper. And he executes a slick, slick, full turn. where he, I mean, the pressure from De Kuiper is so heavy. Johnny even goes down to like a knee a little bit while he executes his turn,

gets back up and gets the ball out to West. And the pass about Tobalo is obviously after that. But I just want to note this because this is, this is the good stuff. This is the stuff that you dream that Johnny could do for the national team when he gets his shot or whatever. It's taken a long time to get here. but this is like a plus plus plus moment on the ball from Johnny and one that I mean a lot of other midfielderers are not making for sure and okay let me ask you this it seems like you

were impressed with some of the stuff Cardoso did in the game he was a planned substitution at the half yeah as a card carrying as car carrying founder of the troubadours yeah where who you if we get Tyler and you also said you want Tyler Adams back because he's a business handler so we need that we need Tyler in there as a business handler who's your other I mean it it would be Johnny because I mean we haven't even gotten on Tanner but brother I thought he was probably our worst player huh he was bad bro and and the thing is it's like he was bad with like no plus moments either it was like no like no like Like almost a damn near first pass of the game.

He gives it away. Trying to find Polly, I want to say. There's, he gets stiff-armed by doku at like the end of the first half. He also gets spun like a top by Doku when he's just like receiving the ball at the top of the box. Okay. We'll get into the goal that we can see it as well. I thought he was pretty damn rough. And, you know, I'm a big, I'm a big Tanner fan, big Tanner fan.

But we also got no, and, you know, it is tough for our, for our defensive midfielders to influence a game with the way we play kind of because we kind of skip that line quite often. Like, even the good moments that Johnny has, it's kind of like it needs to go up to the front line and then come back. Right, right. To our defensive midfielters. And then, like, you'll get a Johnny spray out of Tim Wea. You'll get this moment that Johnny just. had type of thing because they're you know they're being so tightly marked um but there has to be yeah yeah and back through kind of action too yeah and back through and there was no there was just

no positive moments from tantestment on the ball like zero in this match um and there weren't really many positive defensive moments he gave some effort at times you know um but yeah i don't think he like melded in anything but he was he was asked brother he was he was ass. I'll just leave it in that. Okay. Okay. Let's talk about the goal and then take a break. So 39th minute, we get our goal. The corner at that Ballo and Wes and Johnny had just won is bent in by Jetty. By Jedi. By Jedi. Wes goes in past Salamockers on a pick from Cardoso.

Got to mention this. Cardoso sets a pick. And Raskin doesn't make the switch. West just leaps and kind of just gleefully side-footed it down into the turf past Laman's totally unstoppable. Runs over and celebrates with Jedi like they're both old war heroes like they've been down this road before. And we're flying, man. We're ready to take the world stage. 1-0 over Belgium, almost half-time.

We've been the slightly better team, in my opinion, up to this point. And this is a kind of team we probably need to get passed to get to the quarterfinals. So, you know, it felt good. It felt like things were on the right track. Yeah. I hugged like five people. You know, five, six people.

Because once again, I was in like the AO section, you know. Yeah. There's huggable people all around you. Yeah. When you score a goal. There was no hugging going on in the mezzanine. Yeah. But you're feeling good.

And it's a West goal. obviously it's been it's been a while um since west has scored a goal for the national team i think they said since uh grenada grenada he scored two goals against grenada whenever we played them a long time ago um the spice boys but yeah i mean that that's a that's a screw up by belgium to to match up solomackers with uh mckenny like they just they didn't do their scouting report there on that. Yeah. And Potch, you know, he's immersed himself within the American culture, whatnot, you know, you've seen him, college football game, etc.

Here, channeling the spirit of March Madness with Johnny Cardoso setting a pick, a little backscreen lob action to Weston McKinney for the goal. You love to see it. Yeah. Speaking of March Madness, did you see that Yukon buzzer beater? Holy smokes. You damn right I did, brother. As a Duke hater. That's a what?

I said as a Duke hater. You're right, I saw it. It's the first basketball game I've watched this tournament, and those last two minutes didn't disappoint. All right, let's take a break. We'll be back to talk about Belgium's answer right at the end of the first half and then sort of autopsy the dead body of the second half,

hopefully with more brevity than we've provided so far. We'll be back in a moment. All right, we're back. 40th minute. Reim wins a ball at midfield to Pulisic, and he combines with Cardoso and Tillman. And then he's on the end line, and he fizzes it off the legs of a defender at the six.

So, I mean, we're, like, this is immediately after our goal. We're immediately back in their defensive third with Pulisic on the end line. Just reinforces my feeling that things are going well. Yeah. And this is another plus play from Cardoso on the ball. Pass is slightly off target

from a bully It kind of wronged foots him And he's still able to get that left foot out And redirected the ballo It says good stuff from all From all involved And once again Malik cooking Once again bro

I mean Yeah Really looking good Yeah okay Now Doku really goes to work He works way around the edge plays it back to KDB Who I think

shoots twice. The first one's blocked back to him and they shoots again. Then in the 41st minute, Doku weaves through a bunch of defenders and lays it back for KDB again. Another shot from distance. This one curls just wide. So just kind of noting

the sort of ominous drumbeat of Doku. Yeah. Yeah. And at this point in the stadium, I'm looking up at the clock. I'm like, bro, can we get to half time? I'm going to lead. That would be, I mean, that's the win I was looking for in that moment.

You know, we'll worry about winning the game after, but can we get to half with the lead? In this situation, the first bit of danger created by Doku was the one where Tim got scanned and got the face full of Bermuda. Had help to his inside once again, but this time just, yeah, Doku cooked his ass. The second was Jeremy Doku. receiving the ball in the half space where he spun Tanner like a top. Just on the receipt.

Just on the receivable of the ball. Yeah. Dooku did a little wiggle. And Tanner was non-competitive. That was a tough look. That was a tough look. Yeah, I mean, that little not excusing Tanner, but yeah, that little wiggle is terrifying. I was using the speed controller hotkeys watching the game,

you know, taking it down to like 50% sometimes when it was something I really wanted to know what was going on. And like you got a really, like, only when you like really, really, really slow it down, can you see what he's like what Doku is doing with his shoulders? It's very subtle, like quick little things and then boom. Okay, Belgium scores in the first. 45th minute. Doca goes to work on Way again, cuts in on him. This time is able to get a shot off

with his right foot. Blast one at Turner, who parries it way out of the box, falls to DeBast, a young centerback who plays sporting, I think, in Portugal. He takes a good first touch with his instep to set himself up and then just has one from 30 yards out. It goes just past the ankles of Cardoso and Ream, but, you know, I looked at that replay from several different angles that have a slower speed than they did it on the broadcast, and it does not look to me like Turner's line of sight is affected by anybody in front of him. Like, he should have seen this shot the whole way. And he's bobbing on his spot at least once while the ball is in flight.

Yes. Before he dove. And the only explanation I can come up with for that is, maybe he thought there was a deflection when it went past the reams legs and that's why he he like hesitated before he jumped but that's that'd be i mean that'd be crazy if that was the case he did not react quickly i guess you pointed this out after the game but so i watched it more carefully and after him today and i was like yeah you're right he didn't react very well and you know

I kind of came to the same conclusion you did like if anyone threw him off it was probably Tim because I mean Tim was very close to the ball you know I mean it's it's going extremely fast so you you know I can't like ding Tim

for not getting a piece of the ball or something like that but I imagine if anyone threw them off it would have been Tim Rieb but yeah Matt's Matt's sitting there chilling for a solid one count, you know, one second. Yeah. And that's all I say.

He's still got a fingertip to it. Yeah. The thing is if he dives, the way it's going, as soon as the ball is struck, he probably pretty comfortably palms it around the post. Yeah. And so once again, in the spirit of March Madness, we get a Belgian pick on this play. And this is something that I also noticed from the stadium. So when DeBos lines up to switch this ball over to Dooku, I don't know who it is.

I think it's probably CDK, DeKatelar, who, first of all, he's looking DeBoss way and he gives him the like, yo, play it over here. While he's setting up in position to pick Tim Wea, DeBos plays the ball and then whoever the Belgian player is. I can't really tell I can't really get a number right here. But whoever it is just stays right between Doku and Tim Wea,

causes Tim Wea to kind of take a longer route to Jeremy Doku than he would have otherwise. And yeah, that was well executed to get the ball to Doku. Now, once Doku gets the ball, We have Tim We have Tim faced up with him We have Weston kind of providing support He's kind of like dropped into the back line And then we have

Tanner Testament here Tanner Is kind of playing The pass away There's like a You know Doku has the ball in the wing There's somebody

I think it's I think it's KDB Who's like at the top of the box So Tanner's denying that pass. Tanner's kind of shading over there. But, you know, and I had been thinking about this goal for a while, and then on like my second rewatch, in the 27 minute, we have this exact same situation.

And Tanner Testament, like Weston is in the same position, and Tanner's kind of in the same position. And he has KDB at the top of the box. What does Tanner do? He decides to double Jeremy Doku. And Pottch talks about this in his, in his presser. He says the plan was to double Dooku with help from our midfielders,

and it didn't happen on the goal. The person that's available to double here is Tanna Testament, and he does not. He decides to kind of shade to the one passaway, and that gives Jeremy Dooku a two-lane go, and for the first time in this match, you know, he cuts in on his right foot and has a shot at Matt at Matt Turner that, you know, Turner does well with,

and then that turns into the boss receiving the ball and striking it into the goal. So I do think we should put a fair share of blame here on the Tamman. Okay. All right, Johnny Cardo, so come on down. And then next, I guess the next action right before the half. half is Tanner getting stiff armed by Dooku? This is basically a Tim,

a Tim way a turnover after a throw-in from the right touchline in our, in our own half. And Jeremy Toku receives the ball. Jeremy Dooku receives the ball from KDB as he's kind of like getting into an attacking position. Really at like the left corner of the box. and yeah so while he's waiting for the ball to why he's waiting for the ball to get to him it kind of holds his arm out and just holds tanner testament testament off from like getting pressure

onto jeremy doku because kdb kdb kind of hits this pass with um it's kind of under hit a little bit doku has to kind of wait on it and it goes behind him you know in a perfect position kind of for like tana testament's like make a play on this ball but i mean he just there's no other way to put it he He gets little brothered by Jeremy Dooku here. And, yeah. Not a tall man. No, no, no, no. So, yeah, the mistakes are, the mistakes for me, I kind of adding up.

And once again, there aren't plus plays to override these mistakes in this match from Tana Chessman. Right. Yeah, 47-minute mark DeBrena plays Doku in behind Wea, with like kind of a, I think it was an outside of the boot pass. from the left side. Yeah. And Doku just, you know, races in behind him, cuts it back across toward Dukyper, and Jedi cuts it out.

Not a super, I mean, could have been dangerous. Jedi does well there. And then the ensuing corner gets floated for Salamockers to have a first-time volley at it, which he hits it hard off the turf, draws a I think a pretty decent save from Turner so yeah

the good feelings maybe yeah so go away a little bit right this is where it kind of feels like it snowballing on us a bit Belgium are finding different ways to get at us giving us new looks looks like this one here where

KDB pops up in the spot that Jeremy Dooku has usually occupied which is like right around the right around the midline kind of thing, like towards the touchline. That's where, like, Weston picked up his yellow card when Doku received the ball.

Right. Things like that. He's, and so now KDB's there, which gives Jeremy Doku the license to, to even be more terrifying. You know, it's one thing where you know, you know where he's getting the ball.

It's just up to you to stop him. Now he's floating around like a B on our back line. And for, an inexperienced defender like Tim and especially a Tim way of Mark McKenzie partnership which doesn't aspire a ton of confidence

you know they don't they don't sort it out well no and Tim basically he needs to recognize like because Mark has a man on kind of the Cadillari is like kind of occupying Mark McKenzie somebody needs to take charge let Tim know

that Mark isn't going to be able to help him here. And he doesn't have a threat outside, right? So he needs to get in between Doku and the goal, essentially. Yeah. And not let him operate in his bond spot in that way. Yeah, I mean, it is, to be fair, a lot to sort out. But also... But it's sortable.

It's sortable, and I don't know. Mr. McKenzie is not the guy to do it, I don't think. with you know sort of directing Tim Wea that's the half it's 1-1 it uh it started well

but after our goal and then their answer they did Belgium did feel suddenly like the much stronger team to me Christian Roldon comes on for Johnny Cardoso to start the second half this was apparently a plan substitution nothing to do with Cardoso playing poorly which you know if you've listened

to the first hour and a half of this recap You know that Cardoso didn't play poorly. He actually played pretty well. 48th minute, Christian Roldon actually does better against Doku than Cardoso did earlier in a 1V1 situation. It results in a corner kick, but he does not. He kind of like sticks his shoulder into Doku in a way that nobody else had done so far. And then kind of forces him wider than he wants to go. And then in the 51st minute, Roldon, has a real nice tackle.

on Dooku, and then draws a foul from Dooku right at midfield. So not too much of note in the first five minutes except for that Roll-Don maybe helped a little bit in neutralizing Dooku temporarily. I will say, I don't know, I mean, Rodon had one nice pass through the lines later. I don't know that he really covered himself in glory in this game. I thought he was okay. Okay. I didn't think he was out of everybody, like out of Arf, Seba.

and Christiane, I guess that's just the random cohort of, like, MLS guys. He was the best of the three. I think he could stay, man. I think he's going to World Cup. And, you know, these doku moments. But these, you know, he had two passes. He had two pretty nice passes. Okay, okay.

Which, once again, it was kind of, I think Belgium relaxed. shape a little bit and weren't necessarily marking, though, that band of two as much as they were in the first half. But he was able to receive the ball, get on the turn, and fine, passes forward, and I'll take it. Yeah, okay. And he brings some defensive bite, too, which is, I guess, why I bring up these two moments. We get a big chance for Pulisic in the 52nd minute. He spreads it for Wea, who battles with the Kuiper toward the end line.

and pushes it back for Pulisik who cuts in and goes left across the face of goal past Onana. I mean, it's really nice dribbling here. And then he's got a chance to shoot. Like, maybe he could, you know, slam it in at the near post. Maybe he goes far post.

He's got a lot of the goal to shoot at, and he just can't wrap his foot around it, and he sends it skyward. But this was a big chance. I mean, this is a big chance. Probably, you know, one of the five best chances of the game, for us.

Oh, yeah. Maybe, I mean, one of the three best chances of the game. You know, you got Wes's two. Yeah.

West is two, like, and then this, this is good stuff. He gets busy here, man. Yeah. And this is where like,

you know, this is, this is where he can do his thing. In these moments, you get the ball. It's, it's like, he's not Jeremy Doku,

right? He is a, winger by trade, but he's not Jeremy Doku, he's not touchline winger. It's like his shiftingness is better saved for receiving the ball in and around the box like this and fashioning chances in that way. Yeah.

And he looked good doing it until the shot, and the shot, like, comically went high up into the... Went very high up into the stands. We had a nice, like, kind of childish stomp from Christian, too. after that chance was kind of stuck in my head live and also on the rewatch but yeah he wasn't happy yeah and as was often the case

when we scored or when we almost scored Belgium comes right down and scores a goal 52 minute mark doku goes to the end line against McKenzie cuts it across kind of weakly I mean I think it it ricochets off McKenzie's inside of McKenzie's ankle or something

and goes to a spot where Ream has to seal off the goal from two converging Belgian attackers. But Salamacher's kind of emerges from that little moment of hesitation and chaos with it, turns and lays it off for Onana. Tillman closes on him, I think, with some level of alacrity. But Onana just passes it through his legs into the bottom corner. Do one. And this is one where we had seven in the box, and McKinney was tracking to Kuyper,

so only Pulisic and Ballo weren't all the way back on this play. I thought maybe Testman got dragged a little too deep. You know, like maybe he's tracking somebody all the way into the, all the way into the goal mouth. Maybe at that point he needs to like come back out because we got that part covered. But I don't know, man. It's like it doesn't look like any. anybody does anything too like egregious here

it just it just kind of happens and then the shot goes right through Tillman's legs I don't know what do you do I don't know I don't know what to do and that's why you need business handlers you know what I'm saying like let's say

we kind of have that not that this is likely to happen but we kind of have this same situation right with Wes versus Moonieh for instance like let's say Wes looks up he sees he's not liking what he's seeing from Balo. He decides to take out Munei, somehow.

And instead, Munoz does not decisively shepherd this man in the ball, like, kind of out of bounds or whatever. Right. All of a sudden, he lets something squeak through and then, like, once again, without business handlers, you invite Calamity, man. You invite Calamity, and that's what's going on here. Mark McKenzie, I don't think covered itself in glory here. just because of the fact that

they kind of meet each other Doku and McKenzie kind of meet each other like so deep and Christian like really bust it to get in position to be and and that's why you know Christian got spot on his team man like Tant Tenton in that same situation I'm not sure he's getting there

to help Mark McKenzie in that same way yeah Christian Bust it gets there provides that that help for Mark and

without a ton of room to work with to even get to the inline like you know he can't even build up ahead of steam like that one where Tim got the face

full of Bermuda that there was a lot of room for Doku to kind of even though Tim was shaded that way there was a lot of room for him to kind of get going and build up the steam

to really beat that man there's not a lot of room here Doku shimian and I don't know I just feel like this was a very this was a handleable situation as far as like

1V1 he's at a dead stop he's pretty he doesn't he doesn't have any way to cut on his right foot because Roldon is covering that because Rodon is right there and the inline is like

five yards away yeah yeah it's it and somehow still he kind of cook's mark and is able to squeak that cross you know, between his legs or whatever. He's kind of outstretched with his left.

Okay. Mark is with his left foot. And also this is bad work from the, they're showing the replay of the policy miss. We don't know what happens until we see the replay after the goal. The move gets started by Tim Rame losing a header in midfield. So that's how we, that's how Belgium gets going there. So some other business that wasn't completely handled.

Yep. I've also seen people that multiple people say that Malik needs to sell out to block that shot there, maybe slide. I got some I got some, I'm listening, you know, to that perspective.

I'm not dismissing that out of hand. You know, after watching it, it's like Malik does close down with alacrity and he's like so there that like I think a slide, it's not even like a sellout like he has to show some commitment. It's like he's there, bro.

And I think a slide obviously opens it, like, widens your body to block the shot. I think that's probably the right play there. I'm not mad that he didn't do it necessarily, but I think that would have ensured that the shot was blocked. Yeah. Also saw Greg Velasquez in the Discord saying that Malik kind of crosses Onana's face while closing him down there. which kind of leads to the shot, kind of going through Malik's legs, which also makes sense to me. Instead of like, instead of coming directly at him. Right.

Yeah, I see. Right. So. Yeah. And once it's going through his legs, it's over. I mean, there's no chance of Turner saving that. Probably no chance even if it doesn't go through his legs the way it's placed. Right.

And it's like, I mean, even Tim Riem, once the ball squirts through, it's like, yeah, we get. Belgium gets to it first, but like, did they have to? I don't know. I don't know if I want him chopping away at, like, people's legs right in that spot, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I feel you. But, yeah, I mean, business wasn't handled, I guess, on three different occasions, even if you don't count the Tillman thing.

54-minute mark, a decent combination up the left side from us. Pulisic doing most of the serious work. It results in him flashing a shot off Lamage's shoulders. shoulder, but Pulisic was offside. I mean, it was like kind of a scramble where Pulisic shifts it over to Jedi. Jedi takes a heavy touch, kind of loses it, battles for it,

and then it goes to Pulisic. And he takes a good shot that Laman saves with his left shoulder, but he was offside. So kind of a move point. Why don't I even talk about it? 55th minute, another nice combination up the gut from Rodon to Pulisic

to Balow, and then over to Wes. taps it over to Wea. This is lovely one touch soccer. It's one of the good Rodan moments we were talking about. And Wea has a half folly. Like it lines up, it sits up nicely for him. It's like exactly what you want from about 17 yards out for Wea to just like hammer it into the far,

and at the far post or wherever he wants to hammer it. And he shanks it, man. Like it's kind of similar to the Pulisick shot earlier, just way, way wide and high. Yeah Yeah I mean there's nothing There's nothing more to say about this I guess I mean but

We are still playing some good stuff So Yeah You know it's not Once again It's not like Belgium Flip the Switch And we've just been

Completely asked from there forward That's true You know And it's only 2-1 And then Unfortunately Belgium scores almost immediately.

And it starts with Tim. You know, Tim's kind of like, kind of grieving his miss, if that's what you want to call it. And the ball ends up with KDB on the right side, on our left side, Belgium's right side. And Tim's a little slow to get back to his position. And so KDB plays like, I don't know, 80-yard diagonal waist-high ball to Doku to put to like to,

to set him off and running down that line. Tim does get back so that Dooku has to square him up, but he's all kind of out of sorts. He squares him up, does him, backboards with the Kedalar, who does that delicate one-touch pass, return pass to put him in a shooting position. And we talked about like two hours ago, yeah. Yeah.

He, he takes a touch, and then rips it with his left foot. Turner Perry's with his left arm well, I think. It spins up and out to Munei, who meets it with a header on goal, and this is where Ream gets whistled for a handball. I think it does, I mean, it obviously does touch his left fist as it goes past him. Yeah. Which, like I said, this made this save more difficult for Turner. Turner does save the shot, kind of nicely, but it doesn't really matter because it's a penalty.

and the Kedilar steps to the spot and puts it high and to the left, 3-1. And, I mean, we already talked about the penalty, right? We don't need to talk about it some more. You think it was a harsh call. I think it was silly for Ream to help us for Ream to touch that ball with his hand. So, like, don't do it. I think it was bad from Ream. Like, that's not the technique you use if you need to step to your left.

in that situation, right? It's like you don't kind of throw your arm out there. You know, I saw it plenty from pickup on on Saturday at the West End Marta Station.

You know, you want to block something, or you want to make a save where you don't get a where you, you know, you don't feel like face planting it some turf or whatever, you know, kind of turn your body, you step, you turn your body, you leave your hands out of it.

And so I guess I do understand your perspective. I mean, it's going to get called in the World Cup if you touch a shot at that spot with your hand. And it's, and your hand is out from your body at all. Anyway, that's, so that makes it 3-1. It's possible to tempt so old, bro. You know, you know when you got to get up out of the chair when you've been a, you got to. really, you know, you got to throw your whole momentum into it. It kind of looked like that.

You know, with Tim had to step aggressively to his left to try and block the shot. And in order to get as much power as he needed to, to step hard to his left, you know, he had to get some arm swing in there. Maybe so. It's a sideline. I mean, it's a side effect of starting a... 39-year-old. Father of teenagers. Damn there.

Belgium makes a bunch of subs at the hour mark. and not a huge drop-off from them in the way they're playing. We make a bunch of subs at the 63-minute mark. Jedi comes off for Arfston, Burhalter for Tesman. I mean, sorry, Tesman comes off for Burrhalter, and Wea comes off for Freeman. And in the 67th minute, Belgium scores again. It's a big switch to the right.

Munier carries it and then hands it off to Dori Lukabakio. who is one of these subs on our left side. He cuts in on Arfston, you know, shades of the June 2025 window before the Gold Cup when he's getting worked and curls one left-footed into the far side of the goal. I mean, it's a totally unstoppable hit. The thing is, you know, Arfston gets cooked,

but Pulisic was dogging it a bit on the recovery getting back and then doesn't you know doesn't step in to like provide some provide some inside help for Arfston. Nobody else comes to Arfston's rescue and it's 4-1. Yeah.

It's so the one thing I'll say is like the dog in it from Pulisic here looked like it looked to me like he might have just not had it in him. Yeah. You know, it wasn't like, I don't care dogging it. No. But it did look like he was just like, man, I'm kind of tired right now.

It totally looked like that. And then he, there was a long hydration break after the goal. And he got subbed off. So it must have been what it looked like to Posh, too. Because we get Ray and Scali, Ajamong, and Pepe on for the front four. So West Tillman, Pulisic, and Ballot to the bench. And it's just a low hum in the stadium at this point. Game's over.

Nothing really happens for 10 minutes. 80th minute, Arston floats a ball to the back post for Big Pat. And he demonstrates one of his strengths. He rises above the defender, nods it across. It just doesn't find Pepe, who is kind of in the neighborhood, but the connection isn't there. It's cleared by a defender. and on, I think, the ensuing sequence, you know, after Belgium gets possession, they score again.

They retrieve the ball over on our left side after we, you know, they attack, we kind of clear it. I think it was maybe rolled on and cleared it. They get somebody, at first I thought it was a throw-in because it's just like, everybody's just kind of like, oh, it's going out of bounds, but somebody saves it for Belgium. him. And then Luka Bacchio kind of finds space in a pocket there to receive a pass between the goal and where the ball is on the sideline. And Burrhalter, I'm going to give Burrhalter a little bit of a ding here. He falls asleep a bit because I don't know what he's really thinking about, but he should be tracking Luka Bacchio. He doesn't. And neither does Gio Rana. Neither than picks him up. So he just turned. He has all the time in the world to just receive this pass turn.

and step into the box. He slips it to a teammate to the end line. I don't know which one it was. And that teammate cuts it back. It gets caught under Sebastian Berhalter's feet and falls perfectly to Lukabakio who shoots it past him. At first it looked to me like it was through his legs as well, but it was just past his legs in at the near post for the goal.

So a brace for Mr. Lukabakio and his 5-1, Belgium. And they're not even really celebrating their goals that much at this point. They're just kind of like, you know, good job, guys. a that's fun right let's get to our hotel yeah bro they show a shot of uh i guess so like the belgium technical staff because because luca bacchio is like celebrating in front of them and they're standing up giving a round of applause like it's like it's the oscars or something bro you know what i'm saying there's no there's no fist pumps it's just just golf claps you know what i'm saying that's where we're at bro that's where we're at so yeah oh penda nearly

scores in the 85th minute after getting slipped in by Mika Goetz, a 20-year-old sub-off-the-bench who plays for Iax. I don't understand why, I mean, why is it so much easier for them to, like, make a little darting running behind our centerbacks, get a slip pass, and then get a shot from it, and we can't. Because our centerbacks are bad at pitch control, and this is a prime example here. Mark McKay... I'll start here. Bells, I kind of talk to you about this.

a little bit off air about just Mark McKenzie because I've started you know we own a hunt for some centerbacks baby and so I've started watching these Toulouse matches and really locking in and see if you know my priors on Mark McKenzie are changing at all and they're just not

he's just he just the thing about Mark for me is like as an attacker you can get whatever you want off Mark you know what I'm saying it's like it's almost like he's it's like he's some like gullible person that you can play or something

you know it's like you can do anything you can set this man up in any way you can get anything you want you just have to use like a little bit attacked to your game like you know go far post far post cut near post you know what I'm saying and that'll

that'll just get Mark that'll just get Mark bro and in the situation he's first of all, he's asleep to Upenda and slow to react to a Penda making a run in the first place and it's just like, it's almost like he's not there, bro. He's like two sheets to the wind.

No, no, forearms shiver to the man. You know what I'm saying? No, you're going to fill me. My presence is here. None of that. It's like, like I said, you can do whatever you want with the man. Like, think about the different

type of physical challenges Ballows had to deal with in like this past year whatever, like the Paraguay match and what they were doing to them. Yeah. Different things like that. It's like... You don't get any of that from Mark.

Mark is just like straight down the line. The fairest man to ever play a soccer game. And it's like he kind of needs that, bro, because he's small. He's a little on, like... He's not like a freak athlete. He's not a bad athlete, but he's not like a great one. He's smaller. He's not that twitchy.

I mean, you don't want your centerbacks necessarily to be twitchy, but, yeah. It's just, you put it all on a package together. It's just, he's a. An easy guy to play against. Easy guy to play against. And it's like he plays in these back threes for, to loose. And I think those kind of, they kind of insulate him from being, from having to do these types of things.

But, yeah. You think what Potch, Potch went and dialed up. No, Kyle. on FaceTime after the game. I mean, I mean, uh, or maybe he didn't,

maybe it's best to, to stay away after our five, two laws. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. Psy of, uh,

Gen Z or, yeah, Gen Z 18 year old or whatever. Um, what a mystery. But also, uh, Mika Gultz,

right, the, uh, the man who played the bald upenda. Um, Joe Scali, got absolutely cooked by him and got a yellow card earlier in this second half.

I just wanted to say for anybody who's like, I guess wanted us to start a different right back against Jeremy Dooku, you know what I'm saying? Joe Scali got cooked by Mika Ghout. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It was not. Not that famous of a player.

I mean, I do get the sense looking at the ages of some of these Belgian guys. Their pipeline's not too shabby, you know? No, it's not. I mean, like, you know, Jeremy Doku's not... He's 23. Yeah, he wasn't part of that, the past generation. You know what I'm saying?

That's a new gen dude. Yeah. All right, let's get out of here as soon as we can. 87th minute, the USA scores. Just after a little patch of sunlight shows up in the corner of Belgium's defensive third in the stadium, Pepe wins it off Tealeman's foot, a little slow from Uri T's. Telemans, who did not start the game but did come on for a good part of the second half, wins it right to Pat, and he just tucks it away at the far post to make it five two. A little consolation goal for us.

After the goal, we didn't get much other than an acrobatic big Pat volley on a hopeful ball in from Scali. It gets knotted away off of Pat's chest. He pops it up, tries to do a sidewinder and sends it all the way over. we didn't have much to offer after all the subs came on, at least in the attack. Yeah. And I think there was some business decisions being made. Like this one's over, let's just see what we can do against Portugal. We need Richards to be healthy. And I don't know that it solves everything, but it's an improvement over McKenzie.

Help if deaths were back to just to have another option. on how to do stuff. I mean, I don't know if Dest is going to handle Dooku very well either, but... I have no brother. But, you know, but I think big picture, I guess my takeaway is we might win a game like this at the World Cup. That's the thing. But... It's like...

Go ahead. Well, we might win a game, a game that roughly plays out like this, but we do need some things to go our way. Mm-hmm. And we probably need... I mean, probably need slightly better goalkeeping. I'm thinking particularly that first shot, which kind of changed the whole complexion of the first half. I'm talking about the first goal.

Yeah. And we need a little bit. We need a little bit of luck, you know, if we're going to do anything at the World Cup. That's what it feels like right now. Which we could get it. We could get the luck. But we are not going to just meritocratically

you know, stride our way into the quarterfinals, let alone the semifinals, you know? Yeah. This is Belgium without, they should have Romulukaku in the World Cup. They should have Leandro Trussard as well. Yeah. In the World Cup. That's a, yeah. They are a top ten nation.

I mean, they always give, they always give, The big country is a big, big test at the World Cup. They always lose in the, usually the quarterfinals. But it's always a really good game, and people are rooting for them, and they look great. But. Yeah. But the first half looked good. The first half did look good.

But without business handlers and the first half, the back line, it's going to be, sometimes you've got to create your own look, right? Right. And a lack of business handlers prevents you, kind of can prevent you for creating your own luck. Now, maybe, maybe we go on a crazy finish and spree like that Udeguad match or something like that.

But, yeah, it's, look, I'll put it this way. I'll put it this way. World Cup 2022 I felt pretty confident that we could go up against anybody and at least give

them a bit of a scare and for the most part we did that you know even the Netherlands match I mean well if that what was that

Pully had a pass to play to Hajie to put him like 1V1 against the keep it that was like a little heavy yeah that could have potentially tied the game

England match, I mean, we all know how that went. I mean, we had a solid 15-minute stretch in the second half where it was like corner after corner after corner. Famously, we couldn't get anything out of corners in that cycle. So nothing came of that, but we all felt good about M.A. and the solidity that they provided us both offensively as far as getting up the pitch and keeping us up the pitch and defensively along with our backline and Greg's, you know, defensive record or whatever. We felt good about it then.

Once we made the changes, we got Tim Riemann there and Longout, et cetera. Now, I think we're still kind of in the same place now, maybe with slightly less control. Yeah. And ability to, yeah, because we just don't have the ball all the time in the way that we did with Burrhal to ball, which, you know, prevents the opponent's ability to get at us,

obviously. But I still think we're, We're kind of in that same position. And so you kind of just let the chips fall where they made from there. Well, we're in the same position except we don't use the MMA midfield anymore. I mean, Moosa's out seems to be. Yeah, yeah. And so that makes a difference in our pitch control.

And then, you know, we are probably not as strong at centerback as we were in 2022 either. Nobody stepped up in Walker's ever miss shoes Yeah Unfortunately But if we're going to play Sort of fearless soccer We All the more need for business handlers at the back

You know Yeah And And this like These like pile-ups of goals That we have Somewhat repeatedly experienced under Right

Pocitino. The risk continues to be there. Yeah. We'll see what happens against Portugal. Looks like Greg and I are going to recap that on Wednesday. Sanjay and I are going to come out with a game day hit late tomorrow night, which will be in your feeds when you wake up on Tuesday morning. Any other announcements? Bits?

No. No, I don't think I have anything, brother. You appreciate you sticking with us, guys. Thanks for listening. If you want to skip the ads, I'm going to put like 50 ad breaks in this episode. If you want to skip all those ads, join the Patreon. Link is in the show notes. We will see.