Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #700: USA v Paraguay recap

Episode Date: June 15, 2026

We have a squad! Full recap and timeline of the 4-1 drubbing we dished out against Paraguay, a quite solid Conmebol team. Belz and Velasquez revel in it all and look ahead to Australia. Pickup: 6/18, at noon, at Lower Woodland Soccer Field #2 Night before: 6p-10pm, Media Mixer hosted by Sounder at Heart, Project 9 brewing, 1409 NE 80th St. RSVP here: https://partiful.com/e/BY6NPWAb0JVUagYN2q4y?c=sF2c_4mR Pre/Post match @ Fast Fashion brewing, 1723 1st ave s. Doors open at 8am sharp, 1723 1st Ave S Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus 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: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedCheck out our store, where you can get Scuffed hats and sweatshirts and other stuff: scuffedpodcast.com/storeAlso, 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.scuffedpodcast.com/store  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuff podcast, where we talk about U.S. soccer. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the first scuffed recap of the 26 World Cup. What a privilege it will be to talk about this game, the USA's 4-1 win over Paraguay. Greg, how you doing? Bells, I am doing better than at any other time you've ever asked me that question. And what a treat. I mean, can you believe it?

I guess the answer is no. Like if you had said, hey, would you be happy if we saw quite possibly like the most comprehensive World Cup performance of our lifetimes from the U.S. men's national team? I've been like, yeah, that'd be great. I would take that. And then we just got that handed to us in a spectacularly entertaining fashion. Yeah.

I keep telling people, I would have guessed that. we win the game. You know, it being a home World Cup, we beat Paraguay a few months ago. I think we can beat them. We should beat them. I would like for us to beat them to one, maybe. You know, we'll give up a goal, but we'll get two.

But to come out there and play yeah, like, I mean, easily the best World Cup performance of the scuffed era. And probably, with a possible exception of that Mexico game in 2002, the best performance of our lifetimes, which it happens to be that our lifetimes are the modern era

of the U.S. men's national team. So you have to go back to like 1950 or 1930, which people know about as much about that as they do about like Alexander the Great's campaigns and Persia, you know, it is, it's unbelievable. I mean, what, what a treat. I love thinking that the only evidence remaining from those 1930, uh, was like, it's like a coin. We found a minted coin with the, with the score on it. And that's our, no, it is an account written by Herodotus 200 years later. You almost have to, like, when I say it's the most spectacular, like the most comprehensive performance, like you can, you can,

you can add caveats like, okay, you know, it was less lower stakes than the Mexico win in the quarter final, or in the round of 16 in 2002. It was, you know, we beat Portugal, for God's sake. You know what I mean? Like, there are, there are other games that were huge in their, in their different ways. But as far as comprehensive victories go, this was so comprehensive of victory in performance and domination that it almost actually like undermines its own quality. Because it was like, well, yeah, but it was so easy to beat them. And it's like we've never had a game in the World Cup where we beat somebody so easily. Like that, that was insane. It is, for me at least in a certain way, it's a culmination of my hopes because I feel like,

over the years, I thought we could play like this. You know, it was, it was within our reach. We had the players to play a game like this, and that hope kept getting deferred, you know, over and over again. And sometimes in spectacular, spectacularly depressing fashion. And, you know, people would, would ask me in pity about the podcast, you know. But it did feel to me like, even four years ago, even as, you know, at the World Cup in 2022, that we could, on the right occasion, on the right night, put together a performance like this.

We just never did until Friday. What a time to do it. In the World Cup four years ago, it was, you know, you could bust out like different reasons why, right? Like we went in a little bit more hobbled where, you know, we all kind of know, Gio Raina's fitness issues and injury issues. Weston McKenney was on like 60 minutes. Serginio Dest was coming out of the game every six.

on the 60th minute, we didn't have the backups to keep us as strong when they'd come off, obviously. Somebody dug up our post-2020 recording our session right after that. And one of the things I'd mentioned was like, we had all the pieces there. We just needed to add one striker and one center midfielder. And I think I also wished for a centerback. And you could say that the centerback didn't hit, but Tim Rieme with his legs still going as hard as they are, I guess you can count that as a win. But we hit, Malik was a hit. Absolutely. Balagan was a hit. And we have McKenny, you know, for 90 minutes. We have Sergenio Dest for 90 minutes. When you look at our 11, 12, 13 top guys, we are a squad. Yeah. And we have Gio for, you know, I mean, we've mentioned this before,

but Gio really the only significant minutes he played at the last World Cup was the second half of the Netherlands game when he was thrown on in desperation, basically. And now we have him, you know, presumably for 30 minutes at the end of every game, which is a little different from 2022. And as we'll see as we go through the timeline, it can make a difference towards the end of a game. And we got a taste of this, again, I would say with the Germany game. Like I thought the Germany performance in Senegal too, those were really good performances. And as we'll kind of talk about in this timeline, this could easily be basically the same level,

baseline level of performance that we had against Germany, but this is what it looks like against the team that's some measurable distance away from Germany's quality, as Paraguay are. So Paraguay is a good team, but they are in Germany. And when you can play at this level against a Paraguay, this might be the kind of outcome that you're going to get. Yeah, and let me just, I know we're not going to be the first people to say this, but we should get it out of the way that this idea that maybe Paraguay is not good at all.

not true they are they qualified out of common ball south america which is very tricky to do they were even on points with brazil columbia and uruguay in qualifying it's a pretty nice company to be in they only gave up 10 goals in 18 qualifying matches so less than a goal a game went nine straight without defeat they beat uruguay they beat brazil they beat argentina in qualifying and you know some of those games were two years ago things change but This is not a bad team. They're pretty good. And for us to make them look like that is just, I mean, it's a dream.

It's a dream. Let's do the lineups. We had freeze in goal. I mean, there were no surprises really in the lineup. Matt freeze in goal. Alex Freeman, Chris Richards, Tim Ream, and Jedi Robinson across the back line. And then Adams and Tillman as the double pivot, I guess we'll call it. And then Sergenio Dest, Weston McKee.

Kenny, Christian Pulisic as the right to left attacking midfielders, and then Fuller and Balligan at Stryker. Can you kind of give us the rough outline of how that lineup was shaped on offense and on defense? On offense, we get the 325 with Freeman Richards and Reams staying home. As the back three Adams and Tillman being the nominal pivot, though, Tillman much more advanced than Adams. So it kind of blended from a three, two, five into like a three one, six, three one, five one, which is a little twist, a little twisty and fantastic use of Malik Tillman, who demonstrated that he is more than capable of filling that spot. Talk about being unfazed by a big moment.

And then in the defensive shape, it was basically a 4-2-3-1 with basically the lineup as you read it. So Paraguay, when we get into their lineup, they are a good team, as you just said. They could not figure out how to adjust to what we were doing, which wasn't particularly complicated. I mean, it was basically just our base shape. And then Paraguay sort of just falling for the same trap over and over again or kind of walking themselves into a trap over and over again, that we were pretty, I mean, very effective, not totally ruthless, but very effective in exploiting.

Yeah, let's get into that in a second. Let me give you the lineup for Paraguay. Orlando Hill, who plays at San Lorenzo in Argentina, that's one of the clubs in Buenos Aires. There's a lot of clubs in Buenos Aires. So he was in goal for them. The back line from right to left is Juan Caceres, who plays at Dinamo Mon Maris.

Moscow and had a horrific night at right back. Gustavo Gomez, the captain of Palmeiras in Brazil, you know, a perennial contender there. Omar Alderete, who plays centerback at Sunderland, got 2,800 minutes there. They're qualifying for Europa League, straight to the group stage, which is really difficult to do out of the Premier League. And then Jr. Alonso, who played left back, he's at Atletico Minero in Brazil. The band of four, I guess, for them was Diego Gomez, who plays at Brighton, Andres Kubas, who plays for Vancouver FC, teammates with Sebastian Berhalter, Damien Bobadilla, who plays for Sao Paulo in Brazil, and then Miguel Almirone, who we all know, plays at Atlanta

United used to play at Newcastle, had sort of a Newcastle sabbatical between Atlanta United 10 years. And then Julio and Ciso, who plays at Strasbourg, and Antonio Sanabria, who plays for Cremonesse, which just got relegated from Syria to Siri B. So, I mean, those two centerbacks, I just want to point out those two centerbacks are legitimate players. They are not just clowns back there for the reasons I gave. And what about their shape? What were they, were they sitting back? Were they trying to press us? Were they doing different things at different times? I feel like they were caught in between

and didn't do a particularly effective job at any of it. They were kind of at a mid-block 4-4-2. It started out almost looking like a 4-4-1-1. But I think it was just a 4-4-2 with extra emphasis on the non-ballside striker, kind of like shadowing Tyler Adams. But they didn't put particularly good pressure on the ball. And the big trap that,

fell into was their back for against our five that we ran in our band up top from left to right ours was Jedi Pulisic Bolligan McKenny Sergino Desk and even that's simplifying it because the the key feature of ours was it was super fluid very tons of interchange but the the piece that got them all tied up was their wide full fullbacks not knowing what to do or just doing the same thing over and over and not adjusting, which was to get too tight to our players out on the chalk, our wide players. And the centerback on their side wouldn't sort of come with them. They would stay tight with Fuller and Balagans.

Their two centerbacks would really stay tight, bracketing balligan, which just left a huge seam between fullback and centerback. And we were just constantly dinking a ball up over the top to a streaking Weston Kenny or Christian Pulsick, sometimes Malik Tillman, breaking from that sort of recessed line, up into that seam. And we were just gaining territory. And the thing we talked about in the Germany Recap, too, is all of our lads are lads, they're units.

They control the space around them. So when we dink a ball up, it's not just like, well, we'll see if our guy can win it. Our guy won it. Like every time. Yeah. We'd get it, control the ball, not necessarily be in on goal, of course, but like we'd have it up there and then the dynamic moving around them with a bunch of other lads who are all units and we we just were untroubled for the entirety of that match i i think that's a

that's a really underrated thing the laddiness of our lads when we um like particularly west his ability to bring down like one of those floated balls behind the line and it's not always it doesn't always look cinematic the way he does it, but the efficiency with which he does that brings it down and then immediately he's playing forward or immediately he's got his head up looking for somebody to pass to. And I mean, obviously Tillman the same, Pulisic, a lot the same. And the interchange between Wes and Dest maybe in particular, I mean, maybe that was just because it was closer on the screen in the first half seemed to really baffle them too. You know, West would come out wide and then Desh would be on the inside.

And it's such a guy, you know, I watched the Australia Turkey game late Saturday night. And then the next thing I watched was the rewatch of the USA game. And the contrast between the way Turkey was attacking Australia and the way we were talking, attacking Paraguay. It was really, really striking to me. Like, there was so much dynamism in the movement. the movement you're describing, but, you know, midfielders, pistoning and all kinds that, like, we're just moving everywhere when we had the ball. Really impressive.

The Jedi, the Jedi pool sick, I don't want, I don't want them to be left out on this either because that side was incredibly fluid, which I feel like is the big departure. We've seen the fluidity on the fun side, on that right side, hence the fun side moniker that we bestowed upon it for a long time. the Jedi Pulsick side was always kind of the sludge where they were always kind of trapped in wheels spinning and it feels like it was because you know Jedi always kind of took the outside lane

and Poolsick might go into either lane and so that would run into issues because it'd be like well sometimes Jedi's already out there and it was just a mess but this time Jedi has total comfort moving to the inside he was playing in as a double 10 for significant stretches in possession everyone's just fluid going everywhere and Paraguay because of their shape and because of the way they weren't set up low,

they didn't, it wasn't a low block, there was all that space behind them that we could work into. They ended up just being a complete mess. And that will be the major difference, I think, for the Australia game. This is like a kung fu movie where we're going to have different bosses to beat each round because I do think it's going to be a much more committed low block, which will test us in a completely different way. And I'm super excited to see because I think we've got the Haas and the technical acumen

and eagerness to sort of do some intricate combination play through Australia's lines when we get to that game on Friday. Yeah, let's talk about that quick at the end. I mean, I know I'm the one who brought it up anyway. But before we get to the timeline, a few quick announcements. I always forget to say this stuff till the end. So let me just say it right now. we're going to be in Seattle this week in force.

We've got Vince is going to be there. I'm going to be there. Sanjay is going to be there, of course, but he's going to be busy on game day because he's got to, you know, he's got to be in the stadium as a reporter. We're going to play... He's a machine rushing up on a Spanish as we speak.

We're going to play pickup soccer at the lower woodland soccer field number two. We have a contract from the city of Seattle from noon to 2 p.m. That's just south of Green Lake. Again, at noon on Thursday, anybody's welcome. Greg got some scuffed pennies printed up, I don't know, 50 years ago or so, and we're going to have those. So please come play with us. That's always really fun. There's a media mixer that's open to everybody at Project 9 brewery the night before the game, 6 to 10 p.m. Everybody's welcome at that. And then the party on game day is at fast fashion brewery. Doors open at 8 a.m. We got some, I think we got some fun stuff planned. Vince and I, I and Jeremiah O'Shan from Soundrette Hart will be there. Will you? All the details will be in the show notes.

And then also, if you want to support the podcast and get access to the video repository lovingly assembled by Vince, this includes clip notes, which is every single moment we are about to talk about in a video. If you want to get that, and if you want to join our call-in shows after the game, and get the episodes that Sanjay and I are recording before each game with a rotating cast from the USMNT Press Corps, join the Patreon. The link is in the show notes.

Oh, you also get all the episodes ad-free, too. I mean, there's so many benefits that I forget to mention them. So that's that. Let's get to the timeline. One minute mark. The first really notable action is a dangerous moment from Paraguay,

so let's get this out of the way because it's all going to be roses from here on now. Alderete, the left centerback, plays a ball from the half, line in between Richards and Ream. Freeman, I believe, held Sinabria on side, and he beats Ream to it, gets jostled toward the end line, and then slides it across through Ream's legs into the six. Richards, to me, looked a little, like a tad slow to respond, and Diego Gomez, the Brighton player, darts in front of him to get to the pass. Richards almost kicks him in the back of the legs,

which I was a little scary for me, and then Gomez just lashes it at the goal, freeze tips it off toward the sideline. I don't think it was going in any way. but there's initial sense that Paraguay is going to try to take the game to us. Take the game to us and more importantly, like, exposed three separate players in ways that we were worried about going in. Freeman, like, is the youngest guy, you know, like, he's the baby here, experience-wise. And this is a tough look for him. This isn't just like he broke a half a beat early. Like, he set up a full, like, yard and a half, two yards off.

You know, this isn't this isn't the kind where you're even going to need the fancy graphics from the network. So you're worried about that. Ream just getting dusted for speed. You're worried about that. And then Richards, who hasn't played in a while, you're like, is he too rusty? And when that ball comes across, he got out foxed here. Like, he didn't see the man sneaking up behind him. And he takes this big wind-up swing.

And if the Paraguay player, who I'm sure is clever enough, had been just even a half a beat, had been, like, he already beat him. If he beats him by even a little bit more, it's going to be the thing where Richard swings him at the back of his leg and takes a Zimmerman-style penalty a minute into his World Cup. Yeah. So, like, completely, like, completely, like, a huge letoff, to be honest, within 65 seconds. And, like, enough that you're like, oh, no, like, is this going to be what we're looking at? at this game and then like basically none of them put a foot wrong for the next 72 minutes.

Right. Yeah, I, yeah, it did. Maybe the biggest concern for me was, is Richards just going to be behind the pace in this game, having taken a month off from soccer with injury. But like you said, it didn't turn out that way. So let's get, let's get to all the positive stuff and there's a lot. So 215 mark, Ballot gets a little half chance when Freeman plays a lofted ball to McKenney. in the channel. This is exactly the pattern you were talking about earlier. He gets behind and then heads

it across for Ballo, who, you know, it's a very contested shot, but he shoots with Alderetti draped on him and bounces it towards heel, the Paraguay keeper. And again, this is so, this is so, we find it so instantly Paraguay's gap that I don't know, I'm so curious if it's something we identified in film, or if it's, or if it's just, the boys being, you know, the boys and being like, okay, here's the space, go for it. Because we, I'm sure Paraguay are not the first opponent who've given us this kind of thing. And we've belabored how we can be overly conservative where we don't hit this ball because it's like, okay, we could. But that's, you know, come on, that's a lot.

We don't have to swing for the fences right now. Let's just take the easy pass. I can just recirculate. But no, it was just like, it's on hit it. It's on hit it. Yeah. And I think maybe that's, another one. I'm just going to go back to the Turkey

Australia game because it's interesting to me. This is another difference between us and Turkey. They didn't do any of that. They didn't have anybody running in behind. And I know it's harder when it's a committed low block, but they were, it was, they're not taking a lot of risks with the ball. Turkey wasn't. And, um, anyway,

let's talk about this game. We see at the five minute mark, McKinney going to the touchline and desk tucking in and it does, I mean, there's a couple shots of Alfaro, the, the Paraguay manager trying to, I don't know, trying to like kind of urgently talk his team through what to do with all that. And I don't know that it really accomplished anything.

So seven minute mark, let's get to the first goal. It starts with Ream winning a duel with Sinabria, chesting a ball to Richards. Richards passes it over to Freeman. And then at this point, we really hadn't put together any outside of that, that, that ballow chance. half chance, I mentioned, any sort of extended possession. And Freeman leads McKinney into a big pocket of space with a pass on the ground, and we're just off. This is McKenny's bread and butter this kind of moment.

He dribbles forward, he cuts to his left. So he eliminates, doesn't eliminate, but he evades a guy, and then zips it out to Pulisick out wide. And you can hear, like, the acapella baseline in the stadium start to rise a little bit as he gets up against those two defenders on the left. side and he squares them up and he splits them into the box just pure explosion from him and i on rewatch i honestly teared up watching this because the crowd just explodes i mean just a big urgent oh as soon as he makes that split he slides it over to mckenny mckenny takes a touch slides it

tries to slide it over to Balo, it gets cut out by Bobadilla who intervenes in desperation only to pass it into his own goal, 1-0 USA. But my goodness, what a moment to score that early in a World Cup game on home soil. Yeah, just incredible. Like a huge release of like the tension that you've always experienced watching a soccer match, but amplified exponentially in a World Cup group stage. But we got to go back to again, the laddiness, just the sheer adulthood of our players, because this is a great pass from Freeman to recognize McKinney and lead him up into the space to get us running downhill.

But Paraguay have this completely buttoned up. Like there's nothing other than just the forward momentum of it. They've got four back. Their line of four is retreating beyond McKinney, and they've got two guys squeezing him. So everything is contained here. But because McKenney is McKenny. and not some of other players in our personnel.

Like he eliminates the double team. Like he's double teamed while moving at full speed with the ball. For so many of our players, this would be like the end of it. He doesn't even have an open pass at this point. Balo's kind of bracketed. He doesn't have an angle to desk on the right or Poulsick on the left. But because he can be moving at full speed and still execute this incredible technical change of direction against Paraguay's level of players, he frees himself up.

He resets his clock. and now he's looking at Poolsick with all the time in the world to hit an easy pass out to his feet with Poolsick able to gain control. And then Poulsick's buttoned up and he's one on two and they still have five other guys in the box. You know what I mean? Like they are completely, Paraguay should be completely fine here numerically. And then Poolecic does two guys. And it's just like we've got adults now.

We've got a critical mass of adulthood. And again, it's a little sloppy. that's going to be another theme here. All of our sequences that lead to goals are actually a little sloppy, but when you have a 1V1 grown-up advantage at every spot on the field, you're going to turn those into chances. It might not work out. It might not break that way against Germany.

There's some luck involved, but you're going to get less luck against the hosses that Germany has versus what Paraguay, Australia are dealing with. Yeah. And it is worth noting, I mean, we'll get to it. well, we'll get to it with the next timeline item, but Casaris does get a yellow card pretty soon. This was before the yellow card.

And after the yellow card, Casaris was, I think, even more kind of on skates out there. And that's what, I guess that's the next item on the timeline, 850 mark. Ream plays it out to Jedi. Jedi passes to Pulisick in the channel, and he roasts Casaris again. I mean, slips it through his legs at full speed.

Casas slides through him, takes him out. It's a yellow card in under 10 minutes. for their right back, who is responsible for marking Christian Pulisic for, you know, most of the game. Bad news for Casares. Yeah, we had a Jedi underlap there. Again, Jedi in Pulcic showing a little of that fluidity where it's not just crowded on the left touchline. It's an easy, easy combination where we can take as much space as we like. And, yeah, Bargwire and Hell.

Let's see, 10.50. This is just going to be, it's just going to be fun moment after fun moment. 1050 Mark Tillman starts showing off a little flick on a little combination with Wes Tapulisic who slides Ballo in and Ballo actually has a cutback for Malik but just misses his just misses the cutback opportunity. He fizzes it at the kind of at the six and it's cut out but man we're looking good already and I mean my thought at this moment in the game was sort of a rephrase of what you've been saying about them being grownups is we just have a lot of a lot of

lot of guys who can handle the ball in tight space. It's just over and over again. We can get out of trouble and reset the clock to borrow another Velasquezism. Yeah, and what you're seeing with Tillman here, and we saw it against Germany, too, is, and you start to take it for granted. Again, because they make it so easy, we've talked about this with Giorina. He makes it look so easy that you don't realize that any other guy that we were playing in that spot, it would have been a turnover, and the whole thing breaks down, and we never are talking about this positive play. Because of that moment earlier in the sequence, you can hit it to Malik Tillman at any height, at any speed, in, like, under a little bit of pressure, and he just is dealing with it.

And that's just massive. He just loves it. He loves getting it. It's impossible to overstate, like, how important that is to continuing a movement, a team movement that can continue to advance rather than either forcing him to put his head down, just protect the ball at all costs, and pass it back to Chris Richards, or to turn it over in a scramble where suddenly we're now playing defense,

which would seem like a totally normal soccer sequence and you wouldn't think anything of it watching in real time. But when it's the opposite, over and over again, over the course of 90 minutes, it just leads to us flooding their 18-yard box. I just got to give a special salute to you, Greg, powering through this with a sore throat.

You've been sick all weekend. He's over there drinking tea with lemon in it. um so 1540 no 1345 mark and cezo gets a little chance off a throw in so there's still this like a little bit of a lingering uh i don't know doubt in my mind about our ability to handle business at the top of our box but he gets a he gets a little chance off a throw and ream heads it across the middle off the throw so that's not that's not dealing with it. And then, and Ciso dances at the edge of the box around Adams. Actually, there's a pretty decent window at that far corner and pulls it wide. There's a little deflection, but it wouldn't have been on frame anyway. Yeah. If you check this, there's going to be

echoes here of the goal we give up later because it's Adams and Ream both kind of converging on a throw-in in between them that's weakly headed out and sort of headed back towards our goal instead have cleared, and it forces Freeman to pinch way inside to help. And so in this case, they don't get clear possession where they can find, like, the guy running into the space Freeman is vacated. But obviously, in the 72nd minute, we'll get to what happens. And that's a little bit different than that. Yeah, and I want to reference another game, which is the Cote d'Ivois versus Ecuador.

If you watch that game, I'm sure many of you did, the centerbacks for, Ivory Coast are absolute business handlers. Like nothing. I mean, they just thump everything out of there. They just never get beat. Ecuador got a few, hit the crossbar a few times from distance, but they didn't get any traction with those two centerbacks. And that remains a weakness for this U.S. team, despite all the joy, despite the

building enthusiasm, hopefully across the country as we head into the game on Friday. we don't have that. We don't have that at centerback. And this was one example. 1540, a huge chance for us. Jedi steps past a couple guys to the inside. I mean, he was just waltzing into the channel repeatedly. He passes to Wes, who does some kind of mysterious, I don't know what it was. Croif touch. Maybe it went off a defender's foot through two defenders to Spring Ballow. And it's like he and are pretty much both in on goal with a defender between them. Ballo squares it for Desk, which I think is probably the high percentage move. Dest is all alone with the keeper, and he just takes a heavy touch, and that pretty much ends the whole thing. But man, this is a huge chance to score, created mostly by Wes.

Yeah, when that ball is falling to Sir Gino Dest, he is the last person that I would have expected to miscontrol a soccer ball in that situation with that much. space. So pretty divosting for that to happen to him in that moment. I mean, he obviously... Just for anybody who's not a familiar. Devosting is devastating in Danielle Raina. I mean, Dest had a goal in the tune-up matches, so it's like, oh, man, here he is. He's our attacker.

So, but what do you do? You shrug and you say, we are knocking. Yep. We knock again. Knock, knock, knock in the 17th minute. Jedi clips a ball to the back post. I mean, we're just kind of shelling their box. Jedi clips a ball to the back post. Richards attacks it.

Looks to me like he's going to just ram this ball in at the near post. But Alderete bravely sticks his head kind of in the way, and they clash heads. It's a little scary, but another good chance for us. 2020 mark we hit the channel again this time tillman on the left side this is when he does this jump that jump flick with the bottom of his boot backward for Wes I mean what even is that what do you even call that there's not even a word for it but it was dribbles like a basketball yeah yeah just kind of stomps on the ball gently and uh it goes it goes it goes right into west's path which is what makes it so lovely west does get crowded out but If they're just going to let us keep doing that, we are going to, you know, we're going to keep having joy.

And then we have the same scene. It's that scene. It's the scene between the fullback and centerback that Malik has run into. And this is one of the few examples of us not grown-uping very well because Wes has that ball. And he should be more of a grown-up about it. But we'll forgive it every once in a while, you know, because on the balance, we were definitely the grown-ups in this match. for sure. And at the hydration break, you know, where people are talking about, well,

hydration breaks can sometimes break people's momentum and this might be good for Paraguay. Well, not so much. 2730 mark, we have a goal chalked off because Pulisic was offside in the buildup. West passes it to him. He cuts in and finds Tyler just inside the arc. He grown-ups a little bit at the top of the box, dances and slips it in for Ballo. which is not always what he does, but he did it this time. And Ballow slots it in at the far post off a deflection on the keeper, I think.

But Pulisic was off, so was Ballo. It turns out, we'll be back, though. We'll be back. 31st minute. Well, do you have anything to say about that one? Well, just again, like the sloppy nature of it, if you want to call it, when I say slop, I'm talking like pool hall rules where you got to, you can't have your bounce off to anyone else's ball.

You know, when you're doing a Rondo, counting passes, if the other, if the defender gets even a nick of the ball, you got to start your countover. Like, all of these passes are hitting Paraguay players. It just, yeah. It's just like right now in this game, we don't have to be perfect. We are, we are just out, out muscling them. We are, it reminds me watching the U.S. women play,

where they don't have to be perfect, and they'll get their chance to score anyway because they are just better player for player than their opponent. And that's what we're looking at in this game. Yeah, we have to wait until the very end of the game to have a glass of champagne, you know. So we get our second goal, 31st minute. Jedi plays a curling on the ground pass down the left wing for Pulisick, a little in-out run from CP.

The ball has waited perfectly for him to arrive at at full speed, so he's in behind, passes it through Casares' legs. and Ballo's side foot's at home to the right of the sliding defender, 2.0 USA. It's again, like you said, it does touch a defender on its way through the pass does, but it still gets to its intended target, and we're up to zero. I mean, what's your reaction here, Bells? Like?

Wait, what? What's going on here? Really? I mean, it's just, it's, it's, It's so rewarding because these high stakes games, again, the tension can be so high. And just because you've gotten your chances doesn't mean you're going to keep getting them. And so when you haven't taken them, when you haven't taken them, you're like, oh, no, like, as much as you want to believe, like, we just got to keep going and it'll happen. We all have been around soccer long enough to know there are games where it just doesn't happen.

So getting that ball. Yeah, the goal gets chalked off earlier. And you're like, oh, man, like, we got to keep getting more. We know, you know, we saw the whales. So getting the second goal was just like, there it is. Like we are, we are firmly in control. Yeah. Yeah, now that you mention it, I did mention to my, the people I was watching the game with,

which was my family, we have got to get another goal. We can't just keep, we can't just keep getting chances. Because things can turn, things can turn, especially with these hydration break. I'm just kidding. So, but this was an interesting one because we reverse the pattern on them, right? Before their fullback had been like going out to our guy on the chalk. And in this one, we'd had a little combination in the buildup where Pulisik could streak to the inside. He'd cut to the inside.

And the fullback was still kind of pinched in there. And you see the, as we kind of circulated back to Jedi deep. He's not, he's not advanced at this point. Pulisic is like coming back to it still on the inside. and the fullbacks on the inside too. And you see Pulsick take a quick check over his shoulder while Jedi's on the ball with no pressure. That's the other big theme. Paraguay not putting any pressure on our quarterbacks, on our deep line of quarterbacks.

Yeah. Poolstick does this like micro check over his shoulder. And then you just see him like lift his hand that's still at his waist, like lift like one, just sort of rotate his wrist to point towards the sideline. And then he breaks and Jedi hits him. And it's just like, it's just beautiful. It's just like these guys are just,

they're just players. We haven't, we haven't been playing. This group, this 11 has barely played together at all in this cycle. But just this little communication from those two guys and off the go. I didn't notice that. I didn't see that.

Yeah, that's cool. We continue to knock the ball around and attack those channels. Paraguay is all out of sorts. Malik is combining with what I can only imagine. imagine is terrifying casualness to them. So I was like, how's Paraguay going to respond here? How are we going to change things going up to zero?

And the answer is Paraguay don't touch the ball for like seven minutes, maybe like 10 minutes. It is insane how we just continue to build around their box for the next, I mean, eight minutes uninterrupted. And in that stretch, there's a time where we get a couple of advantage calls where Casares might have even picked up another yellow if Malik had wanted. wanted him to. Sergenio Dest plays through a foul and we just keep cooking and just like don't even want the foul. We just keep going. Every once in a while, Paraguay does like step into a pass and just clear it right back to our centerbacks and we go again. But in the next like 10 minutes, I don't think Paraguay connect three total passes, not like three passes in a row, like three total passes in 10 minutes. Wow. And the crowd is loving it. It is amazing. Yeah, it is amazing

how comprehensive this was. That one where Serge got fouled and he just kind of still played it into maybe Wes, maybe Malik. The crowd loved that because he just danced around like two guys and you know, if we're going to go out and play like this,

people are going to love it. People are going to love when we're dancing around people and running all over, not running all over aimlessly, but really putting in the work. In the 37th minute, get another West run to the cutback zone. Desk feeds him.

He cuts it back. It's cut out, but right to Malik at the top of the box, he teased one up with his left foot, and he shoots, deflect it off, basically off his foot out for a corner. On the ensuing corner, we find Richards, and he nods it just wide of the far post, kind of leaning away from the goal,

an excellent header, and very close to a third goal, honestly. It's all goal-mouth action for us. Like, even Malik shot this time into traffic, I think, because, like, a minute earlier, he'd had another half look that he chose to do a pump fake and try to feed someone else in the box. Yeah. And the chance evaporated. So I feel like he was like, nope, this time I'm just going to unleash it. But it's just us camped out on the edge of their box.

In connecting passes, you know, like just soccering through them. There were some surrender crosses throughout the match. But for the most part, man, these guys want to, like, play. They want to do these. cute stuff. Yeah. I mean, maybe we can call this a surrender cross.

In the 41st minute, Desd works Alonzo on the right side, so he did not escape our fury, even though most of it was directed at Caseras. Desd fizzes one right into the goalkeeper's arms when maybe he could have, you know, maybe he could have picked his head up

and looked around a little bit. I think he was trying to hit it across. I think it was Malik sneaking into the back post, and there was a corridor. door there. Just miss it. Yeah, if he puts it two, if he hits it with that same pace,

but it's two yards away from the keeper, it's, it's Malik streaking into it. Okay. Pulisic Meg's... I'm giving dust the benefit of the doubt. That's what he's going for. I won't come down too hard on him.

42nd minute Pulisick Meg's Caseras again, whistled for a foul as they fight for it near the end line. That is, Pulisic is, but he's really cooking. Um, 43rd minute, another great chance for us. Desk gives it away a little cheaply at midfield. The counter's on, but Freeman slides to poke it away from Enceo, and we're going the other way.

I mean, we haven't really talked about it yet, but our, whenever Paraguay did get the ball, wherever it was on the field, we were just a swarm of bees around them. I mean, it was just absolute commitment in the counterpress and made a big difference. but in this case, Desk gets it on the right side from Pulisic. He kind of hesitates. After a little slop. After a little bit of slop.

Yeah, that's right. How do you bring that up? Yeah. Well, you say it. You explain what happened. So we win the ball after Desk giveaway, and then we feed it to Pulisick with a good outlet. And Pulisick tries to do like a move,

but it totally gets tackled from him by Paraguay, but not quite tackled. Like, it's just that over and over again. And that isn't all luck is kind of what I'm saying. There's definitely chance to those sort of disruptions. But with our 11 guys, we are coming out way more with the ball. And it wouldn't work like that if it was a different group of our 11 guys, if it was a different 11 for us, kind of as we alluded to when the reserves came in

against Germany. And it wouldn't work like this if it was our same starting 11 against Germany. like more of these times after a disruption like that, we won't come out with it. There'll be quicker reading, quicker pouncing. So I'm just pointing it out to show that I think it's a huge step up. I'm saying this as a compliment to our guys, not like we were sloppy and didn't deserve it.

I'm saying this shows how good and talented our current group is. It's not just like heart and fight. Like this is a talent. And our guys have a real talent edge. over a Paraguay-level team. And it's the nature of the game that things will not always go exactly how you want them to go. You know, the like perfectly drawn up sequence of passing back to front where the other team doesn't touch it. There are examples of that, but it's kind of like a, it's like a, I don't know, a holy grail that you're seeking, but you almost never get it.

and so you have to be able to win the cage match. You know, you have to come away with the ball. And it is, yeah, it is a skill. You see it in all these games. Like there are some,

some guys do, and they keep going, and they score goals or they create chances, and some don't. And I think, and I think in international soccer, that skill is, is even more heavily weighted.

I just think because of the lack of time together, the patterns aren't as automated. You have to, to hold on to the ball a beat longer and you have to be able to hold on to it. You have to be able to do that. You have to be able to control that space around you with less of an automated response. I still think that's the case. Yeah. Another guy who was who is who I noticed in this workup doing a lot of that is Jan Diomande from Ivory Coast. Like that winger for them who plays at RV Leipzig, Ecuador could not take the ball from him. Even when they

they got a foot on it. He would still come away with it. Sorry to interrupt. We got to keep going on this because Death does a hilarious desk. It's subtle. Oh, yeah, I was about to move on. So he gets it on the right side from Pulisic after that little bit of slop. Embarrasses Al Maron.

I mean, he stops, looks back. Amarone thinks, well, this is my chance. Stabs. And then Desk just uses outside of his foot to move it back forward again. And Al Maron is left on the ground. and the crowd loved that and he slides it to Wes in the cutback zone

West just absolutely trucking down the channel over and over this is one of the most like the most crystal clear examples of it he cuts it back Kubas sticks a leg out and blocks it but Malik arrives on it it's just him and the goalie and he blasts it off heel from point blank but this was a huge chance and I don't know

this happens 10 more times Malik probably scored there's at least four of them. It's well done by the keeper to meet Malik at the ball so that Malik has to find a path. Maybe you could bounce it under him if the keeper kind of does the low launch, where you launch yourself low at sort of ball height as the ball's kind of bouncing. Because again, Wes's cutback doesn't go right to Malik. It gets disrupted by a Paraguay defender. So it's bouncing to Malik.

But it's just you get there. he meets it well and I don't know man it's it's it's tough with the keeper meeting him at the point it's basically a Wondolowski think about it yeah yeah I guess if it was the only chance we had all game then people would be talking about it more um 44 minute mark do you want to say anything about desk embarrassing miggy there it's again it's just like a new and creative way that desks can embarrass people like it's it's almost just like a slapstick in the camera angle I don't love all Fox's

cuts to close-ups but this one worked out very well so it cuts to a close-up and desk while he's waiting for the ball to come to him just like is looking behind him the whole time like waiting for help like oh I'm waiting for help

turns his whole body backwards as he's sort of backpedaling now with the ball definitely going backwards with it and then as Miggie commits he just he just flips his hips and off he goes and it's just I mean, it's just, he's trolling him.

He's a, he's a troll. And Almeron, I mean, this is a very, very good soccer player, Miguel Almerone. I mean, dominated MLS five years ago. Played, was worth it for Newcastle to pay $25 million for whatever it was. And he leaves his mark in this match too. Miggie has his play, so he gets his moment. Tillman gets ganged up on just outside their box at the 14th. minute mark and then Paraguay is threatening to counter very slightly and I thought you would

appreciate this. I know Stu Holden did on the Fox broadcast. Richard's fouls Sinabria just inside their half as their counter is just sort of blooming into something and he puts an end to it. It doesn't even get a yellow card for it. So yeah. So that's good from Richards. Not getting the yellow is just a little bit like luck of what the ref is feeling in that moment. Like you could totally see him giving the yellow, but I do think Richards did enough to not make it, demand a yellow card. So in that sense,

there's a good balance. It's harder to whistle something for a tactical foul when the player has their back to the goal they're attacking, right? Yep. Yeah, I think so. So you met him early enough and not forcefully enough where it was like, I'm going into foul him. Like it was enough of the language of the body language.

It didn't demand a yellow card. All right. Let's get, I mean, there were other chances that we're sort of glossing over, but let's get right to the third goal. 49th minute. So the fourth minute of stoppage time, pretty much the last action of the game. It's a simple pass from Adams to Malik right at the halfway line. And Ballo makes a run off of Alderete's shoulder.

Malik skims it through to him. This is a really nice pass. sort of a mirrored version of what Jedi passed to Pulisic on the second goal. And Ballo lets it run under him, and then it's a duel. Like Al Goretti comes in from the left. It's a sliding challenge. It gets a lot of ball, but Ballo just comes out with it. And Alte is behind him, and it's just him and Gustavo Gomez, who was very angry in this game at several moments.

but Ballo takes a touch to his left to evade Gomez and then whips it into the top left corner. It is, if you have, you know, if you've ever seen one of those things you put up in the top corner of a goal to try to aim at it, it would have gone in that. You know, it was very much, it was like right in that very top corner. What a finish. Ballot dominating the channel as he does when he runs onto a ball. And I'm like, man, I'm going to just watch this first half on loop for the rest of my life. What an amazing experience.

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. And it's, again, just us, this is ruthless. This is just punishing a team that decided that we are at half time. It's half time. You know, they cleared out an attack that Surge had. They kind of, it kind of, they didn't clear it all the way, of course, because we're just dominating all these scrambles. So of course, Malik ends up at the ball and he doesn't just turn over a bouncing ball. It's chest high. He like hits a. swiveling volley all the way back to Tim Riem, 30 yards. You know, like, he can just do that. And so it's like, okay, that's probably half time.

Balls out, balls out there. We're already four minutes past 45. Paraguay gets into their shape, but their shape is just so low energy that we just knock it to Adams, knock it to Malik at the center circle. He is under no pressure. No pressure. Everyone else, everyone else on the field. Like there are 20 players on the field just sort of standing straight up and down.

and Bolo makes his run because Bolo always makes a run. And when Bolo first joined his team and joined the program, he was making these runs. And we were all throwing our hands up because he was on it like no one would play him through. It was like that was the theme. Bolo was breaking beyond the defensive line and no one's hitting the ball into him. And now we've got 20 people standing straight up and down. Bolo makes his run and he's like, I will hit this. And so we play it to just our one guy moving and our one guy,

guy moving makes some magic happen. Yeah, an individually brilliant goal for sure. Even the, I mean, since we're scuffed, we will do it, even though we're already an hour in its first time. His, the individual brilliance of how he receives it, right? Like, it's, he's, he's riding a challenge on his back. The guy is draped all over him, and he still can get his feet right to, like, run over the ball first without touching it. And then seal the guy off to hold off that challenge as he then rounds it and keeps the leverage

to cut into the inside where if the defender is going to make any other kind of play he's going to drag him down for a penalty and probably a red. So just brilliant stuff from Bolo and then he still has a ton to do to beat the next man who arrives

and then he still has a ton to do to beat the goalkeeper. Maybe he did more than he needed to beat the goalkeeper, but it sure looks amazing. Yeah. The thing is, Al the Redday's challenge was actually what should he feel bad about?

Like he came in and like put a lot of foot on the ball. And most people, when somebody's sliding in and your foot is on one side of the ball and they're sliding in and hitting the other side of the ball really hard, you're going to trip over. You're going to fall, even if it's a clean tackle. Not below. Like he just, like the strength to keep his feet, to keep his wherewithal. and then set up that, you know, that showdown with Gomez.

Amazing. That's the half. Let me say this. If you want to skip the ads, join the Patreon. Link is in the show notes. We'll be back. All right. Second half starts.

Pulisic comes off at the half after what he and Potch called a kick in the calf. Burhalter comes on for him. We've had many, you know, quasi updates since this, since the game. I think Tyler Adams basically told everybody to relax today. It was like a, he was dealing with a knock a couple weeks ago. He got kicked in exactly the same spot. He's going to be fine. It does seem like he's going to be fine.

It is, with that being said, it isn't it kind of weird that he took him off, that we took him off at the half, especially with like a week's rest between games? So I was flying so high that I thought it was like, we know we're winning. And this is precautionary in the sense that he was, expect, like we were expecting Paraguay to get, get a little goonish. I thought we were going to, we were worried about a little like hockey style, uh, targeting on pool sick. So we'll just take them off.

We can let Seb Burhalter eat minutes because that's how good we are now. We're a team that can do this at half time of our first World Cup group stage game. It's our new reality, Bells. You just got to, you got to understand that we are just that team now. Okay. Yeah. I mean, in the moment, I didn't really bother me much at all. But as I sort of wrestled with it afterwards, I thought,

I mean, it's kind of strange that he came off. But anyway, he looks like he'll be ready for Australia on Friday. And Burrhalter came on. Not quite the grown-up that the starting lineup is, I wouldn't say. 49th minute is the first timeline item I have in the second half. Freeman gives it away. So, you know, this is, this is like probably the one major blemish on Freeman's game. This, like, pass to Paraguay inside our half.

And then Burrhalter gets just shrugged off by Diego Gomez. He can't do anything really to trouble him. And Ream has to rush over. He does well to recover, I think, and kind of jostle the shot. I think he gets a foot to it, sends it hurt. over the bar, but we have an error from Alex and a bit of a lack of resistance offered by Sebastian. And I mean, I'm always going to worry. So there was a little part of me that was like, hey, it's a little bit of a different game without Christian Pulisic out there.

What's going to happen? Yeah. And I mean, more importantly, without Malik Tillman in that eight role. Yeah. Because he moved out to the left wing. Yeah. So it's very much like, okay, so I'm like, you get a chance here. it's again in my mind, I feel like I rate Sebastian Burralter lower than what a lot of other people in the media do and potentially lower than what Pocitino does.

But I could rationalize in my head of being like, look at this great chance for Pocciino up 3-0 to get Burr-alter of some low-pressure experience in minutes. But I'm probably wrong about that because I don't think that that's really what you would do in World Cup game if you didn't really truly rate Sebastian Burralter. So it was nervous because it's definitely not his mess. It is absolutely Freeman's mess. But his job is to then be very good at cleaning these up. And this wasn't a particularly good response to the mess. No. And then on the ensuing corner, there's a little flurry of pressure leading to Almeron going at Ream,

which is not a matchup we love. Almaron goes past him The ball is it takes a touch That is going out of bounds and he goes down It looks initially like Ream got him And he was given a yellow for this sort of swing and miss On the ball because the understanding from I think both the TV The initial TV angles and the ref is that he got

Almorone in the In the shin They Paraguay takes the free kick And then there's a whistle And then there's a whistle And then And VAR calls it mistaken identity.

And the ref goes to look at it and discovers that Amarone wasn't touched at all. It was total simulation. Reams yellow gets rescinded. Ammaron given a yellow for simulation. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, justice with technology. And I don't know what else there is to say it is hilarious. So they call it mistaken identity. As if, yeah, I don't know.

I don't even know what that is about. but it allowed them to give the yellow card to someone else. So I guess they were looking for something in the bylaws that would allow them to make the right call there. Yeah, and none of us have any idea if this is actually correct application of the laws, right? Is that where we are three days later? I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know. And I don't really care because it was the right decision, obviously. And we didn't end a, it also like the fact that they blew the play dead mid-play also didn't cost Paraguay anything. So that feels good. I want to make sure our win has all the integrity that it deserves. So we didn't get bailed out by the referee here if this was misapplication. In fact, on our clearance of the header, I feel like we were running.

We had guys running out to try to chase that thing down. We'd be countering the other way. So if anything, this hurt us. Yeah. Well, it hurt Tim Reim. Tim Reams' feelings, I think, to be unjustly yellow-carded like that. But like Vince said in the call-in show, this is probably good for this to happen at the World Cup in a U.S. game for casual soccer fans to see flopping punished. Root it out.

Yeah, root that out. Get it out of the game. Although if they've been watching the NBA finals, they've seen plenty of it already. not necessarily getting rooted out, just flopping. 54th minute. Heel under pressure from Ballow passes it right to Tillman, you know, a few yards on top of the D. He tries to slip in Dest, but his pass is under hit.

This is a big opportunity to miss, and you could see it on Tillman's face. He knew it too. He had the right idea. Dust was arriving. He was onside. It was going to get his chance for redemption. That's scoring after the heavy touch earlier.

and Tillman just didn't just didn't hit it with the right weight at all, not even close. Yeah, and again, it just shows that this was absolutely just a volume match for us as far as chances go. Like, we weren't perfect, and that's the beauty of it. Like, I'd be more, I wouldn't be wet blanketing this no matter what, but the blanket would be a little bit damper if it was like, man, we had two looks and we scored four goals. like we were we were threatening over and over and over we were threatening in different ways over and over and over so again optimistic that even as we face a new boss Friday that we'll have some tricks up our sleeve that can

undo Australia's block yeah I hope so 57th minute I mean the game's starting to get a little chippy we're still all over them with our counterpress but 57th minute we're stunting on them Adams wins it at midfield to Tillman, who slides it out for Jedi. He does a little hesitation dribble, not all that different from the one that Desk did earlier, except this time on the left side,

and leaves Casares swinging at air, clips it across the other side of the goal. Wes collects it. I was kind of hoping Wes would just take this on the volley from a ridiculous angle and try to smash it in, but he collects it, cuts it back for Tillman, who shoots and his shot. shot is blocked off his foot, but this is all quite fun, and you can tell they're loving it in the stands. And when I say they, I mean the people in the stands, not the celebrities who

were not watching the game. A little under, just again, little subtle stuff, but the ball to Jedi from Tillman, again, is not a ball that we should take for granted. It's Paraguay habit, and they hit a little bit of a loose pass in the midfield. Adam steps to it really well. And, wins it to Tillman, who's got his back to the corner. Like, he's facing the center circle. And Jedi's actually standing right next to him. So the run from Jedi is immediate.

Like, he recognizes this transition moment and he takes off. Tillman never even looks. And without even facing him, hits this, like, again, that, that, like, ballerina-style footwork where your feet are completely crossing each other to hit the disguise, no look, past, away from where your hips are facing. to put Jedi in. So that instant recognition and execution in the moment you might just

it might just kind of happen and you don't notice it. But that's the difference between getting an open field to attack and recirculating and then going against a set block. I also noticed that his pass was very close to Casares

as it traveled past him, which allows Jedi to not have to go too wide when he gets to it. It also requires a lot of precision, you know, to play a pass that is just out of reach for the defender, but close enough to him that it creates a favorable angle for your teammate. Tillman's not perfect. Like, you know, he had, he missed hit some passes like the one we talked about a minute ago,

but, man, is he good? 59th minute, Tyler gets a yellow for kicking Mauricio, a sub. came on, the one who ultimately scores the goal for Paraguay. He kicks him as he passes it backward in his own half to a centerback. And so in the words of Andres Cantor, Innecessario, not necessary for Tyler to do that. So now he's on a yellow for the rest of the group stage. But as Vince said, he just has to taste blood. It is.

He loves to project scrappiness, I feel like. Like he feels like he's, he must at all times project toughness and scrappiness. Because he kind of like, it doesn't even kick him. He just like steps on the back of his heel. It's the top of his boot, like the toes of his foot onto the back of the guy's heel just to send a message or whatever. But yeah, very, very much an unnecessary yellow. I don't think he should really change how he plays, especially if he's starting against

Australia. He's got to just play his game. And if he takes another yellow, we'll deal with it. that against turkey. Right. Okay. In real time, I got to say, I thought there was a big dip in our play after the half, but on rewatch, the dip was kind of smaller than I, smaller in reality than I had thought it was

watching in real time, because we were all over them. I mean, straight through the hour mark and beyond. 63rd minute West floats it to the cutback zone for Dest. He works his guy and then zips his guy. and then zips it across the six. This is a really nice sequence from both of them. And if Jedi is, like, crashing the goal ferociously, maybe he gets a tap in here.

He's not, and the ball just trickles through. I guess was it Malik in the goal mouth in this sequence? Yeah, and I think Bala had been taken down earlier in the play. Oh, yeah. And so, I mean, you can, again, you could be like, Malik's got to be aware that we are without our strikers. So he's got to be the one to break harder to the gold mouth. But I'm just not going to do that because the boys are flying.

Wes is cooking again in the 64th minute. So 60 seconds later, he eliminates two guys on the dribble up the right. One, on the second one, he touches it around him to the outside and runs to the inside of him. And like just kind of this just clowning people. and he slips Ballo into the penalty area and Ballo I think makes the right choice to cut it back for Burrhalter who is arriving

at the top of the box but it's cut out by a Paraguayan defender I don't know, 67th minute good strong coverage and sliding challenge from Richards to shut down a good pass up the left side and then we have the hydration break in the second half anything thinking about anything right now Greg? Just again thinking about how our both always look like superheroes against Paraguay. And again, this isn't Guatemala in the Gold Cup group stage.

This is Paraguay playing for their lives at the World Cup. Yeah. It'd be interesting to see how they do against Turkey. I mean, honestly, can't wait. You cannot wait to see how that game goes. 71st minute, Paraguay gets a little chance off a throw. Amarone volleys it from the edge of the box, but Jedi blocks it with his body.

and then in the so there's a little bit of a chance there for them 72 minute pappy comes on for ballo wea comes on for desk again we get to bring timwaya in off the bench i think a point that you've made in the past but we do have to talk about paraguize goal 73rd minute it's a free kick from deep hill the goalkeeper takes it and he just lofts it at the middle of the field it Adams meets it and gets it gets his head on it, but it sends it backwards. So Richards and, so it's bouncing in front of our box. Richards and Reem can't beat Al Marone to the bouncing ball.

He does admirably, I think you kind of referenced this earlier, to get his head on it, to kind of, to kind of nudge it between them, and then he volleys it out of the air over to Enzizo at the top of the box. So a really nice play from Amarone. And then Enzizzo just takes a touch and slides it over to Mauricio. Easy as you like. That's the halftime sub for Bobadilla. And he slots at home.

Easy finish. The problem from my point of view is just not handling business in the middle. It seems like Ream and Richards, neither of them wanted to foul. And they didn't quite, nobody just kind of solved the problem. Yeah, it was a ball that stayed right in between people the whole time. Even starting with Adams, it's, I mean, Adams isn't a tall. most dominating aerial guy. So I'm not,

that's just, again, a limitation of his. But him for the first ball, it's kind of a weak header backwards. And then, yeah, the second ball we don't quite get enough on. And then as it bounces another time, Ream doesn't quite run through it. And that allows McGee to beat him to the ball with his foot.

I'm not sure. I'm curious how the set piece guys for the U.S. and Pachino will assess way a starting position. If we know they're going to just launch it into this scrum, if Wea is a little bit deeper, he'd be able to help sooner, but he starts higher up. So he's never really in the play to help. So as Freeman pinches in to help, that space is just vacant. I also, I don't want to ding Adam's too hard because, again, it's not a lot.

But after he heads it backwards, he does ball watch for just like a half beat. And these are those the most important half beats, right? If you if you ball watch while Miggie and Richards are battling for the ball, that's like two and a half steps. If you can get two and a half steps in back towards that scrum area, then you're there to meet in CISO when the ball falls to him. Instead, you're three yards off in CISO, which gives him the time to recognize the situation, execute a pass. And that's the difference, right? So it's those margins that we're talking about when things all break perfectly for the other team. you have to be, you have to be spot on to interrupt that chain.

Yeah. And this is, this is the week, this is one of the weaknesses of our team. It's like this, this kind of stuff is probably, it's not, probably not going to be the last time this happens in the World Cup for us. So, just got to be prepared for it, I suppose. Maricio, by the way, plays his club soccer at Palmeras with Gomez. We get a gift from Gomez, 74th minute. He passes it, I'm sorry, this is from Heel.

He passes it straight to Tillman in Zone 14. He and Pepey suddenly have a 2V1. Tillman passes it to Pepe. Pepe passes it back to Tillman, and then he shoots it. He does touch it to give himself a window to shoot, but he shoots it right at the keeper. I kind of surprised Pepe didn't have a go himself. that seems like a very peppy thing to do to you know when you get a ball you get a pass inside

the box with nobody really between you and the goalkeeper um i do think at minimum he should attract the defender a little bit more before he slides it over to tillman but i don't know we're nitpicking here exactly uh it's good pressure from the u.s from both peppy and sebastian berlter um but this this is the pressure we've been applying all game where paraguai just never had an easy time of it. They never really had untroubled long strings spells of possession. It was really, it was really, again, impressive from the U.S. But yeah, Tillman, Tillman takes a, I mean, he first times it to put Peppy in on the turnover and maybe, like, again, to nitpick under Cook sat a little bit. He could have driven Pepe and the defender farther into the box, at which point, if he does

get a return ball from Pepe, he's going to be at the six instead of 15 yards out, kind of a thing. but whatever. We got the look. Tillman ends up, we took the two of you one, created a very good look because we have very good players, and he just rifled it directly at the goalkeeper's feet. Yeah. Tillman dust himself right off and dusts Caseras at midfield.

I think you mentioned this on the call-in show, or maybe Vince did, strides into the final third, tries to slip peppy into the box, but the pass is heavy this time. 77th minute, a sweeping move from left to right from us. Tillman to McKinney, McKinney to Tillman. So Tillman just backboards off McKinney, and then he plays way out wide, way out wide, and the keeper touches it wide.

It was kind of hard for me to decide both in real time and on the rewatch. Was this shot on frame? No idea if it was on frame. I feel like we're not going to have that kind of technology, but because the keeper gets, a hand to it really far off of the line. Like he's really, you know, well off of his goal line. That's a long time for that ball to be off of its path and it doesn't miss by much still.

So I'm comfortable saying that was going over the keeper, dropping into the top bins if he doesn't make the save, which makes it the best save so far of the World Cup. And zero credit given for it, unfortunately. But it is. They called it. They said they didn't even acknowledge that the keeper touched it. Yeah. But yeah, it is a sweeping move.

It is slick soccer from us. I think it's like another two and a half minute passing sequence where we're totally untroubled. Through a lot of these sequences, we haven't even really like, we don't beat them until the very end of the sequence. Like it's sort of we're hitting sort of uncontested passes. We aren't having to do the unexpected thing until we've worked it all the way up the field and then do like one thing that's like, oh, that was clever. And then we're in. So it's it's just we look so comfortable in this game and and again part of that is Paraguay not fixing their issues But Paraguay's baseline is still high enough that it's it's a solid showing from us

Yeah yeah Tillman Working really hard all the way to the end carrying the ball deep and not all the way to the end all the way until he comes off Let's see Raina comes on for Tillman 82nd minute, just quite a performance. And it's getting scrappy out there. Another strong challenge from Richards,

who has, who has shut down a couple, earlier shut down, a attack with a good, well-time sliding challenge. I notice in the 85th minute that Ream wins a foot race to the ball, and he gets a big head start, but we got to mark it down. And just as I'm admiring how comfortable we all are on the ball, in the 88th minute, Freeman dribbles into trouble in the center circle. Sebastian in this case does come and solve the problem. He's Johnny on the spot to win it back.

And then Raina suffers, Raina collects the ball and suffers the first of two fouls that made him very unhappy. He's rolling around. There's a foul called. And then 88th minute, 88 minute mark, we get a nice pass into the left channel from Jedi to Wes. West collects it efficiently again and cuts it back for pest. who skies it with his left foot. But I mean, this is a, this is textbook chance, big chance.

I don't know what the XG was on it, but eight yards, ten yards out with his left foot, just puts it over the bar. Yeah, great ball from Tim Ream. Again, great. I mean, how about McKinney's touch as he's running? Because again, these are like, these are all balls out of the air that we're trying to receive while running vertically up the scene. Yeah.

And so his control and then his pivot to. go from facing the sideline to facing directly at the near post. Just class. And, you know, the miss is the miss. It's a great look. He's in a good spot. He holds his run. It's one of those striker moves where he's breaking to the goal

but then stops to create separation window to get the pass. Just gets under it a little too much. And I'm certainly not holding that against him. I don't know where the peppy finishing. like mythology goes from here wells do you still uh are we still holding on to it or is he just a good striker who gets into good spots uh i i i don't i don't know i think i think he's uh i think he is he does have something mystical about him where he's scored he has scored some really big goals for us but um i'm not a big i'm not a big proponent of the pep

is a better finisher than Balow thing. Have I ever said that? It's hard for me to remember all the things I've said, which is a bad sign, but I don't think I've said that. It's not a me. It's not a gimmie. I'm mostly being sarcastic.

It's not a gimmie. It's just another good team look that we've built, and he had a key part in building it by getting into the right spot. And it's great to have him off the bench. And man, I wanted to get one. I really wanted to get one in this tournament. So bad.

I think, let's see, right in the 90th minute, we get, this was an exciting moment, actually. Burrhalter wins it in our half, floats one behind for Pepey, heel arrives and clears it. It goes right back to Burrhalter with heel out of the goal. And he tries to do a Michael Bradley at the Azteca impersonation. And it just kind of comically scuffs it. It's a pop fly that bounces right around the penalty marker in the off frame. So at the depth of the penalty marker, off frame. And he'll collects it in a pretty relaxed manner.

Also in the 90th minute, Jedi sends Peppy to the corner. It's clear to Wes who settles it to Gio, and he gets raked on his calf a bit and was not happy at all. Like he's mad at this point. We keep cutting him open. over and over again. Maybe you were being a little rote in the final 18 in the second half, a little obvious, like with the final two actions.

But, I don't know. We're up 3-1 and we're just, yeah, I mean, I kind of agree. I do think we could get a little bit cleaner with our patterns in that last, in the box. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, We are there, and we're two goals to the good in our group stage game, which virtually puts us into the knockouts. I know.

Yeah, we're basically in with a plus three goal differential already. We kept the ball. So this is the second moment in the game that brought tears to my eyes on rewatch. And look, I don't cry that often. So I just want to be clear about that. We kept the ball for the entirety of stoppage time pretty much. Like we barely gave up the ball. And the crowd was loving it.

We were allaying them. So the final sequence is 26 passes. With Wes doing a lot of the heavy lifting, I mean, like getting us out a little tricky little situations here and there. And the crowd is on their feet because they know we've won the game. And they're roaring already. as this 26-pass sequence comes to, it starts to come to an end.

And the ref, you know, ref puts up his hand like this is it. And then Freeman squares it to geo a few yards outside of the box. And he takes two touches into the box at the retreating defenders. It just turns his body slightly toward that left corner flag.

And it's a party, baby. Just casual excellence with the outside of the right boot. Nobody saw it coming. It's up. So it's the suddenness. It's the surprise of the, of the, of the choice that that puts this in it's not the power of the shot and um he'll doesn't see it

because he's a little bit unsighted and he was surprised by it and you know geo runs over and celebrates with his hand over his ears like he hasn't heard anything anybody said his whole life he is who he is he says what he says um 4-1 USA he does what he does yeah and i you know i mean just go ahead and celebrate wherever you are right now. Pump that fist. We deserve this. The whole team races over to celebrate with Gio, including Potch. What a scene.

Yeah, I feel like you and Vince in particular and Sanjay have done a tremendous job. And all of us. We can all for preparing people who listen to this podcast in particular to celebrate this moment. Because we've told them it was coming that this geo Raina can do this kind of thing, despite what can only be described as a unspectacular club career, underwhelming club career. Underwhelming, yeah. We have remained unfazed by that because when he puts on the U.S. jersey, he is good,

and he was wearing a U.S. jersey on Friday night, and he was pretty, pretty good. So, big moment, big moment for all of us. Also, as a Tim Wea fan, I need to give immense credit to Tim Wea because he has been a bit petty. He was petty against Germany. He was petty in this match because at the 97-minute mark when that ball gets worked out to him on the sideline in our half still, I think it went through his brain that like, okay, the game's over if I stop right here. If I just stand on the ball, the ref is blowing the whistle. and he didn't just not stand on it.

He, like, added a little pep. He was like, I got to bring it forward. He carried it fast. Yeah. He accelerated to be like, we got to get it up here. If I can get into the attacking third, we get to do a whole attack. Tobin Heath had a great comment about that. Like, she always loved when she played in games that went to extra time just because

she got to play more soccer. She's like, oh, man, I'm so happy. But this game's going another 30 minutes. More tricks. And I feel like Timway absolutely did not want to have. this whistle blow with him just standing on the ball at midfield. Like, get up there. Let's do some more attacking third stuff.

One more rep. So credit to him. And then just, yeah, the moment of celebration culminating with Gio's touch is just beauty. Because it is. It's all Gio. It's so effortless. It's so casual and so unstoppable. It was a little triangle.

And the build, the last few passes were a little triangle of. Waya Freeman and Gio, a very acute triangle, actually, most of the time. And yeah, man. People have asked me, like, why is the defense retreating so much here? And I think maybe it is partly because they think the game is over, but they don't want them to score again, you know? And they're waiting for that big wind-up that you need to do if you're going to hit the ball in the more conventional way,

and it never comes, you know? And this is just, bam, that outside of the boot. It's casual, but it's also, it's a surprise. And, yeah. And it's difficult. Also, since obviously I'm watching this over and over right now, got to give Ricardo Pepe some love too, because he doesn't just stand stationary watching what's happening around him.

He breaks across Gio's face, which drags the center back, away from the far post where he might have been in a position to block or to just obstruct geo-shooting vision where he might decide it's not on and have to find something else. So good clearing out from Ricardo Pepe. We're just doing little things correctly and well

and combining that with 1V1 dominance all over the field. Yeah. That's the big one, isn't it? Yeah. And it's also one that will change the most as the level of competition gets higher, the margin of dominance, where we might get to the point where we're going to be even or even, I don't know if this group will ever

be below. Again, we were squared up with Germany very well. We matched them 1 v.1 pretty well, I think. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the Australia game because you think they're going to be a low, like a much more committed low block. I mean, that's what they did against Turkey. Turkey had no answer for it. Like, they took it, they took a couple cracks from distance, but like really didn't have a way to attack Australia. And they have these two strikers.

They're burners, aren't they? Irankunda and Ture. And I would say Irankunda, he's the one who scored the first goal for them against Turkey. He's probably the more. dangerous of the two, although, I mean, Torei seems honestly a bit of a tronco, if you're, if, if, if I'm going to be totally honest, not much of a footballer, but he can, he can cause us some problems. So what do you think?

He did cause us problems in the friendly and so did, so did boss, the other guy on the left side. But so, I mean, I'm not, I'm certainly, uh, have concerns that those guys will, will, will dust us. I think we are dustable, and I think those guys have already shown that they can, I mean, Chris Richards started that game in the friendly against Australia and was dusted. Tim Riem, I feel like, is a guy that we are constantly worried about, dust and dust adjacent problems. But I think we're just going to be better than they are. I think we'll be better than Turkey was. and so I like our chances to

to create better looks than what Turkey got. I don't think we'll have to settle for distant shots, but this is all sort of optimism because I think the last time we played a truly committed low block was probably Panama in the Nations League. So we know how that went, but we also know that a lot has happened since then. and I think the issue we talked about even at that game was that again we talk about a critical mass of adults and not just adults that we have now but the kinds of soccer the kind of soccer that these adults want to play which they're not just like bruising players but this isn't like cross it into Jordan Pfeck we are we are soft these guys are legit technical craftsmen so yeah I like our ability to be able to be able to be we are so I like our ability to

to combine intricately in small groups through a low block. No one was trying it in that Panama loss. I think our guys in this game will try it, and I think we can execute it. Yeah. I mean, we sure, even when, I mean, that's another thing we haven't really talked about that much, is that in this game against Paraguay,

they weren't in a low block, but even when they were deep, and we were played into the amoeba, our willingness and confidence to try to combine through that was pretty cool, like, particularly Wes and Malik. I mean, those two in, like, those two specifically just are willing to do that. It's still going to be hard. It's still going to be hard to carve out chances.

Absolutely. And in Australia in a position where even if we get, even if we get an early goal, again, I don't want to get, like, we're not, we're not just destined to score. early goals or any goals. I think they'd be in a position to stay in the block. I think they might see that as their best chance no matter what of bringing us forward to to try to beat it, even if they're down a goal, like luring us up in numbers and then trying to hit us quickly.

Again, very old school, like when this was a real thing where it would be full low block, hit it out to your runner. Because I think that's just what they've got. And I think they're well drilled on it. And like you can tell they're the team that is playing this kind of style with a lot of pride in their ability to do it. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people didn't, a lot of people thought Turkey was a much better team than them. And I guess, I mean, on paper, Turkey is, but boy, it didn't look that way the other night.

Is there anything you would do to prevent us from getting hit hard on the counter, like personnel-wise or? I mean, I would consider replacing Tim Ream, but I don't think it'll happen. We won't, I don't think we will need his line-breaking progressive passing from deep. The thing we talk about in these games against a total committed low block is that the phases of play sort of get flattened out into just, you know, are you going to horseshoe around the outside? It's basically just the attacking third phase of play. Like, you don't have to do things. you don't have to worry about what's our buildup to progress the ball to this and then into this. Like you just skip right to we've got the ball around the edge of the box.

Now how do we actually get into the interior to create shots? So Tim Ream's value is diminished there. I don't think there's any chance that happens. I think POTCH is, you know, Tim Riem is basically the extension of Potch at this point on the field. So I don't think there's any way that happens. I'm okay with it too. I think we will have enough protection there. between Richards and Freeman to insulate us on those brakes,

Tyler Adams' ability to jet. Jedi's got pretty good recovery speed. Yeah, yep. So, no, not really anything that I can think of that I'm going to do differently. I'd have Geo really ready to go as another lock picker if we just are struggling to pick the lock. But I like our chances, and I'm really excited to see what we look like trying to break this down. because it's we we because of this dress rehearsal this fiasco against panama that we have that potch already has on his in his life experience now we're not going to go in there blind to what we need to do in attempt to do yeah and there doesn't doesn't seem like there's much chance australia will say ah we're gonna we're a surprise him and come out and press hard and i would welcome it i would i would welcome it yeah all right all right uh hope

to see a lot of you in Seattle. Thank you, Greg. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.