Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #708: USA v Belgium recap

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

We wilted in the first truly difficult match of our World Cup, and now we're out. Greg doesn't think this was inevitable, but also doesn't think it's down to tactics. The team turtled immediately against Belgium's quality, everyone got spooked and we were lucky to go to the half down only a goal. We found a little footing early in the 2nd half, and then Matt Freese sealed our fate. 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 when we talk about U.S. soccer. Hey, everybody, we are here to recap the 401 lost Belgium. Lots to discuss, but Greg, how you feeling in general? Belzee was a bit of a bummer. It had been built up, and again, our glorious lads deserve a lot of credit for how built up it was. but that buildup was a double-edged sword because man was the fall off severe. I feel like I, a little bit like I bamboozled myself by believing, you know, I guess the betting odds were that we were the favorites over Belgium.

And so I saw that. I saw that Belgium wasn't playing that well so far in this World Cup. We had played well in this World Cup. And I thought, you know, we can beat these guys. But I had also been in the stadium in March when we lost to them five to two and looked like it looked like we were just in it. They were in a different class from us then. And turned out it also looked like that on Monday night. They were, they still look like they were on a different level than we were.

Yeah. I mean, the joy, again, the joy around this team was very real. the performance assessments of the team probably a little bit got swept up in some of that joy again we're kind of known wet blanketers me in particular and I feel like we had done some gentle wet blanketing of Paraguay of that game a little bit more of like our normal amount of wet blanketing

on Australia but there was just there were a lot of ways that our performance was overblown in those games. They certainly weren't bad performances, but there were some things where it was just like we were doing well and we were benefiting from a lot of good bounces. The good calls continued right up until kickoff for this game. Some great decisions from panels at OEC,

the tournament organization. but all of those balances and a lot of some of the other things that we were doing well evaporated within seconds of kickoff. And then, so that's part of it, and we'll get into it in plenty of detail because we do. But what wasn't apparent was how we might respond when some of those things happened. And the response is by far the biggest letdown. You know, we talked about how the Paraguay Australia Games was so much about just absolute one-on-one individual dominance of just us bullying the daylights out of those players in the individual spaces that we were occupying. And it was just so clear so quickly that when you run into a pot one team like Belgium, that bullying and that dominance is not going to be alone what's going to win you a game.

No. Well, we got bullied. I mean, we'll get into it in the timeline, but Onana, who came off in like the 16th minute, but for those first 16 minutes, totally dominated the game and made some of our guys, you know, who were total lads, like you said, total lads earlier in the tournament made them look like they were not the lads anymore. They got outduled a lot early on. And yeah, so you're saying like the fact that we couldn't respond and sort of regroup and do something together as a team to combat that was a letdown. Is that, am I understanding that correctly? Yeah, I mean, beyond that, I think we just, I think we basically completely turtled. Like, I think that changed how we made our decisions. Like, even when we had time, granted, again, even when you have time against Belgium,

what you're looking at with that time is way less inviting than what you're looking at when you were playing Paraguay, Australia, Bosnia, which those are the three games that our first team lads played. It's a completely different picture. We know smaller, time on the ball less. Yeah, the way we responded and acted

even when we had time, I feel like you could tell it was just affected by the complete upgrade in the level of competition that we were facing. So the Whiplak, The whiplash to me is actually really familiar. Like, you know, it's very much like, how could we have looked so good in these other games?

And then come in and done this. We have a perfect example in this tournament of the kind of opposite happening. And that would be Paraguay, where they were completely shell-shocked at the way they just got battered against us. But then they turn around and have an excellent game in the knockouts and knock Germany out of the tournament with a much more committed performance. So it's like you can see that even a team that did, that can still look really terrible against in another game in the same tournament.

Yeah. And then Paraguay, you know, they lost to France, but they sure did muck it up and made it a tough night at the ballpark for the French. So, yeah. So our performance against Belgium was basically the Paraguay performance against us. Just they turtled and paid for it and we did the same. I do want to say, you know, I know this isn't like your favorite thing to talk about, but when it comes to like growth of the game, which I did feel like this was a huge opportunity squandered.

I'm not, I'm one of like a million people saying that. Largest TV audience for a soccer game in America ever. I think that's, I think that's official now. Everybody was paying attention for some sort of unsettling reasons. but also because it was an exciting team. They had played exciting soccer in this tournament. And I think people noticed that. So, yeah, it's a squandered opportunity.

But I don't think it necessarily means that people aren't inspired by this World Cup. I think not only is it not just the U.S. team, there's a lot of players and a lot of teams, a lot of nations competing, and people are watching those. But also, I think I was, I'll just give an example. I went out to the rec soccer fields last night to line some fields, like freshen up some lines, so I don't have to remeasure them. I think you know what I'm talking about. Usually those fields, there's nobody out there.

There's a family playing on one goal, you know, just kind of kicking around. And then there were eight young fellas who just graduated from high school. They all looked like football players, but I guess not all of them were. One of them was the nose tackle for the local high school. They were playing four on four soccer, right in the middle of the field and they were like hey you need us to get off and I was like no no no please please play they didn't know how to play soccer but they weren't just like goofing around

they were actually trying to play because they've been watching a lot of soccer they've been watched a lot of the World Cup and they're excited about it and um one of them said uh the nose tackle he told me they were all sore about the loss to Belgium so this was 24 hours after the game and he said he said yeah we got to find the talent I was like yeah baby we do When you get the nose tackles, I feel like that means something because that kid's not, I mean, it's too late for him to be the next, the next, Landon Donovan. But he could be the next Adam Bells and he could start his podcast and he could be posting clips of kids from the German Regional League. Who knows? Yeah.

I mean, anybody can be the next Adam Bells. It's the whole, like the whole world could be that. So, yeah, totally. He could teach his kids how to dribble when they're four and five. And that kid could be the next Landon, Donovan, or Tim Ream or whatever. So I do think, I don't think it's a total loss, is what I'm saying, for the culture, for us to lose. Yes, it would have been incredible if we could go play in a quarterfinal against Spain. And I think if we all came out and played our best game and really gave it everything we had, we could.

There was a universe where we could beat Belgium. Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't think in any way was that was that outcome like inevitable. I mean, Christ's the same players performed better four years ago. Right, right. All right. So, yeah, I do think plenty of people have been inspired, and I'm glad about that. Let's do the lineups and then get into what really happened. And I do want to talk about your, I want you to talk about tactics a little bit after we do the lineups. So freeze, Matt Freezing goal, what a night for him. Alex Freeman, Chris Richards, Tim, Tim Ream, and Jedi Robinson across the back line.

Adams Tillman and West McKinney in the middle. And then Dest, Ballot and Pulisic from right to left in the front line. Belgium had, and I'm going to give the clubs again, Thibault Courtois, in goal, he plays at Real Madrid, of course. Timothy Castain, Castagna, who plays at Fulham, played right back. Nathan Ingoi, who plays at Lille, played right centerback, Brandon, Michelle, left centerback from Club Bruges, and then Maxim de Kuiper, who plays at Brighton, was the left back. Nicholas Raskin and Amadu Onana at Rangers and Aston Villa, respectively, in the midfield. and then the three across the band of three would be Dodi Luka Bakio at right wing.

He plays at Benfica, Yuri Telemans, who plays at Asden Villa, was the central mid. And then Leandro Trosard at Arsenal was the left wing. And then Charles de Cattelar, who plays at Atalanta, was the striker. So they changed up their lineup a little bit. DeBrena and Doku for the beginning of this game. I mean, Lukaku also has been. coming off the bench and did come off the bench and scored. But yeah, interesting, interesting from Rudy Garcia.

Yeah, and I feel like Doku, the most notable omission, because in that friendly, it was Doku that was just absolutely giving us nightmares. So what was most interesting about Belgium here was with this group, their sort of decision to not really try to play through us, to not try to play through our midfield of, bosses, or at least the way they'd been playing throughout this tournament, and it was just to sort of launch it over the top of us. And I don't know if that was just a matter of identifying that, you know,

we talked about when we played in Australia. We kind of took advantage of their backline oafishness. They might have decided that we had a bit of an oaf, oaf adjacent player in our lineup. Because they started going after Tim Rheam real early with long balls. and hoping that they'd be able to win second balls around us. And again, that just wasn't something we'd had to worry about in any of the three other games that the lads had played. None of Paraguay, Australia, or Bosnia were ever interested in actually having the soccer ball

or working on any kind of first ball, second ball patterns. So we were basically never tested, and Belgium just tested us right away. Those long balls at Tim Riem, they did work. for the most part for Belgium, too. Like, they did win a lot of those second balls. Yeah, it was just a shortcut to get up the field. It wasn't like they necessarily got those and then just got themselves in on goal

with a flick on and behind a back line. It was just, that was their sort of easy way to just take space, get up the field, and not really have to do any real rotations or ball movement or out of the back. Yeah, because they would, I know, I mean, we didn't even get a chance to press for the,

first three and a half minutes because they were immediately in our defensive third for reasons we'll get into but um they would we would sort of set the line of confrontation at maybe three quarters and then there would be some kind of trigger uh maybe a pass back to courtois or something that would that ballot would then go into the box and try to cut off one side and anytime that trigger happened that's when corto quarto would kick it along they'd sort of Pass it back and forth until one of it. We committed forward and then boom, long. Okay.

Anything else tactically? I mean, so we didn't ever really get to press. I mean, you never saw like us actually pressing the way we did in the other games. Because we just never really got a chance to. I mean, people have been saying, well, they kept playing through our press. Well, we never actually, it never actually really happened. Yeah. I mean, we absolutely smothered those other three opponents with that.

kind of a press, and they would launch it to eventually. And the thing is, they would launch it to nobody. Like, they were just launching it and being like, okay, we don't want it. This is what we signed up for. We're going to give it back to you, and then we're going to play. Belgium were launching it as their way of getting it to their next man. They'd launch it up towards Ream, and they would essentially either control a weak header if Ream won it, or they'd outright win the first ball.

And again, they were just so... efficient at that second ball cleanup where, I mean, Tyler Adams had the perfect comment after the game. What did he say? He said, like, things we were doing in the other games just weren't coming off. The back heel, like, you'd think we're okay for a second ball, but they would just get there first. And it was very much just like, again, a complete role reversal of what we looked like against

Paraguay, where there was, you know, so much of our stuff was sloppy, the little flick and fun stuff we were doing wasn't actually perfect. It would hit a Paraguay player, but we'd clean it up because we could just dominate the space. And it just was the opposite here. Belgium would just dominate the space, and they wouldn't just disrupt a play. They would have it,

and they would hit it to the closest man next to them, and they would actually just then build their own attack. And we just never saw that in the first three games because whatever those opponents, our opponents could do in those games, it would just disrupt it and just, like, slow us down marginally. Like for a beat we'd have to slow down, but then we'd be right back into the attack. And here, we'd lose the attack if we weren't incredibly clean and precise.

And then Belgium would have the ball for a minute and a half. So, I mean, it's such a difference, but it accumulates over the entire match. And that's why we generated like nothing in the attack. We could never string together two positive attacking actions. The goals we give up were calamitous and almost like a completely separate field of mistake than what the issues were for us in possession. An entire different discipline that come from. Yeah.

No, it was the counter, you know, the counterpress was so ferocious for us in the first two or three games. And I assume it was, we tried to apply it with the same level of ferocity. But like you said, they would, Onano would take the ball from Pulisic. And instead of there being like a scramble and then West coming away with it or Malik, it'd be Belgium coming away. way with it and they would like you said have the ball for a minute and a half so maybe that's what people are talking about when they say they played through our press they played through our counter press with ease yeah yeah in those scramble moments we like would never come out on top it was it was

just them calm calmly having the ball uh and working their way out through a gap okay I just want to acknowledge this because some people say why didn't you talk about this a lot of people are saying the part of the reason we lost this game is because Belgium was fired up by the overturning of Balagans Red Card suspension and we were distracted by it I don't know

I don't know if that's true I think it's plausible and maybe it'll come out in a book someday that the locker room was deeply unsettled by it I hear that argument I think soccer is such a game of belief you know like you have to believe in what you're doing

you have to believe that you're that your work will sort of, that your work on the field will actually bear fruit. And if you feel like something kind of unsavory happened in the background so that one of your teammates can play, I don't know that any player felt that way. But if you do, that can affect your level of belief. And it certainly does seem like it fired up Belgium a little bit. I know that's not what we're going to talk about most of the time.

I don't think it's the main thing. I just want to acknowledge it. Yeah, I mean, I could see Belgium being fired up about that decision. like the second it was announced. I mean, you're going to feel like, okay, that's a strange. Give them a little home cooking. And that could motivate you to, you know, want to embarrass us. I'm way less persuaded that it affected the U.S.

and that we were somehow distracted. And, I mean, these are 25-year-olds, like all of the sort of moralizing and stuff that's going on. A lot of it, you know, very. very well thought out. I don't see the 25-year-old kids in camp, you know, really putting a lot of thought into those kinds of questions. I imagine there's plenty of bans about it. If, you know, if people are giving them the business about Bolligan suddenly being allowed. But I can't see him reacting anything other than me like, almost like it's a big fun game for a bunch of 20-year-olds.

Yeah, yeah. I don't, yeah, I don't, I'm not saying it's true that it affected them. I'm just saying people are saying that. People are, and I, it's sort of plausible. I will probably never know. I also think, I also think a lot of people who are saying that might be some of the same people who, in the lead-up to the game, we're talking about how obviously afraid Belgium must be for them to be making so many comments about the, about the decision. Like, like they are shaking. They are obviously so scared that they're already preemptively appealing a loss, you know, that, like that kind of thing. It seems very much just like you can go any way you want with it.

Just an internet conversation. Okay. To the timeline. Well, before the timeline, let me just say this. If you would like to support what we're doing here, please join the Patreon. The link is in the show notes. You get all our episodes ad-free, plus the clip notes videos that Vince puts together of every action we discuss in the timeline, plus all the bonus episodes, and there have been quite a few this past month.

So join us to the timeline. Okay, 10 seconds in, ball is pinged around after kickoff on top of our box, and then Trussard smashes it off of Freeman. It's like a volley from the edge of the box. It rolls toward the sideline. Dest, who had been an eyewitness to Trussard smashing it off of Freeman, he shepherds the ball out of bounds as if it's our throw, even as Freeman sprints to the end line to open up for him.

So he's just not fully aware of what's happening. And I feel like this is Serge's game in a nutshell. Like he, I don't know what happened to him, but he was not ready for this game. Yeah, I think that's fair. The only defense I'll kind of give him is that that just made him one of nine other players who looked that way for the U.S. It's true.

It's true. I mean, yeah, shepherding the ball. of bounce for the other team to get a throw in. It's just a weird, it's just a strange thing, and it happens right away. And they get a chance off it. The ensuing throw goes into the box. Telemans gets a shot from the edge of the box. It's blocked by Jedi. Right to right back, Timothy Chastanya from Fulham, who takes a good shot with his right foot. It's curling away into the left corner and Freeze makes a nice save at full stretch. What did you think of this save? It's outstanding. It's a very good save.

It helps with the narrative about Fries not seeing very many shots because we basically weren't having to play very much defense in the tournament up until this point. So there's always concern about is Fries can be able to do some stuff? And he doesn't. And this is, you know, it also is helpful when you know that the guy sitting on the bench behind him is Matt Turner who statistically is a much better shot stopper. than Matt Fries over his career, including this season. So it's great that Fries gets a moment and gets to demonstrate his shot-stopping chops. Yeah. Everything's looking great for young Matt Fries here.

Three-minute mark, we connect a couple passes, but Pulisic, this is another theme. So one theme is not looking like we're quite ready or aware of what's happening. Another theme is Pulisic just getting dispossessed Every time he tries to dribble Every time Yeah Every time So you know we talk

You have already mentioned Dest looking off of it I feel like Death's assessment is actually probably a little bit Worse than what he actually was Whereas Pulisic it's totally justified like He was he was bad bad Yeah Pants As they say

Uh Yeah, in this case he gets little brothered by Onana, Amadou Onana, as he's trying to cut in, and we get our first chance to counterpress, and they work out of it easily. So this is where this sort of Belgian efficiency and calm starts to impose itself. Four-minute mark, we get our first chance to really press, and this is the first time when Courtois demonstrates that he's ready to kick it long anytime we send somebody into the box after him.

For 30 mark, Dest raises another red flag passing it out of bounds under pressure as he tries to shove it down the line for Wes. This is more of just like a tricky pass to execute, but him passing it out of the bounds is not totally normal for him. It's also just an example again of the windows being smaller. Like Desd gets this ball with time and he just, holds it and nothing obvious presents itself. So he ends up hitting a slightly lower percentage pass. And this is where I do think that the turtling is creeping up where things aren't as easy.

It's just more difficult. And this shouldn't be, I'm not trying to make this sound like it's an excuse. Like, oh, this is hard so we had no choice but to turtle. The turtling part is what's really disappointing. Yeah. Is that in the face of these slightly more challenging moments, we just didn't respond at all.

So we'd been like expecting everything to be just as easy. as it had been in the other games, and we'd sort of believe that we were just unplayable monsters, and we just did not have an answer for things being even marginally more difficult. It is really disappointing. I'm feeling more disappointed at it

about it right now than before we started talking. 5.50 mark, Onana tackles Pulisic again. I think, yeah, it ends up with like a Belgium throwing on the right side. And then seven minute mark, a huge chance for Belgium. This is like, this is alarm bells ringing all over the nation. Tyler gets blown up on his second touch on the half turn at midfield and the ball bounces around. And then Onana does this just giant big drop step on the half turn to hold off Wes,

like puts his butt right into Wes's midsection and Wes cannot. I mean, this is control. Like, Wes is hard to dominate physically in a duel. and Onana shows you how to do it right here. Yeah. Paraguay did not do that. None of our opponents did this one time to Weston McKinney over three games. And it's just like, whoa. Lukabakio flips it over to, I'm sorry,

Onana flips it over to Lukabakio, and then they're off to the races. And again, this is another instance of one player dominating another. Luca Baccio dribbles past Tyler. Tyler's kind of pesky around him, but doesn't ever really stop what he's trying to do. Tyler gets back in front of him. Lukabakio dribbles past him again and then pushes it out wide for Castagna. Pulisic is just lazily behind the play.

You're rolling your eyes at me like I'm being mean to Pulisic here. No, I'm going to go to bat for Pulisick on this because I think Stu called him out on it too, And I was like, no, that's not a little sick. This is 100% Tyler Adams. Okay. Like getting blown up the one time, he gets back into position. And then he goes in like a cornerback right on the snap trying to bust up a wide receiver off of his route.

And Luca Baccio is completely unaffected. Yeah. So Adam steps into Luca Bacchio's body as he pushes his ball past Tyler. And it's like, okay, maybe he'll win this in the ref, where he'll just be like, all right, that's just rubbing. we'll allow it. Or maybe he'll get the foul for stepping in front of him. But he couldn't do either of them because it looked like he didn't even, I mean,

Luca Bacchio completely unaffected and just moving forward. And that's why Jedi is now a two-on-one with the overlapper. Poulsick's fine jogging back here because he's like, okay, Adam's on the ball, Jedi picks up the overlapper, everything's fine. Adams chose to step into a challenge that he didn't have to step into, and it just failed miserably. So then he's eliminated and Pulisic's behind Castania and Jedi is still has to account for Lukabakio. I see what you're saying.

I mean, Pulisic's tracking back though and he's just tracking back like five yards behind Castania the whole way. I let Charlottina come back against Egypt the other day. This ain't happening. This ain't happening for one of those non-men. messy attackers. I mean, they are getting back. They're getting a foot in. Anyway, he, uh, Castania whips an uncontested.

So he's totally uncontested. Whips a ball, uh, across the edge of the six to the feet of Yuri Tileman's. He whiffs on it. Thank goodness. Because he's also uncontested. He is all alone. This is, this is, this is Netherlands opener in 2022 wide open. Yeah.

And, uh, I mean, that's it. The ball trickles through no goal, but yikes. This is just us getting outmanned everywhere in one sequence, and the only thing missing for Belgium is the final touch. Yeah, yep, this was, I mean, again, you want to compare it to that 2020 Netherlands. Like McKenny gets outmuscled and then never makes it back into the play either.

Like, we talk about those center midfielders trying to stack up in front of the box, and no one made that happen. So Adam's getting B is one thing, but us not filling in those spaces in this transition moment. It's a tough look. Rough, yeah. And it's at this point in the Fox broadcast that Stu Holden and John Strong start discussing how much stronger Belgium is than any of our previous World Cup opponents.

And they're just knocking it around in our half. And the next thing on the timeline is their goal. 8.30 mark. Luca Bakio sweeps a big switch over to Trussard. who collects it down in the left corner and then he goes at Freeman along the end line Freeman does pretty well blocks his left footed cross

it spins up in the air and then Freeman heads it forward but weakly and still into the box which I think is a little bit of a mistake it's going to land right at the top right corner of our box from Frizes perspective

Dest is the guy nearest it like he's got to be the guy who you know punts this away, but he hesitates. I thought, the thought flashed through my mind as the ball was in the air, that, uh, you know, that Mexico penalty, that Harry Kane won where you, like, you're, you're kicking up and then somebody else gets their foot above yours.

I was like, oh, that might happen. I mean, like, literally did flash through my mind. I don't know if it flashed through Desmond, but he didn't do anything with the ball. I neither did McKenney or Tillman. So all three of them are just sort of waiting for one of the other to do it. I think it's mostly on desk. And then, who was it? Raskin, the Rangers player, comes flying through, steps on the ball, on the bounce to kind of move through that

that indecisive trio, takes a touch to Chris Richards right, and then just fizzes the ball through his legs across the six. DeKedalar is alert and taps it in. 1-0, Belgium. I mean, you guys, you and Vince, you talk about business handling all the time. And this is just our lads doing some of the worst business handling that we've seen. I'll defend Freeman here just in the sense of like if that's as big mistake as the baby of the group in a World Cup game, in a World Cup knockout game against Belgium, that is not a certainly shouldn't be a fatal mistake. looping a looping header.

It's not like you headed it straight to somebody's feet at that corner of the box. He's a looping header into an unoccupied space where three U.S. players have a play on it. The one tiny defense I'll give to Dest, I mean, they got to sort this out. But when he looks up and sees Wes, he might be thinking that this is Wes's take because Wes is facing the middle of the field out towards the sideline. Yeah. rather than Serge who's facing from the outside into the middle. So Serge's only clearance, unless he's going to do a blind hook out to the sideline,

is back across the field. He might just read this as, okay, Wes is, you know, the outfielder takes the pop fly from the infielder because they're moving forward. Kind of a situation. But it's thin. It's thin. And again, it's just like somebody step up and handle the business. Yeah.

It is also, I'll also say it's an awkward one for Desk because of the orientation of his body, but also because of the way the boss coming over is like coming over his head from behind. Right. And it's a little tricky. So yeah, it's a odd little situation. But yeah, somebody's got to handle the business. Handle business. And I'm not going to be too hard on Ream for letting the attacker get behind him.

Like that can happen. He has to kind of be ball watching in that situation. and then he's going to have less burst. Yeah. I mean, Ream will, Ream's limitations will rear their head again shortly. But, yeah, it just seems like we haven't completely switched on yet. When you stack up the, you know, shepherding the ball out of bounds,

not handling business in the box, the sequence earlier where West doesn't get back into the play, Tyler can't handle Luca Bacchio. at all and nobody's marking tea lemons. It just seems like we're, like, we're, we already turtled up. Are we already basically cooked? I mean, yes. Like, I already think that we are stepping, like, again, West's not handling the business

here, West not stepping through this ball and just dealing with it. Like, I totally think that you can put it more on desk from the textbook reading of it, but from the, from the West being a total business handle. through this entire tournament versus Serge who's doing a bunch of fun tricks and stuff. This is a spot where I'm like, if he's not just going to step over and control this, he's playing different than he was in the first three games. Again, I keep saying three games. He started the turkey dead rubber too, but the dead rubber is a dead rubber, so it's kind of just like, yeah.

Disregarding it, yeah. Okay. 12 minute mark In my notes I've got Tyler looking just spooked He has a ball come over to him in a scramble And he's got Tillman To his left

Jedi further to his left And he just smashes it Straight forward in the direction of a white shirt Wes sticks his leg out Because his nose is about to hit A Belgian player And then Wes sends it back toward our goal Richards gets smashed in the face with the ball and a scramble.

And I'm just like, boys, calm down. What is happening right now? Yeah, that's, I mean, you're totally right. It's just spooked. It's like everyone's hearing these footsteps that they weren't paying, they weren't hearing against the other teams, and they're paying way too much attention to them. They just didn't, they just didn't step up for it.

There's not much more to say like the, the analysis isn't going to be that much more than that. It wasn't like a tactical disaster class from us. There might have been a couple of adjustments you could make, but you can't tactic your way out of West not stepping through that ball in the box or Serge not dealing with it. You can't really tactic for Tyler Adams or any of our players, just panicking, just getting into panic mode on the ball.

Yeah. And were Wes Serge and Malik misplacing? I don't know, three quarters of their passes in the first half. I mean, it was, it's crazy. Yeah, and obviously Poulsick didn't make Belgium nervous a single time. No, no. And Balagan, I guess he had, what, 10 touches in the first half, barely got involved in the game. Did, I think, okay when he did, but there, Belgium is just having a ball attacking us

as we sort of stride forward with the timeline into the 13th, 14th, 15th minutes. Onana is shutting it down whenever we try to get out of our defensive third, we can't connect passes out of our half or keep the ball for very long at all. The clock, that ticking clock that you like to talk about is ticking real fast on everybody out there. Yeah, everybody's mental clock is running five times faster than it had an all tournament. You know, 17th minute, Onana goes down in what appears to be a no contact injury, chasing a bouncing ball next to Pulisic. And, I mean, it's really sad for him. It turns out he had ruptured his ACL.

And then he came off for good, replaced by Hans Vonachin of Club Bruges. And you would think, I can say this without being crass, you would think Onana coming off would sort of make things. easier for us. And maybe it did slightly, but it didn't really, you know, it didn't really pan out that way. Yeah. Heartbroken for Anana, because heartbroken for anyone who suffers that kind of injury in the world's color. I just wanted to get that on the record.

Yeah. Well, and it also didn't really help the U.S. when you left the field. I guess is what I'm trying to say. Luca Baccio is even able to control his space against Jedi on that wing. Like Jedi couldn't take the ball from him. It seems like most of the time when they went at each other, it ended up being Belgium's ball. And, you know, this is a guy who plays for Banfica in the Portuguese League.

I don't know what his transfer market value is, but he's good. He's a good player. Some positive signs from the U.S. 21st minute, nice little one v1 action from sergenio he skips by trussard cuts inside and plays a good pass to tillman's feet in zone 14 he turns and tries to outside of the boot spread it out for pulisic on the left wing and the pass is cut out by luca vaccio and he's off um yeah and this is what i mean about uh you know not being able to connect two to uh positive attacking actions surge does

a little surge shimmy pass and move it's like okay here we go here we go and then at malik's feet with time at the top of the box, you know, whatever, 25 yards out. And it's just, I don't want to say lazy because this isn't a lazy pass. This is just Malik's excellent body language, but he's going for the outside of the foot curling ball over to Pulisik. And it comes off as lazy because it is nowhere near getting to Pulisic. It's cut out so easily that he may as well have been passing it directly to Belgium. Right.

And I don't know if he was, I mean, I don't understand the choice there. Like turn and sort of engage the centerbacks or whoever's right in right behind you. You had time to do it. Yeah. I mean, he had Bolligan sort of posted up on the top of the box where we could get a little attempt to nice combination play. So, yeah, the irony there is we were trying to hit the pass sort of around their amoeba, not being super brave with it. Because it's not going to put Pulisic in on goal. It was just circulated out why.

And even that, we just kind of fluff it. Near disaster for Richards in the 22nd minute, Cortois plays long over our press. Ream struggles with Decadilar and the duel, as he did basically every time the ball came to them. It goes, I think CDK wins it off his foot and it goes behind Richards. Riches kind of dilly-dallies a little bit with it. Almost just like gives it to CDK, but then does manage to get it out to Jedi. but the crowd is pretty nervous at this point and a little disappointed, I would say.

Because the energy in the stadium was amazing at the beginning. And full credit to the crowd, because they do stay in and keep trying to give the lift that they're able to. Well, yeah, just a nightmare from Richards there. Inexplicable, right? I mean, that's the thing. It's like you can't really explain it.

You can point out that Belgium's much better than the other three teams. That is very obviously the case. But it's not like Belgium aren't 2010 Spain. You know, they're not France. Right. These aren't guys, Chris Richard's plays in the Premier League. This is not a situation where he should be doing this.

Yeah. We get a little action from Freeman, 22-minute mark, plays it to Tillman's feet in zone 14. He tries to back-heel it, but it's just cut out, like, easily. All of our little back-heel-crofe things just. Didn't work at all in this game. Moving right along, 29-minute mark. Once again, we get a little momentum with a good switch from Richards all the way over to Jedi, so a nice diagonal ball.

Poulosick shows in the channel, gets a little square pass, turns and darts toward the goal, plays a pass to Baligan's feet outside the box. He's got his back to goal. He gets fouled by Michelle, and we get a free kick this time from 25 yards instead of right outside the box. But a little sequence from us. Yeah, again, this is what we need, right? That positive play into ball again, even if he doesn't have,

even if he's not in a clear goal scoring mode, to just keep feeding him. Was this a foul? Did you think this was actually a foul? I mean, you know, I don't believe in yes or no for fouls. It's a foul some of the times and it's not a foul some of the times. Yeah. Well, it was whistled as a foul.

We got the free kick and of course we score. Tillman takes the free kick. He tries to beat the wall the same way he did against Bosnia. Courtois leans to the corner behind the wall. I assume he had this covered if it made it over the wall. It looked like it, yeah. Yeah, it looked like he was there comfortably, but alas. Yeah.

Vanakin, the substitute, got a nick with his forehead and wrong-footed Cortois. The ball sails right down Main Street into the goal. And the crowd goes absolutely nuts. I mean, the burst on that goal is a powerful thing. Yeah, it gives us all the momentum. First shot, this is our first shot of the match for what that's worth. It is crazy at this point to think we're tied, having created almost nothing, and playing like a terrible game so far.

That's the beauty of soccer. And this is, I mean, people have to be really at least appreciate the fact that, Because we just didn't create really any shots, people don't have to listen to us talk about variants and beat that drum to death because there wasn't a tremendous amount of finishing variance for the U.S. in this game. Varians smiled on us a little bit. In this moment, yeah. And this is the beauty of it, and this is why, again, we'll get to the massive swing in momentum and then the massive swing the other way in momentum. But this also is what keeps hope alive until it goes to 3-1. It's like in soccer you can always get that one miracle.

You can get one. You play if you're one miracle away. And we were hoping for two miracles in this game for basically the next hour after this, or half hour, I should say. All right. So then Belgium scores right away almost immediately. I mean, by the time the cameras get back to the game, Pulisic is taking a header down from Jedi and turning,

and then he gets dispossessed by Telemans, trying to dribble forward in transition. And then Belgium works it back to Courtois, and he boots it long. Vannachin wins it to DeKedalar, out to Lucabacchio, back to DeKetelar, to Telemans,

out to Trasard, on the left, and he goes at Dest and beats him to the end line. Freeman is basically shadowing Desd defensively. So he's like three yards behind Dest, but just like doing the same things. And he still almost closes down Trussard on the end line to block this cross. But he doesn't get there quite in time. I mean, that closing, that rate of closing from Freeman is pretty impressive.

But anyway, I digress. Trissard's cross is a really quite lovely ball Clipped across the The edge of the six And de Ketilar Just climbs up on Tim Rame Heads it down off the American's head And into the back of the net

Two one A gasp goes up from the crowd Camer pants to Pocitino And he is, he looks mad And then we get a replay of him Kicking the water bottles What a shame to concede so quickly And the crowd is really

taken out of it by that. Yeah, and again, this isn't like a massive tactical failure or breakdown on any one individual. It's Belgium calmly, again, getting, like, luring us upfield in the press and then Cottois launching it and then an easy control from Belgium from the launch. Like Richard just kind of gets on a guy's back, but can't stop him from just nodding the ball into a space that Riem is never going to win a second ball in that situation. Like, it's a quickness battle and that's not going to be Reims' job. So, so Belgium can lure us upfield and then

smash it up and steal 60 yards on the trot. And then once they work it around to the wide space, we're there. You know, you can probably nitpick that the double team on that edge doesn't effectively stop the cut around the edge. One guy should take the inside of the

it. It's a double team that's not a double team. Yeah, it's a video game glitch where two people are like literally doing the exact same thing. So, yes, so they didn't effectively, they didn't optimize their pitch control, I think it's fair to say. But then it's just across where the trajectory is such that Tim Rheim is able to be dominated, and he gets absolutely dominated on this play. Yeah, gets dunked on. I mean, you look at some of the teams who might win the World Cup, and they don't have centerbacks

that are going to get dunked on by DeKedilar in that. situation, you know? There's a, yeah, one of the many gaps between us and the true contenders. Yeah, when I say their trajectory is good, it's not like it's a perfect one where it's just like just over the head where Ream can't possibly reach it because it's just out of his range of getting to. Like, it's directly above Tim Ream, and Tim Ream never gets to it because he is absolutely fathered on the play. Yeah. And, you know, Dick Hedellar is probably a good athlete. He's a good athlete, of course, but he's not like, I don't know, he can't like jump out of the gym or anything. So we worried about Ream in the lead up to the World Cup.

I mostly had shelved those worries because, you know, he's played well. But this is what we were worried about. It's one of the things, his speed to recover and his aerial deficiencies. And it was easy to shelve those worries. but like again, it was really just the test had never been taken. We just hadn't played teams that were in any way really capable

of testing us in this way. And man, those pot one teams is a different animal. Yeah. So it's 2-1. 35th minute, Wes gets a yellow card for sliding through Raskin on the sideline. 37-minute mark,

long spell of tame possession from us, ends with Tillman getting dispossessed on a loose touch just inside their half. And then once they have the ball, they're able to work it through our counterpress and set up in our half again. I do feel like they were, well, we can get to this in the second half,

but when they let us have the ball, we were able to possess in their half, but any time we tried to play it into the amoeba, immediately we lost it. Like, anytime we actually tried to force the issue, they would take it from it. us and go the other way. 39th minute, dangerous corner kick from Belgium.

Trissard meets it low and short and flicks it at goal. Freeze gets down quick to make the save. Adams got shook on this one real bad. Who did? Who did? Tyler. Tyler. Just again, a little like shimmy and then break to the ball from his man.

And it was not a good moment for him. Overall, I mean, I do want to say, mostly Adams had kind of him down. So after that one time where he got absolutely rins that we talked about in the eighth minute for Belgium's really good opening chance, he had mostly settled down. He still had that one ball he smashed into somebody, but he'll provide a little bit for us

in the rest of his game. Okay. Destin Pulsik, not going to provide much for us the rest of this game, and I noticed in the 39th minute, they both try to dribble by a guy in transition and quick succession, and neither of them can

get past the guy. Yeah, and it's like this happens several times this game where John Strong on the call is like, Desk can't quite win it, and now Poulson can't quite win it. And again, it's such a contrast from the other games we've played where we could just win

everything. Everything was won. And now it's just like, we just, they've got some hosses, and we just can't count on coming out on top of these scraps. Yeah, because in games one, two and four, Dest and Pulisic wasn't in the game on game two, but when they were on the field,

they were really good. I mean, maybe not so much Pulisic against Bosnia, but he was good when he came on against Turkey. He was very good against Paraguay. Destin, I thought, had a pretty good tournament. But yeah, this, the Pot One competition was different for them. Let's see.

41st minute, first half in a nutshell, as Pulisic and Adams collide on the ball above Belgium's penalty area and give it back to them. 42-minute mark, a chance for Belgium, a set piece on a soft whistle on Richards to Kuiper, curls it in from very wide. And lo and behold, Luca Baccio gets a free header from the edge of the six. Sends it wide, but we are not taking care of the blocking and tackling here. Yeah, this was, I mean, we've am prudered the... The set piece goal Germany scored out of us in that friendly where they set a nice pick. And then Wes is like a third of a body behind our line, keeping people on side. Chris Richards on this one drops like half a second early and drops like two full steps to keep everybody on side.

All these free runners are in. And it's a massive letoff again that we aren't down another goal. Yeah. could be 4-1 at this point pretty easily I noticed something right after this where McKinney gets a big pass I mean gets a pass in a big pocket of space could have easily turned and driven at the

at the Belgian penalty area but he doesn't even turn around he just plays a one-touch pass out to his right which would be out to our team's left probably in the direction of Pulisic and it's just cut out easily. And I felt like, man, he was he was hearing footsteps that weren't even footstepping at that point. Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right. I snapped that one too, and it was just, we would have had a three on three and a half running right at the top of their box. But yeah, it's, and Bolligan does one of the, does that same thing. You might have done it

earlier in this half where it is. It's just we don't, we don't think we're going to be able to hold it. So it's like the safest thing. It's almost like a surrender touch. The surrender, one touch. That's almost never going to come off, but it's just safer mentally than trying to actually control the ball if you think you might have to deal with the tackle, which he wouldn't have even had to deal with. No. Yeah.

Long throw. Well, you know, Freeman actually doing some decent stuff. He clips a ball into McKinney in the 44th minute, and he dummies it for Ballo, and he doesn't read it quite fast enough. But I like us kind of attacking that way, you know, trying to play the ball into the amoeba. There's a long throw from Tillman right before the half flicked on by Freeman, and Balagan meets it on the half folly right in front of Michelle and flashes it over. But this is kind of like vintage balligan chance, vintage balligan endeavor and scrap.

Just can't quite direct it on frame. Yeah, no, this is a really good chance. And sort of, I'm going to say evens out our luck on Tillman's goal. So now we've created something. So we can at least say, all right, we can get a look going in at the second half. We can get this goal back. Yeah. And there were, well, we'll get to the second half, but there were some green shoots in that early part of that second half.

Ten shots, five on goal for Belgium at this point. Two shots, one on goal for the U.S., which was obviously the goal that we scored. 47 minute mark. Got a got to note this about Des. He gets a chance to run at De Kuyper, who puts a chance. him in his pocket all day, but it gets a chance to run out of him in the 48th minute and just sort of clumsily dribbles into him. It seems like he's been having, it's like, you know, we used to talk about players having jitters when they first played for the national team.

And that's kind of how Serge looked, like this was his first cap and he wasn't sure how to handle it. Yeah, so Serge is dribbling here in most of this game reminded me of the Pirate-Wi friendly, where the first time we were like, Serginio's playing right wing for us, I guess. And we went to him a lot, and he dribbled a lot, and he lost it like every single time. I feel like Serge's dribbling is exponentially better,

when while he's dribbling, he has somebody where he's like, I can dribble here, or if they take that away, I can combine. And my dribble is going to force him to make a decision. So I just thought it was, again, notable. We get the ball out to him, and he's just all alone. Like, there's nobody else out there to play with him. So I actually like the choice to dribble here When we talk about we've got the field

We're running downhill You have to press the advantage And see what you can make of it Even if it's lower percentage Yeah We we Like this was the only thing you could do To press the advantage

The territorial position we put ourselves in Was he had to He had to attack this guy on the dribble One on one and a half I mean he was going at a guy Who had another help side defender with him So it was super low percentage And yeah

He kind of failed in the most I guess embarrassing way possible to kind of leave your feet and then just hit the deck and very little brothers as you lose the as you lose track of the ball

and it rolls sort of under the defender quick Belgium restart on a corner and we're again kind of slow to react Luca Bakio gets another shot from inside the box

at the 48 minute mark 49th minute Tillman I mean 45 plus four. Tillman plays a ball down the channel, collected sort of messily by Courtois just in front of Ballot.

But this was a good idea, and the ball was like a yard from connecting with Ballo and us getting a shot. So it troubled them a little bit. I thought this was real good. This was almost a carbon copy of the assist he had against Sparguide,

where we kind of just catch them napping, Like there's nothing else going on. There's no, you know, this wasn't part of a long buildup. It was just Malik on the ball of time at midfield. And he catches a great run from Bolligan. And I think Bolligan can even get a touch on this before Cottois meets it. But the touch would take him out of scoring range. So he, you know, he's electing to try to get his whole body around it to shoot in one touch or in one motion.

But it's real, it's a very good play. So this was like another moment of life and some quality from Malik Tillman in my mind. I thought this was at this point, by far, I know we got the goal on a deflection. But I was like, okay, that's what we need from a leak because we're not getting it from, we're not getting this from anybody. Well, we get a great, I mean, there's other little signs of life too. Great ball up the gut from Richards to Ballo, who lays it off for Wes at the 4920 mark. Still not halftime.

A little messy. Wes has to slow down to meet it. So the layoff gets poked by a, gets a touch from a Belgian player. but still gets to Wes. He has to slow down. He swivels to pass it a long wide to desk, and DeKyper just reads it and sends it the other way. But this was a quite promising little moment

that we just couldn't connect on. Yeah, and again, it comes down to precision where in this game you have to be precise or it's over. And in the other games, if you weren't precise, it's all right. You got a ton of wiggle room because they're not going to actually punish you, and even by punishing, I mean, even just by taking the ball.

Like, you just still win it just not as clean. The next one's clean, though. Get to the next one. This is a good one. Yeah, 51st minute we get probably our brightest moment of the half, a good combination up the right side from us. Tillman takes a touch around one guy and then Meg's another to spring Dest who's like running inside. And you can hear the crowd respond to the nutmeg and the sort of jailbreak nature of it.

Desk plays a pass in behind for Balligan. It's a good pass. And Balligan tries, I think, to square it for Pulisic. rather than shoot. It's blocked out for a corner kick. But we just need more of this threat. Like this is us being like, okay, we are good enough to threaten these guys.

And again, the good enough here was very much Malik Tillman rinsing a dude on the sideline, which is what we'd gotten used to after three games. I mean, he rinsed two dudes. He out muscles one and leverages him. And then the second guy coming over to help gets embarrassed. So we're definitely feeling like this is possible.

This isn't a lost cause. No. No, definitely. Pulisic sends the ensuing corner kick right into Courtois' arms. For some reason, Pulisic's back on set pieces in this game. That blew my mind. Watching him walk over there? I was like, is he just like choosing that, like, is he saying,

I'm the only one who can do this? Blew my mind that he walked over and took that corner. And then it was just so predictably like a punt right to Courtois. Yeah. super high looping ball. It's easy to claim. And also, he and Des had the 2V1. Belgium only sent one.

And I'm like, I don't know. Yeah, can we not just, can we not go two on one here? What's the, I don't know. I was fussy. Yeah, I didn't like it either. So we're getting whooped and we're down a goal. But it's only a goal. So that's the half.

We're going to take a break and come back and do the second half. We'll be back in a moment. All right, so the half comes and goes. And in what's becoming a World Cup tradition, Potch turns to none other than Gio Raina in his hour of need. Raina comes on for Dest, who I think was probably the target of a lot of Pachitino's ire from the first half.

And then West goes to right wing. So I'm going to go to Bat for Dest again, not in the sense that he was actually good by any stretch. He was bad. But I don't think he had the worst first half performance. I'd probably say Pulisik did. Wes was up there. I think so many guys had a bad performance.

You've got to change something, of course. And Dest is the easiest guy in the attack to change. I mean, I think he's the most sort of luxury guy in our attacking band. So I think he's just the one that's going to make way. I just want to point out this isn't Rico-Clark level, you know, where it's like, okay, it's clearly just Rico has got to come out. This was just everybody's bad. Dest is the easiest one to swap out.

Dest's not handling that bouncing ball, I guess, looms large in my mind because it resulted in that first goal. But yeah, I totally agree. He was not alone in his and not playing well. Let's see. So right away, 47th minute, Pulisic loses possession to Luca Bakio. Like you said earlier, basically every time he took somebody on, he lost it. I do think we looked better with Raina on the field, at least at first. He brought a little composure in the middle, and we're starting to probe at them a little bit.

Nothing super threatening, but at least we have kind of a handle on the game. Absolutely. You mentioned McKinney going out wide at the right, but the other thing is Tillman slid up a level. So Tillman basically slid into the McKinney vacancy now. and Raina is sitting deeper. So he's sitting in like the, I mean, he's not in a pivot with Tyler Adams, just like Tillman hadn't been. But he's the one who's sort of the deeper of the two between him and Tillman. And it really is just he's the guy who will get on the ball.

And he's, I mean, everyone else's clock is at 5x, and Raina's continues to not be 5x. I mean, he's a ball several times. Yeah, he's 0.7.5x. And so he keeps getting the ball, not keeps getting the ball, but we, could go to him, and it was calm. It's calm, and it's not just like, okay, it's calm while I recycle it back to the back three. It was calm and it's like, I'll hit the next six-yard pass up the field to the next guy and not have them in a panic moment.

Yeah. Yeah, he was a nice addition. It's like he's never going to be the kind of player who, he's just too proud, I think, to allow his clock to go above .75X, you know? 51st minute Ream Reem recovers pretty well on Luca Baccio and blocks a blocks I think a cross

on the end line out for a corner just got to give Ream credit where it's due 52 minute mark Ream plays it to Jedi to Pulisic and then he kind of shoves it inside for Pulisic striding across the top of the box he tries to shoot

but Telemans gets his leg in the way of his shooting foot between the ball and his foot that's about to strike it, which is not a foul on Telemans, but it does mean Pulisic kind of awkwardly kicks the back of Telemans' shoe. And he was limping from then on and never recovered. Yeah, this is where he really did his leg. So even in the lead up to this, you could tell that Pulisick was not going to get this shot off. It was one of those motions where I was like, Oh, he's done this little too slowly. This is going to get taken from him, and it was, so he ends up fouling

Tealemans. They just don't need to call it, because, again, even in the scrum, Belgium just get the ball calmly, and there's no need to blow the whistle. Telemans. It didn't hurt Teleman's at all. He didn't look like he even flinched. But the key thing here is politics hurt, and we get 54th minute a great ball from Tyler out to Freeman. I mean, this is nasty from Tyler Adams. There's a gorgeous pass, a diagonal from the left channel all the way over to the back post on the right side. Freeman arrives on it.

He's got Ballo running at the near post, Wes arriving like, you know, sort of a beat later into the box. He could have just tapped it across, like volleyed it across. And he just takes a bad touch when it trickles out of bounds. Yeah, that one hurts. But great delivery from Tyler, and again, we can threaten. A couple minutes earlier did make the timeline, but Tyler had another ball into the seam that we had been kind of not been able to play in this game, but he hit West and McKinney going right into the top of the box.

And again, McKinney just took a slightly heavy touch. And in any other game, he would have just then run up and collected his poor touch. But in this game, Belgium collected, there's another player who would, like, gets a touch to disrupt it and they come out on top in that scrum too and they just have the ball comfortably. So anyway, Tyler Adams, two decent passes here to again show that we can threaten. Yeah. And we threaten again, 55th minute. Geo, we're playing it around the top of their box.

Geo tries to scoop it over the back line for Ballo. It goes out of bounds, you know, 10 yards wide of the goal. So it wasn't really that threatening. But it was kind of exciting. Hey, look, when you're like, starving, like anything looks good. And so, again, entries into the box is promising.

And we're doing it at the moment with 10 men because pool if it cannot play soccer. Yeah. It feels like we've fought our way back into the game. We could get a goal. I mean, it wouldn't be a shock if we scored somehow at this point, and then it would be 2-2. I don't know that we deserved

to be in the game, but we were. But not for long. not for long because Belgium scored almost immediately after this 57th minute you guys all know what happened Michelle sends it long

over Richards and Ream and DeKetilar is running free freeze comes out which is what we need him to do he chests it past CDK you think okay he's got this he pulls back his left foot to strike it and just breaks off his kicking

motion something spoof him in that moment. And as he resets his feet to take another crack at it, CDK pokes it away to Vanakin. Vanakin passes it somewhat weakly toward the open goal. I mean, it's a weird shot. It's right at Ream, but Ream is backpedaling. And he tries to fend it off as he's backpedaling,

but his touch just kind of nestles it into the corner. And it's 3-1. It's tough. Was this a good job or a bad job by Matt Freeze? This is tough, man. He has to come out for this because Richards lets him run free, and it didn't seem clear that, like, it wasn't obvious when the ball was released that this will be the goalkeeper's ball.

So Richard loses his man, which isn't great. But, oh, dear Lord, freeze. Good composure to control it. I don't get the hesitation. He must think, like, I've got more time than I thought I would have. So I'm looking up, and now I'm actually going to pick out my pass. Oh, that one's covered. He starts his motion.

That pass isn't ideal. I'm going to wait and come over with something better. And then he still gets his pass off. He actually tries to, like, cut a pass backwards to Tim Riem. Like, he's trying to actually, like, cut it behind his hips, you know, the disguise pass to drop. And it's just a nightmare. I mean, a different centerback than Tim Ream probably makes a play. I know.

That's the other thing. You're asking a lot of the agility in that moment, but it's like... It's not like the shots hit with any venom. Yeah, he's just running as hard as he can. It's a totally different technique than any of the ones you practice because you just aren't training for this scenario. This isn't a repetitive thing. So, yeah, he's running backwards and he's got to fend it off in a way that doesn't just leave it there. for somebody else because once he touches it

he's not going to be able to get to the second ball you know if he he can't control it because of the way it's behind him and the way his momentum's going so he has to like hit it far enough away he's trying to like stab at it to clear the danger entirely and it's just a it's just a so feeble

and again just almost like comic comical but also heart wrenching for for him for us for Matt Fries uh and now and now we need two miracles and that's that's a really tough place to be in when you've when you've got you know two shots in the game uh that's that's asking for a lot

of miracles yeah game's over at this point it doesn't mean we should give up i mean yeah i want to be clear we should not be giving up like uh and we don't but like it can't happen you can get you can get the one miracle and then you you got to keep going for the second one but but it's so discouraging after we'd kind of look like we had fought our way back in and we're capable of at least a little bit of a threat uh to hand this to a team like belgium just just definitely Yeah, that's it. I mean, we, I do think we were in a position where we could, we could have tied it. But at this point, after this, it's, it feels like it's over.

I mean, it felt like it was over in real time. It felt even more like it was over on rewatch for me. Like, we created, we did create some stuff here and there. We didn't stop trying. There was a sense of urgency from us to try to score. But, yeah. Burrhalter comes on for Pulisic right after the goal. So the 59th minute, his night's over.

He goes over, covers his face, and doesn't even watch the game. We have a lot of possession from here and out, but it's mostly harmless. And when we try to play the ball into zone 14, it gets cut out like we discussed earlier. This was, so the analogy I was making was this is like an Olympic metal contending figure skater. You know, they're a solid performance. on the last routine, we'll get them a bronze medal here. They just got to get through it. And they hit the deck like three times.

But they still have to finish their routine. Like, we still got to, we got to finish this out. Yeah. Who's the guy, who's the Russian-American guy who was supposed to win all the gold medals, and then he hit the deck like three times? We're not that because we weren't supposed to win the gold medal. I think, yeah, Apollo, Anton, oh, no, I believe this. I don't think that's his name.

I think that's who it was. Doku, Lukaku, come on for Lukabakio and Deketilar. Some decent options off the bench for Belgium. Yeah, and again, Belgium, no, now we've made some changes here where they don't have to, you know, our midfield engine that we've relied on for this World Cup isn't playing well, and now it's disintegrated,

and our midfield is now Adams and Burrhalter, which is a lot less threatening of a, you know, a suffocating counterpress. Yeah. Peppy comes on for Adams, 72 minute mark. We create a little bit in the last 15 minutes. I'm going to just bang off some stuff real quick. 79th minute, good sequence from Freeman and Wes. Wes clips it in, ball out to Burrhalter on the edge of the box.

And he takes a juggle and has one on the volley with his left foot. I mean, inches from a goal. This was close to getting us back into the game. Yep. Yeah, that would have been the first miracle. Yeah, man, that was exciting. 81st minute, Gio gets on the ball at midfield plays Ballot over the top, and he's in, shifts onto his left foot, and his shot is... It's kind of interesting.

He blasts it off the turf, I think. It's kind of hard to tell because the replay wasn't great, but blasted off the turf, and it goes waist-high at the near post. Cortois is leaning to his left, thinking he's going to go far post. It does make, I think, a decent save up to his right. Not up too much, but to his right. Yeah. And I'm still choosing to believe here that we can get our two miracles because... Yeah, I mean, I still just was.

Up until, literally up until they put the stoppage time on there, I think I was still choosing. You can just make that choice. Because you thought there would be 10 minutes of stoppage time and there was only four? That's about right, yeah. Plus we actually made surrender substitutions. We work our way into some threatening spots, after that, but never really generate anything. And Belgium are now a threat on the counter, thanks to Jeremy Dooku.

85-minute mark, we just get killed in transition. Doku shrugs off Freeman over the course of 30 yards, which is not easy to do. And then plays Lukaku into the box. He gets crowded out. Ball falls back to Doku, plays it over to Trussard, who cuts in to make himself a shot, and whips one with his left foot to the far point.

host. Good block by Chris Richards here, right? Oh, excellent. I mean, gets himself squared up. Like, you got to love this. We'll ding Tim Riem here on Belgium's fourth goal for not getting in the right spot. But great work from Chris Richards. Also, I forgot to point out on even all the way back to Belgium's second goal, one thing I was really happy about, even as Tim Rieme was getting dunked on, was we did have two center midfielders stationed right in front of those centerbacks. So we were covering that cut back to the penalty spot. Good, good. We got to give him credit.

We got to celebrate all the little baby steps. 88th minute, Tillman gets in a pocket on a nice bit of passing from Ream and McKinney, and he's kind of striding towards the goal. He has Pepe in Zone 14, but it's just not quick enough to kind of push it over to him and gets dispossessed. I thought, I was, you know, I mean, I guess I thought the game was over after the freeze goal, I was like, man, that was a chance. What if I could just see Pepey taking a touch and then just ripping a disguise shot into one of the corners?

Didn't happen. Alexis Salamacher's and Axel Witzel come on for the last five minutes. Vince called Salamockers a victory cigar substitution. I mean, it is interesting that, like, all the narrative was, we need to have Pulisic have a great game to win this game. Obviously, he didn't. and then his teammate, the guy who starts on the other side of the, well, often starts with him for A.C. Milan. Doesn't even come in the game until the 89th minute.

I don't know. Pot one teams, man. Yeah. We'll just save Doku for later. Well, I mean, yeah, right. And then you see Doku like pull that, Stue Holden talked about this on the call, but, like, he pulls a ball out of the air and then draws a foul in there. half and just looks like he's just having fun in practice, you know? Like, I mean, it's a sky ball that comes down.

He just, perfect touch. That's what's coming off the bench. 93rd minute goal for Belgium. So Freeman wins the ball in the corner, but heading towards the corner, tries to bang it off, like, forward, and his pass goes off the guy on his back, over to Richards in the box. Richards gets to it first and tries to bang a pass off the same guy. It falls to Lukaku, who has now, and the way it falls to Lukaku eliminates Richards.

So he's coming in from the left or from our right and just bends one in at the far post. Celebrates vigorously down in the corner. I mean, they did the Trump dance. So if there is any silver lines that they can make a punchline of, of, of, of, of him for at least a little bit. Ream could have read this and got his body into the far post a little bit because there was no one else he could have passed you. So we didn't have a square ball to defend.

But it doesn't matter. I mean, I'm not going to, this is when you're, you know, the clocks at 10 seconds in a basketball blowout and the team that's winning goes out, goes down and dunks it. And it's like, all right, you can, no one's going to try to stop me. You're already walking off the floor. So it adds to the embarrassment. because the way Richards gives it up, but it's just like, what are we doing here? I should also point out just for exhaustiveness.

Max Arfston came into the game with Haji Wright, so that's a World Cup debut for Max Arfston. I'm not sure if he touches the ball at any point, but he's on the field. Okay, yeah, we should mention that. Glad that they got on the field. Greg, where do we go from here? Man, it's so tempting to do like the big takeaways from stuff like this, we, we didn't, we didn't perform. Like there was, there was nothing about this game that

was a good performance and it was across the board. I'll give, I'll give Freeman a pass. I think he was fine. I think he did fine in this game. Balgan was okay, but even he was like resorting to these one-touch flicks and things that, again, we're kind of just like, you could, you got, to take it on yourself to control the ball and actually do something. He did a few times. he got into a few good spots, but across the board, the guy sort of just turtled. And I don't think we have to be punitive. I know there's a lot of stuff out there. It's like they need to feel how mad everyone is.

I think that's kind of silly. Yeah, in the same way that, you know, like when the figure skater falls three times, it's like you don't have to hate them or tell them how mad you are at them. Like they know that they botched it. There's nothing that. Yeah, they do. So because it's a tournament, it's ever. every four years, you don't know if we're going to be able, if the players, if the individual players

who had such poor showings, you don't know if they're going to like learn from it and be better for it. Because by the time you might find out, literally they'll be like past their prime for some of these guys. And they're not that we need to like kick them out, but it's just like you don't get to come back and be like, okay, now we learn that, you know, we got to be tougher. Mentally, we have to be ready for this, step up and play better. It's like, this was it. This was your chance to do it. The next World Cup will be a completely different beast because you'll be a different human being by then. Yeah.

Should we just switch to being a bunker encounter team forever? So the reason I laugh at that is like imagine with this personnel being like, you know what our best bet would be sit in our box and see if they can just handle business for 90 minutes. Yeah. No, I mean, obviously, this group is not prepared for that. But can, like, do we have a pool somewhere of business handlers? You know, like, find whoever the current Walker Zimmerman is and just be like, you're back there just to clear the ball for, you know, that, I mean, I don't know. I think these were our best players.

I think they were put in positions that make sense for them. We need to, yeah, we need, we need. more business handling before we can actually bunker. But we need some kind of, we need to be able to play that way sometimes, I feel like. And I don't think, I don't think we can. Against teams better than Bosnia, right? I mean, we did it against Bosnia. We sat back and absorbed and absorbed and we were, you know, nails.

But, you know, if that's going to be your, if that's going to be what you lean on in a tournament like this, you have to be really good at it. Because even Belgium, who are fading, you might say, they're not Bosnia. Bob Morocco likes to talk about one of the edges that past teams had, because people love to talk about our past teams. Why don't we have the fight and the heart that those past teams had? And a lot of it is because the way the game has changed from when those teams were playing has undone the edge that underdogs can get from just pure. you know, work rate and heart. So if you watch some of those games of those teams that, you know, we really worked our tails off,

it's very much just like relative to the opponent because back then you'd still have, you can watch the 2009 game against Spain. You know, we talk about back when we were just, we could just commit to defending an encounter and that got us a winning against Spain. Like if you watch that game now in the context of what the modern game is, that game against Spain is wide open. Like that is a wide open game of soccer Compared to any game that you would watch

At a high level in 2026 It does not look like what you would call like a bunker and defend We were like both teams Had tons of space to operate going both directions So it's just it's a different thing Teams in this era At the top levels Don't get outworked because every player works incredibly hard all the time

Like in the past three guys at a time might just take breaks when they didn't have the balls. Like, I'm, you know, defendings for ugly people. Like, we're the good soccer players. We, we, when we get the ball, then I get to act. And that just does not exist anymore.

You don't, you don't outwork the top team. Like, Paraguay pulled it off against Germany, and it took everything they had, plus a ton of luck, you know, and just a whimper of a game from Germany. But it's not really an edge that underdogs can just sort of reliably, outwork a team that just doesn't really exist anymore.

Yeah, I mean, I mentioned it earlier, but you watched that Argentina-Egypt game. I watched the second half, at least, and the work rate from Argentina, I mean, outside of Messi, Messi doesn't play defense, obviously, but outside of Messi, the work rate from those guys is just bonkers.

I mean, they are everywhere, and you combine that just absolute religious, zealotry for the sport that they have with every touch is perfect. Every touch is perfect too. So it's like they're working as hard as they possibly can. And every single touch is correct. Yeah, the touch, the decision, the movement off the ball. So I also don't want this to be a cop-out because I usually do in games like this,

where we lose, where the go-to line is like, we just didn't have any fight. I'm usually the first one to be like, kind of nonsense. Like, you're just kind of attributing that because we lost. But in this game, I will say, like, we were mentally soft. Like, the decisions in execution was very much like,

we are scared of what is about to happen. Like, I'm scared that I'm about to lose the ball. I'm scared that, you know, I can't do the thing that we've been doing all tournament anymore. So we just kept losing it in that way. And that's how you, end up with, I mean, what, again, four shots? Like, it was, in that sense, we were really bad.

So this was, this was like a failure to step up and actually, like, commit to being like, we have to play our way through this Belgium team to create chances. We just did not do that. And then the goals, the one, the big one, on the huge blunder. Yeah. I don't know what to tell you there. We were big proponents of Turner. being the starter.

But I think we would have been sort of right accidentally in this case because the thing we like Turner for us is shot stopping and Matt Fries delivered on the one shot that he could really make a difference on early in the game. And the thing we were worried about with Turner would have been a horrendous blunder with his feet. So it's the way Fries got undone here. I don't think necessarily like vindicates people who wanted Turner. No. Yeah. because Turner could Turner is capable of very similar things

yeah I mean maybe Turner would be a little more cautious because he doesn't quite back himself as much out there 30 yards from goal as Freeze did on Monday night yeah yeah it was soft and it was and it was the and it was two players developed overseas Baligan and Tillman who were probably the exceptions. I mean, if there was an exception, it was those two.

I know you don't. I can see you getting uncomfortable with that, too. But, like, I just thought they, Tillman actually did do some decent stuff. Baligan did some decent stuff. They weren't quite as hopeless as Pulisicic and McKinney and Dest. Yeah, I think Freeman, I still think Freeman acquitted himself really well in this game. Yeah.

Yeah, he did. He obviously didn't stand out in any massively positive way, but there was nothing where I was like, you are not up for this. Yeah, he was up for it. I don't know. It just seems like the gap, you know, where you can say where, what are we ranked? Who knows? 20th, something like that, 16th.

You can say, rightly, that we're the 16th ranked team in the world or whatever it is, 20th ranked team, but the gap between 16 and 5 is just massive. But it shouldn't be this big. Again, I still, it's so hard to just be like, that's just who we are.

I stand by like, it didn't have to have gone like this. Even with the personnel, you know, we have and they have, like, I don't know what happened there. If it was a perfect storm of like us getting way out over our skis mentally and then and then sort of having like a shockwave

knock us back down. I mean, I don't know if it's just, you know, a simple fact that if we had played Tim Wea, we win this game easily or large Patrick being hurt and unavailable. But again, I wish we could see what happens if we could play this game again or if we had another chance to

with these guys that again, I don't think should be banished to the, shadow realm. And maybe we will. Maybe come Copa America, we'll get to see this a very similar group, try to redeem themselves. I'm really hopeful that we get that chance. And I hope the guys do too, because, again, I love the lads. And they were so much fun for the past two and a half weeks that it's like heartbreaking

that this was such a whimper of a finale. Yeah. And it's so long until it's so long. we get another four years. I mean, Copa will be great, but it's not the same. At least not for the

larger American public. We need more, I think we need more good players. So I'll just say again, we should all be teaching our little kids how to dribble and volunteering to coach at your local rec. Teach those kids out of dribble.

I desperately want that too, because I just think it's fun to do that stuff and build communities. But man, again, I really want these same guys to just get to show that this isn't them. Because it just, the World Cup sticks with you. They're not going to get the chance, though, Greg. I know. It is. We talked about Rico Clark, right?

Like, you say Rico Clark World Cup, like, you're only thinking about one thing. And it's a brutal, uh, it's, it's, it's a brutal, uh, it. It's so unforgiving sporting failures. Yeah. In this tournament in particular. Yeah. I suppose people will remember. I will remember always the Paraguay game, the Australia game.

The Paraguay game in particular was a lot of fun. But yeah, this is what the tournament's going to be mostly remembered for, unfortunately. And I don't think, I mean, I hate to be the pessimist, but I just don't think, even if we do, really well at the Copa America, it doesn't really redeem that. No, you can't, like, you need a World Cup to redeem a World Cup. Those are the rules.

Yeah, those are the redemption bylaws. Soccer law. So, but it would, for me personally, like, I just want to see that, no, these guys aren't just like, totally, like, spineless. I mean, like, I don't know how else to say it. Yeah, spineless is the word, yeah.

Because I genuinely don't think that. They've fought in games before. They've fought games in this tournament. They fought against England four years ago. They put up a fight against the Netherlands. They handed it to Mexico for like seven straight games in blood and thunder matches. They can do it. It's so inexplicable.

The turtling. And I also am not one who's like, Pocitino just didn't have them ready. I've always kind of thought that that coach, putting all that kind of stuff on the coach, is mainly nonsense. unless Potch somehow actually caused the turtling. I don't really think only a manager's post-game pre-game speech

is what's going to have a team fired up or not. Well, Potch has made the point recently. Like, there's nothing I can say at this point that is going to add to the moment. You know, if you got 70,000 people, 30 plus million people watching on TV on just Fox, and, you know, the entire nation paying attention and you play like that?

I don't know what motivation do you need. It's a, especially Wes, you know. I love Wes. He's my faith. He's probably, I don't know, on aggregate, probably my favorite player not named Gio Rainer and Malik Tillman.

And I just don't understand it. He loves the bright lights. And he just comes out And, yeah, it's weird. I feel like this is, like this is where it has left us. It's sort of just speechless. I guess we'll spare everyone any more speechlessness. Greg, thank you.

Pleasure going through this World Cup cycle with you. And Vince, and Sanjay, and everybody else. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.