Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 103: USA v Cuba review

Episode Date: October 12, 2019

The first Nations League game ever for the USMNT was in D.C. against Cuba. No spoilers, this is our quick review of the match.----Check out our sponsor, www.awaydaysfootball.com, home of the Mystery Kit and Away Days FC. Use the code "Scuffed" to receive a 15 percent discount on your entire order there. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. It was a romp in the nation's capital. USA 7, Cuba Zero. Greg, are we celebrating? Bells, every U.S. men's national team data point is a celebration.

So yes, yes, we are celebrating. We celebrate information around here. That did. That felt like a open training session. that U.S. Venn's national team was generous enough to sell tickets, too. Yeah. Well, I don't know how to feel about it, honestly. I was hoping that talking to you could help me figure out how to feel about it.

It's fun to score six goals in one half. It's fun for West McKinney to get a hat trick in 12 minutes. And it appears nobody left the game injured, so that's good. Yeah, a couple of worries there in real time. Yeah, most notably Sargent going down with, what looked like a foot slash angle ankle injury, I don't know, sometime in the late first half.

Yep. Ariola took a crack, came back from it. Oh, did he ever? That was a crack, wasn't it? Mm-hmm. No, you know, you know what I kind of like in this game too? You know, I mean, obviously you and I are sort of,

sort of obsessive about this stuff. Sort of. In the camps, in the build-up to these games, everyone has their video content now. So U.S. Soccer will release, you know, there are little clips of training. I think there were some clips this week of just like two on zero attacking drills where a coach is serving a ball in. I think Berhalter might have been serving some of the balls in. And so we're watching guys just score and just against helpless goalkeepers.

That's basically what this was for me. It was just sort of 90 minutes of being able to get in free down the wings, serve a ball in and see if we could get somebody to score. It was so easy. I shouldn't say 90 minutes. I should say about 40, 44 minutes. Whenever we scored our sixth goal is about when that ended. Yeah, that's right. It was so easy for us to work the ball down the wing and have somebody in behind and then serve a cross.

And not from a non-dangerous spot either, from like the edge of the 18. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just totally in behind, like an uncontested cross where they'd even drawn out some Sunrex. That was, if I can sort of jump ahead a little, the most surprising thing about this game, was sort of Cuba's ridiculous approach to their setup, where they did not just sit back in a 4, 2, 3, 1 in a very low block and try to absorb our pressure. They actually, like, had an extremely high line of confrontation. What even was their approach?

I don't know, but it just allowed us to, I mean, there was so much room. We could go down the wings, which we did very effectively, into all that space where the ball could go out wide to Reggie Cannon, and he could just slip the ball in two. a 50 yard opening for Jordan Morris to just have free rain. But even, I mean, it was so, we could even hit 60 yard balls down the center over their line that was at midfield and we could run in straight down the center. Yeah.

So, yeah, that was the most surprising thing to me was that Cuba decided that they were going to play an extremely high line, high line of confrontation. Yeah, kind of a soft mid block or something. I don't know. But we were pragmatic. We were pragmatic about how we attacked it. Yeah, that's true. And we shouldn't make too much light of Cuba.

I mean, it is kind of a, it's really kind of a sad situation. I think I saw that a couple, did a couple more players defect from the team today? I saw one today. I don't know if there were more in the week leading up to it. I saw somebody saying that they had a couple people defect at half time. I think that was a bit. I think somebody was doing a good. bit. Okay. All right. That's a bit. All right.

I don't think that's, I don't think that's unprecedented, but I don't think it happened today. Okay. All right. Thank you for the, thank you for correcting me efficiently. So anyway, yeah, they're a program that's not in great shape. And then the second half was pretty sloppy, I thought, from the U.S. We did, we kept just lumping crosses in. We didn't. We scored on a penalty on a cross that was it a handball or was it a foul on josh sergeant i don't you is a handball dude like literally just like are you are you did you catch it no i saw it yeah but jose soccer was saying that was if they called the foul on josh sergeant in the middle of the box that's what oh for real their release yeah okay i i thought it was literally like a dude actually like raised his hand up to

like bat at the ball like oh god i completely forgot that was against the rules he did he did that did happened, but sergeant also took like a jab to the face at a penalty marker. So anyway, there could have been two penalties called on the on the play. And that was our, that was our only goal. Otherwise, I don't know that we really threatened that much in the second half. There was a, there was a notable, notable threat in the waning moments of the game that I think we'll get to. Oh, yeah. That's right.

Uh, I, I can get, I can see where you, uh, come at it as sloppy. I thought it was just really safe. um like uh super conservative which that was the most sort of the most disappointing thing for me i get it i get the idea to just sort of babysit the clock until we uh until the whistle blows because we have another game coming up on uh tuesday so short turnaround but it was like uh i was like oh this is a perfect time to start trying to hit these like balls into tight windows and see if we can really combine and tidy uh tidy little like windows but but also we have guys getting cracked in the ankle so maybe maybe don't do that

That's fair. Both things you said which are in contradiction to each other are both fair. I'm glad we committed to sort of one way or the other. So it seemed like as a team, it was like, okay, guys, job done. Even getting to seven goals is significant because assuming we beat Cuba in the return leg, which I think is a safe assumption, then we essentially have locked up the goal difference against Cuba relative to what Canada did against Cuba. Canada was plus seven after two games,

we're plus seven after one. So whatever our next win against Cuba is, we'll put us ahead of Canada. Right. And let's keep our fingers crossed for a win in the Cayman Islands next month. Did you watching this and just how easy it was for the U.S. in the first half when we were kind of trying, did it make you pine for a youngster?

to be bled in this game, as you suggested a month ago, or actually a month ago, a week ago, and every week previous to a week ago, back to July. Yeah. Yes, yes, it did. I mean, it absolutely did. But it's become clear, and it's sort of bent, we're kind of just being beaten into submission here that. It's not good. Yeah, Burrhalter, at this point, has his group.

He keeps at this point referring it, referring to them as the group. So it seems like he's not interested in sort of exploring around the edges all that much. Literally one new person camped this window in Brendan Aronson. And he did not play. He did not play. Didn't dress. Wasn't in uniform. So,

so no, it just seems like, all right, he's not interested in seeing if, if, say, and Anthony Robinson can give him something that Daniel Lovitz can't. That just doesn't seem to be something Burhalter is curious about.

which I mean that's that's sort of his choice and I just think that he'll have to sort of own those choices as we get into competitive games and if Daniel Lovitz comes through and really performs really well in meaningful games then it'll sort of be a Burrhalter success if Lovitz can't hang at that level that's just something that I think Burrhalter then has to own because that's that's his decision yeah totally I think that's the best way to put it, too, because we've sort of beat that horse a lot. We beat the horse, but the horse is not dead. The horse continues to live. Every window. The Canada game on Tuesday is going to be far more interesting, I think. Just a brief note on that. This is a side with several talented attackers, an L.A.FC starting center mid in Mark Anthony Kaye, who's been really good in Major League Soccer this year.

Alfonso Davies, who's sniffing first team minutes at Bob. iron, I think he's gotten some. He's really, I mean, he's a great three Bundesliga player. Yeah, well, he's a great three Bundesliga player, but he's made his debut in the Bundesliga as well. He has. Yeah, he made it last, he made it last spring, like, after his winter transfer. I think I was checking on it.

He's got, like, 90 minutes of Bundesliga time, and he's got, like, 250 minutes of three Bundesliga time. So he's straddling the first team fence. So there's him, and then there's Jonathan David at Ghent. Belgium. He has 10 goals and five assists already in all competitions this season. He's a very dangerous player. He's only 19. And then they've got a guy at Cavalini who's starting games at Stryker and League Amici's for a kind of bad team, Puebla. So that's that's not nothing that we're up against. And they have everything to play for. And I think, I think Tuesday is a game

that we're going to have to, you know, Burrhalter has a chance to sort of prove himself, you know, after not being able to prove himself against Mexico the last two times. And a chance to sort of start to rebuild national interest in the U.S. men's national team, which is clearly not that high. You couldn't. 12,000 on high, I believe. 13,000? What was the gate?

I don't know what the gate was, but the numbers yesterday were 11,500 tickets sold for the game. Okay. All right. So let's look ahead to Canada. That's the really interesting fixture in this window. And I think it's important. I think it's something that it's going to be an interesting game for us. I think so, too.

I think it's a great test. Again, it's sort of that medium test that we don't get a lot of. We get a lot of the low end in Conccaf competition. We get a lot of these low-end teams, and then we get Mexico. And it's sort of designed to fall that way when we get into tournaments, into Concord Gaff tournaments. But now Canada seems to be a medium country. And so, I mean, I'm not saying that the U.S. is not a medium country.

We are a very medium country at this point. Slightly above medium. But it's good to then have that test where we're presumably not going to be up four, zero in the first nine minutes. Yeah, right. I don't think that is what will happen on Tuesday. So let's get to the scoring summary. That's sort of our main squeeze here.

But first, today's sponsor. Awaydaysfootball.com. Proud to be sponsored by them. It's an independent soccer apparel brand based in Boston, high-quality products. They do several different things if you click around their website, including a new membership club called Away Days FC, which they just announced on Thursday.

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histories that when people ask you about your jersey, which they invariably will, you get to give a nice little spiel about some obscure team in the world. Yeah, you say, I've been rooting for them since I was four. And you tell them everything about the club. No, it's a cool way to like kind of expand the way you think about football. The jerseys you get are typically from lesser known clubs, a second division club in Germany. Like my mother-in-law got the Jan Regensburg kit a few weeks ago. I think I said that on the podcast before.

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You want to take the first one? All right, yes. First goal happened moments after kickoff. Cuba knocked the ball directly to our goalkeeper, where we then built from the back. They were not trying to disorganize the opponent with the ball. As soon as they hit that ball, I was just like, man, I wonder what their coach is like,

just hit it anywhere with their goalkeeper, at least make them play with their backs to the goal directly to Guzon's hands. We proceed to make like three passes in the back, feed it out wide to Reggie Cannon, who had crept high up the right side line. Cuba left a massive gap as they closed down Cannon in the channel behind him. So he just slipped the ball without even having to check if Morris was running. Morris was indeed running. Morris was in a veritable ocean of space. Plenty of time to attack the near post, pick his head up, pick out Weston McKinney.

who made the run directly to the center of the goal, and McKinney had a tap-in. Well, let me add a little color to this because... No, that's right. I literally have already gotten McKenney's goals mixed up. McKinney didn't have a tap-in. This was... This was the one where he took a time to...

The one where... Sergeant Pulisick went past the, like, let the ball run, or it was slightly behind both of them, and they brought all the... Cuban Central Defenders with him. McKinney got to collect it sort of at the far post had to sort of reset it,

set his feet, and then just slipped it in with his left. Yeah, with his right. Is that better? With his right, right. Oh, jeez. I'm a detail, man. Attention to detail.

Well, no, neither of us has any confidence when it comes to scoring summaries anymore because I think I, you got one wrong a few weeks ago, and then I corrected you a week after that, and my correction was incorrect. So, no, he took a touch and then he hit it with his right foot. But like, who cares?

It was a, there was a nice little weave of movement from, you know, I think Poulisix, Pulisic movement towards the near post is what drew the defender away from McKinney, who was drifting to the back post. And I don't know, there was something nice about that. That was 30 seconds in, 30 seconds into the game, and it's 1-0. Yeah. And at that point, it was clear that this was. was not a contest.

It really was. And then a few minutes later in the fifth minute, right at the beginning of the fifth minute, so like 501, Canon. That's technically the six minute. I'm not trying to be the-401, 401. 401. Okay. Canon throw in to Miyazga around the 330 mark, 335.

Miasga to Yule, to Lovitz on the left, to Pulisic, who plays it to Roldon in the middle of the field. Roldon has a little bit of a miscue with it. but then he's able to tap it back to Miyazga. And then from Miyazga to Cannon on the right wing and the same pretty much exact same pattern of play as Morris has sprung down the right wing and whips across into the six for Miasga,

for McKinney to tap it in. He kind of just beat his defender to it and kind of, I don't know, maybe touched it with the bottom of his foot. Right. Slash, maybe Cuba played that ball into the goal. Like I think that's, yeah, I think that's one for the dubious goals panel

because I am not totally convinced that that was McKinney's goal. I hope we give it to him. We'll give it to him. I think he's been giving it because he has a hat trick. And then in the ninth minute, we scored our third goal. This was Cannon, Miazga, to Ream, to Miasga, to Miasga, to Kannon, to Yule, who's now going to start popping up in some of these goals, who makes the key pass here, picks out Sergeant between the lines.

You know, I don't know why Sergeant is in a 10-yard radius circle of space here, but he is, and he sort of receives a ball on the half turn and then taps it to McKinney just as he's tackled. McKinney turns and taps it with his left foot to Morris coming in on the left wing, and Morris tucks it in near post with his left foot. 3-0. Nice. Yes. And in the past the pass from Ewell to Sergeant, I think is another good one. Again, the windows are very big here. The passing windows are very big. But it's still like something to

hit that ball into a target's fee, even with sort of trees of defenders sort of that you're hitting the ball through. That's still better than going safe and just sort of going around the outside of a defense. So it at least bodes well. That we're that we're at least trying to do that sort of thing. Yeah, and this wasn't the only time Ewell did something like that. 13th minute took the goal to make it 4-0. A Ewell diagonal to Morris.

Morris, it's kind of a diagonal. I don't know. Would you call that a diagonal? He plays it a driven ball to the right corner. Morris tracks it down. It is. I mean, it's like a 70-yard ball. This was a ridiculous distance.

But again, it's something where he doesn't have to get it exactly right because Cuba's not very good. So, I mean, you'd say it's overhit, but it's just the easiest thing in the world for Morse to sort of unopposed chase it all the way to the corner flag. Right. He kind of squares up his defender after he tracks it down and plays a nice little scoop pass to Cannon who is underlapping. And then Cannon whips another ball across for McKinney to smash him from short range. This one, I don't think there was any mistake. And it was sort of sergeant missed it on the near post, just barely. McKinney smashed it in, and Pulisic was behind McKinney.

So potentially there could have been three people who scored in that. Right. That's where I was like, okay, this is getting into unopposed finishing drill. So, yeah, McKinney literally steals the goal from Pulisic, who was also there to score. Right. And then we have a quiet period. No goals for 20 minutes, 23 minutes. And the next one comes in the 36th.

A Yule entry pass to McKinney at the top of the box. Not quite as incisive as the one to Sergeant earlier, but still, you know, a somewhat ambitious pass. And then McKinney. The correct pass. I don't even want to call it. It was the correct pass, but it's, it's, we're at the point where it's great to see us hitting the correct pass.

I do think McKinney's, uh, his, his sort of Croif pass to release Morrison behind was was pretty nice. Yeah, that was my favorite moment of the game. Probably favorite or second favorite moment of the game. What's the other competition? I think we missed it in this quiet period. It was the Jackson Yule actual diagonal to McKinney that was probably another like 55, 60-yard diagonal. That McKinney took down with like the on the dead run with the outside of his right foot.

Oh, yeah. It's just in the moment at least it reminded me of Dennis Burr camp A lot of things remind me a Dennis Burr camp when they go really well and look really pretty I'm like ah that's that's such a Dennis Burr camp play But to be on the dead run and to collect it that way That's what it made me think of and then he had like a little Cheeky outside of the foot attempt on goal that was that was parry to safety Here's the thing do you think he intended to strike that on goal

I didn't think so when I first watched it I actually thought maybe it was deflected I I thought he was trying to outside of the foot it to a onrushing. I think it would have been Morris. But that's what I thought to. I thought he was trying to put it across. I didn't think he was trying to score that. The pace was kind of all wrong for that. I mean, you wouldn't try to score that way with the outside of your right foot.

If you're going to try to score with the outside of your right foot, I feel like you try to sneak it in at the near post. Yeah. So it seems like the wrong technique slash trajectory for what ended up happening. Yeah. The dubious goals panel, you know, a subcommittee of the dubious goals panel is the sort of dubious shots on goals panel. And I wonder if that wasn't just an attempted cross that he got all wrong. That would probably be more likely.

But even if it were, I'd applaud the sort of cleverness of that attempt. Sure, sure. Okay. Let's get back to the goal, though. Yeah. It was a good pass from Yule. It was a very clever touch from McKinney to put Morris in behind, and Morris wasn't as clean as we'd like him to be. Went for it low.

Goalkeeper gets a foot to it. Rickshays off the goalkeeper's foot into a backtracking defender, hits the defender in the face, crosses a line for a goal. Exactly. I feel like we need to take all American attackers to chipping school. You know what I mean? Just chip the goalkeeper. The little classic little list, right? The onrushing keeper gets beat.

Yes, I don't know. I mean, yeah, there is definitely an art to that finish. I feel like people will say that Morris is a reliable finisher in those situations. I feel like he's been okay in those situations, but. Well, he got that one wrong and got bailed out. Got bailed out by Dario Ramos's face. And at this point, McKinney has a hat trick and an assist and then an assist on the own goal. So it involves an all that goal.

Yeah, that's the worst part. All that is it takes McKinney's assist away. Yeah. That's the worst part. There really is no worst part. It's just it's the fifth goal in a six goal half. 40th minute, Josh Sergeant finally got his goal. He had a miss in there where he had a, there was actually had a couple misses.

He had the one where he, it was a free kick from Pulisik from the right side, free header for Sergeant, and he just glanced it wide. But in this case, another Yule diagonal to Morris. Morris runs onto it and taps it back to Sergeant who meets it at about to 12 yard mark and curls it in near post. Tidy finish, left foot, 6-0. Yeah, I like this one. I like the idea from Morris. I like when Morris shows off sort of that good awareness. And this was a good awareness play from Morris because it'd be easy to attack the goal yourself there.

But I think laying it off was absolutely the correct play. And I'm always after what's optimal. So in that case, setting up Sergeant for the chance to pick out exactly where we wanted to put his finish was exactly the right play from Jordan Morris. Yeah, agreed. And so Morris had two assists and a goal, right, on the night, something like that. Well, did he actually get the goal or was it? Oh, yeah, he had the goal plus force the own goal, right? Yeah, he forced the own goal.

He had the left-footed goal for the third. That was definitely a goal. And he got the assist on the first one. Yeah, he absolutely ran riot behind that high Cuba back line. And then 62nd minute came on a penalty goal. came on a penalty for Christian Pulisic. This is the one we discussed kind of at length earlier, earlier, where there was maybe two fouls,

and Pulisic just hit it right down the middle as the goalkeeper dove to the goalkeepers left, 7-0. I would say the second half beyond that wasn't great. We already sort of discussed that. A lot of looked like the LA Galaxy out there, just hitting crosses. But there was no Zlaton in the middle. As much as we love Josh Sargent, he's no Zlatan.

Yeah, which actually turns them into the Portland Timbers, I believe, when you're hitting crosses to anyone who's not Slatan. Yes, yes, there you go. So many MLS analogies come to mind. So takeaways. Do you have any takeaways? I'm going to like preemptively undermine your takeaways bells and say, like, I actually have more questions for people whose opinions of players changed

after this game. I feel like if you had an opinion of a player in this game, I don't even think you can really use this game to confirm that opinion. Like, you can't have any movement in any direction on any players. Well, okay. So let me start with the one that's probably going to annoy you the most. All right. I thought, you know, Sergeant had the chance he missed that I mentioned. And then the one we haven't talked about yet, which was that when he skied it at the end, one v1 with the keeper. And then in between the two, he had a chance with his right foot in a kind of a nice attack. I can't remember who passed it to him, but with his right foot where he had like he had like

the whole goal to shoot at and he shot it through the legs of the defender right in front of him right at the keeper. So I would say three, three chances with a combined XG of, I don't know, I'm bad at estimating that, but one point five. That last chance was real bad. Yeah, apparently he was asked what happened on that and he said, I missed. That's about right. I mean, he sized the whole thing up.

He had to also know that Tyler Boyd was semi-free, not necessarily all the way free, but semi-free. On the left side of the 18, chose to just go for straight power and smashed it pretty well over. He missed. Yeah, he missed big time on that. And I think the header miss was, you know, those headers aren't easy, but it would be sure would be nice if he could put that on frame. If only to silence the, is there a prose artist crowd? I don't think there is. But the sergeant doubters.

And I don't know that he did that. His one finish was nice. And I think he had an okay game otherwise. But he didn't have a fantastic game. even within the constraints of, you know, of the context, which is, this is a bad Cuba team and the second half was a wash. Yeah, I mean, it's really, I really don't have any, I really can't give you anything on the spells. You disagree.

You think there's just nothing to learn from it from the way Sergeant played. Yes, that's basically what I'd say, because I don't think that he had a shocker, like for a guy to go up and, and have that glancing header go just wide. Like that happens. That last miss is a, is a pretty shocking miss. That's not great. But it's just,

it's sort of like the outdoor versus Mexico and the Gold Cup final. Like, you're going to miss some of those. Like, yeah. You should, you should do better, I guess you should say. But certainly on the header,

I'm not, I'm not really too concerned. He goes up well. He gets sort of all of the technique right. And it misses by a couple of feet. Okay. All right. So that's what we have to say about Sergeant.

I guess the only other thing that I had as a takeaway was Jackson Ewell continues to be intriguing. I thought he was involved in the buildup to several goals, as you would hope a holding midfielder would be in a game like this. I thought he looked pretty good. Yes. I liked, again, just the fact that we have more evidence that we have to stop saying that Michael Bradley and Will Trapper. are the only guys who could like who else could who else can you use you just have to use will trap is the only guy who can hit that diagonal ball and it's like you guys basically anybody can hit that diagonal ball if you ask them to uh you will was hitting it all night i know again it's cuba and there's a lot of you there's a lot of room to hit that ball into but that's sort of what burr halter's trying to set up is is a system where you have a lot of ball a lot of space to pick out that diagonal ball you will show he's got that in his locker yep Yeah, I think it's also might, at least it might say something that Ewell got this game and Will Trap was a healthy scratch, not in uniform. I mean, it could all disappear against Canada if Bradley starts and traps the backup and Ewell's not in uniform.

But it's possible to read it as between Uruguay. Yeah, between Uruguay in this game, like this is maybe somebody sort of phasing trap out. It's possible. Yeah, I mean, I think that's probably the most likely reading of it. Not that I don't know that trap's ever going to get phased out. But I think the most plausible reading is that is that Ewell has surpassed trap. I'm going to be real careful there because this could just be another, this was Ewell's chance to surpass trap. And for all we know, Burrhalter all great amount and say, ah, not quite there yet, Jackson.

and, you know, spend some time with you 23s. I suppose, yeah. Best to be careful on that stuff. I've been learning. I've been learning to be very careful. The other takeaway I thought was, I thought Boyd was, again, unimpressive. I thought Ariola had kind of a rough game.

Could have a lot to do with the way the game was being played in the second half, as we discussed earlier. But still, they didn't offer much in this game. And I thought, you know, Roldon had a couple messy moments, but he was, you know,

he was more or less fine, in my opinion. Roldon felt to me like the, like the epitome of being, of playing safe. I felt like every, every pass he made was just sort of like shifting it over to Cannon

eight yards away. Yeah. Like, it didn't feel like he was trying to hit any of those balls into sergeant's feet or into anybody who was ahead of him into their feet. Maybe, maybe I'm wrong

and I'll have to, do a take a look at his whole body of passing but you got to watch this game three more time I won't I'm not gonna I'm not gonna do I'm actually not gonna follow up on that Roldon body of passing but it just seemed like every time he got it he'd take a little bit longer than he should and then he'd sort of just move it out wide to Reggie Cannon yeah that squares with my general impression too uh anything we got anything else anything else to say about this So it's again, for me, it's just going to be interesting to see if any of these sort of performances translate to Canada or sort of all of the Canada lineup selections were already sort of picked. And, you know, if any of this really mattered.

Yeah. Well, I, so I'm going to, I'm going to guess that we're going to see Zardis and Bradley starting against Canada. And then, but the same winger as we had today, Pulisic and Morris. And then McKenny will be kind of the 10. The interesting question is, who's going to be the other midfielder? Is it going to be legit? Is it going to be rolled on? Along with Bradley and McKenny, I think that's the part I don't quite know.

And then, you know, the backline may be the same as today. It may be different. Who knows? Yeah, the backline, I feel like everyone's, Everyone could be a toss-up, but Tim Ream. And Tim Ream's toss-up could be whether he's the left-back or the centerback. But we aren't really, we're not really playing a stay-at-home left-back, or we haven't been the last two or three games.

So it seems like Ream has probably shifted more to a full-time centerback. It does seem that way. And it does kind of boggle my mind that Daniel Lovitz is the guy. And that's where it gets into, like, if Burrhalter-Wur, interested in using Nick Lima at left back like this could have been a chance to get him some minutes get him get him sort of in with next to Ream for a game so they can get their communication sorted get comfortable I got I kind of assuming that Lima's not like we're all kind of hoping Lima adds to the left back depth chart but it doesn't feel like that's going to happen I don't

think so no it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a one-man show with love it's right now yet Lindvers can it'll be an interesting one yeah recalling that interesting I think that's, I'm curious, like, Yedlin has played a little bit of right back for Burrhalter, I think, back in March. Yeah, but I think it's going to be Cannon again. That'd be my guess. Canon didn't, he didn't hurt himself today. No. And Yedlin's only played, what, like, one game in the last five months?

Yeah, he started against Manchester United last weekend. He came on as a sub the weekend before for like 15-minute cameo. Yeah. I guess it'd be easy to leave Yedlin out without having to sort of say cannons ahead of you. Like it could just be, we're just going to work you back gently. Yeah. And that seems like it's not out of the realm of possibility just based on the way Yedlin and Berthur alter have both talked in the last few days, too. Let's wrap it up.

All right. All right. We'll come back for Canada. We'll see, yeah, we'll see you guys. we'll be in your ear holes late Tuesday, early Wednesday morning. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.