Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 109: Netherlands 4, USA 0, and a U17 World Cup postmortem

Episode Date: November 4, 2019

The US U17s’ trip to Brazil was cut short on Saturday night with a 4-0 loss to the Netherlands. That’s it. We’re out, after a 4-1 loss to Senegal and a 0-0 draw with Japan. Scuffed regular Matt Hartman joins me to recap Saturday’s game and try to take something away from the tournament.- 0:30 opening thoughts and lineups- 6:15 scoring summary- 22:15 big picture takeawaysThe Earnie Stewart/Berhalter Brothers regime takes an L on this oneConcacaf qualifying was not good enough preparation for the World Cup for this cycle.Our lack of dangerous wingers made us dull and predictable in the attack, even in transition.Central midfield softness was once again a problem.Getting MLS minutes doesn’t make you a difference maker at the U17 level. Argue about player selection all you want, the player pool wasn’t good enough to make noise in this World Cup group.Most American MLS academies aren’t doing enough to contribute to the youth national team player pool.Don’t give up on the players from this roster because of this tournament. Several talented players here despite the poor showing. 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. The U-S. U-S. U-17's trip to Brazil was cut short on Saturday night with a 4-0 loss to the Netherlands. That's it. We're out of the World Cup after a 4-1 lost to Senegal and a 0-0 draw with Japan. Joining me to recap Saturday's game and try to take something away from the tournament is Matt Hartman. Thanks, man. How are you? I'm slightly discouraged bells. Thankfully, the last several years of American soccer has offered me plenty of preparation for stuff like this. And really, if we're being honest, the Senegal and Japan games were the writing on the wall for this group.

Yeah, I got to say, like, emotionally, and obviously emotion is part of this for us, podcasters. Emotionally, the Senegal game kind of took it out of me. And the rest of the other two games have kind of been, a wash. I didn't really expect that much after the way we played against Senegal. And it turned out to be right on that front. Yeah, I was kind of in the same place as well. Big picture, I take solace from the fact that there is talent on this team. Kobe's got real class. At some point, he'll sign with the club and get to play left back. Odunze and Las are promising goalkeepers. I think Ricardo

Pepe had a bad tournament, but he's still a big prospect. Bello still has a high upside, I think. a pretty raw player as we've seen, but still has a lot of upside. Gio Raina is a talented player at a good club for his development. The thing that bugs me, you know, the thing that bugs me is that these youth national teams play to win. That's why they go to the World Cup, and this team looked miles from being a winning team. They got, of course, one point in one goal in three matches, and it was always going to be a tough group, but I think it's fair to be really, really disappointed with the way our young

Americans played. Not a lot of ideas in the attack, a general lack of quality. quality, lack of sharpness, lack of courage, lack of toughness. We conceded goals just before the half in both losses. I thought our body language was poor, shoulders were dropping. Not only do we not look like a very good soccer team, we look like a collection of players who didn't believe in themselves and lacked competitive edge. Do you disagree with any of that soliloquy?

No, I don't. That's really well said, Bells. I agree with all of it, though I think it should be restated that the usual disclaimer with U-17 results is that they don't matter all too much in the grand scheme of things. The U-15 team that, I mean, the 2015 team that also only managed one point in the group stage of the World Cup produced the two best American players in the world right now in Christian Fulisick and Tyler Adams.

So yeah, it's disappointing that we couldn't give a better account of ourselves, but as you've said, there are still individual talents in the group to be excited about, although I would completely agree with the fact that the team didn't have the quality or the fight to compete in this tournament. And Wiki certainly deserves some blame for the player selection, perhaps the roster selection, but in the end, I do think that we had the least talented roster of players in our group, and it's understandably hard for a group that played with the ball for the vast majority of qualifying to adjust to the considerably higher level of competition at a World Cup.

Yeah, it was night and day, man. It was night and day going from Concorda Kav to... to this group at the World Cup. Let's get into the game, do our normal procedure. The Netherlands came out with a standard 433, as all Dutch teams do. Calvin Ratsy in goal, Stephen Vandersluat,

Kiyana Hoover, Divine Wrench, and Anas Salah, Aden across the back line, Yuri Rageer, and Kenneth Taylor as a deeper central mids, and then attacking front four, really, of Nasi Univar,

Jaden Brof, Mohammed Tabuni and Sanjay Hansen worth noting that eight of the 11 players came from IACs. The other three came from Man City, I think, Liverpool and ASE Aukmar, if I'm not mistaken.

How did the U.S. come out? I'll call it a 433 as well, although in practice the winger spent more time defending on the second line than attacking alongside the quote-unquote striker. But anyways, It was Chaturu, Odunzei in goal, George Bello, Kobe, Hernandez-Fauster, Tevon Gray, and Joe Scali along the back line from left to right.

A central midfield partnership of Adam Saldania and Danny Lava with John Luca Bousseo in front, and a forward line of Andreas Jason on the left wing, Ethan Dobler on the right, and Gio Raina at the 9. You'll be surprised to know that zero of the 11 players came from my ex. The only one who could have come from my ex, Joshua Pinnadath, was not on the roster. We'll get into that briefly later. It's not as big of a deal for us as it is for some people out there. But I guess for me, there were no real surprises here, right? Except Tavon Gray got to play ahead of Nico Carrera.

I think maybe some people would be surprised by that. And then Pappy was hurt. So that's why Raina played the nine. That's a little bit of a surprise that Wiki wouldn't start Alfonso Campo. Chavez at the nine, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, it wasn't a surprising roster based on,

lineup based on how we had been playing the tournament. I was perhaps a little surprised to see Danny Lever get to start again, knowing how he had played in the tournament, how this game was probably going to go. You know, he played 180 minutes until this point as well. So, you know, he's not a player that's still running around

like crazy in the second half of games as is. But yeah, it seems like It's just one of the things that Wiki was steadfast on, you know, alongside something like Kobe staying at that left centerback role. Yeah. Those were his core principles. Kobe at left center back and the Lava Saldaña double pivot. Okay, so the game didn't start off too badly. In the seventh minute, the first big chance for either side was from the U.S.

A Kobe diagonal to Joe Scali at right back on the right wing. Scali brings it down and then hits a lovely head-high cross to Raina who flashes his header wide. He did make pretty good contact but just hit it wide. So we had a chance. We had a chance there. Yeah, it was a great ball to the open man by Kobe who was able to pick out teammates across the field with consistency for most of the tournament. Scali took a little while to settle the ball down, but there wasn't a Dutchman within 10 yards of him at that point. You could say, I mean, as you said, the cross into Raina was well hit, and Geo couldn't turn it on target, though he made good contact with it.

I think it would have required decent placement to beat the keeper, but I think you'd rather Raina ask a question of the goalie from that range instead of trying to flick it back post. Right. Yep. Ninth minute, USA gets another chance after a corner kick won on a little George Bello run and clipped ball into the danger area. that's cleared. Rana's set piece is cleared by a Dutch defender and then slashed at by Adam Saldane at the top of the box whose shot also flashes wide.

Well hit, just couldn't keep it on frame. Yeah, the entire passage of play between the geo-header wide and this moment is what Wiki would have been looking for in this team all tournament. The midfield forces a turnover by trapping a Dutch player on the sideline. The ball moved quickly across the back line from right to left and then eventually ended up at Bello's feet who puts a pass in behind for Jason

who managed to keep to play alive long enough for Bello to eventually find the ball on the attacking third and create danger. A wonderful strike from Saldania after a relatively tame corner by our tallest player on the field. Yeah, it would have been a Golazo. Yeah, right.

Then the Netherlands starts to carve out some chances. This was Nazi Univar had a chance after a really nice Dutch move through the left side of our defense in Univar, who is a player I'm really high on. He's, he looks like something special. He should have passed to Vandersluat, the right back, who was wide open to his right.

Instead, he took a shot, and it just went wide, I think, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it was the best passage of play in the game to this point. A couple of good Dutch passes opened up our defense after our high press failed to get near the ball. Pretty lucky that Univar decided to not lay the ball across the Vandersuit because it would have been a one-on-one with O'Dunzei from a pretty good range. It would have been one-zero, let's be honest. Yeah.

17th minute, Chance USA, long ball from Scali over the top, and Raina wins it well. You know, he shows in this case, I think, what he can do as a number nine. He wins a ball, he bodies a guy off, and he draws a keeper out and dribbles around him and then passes to Jason at the top of the box, who probably should have taken it first time since the goalkeeper was out. But Jason Dilly Dally's, which is kind of what he's been doing the whole tournament, and plays it wide to Bellow once the keeper had returned to the goal mouth, and Bellow hits it at least 10 yards over the goal.

It was way over. It was a field goal. Yeah, this moment kind of summed up Jason's tournament who didn't adapt well to this speed of play at the World Cup, despite being a dominant player at the A. level. He looked more afraid to make a mistake than he looked prepared to make a difference. And in that moment in particular, he definitely needs to take it first time or release it to Bello a second or two earlier. If he doesn't shoot, he's just too indecisive. 18th minute, I mean, I totally agree with that.

18th minute, a chance for the Netherlands, corner kick from the left side from Holland's vantage point and Leva just loses Jaden Broff. I guess he's their number nine? Yeah, he's the closest thing to it. In this moment, Lava just gets caught ball watching. And again, a bit of a microcosm of his tournament just isn't an effective defender at this level. And like I said earlier, it was a questionable selection. He was a questionable selection for this game given the minutes he played before this tournament and how we were going to have to how much we were going to have to defend against the Dutch.

Yeah. I mean, you and I have always, we always have disagreed a little bit about Lava. I've been higher on him than you have for time in Memorial. and we argue about this pretty regularly. But I think there's no doubt. Lava does have physical limitations. Those really came to the four in this tournament, like the speed of the game.

And he looked gassed. I mean, he looked gassed a lot of the time out there. Like he just wasn't fully fit or something. Yeah, it was strange. I'm not exactly sure what it was there, but you know, it's not something that we haven't seen before. This team, you know, gassing, not just Lava, but the whole team gassing.

as games go on. And it definitely doesn't help to have a player like Busio in front of him who, you know, is a decent defender from the 10, but isn't a great defender as a midfielder in general. You know, if this was like a tab coached team or something, you probably would have seen that third midfielder. If you're, if you are playing Lava, it would be a little bit more defensive. Yeah. Or a little more athletic or something, you know. I mean, Leva does a lot of good stuff on the ball when he has time.

but he didn't have a lot of time in this tournament in the anyway we'll talk more about that this next passage of play 19th minute univar has a shot deflected wide 21st minute cobi giveaway and braff run into the box 26 minute tabuni hits one right at odunzee so the half chances for the netherlands start accumulating right in the middle of this of the first half i think it was great that got a piece of the univar shot to knock it off frame it's well done by him the poor giveaway in the 21st minute by Kobe was, you know, a little bit discouraging because, you know, it's the type of thing where when the other 10 players on the team see Kobe giving up a ball like that, you're like, you know, oh, God, if he's, if he's starting to make mistakes.

Yeah, we're sunk. Yeah, exactly. Then, yeah, a bad, there was a bad, lave of turnover upfield in the 23rd minute. The Dutch press really kicked into high gear around the 20th, and we didn't respond well. They established possession in our half, and our wingers needed to drop deep to help defend, and we just weren't able to consistently play out, giving the limited options that we had upfield. The 31st minute speculative Giorina shot from distance was our only really decent chance in the stretch of 20 minutes or so, and Bello looked the only player on the team capable of beating a player off the dribble to beat the press.

Yeah, Bello looked even a little sharper. I thought he was okay against Japan. I thought he looked a little sharper last night than he did against Japan. So there's some small encouragement in his improving form as the tournament went on. In the 42nd minute, the Netherlands scored. And it was just so easy. It was so easy. Sanchez Hansen gets at about 25 yards from goal, skips past.

Andres Jason cuts George Bello and then slots it under the outstretched leg of Saldania for the game's opening goal. It wasn't a complicated thing. Sanchez Hansen's first touch was seven yards away from himself to beat Jason. I don't know. It just rubbed me the wrong way, the way that whole thing unfolded. Yeah, I mean, Jason isn't a great defender. He's decent at pressing players upfield, but defending at the top of the box like he was here, he never looked good in the tournament.

So he got past Jason with ease. And then Bello looks like he's cheating towards defending a potential run to the end line. And I think it's actually Saldania, who is most to blame here, is he was defending inside Bellow in a perfect position to block the shot and just gets caught leaning the wrong way as Hansen moved the ball to his left foot. Perhaps the reason why Saldania would be got subbed off at half. Maybe that's the reason Saldania got subbed off. I mean, he did get megged by the shot.

his body was in position to block it. He just got megged by a shot. Sometimes that happens. But regardless, Wiki needed to change something at halftime and the midfield was as ripe of a place for change as any. Yeah, totally. Bringing Brian K.O. on for Sildangia was a good move,

in my opinion, probably a change that having cut Kio on the field in general is probably a change I would have made from the start of the game. And I think that immediately after halftime, Kio definitely brought some much needed energy to the team. Yeah. Well, so he came on for Saldane, as you mentioned, and then Accomposed Chavez came on for Davilaire at the right wing. That's a sub that I'm glad a change was made, but it really didn't accomplish anything. AOC looked arguably less effective

than Daubalier with the ball at his feet, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I'd probably mean, it's like comparing a zero to a zero. It's not, you know, that not much happened down that side the entire game. Ocampa Chavez has never really looked particularly good on the wing for this team. It's probably worth noting and the few chances he did get on the ball he couldn't do much with. Yeah, he cut inside every time. So we didn't have anybody on either side, really, with Raina playing up top, who could get to the end line and destabilize a defense.

51st minute the Netherlands scores again and this one was this one was really discouraging if the first one was discouraging this one was even more so because it just seemed like a lack of effort across the field from the U.S.

Kenneth Taylor, the Dutch captain and number six picked the ball up in the center circle and I'd say he took 15 yards unopposed with Lava kind of backpedaling in front of him he easily picked out Salah Edine

drifting unmarked down our left flank he had one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi to gather himself at the end line and pick out a pass as Ocampo Chavez kind of gradually worked back toward him and then his driven ball across is kind of dummied by by Brough, I believe, and then met by Hansen for Hansen's second goal. He also was unmarked. So I don't know, there were five defenders in the box.

I don't know what any of them was doing in this situation. And at this point, the game is over. to zero. Yeah, absolutely. Lava did nothing to prevent the pass in. You know, he kind of looked like Michael Bradley in this situation, just waiting for the player to come to him, you know, in that defensive crouch. I don't know where Scali was after the ball found its way to the left wing, which was, you know, again, a theme for Scali since qualifying, you know, just being too far up the field. The ball across makes it through, you know, as you said, a crowd of completely unmarked. players while a bunch of U.S. defenders happened to, you know, be in the area watching as soon as the

ball went in, the energy just left, whatever energy that was left in the team completely disappeared. And the game was really all Dutch from here on out. Yeah. So we have a lot more, well, I guess we don't have that much more in the scoring summary. Let's do it as quickly as possible. The 70th minute goal for the Netherlands, this was on a simple restart deep in the Dutch half, sprayed it out wide to Hans. before the camera could even catch up. Hansen picks it up and he just dribbles straight north down the field.

Jason was unable to catch up to him. I mean, Jason did actually catch up to him in the box, but he cut inside of Jason and then tapped it sideways for Muhammad Tabuni, who was arriving late. Lava caught napping a little bit again and Tabuni slams at home 3-0. Yep, not too much to add here. A few simple passes and runs completely undid our. barely awake defense at this point.

The biggest takeaway from this goal is it started the Wiki yelling at people defending on the left-hand side that that Dutch player, I forget his name is going to cut in for the next 15 minutes. Wiki's just yelling at Scali and Jason that he's going to cut in on that foot. Right, right. Yeah, it was very audible on the broadcast.

Show him outside. Show him outside, Scali. So the U.S. got carved up a few more times down the right flank, and towards the end of the game, the Netherlands was just sort of set up in our half, and they were just playing with us. And I think it's worth mentioning that this was not a Netherlands side brimming with confidence. And not even in the first half were they brimming with confidence

until they sort of realized that they should have been brimming with confidence, considering the opposition they were up against. They had only scored one goal all tournament. And a theme of this tournament is that, Our opponents have grown in confidence the longer they've been on the field with us. And that certainly happened last night. I think the Dutch will have wished they had played us first to give the whole tournament a different cast. Right.

That theme of our opponents having grown in confidence the longer they're on the field with us isn't just the thing that we've seen in the three games of this tournament, right? We saw it in the Mexico game at the end of Concaf qualifying and the Brazil game. friendly before this tournament. This team just seems to run out of gas around halftime, and I really don't know why that is the case. Yeah. I mean, is it a simple fitness issue? I don't know.

I mean, if it is that, that's only one of the problems. Let me be very clear. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, we seem to run out of steam. We gave up a penalty, K.L. Fowled Roth in the box, kind of a late clumsy stab. Odunze made a nice save on that penalty, so that's something positive to take.

from the game? Yeah, I mean, O'Dunze did everything he could have done in this game. I thought he didn't have too much of a chance at any of the goals. After that third goal went in, the team looked completely shell-shocked. They were crawling out of their foxholes to defend and just wasn't happening. The Dutch were passing around the top of our box at Will. And we're just getting completely dominated. Yeah.

The last goal, the final assault and the wound came in the 86th minute. A stray bellow pass, and his intended target was Lava, is picked off by, I think, Keanu Hoover, and played forward to Nalfal Banis, who was a sub, and he's in space, and he cleverly squares it to Jaden Broff, who cuts a dunzee and thrashes at home, 4-0. There was one more thing I want to mention from the game after that. But Keo did have a pretty nice chance, 1v1 with the keeper, where he just decides to dribble straight down the middle of the field. And he beats like five guys. And, you know, it doesn't come to anything, but that was the kind of sort of initiative taking that we didn't have from any of our midfielders or attackers.

And it was nice to see even at the end of a very discouraging night. So I think, you know, Keo showed well in his half of play in this tournament. Yeah, kind of makes you think that he probably should have played more than a half. Yeah. Let's go to the takeaways. I know I'm doing a lot of the talking here, Matt, so I apologize for that. But let me give my first takeaway, and then I'll let you do the second one. So the first one for me is this Ernie Stewart-Berhalter Brothers regime really takes an L on this one, I think.

They've pushed out every youth national team coach that was there when they started, including Tabramos. and this wiki was their guy rafa wiki was their guy he's the only youth national team coach in u.s soccer's employ at the moment and i thought wiki did pretty well in qualifying but i think this undoes a lot of that goodwill they get the worst youth national team showing at a world cup since 2015 yeah absolutely it's going to be hard to justify promoting wiki to you 20 coach off the back of this performance if that is indeed the point plan. Wiki came into the job as a Burrhalter apostle claiming that he believed in the Burhalter style

of play and that it could be implemented at U-17 level. Well, not only was that game plan ineffective, but it was almost half abandoned in favor of defensive structure and counter attacks in this tournament. So it didn't look like the players were set up to succeed, both because of the naivity of Plan A against quality opposition and in their preparedness to embrace the. sit back and counter plan B that was needed. Plan B was pretty ragged, I would say. And not to mention, the new regime,

another thing the new regime has done is apparently they've 86th the Youth National Team Summit idea. So to the extent that the talent in this side is not as good as it needs to be, that's not going to be rectified the way it was for the last U20 cycle, when Richie Ladesma, Chris Richards, Frank Yamaya, they all emerged in this youth national team summit, 153 players from all different ages, all met in Florida in the January after a youth world cup year. And so the new regime doesn't want to do that.

And that seems like a lost opportunity, I guess. Yeah, it's just absolute nonsense to me. I don't understand why having looked at the production, the last one gave us, the last the Youth Summit gave us why anybody would think it wouldn't be a good idea to have another one of these. You know, obviously not the first time I'm going to have a disagreement with the current leadership at U.S. soccer, but I really hope this just isn't one of those things where it's not happening because it wasn't their idea.

I mean, we'll probably never know, but it was Tab's idea and at least Tab was involved in the formation of the idea. And they didn't want to do it. They don't want to do it now. So there you have it. Conclude what you want. Do you want to give a takeaway? Sure.

I think, and we've touched on this leading up to this point, that Conccaf qualifying just wasn't good enough preparation for the World Cup this cycle. You could make an argument that we were the best team in, the best U17 team in Conccaf outside of, you know, that very end of the, maybe not the very end, but the last. last hour or so of the of the final against Mexico and we weren't ready for the World Cup and I think that might be even underselling it a little bit the only Concaf team that has a chance of making it out of the round of 16 is Mexico you know and their their group I'd say is a little easier than us

if not considerably easy given that they have a free three points sitting at the bottom of their group in the Solomon Islands. Right. But yeah, just not, Concaf wasn't good enough to prepare us for this tournament. And I think that that's something that we should probably, we probably should have been ready for in that the style of play that we played to get here throughout Concaf probably wasn't a style of play that we were going to get

away with against the champions of Europe, the champions of Asia and a, talented African side. Very, very, very good African side. Yeah, I don't know what the, I don't know what the solution to that is. I mean, we're sitting in Kanka Kaff, that's not going to change. Mike Wattala in the interview I had with him last week made the point that in the past youth national team coaches were, like the U-16 coach would help the U-17 coach at the World Cup. And then he might get promoted and then he would be, you know, he would be ready for that

sort of change in competition from the Kanka Kav. qualifying tournament to the World Cup. It's worth noting that Wiki doesn't have that experience, didn't have that experience going into this tournament. Who knows if that played a role in this, but it's a possibility. Well, on the bright side bells, at least the current U-16 coach, got the opportunity to learn under Wiki this time, so it's not going to happen next cycle, right? Well, who is the current U-16 coach?

I can't remember. I can't remember either. Okay. That's weird. I get it. You're being sarcastic. There is no U-16. I was like, wait a second.

I didn't think there was one. All right. I'm a little slow. All right. Next takeaway is our lack of, for me at least, is our lack of dangerous wingers made us dull and predictable in the attack, even in transition. This has been a problem for the U-17s of the whole cycle.

We just haven't been able to identify difference makers who can operate from wide. A player like Josh Pinnadath couldn't break into this squad. I was initially okay with that, but now I'm not so sure. I would have liked to see Sehir Arse in the squad, the Moralia player, said that before the roster came out. That probably would have helped. Even though he's not a winger, he's kind of an adult level attacker, which obviously Jason and Yao are not at this point.

So I guess I'm curious your thoughts there. Yeah, I agree on Seger Arse. Even if he wasn't played on the wings, given that, you know, Pepe ended up going down. would have been useful in that spot in hindsight given it doesn't look like wiki was comfortable with playing ocampo chavez up front penadeth uh you know i don't know this is a penadap is a constant um topic of debate at scuffed global headquarters i get that people like his one v one ability uh but you are losing a lot on the defensive side to add a winger that despite his one b one

one v one ability struggles pretty mightily in converting those stepovers to stats yeah yeah i mean i'm not gonna i'm not gonna i'm not gonna kill myself about that i'll i'll say that i guess in the end this team just doesn't have a timiuea or uh ulyanes or you know not even an andrew carleton who was actually was really good in the last u17 world cup and absolutely um and there's no there's no josh sergeant i mean peppy was peppy was peppy was a good play He's a good prospect, but he was not that good in this tournament. Sargent didn't have a great U-17 World Cup, but he still scored a goal, still did some good things. We just didn't have any bite in the final third.

And I think that had a cascading effect on the team. It made us so easy to deal with. They did not have to respect us on the wings at all. So then, you know, I think it applied even more pressure to our midfield, which was not up for that pressure. Which brings me to my next takeaway, if you don't mind. Central midfield softness. this is a issue that's close to your heart, was once again an issue. Lava's not an elite athlete anyway, Danny Lava, but he looked, gasped this whole tournament.

I'm sure Weather played a role, but he just wasn't physically up for the competition. And Saldania struggled as well. And when I say wasn't physically up for the competition, I mean, you know, in Kankakef qualifying, he bossed some games. You know, he had time on the ball, and he was definitely the orchestrator for the U.S., and he played really well. and we asked him, I think we asked a lot of him in this tournament in that way. Yeah.

And the pockets of space were smaller. The closing by opposing midfielder's onto Lava was faster, and he just didn't, he was not able to do any of the stuff he did in qualifying. Yeah, absolutely. And when you're the type of player that is already working in fine margins because of your lack of you know, we said athletic ability. When the game gets even faster, there's a clear jump that you're going to have to make as a player to get to that level

and be able to connect those passes that you were only just able to connect last time or get to the balls that you were only just able to get to last time against the lower level of competition. And, you know, it is a lot to ask of Lava. And it's the reason why I'm not going to be too hard on him coming out of this tournament because it's really hard having seen the athletic and technical capabilities of the other teams in this group. It's hard to see a situation in which Lava ever had a great tournament. Like it was always going to be incredibly tough on him.

And again, remembering he's already one of the younger players on this team. He's barely 16. Yeah. But yet, as getting back to the original point, the lack of central midfield bite is, in my opinion, the biggest single issue that we had in Brazil, and perhaps if we were to take a top-down view of the whole player pool, the biggest problem that we have at every age group kind of right now. Bello and Leva needed to have fantastic tournaments on the ball

to justify the lack of defensive cover that they provide, and neither came particularly close, in my opinion. Busio and Leva, right? Yeah, Buccio and Leva, sorry. Yeah. I don't know what the point of bringing Max Eadetz to this tournament was, We knew going... He didn't play.

Yeah, didn't play. We knew going into the tournament that the midfield could struggle defensively and to cover ground, could struggle to cover ground. And Dietz was never going to solve that problem. If a player isn't part of the plan A, as he clearly wasn't, and doesn't work for plan B, what's the point of bringing him? I think that Kea was horribly underutilized and that a player like John Tolkien would have been a much better last man on the roster,

as he's capable of bringing that gritty defensive presence from midfield without sacrificing too much on passing ability. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't get the Deets, the Deets inclusion either since he wasn't even used. And yeah, the way K.O. played in the second half last night is enough to, I think, make me question why he didn't play more.

Yeah, and also, like you said, midfield softness is an issue. And I don't know if that has something to do with the player profiles that Stewart are in Tony Lepore and, you know, Burrhalter are putting together. But it's a, it's looking like a kind of consistent theme of a problem. Next takeaway for me is getting MLS minutes doesn't make you a difference maker at the U-17 level. And this is weird, you know, we see this with Buccio and Lava. Solid performers in Major League Soccer this year did not make them effective at the U-17 World Cup. Buccio's inability to create chances from what was essentially the 10 position was a real problem for us.

as well, I would say probably the third biggest problem after, you know, some combination of the central midfield softness and lack of wing danger creation. Yeah, I don't want to be too hard on them, but they are, you know, two of the biggest losers coming out of this tournament based on the expectations we had going in. You know, we thought that Bousio on the back of a couple of very solid games and major league soccer might be ready to come into this tournament and put on the kind of performance going both ways, you know, attacking defensive, getting open for teammates that, you know, kind of similar to what Pomacol ended up being able to do for the U-20s.

Right. That's kind of what I was hoping for. Really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you had higher expectations than I did. Perhaps that's true. But I thought that they'd be hyper-confident going down to U-17 level at least, and it totally did not look like that was the case.

If I had to describe them both in a word, their performances at this World Cup, I'd probably to use the word passive. Yeah. Yeah. Passive of passenger. I'm sure they have the same Greek or Latin roots. I don't know. What else you got for a takeaway?

I think that the big takeaway for me from this tournament is that the pool just wasn't good enough to make noise in this World Cup group. We can argue about player selection and whatnot, but I don't think there is any combination of 23 American 17-year-olds that provides a significant improvement on what we saw. You know, again, with the caveat, if we assume that it's Wiki and we're trying to play the same style, the American 2002s and 2003 is at this specific point in time, and again, that is a caveat worth noting, just aren't as good as Senegal's and Japan's and the Netherlands. and our development pipeline just isn't in a place yet where we can rely on it producing 11 World Cup already 17-year-olds out of every age group.

Yeah, I mean, I do want to talk about that a little bit more, but let me just push back a little bit. If we had, if Tab Ramos had coached this team and he had put them in a, you know, sort of like a smash and grab 433 where we weren't, you know, we weren't trying so hard to build out of the back. It was much more pragmatic. Put Kio in there in the midfield just for his athleticism and his sort of take the bull by the horns kind of play. Maybe have a little bit different selection, less focused on system and more on just like let's get results. Let's create some problems for the other team. Do you think we still wouldn't have had a chance of getting out of this group? Yeah, it becomes more complicated at that point.

I do think that we would have a better chance of getting out of the group, but it wouldn't have been pretty. I don't think it would have been getting out of the group situation where we're confident that we're, whether we'd be able to go much further. It would have been, you know, like maybe grab three points against Japan on the counter who's, you know, didn't look to be all that great defensively. We just didn't ask that many questions of them and, you know, a point from one of the other games. But yeah, I do think it's mostly on the player pool. Okay. Why do you think?

Go ahead. Again, this group was, this World Cup group was very good. And that's worth noting that if we're in some of the other groups that I've watched, called a couple of games where I think that we are able to put up more of a fight, but, you know, just not. We just happen to get put in the group of death this time. Yeah. Well, why do you think the development pipeline can't,

produce 11 World Cup ready 17 year olds out of every age group right now. Yeah, we're just not developed enough yet as a soccer country for it to be the case, you know, despite having as many people as we do, the pipelines from U10, U12, whatever level you want to start at to a professional team just aren't developed yet. And I think that's the first thing you have to remember is that a lot of the academies in this country are fundamentally flawed and that they don't end with a chance at professional minutes. And when you start to get to this 16, 17-year-old age group, if you're going to be a game-changing World Cup level player at this level,

you're probably already practicing, at the very least, with professional players. And of the American MLS academies that theoretically fill that void, around a third of them are developmentally useless. And, you know, that's something that I harp on all the time. there are just some MLS teams in this country that look like they could care less about developing players. And that's not great. Right. And that's going to continue to be a problem going forward.

And then particularly with this. A third, that seems very generous to MLS. It is perhaps. I've seen you in black and white say there are only like three or four that actually do care. There are three or four that do a good job. Okay. do a top to bottom good job and then there are teams like you know teams that i'd call like sporting kansas city and the columbus crew that are trying and you know i'll give them credit for

trying but yeah it's just that bottom that bottom third of teams that offer absolutely nothing is what what kind of kills us because you know if you're going to have one of those if you're if you're going to have a professional top first division professional soccer team in the united States and you're offering nothing for the in terms of youth development. You know, it's going to hurt the country as a whole. And, you know, we're talking about teams like Houston, Portland, New England, Portland. I know I just said them, but they're worth mentioning twice. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the good ones worth mentioning probably right now are the Galaxy. I mean, for whatever reason, a lot of it has to do with the amount of talent at their disposal. they continue to produce players who are good, who are good, who are good for the U-17s and the U-20s and for the national team. Yeah, the other three teams I'd put in that same category as them, like the very top tier are FC Dallas, the New York Red Bulls and the Philadelphia Union. I think those are kind of the four best teams in the country.

Maybe you could throw NYCFC into the group, but getting back to why the development pipeline potentially, failing this cycle, the New York Red Bulls and the Philadelphia Union fail to produce a single player for this team, for this World Cup team. And when you have two of the five best academies in the country, two of the five only real academies that you can kind of count on producing players, not produce a player for this group, you suddenly have a very limited pool of players. Though, again, it could be noted that I think John Tolkien of the New York Red Bulls could have easily been on this team. Yeah.

And I think the Seattle Sounders deserve mention for not only trying, but getting some results. They had two players on this roster. One of them was Lava, who didn't have a great tournament. AOC didn't have a great second half last night. But, you know, Josh Atensio is the same ages as Danny Lava and has played as well as Lava. for the Tacoma Defiance over the last a couple months, I think it's fair to say. So, I mean, you know, it's very possible

Atencio rises and joins the U-20 cycle and Lava doesn't, you know. I mean, anything can happen. But Seattle's doing, Seattle's giving it a real effort. I mean, they're giving those kids a lot of minutes in USL and trying to try to get them in the goal. I do appreciate Garfogger-way trying to build something up there like he had built in,

in Realsall Lake, which, which, you know, if they had been able to keep their players, would have had a nice little, a nice little group of players come through that he had recruited to the team while he was there. But yeah, I mean, it's just not enough. The MLS, the MLS academies as a whole just do not offer enough for the U.S. youth national teams to compete consistently on the world stage. And perhaps most troubling is that I don't think the DA has gotten a whole lot more competitive over the course of this cycle, largely due to the different tiering of teams that have been implemented this season. They did promotion relegation without the promotion. Yeah. Promotion for the MLS teams. Right. They relegated a bunch of independent clubs to a second tier.

for in the name of better competition, which is kind of baloney because some of these MLS teams don't even do that well. They haven't even been doing that well in Development Academy. So a lot of... You need to build that hashtag world class D.A.

Bill's. Travis Clark will appreciate that reference. That's a lot of negative stuff. So I want to close on, we give a closing thought that's kind of positive. I don't disagree with any of what you said. But I don't think we should throw out the player pool

in this age group because of this tournament. Like I said earlier, and I see people doing that on the internet. I mean, Kobe Hernandez-Foster looks like a class player. Like, he could be a left-back in one of the big five leagues if he can just get somebody to play him in that position. Absolutely. Presumably he will get that soon.

Gio Raina didn't have a good tournament, but he, you know, he's a very talented player, and he's going to, I think he's going to get every chance to develop and get first team minutes at Dortmund over the next couple of years. And as we know, Dortmund's a good place for young players. I'm not selling any of my Ricardo Pepe stock, despite a poor tournament. He fits the profile of a real number nine, and he's got plenty of time. He's in 03.

He's got plenty of time to figure it out and develop at North Texas. I hope the tournament wasn't so scarring for him that he just immediately decamps for Mexico at the next chance. Don't speak it into reality bells. Yeah, right. I see we've talked about Danny Lava's limitations, but I'll just repeat. He's barely 16. He does some things very well, not giving up on him.

I think he could develop physically over the next two years, and that could make just enough difference where he can be like a good number six. I'm not saying it's going to happen. I'm just saying it's possible. And then finally, Brian K.O., Tevon Gray and Nico Carrera are all still raw. but they have time to develop and it wouldn't be shocked if any of them ended up playing for the national team. So like you said, like you said at the beginning, Christian Pulisick and Tyler Adams were on that 2015 U-17 side. If we get two of our better national team players from this roster, it's probably okay, right?

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think there's a chance we could get two to four, two, four, five national team players from this roster. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I would say two is a very realistic prediction. Right. And it's worth noting again that how good a player is when he is 16 or 17 does not almost in any way equate to how good he's going to be as a fully grown adult. There are a lot of players on this team that I would call subpar players for, the U-17 World Cup level right now, who I believe are very, very good prospects. And, you know, Danny Leva and a player like Brian K.O.

are just two examples of that. Okay. Well, any closing thoughts before we move on from this little chapter of U.S. soccer history? I'm more than ready to put this last month and a week, I guess, of U.S. men's national team games behind me and look forward to us beating Canada in a couple weeks. Such optimism, such optimism. Yeah, so that's coming up in a couple of weeks now, November 15th versus Canada in Orlando. Sergenio Dest will be there, hopefully John Brooks, hopefully Richie Ledesma will be on the roster.

No way, that's going to happen. Funny joke. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thank you so much, Matt. Really appreciate you taking time on your weekend to not only fill out this document with me, but talk with me on the telephone. Not a problem, Bell. I'm glad I could join you. All right, everybody. We'll see you.