Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 116: Taking stock of the year for the USMNT

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

We wrap up the year — what went right, what went wrong, what went reasonably ok. Actually a lot of good stuff happened! Mostly with the player pool. 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. Hello, everyone, and thanks for tuning in. This might be our last episode of the year. We don't know for sure, but since that may be the case, we're going to run down the year that was for the U.S. men's national team

and talk about what went right and what went wrong and sort of look ahead to 2020. Greg, are you ready? Ready as ever bells. All right. I feel like we talk about. We've talked about a lot of this stuff already. So we're not going to make this a long episode.

We're just going to sort of quickly move through it because we, I don't know, I sort of feel like a broken record. I think you sort of feel like a broken record. Is that fair to say? I think a lot of it stems from the fact that it felt like a lot of these sort of windows for the U.S. national team over 2019 were just sort of the same window repeated over and over again. So, I mean, a lot of our takeaways were the same from month to month.

Right. And then there hasn't been, there hasn't been a ton of new development in sort of U.S. men's national team news over the last couple weeks to talk about. So here we are recapping the year, in some ways, rehashing what we have said already. So first of all, what's the number one thing that went right in your opinion, Greg? Biggest positive of the year in my mind, no-brainer is Serginio Dess's choice to play for the United States. Yep, totally.

I totally agree. I think, you know, a couple of close seconds in my opinion in terms of the development of players. But yeah, to have a right back like that, playing Champions League minutes, decide to play for the U.S. and get cap-tied. Big deal. Changes our player pool dramatically, I think. Yeah, that's the big celebration.

I would say number two is, and this seems like a long time ago, now, but it did happen in 2019. Tyler Adams made a better transition from MLS to the Bundesliga than I think anyone, perhaps a couple of people could be excluded from that, than anyone thought he would. I'll go back, Bells. I will go back to our January 2019 pre-Bundas League recording. I'm pretty sure, pretty sure. I was adamant that Tyler Adams was actually going to transition a lot smoother than people were expecting.

I was definitely more skeptical than you were. I remember that much. I don't remember exactly what you said, but we can reach into the archives at some point. But, you know, I mean, he did surprise a lot of people. Maybe not you, but he surprised a lot of people by becoming pretty much an integral part of one of the top four teams in Germany.

And he since has been injured, and that's not good, but he showed that he can do it. And that's a pretty big deal to have a number six who can play at that level. And whether it was a big surprise or not, the fact of the matter is he was absolutely not a lock to do what he did. So to have it play out that way, massive. Massive for him, massive for sort of what it says about his ability to play at the level and massive for what we still expect he will bring to the United States national team. He's about two weeks out.

Is that right? Two weeks from two weeks. He is back in supposedly back in training. He's a question mark to play before the end of the year, according to RB. Leipzig's Twitter account. Number three, what's number three for you? Number three, which is probably a 2A, is Christian Pool of Six newest, most recent meteoric rise within the ranks at Chelsea. Yeah. He exceeded my expectations dramatically. Six goals, six assists, and man-of-the-match performance midweek this past week against Leal and Champions League against Chelsea advanced to the knockout

rounds, he does look, he looks like a more confident, a more dangerous player than he did for Dortmund last year. Would you say that's fair? I do. And this, I was definitely not, I didn't see this one coming either. I kind of expected Pulisic to make sort of a lateral move soccer-wise, where he'd go from sort of being a role player with Dortmund, a contributing role player, but a role player nonetheless to sort of a similar role at Chelsea with a bigger paycheck. But it has not come out that way in the first third of the season. No, he's not a role player. He's a key player.

He's not Eden Hezard, but... But maybe he is? Yeah, right. I mean, he's got to do it for six more years to be in that ballpark. But I mean, like, if you're just looking at his current performance, maybe he is currently doing that. Right. Maybe.

I mean, the comparison is not ridiculous, I guess, at this point. Whereas I think it was formal. months ago. All right. Number four, number four for us. We don't even have these numbered. I'm just throwing numbers on the top, on the front of them. This is the fourth item.

Right. Yeah, why don't you take the, why don't you take the next one, Greg? All right. So the sort of fourth thing in our list of what went right was the U20 World Cup. And for me, the, uh, the next sort of five months following. Maybe only Serginio Dest has fully sort of completely made it, if you want to say he's made it by start being a starter at Iax. Yeah. But there are so many guys from that team that we were excited about going into the tournament.

We might have actually come out with more names that we were really excited about than we went in with. And to a man, like almost none of them have completely fizzled out, which it wouldn't have shocked us if a lot of them had fizzled out. But we can kind of run through real quick. I kind of have them listed sort of an order of who was most impressive in the tournament, which you know, you can you can quibble with that all you want. I won't. I won't quibble with it. But at the time, I feel like this is who we're like, whoa, these guys, you know, we had a lot of hope for these guys going in.

A lot of them showed really well the tournament. I'll start with Chris Richards. Excellent World Cup tournament. And some people might be a little down on his progress since then. but the only way I feel like he could have progressed more is to actually be in the Bayern Munich lineup or in their 18, which is a really, really high bar to clear. Yeah, too high. So the fact that he's not necessarily in that lineup doesn't mean that he's stalled or plateaued.

So for me, Chris Richards, still in a very good place after a very good U20 World Cup tournament. Yeah. That place being the three Bundesliga for Byron's reserves. Right. And I feel like a broken record here, but I think the three league is, a little bit underrated by your average American fan. The crowds are hostile. The games are very serious, and I think he's getting a ton of good reps.

The only thing, you know, the only thing that you could maybe have asked from Richards was to be loaned out to a two Bundesliga club or something like that, which didn't happen. So I guess, you know, there may be some who would say, well, sure, he's not going to play for Bayern Munich, but maybe he could have gone and played for a better team than the third division in Germany. Right. And I mean, you could even say, you know, best case, he could have been loaned out to another Bundesliga team lower in the table. That's definitely fair. So maybe, but also there are guys from that reserve team that have been called up to Munich's first team to play centerback. So it's not like Munich don't see those players as guys they can draw on. Right. And I would. They're not just still in the three Bundes League until they can be sold off necessarily. Right. Davies split his time between the two sides for quite a while. And in fairness, Richards is not splitting his time. He spends all his time with Byron 2. And there are a couple

others. There's that French midfielder whose name I can't remember at the moment, quiesant. And then Xerxes made his debut in Champions League. He's a striker, kind of a messy striker, a messy striker for Byron 2. Anyway, like he said, there's several like that. And I would say if Richards were totally dominating in three-lega, then I guess I would feel a little worse about him being there. But he's performing well, but he doesn't look like he's way above the level. And that's another thing that sort of speaks, I think, to the strength of the league. He did look like he was above the level for the U-20s, maybe not above the level, but he was the best player for the U.S. And he's playing in three-lega. It seems like it's a good challenge for him at the time,

at the moment. So there you go. Definitely not in a position where you're like, oh, no, he stalled like let's write him off so richard's in good place uh next guy on my list of u20s is tim waya now waya obviously has uh run into a bit of an obstacle here with his hamstring injury at lill but the fact that following the tournament he made a 10 million dollar move from psg to lill i think is a good thing i think it shows that somebody raised him pretty highly uh he was playing through their preseason i believe started their first uh league match uh maybe he came off the bench. In any event, it seemed to be in the plans, had it, was going to have his opportunity to play his way through set back by injury. His coach said a week ago or so,

he's going to be back after the winter break, and we expect his, the second six months of the season to make up for the first six months, which, in which, of course, he didn't play. So I think he's still in the plans. Well, I mean, we'll just have to see on that one. You know how I feel about players coming back from long injuries. Talk to me after their fourth team. Yeah, you're very pessimistic. Next one is Paxon Pommackal. I would say, you know, he used the U-20 World Cup as a real sort of momentum booster,

and he was one of the better players in Major League Soccer, better Americans in Major League Soccer for a big part of the summer. And then he was also slowed down by injury, had an inductor injury. And I think that did affect his performance towards the end of the season. And he came on late in that playoff game against Seattle for Dallas and almost helped them get a win over the eventual champions and played really well in that game. And then he had surgery, and we expect, I mean, again,

nothing to say that his momentum is less than it was at the U-20 World Cup. It's probably greater. He signed a big contract, $650,000 a year with Dallas. Hopefully that doesn't lock him into MLS for the next 10 years. But it's a big sign of that franchise's confidence. in him. And so here we go. Come on, Paxton. Next guy, Alex Mendez, had some real, like, real eye-popping moments in the World Cup. Some, like, ridiculous sequences where he set guys up with 45-yard through balls,

through a maze of defenders. Definitely caught a lot of people's eye, potentially used that sort of performance to Kiamu from Wolfsburg to, I'm sorry, from Freiburg to IACs. So again, I would say that's a positive outcome following the 20 World Cup. Hasn't broken through for Young IACs too much. A lot of appearances off the bench. But Young IACs is basically like a

powerhouse reserve team. There's such a logjam of talent throughout the entire IAC club. So much talent. You know, I kind of compared to a guy we'll get to you later, which is Richie Ledesma. La Desma at the beginning of the young PSV season was behind Hatterin,

who is still playing for Young PSV. Right. Real talent for Hattern's dual national Dutch, something else, right? Moroccan. Moroccan. Yeah. So anyway, Ledesma behind a Hattern, but because PSV isn't as strong top to bottom, Hattern makes the jump to PSV's first team, ends up starting for them.

And that opens the door for Ledma to become the starter at PSV. No such luck for Mendez at Young Iax. They have, like, elite talents playing for their reserve team that might be starting in a lot of other. eridivis side. So Mendes a little bit behind and a bit of a traffic jam. So we don't know for sure sort of what his quality is. He gets limited opportunities to showcase it. But he's not, he's not off the radar entirely. I would say he's, he's, I'm still happier with where he is now compared to where he was at Freiburg 12 months ago. Yeah, well, 12 months ago, he was still

officially a, you know, L-A-G-2 player. LAPS-L-A-G-2 player. So yeah, that's a ton of progress. And he's only been at IACs for three months, four months now. It hasn't been that long. He does have his work cut out for him, but I think there's going to be plenty of room for patients there and to see him figure it out. So Gino Dest was the other, was the next name on the list from the U20. Did you have something else to say about Mendez? No, I don't know. That's, but just, yeah, just Mendez in a healthy spot for what he's trying to do. Absolutely. Dest, we already discussed him. You know, his choice to play for the USA was huge. But, you know, seven months ago, he was, was a he was a U-20 player for the U.S.

and he was a young Iax player. So his progression has been meteoric. And now he doesn't start every game for IACs, but he almost always comes off the bench if he doesn't start. And remember, so Gino-Dest was very good in the U-20 World Cup, but he was not necessarily our best player at the U-20 World Cup, which is, again, all sort of that building those reasons to be optimistic about this group. Right.

One of the guys who I think emerged a lot higher than he went into that U-20 World Cup was Chris Gloucester. He had a very good performance, and then he parlayed that into a move to PSV from Hanover. Hanover's kind of a disaster club, so I'm glad he got out of there. Into that more later. He transitioned pretty quickly into young PSVs lineup until I think he's had a bit of an injury setback over the last month or so. Right.

I think he's coming, well, did I see that he's coming back soon? I'm not sure. But he probably jumps right back into that lineup as soon as he gets healthy. His teammate there is Richie Ledesma, who we've talked about a lot on this podcast. He's the guaranteed number 10 for young PSV. He hasn't made a debut for PSV's first team yet. But it doesn't feel too far away. I don't know.

What's the score in their game right now? Is it 1-0 Doordrecht? I'm not sure. Of no young PSV who are bottom four of the table in the Airstad de Visi. I was just checking this because young Iax is about to be finished in a promotion spot. They're not allowed to be promoted as a reserve team of a senior side. Young PSV close to a relegation spot. There actually is no relegation this year between the Airsta DeVisi and the Tweety DeVisi,

third division. So is that what it is? I'm sure that's not how you pronounce. but we'll take it. So Young PSV are literally just sort of playing with house money. They can throw any kid they want to in there for development and results be damned. Yeah, and it's a development team. They play, we said this last week.

They play soccer, try to break through lines. They try to possess the ball. Ledesma is roaming in the middle of the field, receiving the ball between the lines and trying to make stuff happen. He's getting a lot of good reps at the stuff that he needs to get reps at. seems like a healthy spot for him. Right. And remember, Desma barely featured in the U20 World Cup because he had just come back from a long injury layoff,

a long transfer layoff followed by a long injury layoff. Yeah, 12 months ago, we weren't even 100% sure he was going to PSV. I mean, that was the strong rumor, but it was never made official. He had to pass a physical. He had a weird ankle injury that he had suffered a few months earlier. So here we are. He is, you know, right there.

behind the first team at PSV, that's progress. You know, 16 months ago, he was a, he was a lapsed RSL Academy player. So, eat it. Next guy, Ullianez, has, he again had, like, limited role in the U20 World Cup, but every time he did come on the field, the guy was dangerous. Like, he had an incredible danger per 90 ratio if you were to, if you were to, if you were to extrapolated out. So Ulyanis has turned that into a incredible tear through the U-19 Bundesliga.

And time will tell if that parley is into a call-up to the senior team over the winter break. Yeah, with all with the last three, Gloucester, Ledesma, and Uli, I think the big question is, are they going to be in winter training with the first team and what's going to happen there? I think that's kind of a crucial moment for all three of them. Gloucester himself mentioned that in a recent interview with some British podcast, I think. Next up, Brandon Cervagna, did you think he raised his stock in the U20 World Cup, at least in your eyes? So not necessarily, no. Like, I didn't think he was like an incredible performer in the U20 World Cup.

But it's sort of what he's done since then. I mean, he started in the game against France. So he was a big part of the win against France. There were questions during the World Cup about the fact that he was starting over his FC Dallas teammate, Edwin Serio, who was at that point ahead of him in the club depth chart. But since the U20 World Cup, Servania has jumped ahead of Serio and became more of a factor for FC Dallas. Right. And, yeah, I think he played well down the stretch.

I'm not quite as impressed with him as some other people are, like Matt Doyle. or I mean, who else is really impressed with Servania besides. I'm not sure who else was fully aboard the Servania hype train. But in any event, we've got, that's nine guys we just listed who, even though some of them, it might feel like they're, they're sort of stalling out because I haven't broken through to a first team. I feel like any of those guys wouldn't be out of place in a lot of MLS starting 11s, which is sort of my go-to at this point for whether or not their level of play is good enough for the national. team. Right. And yeah, any one of those guys, I think, could be, could jump into a MLS roster,

probably an MLS 11. Now, the last name on here is Sebastian Soto. He's the one who you could argue has stalled, right? Yeah. And he actually had a really impressive tournament for the U-20s. It was, it was kind of one where he may have actually, uh, the quality of his tournament may have played into the fact that he's stalling right now. He's one where we think maybe he overplayed his hand trying to negotiate a contract using his U-20 World Cup as leverage. And Hanover might be sort of making an example of him. That's just speculation. It's also possible that he just can't compete at the two Bundesliga level.

Yeah, Hanover not doing too well in that league either, and he's not getting any minutes. Who knows? Who knows? We assume he'll move after his contract is up, and I'm not exactly sure when that is, but I don't think it's too far out. and he'll get another run at things. On top of that, what else do we have here? Well, we've got one Giovanni Raina,

who in the last two weeks has dressed for the Dortmund first team for a Bundesliga game, and then lit up a UEFA Youth Champions League match. So a pretty good 10 days for Gio Raina. Yeah, two goals, two assists and a win for the BVBU19s. he's he seems very clearly to be you know if not the next young young player to break through the next one or two or three and um yeah sky's the limit very talented player next up is miles robinson who sort of came out of nowhere in 2019 he was i don't know if he even played for atlanta united two did he in 2018 but he wasn't playing for atlanta united one and then he became a uh guaranteed

he started for them, started all season. Michael Parker said he's the best 1v1 defender he's ever seen. And then he got his first call up. So it's a good, solid young centerback prospect who also has been capped and looked pretty good for the national team already that we weren't even really thinking about 12 months ago. Yep, yep, sort of in the same boat, a little older Jackson Yule. I think people might be jumping the gun a little bit when they're talking about Jackson Yule being the new number, the new number one, number six on the depth chart.

And I don't mean that because maybe he has passed Michael Bradley or he's in the same sort of discussion as Michael Bradley. I just think it's kind of crazy that we're even trying to reach really firm conclusions at this point with so much turnover and so much sort of unknown uncertainty about these players. What, Ewell, has four caps, five caps at this point. But he's, you know, that's a lot of them against Cuba. Right. It goes a long way for me that he brought

stability to that midfield against Canada. Obviously he didn't do that single-handedly. There were some tactical decisions that helped, which we will talk about. But that was a must-win game, and he stepped in and helped us get the win that we needed. Yeah, don't get me wrong. I'm excited that he's been brought into the fold and that he's been holding his own the way he has. I think it just, again, showcases sort of how much fuzziness there is about our current. player pool even after a year of Greg Burrholder.

Yeah. Well, he's had a, Yule has had a really good year. He, uh, he, he, he, he kind of learned how to play defense from Matias Almeida. And, uh, he's translated that into, uh, at least being, you know, in the top 30 of the national team and probably, you know, if, if Burrhalter had to take a, a squad of 23 to the World Cup tomorrow, I would think Yule would be on that squad. Yeah. Absolutely. Three other guys who would be on that squad who maybe we weren't sure we're going to be in this list January this year.

Jordan Morris, Aaron Long, Reggie Cannon. Sort of a little bit more established than these guys who are true sort of youth prospects at the moment. But none of them sure things 10 months ago, 12 months ago. Yeah, 12 months ago, even seven months ago, I was really down on Jordan Morris. And I'm still skeptical of him, but he obviously delivers. he's obviously dangerous enough to be in the 23 right now and probably in the 11, at least until Tim Wea gets healthy. Long, you know, long probably the most established of the three at this point last year,

but he, I think he separated himself as this, as the centerback partner for John Brooks. We discussed that last week. Reggie Cannon had kind of an up and down for six months of the year. You know, he was, he didn't understand the system when he was called into January camp. and I think he got sent home early. And then he was sort of last second edition to the Gold Cup roster. Burrhalter sort of did away with the inverted right back system at the Gold Cup. And Cannon emerged as the sort of top right back in that camp and played really well.

And he's played really well every chance he's gotten since. Yeah, he's looked good for the national league the whole time. Just so you don't get fact checked too hard bells. Cannon wasn't sent home early in January. He just didn't play a minute. He sat on the bench for both friendlies while Nick Lima. held the entire right back responsibility. Okay.

Yeah, isn't that weird? That's so weird, really. But for both Morris and Long, at least, I'd say what we're kind of seeing, I think, is, you know, I think they deserve their current place in the discussion where people are high on Morris, high on Long. And I'm high on them in the sense that I think they both sort of have low ceilings but high floors. Is that, is that okay to say? I think so, yeah. And I think that's still a good thing. Like if we can get a bunch more,

a bunch more Aaron Longs and Jordan Morris's to at least have to call on for depth, then I think we're doing well as sort of some of these other lottery tickets. We wait to see if any of them hit full jackpots. Right. Right, right. We'll take these $100,000 lottery ticket wins with Morrison Long and just wait for the big one to hit. Yeah, Powerball. The next name on the list of sort of also good developments in the player pool, Dwayne Holmes, who 12 months ago was just breaking into that Darby County team.

He had been playing in League One for a while, and he's become a fixture in that lineup. They're a good, solid championship side, and he's an option for Burrhalter in the midfield. No indications that Burrhalter will exercise that option, but he's there. Yeah, you wonder if Holmes will be the sort of Eric Lehigh from the Yergen-Klemsman area where he seemed like you would solve a lot of problems for us, never really given a runout. I have a small category here of things that went reasonably well. The first one is just way as $10 million move and then is injury. So it's great. The move was great and the injury was not great.

The second one is I think the one we'll probably talk about the most. Burrhalter, who we have criticized all year pretty much for a variety of things, at long last, at the end of the year, in the last international window, he did show some tactical flexibility, and he did two things. He changed the defensive shape that we played with against Canada. And I don't know if it was instructions or if it was a result of the defensive shape, but it gave us the freedom to score goals in transition or create danger in transition. and now's the point in the pockets where I'm going to turn it over to you and let you talk for as long as you'd like.

So it's one of those things where he gets the credit for making the change, but you still have to almost hold it against him that it took him 17 games to do it. You know, we sort of moaned a lot about its player selection in the fact that, you know, even Burrhalter would complain sometimes. I remember half time of games, maybe even as early as March, January, where he was saying the guys needed to, be braver and going forward. And it's like, guy, you're picking all these safe players and putting them in your 11. And then putting them in a soft 4-4-2 block. Yeah, right. So what do you think is going to be the outcome here?

So finally against Canada, he starts a Sebastian Leget, who's a player who wants to drive the game forward. Lo and behold, within 40 seconds, Legit, in a transition moment, it's a great ball to drive the game forward, you know, and we create danger. So it's one of those things where it's like, okay, it's good. It's worrying that it took him this long. But if this is what we can start to count on seeing regularly, then we're in a better place than we were for all of 2019, to be honest. Right.

Yeah. That's simple. Like that's simple of a switch and we're in a much better place. Right. That's why I put it in the went reasonably well category because you had to have the first 17 games to even create the problem. but the problem did to some extent get solved, at least for one night. One night only. Well, yeah, right.

To be D. All right. Another positive in that evening game against, in the Orlando game against Canada, John Brooks's return. So Brooks had played one game in March, I believe, for Berlter, then sat out everything else with the injury, made his return against Canada. presumably will be available going forward. Adds a nice touch of class to our back line. Anything else go reasonably well in your opinion before we move to what went wrong? I'm sure there's some minor reasonably good things that happen, but let's skip to the bads. Okay.

So, I mean, the thing that Burrhalter is probably going to be criticized about the most, aside from his brother, the fact that he's brothers with Jay Burrhalter. The thing that he's probably criticized for the most is that he didn't deliver on this promised possession-based style. It never really worked. It never really clicked. Is that fair? I'm going to say that yes. And I know there are people who will disagree and say, no, we saw it against some of the, you know, some of the really weak Concaf teams. But to be honest, like, I still don't think we saw it against those teams in a way that I would say, yes, this is clicking.

Like they might point to, what would you point to, Bells, if you were going to say, no, did work. Like we did get to see it against weak teams. You'd point to the first few minutes against Jamaica before the power outage. And I guess you might point to the second half against Trinidad. Yeah, I think you're about it right there. And maybe you'd look at the gold cup and sort of show the, I don't know, maybe four or five clips of, it's like that diagonal ball that either Bradley or McKinney would hit across the box where an outside back would then head it back across for a forward to finish. And we scored like two or three goals on it.

And everyone's like, that's it. That right there. Like that shows that we're making progress. Now we just need to be able to do it against the good teams. And I kind of am not, I'm basically just not buying that. I feel like it's almost like a little bit of a gimmick. Like if you just ask your team to look for that over and over and over again and overload a poor opponent, like you had better be able to find that three or four times over the course of a six game tournament against the competition that's as weak.

as it is. You know what I mean? Like if... Right. It's like what we did against Cuba. The, you know, we scored all at like seven goals in 10 minutes or something crazy like that. Right. Right. Hitting those going up the wing and then crossing it for a late arriving, West McKinney. And I remember people saying, well, we're getting the patterns of play down. That's good for the players to get those patterns down so that they get comfortable with them. And then we went up to Toronto and played Canada and looked like we had lost the song sheet. you know right and that that's exactly what i'm saying so if if what you're asking what you think

you're building on in those games uh can't materialize at all against canada it's not like we were just like oh we were there we were just we just couldn't find that last opening uh in in in in in Toronto like we weren't even close like we weren't even we weren't even playing in a recognizable game so uh that's where that's where i like i really pushed back against people like we saw we saw the the foundations of it. Like, if you want to argue that, I'd say we saw those exact same foundations in the January games. Like he,

we saw some things against Costa Rica and Panama on those games where, you know, when we were evaluating at the time, we were able to project with some optimism like, okay, this is the foundation. And now we're going to be able to build on this for the next game. And the next game will add better players. But 12 months later, like you, then you look at that Toronto. game or you even look at, you know, through the Gold Cup and any of the friendlies, there wasn't really anything built on that foundation. It looks exactly the same as it looked in January.

Like some guys have some idea of what the pattern is, but there's no more fluidity to it. There's no more, it's not as, it's not well drilled. So in effect, like, it's not a foundation. It's what any coach could have could accomplish with one camp. So that's, that's where I think of it as sort of being a waste. Yeah. Yeah, I can't disagree with that. I think you said it. well after the Canada game, it was good that we, that we scored goals in transition, that we troubled Canada when they were in possession. But it was the things that we did look like the kind of things a coach could have done in his first game out, you know? Isn't that what you said it? Yeah, that's right.

It looked like a very good first game for a coach. So the patterns that we were trying, like we did try to, you know, run some of those patterns out of the back. And they basically just never came off, maybe one or two came off. And that's sort of what you'd expect if you just introduce them to some players. And like, okay, try to do these things. And it's not always going to be clean. But, you know, we got to start somewhere. And it's like, all right, well, we got to start somewhere 12 months later.

Right. So here we are kind of starting over. Burrhalter's starting over. I know he wouldn't say it that way and nobody at U.S. soccer would. But it does feel like it's just he's just getting like a second chance to start again. Start over. Yeah. That's exactly what it feels like.

And, you know, maybe he, I mean, there's an optimistic way to look at it. Maybe he learned a lot that first year. I'm sure he did. And he can implement all that and be a lot more pragmatic and figure out what we're going to do and be more effective. So that's kind of how I look at it. I'm not like, I'm not saying Burrhalter out at this point, partly because there's just no point in saying it. And I think he'll, I am optimistic that he will do better. in 2020 than he will in 2019.

In part because you think he's going to stick with the, with a more aggressive defensive posture. Is that a big part of it? That's a big part of it. I think having, having desks regularly there and, you know, somebody we didn't talk about in our went reasonably well category,

probably should have is Josh Sargent. You know, Sergeant hopefully getting healthy and getting some reps, you know, getting Josie Altador back, getting Tyler Adams back, I think the team just looks a lot better automatically with Adams. Yeah, there's definitely that hope that the player pool will upgrade itself. I mean, and that is a very real possibility.

There are some questions, I think, that Berhalter is planted about how readily he will respond to an upgraded player pool. Yeah. You mean because he talks about the group so much? Because he talks about the group so much And because of what it seems like it takes to Sort of force his hand You essentially have to force his hand at this point

If you want to break into the group And that means it appears to mean Playing Regularly for a top five club Slash World Power IX Yeah Yeah I guess we'll We'll find out

Even more about that Because we discussed this last week as well Because the optimistic case there Is he spent 20 19 establishing the group, establishing the culture of the group, and hopefully that's whatever he wants that to be is set now. And he can he can remove pieces and install pieces with a little more freedom since he has this baseline culture that he's looking for. Yeah, that's definitely the hope. But that was also again, that was the exact same argument that we made in March when he left a lot of good European players off of his roster in favor of the January guys.

we're like, all right, he's just setting this up so that the gold cup, he can, he can call in all of his, all of the other horses. And very few of the other horses were really given a chance. Yeah. Well, it looks like, it looks like Holmes is not one of the horses. And that's, that's likely not to change. Adams is. Adams is one of the horses. And then, you know, if you got to imagine if Raina breaks in at BVB and Ledesma breaks in at PSV, they are going to be horses as well.

Yes, yeah, we could end up with a, we could end up with an entire team, of course. Yeah. I mean, again, that's the hope. But, but, you know, I guess time. Yeah, that's what I mean. At this point, it is sort of a very much of faith situation. We've had a lot of hopes this year. Well, yeah, so that's the other, I guess we've already sort of covered it, but that's the other thing that went wrong is the constraint of the player pool by Burrhalter.

And there's another name that you're really, um, is. interested in bringing up, I think. So on the things that went wrong was the, it was the Burr-Alter Nagby divide. Yeah. After Nagby had a, I mean, there was a Nagby-Klin divide. And so when Cleansman was released. He must just be impossible to get along with.

It's funny. Like my, my interpretation of it is very much just like pro, I'm almost always pro player. So I'm always just like, oh, I mean, Nagby just has a really good work-life balance. and if it's not a situation that he really, really wants to be a part of, you know, he's going to choose to spend that time with his family and not, not wait into the poor of the bad environment.

And I have a lot of respect for players who make those calls. So, you know, same thing when Donovan made his choices for his own personal health and well-being. I'm like, hey, that's great, buddy. Like, that's exactly what you should do. And we'll welcome you back when you're ready to come back. Which we did not. Apparently not. We did when it was suited us.

he came back for the Gold Cup and then was the best player in that and then was promptly cut 11 months later. So anyway, Nagby. So, you know, Nagby came back and played for Arena and I don't know what the situation was there, but he seemed to have no problem accepting those call-ups. So, yes, it's really kind of, I'm really curious about what sort of went on with U.S. soccer and Nagby between Arena and Burrhalter. Yeah, I mean, these things are, these are huge. human beings we're talking about and there's there's personal stuff involved almost certainly right and

and we don't know what it is but it's not hard to imagine that they're they're they might just not get along nagby and burhalter or maybe homes and burrhalter don't get along you know it could be it could be that simple and oh i guess we just have to sort of not know and live with it but but nagby nagby comes up for me is something that went wrong because i genuinely think he would help the player pool. I think you would help the team accomplish sort of what it's trying to accomplish under Burralter. And I just really enjoy watching him play. Fair enough. Fair enough. There were some injuries that went wrong in 2019. We've discussed them glancingly already, but the big one was Tyler Adams, Tim Wea, his hamstring that kept him out all fall was a big disappointment.

Pomacall being slowed down by an inductor injury towards the end of the day. Yeah, that pomacol one hit right after the, basically right after the U-20 World Cup. So it became difficult to take his momentum from that tournament and the early half of the MLS season and actually see what he could do for the national team. We're kind of assuming that that's why he wasn't able to get a bigger cameo in the one call-up he got. Yeah. I think it's a pretty safe assumption at this point.

And then Jonathan Amon, he just hasn't been healthy all year, right? That's what we're assuming there, too. We don't actually have any injury confirmation. I don't think he's just sort of completely vanished. from FC Norselaun's team. So he's a guy this podcast was pretty high on, wasn't in the U20 World Cup plans. Speculation there amongst me at least was that

Norchland is just kind of like not great about releasing him. They're worried he's going to get hurt again, which seems to be a justified worry. I think I read that. Yeah, if he's hurt now. So that's why he was called up to the Gold Cup pre-camp because you got to release him for the senior team. cut from the Gold Cup roster.

And then I don't think has really played since then. I think he made a couple brief appearances at the beginning of the Danish season, which starts kind of early, you know, compared to it. But yeah, he hasn't been, he hasn't been playing for a while. So, yeah, so there's just a complete void of information for Jonathan Damon. It's just on there because we were high on him. He plays a position of need. He's a dangerous winger.

He can beat people. He's a pretty good passer. We'll always have that Bolivia game. Was it Bolivia? Was it Peru? I don't remember who was against that. It was Peru. It was Peru.

He played well. The Peru game. Yeah. We got so much data from that Peru game. So, you know, big picture. What's your big picture takeaway from 2019? And then let's get out of here. All right.

I kind of circle all the way back to, you know, what we were talking about when we started this podcast, which was sort of that savior committee. And we were talking about a bunch of different names. And I feel like 2019 saw a lot of new names added to that list, and it saw a lot of the guys at the top of that list almost take their game even higher in the Adams and Pulisick. And I'd even say Weston McKinney situation where McKinney wasn't, you know, necessarily locked into being a starter, which he is now. Yeah.

So you have all that optimism. You have the optimism of what the U-20s are doing. So I guess what I'd say is I'm still very optimistic. about the future of the program. And I feel like we do have sort of an unprecedented influx of talent on the way. Very little of the optimism at this point is tied to the staff,

you know, Greg Berhalter or what U.S. soccer is doing in general. Yeah. I don't, and I guess I would just add to that. I don't see Berhalter like, he's not going to hurt that momentum. I mean, maybe he will, but I don't, I'm not saying he will.

I'm just sort of neutral on it. But do you think he's actually going to hurt the larger positive, this larger positive momentum about the player pool? I think that's going to be held back by Burrhalter. I do think Berhalter is going to be slower to integrate some of these players than maybe other coaches would be. I do feel like there are probably coaches out there who would have already made a lot of moves to get some of the younger kids involved.

and, you know, Berlter has decided that's not the direction he wants to go. Doesn't necessarily mean he's wrong and that people who think that the kids should be playing more are right. But I'm definitely more on the kids should be playing more side. Yeah. Well, so just to back up your point about this, you know, this is, this was sort of the animating reason for the podcast in the first place. You and I were both excited about the future of the player pool. Is that fair to say? That was that the animating reason for the park?

Also, we wanted something to do with all this time we were spending. At the very beginning of it, you were very excited about the young players and the player pool, and I was actually pretty cynical about it. That's true. And it wasn't that you convinced me. It was that so many of the young players hit on levels that, you know, the past generations of hyped up players weren't hitting on. Right.

And to give some, just some quantification of this. You know, I tweeted about this a few days ago. The top 20 USMNT valuations according to transfer market, a third party objective source based on the estimations of German contributors, you know, regular people. So the wisdom of the crowd in Germany, which has been pretty accurate over the years. It has. It has. It's done remarkably well. Historically, and I was just going to say, let's not go that far. has it not been accurate historically? I just,

I just mean the wisdom. I'm just going to, I'm actually just going to tie this up and leave it and not going to. No, no, it's the wisdom of the crowd. The wisdom of crowds doesn't mean that people always elect the right people, but it does mean that if you have a giant cow at a, at a state fair, and you ask everybody,

you ask everybody to estimate the weight of the cow. If you get enough people to put in their estimations, you will get, that's as close as you can get to estimating something if you average all those estimations. This is like, this is a thing, Greg. It's a thing. No, I'm not, I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just, I just want to make sure that we're talking about transfer market and the values

soccer players. Okay, anyway, so transfer market says six of our top 10 players and eight of our top 20 by value are 21 and under. But let's focus on the six of our top 10. They are, let's see, who are they? I bet Christian Pulisik is on there. Pulisic, McKinney, Adams, Wea, Sergeant, Dest, Cannon and Mihailovich are the eight.

So it's Pulisic, McKinney, Adams, Wea, Sergeant, and Dest as the sixth who are in the top ten. Now, in 2002, we had two players, 21 and under in the top 20, Beasley and Donovan. In 2006, we had one, Freddie Adieu. In 2010, we had three. three, Bradley, Altador, and Francisco Torres. And these values were much, I'm not going to look up all the numbers and recite them to you,

but these values were much lower outside of Altador, I think, than Altador and Bradley, than the numbers of Pulisic McKinney, Adams, Way, a Sergeant, and Des. And then in 2014, we had one player in our top 20, who was 21 and under. That was John Brooks. And in 2018, we had two in Pulisic and Miyazka. So that Pulisica Miazga has turned into, all of a sudden there's five new names in the top 10 for valuation. And I think, you know, there are quite a few others who, as soon as they make some debuts and start to score some goals, I'm thinking of Raina, Ledesma, then they're going to join that group too. But even if they don't, even if it's just this six, that's a totally unprecedented, a totally unprecedented state of affairs.

And I think, I think people don't give that enough credit. Right. They don't. I feel like the pendulum swung so far to being cautious and being like, oh, we've been burned so many times that it's like people aren't necessarily appreciating what they're seeing. You know, with just, I mean, just Pulisik McKinney and Adams is like an out absurd trio of U21 players in the U.S. historical framework. So to have those three plus all this sort of gravy underneath them was Sergenio Dest now choosing you. Like, it's, this is sort of an insane moment to be, to be watching unfold. And a lot of it happened. I mean, McKinney and Pulisic were, um, were top 20 players for the U.S. by value in 2018 as well. But the other, the other four, they all, they all joined in 2019.

If I'm not mistaken, yeah. So, so again, it kind of goes back to my, uh, like my Bayesian. And like, it's this, we should probably expect more of these things to happen, uh, over the next over the next 18 months, we should be expecting more guys to sort of hit on the levels close to these guys, not necessarily Pouselik level if he's the outlier, but, you know, at the McKinney level, at the Tim Whale level. So that's going to put us in a completely new spot as far as our national team program. And the question then becomes, all right, but how quickly does it happen? How quickly do we integrate them?

And how quickly do we get them playing well together? And a lot of that is Greg Berhalter related. Yeah, it would be great to have a. I would love to hear Greg Burralliter talk about this. Are they looking at these numbers? Are they thinking about this as like sort of a sea change? I never get that sense. The one time I think we did was when I think he was being asked directly about, you know,

the decision to try to play this possession game and is that the best for the U.S. And I think he made a point of saying, like, with all respect to 2010 or 2002 team that he played on in 2002, like they didn't have Christian Pulisick on that team. Like Christian Poolsick is a is at a different level than sort of any other U.S. player has been on. And I don't think he was saying because of Christian Poolsick, we can do this. I think he was using Christian Poulosick as sort of the poster boy. But to say, no, this is a different group. We have a different player pool than what we've had for previous cycles.

Okay. So I think he's, I think he kind of has some acknowledged it. I had forgotten that he said that, but you're totally right. He did say that. And it was like before he ever coached a game too, I think. It was like his first. Right. So I think he's,

I think he's just as eager as the rest of us to see these kids break through. He's just not going to be as, he's going to be a little bit more risk-averse than maybe some others would be in actually calling him up, integrating them. Okay. And they're not all going to hit.

Obviously, we've said this before. They're not all, even the guys we've listed out now, some of them are going to fizzle, which is, which is fine. We just need a couple to come good and a couple to come out of nowhere. lottery tickets it's a cynical lottery ticket play so yeah several disappointments on the coaching and player selection front but the player pool is moving in the right direction that's the that's

optimism that we have been bringing to you from the beginning we have been accused of being too pessimistic but it's partly because we just we're just so excited about the future i think um now speaking of the future 2020 2019 has is kind of ending with a whimper there's not that much to talk about with all due respect to the player of the year award. But 2020 is going to be a lot. There's going to be a lot. So there's a camp. Is there going to be a U-23 camp in January 2?

There's definitely a U-20 camp in a national. I guess I would say it would be ridiculous even for U.S. soccer not to have a U-23 camp. So I'm just going to assume that there will be. There's going to be a U-20 camp, I believe, in Florida. Our understanding is that the senior team will be convening in Qatar. Right, right, to prepare for. the World Cup in 2022.

Logistics dry run, I assume. I mean, I really do think that's what it is, right? Just for the sort of admin coaching staff side to get the lay the land. I mean, I guess that makes sense. I never really thought of that. Okay. And then in March, there's going to be a U-23 camp. Not a U-23 camp.

There's going to be... Qualifying. Olympic qualifying in Guadalajara. Yeah. And I... So that's a big deal. If we can be one of the two teams that qualifies from Concaf, we get to play in the Summer Olympics, which will be obviously in the summer.

And then the U-20s will be meeting in March as well, and getting ready for U-20 World Cup qualifying, which is in June, probably in Florida, if passed as any precedent. And then the senior team will play a couple friendlies in Europe, one of which will be against the Netherlands, which was announced earlier today by the Netherlands. And then in June, of course, there will be U-20 World Cup qualifying, Let me know if I'm missing anything here.

And then it's a lot of stuff. Nations League, Concaf Nation's League Final Four will be in June as well. The U.S. is in that thanks to our win over Canada. Most likely hosted in the U.S., I believe, all every game. That's the rumor I've been seeing. I don't think that's confirmed. So I don't need a second source. I can just say these things.

Okay. So that's definitely going to be in Columbus, Ohio and Cleveland. and Louisville, Kentucky. And then... Just outside of Indianapolis. So they'll stage the game at a Hampton Inn, just outside of Indianapolis, Indiana. Everybody can head over to L.A. Fitness to get ready for the game.

And then the Olympics, of course, in late summer 2020, and then World Cup qualifying begins. The first match will be in the September window, first two matches. So just a huge amount of soccer coming up in 2020, which is why you and I might be taking a break until the end of the year just to kind of recharge and reset our priorities. And for as much as like U.S. I'm going to say this sort of affectionately because I'm part of the, I think I'd be lumped in with U.S. soccer Twitter that like gets apoplectic about some of these U.S. soccer decisions.

If you thought that, you know, U.S. soccer Twitter was losing its mind over results in 2019. Imagine if things don't go smoothly in 2020. I, aye, aye, yeah. And it'll be, I mean, it'll be much more justified. I get, I think soccer Twitter does get a little overly critical of, like, stupid things. Like, who, who announces the friendly first, the Netherlands or the U.S.? I saw some tweets about that. Like, come on, guys.

Come on, guys. Who cares? Right. Like, let's keep our, let's keep our focus on what matters. But whether or not, whether or not Ledezma's getting phone calls from Greg Burold. Ah, way to turn the knife. Twist the knife. All right. Well, happy holidays to everyone and happy holidays to you, Greg.

Hope everybody has a good new year. Anything else we need to talk about? No, no, no. Honestly, everyone enjoy your holiday. Enjoy the time off from the, well, from the national team, but obviously club soccer going nuts for the holidays. Yeah. Okay. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.