Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 133: A bunch of MLS is Back scouting reports

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

We dive deep (and occasionally not-so-deep) on 14 USMNT-eligible players who’ve been busy at Disney World over the past month. Aaron LongJames SandsMark McKenzieMiles RobinsonJusten GladCristian RoldanJackson YueillFrankie AmayaBrenden AaronsonSam VinesChase GasperAyo AkinolaJeremy EbobisseJordan Morris 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 Domestic League is back. Has been back for a while now with a group stage knockout round-style tournament that you've all been following to some extent. We're not going to say anything comprehensive about the MLS's back tournament,

but we were able to scout a few players in it and want to talk about them. We also know more about the World Cup qualifying format in Conccaf than we did a week ago. Why don't you start with that, since you're kind of the Conca Calf World Cup qualifying format expert? I earned that title. So new format announced, hexagonal is out, the Ocho is in, and obviously the context of why we have to change the World Cup format is not a happy situation. But from a soccer sporting standpoint, in my opinion, the changes to the format are extremely beneficial to the the United States vans national team. Why beneficial?

I don't get that. So we know the old format. We definitely know like the, how it runs, the hexagonal, six teams, play each team home and away for 10 games. The timing of the hex for this 2022 cycle was a big deal. It was different than past cycles. And it really, in my opinion, was working against us in a lot of ways. So the hex was a really.

originally scheduled to run from September 2020 to June 2021, which means it would have actually wrapped up a full 18 months before the World Cup in 2022, November. Yeah, which is like a century in soccer time. Yeah. And even before, like, you go to the November World Cup event, like, in all previous cycles, the Hex would wrap up in November the year before the World Cup would take place in the summer. So it was still only eight months away. So even if it were a normal Summer World Cup, you'd still be talking about a full year ahead of the event that we would have been going through these qualifiers.

Now, why would that have been a disadvantage for the U.S.? Disadvantage for the U.S.? Because we are in essentially a complete transition from our prior cycles pool. So we have to identify and integrate a ton of new players, combine that with the fact that we're dealing with this missing generation of, of prime age players, which means that a lot of our eggs are in the baskets of 18 to 21-year-olds currently. And we need a lot of them to hit. And this gives a, you know, prior to this adjustment, we didn't have that happen. Yeah, there was no opportunity for it to happen.

Yeah. And with COVID ruling out the Olympics and some of the other windows, we were going to go into the October window, a World Cup qualifying window. like with a lot of question marks. Yeah. I'll also throw in our old saw about 2019, kind of in my opinion, being a wasted year preparation-wise in that,

you know, a lot of the things that we tried to incorporate in 2019 seem to have fallen by the wayside in that last Canada game and then in the, which was a successful outcome, and in the Costa Rica friendly. So we would also be going into this sort of

urgent World Cup qualifying mode with a brand new system. We don't know how players are going to fit into it. There just would have been a lot of uncertainty about how we would play in some really important World Cup qualifying games. It does seem like a bit of an unsettled question, like how much did Greg Burhalter shift course towards the end of the year? On the evidence of what we see, it looks like he did kind of a base. in a lot of what he was trying to do in 2019.

He has never admitted that or even hinted at an admittance of that. But perhaps he will find it in his heart at some point. And maybe, again, maybe I'm totally wrong about how I'm projecting us to play. And we'll see a lot of the same frameworks and staples from 2019 going into these next windows. Right, right, right. I'm just thinking about all the data will be able to work through data, I should say. I think you can say either Can you?

Consult your dictionary. 14 qualifying matches which are the definition of meaningful soccer games to watch a gold cup Nations League semis and final hopefully Olympic qualifying and hopefully the Olympics

so there's just going to be a lot to watch and talk about maybe we'll just have to become a daily podcast. There are going to be spells next summer where that's probably going to be the case. The Ocho itself, I think, has the potential to be just an extremely exciting competitive format. I think there are better teams in Concaf now than there were four years ago. I think the levels risen.

I think the U.S. maybe has dropped potentially, or at least on the evidence of 2019. That could all swing back the other way with a new setup and some new players. But the level of competition and the drama. that I think we're going to see is going to be pretty incredible. Yeah, I mean, I guess the thought that we have, the unspoken thought that we have and that a lot of people have is you get the Holy Trinity of McKinney, Pulisic, and Adams on the field at the same time, throw in the Apostle Giovanni and a few others, and it's a different kind of, you know, it's a different kind of situation than it was last year.

There's a Sergenio Dest, I believe, that is making some waves. Yes, yeah, there's many, I mean, there's a lot of possibilities out there. A lot of wave makers. Yeah. So let's get to the MLS's back tournament, which is not nearly as exciting as World Cup qualifying, but it's happening right now. What's your overall take on it, Greg? My overall take on the MLS back tournament is that Bob Bradley would have been

and still would be a hell of a higher for the U.S. men's national team. I mean, they do play fun soccer, but they do. they haven't, I'm always ready for them to crash out of a tournament. And all they've done so far in this tournament is make the quarterfinals and they face Oscar Pereja tonight and he's got Orlando clicking. I would not be surprised if they lose tonight. Los Angeles, you're calling out against the host team tonight. All right.

I'm not, I don't make predictions anymore. I'm out of that game. We're leaving that on the pod. Just on the pod. You're not striking that from the record before you release this in the morning. No, it's going out. I just said I wouldn't be surprised if they lose. Does everybody hear that?

I would not be surprised if they lose. Basically what I'm saying is nothing. I'm saying actually nothing. In a 90-minute one-off soccer game, there's a chance that LASC will not win. Yep. You heard it here first. Bold. Okay.

This tournament overall, should it have been played? amid a pandemic. I know you're a close COVID watcher down there in West Des Moines. So no, I don't think it should have been one of the reasons that I haven't really been talking about the tournament generally is because I think it's a tough area I like to be in to hold this, any, to host any professional sports at the moment in this country in particular. So I know that the bubble has more or less been successful once they dumped a few teams. the NWSL just had a full tournament where they didn't have any COVID cases within their bubble.

So it's not that necessarily the bubble isn't working. For me, it's sort of all about the context and what it requires to have a bubble, which is near, you know, daily tests for these players and staff who aren't, in my opinion, like a priority in a country that's facing testing shortages. I mean, it's basically as simple as that. And I think there probably is a discussion you could have where people could try to, you know, justify the existence of these events because MBA is kicking off the same thing. NHL is in a bubble. I think other sports are playing and using a ton of test, not a ton of testing capacity, but some testing capacity in every little bit adds to that strain.

So I think you could have those conversations to try to justify it. But I don't think those conversations are really happening. And I think that at a minimum, like the leagues need to justify their own existence for doing this and say, yes, we understand that, you know, hospital workers, daycare teachers, whoever, are facing long waits for test results. But here's why it's more important that we have our MLS's back tournament. Yeah, you can't really make that. But I mean, you have to, right? Because we're doing it. So it's like if you're going to boil and eat a live lobster,

like you have to make the case that it's okay to do this because it tastes really good. Do you have to make the case or do you just suspend your disbelief and carry on with your life? That's exactly what, I mean, that's exactly what's happening is we just are going to choose not to, not to acknowledge that the two things are very much adjacent to each other. They're very much affecting the other. Yeah. Yeah, there are moral dilemmas everywhere in life. I mean, this is a big one.

I'm not trying to minimize it. It's a big one. But there are a lot of moral dilemmas that we choose not to engage thoroughly with. And that's why I'm not talking about the game sort of on the timeline. It's because it's uncomfortable to talk about it. I mean, there's something really exciting happens. You're like, oh, amazing Brendan Aronson play after he got tested four times in the last week. Like that kind of thing is always sort of in the back of the mind.

But also. It was an amazing play from Brendan Aronson. Well, and the tournament is kind of fun. You know, it's this World Cup format, essentially group stage, followed by a knockout round, single elimination. And, you know, there's been some fun games. It's been a lot of trash soccer, too, but there's been some fun games. Sometimes those things go hand in hand. That's true.

That is true. I'm not kidding when I say that. Well, you know, like you look at it. Philly, Philly's win over, who did they beat last night? SKC? Yes. I mean, the second goal was just an absolute clown show. Off a, like off a corner kick and nobody's back.

It's the second one of those we've seen in this tournament. San Jose and Vancouver had the exact same situation of like a full 98-yard breakaway. Yeah. Just in a normal first half of a soccer match. Yeah, it was weird. It's also sad that there's no FC Dallas, I think. I mean, if you go with me here, Greg, and suspend our disbelief that the tournament is somehow morally justified, which we can't really make that case. It would have been nice to have Dallas there to see, to get some data on Pomacall and Peppy and Cannon and whoever else I'm forgetting.

Jesus Ferreira. Yeah, Brandon Servania. So we didn't get to see that. Tanner, Testament. Oh, Tanner. The EFC Dallas up-and-coming star. And then, you know, one question that's occurred to us, and I think there's been some discussion of it out there, is there going to be an exodus, you know, from MLS to Europe by young players or maybe even old players who want to get minutes and need to see the field? because while the bubble worked, Major League Baseball and U.S.L are showing that when you travel for games and you have games at stadiums in various places, it does get really complicated from a virus control perspective.

So there's no guarantee MLS is going to have the rest of the regular season. Will we see a bunch of people loaned out to Belgium and the Netherlands and Germany? I think we will start to see some of that happen. Going into like an Olympic year slash World Cup qualifying year for some of these kids who want to make their case, I think they have to find a way to play somewhere. And I don't know what other recourse they would have. I don't know if the national team would try to establish like a bubble mini camp or something. So I also think maybe just from a financial standpoint, it might make sense for some of these teams to try to all. offload wages because I don't know what that will I mean we have no idea if a season doesn't

happen how teams will set up pay structures for players who aren't playing so uh we've seen a couple of uh high profile players from the u.s women's national team um yep going over or entertaining offers from europe to to play because there's probably some speculation that there won't be a regular nws l season uh so it wouldn't it won't surprise me at all if we see some players sort of thinking ahead and trying to get ahead of that curve yeah but well pomacall's played 40 minutes since last fall and um if i'm him i'm just begging my agent to to get me to tell star yeah get me to tell star i mean let's let's shoot a little higher with here and vene all right but yes i'm that's that's something that we've kind of speculated about and it won't surprise me if if players start trying to

make that move okay let's get into some scouting reports this is just what we're ready to say about a player after watching a bunch of their involvements in this tournament. We're not going to talk about Gina Luca Bousseo, Julian Araujo, Bryce Duke, or Sebastian Burhalter. They're all interesting young players, but they didn't really make an impact in this tournament. We're also not going to discuss veterans that much, although we're going to make some exceptions.

And yeah, because you have some Jordan Morris material, I think. Yeah, I want to talk about Jordan Morris. You did a deep dive on the entire Seattle Sounders roster. Give me the new who. They're the defending champions. But mostly we're going to focus on young players who are also making an impact. So there's a Venn diagram there that we are trying to hit right in the middle.

But I want to start, if that's okay with you, by talking about some young defenders. But first quick word on Aaron Long, since he's sort of the, we agree he's the floor at right centerback for the national team. Right? That's what I would say. Again, not in an entirely condescending way. Just if you want to get into the national team, this is roughly what you have to do. This is we have to beat out. Yeah.

And the good news for everybody gunning for his job is that he didn't do that much in this tournament. You know? Red Bulls didn't have a good tournament. They crashed out on the group stage and nobody really paid attention to long. But the basics are this. He's strong in duels. He's especially strong in the air. He doesn't get beaten for pace over the top because he's fast.

He also doesn't do hardly anything in possession. So he sets a floor of solid defending and physicality and competitiveness. But the bad thing is he's allergic to progressive passing. And he's the presumptive starter at right centerback for the national team. So can any of these young MLS centerbacks surpass him? Which ones are you talking about? Okay, well, I'm going to start with a guy who's not really even a centerback in my mind. But he's played some centerback in this tournament.

He's played some centerback over the last year or two. It's James Sands. He's 20. He's at NYCFCFC. NYCFC lost to Philly and Orlando City but advanced out of the group on a win over Inter Miami. Then they beat somebody really badly three to one, right? Toronto FC, I believe. Toronto FC Sands, Iowa Canola, and mostly without Josie Altador.

Right. So then they crushed Toronto in the round of 16, and now they're in the quarterfinals after limping through the group stage. It happens sometimes. So Sands started all three games and roughly split his time between centerback and defensive midfield. The good news is he makes a big impact as a deep-lying midfield destroyer because he's good at reading the game, reasonably athletic, really tough in the tackle, and he times his interventions well.

He's just got a knack for applying pressure and taking the ball from the other team, and he's comfortable enough in possession to find someone's feet after he wins the ball. He's kind of like Kyle Beckerman, but with a more conservative haircut. And fewer legendary red cards. Yeah.

Although he, I mean, he's going to get his share of discipline over the years, I think. He's pretty good. From the tackles that kind of I saw from, I believe it was Watke's video, he really isn't afraid to put his knees through guys' thighs on tackles. No, yeah. Yeah, he'll, I mean, there's a lot of good in that. So for national team purposes, the problem is he's not a good distributor.

He's a little bit like in the way that Aaron Long is. I think he's a little more elegant than Aaron Long on the ball, but he's not hitting line-breaking passes. So he doesn't fit Burrhalter's profile for that number. six position. And as a centerback, he's slightly undersized, and I think his impact diminishes a lot because even though he's a good defender, his ability to pressure the ball is sort of negated when he's at centerback because he's on the back line. He's also not great in the air, and his unwillingness to play those risky passes becomes more of a problem in the buildout from centerback than it

would be at central midfield. It just makes things more claustrophobic back there. So in about two 275 minutes in the group stage, he played exactly one line-breaking pass. So he's not, for me, he's not a centerback candidate for the national team. He is a good central defensive midfield prospect, but not the way Burrhalter is running his team right now. Not the way Burrhalter is running his team, and the way Burrhalter runs his team, in my opinion, and I'll kind of get into this later with some of my scouting reports, makes a much shorter list for that style of six. then if we're going to go, like, sort of pure ball winner, I imagine Sands now has a lot more competition against other peer ball winners.

I mean, who would you put in that category? Tyler Adams, obviously. Yes. But that's it, I think, as a pure ball winner number six? I mean, unless you want to throw in Alfredo Morales and Danny Williams. So, yeah, and even, like, if you're going to get into just, if that person's job is just to win the ball, then you get, in my opinion, like Weston McKinney becomes a candidate for that position as well if Adams can't go.

Yeah, I suppose. But I think Sands reminds me a little bit of, remember when Jonathan Gonzalez was still in the fold and playing for Monterey as an 18-year-old? I do. I remember it very well. You do. You tip me off to him very early in the process. It's similar kind of alertness and intelligence, finance. what the other team is doing and breaking it up, you know?

And I don't, I mean, McKinney is plenty intelligent, but I don't think he has that alertness as a defensive midfielder. Anyway, we don't need to get too deep in the weeds on this. So, yeah, that's James Sands. Probably not a centerback long term for the national team, in my humble opinion. The second centerback that has gotten a lot of attention in this tournament is Mark McKenzie, 21 for the Philadelphia Union.

He started every game for them in this tournament. And Philly are, now they're in the semis, right? They just won last night, three to one, beat sporting. Yeah, cruised over sporting Kansas City. McKenzie, I'll just be honest, I really like Mark McKenzie's game. He's got a lot of good tools. His first touch is almost always positive. He strikes the ball, sharp,

It's hard to even explain. It's pleasing to the eye the way he strikes the ball, in my opinion. What do you think? It's just, I mean, you just want to sum it up with his still from that U-20 qualifying tournament, right? Where he's where he just sort of pings that ball into Mendez's feet. Yeah. It breaks three lines. The ball, yeah, exactly.

And the ball just like leaps off his foot and it's sharp. He also moves pretty fluidly with the ball at his feet and he wants to play line-breaking passes. They don't always come off. You know, sometimes he, sometimes he hits. an errant pass. He's also good at running down and shielding a ball in behind and pretty strong in the air, even though he's not the tallest centerback prospect that we have. So as far as young American centerbacks go, to me, he looks the part of elite potential the most. Pops off the screen with that sharpness of passing, strength and fluidity. The one problem, and it's a big one,

is that he can look out to see when he's marking a runner in the box and the ball gets to the byline. He just kind of like, he doesn't have an instinct for, you know, finding his marker and getting, getting ball, getting goalside. I don't think. And that's, that is a big problem. I think it's something you can work on, right? As a centerback. Reps, I mean, games like reps against really good attackers where, uh, where you learn how they're going to lose you and then can start to anticipate how they're going to lose you and the chess match continues. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the two occasions that I noticed were in the opener against NYCFC

when Ebert from NYCFC, that's the Brazilian striker from NYCFC lost him, and then scuffed a header from point blank. It also happened on Pizarro's goal for Inter Miami in that 2-1 win for Philly, where he just kind of lost his guy, no real reason for it, just sort of was ball watching and his guy got free. So, I don't know, any questions or push him, back on McKenzie. How do you like his weak foot, Bells?

I like it quite well, yeah. I mean, yeah, he hit a crossfield diagonal with his left foot last night that was on a dime to Badoia to help set up a, you know, a somewhat dangerous attacking move. Okay. I don't think there's anybody in the, any centerback in the pool who can hit a weak foot diagonal with any sort of reliability. Is there? No, I'll back you up on that one.

So we're hoping that he becomes. at the very least, like the kind of centerback you could employ in games where defense is going to be less the priority and distribution is going to be higher on the priority list because we have those games. Yeah. Are you ready to say he could be that player in June? I mean, that's eight months off. That's a year off. How's my calendar, man? I don't know.

I don't know. I hate making predictions. I'm out of that business. But I do think of all. all our young centerbacks, he's the one who looks the most likely to be really good someday. Not that he is right now. And I would say even more than Chris Richards. Richards is a better defender than McKenzie.

He's in it. We think a better club situation. But McKenzie's comfort with the ball at his feet is on a different level from Richards, I think. All right. So he's at the very least in a pretty good starting play. place for a 21-year-old centerback, 21 for McKenzie? Yeah. Maybe, hopefully he goes on loan to Freiburg.

He's going to love it. He's going to love it in the black forest. Better than Tim Ream today or not there yet. I don't. I'm asking that genuine. I hate that argument, but I, yeah, I think Ream is, you know, ream with his 12 years of experience advantage over McKenzie is probably still a better centerback than McKenzie.

but it's gotten closer than it was six months ago. And McKenzie has been coming back from injuries and concussions. And so we like the trajectory he's on at the moment. Yeah. And that's all we need to be. That's all he needs to have right now is he's moving in the right direction. Yeah. And I think I do want to make the point.

I think he's the – you look at the landscape of centerbacks we have. Nobody is really that exciting except Richards and McKenzie. and, you know, somebody could, somebody else could emerge as, you know, that sort of modern centerback that other nations are producing, but we're not. McKenzie seems like the most likely to do that, in my opinion. All right. Well, I'll push back a little, and I know that he might not have the modern distribution that we're looking for, but is Miles Robinson a guy we should be excited about?

And I'm going to then just let you take it away. Okay. Well, Robinson 23 centerback, 23-year-old centerback for Atlanta, United States. is a little bit in the mold of Aaron Long, I think. Really good in duels, really good defender, strong, physically imposing, more physically imposing than just about any of these guys we're talking about. But again, not much of a passer.

I think he attempted like seven or eight long passes in Atlanta's ill-fated three-game tournament. And I think it was like three-first. nine or something three for eight and none of them was none of them signaled like hey this is this is a centerback who's going to be able to distribute out of the back and that's consistent with what kind of the data we have on miles robinson going into the tournament right that he's not going to be spraying the ball around not that that's necessarily his job but there's certainly nothing in the in the record suggesting that's what he's going to add to your team right that and and maybe that's

okay for the national team you know the We've talked about this. There's the strong possibility that the way we're going to set up our defense for the national team is we're at Brooks and then Brooks, who is a good passer, and then a centerback who's just a really good defender next to him. I mean, that's kind of the way we've done it recently. So Robinson fits that bill pretty well. But I'm talking about like in the future, you know, if we're ever going to win a World Cup and we need to have two really good centerbacks. Robinson's probably not that guy either. I mean, to be honest, nobody probably is that guy.

Nobody here is... Nobody's going to be the World Cup winning the centerback. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, I think Robinson's impressive in a lot of ways, just not much of a passer and not super comfortable in possession. All right, so out of those guys then, and I know I threw Tim Riem in there because, you know,

Reem is on the verge of being promoted to the Premier League. Are any of those guys, do you think, knocking on Aaron Long's door today? Or is Aaron Long, is the inertia of Aaron Long's 2019 with the national team? What seems to be, in my opinion, like Burrhalter thinks Aaron Long is a tremendous leader. I don't know why I just have that impression. So do you think any of those guys are going to be able to overcome that inertia in the short term? or do they really need to stand out more? Again, Miles Robinson is coming off an MLS All-11-type caliber season.

What's it going to take for them to unseat Aaron Long? Have any of them really done it? Or are they even really close? I don't think anybody's done it. I mean, it's hard to know what Burrhalter is thinking. But Robinson's probably the closest because of the aforementioned all 11 MLS defender honors. but I yeah I don't know

I don't know what I don't know what tips the scales there and so right now probably give it to the inertia right I would yeah just the momentum that long has by being in the squad previously it probably carries him through

to next June when we start World Cup qualifying but you know that's unless you know unless Mark McKenzie really breaks out or Chris Richard really breaks out, then it might change. But I don't know what more Miles Robinson can do.

Just demonstrate consistency over time, I suppose. Yeah, and even that, I mean, something tells me that if you're, if you had a whole season where you were that caliber, but that wasn't going to be enough. I think, I think right now in Burrhalter's mind, no one else is really ready yet. Like you said, that changes immediately if Chris Richards is loaned or sold on to like a mid-table Bundesliga team earns a spot.

That changes the conversation that day, I think, for most people. Yeah, yeah, I agree. And, you know, if McKenzie ends up getting playing time at Celtic or something, that could move the needle as well. Another centerback, last one I want to talk about, and I'll make this quick, is Justin Glad, 23-year-old from Rail Salt Lake, also Olympic eligible. R.S.L conceded twice in the group stage only, and then they lost in that barn burner to the San Jose,

the San Jose earthquakes in the round of 16. Glad played every minute of the tournament for RSL. He's a little tricky for me to assess because he's big and he's fast and he defends with a lot of urgency and energy. He also will occasionally hit a line-breaking pass, but something about him just doesn't convince, and I'm not sure what it is. He looks like a solid MLS.

centerback right now, but he doesn't have the smoothness of McKinney or the lockdown alertness of say, James Sands, and he's two years older than them. And if we're nitpicking, he's still not physically that strong and loses some aerial duels against big physical strikers. Also, good, good straight line speed, but not quickness in close quarters, if you know what I mean. All right. So the fact that the fact that he's got two years on those players and still like, are you kind of thinking maybe we've gotten about as much as we're going to get out of Justin Glad? As a podcast? Maybe, yeah.

No, I know. Again, it's 23, so it's a bit of fools errand with centerbacks to say this is the end of their U.S. men's national team involvement. But given his competition, does it feel like he's well behind? I think it's enough of a morass in there. with all these centerbacks that anything could happen, but right now he looks the least likely of the guys I've mentioned to emerge.

All right. Well, he was named on the qualifying team for March for the Olympics. So, again, it seems like he's somewhat rated by the U.S. staff, and we'll get his chance to show what he can do. Yeah. I mean, he does have like several thousand. minutes of experience as a first team professional. So he's been around the block a bit.

Those are the centerbacks that I wanted to talk about. There's others, you know, I wish we could get to Abu Bakar Keta, and I think that's the only other centerback I was interested in, but just didn't get to him. He played. We'll add Panetta to our list as well. Of just, again, just guys we can keep track of every week if we get to have a season. Right. Do you want to do some midfielders or should I go straight to the, I feel like I've been doing a lot of talking.

Should I go straight to the fullbacks? No, give me a chance here, Bells. Let me do some center mids. Okay. Because this is, I think, the most contentious position in the national team. All right, yeah, let me relax over here. Go for it. So I'm going to kind of cluster the center mids, but I'm not sure they all necessarily fit in the same role.

And mostly attention is going to go with, the first we're going to talk about here, Christian Raldon, who is going to probably elicit a lot of eye rolls as soon as we say his name, because I think Christian Raldon is kind of dismissed by a lot of people as a staple in the U.S. national team. Am I wrong about that? I mean, you almost sort of tune out as soon as you hear his name or see him in the lineup. Yeah, I don't pay that much attention because I assume that he won't play that much going forward. And I think that's sort of what everyone says, well, he's just Adam stand-in. But, but, you know, guys get hurt.

Like, no, we're not going to field the exact same 11 for every, for every game in qualifying. And even if we do, we got guys coming off the bench. Christian Rodan has played 950 minutes in the Burrhalter era, which is the most of any center midfielder in the pool. And he's only behind long ream and ariola among all outfield players. So he's obviously pretty highly rated by Burhalter. And even if Adams was back,

you know, you could make a case that at least through 2019, Roldon was like the third center midfield choice after Adams and McKinney. Oh, man. Yeah. I don't think that's far off. So I don't think you can really just ignore him or I don't think we can just sort of have our eyes glaze over at the mention of his name. He was first guy off the bench in the Gold Cup final. And he started, and that was when Christian Poolstick was still considered one of our center midfielers. With him slit moving out, you know, that could.

move Roddon a slot higher. He started the Nation's League first leg against Canada. So, you know, he's in the picture unless, unless like the Canada game and the subsequent legit performance in the next Canada game has, like, just knocked him out of the conversation. Why do you think, you know, as unbiased as you can be, why do you think he continues to be in the picture? Okay, so, you know who loves Christian Aldan more than Greg. Berholter does.

Brian Schmetzer. Math. Math loves Christian Raldon a lot. So the good folks at American soccer analysis during the pandemic established a new, or not a new, they didn't establish a new metric, but they've very publicly released data

on their metric called Goals Add It. We talked about goals added much. I don't think we've talked about it in the podcast, no. So it's this idea that, you know, everyone at this point is pretty familiar with expected goals and expected assists. Goals added is a metric that tries to apply sort of the same concept but to every action

on the field rather than just actions that lead to shots. So, you know, anytime a player receives the ball and then moves the ball, goals added is going to measure the where everyone is on the field at the first moment, where everyone and the ball are on the field at the next action and say, how much did this action improve one team's chances of scoring and hurt the other team's chances of scoring and you know add does all that math and figures out how you affected the situation and then totals all those numbers up for each player to say how many goals they contribute to their team this is this is essentially the same concept that liverpool's been sort of famously employing uh within their scouting networks hmm okay yeah i mean it seems like a noble seems like a noble

endeavor it for me it's like sort of the end the end goal of of analytics is if they if you can get this right, this is what you're trying to measure. If you can isolate all other variables, this is how you determine how effective a player is. So goals added, for Roddon is a pretty picture. Yeah, Rodon does really well and goals added. And I know Burrhalter in his interview on the Paul Carr podcast, is that where he talked about how they'd like. Expected value is what it's called. Expected value. He, like, I don't think he actually, he didn't certainly didn't talk about this particular American soccer analysis metric, but he did sort of describe a metric

that is the same concept of measuring every, like each action and how it affects their chances of scoring. And Roldan scores really well, at least on the American soccer analysis, goals added value. So if Burrhalter is leaning heavily on these sort of stats,

Roldon comes off looking really well, and Burrhalter must think that he can use that he can harness that value that rolled on, you know, seems to bring on a spreadsheet and get it into the field. Well, okay, having watched a bunch of rolled on and cross-reference that with his goals added performance, does it make sense to you why he does so well in the numbers? It doesn't. We need to get a couple of the folks from American Soccer analysis on the pod to, like, run us through some Roll-D-on.

stuff. He's he's like an extremely boring player to watch play. I don't mean that. I mean, his decisions don't ever seem to to further the cause of scoring goals. He's not saucy. Let's just say. There's very little sauce.

And, you know, like when I was watching him on the eye test, I was like, man, he kind of just really looks like an off-brand Darlington Nagby. And then, like, even then, though, he's not nearly a soft. Because Nagby's doing all this cool stuff that usually results in sideways passes.

But he's like, you know, this in the middle of the chaos, and that's what's sort of so sexy about Darlington Nagby is. He's receiving the ball and is completely unflappable, despite being surrounded by two or three guys, always under pressure. Right. Raldon seems to, like, filter himself out of that chaos, usually by dropping deep. So it's not like he finds great pockets inside a team's shape.

Like, he usually sort of drops out of it if he's playing that center mid-roll. And then plays from there. Now, he also plays some winger, and he finds himself as like a wing player at times. And I need to give the stats folks more credit because I'm always like, well, is that what's tipping the scales here? Is he getting credit for like doing winger things but being compared to other holding center mids? But I don't think that's the case. Okay. Well, help me reconcile these two disparate facts.

So what the stats really liked about Roldon last year, and I should also say that over the small sample size of 2020, these stats don't particularly love Christian Roldon, the goals plus. But from 2019, basically all of his value is wrapped up in passing and interrupting. So we're also going to need them to explain fully what interrupting is. But that's where he's like a negative on everything else. but his interrupting is like he's a world-class interrupter. Is that just disruption, like breaking up plays winning the ball?

Yeah, the traits they measure and score dribbling, fouling, interrupting, passing, receiving, and shooting. Okay. So Raldon's positive on passing, and his highest score by far is interrupting, and then he's negative everywhere else for 2019. Okay. So, that's, I mean, that's what it is. Like he just, he just gets the ball and shifts it to the next player.

And somehow that, I don't know if he's just like a Texas Tech quarterback. And he just, the system at Seattle is so, like, well drilled that he's benefiting from that. Or if, or if there just really is so much more to Roldon than we can see. Maybe the metrics are, are not quite yet able to isolate Nico Lodero's actions from Roldons. Or Jordan Morris. Yeah, right. Well, he's in the same way that Aaron Long is kind of the, I don't know, the benchmark for a national team centerback right now.

It's fair to say Roldon is sort of the benchmark for a midfielder, right? I think that's about where we're at. And the question, I think, a big one is going to be whether, if Burrhalter goes with sort of this new system, if Roldon is considered the number three man as a pressing number eight, as he was as like a as as he was in that sort of eight 10 roll and I don't know I have no idea if Burrhalter sees him as that or if this completely takes rolled on out of Burrhalter's plans but I still want to spend eight minutes talking about it you got eight more minutes

um okay so who's who who's who he got next then so next up is Jackson Yule and I think this one's going to be a little bit more immediate I think this one's going to having a more immediate effect on on how the u.s plays okay yeah because he is the presumptive starter at the number six for the u.s men's national team i think that's maybe going a little far because we don't know how michael bradley is going to factor in michael bradley has started all the important games that he was available to start uh in that last canada game he was injured from the mLS cup uh finals so i think it'll be yule i think i think i think the

Uel's mobility I think Burrhalter is settled on as being necessary I mean his relative mobility is mobility relative to Michael Bradley

yeah it's it it can't be we can't be going back to Bradley for important games can we? I don't think so I think I'm pretty

convinced that it's Yule's spot at the moment and this is where I mean like I'm still mostly opposed to the sort of Jackson Yule role existing in the first place

but I think you can at least see the logic of it. What is the logic of it in 50 words or less? Well, the logic of it is that the job the U.S. has to do is to break down inferior regional opponents who are going to give us the ball and dare us to score against their low block. And that was a really successful tactic through the 2018 cycle where we finished fifth out of six teams. And I don't think you can say, well, our talent pool is just so low during that cycle. because surely our talent pool wasn't fifth out of those six teams. So for me,

the problem is like how we deploy that talent. And as Bob Morocco might put it, it's our division of labor. I think our biggest issue was the predictability of the players that we choose to play. You watch those games and it's not just Coovo, you know, it's Panama away, it's Costa Rica. At home, it's Honduras away. We're just so boring.

We're so vanilla. Like nobody ever does. does anything that's unexpected. So we always attempt the obvious pass to the obvious teammate who's in like this obvious space and we just run these little two-man games all over the field. And assuming we even like execute those obvious plays, because a lot of times we like force things in an obvious way, you know, the opposing low block just sort of moves in sync with us. Like they see what's coming at the same speed we do and they're just moving into the new

space and we just never seem to trouble them. which is why all of our attack in that cycle basically came from Christian Pulisic because even though he's predictable, like he plays predictably, you just can't stop him anyway. You know what he's going to do, but you just can't stop him. So he can unbalance a team by himself. So Yule is in there to, that sixth position is there to spray the ball, spray the ball from the middle out to one of the corners

to an overlapping fullback who then wax it across the front of the goal. No, I think it goes even farther than that. He has that passing range, that fabled will trap passing range. But I think more than that, what it comes down to is Jackson Ewell makes unexpected passes against set defenses. He does. That's true. That's like my whole scouting report is that he's going to take the ball and he's going to make a progressive pass that isn't telegraphed by his body shape. And that's like the entire bar he has to clear to make his value worth. while and to essentially get us through these qualifying matches.

And if he's making those passes to Christian Pulisic and Giovanni Raina and Timi Weaa and even Jordan Morris, that's going to be more dangerous than Pulisic and Areola and Corey Baird. Who were our wingers in the last? Darlington Nagby was a winger in the last cycle. Okay. Yeah, Fabian Johnson played a little bit. But yes, that's the gist. But they were always receiving the ball in that last cycle against the defense that was very set up already by the time they received it.

And Ewell's passes aren't always super elegant. Like sometimes he's really jamming in an overhit ball to get it to that guy that he's not looking at. And it only gets through because the defender wasn't expecting him to hit it. And so he has to hit it with a ton of pace to use that element of surprise. But it's enough. I mean, they get there. They get to the teammate. And for that like briefest moment, you know, Christian Poulsock has the ball and the defense is not quite set.

And that's sort of the only domino that we need to fall, I think, is what the gamble is to justify Jackson Ewell's place in the starting 11. Okay. This is a really good scouting report. I mean, all I said was that he passes the ball away from where his hips are facing. That's the Jackson Yule scouting report. Brevity is the soul of wit. do you have any cautions about him? So I think the bar he has to clear,

the biggest bar he has to clear is going to be his defensive liability. And here's where I think playing for San Jose helps in that regard. Like if we're going to play that pressing eight system where, you know, let's say it's Adams and McKenney ahead of him hunting, for them to hunt and put pressure on team, we have to know that the team can't immediately just like clip the ball into the space that Adams and McKinney vacate and just assume that the guy that Jackson Ewell is responsible for in that zone is going to be able to beat Jackson Ewell to the ball.

Yeah. And I think, again, for a competent soccer player, most guys should be able to do that. But with Jackson Ewell playing at San Jose, we see that because if he was really bad at that, like extremely bad at that, then teams could easily just draw out San Jose's center mids because they're manmarking and then just clip balls into Jackson Ewell space all day and trust that whoever's playing against him will win it and run at Jackson Ewell. But I don't really think that that is a tactic that, you know, has been proven to just work every time against San Jose. Yeah. And Ewell did show, I thought, in that game against Canada in November, that he was

more of a defensive stalwart than Bradley was. I think so. And you can still, you still, he still has some protection built in there with, with like a McKinney or an Adams. if they're, you know, as like, they're not both just going to be chasing all over the field like San Jose actually would to man-mark players. Like there's still that connection to them. I just, for when you compare Ewell to Bradley, that's something Bradley might not actually be able to do.

If you just leave Bradley alone, like you might just be able to exploit, teams would probably be able to exploit that space. I mean, we saw what happened when Bradley was left alone in 2017. Right, right. So that's about it. That's my Jackson Yule piece. And it kind of helps explain why a James Sands wouldn't even really be in competition for that role.

Because the role only exists to hit that unexpected pass. If Sands isn't doing that, we can plug in someone else if it's just going to be a ball winning role. Yeah. Yep. It's very clear. I mean, some people, some of the people who tweet at us on Twitter don't understand that yet. And probably those are people who don't even. and listen to the podcast, let's be honest.

But there's a very clear role for that number six job. And until Burhalter changes it, or we see the next evolution of the Burrhalter system, it's not a job that really fits Sands. It's not really a job that fits Adams either. Right. And this is the other piece of this. The last one I'll do on Yule here is,

if he can't do it, I think it will be very clear, very quickly. so I don't think it'll be some extended, elongated, like we saw 2019 with sort of the Bradley trap. They ate up all of the minutes in 2019, even though we weren't great, in my opinion, in sort of those real tests that we had at doing the things that they were supposed to be doing. So we didn't get that field stretching pass constantly from those guys. If you can't break lines or if he's a huge defensive liability, I think it will stand out very quickly. And I think we'd then be able to sort of move on from that. move to the next framework. The next iteration. Yeah. Okay. Very good. Very good. Who's your next

midfielder you want to talk about? Well, those are my two midfielder spells. I had Frankie and it was basically the same thing as James Sands. He's not making a lot of incisive line breaking passes. He's a nuisance guy, so he's actually pretty good pressing. He might end up if he's going to ever factor in. It might be in more of that like pressing eight rolls. who's capable of, you know, connecting passes once he wins it. But he's not, he's not like threading passes through tight windows. So he's not, in my opinion, he's not just because he sits in that space for Cincinnati. I don't think he's really particularly in contention for the Yule role.

Yeah, definitely not. Maybe one of the eight roles if a lot happens, but there's a lot of competition for those jobs. Come Olympics. I mean, it might be one of those things where come Olympics, depending on where all of our tier one and a half tier two prospects have filtered. If you think of Amaya as like a tier three, tier four Olympic prospect, like he could get some looks in Olympic camp.

Okay. Do you want to talk about Brendan Aronson here? Oh yeah, we should, shouldn't we? I mean... Everyone's talking about Brendan Aronson. Yeah, he's gotten a ton of attention in this tournament. Apparently, some clubs in Germany are scouting him.

Can I just say real quick? that's what bugs me the most is that like you constantly hear about so-and-so team is monitoring a player and it's like this is 2020 like we were talking about with this data stuff anybody who plays any level of professional soccer is on every is on the same database as every other player and can be sorted by their by their production levels so I have no idea what they what they mean when they say that

that Gladbach is monitoring Brendan Aronson yeah I mean you'd like to think it's signals and like an extra level of attention beyond just like the part-time scout watching them on Y Scout. But but yeah, I don't know what it means at all. So all like Freiberg's entire staff is huddled around a computer monitor watching ESPN Plus at whatever time that is in Germany. Christian, get over here.

Mr. Stike. I don't know. That's this is all like cynical because it wouldn't, I mean, I have no doubt that some of our, players are being consider, you know, whatever, whatever that process is for some of these clubs. I'm just always, whenever I see that, it just kind of makes me chuckle because it's so vague. Yep. It is, it creates the, it creates the impression of having significance without having any, which, you know, I have to admit I'm kind of a master at that myself. So, Aronson, has he been all that good?

if you go on Twitter.com you will think that he has. I retweeted an angle of his assist from last night that Sanjeev tweeted out. So I'm part of this. We should always celebrate those moments because that is like total sauce. But it gets like a little bit funny

and this, I know this will be rich kind of coming from youth hype podcast scuffed is that people like are unanimously assigning now like seven-figure price tags to him going to the Bundesliga, where I'm just still pretty skeptical that that's going to happen. Yeah. He's not a game breaker yet. I mean, he did that.

He did that assist. We can't take that away from him. And if that were who he is, like if he's doing that every game, and that's what he is next game and a game after, then suddenly, yes, that probably becomes a seven-figure player. But that we have quite a bit of data. on Aronson, and that's not who he is at the moment. No, he has...

That play aside. Two assists. I don't know what the advanced metrics show, but two assists in this tournament so far. Two assists in this tournament, and this is one where he's like the anti-rolled-on, where everyone loves him, but the math actually does not care particularly that much for Brendan Aronson. Hmm. Some of that might be volume, which has been a lot of the talks surrounding him, is that

for as hype, as much hype as he's getting, he hadn't been particularly involved in games as far as just like the number of times he gets on the ball. And, you know, at John Mueller, John Space Mueller,

dummy run. John Space Mueller, yeah. Had the great explainer for why that's the case because Aronson at the moment stays in cover shadows too much when his team's in possession. If he was like, watches that video and goes, oh, I can fix that and fixes it, then that makes them a completely different player.

But when you're only on the ball, a few, like a dozen times a game, 20 times a game, you can't accumulate enough positive moments to be well regarded by those advanced metrics. Yeah, yeah. I forget which game Mueller made that video from. I guess he made it from clips from several games. But, you know, last night against SKC, Erringson touched the ball. 36 times it's still not that many

for somebody who wants to be a high volume 10 But that's a I mean that's a 50% improvement from from the first game of the tournament where I think he literally touched it

like 21 times Wait I'm sorry He didn't touch it 36 times Scratch that He touched it 14 times last night For real Yeah So these are Wisecout figures

so that I know that some people say they're not the best at data collection, but take them for what they're worth. 19 touches against Inter-Miami, 18 touches against Orlando City. So that's going to be the rub, and that will probably, I don't know if I want to say scare some teams off, but that will stand out to teams who are trying to figure out if this is a guy they want to add. Certainly if they want to add them for seven figures.

Yeah. Yeah, man. And I'm not saying we shouldn't be excited about Brendan Aronson. We love like any prospect who's doing, who has a pulse as an attacker in the American pool. It's just that the pendulum has swung very far, very quickly for Brendan Aronson. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to keep watching him, but I don't think it's fair to say we're not as hyped as a lot of people are. I mean, that's what I'm gathering from your voice.

Yeah, and it's weird because I am hyped about him. I think it's great that we have this kid doing this. I don't think that means he's a lock for Champions League football next year. Okay. Okay, well, you've got some four words to talk about, but why don't you let me do my full backs first? Yeah, give us that left back situation. Yeah, two left backs to talk about. Sam Vines, 21 at Colorado, the Colorado Rapids, Colorado crashed out of the tournament,

and I think, you know, Vines put in serious work. He reminds me a little bit of long, sort of in that cut from that same cloth as a defense. athletic, competitive, strong in duels, got beaten by a couple notable balls in behind, but didn't give up much defensively. Had some success against Minnesota carrying the ball up the line and finding feet, but didn't find a lot of joy out on the flank and didn't progress the ball that much, which could be a team problem as much as anything because the rapids are pretty bad. I'm happy Vines is in the player pool.

I really want us to develop a left back who can tilt the game, and he's not quite that yet. So I'm, you know, we all saw him in February against Costa Rica. I thought he was decent in that game, but not special. And I think that's kind of like, that's kind of what he still is, you know? Right. And it's a bit telling that that still could be like, well, it's probably still enough for a call-up. Yeah, yeah.

And I think, so the second one I want to talk about is not all that different from him. is Chase Chase Gasper, 24-year-old left back for Minnesota United. Minnesota has made it to the quarterfinals of this tournament, and their left back has been a standout performer. He is a tough defender. He wins most of his duels, and he logs a lot of interceptions for the position. He's not a plus-plus passer of the ball, and is crossing is only so-so, but he is able to wiggle out of tight spots with a couple touches

and can find a target behind the first line of defense with his feet. A lot of times he's passing it in the air to, toy or is it Schoenfeld so he pushes up the flank and regularly gets involved in the attack which is what we want our left back to be able to do for now it seems to me like he's ahead of Vines in the pecking order

just based on the evidence of these last few games and he should be a solid option at left back for Burralter in the coming year so I'm a little higher on Gaspur than I am on Bines okay Do you think that's a today only thing? You think that, I mean, is it sort of pointless? They both have ceilings that we can't really predict.

Yeah, I think incremental improvement in the way they cross the ball and the way they find a final ball is what we should look for from Vines and Gaspur. You know, like actually present danger to the opponent in the final third, which I don't think either of them really does. at the moment. Otherwise, you know, they are a solid, they're both solid defenders. I think Gasper's probably a little better defender

than Vines right now, but Vines is probably more athletic. Gasper's three years older. And effectively, there is no incumbent at the position, right? I mean, we're talking about Tim Rheims versus Serginio Dest as a makeshift left back, and then it's, it's going to be these guys

or Anthony Robinson. It doesn't seem like Fabian Johnson's going to be invited to camp anytime soon. Yeah, don't rule out Daniel Lovitz. I kind of am. That's kind of what I'm doing. I'm kind of ruling out Daniel Lovitz. Yeah, it's a wide open field for that position. So if I'm Chase Gaspers' mom, I'm, you know,

I'm saving up to buy plane tickets to some World Cup qualifiers. I was just going to say the October window, should it be a domestic only window? But World Cup qualifiers, you can buy those tickets. If he's, you know, as a backup, as a backup. They'll probably play one of those games in Minnesota. Yeah, that's right. Get your hopes up.

Yeah, let's start saving our money, too, go to all seven of the away matches. All right, all right. Who else do you have as our left-back pool? That's all I got. That's all I got for now. I think that covers all of the MLS's back, left-back pool. George Bello played some games.

I'm not going to ask you to get into it. We're not going to talk about that right now. I think we should go to, we got a handful of other players to talk about, three in particular, Greg. You talking about the forward pool? Yep. All right, let's go.

So the forward pool that I did my homework on was Jordan Morris, Ayo Aconola, and Jeremy Abobesi. Who you want me to start with, Bels? Ayo Aconola. All right, Aco Acoa is sort of the star who was riding the momentum before Brendan Arensen and hamstring injury cruelly took it away.

Was it a hamstring? Was it a hamstring? I'm not sure. Scott Dorical let us know. Aconola amassed five goals in the first three group stage games before missing the round of 16 knockout game with an injury. And that got a lot of buzz, obviously, because he'd kind of, you could, you'd, say he came out of nowhere.

I think his last game prior to this was a U.S.L. was a Toronto two game in the U.S.L. So I don't think people had Ayo Aconola as a five-goal score going into this tournament, potential golden boot winner. No, they did not. No, they did not. I certainly did not. I thought I had sort of written him off because.

Because he was playing for Toronto, too. That. And, you know, even with the U-20s, a team that I really enjoyed and watched a lot of, he was always, you know, kind of a bull in a china shop, you know, like not a, not a, not very technical, not great at combining. Okay. Well, this is going to blow your mind a little bit, Bells, but my report is basically that he's, he's a bit of a bull in a China shop.

Okay. Okay. He was, he was, like, his most effective moments were, like, his very, the thing he did best in this tournament was to straight race behind the back line and get free and get found, which is two parts. One, there is like a skill to that, obviously. There's timing and run, communicating with the player on the ball to coordinate this. But two, and I think one of the other themes of this MLS's back semi-colon tournament,

is that backlines have been an absolute shambles. Okay. Like you just have the most ridiculous, like, zigzag back lines where where like the near sideline fallback who's not marking anyone is like four yards deeper than everyone else. And so a guy can just wade where normally he would be, it'd be like a everyone would know he's offside immediately. Like now the guy is just on and has the as this breakaway. Like that has been like an ever present part of this tournament for me. And so I think we've really seen an inflation in sort of these scoring chances.

Aconola has a ton of these breakways He actually has that's not where his goals have come from Surprisingly because he's he's had those chances Saved quite a bit Or he's been taken down and fouled Yeah, yeah But that's been that's been like his most Exciting like this is what's gonna get your attention

When you talk about popping off the screen It's oh, Akanola is in again Like he's just been sprung again like this is crazy He keeps getting in on goal So do you give him any credit for like For timing his runs well or getting you know getting his shoulder inside a center back and, you know, winning position, that sort of thing? I'm going to be skeptical on it. I mean, there's an element to it that, yes, that's going to be good,

but I think a lot of it is going to sort of fade out as we leave this sort of preseason where I don't even know to the extent teams got a preseason in before this, before they had to just start playing games. So I'm very curious, because, usually you look at expected goals to see how things are going to see how sustainable something is. And Ocannol's expected goals are extremely high. But, you know, there's a sample size caveat. But I also think that the situations he was getting into that were his highest, like XG situations are not necessarily going to be sustainable once they get into more regular schedules. That's my big concern. There were other situations where he's moving well off the ball in like,

creating space for a ball to come across him for a nice tap in. There's situations where he does time runs really well, and Altador, you know, slides it in. But for the most part, I think we're going to see, you know, I don't think we're going to see Aconola as somebody who's going to be taking over MLS in the scoring department. Okay, okay. Well, let's get to his link up play too,

because I think that's important. And that's where it's more of like the bowl in the china shop. he's willing to he's going to come back into the midfield and play a lot of times even that isn't super subtle like he'll just sort of come flying into your picture from from the forward position and he sort of receives the ball while he's still running backward it kind of bubbles up on him he'll probably connect a path but he's not going to be this like in rhythm connecting player which for me is what we're looking at the specific trait we're looking for in our national team setup yeah and that was that was no more clear than when joe's the altar

Lord finally played in the tournament in the, I think the third game of the group stage, Altador comes on and with his very first touch, like, takes a ball off the short hop while he's posting somebody up, like, cushions it perfectly while he pushes off the defender to create separation, pivots with one step and slides in a ball for Aconola who then gets dragged down. Perfectly in stride. Yeah, I mean, like, you just see that on, and that's, that was Josie Alcadour's first competitive soccer action since the March shutdown. and you're just like, oh, okay, Josie Altador probably still our striker.

There's levels to this. Yeah. So anyway, that's sort of my Aconola take as of July 2020. Great. I think he has a lot more in common with Zardez than he does with Altador at the moment. One last, I know I said last thing, but one last thing about Aconola is there are worse types of players to be than like a Giazzi Zardez type player when you have Puts Waylo and Josie Altador feeding you passes. So it's certainly not like there's a cap on what Akanola can do.

He could have a ton of success finishing off chances from these guys. Yeah. Anyway, that's my Akanola Scout. Well, I want to say I like the way he finishes and I like the way he can, which I know that's just gobbledy gook, mystical gobbledy gook. He did have that absolute vanger though. Yeah, he had the banger. If he gets the ball on his right foot, he's going to put it.

He's going to test the keeper. If he gets the ball on his left foot, he's going to pass it to the keeper. That also checks out. Yeah. But his ability to win a physical battle with the centerback, I think, is something that Sergeant kind of misses a little bit in the Bundesliga. Obviously, we're talking about different levels and totally different circumstances. But you do get the sense when Aconola is chasing down a ball that a sense.

centerback is also chasing down. There's a decent chance Aconola is going to end up with it and get a shot off. And I know that's only a small sliver of what it is to be a soccer player, but it is something that matters. That's just my little two cents on Aconola.

I'm right there with you on that. He is, I mean, that goal he scored where he just overpowered Montreal's centerback to score his third of the game. Yeah, it was intense. pops off the screen a little bit. Yeah.

Okay, let's do Ababa Se and Morris. Okay, that's great because Ababa Se is actually like a great contrast to Aconola where I think he is actually incredibly tidy. I hadn't watched this one of Ababa Se. I think, I don't know if it's just because I feel like he's buried on the wing out in Portland last year, or if Portland just doesn't get me too excited to watch. But he was playing as the target striker in this tournament, he's really clean on the ball. and it was a complete contrast.

He has some of that outdoor efficiency in his mechanical, like collecting a ball and then moving it to the next place. He's usually operating in pockets rather than with a guy right on his hip, but there's definitely evidence that he can play with a guy on his hip and still be that clean with it.

So I think he's much more like a Jesus Ferreira type, which for me is a valuable piece could be a valuable debt option for the national team if we're trying to play that way outdoors always hurt and we're looking for guys who can facilitate for the sort of more elite attackers. Okay. He's also scored some goals, right? Yeah, he's gotten on the end of a couple of crosses, so a decent header and then one time

where he did just kind of have a guy posted up on a ball that came across and he's there to clip it in. his movement I am not super impressed with his movement in the 18 like when the ball goes out wide I'm more impressed with his movement checking back to balls in the buildup like I think he's actually really sharp

about losing guys like with a quick sharp burst to get into a space he doesn't just sort of turn and run back to the ball the way sort of Aconola had a tendency to do again he doesn't post guys up necessarily the way Josie does but he does kind of operate

more like a Ferrara to get into a pocket, collect, and really cleanly move it along. He doesn't, he's not going to dominate players the way Josie Altador does. Not many, not many do. Right. That's why Altador's, you know, sort of remains our most complete forward option. So Iboise is somewhere in the depth chart, but like third or fourth or fifth? Yeah, it goes back to, I wish we would have seen more, that kind of player more through 2019. and Ababa Se would have been one to get more of an extent to run out in the forward role rather than playing that one-off.

He played one game on the wing in January camp. Well, he's got a big supporter in Matt Doyle, that's for sure. Since we talk about stats from the other guys, Abousa is also basically bang on Giazzi's Ardez's goal creation numbers per 90. So it's not like he's, you know, incapable of scoring. I know Zardaz tends to get defended by just being like, well, who else is scoring? But Obosei is, I think, right on Zardaz's numbers per 90 from 2019. Even given the fact that Ibovsa played a lot of wing, too?

Yep. Yeah. So, again, like there's there are other contenders. It didn't, it's not like it, Zardaz is just the only one who we could have tried. Okay, let's get to the, I think the last player we're going to talk about today. Jordan Morris. You did the scouting report on him? Yeah, I took him on because a lot of people are trying to figure out if he's still going to have a play.

I mean, I shouldn't say a lot of people are trying to think that. A lot of people are certain that he should still have a place probably in the starting 11. Even as we were talking about sort of the new system, we think we're going to play. And so I just wanted to see how he looks and how he might fit. in so I wanted to take a closer look at him. There are also people sort of calling for maybe moving him to the nine to play as the striker to get him and Gio Rain on the field at the same time. Who's calling for that?

I think there's a contingent. I don't see it. From what I saw of him in this game, there was also someone who brought to my attention that he played the nine a little bit for Seattle last year over the summer. Like he's just, he doesn't have the usage rate as a nine. that I think we're going to that our situation that our setup would dictate. So I think if he's going to play it, be on the wing. Something we didn't talk about last time out is if you want to have Morris and you want to keep him on the wing,

you could do that on the right side. He could play that right winger. And you could have Sergenio Dest come up and attack sort of inside. So he could become like a 10 and a fullback instead of a overlapping fullback. I love it. I bet Greg Burrhalter loves that idea too. I think so, too. It would be a nice little fun wrinkle.

And it's not crazy. And again, you have to rotate between games anyway. We're going to play a ton of games in a short time span. You're going to have to deal with injuries. So it's not like it's always going to be the same 11. So if you are looking for ways to spell guys or you need, you know, rotations, that's certainly a rotation that would be pretty consistent, I think, with people's skill sets. Yeah.

You can always bring him on as a late game sub to get a goal too. Oh, yeah, no. And I still don't think it's out of the realm of possibility whatsoever that he's Burrhalter's. Burrhalter thinks of him as the starter, even in place of Gio Raina. And my actual gut theory is that he's going to ease Raina in. Like he has the luxury to do that with Des,

we had to get him in right away because there was that eligibility question. But with Raina, I think he'd be more than happy to say, what is actually the best way to integrate this player? And it might be bringing him in for 20 minutes here and then, you know, that kind of a mapped out plan. And that sort of would also help manage potentially egos because Jordan Morris could very easily say, what have I done to get replaced? Yeah. All right. Should I talk about how he plays a little bit?

Sure, please. I'll just kind of reiterate. He's also a bit bull in China shoppish. and I don't think that's too much of a surprise. He's going to be fine collecting the ball in the wing, but what I'd say about his first touch is that he basically has to, he's almost always like fully concentrating on collecting the ball with his first touch, and it's rarely used to, like, deceive someone

or to beat someone straight away. Does that make sense? He's going to collect it, and then he's going to do something. He's not like already doing something while he's collecting the ball. But where he's, He actually looks much more like a finesse player is once he's moving. Like when he's running full speed, he's still capable of hitting like some nice combination passes

with a Rui Diaz or with a Nico Adaro, where it's all like graceful and fluid and in stride and clean. And I think that's kind of a unique skill set to have where he's not as great from a standstill, but once he's moving, he's just in his element. Yeah. Because he can, he's to the point with his guy. game now where he can definitely take it to the byline on the left wing and pull it back across

with his left foot effectively. Yeah, Fizz is a low ball across. I really like that, that skill set that he's got. And he just has some really good ideas of where to, I think, try to hit that ball. So he's got some good setup passes to his name in this tournament, aside from just his assist. So, you know, in this tournament, he has not done, certainly hasn't done any. to hurt his cause if he was already in good standing with Burrhalter for like a starting 11 spot okay um just since just since we talked about all the other guys as numbers a little bit jordan morris in his absolute like career year career year last year did pretty significantly outperform his expected goals so i think he is hitting for like 0.77 per 90 which is pretty

absurd. And I think he was actually only expected to hit like 0.55. So it was a, he was scoring and assisting at what you'd call an unsustainable rate, like he's going to regress a little bit this year. That hasn't happened through MLS's back. So we'll see if that's MLS's back inflation or if, or if he's really just getting better and better. Who knows, but he did not look good to me in the game against LAAFC.

could have just been an off night and it's not like he was a total disaster, but pretty rough outing for him to end his tournament run. Just when I was feeling the heat from the public on not giving him his due, he comes out and kind of lays an egg. That's what happens when you play

against future national team coach Bob Bradley. I guess so. Yeah, the thing is, it was a wide open game too. You know, L-A-F-C was throwing everybody forward, and Seattle was throwing everybody forward, and, like, they just, Morris just couldn't ever really break anything down. So, anything else to say about that?

I think we've, I think we've gone on for a long time. We've gone in-depth. That was an in-depth episode on some players. Yeah. Let's overthink some things. Let me do a quick, T-L-T-L-D-R on all of these players. Aaron Long, do you mind if I do that just to close us out? Oh, no, that's great.

Aaron Long, still, you know, still a national team centerback provides a decent floor, but not, certainly not an insurmountable one. James Sands, probably a defensive midfielder, not a centerback. Mark McKenzie, lots of potential. Let's watch him closely. Miles Robinson, similar to Aaron Long, I don't know what the calculus is for him to surpass an Aaron Long. Justin Glad, let's put him on the back burner for a while at centerback.

Christian rolled on, no comment. Jackson Ewell. Spreadsheet merchant, Christian Roaldon. Spreadsheet merchant, there you go. Jackson Ewell, he fits Burlhalter's profile for the number six in the current system, probably better than anybody else. Because, as you said, Greg, he makes surprising passes. Against MLS teams.

If he can't do it at the national team, we'll find out quick. Yeah, okay. Frankie Amaya, not a Yule type 6, not really, so maybe he's an 8, but it'll be a while before we see him with the national team, I would think. Brendan Aronson, cool it, everybody. Just enjoy what you're just enjoy what he's doing. It doesn't have to lead to a $9 million fee. Sam Vines, athletic, but probably not quite there yet. Chase Gasper, I'd say a good solid backup left back for the national team for right now.

Ayo Aconola, bull in a china shop was feasting on minnows in MLS's back. Jeremy Obamesey, you want to take that one real quick? I think he's another option if we're going to start playing the nine as more of a false nine. I think he fits really well. Okay. And Jordan Morris could very well be the starter at right wing, at minimum, a solid sub off the bench or a rotation player for the national team. Let's get the F out of here. All right, bells. Thanks, Craig. Really appreciate it. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.