Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 141: McKennie, Adams & Reyna shine, so let’s talk Berhalter’s midfield

Episode Date: September 24, 2020

Big weekends for McKennie, Adams and Reyna, and a lot of people think they should be our three-man midfield. Not so fast, says Greg Velasquez. We go deep on the midfield setup, Reyna’s and Adams’s best roles, and the knock-on lineup effects of playing them in various ways. 0:30 intro and a big weekend in Torino, Leipzig and Dortmund17:26 how we gonna line up this three-man midfield? Adams, McKennie, Reyna? We get in the weeds on this. 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. Thanks for downloading this episode of scuffed, as has been well documented. West McKinney, Tyler Adams, and Giovanni Raina started and played important roles in wins for their clubs over the weekend. Three big-time performances, and they happen to segue nicely with a subject that always

brightens the eye of the hardcore fan of the men's national team. How's old Greg Burholt are going to line up that? midfield. Hey Greg. Greg Velazquez. Hello Bells. The Savior Committee is thriving. Yes, we've nearly reached a quorum. We're close. We are close. We can hold votes any day now. Yeah. Not any day now. We're not going to hold a vote in October. No, the body's not going to be taking any action for a little while. Let's work with our way through these three big performances and then get into the weeds, deep into the weeds. Yes, my favorite place to be. But first, Quick thank you to all our supporters on Patreon.

Several of you heard the call on Twitter and signed up. And seriously, that's awesome. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Now, West McKinney at Yuvay. No big deal. No big deal at all. Started.

Went 90. Any thoughts on his performance before I just start prattling on? Once again, like a guy who just comes in and immediately looked like he belonged, did not look out a place at all. It wasn't sort of a bumbling comic relief to Yvese's professional demeanor. So that was sort of the worst case scenario for what we could have seen once we saw his name in the lineup. And obviously he was not that. Yeah.

I would say he was, you know, Adam Whitaker Snavely, his newsletter did a good job of sort of explaining that, hey, just belonging in that lineup and looking like you're not out of place is sort of, a huge accomplishment. And it is from an American perspective. But I would go a little further. I thought he was pretty good. I thought he was even pretty good in some ways. He had a couple moments where he got caught in possession in places where you would rather not get caught in possession.

But I'd say, you know, 95% of what he did in that game was positive. And you could tell the fans appreciated his sliding challenges and, you know, his energy out there. Yeah, he also managed to sort of throw in that extra Weston McKinney value once they started bringing him up on set pieces into the box. I mean, he essentially created their second goal. And then he came close to a couple of, or he came close on that chance and then another chance a little later in the game. Yeah, would have been really cool for him. You know, he, he thwacked that ball with outside of his right boot, right boot. It's right, but.

And it was an amazing save to keep it out of the goal. And then, of course, Benucci came in and cleaned up the mess. Oh, Benucci. I'm going to read a few words in Italian because it's kind of fun. You haven't been able to do this since Michael Bradley at Roma. Yeah. And we weren't podcasting back then. No, we definitely weren't.

And, you know, somebody's going to get after me for my pronunciation. But let me try it here. Stratasferico. Sontuoso Perfecto Potente Impavido Strepidoso

Surrendente Those translate roughly to stratospheric sumptuous perfect powerful fearless sensational and surprising

and they are words used by YuVe fans in response to a tweet from the club asking for an adjective that describes McKinney's performance so I just thought that would be

kind of fun I'm not sure I would go as far as those fans, but I believe it is fair to say you made a favorable first impression. He did. I totally agree with that. I also always try to keep myself from getting too far ahead in the sense that, like, this still is just one game, and UVA does have incredibly high expectations for outcomes, for performance. So we don't want to say, well, that's it. Westman Kenny is going to be a guaranteed starter for a Skiddo winning club for the foreseeable four seeable future. It's good to go back and remember that Josh Sargent scored a goal on his

Verde Brayman debut. I think within seconds of coming on to the field, there's no way he can go anywhere but up. And then for the next 18 months, he was sort of in and out of the lineup, a lot of times out of the lineup. So it's still important to hedge as far as what McKenny's future with Yuvae will be, and that it's not sort of just nailed on. But it's also important to know that, you know, we're talking about the essentially highest level of player can play. So the fact that he's even in that discussion or in that picture is just massive. Yeah. I would say even like the opposite is true,

the opposite of him now automatically starting a lot of games. I think he's still probably second choice. I mean, I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Been wrong before. We're talking from a U.S. men's national team standpoint, the difference between those things is negligible, like that he's still then like instantly,

in the pantheon of like the highest achievers that our national team has ever produced. Yep. Yeah. Still, still kind of marveling at the whole situation, to be honest with you. All right. Let's move across the border. Do they share a border? I don't think so.

Yeah. It's pretty close, though. Everything's kind of crowded over there. Yeah, moving up to Germany, northeastern part of Germany, R.B. Leipzig, one, three, one. one over Mines and Adams, Tyler Adams went 90 in the midfield. Well, it was perhaps partly at fault for the goal that was conceded, but not. He also played quite well, I thought.

Now, he didn't play as a deep-lying midfielder in this game. No, he did in their poll call game. And we'll kind of talk more about the specifics of it, I think, later. But in this game, he was, and, you know, there was a big, big sort of, not fire store, but a big discussion over Adams and the roles that he played and how that could translate to the roles that Burrhalter likes to use. And, you know, we're obviously part of that discussion. But then when this lineup was announced, Adams was originally listed as playing a centerback. So sort of in that, in a three-man back line as a centerback. So kind of in the

space that he occupied in that polka call game. So it's sort of re-ignited and confirmed certain ideas what he what he could do and how his club's using him but then in the actual game itself against minds he was very much part of a double pivot with campel and they played ahead of a three man sort of back line that was two centerbacks and clausterman playing a sort of a stay home right back if you want to see what that looked like watkey did a great video on the buildup on on Leipzig's buildouts and where Adams and campel were in relation to each other and uh by Bob Morocco posted Closterman's heat map and compared it to their leftback's heat map. So you've got to see the sort of asymmetry of Klosterman staying home and their left back being more of the traditional attacking left back.

Okay. So Noglesman and Burhalt are both in the avant-garde when it comes to buildouts. We'll get more into that for sure. I don't know that there's that much else to say about Adams' game. Like he did his usual thing of being extremely disruptive, hard to. to dribble past, good at breaking up what the other team is doing and efficient and what's the word? Not a lot of, not unadventurous. Yeah.

Not a lot of mistakes, unadventurous. And again, those aren't meant to be insults. Right. Okay. The third, sort of quote unquote midfielder. Georena. Georrena. More adventurous.

Yeah. But also, I mean, worth pointing out not super adventurous with his passing. I didn't think. But he scored a first half game winner in a 3-0 victory for Dortmund over Barusia, Mujing Gladback. And he also drew the penalty for the second goal. So, yeah, a very eventful attacking game for young Giorina in his very first Bundesliga opener. Yeah.

He started a couple of games for them, but, you know, this is big because it was the start of the season, leaving Julian Brant and Marco Royce. on the bench. Also a little bit crazy to him, to think that that's what's going on. His goal was a well-taken finish from kind of a tight angle, put it through the legs of a sliding defender

and wrong-footed the keeper, went far corner with it. The chance emerged from a poor touch. It's worth noting, I think. And then he drew the- He kind of pinballed the ball off of a defender's legs, right? And it bounced favorably to a teammate.

Yeah, to Jude Bellingham. who then played a nice little outside of the foot pass to him behind. And then he drew the penalty for the insurance goal from the spot by Erling Holland. Maybe made a meal out of it, but there was contact. There was contact. I'm glad he went down. Yeah, the meal of it, it's kind of funny. Like, you can say he flopped to get the call, but it's almost, it kind of was the opposite.

it like I think his flop was so kind of poor that he didn't get the call in real time. Like the referee didn't give it to him. I think because it was such like an awkward, obvious dive for his body motion. So it was only by going to the video and being like, oh, well, he did get kicked in the foot. And then he just looked ridiculous with his dive, but definitely kicked. So there's the penalty. So the flop would have cost him pre-Var with VAR. I mean, you still have to go down no matter what to have any chance of getting the call.

But now that there's a video review, they get to see that even though it was a bad dive, he was in fact fouled, so there you have it. Right. Yeah. And he gets fouled because he's exceptional at putting defenders in awkward positions where they have to lunge and he's already passed him or he's moved into an unexpected space. Yep. Very smooth.

Very smooth. He's most at home when he is dribbling the soccer ball. And it's weird that like we're, so thrilled by McKenny at Yuvae that we're not, at least I'm not talking or thinking about it as much that Raina is at Dortmund. I think that's because Pulisic's success at the Westfallen stadium kind of numbs me a little bit to that fact that we have another 17 year old there, but it is a huge deal. I guess nobody needs me to say that. No, and I'm not numb to it at all in judging by the, you know, onslaught of Raina starting tweets that we used to see when

Pulsick was starting back in the day. And we saw the same thing with McKinney. People are still really justifiably excited about this. Jazzed. We be jazzed. And then, oh yeah, I just want to say, as a side note, Erling Holland, what a striker. What a player.

Unbelievable. I mean, in Sancho, too. But the run that Holland made on that third goal in that game, it comes off a corny. This has nothing to do with Americans. I just have to say it. He's guarding the front post on a corner kick. And then it kind of pings around after the corner kick.

And as soon as he sees that it's going to be a counterattack, he puts his head down and sprints full tilt, 120 yards. He is a freight train. Yeah, because he knows there is just a little bit of a chance that he's going to get a chance to score. And sure enough, he's the one who arrives in the box first. and Sancho just slips it into him and then bang,

3-0. And it's one of those things where I don't know if he knows it or not, but it's obvious as soon as he starts running, no one else from minds who's sort of going to chase the play the way Erling Holland is is going to stay with him. So it's like he's going to add that extra man advantage to any of those situations because there's just no way that anyone's going to stay with him in that 70-yard race.

Right. It's awesome to see. It is so cool. He has a couple of those. I think people are basically like making memes of Erling Holland racing past, you know, whatever it is. Any anything where you have a bunch of people running in the same direction, Holland just breezes past them. It's intelligent, too, you know. I mean, I know you know that.

But like he doesn't, even if he doesn't get the ball and doesn't score, like you said, he creates a numerical advantage. So maybe somebody else gets the final ball and gets a chance to score on goal. I mean, it's just wonderful. wonderful to see. It also like shows that, sort of puts that spotlight on how much better the soccer is watching these players play for these teams than it was a couple years ago watching McKenny at Schalka

a couple years ago, seven months ago. Right. Josh Sargent of Brayman, like suddenly the guys that we get to watch and concentrate on are playing for these well-oiled machines that have like, again, this is where you can really use the word, world-class talent around them. Yeah. And then they're buddies, you know. McKinney's buddies with Ronaldo, Rana's buddies with Holland and Sancho.

Wild. Bellingham. Yeah. Coming up. Yes. So, so yes. Axel Witzel, that afterthought. All happening.

Yeah. So what, back to Rayna, what is he definitely good at, do you think? You know, the number one thing continues to be that ability to sort of receive the ball and then just kind of glide past people. who are in good defensive position. Like people are set up to defend him and for whatever reason he just, whether it's sort of a misdirection as the ball's traveling to him

or it's just incredible athletic intelligence and body control to just receive it and gain a little bit of leverage and he's such like a wide physical body but not stocky. Do you know what I mean? Like it's hard to even explain. But he just sort of...

He's big. He's big. Yeah, they can't get back around him and gain that half a stock. step that he gets on him and that's why they end up having to stick a foot out and he draws a ton of fouls uh not just in the box but he and pulisick both as we get into conga calf uh if they don't draw a ton of fouls it will be it will be like because we are being heavily concafed yeah but i don't expect it i think i think mostly i think that those sort of concaf issues are overblown and we do get our

share of calls and those guys are going to get tons of foul calls yeah yeah i think the I look at Rayna, I think the difference between him and say, like, Alex Mendez or Richie Ledezma at this point is mostly athleticism. I mean, he has a way of, like, moving the ball around to put a defender on the wrong foot. But it's, it's that the wideness, that wide is a weird word for it, but it is, it works. You have to like take an extra step to get around his body positioning to get to the ball. It's his length, I guess. into it. It's like his length, I suppose, six foot something, and, and he's just, he's quick, he's powerful. So yeah, he's also relatively ball secure. I mean, that's, that's part of it.

Though I think he struggled with this a little bit on Saturday. He gave the ball away a few times, and he, and then he, he's shown that he can get in dangerous spots in the 18, for example, drawing a penalty and scoring a goal. Right. Not a bad day's work. he's not a particular so we're about to get into our midfield slash entire lineup discussion but I will say he's not a particularly energetic presser or ball winner and although he does win the ball sometimes and he isn't making a ton of incisive passes like I said earlier I thought he was pretty safe with his passing for the most part he is good at sort of spreading it wide which is I think of us a talent that we we will be able to make use of yeah especially when

he's able to sort of draw players into, again, to get past the first defender in a way that forces other defenders to start cheating over, even if they don't commit fully to them. They have to sort of, everyone recognizes when a guy's half beat, and you have to start to pull away from your space to sort of compensate for that. Yeah. And I would, my last little critique is I don't, I think his movement off the ball leaves something to be desired. Definitely most comfortable dribbling.

but he deals he's only 17 so the next time we see the national team why shouldn't it be Adams at the 6 McKenny at the 8 and Raina at the 10 I guess I'd say it can be that it just can't be like left at that so you know it's 20 20 and we're well beyond being able to say here's your 10 here's your 8 here's your 6 get out there and have some fun fellas like I know the the fan base, that sort of community that we, that we're a part of online talking about these things, loves to say, like, why are we overthinking this? Just put these guys there in those spots. What I would say at this point, using those like delineations, the 10-8-6 is sort of borderline meaningless without a bunch of context. So I really do think that, you know,

even though we're saying Burr-Halter's overthinking things, I really think to just say, that's our midfield, let's move on to the next thing, is really underthinking it pretty badly. So this is because, it's underthinking it pretty badly because we're going to be building out in some kind of three, two, three, two, two, two, three. Yeah, maybe. At the very least, like, you kind of, if you're going to say, here's your 10, eight, six, you have to say, like, here's how they will behave, because not every 10 behaves the same way. Not every six behaves the same way.

So how are we building out? Like what's their role in the buildout? What's their role after that? The whole Adams thing started because, you know, he dropped between the centerbacks. And Nagelsman even said he's going to be this QB role for us. And so people seized on that. You know, even in that game, Adams wasn't sort of spraying the ball around at all. Like he was shifting at 8 to 10 or 8 to 20 yards side to side to his other centerbacks who were who were on that line with him.

hardly like a tempo control or hardly like a distributing deep lying midfielder. A deep lying distributor. So again, so even those kind of questions matter and kind of have to be accounted for. But yeah, like that you just,

you just can't leave it there. You have to kind of say, all right, if we're going to build out in a three, two, what's this guy's role in it? Is Adam's dropping in between the two centerbacks to form that three? Or is he just a six sort of in name only? because it's a nice shortcut, but really he's playing, as he did in Leipzig's last game, as like just a slightly more recessed dual eight

like he was playing with Campbell, and McKenny's that other eight. And if we're going to do that, then we either have to have McKinney dropping in as the six or one of the fullbacks has to stay back as part of that three. Is that what we're getting at here? Yeah, I mean, so if we're going to say, if we're going to build in that three, two,

like let's say Adams and McKinney play sort of side by side like Adams and Campbell just did in the last game which is my that's my preference at the moment for sure I think that's a much better use of Adams than anything else you can sort of do on the soccer field then you have to then then you have to say all right well who are the back three going to be we know it'll be two centerbacks Brooks and one other guy and we don't have to solve that one right now as we know it's kind of a log jam but who's the other one going to be and so We know it's not going to be Sergenio Dest. We know that if Anthony Robinson, as a lot of people want to say,

we'll just throw Anthony Robinson and Dest on as your fullbacks, obviously those two guys are comfortable in those positions. So there you go. Get your best players on there, which is making a lot of assumptions already about Robinson being one of our best players. Right. But if you're going to put those guys on there, certainly you're not asking any of them to stay back in the back three.

So then it's like, okay, well, who's the guy who makes up that third player? Yeah, so you can't, and so you're saying, you're thinking we can't ever just build out with like a two, four or something. I don't know that you can't do that. I'm just saying that, you know, for people saying use Adams as your, as your QB who drops between the centerbacks, McKenny's your eight, and then Raina's your 10 because he's playing 10 for Dortmund, that leaves an open spot because that's, you know, Raina is playing the 10 directly underneath Erling Holland, you know, and I think. think we want, I think we would want Raina playing in that same role for us as, if you want to call him a 10, as that player. Let's just do away with

numbers altogether and let's like specify like roles and spaces on the field. I think that's what you have to do here. So if you want Raina in the buildout to be right underneath your striker like he is at Dortmund in which he looks incredibly effective at for a

program in the U.S. Men's National team that has badly lacked players who can excel in that position since since clinton dempsey's you know aged out of the pool for me makes no sense to take reina out of that space like he should be in that space so we have if we establish him there i think you can also i think you also have to bring christian pulick into the discussion right and pulick is going to be i think especially knowing that rena can play that's a right-sided number 10 where he's right under the striker shaded to the right christian pool sick obviously having a ton of success at chelsea as a left winger who

pinch his way in to play directly under the striker shaded to the left like good now now we now we're hitting like perfect fits for guys with our team and the way they play with their club right and that's not and the point is that's not going to be reina at the quote unquote 10 that's reina at right wing sort of so i don't you don't want to use those words we don't have to commit to that yet we can just say here's how here's where reina is going to play for us in the in our possession yeah so if we just if we just start there and say raina playing directly under the under the striker shaded to the right pool of sick being that winger coming in from the left to play under the striker like if we just start there and establish those roles uh i think that gets us uh further into the conversation yeah

and then we've got and then we got to keep building so if we keep building and say well mckenny's you know makes the most sense as one of the uh eights in the buildup perfect fit he's doing that for uvea he's shown he can do that for the u.s men's national team he's He's shown that he struggles in other roles where he's more advanced as like a 10. So this is great. We've got McKenney in a perfect fit. Yep. Still with me?

I'm with you. All right. Any objections? No. I mean, I do have a thought, but I don't think it fits at this moment. So keep going. So now where we say, all right, well, we need another guy next to McKinney in the buildout, just like we have played in the past with the national team, just like Leibzig and Dortmund both play with these guys and these roles.

goals. And so again, for me, that guy is Tyler Adams. And you can call it whatever you want. He's, he's the more defensive version of McKenney and you can call him a six or you can call him a dual pressing eight. I think Burrhalter's kind of alluded to being, to that being the name of that position. That's how I've been referring to it in the U.S. men's national team context. So if you put Adams there, again, then we just keep filling in spots. So let's say Adams is that guy. then we're back to filling in that last spot in the three-man back line. Right. And I think, so the options are Jackson-Ewell or a Jackson-Ewell type.

Yeah. So let's say we throw, so that's the center-mid. So if we throw in like a passing center-mid, we can do that. There's no real problem there as long as we think we have the right guy for it. And that just means that all that changes is our defensive rotation. So if that's going to be a center mid that we use, who's going to defend as a center mid when we rotate into defense, then that's easy. We still have Adams and McKinney and now this other center mid to defend, and it's easy to just shift Raina out wide as a winger. So then instead of calling him a 10, you could call him an inverted winger, but his role in our possession and attack hasn't changed at all.

Okay. And then you or you could or you could have like say Sergenio dust at left back and Reggie Cannon at right back and Reggie Cannon be a stay at home right back. And then you could have Raina and then Sergenio Des would obviously get forward. Then you could have Raina play sort of as a nominal 10 and then have a like a Jordan Morris stay wide on at the right wing. Exactly. So I know I know Doyle released one of his like a per. like potential lineups for November World Cup qualifiers. So essentially saying here's what we could do to get our best 11 on the field.

This could be our best team, not necessarily our best 11 players. I don't want to put words in his mouth. But he put Cannon at right back and dust it left back. And a bunch of heat came out about how are you putting, how are you keeping Robinson off the field? He's in the Premier League now, whatever, whatever. But in my mind, it's not a choice between Cannon and Robinson. It's a choice between getting that extra winger on the field because of all the things we've just talked about.

So if you play cannon as a stay-at-home right-back, then that opens the door to have desk as your left-back going forward. And now you can put a true attacking player on your right side, not Robinson, who's a good attacker for a fullback, but an actual attacking Jordan Morris, who's been lights out for Sounders and mostly pretty good for the national team. Or if you're really on the Tim Wea train, it could be a Tim Wea as a winger. and we're still safe with, and yeah, and at that point, Raina really is a 10, and he plays on that right-sided 10 space in the attack, and he defends as sort of a 10, advanced central midfielder when we rotate into defense.

Yeah, I like that. In fact, there are very few of these iterations that I don't like, you know. I guess I would just say, you know, I saw a tie at Final Third respond to a tweet of yours last week where you were talking about some of these issues, where he said, why would you put Adams at the 6th when he's not that great at the buildout and you lose some of his counterpressing qualities when he's further back in the field? And I get that.

I get that that is in sort of the abstract playground of football Twitter. That is a good take. Like it makes sense. But I don't think World Cup qualifiers in, Honduras and in Costa Rica and in Jamaica or wherever wherever we end up going they're not in it's not an abstract playground and I think you just need like there's a part of me that sort of sides with this growing consensus that we need to have like a six eight 10 of Adams McKenny Raina because honestly he'll he can build out fine it's like he can he can pass fine I know

I'm sort of contradicting myself but he can do it okay and like you you okay you can at counterpress with him higher up the pitch when he's playing as the sort of an out-and-out quarterback six like he did in that DFP Polk Hall game. But like, eh, so what, you know? You're still going to get his defensive presence in the middle of the field. I'm feeling today like it doesn't really matter that much. Well, let's add some context then to that QB role because he does, it's not like he just stays back as a centerback in that role.

Like he starts there in the buildup, but then as the ball enters the final. third as it enters the box, you know, if you watch sort of the edge of that screen that he's on, he's on the right side of the screen while the ball's going into the box on the left side of the screen, you'll see there's some kind of a cue or a trigger where he obviously does step up into the midfield to become a central midfielder in the counterpress. And the same thing was the case for Jackson Ewell in that Costa Rica friendly. Like he doesn't just sit back with the centerbacks the entire game. As the ball progresses forward, he does come up into the, into a central midfield space and he is part of the counterpress.

For me, the reason I agree with Ty on this one is it's basically just a matter of ground coverage. So the two pressing eights in the setup I'm thinking of have to cover a lot more ground than that sort of quarterbacking six. The quarterback six still has a role to play in the press

and Adams definitely would play it very well. But the actual distances covered from big switches, he just has a smaller radius that player has a smaller radius to move than the eights who have to go from the center of the field all the way out to the sideline when that when you know costa rica switches the ball from their left back to their right back uh that's that'd be the pressing eight's job he was pinched way in with the center midfielders and now it's his job to get all the way out to that left back to press them and arrive at the same time as the ball essentially yeah to play and so for me that's where it's like we have maybe and maybe we have other guys who would end up doing that

well, like a Pomacall or a Holmes. Leget. Alfredo Morales, Sebastian Leget. And you might not, maybe you don't lose anything to put that guy there and run Adams as your pressing six. That would be sort of the only case for me that, that I would want Adams in that quarterback rule is if we find a guy who's almost as adept as Adams. So we gain, we don't lose too much in that pressing job and we gain a ton from our pressing

six role. Yeah. Okay. So where does Raina, if Raina's playing as a nominal right wing in that setup, where does he, like, where, what are the implications for him if the one of the, if one of the pressing eights has to run all the way to the sideline to cover for a switch, you know what I mean? Yeah, and this is what I hate about sort of people saying, well, you just have Adams that's the quarterbacking six, and then McKenny and Rainer are your other two center mitts. In my mind, that effectively makes Raina one of the pressing eights, not a 10 at all. And I don't know that he can't, that he wouldn't be able to do that, but, you know, it's... It's not his strong suit.

Yeah, it's not a strong suit, and I don't think we can replace his ability as that higher up the field player. So we lose a ton by taking him out of there, unless Timway is actually like in the same, classes him in sort of that role. But, you know, if you're playing anyone else in that spot right under the striker, you're losing, you've lost a lot of ground. So I want Raina as high up as possible. I don't want him as one of the ball chasing eights. Okay.

Well, I guess my only, the only thing I feel really strongly about here is that it doesn't make, because these games are going to be battles in hostile conditions, I just can't see the wisdom of, of, of starting Ewell in the midfield, you know, nothing against him personally. He's had a little bit of, he's had some struggles this season, hasn't played as well as last year.

But it's just, there's a lot of better ways to do it. It sounds, I mean, sounds some of them have been described by you in the last few minutes here. I just, I can't see that just to put a quarterback

in between the centerbacks. Don't. A pure quarterback with significant defensive liabilities, we're saying. Yeah, right. I mean, I'd much rather it be canon at right back. I'd almost even rather it be Tim Reem at left back as a stay-at-home. I hope you can't play stay-at-home left-back with Pulisick is your winger who tucks in. That's sort of the road. That's what I mean about all these knock-on effects. Like you got to have somebody overlapping Pulisick. Okay. So, Dashta Robinson.

So it's really only canon. It's really only canon unless you want Adams at the quarterback role. you can run you can run like a quarterbacking center mid again and you could keep like this was to keep Jordan Morris on the field was this variation because people are adamant that he play and again he probably deserves a shot to stay on the field with what he's done so far and that would be keeping him wide on the right playing Raina as that sort of nominal 10 then in the same space we've talked about because he's got to be in that space for me but then defensively he stays central Morris defenses the winger and then it'd be sergenio dest as a right back who would actually come in and play next to mckenny as a midfielder and that's sort of just speculatively saying so

versatile and technical that he can play anywhere he's just he can do anything which may be true but my sense is he's my sense is he's most comfortable along the touchline i mean that's where we've see it's where we've seen him play almost all his minutes and he all his highlights are from that spot. Right. So, so yeah, that's a real reach. Now, we should have all these, all these variations we're talking about. We should get to see them tested out extensively because gold or a World Cup qualifying has been pushed, as I'm sure most people have heard by now. We're not doing the four game window in the summer to, huge bummer. As a recording deadline, gold cup is still happening in the summer, which actually means we will have an extended camp in probably six competitive games

plus the tune-up games, if we have those, to just be experimenting with all of these new guys and developing these new variations and permutation. So Gold Cup now has the chance to be an incredible science experiment for Mr. Burhalter. Yeah. Well, I'm now more excited about Gold Cup than I was 25 seconds ago. Oh, yeah. This gold cup would be an incredible, like, eight weeks. Yeah.

For me, I couldn't be more excited about seeing these guys playing in all these different looks. A couple other calendar notes. Nations League is in June now. I guess the March window is just going to be some international friendlies, hopefully. Hopefully, yeah, hopefully full-strength international friendlies. A quick note on the Nations League then, like for me, those games become kind of the throwaway games. two games. Don't bring your other guys in if you're going to bring them in for Gold Cup. This is the overflow. This is Kenny Seff's time to shine.

Because we still, and then we still potentially have the Olympics where you can, you can throw all the U-23s who weren't quite first team ready now that our first team has gotten an influx of high-end talent. We should make a t-shirt, Kenny Seth's Time to Shine. And then, yeah, and then I noticed this mentioned on Twitter. who knows what is going to happen, but after the Gold Cup, there are only five windows left before the, as of now scheduled April 2020 final draw for the World Cup. So that's 10 matches.

I don't know how they're going to do the Ocho in five windows. Something's got to give. Something's got to give. There's a lot of logistical puzzles here in play. Yeah. We should mention a couple of before we get out of here. a couple of transfer related items. What's something about Dest going to where?

Dest is in like the most tedious TV love triangle ever between Barcelona and Byron where nothing ever actually is being announced. It's just like now bars are in the lead, now Byron are in the lead. Yeah. I mean, tedious in one sense, but also pretty cool. Yeah. It does seem like he's going to go to one or the other. And then, yeah, but as you always say, anything can happen.

We know nothing. The other one is Brennan Aronson. The Brennan Aronson moved to R.B. Salzburg is starting to look real. Tommy Scoops. It's like an official rumor now. Yeah. Not just a rumor. Certified rumor.

Okay. Anything else going on? Tim Ream and Anthony Robinson. and starting together in a cup game for Fulham as we speak. And then just another lineup of 50-odd MLS Olympic eligible players is probably going to take the field tonight. Yeah. Man, MLS is on fire.

The Savior Committee is growing. Do we need to tear that out again? We probably do. It's probably time. Yeah. Do you remember who the original executive board was on that committee? The board of directors? Is that what it was?

I don't know. I can't remember, but I'm sure it was. Exactly right. What I remember is I had to convince you to bump Tyler Adams into the executive, into the like first run board of directors. Yeah. You weren't quite ready yet. And I was like, no, we can put Adams on there.

That sounds like it's, that sounds false. No, I'm sure it's true. I've always been a little bit of a Tyler Adams skeptic because he doesn't play a lot of interesting forward passes, but I'm off the skepticism now. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks, Greg. See ya.