Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 144: November USMNT camp roster projection

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

We talk about who we prefer to be called in for what we hope will be two friendlies next month in Europe. As usual, we would be happy with lots of different possibilities. Just can’t wait for a USMNT match!patreon.com/scuffedpod Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Hello and welcome to the scuffed podcast. We're going to lead off by saying how much Daryl Grove, who died last week of cancer, has meant to us. The co-host of the Total Soccer Show was, as we all know, probably the most comforting voice in the American soccer media landscape. He was smart, quick-witted, warm, kind, and reasonable, and he really did understand. stand soccer. He was also a champion, not in the sense of necessarily lifting trophies, although I'm sure he did lift some trophies in his time, but in the sense that he championed the work of others. He championed scuffed when it was just a newsletter and promoted our podcast a lot. I don't think we would have gotten the traction we did without him, even though he could have seen us as a competitor.

And he championed the work of many others, Travis Clark, Joe Lowry, Jordan Angelie, the guys at the athletic. Those are the ones that come to mind right off the top of my head. He helped others by lifting them up, which is such a rare quality and a good example for us to follow. Yeah, the outpouring of love for Darrell and Taylor and their families and sort of how consistent the theme of the responses were that hello would welcome being sort of the signature opening of the show. And Darryl really made so many people feel so welcome. And it was all always with love. You know,

it can be easy in the media game to kind of weaponize divisiveness, you know, for engagement or for whatever else. But that's so obviously not what Daryl was about. Yeah. You know, we're all going to miss Daryl a lot.

And I think we'll all kind of carry that big warm, hello and welcome with us. Yeah. So, yeah, our best, our best wishes to Taylor and Daryl's family and Taylor's family. And so let's get on with the show. So today we're going to talk about the U.S. men's national team roster for the November friendlies in Europe, which we believe is still on the schedule, despite the continuing pandemic.

I hope it's still on the schedule. I mean, so far from what I've seen, what's at question is whether there will be a second game and we're working towards getting Panama in London. So playing Panama, I believe, Craven Cottage in London. Yeah. that would be really cool if we could have two games of data to look at one real quick piece of housekeeping before we get to that we want to thank our patrons on patreon we've seen a lot of long-time listeners sign up to support the podcast and that is incredibly helpful and not to put too fine a point on it but if it has occurred to you to support us there and you haven't yet please do so it's easy to

find us on patreon.com slash scuffpod and we're producing exclusive videos such as they are on Mondays and Fridays, people do seem to be enjoying them, at least some people. So enough of that, the roster. I think people really enjoy the Adam Bell's hair length watch. Yeah, it was long, now it's normal. All right, there's the update. Yeah. The roster, where do we start, Greg?

All right, so it's kind of wild because it was rumored that it was going to be a sort of European-only roster, but now lately we've seen sort of these updates coming in that MLS is going to be changing or has changed their re-entry quarantine process. Which would allow players who go play in this European window to make it back in time to play in the first round of the MLS playoffs. Which now I'm actually going to have to review to see which teams participate in the first round of MLS playoffs because I believe like four teams from each division bypass that round of playoffs. Oh man, you're going to be on my level of expertise. But I guess what we're going to be operating under the assumption of is MLS players are available,

but I feel like there might be some deference given to their clubs or they might only be called up in certain situations. So it might be that a first choice player or first choice in the 23, I guess, might be left off even though they might be called up under other circumstances. How's that? That sounds good. I mean, I guess the issue is like there are so many possibilities for this camp if we, if everybody is available that, and there's no technically no constraint on Burrhalter. He can call as many people as he wants. So how are we going to sort of winnow it down here?

So what we're going to do is we're just going to go with, for our episode, for our purposes, we're going to go with three goalkeepers, four fullbacks, five centerbacks, six center mids, four wingers. and I know that those definitions can get a little fluid and three forwards, three sort of out and out forwards. Okay. I like it just because it's how it's what we're. I like it just because it gives us some constraints to work under. Otherwise, I'd say like basically bring in everybody who's U.S. eligible in Europe.

Right. Again, there's not a ton of time to work with the group, so bringing in a ton of guys sort of defeats the purpose. It can not just have diminishing returns, but actually actively hurt what you're trying to accomplish. And there are, keep in mind, there are a lot of first choice, like real first choice players who have barely played for Greg Burhalter. So, you know, if you're thinking about what the priorities might be, Greg Burhalter introducing himself and shaking hands with some of these guys is actually like the priority. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. Okay.

So let's start with Stryker. You get to pick three. Why don't you pick your three first and then we'll see. All right. In classic Velasquez fashion, I'm not even, I'm even in this exercise. I'm not committing to a true three. I'm going to say Josh Sargent is in. And then I'm going to say, give me any two of Gio, Nik.

Joe Keeney, sorry. I shortened him to Gio and got mixed up with Raina. So Joe Keeney, Sebastian Soto, or Aaron Johansson. Any two of those guys is fine. It would have been really nice if we'd had an October window, so we could have looked at a couple of those guys in that one with Sargent, and then looked at a couple of the other ones. in this window with Sergeant, but we don't have that.

Yeah, okay. Well, I agree with you on Sergeant, and I am kind of with you and being unclear on the second two after that because a lot of players would make me happy to see. I'll focus on Johansen because, you know, if you do go back and watch some of his clips. I do. He is the one striker among many in Europe

who is playing in a way where he gets a lot of touches. you know, you'll pull up Navakovich or Haji Wright or Sebastian Soto even, and they're getting like 10, 15 touches a game. I don't know. I don't know if that's just a function of the style they're playing or what. But Johansson's touching the ball like 30 times. He's dropping really deep for Hammerby. Almost has a number 10 sometimes.

And he gets involved. He gets really involved. And he's real nice to watch on the ball. He's real clean, isn't he? He's just a very tidy, efficient combination player. And in addition to that, he is ruthless in the box. If you watch his goals this season, what he's doing, I mean, he's got three penalty kick goals out of 10.

So on the other seven, I'd say like five out of the seven, what he's doing is he's just eating a backpost defender for breakfast. Yeah, real sneaky, right? Yeah. He'll just, he'll see that the ball is coming down the other flank and then boom, he is in to that space. He's got that space sealed off and then tap in. Yeah, his movement in that regard is, I'm going to say Zardaz-esque.

Very Zardez-esque. I mean, I had that exact same thought. He's kind of like Zardis, but slower and with better touch, better first touch. And I'll just throw out there since I'm sure I'd be considered a Zardaz hater or Zardaz critic. Before the MLS season even resumed, we were on record pointing Zardez out as a player who had that elite ability in the box. Moving in the box is what I would call elite within our play. pool. Zarda is not included for either of us in this case.

And for me, that's just a function of we have guys that we need, kind of might want to explore in Europe and we'll have all of the January camp to bring Zardas back in. And it's just to leave him at home with his club. Wouldn't surprise me at all if he is included. And it's Zardas and Sargent. And one of these guys that we're talking about and the other ones just maybe Burrholder just feels like we're fine without them. Yeah.

And then Zardis is one player who doesn't need to. meet Burrhalter and shake hands with him. He spent a lot of time with Greg, Greg with three Gs. So my list is Sergeant Soto, Sebastian Soto and Aaron Johansson. I talked about Soto in my Patreon video earlier this week. He had a very, very good game for Telstar over the weekend. Like just looked absolutely confident. Receiving the ball with his first touch was so nice.

And he scored two goals. One of them was a Galazzo, I think it's fair to say. a full volley on a looping ball from the left wing over to the right back post. And then he scored on a header. Did well to redirect a very driven cross into the top right corner totally unstoppable. But I thought he looked really good in all facets of the game over the weekend. So there you go. So does my guy.

It does hurt me to leave off Novakovich. and Haji Wright at this point because they're both doing good things. And if they were all called in, that'd be great for me, you know, including Zard. Including Zardis. But, but like, go ahead. You were going to say something? Well, just this is where it'd be so nice to have a, you know, a more, a less sort of, what would I say, a world without so many external issues. Is that I guess how I would say it.

Right. We could have, we'd be, we could comfortably have a U-23 camp. And some of these guys, we could get our exploration done in the U-23 setting, rather than literally just having like the one and a half, or whatever it is, one week to work with the guys and be so limited that you just can't, because we still need to look at Sergeant. Sargent hasn't played a great game under Greg Burrhalter. We still need to see if he can do that.

So he's still the priority probably. And then it's just like with this, whatever time you have left, let's take a look at some of these other interesting cases. Yeah, I would not be surprised if Johansson came in and just blew sergeant out of the water. He's got that guile, right? Like, Johansson has this guile, and he has it all over the field. So while we can praise Jazi Zardez for his movement in the box, Johansson has this sort of same like three-dimensional understanding all over the field

and the technical chops to sort of let him succeed within it. I don't know if his athleticism is going to hold up outside of Sweden. But yeah, it would be cool to see. It would be interesting to see him play. There was this one play in his most recent game where he came, he was standing at the edge of the box, and he received a ball with his back to a winger who was overlapping behind him on the left wing. And he just kind of touched it with the inside of his boot. And it kind of like curled around the defender.

behind him right into the path of the winger. It didn't result in anything, but you could, my reaction and the reaction of the commentators was like, hmm. I think that, I think I saw that same play because I think it was one of the first plays of first actions of a game. So it came up first on his list. And yeah, he just, he just adds that ability to sort of do those things that are easy on the eye.

Yeah. Okay, that's a lot. That's a lot on strikers when Josh Sargent is going to get all the minutes and Zardez is going to get called up anyway. It's a fun position to talk about I have Joe Keeney as a winger By the way So we'll get to that in a second

Cheater Yeah because I do want to see him So who are your wingers You get to pick four According to your own rules You can break them again Yes I am No this is where we're getting into the fluidity of positions

And I've been going back on forth With some people on the online And it's about like Where guys are setting up So even though I'm again going to call Giorina a winger here. He is not going to play winger. So he's going to,

the one like sort of staple of Greg Burhalter's coaching and tactics is that we play with a front five. And if you go back and look at an old athletic article from Michael Cox, he points out how basically all the top teams are playing with front five and have been for a while now. And it's going to that sort of classic training pitch diagram where the field's divided up into five lanes. and you need one attack high up in each of those five lanes.

So when we talk about Gio Raina and where he fits, what I'm talking about here is Gio Raina is we're going to have a striker in the central lane as a starting position. And then in the lanes just on either side of that striker is where I think Greg Berthorter is going to deploy our wingers in his sort of system that he's going to be trotting out. That's what he did in February against Costa Rica with Janez and Ariola. and I think that's what he's going to do in his next game, and I think it's going to be with Pulisic and Raina

as our starting sort of inverted wingers who take the central channel half spaces in that front five. Yeah, I co-sign all of that. So it is a common source of confusion when we talk, like not just us, other people who say on Twitter that Raina should be a winger, because people are like, Rayna, a winger, you know, he shouldn't be a, he's a central midfield.

Well, he will essentially be a central midfielder in this side. Yeah, we'll be playing a front three, and Burrhalter's referred to that since that Coast Riga friendly. Being excited about playing a front three with a midfield that will chase in and clean up behind them. And it doesn't seem to me like Raina would be a player that you'd want doing all the cleaning up and chasing. You'd want them in the front three. So that's how I've got them listed here is a winger, but basically just think of them as a front three player with Pulisick and the striker. Yeah.

You need some lunch pail guys in behind them. Right. And then for his backup, I have, for the backup wingers, then I've got Tim Wea, who I think can easily do the rain and job. We'll see if he gets any run out this week. They have a Europa League game Thursday and then a league game on the weekend. And then I put Jordan Morris on here, so I could see him being left out and just being left with Sounders. And I can kind of get into Morris's role. But if Morris plays, he won't, I don't think he'll be an inverted winger. I think. that'd be a silly way to use him. I think you use him as more of a sideline hugging winger, and then I think you'd play a stay-at-home left-back. So this would be if they rotate pool sick and Morris. Yeah. And so just real quick, if they do that and you have a stay-at-home left back and then Morris on the wing, who fills the left-channel spot in the front five aforementioned? I've got two ways you could do it. You could do Serginio Dest and you'd start him at left-back, but in the attack he goes up and plays as like a 10.

which he has done quite a bit. He did that often enough for Iax. Even within a game, he would have several roles where he'd play in that channel, in that haph space. Sometimes he would go around the attackers and play more of the sideline-hugging, uh, wide attacker. But he's so versatile that you can do so many different things with him.

He's played as the, um, underlapping left back for the U.S. against Uruguay. Um, so, so that's my short answer. You could also bring along Tim Riem, who I have as our backup left back.

and play Tim Riemes, a stay-at-home left back behind Jordan Morris, and then just play one-year attacking mids, like a Sebastian legit type, in the half-space, in the attack. Okay. Or you could do that, put Rana in it into the midfield, actually, which seems like a distinct possibility, and then he would be that, he could be that guy. All right, well, I have the same four,

except trade-out Morris for Niko Joaquini. I really think we got to see him in camp, and I'm just cheating because he really is a striker. But he does play on the wing for Khan. I don't have anything against Morris. I just think why not just leave him at home in the middle of a pandemic. Sure, yes. And let him get ready for the playoffs with Seattle.

Yeah, Seattle obviously got burned the last time. We had an international window with Rudy Diaz contracting COVID-19. And missing, I don't know what he missed for Seattle, but he's made quite a difference already in his return to action. The other omission is Ulyanez here, besides, I mean, that's the omission among the wingers, I think. And that's just because Yanaz isn't making any waves right now. I haven't been able to see how he played yesterday in the KMVB Cup, but his previous outings were not those of a highly influential player for Heronvene in the Air Divi.

Yeah, if Morris has left home, I would be fine bringing Janice as as Poole's backup because Yonnas played that position in January and acquitted himself well enough that even though he's not doing much with Heron-Bain at the moment, I'd be fine based on its prior U.S. men's national team performance to bring him in again. Yeah, I'd be fine too. There are other guys. So like Conrad de la Fuente, I feel like people are going to ask about Manuel Sabi, Richie LaDesma, Bells.

Yeah, I mean, he would fit that. job pretty well I think but um yeah I think I'm fine with my four I avoid do I mean I was just thinking about how how much we dodged a bullet with Conrad de la Fuente not making his debut for Barcelona yet we left him off our top our last top 40 oh I think my lucky stars Tyler Boyd Tyler Boyd is not on our in our four-winger's list does that merit any conversation I don't think so. Okay, we're going to get to the rest of the positions, but we would like to take a moment to thank today's sponsor.

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at Manscaped.com, and thank you to them for sponsoring today's episode. As Greg so aptly once said, manscaping is no different than anything else in soccer. You're going to get your best performance with a well-manicured surface. I had to steal that from you. Okay, center midfielers.

Okay, central midfielers. You go first now, we're flipping it. Okay, I'm going to go with Tyler Adams, Weston McKenney, Sebastian Leggett, Darlington Nagby, Dway, Dwayne Holmes, and Brendan Aronson. Okay, Darlington Nagby is not happening, bells. Darlington Nagby is not going to fly to Europe and leave his family in the middle of this pandemic for a U.S. men's national team getaway. But I respect the choice.

All right. How about let's replace him with his teammate, Aidan Morris. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. I guess the obvious replacement for him is Jackson Ewell, which is going to happen, right? Unless they don't want to mess with the MLS stuff. Because San Jose, I believe, is still battling for a playoff spot. Good grief, are they really?

Yeah, and I guess they'd still be able to play their last game and then leave. I don't know, but they'd definitely be, you know, he missed all of their training build up to their first round playoff game. And I'm pretty sure they would play in a first round playoff game if they make it. But yes, I have the exact same midfielder as you with Sebastian Ewell, or I'm sorry, with Jackson Ewell instead of Donton Neg. Okay. And I think I have Aronson in because one of the things I take into consideration is guys available availability for January camp. So if these MLS guys could play in the January camp, then you could essentially punt your data collection on them until then.

Aronson will not be available for the January camp because he will be moving to Salzburg. So I imagine Burrhalter would take this chance to see him if it's possible. And I've seen sort of some whisperings that Aronson and Mark McKenzie might be in line for call-ups. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I really just want to see an Adams-McKennie Leggett midfield. and I know you kind of want to see something,

or at least you're open to seeing something different than that, but that's what I want to see, and the rest of the call-ups don't matter that much to me. I mean, if Ledesma happens to sneak in for some reason, fine by me. I can't think of anybody else who we need to see. No, not. We don't need to see Ledesma, to be honest. I can't believe I left Kenny Seth out of my winger discussion.

I just saw his name on my list. If Morris doesn't show up, we're bringing Kenny Seth. Okay. But midfielers, no. Alfredo Morales, I believe, has been injured for the last couple of months. I wouldn't expect that he'll be ready. Julian Green is one that I can see if Ewell is left in the States or Legette or Aronson. I wouldn't mind seeing Julian Green just again as sort of a curiosity.

But, you know, I've watched his stuff. He's a real tidy player, but I don't think he adds any real oomph. and I don't think he's particularly like an elite ground covering pressing center mid. He's just a nice cog and a possession machine, but I wouldn't miss him not being around. It is kind of fun to see. You see this with Green a little bit. You see it with Haji Wright. See it with some other players.

You see them as they get older, they really do kind of round out a little bit. I don't mean just physically, but in terms of the way they play. And I don't know, maybe that's just me watching Aaron Ewanson and being like, oh, man, that's a man playing soccer. after so much of the Josh Sergeant confusion on the field that I've witnessed in the last 18 months. Okay, does that cover – don't you have something you want to say about the midfield? I mean, you just want to see the Ewell experiment played out, right? Yeah, I mean, if we're going to test this out, then let's throw him in there. Let's see if he can break lines and disorganized teams with those passes.

And if he can't and he's really struggling, like, it feels like he is sort of clearly the player who's not quite at the level as everyone else and again maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm wildly underestimating Ewell's abilities here but we have to see if the one thing that he's supposed to be really good at he can do at this level that makes these other guys that makes that's worthwhile for these other guys who are

playing in the Champions League later today yeah right are you checking is Pulisick on yet against Krasnodar? I haven't seen an update yet. I know Kenny Seff started his game today. Yeah, he came on to 70th. Okay.

Adams is not starting, but he's on the bench available, so that's nice. Okay. Is that good for center mids? I believe so, yeah. I mean, I'll just say, I think in this one we're going to basically have two sort of pressing eights, and then I think the third center mid is going to be doing a lot of, dropping back with the two centerbacks early on in the buildup. Yeah.

I know you want to see, you're sort of the scholar among us, and you want to see the Yule experiment fully conducted. But I guess I'm ready to just say, like, hey, let's just, let's go straight to Adams at the six. I wouldn't hate it, but he doesn't play. I don't know. We don't need to rehash all the six versus what he actually is doing for Leibzig discussions.

He did it once. in a cup game. All right. Centerbacks, you go first. All right, so I'm bringing five. That's what we settled on. I'm bringing John Brooks, and I guess I'm cheating when we get to the pullbacks.

But John Brooks and Chris Richards, I'm bringing Mark McKenzie over from MLS, and then I'm bringing Miasga and Eric Palmer Brown. Ooh, yeah, I didn't even think of EPB. But, yeah, I think I would like to see him, too. My list is Brooks, Miaska, Richards, McKenzie, and Aaron Long. Okay. And I know Walker Zimmerman is apparently playing well for Nashville.

Iko Parra is always sort of a name worth discussing. CCV has found a club in Bournemouth. I haven't played yet, and I think Bournemouth played today as well. And then Miles Robinson did not. I mean, I've got to be honest, I haven't watched a lot of Atlantic. United but Miles Robinson has not, as I understand it, had as good of a year this year as he did last year. EPB over Long would be fine with me.

You know, keep it, keep it Euro-based. I don't think he's, I mean, I'm assuming Long is still Burrhalter's number one right centerback, but this is just knowing that he'll be around for the January camp, he'll be, I'm sure, like, captain of that group. So just test out a couple, test out a couple other guys. you're interested in. Yeah. It would be, I guess I really just want to see Richards and McKenzie and I throw EPB right

into this group, get a chance to impress Burrhalter and then sort of work their way into the group. That would be really cool because we do need a, eventually we need an upgrade and those are the three guys I think most likely to provide that at that position. And you have Miyazga there because Miyazga is very much known quantity. I mean, he's such a, like, I feel like he's such a consistent guy. Like everywhere he goes on loan, he'll just, he goes to Anderlecht and plays in their very first game. Like he, when he went to, when he left France in the middle of the night and went to Redding,

just like immediately jumped in with them the next day after arriving. He just seems like such a plug-and-play type player. So it's nice to have him there sort of the measuring stick for these guys to, for these other guys to sort of test themselves against. Yeah, he's also, he's also a big personality. I mean, there's a, you know, the famous thing with Diego Linaz, where he's, He mocked him for being short and then like sort of the ball-grabbing episodes throughout the throughout his career. But I remember, if you'll indulge me for a second, I remember the one time I covered a national team game, the Brazil friendly back in 2018, I guess it was, where we got beat 2-0 at MetLife Stadium in New York.

In the mix zone afterwards, he was the one player who went through where you could tell he was like really engaged with the reporters who were talking. talking to him. You know, he was, he was, he was engaged, he was sort of warm and, seemed like he was giving a real effort to give a meaningful answer to questions. And that's, I'm not saying it's bad not to do that. That's like, it's kind of in an athlete's best interest not to give meaningful answers to questions, if we're really honest. But I was impressed by that sort of in person. Like he was, he was, he seemed like a real minch. And I know he has a, he has a reputation for being like this kind of like bad boy. But I think he just seemed like a dude who would be really good at a party, you know.

All right. Matt Miosga invited to the next scuffed mixer. Yeah, pancakes on Saturday morning. Right back. Let's do right back. Sir Gene. Go ahead. That's right.

You're going first now. Serginio Dest and Reggie Cannon are my picks. I think that's pretty self-evident at this point. Wouldn't shock me if we end up with an extra fullback. in DeAndre Edlin there, almost as a way for Burhalter to say, hey, buddy, we're, we haven't forgot about you. But I, it just seems like Burrhalter really rates canon. I don't know.

That's, even that might be going too far and try to read Burrhalter's mind, but that's just going from his comments, not necessarily his selections. But I kind of just see that happening. I don't know. Maybe we're way off and Burrhalter still says it's Destin Yedlin first, but no, I'm going. I mean the other possibilities distant though they may be are Shack Moore and Nick Lima More would be cool to see again yeah you know I'm really curious about Shack Moore my thing here is just with the with the timetable we're working on as fun as it might be to see if Shack Moore is a step up over Reggie Cannon or DeAndre Edlin

like that's not going to be how you use your time since all those guys are backups to or Gino Dest. So, you know, we're going to have to say that Shackmore call up for the Gold Cup. Timmy Chandler, also a possibility in this spot. I just had an extended back and forth with one of my key engagers on Twitter about this. I guess the reason Chandler doesn't break in for me is he, you know, he's not really a pure fullback anymore. and he's not really a pure winger. He scored some really nice goals in the spring for his club.

But he's not, I think we've talked about this on the podcast before. He's not really a possession-style winger, and he's not a pure fullback anymore. So I'm leaving him off. And he's not really playing either. He's sort of fallen off again. I think he's only made two starts since play resumed after COVID. So that's going back to, like, May for the Bundesliga.

he's not playing very much. So he's kind of fallen back into that. I don't know if he's just sort of a leader role on the team in the clubhouse, but his minutes have fallen off pretty sharply again. Okay. Left back, you go first. All right, left back, this is the Anthony Robinson tryout,

and I think that's, again, one of the key priorities of this window is to see if Anthony can fit well into what Burrhalter's doing. His only other appearance for Burrhalter was a, subpar outing. But it was in a weird game where we trotted out like a three, like a three centerback lineup against Jamaica prior to the World, the Gold Cup,

a bunch of experimental names. And he was just incredibly uncomfortable sitting, playing as like a left winger with Georgie Mihailovich as his sort of connecting number 10. So I'm curious to see what he's going to, what he would look like with much better players in a more comfortable setup. Okay. Yeah, same here. I think this is every U.S.

men's national team fans dream, desks on one wing, desks at one fullback, Robinson at the other. We'll see. Like you said, it's a tryout for him. Tim Rieme would be the backup for him. That's what I'm calling it, because

this was, because of Jordan Morris is going, you might want to have a stay-at-home left-back, and because we don't really have any other left-backs playing over in Europe at the moment, Gloucester's having a hard time getting into Young PSVs lineups, and Kobe Internet as Foster, if we want to reach way down, is playing as a number six for Wolfsburg's U-19s. So unless you're going to run Timmy Chandler out there on the left or Shaq Moore out there on the left.

There's aren't a lot of options. And we're leaving all the MLS guys at home until January. Right. So I'm going to call an audible for myself here since I'm not bringing Morris. I'm leaving him at home. I'm going to drop Ream from my left back spot. and make it Shaq Moore. Okay.

I can't believe you got more into the lineup and I didn't. Because really I think I still think our best, probably our best lineup is Dest at Left Back and Cannon at Right Back. But it is worth definitely checking out Robinson at Left Back in this camp. I don't know if I've done this on the podcast yet, because I was on board of that variation as well, and I still think we'll see it and we should, but desk at left back and cannon at right back.

Is that canon that stay at home right back, or is that canon getting up and down the sideline? Well, it could be either. But if you're saying you can't do that with, you can't get your three at the back if you send them both up to sideline. Well, if you, I'm just, you can find ways to do it, but I just feel like if you're sending,

if you're having Canon stay at home, and that might be to accommodate like Jordan Morris or Tim Wea as a right winger, you could do that and get all those pieces on the field for the attack. But then in the press, your front three that Burrhalters talked a lot about would become like striker, Pulisic, and Morris or Wea, and it drops Raina out of the front three in the press and turns them into a ball chaser. Okay. Yeah, you're playing 4DHS over there, and I'm...

It's just another one of those variables that you have to think about the knock-on effects within one team. Because, again, people like to say, well, they do this for their... club and you have a lot of guys who are doing things for their clubs but if you try to take all of those pieces and have them all do with that for the national team it doesn't all fit on the same lineup card okay okay yeah i guess i yeah all right let's do let's do goalkeepers and give them short shrift and then get out of here all right sack stephen heath and horvath matt turner yeah i think that's it um i mean sean johnson has a shout bill hamides always going to have some kind of shout.

I think Brad Gazan has his ship has sailed at this point. I think it probably sailed a while ago, but again, with all of those guys, there is a certain floor that they set that is mostly fine. You know, haven't had a howler out of any of them. I feel like our last true howler would have been Horvath in 2017. Yeah. Horvath, as most of you will know, started in Champions League and helped. his team get a two-one win in St. Petersburg against Zinit.

So that's pretty exciting for him, having not played for 18 months, I think. I think it was 13, but then he also started their league match over the weekend because Miniole was still out. He did pretty well. He had a couple of good saves in that game as well. Conceded on a penalty and a defensive howler where a dude looked so wide open that it was instantly flagged his offside because it was obviously offside, but then in hindsight there was like a weak side defender keeping him on.

So it was just a guy able to collect the ball from 10 yards out all by himself and turn and slot it in past a strait at Horvath. Did Bruges win or lose? They lost 2-1. So Horvath had a couple good saves and very little, I'd say, that he could have done on either of the goals. Okay. And as everyone knows, Matt Turner is the Gianluigi Buffon of American Soccer.

So got to bring him too. That's a joke. His numbers haven't dropped. He hasn't regressed to any kind of a, I don't know if it wouldn't be as mean because he's just had excellent numbers for his entire MLS career, but he's maintained a half a goal per game average of shot stopping expected goals after the shot. Is that a good, succinct way of putting it? It works for me, yeah.

I mean, yeah, it's clear like the data, the high-end analytics are. fans of Matt Turner. I'm not, that's not me like questioning the analytics. All right. There's our November roster. Yeah, yeah. And so we're doing this right now, I guess we should say, because it's probably,

we're not sure the, we're not sure the roster is going to come out before election day, which is Tuesday, of course. Maybe it'll come out on Sunday. In any case, the game is, November 12th. Pool 6 scored. Of course he did.

Of course he did. Pulisik scored. Kenny Seth, instrumental in Godanks game today. Like everything that we want out of the U.S. men's national team is that. By the time we know who our next president is going to be

in the United States of America, we'll have to be talking about what the lineup is going to be for that game. Because we'll know who's in the roster. We'll react to the roster. Even that is a pretty optimistic statement, Bell. Oh, I don't know.

Doomsday. Doomsday Velasquez over here. All right, but there's our roster. I'm guessing we went 25 to 25. Can't wait to talk about how we're going to come up with some 11s out of that group of 25. Yeah, it'll be fun. It'll be really fun to finally have a game to talk about. We're basically two weeks out from it.

Thanks, everybody for listening. Thank you, Greg. We'll see you.