Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 147: Wales v USA — the full treatment

Episode Date: November 13, 2020

Might not be interesting to most of the world, but it sure was interesting to us! Debuts galore, we pressed, we built out with something like a 2-3-5. As Greg says in the pod, it’s almost like we’re starting over. So much to talk about. 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. It likely passed unnoticed in the wider world of soccer and definitely in the world of the mainstream American sports mind. But it really was a pretty interesting football match, wasn't it? It was interesting in the fact that it happened.

A match hasn't happened in a really long time. We finally got one. We got a group of players. that we were all excited about. We got a starting lineup twice, that one we were excited about, and then two, we were even more excited about. And I also want to kind of just throw in here,

despite all of this excitement about our team and the players, the best part of the entire day yesterday was, in my opinion, was the U.S. soccer tribute to Daryl Grove, both through their lineup account, their Twitter account, and then even on the broadcast, they got to sort of show him some love and some appreciation,

and obviously all of that is so, so deserved for everything that he has done. So it was a really special moment, I think, that the Daryl Grove tribute. Yeah, meant a lot to me. I really appreciated U.S. soccer, you know, acknowledging his role in the ecosystem. Yeah, and it's, again, impossible to say enough about him and what he did, but just to even have that on there. That's something. Very cool, yeah.

The U.S. drew Wales, 0-0 in Swansea, just to get the basic facts out there. Not many chances generated by either side. Still, kind of a momentous day, I thought. It was the first match since the pandemic started, as you just mentioned, Greg. Six young players made a national team debut. Giorana, Eunice Musa, Conrad de la Fuente, Nico Joaquini, Oano Tossoe, and Johnny Cardoso. And those are all teenagers except Joaquini, and he's just 20. So a lot of young, talented players that I knew previously only through Y Scout.

Yeah, six guys played on the field yesterday that were U20 eligible. Yeah, it's crazy. So despite some of the initial rage that went into the roster and lineup announcement, the lineup announcement at least, wild, you know what I mean, wild times. I don't even think we should, I'm doing it right now, but I don't think we should acknowledge that rage. It's so ridiculous. No, I'm fine with it. Legette,

Legette being in the lineup is enough to cause a lot of people on Twitter to go get really mad. And I'm like, I'm just like so bored with that whole scene. Anyway, it was also the first time, this is a pretty serious thing. It was the first time Brooks, McKinney,

Adams, and Dest were on the field together. And, you know, I would say that is, those four guys are really the core along with Pulisic and perhaps Raina, we can argue about that later, of this team. Uh, Musa looks like an impact player. I thought, uh, you know, he's very young. He didn't have a perfect game, but definitely makes an impact. In fact, this lineup was probably first choice, but for the

absence of Christian Pulisic, a striker as yet to be identified, I think, uh, and perhaps a left back and a right center back, though the left back we saw and the right centerback we saw could be the first choice at those positions, maybe. So, so first choice lineup, but for about 40 percent of the lineup. A first choice, arguably a first choice lineup except for two. Okay. All right. That's fair. Maybe that's nine out of 11. I don't know. I don't know if I'll give it to you yet. At worst, it's seven out of 11. It was probably, is, is Musa included in your first choice lineup then? Is that what you're saying? Kind of, yeah. Okay. All right. I'm not, I'm not saying he's not. I just wanted to clear that number up. Well, yeah, whatever you do with the

math on that, on the percentages there out of 11, it was probably the most talented. USMNT 11 we've seen since we started this podcast. And then we got three debuts off the bench. And Tim Wea got his first cap since his hamstring apocalypse. So there is a lot to discuss. I am clinging. I'm throwing this out there right now. I'm clinging sadly, desperately, delusional to Tim Wea having like a minutes restriction.

And that's what I kind of have that so baked into my mind at this point that that's why I wasn't even talking about him as a starter really. because I don't think there's any way he's cleared to run for 60 minutes. He hasn't done it since the hamstring apocalypse. So when I saw him warming up or going to the sideline to check in at 75 minutes, I was like, ah, it's a 15-minute restriction for this friendly. Hey, man, I hope it's true too. I hope it's true, too. He didn't, you know, he didn't, we'll get into this,

but he and Joe Keeney did not even touch the ball, I don't think, in the attack. Way I might have. I think way I had a bit of a dodgy touch deep in the corner. Okay. I'll do a way I'll accomplish. He kept it in line. He kept it in bounds.

He kept it in bounds one time. That's true. That's right. That's right. That's what it was. So, I mean, do you have a couple big picture brush strokes before we, before we do the lineup and kind of work through the timeline here? So big brush strokes for me were, for the U.S. was the midfield setup.

There was no statuesque. ball-playing midfielder in our lineup. We had three, like, complete soccer players. No one who you just have to say is just one quality. And if you can't tell what I'm referring to. I'm referring to, like, the Jackson Ewell, he has this one quality, and that's enough to put him in the line. Like, we had three complete players in there.

And the difference was stark. So I'm sure we'll get into that. And then I think the other big talking point was the false nine, and it's not even about who was chosen to play. I think for me it's just about whether or not a false nine works or is beneficial or can be used well for our for our player pool and our team and then I think how we defended so those are kind of the three big points and I'm sure we'll get into the more granular stuff as we go yep okay um what did you see what did you see well yeah I wanted to ask you about how we defended a little

bit and I love the engine room that having three complete players in the middle of the field. You know, granted, Wales didn't offer a lot of threat, which we will talk about, but still, we looked so solid in the middle. And we had physical, tough, athletic midfielders. And I thought McKinney and Adams had great games, you know, all things considered. Musa, like I said, made an impact. Let's do let's let me just sketch out the lineup real quick it was stephen and goal most of you know this but stephen and goal Anthony Robinson at left back uh john brooks at left center back matt miazga got the nod at right center back

sergenio d'est at right back uh Adams at the six mcheny and musa as the dual eights reina started on the right wing conrad della fente on the left wing and sebastian legett oddly enough as the ostensible striker. And then Raina and KDLF, they switched sides a little bit as the match went on. Now, Wales, we should mention Wales, we're not going to get into the details, but whales did not feel the first choice team. Correct. And for the most part, I would say whales were ineffective but organized.

How's that? I kind of want to say bad, but organized. Wales were pretty bad in that they just offered zero threat. they were never a threat to like punish any mistakes that we made so if we did have turnover as Fantine and Robinson did dribble the ball directly into a Wales defender's

feet you know like it just never felt like Wales was going to come down and capitalize on that 2 v2 that they then had and have you know they were just really poor attacking our goal but they were I thought they were very organized and very committed to their shape and defensive responsibilities

and that's good I want to play teams like that I think that really is close to what we'll see in a lot of Concaf qualifying. So it was a good early test for a very inexperienced U.S. bunch. Yeah, I thought they were organized too. I thought they were sort of treating the game like a, I don't know, like a Nations League group stage match where they needed a point to advance because they were awfully organized and committed in the box.

And I'm going to criticize us a little bit for our movement up front, but you do have to acknowledge that there wasn't a lot of space. there wasn't a lot of space to exploit because they had that. Yeah. Go ahead. Can I talk about kind of how they took that space away? Sure, please. So it looked like a 4-2-3-1, I'd say is sort of the setup as far as like a nominal

positions go. But once we had the ball, again, they were content to let us have it. So, you know, when we talk about how well we controlled possession, that can be kind of misleading because whales were not interested in never taking the ball. back from us. But they would drop, they had their, they had their two center mids that would kind of protect the back line. But then they're two wide players in the three band of the four, two, three one, dropped really

deep as well, often even behind the two center mids. So they were, those guys were really set up to take away the flanks and to sort of double up with the fullbacks. So it was, it was often looking almost like a four, four, one, one. Or a six two, one one. and they're attacking mid or their second forward there in that situation kind of would just shadow Tyler Adams, which we really need to get into that too eventually.

But so it made us have to react that way. You know, if the idea was to have Tyler Adams sort of quarterback the team, Wales essentially had a guy on him, not at all times, but pretty close while we were building. Yeah, they read the press reports from previous. men's national team, U.S. Men's National Team games. Yeah, I don't know. I didn't see that we needed Adams to quarterback.

Oh, no, not at all. I don't think we want him to necessarily. I mean, Miazka and Brooks both were pretty effective at playing the ball in defeat in the center circle or even deeper. Should we talk about how they did that? Sure. Yeah, please. Can I talk about it?

So, you know, going into this game, we've been talking a lot about the 3-25 that Berhalter has tended to run, and he arrives in that shape in different ways. But what we kind of expected was Adams to drop into the six roll, dropping between the centerbacks, and then McKenny and Musa being sort of the two center mids. But that's not what happened, right? No, no, no. I don't think Adams really ever dropped between the centerbacks. Instead, we mostly played in like a two, three, five.

Yeah, I was thinking exactly the same thing. Or if you want to call it like a two, one, two, five, if you want to get really granular. But I think you could, I think you can, you know, commute. communicate the idea as a 2-3-5, but a little wrinkle on it. And this is something that I really want to see because it kind of moves towards that triple pivot that we've discussed in the past about all of our center mids being capable of being that sort of deeper player as the game sort of plays out. McKinney would often flare out left to the left flank.

So you'd end up with a, you would kind of end up with a three. And it would be Miyazka on the right, Brooks in the middle, and McKenney on the left. and a lot of our good buildups kind of started from that shape where the ball would swing out to McKinney. And then the beauty here is all of McKinney, Musa, and Adams are threats to sort of burst through to the next level, whether it's on the dribble, whether it's in playing like a one-two situation

or whether they actually are like a third player running. And we, I definitely want to like eventually post some clips of even Adams doing it where Adams plays a vertical pass. And then he like bursts past the man that had just been on him. and we just have never had that because we've always been playing lumbering center mids all through the first year

Burrhalter's reign where you're not going to get that from Michael Bradley, you're not going to get it from Will Trapp, you don't get it from Christian Rodon even, Jackson Newell, like those guys don't offer that. And now we have three center mids who all pose like a threat.

And I think that is a massive deal and for all the sort of hand-wringing about the false nine and Legette in particular, for me the biggest setup is I feel like this has to sort of put an end to any kind of like, like I know I talked about being okay with a Sebastian, or I'm sorry, a Jackson Ewell experiment sort of playing out. I just don't see the need to do that anymore.

Like, just run this. If one of these guys isn't available, Musa, you know, goes in place for England. Legat can be the Musa or. Legette can do it. Pama call. Brendan Aronson, Dwayne Holmes. Like we have other players who can push things forward in that vein, whether they're, I mean, they might not be as good.

but we have that kind of player, I think, in abundance. So that, for me, like, we got to start having this be our center midfield. Yeah. And I would say in that, to go back to the discussion of the 235 shape, it wasn't always just McKinney flaring out. You know, sometimes Raina was dropping pretty deep to be part of that three in front of the two centerbacks. Sometimes even Legget was as the striker. Yeah.

Not a lot, but he was doing that. There would be that interchange. I thought the pattern was more. either McKinney doing it or it would actually be Anthony Robinson, just sort of dropping straight back to be that player. He didn't get the ball as much. So I don't know if he was just sort of doing it to keep the shape we needed. But when McKinney would go, like the ball would come to him,

when Robinson would drop into that space, we weren't really looking to play him. To steal a concept from the Total Soccer show, it was a quicksand performance for Anthony Robinson, you know? I think that's fair. And I'll kind of give my take on him later. one other, because since we're talking about the McKinney flaring out, wrinkle, a lot of the times McKinney flared to that left, like two or three passes or even McKinney would.

The pass that we ended up finding was we got it out to McKinney on left of John Brooks. We ended up very quickly, actually, and efficiently, getting the ball over to Serginio Dest in the attacking wide right space. I thought that was kind of a good pattern to see. It kind of goes back to Burrhalter loving the big switch to get it there. And again, sometimes it was McKinney just drilling that ball 55 yards. Other times it was McKinney pulling off some really neat dribbling. Neido.

Through some traffic. And, you know, then hitting like a ball only half the field over to Dest. But to me, that seemed like an emphasized point. Like I feel like it was like, okay, we build here. And then what we're eventually looking for is one of our best attackers in space, Serginio Dest, on the other side. Yeah. And we did. We made that pattern of play work, and Dest was able to fizz a ball across probably three times that I can remember.

Just didn't connect ever, which we can argue about why that's the case. Let's do the timeline, and we'll touch on a lot of this stuff we want to talk about as we do it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to really hit you hard on all of your timelines that get into the false night. Go ahead. Let's start. Well, you're in luck, because we're going to hit one right off the back. In the third minute, Sebastian Leggett dropped toward midfield and received a nice pass on the ground from Matt Miazga.

I was impressed with, just as an aside, I was impressed with Matt Miazga's line-breaking passing. That is definitely not a skill for Aaron Long. Now, there may be other reasons to start Aaron Long over Matt Miasga, but I think Matt Miaska did, you know, he showed us something in this match that was, I think, useful information. Anyway, so nice pass from Miazga to Lajja. to Lajette's feet. Now I think as Lajette came to the ball, to his left, was Gio Rana in a pocket of space facing forward. And I'm thinking Sergeant, Josey,

maybe even Joe Aquini and Soto, maybe even Jazi's artists, would have laid that off on a one touch for Rana because that's a pattern of play that they're used to. Like they know, that's what they've been doing their whole career. And we would have been off to the races. this is in the third minute. Legette, at least initially, wasn't comfortable in that role in that pattern,

and he took a cautious touch and then tapped it back to Miyazga. Now, on my first watch, I thought Legette did that the whole game. It turns out I was wrong. I think he did it some, but he didn't always do it. So I think that was noteworthy because I believe in the mystical power of tone setting, which you do not, I know. But I think that that's, you do that in the third minute when you have a chance to spring forward and it does, it sets a little bit of a tone for the game. So there we are. That's my first thing in the timeline. What's your, what's your rejoinder?

No, I'll give it to you. I actually had that moment like clocked as well. And again, you know, watching this stuff as a coach, I'm like, okay, got to like make a note of this because he did. He had, not only did he have time, like the defender actually backed off of him. As the ball got to his feet, the centerback that was kind of with him dropped off. off to protect against any runs behind. Because this was like midfield, so it's not, they worried about, you know, the jet turning and going to goal. And what it made me think of is how extremely clean and efficient Jesus Ferreira was in the January game. Didn't make me think, oh, I bet Giacchini could do this,

because I honestly have no idea. Same for Soto. And my very best guess is that Greg Burhalter also doesn't know if those guys would be able to do it. And at the very least, I think Burrhalter, the reason I think he would have gone with Legit was because he knows there's at least some baseline of possession competence that Legette has, so we at least don't turn the ball over there.

And even though that's really conservative, you know, there's just such limited information that I think you run with Legat to get that ball back to Miazga so then it can go forward again to somebody else. And I think in this sequence, correct me if I'm wrong, we do end up with the ball in the box eventually, don't we? Yeah, well, yeah, we kept possession, and then we just sort of reset back to Miasga. That's my, yeah, that's my next thing on the timeline. Moments later, it's a McKinney diagonal to Dest.

There we go. Oh, and that was Dest's just absolutely gorgeous first touch on McKinney's great, 55-yard diagonal. McKinney hit several of these nice lofted diagonal balls that we were led to previously believe that only Michael Bradley could hit. No, I'm just kidding. That sounds like kvetching and it is. So Dest slipped it to Musa after that night.

first touch on the touch line, I mean on the end line, and then Musa attempted a pullback, but it was cut out by the aforementioned very compact Welsh defense. 10th minute. I just wanted to mention that McKinney tackle as he bails out A. Rob, Anthony Robinson, he tracked back in, you know, in glorious fashion, cut out a, I think it was an attempted cross with a very nice looking sliding tackle. You talk about the one where he basically lunges 10 to 12 yards in the air. Yeah, and then the ball hits him in the back, pretty much.

Yeah, McKinney was covering ground. Yeah, he was. And I will say there's no specific timeline for this, timeline item for this, but Adams and McKinney came out of the gate early on looking very confident and busy and good, like right off a kickoff, and you like to see that. So yeah, so here's my chance, since you mentioned that. There's my segue into the Adams.

a bit. One of the reasons that I didn't want to see Adams in that Jackson-Ule roll is because I felt like that would put too much of a leash on him defensively. Tyler Adams did not have a leash on himself defensively. There would be times where he, I mean, he was like being shot out of a cannon from that central sort of a little bit deeper center midspot. He burst like 30 yards forward to go press someone. Like he'd read a cue and be like, I have a chance to go here.

They won't be able to play around me. I will arrive in time to pressure this and make you go backwards or disrupting cause of turnover. And he was gone and it was just amazing to see. Again, we've not had that kind of capability at any point. Probably since, tell me when we would have had that last. Like Michael Bradley is a 22-year-old? Maybe, yeah. Yeah.

And he and Jermaine Jones back in the day? I don't know. Right. So it's been at least an entire World Cup cycle where we have not been able to ever do that. we've just never had the skill set to do it. So no leash on Tyler Adams. He was free to go wherever he thought he could go to pressure the ball. Yeah.

Yeah, that's great to see. I want to say one more thing about Leggette. I mean, I'm going to say several more things about Legit, but one thing I want to say right now is I don't blame him. I don't want, just to be clear, I'm not blaming him for that, you know, the caution in that play. I don't, it's just his, it's not his position. That's all, you know.

It's not his natural position. Well, I'll use that to say, this goes back to like a thought experiment we'd had, or at least that I'd had, even through like late 2019, was that if we were going to play the way Burrhalter had often been playing and using the nine the way Burrhalter had been using the nine, that any decent, half-decent attacking mid would probably have been more effective than running a Giazizadez out there,

who has none of the ball possession attributes that Legette does have, even though Legette is certainly not a super effective player in that space. If you're trying to just use that player to help in the buildup, that still makes some amount of sense. Yeah, and you looked up the touch maps from Zardis's performance at Stryker, and he's got like three green lines and two blue, two red ones. Like, that, I mean, LeJet was certainly more involved from that position than Zardis has been basically ever.

It's not that far from Sergeant either in the Uruguay friendly. So I looked up because people kept saying like this false nine, it'd be so nice if we could see this with a striker so we could actually get some play in the box. As though just putting a striker in there solves all the problems of getting the ball into the box for a striker. So yeah, so I posted the touch match from four of the friendlies from 2019. And, you know, it's the same issue. The striker's not touching the ball in the box because the issues are earlier in the process. The issues are getting the ball into that space to deliver it for a striker.

And for me, that was the same thing today. Little timing, little rhythm, things that are a little bit off, and they have to be extremely clean against an organized team, and they weren't. And that's all that it takes. Like, we can improve on them. They're not, it's not a lost cause. But that's why I posted those, because it's playing a real or a true nine doesn't just instantly solve the lack of, the lack of sort of danger we created around the final 12 yards.

Yeah. Well, let's just keep going with this thought because... No, I like... Oh, go ahead. Well, because I think, you know, there's some disagreement out there. Like, is it because we didn't have a nine, or is it because Conrad and Raina didn't have good games? And I think that definitely is a factor. Like, Rayna's not a great...

He's not great at moving off the ball. It's not a natural strength of his. And especially if you have Leget dropping super deep, you need... to have those high wingers making runs in behind and stretching the defense. And Conrad and Raina didn't do that hardly at all. Ever. They didn't have any sense of how to shape themselves to make those kinds of runs. Raina didn't even seem like it occurred to him to make runs like that.

I think Conrad tried to make some runs, but it wasn't really, he just wasn't, he either didn't understand how he played in that situation or just, like, couldn't do it. So this is a great bit about Raina's moving off the ball, because I'm going to push back a little bit. I don't think his moving off the ball is poor. I think his movement off the ball is generally with the purpose of collecting the ball at his feet in a pocket of space. And I think he's good at that.

That's not going to help you very much if Legette is coming in to do the same thing, or at least it won't help you if that's all you do. If all Raina's trying to do is get in a pocket and Legette's coming back to get it in a pocket and Conrad is super indecisive on where he's going to go, that's where we offered no real threat in my mind. Or that's one of the really big reasons. Whereas if it's a player who's going to bomb past you, and we saw this in that January friendly against Costa Rica,

Ferreira would come back just as much as Legette was. Ferre was a little bit cleaner, and Ferreira was always trying to then play a ball into somebody sort of on the run past him. And it wasn't even just the front three guys, Yuli and Areola. Sometimes you would actually be hitting like Legit or Aronson getting past him free in space and off they went.

And there were times where our guys were looking for that. There were times where Musa and McKinney, I think, were looking for that kind of a link up from Leget. Even Adams, there was a time where Adams play the vertical ball directly to the Jet burst through. And if Leggett can lay it back into Adams path, Adams has passed his marker. You know, I mean, that marker is not going to keep up with Tyler Adams on the one, too.

So that's where, I think that was where the big disconnect was in our ability to, like, use that effectively. was no one was really filling the space past Leget when Leget would come back in play. We would essentially just completely compact ourselves attacking-wise. And we found some joy by swinging it wide to Dest, as we talked about earlier. But then I think an additional problem is,

like once it got out wide to desk, then you have a guy in Legit, making a run in the box who's not like, again, doesn't have thousands of reps as a number nine making like a near post run. like disguising his run and going to the backpost or whatever. And so like the runs just weren't that decisive. I didn't think from Leget as a striker.

And definitely not from Conrad or Raina, you know, because it was one of those three guys. This is where I'm going to fight you pretty hard. And this is where I think the perception and the frustration a lot of people had was seeing that Legit in this role to begin with might color their assessment a little bit because I thought Raina's movement was, or I'm sorry, I thought Legette's movement in the box

when the ball would go out to desk was pretty good. There were times where Legit just wasn't in the box at all because he had actually keyed the sequence that got Dest free wide, and then it's not his job to also be the guy who's in the box. That's where it hurt to have sort of Conrad in that space who wasn't then like, oh, I'm the forward now. I have to make the Giazzi Zardez run to the near post. But there were other times where when it was Leget,

I thought Legit got where he was supposed to, be. He had the little back heel attempt on goal that got blocked from four-yard Joe. That was nice, yeah. And then I'm sure you're going to get to this in the timeline, so I'm going to have to spoil it already, but you'll describe it more detail later. The cross that des, des, des fizzed by that Legette just missed getting to. I watched that one over and over, and Legette did everything right at all the right times, like as early in the sequences you want to go back. So he did everything right. His movement was actually excellent. Like as he's arriving in the box,

he ghosts to the defender's back shoulder, like he's going to go there, just a really subtle movement and gets the defender to shift a little bit and then darts in front. So he had the right position. If the ball was in a space that anyone could have gotten to it, it would have been him getting to it,

and he would have, you know, I have no idea if he would have finished or not, but if the ball had been there, only Legette would have gotten a play on it. So I think he... I thought his movement was good. I think he could have been more committed to that in that moment.

That's the one that comes up in my mind, committed to, like, getting there first. All right. Well, you're going to have to settle this with the actual, I don't know, have you already posted that clips? I haven't posted it, no. That one you have to post, and we've got to let the people decide. Okay. All right. Let's keep moving.

Let's keep moving. 12 minute. Okay. Or 12 minute. 12 minute. Legette intercepts a Welsh keeper's pass and the press. Bells, we are basically just, we're just a real-time narration of the soccer game at this point. He heads it towards Conrad and.

And Conrad is offside. I mean, it would have been a chance if Conrad hadn't been offside. He didn't get to it anyway. Anyway, just an example of our press working pretty well in that moment. Excellent, excellent bit of the press. 20th minute. Raina wins the ball near midfield in space, which you give him credit for that. And he drives forward.

And then we get to see sort of the Giovanni Raina nightmare scenario. He's got a 3V2 with Legette to his right and Conrad jogging in a zigzag ahead of him and to his left. and then Anthony is bombing forward, wide, left in miles of space, miles of space. And so it's really in my mind of 4V2 because there's nobody, there's no defender that's anywhere close to Anthony. And every other defender on the field is canceled, not canceled, eliminated, except for the last two. So you've got four attackers versus two defenders. Don't argue with me.

Don't argue with me on that, great. And Jets in space to his right, Anthony is in space to his left, and Gio just dribbled. right into the closest defender at the top of the box. It's a huge chance wasted. I don't know if it's like poor vision, just a bad touch, you know, human depravity and selfishness. But it's disappointing. There was a moment, there was probably a moment that Gio could have played Legit in earlier

that would have freed Legitin on goal. And I think he could have done that. I still think he had good choices even after he missed that window, if you want to say you missed that window. And then it was just a bad touch, just sort of a horrendous step, just knocked it forward when he wasn't even trying to. And that's when it died. He never really made the decision to make the play. So I've got it chalked up as just a bad touch.

It wasted a very good attacking chance. Yeah. And I think I do agree that maybe the legit pass wasn't on for a big portion of the sequence because there was a defender in the way. But you got to play it. You got to play the simple pass out to Anthony. even if he is struggling or whatever play the simple pass out to him that opens up a lot of possibilities because then Anthony has like three attackers with him and at most three Welsh defenders to deal with all right so if we're going to X as a nose down down to the last detail if I want him

to play Anthony I still want him to hold that ball then because what Conrad could be doing for Anthony and I think this is where Conrad was like indecisive is if he drag sort of a cross reina's face which he kind of started to do and then like stopped and it was very very sort of herky jerky. If he goes through and gets that defender to take a step and a half with him, then when Raina is playing it to Anthony, it's Anthony on goal instead of, and if the guy doesn't go with Conrad,

then it's 2V1 GEO and Conrad. So you had all of these, I wouldn't call it 4V2, but you had like multiple different 3V2s and multiple that could turn into different 2V1s depending on how the defenders reacted. And all of it just went to. to hell with that really clumsy touch.

The scuff podcast where we do not sweat the details. This is a point in the podcast where like any casual fan is like, see ya. And let's move on to the 21st minute. Good Brooks entry pass. Again, lots of good entry passes from Brooks and Miyazka in this game. Leggett takes a cautious touch, but then sprays Desk wide right and Dest sweeps in a cross that misses McKinney and Conrad unfortunately. I think that's just, you know, sometimes crosses don't, don't connect. And there were like four or five.

What? No, you, yeah, go ahead, go ahead and finish it because that's about what I was going to get into. Well, four or five Welsh shirts in the, in the box. So, so the problem there is, one, you're right, LeJette's touch, first touch was clumsy because he had either, I think it might have been Musa on that play. If he has a cleaner touch, it's Musa and we're in. He makes up for it and gets Dest in a very good position, like he said. Dest is in such a good position that he had absolutely no need to hit that cross first time. And that's on Serginio Dest to recognize that it's 2v4 in the box. And unless like the instruction is Weston McKinney is unstoppable, if you have him in there hit a cross to him, there's just no reason we had to hit that cross. He had Raina come into

play with him at the top of the box. So we could have just continued to sort of soccer our way into a more dangerous chance. We shouldn't, you have to know LaJette's not there because he's the one who had, again, come back to key the whole sequence. So that's just a cross that we shouldn't have been hitting. I hate crosses. Yeah. I mean, I would have liked to see us roll the dice on a lofted cross in the general

direction of McKinney at some point in this game. We never did get to see that, but. We did have a couple of good crosses. I think it's not on your timeline, but not too much longer later. We finally freed Anthony Robinson. I think it was like a Brooks ball again. Yeah. just like puts Robinson all the way to the end line.

Yeah, it was actually also in the 21st minute. It was a... Okay. It was... Yeah, go ahead. Oh, you did have it on there. So then that actually was a great crossing situation, and Robinson just hit a bad ball.

He lofted a ball, and it was easy for the keeper to come get. But if you look, that was actually 2 v2 in the box when Robinson's hitting that cross. So that would have been the time for a trademark, excellent Anthony Robbins service, and we didn't get it. Yeah. Yeah. And really the brightest moment of the half for Robinson. 31st minute Dest skins his guy and Fizzes won.

I'm saying in the timeline that the Legette doesn't make a near post run. You probably tell me that you watched it a thousand times and you did everything. Nobody gets to that ball. The defender couldn't get. Nobody who's in an onside position. No striker in an onside position can get to that ball. Dest basically shot the ball at the goalkeeper. Okay.

I ask a lot of my striker. in terms of movement, I guess. 34th minute, Conrad, skies one. This is one that a lot of you will remember. Our press causes some Welsh discomfort and a pretty silly, errant pass from one defender back towards his own goal. It landed on Conrad's chest,

and he sort of let it bounce, and then it was spinning in the air, and he skies it well over from point blank. I have played a lot of soccer in my life, and I see that. Honestly, I see that, him sky that. And I'm like, that's, you know, that's what happens, like, most of the time when you try to hit a thigh-high spinning ball. And I know, like, everybody's going to say, well, he's a professional.

He plays at Barcelona. You've got to be harder on it. But I just can't find, I can't find it in my heart to be mad about it. It's like, that's a much tougher finish than people, I think, give it credit for. So I don't really care. I don't really care about that. You know where I stand on it. It is a thing that happens in a one-off finishing situation.

Yeah. Yeah, I may be the worst finisher in the history of the Minnesota Amateur Soccer League. Also, there was a guy recovering and, like, sliding in front of him with his foot, like, waist high in front of Conrad. So he did have to put the ball over that guy's foot. So the window then gets a little tighter. Yeah. He doesn't have the whole goal ahead of that. He has to hit it at.

I'm not, you know, it's just kind of like, it was like a really, really bad play from Wales, and then we missed a chance. Whatevs. 44th minute, lovely combination from Adams, Brooks, Miyazga, Legette, McKinney, and then McKinney plays a lovely throughball for Conrad, but Conrad's not on quite the same page or, you know, doesn't quite have his body shape right to get on the end of that through ball, or he hesitates or something. It's just like sort of, that's how he was with his runs behind the lines.

It just wasn't, it never was quite in sync. But. Yeah, he was reactive there. Like, as the ball was moving towards McKinney, Conrad actually is taking a couple of steps back towards the halfway line. So all of his momentum is going that way. And he didn't have to. Sometimes you're doing that to set yourself up to be on side, but he didn't have to.

He was well on side. So he could have been sort of leaning the other way. And that's those little, that's what we're getting into is that's the difference between Conrad being in on goal and everything breaking down and it being a turnover is which way he's leaning. And that's how refined like the timing has to be against an organized team. even a mediocre organized team can kind of force that level of timing. And we just didn't have it today, or yesterday, which is fine.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a very pleasant 17-pass sequence that led up to it. I think maybe our nicest moments of the game as a team. So I put that on Twitter. You could check that out and watch that clip if you want to. We've reached halftime. You're not even going to talk about the legit. the legit backheel shot, that doesn't even make your timeline.

You have an agenda, Bells. I forgot it, actually. But you talk about it. When was it, was it right before halftime? Right before half. And this, I think, was one of the first times that, I think when we were talking about it, I described it as McKenney just being, like, done with watching Conrad and Raina had switched at this point.

So Conrad is now on the right, and he actually was hugging the sideline more on that right side, and Dest was, like, coming in to play more than 10 space. and like it just looked like McKinney and Death decided to be like, all right, the grownups are going to play now, and they went out and played together on that wing and combined. And it was just, again, it just looked like it was just so easy for them to put McKinney in a position to drive a low ball cross-clip that low ball back, legit making a great move into the near post,

which is the run you like, and making a good decision in my mind to try to, like croiff it into the goal because sometimes when your body's facing the wrong way, you're looking for a little layoff back towards the top of the penalty spot, but Conrad's not making that run. He's sort of ball watching as this is happening. And so it's really good improvisation. The shot gets blocked by the defender's thigh that's on Legett.

But again, just the ability to get into those spaces, I think, bodes well. And the freedom that McKinney feels to go do that with Sergenio Dest, for me, this is good stuff. I really like the overall fluidity of the way we play. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the more we talk about it, the more I'm impressed, even impressed with Leget for what he accomplished in this, you know, square peg, round hole kind of situation, you know. Yeah.

He's just a versatile, effective player. And, you know, he's not a world beater, but by golly, he's in my national team. And he's not even auditioning for this spot. Like, this spot is never actually. going to be his. This was a stop gap role that he was playing in like a stop gap kind of a camp where we're missing our, you know, probably our top three candidates for strikers. So I'm sure Soto and Gio Kini will get a couple of looks. And if only one of them does, like I'm still okay with that. I'm not, I'm not going to be like, oh, we wasted a chance to look at Sebastian Soto.

We've looked at Soto a lot. Like we kind of have had him in camp quite a bit. We kind of are probably roughly aware of where he's at as a player. Okay. Half time came and went. I think this is probably a good time to talk about Anthony Robinson because he, you know, he settled down a little bit in the second half. The second half did, was not as much of a soccer game as the first half, I didn't think. The game kind of fell apart. But Robinson, give me your thoughts on Robinson.

You know, he definitely struggled in the first half just with sort of basic soccering. what it his first half actually was very reminiscent of that uh jamaica friendly where he was really bad you know like um and i don't think he was necessarily set up to succeed in that game here there there aren't as many sort of reasons that you shouldn't have been able to uh you know connect the basic passes when that's what you're trying to do or to move the ball into the basic spaces you're being asked to move it to i'm not blaming him too much for not ever being able to get like free down the line the way we're expecting him to and the way that, you know, that is sort of his strength. And I think that goes to playing with Conrad de la Fuente as your sort of partner instead of a

Christian Pool Sick. So my big thing on Robinson is that he is going, he can add a lot when you have someone like Pool Sick and that kind of gravity that's going to draw players over. The thing I saw that really kind of made it happen for me was when De La Fuente had the ball on an occasion and Robinson was going to go around him. The defender on De La Fuente, even before Robinson was within 25 yards, already started the shift to cover the overlapping run from Anthony, which is normal.

That's a normal defensive shift to make. But I don't think that happens with Christian Pulisick on the ball. If it's Pulisic on the ball, I don't think that guy's leaving as early as he's leaving to take away Robinson who's on ahead of steam. So I think it was hard to get Anthony Robinson the runway that he almost has to have to be effective when it wasn't Christian Pulisick.

So, I mean, obviously anyone's going to be better with playing with pool sick versus someone who's not as good. But I think with Robinson, it's really amplified. And he would be a guy who would benefit probably the most from that sort of upgrade left winger. Yeah. That all makes sense. I guess a big picture, I'm just thinking left back is still a big question mark. And it forces me to sort of think about, okay, so what are the options here? Timmy Chandler.

And hear me out. Hear me out. I'm not saying he's like the answer at left back. But I think Robinson was bad enough, you know, even considering the context of having Conrad in front of him and not Pulisic. He was bad enough that we have to think about like, okay, what are our emergency options when it comes time for World Cup qualifying? probably I would start cannon at right back and desk at left back if we had to you know had to win a game tomorrow but say one of them is hurt or something is something's going we need we need some depth options we got the sort of young

Republicans contingent from MLS and Sam Vines and Chase Gaspers and like I'm totally willing to like keep an eye on them we'll see them in January camp but Timmy Chandler is a bonus league caliber wide player he hasn't played a lot recently but he's had moments where he doesn't play and then he comes back and he scores like five goals in a couple months he's a he's a he's a he's a versatile guy apparently he wants he's like interested in playing for the national team there's been reports to that effect over the last year too so i don't i don't know what the conversations have been like between him and burlhalter but i think at this point it's like it would almost be irresponsible not

to explore that a little bit and bring him into camp at some point and make him part of the program again. This would have been the camp for that, right? This is when you would have done it? Yeah. Unless you're like, no, this camp is just the Anthony Robinson camp. And again, we're not throwing, I don't think anyone's throwing Robinson in the bin. No.

My guess is, I guess I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if he starts the Panama game. But yeah, he certainly didn't like claim the position with both hands. So I think the hope would be, if you wanted to go the Chandler route, the hope would be that he provides this, again, this sort of baseline of competence that a lot of our guys showed yesterday. It kind of reminded me what I said about Mexico, is that everybody on Mexico just looks like they are not going to fuck up.

You know, when you're watching, you just don't expect them to. And it was refreshing to see an American team mostly have that, and it made it all the more clear that Robinson and Conrad didn't really have that sort of level in yesterday's game. Was that fair? Like when you watch him, you're like, oh, they will probably pick this up. Yeah, I mean, I'd say it more about Robinson than Conrad. I thought on, I did think on rewatch that Conrad did some nice things when he was on the ball

and didn't like screw up everything. But it was really his big problem was like, we didn't really know what to do off the ball. But yeah, I agree with your point. like Robinson looking like he was about to F something up was very noticeable because we had so many players on the field who didn't look like that. Right. So they've upped the standard that we're now sort of going to judge the other guys by, which is great. But it just made them stand out all the more.

And I just think left back is wide open enough still that we can't keep. If Chandler wants to play, if there's like if there's nothing that I don't know about that is preventing this from happening, which there may be, like, bring him back in, try to bring him back in even in March. Or, I don't know, I think we may have a camp in January, too. FIFA's switching everything up because of the pandemic. Okay. I don't know if the January camp is a FIFA camp, my understanding, a FIFA window.

My understanding is it still would just be domestic. And again, Burhalter also mentioned December. So there's a chance we could be looking at December and January domestic camps, which be pretty cool. But I think for Chandler, the next chance would be March. And then after that, it would be the crowded summer, which that'd be a perfectly good time to bring in a guy you want to kind of explore. Yeah. And I think, you know, there's going to be four to six people on Twitter who hear this and say, you know, he's not good for the locker room or whatever, which, again, I'm like, I'm not an expert on the locker room ology and everything. But one way to think about it is, like,

Even if he is, so worst case scenario, even if he is or was bad for the locker room at some point, he's not, it's not his team now, you know. He's coming into a team where there's West McKinney, Tyler Adams, Christian Pulisic, players playing at much bigger clubs in Eintrach, Frankfurt, much better teams in Eintrachr-Frankfort. It's their team, you know, and he's just, he would just be an option, you know, a piece at a position of need. rather than, like, maybe 10 years ago, you know, he was, like, among the top two, three most prestigious clubs on the team. Right. When he was, like, the hot shot dual recruit that we were trying to persuade.

Yeah, I could see that. Again, I don't put much stock in that locker room business because I feel like it's a bit of sort of just the gossip stuff. And I still think that a lot of it comes down to the coach and their ability to manage a team and to put players in positions where they know what their role is. so you don't have 18 different players all trying to do their own thing, and that's how you can kind of get those egos conflicting. So, no, I don't see any reason that even if Chandler was not well-liked, I don't know how else to put it in the past, that that would carry over into a completely new setting, new coach, new players.

Yeah. I think it just has to go by whether you're not, you think he can help the team on the field, and if you think he can, get him in there. Okay, yeah. Cool, cool. Moving into the second half, we'll try to keep this quick. 49th minute miazga through the lines to McKinney.

I think you mentioned this in the Slack channel. McKinney just so silkily receives it in stride, taps it wide to Dest as he surges into the final third. That's McKinney, I mean, and then Dest vizes another cross, and Legat makes a perfect run, and it's fine. It's fine. I think it was fine. This is the one you've got to, you're, this is the one you have to post.

So mark this one down, Bells. You've got to clip this and post it like from the beginning of the play. I think in the replay you even get the cool overhead view of it and watch like when Legette makes all of his movements, when he makes his decisions to go. And you've got to tell me where his, where his mistake was that a Zardez or a sergeant would have done better. We're talking like, we're talking like two tenths of a second difference between getting to the ball and not.

You know what I mean? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So you got to tell me where is that. Zardaz would have made up that two-tenth, unless you're going to say Zardes is just faster. Or all you've got to do is like curve the run in a slightly different way and you're in, you know? That's what I'm saying.

So here's what I need any of the legit sort of, uh, uh, truthers out there to do is I need somebody to like clip the play, any play, this one or anything else where you're like, this is why it's not going to work to have a, this is where a true number nine would have improved our, our play. So that's what I'm waiting to see. instead of everyone who just decided that they hated it from the start, saying this is why we're not getting any shots off because it's a false nine. And it's Sebastian Legette shouldn't be there.

I'll see what my calendar looks like on Sunday morning. Block off some time to appease me. 50th minute. So it was a chance, right, in the 49th minute. 50th minute, Musa surges through the middle. I think a lot of people, eyes lit up at this. He eliminated like two or three guys on the dribble And then tapped it wide to Raina who lofted across the back post

Conrad Delafonte headed it Towards the goal I don't think it was all that Threatening of a situation But it was it went off a guy's shoulder Maybe his hand probably his shoulder So Conrad's header wasn't a dangerous situation But what I loved about this and what I think this is another example of

Is we were dangerous We got the ball to Gio Raina Who was able to pick his head up and pick out whichever cross he wants, and he picks out the exact right one, that lofted ball over the traffic in front of goal, to a Conrad who's only like half-marked. But what needed to happen is Conrad needs to let that go

because Anthony Robinson is right behind him completely unmarked. So this is where I'm like, oh, this is progress. These are the good things that you can take to the film room or wherever. You'd be like, hey, here's what we created. We created a situation where we could cross to two guys who were barely being covered by one defender. That's the promising stuff. where we don't need to like get too stuck on our total number of shots or the fact that we

couldn't score like that's the stuff that you can build on is we created a situation we hit the final ball and we had 2 v1 on the back post the decision might have been average at that point but we had we like we can build that we can create that stuff and that's with um you know potentially not our first choice left winger potentially going out on a limb 56 minute, Miyazga gets battleshiped on the right touchline and then sees yellow. It was kind of coming. He was being chippy kind of most of the game, which is his mode. I think you mentioned during the game, Brooks got battleshiped a few times.

Yeah, it just means that guys have an easy time with our giant tall centerback sort of almost just running around them while they have to like pivot three times to change their body shape to chase after. And it happened to Brooks twice in the first half and it happened to Miazga here. And it battleship wouldn't be the correct term, but actually Sergenio Desk got done once too. By Rabi and Mondeh. But yeah, so so all of it did. And again, no one's expecting defenders to just have perfect games where they never lose a 1v1 sort of situation like that. And we generally did well to cover on all of them. But this goes back to would a better team than whales have been a little bit more lethal in punishing us? Yeah.

I wouldn't say real quickly on the term battle shipped, you know, if you're not of a nautical background. I was just reading some old letters from when I was 19 or 20 and I was on a ship for a while. And I told my parents that we were playing soccer on the back of the ship and a ball went overboard. And somebody told me right then, I think we were in the North Sea. Somebody told me, if you, the, if you fall in, you die in 15 minutes from hypothermia.

It takes them 20 minutes to turn the ship around to come back to get you. So that's what, that's the battleship concept. Incredible aside right there, Adam Bells. Got it. So many more questions that apparently we'll spend, we'll spend 10 minutes talking about one, one step that Sebastian Legit made on a, on a chance. But we're just going to breeze right past. You living on a battleship.

It wasn't a battleship. It wasn't a battleship. I have never been in the military. 63rd minute. Arent McKinney header picked off and it's a counterattack. This was McKinney trying to head it back to Adams just to sort of maintain possession. And this was the best chance of the game for Wales. They slipped it wide.

And Brennan Johnson came in from the right wing. And there's a good save from Zach Stephan. Was it a good save? Greg. It was a good save, man. He had basically two plays to make that I can think of as far as shot stopping, stopped him both. Oh, yeah, there was that one long-range blast. Yeah, the Tyler Boyd shooting area.

And then his distribution was mostly good. I think there was one, like, errant. Like, his distribution was all very intentional and mostly calm. He had the one pass to Adams that turned into a disaster. And then he had, like, one, I think, angled ball out. to Desk that went over Desk's head where he was under a little bit of pressure. The camera had just cut away and then cut back right as it was happening. But otherwise, solid distribution from him, good shape on those buildouts.

So there's my chance to talk about Stefan for a bit. Yeah. Around the 70th minute, Yanez and Cardoso came on. I enjoyed what I saw from both of them, but especially Cardoso. I mean, Yonaz did take the ball off of somebody in the 73rd minute and have one from the Tyler Boyd shooting area. It drew a save. I mean, it was nice to see us actually get the goalkeeper to, like, move and fall on the ground.

You wish you would have passed it. I don't know. Taking a shot that there was no one, at that point, there was no one, like, racing to join him. Like, everyone was done racing. There was no racing to join anyone and ever in this game. So, so, yeah, I mean, whatever. Go ahead and have your hit if you hit a World League. Yeah.

And Cardoso, there's a comp out there on. Twitter from USA soccer comps, sort of a new entrant to the field. It's good because Watkey has disappeared. Wachie's become a man of letters. Yes, as any of that accounts, like evolved into this exploration of language that sort of vaguely orbits the game of soccer. Yeah, I enjoy it quite a lot. Cardoso was tough, tough in the tackle, seemed to be pretty competent on the ball.

I think the drop-off, he sort of, to me, he looked like a tougher version of Jackson Ewell, maybe a little quicker and more athletic. Not going to stake my life on that claim. But it's not, it's not the Tyler, he's not going to do what Adams was doing, though. He's not going to be, like, 360 degrees barreling into challenges and, like, taking away these lanes,

at least from the eight-and-half, you know, involvements he had in this game. Yeah. Did he even have that many hit three involvement? I think it was more than that. Eight and a half sounds right. And then, you know, 79th minute, Joe Aquini and Wea got on. Like we said, they barely touched the ball.

The game was too messy from then on. And then we saw right at the very end, O&O to Soe make his U.S. Mids National Team debut, and Reggie Cannon came on as well. Just to sort of make an appearance. What did you, so did you make of our press? Have we talked about that yet? I don't think we have.

Not specifically. Did you think it was good? I thought it was. I don't think we ever got carved up. Before the game I was like, there's a chance that we deploy the same press we used against Costa Rica and where Costa Rica just sort of gave up

and launched it long. Wales might be competent enough to be like, oh, no, we can beat this. You guys are naive here or you're doing this wrong or whatever and we can exploit it. There wasn't too much of that. I feel like what Wales did

was played like one level better than Costa Rica where we were kind of, the press is designed to give up the weak side fullback is to allow a long ball to a weak side fullback. Do I need to talk really specifically about it, or is that good enough for how we're kind of setting up? No, I think, you can go, please go a little bit more specifically.

So we've talked about it before, but when the ball is with like a wail centerback, LeJette's job is to essentially, or the forward's job is to deny the ball into a center mid, and then the ball side front three guy, whether that's Rainer or Conrad, denies the fullback, And then the weak, the other side front three guy denies the other centerback.

So the guy you give away is the long diagonal over to the weak side fullback. You let them have that. You almost encourage it. And then while that ball's traveling, since it takes so long to get there, one of Musa or McKinney or Adams, probably Musa or McKinney, like, blazes out to arrive at the same time as the ball. That's sort of the idea. And Costa Rica could never really even accomplish that pass. they'd either try it and give the ball away right there

or they wouldn't even try and they just lump the ball upfield instead. Wales could hit that pass. So whales would hit it and that guy would calmly collect it. But then they wouldn't take that time to see if they could immediately explode past us because we were, you know, whatever, caught slightly out of position in that, you know, second and a half. They would basically just recirculate possession until eventually they would then just do what Costa Rica did

and sort of give us the ball again. Okay. That's sort of my takeaway on how whales dealt with our process. press is that they also didn't ever really beat it. Yeah. And we did create some chances for ourselves with the press. Quite a few, yeah. Yeah.

So quite an evolution from Burhalter to go from the soft 442 being such an officianto of that defensive setup to now we're actually a pressing national team. Yeah, massive change. And so much for the better, given our personnel. We should see, we're going to see, I think, a lot of chances created, or if we don't create a lot of chances, we will basically suffocate concafobonents, is my prediction, and they won't be able to sort of build anything up themselves.

They'll have to essentially do what Costa Rica and what Wales did here and just concede that they can't do it, and they'll just hope for some kind of like a one-off fluke through the long balls. And Wales did end up getting a couple of those, but that's the hope. Yeah, okay. I have a few closing thoughts here. I assume you do too. I'm...

What's here? I just thought one too many touches from almost everybody. Raina was the biggest defender probably, but Dest was guilty. Musa was guilty sometimes. Even Legette on one occasion, I noticed he just like just tapped the ball to Raina as soon as you see the window open instead of waiting an extra second. I would say Weston is the only player on this team outside of Brooks who seems to actually relish passing the ball. Dest maybe two.

So I, that trouble. Death, death, yeah. That troubles me a little bit that we, you know, in terms of like rhythm builders, Weston is the one who sort of sticks out, especially among the front seven. And nobody else really does. This is just a lot of like receiving the ball,

taking a touch, standing, either tapping it backwards or trying to dribble somebody. Whereas, you know, McKinney does. does, he likes to, he likes, he's looking for that one touch pass, boom. And he was the one, easily the most progressive of our front seven players, I thought. I mean, Des, you could argue Dest was too, but he's often on the end of moves that somebody in the midfield had to key. And if you want somebody to key a move, McKenny was the one doing all the keying.

The big hope is that guys will be, will have to like lean less on picking their heads up to identify where to go and we'll just kind of have a sense of it the longer we play. We have effectively started over with both personnel and to a large degree tactics. Like I know the 325 or 235 now isn't necessarily a new concept, but the way we move even within it is completely different now that McKinney is just sort of being fluid. Geo Raina is so fluid about where he goes. And so it's going to take a while for people to understand like, okay, when Raina's here or when the false nine drops here, like somebody has to be in the space right away.

And that is going to take a couple of camps, I'd assume. And, you know, I hope I'm wrong and I hope we just come out against Panama and everything looks as clean as we've ever looked. But I'm okay giving at that time. Everyone, I think, was in a position where my big thought on it is that everybody was put in a position where they can play well, maybe with the exception of Sebastian Legerette, but even he was, you know, fine. for the first time he's played that for the U.S.

So I think it's easy to take this game, to get it into a video room, and then to make really fixable corrections. Like all the issues, I think, a lot of them are very easily identified and addressed, and we can progress from here. There's obvious progressions to make from here. And that's the biggest deal for me.

Yeah. We miss, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say we miss Pool 6th's cutting edge. Quite a bit. Yeah. It's a different game if we can get an early goal somehow, and, you know, Pulisic's a game breaker. And when you don't have your biggest game breaker, then you're, you know, you're missing

something. It ain't rocket science. I don't have any other things to say. Do you? I'm really looking forward to Monday in whether we've trod out the exact same 11 or whether like we replace everyone, I will basically be equally excited. Yeah. Yeah, either way, it's kind of cool because, yeah, maybe we get to see Ledesma.

If we don't, we get to see that same, we get to see that some of that, we get to see that same midfield again. Oh, no, I have to watch Musa and McKenny and Adams again. It's going to be great either way. 245 p.m. Eastern Time, 145 Central. Sorry, my mind has moved to Eastern Time. I know it's like the greatest heresy in this podcast. All right. Thanks, Greg. Have a good weekend. We'll see you.