Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 148: USA v Panama, Concacaf in Austria

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

It was a Concacaf meeting in Wiener Neustadt, southern Austria. Second friendly syndrome. Despite all the goals and the young debuts, it just didn’t have the same pop as that 0-0 draw against Wales. We discuss the match in detail, and what we think we learned from it. 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 Velazquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. The U.S. won six to two, but it wasn't as good of a performance as you might think based on the scoreline. The goals came in two bursts, an eight-minute stretch in the first half and a 12-minute stretch at the end of the game. The overall outing was what? Okay?

As expected, we'll get into it. Greg, how you doing? I'm great. A true number nine, Pells. Good for a four-goal swing. That's all it took. Just put a striker on the field, and you score goals. It ain't rocket science.

Let's do the lineups real quick, and then we'll get into some stuff. For Panama, not really a strong lineup, or at least not one with a ton of recognizable Panamanian internationals. They're going through a lot of turnover right now. Well, let's also point out it wasn't a strong lineup for Panama. We also don't know, though, if it was their best lineup. This isn't like, oh, they left all their best players home. This is like they don't have that many good players at this point.

Yeah, I think you just set off air. They're going through as much turnover as we are. They just don't have five, 21 and unders in the Champions League. Right. I think at this point, they are like ninth in Concaf in like FIFA ranking, which is a little bit more meaningful now that it's sort of a straight ELO rank. There's a probably 50-50 chance that Panama is not even playing in the Oval. So, so this is very much more like a gold cup group stage opponent than a real, like, hex-quality

side. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And yet, we didn't, you know, dominate the way you might think we would on paper. Let's, I'll give the U.S. lineup, Stefan and goal, just like against Wales, desk at left back, Tim Ream, Matt Miosga at center back, Reggie Cannon at right back, uh, Tyler Adams, West McKinney, and Eunice Musa in our written-in-pen midfield. Ulianez and Giorina on the wings and Nicolas Joaquini at Stryker.

That ink that are midfields written in, is that ink good for 10 years, bells? 10-year ink. I don't know. We got to talk about Musa because, like, I feel like everybody is crowning him. And I do, I'm not, like, I'm not trying to be contrarian about that. I thought I've been really impressed too, but I do want to talk specifically about what he does well with you later. Okay.

But you want to get into this striker situation. There's been a lot of hullabaloo about us not playing a striker against whales. So I'm going over the false nine, false dilemma, and everyone was so up in arms as soon as they saw the lineup with Legit at Striker. And I kind of get it. We want to test guys out. And, you know, we never seen Joe Keeney. from now I'm calling Joe Aquini, Nico. Is that okay?

That's good. Okay, it's a mouthful throwing out of Joe Aquini every time. So we've never seen Nico, never seen Soto. So people are calling it a wasted opportunity. But also, like the sort of irony of all this is that everyone was so relieved that we started the true nine against Panama. But then also everyone was like, man, our possession is really terrible. And it's like, guys, maybe, maybe those two things are related a little. if you look at the touch maps of Legette versus Wales

and Joe Aquini versus Panama, Nico, as we've already decided to call him. I think you're doing fine with the last name. They both got about 77 minutes set forward. Legette was replaced by Joe Aquini and then dropped into the midfield against Wales. Joe Aquini was replaced by Soto, swap like for like against Panama. Joe Aquini touched the ball.

His non-shot touches were, he probably had like 10 involvements in the game in those 77 minutes. Legette had like 30. Like Legett was constantly getting the ball in the, you know, as the often like central highest player of the team,

that's a big deal if you're trying to control possession. So when we were talking about how well our midfield was controlling the game against Wales, a big part of that was how the team like was able to incorporate the forward coming back to get the ball and keep it and not give it away. So that was actually like

really positive contribution that LaJette had on that game. We didn't really get that involvement from Joe Aquini. He would come back sometimes. I know Joe Incleet posted that he was kind of doing the same things as Sebastian or as, yeah, Sebastian Legit, but very clearly not to anywhere near the extent. Yeah, but okay, so the counterpoint might be, well, we, we didn't, we did a lot of deep possession against whales, but very little penetration in the, in the, attack and it seems that we were able to develop a lot more penetration against Panama.

Maybe that's because Panama is just so much weaker than whales. Is that what you would say? I'd say that definitely factors into it. I mean, Panama are a bad team. Wales are a decent team and whales are fairly well organized. Panama pretty poorly organized. You know, Gio Kini also, you know, I brought up the non-shot touches. Pretty importantly, Joe Kini had some shot touches in that game and scored two.

goals. So I just kind of also want to talk about how the goals don't necessarily vindicate like the narrative here, because that's really what I'm pushing back on. It's just this narrative that I think is kind of dumb. Yeah. Like we had all that possession that you're talking about, and it didn't necessarily penetrate penetration against Wales, but it wasn't like Joe Aquini somehow opened up our possession and turned our possession into attacking chances against Panama. In those 77, minute performances that they both had, Joe Aquini had two shots. I'm sorry, he created, or he found himself in position to take two shots plus the penalty. Sebastian Leggett also took

two shots in his 77 minutes. So it wasn't this some sort of like, you know, incredible difference in what we were able to create out of our possession. And if we really want to get into it, Joe Aquini's shots weren't at the end of like possession. His first shot came, or his first goal on his first shot came on a turnover that we created high up the field and we turned it into a 3B2. It was actually very similar to a 3V2 that we got against Wales. Raina has the ball driving at the top of the box. And unlike Wales, where we didn't execute very well, Raina here was able to slip Ulyanaz in and Yanez gets a shot off and Joaquini scores the rebound.

Yeah. I don't think there was any rocket science to second reference of rocket science in the podcast. That's the last one I promise. And in Joe Aquini's obviously in that goal. I mean, he just, you know, he did the right thing. He was in the right spot. And yeah, we'll get into, I guess we'll get into this a little more. So it's just a 3V2 that Joe Aquini is present for and does well to clean up the mess that the Panama goalkeeper made.

His second goal came on a corner kick. So again, this isn't like some true like strikers run that we saw from him in a long buildup or anything like that. He was there for a corner kick. Matt Miaska had the assist on it, which is not something that's going to happen. often in the run of play. So it's just one of those things where if you're pointing to Joe Aquini's goals as an argument that the true striker was what changed the game, it doesn't really seem to hold up. And if you want to use the mystical striker's instincts in the box, that also isn't

going to hold up particularly well because Sebastian Leggett also scored on a corner kick in this game. So I don't know. I don't really have a big point. I'm just like, I got fussy because I thought it was kind of a dumb narrative. Well, my ears parked up when you said the word mystical. I sure love that. Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of oversimplistic stuff out there.

And I'm not advocating for Leggett to be playing our nine or our false nine. And I'm definitely not trying to like trash Joaquini. You know, he was fine. It was his debut. It's a really exciting game for him. He scored two goals. That's awesome. Really, the other kind of thing that I wanted to say, though, is whatever true nine ends up

playing for the U.S. in our next few games, I honestly think it will be a lot better for us if his touch map looks more like Legettes than Joe Aquini's. Like, I don't think Joe Aquini was involved enough, and I think that actually led to some of our issues really putting our foot on the ball and controlling the game. Yeah, interesting. I wonder if it did, was Legette coming further back than Joe Aquini to pick up the ball, at least in some cases he was, but I don't know, I don't have a, I don't have like a heat map in my mind. He, what's your sense of it?

He probably was, but I think he probably has a better sense of where to go to get it, being a center midfielder by trade. I also probably think a big deal is having John Brooks in the game instead of Tim Ream, uh, because John Brooks honestly is like a cheat code for playing the ball into, into those attacking players' feet. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I would say particularly in the first half, Rana,

was not all that good at progressing the ball. Well, I should be more precise. First 25 minutes or so, like up until his goal and shortly thereafter. So I don't know how we were going to get the ball to Joe Keeney with consistency. And then that's the big byword on all of this is like we can do nice things. We can play beautiful soccer on occasion. But when are we going to consistently do it? Sort of false nine aside, you know, consistently just be.

able to control a game and and carve up the other team we don't even have to carve them up we just have to probe them pro you know pro i'm i'm not i honestly and we'll get to it in sort of the big takeaway section i'm not concerned about any of that really uh okay like this is we're two games in three brand new central center midfield players playing together uh there i have no real problems or or i don't there are no like alarm bells going off because of because of sort of our sloppiness uh my my false nine rant is more just about like it i think it's actually it's actually very good to get our nine more involved in the possession, and I think we'll end up benefiting a lot from doing that as often as we can. So that's really where I was going with it. I think the

discussion got a little silly, and again, it won't be legit, but whoever it is, I think they will want them to get involved in a way that is similar to what Sebastian Legette did. Yeah. Okay. I guess I should say, you know, because we're going to get into the nitty-gritty, the details of this whole game. But, um, we're going to do. not the whole game, but a lot of it. Big picture, it's so cool to see, you know, Soto scored two goals, Joe Keeney scored two goals, Musa continue to play well, Adams play well at the six. McKenny, sort of the leader of this team right now, it appears, at least in terms of on-field action.

Dest has been fine. We know he can be better than this, but he's been good enough. Same with Rayna. I'd say the exact same thing for Gio Raina. Like, hasn't been excellent, but you know it's in there. Yeah, I mean, I'll concede that. And then I thought, you know, we may disagree about this, but I thought Cannon was pretty good.

And, you know, the centerbacks were a bit of an issue. But big pick. And then we got Ledesma and Yanez some chances, and Richards got his debut. So there's a lot to, you know, like just a lot to celebrate from this game as fans as people who want the national team to succeed. Yeah, and I know there was some disappointment when some of these guys didn't start and we didn't rotate as heavily for game two.

But I'm not bothered by that at all. I feel like the reason you call guys into this camp, you know, we're still 10 months out from World Cup qualifying, all these new players, is to, it's so you can't, you have the luxury now to sort of ease them into things. This is the introduction camp. It's not like we've got a big game next month. Like we ease them into this one. Some of them will get into the March camp. some of them won't. Some of them hopefully will be playing in like a U-23 get-together somewhere

and once we get a vaccine up and running. I don't know. But like you get to now sort of do this at a better pace. And that's what I think the goal here. So I'm not bothered at all that Richard's only got 10 minutes. Like this is his introduction. If he merits it, he ends up getting another look in March or whenever. And we just kind of go from there.

At this point, it wouldn't be surprising if any of these guys, you know, shot to the top and became a, you know, a first team regular, a regular starter for the national team. It could happen for any of those guys. It probably won't for most of them, but could. So, yeah, it's good to have them introduced and sort of at least a little bit of accustomed to what Burrhalter is trying to do and the way he talks about it and what's expected of them.

Let's go to the timeline. Yes, the Bell's Con, what are we calling this, the Bell's timeline? Oh, we'll come up with something better. Trademark Bell's timeline. We can call it. We'll figure out a good name for it. How about that? Seventh minute.

First real chance. Matt Miazga played a straight forward pass to McKinney, who was showing just inside the attacking half. Nice, efficient, I would say even kind of flary turn with the ball, and he hit a slicing ball down the right wing for Reggie Cannon to run on too. Yeah, we saw this a lot that space where we were able to get Cannon in behind, and he timed, he was timing those runs well. A big part of that was because

Panama's left back was kind of shocking. Defensively, offensively had a really nice ball that we're going to talk about in just a second. But defensively, he kept like getting pinched in with Ullianas, who was kind of our right winger

who would tuck in, but he wouldn't just pinch in, which would be fine. He would also step like really far up off of the line. So you had that situation where he's got a terrible angle to try to catch up with Reggie Cannon. And that's how we got a ton of joy in that space was he wouldn't just be, that left back wouldn't just be in, he'd be too far high.

And it was just like, it's just like a classic backdoor cut that he just couldn't catch up with. Uli's gravitational pull, let's call it. That's right. It's what Anthony Robinson didn't get any of in the last game on the left side. Is it because Uli, I posted this on Twitter a few minutes ago? It's because Uli meg somebody and that left back was like never again. ever again play it into Uli's feet I am wrecking him yeah yeah um so that meanwhile as canon ran onto that ball which you which you explain well why that was on so often because it was

like three or four times i already i have to correct it because on this play it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't Uli right it would have been reina at reina was still on the right side and Uli was still on the left side that's right that's right but same same concept so uli Uli had switched over to the left side on this one, and maybe he started on the left side. I can't remember. They switched back and forth. Yannes was coming up the left wing, as Cannon was settling to, picking himself up to, picking his head up to find somebody. And he just ghosted right across the penalty marker, lost his man. I thought that was very nice, off ball movement. And then Cannon hit him with a good pass right on the floor.

And Yanaz just flashed it wide of the near post. Yeah, it was a good read from Uli to read Joe Aquini's movement, and this was good movement from Joe Aquini to drive forward on that with the ball to get essentially on the same line as the ball that Cannon was on. And that created a window, and Uli waited for just that moment for the defender on him to sort of switch off and just kind of keep dropping as defenders do in that situation. And then he just made a hard horizontal cut directly at Cannon

instead of continuing his run towards goal. Yeah. that's the kind of thing that gets me up in the morning that kind of not just because I'm like biased towards Ouli I mean I am a little bit I've been rooting for the kid for a long time and I want him to do well but I just love that kind of stuff that kind of movement off the ball really decisive really decisive and and not to like we don't have to do all all these like comparisons but uh it's something where I felt like Conrad's movement in the Wales game like the way I would describe it as he was very often indecisive.

So this was a nice early contrast to what we saw against whales. Yeah. From our unproven winger pool. And that happened right after Yanaz went down in a heap going knee to knee with a Panamanian after he did somebody on the left side. So I'm going to choose to believe that he was still a little shook up. That's why he didn't score. I'm just, I'm smiling.

I'm just kidding. Anyway, he's a clever attacking player. and this is a good example. Nice running ball across from Canon 2. Eighth minute, goal Panama. Almost immediately after the Anez chance, Panama got a free kick on an Adams foul. So Adams did this a couple of times,

I think, over this window where he takes this weird angle in a pressure closing down the ball where he's like running to the opponent's back shoulder, not to get like goalside of him. It's almost like he's daring them to advance the ball with their first touch, because then he'll use his incredible quickness to get the right side. But he goes to like their wrong shoulder.

And in this case, the Panama attacker Tejada called his bluff and just took a touch towards goal and Adams just wrecked him. Yeah, just bear hugged him from behind. For no real reason. So I don't know, it was just a strange one. And a couple of minutes later, he'll basically do the same thing. But let's talk about this one in its consequences. Well, it's like a classic 10-yard penalty for a block in the back.

That's what it is. So, yeah, on the quick restart, Fidel Escobar, who plays – I thought he looked kind of good as a centerback who plays in Spain's second division. I elected to swing it wide left to Alejandro Francis, who pumped a ball into the box. It was lofted between Miazga and Riem and Jose Fierda, who was Fiardo, who was Niazga's man. I mean, Miyazzo was clearly marking him. Just met it freely at the six, nodded it into the goal. So, you know, let's portion out the blame like a pumpkin pie here.

Six pieces of blame. It's a really pretty goal. Like every piece of Panama's execution there from the ball out wide to the ball into the header, really, really like, flawless. Yeah, it was really. It's a pretty nice goal. I mean, I'll say Miasga was kind of cheating out a little bit because because of the quickness of the restart, it seemed, it looked like to me, Canon was sort of stuck in a two-on-one. Yes, he was on the flank.

So, and Rana was trying to run to catch up and help out, but it would just happen kind of quickly. And Miasga noticed that and sort of cheating a little bit away from Fayardo, which created that space that, you know, on the replay, it looks ridiculous. Why is he so wide open at the six? but that's, I guess, the mulligan that Miazga gets there. I'm not giving him one. I think he's basically just got to keep essentially like a hand on his man. Like he can't, there's no reason that he would leave the guy who's dead center of the field 10 yards away from goal to drift to a man out wide when the ball hasn't gone to that man yet. Like you'd wait until the ball gets played to him and then if someone has to step to him, then Miazka would.

But there's no way it's Miazka's job to go cover that. guy who's drifting out wide. So is it's somebody else's fault for not covering over there? Yeah, I mean, it'd be, it'd be Cannon and Raina who sort of create, who, their miscommunications kind of creates that situation where it's 2B1 versus Canon. And then once it's there, and I'm not, I mean, it could be all one or all the other. I'm guessing it's probably Raina, right? For not dropping to not let that ball get through or to not be able to arrive to get goal side of the guy who's on the ball and pressure the cross. But once it's out there, I don't think Cannon's really done anything wrong to not go close them down immediately,

even though it seems obvious since they scored on the cross to say he has to go do that. Before they hit the cross in, if you said, what's more dangerous? This guy hitting a cross from the sideline 40 yards out or the guy that you could slip in behind. If Canon goes to chase it, I'd say you'd probably say you have to split the difference in. Stay goal side of the ball, but also drop to that, to the runner's line, which is about what Cannon was doing, I think. Yeah. What about Stefan?

John Mueller put a image on Twitter of how far away the crosser was and Stefan's clear view of it. And you do the math and you say, well, the header happened basically right on the six yard line. So how responsible is Stefan for coming out and claiming that ball? I don't know, man. It's tough. like goalkeepers can have a lot of, a lot of sort of goals they concede where he say, ah, he probably couldn't have done anything else. But the thing about goalkeepers is, and I think I might be stealing this verbatim from either

Kieran Doyle or somebody's already, I think, said almost this exact thing. Like, you have to stop some of these. Even the ones that you, on any case by case goal, you could be like, not much he could have done there. Like a few of those, you need to do something there. So on this one, it's like maybe he comes, maybe he doesn't. but some of those he should come out and get in and uh john muller eventually posted a follow-up that showed stephen's starting position so the two pictures side by side as the guy's hitting the cross

step is like a yard off of his line or a step off his line so maybe maybe two yards and then as it comes in he you know as the guy hits the header stephen has dropped to his line so that i think the implication there is that stephen at the time that the cross is hit where he can start reading the trajectory he probably would have taken two steps forward and gone up and got it. You know, like that would have been the mechanics of it. Two steps up, go catch it at its highest point. You should be able to get it higher than Fahardo's head can get. You know, so that's the implication is that Stefan had the information to go get the ball,

chose to stay on his line and ride it out, and what happened was unstoppable header for a goal. Yeah. I mean, that's a tough thing to demand of your goalkeeper, I think. don't you think, or is it? I don't know. It's tough to say they need to get those every single time, I think. Maybe I'm wrong, and we need to get more of a goalkeeping expert on here than I am. I don't know if that's, we don't have that in our phone book.

I guess what it is, again, it's Stefan, I think, can go get that ball. I think it's something he's got to get more comfortable with his judgment, and he should be able to go get it. The guy also shouldn't be wide open for a header from there. He should have somebody leaning on him, disrupting his jump, all that stuff. Yep. Yeah. So, you know, this veteran back three of Stefan Miasga and Ream, probably the, well, outside of maybe some subs, the weakest players on the team today, or yesterday, I guess it was.

You know, the ones most guilty, I guess. I'll grant that. I'll grant that. Would you say Stefan Miyazga half and half or more Miyazga than Stefan? Man. Do you hate this when I try to pin you down on this? I don't want to get into like percentages of blame on the goal. I'll say he should definitely do more to stay tighter to his guy to disrupt him.

And I think Stefan probably could come get that ball. Okay. Well, it's a depressing thing to see us go down one zero to Panama on the road. It sort of felt a little bit like the 2017 campaign when we just really never played good soccer on the road. And this is obviously not in Panama, but it felt a little bit like that. Yeah, it felt cheap, even though, again, Panama had to hit three really,

I mean, again, three really good pieces of execution for Panama, but it still felt cheap to have it happen that easy, if you want to say that. I'm glad you said three, because actually the free kick out to Francis was, really nice. Yeah, that ball wide, then the delivery, and then the header, again, three really good pieces of execution. But to, I don't know, to not contest any of those just felt, just felt like a cheap goal to concede. Yep. 10th minute, another Panama chance. Matt Miazga

gave away in his own half counter, another Adams professional foul from the back. I don't even know if you could call it a professional foul, I guess. It was just, it was exactly what you described earlier about him being on the wrong shoulder and then just kind of running over the guy. The free kick was blasted well over by former Red Bull legend Michael Maria. Current Anderlegged star, I believe. Oh yeah, that's right. Yeah, I forgot that. 17th minute, McKenney Slaloms.

I was looking for a good verb for this, but it was quite an impressive run the way he beat those first two guys, just look powerful and elegant in a way that he doesn't. not always do, even in the same sequence. But he slalom past two defenders in the middle of the park, lost it briefly in a 50-50 challenge just inside the attacking half, recovered it out wide, and then promptly lost it again near the right corner, just kind of dribbled way too far ahead of himself. And he could have been called for a foul as he was counterpressing, but he did win the ball back and then tapped it to Adams, who quickly and efficiently one touched it to.

Really nice. So that's kind of the key play. Yeah, sorry to jump all over you there, but I kept watching that one again, and I feel like that was a really underappreciated little shift of the ball from Adams, who I think is really clever about that stuff. Yeah, he had a few clever passes, and maybe I'm going to have to start walking back my long-held belief that he's not that great of a passer because he had the one on the third goal, too. That was just lovely.

So Adams, one touches it to Musa in space, and then he just goes on a dribbling expedition and beats one guy, and then gets filed by the next, just outside of the 18. Free kick, a few minutes later from Raina, who put it in the goal past a keeper who, as they say, probably should have done better. But it was, you know, it was a good hit, low hard, towards the corner. It's a clever one because you see this all the time now. Players have gotten smarter about knowing that goalkeepers have a tendency

to sort of shift their weight at the moment of the kick towards the wall side to make sure they don't get beat there. and then they just can't get their weight back to dive back to the post that's supposed to be theirs to cover. So a little clever finish from the 18-year-old. Yeah. Then, so that's 17th minute. Now it's 1-1.

I would say my observations from that early portion of the game are that Canon was getting up the wing well. You covered that well adequately, more than adequately. Raina was not sharp at the beginning of the game. Desd was flashy, but pretty much toothless. McKenny was the most incisive American, very toothful, you might say. And then, yeah, I had not much else to say. Adam's very clean and efficient at the six.

I think it was kind of obvious right away that this was going to be kind of second friendly syndrome where Death didn't actually look terribly interested in playing a complete game of soccer. It was just like, hey, when the ball comes to me, I'm going to mess around. I will step over it, yeah. Which is great. I have no problem with that in a second friendly of a window. Like, have a ball.

Yeah. One thing that was a little bit different that I picked up on kind of early is that we did drop Adams deep between the centerbacks more than we did. Did we? We almost never happening in Wales. Yeah, he found himself back there quite a bit, actually, I'd say, especially since again, didn't happen at all in the first friendly. So I don't know if that's a John Brooks difference. where when Brooks is there, you don't want to crowd Brooks out of that space

because he's so, I mean, clearly the best distributor on our team from Deep. So there's no way you want to displace him there. Or if it's just, if it was a way to try to beat Panama's, like different shaped pressure. But it was definitely a thing where Adams was kind of filling that space. Okay.

Yeah. I'll say one thing about Dest and his, you know, his step-o's step-off. I love, I love Sergenio Des. Like, I'm not, just, let me just put that disclaimer out there. But the thought that kept coming to my mind was final thirds, uh, quoting final third. It was fake swag, you know, like the no look, like the no look past when you don't,

like you're not actually fooling anyone. You're just making it. You're just sort of making an aesthetic statement, which I'm fine with, but. All right. I was going to say, I would, I want as much fake swag as we can fit into an 11. Okay. I think there's a high correlation between fake swag and then also having real swag. Yeah, I think that's true.

I did think, I did think, I did think Ullianas had some real swag in this game without having a lot of fake swag. Like you didn't see him play and think, oh, like, he's the swagiest out there. But he was doing, he was doing, he was doing some saucy stuff. Are you embarrassed by that passage of talking? I'm actually really excited for when we get to the swagginess of the, substitute. 22nd minute, desk entry pass to Raina on the left side. And Raina, Raina's attempted through ball is cut out.

But then Raina and McKinney spring into a pretty furious counterpress and they win it back. When I say counterpress, most of you know what that means, but maybe some of you don't. That's just like after you lose the ball pressing high to get it back quickly, right? Yeah, it's like the immediate swarm. And at this point in soccer in 2020, like your tag. shaking shape often is set up with the counterpress in mind. So you don't just like, it's not just like, oh, we randomly lost it. Now we all, somebody sprints at it.

You are already set up in anticipation of what will happen when you lose the ball. And that's just another extension of the chance. You know, like that's where we are in 2020. Where can I do a little bit of a side note here? Absolutely. It was really obvious in the Wales game how we, how like, deliberate we were with our counterpress because, you know, we were building out of that two, three, five, but maybe I'd talked about this in the first podcast, but I don't remember.

Once the ball would go wide to like Dest or Robinson, the other fullback, the weak side fullback then wouldn't keep advancing up into the box. They would immediately like shift to the middle of the field and they'd even give like a little hand signal to the players behind him to be like, I know, I'm here in my spot for the counterpress. Like we will have the two centerbacks and then at least one of those three center mids and usually two of them, plus the weak side fullback would tighten way up into the middle. And that would be like our two, three counter pressing shape.

So whenever it came out, we would immediately try to squeeze it, smother it, create an umbrella where it can't get beyond you, foul if you have to. But you do at all costs, you keep that ball from getting beyond and letting the other team counter. Okay. Great. So on the 20, no, I mean, it's helpful. I mean, people have been asking us for more of that kind of stuff.

So it's great. So let me continue with the 22nd minute. They win it back, Rain and McKinney in the counterpress, and it falls to Raina in space. He slips at Wadiana, you described this earlier. And his shot, we couldn't get a really good angle on it from the camera, but it did force the goalkeeper down to his right, and he potted into the center of the area.

Joe Aquini swept at home. It seemed like a pretty preventable goal from the Panamanian goalkeeping coach's perspective, but again, I didn't have a great angle. No, it totally was. And I'll even say, I was talking about how it was a cleaner execution than the Wales 3V2 that we kind of squandered. But that's only because almost anything would be a cleaner execution than that Wales 3G2. This wasn't super great execution to have the 3B2 and end up with the shot that Yanez ended up with

is not great. was pretty, he ended up pretty far out, pretty wide, tough angle, and like pretty far out from the end line. So he was almost like corner of the box, trying to, trying to hit that thing. Yeah, he would have had his lot time to like, for it to be, you know, unstoppable shot. Really poor angle. So yeah, so it ended as well as it could have possibly ended given where Yanis was taking that shot from. Yep. So 2.1, Joe Keeney gets on the board, 26th minute after a pass of play that I would not call glittering, but that did progress the ball up the left side. Raina took a shot from distance, and it kind of deflected and looped over the goal, defected

off a Panamanian defender. Raina took the corner, it fell along to Dest. And then we got our nicest goal of the game, the one that more or less settled the match. Desd tapped it back to Adams just outside the 18-yard line. And this is when Adams played that. It was a very lovely low ball, slipped it in behind for McKinney, who was also making a very good run, a diagonal run from the sort of the top of the key to the... I keep on using other sport references.

A diagonal line from the top of the box to the left of the goal, and then he... It was inch-perfect. Well, to use the soccer terminology here, it was a nice reverse path from Adams, and it was because I've said this before by Adams, he's very good at, like, manipulating,

the micro situation of his passes. So he cuts in slightly just a little bit to shape his hips to the inside of the field, which drags everyone that way. And so McKinney's making that reverse run across the shift of the defenders. And that's where Adam sort of hits that ball against the grain for McKinney to run into. It was really lovely. Go back and watch the replay. It was very nice.

And then McKenney did, I thought, quite well to turn. on his heel and loft it with his left foot from the end line sort of over the goal to the backpost where Miazga headed it back across the face of the goal and then Joe Keeney just kind of threw his head into it and punched it home three one yeah good decision from Yazka and very selfless from from Joe Keene to throw his head in because you never know whose foot or fists are going to be arriving at the ball at the same time yeah totally Do we want Sebastian Leggett throwing his beautiful face into the danger zone like that? No, and that's what people don't realize.

Or maybe that's what people do realize, and that's why they don't want him anywhere near that situation. And despite the scoreline at this point, I'd say it was not that we didn't look that good. And then, I don't know, you can disagree with that if you want. But I would say from that goal in the 26 minute until the 83rd minute, there were big portions of the match where Panama was better, just more flowing in possession, more sort of in control of the ball. And then they scored again after a while, 79th minute. But why?

What is wrong with us? Why can't we possess the ball beautifully? I don't know. I don't know how much of it is that sort of second friendly syndrome. It did look like a lot of guys were trying to do things on their own. over that stretch of 40 minutes, I still think that it does change things to not have that like false nine mentality. Again, I don't even want to call it a false nine because I don't think we're going to be playing true nines there, but they have to, they're going to have to come back

and play a little bit. And we just had no involvement for Jolkeeney there. And we did actually try to find that sort of, I don't know if you'd call it a line stretching run. Like we did loft a couple balls up towards the forward line. And they were always just turnovers immediately. And that's sort of the issue I have with people thinking that these magical line stretching runs that they're talking about are just easy to do. Like, they're usually just giveaways. Like you've got to build and you've got to combine and create in the midfield to disorganize

the opponent. You can't just loft a ball up to the forward and be like, well, he's a forward, so this is what he's good at. That's not really what you can do here, even against Panama. So I don't know, man. it was messy and hard to watch. It was like dull, right? It was a dull messy.

Yeah, especially after the goal scoring stopped for a while. And don't get me wrong, I'll take whatever I can get. Like, we just went forever without anything. So watching McKinney try anything, whether it comes off or not, I'm great with. But yeah, it was a mess. It is to the point where you see, when you see a passage of play that is pleasing to the eye, it really sticks out, you know. I mean, the one that led to the third goal, I just spent 30 minutes talking about it.

And the one that there's one with Ledesma and McKinney towards the end of the game that I liked to. Just to move through the timeline quickly here, McKinney could have been shown red. I thought in the 50th minute for a studs up challenge probably would have in a World Cup qualifier, wouldn't you say? I have no idea, but I kind of want to get into this sort of like concaf-calfness that people we always like to kind of talk about and like, oh, in conga-calf, you know, you can't do those kinds of things. And I absolutely agree with people saying that, but I feel like, you know, when we talk about sort of the dark arts and stuff, when we're talking about dark arts and World Cup qualifying in concaf, for me, it's never a matter of like trying to tow the line of what you can get away with. I feel like it's kind of the opposite. it's like to really understand the dark arts in Conca Gaff, it's about doing everything you can to punish the other team

when they try to get up to that line. So you have this challenge from McKinney, which is way too close to a line. Essentially like you can't give a referee a reason, you know? Like if you get a red card there, you have no argument. You have no complaint. You're like, yep, I'm sent off and, you know, we're stuck in it.

And I don't know if this being a friendly sort of everyone knew going in, like, hey, this is the time to do it. We won't be able to do it. in the actual qualifiers. Maybe we're playing the long game and he's trying to piss these guys off so in the qualifier we can get them retaliating. I don't know. That's a big stretch.

But there were other examples in this game. Like Adam's two fouls early in the game. Like you do that early in a qualifier and you take a yellow card. That's not a great situation to be in for the next 80 minutes if you're our, you know, destroying center midfielder. I don't know if you saw Miyazga getting into some like baby games in the box off the ball. I did not see that. Oh, it's horrible.

Like, the ball's out wide, Panama have it. And there's a Panama forward posted up on Miyazga at, like, the, you know, the penalty spot. And they're just, like, throwing elbows. It's like down low basketball stuff that we talk about now that we're bringing in other sports constantly. And it was just, like, just grabbing shoulders. It was basically like what you do in front of a hockey net. We're going to talk about every single sport in this podcast. But it went on forever.

And at any point, if Miyazka gives him a little tug on the shoulder and he really flails and gets an A are as attention. Like, that's a penalty. Like, what are we doing? And, uh, that kind of stuff is what throws me off. Um, I think Daniel Smith posted the picture of, uh, McKenny getting choked in the Gold Cup final. Yeah. As sort of the contrast, like, oh, really, that's a red card in, in a real game. But that's kind of the, that's exactly what I'm talking about is if McKinney wants to really, you know, concaf someone, when Guardado's hand goes to his throat, he needs to drop and, like, hold his throat like he's just been, had his windpipe crushed. Like, That's the dark.

Instead of standing there. Yeah. Yeah. So it's about when the other team gets up to that line, can you like punish them and make them take the red card? It's not about like how close can I get to getting away with something because you are going to go too far. We need to stay 100 meters away from that line on the other side. And McKinney definitely was not 100 meters away from the red card there.

He was within, safe to say he was within a meter. So yeah, you need an electron microscope. to tell how far he was away from. So that's kind of what I'm thinking is, I'm hoping that this was just our guys knowing that there's nothing at stake and this is the time to get that out of your system because we don't want them anywhere near those lines

come qualifying. Miazka, we got to find that. It was just, they were flirting, I think they probably are a little bit into each other. Yeah, he's a hot mess sometimes. 79th minute, the U.S. had a chance. I thought this was kind of interesting when Cardoso won the ball at midfield.

Johnny Cardoso came on in the second half. And sprang Soto, who also came on the 77th minute for Joe Keeney, Soto slipped it a bit too hot out to an onrushing Wea. And then Wea's touch was all wrong, and it cammed off him to the goalkeeper. I'm chuckling at you underselling that bit too hot piece. I feel like Soto slammed it at Wea's feet and just pinballed it to the goalkeeper. I don't know that you could even describe Wayas touch as an actual touch so much as a deflection to the goalkeeper. Well, because Wayo was trying to take it in stride.

You know, if he had just, like, if he had just been like, oh, this is coming in hot, I'm going to stop. And it would have, it would have perhaps the angles that he had would have been closed down if he had stopped in that way. But, yeah, it was definitely too hot. Definitely too hot. And then Ledesma mishit a little combination pass with McKenny. and the press. We were trying to win the ball back, and McKinney hit it to Ledesma.

The Desma hit it back to McKinney, but it went over him and sprang a Panama counterattack. They were just rushing down the field. Cardoso tackled the guy with the ball, and it fell to somebody else, and he chipped Farhado in, and he smashed it past Stefan with his left foot.

What happened here? Again, it seemed like a very easy goal. Yeah, it starts with... Tell me. It starts with Ledesma's sort of Keystone Cops moment with McKinney, where it's just lack of playing time together, so, you know, McKinney's expecting Ledesma to either, like, you know, play at the ball ahead of him rather than playing it to where he just was.

And then from there, it just sort of gets worse. Cardoso goes in with a super... I don't want to even say dangerous, but it was like a fouling challenge. I feel like Cardoso's intent was to stop the play by either winning the ball are fouling, but he ended up not quite doing either. So because he didn't win the ball, the ref isn't going to stop it for the foul. And then, like Miazga, inexplicably, like darts forward three steps, even though there was another center mid coming to pressure the ball after Cardozo's foul.

So Miaska shouldn't be abandoning his deep responsibility, which Panama then exploits by hitting the ball, you know, subtly into the space Miaska just left. Cannon hadn't gotten up in time. I think Dest might have been on Cannon's line too. So Ream assumes that the guy who's half a body length behind him is offside, but he's not because we are lines of shambles. And the rest is just a really crisp finish. And this one I'm not going to put anything on Zach Steffin.

No. No pie. No piece of the pie on Stefan here. Good left footed finish outside of the boot kind of half-folly. So that's a brace for Farhado, who plays in the domestically in Panama, I think. Yeah, so let's just move on to the next thing, right? I think you explained who was at fault there pretty easily. It looks like Miyazga had a rough outing.

Well, he had an assist too, don't forget. You got to give him the assist? Yeah, laying that aside for a moment. He didn't lock down the position. No, no position. and I thought his passing was good against whales, so that will be a point in his favor if you're comparing him to like an Aaron Long

and trying to figure out how to maximize that position. He did get battleshiped. He got battleships. Do you want me to explain what battleshiping is again? Oh, I'm actually waiting to hear what your next reference to living on a submarine is going to be. Okay, Soto had come on for, as I said earlier, for Giochini in the 77th minute

and it was an eventful appearance for him. 83rd minute, Ledesma from the right channel with, I mean, right wing really, with Cannon overlapping to his right, whipped a tantalizing cross into the box from over there and Soto nodded it down to make it forward to a quality ball, but the skeptic will say Ledesma wasn't good in the game before that

and that's true and that he was under no pressure which is also true. So, you know, take it for what it is. It's all of those things. It was a really good cross-in, but the game essentially had just ceased to be a contest. This is one of those weird, even though it was only three to two, like Panama was just done.

They just stopped playing. That cross, I think, came at the end of like an 18, or I don't know how many passes. You'll have to count the passes for me, bells. But it was like 30 seconds of us just moving the ball around all the way back to Stefan, from one side, then to the other side, back over to Ledesma.

And despite all that, despite sort of how much, methodical that possession was when Ledesma crosses it into Soto, there's like, there's three Panama defenders in the box. And this is kind of the big contrast between Panama and Wales, because we were crossing the ball into, in that Wales game, and there are eight defenders in the box. Like we're crossing constantly against a fully complete, like, dialed in defense. That is not what Panama looked like for the last 10 minutes of this game. It was very much like shadow play, uh, which is, you know, part of, part of playing weak team. teams and you still need to...

Is that they just give up? Yeah, I mean, they give up. We saw it, we see it even in meaningful matches. In the Gold Cup, we see teams give up. We'll see it even in qualifying, in our home games especially. I know Honduras gave up against us when we beat them, what, we beat them, 4, 6-0, Arena's first game, and then Panama gave up when we thrashed them down in Florida. So you'll have these moments and you still need to capitalize and run it up, and we did a good job of running it up.

and hopefully the guys, they did. They clearly started to have a lot of fun in this last 10 minutes. Tons of back heels, tons of fun little things that, I mean, what more could you ask for after 10 months of not playing? Yeah, I thought, well, the 87th minute was the Leget goal on a similar cross from Canon, just off a set piece from a similar area, a similar height, and Leggett just headed it in near post. So he did that just to bolster Greg's argument at the top of the podcast.

You would have had another one. I don't think you start early enough in your next, you go with your next timeline event after the Jets goal. The next one is the second Soto goal, which is also assisted by Ledesma, makes it six to USA. This one was preceded by an encouraging, for me, spell of play where Ledesma and McKenny. This is those back heels you were talking about. They're just kind of messing around over on the right, in the right wing. But they did some nice combination stuff, and Wea kept hitting shots that were blocked, and then ricocheted back out to one of the two of them.

Not quite, Bells. Waya didn't hit a shot that was blocked on this one. On this one, Wea moved the ball over to Legette, and Legit had a shot from like eight, probably 15 yards. That got blocked. Cleared off the line by Sebastian Soto. Oh, really? Yeah.

So Legette would have had two. Given the goalkeeping quality, I'm guaranteeing that it would have been his second goal, but Soto blocked it to keep the play alive so that Soto could end up getting the goal. I didn't see that. I didn't notice that. Interesting. So yeah, then Ladesma hit a different sort of cross, this one very long to the back post, more looping, and Soto just kind of headed it down right and snuck it in at the far post.

Tight angle there. Yeah, this, again, total shadow play here because when Waya hits the ball out wide till it does not have it, like, Waya had already missed cannons overlapping runs. So you just have two wide open players out there. And you can just take your pick of whoever wants to deliver the cross under no pressure. Again, I'm not putting any of this down. This is glorious and we should want this in all of our friendlies against Count Concaf opposition. Like, we should have them at the point in the last 15 minutes where they have nothing left to compete.

Yeah, that's super fun. We just have to be realistic about, you know, what it means. I have some questions for you. So, well, I already asked you one, and we didn't really get an answer, and so I'll take an L on that. But what about Musa? Can you talk about what you think he offers and why he's, why he is so valuable? Well, he's super valuable because, you know,

there's been this long history of us playing, like, midfields that are constructed with at least one sort of lumbering slow player in them. And even that player isn't necessarily like some technical savant. Like we keep talking about how they have, usually it's about the long diagonal. And what we have in McKinney and Adams and Musa are three guys who are technically, in my opinion, like about as good as anyone in the pool. So they're not like, they're not just like we're throwing athletes in the middle and having them chase. Like these guys are all upper echelon U.S. men's national team.

Adams, maybe you can quibble with. But again, even he has the presence of mind and the shiftyness to hit those little passes that we saw him hit to create one of the goal scoring opportunities. So it's just a completely different level of player, you know, top five league center mids, who also are not liabilities whatsoever on the defensive side of the ball and are obviously, in most cases, like,

very strong on the defensive side of the ball. And this is what we, this should be, in my mind, like the future of the team. And Musa is just a huge piece of it. I don't know that he's the only guy in the pool who we have who can offer this flexibility and strength. But it's awesome that we have him. And it's awesome that he's 17. And who knows where he will go, both in terms of his development and how far he'll progress. And in terms of what country he will end up representing.

Yeah. He seemed like he was enjoying himself, too. A lot of smiles And why wouldn't he Why wouldn't he enjoy himself? Hopefully he sticks around So we talked a little bit About why we can't possess the ball

Beautifully for big spells of the game I don't know I'm willing to give it some more time I guess We should But we saw in this game I think a lot of McKinney trying things Musa trying things

Rana trying things And when those guys are turning the ball over In a window like this Like it's kind of like I'm fine with it because that's who I want turning the ball over. I want guys who are capable. You know, Musa did a bunch of guys to get foul to set up Raina's shot because he's capable of doing those guys. McKenny, the same one. He'd bring the ball at the field.

And we know Raina can do people on the dribble. So it's like I'm glad that when we're trying things, it's those guys trying things. And if they lose it, fine. Like we'll take the rewards even though it's not always going to come off. That makes sense. Yeah. Okay, so we talked about Miazga having a rough window in some ways and definitely a rough day yesterday. I was going to say cannons nice and reliable, occasionally dangerous up the wing.

I don't think Dest is perfectly suited for left back, but that pairing, I think you get, I think, I mean, we'll see how Anthony Robinson progresses. But right now, I would have much rather see Cannon at right back and Dest at left back. I was going to, I'll push back on that and just be like, if we're taking Robinson's performance against Wales versus like the canon performance against a much worse Panama, like I just think we should be careful sort of making hard and fast conclusions there. Well, I was already sort of in the canon on the right desk on the left camp. Okay. So I needed Anthony Robinson to sort of move the needle there. And I'm not discounting him. I'm not writing him off.

I got like a 17 tweet thread from somebody defending Anthony to us. Maybe you saw it too. But I'm not like writing him off, but like you can't tell me after that game that he's, you know, he's the guy at left back. Oh, no, I don't know if he is either yet. I really want to see him with Pulisick once and see what that does for him. Okay. Fair enough. I say some of the kids need time.

They definitely do. But they have repeatedly found ways to impact national team matches. When I say kids, I mean, players from the last U-20 cycle. Yanez was a good attacking player in several moments of this game. Doesn't defend or win physical battles, kind of at all. I mean, he defends a little bit, I should say. He had some defensive moments. And I think that stuff matters.

But he does, and he needs to improve at it, but he does, he's a good attacking player. He does stuff in the attack that is pleasant for the eyes. Same with Ledesma. His crossing was excellent. he got the two assists, but it was kind of a horror show initially when he came on. I'd say improved,

and there was that sequence with McKinney, but you're going to say, and I think it's fair, that none of it matters because the game was over at that point anyway. It doesn't matter, but it doesn't not matter. It was good to see, like, if it had just been all bad, like if everything had been bad,

the way the first few minutes of most of the subs performances went, that would have been worse than, to at least have that eight, nine minutes of just like clowning people. Yeah. The clowning people is going to go a long way for me. Yeah. Yeah, he, he, they look like they both need to just get a little stronger and a little more used to the, the rigors of adult soccer. How about Wea and Richards, those other U20 alums coming in?

I did not, you know, I did not, I don't have too much to. say about either of them. I thought I was glad to see them on, but I didn't think Waya made that much of an impact on the game. Did you? No, not particularly. He still looks, so I, other than the very, very end when he was kind of involved in those clowning sequences, I haven't seen him do the the things that he was doing in 2018, in his senior team performances, where he doesn't look nearly is like clean. In 2018, even when he had, you know, almost no first team club experience, he always actually looked really polished as a player. And I don't know if it's, if it's still coming back from injury. But that polish isn't always there. You still see a lot of the

right ideas. But the execution just seems a little bit off. Yeah, we'll just have to be patient with him. I mean, he's coming back, coming back from a stop being impatient, Greg. he's coming back from some serious injuries and, you know, we'll just see how it goes. Anything else? I'll piggyback a little bit. Like, I really am not drawing any conclusions good or bad on any of the new faces other than Eunice Musa. And my conclusion there is he's our starter until he defects.

And the big numbers we put up are really fun versus Panama. But the big thing is just the matter. The big takeaway is just the fact that the door was open to them in the first place. You know, not all of them are in ideal club situations, but to be able to bring them in. Yanez. Yanez, Soto, Conrad. Like, but for these guys, even Chris Richards isn't a great club situation for, like, his immediate,

for our immediate needs. He might be in a fine club situation for his long-term career, but for what we want as a national team, he might not be in the best environment. But yeah, the door is open, and I think what we see again is these guys can still come into the senior team and not in any way like be, not embarrass themselves. They're not falling all over the place or they're not doing it any more than sort of our veteran senior team players. So I'm glad the door was open to them. I'm glad that some of them really sort of took advantage of their first chance. I don't know what the chances are going to look like as we have more camps that they aren't going to even be able to get to.

in December and January, and then once we get sort of full, full strength in March, if that can ever happen in the summer, like it'll just be kind of interesting to see which of them made enough of an impression on Burrhalter to stay in the mix. Yeah. And there are going to be injuries and, you know, shortages where somebody might get to step up and get their chance even if they didn't impress that much. Yeah, and while I don't hope that we have to rely on, you know, all or many of these guys against France in a World Cup group stage game,

it does make you feel a little bit better about, okay, we've got, we have El Salvador coming up in the Octagon, and we need a guy because Pouls six out, who's going to, like, be able to at least be on the bench and be an option. I think Olianas is available. Games like this make you feel a little bit better, and again, this is why it's nice to have these games 10 months out from. qualifying so that we can sort of build that trust that Burrhalter has in the players and the players having each other. Even if, again, only

a handful of them, the guys who are on the bench, even if only a handful of them really have a chance at being meaningfully involved. Yeah. Okay. And we, I guess we're glad that Berhalter is doing

this is what we've been asking for for years. December camp coming up. December camp? Oh, yeah. It's rumored. I think someone on the El Salvador side posted that U.S. Men's Nationally versus El Salvador on December 9th.

Notably, the MLS playoffs will overlap that. I think the MLS Cup is December 12th, and the semifinals are the 6th of December. So any of the four teams in the semifinals probably not going to release their players. So if you have hopes for a specific MLS player, it's very likely that Jordan Morris will still be alive in the playoffs and may not be able to play the December game.

Yeah. I mean, I'm pretty sure Philadelphia will probably choke in the playoffs. Do do, do, do, do, do do do do do do. Yeah, okay. I'm just kidding, Philadelphia fans. I hope you guys do great. Let's see. A couple of little programming notes.

Well, just one. Thank you to all our Patreon, our Patreon supporters. that's wonderful. We appreciate it. We don't thank you enough. Anything else, Greg? No, no, no. We're looking forward to the December camp roster announcement,

which has to be coming up actually pretty soon, or maybe they'll wait until the first round of teams lose from the MLS playoffs. I don't know how they're going to solve all that on such short notice, but more power to them for trying. Yeah, if the game is the seventh, that's what, three weeks a week? Ninth.

James is the ninth. Ninth, night, okay. It's a little over three weeks. And I think, so again, the NLS quarterfinals, sorry to keep going on this, I think are like up through December 2nd. So I don't know if they'll have to wait until the day after that to announce like the full or if they'll just start adding guys one team at a time as teams lose. Like, all right, we know Leggett can be there.

Yeah, Burrhalter's probably just calling up the whole Chicago fire roster. Are they in the playoffs? No, fire or not in the playoffs. We've got Georgie and Leggett. Yeah, good, good. Paul Areola. We get Paul Areola back. Yeah.

Okay. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.