Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 152: USA v El Salvador

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

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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. A second or third choice USA side defeated El Salvador 6 to 0 on Wednesday in Fort Lauderdale. And while some would say there's nothing to be gleaned from this, we are going to get into it a little bit. Greg, you ready? Yeah, let's get to glean.

Two bits of news before we actually three bits of news before we get to that. The first one's very bad. Richie Ledesma fell awkwardly on his right knee yesterday in his first Europa League start for PSV Einhoven. And as many of us feared, the news came out this morning that he tore his ACL. He'll be out for six to nine months, which means he almost certainly misses all of the action this summer. And, you know, probably is pretty discouraged right now. He's a 20-year-old who had just been breaking in with PSS. fee and starting to look comfortable as a first teamer.

So that's a that's a huge setback. Pretty sad. We're all sad. Yeah. Tough, tough news for the kit. And I'm sure he, you know, I'm sure what something else that's going through his head right now is how big of a blow that is to, to his eventual U.S. men's national team chances for this cycle. Because even when you make it back from that injury next season, at that point, you'll have

missed all. There's just so many opportunities for everybody. on the fringes going into this summer that everyone's going to get their chance to sort of make stake their claim and to sort of be denied that opportunity now is going to be a tough one to overcome just because, you know, it's going to be, we won't be able to take as many risks on the roster as we get into September and the actual World Cup qualifying, although maybe if we keep knocking teams out 5,60, we will be willing to take those risks. It just feels like the squad might start to be sort of set at that point.

Or, you know, just, again, way fewer games to audition. Yeah, I guess I would agree that it's a setback in that respect as well, of course. But, you know, he's, how well would he have to perform for PSV Einhoven in the 2021-22 season to get into a roster and qualifying? I don't know, that'd be a question for Greg Burrhalter, I guess, but he does some things that I don't think we have a lot of players who do. Go ahead, yeah. Yeah, I'll say this, though. I think our pool is going to make it tough for him in the sense that I think that over the course of the summer, we're going to have a lot of high-performing players who are performing well for the national team filling those spots.

So it's not going to be like we just have these filler placeholder type guys. I think we're going to be playing at a level where, you know, we already know we have Poolsick and Morris and Rana, as, you know, potentially three out of our four wingers. If Ladezma is going to be in one of those sort of inside winger places, the competition will be fierce for that last spot. And I think, you know, I think it's going to be going to a player who is playing really well for both club and country by then. So that's what I mean about being really difficult to, I think this team will be difficult to break into for someone who hasn't had a lot of chances. to play for the national team. And those tournaments, the Gold Cup, the Olympics, presumably, and Nations League this summer are a chance to sort of put a flag in the ground, as they say.

Yeah, yeah, that's where I think it's going to happen. So, you know, hopefully Ledzma does come back and make it apparent that he needs to get that shot. That's what we're all hoping for. Yeah, definitely. Some good news is West McKenney scored an absolutely gorgeous goal for Juventus at the camp new. in a 3-0 win over Barcelona.

I'll describe it briefly. He received the ball at the top of the box. He knocked it wide to Quadrato. Quadrado, first time chips it right at the penalty marker pretty much. And McKenny leapt into the air, went horizontal, and scissor kicked it right by the goalkeeper's ear at pace. Emphatically. Yeah. It was fun to watch, fun to watch him be congratulated by Cristiano.

And I mean, you're not a fan of Bernaldo. I mean, it's still, he's still one of the greatest soccer players of all time. And that whole, like his whole, it's clear that McKinney is a part of that team that is valued and he's liked, you know. Yeah. And it's, I feel like his, his willingness to just do something like that. Not that, not that it was like showboating or anything. That was just the correct technique in the moment to get off your feet and smash it. but it's great and we already know Weston is willing to do these kinds of things

we got to see him attempt a bicycle kick in the Gold Cup last summer so yeah he's that he's just that kind of player who's who's not going to be afraid of the ambitious type of stuff something we'll revisit later in the episode actually I think awesome and then it's something you mentioned earlier Tim Wea scored his first goal since the Nixon administration It was definitely his first goal since I believe he was in a Celtic uniform. Yeah, which explains why he didn't celebrate very effusively. Class, class, it must be said. But yeah, it was a nice goal.

Well taken, left-footed volley off a corner kick that squibbed out to him. First time. Loved it. Good for Timmy. Should we get to glean in on this, El Salvador? Match? Yeah, let's glean it up. You mentioned that a lot of people are saying,

not much to take from this game. I fully subscribe to that newsletter. We compared the Panama game in November to sort of a Gold Cup group stage game, and I think this fits that same bill where we're just going to be dominant, and nothing that sort of happens in this game should give you much to conclude for games that are going to happen in World Cup qualifying, especially games that happen on the road in World Cup qualifying. You might remember we breeze through the 2019 Gold Cup group stage.

I think we had like a 12 to 2 goal, goals for, goals against ratio. And then promptly struggled our way through the knockouts and the rest of the calendar year. So we definitely want to be careful saying that, you know, this definitely means corners have been turned. But it was still, it was fun to watch as it happened. And I feel like that's the kind of ephemeral, feeling you get from these friendlies.

Yeah, why was this El Salvador team so bad, do you think? I don't know. I'm morbidly curious about it, though. And I kind of do want to do like a full autopsy on this particular game, even if there's no real long-term takeaways. And like the first thing I want to know is if there's any suspicious betting activity on the first half score line. Yeah.

It was just so easy. I mean, from the, what was it, the 15th? minute to the 25th minute, something like that. 16th minute to the 26th minute, yeah. Yeah, I know that's where the goals, that's when the goals were scored, but from the start, it was insane how open El Salvador were. Like, it was insane that they were playing that way. This is the same back six roughly plus goalkeeper, so the back line plus two holding mids

that they've had out for like their last nine or ten games, including like a decent gold cup outing where they beat Jamaica. I'm sorry, they beat Curris out, and then they tied Jamaica in the Gold Cup group stage, and didn't give up a goal to either team. So it's not like this is like a super, you know, terrible defense. So it's nice that we made them look terrible. But a lot of that was how they chose to play. Somebody, one of those centerbacks is having a big payday, is what you're saying.

Well, they did start a different right back, and we'll talk about that later. But it was more of the approach. They played kind of like Cuba in the nation's league. league game that we played in the U.S., like they came out in this incredibly high line. The high line wasn't organized or disciplined in any way, and they had zero pressure that they applied to U.S. players when we were on the ball, so we just got to pick out whichever runner we wanted to, whenever we wanted to. Timing didn't have to be an issue.

Like, it was just the easiest thing in the world. Yeah. And I would say those first 15 minutes, our lack of sharpness in the attacking third is the only reason we didn't score, you know? Yeah, we still got in plenty of things. times. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Let's go with the timeline. Ready for that? Yeah, the timeline's going to be a lot of good attacking chances. I thought we came out looking energetic, which, you know, that's, I know that some people are like, well, that's just silly talk, but, you know, Yule wins the ball high

and draws a foul 30 seconds in. I think Legette won the ball on the sideline a couple of minutes later. So our midfield trio of Ewell, Aronson, and Legette was, you know, they had some characteristics of a good engine room that they were like on, they were, they were on it. They were ready to get after it. Yeah, not passive. We clearly weren't coming out passive, which we don't expect to really ever do anymore. Wasn't the case last year, but this is definitely the new normal. Yeah, which is nice. Well, it's, okay, we're going to skip a lot of the stuff I wrote down here because my editor, Greg has nixed it. But let's start with one at the 155 mark, one minute, 55 seconds.

A decent idea over the top from Yule, who kind of receives a ball around the center circle and then drifts with a guy on his back to his right. And then he plays a ball over the top for Arajo, who's wide open. But the weight on the ball isn't it right? And it skips out of bounds before Araho can get to it. Yeah. And this is basically like an individual. of what the entire game was going to be where this was just our back three of McKenzie,

Long, and Yule. I'm calling it a back three. Can I kind of talk about our shape a little bit? Yeah, please do. Maybe toss the lineup in there while you're at it. Sure, sure. For anyone who doesn't know from a couple of days ago, it was Bill Hamid and goal. It was Long and McKenzie at centerbacks.

McKenzie on the left, long at the right. I wasn't sure if we were going to see that. I wondered if McKenzie was going to get a tryout at right centerback to sort of see if he could partner with Brooks, but he got played on the left to sort of be the John Brooks, essentially. Vines at left back, Arajo at right back, Ewell, Aronson, Legette, as we mentioned, we're kind of the engine room with three center mids. And then we had our front three of Aconola up top, Mueller on the left, and Paul Ariola on the right. So Ariola deemed fit for the start. Got exactly 60 minutes, so we assume that was kind of a planned sub. But that was

the lineup. What was different about this lineup? up in the way we'd been playing for the rest of 2020, all three games of it, was that we didn't kind of get into that sort of five, that attacking band of five in this game. Like it was a really distinct like, Vines and Arajo both sort of held back quite a bit into like this, our back four was just visible almost all the time, where it was like a back four and then Ewell, and then you had Lejet and Aronson above Ewell, and then the front three. So it was basically like a four, one, two, is how I'd describe it. Hmm.

In possession. And we were in possession almost the entire game. Yeah. Okay. So getting back to this delivery from Ewell, so this was the entire first half was, there was like El Salvador just left one guy up high with no help and he wasn't particularly interested in applying much pressure. So you just had McKenzie and Long and Ewell for the most part, just knocking the ball

around the three of them until eventually one of them would take a touch. take another touch, like head up the whole time and then just sort of float a ball to one of the runners. Yeah. And this particular ball was to Arajo. Arajo would get forward a little bit more. Vines almost never did.

I don't think we ever hit a ball upfield to Sam Vines, but we did hit a few to Arajo. But the crazy thing here was just how unprepared El Salvador were for it. So because of our front three staying a little bit more narrow, in this case, El Salvador's left back, stayed like tight to ariola who was pinched in centrally. And they just left the full left channel like El Salvador's left midfielder was in no

way interested in tracking Arajo. So this was like a sign of things to come that we could have hit Arajo anywhere we wanted in the entire like final third and we just overhit it and the ball ran out of play. Yeah. But this is, that was what was available to us basically all game. Well, I do want to get back to that a little bit. but let's do a couple more things from the timeline. I do want to mention in the fourth minute, Araujo had a poor clearance,

and this was one of a handful of poor moments from him in the game. The other that I noticed being a very bad giveaway in the 70th minute, which we're not even going to get to in this timeline. But Arajo did have his bad moments. I guess that's why I bring that up. 515. Arauj hits a nice ball up the wing. So this, I'd like to describe this what happened here.

We had on both sides, the tucked-in winger and the dual eight on that side were both able to run into the corner to get on a ball from Aaraho. And I don't know how they decided who went, but that seemed to utterly confuse El Salvador. or like not they were not able to figure out who to who to track on that run into the corner. And then both of our fullbacks, I mean, they each played a ball like this multiple times, just a curling ball on the ground to the runner who's coming from the inside. And I mean, we just cut them open repeatedly in that specific way. So you talked about the lofted ball from one of our back three. There was also just the ball from the fullback down the line.

Yeah, just sort of hit it. the window either between the fullback and the line or even between the full back and the center back and and i'll even i kind of want to push back a little bit on this being like a pattern i mean it was a pattern that we hit this ball but when i'm thinking like patterns of play i'm thinking of like coordinated coordinated movements uh and it the the thing about this game was we didn't have to really coordinate any movement so in this case uh we had that back four structure again and we're just knocking it around with no pressure and arajo has it and he can look up and there isn't like any confusion about who should go with Ariola from El Salvador and who should go with Arensen.

Like we were, Aaronson was basically just static. And it was as simple as Ariola like doing a body faint to come back to get the ball from Arahoe and then just taking off upfield. So as much as we love to talk about like the details of tactics and and as much as we talk about Burhalter and sort of his systems and all this. I mean, sometimes it's as simple as hit the ball behind their back line and then run after it. And that's, that was like a lot of what this game was. Yeah. I I mean, the timing was good on this particular play or whatever. But, yeah, it's mostly just the fullback wasn't fast enough to, or, you know, committed enough to break it up, break it up.

So in this case, Ariola got on the end of it, and then he played a ball across that was easily cut out, just a poor, a poor ball. Yeah, poor ball because he had Aconola. Aconola had easy, like easy inside position because he outran the center back. into that space once the ball went to ariola. So any ball that's in between Okinaola and the goal is tapped in. Yeah. And not to say that you hit those 100% of the time,

but as far as the game, chances like that existing, they're rare to come by. We need to make the most of them. Okay. 630, line-breaking pass from McKenzie to Chris Mueller. Is it Mueller or Mueller? I'm going to say Mueller in this instance, and then I'm going to say Mueller later on. Well, Mueller, it was to Mueller.

He tried to do a little combination with Legette and gave it away. But that was a nice line-breaking pass from McKenzie, I thought. Yeah, we'll come back to this for a couple of reasons, because I like that pass from McKenzie, and we'll talk about, well, let's talk about the Mueller giveaway real quick. So Ball is coming to Mueller, and it was Legette kind of over next to. him and he tried to hit a one touch ball behind the back line to Lejet. But the centerback ran with Legett and sort of bumped him off his run and the right back who dropped as the pass was arriving to Mueller and was able to just sort of clean it up.

And we'll talk about why I went into that much detail later. Okay. I read at about the 10 minute mark, Yule diagonal to Arawo, who gets a good pullback off after some hanky-panky in the corner. And then Aronson shot, Erinson's shot is blocked by the goalkeeper, I think. So I have this one marked because it's just, it is like the best example.

I think we took a throw in at like nine, at the nine minute mark and then just knocked it around our back line again for a full minute of leisurely as you like before Arajo picks his head up and just hits a really good ball. Like he hits a great ball into Aronson. and I think Aronson is, oh, he hit this one to Arraho. So, yeah, I get this one. But it was just so, it was just so uncomplicated.

Yeah. Arajo kind of received it with his chest, popped it up, kind of drifted into the corner, and then beat the guy who was marking him to get the pass off. And it was a dangerous chance, I thought. At the 12-minute mark, a nice moment from Aronson. He flicks on a little scoop pass from me. Mueller, I thought this was one of Aronson's better moments in the game. Ariola is just a split second late to get to it for a chance.

So Mueller scoop past to Aronson. Aronson's got a guy on his back. He just flicks it on with his head. And Arieola might have gotten to it if you were a little bit more on his toes, but might not have anyway. So the reason I liked this one is because this was pretty much like our first real combination sequence. This was the first one that we first sequence we had that wasn't just that sort of ball over

the top. So it was 12 minutes in. So it took us 12 minutes to really do this. And I'm not even really blaming the guys. Like if they're giving it to you, if they're playing that high line and you're much faster and you're not being pressured on the ball, like just do this. It's a December friendly, like go get your numbers in the box and score goals. But it was good to see this kind of a sequence.

And it started with a nice Yule penetrating run up the middle and a nice ball from Yule to Aronson sort of in that pocket. I'm sorry, to Mueller. And then Mueller. Yeah. And then Mueller. flicked it, scooped it to Aronson. So that was a good, like, coordinated movement that I was happy to see.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's get to the goals. And it's the next five items are going to be goals. They all came at once. Yeah. It was pouring. 1610 is when this sequence started.

Vines plays that curling ball on the ground up the line for Mueller, that curling ball I was talking about earlier. And Mueller was just faster than the Salvadoran right back. Nothing fancy with our movement in this case. so I'll agree with you there. And Mueller bulls his way into the box, kind of jumps over a sliding challenge, skitters the ball across the penalty area.

It's ushered into the penalty. I mean, it's ushered towards the penalty marker by a deflection. Yeah. And then Aureola just sort of gets to it, takes a touch, and left foots it right over the keeper for the opener. A scrappy goal, but I thought it was a nice pass from Sam Vines. Good pass from Vines, but yeah, it's just a very forgiving situation where we can,

we can kind of miss at several moments in the sequence and not really have it affect our ability to score goals. Awesome that Paul Ariola gets the first goal, I should add. Yeah. In his first real game back from his nine-month ACL absence. But you know what I mean? Like we get the ball into Mueller. He takes a touch that actually goes into the sliding defender,

which is an ideal. Like you'd rather not take it into that. And then the defender puts it back off of Mueller's foot and it stays in his path and then it's like the deflected cutback that I think he was trying to split to Aconola but it gets deflected out into this no man's land where obviously we're going to

win the race to that because no one from El Salvador is trying to fill that space which we'll see we'll see that kind of come up again on several of these other goals and even then there was like some uncertainty between Ariola and Aconola this hesitation about who's going to go for it and that's not going to cost us either because we have

plenty of time to have Akanola be like, all right, I will defer. You hit this, and Ariel sets his feet and smashes in a fantastic finish. Yeah. Yeah, it didn't look like a real international goal for some reason. But I kind of want to make fun of the right back for El Salvador a little bit here because it's funny to watch him on this play. He looks like, it looks like somebody's little brother stole one of the jerseys and is like snuck his way out of the field because he's just a second late. He's always a little bit behind. Kind of like a come on guys wait for me sort of vibe from him. And go ahead.

He'll show up the same way on like the next three goals. And he's the one odd man out from this El Salvador lineup that wasn't part of like their Gold Cup or Nations League lineups. I think he got like a two minute time wasting sub in the Gold Cup. They're starting right back, subs in in the 38th minute for him. Tamakis comes in for him and they don't exactly shut us down after that

but then it looks more like what you normally expect for an overmatched team like they're overmatched but they're not just like constantly pulling the ball out of the back of the net so they were able to plug the dyke a little bit yeah okay 19 20

minutes 20 seconds we get our second goal McKenzie plays it through the lines to Mueller is very similar to that time where he couldn't get it to Legette. This time he combines with Leget who breaks free and behind from the channel and then crosses

it for Io Aconola, much better cross than the one from Ariola earlier. Io's shot is blocked by the Onrussian Keeper. It spills to Yule outside the box who then just kind of slips it to Mueller, who pauses kind of similar to the way Ariola paused earlier

and tucks it in to the far corner from about the penalty marker, two zero. Nice, nice finish from Mueller too. Yep, good finish. And this was, this was one another one of those really good. Like, I was happy to see this kind of combination, happy to see McKenzie's ball under the feet was really clean. And in this case, the right back, who was in a 2V1, and it was Leger again on him, he didn't have as much help from the centerback, but this time he actually chose to like take two steps out towards Mueller forward. And so then Mueller's, I don't know if it's a blind ball into Legit, or if he's just anticipating that movement for the defender, but then it's incredibly effective to slip him in behind and off we go.

So I was really happy about that. Great cross from Legette. I thought this was a really tidy bit of combination play, which is, again, I'm all about this combination play in these coordinated movements and sequences. So that one was nice to see. But again, once more, El Salvador, no urgency to fill that space that Mueller ends up scoring from. Yeah.

He had a lot of time to sort of look around, survey the scene. and then put it in the corner. 22-0-0-0. Either way, though, we love debut goals. So anybody scoring on their debut, anyone's scoring coming back from injury, the more the merrier. Yeah, and Mueller, you know,

Mueller, I think, got a lot of the headlines from this game. And this is an example of him, I think, doing something really nice, especially in the build-up, you know, that one-touch pass to the Lejet. It's not rocket science, but it is, like you said, it's a nice combination play.

It's good to see. And right at the 22nd minute, third goal came, a simple transition moment, and Aronson passed, kind of just like a bouncing ball in the air, falls to Aronson, and he passes it to Legette, who knives through the buttery El Salvador in defense and chips the goalkeeper with the help of a nice deflection, and it's 3-0. So this one was, for everyone who suffered through the 2017 qualifying cycle, this was Costa Rica's first goal against us in New York City, where it was like their goalkeeper on the ball, they were all spread out like they were going to try to play it on the floor somewhere,

but instead he hits the long ball, and I think it might be Ewell hits the header right to like Aronson's feet, so Aronson has it. And it was just like with the U.S. and our centerbacks in that game against Costa Rica, El Salvador just like never closes the gap that they'd spread out for the initial kick. And that's how Leget just is able to receive it at like. the edge of the circle and run 55 yards uncontested to chip the keeper. Yeah, it was like he got played in behind one of the central midfielders, and then there was nobody in front of him between him and the goal.

There were people between him and the end line, but they were all like outside of the the width of the box. Too easy, too easy, long story short, and that's when it started to feel for me like, oh boy, this is, this might not be. In isolation, it's still a really good pass from Aronson to the jet to slip him in there. It's just usually that's too key in attack not to actually get the guy running at the goalkeeper. Erringson gets an assist on that play, which is kind of funny. 2430, another goal.

Big switch from Mueller to Ariola. So Mueller switches it from the left side all the way to the right side to Ariola. Aureola dribbles into a little bit of a cool de-sac just outside the box and then taps it back to Araho. Arajo sets himself feeling not one ounce of pressure and hits a sweet cross back over to Mueller who thumps it in at the back post with his head. Again, they're the right back just a second late, very little brother-like. Great diving header finish. We love diving headers.

Just to give O'Raho full credit here, this sequence, if you want to call it a sequence, it actually started with him and his really good defensive contribution. on the night where he chased back a guy into the box and took like one of one of the few times El Salvador touched the ball in our box. Arajo would chase the guy down and made the little tackle. The guy went down feigning contact, but I don't think it was even close. Yeah. And then we proceeded to just sort of walk the ball.

It wasn't like a quick transition. El Salvador had certainly hadn't committed numbers forward. We just walked the ball up kind of unopposed until it gets to Mueller, who hits that really nice crossfield switch. and then from there it looked a lot like Ledezma's cross against Panama, where he just had all the time in the world to pick out his guy in the box and hit it. Yeah. And then in 2640, so just over two minutes later,

Ariola picks a guy's pocket in the center circle, kind of a Benny Hill type moment for that guy. I had it as Rico Clarkish. Is that too much? No, I don't think it's too much. He finds Aronson in transition in behind. So now we have basically a 2 v1 against the keeper with a defender trailing between them. Aronson squares it to a wide open Mueller who squares it back.

Probably to Aronson is what he was in. I think so. And Achanola just comes in and pokes it in, pokes it home before it gets to Aronson. 5-0 Yeah, Akanol saying 2E1, not on my watch. This is 3V1 territory, friends. debut goal. So, yeah, so it was great that all these goals did, like,

come with some additional meaning to, so it's not just pounding on El Salvador. Though, again, once we schedule the game, pound away. But it was, it felt like there were a lot of feel-good moments to the ball hitting the net. Yeah. So then we got another goal This one created by Legette

Who had a nice Nice evening He assisted Aronson Later in the match Aronson's goal was ushered in by a by a fortunate caram It might have gone in anyway But let's not Dilly Dally Dally here

No no I got a Dilley on this one Wells Just because I've got to give Otherwise I don't know if we'd even mention Marco Farfan But this came on a It was actually like a nice little piece of play from him where Aaron Long, it was a restart, a restart in our defensive half near the right side line.

And Aaron Long chose to hit like a 55-yard cross-field ball to Farfahn, which is in the air for a long time, which gives El Salvador a lot of time to kind of run at him. So a chance for a guy on his national team debut to have a nervy moment and maybe give the ball away, but he settled it nicely and then actually hit like a clever little ball to get it out of his feet to set us away to end up with Arensen's scoring his goal.

Okay. And then, I mean, Leggette had a nice, some nice moments in that sequence, too, right? Like, didn't you do a little give and go? Was it with Farfon? So, no, it was Mueller. Okay. Mueller had a, he just kind of gave it to Mueller and then just continued his run. Legette did. And then Mueller had a nice, you know, finesse ball out into Lijette's path. Legget did his little body faint and completely lost the guy. and then set up Aronson,

who was just, again, all alone in the penalty spot. Yeah, yep. He put it through someone's legs, I think, and it bounced into the goal. I see one other mysterious timeline item here. Okay, so I didn't want to have to do this right away, but, like, I had a real problem with Chris Mueller in this game, and it came in the 68th minute when Arajo plays.

At this point, Akanola had been a bit. moved to the flank and nothing had changed. We could just hit a long ball behind their back line and now was Akanola beating everyone to it. So Arojo plays Akanola behind. Akanola all the time in the world hits this really high looping ball to the far post. And Chris Mueller somehow in a 6-0 game does not attempt the bicycle kick that Weston McKinney would have attempted and scored.

And for me, it's unacceptable. Like that is a lot of people putting Chris Moller. in their in their winger debt chart for the U.S. and as far as I'm concerned, like he's on a, he's like, that's a two-year ban. He's on probation. Two-year ban minimum. Should have gone for the overhead kick, Chris.

It was tough, tough to watch. Yeah. It makes me think, like, would somebody from Germany ever go for an overhead kick like that, or would they just play the high percentage ball back across with their head? Not that we need to be Germany, I'm just curious. So I'm like now trying to weigh the math in my head about whether the overhead kick is technically the optimal play. From that angle, it's close.

It's real close. He wasn't like right on the end line. It was set up, it would have been so easy to like time it. It was. You're disappointed. As a, as a, I mean,

it's not called the pragmatic game, Bells. It's called the beautiful game. I'm watching, Greg and I are on video with each other, which no one else is going to see, but he's, he's really,

really frustrated right now. Why do we even, why do we even, go out there? Why does anyone go out there and kick a soccer ball to begin with? And it's for that exact moment. Well, I heard you are you are heard. You are heard on this podcast, Greg. Let's talk about some players, unless you got any other, any other sort of wrap up thoughts on the timeline? That was the timeline. Okay. I have some notes on each of the starters. I don't, I think Farfan, Farfan deserves mention because he got to play. You know, he's,

He's had his struggles in his club situation. Let's put Kell and Acosta in that deserves mention, too, just because it was nice to see him take the field. Yeah, for sure. Same, probably even nicer with Acosta because he was, you know, he was a men's national team regular, no, three years ago, you know, two years ago. Yeah, all through 2018. All right.

So start at the top, Ocannola got his goal that we mentioned. I didn't think he looked bad. I didn't think he looked great. There was so much joy on the wings that he almost didn't have anything to do other than show up in the box. Yeah, we were able to even to float some of those balls over the top to him

centrally. Which is so weird. And he did okay with him. I mean, he didn't get any of the high-profile chances on them that some of the other guys did. And when you score six goals, you know, the highlights are going to be the goals, not the time that Ocannola hit a shot over the crossbar.

But he got in a couple times. We didn't play his feet very much at all. I think on my timeline, it was like the 20th minute was the first time we hit a ball into Aconola's feet. Really? When we did hit it into his feet, it was almost always coming from Aaron Long. So that was kind of a cool dynamic. I don't know if it's just something I know. It was always Aaron Long hitting it into Aconola's feet.

It tended to be Mark McKenzie hitting it into Mueller's feet. And then we basically never hit it into Ariola's feet. Interesting. Maybe McKenzie and Aconola have some kind of beef. No, I'm just kidding. but yeah it's it's just a very it just that stark contrast between what we were doing with georena and even what we were doing with ullianas and ariola back in january uh we just weren't looking for that ball and the half space because again partly because it was so easy to just hit it between

the back line and the box and run after it right mueller got all the headlines scored two nice goals and was credited with two assists i'm i think he deserves deserves a look with the full national team, I guess. You could almost say that for several people. Yep. But, you know, he's definitely in the mix as a winger. Yeah, well, there's no way he'll miss out on January camp. And so if he looks good in January camp,

then even if he just looks average in January camp, I'm guessing he has a place on one of the two senior teams this summer, whether it's the A team or the B team. We still don't know how they're going to split up the A team in the B team. team for each event. But I would imagine Mueller is going to be in uniform. Areola, I think, you know, I'm really happy to see him back. And I do think he does a lot of some things well, but I just don't know if he's good enough in the attacking third. And we, you know, we've been over this territory on this podcast a few times. But I don't know,

what do you think? Just going to give, we just give him a mulligan because it's his first time back. Well, we have plenty of data to work off of on Areola from all of the times he's played before. And I don't think he's in any way a new player. I don't think he's, I doubt he's worse than he was before. But, I mean, we know what he is. It's that work rate thing. You literally can't hear someone talk about Ariola without them talking about what his work rate is and what he offers on the defensive side of the ball. And I think we've made that point, too, that if he does stay in the full strength 23,

it's probably going to be because we want to have the option to have a defensive-minded winger to use in certain situations. Or he'll be just a depth guy who, you know, when our other guys are inevitably injured, Ariola is going to be the old standby. He's reliable. We know what we're getting from him.

So, you know, Berthelter said he'll play a big, he still has a big role to play for the national team. I don't think that was just lip service. I feel like that's probably what his role will be. I'm fine with it. He seems like a great teammate, and his lack of cutting edge in the final third is really my only criticism of his game.

Aronson, I thought he did a few nice things, but overall was pretty unconvincing. Do you disagree with me? No, I don't. I think a lot of the guys get end up, end up with like better grades than maybe they would otherwise because of the frequency of our attacks. So you're going to remember a few things that he did that stand out because we had so many chances to do things, if that makes sense. And it's it's the same phenomenon with all the other

weak opponents or even especially it crops up in youth tournaments where where it's just an attacking drill. It's a 90 minute attacking drill. So, you know, he's going to have a couple of nice passes like slipping legit in or his little scooped ball. But it, we got at some point start to say, all right, but what percentage of his of his attempts really sort of came off. And not to say that he was bad, but just to say that he wasn't like, he wasn't flawless. Or he wasn't like a, he wasn't like a, what do we say? He wasn't the cheat code. No.

And I thought, you know, it's not just that Mueller scored the two goals and got the two assists. It's, you know, in combination, he was, I thought, pretty good on the left side. well, I don't know if I want to go that far, but he did have some moments of good combination. So did Aronson. Erison had a lot of giveaways, a lot of times where he didn't, I don't know, measure the timing of the moment very well or something. And he doesn't take the ball as often as the other guys we've now seen play in that room.

Does that make sense? He doesn't get on it very often. Yeah. Yeah. I just mean like when El Salvador have the ball or if there's a little bit of a scrap, Like he's not the guy who wins the scraps the way that we were winning those scraps in November. And I know, I don't think too many people are saying Aronson's ahead of McKenney or Aronson ahead of Musa if Musa chooses the U.S.

But that's where you start to see the value of those guys and the fact that when the ball is near them and an opponent, like so often it was McKenny and Musa coming away with it. And Aronson is not really that way. Aronson does get knocked off of his spot quite a bit. Yeah, yeah. There's a, I think somebody who criticizes Aaronson a lot on Twitter put a clip out there of, of him, you know, him giving the ball away in the corner, and then he tries to win the ball back, chasing back, and he gets, like, he gets ragdolled off the ball.

And I know that kind of felt more like his night in a nutshell than anything else to me. And I, and some folks in our, in our Slack channel, we're joking about how when he scored his goal, it's almost like he did everything he could to miss that shot. Was that the word? I won't. I won't out the person who's the people who said that, but it was funny. No, and again, I'm not trying to trash any of the guy. I mean, even though we're pointing out a lot of like the deficiencies that were present from the opponent in this game that contributed to goals, like Aronson's still firmly in the picture, I think, for our 23.

So it's just a matter of like, I want to at some point see that. And I'm expecting that when he moves in January, we will find out just how he, how effective he can be at the high level. Yeah, no, that's going to be great for him to go to R.B. Salzburg. Next up is Sebastian Leggett, who played pretty much the same position as Aronson. I thought he just looked like himself, a leader of men, a very handsome jack-of-all-trades, an asset on the field in so many ways. Yes, he did have a bit of a giveaway in the first half. Do you know what I'm talking about? I don't.

In our box. God, I don't want to put him on blast for it. No, he was, yeah, I agree. He was basically just like, again, it's that reliability that Ariola offers, but with so much more cutting edge in the final third. Yeah, pretty much. Jackson Yule. He can ping the ball.

So there's people putting that on Twitter How he could hit that ball, that diagonal He definitely did it But let's not get carried away is my opinion It looks like he was about 50% On those penetrating balls into the attacking third One of them was a highlight real pass to Ariola Who kind of thwacked it into the stands

And you may have seen that one on Twitter You also worked hard defensively You can't fault his effort But he lost his share of physical battles similar to Aronson. So I don't know. He kind of looks like who I think he is or who I thought he was, which is a decent player who just might not be physically up for a decent international

opponent. Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. I didn't know if other people were kind of catching that he hit a lot of those diagonals and he really only connected on a couple of them. And that's, for me, that's the big deal. Like if this is your ticket into the team and you're playing in a game where there's no pressure and you have such like a, a wide margin of error for where to put the ball,

for your team to end up with it. He missed a lot of them. He had the highlight one that you talked about to Ariola. He actually had another great one to Aconola, I think, before that, probably like 10th minute. But, yeah, a ton of those balls either got cut out by the defender's head or, like, ran to the goalkeeper or ran out of bounds. So I would have definitely wanted to see him hit a higher percentage of those.

Yeah, especially given. Given the conditions that you described earlier in the game. Right. I mean, earlier in the podcast. Yeah, I would say McKenzie, who's the next guy we're going to talk about here, was, you know, he tried line breaking or over-the-top balls on occasion. And it's like he connected on almost all of them. Super clean.

Yep. Yep. That was going to be my next bit. Sorry. I didn't know that. I didn't know that I was stealing your thunder. No, no, it's fine. It's fine.

You just take it now. So I thought he looked. I thought he looked promising. Super clean on the ball. Wasn't tested defensively, but, you know, when there's no test, you can't fail it. Yeah, that was a big thing for me on McKenzie was that when he did hit those passes, like they were exactly where they needed to go. And it's hard to tell from the angle we're watching from, and usually from the, like,

the Zoom, how big those passing windows are that he's hitting through. But he was finding Mueller's feet quite a bit, and it was always like zipped into him. So I don't know. I thought percentage-wise, I thought McKenzie was very sharp for the passing that we wanted to see from him. I actually feel like if he has that in him, it's going to be really hard for Tim Ream to stay on the full-strength roster. I know Ream's been a mainstay. But he's not playing at the moment for Fulham. and what he offers, he's never been like the defensive lockdown specialist.

He's been like a sturdy defensive guy, but he's very much been about that distribution. So if McKenzie can offer that same level of distribution, it feels like that could be Tim Reams' spot sort of fading out. Yeah. I'd like to see, you know, to your earlier point, I'd like to see McKenzie as the right centerback sometime with Brooks. I don't know I don't know if we're going to see that though Speaking of right centerbacks Next guy is Aaron Long

I don't have a ton to say about him I just thought he had a couple of rough moments Probably drops slightly in the pecking order for me But who knows? I don't know He and Miazga neither Miazga nor he has covered himself In glory of late And then Zim, I didn't

I was just going to say I didn't really notice any any real mistakes from long he had a couple of long balls that he tried to hit that didn't connect but I don't know I thought he was mostly fine in the game I mean again there was really nothing to do he overran a dribbler in the corner one time okay forced Arajo to bail him out but yeah I mean I'm not saying he was he didn't have like a howler or anything

all right so my takeaway from Aaron Long actually in this game is just the fact that Aaron Long started. And for me, that means he's still probably Burrhalter's top choice at right centerback. Because if ever it was going to happen, I mean, maybe in an extended January camp, Zimmerman will like officially, like really beat him out. But given the seasons they just had where Zimmerman was like the all big 10 centerback and Aaron Long was, you know, kind of having a down year allegedly. I don't know that he was really having a down year. but Zimmerman had a tremendous year. And so for long to still be given the nod as the starter,

I think for me that that actually solidifies his place in the pecking order as the guy to beat out if you want to be that right centerback. Okay. I'm not going to root against him. Left. I like all of them. There's such good, that's such a likable back line with that. So the next player is Sam Vines.

On an initial watch, I thought he was really sharp. On a second watch, I sort of don't have a take on Vines. I was really surprised about that, too. He had the really good looking ball into Mueller for the setup on that. But otherwise, like, name another thing that he did. Well, I noticed, I think it was in the third, very early, like in the third minute or fourth minute, something like that. He navigated the El Salvador and press one time in a way that was kind of nice.

Like he chipped a ball, he chipped a ball from deep to Mueller, to Mueller's feet over a couple of pressing attackers. And I, in the moment, I thought, ooh, that's nice. It's nice to see that from a left back. I still think it's nice, but that's really the only thing I can come up with, you know. All right. And again, I'm not saying that to be like, he was bad. He should have been doing more. I was just surprised to see, like, a lot of people being like, I think Vine should,

Vines has a real case to be our stutter. And I was just like, I guess. I don't, I don't know what do you. what he's really done here to change to change his place in the pecking order but maybe maybe it's just really again that that sort of confirmation that there is no pecking order left back at the moment it is a free for all yeah it's i i would like to see vines against a good opponent because i think he is a pretty solid defender and you know if he can if he can play a pass like he did he did a couple of those passes up the line i think then you know who knows maybe he's

maybe he can compete with Anthony Robinson. Well, he's Olympic eligible, so he's another one who will definitely be in uniform this summer, assuming Colorado release him. He wasn't in my right, he wasn't part of the Olympic qualifying initially before all of the COVID. I think he was left out of that, and the assumption was that Colorado wanted to keep him for the regular season. And so, but I don't know, something tells me that teams will play ball for the actual. Olympics. NLS teams will play ball for the actual Olympics for the most part. So that's my guess.

So, and if not, we can always just call him up to the Gold Cup. Yeah. I think, I mean, I'd be totally comfortable with that. And then finally, Julian Araujo, he got a lot of praise after the game. I praised him too. I think I continue to praise him. Lots of upside, great athleticism. I saw he had nine interceptions on the game, like way more, since very defensive.

active and he did play plenty of penetrating passes including that assist we talked about but yeah he's still a bit messy you know he he uh he had that poor clearance he had the really really bad giveaway in the 70th minute which a better team would punish that severely so but he he was he was much more involved with the vines and obviously vines you know came out a half time so uh fewer minutes but Arajo hit a lot more of those balls in behind the back line than Vines was trying to play. So, you know, frequency-wise, there was a lot to outweigh the mistakes he did make. But yeah, he looked a little bit shaky in ways that would definitely be punishable in a Conca Calf World Cup qualifying road match. I don't think he's taken over for Dust just yet.

No. Bill Hamid had nothing to do and I'd say the subs can all go without comment from us except for the aforementioned Farfan and Acosta. Soto had just Soto, I don't know if Soto even touched the ball maybe once or twice. He did. We tried to find his feet a couple of times but again very few of our combination attempts

up into like the front three's feet really came off. It was mostly just the Mueller goal. Yeah. Okay. Well, so at some point over the next few weeks, we're going to hear about January camp and get a roster. Still some European soccer going on. We broke the champions. We broke the record, the all-time record for Americans in Champions League minutes,

just in the group stage. I think we shattered it. That's cool. And a bunch of guys going on to the knockout round of Champions League, which picks back up in January, right? January or February. I think like February 2nd this year, which is an early resumption, but it's going to be cool.

And then we get to spend all of January talking about where Mark McKenzie's going to land. Yeah. Is there something hot there? No, I don't think so. All right. Everybody have a good... But if clubs were watching that El Salvador game, they're going to add a couple million to that price. All right.

Well, thanks, Greg. Thanks everybody for listening. Have a great weekend.