Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 78: Stock down! For almost everyone! But not the U20s

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

Greg and I break down the Gold Cup roster, talk as quickly as possible about the 1-0 loss to Jamaica, and move on briskly to the U20 World Cup. Scuffed is on Patreon and we're ramping up the Patron-only content. GIFs are ok there! And it only costs $2 per month to support the podcast at the base level: https://patreon.com/scuffed Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the scuffed podcast. I'm Adam Bells in Minneapolis. With me is Greg Velasquez in Des Moines. We talk about U.S. men's soccer. Hello, good people of America. We have a Gold Cup roster, a dispiriting friendly loss to Jamaica last night and the U20 World Cup,

which is much more positive to discuss. Let's start with the Gold Cup roster announced this morning. Greg, why don't you take it away? Bells, do I have to? You must. All right. You get the good stuff. You get the U-20 stuff, and I'm stuck with this gold cup roster.

I'm disappointed in the gold cup roster. I'm not going to try to, like, pretend like I'm enthusiastic about it. There are pieces to be enthusiastic about, but overall, I feel like this is, there's some, there's some, like, omens. There's some, like, bad omens in the player selection. Well, before, yeah, let's talk about those bad omens, but before you do that, Why don't we read off the roster? You take goalkeepers, I'll take defenders.

You take midfielders. I'll take forwards. Okay. So the goalkeepers are Zach Steffen, who is the prohibited favorite to play every single competitive minute of the Gold Cup. Sean Johnson, who I'm taking to be the number two. And Tyler Miller, who I think is going to be the third man in camp. The understudy, the under understudy. Defenders are Tyler Adams.

interesting that he's listed as a defender. Omar Gonzalez, now player for Toronto FC, Nick Lima, Aaron Long, Daniel Lovitz, and Matt Miaska. Oh yeah, and then Tim Ream, Tim Ream and Walker Zimmerman. Tim Ream, don't forget him. Tim Ream, Walker Zimmerman. The midfield, and there are six listed midfielder's,

so I'm assuming that essentially they're broken down by the Will Trap Michael Bradley role. And again, notable there is that in the 40-man provisional roster, there were literally zero backups for those players chosen. So nobody in camp got to come in and really compete with Michael Bradley and Will Trap for that position, which, again, I think is notable given what we'll talk about later, which is the performances against Jamaica. And then the two sort of eight slash ten roles, there are four players for that.

It's Christian Pulisick, Weston McKenney, Dwayne Holmes, which is like the... Ding ding ding. Like one thing to be excited about. Christian rolled on. Okay. And then at Forward, we have Josie Altador, Paul Areola, obviously a winger slash wingback slash fullback. Tyler Boyd, the new guy, the New Zealand dual national, New Zealand American dual national. who just made his one-time switch.

Jonathan Lewis, the Colorado Rapids, sort of a Burrhalter favorite, Jordan Morris, and Giazi Zardis. Notably, not on that list, is Joshua Sargent. That's notable.

It's notable because why. Why is it notable? It's notable because, in my personal opinion, like Giazzi Zardez is extremely limited as a forward. I don't know what value he adds to the system. He started, what, four out of five of Greg Burrhalter's game so far, and to my eye

hasn't shown anything new or above what he's shown in any prior national team appearance. So it's not as though this system is somehow unlocked Giazzi-Zardez, dangerous attacker. He's very much still been the hardworking, unspectacular, non-dangerous forward that I feel like he has always been. And yet he's on track for 50 caps over the next two years. It's, yeah, man, it's disappointing. And, you know, we kind of touched on this in our,

the last spot I was on, which was that there are just a few roster changes that could have made this a really exciting group of 23, alas. Yeah, we're not going to get Jonathan Aeman, which is, you know, maybe we'll just sort of talk about this roster in context of the Jamaica friendly last night, because that's the oftentimes going to be what sort of comes up.

But Amon wasn't too sharp last night. Would you agree? Here's what I'll say. Because the game overall was so poor. And I feel like the biggest reason it was so poor was a handful of really poor individual performances, which sort of didn't allow anyone else to do anything that could have been considered good.

Like we never were getting to the point where other players could look good because there were breakdowns every second or third pass in key areas. So no matter what, Ayn, I don't think there was any way, Amon, I don't remember any big mistakes Aman had. I'll say that. Yeah, I mean, he took his guy on a couple times and didn't get by him, lost the ball, but, you know, that's going to happen every now and then for a winger. Yes, I mean, so for those of you not following this stuff closely, which you can totally be forgiven for not. We lost to Jamaica 1-0 last night with a highly experimental lineup.

It doesn't appear that the roster was at all affected by what happened last night. Does it? I mean... I don't know. So do you mind if I kind of go on a little bit of like a what's led to this point? Yeah, please do. Please do. So we got the 40-man provisional roster, which we kind of discussed in a pod, knowing that that wasn't a lot of information because there were a lot of, like, obscure names on that 40-man.

Um, they, they went on to have a combined camp. I honestly thought the build up to this was a really positive, uh, sign from Greg Burhalter, uh, in that he had kind of a confusing conveyor belt of pre gold cup camps and camp rosters. Uh, and I thought that was, I thought that was a really good way to bring in new faces. So you, in that first camp like two weeks ago, you brought in like Holmes and Aman and Jow and sergeant, uh, Anthony Robinson. sort of these guys very new to Greg Burhalter so that they would have a week to get up to speed on the system. And then you filled in that camp with a bunch of just available U23 bodies who weren't really in demand for their clubs or in their offseason. So again, I think that's a really good use of a week.

Then the next week you send all those U23 bodies home and you keep your sort of top choices for the Gold Cup and bring in the rest of sort of the Gold Cup players who are familiar. familiar with the system, Gold Cup candidates, I should say. And now you have a camp where you can actually concentrate on the soccer you're going to play with more or less the group that you're going to be choosing from. Again, I think that's a really good use of a week of camp. All of this leads up to this Jamaica game, which, again, I think is everyone was really upset with their roster choices, and I feel like I was kind of fine with it, the lineup selection for this game.

because you thought it was a sort of a tryout for the bottom three or four spots on the roster. Yeah, I'm totally fine with using this game as that audition. What kind of doesn't make sense to me is that, like you said, the performances don't necessarily

then didn't end up meaning anything. Yeah. Well, I guess, so the reason Burrhalter gave that Sargent wasn't included in the final 23 was that Sebastian Leget took a knock or he's injured somehow so he's going to miss the Gold Cup and that sort of sealed sergeant's fate because Leggett was able to cover both midfield depth and wing depth and if you don't have that versatility then you have to

apparently you have to bring and you know two players to take the place of Legit and that That means you can't bring three true number nines. And sergeant is third on the depth chart behind Altadour and Zardis in Burrhalter's mind. So sergeant gets to have a little bit of a vacation before Verde Bremen camp starts. And so logistically, I kind of get that. I think I'd even discuss that again in our initial reaction to the 40 man, when we kind of projected a went way out on limbs and projected what the 23 would look like. I had sort of that idea, but my idea was that it was going to be Holmes who would be able to back up your attacking mid and wingers, which gave you the freedom.

Because I was sure that he would take three strikers because Josie Altador has a long history of injury issues at this point. And it seems wild to take two strikers if one of them is Josie Altador. Yeah, man, he's going to pull his hammy in that first game against, or he'll probably pull his hammy against Venezuela and a friendly. I mean it's It's It's I'll get hurt Right

It's a little mean And it's kind of funny But it's also true He's like he has a He has a very consistent record Of Including at a World Cup Of not

Being able to make it Through a tournament For physical reasons Oh brother You have to be prepared For that contingency And we're very not prepared Now for that contingency

Because I guess we have to have four wingers or we have to and we have to have four central midfielders, even though again Christian Pulisic, a very versatile player who's actually sort of playing out of position as a 10 is an option on the wing as is Dwayne Holmes. So I don't know, maybe I guess Jordan Morris becomes your hybrid winger slash forward option. But no, it doesn't scan to me. Like you bring in homes and you have these other options.

So leaving Sargent at home as a third forward already doesn't make sense to me. And then what doesn't make sense is saying that Zardis is ahead of him. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I feel like my outrage levels are at an all-time low with this stuff. I think everything you're saying makes sense. And it doesn't make sense that Sergeant isn't on the roster. And a lot of people say, well, if he's not going to be on the Gold Cup roster,

He should have been on the U-20 World Cup roster, and I get that too, sort of in the abstract. But I guess just on an emotional level, there's a couple things that make me less just outraged. One, Sergeant hasn't looked good for six months. Like he hasn't looked sharp. He didn't look sharp for Verda Bremen before he fell out of favor there this spring. And, you know, I mean, he fought the good fight last night. But I don't think anybody would say he was a game changing number nine. Granted, the game was not, you know, like you said, the team, the team was bad all the way around.

So how's the number nine going to look great in that system? When nobody else is clicking, I get all that. But, like, he just hasn't been the transcendent Josh Sargent that I thought he might be by this time. So I guess whatever, you know, is kind of my thought on it. And when it comes to the U20 World Cup, I'm happy to see Sebastian Soto get his chance. You know, I'm a Sebastian Soto fan. I know he's not rated as highly as sergeant. by a lot of people.

And I think that's fair too. But I'm happy he's getting his chance. I'm happy he's getting a chance to shine, scores a brace against France to put us through to the quarterfinals. I think that's great. So I'm not mourning sergeant's absence there either. Is there something I'm missing where I should be more upset? I mean, yes, the quality gap that now exists in the senior team at the forward position. And Berhalter actually, you know, full credit to him, he was very explicit.

He kind of hodgeposhed a bit about getting Sergeant his preseason with Rutter Bremen, I think. But at some point, he very explicitly said, we have Altador and Zardez ahead of Sergeant. Yeah. And again, I just think it's insanity. I think that that statement is insanity. And this has nothing to do with like the potential that Sergeant has. I truly believe Sergeant has a lot of potential to improve. where he is from where he is now.

If Sargent doesn't get any better at soccer, he is already a much better forward than Giazzi Zardaz in basically every aspect of the game. We're going to have to crowd source this one because I don't think I have them anymore. You probably have most of them. I'm going to want a catalog of every time Josh Sargent has been dangerous in the past 16 months

for the U.S. national team. And then I'm going to want a catalog of every time Giazzi Zardaz has been dangerous for the U.S. national team. Zardaz, for me, has the one moment against Chile where he accidentally takes a first touch into some space and then frees Pulsik for the goal. As far as I can tell, that is his lone key contribution

to the U.S. attack over the last year and a half. Yeah. I can't think of anything else either. Sargent has more sequences than that in like his 10-minute cameo in a friendly and last, March. It's not even a contest of who brings more to the position between those two. And you can say that Sergeant hasn't impressed with Verde Bremen in the last six months, which is completely true, but all of those dangerous moments Sergeant had in the U.S. shirt prior to that

came when he had zero minutes for Verde Bremen. So it's not as though there needs to be that correlation between his club performance and the national team. We've sort of handcuffed ourselves for this Gold Cup tournament by leaving Sargent off in favor of Zazzi Zardos. All right. Well, I'm a little outraged now. Let's give, let's give, let's give Berhalter an L on that. How many Ls does he have already in this podcast? He's got, that's definitely one. Any other ones? I'm going to say not even naming a backup to Bradley and Trap is an L. Like, again, just guaranteeing those two their spots, performances be damned. I got to, I've got to say that's an L.

All right. The L's are going to start piling up here. Because in addition to not even naming a backup to Bradley and Trap, he's building the whole gosh dang roster around them because he's because of this, because of this inverted fullback, left center back, left back nonsense, which I've been patient with. And I've been patient with this stuff. And I, and maybe I should. keep being patient, but it just seems

like he's overcomplicating things. Why don't we just put our best players on the field in their best positions and play the game of soccer? Why are we messing around with Adams at right back? I know other people have been saying this for a long time, and I've

been like, all right, let's just see how it goes, but I'm starting to be like, what? Why are we doing this? Why do we need to have a left center back who can also play left back? why can't we just have two a right back and a left back Adams at the six get rid of this like this commitment to soft

quote unquote ball playing central midfielders and you're there you're referring specifically to Will Drap and Michael Bradley yeah and just and just have like a midfield that you just throw it all out do a tab Ramos 433 and and and go with that you could put together and then coach within that and then coach within that right It's not like you just have to throw all tactics and coaching and details into the bin. You can coach within that 433 for your principles and your systems. Yeah, we were talking about this.

We were talking about this on the group chat. And like here's a lineup I could come up for a 433 from this roster. You have Althador at the 9, Pulisick and Boyd at the wings. I don't know who's on which side doesn't really matter to me. Dwayne Holmes, who was the best player on the field for the U.S. last night, Right. Within 40 seconds of coming on. Like just blew everybody, all the other, all other central midfielders for the U.S.

out of the water. Which I'll intercede right now and say, and Holmes didn't do anything special. He didn't have to do anything special to earn that title. He was basically competent. Yeah. He had a little bit of aggression. And he towered. Yeah.

And he towered over his competition internally. Yeah. So you got Pulisig and Boyd on the wings Holmes and McKinney as the dual eights Adams is the six behind him Lovitz and Lima at fullback Lovitz on the left Lima at right back

Neither of them You know look Neither of them is going to be playing in Champions League ever But they're who we got And then Long and Miazga At centerback And Zach Steffen behind him

That team breezes to the final Of the Gold Cup in my opinion And looks pretty good doing it But no one We're not going to do that. We're going to have all these moving parts. We're going to have wingers that have to, I don't know, a right winger who has to cover, a left back who has to be a centerback, a left wing who just stands on the touch. I don't know, man. Give me a break. I'm less outraged about the Burrhalter system than you in this case. So we've basically flip-flopped here. And I'm like, I'm still, for the most part, fine with this Adams experiment. I think that our people were complaining about force. central midfielders yesterday and it's like okay but he's been running four central midfielders every game i mean it's just been uh either adams or lima stepping in is that four center mid i'm

fine with the experiment i totally agree with you that your lineup would cruise to the final i still think burholter's lineup in this setup is going to cruise to the final because our top six are much better than anyone else's uh top six save mexico uh maybe that's arrogant but i don't think that a pool Poulosic McKinney, Adams, Altador, level talent exists on any of the teams we're going to play against, certainly not in the group stage. And I don't think we'll see anyone that good in the knockout rounds either. Yeah, okay. So who are your top six?

I mean, Adams, McKinney, Poulissick, who else? Altador. And then I'm going to go with, like, I'm still going to say two of our centerbacks who aren't named Omar Gonzalez will be in the top six. Okay. All right. I'm hopeful that Boyd's good, but we don't really know, right? We don't really know if Boyd's good. We don't really know how good Holmes is.

He just showed up better than Roll-on in Georgie. Yeah, I've been a fan of Holmes for a while now, and I mean, I guess not as long as some people, but for a few months and sometimes getting resistance to that. But I think he's good enough to be in the starting. He's better than Christian Rolls-on. He's better than Will Trap. Obviously, it's a different position than what Will Trap plays.

But, okay, so that's your top six. Is he a six? Is he a six? Is he like a deep, deep-lying cess fobergrass like prodigy? Because he's not. He's neither of those things. But we're just carrying him. Yeah, he's.

And I know, you know, some people think Bradley's tougher than Trap in the tackle, which maybe marginally at this point, but I don't think they're that different of players from each other right now. So I don't think either of them makes sense to start for a national team. I know we're all over the place, and I feel like I promise this after the Chile game,

but I really have actually gone through now and cut out the Michael Bradley clips against Chile that bothered me. And in the week leading up to these Gold Cup group stage games, I'm going to have to do some kind of a, do some kind of video threads on some of these guys who I think don't belong. My issue with Michael Bradley is that he, I don't mind the sort of Michael Bradley trough that everyone has a problem with. Like 95% of the time Bradley is doing very good in the vicinity defending just by being in the vicinity.

What I think Bradley doesn't offer is the urgent defending once we have been penetrated. And I don't think Will Trapp can give us that either. Obviously, the name that gives us that in better than like anybody else in the world is Tyler Adams. But Michael Bradley's urgency to clog the middle and anticipate where he'll be needed at the top of the box or in the penalty area to snuff out danger was almost non-existing. It's chilly. Yeah. And Adams is for that particular quality, Adams is like top 25 in the world right now. or easy for in my mind i haven't i haven't scouted everybody in the world but when when you would

post videos of tyler adams even in his red bulls days like that's what stood out the most to me was how early on he would recognize the potential for danger and clog the area where it could occur not like react to it once it started to develop like he was already there and the danger just never could develop yeah and and you know the argument is he'll be able to do some of that from his newfangled right-back central midfield hybrid position. But I don't know, it just seems like an unnecessary tinker. It's an unnecessary tinker with the goal of preserving a spot for Bradley and Trap. And I don't know, it just seems that I'm souring on that.

I'm souring. Well, I'm willing to give Bradley and Trap both like... Another try at the 6th. Another try. Well, you got to give them a try with Adams next to him because that will change how good they won't have to do nearly as much of that kind of thing with a Tyler Adams next to him. Just the same way in the U20s, we can use an example. You know, certain midfielders can get away with things on the field and become useful so long as they have a complimenting piece next to them. I'm talking specifically about like a mend. and a pomecall.

You take pome call out of that situation and suddenly Mendez sort of can can fall off a cliff as far as effectiveness. So Bradley and Trap might end up looking super effective next to Adams. And that could in my mind vindicate the decision. Bradley or Trap yesterday next to a Jackson Yule and vice versa. Jackson Yule next to a Will Trap, they aren't going to be, neither of them is going to be nearly as effective. And they will both be liabilities in many cases. Yeah. That's one other point I wanted to make related to that. It's just the athleticism gap between us in Jamaica and the midfield yesterday.

They were, it was men against boys. It was, and it feels like it's going to be that way every time we have Will Trap out there against an international opponent. And Bradley, to some extent, as well, I just want us to go out there and put some athletes with some aggression. who can play soccer, who are playing soccer at a high level, West McKinney, Tyler Adams, Dwayne Holmes, you know, people can crap on the English championship all they want. It's better than MLS. It's better than MLS.

And then just, like, turn them loose, you know? Let's see what happens. It can't be worse. It can't be worse than what we've been seen. Anyway. It can't be worse than yesterday. I know, I know. Like, again, I'm kind of scattered here with what we just saw.

and combining that with the disappointment of the Gold Cup release, the roster release. For me, I'm disappointed in it. I feel like most people who aren't in Omar Gonzalez's immediate family are disappointed with it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

I started recording this feeling pretty sanguine, but now my blood is boiling. So thanks a lot, Greg. I know. Anything else to say about the game last night? What were you going to say? no, no, we can go through a little bit of the game. So again, Burrhalter's kind of being, what would the word be, Bells?

Pillared. Pillared. Pillared. Oh, nice. Small joys. Okay, so Burrhalter is very much being pilloried for his roster or for his tactics. Again, I don't think the tactics were necessarily the issue. I felt like guys were getting the ball.

And full credit here to Foxx. a new approach to filming soccer games where they are much higher up on the camera angle, we could see guys receive the ball with plenty of space and plenty of options to play, even like to continue to play dangerous passes. And guys just were not doing that. Chief among them, Georgi Mihailovich, you had just a bit of a shocker. And I don't I don't really care that much. The kid's 20.

It might mean he's not ready. But that sort of knock-on effect, if we're going to play this possession game where we're going to move the ball from guy to guy to guy, it means that in every possession, like, Georgie should be a part of it. And if it breaks down every time it gets to him, then Josh Sargent is going to have nothing to do. The other guy who I thought really stuck out as having a shocking showing was Anthony Robinson. Yeah. And it wasn't like he wasn't invisible.

He was very much visible where he was getting the ball. And I thought very good attacking spaces. and just completely letting himself down with decision-making, with touch. And you can say he was being played out of position, but I also kind of don't buy that because Anthony Robinson's strength as a traditional fullback is his ability to get forward. So Burrhalter was just like, all right, well, let's just dispense with his defending altogether, put him in these advanced positions to begin with, and let him attack.

So unless you think that Anthony Robinson is only effective attacking when he, he already has like a full runway of sideline to to initiate his attacks. He didn't show any any ability to be dangerous once he got the ball in advance positions. Yeah, gave the ball away a lot, didn't look comfortable. He's not on the roster either. So kind of, you know. Yeah, Georgie and Anthony are definitely two guys who did play themselves out of contention, which again is fine.

They're 20 and what, 21 years old. this isn't their last crack at making a U.S. national team roster. Yeah, and Burrhalter is very clear about that. He said a lot of times just because you don't make this roster. There's nothing preventing you from making the next one or the one after that. So, you know, that's good. I mean, anything else to say about the game, Holmes was clearly, I know we mentioned this, but Holmes was clearly the best American on the night.

And it was his, in my opinion, it was his little bit of a good. aggression, his little bit of composure, and his athleticism, his ability to step, you know, to drive past somebody if he needs to, to hold the ball, to hold the ball up if he needs to. And then he had that really nice first touch on that ball, on the back post, took a nice first touch and then pulled it back for Josh Sargent. Sargent, wasn't able to get it on frame, but you don't care about that, right? No, I don't. I mean, that's a bang, bang. Sergeant gets to the ball.

He made the right move. He made the right attempt to get to it. It may have deflected off a defender and gone out. In any event, very, very good from Holmes. In my mind, good attacking play from Josh Sargent. Didn't Holmes also pull one back from Mihailovich, too, that Mahalovich scuffed? I'll have to check that one again. I want to, I want like an all-touches compilation.

from Mahalovich, Rodon, and Areola, and throw Robbins in there, too, sort of the front four playing underneath Sergeant as a way

of defending Josh Sergeant in that game because it was horrendous. It was atrocious from those four. I'm throwing ariola and

rolled on in that too. There were big stretches in that game where we couldn't connect basic passes. You know, Ariola, rolled on

the whole kitten caboodle. I don't really I don't really want to talk about it anymore. I don't either, but just to say that, again, the bar was so low that Holmes looked, was a breath of fresh air just by having his passes actually hit their target and not roll to the goalkeeper out of bounds. Like that was enough to make him a lock for the Gold Cup roster. And that's a rough, that's a rough situation to be in for a national team program. Yeah, yeah, it is.

Which kind of brings us to our next segment, unless you have anything else on the rock. roster or the Jamaica friendly, I don't want to cut that short if you got stuff. I mean, Omar coming. Like we got Omar coming. Now, how about this? Let's really quickly, just so I'm not a complete Debbie Downer, even though I'm a lot Debbie Downer. Let's run through what we are actually excited about for this Gold Cup roster.

Okay. Can we do that? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to see healthy Weston McKenney, Christian Pulisick, and, Tyler Adams on the field together. Walker Zimmerman's been playing well for L.A.F.C., you know, the best team in Major League Soccer. I'm excited to see him, hopefully.

Hopefully. Yeah. Matt Miaska, you know, I'm always sort of favorably disposed toward him. And, yeah, healthy Josie Altador as well is something to celebrate. That's a big one I'm excited about. I feel like there's going to be a world of difference. in our ability to attack just by having a more competent all-around forward. Tyler Boyd. I forgot to mention Boyd, yeah. He's excited to see Tyler Boyd.

Another guy who I'm actually excited about who I feel like is sort of brushed aside is Jonathan Lewis. Like I feel like he kind of gets lumped into like this MLS like Corey Baird, Paul Ariola, camp. But I feel like he's a much different winger than those guys. Like he's a truly dangerous winger, which is all I want. I just want dangerous wingers rather than workman-like wingers. And Lewis seems to fit the dangerous winger category. Yeah. I worry, though, that it's going to be Aureola because of that,

because of the defensive responsibilities that may be demanded of our wingers. But, you know, Shirley, surely, surely, surely, surely. I totally think so. minutes here there. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking Lewis will get his 20 minutes a game, 15 minutes a game, and I'm plenty of happy to see how old's Lewis, 21? I think so. He might be a little older, but not by much. Okay. So I'm excited to see a dangerous 21-year-old winger coming in and getting 15 minutes to run at a Conca Calf defense. Yeah. He had it. Lewis had a nice hit last

weekend on a one-time strike for the Colorado Rapids. He seems to be settling in there. I still think, anything else you're excited about? That probably is about it. I'm excited to see whether Burrhalter will adjust if it's a shambles and do the right thing and get Pulitzer wide and Adams into the middle. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. It's still early in the Burrhalter era.

The overarching thing, this is a point I've made before, both on Twitter. and on this podcast, but the big picture thing for me is just that the player pool isn't very good. There's, there are, we've got McKinney, Pulisic, and Adams as sort of legit blue chip American soccer players. And I mean, there may be a couple in there, a couple others in there. Some people would say Altador is up there too, Matt Miaska. But beyond the like first six or seven or eight or nine, wherever you make the cutoff, It's just a lukewarm soup of names and skill sets. And it's just not good enough, you know.

It's nothing to be excited about. And we need new blood. We don't need two or three U-20s to hit. We need six U-20s to hit. And I think maybe we will get that, given how weak the current player pool is for the senior men's national team and how many exciting. Nobody's a can't miss prospect except for maybe Chris Richards. But there's there are so many potentially exciting prospects in this U-20 squad that maybe we will get

six or seven to hit in this sort of this time of transition in American soccer, men's American soccer. All right. Can we play this game, Bells? Do we have time to play this game? let's name the players on the Gold Cup roster who are behind at least one U-20 player right now, like in your mind.

Can we play this game or should we scratch it and save it for later? I mean, it's tough because people can always say, oh, well, he hasn't played any first team minutes. There's no way you can put him behind him. You make your call. You make your call. And I feel like we should be able to use the evidence we have on the field from yesterday to decide.

A simple size of one game against Jamaica. Like fitness aside, I think Richie Ledesma is already a better player than Georgie Mihailovich. I know, Mahelich isn't on this roster, so that doesn't count, right? Yeah, so you could... You've got to compare him to Roldon. I mean, Raldon, it's hard, right?

Do you think Ladezma's ahead of Roldon? I actually don't know if we can even make that comparison because Roldon's going to be in like a more of a, more of a Paxton-Pomacall role. So how about that? Is Roldon ahead of Paxton Pomekaw? No, I would put Pomekaw ahead of Roldon. Yeah. How about this?

To get Ladezma into the mix, would Ladezma be good enough that we should push Poulosik out wide and stretch Jordan Morris from the lineup from the roster? If Ladezma were 90 minutes fit, yes, absolutely. All right, so let's put Morris on the behind the U-20 list. Morris and Roldon. Yeah, I think Morris is behind Tim Wea as a winger as well.

Oh, there you go. I completely forgot Tim Wea. I think, I think, I think, I think, Arola does offer more defensively, probably, than Wea, but not that much more. I would put Aureola behind Wea, too. Jonathan Lewis? I, I would, I'd rather have Ullianas than Jonathan Lewis. There you go. I would have Wea, or I would have Wea for sure over Lewis and potentially,

uh ulyana ulyana is over lewis as well i mean i don't really know those two it's tough to make any real comparison uh but we have plenty of information on tim waya yeah and we know and we can see what timwaya looks like compared to yannas i mean um jazzi's artists really different players jazzi's artists i mean i don't think it's that far between him and sebastian soto well a burrholder must think so because i would just say josh sergeant's might use U-20 over Zardez, but give me Tim Wayout striker over Zardez. Give me Chris Richards over Omar Gonzalez. Richards over Omar.

Is that it? No, I take. Do we dare say, go ahead. I think I'd take Gloucester O'Bullivots and test over Lima. What I don't know Sergino Dest probably comes in ahead I like you know people are gonna people are gonna drag us for this

because they're gonna say we're just being ridiculous and there are a lot of U-20 cold waterists out there yeah but the guys we just named well you called Janice but the guys we're naming Serginio Dest is playing professional soccer I get that it's the Dutch second division

but he's at least he's playing against men. Wayas played against men, way has played against men in the national team shirt. Pomacol is playing against men in MLS. Like, I guess Ledesma's the one reach, but man,

does Ledesma have skill sets that clearly were not on display from the Roll Dons and Georgies of the world? Yeah, man, get Ledesma fit, and he's, get Ledesma fit for 90 minutes, and he's like,

he's waltz in it. He's waltzing into that lineup last night, and we win that game. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not scared to say that. He's a difference maker. You could see that in the first 30 minutes against France. The best U20 side in the world. Right. If only we could just talk about that game nonstop for the next month.

We should talk about it. That was a fun game to play. But let's, yeah, let's get back to the U20. Let's go full bore now on the U20. and all of the good stuff. Yeah, we should... Six are hit. Yeah, I do.

I think, I mean, I hope six will hit. And I think it's possible it could be more than that. It could also possible. It could be less than that. We should talk about the France match a little bit because we have Franco Pinoz on the podcast and he was measured in his praise, you might say, of the USU20s. And I feel like we probably didn't do a good service to the... to the win. I mean, it was a historic win. It was probably the greatest win in U.S. Youth National

Team history. And I wonder what your takeaway was from it, Greg. I know you watched the game. I was really happy with it. And I feel like, you know, Franco is describing what he would require for it to be a good performance. And in my mind, like, what he was describing, like, barely exists in World Cup knockout play. Like, you don't get, you don't get World Cup knockout game. for the most part, outside of like Spain's era of dominance. And even then, I'd say it doesn't always look like that, where one team is just going to completely outplay the other. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the U.S. to just completely dominate the game against France.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to dominate the next game against Ecuador. And if that's your bar for calling it a great performance, then I don't think you'll ever get it. Like think about World Cup knockout games, even for the senior teams. who just goes outside of Germany against Brazil in 2014, who just completely outclasses their opponent. Yeah, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen.

Yeah, you fight and claw and scratch for everything and trust that if you can stick to the bones of your game plan that at the end of 90 minutes will come out ahead. But there's a reason that so many of those games are scrappy and cagey and end in one zero wins even for the nominally much better team. Yeah. Yeah, you know, one thing I wish I had said, which I didn't say in that podcast, is yes, France had more of the possession, but no, they did not have more, they did not create more danger than us. I mean, you could argue it was about even, but I would even shade towards the U.S. creating more clear-cut chances than France, despite not having much of the ball, particularly in the first half.

the France chances came on sloppiness from the U.S., I would say almost exclusively. There was one time where they built it around to the right side, looped a ball over the top to the back post, it got headed back, and then worked to quesance for the shot off the post. But other than that, both their goals came on sort of counterattacks where we had people out of position. There are two chances before Soto scored. the opener came on on giveaways in our in our defensive third that led to like swift counter you

know i don't even know if you call that a counterattack just swift transitions that we weren't quite prepared for so france wasn't france wasn't just running us off the park and then also creating chances from it france was yeah yeah yeah i would say like there was there was never time was like oh my god chris richards is standing on his head or oh god uh brady scott is having uh tim howard versus belgium like performance here to keep us in the game like it was Nothing like that. Yeah. It wasn't.

And to be frank, I thought we were the team with more teeth in the attack. Ledesma could have had one very early on a moment of transition after Waya poked the ball away. Then, of course, we had that beautiful Ledesma Soto connection for the first goal. And then when the subs came out in once too, where it was way got like clean in and it took a desperation like a sliding challenge from behind from France to poke it. out of bounds for a corner. That's right. That was as good a... That was basically as good a chance as,

uh, almost as good a chance of Soto's goal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Waya was playing with a chip on his shoulder. So we don't need to break down all the goals and everything, but I, but I do feel like that was, uh,

it was a, it was a good performance and, uh, to go with a huge result. That's my, that's my stance on it. Yeah, I will take that performance. I think we can control more of the ball against Ecuador, but I don't think that's a prerequisite for calling it a good performance.

I think it's okay to say we will feed certain areas of the field and certain amounts of possession and pressure in order to protect other areas more closely, and then we'll count on our ability to either break. Like, there's nothing wrong with having a plan that includes creating chances on the counterattack. Some people talk about sort of a dirty word, like, oh, all our chances on

encounters. It's like, okay, that's good game planning at times to have that in your repertoire. Yeah, I just it was kind of undersold how well the U.S. sort of played their game. Yeah. Yep.

I guess we're in agreement on that. So coming up next on Saturday is Ecuador, the South American champions. I have to admit to all the listeners that I haven't been able to watch in detail any of

Ecuador's games, so I don't have like a great level of insight on that team. But just based on what I read, they're going to be, they are going to give us a little bit more of the ball. They're going to allow us to keep a little bit more of the ball. And they have a really good number nine. They have some dangerous wingers. And they have a strong athletic midfield. So I don't know what that means for us necessarily, except I'd like to see Brandon Servania started the 6 again, just because he covers more ground. I said that on Twitter, so everybody who listens to this is probably going to know my position on that already.

Do you have any sort of prescriptions for the game on Saturday? My prescription, and this is, I think if we start Chris Durkin, we won't win the game, which is tough to put just on Chris Durkan. But it's kind of the same thing as like the Trap Bradley, where Durkan isn't enough of a six to give cover to the centerbacks. And he's not athletic enough, and he's not a good enough passer to justify, including that, building that vulnerability into your team. I think it's got to be Servania and then Tomicall and then one of Ledes-Mont-R-Mendez. And if we do that, I think that we will be able to control the game and we will be able to generate chances. And then it's going to kind of come down to the soccer gods.

What does that become? Yeah, it comes down to which way the cookie crumbles, really? Who finishes their chances? Yeah, then we're just at sample size. Yeah. Okay, well, that game's at 10.30 central time on Saturday morning, 1130 Eastern. So check it out. I think I'm going to record with Matt Doyle after the game.

Matt Doyle, the infamous MLS analyst. Is he infamous? Yeah, is there a more polarizing, is there a more polarizing figure? Probably not. Only because of Lexi Lalas, there's only one poll with Lexi Lalas. Yeah, no, Doyle has graciously agreed to come on. He's good at talking about this stuff. I think there's no question about that.

And he's a good friend of the pod. So, Greg, anything else we should mention or discuss? we good? I think we're good on all the men's sides. Obviously, the women's group stage kicks off or the June 11th for the U.S. Women's World Cup kicks off tomorrow, June 7th. But the U.S. women have their first group stage game

against Thailand on June 11th. That's Tuesday. I don't think we need to go into any detail. Yeah, I don't think we need to really go into too much detail because the women's sort of lineup has been set for the last 12 months. I think I feel comfortable knowing what you expect on them, and I feel pretty comfortable about them comfortably navigating the group stage. Yeah.

Still the favorites. Still the favorites. Godspeed to the women and Godspeed to Greg Burhalter as well. Oh, and Godspeed to you, Greg. You got the quarterfinals of the Iowa State Girls Championship this afternoon. That's right. That hadn't come up in any of our social media yet. But yeah, that's the other big one is the Iowa High School Girls Soccer Tournament.

It's the Waukee. Go Waukees. Who are you guys up against? We are up against eastern Iowa side, Pleasant Valley. Pleasant Valley. Is that Eastern Iowa? I thought that was, whatever. Now, they're right on the river, man.

They're right on the Mississippi. Oh, okay. All right. All right, good luck. Good luck to the girls and you. Thank you, sir. Thanks, everybody, for listening. We will see you.