Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 82: Gold Cup — USA v Guyana review

Episode Date: June 19, 2019

No spoilers! Except that Gyasi Zardes was in the starting lineup, Greg and Belz got loose for the game, and then they recorded real late at night. Thank you to Away Days Football for being our first sponsor! Check out awaydaysfootball.com and their very cool Mystery Kit product. You pay $25, you pick your jersey size, and a few days later you receive an official club jersey in your size from somewhere in the world. You don’t know where, or what club, until you open the package. It’s a mystery! And they have other cool stuff too. Use the promo code "Scuffed" for 15 percent off your entire purchase. awaydaysfootball.com Scuffed is on Patreon and we're trying to ramp up the patron-only content to make patronage even more worthwhile. 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. We won 4-0. It was a beautiful night at Allianz Field in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was not a beautiful performance, was it, Greg? You tell me, Bells, what was your view of it?

I feel like the things we've been banging on for the last, I don't know, several months. Why is Jazzy's artists a part of this? part of this team. He scored a goal, Bells. He did. Stryker's job to score goals, and he scored a goal. K and Golazzo. And, yeah, so Zardis doesn't make any sense to me, and who else doesn't make sense?

Tim Riem. Are we, are we going to list, are we going to go right now, list them off, list off? Do you want, do you want to, like, give any of the big points of the big four zero win? Are we going to go straight into gripes? I mean, I think we should go straight into gripes because we played Guyana, not a big, not a big opponent. Yeah, tell me why we should go straight into gripes. Well, you tell me, why do you tell me why we should go straight into gripes? Because if you're going to play Guyana and try to, like, say that anybody had a good performance,

that good performance needs to be, they need to look like a superhero playing on the field. Like, it needs to be playing FIFA on the easiest mode possible. It's not like, oh, they did a couple of things well. Yeah, because I found myself throughout the game thinking, oh, Aurello did some good things there. Boyd did some good things. Obviously, Boyd had a brace. It's a great story. A New Zealand American joining the U.S. national team comes here in his first competitive game.

He scores two goals. Second coming of Landon Donovan, right? The New Zealand, Landon Donovan, that we get our hands on. But really, no, right? Like, no. Yeah, yeah. He didn't blow the doors off. He had a couple of good strikes on goal.

I would say his first goal was really nice. Yes, it's really well taken, smashes it low through the legs of an outstretched defender. Paralyzes the keeper. But overall, you know, and we've done a lot of sort of back and forth with the U-20s and the senior team. And you, like, if you think back to what the U-20s looked like in Concaf qualifying through the Concaf tournament, where it was just like they, their opponents were so outmatched that it just looked like they didn't belong in the same field as our U-20 boys. That's what this needed to look like against Guyana.

And it didn't look like that. No. The first half was like... We were pretty even. Yeah. The first half was pretty even. When we kind of rewatch some of the spells of it, it's... like you could watch seven or eight passes and you were like at what point do we ever

encounter pressure we were never under pressure uh matt doyle spent the last three weeks talking about how you have to get pressure on the ball in central midfield guy onna never pressured us one no like there was every every possession should have resulted in some kind of like a dangerous threatening pass into the 18 yard box or a shot on target uh and it wasn't really the case Let's be a little positive. Let's be a little positive. Who was providing some danger? Who was providing some final passes?

Not often enough, but I thought Weston McKinney had some very standout passes. Like passes where you're like, okay, that's what this should look like. When you're playing a team that you're much better than you should be able to hit a pass that just completely unlocks them, carves them up. And Weston McKinney, I thought, had three of those in the first half. Right. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't a fantastic game from him necessarily, but he had that pass to Boyd in behind,

the disguise pass, he had the assist on Arayola. The past of Boyd you're talking about that little, that little, like, weighted slide rule ball into the 18 on one side of the defender while Boyd was running on to the other side of the defender. Yeah, that was class. The assist to Areola? Yeah. I mean, what do you think about the assist to Ariel?

I think it's a, can you call it? Can you call an assist soft? It was a soft assist. It was a soft assist. I don't know. That's harsh, but again, you're really relying on Guyana being poor. So, I don't know. It's a great run from Arroyola.

The combination between the two of them is good. McKenny makes it. Arroyole collects it on the wing. McKenney recognizes that he can make a good dragging run to the sideline ahead of Arieola. And Arieola feeds it into McKenney, who, again, is put under no pressure so that he can collect it, face the defender up, and just stand on it while Ariola makes the run past him. So it takes a long time to develop, but you have that time because Guyana is so bad.

And then McKinney hits the nice weighted ball into Arial's path. It is almost cut out. Guyana touches it. Like they get the touch to it, and again, they're just not good enough because they're Guyana. and then Areola does well to take a prep touch and then curl it around a sort of hapless goalkeeper. Right. Yeah, it was a decent pass,

but probably would have been cut out by a better defender. But you're playing the team you're up against, so if you are going to be playing Guyana, I want you to be making those passes. I want you to be connecting on those kinds of passes. And McKenny, to his credit in this game, hit at least three of those in the first half. Right, and that was really the only danger we created.

That was the second. So we've gotten through two of his, but the third one was him collecting, I think it was like a long, errant cross. From the left wing, it went over everybody in the box, and McKenny actually chases it down towards the end line in the 18, and then just does some really fancy fucking, like, again, like that, he's just toying with him. And again, you should be able to toy with Guyana.

So he toys with his defender in the book. box, hits a nice 45 degree cutback to Pool Sick. Pool Sick sets up. Lima. Lima, yeah, and then Lima has a decent strike saved, and then Boyd. Left foot a shot on frame, and then Boyd

just completely... Slams the rebound, yeah, out of the arena. It landed on University of... It landed on West Burdine's bar. It hit the Blackheart. Blackheart, St. Paul. Yeah. Which we didn't make it, too. No, it was too crowded.

They were getting too much business. We couldn't get in there. We went to Trend Bar. Shout out to Trend Bar. I like the place. Here we are. We're still alive. But yes, McKinney, three really bright moments.

None of the, or one of them resulted in a goal, but just, for me, just that level of class that, again, needs to be on display when you're playing a team as weak as we were playing today. Right. Yeah. Totally agree. And I think we didn't do much. We didn't do much else in the first half, even though we had tons of teams. time. So much time.

You've already mentioned it, but I'm going to hammer on Zardez again. Professional soccer player Giazzi Zardez just adds nothing. He was trash. He was trash. There's no other way to say it. He was terrible. It's hard on him because, I mean, the guy, again, he's working as hard as he can, which is like the most insulting thing you can say about a dude in professional soccer.

Oh, he's just working as hard as he can. can though, isn't he? He's giving it his all. I mean, yeah, the ball's like finding his feet in the box and he's just touching it into his other, like he's touching it into his trail foot into, he's eliminating danger. Giazzi's Ardess literally eliminates danger anytime he does what he's trying to do. When he does something he's not trying to do, he's actually extremely dangerous. As I feel like I've demonstrated somewhat fortuitously in my thread that I posted on him a week ago,

I feel like his best plays are accidents and true to form tonight in the first half. Candelato. Well, in the first half, the most dangerous play he had was a cross that comes into him at the top of the box that he tries to trap. And he actually errantly settles the ball past an unruishing goalkeeper into the goal. That's right. Unfortunately, he was tagged for offside. It was just a ridiculous donkey touch that happened to go in because the goalkeeper had vacated the goal for some. reason.

It would have been another Giazzi Zardez unintentional goal, which we all laugh about, only to be outdone in the second half by an actual Giazzi Zardez unintentional goal. So we, I mean, can you break down what happened? Dissect that play. All right.

That's actually a good buildup. We're going, yeah, it's a great buildup. We're going on how to order here, but here's the goal from Zardis in the 55th minute. Boyd does some good work, as he did. he tucked in, he did some good work, sometimes he found Lima overlapping, sometimes he played the diagonal to Ariel.

It's basically those were two options. And let's just talk about those diagonals because they were on, so many balls were on. Like you couldn't, you had so many options to hit, but I've made this comparison before. It's like college wide receivers where the quarterback throws downfield and the cameras like pans over to the wide receiver and there's no defender in the picture.

Right. It was one of those moments. So the balls... It's a big 12 window. It's a big target to hit. You got a lot of open field to hit a guy into. It's a big 12 window. Yeah, it's Texas Tech football.

All right. So, yeah, so Tyler Boyd... Tyler Boyd to Ariola. Ariola takes a nice couple touches. Great first touch. First touch. Tim Wea-esque. Very Timway-esque, yeah.

We've been kind of... If only. We've kind of been ragging on Ariola in me. relation to Tim Wea, like Tim Wea should be on this Gold Cup roster starting out of Polariola. That touch was, that was a very good first touch.

Yeah, and then he cuts inside. And he takes a hit that I think is curling into the far post. Like it's going to nestle in just inside the far post. It gets headed away by a Guy on and defender right into the face of Jazzizardez.

Juster perfectly places himself to absorb that header. The timing of of his run is impeccable. He just fits the system so well that he put himself in the exact right place to score yet another inadvertent goal. To his credit, he did not pretend that he did it own purpose. Well, no, he was holding his face because he was checking to see if his nose was broken.

His nose was hurt. At that point, it's 3-0. It feels mean ragging on the guy. He had such a bad game. No, here's why it's not mean. It's like, because Josh Sergeant is, in Germany now. Or maybe he's in St. Louis, just chilling.

Maybe he's in O'Fallon, Missouri. I don't know. He's somewhere either in the Upper Midwest or Northern Germany right now, not playing soccer for the U.S. men's national team. And Zardis was bad. He really was bad. Like, he didn't have a good touch.

It was comedy. It was comedy. Like, I'm going to have to do it. I'm going to have to, like, cut together. It's not even a low light. It's like, I'm not going to cherry pick. going to be like, here are all of Zardez's touches. No, if you don't do it, I'll do it.

And I may as well, we may as well put, like, the Benny Hill theme song behind it because it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's back. Like, it's, it's just, uh, I don't know, it's, again, it feels mean like a, we're just piling on, but that's how bad it was. And you're talking about Josh Sargent, and I was a big, I fully expected, it doesn't you have to be Josh Sargent. Bobby Wood is, would be a massive upgrade, uh, to Giazzi Zardaz. I don't care that, I don't care about massive, but I'll, I'm going to say a

massive upgrade. I don't care that he hasn't played for a club team since I don't even know when. When was his last game? January. January. Okay. All right. January, 2009. Or February. Who knows? 1990s? The mid-90s. Was his last appearance

in a club game. And I would still say Bobby Wood is far and away a better striking option than Jaze Zardas. Today, tomorrow for the rest of this cycle. What is... Again, it actually gets to the point where we have to call into question Greg Burhalter's ability to judge talent.

That's really what it comes down to. Like for all the piling on of Zardaz, it's Greg Burhalter who chose him. He put him on this roster. He chose to play him in this game, which fair enough, we're never going to lose to Guyana so you can play anybody. But we saw what happens when you play anybody, and it was what Giazzi's Ardaz just did today. Yeah, we're rooting for Greg Burhalter to succeed. We want him to succeed, but this does not make sense.

It just doesn't. who can watch this and think it makes sense. Yeah, it's a tough one, man. And it's, again, it's just, for me, what it does is it sort of cast doubt then on all the selections. Because, again, we talk about those ones that have to be like close calls in our mind, like the Jonathan Amens versus, I don't, maybe that's not a bad one. Casual fans, casual fans in the stands are watching the game and saying he's garbage. Like, why is he playing? Why is he picked?

How is he even on the roster, much less somebody that you're going to rely on? on to be threatening. No, we're just, we're just going to linger on. Yeah, it's just rant, rant, rant, rant, rant. Any other, okay, so let's do the, let's do the second goal, because we already discussed the first goal and the third goal. Second goal, outside of those three McKinney moments,

one of which resulted in a goal, I don't think we had too much to celebrate in the first half. No, very little. In the second half, our first, our second goal came on, Bradley plays a ball over the top to Boyd, who was active. I mean, if you're going to pick like a man of the match for the U.S., it's either McKinney or Boyd, right?

I think it would probably be Boyd. You can point to McKinney's three passes as we have done as, like, those touches of class. But Boyd gets got in the box a couple of times with the ball at his feet and smashes the ball at goal, and two of them went in. That's got to be enough probably. I don't know. I guess if we're going to start crowning a man of a match. If we're going to be British about it,

Boyd's man of the match. If we have to start assigning a man of the match, yeah, it probably goes away. But anyway. So, anyway, Bradley plays a ball over the top of Boyd, and in my opinion, a well-taking goal. Boyd collects it. He kind of stands as a guy up, takes a touch to his right, and then smashes it between his legs in the far post. We kind of discussed it earlier.

But you have a little bit of a quibble with the play from the beginning, right? Well, yeah, if we want to talk about that, it's back to that sort of college football thing where the windows are so big. Bradley actually gets the ball and misses the first giant window. Really what it is is Guyana's back line was such a shambles. So ragged. That they routinely left these giant gaps to split

because one defender would just drop instinctively. And they had no discipline. And so then anyone could then just run free anywhere on the field. and remain onside. And this was one of those cases where just the ball on the ground into that giant window was on. Right. So Bradley initially missed a pass. I mean, again, it's not a needle-threading through ball.

He missed a 30-yard window that he could have just put the ball on the floor. This is the kind of ball that, I mean, I hate to bring it up. This is the kind of ball that Alex Mendez eats for breakfast. Like, he has no trouble hitting this ball. No. I don't even know. I think Richard Ledzma has. Right, I was going to say, Paxton and Baumacall hits that pass.

We saw that pass in the U-20 World Cup plenty of times. It's a huge window. Bradley misses it initially and then ends up playing a much more difficult pass very well. Like the pass he hit had a higher degree of difficulty, but he executed it well. But it kind of forced Boyd to hold up his run. It forced Boyd to have to then beat the defender because the ball floats up and it beat the ball gets to Boyd, but because it's in the air long enough, the defender then gets to get goalside. Boyd then does what I think we've seen him do in the highlights of him from his Turkish club games,

which is faced up with one defender. He has enough sort of one-v-one skill to do his step over, create the shooting window, forces a defender to lunge to try to block the shot, and smashes it low through his legs. Very well-taking goal. The prettiest goal of the day. I mean, because even though Ariel's was pretty nice, it was very much not an up.

upper 90 hit it was no yeah boyd's you boyd's you get great angles from it where it's i mean uh it's it's unstoppable yeah it's one of those that is like smashed low directly into the bottom corner uh very yeah one of the one of the fun wants to watch yeah okay so that's that makes a tozyer we already discussed uh zardis's goal in some detail i believe and then uh the fourth goal came in the 81st minute this is where boyd gets his brace it's At this point, Trapp had come on for Bradley and Roaldon had come on for McKinney. Hopefully, McKinney's handsprings, okay. We talked to him very briefly after the game.

He seemed in a decent spirit. Yeah, he didn't make any mention to us about being ruled out. And I feel like he would have mentioned it to us. He totally would have told us if he was in trouble. If he was a serious injury. So I guess we'll just verify right now on air. that McKinney is, no. Yes, McKinney had been relieved.

And this came on a, so the fourth goal came on a will trap diagonal. To Ariel. Missed Ariola. And Ariel, but because it's Guyana, Arroyola has plenty of time to chase it down towards the corner, square up the defender, kind of cut back into the top of the 18 and then hits a nice pass. Kind of beats his guy a little bit. Hits a night.

Probably forces a defense to collapse a little bit. I haven't rewatched it that closely. hits a nice pass on the floor to Boyd's feet. Tyler Boyd does the same kind of thing, creates a nice shooting window to his right, and smashes it on target, and it takes a deflection and leaves the goalkeeper once again stranded. Yeah, off the back of a guy on in centerback, I believe.

Hard to tell in the stadium, hard to tell on the initial watch. Yeah, I didn't realize it's deflected. If you watch the replay several times, you will notice that it's deflected. 4-0, which is, I called it. I said it was going to be 4-0, right? You did. Here's the thing you called it before you saw that it was Zardas starting over Altador. If Altador plays in that game, Bells, what is the score?

10-0. It should have been. It would be. It literally would be. Because with Altador in there, again, you're setting up for every possession to end in a shot. Right. Everything can go through him, and something dangerous will happen. He adds danger.

Yeah. The gloves are off, man. Zardis, like. Got to go. Got to go, yeah. He's not just, not just his touches in the box. I mean, he had two, three chances in the first half to actually score a goal where he didn't even get a shot on target because his first touch is so bad.

And playing through him is damn near impossible. It's pointless. Yeah. I mean, there were a couple times where he came back and collected the ball and connected play, but always, at least in the center circle, never further up. and when it was further up, he was a black hole. And that just has to be, that just has to be too low a bar to set. Oh, but every once in a while when you hit it to his feet with plenty of time, back to goal,

he's able to maintain possession. As long as he's 60 yards from goal. Right. That's too low of a bar. Again, there's no striker in the pool that can't do that. And that's all Zardaz offers, other than an actual uncanny ability to score inadvertently. Yeah, and it does. I mean, that's the big problem.

It's not, like, beating up on Zardis. It's not like, Zardis is who he is. He's, by all accounts, a very good guy, a hard worker, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it does call into question Burrhalter's wisdom and his judgment, which you've already pointed out. All right, let's move on. I guess we've covered all the goals. We have pizza. We just ate some pizza.

I'm in Minneapolis getting my topper. All right, continue. The other thing is Poulosick at the 10. Okay. So there's a couple other things, but one of them is Poulousek at the 10. After why is Zardis in this lineup, the number two question is, why is Poulosick playing the 10? How did he look at the 10 for you? It's tough.

I want to say he was, I want to say he was ineffective. I don't, he had a couple of chances where he got the ball in the, box in dangerous spots in the first half, had a couple of looks on goal. I think he was in on the goalkeeper at least once, which makes you say, all right, well, that's a positive, right? I mean, he might not have converted,

but him being there, put him there. I mean, him being at the 10, put him in those positions. To contradict myself, I think a lot of people felt good about Paul Ariel's contributions in this game. And once again, sort of in my mind, I say, yes, the system is doing it. job it's getting polarial in these very dangerous positions i sure would love if it was our most dangerous player christian pulisic getting the ball in these extremely dangerous situations

yeah so that's sort of my that's my take i don't think pool sick did enough at the 10 to and again it's against an uh almost amateur side we're talking english fifth sixth division players uh if you can't if you can't completely dominate and toy with toy with players, then in that game, then what are you going to do even against the Panama's of the world? The Power, the Concaath Powerhouse Panama team that we're going to play in a couple of weeks,

in a couple of days. Yeah, we'll play them next Wednesday, right? Trinidad on Saturday and then Panama Wednesday. Yeah, I thought, I thought, even though McKenney wasn't excellent, he was probably more comfortable in that role than Pulisic was, and definitely more effective.

Pool sick was, he just kind of looked busy. Like you'd get it and he'd like take some short little choppy touches and be kind of poking and prodding and he'd either lose it or you'd have to turn his back completely to goal and knock it back to Bradley or to the back three to sort of recirculate. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know if it's just something that takes more time. I'm not saying that Bernholter needs to pull the plug on that extragrubes. I had my reservations about it from the beginning. But I don't think it's something that,

I don't think it's like a completely wild goose chase to try it. So I'm not like, all right, well, that has to be done. We have some data. We have some data today. And the data, the data does not auger for Pulisick at the 10. No, it doesn't. But if I see him line up there Saturday against Trinidad with Josie Altador's player to play off of,

maybe I get maybe I'm curious maybe I'm a little curious maybe I want to see what that looks like maybe you're a little intrigued God we saw his name in the lineup and it was just like it wasn't totally unexpected I don't think I don't think anyone thinks it's Zardez we're back on Zardaz I don't think anyone thinks that Zardez is Burrhalter's number one I think it's very much a guy on is bad and Burrhalter's sensible about saving Altador's legs when he doesn't need to add miles to them you don't think that's the case

I don't know I don't know Man if he has them over Outdoor then Then this is This is like Intervention time He doesn't

No way No way If he If Altaur doesn't start Against Turn it out on Saturday Then Boy oh boy oh boy

Then you can guess What our first topic Of our next podcast will be Yeah It's not It's not my favorite thing I don't love to talk about this artist. It's so unnecessary.

Like there's no reason we should be talking about him because he's our fifth choice striker. He's the fifth choice in the U.S. player pool at best. Before we go on, we should talk about today's sponsor. Let's. It's not Toppers pizza. No, it's not. That's a free one. Toppers.

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code you're supporting the podcast check out awaydaysfootball dot com there's plenty of other interesting stuff there in addition to the mystery kids okay anything else we should talk about from this game do we Do we beat the Tim Ream horse? Yeah. Is that a horse who beat? Let's get into Tim Ream. You know, the Tim Ream, the Tim Ream stand might say, hey, it's pretty solid. He's okay.

You know, he made some nice passes. He's reasonably comfortable with the ball at his feet. I don't think he was. We watched it once. It's always hard to tell because, you know, as we saw sort of checking in on some of the social media sites from the game, there were people who were like, Weston McKinney is. having a terrible game.

And so I don't know if we just saw things, a couple of good things that just sort of really stuck in our minds. And other people saw a couple of bad things that really stuck in their minds. But in the Tim Ream case, like, it just seemed like errant passes. So essentially, if you're not adding by way of your passing ability in a game against Guyana, then you're not going to add. You know, you're not going to suddenly be able to do it later. I didn't think he added.

he got absolutely skinned in the box by Guyana. Yeah, we don't know which guy. Yeah, I should know, but we'll have to. It was hard to see from where we're sitting. Otherwise, I would be super familiar with all of Guyana's players if I had a better seat. Our seats were pretty good.

They were, right? It was a great view of the game. It was actually really nice, yeah. It was a very enjoyable experience. the soccer aside I feel like we're going to have to do a Tim Ream compilation That's all on you

I want no part of that Just because It seems unnecessary again right There's no way Tim Rieme is our left back We gotta get USMNT videos to do the To do the low lights The Zardist touches Yes

All touches Please please do that Sange if you're listening to this I don't know The other thing about Zardaz Tim Rima, I'm sorry, that I saw someone point out is we didn't invert Nick Lima in this game,

so we were very much just running a standard back four. You didn't see any inversion? I don't, it was, no, it was just Will. It was Michael Bradley running by himself in the middle area. Weston McKenney would come back, even in the attack, and offer another central midfield outlet.

Lima was getting around the outside, I thought most of the game. Yeah. Excuse me. But if that's how we're going to play, then what is Tim Ream doing? Yeah. I mean, did Tim Ream ever get into an advanced position? He didn't do that, and he didn't, he didn't, because Lima was mostly wide,

he never really played, Ream never really played as a center back, you know? So, yeah, so I don't know if the plan is just to always have three backs. So no matter what, we always end up in that three-back system, but my God, like, why do we have a 31-year-old placeholder who doesn't actually hold the place very well? Because there's really

no better option. I think that's the answer. DeMarcus Beasley is a better option. Is he? I would give me DeMarcus Beasley. Okay, but outside of DeMarcus Beasley who is like 48 years old. He's 38.

Maybe 39. So bring in, I mean, again, in that case, bring in a kid. Like, if you're going to suffer these mistakes anyway, bring in one of the kids and at least maybe you get a future payoff. I'm sure I've already said this in another pod. So, all right, let's move on from Tim Rui. I didn't even need to bring him off.

That was unnecessary. There was one play where he was waiting to volley across, and he got beat to it. And if that was Louis Suarez, it's a goal. Yeah, if that's a goal. If that's in a quarter final in the gold cup, we get scored on there. Yeah. Okay, let's quickly work through the other players on the roster.

Zach Stephan didn't have anything to do. There's really no information on this game. But, but, positive step for Zach Stephan. No howlers. No howlers. Yes. Okay, so checkmark for Zach Stephan. And then Ream, we already talked about.

Lima was pretty good, right? Yes, I thought Lima was good. Lima got forward quite a bit. Again, it's on a very curved curve because it's a bad team. Yeah, he's at like a big 10 school studying communications. He should be getting a nice. Yes, he got forward a few times. He should be getting forward a few times and he should be able to deliver some end product.

And I thought he had a couple of good balls in and I thought he had the one chance from the Poolsick connection. And he hit that well. Hit it really well. Forced a really good safe. created a good rebound opportunity. Which boy wasted. All right. Lima, solid.

Yeah. Reem, not solid. We already discussed him. Long and Zimmerman. What do you think? It's really difficult to tell. The only thing they can do, I've said this before, the centerbacks through this gold cup

can basically not improve their stock because the team, especially in the group stage, the teams were playing, can't punish you. Like, Guyana couldn't punish us. Even if they found dangerous situations, got themselves in dangerous situations, it's always going to fizzle out by their own accord. They're going to fizzle out their own chances, and that's sort of what would happen. There was no punishment. No.

Just crime. Just crime. No punishment. Crimes against the game of soccer. Never a chance for those guys to be punished, so we don't know. I remember there were at least some good entry balls from Aaron Long that would sort of skip a couple of. lines into the feet of our attackers. Zimmerman had a few, too. You noticed one

in particular that Zimmerman missed where he could have played it to McKinney at the top of the box. Instead, he played it wide to Lima. Just some good system play from the guy's good movement off the ball to drag defenders out and then open giant lanes. I mean, let's talk about

that moment. Because Pulisic, I think there's a little bit a combination between Pulisick and McKinney. And Bradley. And then Pulisick makes a run from sort of the left channel into the right channel towards the goal and drags basically all the attention towards the goal and then Zimmerman has the ball and he all he has to do

I mean all he has to do is tap it at McKinney McKinney's in acres of space acres of space yeah 28 yards from goal yeah it's it's like the classic sort of Sergio Aguero diagonal run that everyone's paying attention to and the past needs to go into the space that the run originated in. Because he vacates it, clears it out, everyone goes with it.

That's the run that Pulisic made. Yeah, Pulisick makes that run. And McKenny then sort of trickles into the space that Pulisick had just vacated. I think that'll be worth sort of clipping out just to show what the system can create in what maybe a player like Pulcic who does get a lot of attention. Maybe that's something that he does add in that central area. Yeah, he can clear out space. Um, okay, so Zimmerman and Long, basically an incomplete.

Yeah, I mean, there's no, there's no grade they can get. It's past, fail, and I guess they passed today. They could have failed. You could have failed. I feel like Reem didn't necessarily pass. Yeah. So you can, you can fail. You just aren't going to get punished even if you do.

Yeah, Ream, Ream needs to visit the professor very early in the morning. All right. Look up the office hours and then you go talk to him. Bradley? Michael Bradley. You want to move on from me? Bradley, I mean, I don't know. He was okay.

He was better than Trap. He was better than Trap was against Venezuela. Yes, that's an almost impossibly low bar to set. But yes, he was. Sort of the same as the centerbacks. He was never under any pressure. There was never a moment where he had to solve a problem that was, like, pressing. You know, like...

We never had to solve a problem is a little bit, you know. For someone as particular as you are. That's a wild statement. I'm willing to rewatch it. I'm not going to rewatch that whole game, but somebody should. And they should send us the timestamp of a time that Michael Bradley had to either solve a problem himself on the ball or had to solve a problem for somebody else by moving off of the ball. Because there just were none of those problems.

There was never pressure where somebody needed Bradley instantly to get into the space. And if you didn't do, we were going to lose it. Because we were never at that point where we were. were going to lose it. Yeah, there was one time where he should have gotten into the space and he didn't. Okay. It was a Lima ball. Oh, that Lima giveaway? Yeah.

That was probably like one of our worst giveaways. We had like three of those. Two giveaways right in a row and the second one was a Lima giveaway. And it was because Bradley didn't, wasn't really moving. I mean, the way he was moving was a bit casual. Very casual. It was, yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. Okay, so, so there you go.

But that's, we'll give him an income. Yeah. For a center mid, you're not always going to be in the exact right spot. So that one, he just happened to miss. But, yeah, he didn't have to do very much, and he didn't. I don't think Bradley was necessarily like unlocking defenses with his passing, even though we have his sort of assist to Boyd that is a nice ball that he played over the top. But I actually noticed he hit.

He tried to hit a bunch of those balls, and a lot of them did not come off. Right, yeah. He kind of was wasteful with those. So the fact that he did hit his one, I don't know. We saw Mendez and Pomacal hit plenty of them in the U-20. World Cup. I'm just saying. With a lot more precision. I'm just saying.

A little bit more precision. All right. You know, jury's out on Bradley. Okay. Jury's out on 31-year-old Michael Bradley. Who else? Who else we got? Ariola, Boyd, and Zardt. We already talked about Zardis.

We don't need to talk about that anymore. We've talked about Boyd. I feel like we've hit Boyd. So what about Ariola? I mean, you know, He's a little bit of a threat when he comes in on that right foot. I noticed that tonight. Like, he can do something when he cuts in on his right foot.

Can he create those windows against not Guyana? Has he sort of shown the ability to do that? Because that's what it was. Like, he was a threat because he would cut in and sort of gain the inside edge on his defender 1V1. Has he ever really shown that ability to do that against even, like, non-Gaiana, Comcaf teams?

Can he do that against a Panama or turn it? I guess we'll find out, but do you have confidence that he'll be able to create that kind of danger? No, I do not. No. I don't either. Yeah. But against today's opponent, he did,

which is all he can do today. Yeah. So I'd give him a solid mark in today's game against Guyana. Yeah. And then the setups. Yeah, I agree. I mean, whatever. ball

The other The subs who came on were Trapped, Trapped, rolled on, and who else? Late sub was Georgie for McKinney when McKinney cramped up.

You were okay with Georgie, right? I thought Georgie, I mean, he was miles ahead of where he was in his last performance and just in the fact that his passes were going to a U.S. player and he was passing the ball forward. So he was advancing the possession

in a somewhat meaningful way, and he wasn't squandering possession. So, yes, well done, George. He has to feel much better about tonight's game than he felt about his friendly against Jamaica. Yeah, and I thought, you know, Roldon had some, like, a comical touch in our defensive third. Otherwise, he was like, okay, right?

Yeah, the touch of Bells was talking about it's just like a nothing pass into his feet from a centerback, I think. Yeah, it does result in him poking. it to somebody else. Just a 12-yard pass into his feet. His first touch somehow goes 12 yards up into the air. I think it went at least as high. One of those perfect triangles.

Yes, then he had to win a battle, and he did. Is that what led to Tyler Boyd getting on the ball and hitting his big diagonal? It might have been. It's impossible to know. There's no way. There's no way to know. There's no way to figure that out. In track?

as same as Bradley right he was never going to be tested he was never going to be put under pressure no one around who was under pressure so it was never necessary for him to be an outlet he did get into a physical battle that he lost I mean we saw that as you expect

that's your that's your midfield bells that's your soft chewy midfield yeah that's right soft sunny side up that's my it's like a it's a soft boiled air are we coming are we too negative is this too negative it's a four zero win in a meaningful game.

It is a very negative podcast about a 40-1. But it was a no-win situation. Like, it would have to be flawless. Again, it would have to look like how the U-20s looked in qualifying. It would have to look how the U.S. women look against Thailand in the World Cup, because that's the level of competition. So if it doesn't look like that, then it's like... Our senior national team is not on the level of our U-20s or our women relative to their

competition. Absolutely correct. Yeah. So that's why I feel like it's like it's like, okay, well, it wasn't great. And let's hope Altador makes things better. I think you will make things a lot better. I think that makes a big difference from the whole team. Eventually, I predict Burralter's going to give up on the Poulis at the 10 experiment. Okay, I thought you were going to say the Zardaz experiment. Do you think he'll ever give up on the Zardaz experiment? I think at some point Burralter will, decide that it's best to play players who are good at doing things that lead to goals. And I think that's going to rule out Giazzi Zardaz. Yeah, I mean, uh, you would think.

But Zardis has, I believe, started every single game of the Burrater era so far. Am I wrong about that? I think he has. The sergeant started against Jamaica. Okay. That's right. Is that the only, that might be the only exception? Mm-hmm.

Yauza. God. And again, like, I remember chuckling when Burrhalter was announced and everyone was like, be ready for Zardaz as your striker. Yeah. All right guys. Yeah. Crazy conspiracy theorists.

Like, in my head, I was picturing like, oh, imagine if Greg Burhalter were named Real Madrid as, like, their head coach, I'm like, he's not going to take Jiazzi's Arduss with him for Real Madrid. Now I'm starting to wonder if Greg Burhalter head coach at Rayle Madrid would make a move for Jawsi's office. See you later, Garrett, Bay. All right. The Giazzi's Arda's hour is wrapping up.

Yeah, we'll, we might have to be a little late this weekend with the Trinidad review, but we'll get to it. It should be more positive. Yeah. I think it'll be more positive. I think Josie will start. I think we'll have an actual focal point for the attack. Yeah.

Hopefully everybody feel more comfortable. Kenny will look even better. Lima will look even better. Boyd will leave. Should we mention that Boyd also had a bit of an injury at the end of the game? Yeah. I don't know if it came through on the broadcast, but he spent the last five, six minutes of the game as the striker.

Zardos had to rotate back into Boyd's role because Boyd was just standing 15 yards outside stretching his leg. Right. Yeah, it was like he took a shot and it... Tweaked something. Something happened, yeah. And then we asked him in the tunnel afterward if he had a pulled hamstring and he said... Very adamantly. No.

No, I didn't. Yeah. So, there we go. Yeah, it must mean that he's going to be clear. But it would be, what a turn of events would be if McKinney and Boyd both are ruled out for the next game with muscle injuries. It'd be January camp all over again. Yeah, January camp plus pool sick. Okay, light a candle for both those gentlemen.

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