Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 83: Gold Cup — USA v Trinidad review

Episode Date: June 24, 2019

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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. We're two days out from the 6-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago, so we've had some time to digest it. Greg, what's your big picture takeaway? My big picture takeaway is that we got about 55 minutes of what I would call

substandard play, followed by about 25 minutes of what I really think. we need to see more of when we're playing against teams that are outmatched. And you can guess whether it was, I mean, it was the last 25 minutes spells, the last 25 minutes of the game. Don't make me guess. Don't make me guess. But you know what I mean? Like there's a clear difference between the first 160 minutes of the Gold Cup and that last 20.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I would say even in the first 60 minutes, whatever it was, the part of the game that you didn't approve of. You could see that the movement between the attackers was a little better. We're creating more openings. Again, massive caveat. This Trinidad team is not good, right?

Right, right. No, I wouldn't disagree with that. I think we were seeing those openings created. I'd say part of what we need to see when the openings are that big is we need to see those openings exploited when we're playing the Trinidad and the Guyana's. And finally, for the last 25, we were creating. And exploiting. And that's, that has to be the bar that we're kind of evaluating by for me. Okay. All right. Well, let's go, let's go through some of the games, big moments. And then we're, the way we've organized this, organized our quote unquote analysis is, why you got to put air quotes around our analysis. I don't know. It just feels better to be self-deprecating.

The is we've got a bunch of questions. Like, I think we have six or seven questions that we have dreamed up ourselves and we are going to try to answer ourselves. So, but you have to wait until after the scoring summary for that. So we came out in the same lineup as we had against Guyana. Let's see, back to front. That's Stefan Engel, Riem at left back, Lima at right back, kind of a true right back in this game. 4-1-4-1, yeah. Back to a 4-1-4-1.

Yeah. And then Zimmerman in Long as the centerbacks, Bradley at the 6, McKenny and Pulisic ahead of him, nominally at least and then Ariola and Boyd on the left and right wings respectively and then

Giazi. Professional soccer player Giazzi Zardaz leading the line. I guess so we're going to be talking about Zardis a lot in this episode. He obviously did have a brace.

We've had some comments from listeners' emails and tweets that we pick on Zardis too much and I guess we're just going to have to, I don't know what we're going to do about that. We're probably going to be picking on him a little bit today, just judging by the expression on Greg's face. We have to say the things that we think, right? So stay tuned to see what our thoughts on Jiaziz Zaras are after his breakout performance.

Yep. Okay. So that's our lineup. Trinidad, did you see anything from them that was interesting in their setup or how they came out? Their like 4-2-3-1 was very like, it left a lot of room to exploit. It was like a back, a flat four, and then they're two clear holding midfielders, and then a lot of times,

like they weren't getting a ton of help in midfield to like cover up space other than those two holding midfielders, which is why I thought our patterns were very effective in creating openings. Yeah. It was a... We could really drag those two holding mids around, creating a ton of big passing lanes through the midfield.

Yep. Yep. And we did that. So let's start off. The first 10 minutes, I thought, especially on the rewatch, Trinidad was the stronger team. They were the team more likely to score. The first warning shot came in the third minute. A long ball from deep in their territory,

Zimmerman kind of loses the aerial duel, and Levi Garcia, the striker who, whose name will come up a few more times today, shake Zimmerman off, and then takes the ball down with a little bit of softness around him from Bradley and McKinney on winning that second ball. And so Garcia both shakes off Zimmerman

and beats Bradley and McKinney to the ball, and then he passes it back and two passes later. It's with Alvin Jones on the right wing. He was kind of the danger man, just as he was back in October of 2017. Jones whips a ball. in from the right wing and it just misses Garcia on the edge of the six. I think Zimmerman missed on it completely, very, very, especially on the second watch,

a very frightening moment, I thought. Right. It was one where Zimmerman could have put it into his own net. Is that the situation? Yep, yep. He kind of tries to like, I don't know, scissor kick it or overhead kick it and doesn't get to it. But neither is Garcia, so it goes out of the best. Yeah, Zimmerman's play there, and I think it was the correct decision.

It was essentially to just guide it. it continue it on its trajectory, but just kind of guide it a little bit away from the attacker, so that if an attacker does try to get a sliding foot on it, he plays it away. So he's trying to give up the corner there. And I think he either, he didn't get called for touching it. So it turned into a goal kick. He did miss it, yeah. So fourth minute, so then the fourth minute, we get our first chance. Bradley plays a nice switch out to Ariel on the left wing. Arieola, uh, a little one-two with Pulisic. So, Ariola's got the ball on the end line,

and then he plays across with his left foot that kind of misses everyone, goes over. But then Westa McKinney rides in on the back post, collects it, and then back heels to Tyler Boyd for a shot that probably was never going to go in, but it was a little something. It was a little something from McKinney, I would say.

Yeah, yep, that's a McKinney highlight. And again, it's going to be really key that a guy that we rely on to sort of drive the game, And I know you've already kind of posted some highlights on the Twitter of McKenny sort of bossing the midfield and really kind of dictating play when he can do those things and also make that kind of play in the inside the 18-yard box. That's like this extra value that's going to be really, really important for the United States. Yeah, I mean, he's never going to be, to use a wild example. He's never going to be Leonel Messi in the box, right? I mean, he's not.

He's not, he's never going to, he's never going to even be like in that sort of stratosphere. That's even, even that's a ridiculous. He's not David Silva. Right, right. He's not David Silva. Right. He won't be David Silva. Yeah.

But he can, but he can make a little something happening. In this case, he kind of takes this, this awkward touch around a guy or kind of over a guy as he's heading towards a back post. And then back heels it, at least to create something. Anyway, enough about that sort of half chance. Seventh minute. Another chance for Trinidad. A Pulisic giveaway in our half leads to a little chipped ball from, I don't know, about the attacking third line. It's cleared and then recovered by a Trinidadian player.

Zardis fouls him. And then Jones hits a free kick from 40 yards just over the crossbar. Two minutes later, ninth minute, another Trinidad chance. A Boyd Cross finds nobody in the box. And then Highland, one of their midfielers. his clearance beats Ream into this huge pocket of space down down our left flank. Ream is pushed up and it's 2 v2 on the counter and then comes kind of a cross field to Trinidad's left wing and then the cross is pulled back across the box for Highland who's on rushing and he has one

through Ream's legs from about 20 yards out that luckily goes right at Stefan. That was another scary moment. Yeah, and that's like our counterpress was really rough in this game. And it was like that was a situation where I got to put a lot of it on McKinney. Because again, a lot of times I feel like McKinney, if he's not immediately the player to deal with the danger, he's not alert to where the second or third chances are going to come from in a phase. So he gets kind of caught trotting back and ball watching once he's in the vicinity and doesn't realize again that it might be his job to jam up the top of the box and make sure that no ball can get sliced back across to a late arriving Trinidad attacker.

So Ream ended up being left. Ream got all the way back to protect the goal to his credit. And then when that ball gets cut across and there's no midfielder recovering to close down the shot, Ream then has to sprint from the goal line out to the shooter. And again, that's something that a center midfielder, maybe by the name of Tyler Adams, covers up for us because it just our counter press is not particularly clean. McKenney does a great job when he is the immediate player to transition. I mean, he's had a few examples in his short U.S. career of tracking 75 or 80 yards back on a dead sprint to actually go win the ball.

But when he's the secondary defender or the tertiary defender, not always very alert. Yeah, that's the thing we can probably talk about more later. but yeah you get the sense when you watch Tyler Adams or you know may he rest in peace

Jonathan Gonzalez when they're on the field they just seem like a little more locked in than Weston does on that kind of stuff and that's a weakness

in Weston McKinney's game it's not the weakness that most people talk about but it is definitely a weakness I'd say after that Trinidad chance the USA looked pretty good

for a little while Boyd had some speculative shots he took a lot of shots in this game. I don't know the stats, but at least a half dozen. And then he had a ball across to Ariola. Go ahead. Boyd kind of has a boy kind of has like a case, a bit of the Julian Greens about him, doesn't he? Where never saw a shot he didn't like. Yeah, but I think there's a huge difference in that Boyd actually creates shooting windows. And Julian Green thinks that he should just shoot

it if he can actually complete the shooting technique, regardless of where the defender is in front of him and that's a big difference. Boyd's shots always sort of seem to be crashing against the advertising boards behind the goal. Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's still progress. And I don't know, I got, I don't have a problem right now with a kid who comes in with the shot that he has, having sort of that shoot first mentality. Yeah, he had a couple shots blocked. He had a couple that went, unfortunately, right at the keeper. And then he had some that went off frame. And then he played a ball across to Areola. There was that dummy that I think it was the one where there was a dummy, the

ariola. Dummy did it to Boyd out wide and then Boyd tried to play it inside to Ariel and just keeper, just keep her at a good game for Trinidad. Philip, I think was his name, beat Aureola to it. And that happened three more times in the game. Ariel and the keeper clattering into each other right at the six and the ball not going into the net. I'll make sure that Zardaz gets his due here because it was his pass, I think, from the top of the box towards Ariola, that Aureola dummy.

So that was a Zardaz involvement in that sequence without getting too much into Zardaz criticism while praising him. I wasn't sure if he was passing to Aureola or to Boyd. If it was to Aureola, it was a little bit behind him, which is why Arial makes a decision to dummy it. I don't know. He just hit it in the general direction of where he was. two teammates were. It worked out. It worked out.

It worked out. It definitely turned a very good chance. And then things kind of quieted down. The game kind of lost some of its vigor, I would say, midway through the first half. The next big chance for the U.S. that I remember was a Zardis header back across. And this happened because Bradley carried it through the middle into space. There was nobody, nobody stepping to him. He taps it to McKinney, who hits it.

It's a nice ball at the back post for Zardis. Zardis nods it back across, and the Trinidad keeper beats Ariola to it just barely. I thought it was funny how Stu Holden, who I have a little bit of a bone to pick in this game with, as that play happens, he's like, that's really good work from Bradley to take that extra touch and draw the defense to him, which sure, sure it is.

I'm sure there's some truth to that. But he doesn't even mention that West McKinney drops a dime across the box to the back post, which is pretty much in my eyes, identical to the ball that Bradley played in the second half for our second goal, except that Nick Lima was arriving on it with the Bradley one,

and Zardis was already in the box when McKinney played it. So anyway, that's my little, let me get off my soapbox, but I thought there was a lot of Bradley praise going on in this broadcast that, I don't know, Bradley was fine. McKinney seemed to be immune from. Yeah,

McKinney wasn't getting any love from the broadcasting. I'm going back to Univision after this one. Sorry, guys. What do they have to say about McKinney? I don't know. I don't speak Spanish well enough. Tell us after the Panama game. Okay.

I run it through Google Translate. So then the 41st minute, we got our opener. This was a Pulisic set piece. He was fouled just outside the box. He was the one standing over the ball and his set piece banged off the wall to Bradley who poked it to McKinney, who took kind of a loose touch and then poked it to Poulosick, and then Poulissick takes a touch onto his right foot and lifts a ball toward the back post where Aaron Long attacks it, heads it downward, goes underneath the goalkeeper.

1-0 USA. Yeah, kind of just, I mean, as quality as Poulisks' ball was, and Aaron Long, I thought did really well to beat his man for the head. or kind of just boilerplate stuff, right? Just kind of throw a ball in the mixer and see if you can out muscle a guy to get to it. Yeah. Nothing disorganizing about that sequence. But yeah, but give Aaron Long to credit because it was.

It was a really good fight that he won to get to it first. And then a good technique to get his head down, get his whole body down, and guide it downwards onto the frame. Yeah. So the half comes 1-0 In the early going in the second half Trinidad got a chance With Levi Garcia driving at Ream

Who just kept backing away and allowed a shot from pretty close But Long was there to block it That's in the 49th minute 52nd minute the U.S. got a chance When there was a throw-in from deep Zardis nodded it down from McKin McKinney takes a good first touch Drives into space

And then plays a nasty through ball for her aureola crossed the field. Arola dragged it wide with his left foot. I can't see those through balls anymore without thinking of Alex Mendez and U-20 World Cup. Yeah, it was kind of similar, wasn't it? With his left foot. No, anytime I see that.

And then we just saw it again today in the women's game with Rosalvel cutting in and finding Rapino with the identical sequence. It was very, very similar. And then Rapino dragged hers, not wide, but short, I guess. Wide left. Yeah, hit the side net. Any thoughts on that before we kind of tick through the rest of the moments in the second half? Just another one of those McKinney examples of sort of bonus, bonus attacking verve.

I don't know what you'd even want to call it. He makes some insightful passes, incisive passes, we'll call them. That we haven't been getting, we've either always had the workhorse center mid or the Benny Fell-Hawber luxury center mid. and I feel like we're at least getting a little bit of both out of McKinney. Better both things than what we've had in the past. Yeah. It's hard to imagine, I think you said this while we were chatting. It's hard to imagine Christian Roldon making that play.

Or, I don't know, maybe anybody else in the midfield. Maybe Tyler Adams. I don't know. I don't know if Adams makes the same incisive passes that McKinney makes. I think Adams is more than capable. bossing of midfield the way McKenney does. Yeah. More than capable and more capable, probably.

Fair to say. Luckily, we don't have to choose between the two of them because our midfield will be more than one player, so we're going to be able to get both those guys on at once. That's the optimistic outlook. Next moment, 61st minute corner kick on and that space behind a corner kick that we take and that space behind Ream is exposed again. Cordell Cato, who I believe played. in the USL kind of just skips around Tim Ream and leaves Michael Bradley behind and then

zips a ball across field to Garcia Garcia probably should have scored here I'm thinking he got put off a little bit by Nick Lima sliding to cut down the angle but um the shot went wide and high and it looked like we were exposed there totally exposed I think even that's a little generous Lima did everything he could to get there I don't know how much of the goal he actually took away. Even on that, you know, from the replay behind the goal, it looks like Garcia has the whole thing to shoot at and he just, he just sort of miss hits it. It just kind of looks like Adam Bell's on the break out there.

You get those huge eyes, though. Just completely melt. Trinidad, Trinidad chance in the 63rd, two minutes later, long cross from Jones, tapped back. I forget by who saved from going out of bounds on the sideline and then tap back

on the opposite side from where the cross came from and somebody plays a quick entry pass to Kevin Molino who takes a quick turn and I think forces an excellent save from Zach Steffen the ball's curling into the far

side netting and I you know we talked about this kind of at length in the group chat Bradley does not close down very quickly. McKinney does not close down very quickly. Have I said other things that need to be said already?

McKenny from the weak side doesn't seem to be alert to it at all. And so isn't even, isn't really cutting down. And by the time the shot's taken, McKinney hasn't made it over to take away any of the goal that sort of Bradley has allowed the shooter to take. Right. It's just we don't, those are two guys you probably don't want defending right now. against a really good team, you know? In a low block, yeah, I feel, I mean, I feel like that's the case.

And in the chance right before that, Bradley and the counterpress isn't going to be the same Michael Bradley he was six years ago, shockingly. Yeah. So I remember that at this point, if it sounds like the game was pretty even based on this summary, I think it's not too unfair to say that it was. We don't have the XG stats, but up until this point, it's 1-0, and our, our goal came on a header on a set piece. But after this, the chances started coming really fast for the U.S. Morris had just come on for Boyd.

And I don't know if that caused it, but we had Pulisic for Aureola at the doorstep. Morris for McKinney to a nice outside of the football, football from Morris for McKinney right at the penalty marker, and he kind of biffed a scissor kick that would have been. But we love, we have to love that he went for scissors kick. we never got to see yeah no I love it we we never got to see the the replay at least I didn't so I don't know if he completely whiffed or he didn't miss by much I'm a I'm like a I consider myself a bit of a scissors kick expert and uh even though even though it doesn't look like he

he didn't miss that by much the technique was very good uh he was just slightly off on the timing i think he might be turned his eyes towards the goal before his foot made contact So then 66 minute Jazi's artist comes on to the scene. Nice bit of hold-up play. He kind of dribbles across the top of the box. Lays it off to Bradley at the top of the box. Why don't you take it from there? Balls at Bradley's feet.

Bradley hits a terrific ball. Another little difference between Bradley's ball and McKinney's version of it in the first half is McKinney did not have to beat a defender. He basically just had to clear all of the, traffic that was the sort of central area of the box. Bradley has to wait his pass so that it does beat the defender who's sort of dropping with Lima's run and he does.

So that defender can't cut it out. It hits Lima sort of perfectly in stride. Lima can sort of just lay down and cushion it back across the frame. And Giazzi's Ardaz has made a very good run in between some ball watching Trinidad defenders and taps home from two and a half yards. Yeah, something like that. Very similar to the chances that some of the chances that Areola had earlier in the game, just maybe a little more space to get his shot off before the goalkeeper arrived.

Yeah, Nick Lehman deserves a lot of credit too because that's a very precise. That's a difficult header, yeah. Because you have to not head it. I mean, the momentum of the ball is taking it towards the end line. So if your header keeps moving towards the end line back the other way, then the goalkeeper gets to meet you at the ball. And he kept it far away. I don't even think the goalkeeper came for it.

Did he? Came out pretty late. He did come out, but he came out late. He basically came out to cut down Zardos' angle. He wasn't coming out to try to intercept the header. So really well done from Lima and very professionally finished by professional goal scorer, Giazzi Zardos. Yep. And, of course, he scores three minutes later again.

But before that, another Alvin Jones free kill. I think Bears mentioning because he just absolutely smoked it from 40 yards. And, man, it was moving all over the place. And I think Stefan deserves a little credit for keeping that out of the net. I don't know. You tell me, does he deserve credit? It would have been a howler if he hadn't. Right.

It would have been a howler. It's just a walloped on frame where I feel like your set piece strategy is like, hit it directly at the goalkeeper's art as you can. and maybe we'll score on a rebound. Stefan, I don't know if he knew too much about where he was going to put the rebound. Eventually, just as the ball finally got to him, it was just a matter of, like, get both palms to it and go from there. And luckily, the rebound went far enough out of frame that there was no danger following. That's right.

That's right. So 69th minute after that, we get another goal from Zardis. Bradley intercepts pretty loose pass kind of a loose blooped pass from one of the Trinidad centerbacks and then he taps it to Tim Ream got to give Tim Ream a little credit here he finds a nice little solution of a pass down the sideline to Pulisic and you know under some amount of duress

and then Pulisic cuts in the defending is starting to look a little bit messy here from Trinidad but he cuts inside and then cuts it against his body to Zardis who has stopped in a little pocket of space right near the top of the box. Their backline, Trindade's backline was ragged as well, so that is part of what kept him on side.

And then he turns and strokes at far post. Nice hit, I thought, once he was in that spot. I've got no complaints about that finish. Your spot on, though, about the backline starting to look a little ragged, even on the goal prior on Zardaz's first goal, if you think about, and you've probably all seen the highlights now.

When Zardaz gets that ball from Ariola, whoever plays it to him, where he can face his man up and he starts to cut in before feeding Bradley, like he is just, I mean, there's no pressure on him. He's inside the box and the defenders are laying off of him by five, six yards. Like that's sort of what the theme turned into for these last, for the last 20 minutes of the game was even within 25, 30 yards of goal, Trinidad couldn't put pressure on the ball. Right.

And Burrhalter made a mention of how he thought the first half set them up for that because he thought they wore them down. That's definitely consistent with what sort of the level of pressure was. Because same thing here. When Poolsick, Poolsick wasn't like holding off a challenge as he was cutting in. Like the guys are, the guys even chasing him are four or five yards away. And when he slips that ball to Zardez, there's no defender within six yards of any side of him. Yeah.

I listen to the Total Soccer Show recap, and I highly recommend that because they always do an excellent job with these game reviews. They thought Zardis was smart to just stop there. Yes. And I guess I kind of agree. I think the defending was pretty bad, though. Their point was, I think it was Taylor's point was Zardis waited for, you know, as Pulis came towards the centerback who was supposed to be marking Zardis, Zardas waited until that guy had to step, and then he just sort of stopped. Had to step to Pulasik, and then Zardis stopped.

Yeah. Yeah, Zardis stopped. Let him kind of run away and create the separation himself. The weak side defender who had sort of started out on Pouls to succeed before Poulcet cut in was late to get back to try to cut Zardaz's angles off. He was grabbing a sandwich. He was grabbing a sandwich. And then the other thing, like, again, if you kind of check it in slow motion,

we've talked before about how vital it is for a back line to hold sort of a tight line especially in a situation like this, while Pool 6 cutting across the weak side defender, the defender on their left back, so our right side of the field, is actually, I think, the deepest man, which allows Zardas to be on side as he is two yards deeper than the player pressuring Pulisic, which is, you know, what allows him to turn and have that hit without being pressured. Well, 3-0 at this point, and the route is on because two minutes later, it's some nice work from Pulisic, buys himself some space after receiving a Bradley outlet pass from inside the box. And he kind of turns around, shakes off a couple guys, and plays Aureola in down the wing, who is just in acres of space. ariola zips it across for zardis who is running free in the middle of the box and

zardis rockets it off the post and then the ball's the ball spins wide to ariola who so he basically just gets a return pass from zardis off the post and and plays across right onto zardis's head and zardis yeah a great little great clippedon ball from ariola on that second one yeah definitely and zardis's header is pretty tame and uh gets parried by the goalkeeper and then I forget exactly how but somehow it ends up back in Zardis's feet again all within the span of about six seconds and he he skies it on the half volley over the goal so he was denied a hat trick by God himself in spectacular fashion yeah so to sort of like nitpick the sequence I feel like Argya's first ball into Zardas

should have been better in the sense that he should have made it easier for Zardis to score. So Ardes should probably still finish it. Being a professional soccer player. But I guess I'm saying it came in hot. So it came in hot for him. And he's got to take it first time. And so that's sort of why he misses it by eight inches, eight inches off and he would have his hat trick. The second one, though, the second ball in for Mario was pretty flawless. Yeah. It was not really holding. I don't really, you know what me?

I don't really hold these kinds of misses against players. guys sort of guys miss these a lot these aren't these aren't just there's no there's no uh none of those were absolute gimmies that you just have to bury no that makes sense he was leaning away on the header as well it was uh it was a good ball but it wasn't like he was flying in and just was able to smash it and i there was the bam bam nature of that first hit off the post it was very pleasing to the eye except for the fact that it didn't go in you know that it's fun out uh yeah yeah his art has his last attempt at that's his last attempt on the sort of triple miss was probably the worst out of the three,

like the wrong technique to choose and putting it nowhere near frame. So we'll get in as artists some more. Don't worry, everybody. We'll talk about the Jazzy's artist. Then we don't need to go into a ton of detail here, but the next three goals came in the 73rd, 78th, and 90th minutes. Pulisic got the fourth one on a Jordan Morris assist. Jordan Morris just won the ball off of poor bat bat.

off a poor pass out of the back from Trinidad, kind of dribbles in and then passes to a wide open pool. Who knows where the Trinidad defense was here? I mean, well, some credit, I mean, yeah,

at this point they've conceded. So you're not going to get guys working super hard to track back on that turnover. Zardaz did, though, make a good overlapping run on Morris as Morris was dribbling, which helped occupy defenders, uh, which kept pool sick open longer for that,

for that finish. Yeah. And then Pulisic just kind of trapped it and passed it in. 78th Morris gets another assist, a throw-in down the line. This one bears mentioning because this was Josie Altador's shining moment in the game. It's a throw-in that he tracks down in the corner. And then he just plays outside of the boot, flick back against his body into space for Morris.

And then Morris does the needful, goes to the end line, pulls it across for ariola for a tap-in. This was nice from Altador, I thought. Altador, because it's a perfect little flick to just put the ball into the path of your teammate. And that sort of like layoff that keeps your teammates in rhythm is so, so important within sort of these patterns that the U.S. are running. And that's going to, that point is going to come up again later. Yeah. Okay.

All right. Dr. Lasquez. That's a teaser. That's a teaser for later in the show. Altador, something we forgot to say is Altaire. Altador had just come on for Zardis. I don't know. I forget which minute, but somewhere between the 73rd and 78th.

And then... Well, since Altador just come in and we're talking about him, a chance that materialized that then quickly disappeared was actually a ball that Altaur is like almost first touch. I don't remember who gave it to him, but he basically collected a pass in that same place that Zardaz scored from for his third goal. It was banger, or his second goal of the game, third goal for the team. and Altador sort of squandered it. He received it wide open again, the same kind of, same space that Zardaz had on his. Yeah, it was a poor touch.

Well, his first touch was fine, and he was ready to shoot, and then he decided that the defender was overcommitted or something and tried to sort of take it past him on the dribble, and his second touch then was really heavy. Yeah, very heavy. I would say the big difference between that one and that situation in Zardis' second was that Zardis was looking at a goal with just the goalkeeper in front of him. And Altaur had us like, I don't know, four or five redshirted bodies between him and the goal, which is why he tried to, which is why I took that extra touch and why it was so heavy, I guess.

The 90th minute is the final goal of the game. It comes from Aaron Long. This was probably the prettiest sequence. Again, the caveat is Trinidad was already down five zero. They'd given up. They weren't very good to begin with. but I think Taylor from Total Soccer Show said it was 23 passes. It spanned well over a minute, and a nine of 11 players touched it.

I think only Altador and one other guy. I can't remember which. But the key moment for me comes when Ariola finds McKinney in the middle, and Long and Ariola are kind of passing back and forth with Pulisic on the left side. And then Ariola sees McKinney showing. in the middle of the field and plays it to him when it's left foot. McKinney, one touches it back to Bradley, and then Bradley finds Morris down the wing. Morris then hits it to Cannon on the overlap, and then Cannon picks out McKinney right at the penalty marker for what should

have been a goal. Well, you know, you're the wrong person to say that, too, but it was a very good chance, you know, a lot of XG in that chance, and he hits it well, but right at the keeper, it pops up into the air. Aaron Long comes running in, and as Leithel he is, you know, he's going to put that away. He chested into the net for the sixth goal. Yeah, it's pretty. It's also very much the 89th minute of a 5-0 game.

It might just throw in cold water on like a great moment for the US. Please, please don't misunderstand. I had a lot of fun in that last 25 minutes of U.S. soccer. But I think the like the telltale sign for me is when that ball finally does go wide to Jordan Morris, there are like seven U.S. players in the box. Yeah.

And part of that's because we've been. building so long that guys have just drifted forward. The fact that Aaron Long is in the box at all in that sequence is probably more telling than the other point. But it's very much like floodgates are wide open and everyone's trying to get theirs. Yeah, blood in the water, as they say. So that's it. 6-0 USA.

When we come back in a second, we're going to try to get at some of the big themes from this game. so we'll do that in a moment Okay, let's get it out of the big thing themes for this game We've organized them in the form of questions Questions that we would like to see answered By the men's national team Of the United States of America

Over the rest of the Gold Cup First and foremost, Did Jazi's artists shut everyone Especially you, Greg, up? Did he shut you up? No, he didn't. And I apologize, Bells, for the negative reviews we're getting for being overly negative. But sort of none of my criticisms of Giazzi Zardez were answered despite the fact that he made some very positive plays today.

Yeah. I sort of look at it as when you're playing opposition this week, you have to do really well just to sort of be okay. and if you think of what Giazzi Zardes has done over his 160 minutes against Guyana and Trinidad, basically the positive plays he has to show for it were 10 or 11 minutes in the second half of this Trinidad game. And it's just not sort of enough for me. I feel like the bar has to be higher than that. Yeah. I mean, what's your take?

Am I, is that too harsh, Bells? Maybe too harsh. I don't know. I mean, I didn't notice anything. super positive or super negative from him in the first half. What about, I mean, I think his defenders would say, well, what about him? You know, he's dropping into that space vacated by Christian Pulisic when Pulisic makes a run and he's open and he takes, you know, he lays it off. He did that several times.

So that's sort of the system fit, right? When people say he's a good fit for the system? Yeah. That sort of argument. So we saw that pattern a lot for the U.S. in these two games, especially against Trinidad. where we worked the ball up the left wing in clear possession, and our number 10, a lot of times it was pool sick, we'll make that diagonal run.

We saw against Guyana, that's the run that McKinney made, where we fed on the ball, and then he returned it to Ariola for the goal. That same run we were making against Trinidad, and in this game, because Trinidad were just sort of playing those two holding mids in the center of the field, that run from Pulisick would drag one of those holding mids clear out of the screen.

Yeah. So that guy would chase Pulisick for, 15 or 20 yards, which opens up a massive window into Zardez's feet. Our guys would, we were hitting, we were finding that ball, Michael Bradley actually very visibly pointing out when Tim Rie or Paul Oriola needed to be playing that ball. And so this becomes the issue. So if you say Zardaz is doing a good job checking back in there, I get that, but that is not a difficult action to rehearse or to coach that entire sequence.

So then the question is, all right, well, Zardez is the right guy to be doing it. And this is where I think the answer is absolutely not. Because everything after that sequence keys on the quality of the layoff. And what we see in that pattern that happened over and over again. And these are sort of the clips that I was kind of reviewing and searching for and finding was that the only layoff you're going to get from Giazzi Zardez when the ball goes into his feet, he's just going to hammer it into the feet of whoever he's looking at. So that's really what it is.

The ball goes into his feet and he's got Bradley behind him. The sequence is set for the ball to go back to Bradley. And then you can either find like the weak side 10 dashing into the space at Zardaz is vacated because that's his next read to run through. And if he drags a defender over, then Bradley's going to hit like Nick Lima or whoever the wide, the player on the far right wing is. and that guy will get into the sort of Pep Guardiola space where he's going to cut it back for an assist. And that's kind of what we saw with the switch to, like Lima's header that almost,

or Lima's header that produced a goal, Zardez's header that almost produced an assist to Aureola. So that's what we're looking for. But with Zardaz laying the ball off, we can't hit it because he can't hit a layoff that puts guys in rhythm. Yeah. So all of Zardes's positive plays,

and he did make some very positive plays, they all came when he was playing in like just a sea of space. Like he just was given so much space in the box. And I just don't think that's going to translate to any kind of real competition. I don't think he'll ever have the space he needs to be effective against real competition. Yeah. There are, I mean, I agree with what you're saying. And I think a lot of people probably do.

There's going to be some who say, well, you're still being too mean as artist. But I think most people generally agree. I noticed on the layoffs There was one that was behind Bradley That forced him to take a touch backwards When the I think the Boyd run was on And there was another one where Boyd didn't make the run These clips are on Twitter

Right if you you know if you go out for him Dummy runs put it out there He had definitely two of these little patterns set up Yeah And that one The one that sticks out to me the most Isardez hits behind Bradley Because if Boyd weren't on

it would have for sure been it, Bradley for sure would have found Nick Lima all alone running into the box. Yeah. Yeah. And even the one where he, where Boyd doesn't make the run and it does get to Bradley, the whole sequence is, I mean, this gets a little subjective, but the whole sequence is a little bit hot in my eyes. And it starts with the layoff. So the layoff from Zardis to Bradley is hot. The pass from Bradley into that space is hot. So in my view, even if, even if Boyd had made the run, it would have been tough for him to track it down.

You know and you know reasonable people can disagree about that kind of stuff But I guess the point is I agree that he's not elegant enough he doesn't have the touch on his passes To to to grease the wheels for everybody else to do what they want to do and that in the Josie altador Flick is is sort of the perfect counter example or the counterpoint which is When you have a forward you can you can play in off of who can hit that kind of subtle return pass then everything else just becomes so much easy Everything else can look so much more fluid. Guys can take the ball on full stride and be as dangerous as they can possibly be.

And we just have to sort of, with Zardaz in there, everyone just has to kind of tiptoe because you have no idea where that path is going to go or how hot it's going to come in. You can't just play like you're expecting it to be perfectly put in your path. Yep. It's like zigzagging through a firing range. Serpentine. Yeah. But I'm another person who who does play a nice pass like that, a pass that was that kind of the Altador pass was reminiscent of is Josh Sargent.

Remember the one against Peru where he played with the outside of his boot into the path of Kelan Acosta? Turned on his guy, played an outside of the boot past, Kellan Acosta. Real heavy touch from Kell in there. Kind of kills the play. But that was that was the kind of perfectly weighted defense unsettling ball. But we're not going to see. We're not going to see from Zardis. That said, is Zardis going to be good enough?

Mexico looks kind of less of a juggernaut than they did 48 hours ago after, you know, barely beating Martinique. Squeaking by, they squeaked by Martinique. I mean, maybe Jossi's good enough if we don't, you know, give up 44 goals against Mexico. He's not. Like, I don't think Jazi's good enough. not to exploit space in those patterns that we're doing a good job of sort of running through. The patterns are good. I don't think Giazzi is good enough to create danger on them.

And we didn't really create a ton of danger on those patterns. They looked good. You can see what we're going for. But that's not where the danger was coming from. So, no, I don't think Giazzi is good enough to execute those. I don't think that necessarily means we can't beat Mexico. We could beat Mexico starting Giazzi's Ardaz if for some reason, Josie Altador isn't fit by then.

But we will be playing suboptimal personnel for what we're trying to accomplish. Well, let's, since before we move on from Jaze, let's just note one thing that Greg Beralder said after the game. This was as reported by Jeff Carlisle. He said, quote, we work as a group, we support each other, and Jazi is a guy that you know exactly what you're going to get from him. I've said that all along. need in your squad of 23 players, you need a majority of guys that can give what you're asking of them. Jazi is a guy like that. Am I over-reading that and thinking that basically what he's saying is Josh Sargent is not a guy like that? I don't know if you can go that far. You know,

I don't think he's wrong about Jazi. I think everyone knows exactly what, I mean, I think people knew where people know where he'll be on the field. The only thing you don't know is like where the ball is going to go off of his foot and how hard it's going to go off of his foot. I don't know, which is fine. Like again, you can play around that. You just have to like be a little more cautious with your movements around him. I don't know if I'm going to take that as sort of a real subtle dig on, on sergeant. And if you are taking it on a dig, yeah, all right, but or a short go. So how would you read it then does that mean sergeant just can't learn it does it mean sergeant's kind of hearing it but freelancing and doing his own thing and going to his own spaces on the field how

would you take it if it if it is sort of a comment on zardes versus sergeant yeah some 19 and a half year old combination of the two not learning it freelancing i don't know um more as a justification for uh zardis than a dig at sergeant though i guess it's We're getting into semantics there. Getting into semantics on a speculative reading of a quote that probably doesn't, that probably doesn't pass muster at the New York Times. I'll say to do more speculation on things, when Zardez came off for Altador,

they had a real, like, Altador and Zardaz had quite the embrace before Altador stepped on, and Altador was talking in his ear, and I really hope that Altador was saying, like, F everyone who says you can't play. Like, because that's I'm sure that is what he was saying. From the team, that's absolutely what it should be. They should, everyone has Zardaz's back. You know Zardas has every single.

Well, Weston McKinney went flying into a scrum that Zardaz was sort of in the middle of. So it's everything from the team should be like having Zardaz's back, like all of that stuff. And then that's what I'm seeing. So I think from that perspective, Burrhalter has the right sort of culture built where those guys seem to have everyone's back. Yeah. And I'm happy about that. But our job is not to have everyone's back. Our job is to have the back of the crest, of the crest.

All right. Anyway, second question. Who's the most plausible replacement for Tim Ream? And sub-question, if no replacement is available on this roster, will Ream cost us the Gold Cup? Most plausible. I think you know where I stand. Fabian Johnson's the guy I want as our placeholder.

back until one of the kids comes good. There are conflicting reports, even from Greg Berlter. Burralter says Fabian, he knows Fabian's there. We can call him if we need him. There are plenty of other reports that Fabian simply isn't interested in the national team anymore. I think I'll have to even check who I've heard this from that they'd confirm Fabian would have accepted a Gold Cup roster, and they confirmed that, you know, months ago. I'd feel like that ship has sailed, Greg.

Well, now it has. I mean, if he's not in this camp, then it's pointless to call him into anything else. So Fabian was my number one. So are we taking Fabian off the table? I think we got to take him off the table. Sorry, Fabian. Sorry, Greg. So in that case, in a 4-1-4-1, the way we're running it, I don't see why you don't move Nick Lima over to left back and start Reggie Cannon or right back.

Yeah. I guess maybe you give up something in... the attack on the right side because this you know even though we're not we didn't run an inverted uh right back system against against gaiana or trinidad trinidad really that there was a symmetry to it i mean lima was far more in the attack than ream was and it and when lemo was really high up the field it did turn into a three man back of sorts right yes yeah that's that's for sure what it is it's like the 401 four one where uh we get to our attacking shape of like a three two four one by having Lima get high and McKinney would sag a little bit.

I think Berlter might even specifically talked about that for the second half, where they even emphasized that McKinney would come back a little bit to try to drag, drag some guys out. And so you end up with McKinney and Bradley as our two sort of holding midfielders and Pulisick and Tyler Boyd, who had just complete free reign to get inside while he was in. So it would be Pool Sick and Boyd as the tens and Areola and Nick Lima as the wings. Yeah. Well, I guess there's no good answer, I don't think. There's no good option on this roster or really anywhere in the universe for that spot, which is part of why I'm not, can't be too critical of Burrhalter on the Ream thing. I mean, Johnson would have been better. I agree with that. But Johnson aside, it feels like there's not a great option. I guess my thought would be Aaron Long, play Aaron Long at left back. He was getting over into that spot a little bit and looked fairly. really comfortable for five minutes or so.

And then you have Miazka and Zimmerman as your centerbacks. I feel like that might be, I mean, that would be defensively more sound. I guess the only question is would long be undone with the responsibility of distributing the ball from left back or left center back being that he's right footed and not quite as comfortable on the ball as RIM. So do you worry that Long wouldn't be able to hit the pass that Riem hit? to Christian Pulisic to key the fourth goal, right? Was it the fourth goal, third goal?

Yeah, that was the most, that was the biggest plus moment I saw from Ream on the ball. I mean, the times he was passing it to Zardis, checking back to him, like you said, there was so much of a window. You could drop a tennis court on the field in that window. And so it wasn't that difficult. But that passed to that Pusik was a little bit, there was a little bit of something there. But that's my biggest issue with Riem is that he's not some kind of a, passing savant as a defender and he hasn't been like a defending savant as a defender.

We skipped during your chances. We actually skipped the Tim Ream shot attempt on Zach Steffen that he made Zach Steffin deal with. Oh yeah. Shot attempts a little harsh, I think. All right, man, but he pinged at him from eight yards. So, like, I don't know. Tim Ream doesn't seem to be an excellent defender. So if you want a stronger defender, you can,

put Aaron Long there or you put you play Nick Beasler there Matt Beasler there I'm sorry there there are there better defenders who I don't think I don't think Rhyme's passing somehow makes up for his weak defending so any of those guys Long Beasler would be I think better options I don't think I don't think I don't think Reme is such a shutdown defender on the edge I mean he got rinsed against Guyana in the box so so if you're going to say well long just isn't good enough to defend on the edge ream isn't really either so like improve somewhere, like improve on one of those passing or defending.

But no, Ream is not, Ream is not the guy. Yeah, the only pro-Ream rationale that makes any sense to me over long would be that the distribution, which hasn't been outstanding from Ream. It's just been competent for the most part.

Let's move on to the net. Oh, the long-term, the long-term solution, I hope is Chris Gloucester. And the even longer-term solution would be Kobe Hernandez-Foster. but they are, you know, there are ways from being on the senior national team, I think. Fair enough?

Well, the worst ream does the shorter term that gets. I suppose, yeah. Hopefully Gloucester gets on the field for Hanover or PSV, wherever he ends up. I guess we'll find out sometime between now and the middle of August. Question number three, did Michael Bradley shut his critics up? And I don't know that we're like the biggest Bradley critics on this show, but are we even Michael Bradley critics? The answer to that will be no because nothing can shut Michael Bradley's critics up.

Yeah. But I guess if you're wondering, did he shut up people who have mild recent criticisms of him that don't stem from his dad being the coach through 2011 or from the failed qualifying cycle? Then I still don't think he, I still don't know the answer to that. Yeah, I don't think. did no i i i find myself being more critical of bradley because i because i felt like stew holden just couldn't stop praising him on the broadcast i shouldn't be so affected by that but it does sort of it sort of affects the way you view the game you know and and you know bradley was

bradley was getting all this praise and and then he gets like he gets praised after the game and people say well where all the bradley haters now and that just makes me think well wait a second what did he do that was so special his ball to lima was a very very very very very nice ball. No doubt about it. Right. Oh yeah. That's quality. Excellent. An excellent ball. I think I've shown. With the with the with the Trinidad caveat that he was not under any pressure when he hit that ball, right? No. No. So that that that that weighs into things. It's a great ball. But if you give, if you give a professional deep lying midfielder, uh, zero pressure to pick his pass, line it up and execute it, you should be able to execute it the same way Weston McKenney did to Zardez's head.

Right. I would say it was very similar passes. Just one was an inswinger, one was an out-swinger. I went through him, counted his long balls because people were telling me on Twitter that he had a great day passing the ball. And sort of looking at his ambitious passing attempts, clearly the ball to Lima was excellent. Outside of that, he had a good switch early for Areola, a good switch, nothing, you know, nothing for the highlight reels. two of his long two of his diagonals missed you know one was about waist high and cleared easily by trinidad the other was uh i think just cut out with a trinidadian head defender's header yep yeah and then um he had a long ball over the top that was kind of not great but boy did Tyler boy

did get to it and tapped it backward as ars i think triggering that that move with the ariola dummy so it resulted in something good it was not uh clinical ball over the top. And then he had a pass into Pulisic on the ground that was that was not weighted properly and guided Pulisic too far to the corner when there was actually quite a bit of danger on if he had weighted it well. So and then, you know, he did a lot of competent stuff in the, in the back two-thirds of the field. No doubt about it. He was, he was solid. But I mean, I just don't see, I just don't see the Bradley Vindication Tour getting much, um, getting much momentum from this game, at least not in reality, you know? I mean, I guess

I guess it did to some extent in the public consciousness, but But it comes off a strange, right? It'd be like saying it'd be like after that game being like, so where all the Walker Zimmerman haters now like Walker Zimmerman didn't do anything. Right. Right. He hung out for that game and got things like accomplished against Trinidad that need to get accomplished. But that's what I would say for Bradley. If you attempt eight diagonals against Trinidad and Tobago, a couple of them should should hit their targets. Like that's your that's your job as a deep lying midfielder. Yeah.

In the Craig Burrhalter system. Yeah, he was one for four. One for four on one, one and a half for four and a half. Yeah, there we go. So, so I don't know. He's okay.

He's the best, he's the best option at that position in this roster and, and probably the best option who's healthy in that position in the pool. Yeah, I mean, the same, I'm neutral on it. I don't, I don't really get the extreme criticisms of him, and I don't really get the Michael Bradley still one of our top three players, especially with Weston McKinney doing all of the sort of things that Weston McKinney's been doing that I think are being, as you

said, from either overlooked or he somehow has polarized opinion in some of his play of, he's not good enough. Yeah, so there's a fair number of people who think that. So Bradley, Bradley's fine. We're not, We're not dragging him, but hopefully Tyler Adams gets to be the six before too long. Question number four. Let's try to race through the rest of these. Okay. Are we comfortable? Lightning round.

Are we comfortable with the way the U.S. defended on Saturday? I'm not particularly in multiple aspects. I don't think we had to defend in a block very often, but I don't think we're great at it. And I think it's because of the fact that we have a soft center midfield from a defensive standpoint. McKenney and Bradley both. are not sort of the shutdown defenders that they need to be. We've already sort of talked about Tim Ream not being a shutdown defender. So I don't think we're great in a block.

I don't think we've been particularly well tested. But I think even more of a worry, given the level of competition we're going to be up against, is in the counterpress. And I think we've been opened up plenty of times by two very below average teams. And that's worrying for when we hit even the semi-competent, not semi-competent. That's harsh, but competent teams like Jamaica, like Costa Rica, we could be really, really undone there. Yeah, it's not been, it's not been too good defensively.

I guess I don't have too much to add to that. Question number five, did Weston McKenney shut his critics up? This is all about shutting critics up, I guess. He, there was something. That's all you can do in these games. There's been, there's been some, I think there's a segment of the, the punditry who is not a fan of Weston, you know, not a fan of his game. I'll say, I'll go a little softer and say they remain unconvinced.

That's fair. That's fair. They still haven't seen enough from him. You don't get any sense from his time at Shulka of what he's capable of because of the way Shulka are playing. So it's like, do we actually know that Weston McKinney's any good? But you and I, I think, happen to agree that he is very good. and I think it's sort of, it's not just, I don't think either of us are just like, Boondislego player, so he has to be good.

I think we both sort of picked up some subtleties and some areas of this game that we just don't see replicated by the guys he's competing with in the national team pool. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. There is a suddenness and inventiveness to his passing. I mean, he played, what, a half dozen passes that cut Trinity? that open and I don't think anybody else was even close to that. Right. Did anybody, Bradley had the one.

Certainly not. So what he does, I talk about creating to adding to the danger. Like Paul Aureola had a lot of good passes in these two games, but they were from situations where he received the ball in already really dangerous positions. Yeah. And I'm not saying this as a knock on Ario, I'm just saying, if you're a winger who's collecting the ball deep towards the end line past the 18, you're in a position. positioned to really have some dangerous passes.

McKinney is creating these from situations where it doesn't look like we're particularly dangerous and then suddenly we are. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the thing that he's special at, you know. I mean, he, it may be sort of a function of his recklessness as a passer. You know, he's willing to take, he's willing to take chances.

And sometimes those don't pay off. I mean, that clip I put on Twitter earlier today that you cut the other day of McKinney kind of bossing his way through the midfield. There's a point where he passes it to Tyler Boyd. Do you know what I'm talking about? He gets the return pass from Lima in the middle of the field. Then he one touches it to Boyd. It's kind of a no look, one touch pass.

Where if Boyd had decided to make a run in behind, McKinney wouldn't have seen it, you know? He didn't look. So then it's like it would have been a giveaway going the other way. Maybe that was a pattern of play. I'm just saying like McKinney does. have these moments of sloppiness and I think they may be sort of part of part and parcel of the same thing his inventiveness and his sloppiness. I don't know. I'd be okay with that, but if we ever want to get to the point where we are playing nice fluid soccer of the kind that we saw in that nine second

clip that you boasted, we're going to have to be trusting that all 11 guys are sort of reading the same page in the same book and that McKinney can hit that pass first time without confirming that Tyler Boyd's coming to that space, which sort of unrelated to all of what we're talking about for McKinney. But I just, I don't see how you can look at the fact that he can be sort of the engine room and have hit six of the most incisive passes of anybody in the American shirt and still have doubts about whether or not he really belongs in the starting 11.

Yeah. And to be fair, I don't know that anybody was saying that after that game. So, I don't know. Just as with Bradley, probably his critics are not shut up. I think, as you pointed out earlier, McKinney's defending has to be more,

he has to be a little more alert to danger. And he does have, he did have three, four moments of messiness that, you know, I think they really stick out in the viewer's mind. You watch the game and you see him give it away in a clumsy fashion, that that sticks out like a sore thumb. And so maybe he can clean that up too.

But the inventiveness, particularly in the second half, He was getting on the ball repeatedly. I think Matt Doyle made the point that he was dropping deeper. Berhalter made the point in the press conference that he was dropping deeper in the second half. He saw a ton of the ball, and it was almost all good stuff that he was doing. What of Josie Altador? He's back.

What do you get? 15 minutes? Something like that. All right. He looked rusty, I thought. Yeah. His fantastic flick touch aside, some of his other holdup play didn't come on. And for someone who had been watching, like, with a close thigh on Zardaz's holdup play and how sort of rough around the edges it is, I was like, oh, man, that was not, that was not any better from Josie.

Yeah. But what is, I mean, it's, it's his first game, so he hasn't played in three weeks. I don't know when his last appearance for Toronto was. He played for, he played against Venezuela for a little while and looked pretty good, I thought. All right. Okay. You don't have to, you don't have to adjust all your numbers for that. But it was kind of like the Aaron Long start against Venezuela, where Aaron Long looked really rough in that game and has since played his way back into rhythm and looks really good.

I think no matter what, Altaur was going to look bad his first 20 minutes back. Okay. All right. So I'm hoping that's just the price of getting him back to game speed and sharpness. And if not, I'll be quick to point out that maybe Giazzi Zardez is 1B rather than. rather than 5A on the depth chart. Talking depth chart. Right, right, right, right.

Question number seven, are Ariola and Morris actually good? It's hard to tell, right? What do you think in here? They both have looked very good in their minutes. Yeah. No, I mean, they're not bad. I mean, Ariel is definitely not bad. He's a useful player.

I think you've used the term, you've used a phrase, if he's our fifth best attacker on the field, then we're doing fine. And I think that's a useful way to look at it. He's not clinical, but he has been dangerous in these two games. He wants to just compliment people. He wants to just sort of be one of the cogs in the machine. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, he wants to keep things just moving to players around him who are very good.

And that's the same thing he does at DC United. like just keep keep feeding the ball to Wayne Rooney and you're doing you're doing something right slash Jossi's artist slash Luciano Acosta Yes all in the same tier of of player right there Yeah I I'm less convinced of Morris

Although he did have the two assists He certainly made an impact And looked the part I just want to see him against You know Francisco Calvo Or who's the left back for Mexico right now Jesus Gallardo

yeah I just want to I just gonna withhold judgment I think yep same boat for me but that's they did what they needed to do against the weak teams which was you need to look a lot better than your competition

when you're playing weak teams and they both did there was a there was a shot from Ariel off the crossbar that I really liked late in the second half another McKinney through ball with his left foot, put Ariole in, and then he cut in on his right and then slammed it off the crossbar.

That would have been a really nice goal. It's a nice play. All right. Number eight, last question of the day, and then we're out of here. Does Pulisic work as the 10? After all, we've been, we've been, Pulisic is a winger, partisans for years, for decades. It's going to be one, it's going to be like a Bradley Roarshot question where, like, I think the way that Burralter's been playing it,

like everyone gets to be vindicated because we can watch it and say, yeah, but all the good things he's doing are when he goes wide. And everyone who likes him as a 10 can be like, yeah, but if you start him as a 10 and give him that freedom to go wide, you get the best of both.

So we still don't know because we haven't done it against good teams. But the interaction between Pulisicic and Ariel, I think undoubtedly for these last 90 minutes was positive. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think he did do most of his damage from the wing,

not to just fall right into that trap, but, um, and, and I don't know, it's hard to even say, it's hard to even call what he's doing right now, a 10,

you know, it's not, it's not really like what a classic 10 does, come in and get on the ball and then create for everybody else. He's more just move, he's moving out of the space. He's, uh,

he's creating this little 2V1 with ariola on the wing. Right. He functions very much like a pinched-in winger who just starts out pinched-in and then moves out wide as the game dictates. So in that sense, I do think that that's a, that's got to be a, so far at least, I think a small victory for Greg Berhalter and his experiments. And I think he probably is reading it as positive returns on the experiment.

Yeah. So what kind of player, go ahead. I was going to kind of get into, I think, what you're about to get into. Another big part of it is that the backup for that position right now is a very unproven Georgie Mahalovich. So if you're going to be putting Georgie Mahalovich in the game at the expense of Polariola, if you move Pulisickout Y, you have even less incentive to change up. Yeah, it's hard to know because I don't have any heat maps or passing maps. that they're not on the MLS match center website for this gold cup which is a source of endless frustration to me but because you have to actually search through to see how many parent crosses

michael bradley right right exactly and i it does it did seem like ariola and pulisic were completely interchangeable there was no there was no point at which one was more out wide than the other and so ariola was coming into that central space and seemed to look pretty comfortable there. Sometimes you're just coming back to the ball in the middle of the field. I don't know. It's a, it's an interesting thing. It's like a whole, it's a whole different kind of paradigm than just like a classic 10, classic winger sort of situation. Oh yeah. And I wonder. Related to that is, now you give your wonder first. Oh, well, I would, so I sort of wonder, like, what kind of player do you need to have to compliment Poulosick in that role?

Because clearly the system is built for Pula sick, right? It's not built for Ariola. So, like, I think of the future, like Ulyanas. Can Uleana's do what Paul Ariola is doing as a left winger? Or Tim way, I think Tim way I can. Yep, Tim way I could do that. Dwayne Holmes could probably do it. The guy plays winger and attacking mid and holding mid and right back for his club. So I don't think he would have a problem with sort of fluid interchange there.

What were you wondering? I was just going to make the point that they were kind of interchangeable with what they're doing, but Pulisic would look the worst when he had to do the job of being a center midfielder coming back to get the ball. Yeah. So, I mean, so it was just one of those things where if he's going to be spending time in that central role, part of his job is going to be every once in a while coming back to help out Michael Bradley and West McKenney or providing a third outlet for the defenders when they're under pressure in midfield. And when he would have to receive it with somebody sort of clinging to his back in that situation,

he was inconsistent. Yeah, right. Well, I guess I'll close from my perspective on this thought. It's nice to see that interchange on the wings, on both sides, really. Somebody on Twitter pointed out that Wes McKinney was kind of in a triangle with with Boyd and Zardis, you know, kind of hanging out in the half space at the corner of the box on the other side. And, you know, he did a lot of good things from that spot too. The thing is, if we can't defend against a good team, I don't know how long we can keep up this system.

I mean, that's overstating it. But, you know, if we can't defend as a team against a good team like Mexico or Costa Rica or even Jamaica, like how long can we keep doing this same stuff to create these overloads on either side? I don't know. I don't have the answer to the question, but it's all sort of like the dominoes. The dominoes are all stacked up together. It all kind of fits together.

And if you can't defend, can you do the things you want to do in the attack? Right. And I think for now everyone's answer is we have to just wait until we have Tyler. Adams to know yeah yeah and that's a good point and that that goes back to if that's the case then no you can't because if it all relies on Tyler Adams and you're going to build everything around literally everything around him where it all falls apart if he's not there then no that doesn't work because you can't count on him always being there in fact you you obviously we know the opposite is true he won't always be available and we need something we're

going to have to have something else be our system. Yeah. Okay. There we go. So that's what I'm ending on. No, that's a good thing to end on. Because that's kind of what it comes down to. It is a lot of it is built around Adams.

And as we all know, he's not there. And that's having an effect on the defense. Hopefully we can, hopefully we can tighten it up a little bit. It's good, though. It's good to see what it will look like in the knockouts. I'm assuming we get, I'm just going to assume we're going to get runner up. I know I'm getting ahead of myself.

Runner up from Group C. So who's that going to be? That's still wide open. That could be Curacao. I don't know. I know Panama. Panama beat Guyana 4 to 2. So we need to draw.

We just need to draw. But I guess what I'm saying is I think regardless, it's going to be a much bigger test than the first two games. And so I guess what I'm saying is we're going to be looking at three, if we get to the final, we're looking at three tougher opponents to give our sort of defensive makeup real tests. And that's going to be excellent data. And I'm hoping we get all three games and we don't get, we don't find that. We don't fail that test so early that we're eliminated before we can get to the final. Right.

Right. Okay. Well, we're not going to talk too much about Panama. We'll just talk about that game afterwards. And you're headed to France, right? Yeah, I'm headed to Paris for this record heat wave. Game on Friday. How do you feel about the ladies?

That wasn't a very great performance today, was it? It was not. It was one of those sort of, it's similar to the U-20s where you wonder how much the personnel decisions factored into it, like were the players put in a good position to succeed, and they're going to be questioned. about that. Fewer questions than if they had lost.

If they had lost, I think the questions would have been a lot louder. Yeah, it was a pretty workman-like performance from the women. I won't pretend. I won't pretend to know more than I do here. Greg, thanks for this. Thanks, thanks everybody for listening. Safe travels to you. All right.

See you.