Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 85: Gold Cup — USA v Curaçao

Episode Date: July 1, 2019

The USA faced a composed, savvy Curaçao side in the quarterfinals of the Gold Cup. We take a look at the game while airplanes fly overhead and children shout in the background. It’s a busy week at Scuffed HQ. Apologies. 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. Another 1-0 win at the Gold Cup for the U.S. men's national team against Kurosau. Not much celebration across the fruited plain, however. Greg, how are you doing? I'm good, bells.

I'm glad to be back. Yeah, fresh back from France. We're going to get into that a little bit later. You witnessed the most important soccer game in American soccer. since when for a long time? Well, yeah, since a week ago from their round of 16 game.

Yeah, but this was bigger than that. This was bigger. This was much bigger, and tomorrow bigger still. Yeah. Well, we will get into that a little bit because it's awesome that you were there. Must have been an incredible experience. Meanwhile, we should talk about this

this niggling gold cup victory. We've survived and advanced, is what I've seen people say a lot. Yeah, I haven't seen that a lot, but I guess it's something that you could say. It's a combination of words that would work in this case. Do you want to give some big picture thoughts, or should we just jump right into the action? Let's jump right in the action and then big picture it after some of your notes. You always have the best notes.

I'm always reminded of sequences and like, oh, that's correct. Yeah, I did some notes last night. I didn't get to watch on time, which is, which is always an interesting experience because you see the reaction on Twitter and in all the group chats that I'm in, and then you get to watch the game later. It's never as bad as it seems. Is that your experience, too?

Yes, that's usually correct, but it's only because as you're watching, you're going, I mean, it's just soccer. Like the world isn't actually a flame, at least in the context of a soccer game. The world may well be a flame. Yeah. The world's on its way to being aflame.

Right, but it's not because of, it's not because of Paul Ariola. Yeah, it's not Paul's fault. Okay, so the lineups, let's get into those real quick. The U.S. went back to its lineup of the first two games of the group stage, right? Zach Stephan and goal. Nick Lima, Walker Zimmerman, Aaron Long, and Tim Riem across the back. Bradley at the 6th, Pulisick and McKinney at the, whatever you call it, Tyler Boyd and Areola on the right and left wings

and Jazi's artists up top as the number nine. I'm not going to pronounce these names all correctly, but here's what Curacao had. Goree at left wing, Arias at striker Napuma Cano at right wing, and then Hui, Bakuna and Sharmine Martina, Bakuna and Sharmine Martina were names that came up a lot in this game in the midfield, and then a back line from left to right of Stati, Lockman, Cucco Martina, and Gari, who had that screamer to get them

out of the group, that stoppage stym screamer. And then Room, Eloy Room, was the goalkeeper. And he was pretty good. It's a pretty good goalkeeper. So the U.S. came out in there sort of 442 defensively and what everybody's calling a 3-2-2-3 in attack. Can you explain that to me? because it's not really like two

and then two in front of those two and then three, right? Right. And TSS, I think, I've done a great job of kind of illustrating this. It's basically a clear back three that everyone can kind of visualize.

And then it's, you always have two players high and wide. And depending on the formation or the starting shape, those could come from different places. These days now, now that we've sort of abandoned the inverted fullback role,

those wide players tend to be Paul Ariola as like a starting traditional left winger and then Nick Lima getting up the right side. So our right back will get high and become one of those high advanced wingers in our 3-2-2-3. And our left back will settle in and be one of the centerbacks in the deep three. And then it's Bradley who sort of stays in his holding mid-roll. McKenney will often drop in with him to make up that two. And then it's Christian Pulisick and Tom. Tyler Boyd coming inside to make up sort of the advanced line of two. Okay. That's the general shape. But then obviously within that, there's sort of flexibility and freedom and designed patterns to shift around and drag defenders, force them to make decisions. Yeah. Well, the first half wasn't so bad, at least to my eyes.

It was, of course, we got the goal in the 25th minute. But even before that, we had some real pretty good chances. First minute, in the very first minute, Pulisic makes a run. from about midfield beats a couple guys, and in my opinion, makes a poor decision to shoot when he has Tyler Boyd lurking out wide. It was, Boyd was in space.

Maybe he doesn't score there, you never know, but he's open. It looked like he had a pretty good angle to shoot from, and he's totally unmarked. Pulisic shot also wasn't so bad. He dragged it just wide to the left. But immediately we're creating chances. Creating chances.

I'd say you're definitely, I don't think you're wrong that Poole-Sick should not have shot. I think that's like objectively the case. I'm actually going to disagree with you and say he should have found Giazzi-Zardez there. Based on the-pass. Yeah, based on the body language of the defender on that side who was trying to cut off Pulsick, he gives it to Zardez, and that is a Giazzi-Zardez trademark tap-in from eight yards away. And I was actually really disappointed that he didn't find that pass. And the fact that he then didn't find the Tyler Boyd pass means,

I mean, that really hurts the vision argument for Christian Pulisik as a 10. Because if he just misses one guy on one side, fine. But the fact that he misses both the open players and takes a shot means that he's probably just not looking. Or if he did look, he saw something and still made the wrong decision. I mean, for me, that's like an easy one to not shoot.

You have to slip somebody in there for the much better shooting opportunity. Yeah. It was, and he well could have scored anyway. I mean, I think he was like a foot wide of the left post. In any case, I thought we looked pretty sharp in those opening minutes that included. The fourth minute, it was long played a ball to McKenny, and then McKinney and Polisick had a nice little one-two in the middle of the field that sort of went through Zardis.

I can't remember if Zardis touched it or not, but it gets, somebody dummies it to Ariola wide. and then Ariola drags it across for Pulisic, and Pulisic does well to reach behind him and, you know, kind of flick it on frame. Flick's not the right word, but he scuffed it on frame, an intentional scuff,

and draws an excellent save from the keeper who gets a hand up, kind of changes where his body is going, and then gets his hand up and stops it. So the details on this one, I think are really cool because Zardaz once again, and it's going to sound like I'm hammering on him, but it's not my fault. G.B. Burhalter keeps picking him. I've got to talk about what I'm seeing. Zardaz once again hits the pass that ends up going out to Ariola, but it wasn't hit to Ariola. He was trying to hit Poulosick and just played it so far behind Poulosick that Poolec couldn't even

adjust his body to get it, had to just run away from it. Gets to Ariola. Ariola then hits the pass. I think is in the only place he could really hit that pass. If he put it between the defender and the goalkeeper, I think there was no... The goalkeeper claims it. Yeah. Yeah. So I think he put it where he had to.

And then Poulsick reaches back. And it's not that he just had to reach back to get it. He actually managed to play this ball off of his own knee. So he reached back with his foot and clipped it. And then it went and then it hits his knee on its way out. I did not notice that. Yeah. And is drifting up, which makes the save even more impressive because that goalkeeper is going to immediately react with his body and, like, throw his hands at where the ball.

As soon as he sees that ball come off Pulisik's feet, he's throwing his hands and body towards that spot. And the deflection isn't a big one, but the keeper would then have to adjust even more after he'd already started moving his body to get his hand to the deflection, to the self-deflection from Pulisix. So one of the better saves I've seen, like, really cool save. Yeah. I should just make a programming note here, which is that I'm taking the week off because I have my entire immediate family visiting for. my parents' 40th wedding anniversary. So that's why I'm recording in my garage right now, which is why you can hear airplanes going over every few minutes.

So just bear with us on that. And also as a result of that family gathering, this will be a somewhat abbreviated podcast. We will be back to full strength next week. Actually, we should be back to full strength with hopefully the Gold Cup championship game. In any case, let's keep moving. All right. Great save. Great save from a room. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, the next 15 minutes, next 20 minutes, that was both, both of those chances were in the first five minutes. The next 20 minutes, not too much to speak of. I thought McKinney did some nice stuff in that stretch.

I thought Boyd started the game very badly and was continually giving the ball away when he didn't need to. There goes another airplane. That's everybody. It's everybody, it's everybody, it's everybody, it's everybody, Come into the Minnesota United headquarters to take a look at all the players who won 7-1 yesterday, or two days ago. The goal comes in the 25th minute, and this is Poolecic to McKinney. Bradley plays a pass to – so Bradley gets it from Stefan, right? Stefan just rolls it to Bradley, and then Bradley plays right up the gut to – I could be wrong about that. Anyway, Bradley plays it to Zardis in the middle of the field. Zardis is checking way deep.

Zardis just taps it back to one of the centerbacks, which was kind of what he did all game. He never played to somebody closer. He always made the safe pass to the deeper teammate. And then Long plays it to Ream. And here's a nice example of the Ariala Poulosik interchange. Aureola is tucked wide, and then Poulosick makes a run into the corner.

And Ream, I think, plays a pretty nice pass into Poulisic's path. Pulisic collects it in the corner. and he does a stepover or something, gives himself a window to play across, and then plays a lovely ball, a lovely, lovely ball at the backpost for... Really similar ball that he played to Aaron Long to get his assist in the Trinidad game in the first half,

where he finds a gap where the defenders have sort of shifted towards the ball side, and so there's a space behind the weak side defenders to put it. And, you know, when you've got a West McKinney or in the Trinidad game in Aaron Long, you put it there and you trust the guy to go get it. It's basically like an end zone fade where you've got the better wide receiver. Yeah, and there are a few better wide receivers than Weston McKinney on the U.S.

Men's National team. He's good in the air. And this was child's play for him. He just nodded it in from, what, three yards out? Yeah, easy peasy. So that's one zero. I almost all the credit goes to Poole's sick because of the ball. If McKinney doesn't put that away, then that's on him.

So 1-0, and I would say the next big chance came in the 36th minute, 10 minutes later. Boyd plays to Ream, and then Ream to Poulisic, to Ream to Boyd, to Aureolec. To Ream, to Boyd, to Ariola, to Boyd. And so Boyd's kind of moving all over the field. I think Boyd sort of came back to the ball. and then kind of cut a crossfield, played it to Ream, and then there's this, he finds himself on the left side of the pitch, and there's this interchange between Ream, Pulisic, Reim, Boyd, Ariola,

and then back to Boyd in the corner, he cuts it back to Pulisic, and then Pulisic lays it off for Bradley, who's arriving late, and Bradley takes a left-footed shot that goes wide. Would really love for him to put that on frame, but still something encouraging about that team move. I would say. Right.

The buildup there really clean, really good, the kind of interchange that we're hoping to see a lot of with what I would consider end product, which was we set a guy up for the final touch, which was a shot towards target. Now, we're skipping a lot of stuff from Curisal,

but I think in the first half, it was clearly we were the dominant side. And I think I saw Paul Carr put the XG out there and even throughout the game, even though a lot of people were disappointed, with this performance, including me. It wasn't that. It wasn't great.

We still won the XG battle, I think, 1.86 to 0.6. Kyrsau didn't create a lot of big chances. I would say the next, the last three, the last two chances I'll mention in this game were Zardis in the 79th minute. Pulisic does well to spring Ariola down the left wing, and it's essentially a 2v1. Zardis streaming into the box unmarked

while Ariola is drivel down the left wing. Arila, as he has done several times in this tournament, plays a pretty good ball across for Zardis, and Zardis opens his hips up and just hits it over, hits it over the crossbar. Not an easy, not an easy chance, but it's one he's got to put on frame if he's going to be a starting striker for a national team. It's one he's got to put on frame, and almost you have to say he has to finish it, if he's going to be a starting striker for the national team, who is weak and so much, who's limited in so many other areas. Like if his whole reason for inclusion is that when you get in the chance he's going to finish it,

then he has to finish it. Who is saying that that's his reason for inclusion? I feel like the rub on or the rub is, okay, yeah, he can't really combine that well, but he's always in the right place to finish. So yeah, I guess even that doesn't technically say he will finish. He was in the right place. He was in the right place to finish. Yeah.

Yeah, too bad. And then the biggest chance of the game came from for Curia, came from Bacuna, and we're skipping some other sort of somewhat chances. Half chances, maybe harsh. They're speculative. Yeah, a bunch of speculative chances from Curacao, almost identical, usually from like deep. A lot of times from a slight angle or almost what you could call it a severe angle, and Bacuna's was no different where he ends up with the ball at the top of the box.

Defended, I should say, Michael Bradley is defending him, but he was able to create a pretty big shooting window from that distance. And Zach Stephan had forced Zach Stephan to make a pretty good safe. Yeah. High to his right. Yeah. It would have been, it would have been a Golazzo if he had, if it had gone in. It would have, it would have had to have been two or three yards further to the left and nestle into the top left corner for it to beat Stefan. Right.

We saw it against Columbia. When we played Columbia. That's right. Same, same spot on the field too. Same spot on the field. And like, it has to have. have that curl to it almost. It's going to be really tough to just hit a straight cannon past Zach Stephan.

So, yes, it drew a good save, and that's, they had a lot of look, those similar kinds of looks. That one actually drew the quality save. So, so, okay, why is everybody so mad? So we ended up winning the game one zero. Why is everybody so mad? It's, we, we won the XG battle. We curse, curse out is a better team than I think a lot of people realized. What's the problem here?

So the problem for me is that we were really inefficient. In my mind, we were inefficient both in attack and defense. I feel like our defense set us up to be inefficient over the course of the entire game. And what I kind of mean by that is we sat back in our 4-4-2 and Carousal were very content to just sort of knock the ball around very patiently. and so what ended up happening is I was killing off a healthy portion of the game just by virtue of like their simple passing and by shortening the game

they're cutting down on our opportunities to exploit the advantage of being the better team so I felt like overall what our strategy what our tactics ended up amounting to was helping out like giving an underdog their best possible chance to get a result. And for me, that's bad strategy.

Like, you need to maximize your advantage. And I don't think that our tactics set us up to do that. So what's your... From a really big picture view of literally, like, clock usage. You know, if we're going to disorganize the opponent with the ball, we have to have the ball to be able to do that. And by conceding the ball to Curacao, we just let them bleed the clock down. And you can say, well, we were winning one zero.

But that's, that's like end game stuff. That's when you get into the final few minutes where you say, okay, now if they want to just sit back there, with four minutes left on the clock fine. But before you get to the end game, like you need to exploit your advantage to create the biggest goal difference that you possibly can.

Yeah. So you would have liked to see a better press? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Some way of actually like trying to take the ball away from them. Yeah. Like, so that we can do what we are supposed to be trying to do as the team under Greg Burhalter,

which is drag Kirao out of position with our passing and then exploit those openings to create chances. Okay, well, I'm kind of going out of order in our hastily constructed notes here, but our friend Matt Hartman, who's been on the podcast before, he put it, he said he was not happy about the game. I think he was even less happy than we were, probably. He diagnosed three problems. Number one, a half-hearted press that never adapted after it clearly didn't work.

Number two, Zardis at Stryker. and number three, a two-man midfield that doesn't have the legs to defend all that space by themselves. He's been a, he's a, he provides a healthy level of criticism for Weston McKinney, I think. And Michael Bradley, why don't we work backwards? What do you think about the third one? What, what's going on in the midfield? Is it true that we don't, that Bradley and McKinney don't have the legs to defend all that space by themselves? What can be done about it?

for Bradley McKenny, I don't think anything besides adding a third midfielder. I think if we're going to defend in a 4-4-2 with just sort of those two as holding mids, I don't think there's a team in Concaf even that we will be able to sort of just dictate the tempo. The issue with the legs for me, and I'm going to kind of maybe stretch a little bit on his meaning here, but the issue with the legs for me is that those two guys are both not necessarily like quick. I think that's definitely fair to say about Michael Bradley at age 44. And I think it's somewhat fair to say about Weston McKinney, even at age 20, which is that, and we saw it on that attempt that Bakuna had at the end. When he gets it, Michael Bradley gets into his defensive posture that everyone sort of criticizes him for and breaks him down.

And Michael Bradley five years ago can get into that posture and even like deny a shot. So he can get into that. He can shepherd the guy so that the guy can't do anything dangerous and has to play like a neutral or negative. path. Michael Bradley in 2019 can't do that. So Bakuna at worst is going to be able to get a shot off from 22 yards out. And that's what he gets.

He gets a very open look where he has the whole goal to shoot at, despite the angle. And if he hits a Galazzo, then we're tied with Curacao. We're tied with Curacao in the 90th minute. So that's where I kind of think that they don't have the legs. They can't actually control that, whereas maybe there are some other midfielder's in the

pool at least who could. Yeah. And we're always talking, we're always talking about Tyler Adams. Yeah, I mean, Tyler Adams is an obvious solution here. So then if Tyler Adams comes into the lineup, who you drop, who you drop? You drop, you drop Michael Bradley. Yeah. Why?

Why Bradley and not McKinney? Bradley's so good at playing diagonal passes, Velasquez. I get that. I don't think he was that effective today. I thought they were both fairly ineffective yesterday, I should say. but some of it I'm going to agree I'm going to come around later and make some excuses for him later in the show but they weren't they weren't really stretching the field in fact if they if anyone was I think it was actually McKinney who was hitting some of those diagonal balls

to Paul Ariola they'd like bounce to him on the short hop but they got to him and and you know we've gone on at length in the past Gold Cup games that when we do have a little bit of creativity for it like it's often came from Weston McKinney that was I mean even though a lot of people thought he had a horrible game and he had some really really sloppy moments, no doubt. It was true in this game too. He was the one advancing possession from back to front in meaningful ways, probably more than anybody else except Poulisic. And Poulissick did it on the dribble. Right.

So McKinney adds that, and I think that's what we need and we need that. I've said it a bunch of times out of Paul Ariola type, like if he's your fifth best attacker, where then he's okay there. It's the same for Weston McKinney if he's like your fourth best. If he can be your engine and not be relied on to be the defensive stopper, and he's also not relied on to be the, you know, the overall thrust of the attack, then he's actually going to give you a lot in both of those, both defensive and offensive areas sort of as your secondary.

Does that make sense? Yeah, totally makes sense. And also he recovers the ball. He had a lot of nice recoveries in this game. He carried the ball forward. I spotlighted on Twitter a moment where Tyler Boyd received the ball from McKinney at the right corner of Curacao's box. And then elects to not play the simple pass to Christian Pulisic at the top of the box.

Pulisic is standing there with Aureola wide left and Zarath is occupying the centerback. So it's basically a 3v2 and Boyd doesn't pass it to Pulisic. instead dribbles into pressure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I was going to say, you can add. Yeah, I was going to say, McKinney is the one who created that whole situation by

by receiving the ball in our half and then dribbling past a guy and then finding a simple pass to Boyd in space. He created a moment of danger. Simple pass. Yeah, not even just a simple pass. He was actually driving the defense backwards and he cut sort of that disguised pass that he does while driving almost, like he clips a square pass, right, while the defenders are all dropping?

Yep, yep. Yeah. Yeah, so McKinney can do that. I think McKenny also, I'm going to get into some of my excuses for McKinney and Bradley here. I think McKinney could have been more imposing defensively, but I have to believe he was told to not commit any of his silly McKinney fouls to pick up a yellow card that would leave him suspended for the Jamaica semifinal. Yeah, and mission accomplished on that front.

So there's a little silver lining there that he's totally available for the semifinals. Let's work back. You have some other excuses for Bradley and McKinney, too, but maybe we'll get into those on this second point, which is Zardis at Stryker, which, I mean, we, it's no secret that we like Weston McKinney on this podcast, and it's no secret that we wish Josh Sargent were here instead of Jawsie Zardis.

But what was the problem? Were there any new problems with Zardis today? I mean, we don't want to be, let me just say, we don't want to be smart-asses about it, but the fact is he's the national team striker. He started, what, four out of five games at the Gold Cup? Yeah, and I think every game but one for in the, but two now, with Josie Altador started the last game, and then Josh Sargent started the friendly against Jamaica. But otherwise, yes, Ardaz has started every game of the Burrhalter area, and they're now sort of these whispers, these worried whispers that Berlter just simply rates Ardaz ahead of Josie Altador.

He's our number one striker overall. Let's return to that point. I don't know. I also want to kind of give an apology because I was a bit dickish. I got called out by somebody for being for my repeated references to Jazi Zardez as professional soccer player, Jazi Zardez. And that's true. That's that's that's the sarcastic sort of me being a dick. Jaziz Ardez is a professional soccer player. I very much don't believe he's capable for the U.S. national team once we find ourselves in competitive games. And at least in this system, that's weird to me that.

everyone's like, yeah, but he fits the system. Because what we watch in this Burr-Halter soccer system is all this movement that's supposed to be coordinated. And then the ball finds our target forward's feet and you see like the opportunities we've created and we see the defense actually being disorganized. But no defense is going to stay disorganized for long. Even average teams will sort of snap back into formation and close windows that were open. And so everything sort of has to be happening in rhythm and in sync.

And the ball goes into Zardais and we lose all of that rhythm almost instantly. Almost every time. Almost every time, too. Yeah, it's real, it's real, like, obvious. It just sticks out like a sore thumb. And if you're not really like watching for it, it might not stick out because he's completing passes in these situations. Like he doesn't turn the ball over. So you're like, oh, that's not bad.

That's good hold-up play. But what's happened is we've actually, with our movement, we created this little tactical window. and then because of the only pass he can complete is like a Giazzi Zardaz pass, we lose it again and we then have to start over. And that kind of factors into my inefficiency attitude towards the team. We're very inefficient even with the windows we're able to create. So as an example, Kurosau was kind of pressing our front, our back three with a front three. I don't know if you were kind of watched.

So it was difficult. And so what was kind of starting to happen was Bradley would come back and be a fourth. and he would actually start picking the ball up, even behind the line of confrontation. So we'd have our back three and Bradley all behind their three. Okay. And that's a tough, that's like a tough way to build from. We're using four players just to beat the first line of confrontation. And so the way we were starting to sort of defeat that was Bradley would kind of check back,

and instead of finding Bradley, we'd actually skip him and play a ball into Zardaz who was checking back. And that's the right play. Zardaz coming back is the right play. So good on him. The ball into him is sort of a line-breaking pass from a Zimmerman or a Long or Tim Ream. So good for them. They're all doing the right things. And then what happens is you have Bradley or McKinney would sort of race onto Zardez.

And so they would then run beyond the Carousel's line of confrontation. And if Zardes can set the ball for that player for Bradley or McKinney, we now have them in space facing the goal, essentially running free or we've essentially created a numerical advantage. on their first line. Which is McKinney's sweet spot. I don't know that Bradley seems decreasingly comfortable in that situation, but at least it's, he's also a professional soccer player, so he can do that too. That's where, see, I'm going to disagree with you there and push back and say that is, for me, that's one of Bradley's strengths, is his reading of the game.

I think he reads the game very quickly. And we have some passes that are evidence of that. You're going to have to help me remember which game it was, but he had, it was the game where he dropped one dime to Ariola, that Ariola smashed over, like, he hit a 50-yard diagonal to Ariola in the box. I think it was Ariola. And in the same game, we'd had a pattern down the right side line

that somebody laid it back to Bradley on a one-touch set, and he fizzed, like, he curled a ball into the channel down the right side for something to run on to. So he had those two dimes. Yeah, and it was a game where I was critical of him for other reasons, but it was like, yeah, but he did have those two dimes. Like, that's where he excels, I think, is

when you can set the ball to him, in stride when he's facing upfield. He has a good, I think he carries a decent map of the field when he's already facing forward. So he has a good like four-dimensional map where he can see what's going to, what's about to open up. But we were never putting him in those situations because when it would go into Zardas's feet, he would just slam it back at Tim Riemer or at Walker Zimmerman instead of being able to lay it off to McKay. Because it'd be like a tight layoff. It'd be like they'd be two yards, maybe three yards from him.

So we would really have to be able to cushion the ball into their path. And that's just not something Jazi Zardez can do. So the reason this is my excuse for McKenny and Bradley is we were creating situations for them to be put in sort of their wheelhouse. But because it's Jazi Zardez, it would never actually come off. And so McHenny and Zardez, or I'm sorry, Bradley and McKinney end up spending, like most of their pass attempts would come against a balanced defense, an organized defense. and it's hard to look good when you're trying to pass into an organized defense. We denied them a bunch of opportunities to hit into numerical advantages. That's sort of my big thing up.

Okay. You know, that makes sense. It's on Burhalter, right? For me, it's on Burrhalter. Zardaz didn't suddenly freeze up. He's not turtling up and missing things that he would usually do. He's never shown the ability to play this way. Burrhalter is picking him and putting him in a situation where he is the one wrecking the rhythm.

and the, and the, any disorganized, disorganized defenses we're creating, he's sort of eliminating them. Yeah. Okay. Well,

okay, on this, on this subject, Burhalter was kind of cagey when asked about wise artists started in the, in the press conference, as I understand it.

I think he said, his artists worked better in this situation. We thought there was going to be a lot of moments of transition. So I wonder if maybe Burhalter's, just playing 4D chess here and he's he doesn't want to signal to Jamaica that Altador actually is the first choice striker and he wants to force them to prepare for both Sardis and Altador and then suddenly we get Altador in the Jamaica game on Wednesday and all is well with the American Empire let's hope I mean you know you can't

he can't change his roster now Burrhalter can't so You know, my big thing is going to be whether or not Burrhalter does talk a lot about data, and we're getting a ton of data in these games. So I guess my question, after this tournament is going to be, does Burrhalter's interpretation of the data match up with sort of at least what my interpretation of the data is? And some of these guys have sort of played their way out of contention

based on all this new data we have. Yeah, you hope so, because I think what you're saying about Zardis not being good at connecting play in the middle of the field, which is, to be fair, what you've been saying for a month, at least, longer, it's unassailable. It's just obvious. When you watch the game, when you watch it back,

when you go through and you grade the players like Ben Harold and, sorry, I'm anonymous are doing on Twitter, it's just, it's there. And it's got to be there for Burrhalter, too. Fingers crossed for the Concaf Nations League in the fall. The last thing is the press. It didn't seem like it was very well-coordinated. Anything else to say about that?

Our press of Curacao are allowing them to possess out of the back. I was going to say, did you think it even was a press? I think calling it a press at all is even a little bit generous. It was very much just like we sat in the 4-4-2 for, a while and then after it was only you know when a goalkeeper just stands over a ball when he when he would be allowed to pick it up and eventually someone has to run forward to to force him to pick it it it kind of looked like that where they would just stand on the ball and not even be doing anything and eventually an American player just like well somebody's got to go go

pressure this so we just tear off after it because there was no coordination behind that player if it was ariola going from the left wing and then and then they passed into the space he vacated it's not like everyone else had stepped up accordingly it would just be a wide open gap. If it was a player from the center, they would just play into that central midfield channel into like a three on two, and they would then just be able to possess in a new space.

So there wasn't, for me, any real discernible press. It was just one guy deciding that he was going to set the line of confrontation and get impatient about it. Yeah. Yeah, it seemed, I guess I don't have the eye for that that you do, but it didn't, it did seem like people were just kind of freelancing Yeah, I think our base defense was a passive 4-4-2, or if you want to call it that 4-2-2-2 like Burrhalter does, and one of the wide players on the ball side,

Aureola or Boyd, might eventually sort of go tearing forward, again, just out of impatience. But I don't think there was anything that you would call a coordinated 11-man press. Fair enough. And to be fair to Berhalter, like we said at the top of the show, Kirstao did not have any really clear-cut chances

except for the one, except for the Bakuna one. And, you know, that would have been, like we said, a Galazzo if it had gone in. Well, I'm going to be, I'm going to, that's, I agree with you, but I still think that's the wrong, the wrong tactics to choose, the wrong strategy from Burhalter, because they didn't have any clear chances, but they had 10 or 11 speculative chances.

And, you know, if you give up two or three of those in a game, sure that's going to happen it's almost unavoidable if you give up 10 11 of those it's because you're essentially built to build to allow them uh you know yeah and i think that's a difference like if even if you're trying to stop them over 90 minutes they're going to get a couple but it felt like we weren't even trying to stop those from happening uh and and again that's where i just feel like as an underdog strategy curious i would take that in a heartbeat at the beginning of the game you said hey we'll give you 10 12 looks from the top of the box uh Cursehous to me like, yes, we will accept those chances.

And if we hit one, if a couple of guys or one guy hits the shot of his life and the U.S. doesn't generate much of an attack on its own, we take it to penalties. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We've already talked about Zardis, Bradley, McKenny. We've talked about Boyd, I was a little disappointed in him. But, you know, he also did some good things. And what did you think of Tim Ream?

Do we owe him an apology? Did he have a good game? Well, again, we've just been bludgeoned into lowering our expectations so much. Yes, he did, right? He connected a bunch of passes into the attacking third. He had the ball into Pulisic that set up McKenny's goal. I think he even played the ball into the channel in an earlier sequence, like really early in the game that set up another really good chance.

I'll have to hunt that one down too. I mean, I do want to give him credit for when he does well, but it's, those are things that we have to be able to do. And from sort of the other standpoint, we didn't handle the Carousel press that well. That's true. You know, we kind of, and that's not just Tim Rame, that was sort of everybody, which goes back to the efficiency. Like a lot of our possessions felt like they were kind of just wasted aimless. You only get so many in a game, especially when you can cede as much possession as we have. so we have to be sharp and clean in our movement or like early movement to get open for stuff and then good decision making afterwards

I don't know that's my long way but Tim Ream did have a positive game I would say he was in the positive column for today's game against for the game against curse out okay well I didn't I didn't notice that Nick Lima had a had a bad game necessarily did you that that's true that Nick Lima didn't have a bad game but he didn't stand out either and this is curious how. And for as much as people are saying, yeah, but they're better than people thought, that's probably true too. But, you know, just because their players don't have, like, police officer next to their name and they actually have real professionals, like, soccer clubs, doesn't mean that we should be, I mean, the professional soccer clubs are, you know, Dutch third division, Dutch second division, English, fourth division. If you can't sort of impose yourself on them, then we're kind of still having problems.

Yeah, and that, let's see, that has something to say about one of our young prospects, right? I mean, the fact that, I mean, you tweeted something about this. There were, what, three players on the Curisal 11 from the Erstivisi? Yeah, yeah. Right, so that struck me the most when, after the game, when everyone, I feel like everyone was kind of rushing to apologize for the U.S. National Team's performance and saying, yeah, but maybe Curisal is just good. I'm not saying they weren't good. They looked clean.

They looked patient. They were technical. But they're still second and third division guys in Holland and Portugal and England. And a lot, I feel like a lot of the people who were saying Kira Sao were actually good are the same people who kind of scoff at the idea that we should call up guys like Sir Gene Odess, who plays in the Dutch second division. They're like, well, talk to us when he breaks through to the first team. And I just feel like this is another data point. Speaking of data, where guys. who play in those lower divisions

are actually very clearly not below the level of some of the guys that we call up on a regular basis. Yeah. Yeah, it's, I'd love to hear the, I'd love to hear the counter argument to that. Like, if there were, I don't have your tweet in front of me,

but what, three third division, three second division, Dutch players, Dutch league players, which is the exact same league that Desk plays in. There was one from the fourth division, right? Dutch third. the Dutch third division, which is a semi-pro league. Okay.

And this is all where they spent their 2019 spring playing. So from January to May, this is where these guys were playing. If you find the tweet. Yeah, there was an English fourth division guy, Portuguese second division. And again, we sort of like... And the Ayrtivizzi players are bottom table, bottom table teams for like two of the three, right? Yeah, yeah, 14th, 13th, 9th. And then there's one who was at Fynord.

And I'm not sure what his involvement with there. but it's there it was a who's their centerback kuko martina yeah who actually plays outside back for club but plays centerback for kurosau because he's clearly their best player yeah so i'd love to i mean hit us up on twitter or send us an email if you can if you what's the counter argument why shouldn't des be called up to play uh against a team like this that that made us look very average or made us look very normal on the night Yeah, and it applies to any of those U-20s. It's not just for Dest.

I'm not just saying we have to get Dest in. It's for anyone who's like on principle saying a guy in the second division can't play isn't ready. Because we just look very even with a bunch of players who are in that situation. Yeah. Nick Lima has not had a bad tournament. He's not a bad player, I don't think. But is he a special player? He hasn't even been a guaranteed starter in San Jose this year.

And, you know, if this gets me labeled as an MLS hater, a Euro snob, so be it. I also love Paxon Pomechall. I also think Aaron Long's a great player. Zimmerman is starting to win me over. He played pretty well last night, I guess. Oh, I feel like you've got a champagne bottle with Julian Arajo's name on it for his September call-up. Absolutely. It's actually a rosé.

It's a rosé. All right. Any other thoughts on this game? I just, I want to hit back to it a little bit at one of the narratives that kind of came out to survive in advance narrative. I think that's just sort of a ready made sort of tweet for a game like this. But there were some like genuine, I felt like people saying, well, at least they won. And the sign of a good team is playing in these kinds of games and winning instead of losing. And that this somehow puts us, sets us apart from the U.S. team of the last cycle where we were losing games like this.

And I really disagree with that. I feel like this puts us exactly like the teams of the last cycle because this is a home game. I mean, it's neutral, I guess, technically maybe, but we're playing Kuros out in the United States. We won games like this in the last cycle. We won the 2017 Gold Cup the same way, playing really uninspired soccer. We flew in our ringers for the knockout rounds and continued to play uninspired soccer and just relied on them to sort of star power their way to. to victory. But then we'd go on a road, and obviously that level of play wouldn't be, you know,

we'd keep the same level of play and it wouldn't be good enough on the road and suddenly we're not playing in Russia in 2018. So I feel like people were just sort of brushing this off like, like this is somehow better or different than the past cycle. I think so far are mistaken. And the only thing that's different about this current team is that at least there's like a proposed plan that we have. I don't think it's all smoking mirrors from Burrhalter.

No. Like I think he does have, you do see signs of this stuff. But I'll say this, Bells, for stretches of that game. And I think this is just a good tip for anyone who kind of wants to watch with like an analytical bent. Just flip your lens a little bit and start watching like what, like watch Kira Kau like you're a Kira Sal like you're a Kira Sao fan. And like there were plenty of times in that game where I was like, oh, Kurosau are doing an excellent job of disorganizing. think us with possession to create shooting chances. And there are plenty of times where Curacao is putting excellent pressure on the

ball in midfield. And you start to realize that we are, there isn't that much that was separated in two teams. Yeah. Unfortunately, true. All right. Well, let's move on from this. The game on Wednesday is against Jamaica.

Hopefully we get to see Altador start a striker. Hopefully he's fit enough. and Burrhalter rates him enough over Zardis that we can have a striker who's accomplished at connecting play in the middle of the field. I'm not sure he's that much better at finishing chances as Zardis,

but he's probably somewhat better. I'm going to predict that if Altador starts, I end up with some clips that are like slicker combination play than we're going to have to post today. Of course, of course, no doubt. Are you going to post some Zardist stuff today? I just have a couple.

Like, I just have to keep doing it. Like, again, as long as Burrhalter's picking them, I've got to post them. And at this point, it's more like, I don't know if you want to call them a rant, but it's more of a rant at Burhalter than it is about Zardaz. Yeah. Well, hopefully Sargent is really keyed up for preseason in Everett of Bremen. I'm sure they're heading up into the Austrian Alps, as all good Bundesliga clubs do in the summer. Let's talk, before we go, let's talk about your,

your time in Paris, man. What was the, you went to the game, you saw the U.S. women win 2-1 over France. This was billed as the final, the quarter-final that was really a final. Now, I'm sure nobody's saying that anymore.

England's pretty good, but how, what was the atmosphere like? What was the scene? It was intense, and it was cool, it was kind of cool in Paris, how,

maybe you've seen this already, but the World Cup hasn't really seized the entire city. Like, it's still very, very much like just yeah yeah Paris at least is almost like World Cup free you don't even know we were trying to find places to watch games the day before where it was hard to find like the Norway game on TV but once we got to like the the pre-party with the American outlaws had set up like it was it was awesome and it was you know thousands of American fans and they marched to

the stadium which was cool and then you get in and yeah it's just it's a really it's a really It was an intense atmosphere, and it felt like a final. Sorry. Hey, can you stay out there just for a second? Give me two minutes. I'm recording something, and then you guys can come in the garage. Do you, do you guys need something out of here? Do you need something out of here?

Or do you want the trampoline? Okay. Give me two minutes, okay? I love it, Bell. Yeah. How was the, so how was the, so how far away from? the stadium was that American Outlaws party? Was it like within a couple miles or did you have to like take a bus? No, it was probably a mile. I bet it was less than a mile. And the stadium was great.

Tons of just tons of people like out getting video out there balcony windows with their phones. You know, and then once you get into the stadium, you're playing France in Paris. And I don't know if you saw the numbers here, but we're very much outnumbered in the stadium where it was probably 10,000 U.S. fans and 30,000 France fans. And that's, I feel like that's what it should be. And it was really cool, man. They would erupt at little things that France would do.

And the U.S. fans sort of made their own noise when the U.S. would play well. It was kind of an ugly game. I'm sure you could tell from the broadcast, but it wasn't the best quality, or it wasn't the best, most attractive soccer. But the, like, yeah, the intensity was there the whole time. It was cool.

So describe for us your celebration on the two Rapino goal, Rapino goals. There was a lot of hugging. There was a lot of rejoicing. Yeah. A lot of non-alcoholic beer being spilled. They didn't serve they didn't have real beer in the stadium. What?

Can that make the production? Yeah, it was somebody warned us at a time so so we knew, but it was still weird. That is horrible. That sounds ridiculous. Yeah, so we had to rely on the game to carry us through. And the ladies did just that, man. It was good.

It was like a championship atmosphere. All right. I got some kids who want to come in this garage now, and I won't ask you to do a tactical breakdown of the game. Thanks, Greg. Very much. Thanks, thanks everyone for listening. We'll see you.