Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 87: A Gold Cup postmortem and look forward

Episode Date: July 10, 2019

A long episode breaking down the loss to Mexico, the opening flurry from the US, the gradual annexation of the game by Mexico, and that 20-minute period of utter helplessness in the second half culminating in the match-winning goal for El Tri. We try to discuss what this game and the overall performance in the Gold Cup all mean for the USMNT and the player pool in the fall and beyond. 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. The USA lost 1-0 to Mexico in the Gold Cup final on Sunday, and we've had time to let the dust clear, read a lot, write a lot of slack messages back and forth, rewatch portions of the game, make jiffs. And we're going to look back at the game today and the tournament and then look ahead to the fall with the lessons of the Gold Cup in mind. much of that will come in the form of us answering questions we got on Twitter. The idea is we start with a conventional recap format, and hopefully as we go, things get more expansive and forward-looking. Greg, are you ready for this? Bells, I am very ready. We have that Mexico game gave us a lot of the data.

So much data. I know you've been churning through it over at scuffed headquarters south. So the game was at Soldier Field in Chicago, sellout, or, you know. overwhelmingly Mexican crowd, as is usually the case. Okay, the lineups. Mexico came out with the same 11 they used against Haiti, except that Ariel Antunas started on the right wing instead of Roberto Alvarado.

So it was Memo Cho and Goal, a backline of Chaka Rodriguez, Carlos Salcedo, Hector Moreno, and Jesus Gallardo from right to left. And then rumored IAC signy, Edson Alvarez, was at Holding Mid. He's a good player. He's an impressive player.

they're very young to Jonah dos Santos and Andres Guardado ahead of him. And then a front line of Rodolfo Pizarro started on the left, started the game on the left. And then Raul Jimenez at Stryker and then Antuna out wide right. That's how they started. And I'd say Antunas kind of like the Paul Areola of the Mexican national team. I think that's fair in that there was very little end product despite a lot of sort of honest work. Tons of honest work.

And Pizarro was kind of the creative force throughout the game. I think it's fair to say. I mean, he and Dos Santos and Guardado all three, but Pizarro primarily. Burhalter came out with the same lineup he used against Jamaica. That's Stefan In Goal, Cannon, Miazga, Long, and Ream across the back. Bradley at the 6th, McKenny and Pulisic ahead of him. And then Morris, from right to left, Morris, Altador, and Areola. across the front line.

So the U.S. started the game strong, I think it's fair to say, and had Mexico, especially Mexico's centerbacks on the back foot. It did not last. So let's jump into the scoring summary, unless you have any sort of big thoughts on the lineup in the game, you know? No, well, I mean, we'll get to the big thoughts on the game, but no big thoughts on the lineup. It was a bit of a fool's gold situation for that opening 30 minutes or so. where it was really like an exciting, intense, I want to almost say even game or it actually looked like we were winning the chess match. Yeah.

And winning the chess match by, let's get right into it, by basically playing long balls, right? I mean, that's how we created our chances. Playing long balls in attack and then in defense, do you want me to get right into sort of the shape? before we get into the event summary? Yeah, do the shape first. Okay, so the shape, I'm going to kind of dissent here with most people,

but I did see Joe and Cleats, Joe Lowry, I think, is somebody who's on the same page as me. When we were watching this, it wasn't our standard defensive 4-2-2-2, which sometimes looks like a 4-4-2, sometimes a 4-2. This was different. We were different today. Mexico in possession kind of turns into a back-3,

and we met their back three with a front three. And I thought it was a very clear difference from how we usually operate. It was Pulisic and Altador as normal, with Pulisic left and Altador center. And then Jordan Morris stepped high to sort of man for man have a line of confrontation

against their back three in possession when Mexico were in possession. And that was different. It's different than what we usually done. And then the ariola pinched, or I'm sorry, Areola to the left, McKinney, and then Reggie Cannon sort of stepped into, I'm sorry, Ariola, Bradley, and McKinney were kind of a midfield three, and it was Cannon's job if they did hit that space behind Morris to sort of try to step up immediately to put some pressure on the ball out in our defensive right-sided channel.

Yeah, it's worth reading Joe Lowry's piece for The Athletic if you have a subscription on this because he lays out pretty clearly and even has screenshots and gits. Yes. Yep. So yeah, so at least our initial defense was a little bit different. It was a 4-3-3, so a little bit of a wrinkle. It's not like we stayed in a 4-3-3 as Mexico would progress down the field. But the chess match in the beginning, maybe this took them by surprise, was they didn't progress down the field that often in the first 30 minutes. Mexico kind of started resorting to long balls that we kind of won comfortably and then would kind of tennis match back at them. Yeah. And I guess the difference. between the two sides, both playing long balls in the early going of the game, was their centerbacks were not dealing comfortably with our long balls.

The first big chance of the game, and as everyone knows at this point, there were two big chances for the U.S. in the first 10 minutes. It comes from a Stefan. Stefan's got the ball at his feet, not a goal kick, just kind of played back to him. And he hits a long ball to the left, sort of the left wing.

Ariola flicks it on, sort of rainbows it off his head towards Altador. Altador just absolutely bullies Carlos Salcedo. I don't know. He, he, he, he, like, he boxes him out three or four times while the ball is bouncing. And then he takes a couple touches and expertly flicks Pulisic in behind. So this is kind of like, you know, the Altador Pulisic connection, uh, showing itself. Pulisic, uh, beats his guy. I think it's Salcedo is also on Pulisic. So Salcedo leaves Altador, chases Pulisic. Pulisic gets him behind him. His shot is blocked by Echoa, who closes down the angle pretty well. And

Ariel keeps it alive for Altador at the penalty marker. And Althador tries an overhead kick, but it does not come off. It was the right technique. It was the right attempt. Yeah, right. I mean, I didn't mind that at all. But the real chance was Pulisic, essentially one-on-one with Ochoa. And he, Ochoa gets the better of the situation. Yeah. Yep. That was it. And what was telling to me there was how comfortably Poulosick was able to beat Salcedo, if that's who it was. Yeah. But just like, I mean, you've kind of talked about this for Poulosick in the past.

His actual then execution once he's beat someone is not, I mean, he's not clinical in that sense, right? I mean, he's not, he's going to, he's in a great spot and he's going to not just completely fluff his lines. But you're not counting on like an expert finish at that point. Is that fair to say? It is fair to say. Or an expert, or an expert killer pass at that last moment. Right. It's just not, just not, hasn't been there for club or country.

Pretty much his whole career. The danger is obvious. The danger for pool stick there is clear immediately. Yeah, nobody else on our team takes that ball in stride and then immediately beats his guy that way, I don't think. And nobody else on our team does what Althedora does and backpedals a dude 15 yards with his, with his rear. with his posterior to set up that flick. Yeah, right. So let's move into the second chance.

Three minutes later, eighth minute, a Mexico throw-in down our left flank. So at Tim Ream, actually it was at Aaron Long, well-won by Long, settled by Bradley with his head to Ream along the sideline. And Ream just side volleys it one time from the sideline in our half all the way up to Altador. Again, it bounces near Altador and a Mexican centerback this time, Hector Moreno, who doesn't deal with it.

Altador absolutely works him with a lovely first touch with his right foot that sort of zigzags Moreno into tripping backward as Althador breaks into the box with room to line up a shot. And Achoa again comes off his line. I feel like he did pretty well to close the angles down. He's really long. He's a long goalkeeper, man. Choa. That matters. I mean, that matters. Altador's got to really try to put it in the corner and he misses by a foot and a half. Yeah, he scuffed it. He scuffed it. He did, he hit it in the, he hit it into the ground with his left foot, um, which is a shame because

the first touch was so lovely. And it was a, you know, it was, if you look at where the shot was taken from, it was as big of a miss as, as Zardis's miss that everyone chortled about last week, you know? It was. It didn't have the same comic, the same comic context. How about the ball from Tim Riem, though? If that were, I feel like we could, we could actually call that ball Marcello-esque. Very nice ball. I mean, hopeful also, wouldn't you say? I think you have to say that. It wasn't, it wasn't necessarily a ball into like a great position for Altador. Altador turned it into an excellent position. And it's not something that I think is necessarily repeatable for Tim Rame.

Yeah, maybe. Maybe not. unfortunately for the U.S., that was the end of it. That was the end of the really, really clear-cut chances. And, yeah, we've already talked about that three-man, that three-man press we had. I don't know if you call it a press, but Morris stepping forward. At this point, I think Mexico,

we could say that Mexico didn't start seizing control of the game until the 30th minute, but really it was at this point that it became an even game. you know, after the, after the Altador miss, I would say it was at best from the U.S.'s perspective and even game, right? Yeah, that's absolutely, that's definitely fair. And it was, it was then that it just felt like that intense, it did, it felt kind of like that knife-edge game where both teams are at that point sort of feeling each other out,

but really physically and, I don't know, it was a really enjoyable 35 minutes. It was, yeah. So Lowry pointed out for the athletic that when Morris was stepping forward, they, Moreno or I guess the left back Gallardo was able to find Pizarro in behind Morris. Is that right? Yeah, they'd find the space between Morris and Cannon. So because Morris was stepped up at times, at least, they had Cannon pinned back.

I thought less so in the first half, but I haven't done a full. like really close rewatch the first half for that point exactly. But I thought a lot of times Cannon was actually able to arrive into that sort of midfield line, essentially joined the line of Bradley McKenny and Ariola to pressure that ball immediately when it got there. That changed in the second half. But yes, Mexico, I think we're able to get some joy down their left side line. Yeah, well, so I had it wrong.

It wasn't that Pizarro was isolated with Cannes. It was Pizarro was isolated with Miaska. and if Gallardo was able to get it to Pizarro past Cannon, then you have Pizarro one-on-one with Miasga, which is a situation I think Tata Martino would have been happy with. And the first big Mexico chance came through that avenue. It was Pizarro 1 v1 with Miasga, a ball across, and Ariola's sliding challenge puts the shot from Gwardado,

Andres Gordado off. McKenny, this is a foreshadowing lost Guardado and the buildup, and it's the way he loses him that's, I think, really frustrating. He sees him. If you look at the GIF, I retweeted a GIF earlier today. He sees him as he's tracking back, and they're both running back down the field. But then, Miyazga just, I mean, sorry, McKenny just gets hypnotized by the battle between Pizarro and Miazga down in the corner and totally forgets about Guardado, it appears. he notices and then he forgets him within a span of five seconds and it takes ariola to the rescue

to prevent that almost certainly being a goal because it's a shot from what seven yards out on guardado's strong left foot yeah if guardado had a better finishing day this this could have actually gotten really ugly uh but yes it's very frustrating but it's absolutely not surprising um i feel like we've been pointing this out again about mckenny since uh since like his first year playing for Shulka is that he is just simply not alert to where the danger will be one or two passes ahead of time and he then is late or completely not involved at all to challenging usually in the middle of the box. Better late than never, but sometimes it's never.

That's the thing. Yeah. So great honest work from the American Ariola because, yeah, If Arroyole's not doing that work, then you've got to assume Guardado with a little bit more time does bury that. So probably a goal-saving challenge from Paul Ariola. And it was, like I said, a foreshadowing of the goal that Mexico later did score in the second half. But we will get to that. So 19th minute USA half chance.

This is just notable because of the pattern of play that we saw. Ariola comes down the left wing. Doesn't beat his guy, but gets a little window to pass it back to Bradley at the top of the box. and then Bradley quickly hits a diagonal to Reggie Cannon, who's arriving on the back post on the right side. Same pattern we've been seeing all tournament. Cannon's ball back across with his foot is dealt with by Salcedo, but a little better ball from Cannon there.

And maybe he finds Jordan Morris, who kind of gave him a look as the ball was headed out of bounds. Yeah, Cannon was looping it towards Altador, right? Altador was sort of in the six, in good position, not a terrible position. Yeah. It just would have been, it would have been put directly on Altador's head. It would need to have been that sort of back-shoulder American football pass for Altador to score it. Right.

And it wasn't and it was dealt with. And I would say it was at this point that Mexico really began to exert control of the game. Weirdly, if you look at the possession stats, we had plenty of possession from the 25th to the 40th minutes. But you can correct me if you think I'm wrong. but my sense was it was mostly just our centerbacks passing back and forth, and we didn't, we got hardly any penetration. And Mexico was the more threatening side from there on out. Yeah, I got no argument with you there.

Mexico looked like they were intent on not letting us play through the middle, much like Jamaica after the storm break. It just looked like they were going to try to deny Bradley and McKenney any room to play. end. You think that started in the first half? Yeah, I think that was basically what Mexico's plan was for the entire game. And I think part of our success early was hitting more direct service to a fresh and, I don't know what you'd say, a committed Josie Altador. Yeah.

Whose freshness and commitment did wane somewhat as the game went on? there was there was a decent amount of waning despite i think what altador felt like after the game if you've seen his if you've seen this sort of uh interview his after the game he said he felt good the question was he was asked was how do you know anything about how your minutes were managed throughout the tournament and he just said i don't know kind of like that so so that one but even before that someone asked specifically if he felt gassed uh in that mexico game and and he said no always said he felt fit, he felt fine, he thought he was working hard. But I think, I think players just don't realize necessarily when they've run out of gas.

Like, they always think they're working hard, but the output drops. You know, I mean, you just do less the same amount of work. So Altador, in my mind, from what I could see, was definitely doing less. Yeah. Okay. We'll get into that more. 31st minute, just a few quick things here. Hopeful miazca ball won by Ariola, head of Achoa.

This was, you know, drew some oozanaz from the crowd. Ariola just hustling his ass off and beats a cho to the ball with his head and then drags his shot wide. Call it a half chance. And then 42nd minute, Mexico chance, Jonah dos Santos lashes one from 20 yards, just not closed down at the top of the box. Somewhere in there, Guardado missed another good chance from close range. And then in the 43rd minute, the U.S. had a great ball from Cannon on the right side to Areola's feet. But here's where Aureole's limitations come in. Do you remember this play? Oh, yeah. Cannon did really well. I don't remember who found Cannon, but we just, we had him in tons of space.

And Cannon hit a really clean ball directly to Aureola's feet. Like through, not a tiny window, but it must have been Morris who probably cleared out the lane into Ariola. And Aureola just couldn't really handle it, you know, which is a theme for him with when deafness and quality are required in the attacking third. So it spills to Pulisic and a Pulisic does a little dribbling around and attempts to chip Achoa. And it does not trouble Achoa very much. And then Ochoa is very long. As I mentioned earlier, it's going to be tough to loft him. Yeah, almost like he caught the ball and just winked at Pulisic.

So then half time comes. And let's talk about what adjustments Mexico made in the second half. Did you notice any? I mean, I've got some listed here, but I feel like I've been talking a lot. So why don't you go for it? Okay. So the obvious one that everyone I think is caught on to is they flipped Pizarro in Antunah, right? And you can say it's because Canon was shutting down Pizarro,

but it's also, it might also be a part of, Just knowing that Canon was, because of our asymmetric system, Canon operating more as a right winger, forced Pizarro to at least sort of respect cannons attacking and sink back to help, just to help Mexico's numbers out there. So it drew Pizarro away from the attack, whereas because Tim Riem is a very much stay-at-home centerback, left back, if you slide Pizarro over there, Pizarro doesn't have to do any real tracking back,

and he can just focus on where he wants to pick the ball up once Mexico win to possession. Yeah, and even though it was more crowded over there for Pizarro, it doesn't seem like he's a player who's really troubled by a crowd, you know? He's comfortable. It seemed like Pizarro enjoyed the crowding. Like, I think there will be some clips coming out from us, but Pizarro was toying with people in tight spaces. Bradley McKinney, like it just didn't seem to matter.

Tim Ream, if Pizarro was on the ball, he wasn't giving it away. And he would get, he would, he would move his marker around while he was on the ball and then find a little window and make a pass that open things up. He could do either. He could, he could make that little slip pass or he could actually just drive, drive by somebody to a space that he wanted to drive to. It was, I mean, Pizarro had a, I was very, I was very impressed. I know we've kind of talked about this.

Bizarro might not necessarily be a starting player in a full strength, Mexico 11. Yeah, which I think is both kind of discouraging if you're rooting for Mexican success or Mexican failure. But also, I'm not sure I buy this whole thing. Just going to go on this tangent here real quick. This whole thing about this being a Mexico B team, because I think the only three lock starters who are missing,

are Vela, Lozano, and Hector Herrera. And obviously, they're huge upgrades. The first, you know, Lozano and Vela are huge upgrades over and tuna, but are they huge upgrades over Pizarro? And then they would have to put Pizarro on the bench if one of those guys was going to start ahead of him, obviously. Herrera is a marginal upgrade, I think, over Gordado. Is he the one he'd replace, probably?

Any of those three, I feel like he'd be a marginal. I mean, I don't know if he'd be in a... He wouldn't play in Alvarez's spot. Yeah. So, yeah, so you'd gain, but you wouldn't gain the way you would if you're taking your weakest player off and putting on a Herrera. Yeah, I mean, Vela for Antuna is, you know, zero to 60 all of a sudden. But you can only play 11 players on a field at a time.

So all those guys Mexico were missing, basically just overlap. kind of your... Yeah, basically. That's a much more succinct way to put it. Well, and I'd say, you know, people were talking about who the U.S. is missing for injuries, and a lot of them, it's a similar situation where if we'd had John Brooks, for example, he might have helped in our distribution as an upgrade over either Aaron Long or Matt Mioska. But I don't think Aaron Long or Matt Mioska had poor outings.

So, you know, you get Brooks healthy and get him back. That's not going to solve the issues we were having against this Mexico side. So just in the same vein of what you're talking about for the Mexico absences, I'd say Brooks and Yedlin as well wouldn't have solved any of our issues necessarily. Yeah, I mean, Yedlin, I would totally agree. It doesn't solve any issues. But I think Brooks does solve some stuff mostly by just being a better distributor than either Long or Miasga. And then you just, we can get into this more later, but then you just slide along over to right centerback. And suddenly you have a left centerback who can hit, who can ping the ball.

you know yeah actually actually when we get into it later that will that will be pretty important should we talk about the one the absence real quick that would have been a significant upgrade yes so tyler adams right when we get into the when we get into the more of the mexico chances uh the two guys who i thought really struggled tonight and i don't think they're bad players i think they're they're both good players and international quality uh breckle bradley and weston mckenny yeah I think they were just not put in a position where either of them could really have the effect on the game that they needed to. McKenny, a little bit more for awareness issues, but they're known awareness issues, I think. We need to improve them.

But for both of them, there's a mobility issue that is solved by Tyler Adams. Yeah, at least somewhat solved. So let's, how should we, let's get to one of the Twitter questions right now, because it kind of goes with the flow from, this is, from at TJ football, how should we have responded to Mexico's second half changes? And I guess the main second half changes are just bizarro to the right wing and Antunas to the left, right? I think so because I think Mexico were already trying to cut McKenny and Bradley out of the game. We weren't really playing through them in the first half either.

No. So my big thing, and everyone was talking about, well, they had, they just, you know, Burholter was stubborn and stuck to his system and stuck to his system. the system doesn't require that every pass be eight or nine yards on the ground. You don't have to play possession exclusively with short, old school, Barcelona, Tiki-Taka soccer. If Mexico or any team, you know, when Jamaica is doing this too, if they're going to deny balls into your center midfielders when you're building from the back, any team can do that. It's possible to deny a ball into McKinney or Bradley from the centerbacks any time you want to deny that. It's just a matter of what you're going to prioritize.

So if you're going to do that, Mexico, then you're going to give away something else. And what they were giving away would be, I mean, you have to start playing a little bit more direct. And that doesn't mean just hit hopeful long balls. It means hit controlled diagonals or, you know, we have to be able to find Morris or Areola into the spaces that are now open because Mexico are giving so much attention to McKinney and Bradley. So my thought was we needed to be playing more direct. And I don't know for sure if Josie Altador's fatigue played a part in why we couldn't do that, or if we'd been instructed to know we have to pass through them on the floor with short passes. But I thought the game called for playing a little bit more direct to our attacking three,

and then having Bradley and McKinney beat their players, beat their man markers once the ball got hit forward. Yeah. Why didn't we do it? I mean, we didn't do it at all in the second half. So that's where I'm not, I mean, we tried. We actually did float some balls forward. But Alcador wasn't winning him anymore. He won, he won like the first one and drew that foul that led to the choke heard around the Western Hemisphere. But after that, I don't know that he won a single other long ball. Jordan Morris wasn't winning long balls. I don't, you know, Paul Aureola is not going to win those floated balls up under any kind of pressure. So we had to be able to at least semi-control the. first ball and then definitely win the second ball and that just was not happening whatsoever yeah yeah you wonder if it was even talked about you know because it surely i mean that's altador that's what altador's good at that's what i mean and more even morris can come back to the ball and chested into the path of west of mckenny or right or michael bradley but but yeah that wasn't

really happening uh it's not until after that altador foul that he drew i don't think it was really until like the 70th minute that Jiazzi Zardaz, when he was on the field, got to a long goal kick and was able to nod it back to Christian Roldan. Yeah. Or no, he nodded it to, he sort of laid it off to Christian Pulsoc. And we got in and had our first real look since the, I'm skipping all over your event calendar here. That's okay. The chronology is all torn up.

But that'd be my, that'd be my answer initially to the how do you beat their press or their extra pressure? And then the other bit that we kind of harp on a lot when we talk about the differences between a Guyana and an actual competitive side is that there are passing windows we could have even tried to play through a little bit more, but they're so small and they have to be recognized so quickly that if you miss them, you turn it over. You're going to lose it. It's not even like if you miss it, you can connect a safe pass. Once you get into the middle third and the attacking third, if you miss that window, it's going to be a turnover. And that's what that's what was happening. We might have had one open pass to play through our buildup, but we wouldn't catch, we wouldn't see it early enough,

and Mexico would body us off the ball and be coming out of the other way. Yeah. Yeah, and this was true, particularly of McKinney, who had a, who I thought he was spooked. You know, there's all this tactical stuff going on and the way Tata was cutting out our midfielders. So there's a lot of context here, but I think just on a personal level,

McKinney had that he recognized, I think, that he lost Guardado in the first half, and of course he lost DeSanto in the second half for the game-winning goal. And I think just in between, the fact, he wasn't getting on the ball much, and he was, I think he looked rattled. And he wasn't hitting the windows. Bradley wasn't hitting windows in any meaningful way either. So, recipe for not success, I think. Oh, yeah.

Let's actually keep working through this chronology because it's a about to get real bleak. Well, before it gets bleak, it gets, there was a last flash of hope, and that was in the 50th minute, really our last stand. U.S. throw in down Mexico's right flank, so our left wing, Aureola, again, I mean, he's everywhere. The dude is everywhere. He's involved in a lot of the good stuff that happens.

He flicks it to Altador. Altador beats his guy, which is Edson Alvarez, who had, I thought, an outstanding game. And then he slips Ariola in. Altaireole in behind. Aureola crosses it. Cross isn't quite good enough, gets cut out. And then on the corner, taken by Pulisic, Jordan Morris just rises to power it on frame.

Just majestic in slow motion. What athleticism from that guy. And then... It felt like slow... Even in real time, that felt like slow motion. And like the celebrations, I feel like had already started as soon as the ball came off of his head. Yeah.

This is a good header. but it was right at Guardado, who was right on his line and headed it away from the goal line. It fell to McKinney, and McKenny just smashed it on frame, but it's blocked by Alvarez's shoulder. And I think there was a little bit of a handball shout, but I'm not buying that. So very close twice in five seconds, but no goal. and then Mexico just starts pounding us. You've spent some time churning through the 20 minutes that transpired after that chance. Yeah.

Why don't you take us through that? So from, I mean, so the McKinney shot is blocked for another corner kick, which then I think we put out of bounds for a goal kick. And from the ensuing goal kick at like the 51 minute mark, it turned into probably our worst 20 minutes of soccer. probably since Kuva. And that really is not an exaggeration. It was a bloodbath.

It was almost in real time, I didn't realize how much of a blood bath it really was, in part because Mexico didn't actually capitalize for the full 20 minutes. But Bell's like, this is not an exaggeration. Every single possession for Mexico, whether it was a goal kick or a turnover or a counter, resulted in some kind of an entry pass

into the attacking 18-yard box or an attempt on target. And it was, and that's Mexico. The U.S. literally did not have a single positive moment, not like a chance. Like we couldn't put together a single like pass that was even remotely like non-neutral. It was brutal. I don't know if you got that sense while you were watching. I mean, I got the sense that Mexico was bossing the game.

I didn't get the sense that we did nothing positive. But I trust you. So I believe it. I shared with you the two positive moments we actually had in that 20 minutes, and one of them is that Zarda's chance that we'll probably get to. The other literally most positive moment we had was like a semi-Mexco turnover that West McKinney sort of race down in midfield and just kind of clipped a ball up towards Christian Raldon, who would come on, and Roldon nodded it back to Reggie Cannon.

And that was it. Like, that was our best connection. And that's 45 yards from goal. Cannon immediately lost it. It was stunning. It was worse than our opening 20 minutes against England back in November under the Dave Serrican tactical masterclass. Yeah, I think Canon on that play, that second of the two positive moments, or maybe it was

the first one, he was hoping for a foul call, right? Yeah, and he might have gotten one, but, you know, whatever. I mean, them's the breaks against Mexico and, uh, a sort of rivalry match. So I'll go through a few of these, a few of these things in the timeline. A 52nd minute, Pizarro dribbles down the right side, cuts it to Jimenez,

and Jimenez Wifts from six yards out. Yeah, that literally came from the goal kick. That was all from the goal kick after our little corner kick spell for Morris. So it was like an eight-pass movement from Mexico that turned into Jimenez-Wiff from the six unmarked. And, you know, in that spell, I'm going to kind of point some of these details out because in all of these possessions that led to chances, the most common weak links were Michael Bradley and Weston McKenney.

So I'm going to kind of spell out their shortcomings here. And that one, Pizarro, I don't know if you remember, Pizarro just danced with Michael Bradley at the edge of the six-yard box, just a little stop and goes and just was moving in wherever he wanted. And then finally, didn't quite fully round him, but got way more edge than he needed to cut that ball back across to a wide open player. Right, right. The next big chance came in the 57th minute, and this is, to your point, a McKinney giveaway. It was actually a somewhat positive moment where I think McKinney played it to Cannon, then Cannon back to McKinney, and then McKinney's trying to play it wide to Raldon. No, Roldon wasn't on at this point, trying to play it

wide to Morris, but Eriel Antuna read his intentions and just took it and raced away down the other side. Antuna plays it back across the top of the box and Guardado takes a shot that flashes over. Four minutes later, Roldon comes on for Morris. People want us to talk about the subs and so maybe this is a good time to talk about him. What did you think of the subs? Roll down for Morris, three minutes later, Zardis for Altador and then, you know, in the last 10 minutes love it's for Reem. Did any of that make sense? I mean, it's hard to, it's hard to say any of it made sense.

They were, they were all ineffective subs. Like nothing, nothing about the substitutions changed the outcomes that we were seeing on the field. Something had to be changed. Like, Greg Burhalter couldn't have been watching that 10 minutes from the 50th minute to the 61st and left things alone. Like, the game was already being lost at that point. I don't know that I don't know that the the players he had available to him

sort of existed that would have righted the ship right but we can get into this a little bit more and we get into sort of what we get what we learn from this but somehow we needed an extra player because Bradley McKinney were being overrun yeah okay sixty-third minute I mean I guess the idea on the subject of the subs, I guess the idea with Roll-Don for Morris was for him to function very much as a midfielder and then Canon continue to go up wide

and then we get a little more, I don't know, strength in the middle of the field. I think that was what Burrhalter said in the press conference. It didn't play out that way. Roldon ended up playing pretty wide. Yeah, we actually, so it looked like we kind of switched into a little bit of a 4-5-1 with Poulosik helping out in the midfield.

and Rodon being the right-sided player in that 4-5-1. So in that sense, it could have added a midfielder. But Pulisic isn't really enough of a defensive presence, and he didn't provide enough defensive presence to really make any difference. And then a few minutes later, when Zardaz came on, that got scrapped, and we were back into our 433 that kind of sagged back into our 4-4-2. Yeah, okay. Well, 63rd minute Mexico Chance Pizarro versus Ream.

Pizarro cuts it back to Alvarez at the right corner of the box, and then Alvarez plays a ball to Jimenez. Jimenez scuffs this one from five yards out. Pretty much a night to forget for Raul Jimenez up to this point. And then, as we talked about, Zardizan for Altador, 67th minute, another Mexico chance, Pizarro, getting attention from Ariola, and then he's just kind of stood up by Ariola.

He plays it back to Dos Santos, and it's just a simple one, too, between Dos Santos and Chaka Rodriguez, who's way out wide, beats Bradley and behind. Dos Santos pulls it back for Jimenez, whose run and shot were well defended by Matt Miaska, so that put Jimenez off on that one. And then 71st minute, we get that one chance that you mentioned earlier where Miaska plays a long ball to Zardas. Zardas knocks it down for Pulis, and Pulis takes on Alvarez, but his shot is well wide. It kind of, I mean, you'd like to see Pulisic put that on frame, but it's kind of the same, the same thing we were talking about with the first chance, just not clinical in the final third.

Yeah, you're not, I'm not expecting, like, when you're watching that happen, you're not like, oh, Pulisick's going to like lash this into the bottom corner. Like, you kind of know, in that sense, he almost turns into a little bit of like an ariola, where you're not really expecting anything good to happen as Pool Six winding up for that strike. Yeah, you're not. It's sad. And I just want everybody to know this. probably sounds very negative right now and we're going to get bad reviews for being negative

but we're going to there's going to be some positive stuff later for sure at least for me at least for me yeah i have plenty of positive stuff but but this less specific it's more big picture but i'm not i'm not super down i'm down on this 20 minutes as uh but this is this is what i consider like an excellent 20 minutes of data it's abysmal as far as like uh outcomes within that time span But there's a lot of, there's so much we should, we should be able to take away from this. Right. I mean, we're facing these 20 minutes head on courageously. And then we're going to, you know, we're going to zoom out and talk about sort of the big picture.

And then here's the goal. Let's talk about the goal. 73rd minute, Carlos Salcedo wax a ball into the middle to Dos Santos. And I was really struck by how, how difficult a ball this was to handle, you know? It was like, it was like waist high sort of dipping as it got to Dos Santos. And Salcedo just trusts Jonah Dos Santos to handle it, you know, right in the middle of this of the field. And he does. He turns McKinney with ease as his touch sort of pops up.

McKinney, I think maybe took a poor angle there, whatever. And then Dos Santos plays it to Pizarro. Pizarro dribbles straight down the right channel, sort of being shadowed by Michael Bradley, kind of like a cop chasing a runaway car, but not getting too close because if he gets too close, If he gets too close, then some innocent bystander might get hurt. So he's just... Keep your distance. Keep your distance.

They're just sort of moving along on the 10, going down the 10 slowly. So Pizarro then zips it inside to Jimenez in the box. Jimenez is stood up by Aaron Long, but he just plays a clever backheeled to Dos Santos, who McKinney did not track, did not track him. McKinney's five yards behind the play at this point, and Dos Santos hits a lovely first time left-footed shot that grazes the underside of the crossbar and nestles into the back of the net.

And he celebrated like it really meant something to him, you know? Jonah was pumped, and there was no chance for Stefan to stop it. Any other thoughts on that? So that's a brilliant goal and a brilliant demonstration of how, how you have to operate in those tight spaces. Like the ball from Pizarro into Jimenez is exactly the right weight. It's exactly into his feet where Long can't make a play on it. And then the ball from Jimenez to Dosanto sets him up to hit it first time.

There's no wasted motion. It is. It's sort of that soccer poetry. So I can appreciate that. But the U.S., and again, because I'm going to basically turn this into Michael Bradley and Weston McKinney Inquisition. Those two guys were basically at fault for the entire thing. Like, there's nothing, Aaron Long did wrong there.

There's nothing Zach Stephan did wrong there. Like all of this falls on McKinney and Bradley. And McKinney will take the majority of the blame because it's his man who gets free to score. But Bradley loses his man, Bradley loses Pizarro to begin with. And that's why Pizarro is able to drive 30 yards down the field with ball at his feet under no pressure. Isn't that, yeah, I get that, but isn't it because Bradley's, you know, Bradley's looking for, to sort of pressure Dos Santos, he thinks like McKenney, we have a chance here to take the ball from Dos Santos and go the other way. Can he, I mean, is he, is he guilty for that? I'm going to go ahead and say yes.

Okay. So the ball, the ball, the ball into Dos Santos, it pops up. McKenny is totally fine to go in and challenge for that ball. we're good on numbers. Like the numbers behind him are fine. We're not in any real danger whether McKinney wins or loses that ball. So it's totally okay for McKinney to go in and play it. Bradley ostensibly, I think, is sort of positioned thinking where's the second ball going to come out as McKinney and Dos Santos go for it.

But while he's doing that, at some point you see the body language change. He stands straight up. While that's happening, Pizarro just sort of drifts two, three yards behind him. And that's the risk Bradley needs to be aware of. So Bradley can think about, all right, where could this come out so we could attack? But he's got to balance that against where could this come out where we would be vulnerable. And he doesn't do that in this case. And then because he's not a Tyler Adams speed freak anymore, there's no catching up.

Once that ball gets played into Pizarro's feet, Bradley never catches up to him. He can't overtake him and force him into more of a neutral pass. Pizarro has free rein to attack at speed and hit out his entry pass. McKinney, I think it's okay to go into that challenge. Nobody's going to win all of their duels. While I'd love for McKinney to have just won that outright with Dos Santos, he's going to lose some. And we need to not be so exposed when we lose a nothing 50-50 in the middle of the field. Okay, okay.

And then obviously McKinney not tracking Guardado, letting Dos Santos beat him into the 18. Again, it's what you'd consider unacceptable for a central midfielder. Right. And we talked about this on Twitter and on Slack today a little bit, but there's this sort of vibrant debate about who is more, who is more at fault here, Bradley or McKinney. I mean, I would say McKinney. I think you would say McKinney is more at fault.

Maybe not. Maybe I'm mishearing you. Are you saying they're equally at fault? I guess what I'm saying is, I compared in the Slack to the U-20 goal we gave up against Ecuador, where Durkin and Mendez both give up that goal. on the 60th. This is the same situation. Neither of those guys are equipped anymore to do that job. That's actually not the case. McKinney has the tools probably to do it. McKinney has these mental lapses where he disengages and that's what costs him. That at least can be fixed. Yes. Bradley, you know, a few times gets sort of just straight done for pace. And that's not anything he can fix. Like we can't fix that for. Bradley. That will be a liability for as long as we're using Michael Bradley in that role.

Right. I guess what I'm saying here is I wish we didn't have to debate it because because McKinney didn't have these lapses. That would be the ideal thing. I wish we didn't have to debate who is the worst defender at all because McKinney does have the tools to be a good defender. He just has to be more locked in. I feel like we've said that on this podcast. every week for the past 52 weeks. Not really, but we've said it a lot. McKenny getting, like, we're all hoping he gets 2,000 minutes at Center Mid in the Bundes League this year, that should, that should be enough of those situations, enough of those reps,

that it starts to click for him. Yeah. I'm still a big McKinney fan. I love the guy. I stand. I stand West of McKinney. Anyway, at this point, Mexico just pretty much saw the game. out. I mean, some stuff happened. Daniel Levitts came on for Ream in the 83rd, but, you know,

Mexico, Mexican players spent a lot of time recovering from injuries on the ground and, and then it ended. I don't, I don't think there was any really big moment where the, where I thought the U.S. was going to score. I mean, we got some corner kicks, but the one thing. But that was also the only way we were going to score, right? Like, you had, uh, besides, besides Christian Pool of Six amazing highlight reel like youth soccer run through eight Mexico defenders. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Where he like came back and got the ball at the bottom of the circle

and then like looped and did a bunch of whirls and ended up drawing a foul from 30 yards out? Yeah, yeah, I do remember that. Like that made me think like there's no way he's going to do this, Izzy. That would have been some, that would have been something. But obviously Mexico or like, you know, veteran enough, savvy enough to just at some point just drag him down. Yeah, sort of, and sort of shepherd him. And I'll say again, I was pleased to see how elated the Mexican players and Tata were with the victory.

You could see it meant a lot to them. So, I don't know, something about that was comforting to me, as opposed to them just being like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we beat the U.S. Let's do some questions. I solicited them on Twitter yesterday and got a lot of replies. Can't get to all of them, but we'll do several. Let's start with Billy M at Wide Overload on Twitter and a great follow. I think this question is sort of with regard to Burrhalter. As Greg Velazquez likes to say, were mistakes made by Burrhalter?

I want to say yes, but I also want to couch that a little bit. I feel like the Burrhal – I hold to Burrhalter's biggest mistakes were back on June 5th when he's. when he put the roster together. The fact that the subs were ineffective, we had to make changes. We had to take people out. I don't think Althador was effective anymore. The mistake is,

Jaziz Arda is the only player you have to put on for him. You know, the mistake is that Christian Raldon is your go-to guy to try to bust the middle of the field, if that's what the intent was. And he's not a player who's going to do that, not against Mexico, potentially not even against Jamaica. So we have some of the wrong players.

Yeah. And I don't necessarily think that it's because the pool just isn't good enough. The pool's not elite. The pool's not world class. But I don't think we necessarily had the right players to give us sort of those options. Yeah. Yeah, Josh Sargent would have been better say this every week for the past 10 weeks. Sergeant would have been better at coming back to the ball and linking up play than Zardis, in my opinion.

So, yeah, I agree. the biggest mistake was in roster selection. I'm not sure who the wingers would be outside of rolled on. Well, should we address the obvious one, the guy who actually was at least on the bench and Tyler Boyd? Yeah, let's come back to Billy's question in a second, but who asked this question? Oh, yeah, John Adams, a question I've edited for brevity. Is Tyler Boyd okay?

like has anyone seen him recently. I'm worried for him. So I heard third hand that Boyd's hamstring wasn't right. I'm just going to have to leave it at that. The sourcing wouldn't pass muster with the Wall Street Journal, but I feel pretty confident he wasn't 100% based on what I've heard. And that is the reason he did not play. Even though I don't think Burrhalter was asked about it in the press conference,

and he certainly didn't volunteer that information. Well, it would make sense to try to not necessarily show that information. I think Tyler Boyd's working on his club situation, so you wouldn't want to advertise that you might not be available to play. But that has to be it, right? Like, that has to be it because the only other way it makes sense for Boyd not to have gone into that game is if he had somehow confronted Greg Burrhalter about his decisions within the team locker room. Like, there's no way that Tyler Boyd wouldn't have been a more dangerous option.

So that's another one of those where when Billy's asking about mistakes being made, I have to assume that Boyd wasn't available or that would have been a pretty glaring mistake to leave him unused. Yeah. Either he's hurt or it was a young and restless situation or Burrhalter is like way, way, I am way overestimating Burrhalter. I don't think it's the third one. It's probably the first one, which is what I heard, which is what I just said. So let me get into the last thing for Billy's question on mistakes. The other mistake that I think you can make, and I think that TSS guys have done a great job hitting on this point, is we ran our two-man midfield.

I know it was sort of anomaly was a 4-33 early in the defensive phase, but once Mexico beat us and got into the attacking third, like it was our 4-4-2 again, which means Bradley and McKinney are alone in the middle. And that was exploited time and again. that's one where I'm not going to say that it's necessarily a mistake from Burrhalter. I think it was a worthwhile experiment. A worthwhile experiment to see if Weston and Michael can handle that responsibility? Yeah, is that naive? Is it naive to even put him in that position? I guess I would have predicted that they wouldn't handle it, but...

Oh, we did predict that. We were very terrified. of it. Yeah. I guess so I guess that's a mistake. Well, I guess what I'd say is,

the mistake would be if come September, come October, we trot out basically the same system defensively and use those two guys as sort of two sentiments. Right.

That would be the mistake. Yeah. Is to not learn from all that data we just compiled. Would you have like to see Jonathan Lewis come on for Jordan Morris? just to have somebody who could run at people?

I wouldn't have hated that. I assume you switched ariola to the... To the right side, yeah. Yeah, and let him play as that sort of inverted right winger and let Lewis have free reign on the left channel. But at the time, it was zero, zero. So that's not... I mean, when Roldon came on,

we weren't chasing the goal yet. Yeah, that's true. So that could have been a little tough. And then the Lovett sub, this goes back to the personnel that we picked to be on the roster. if the idea was to get Lovett's on so that he could bomb forward. Anthony, Anthony Robinson,

Anthony Robinson would be better for that if we're chasing a goal. Yeah, that's exactly the case. Anthony Robinson actually had a really impressive 2018 if all you think about was him bombing forward. Right. Not defending. Yeah. Okay.

So, so sounds like mistakes were made. Should we move on to the next question? Yeah, let's get to the next question. When Mexico manmarked Weston in the first half and Weston and Christian in the second half, this is a, by the way, this is a question from Dmitri Dube, was the USMNT inability to get the ball to them from the centerbacks of failure of the system or a failure of the personnel? What could have been done to get them on the ball more?

Does Brooks and or Richards, Chris Richards, that is, in possession help that going forward? How much blame do the wings in Pulisick-McKennie have for not devising a solution and how much is Burrhalter to blame? It's a lot in that question, but we've dealt with some of it. So why don't you just better up, better up? Okay. So I've kind of talked about how any team can deny the ball into the center mids from a back line. Like anybody can take away our holding mids and not let Brooks, or I'm sorry, Long and Miazka play into them. Where I think Brooks could have really helped us is, okay, so if you have to skip those guys and go out to the wings or go up to the target, Brooks has kind of that pinpoint delivery.

where he could give us give those guys much better chances of getting on underneath those balls than maybe what we got from Long and Miasco. Our balls might have been hit with purpose, but they weren't necessarily you know as clean as what John Brooks could give you. Not even close, man.

I mean, Aaron Long, I've been really impressed with Aaron Long. And I agree with a lot of the people who are saying he's maybe the standout performer of the group in this tournament. He's right up there. He's not even close to the passer that John Brooks is. And I don't think Miyazka is either. I think Miyazka is a little better than long,

but it's marginal and probably debatable. With Brooks, that's a guy who can put a pass on someone's feet in tight space. And if you've got Brooks there at left centerback and then long there to cover for Brooks's defensive shortcomings, as they may be, that seems like the centerback pairing. I mean, we can talk about that more later, too. So in that regard, I don't know who the failure is on. It's really difficult, too, when you're watching on TV, to see what those guys' options are.

So when Long is on the ball, the camera angle usually cuts off after McKenny and Bradley. So you can't see what the movement is of Altador and what the movement is of Morris or even like Reggie Cannon getting up high and wide. Like you don't see what their interchange looks like and what windows they're trying to break into and when they're trying to break into them. So it's really difficult to say who it's sort of on. But we have to be able to improve on that because we can't make it so simple to beat us

just by simply taking away Michael Bradley and West McKenney as sort of our engines. So it sounds like there's just like a series of failings and a lot of things would help. Altador being more, Althroar being fresher and more consistent throughout the game at getting on the ball. Maybe something Berthar's instruction was lacking in providing the players a solution to play through that, what Mexico was facing us with.

And then we didn't really have the centerbacks to ping those difficult passes against a really good opponent. And that's the great thing about this game is it's the first time that we've really gotten to play a tough opponent and be confronted with, you know, our shortcomings. Yeah, it's been this game and it's been Chile. And it was the same thing there where even once we hit that ball from, you know, if we hit that mythical ball from Brooks and skip the lines and win it, we still then have to connect, you know, five, six more passes to keep breaking through an organized team. It's not like Mexico is going to be undone by one long ball. usually. I know we actually did kind of undo them with a couple of single long balls.

But we're going to have to then eventually be able to play in real tight spaces if we're going to want to maintain the possession that Burhalter's been talking about. Yeah. We didn't show that really in any way against Mexico. Nope, we were overmatched. Paul Bergstrom asks, Best 11 of all players not included in the Gold Cup squad that be injured U-20 World Cup players. etc. Do they beat starting 11 from last night?

I mean, that's a, it's a ridiculous question. Maybe they do. I don't know. I think without Altador and Pulisic, you're going to have a real hard time. Even the other attackers that we wish had been on here, Sergeant Wea, and you're getting into like Jonathan Amon. Not guys who are going to carry the brunt of the attacking load. They're good complementary pieces around an Altador and a Pulisic. I kind of have my doubts. Give me the 11, though, Bells. Give me what the 11 would be.

Let's say it's Ethan Horvoth and goal. DeAndre Edlin at right back. Chris Richards at right, centerback. I mean, you could make it CCV. Let's just say, make it C.C. Yeah, I was going to say, no sense quibbling about CCV or EPP or Chris Richards. We have some centerbacks. One of those three.

And then John Brooks as the left centerback. And then I would put Sergenio Dest. as the left back. But it could be, it could be. I've got Bobby and Johnson, but obviously. Okay. I mean, can we stick it to stick with like players who are realistically in the pool? Oh my God.

Okay, fine. So, Gino does. I'm not going to complain about that. It could be Anthony Robinson, too. It could be Anthony Robinson. And then you got a midfield of Adams, Dwayne Holmes, and Paxon Pommackle. Of course, yep. And then I would say the front three would be from left to right,

Amon, Sergeant, and Wea. Ah That's a decent That's a decent sign you've got there At the very least At the very least That team is going to boss central midfield Yeah, that's the thing

They have I think this central midfield Beats the central midfield We played against Mexico To a lot of To almost every loose ball And Well I mean it helps to be 3 v 2 I mean if we're

But then they're also That's a ball winning central midfield Yeah And then Holmes and Palm Coll are both comfortable on the ball, comfortable driving, play forward. That's a big advantage. I agree with you. The front three, Amman Sergeant Wea is not, doesn't offer the attacking threat that

sort of Pulisic and Altador do, but I think they offer as much attacking threat as Ariel and Morris. And Zardaz. The other thing is actually that front three did play against Peru and put together some real good attacking sequences. That's true. Yeah. I think it's a good game. I think it turns out to be a good game and better one than a lot of the old retired players

who love to talk about how great Michael Bradley is would like to admit. All right, Nesnargo. Going forward, should Ariolos always start games against Mexico because of his work rate slash defending? Even if Pulisic plays as a winger and Wea slash Boyd add more to the attack against most Concaf opposition, is Areola preferred when we know we'll have limited possession? What do you think, Greg? It's a little bit of a catch-22 because when you put Ariel there, you're probably limiting your

possession. So I would like to get to the point where we have dangerous players that can pin Mexico back at least a little bit more or can help us put our foot on the ball so we aren't just hoping that our centerbacks bail us out time and time again. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to be, if we're at the point that we have to do that, then the whole, then sort of the whole system has sort of become a failure and we're just back to get, get some hustlers out there and let's scrap it out.

Okay. Yeah. I think, I think we can sort of, there's sort of like a half space between the system is a failure and we're not quite there yet that maybe Aureola occupies. I do think he does so much in the back two-thirds of the field, and I do think we're going to, like it or not, Greg, we're going to have games over the next decade where we are conceding possession.

Oh, don't get me wrong, Bells. Like, I think Areola is in our starting 11 right now, or at the very least, like, one player off from it. I guess in my mind, this question exists in, like, the universe where we found a better attacking player a better possession player, but we're going more conservatively because we can't handle Mexico. Yeah. Okay, okay.

Hope that answers the question, Nasargo. Christopher Kerr asks, and this is a somewhat related question, is the itch to play the long ball slash force passes when we're down so inherently ingrained in American soccer that we can't escape it, or was Mexico still just controlling the middle so much? Go ahead, bells, what do we think? I think Mexico was just controlling the middle and we weren't finding a solution, as we discussed earlier. It may also be inherently ingrained, but that requires a level of analysis I have not done. Yeah, I honestly think Mexico is almost like daring us to try to find those longer balls.

Again, long balls and sort of possession soccer aren't mutually exclusive. Mexico, in a lot of their sustained pressure possessions, we're hitting 40, 45-year. like diagonals or hitting those long passes in the air driven balls it's just you do you you find the spaces that the defense has given up and you hit it into those spaces and if everyone's on the same page and know that it's coming you'll get to it first and you'll be able to control the first and second ball yeah okay all right this is from roberto mexiquitic savendra which striker slash number nine that is not sergeant can come in as an in-between of Zardis's speed and legs,

and Altador's hold-up play right now. What player in the pool can offer more attacking threat? I don't think there's a good option. That's my answer. I like Ramirez's hold-up and creativity, but not his legs. I'm still intrigued by Novakovich. We'll see how he does in the championship for Redding FC. For me, it's all about the Sergeant Soto-peppy future.

Do you have any disagreement? I guess I'd put Bobby Wood's name in the in the conversation. I don't know if he's, if he needs a break to try to sort out what his, his life's going to be for the next nine months. But he, I feel like he's very much that hard worker be with, with a decent technical side. So, yeah, so it seems strange to me that like Bobby Wood wasn't even involved in the camp. He wasn't on the 40-man roster. We didn't bring him in to sort of kick those tires.

I don't know. Bobby Wood for me should at least still be on the radar. He's a serviceable player. Yeah, I mean, beggars can't be choosers, I guess, is the cliché that comes to mind. Eric Pontetus, we had 31, 31 and 29-year-old starters last night. The rest of the players averaged 22.75 years. Who do you see us having in line to try and ease those older guys out? Do you see that during the Nations League tournament?

I guess I should point out here that the 3131 and 29-year-olds are Ream, Bradley, and Altador, right? I think Chris Gloucester is the sort of obvious solution at Left Back, if you can get minutes at Hanover. Who was it just throughout Austin Trustee's name on there? Oh, yeah, people have been throwing that out. Adam Whitaker Snavely is making that point. I wouldn't mind seeing that. I'll jump in and defend Tim Riem a little bit here because I'm a vocal Tim Rieme critic. Tim Rame was decent in the game against Jamaica and the game against Mexico.

In the first half, I thought Riem had a lot of our better passes out of the back line. I agree, and I think he more or less held his own defensively against Mexico. I mean, you can't blame him for any of the goal. It's not his fault. I didn't notice him just getting ripped up the way he seemed to be getting ripped up in transition earlier in the tournament. So maybe unsurprisingly. Yeah, he didn't have any of those sort of obvious moments of like, oh, no, what are we doing with Tim Reams still? I don't think Tim Reams is a short or really long-term solution.

I just wanted to come to his defense a little bit for he actually gave us the performances we need, we needed from him in those two knockout games. I agree. And I would go so far as to say he is a short-term solution. until Chris Gloucester arrives. And bringing Anthony Robinson back into camp, if he starts off the season well in the championship, it doesn't look like he's going to be getting minutes at Everton, so he's probably going on loan again,

or maybe he'll get sold. Loan seems more likely. But it's just a position of weakness, and Ream just had two very good games. I take the Austin trustee experiment. Anthony Robinson isn't even like an option for me in our setup because he's just not a left, a distributing left center back.

I don't think, I don't think trustee's much of a distributor either. Okay. All right. But he's young. He's young. He's only like 21. And then Altador is Altador.

that goes back to the striker question. I don't, I guess it's Bobby Wood is, is someone, well, he's not a young guy, but it's Sergeant Soto and Pepey who are the sort of next in line number nines and maybe Geo Raina if Dortmund decides that they don't want a six foot two winger and they instead want them to be number nine

and then Bradley Pepe and Gene and Geo we're going to need to be waiting a while Sergeant could conceivably be the solution by September Yeah agree, agree to agree and then Bradley's obvious

replacement is 20 year old Tyler Adams and and and and September. Let's do that in September. Yeah, hopefully his adductor is whipped into shape by then. Drew Cheney asks what's the verdict on the quote system end quote question mark. This is these these really short questions are the hardest because they're they're so broad. I'm actually still on board with the attacking system. I think I said at one point that I think the best defense I can give the attacking system would be like a Paul Ariola All Touches video because he kind of showcases what you can do with your players.

I don't want to be harsh on Paul Ariola, but I'm going to sort of call him a mediocre international player. And we can put him in a lot of good positions. And for me, that's because of the system. Like if you're finding, if you're less talented players are constantly getting the ball in good spots, You know, it's not like Areola creates those himself, like the workings of the players around him create it. So the attacking system I'm on board with.

What's your verdict on the attacking? Yeah, what's your verdict on the attacking system? Yeah, I more or less like it. And I wonder if you're not giving Ariel a short shrift because the system does it, but he also, he's in the right spots. He makes the runs. He does the work that I don't know if you could expect maybe even John. Jonathan Amon to do at, you know, at the age of 19. Yeah, that's very fair.

That's very fair. Like, Ariola seems to be very comfortable operating within that system. I'm more or less like the attacking system. And I, I'm guessing you're going to sort of like the other foot's going to drop here and you're going to say you don't like the defensive system. Yeah, defensive system's got to change up. Go on. Talk to me about it.

Tell me about it. All right. So here's my biggest thing. I talked about how that was against Mexico. We had like our worst 20 minute spell of U.S. soccer since, since Coova at least. And the big problem there is nobody was really doing anything wrong. Like against England, when we played England in November, like you could see how disorganized we were. You could see guys racing out a position and then England just punishing us and getting behind and creating chances.

Against Mexico, nobody was really doing anything blatantly wrong. There were individual breakdowns here and there, but, you know, you're never going to have a go through a game where everybody hits all of their tackles. I mean, or everybody is always goalside, right, when they need to be. Mexico essentially was able to just take what we gave them, what we were designed to give them, and just pummel us with body blows for 20 minutes

until they finally hit the killer shot. So that means the system's got to go. Or either the system has to go defensively, or you have to think that Tyler Adams is such an upgrade over somebody who's already in it, that he fixes everything. and I don't think that even Tyler Adams is going to be that big of a difference. I think Tyler Adams is going to be a massive difference, but I don't even think he can solve all of it.

So what's the solution? Like how would you fix the defensive shape? I think there's a ton of different ways you can go about. Give us one way. Give us one way. So one of the ways would be, and we saw this one of the clips I've sent to you guys to the group. Josie Altador at some point, whether he's just sort of, still in a withdrawn position from an earlier possession or whether he's done it intentionally,

has sagged back into sort of the midfield and nearly, nearly denies a passing angle from a Mexico holding midfielder into their attacking third. And it'd just be so easy to be like, Alodore, when we're defending, you sag and actually intentionally take away some of these passing angles. And just by doing that, you'd cut down on the number of defensive actions that the Michael Bradley and the West McKinney roles have to perform. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I guess another, you could also do like more of a 4-1-4-1, right?

In your shape? Seems like people are talking about that. Yeah. I mean, you can go that route and just, and I assume we're talking about Tyler Adams being that, that lone player. Yeah. You know, you, I don't, I don't know if you can do. I don't know if you can, like, high press, like, actually go full out Red Bull, high pressure. and set up actual pressing triggers

and we're going to we're going to sort of track meet this game for 90 minutes. I don't know if you could do that or if that's compatible with the attacking system, but there are any number of sort of more conventional defensive schemes that we could run that would protect our soft chewy center. Yeah, which hopefully becomes much less soft

and much less chewy with Tyler Adams and maybe even pack some pomacall in there. Hey, that's one more point I'll make about the in-game decisions for Mexico. We didn't have a single player we could have put in that lineup that would have added more steel to our spine, I don't think. So I was watching Bradley and McKinney get sort of overrun, and it's like, well, what are you going to do? Like, you can't put Will Trap on there and fix everything. Like, you can't put Georgie Mihailovic on there and suddenly were. So it was really difficult to see how we could have shored up that center, that, that's,

off Chui Center. Yeah, yeah. And it should be noted. I mean, I know not everybody buys this kind of stuff, but we did win the expected goals battle in the game, even though we got smashed for 20 minutes straight in the second half and gave up the game winning goal, then we ended up with 1.6 expected goals. And I think Mexico's was like 1.1. So a solid half a goal more for what that's worth.

And those expected goals are great, especially over the course of the season. but things that don't show up in that in a one-off game are like Jimenez's whiff unmarked from the six-yard box is probably as big of a miss as Altadors and I don't think that shows up at all like that's not a it's not a shot so it doesn't register so in a one-off you can you could really lose some context there not that again expect your goals are a really valuable stat but but sometimes in a one-off you might have to add some context yeah yeah it was instead of a shot that Jimenez-Wiff was just a very clever backheel to

Reggie Cannon. Okay, Brian Joyce asks, what are your thoughts on U.S. men's national team fans that's in air quotes that actively root against the U.S. to inspire a dramatic overhaul of U.S. soccer or fans that think Greg Burrhalter

should be fired already. It's an odd subsection of American soccer Twitter. I can kind of understand the emotion of it, but not the logic. I'll take this one. I'll say, I'd be more tempted to root against the team if I thought we were totally on the wrong track and needed another house cleaning, but I'm not there right now. I think we're moving more or less in a positive direction.

I thought I saw progress in this tournament. I think most people watching did. And no, I don't think Burhalter should be fired. So no, I'm not rooting against the men's national team. And I disagree with those who are. But I'm not going to, but, you know, it's a free country. You can root for whoever you want. Yeah, I'm not going to police your fandom.

I would have more worries. I think a lot of the people who are worried, generally I feel like this sentiment is coming from anti-MLSers who think that MLSs sort of gets preferential treatment and everybody's in cahoots. Yeah. I'm optimistic that the cahoots aren't as strong as people are sort of making it out to be.

And the reason I'm optimistic is because of the inclusions of Tyler Boyd and Dwayne Holmes originally. I think that that shows that Burrhalter doesn't just default to sort of his MLS guys, specifically like his January guys, because I think that was kind of a concern, is that it was going to be like, okay, well, he's just always going to take the guys who he's worked with and who know what his system is. So it's going to be Corey Baird and it's going to be Christian Roldan, Georgi Mahaelovich. I don't know that Roldon, Mahalovich or, well, obviously, Baird was left off,

but I don't know if Roldon or Mahalovich make it if Legit is healthy. I feel like if Legat's healthy, then it's Legit and... Sergeant Holmes and... Yeah, and Sergeant. So I think we will see in September and October that Burrhalter's pool is evolving. He's not just going to go with safe choices. And so I know some of my optimism diminished when Sergeant was left off in place of either Zardez or Roldon.

or whoever you want to say. But, you know, like Reggie Cannon's another example. Like Reggie Cannon went from not being on the roster to Burhalter starting him in the semifinal championship. He's willing to evolve. He's willing to change his assessments of players in real time. Yeah. Speaking of Reggie Cannon,

how close do you think Cannon is to taking the top right back spot from Yedlin? This is a question from Faisal Sikdar, who we had a great time hanging out with in St. Paul at the beginning of the Gold Cup. Shout out to you, Faisal. If Yedlin has sort of made a move, does Yedlin possibly have a place on the field elsewhere? Also, who partners with Brooks in a must win?

I'll take this starting from the back. I think Aaron Long is the perfect partner for John Brooks for the reasons I explained earlier. He's mobile. He's very dependable defensively. He made almost zero. He hardly put a foot wrong in this tournament. He's just not a great passer compared to Brooks.

So Brooks provides a distribution. Long provides a defensive cover. I think it's a good pairing, and I hope we get to see it over the next few years. Let me ask you this, and I think I responded to Faisal with this question. So in your mind, Burrhalter is just operating on a pool of centerbacks, and they can fill in either of those two centerback roles. But have we seen that yet? I feel like Aaron Long has only played the left center back role.

And I feel like Matt Miazka has only played in the right center back role. Walker Zimmerman has only played in the right center back role. Uh-uh. I don't think that's true. Am I off there? Okay. Let me look it up while we're talking here, but I think,

I'm pretty sure Aaron Long played right centerback in one of the March friendlies. But let me look that up. So Brooks and Long started? I believe so, but let me look it up. While we're looking that up, let's talk about Reggie Cannon and the possibility of him replacing Yedlin. Because I think I'm ready to make that move. And I know a lot of people think it's crazy. Like, hey, Yedlin's a Premier League starter.

He has been for several years. Yeah, long played right centerback. Brooks played left centerbacks against Ecuador in March. I think it works. I remember I remember us thinking Long fit that position well because our right back was inverted, you know, and so there was all this space for the opponent to exploit down our right flank, and Long was the right guy to sort of cover that ground. Okay, all right.

Well, there you go. So in that situation, yes, Brooks and Long for me are the two. But I don't necessarily think Miazga or Zimmerman are so far off that it's like one. one, two, and then way down down to three. I feel like we have a good, good number of competent players we can run there. Yeah, I think that's true. We've got a pretty good depth, pretty good, solid depth at centerback. But in five, yeah, but since Faisal is pretty specific, yes, Brooks and Long from here are top two right now.

Okay. Thank you for agreeing with me, Greg. Yes, you're welcome. Now give me the, your Yedlin piece. Yedlin hasn't looked good for the national team for a while. he's bad in the air so he loses aerial duels

and sometimes that costs goals or at least costs a lot of danger he switches off defensively this has happened both for club and country and I don't think and here's the thing I mean I don't think he's a bad defender

I just don't think he's a great defender and I don't think he offers much going forward he's not a good crosser he's not like he's not great in combination he's not going to beat people on the dribble except when he like you know she pushes it past them and runs it runs around them so canon isn't some massive leap forward but i also don't i also think gedlin's just dramatically overrated by the by the fan base and canon did play extremely well on both sides of the ball and the two biggest games the u.s men have played since we

crashed out in kuba that is worth something in my eyes so i want them both in the next camp you know assuming they're both healthy um and assuming sergino desks hasn't hasn't hasn't started a game for iax by then but one start in sergenia death leapfrogs them both right i mean you start for the you start for ix then i mean you're you're right there yeah i would say um so i so yeah i think can't has the edge i can't i can't pretend to have like a strong opinion on canon over yadlin or yedlin over canon like i i don't think i don't think a case can really a convincing case for either can really be made over over the other and i don't buy into like well yedlin's an ePL guy so uh it's surely he's better canon hasn't really had the uh i mean he's 20

what is he 21 i think he's yeah 21 like it's not out of the question that that uh championship or epil side could come calling for him tomorrow uh and and he'd fit in like that so so it's that i don't think that's a good enough uh differentiator yet i just i can't really stay strong in one way or the other. Fair enough. Fair enough. Jay Hernandez, how soon do you think Gloucester, Pomacall, and Soto

if he's starting at Hanover, get called up? If Gloucester and Soto are starting at Hanover, I think they should get called up in the fall because they play extreme positions of need. I mean, we talked about the left back situation already and the striker situation.

I think if either of those, I mean, starting and performing well, you know, like not about to lose their spot, then they, then I want them called up. That's my view on it. Pomacall, I think he should already be called up. I think he should be kind of called up in September, unless Dallas is in a tooth and nail playoffs fight and they're, you know, MLS begs U.S. soccer not to call him up. Right, right. Pomacall's call up has already earned, still kind of waiting on Gloucester. Soto and I'll say Soto becomes much less of a position

of need of Josh Sargent's playing regularly because then you'll have Altador Sergeant and I'm just going to Jaze Zarderhalter. Yeah, I do think Burhalter is going to I think when Zardes does make his exit he will be phased out.

I don't think there's going to be like a cold turkey situation for Jazzy Zardos. I do think there will be a cold turkey situation for Will Trapp just to veer off but staying within the sort of the Columbus family. I think trap might be, I think Trapp's days might be done.

But Zardaz, I think, is going to have a role to play for Burrhalter for the next, through the end of the calendar year, I'd imagine. Yeah, I believe that. At minimum. I, again, believe that. I think, how soon do I think Gloucester, Palmacall and Soto will be called up? I do think Pomacall will be called up by Burrhalter in the fall.

Gloucester and Soto, I had no idea. No idea if Burrhalter sees those as needs or sees those as high potential players in those positions. If Gloucester starting in the two Bundesliga, he's getting called up by the end of the year. It's my call. You're putting yourself in Burrhalter's shoes. Yeah, yeah, you have to. I mean, I don't think, I know Burrhalter trusts everybody he brought in. he switched everybody in that Panama group stage game to sort of reiterate and really emphasize

that he trusted everyone in camp to play. But he doesn't. You know what I mean? Like he didn't put Lewis in in a game where we had to score a goal. Like, I don't think Berlter thinks Lovitz is the guy who's going to get us your World Cup qualifying. Yeah. He doesn't.

I don't think he trusts Mihailovich either. So let's talk about that. What's next? This is a question from Chance Atlevich. laptop coach. I don't know if this counts, but I'd like to hear on what's next bit. When are the next competitive fixtures? What does our player pool look like for those games? And what should we look out for in the next friendlies as the team prepares for that next tournament? Starting with the question number one, when are the next competitive fixtures?

Next is a September friendly window, presumably one or two matches early in the month. And then it's the Nation's League, Cuba on October 11 and Canada on October 15. and then in the third window of the fall, those same two opponents in November. If we win that, just by the way, if we win that group of three, we go to the Nations League semifinals, which are in March,

and then the final is like a week after the semifinals. So I know a lot of people are like, who cares about Concaf Nations League? I'm like, hey, a tournament, it's kind of cool. Let's do well in it and get some players captied. I'm excited about it, too. I don't care about the tournament aspect of it. We just didn't qualify for a World Cup.

Like, I don't know how anybody writes off any friendly. Yeah. Like, you have to take every single minute as a player in the pool and, like, make your case that you belong on a team that is going to qualify for the World Cup. Whether that's a January friendly or a Gold Cup final or a Nations League game against Cuba. And by the way, by the time that second, that. November window and that second round of Concaf Nations League group stage games happens, we're at a minimum 18 months away from the beginning of World Cup qualifying. That gets me, that gets me too.

All these guys, everyone, when we're, me and you are advocates for calling up some of the youth. And I think that's, I think that's fair to say. And we, I get a lot of, I get a lot of pushback. Like, there's plenty of time, plenty of time to work these guys in. But there isn't. This gold cup was some of that time to work these guys in. Unless your plan is to work them in during a World Cup qualifying window,

there is not plenty of time to work these guys in. I kind of do feel like we did miss out some of our selections for this past summer on chances to work in the next set of guys. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess Perthelter sees Jonathan Lewis as a higher potential player than Jonathan Aeman or something. Or maybe it's just that he was in January camp. So let's talk about how the player pool hopefully will evolve before the fall.

I'll start. I'd like to see Morris, Roldon, Lewis, Mihailovich, Trap, and Gonzalez left off the next roster. Roldon is the one where I have just a twinge of like, hey, he's a good soldier. He's been, you know, he worked hard last night or on Sunday night. He did a couple nice things. So I have a little bit of a twinge with Raldon. The others I don't have any feeling other than just don't call them up anymore. What do you think?

So I'm not like a never again guy like where people are like, no, this guy's out of the pool forever. But there is absolutely no, I'd even put, I'd keep Raldon in that category. There's no need to be calling those guys in for the next six to, I mean, January sure, calling anyone. who's MLS and available. But for the, for the Nations League, like, no. Like,

we've got to start finding better options. Yeah, we've got to find upgrades. And it's okay to call guys in who don't pan out. It's okay to call in some of these more speculative guys

and find out they can't do it. But we have to at least ask that question. Because, again, time isn't, time is, we don't have a ton of time. And right now, Roldon is a backup. So don't use your,

what, what exploratory time you have left, sort of hitting that same nail. Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. And I mean, we sort of both think Burrhalter's going to keep calling up Zardis. It would be nice to not call him up either, you know, to get Sergeant, get Sergeant more reps, you know, get more reps for Altador. Maybe take a look at Novakovich or Bobby Wood. I don't care about I don't care about

Azarda as call up I'll be frustrated with Zardez match minutes over the next over the next three windows that would frustrate me like crazy why because he

you think he he needs to be there to help the other strikers sort out their responsibilities in the system I would be fine with him there doing that and I think that's a

defensible decision from Bradley or if I'm sorry from Berthalter yeah but again the data we got from this gold cup for me spells out that Zardez

quite literally can't be the guy to get us through even World Cup qualifying. Not that he won't be the guy in Qatar in 2022, but he shouldn't even be the guy in the buildup. Yeah. Okay. So ideally from scuffed, Morris Rodon, Louis Mihalovich,

Trapp, Gonzalez, and Zardis. Well, Zardis in the camp is fine with Greg, but not kidding. Did you have Lovitz on that list? I didn't. So we should have Lovitz Thares. I would, yeah. Okay. So who do you want replacing them? I mean, Mahalovich is easy to replace. It's just Pomacall, right?

Pomacol or Sebastian Leggett, either. Both. Okay. Roll Don's out. Who's in for him? Dwayne Holmes. Okay. Is Weston McKinney's backup? Or Michael Bradley is Weston McKinney's backup. Yeah, yeah. I know that's, That's a possibility. Will Trap, who replaces him?

I guess it's obviously Tyler Adams, right? Tyler Adams, and he is instantly into the 11. Omar Gonzalez is out. I guess that's an easy one. John Brooks comes in for him. John Brooks, we've got, and even if Brooks is somehow injured as he often is, we have a bunch of 21, 22-year-olds. We have Miles Robinson untested.

Yeah, Robinson. And again, untested. You can't say these guys are untested, you can't bring them in. Like, we need to test them. We need to make Miles Robinson tested. Yeah. Because we know what we get with Omar Gonzalez.

And Jonathan Lewis, who comes in for him? I guess it'd be Tim Wea. Yeah, give me Wea. There's still that chance that there's still like the chance that Pomacall actually comes in for Lewis and Pulisick becomes a winger and Ariel is now Pulisick's backup. because of the hybrid positions that Burrhalter kind of operates with, there's a lot of permutations there. Yeah.

I mean, I guess if Amon has a really strong start to the season, I guess he's maybe in the mix, but Burrhalter has taken a look at him and didn't want to keep him on for the Gold Cup. A little bit disappointing, but not an outrage in my eyes. Boyd gets to stay And then of course If sergeant comes

And Zardis is involved Then we'll have three strikers Which we didn't have In this most recent tournament So that does take Eat up another spot Eats up a game day spot But not a camp spot

We can have 30 guys in camp Who cares, right? That's true, that's true That's true I don't know why I'm operating On this 23-man roster With such rigor Yeah

Yeah, I have no problem Let's get 27 dudes there. Yeah. Okay. Did we back up? Did we get anybody in for Lovitz? I guess it's Reims still there in my eyes. And then I guess Lima would be the backup unless Gloucester emerges.

And then I'd be happy to replace Lima with Gloucester. And I don't even know. I guess somebody asked Burrhalter if he'd ever thought about playing Lima left back. And he said, I never thought of that. So it could be just totally fancy. on my part. It makes sense, though, I guess. I mean, I don't see why Lima

couldn't be the placeholder at that spot over Ream. And there's a bunch of, I mean, I think Ledesma and Mendezer are probably ways out from their first team debuts at PSV Einhoven and Freiburg, respectively. But Dest doesn't seem quite as far out. Gloucester doesn't seem as far out. And those two,

in particular, and then maybe Julian Araah right back, is one to keep an eye on. But it's likely going to be Canon and Yedlin and Ream and Love it. Let's be honest. Give me your percentages of all of this being blown up again,

because when Adams is back, Burrhalter sticks with the inverted right back, or goes back to the inverted right back. 50-50. What are your chances? I think there's a way lower chance of that now again i think i think burrhalter will recognize that bradley and mccannie are not who if you don't use adams in that spot i think burr mcheny and bradley are probably the two best guys to put in there

uh and they're not enough it's not it's not enough steel uh i think i think i think adam i think he abandons the inverted right back at despite never really getting to try it out with tyler adams Huh, okay Well, anything else you want to say about it? We've gone for, I believe, a solid hour and a half well over that. No, let's get on to the September friendlies, the non-cap-tying editions of the U.S. games. Yeah. And I guess I want to say one more thing, which is this, I think there's still a lot of people out there who say Bradley should be starting.

I think that group is getting smaller, actually, but they're still out there. And I think, just to be 100% clear, I think Adams is a like-for-like replacement for what Bradley can do. It sorts out our defensive instability in the middle to a large degree. And so the question is, does Bradley do anything that Adams is not capable of doing? What do you think? I mean, Bradley might have a slightly more accurate 50-yard diagonal ball, but I think the value of that ball is overstated.

you know if if everything falls apart because you know you have because you need that pinpoint pass from Michael Bradley then I think you got to reevaluate the system I don't think I don't think it's even close in my mind like it's not even a discussion about Adams versus Bradley I think Adams has to play that spot from what we've seen in these past six games and then I think the real discussion becomes if Michael Bradley has to be on the field can he can he do the job that West McKinney's been doing. Yeah. And I think he can do some of it, and he maybe can do some of it better, but he offers

less upside than McKinney as an attacking midfielder, you know? I guess that would be where I come down. I'm inclined to agree with you. I think we've highlighted a lot of what McKinney did well in that tournament, and I don't know that Bradley can replicate that level. I don't think he has quite like the nuanced delivery that McKinney has. All right, so we're in agreement. We'll see what Burrhalter thinks in a couple months.

Meanwhile, we're going to have a lot of content, I think, focused on youth soccer over the next couple months. More on that later. Greg, thank you for this. Thanks everybody for listening. If you made it this far, we'll see you.