Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - Episode 97: USA v Mexico recap, and Berhalter's stubbornness

Episode Date: September 7, 2019

Woe is us. Greg V lays this one at the feet of Gregg Berhalter, and this dogmatic commitment to play through a recklessly high press. 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. Mexico defeated the United States men's national team 3-0 on Friday in a match that absolutely reflected the scoreline. We're here late at night to try to glean something from it. Greg, how are you? Bells, I'm terrible.

That was a really just horrific experience. It was pretty rough, man. It was rough. You know, you wait so long for these games to happen. And then you sit down on a Friday night, watch a game like that. It was bad, man. Like it was, uh, it, it, like, sucked the soul out of your being. Yeah.

Certainly it made me question my avocation, you know. But only momentarily, only momentarily. I mean, this is, uh, yeah. I mean, this is where we are. Can I say this? It in no way makes me like excited to gear up for the Uruguay game, right? Like I'm not, I'm not now like, oh, this is going to be, that was, that was, we saw some steps in the right direction.

Now let's see what we can do for the Uruguay game. Like it was, there was no, I don't think there was any silver lining. Maybe that's, maybe that's a little harsh, but, uh, the silver linings were real, real slim. Tarnished, some tarnished silver linings. for sure. Yeah, I try to think of like what would be exciting about this Uruguay game. Do you want me to tell you the thing that was exciting? Because I think it was the one thing.

It was Sebastian Legette's cameo. I feel like that is the one thing where you can say that was good. Sebastian Leggett had very little opportunity to do anything and he did good. Yeah. Yeah, he did. played that ball, obviously played that ball into Jordan Morris to win the penalty. Yeah, no, I agree. I think he, you know, he's been, like you said, I think you said this last week,

he's been good for the U.S. in his limited time, and it's good to see, it'll be good to see more of that. But, yeah, that's the rub on that, though, is because even that comes with the caveat of, it highlights one of the huge weaknesses that I think we are suffering through right now. now, which is Greg Burrhalter player selections. Like, it's, it's long enough now. Like, we're, we're almost 25% of the way through a World Cup cycle. I mean, we're almost 50% through a World Cup cycle.

Burhalter's had roughly 25% of a World Cup cycle. Like, we have to stop kind of, we have to take the kid gloves off of him eventually. Um, he's had the whole Gold Cup to play. And he continues to sort of make not even just baffling decisions for player selection, but like, just transparently wrong. Yes, just like obviously frustrating and incorrect player selections. Yeah. That prove out on the field.

Like there's no hindsight involved here. This has been this has been 2024 site since January. Yeah, I saw Rob Usri, you know, the dirty South soccer guy who is, who is like he's fantastic follow. Follow him on Twitter if you don't. You should. You should follow him because he's kind of like, he's kind of like the conscience. of the fandom in a weird way or something? I don't know.

It's very late at night. We're going far afield here. But I feel like he's a good barometer for me, at least. I like to just check to see what he's saying. Did you see what his tweet was? He quote tweeted the roster? No, I was trying to play catch up after putting small children to bed. So I'm not as caught up on, I'm a little caught up, but I haven't been able to scan everything.

Well, when the roster came out earlier this evening, his tweet was simply trash, just trash, which you know, a little bit of an overstatement, but that's, I think it sums up the feeling about Trapp and Zardis continuing, continuing their reign under Burrhalter. And they both seem like nice guys. I say that every time. But they continue to get to just hoover up valuable minutes 12 months away from World Cup qualifying. Jazi Zardis now, since you said that in the Greg Burhalter era,

which is now 13 games in, Giazzi Zardez has played 66% of the minutes available to a striker. And if you take away the Josie Altador minutes, so if we can all assume that at the moment Josie Altador is still the first string, and if we're trying to figure out who the next best striker is, if you take Josie's minutes out of the equation, Zardis has played 83% of the minutes where Josie was not available. Sergeant has 13% Ramirez has 2% Jordan.

Jordan Morris came in and played a few minutes in a game for 1%. Like there was no competition for the backup striker. Jazi Zardes has been installed as the striker since Berthalter took over. Again, baffling and obviously wrong. Like he's obviously the wrong guy to be doing this with. Yeah. And to be, I mean, to be clear, I don't. think Zardis was the problem tonight, right? And you, you even, I mean, maybe you'll disagree,

but you even said last week, you'd be open to him, him being the striker in this game if we were going to play the ball long and try to bypass the midfield. We didn't do that. Zardis didn't touch the ball. He touched the ball, I think, four times in the first half. Yeah. I mean, you saw, I did see the Zardas touch chart posted by people who I think were poking a little bit of fun at poor Giazzi, but I would totally agree with that. And in fact, I'm not even going to blame Will Trap. I think those guys are clearly the wrong choices. And the fact that Burtalter is sticking with them is a glaring issue. But tonight, the selections weren't the issue. I don't think there's a single player we could have put in that would have solved the issues we saw tonight. And I feel

like I'm kind of a dissenting voice on this. A lot of people were saying the players were poor, the execution was poor, and they were. But I am very much going to take a different a different angle on that. Okay. I look forward to that. That's some suspense. That's some foreshadowing. No, I get.

That's why you get the big bucks, man. Okay, let's start with the roster. I'm just waiting for you to give me a lead in on it. Well, let's kind of take this in a somewhat methodical way. Stay tuned, everyone. I'm going to rant. The warning signs were there when the rosters came out. As we mentioned,

Will Trapp and Jazi's artists started the game. That was, of course, disappointing to most U.S. men's national team fans. Even more disappointing, I think, at least for me, was that John Brooks, we learned, is out with a groin injury. So Burhalter replaced him with Walker Zimmerman, not a centerback that I rate on a level with Brooks or even on a level with Aaron Long. Can I just say real quick on John Brooks omission? I think it speaks to how low everyone's sort of opinion of Burralter selections are. that when Brooks was not included in the lineup, people didn't readily assume that he was injured. It's John Brooks were talking about.

And people actually were like, oh, Burhalter left Brooks out of the line. Because when you include guys like Zardas and trap, everything else becomes suspect. So you don't just say, oh, well, there must have been an injury. Even when with a guy's injury prone is John Brooks, it's just like, for real, he's starting Zimmerman and Long over John Brooks. because that's how that's how like low the expectations are for Greg Burrhalter's selections at this point. Yeah. I mean, there's some truth to that. There's also, you know, certainly U.S. men's national team Twitter could be accused of being reactionary.

That is also a factor in people assuming that. But do you, I mean, do you really think it's fair to assume he would have? Oh, he would have for sure started. And I think that was even like came out on the broadcast if he were healthy. But again, it just goes to that 20 minutes before we learned that he'd suffered the groin tightness or whatever he had, where you could realistically wonder if Burrhalter was just choosing an inferior option because Berhalter has a history of choosing inferior options. Yeah, Berhalter, gone Burhalter. And I'm just going to real quick go to bat for U.S. men's national team Twitter being reactionary. Because you see it every time.

It's like, oh, my God, just relax. It's one friendly. But at this point, again, we're 13 games in. We have, we have like very few good performances. And I think Burrhalter's comments even after the games, like we're making progress. Like, are we? Like, where? Where's the progress?

You've got to show us something. You can't just keep saying, oh, it's just one game. It's a friendly. You're not going to solve everything at once. We've had 13 games. We had an entire summer tournament where you had the full team available. Like, you got to start giving us something here. buddy. Yeah, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt. So the rest of the lineup was Pulisic on the left wing,

Boyd on the right wing, West McKenney, and Alfredo Morales ahead of trap ostensibly in the midfield, and then Serginio Dest at left back, Reggie Cannon at right back, Longinzimmerman at centerback, and Zach Steffin in goal. Mexico ran out a lineup with, without Raul Jimenez, Chuckie Lozano, Rodolfo Pizarro, who had appendicitis last night, hope he's doing okay. Jonah Dos Santos, Edson Alvarez, Miguel Iyoun, and Chaka Rodriguez. They were all not in the starting 11. So this wasn't a B team exactly, but it definitely wasn't a first choice team either. It was Chichorito up top with Tecateo and Roberto Alvarado on the wings.

and then Rodriguez, Guardado, and Herrera in the midfield, and then Sanchez and Gallardo at the fullback positions, Hector Moreno, and Diego Reyes at centerback, and then Arosco at goalkeeper. So there are the lineups. I think it's still a very strong Mexico team, in my opinion. Yes, Mexico have 22 players that are strong,

so they can rotate ahead of their friendly against Argentina that's coming up and save their top lineup for that game and still put up a lineup that I would say outclasses the United States, even if we had more of a full complement of players, even without the sort of trabbzardez caveat. Yeah, and we, and, you know, I guess if you listen to our podcast, you know that we were not surprised that we lost this game. I think we were very clear last week. were the underdogs going into this? Mexico's a better national team than us.

Mexico's B team is a better national team than our A team, I think, on most days. But we were, what were we looking for? What were we hoping for, if not a win? What were you hoping for? I was hoping, I mean, when you get a game against Mexico against, I'm going to call them appear the past two results notwithstanding. then I'm looking for can you actually optimize your soccer? Can you play optimally? Can you respond to what's happening on the field and recognize how they're playing and adapt to it?

When you're playing a minnow, like I don't really want to adapt to what the weak Concaf team is doing. Like I want to impose what we want to do no matter what. But we're playing Mexico here. And again, this doesn't mean like surrender, whatever. It just means like if you were to take a still shot of a soft. soccer situation from above the field, an all 22 picture, like, where's the ball? What's, what's Mexico's shape? Can we recognize as a correct soccer play and make it? And that's what I want to see us make progress towards. Yeah. You kind of just like give what they, take what they give

you and scratch where it is, as Hayden Frye would say, your favorite football coach, Hayden Frye. I made so, for any, for any, I don't know how many college footballs overlap we have here. I live in Iowa. There were a lot of Kirk Farrant's comparisons tonight watching this U.S. soccer team play. Okay, so do you want to say anything about, like, how the two teams came out or anything like that?

I know. Do you want to just jump into what you were going to say? You want to give me my... Here's your lead in. Here's your leading, Greg. There's my lead in. So I did see a lot of people sort of just saying, our guys just don't look good enough, too many back passes.

We can't execute to play out of the back. And I want to basically take this opportunity to eliminate any blame from the players and essentially hang the entire blame for the way this game played out on Greg Burrhalter. I think I, in my opinion, like watching it play out, it was clear the guys had been told that you cannot like hit a ball long. Like the first 30 minutes, I don't think we played a ball longer than 30 yards. And then you kind of worked that in

with some of Burrhalter's comments about the Gold Cup final. And I think it's consistent with that as well where I think he was saying like at times we panicked and hit long balls. And it was almost like Burrhalter gave them like a command to find a solution with a short pass. Yeah, it was a dogmatic commitment. to yeah like you'd see you'd see you'd see us playing like trying to find our way out trying to find

our way out and even when we like couldn't find a ball on the floor the the longest pass you'd see would be like that feathered like textured 25 30 yard clipped ball where they weren't trying to break a line they were just trying to get it over like one defender to the next guy uh we never hit a ball up to giazzi's ardez and that's why giazzi's artes's touch map in the first half was four touches and they were all like within i mean none of them were even past midfield. I think two of them were clearances. Yeah.

Okay. So there you go. In the box. So that's insane to me. And what I'm going to kind of call it is, is that Mexico we're cheating the drill. And I think they did this in the Gold Cup final too. If you've ever coached soccer, sometimes you'll set up an activity where you give your focus group like an objective they have to complete within the game.

So it's like, okay, before you can score, you have to connect the ball to this from one side. to move the ball from one side line to the other and then you can try to score right something dumb like that yeah well what happens is like the other team starts to figure out what the what the restriction is and they'll start defending like unnaturally to prevent it so they they sort of stop playing the game the way it would normally be played and and they overcommit to stop the the the your your pre-scoring objective and that's what that's what this game looked like and that's what the gold cup final looked like mexico seemed to know top Tata seemed to guess or calculate that Burrhalter was going to insist on finding passes out of the back.

And so he completely overcommitted. The reason everyone looked terrible is because Mexico denied, took away any possible pass. You had to go backwards. There weren't any windows. There weren't any openings to play out of our back third. You would have had to have skipped them, gone up to the front line and then played in the open space. And we refused to do it. We categorically refused to do that.

and there isn't a there wouldn't have been a personnel solution Tyler Adams for Will Trough wouldn't have solved that John Brooks for Walker Zimmer wouldn't have solved that the only thing that solves that is giving the guys the freedom to play a more natural game against a defense that was playing unnaturally So you don't think I mean I'm inclined to agree with you but but just to check You don't think there was like some lack of sharpness

and the way the midfield rotated, like the way people were moving off the ball to try to find space. And, yeah, so you don't think that was the case? Like, I'll rewatch the game, and maybe we weren't exactly where we needed to be at the exact moment we needed to be there. But I honestly think it boils down to mathematics,

and Mexico overloaded our defensive third with defenders. Yeah. And, like, I'll just kind of, I did a whole thread on it before the game because it was the same thing in the Gold Cup final. Very prescient looking thread at this point. Yeah, they were reckless about it. Like they were completely willing to give up the back line. And when we went over them in the Gold Cup final, we actually had success.

We carved out chances. And we got into their third into their attacking area. The same thing happened in this game. I think in the 52nd minute was the first time I saw us actually like play. a ball up and I I'm pretty sure it was like flicked on to Zardez and suddenly we had open space to run into like it wasn't this this shouldn't have been a mystery and I saw a lot of people saying well you know you got to just stick to it and play if you can't do it against Mexico you can't do it but it's at some point like you have to keep the other team honest and if Mexico aren't going to

play it honest like you have to beat them the way that they're forcing you to beat them yeah yeah Yeah, I mean I'm sure we'll get to it. Can I just skip to the second goal? Sure, please. The second goal is the perfect example, yeah. Exact example. And it's, you know, we were forcing a bunch of passes short in our own box and eventually Stefan like turns it over trying to hit an eight-yard, like,

touch pass to Morales, who's under pressure and it gets nicked. And they capitalize almost instantly. And they show the replay from behind the goal, which is a great angle. I'm sure I will be cutting this out and posting it. From behind the goal, they show the replay. And you can see that we actually have 4V4 at the midfield line. So, I mean, 4V4 are amazing numbers to spring an attack, even in a tight space, to get that with 65 yards of space to play into.

So on the broadcast, too, Holden is saying, sometimes you just have to hit it long. And this isn't like a, this shouldn't have been like a desperation clearance. This should have been a very intentional, like, recognition of the. of the number situation at midfield and you play that ball out to your 4 v4 like you you dream about a team giving you that kind of numerical advantage so it's again it's like we we were stubborn to the point of

putting guys in in a position where they could not succeed yeah well it is true in the second half we did start to do a little more hitting it long towards jazzy or you know whoever whoever was up there Josh Sargent, I guess, although he barely touched the ball. And I'm watching out of the corner of my eye in the middle of the second half here, and it's, we're getting a little bit of traction, you know? I mean, our lack of quality up front continues to be an issue, but we're getting,

when we do that, we're getting something out of it, something besides, like, passing it to a guy with a black jersey on 20 yards from goal. Yeah, we just ran into GoldaSaxie. Anytime we weren't doing that, we were running into dead ends and cul-de-sacs that were not necessarily because of poor movement off the ball or poor timing. Like, it was just math. Like, it was just seven Mexico players on top of us. Of course that's going to happen.

They've got everyone covered in the short passing ranges. It has to go to guys in more space. It's insane to me. The only way you can say this is like a good outcome, or a good process is if you're saying we're just using this game as a as an intense rondo the way you do in a training session where you play you play down a man in a tiny space and say you just solve it like you just have to figure out to connect but but then again it would be more about can you can you connect 12 passes uh because we we weren't allowed to actually play out of the out of the danger right i was frustrated man because it was it seemed like such an easy thing to recognize from the gold cup final final and then to double down on it the way we did, the result was so predictable. Yeah, so I guess, so I guess we're right into the whole meta, the meta critique here. Like is, is there an argument to be made?

Well, so Berhalter after the game, he said he was happier with this performance than he was with the Gold Cup final because we consistently tried to play out of the back, whereas during the Gold Cup final, we didn't. We know we were hooffing it long. And is there like in the abstract, is there some, is there some validity to that? Like we're going to stick with our principles, even when it's, even when it loses us friendly three to zero. And come hell or high water because we have to change, you know, Burrhalter talks about changing the perception of the way American soccer is played and, you know, playing in a, playing in a different way, disorganizing the opponent, all the buzzwords. So the only

Again, the only way this works is if Burrhalter was totally willing to just be like, listen, guys, we are going to, I mean, we're going to lose. We're not going to connect any. We're not going to be able to create anything. So again, the objective just has to be a different objective than creating, even creating chances. We weren't creating chances with our play out of the back.

So the objective literally just has to be, can you connect a pass to the next guy's feet? It doesn't have to progress. It doesn't have to like advance our tactical situation. but for me that's a terrible benchmark. That can't have been the objective. It would only be the case that he could say, so then the next time we play them in a qualifier,

we'll flip a switch and say, okay, now you can do this, and you can hit this ball long when they overcommit to our back third. But again, I just don't believe that any team would ever actually do that and swing the, like intentionally swing the pendulum, fight Southpaw for three rounds,

and then come out and go, okay, now we'll take the handcuffs off and you can play however you want. And the players were clearly frustrated. Yeah, they look frustrated. So if there was this secret objective that they were actually playing that wasn't related to winning the game, it sure didn't come across in their body language. No, it didn't at all. And now, and Berlter, I think he argued, I saw that he argued with a reporter in the press conference after the game who said they were overrun in the first half and he was. taking issue with that characterization. This is a tweet from Sebastian Salazar, very, very reputable TV journalist.

And just to sort of explore that a little bit, let's talk about the first 20 minutes of the game before we get to the other two goals, which we haven't mentioned. I would say the first five minutes, it was clear that we were going to struggle. We established a bit of a pattern where trap wasn't able to turn into the teeth the Mexican press. I watching the game the first the first time I blamed him I blamed him kind of as I was watching I don't having watched the first 20 minutes again I don't blame him as much he actually did make he actually did do a couple of nice things in the first 20 minutes and but he would pass it back to the centerbacks who had fewer options than he did and then they'd pass it back to Zach Stephan who

who who did I think objectively have a bad game to distributing the ball. I mean, even when there was somebody open, you would miss them. And, uh, and then we weren't, we weren't clean enough in a couple of key instances where, where we could have, we could have played out of it. But, you know, Boyd had a couple bad touches. I think McKinney had a couple bad touches. And I know I'm like, I'm much more mystical about this kind of stuff where I think, like, if you may, if you do a few nice things in a row, it sets a nice, you know, you know, rhythm. I wouldn't disagree with that. I know, I know, I'm not always, uh, momentum kind of a guy but yeah

getting into a rhythm I think is a real thing in a soccer game for a player and a team I'll give you that bells okay thanks and I and I think we had a few chances to establish momentum that that we didn't and and then

and then you know obviously we never really got it there was I'll even go so far so far so didn't it feel like Boussick and Dest were creating a little bit of momentum yes yeah so there was a there was a passage of play around the 10 minute mark where where we did play out of the back it started with a terrifying moment uh stephen passed it sort of between zimmerman and trap and trap thought

zimmerman was going to get to it and zimmerman thought trap was and we almost turned the ball over at the top of our own box but trap did kind of come out with it and he he played a square ball a A somewhat clever square ball to Alfredo Morales in space. And Morales turned in- Do you remember this one? Yes, yep. Try to hit. Because I was like, oh, nicely done, trap.

Yeah, tried to- Young William. Sorry, sorry, go on. I'll let you finish. Morales tried to hit a piercing ball right up the middle at, I think, Zardis. Yeah, it was at Zardis. And it was cut out, but it fell to McKinney. McKinney picked it up and played a nice combination with Pulisic in the middle.

And then Pulisic tried to play Dest in behind. And that was on. Dest was on in behind goal if Pulisic could have lifted it over the defender a little bit. But that was cut out as well. And then Felda, Felda, Feldon Morales circulated it to trap, to Cannon on the diagonal. Cannon heads it back to Boyd. Boyd played it back to trap. To Dest, who combined with Pulisick down the left wing, Pulisic cut in and his cross was cut out.

and it went back to Trap eventually, who played it to McKinney, kind of surging up the middle. McKinney sprayed it to desk on the wing, who then slides it inside to McKinney, who takes a speculative shot from distance. And it was, that was like a two-minute, I hope that wasn't boring,

but it was like a two. No, we got the point across, like we actually did things with the soccer ball. Yeah, for like two minutes. And it started with one play out of the back, you know, and then we kind of kept in Mexico's half for that two minutes. And I would say it was easily our best passage of play in the entire game.

And probably what Burr-Walter is thinking of when he's arguing that we weren't overrun in the first half. And then, of course, a couple minutes later, Desk took that exciting shot on frame from about 20 yards after some competent work from Trapp and Morales to get it upfield to him. And then from, you know, the next 10 minutes, we're kind of back and forth. I guess you could say. Mexico had it in our defensive third most of that time. Hey, Bells, let me just jump in because...

Yeah, please do. Please do. When you talk about that nice two minutes of play, I think it, again, just goes to show you, once we actually made the field big, like once we actually did get the ball up high upfield, even if it took a little bit of luck from a Zardaz, or a misconnection to Zardez that McKinney gets on,

like that's that whole concept of win the second ball in midfield beyond that Mexico. press or line of confrontation, once we get the whole field big, then we did look very competent, not necessarily very competent. We looked fine. Yeah, very competent is too generous. It's too generous, but we, but I take your point. Yeah, we could move it around the full 80-yard field like and not look completely out of sorts, but it was just, it's just when we penned ourselves by choice into our back 35 or 40 yards, and Mexico brought six or seven guys into that 30 or 40-yard space that we had no chance.

I mean, you just can't force yourself to play in that tight of a space. Yeah. I'm not sure I 100% disagree. I'm not sure I 100% agree that like no player could have done it. I don't think Tyler Adams could have done it. But like Jonah Dos Santos might have been able to do it, you know, might have been able to turn in space and find somebody's feet. because the press was so aggressive. If you have a midfielder who can do something creative and is also secure on the ball,

you can, you know, there were instances where we did play through it. Not very often, but it did happen, you know. Yeah, I'll give you that. Here's my response. So let me just further the question. Is it because just simply because our personnel is not good enough? Maybe. Like I still don't want to commit to that.

And the reason I don't want to is because of Weston McKinney. And I think that one of West McKinney's strengths that he's been able to show with Shalka, even when they were a garbage outfit last year. Maybe they're a garbage outfit this year too. But one of McKinney's strengths, I think, was releasing balls under a lot of duress in sort of like what looked like lost cause situations. Releasing balls, even like long. He'll find like a long ball forward into a guy who actually has space to attack in. So he can actually take a What looks like a hopeless situation

And create something out of it where suddenly a guy's attacking down the channel in space Not free to goal But you know what I mean just puts him into an area where suddenly we're into attack not just like relieving pressure And we saw nothing even resembling that in my mind In that 90 minutes so so that's sort of my response is you can say Jonathan dosatos would have been able to do it But in my mind west McKinney is a player who's good enough to do it And I just don't think he was ever, I feel like he wasn't given the freedom to do that. Yeah.

Maybe. Yeah. I'm not going to, I'm not saying that better players wouldn't have helped. Right. I think, I think, I mean, McKinney had such a bad game. And you know, I'm like, I'm a huge Wes McKinney fan. I want, I want, like, everything for him to, to be the central midfielder we need. But I think even, you know, even when he did get on the ball outside of a couple of

nice moments. And even when he did get into space, it was just a lot of bad stuff, a lot of bad stuff happening. But we don't have to. I do want to kind of take your position of like putting it on Burhalter more than on the players. And I don't want to like rip on everybody. Because that's what you'd have to do in this game, right?

Like everybody would get ripped on. Zardaz would actually come out the cleanest just because he never touched the ball. Yeah. I mean, if we're looking for other little silver linings, I thought it's particularly in the first half, not as much in the second half, but in the first half, Morales was a good addition as a sort of midfield enforcer. He did get skinned by Lozano on that third goal. So that...

Should we just go over the third goal now? We're doing these completely out of order, but should we talk about it? Let's just jump around. Yeah. The third goal was, we didn't have to do with playing out of the back, interestingly. we were in the attack had I think like eight guys up in the box something like that maybe seven

yeah we'd found Jordan Morris out on the wing I'm gonna do a little bit of goal description bells you don't always get to describe the goals we found Jordan Morris on the wing and something that I picked up on right away was that Jordan Morris for some reason wasn't able to find Christian Pool Sick at the top of the box with just like a simple pass

I don't know if you picked that out but I didn't know noticed that. It was on. Like the ball went into Morris's feet and Poulosick was just sort of standing there doing his Pouloset thing where he points down to his feet and we could have gotten the ball to his feet, which would have then required Poulsick. It's not he would had a clear path to goal. Don't get me started at Poulissig pointing at his feet. But as the national team, as the U.S. national team at the current moment goes, getting the ball to Christian Poulosick at the top of the box with a little bit of space is about as good as you can hope for. And that was there

and Morris either didn't see it or didn't think he could hit the pass or just chose not to, whatever the reason. And he sort of dribbled around in a nice circle for seven or eight touches. Yeah. Which again, nothing horrible, but he finally moved it back to,

was it long or Zimmerman? Are you talking about the third goal? Yeah, I'm talking about the third goal. Okay, okay. You're going to rewash it. You're going to have to tell me. All right. Well,

Well, he dropped, I think it was Aaron Long. And Aaron Long sort of tried to hit an off balance. He was off balance. He tried to hit a pass into West McKinney. I'm pretty sure it was McKinney, who was also completely alone. And there was room to hit him. But the pass was a little bit behind McKinney. And Mexico sort of swooped in and took it.

Big touch forward at us on the counter. And at Alfredo Morales, who was there to break it up. And now I'll let you go. Well, I thought. But so this is going to be horrible radio. But I thought that what happened was sergeant's coming down, coming down the channel, and he plays Cannon to the wing. Yes. Yes, he did.

And you're correct. Okay. And then, yeah, Canon's passes. Cannon cut it back. And so am I off here? No, yeah. Cannon cut it back. It just didn't find anybody.

It got cut out by somebody. Yeah, you're right. I think my Jordan Morris missing Pulisick bit is a completely different sequence now. Okay. I mean, what, I mean, Jordan Morris missing Pulisic is something worth noting, I think. So let's just leave it. Let's leave it there. But that, but then it's just like a, it's a cleared, a cleared cross.

I can't, and then somebody just finds Lazzano's feet in, you know, 70 miles of space. And he's, and he's running at Morales. and he does him. He does him like, somebody we know reminded him of Landon Donovan, the way Lazzano plays. Just kind of effortlessly glides by. Morales leaves him in the dust,

cuts in and plays the ball to Ariel Antuna, the 12th best player for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Antuna is just in a shooting drill out there, like a JV high school soccer shooting drill. and he slots it past Stefan easily. 3-0. 3-0. And the big takeaway on it, right, was that Morales totally should have fouled the guy, right?

Isn't that the giant takeaway? I guess. At that point, it didn't really matter because the whole thing seemed so hopeless. No. No. You're playing Mexico. You don't allow him to score a goal. Okay, so I've pulled the goal up, and I was completely off.

I had a different transition moment on the Jordan Morris bit. It was cannons cut back after Sergeant Fed Cannon in wide. Cannon cut it back and it doesn't find an American player, which is fine that happens. And yeah, then Mexico cleared out wide. Morales is there to stop him and gets completely skinned

and has the chance to just grab the guy and pull him down and take his yellow card. Doesn't, and that's how it started. You were correct. I'm going to have to pull up the Morris bit from another time. Okay, okay. Well, so just it's too bad that the night.

ended that way for Morales because I thought he he demonstrated that he is a useful player for the national team do you agree with that at least as a rotational guy yes but and I just checked Morales was on a yellow card already so that could easily be why he chose not to he's 70 yards away from goal he could just decide that it's not so the goal scoring opportunity isn't so eminent that it's worth the the getting sent off let me let me push you on Morales. Is he a better Michael Bradley? Are they even in competition?

I don't know. I mean, he's a better defender than Bradley. I mean, that's the thing that stuck out to me is he, it was harder for Mexico to just play right through the middle of us than it was. I felt like back in the Gold Cup final. Didn't it feel like in the Gold Cup final? They were just shoving it down our throat. And in this game, they were,

They were pressing us and we were giving the ball away a lot, but I don't remember just a ton of people dribbling straight through the middle for a while or quick combinations through the middle. It seemed like Morales was offered more resistance in that part of the pitch. I think that would bear out from even a shot chart. I don't think Mexico won even took that many shots in this game, whereas in the Gold Cup final they took a ton of shots. a lot of them from right at the top of the box,

which is where you'd think maybe Bradley would have helped prevent those. So you could say maybe Morales was helping to prevent those kinds of shots. So I think that would stand up, Bells. Okay, yeah. That's what I liked about him. I mean, he's not a world beater on the ball, that's for sure. I mean, he's fine. But I don't think anybody who watched that game was like,

you know, Morales is going to be the guy who runs this. runs this offense for us. So I guess I'm going to punt on the question. I can't believe the one time I try to step in and describe a goal. I just describe it completely other separate sequence. I was so excited, Bells. You're forgiven. You're forgiven completely.

We need to know our roles. I got to stay in my lane. I was a little confused at first. I was like, wait a second. I don't remember Aaron Long being involved in that at all. But then I thought maybe you were going like 20 passes back. I was like, Craig, do we really need to go 20 passes back? I was still getting to the Reggie Cannon cut back.

You just cut me off. Okay, let's do the first goal because that's also kind of sad. I thought Sergenio Dest had a nice debut for the first 20 minutes. And then Mexico scored it was a long and gorgeous passing secret. I think many many, many passes, more than 20 from Mexico, just demonstrating the sort of class and first touch and movement and quick thinking that I wish we had more of. And it ends up with Takedito and Sanchez on the right wing facing Pulisic and Dest respectively. And so it's not like a super dangerous situation. Takedito glides past Pulisic, who was,

I would say less than committed on that play to playing defense. And then he does desk up with a nutmeg, which brought the house down at the Meadowlands and floated across into the middle for Chichorito, Javier Hernandez, who was completely unmarked in the middle of the box, and he headed it home very nicely, in my opinion, 1-0. and that was, I think that, you know, that, that kind of, that kind of took the wind out of our sails. Whatever wind we had was out of our sales at that point. After the 27 past sequence, it ends with an unmarked chichiturito. Yes, that will do it.

And your new golden boy getting absolutely fleeced. Yeah. Can I just, can I just start with the 27 past sequence, though? Sure, please. Can I try to, like, take a little bit of the shine off that? our defense continues to be a really passive defense that this is where my again for all you college football fans out there this is where my Kirk Farrant's analogy kicks in it's an absolutely like bend but don't don't break defensive scheme we are not trying to like set up traps or that we don't have pressing triggers where we're going to go try to steal the ball from you literally anywhere on the field like the defense is just to keep your shape keep them on the outside of you bend bend bend bend and bend you bend and you bend and bend, don't break. Eventually, they'll attempt a shot from distance or they'll get impatient and they'll give

you the ball. I don't think we have anything designed to actually create like turnovers. It's just wait until they turn it over. So the 27 past sequence is sort of just a natural extension of that. They aren't like, it feels like we were never beat until suddenly we were very beat because we stopped being getting, we stopped bending and Sergenio Dest broke horribly. Yeah. Is that is that

Does that kind of jive with with the Yeah With the way those games go It jibes it jives except that you know There were there were several moments throughout that sequence Where someone had to receive the ball Under pressure and it's not like It's not like the US wasn't trying to play defense

I mean I get what you're saying about there weren't Traps to like like trigger the press and stuff like that I get that But there was a There were just a lot of Mexican players receiving the ball under pressure and making a quick and elegant decision. Sure. Over and over and over again.

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. And that was born out in the Gold Cup final two. They just look so untroubled, don't they? Yeah. Like we could put a guy right on their back leaning on him, hitting them as they received the wall, whatever, and they just never look like they're actually going to touch that ball

to a spot where you can see it. Like they're always going to hide it from you and get it to the next guy. Yeah. Hector Herrera is like sort of the sort of the like class. classic example of that in this game. That guy didn't, he didn't look worried the whole game. He had no worries on his face. All right. Should we talk about Dest? Yeah. Well, I mean, he got, he got done dirty and, I don't know, you want to talk about, like, his national team future?

I'm taking my little internal soccer discussion victory lap here, Bells, because who did I say that I was expecting Desk to resemble in his first game out? Oh, yeah, Anthony Robinson. All right, take your victory lap. I completely was like, I think we're going to see a very Anthony Robinson in 2018 performance, which in my mind is actually not a negative thing at all. I thought Anthony Robinson gave us a lot of positive attacking attributes in 2018, and he also had a lot of sort of defensive liabilities. Dest, this was kind of just one defensive liability.

I don't think Dest was sort of abused the way Robinson was. against say Columbia or Brazil. But again, a very visible, of high visibility error that that was, that Mexico capitalized on means that he's probably going to not live this one down for a while. Yeah, I mean, I know that in the fans' imagination, he may not live it down, but he was, I think it was categorically different than what Robinson underwent in that Brazil friendly and some of his other performances because he was up to the challenge defensively

for the most part. I mean, really, with the exception of that one play, and I know, is there like a special, do you get a special dispensation for getting magged? No, I mean, yet, like, it hits you harder, right? Didn't we? I mean, we were going nuts about his, about his highlight in the U-20 concafas

because he did Diego Linus with like a spin move, this takes that up several levels. So if we're going to make that like a meme, then yeah, this is going to be a mean that's going to live for a while. Something tells me that for the average Mexican national team fan, it's not even meme worthy, you know. Dude, it is. It's like right up there with Linaz doing trap

the way he did trap in the friendly way back when. I'm saying, do they care about death? as much as we care about Linus. They don't care about desks, but they absolutely just care about doing a U.S. player that dirty and it leading to a goal. A very nice goal at that. Yeah.

Yeah. Fair enough. I mean, there's no, there's no sugar coding that moment. It was, and it was, it was the decisive goal, as it turns out.

So, but just like, just like I did in 2018, I very much came to Anthony Robinson's defense. You're going to get skisive. against Brazil. You're going to get skinned against Colombia. Dest got done by Tecateo. Tecateo does people. Like this isn't the end of the world.

Tim Ream got done by a dude from Guyana in the box just as bad. Guyana just wasn't good enough to score on it, so we all forget it. This isn't like a disqualifier for Sergino Dest. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, tell me what you think. Well, should we talk about his national team future? Does this make him more likely to play for the Netherlands coming in here, getting nutmeged, losing 3-0 under like basically a kamikaze tactical plan? Your guess is as good as mine, Bells.

I'm not even going to try to speculate on what deaths, what's going through Sergino deaths mine right now. Good friend of the pod, Matt Hartman, is he's all but giving up hope. as of tonight. I think he'd given up hope like the moment Death was announced in a starting lineup for Iax. He was like, all right, well, it was a good run. Yeah. We'll always have that U20 highlight.

He sets, he prepares himself not to be disappointed, I think. What did you like about Legette? Do you want to kind of end on that high note? The same thing, the same thing I liked about him when he came off the bench in January, the same thing I liked about Dwayne Holmes, when he came off the bench against Jamaica. He was an instant and obvious upgrade

as far as being able to push the game forward. He could receive it without clear options. He wouldn't necessarily make the obvious pass. I actually, well, I mean, the path that he hit into Morris for the penalty, like, that's not an obvious pass to make. Perfectly weighted as well. Yeah. So, yeah, the technical execution and the vision,

So in his limited sample size, Sebastian Leggett has been very good for the United States. And it seems like, I don't know if there's any load management going on for him or if Berhalter just trusts other people more. But if past U.S. performance means anything, Sebastian Legat should be in the next starting lineup. Yeah. And frankly, should have been in this starting lineup. You mean Sebastian Leggett, right? Yes, what did I say? I think you said,

Sergenia Dess, but... Well, Sebastian legit. But I think we should both be in the starting line. I would definitely agree. I want that as well. Yeah. It would be nice to see Pomacall too. But maybe, you know,

maybe in practice he's just nowhere near the level. Maybe. Are you buying that, though? No. I was being a little sarcastic. I mean, again, Will Trap doesn't... What purpose did Will Trap serve in the same?

game, Bells. Since we're talking about the midfielder's in Pomacall and Legit, like I'm saying the legit should maybe start, and there are only so many midfield spots to go around, and we also love Paxton Pomacall. Where does Will Trap fall in this after this game? I don't know, man. I don't know what he, I don't know what purpose he serves. I don't know what purpose Daniel Lovitz served coming in off the bench for Sergenio

Des. I mean, maybe the purpose was to give Des more, you know, a little bit. bit of a rest so he'd be ready for Uruguay. That's what I do soon. God, that has to be the case, right? And Lovitz is more of a kind with Dest than Tim Riem is. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I don't know.

I can't answer the trap question. I don't know what he does. I mean, he's, he's reasonably comfortable on the ball. And that's about it, right? Yeah, he actually had one really nice play in, I think, in the second half where he received it not necessarily in a ton of in like a really tight space, but with enough pressure that he has shifted around a little bit, got it to his nice right foot and like curled a ball into the path of Reggie Cannon out in sort of the right half space.

And that actually keyed another one of our like 90 second to two minute possessions that had that included some danger. So I'll cut that out and make sure that Will Trap gets his due. but you know for the talk of needing a guy who can ping those long diagonals I don't know that trap really hit any long diagonals over 90 minutes yeah no I mean we weren't allowed to hit long diagonals no that's that's right that's right soccer's an is an interesting sport in that like you know if you if you if you're going back to college football if you if you if you face a team that blitzes all the time and you throw a screen pass every time

Nobody thinks you're, you know, nobody thinks you're abandoning your principles. Everybody's like, yeah, that's the right thing to do, you know. Right, right. I was going to, like, go all the way to the extreme, be like, let's suppose Mexico we're pressing with eight or nine people and just left one guy back. Well, you should obviously just hit a blind ball up and let your three guys run. And then it's like, okay, well, what's the break even point for that? Like, if they leave two, if they leave three, if they leave three and a half or four, like, when do you say, all right, well, we've got to just take the space they're giving us? Yeah, well, the thing is, though, in soccer, people will say, if when we say, hey, we should be hitting it long to Jazi's artist's head, people will say, well, that's just, you know, that's just American soccer.

And like, that's, that's crap. We shouldn't do that. We should stick to our principles. 2009, 2009 Barcelona would have passed through that Mexico pressure. I don't know that many other teams are going to pass through it. All right. Well, my spirit's broken. Uruguay.

Uruguay coming up. We're going to send five of our top players home. and then we're going to play Uruguay. Yeah, Pula's six going home. So is Brooks. Morales was going home already, and then he got hurt, went off on a stretcher. I hope it's not too serious.

I haven't seen anything about it. Stefan headed home, and I think Sean Johnson is done. Hopefully it's been a fruitful time for Sean. And then I thought I heard on the broadcast that McKinney is returning. Oh, is that right? That's what I thought, because I think Holden said six guys are going back.

And I think McKinney was the six. We'd already known about five. Okay. So McKenny's going back too. Which, which that should mean, come on, surely that means Paxon Pama Call is starting against Uruguay, surely. I hope so. I hope so.

Jackson, Yule, Paxon Pama call, and Sebastian Leget. I would take that midfield three. Would you take that, Bells? I would. Yeah, I'd be interested in that. I'm not, I'm not going to pretend that I'm like super, super optimistic about it, but I want to see it. I feel like Jackson Ewell couldn't be handcuffed. If you put Jackson Ewell on the field and he sees a 60-yard ball,

like he's hitting that ball. Oh, you love Jackson Ewell now, don't you? I love that he will spray a 60-yard ball with no, I don't know. He's the guy who gets a ball and a half ball. He's like, oh, I can for sure, like, lace this 60 yards on a rope. No doubt, no doubt. So we're not going to preview the Uruguay game, but that's our preview right there.

There you go. Everyone hold your breath for that midfield lineup Yeah and you gotta imagine sergeant's gonna start For sentimental reasons in his hometown of St. Louis And then I guess Morris and who would be the other winger? Who, Cory Baird? Yeah No, it's Sergenio Desk you adjusts system and throw Dest out wide

Oh yeah, Reem attacking attacking fullback Ream at left wing Oh and then we should also mention the missed penalty too Oh, sure. I don't care about them. Yeah. Sergeant did miss a penalty. He did.

Yeah, like miss penalties made penalties. None of that. I'm not bothered by either of those. Okay. Are you like this says something about sergeant's mental, like his mental status? I mean, I would feel more confident about him if he made it. But he didn't, it's not like he hit a terrible penalty. It was a pretty good.

he hit it pretty well, just the goalkeeper guess, right? Yeah, yep. Yeah, if the goalkeeper chooses to go left, then suddenly Sergeant is showing his mental toughness to step up and take that penalty after all the adversity of the gold cups. That's how penalties sway narratives, and I just, like, yeah, I just can't dissect somebody's penalty kick. There would have been at least three, 400-word news articles about it.

There would have been if that had tied the game 1-1, but for a consolation penalty bells, you're getting 100 words max. Yeah. All right. I can't even think straight anymore. Thanks, Greg. Thanks, everybody for listening.

We'll see you.