He's probably analyzing his own performance to determine how he can do better. Sergino Dest has been part of our program for quite a long time now from the U17s to the U20s and now the senior MNT. Did people think last night was his first experience with the USSF? He gets that the USSF/USMNT is a work in progress and a lot of young players are being incorporated. He probably sees it as an opportunity as the Dutch senior team doesn't need him at the moment. Yup. At some point a player ceases being a prospect and actually has to do the job. He has to score that goal. Pulisic put him in position to grab that goal in as big on an environment as a friendly game can create...…………...and he flubbed it. Now we're going to keep giving Sargent more and more and more chances. Our shallow forward pool demands it. But he has to do better.
Whoever does player ratings at ESPN is on crack when he opens talking about the players with this... "Forget the result: It was a narrow defeat, " That game was anything but a narrow defeat, we were demolished. I think 3-0 may flatter us more than Mexico.
We should mind it. USSF keeps getting away with obvious bullshit. Where is our soccer media? Why are they such cowards and won't call the federation out?
Watching the play out of the back was like watching a hostage video. You could tell they were acting against their better judgment.
He’s going to need it with the crap product his brother continues to put out. We’re diehards on this site and some are already starting to give up on the program.
My biggest problem is that after watching the team get pressed to death in the Gold Cup is that GB let it happen again. Tata, with a far slicker midfield in Atlanta, hoofed it to beat the RBNY press in the playoffs. Tata understands that winning is more important than a "system." We had the players to pass better but he didn't use them. Sarge Pulisic Lleget Mckennie Pomykal/Yuell Morales Dest. Cannon Long Zimmerman
Jay Beerholder has more money to make with Stuey spewing nonsense and expansion teams to get money from. Never mind the fact that our national team is in the toilet.
I get that Beerholder wants to paint the Sistine Chapel with crayons because certainly with a little bit of tweaking Columbus Crew could have played like Man City. Sure. But is he so damn blind to the tapes, that when Dortmund or Man City or Brazil or Mexico lose possession they apply full field pressure (especially in our half of the field) to get it back. It was so easy to see what Mexico was doing last night .... Why not just blast the ball long and we apply full pressure against Mexico to gain the ball back against them in their defensive half? As much as I hate Zardes - he did try to run and apply some pressure but he was all by himself. You either do it all together or don't. That is why on one possession you try to play it out of the back and then next one you punt it long and counter pressure ... so Mexico does not know which way you are going to go. Mexico mixed it up. But when you do the same thing over and over again with crayons it is soooooo easy to nail that when you don't have the Barca back line and goal keeper distribution ability to do it safely over and over again. Just do it some and other times don't and mix it up and counter press with with young fit legs. Cmon Ernie - or Earnie - can't you see the program is regressing whether fear, or tactics, or sheer stupidity? You have a bunch of younger talent and you need to provide them with the best possible coaching - and Beerholder is not it. Just swallow your pride and get a better non American (and possibly non English speaking or bilingual) coach.
I wouldn't sacrifice a wink of midweek sleep to watch this horror show. Indeed, I went to bed at the end of the first half last night.
I liked the move for Puli to give Sarge the ball. My take is that he was giving triple G the bird with that move. You don't rate him...well this is what I think of him. Unfortunately for everyone, Sarge choked. We are a year in with GGG, and still what, a quarter of the starters are players that played for him in Columbus...a middling MLS team. That is all you need to know, period, end of story. He is in WAY over his head. What is Tata thinking? He must be like WTF...is it Christmas. Everyone in the stadium knows that US is going to try to play out of the back regardless of what happens in the game. No matter how hard the forward press is on, or how many times we cough up the ball in front of the goal, he will still do it. Did you see the smile and hug he gave GGG after the game. Just bizarre stuff going on.
agree ... Morales may not have been as good as Adams but at least he was playing tough despite the ref yukking it up with Chica.
Brooks supposed had muscle tightness and they pulled him from the roster. Dest came out because it was so important to give Jon Lovitz (pun intended) a run out.
It's not about coaching, only in a small way by making the wrong decisions at the wrong moment. It's far more an identity issue. We have a tiny population, Germany, England have several times our number of inhabitants. They have far more talents running around than we do. It's just a statistical unavoidable truth. It also applies to the USA. Yet we remain a power since we took international football serious. The reason is our attitude, our arrogance. We from the little ones on drill them with the notion that we're the best in the world and our system is the best. The rest are copycats. Our players are soaked in the conviction that our system is the best. And the Orange team is the pinnacle of it. So you as the USA get players from clubs in different leagues that play a variety of (interpretation of) systems and have to find a way to make that a working composition. The Orange team doesnot have that problem. All players come from the same back ground and are capable to vary on that core system. They are so to speak one mind.
This is why the Berhalter choice was such a bad one and the US made a major mistake in not even bothering to interview Tata. Tata gets the absolute most out of his teams. I’m sorry, but this Mexico team isn’t THAT much more talented than this US team.Tata hasn’t been in his job any longer than Berhalter. The difference between these teams is Tata knows how to fit a system to match his team’s talent while Berhalter tries to instill a system that won’t work in the confines of international training on a team not suited to play it. This US team should be a pressing and counterattacking team, like Tata’s Atlanta United team was. Alas, Berhalter wants to impose his Dutch-based system with very few players that can play it. But Earnie Stewart wanted his teammate who spoke ‘Merican fluently to have the job, so here we are.
Nagbe basically just dropped out. Alvarez and Gonzalez are gone. A raft of duals like Dest, Araujo, Miljevic, Mendez, and Cajuste could just as easily decide they don't want to be a part of this mess. More may be at stake than folks realize.
It's coaching. The team is at its worst point in this century. There have always been American players coming in from different leagues and different styles of play. That's not the cause of the problems. Also, there are good number of small nations that punch above weight. These include Uruguay, Croatia, Portugal, and Belgium.
Yes, they occasionally do. The Orange team does it for decades now. Just for comparison. Make a list of matches of those countries against countries that just became world champions and compare those with the Dutch record against them. And list their semi and finals appearances with ours.
Adding this to my sig. Most of us are teenage drama queens, But your main point is right. Sports fans don’t thrive on succes, they thrive on hope. And if you’re a close observer of this team, right now, you are hope-less. GB’s theory of the sport is just wrong. Also, I think that explains people’s red hot hatred of Trapp. Let me be clear...in my opinion, he’s a 2nd level situational player, as in, he’s a squad player you use in some spots in the B team Gold Cup. But with this team, he represents Gregg’s stupid insistence on playing slow, plodding, dangerous (to us!) soccer. The “situation” I referenced above is when you want a deep midfielder who can hit a nice long pass. That’s Trapp’s core competence. But our system is bludgingly simple and stupid. We build slowly, from the back. Who does that work against? Against bad teams, they’re going to bunker us, so it’s dumb because it gives them time to set up their blocks. Against good teams, they’ll just say, thank you very much for taking away your threat of beating us over the top, now we’ll just mark you 1v1 in your own half until you lose the ball or kick it out of bounds. The dumbest thing is that even when we executed, where were we? We had broken through by bringing the whole team into our own half to get enough numbers, so we had the ball at midfield, with no opportunity to capitalize on our success by creating an even numbers or better attack. (IOW, we never had a situation like Mexico’s 3rd goal.). It’s like playing against a pressing college basketball team in the 45 second shot clock era. If you beat the press, you have to attack and make them pay. If you don’t, you take away the “risk” part of the risk/reward calculation of the full court press, or in soccer, the high press. I’ll repeat an analogy I’ve used before. Of all the frustrations of these stupid tactics, for me, the most frustrating thing is the way we play when we succeed in building from the back. That’s when the other team is vulnerable. It’s like those fight scenes from the Wild, Wild West. James West would be kicking ass, and then one of the henchmen would hit him with a chair, stunning him. Instead of pressing their advantage, the henchmen would be like, whoa, he’s concussed, what do we do, I don’t know...and then he’d recover and get back to ass kicking.
Dismal showing, thoroughly out coached. This was my concern when Berhalter was hired - he has no experience at this level, and very limited managerial success in general. It’s like hiring the manager of Taco Bell to run a new upscale restaurant. Not a risk you can take, especially coming from rock bottom. You can’t play out of the back if the CB’s can’t pass and the GK can’t distribute. The CB’s were terrible in this game. On the first goal, after Dest gets beat Long has to close down. He’s just standing there marking no one - contrast to how many defenders Puli had to beat to make something happen. In the midfield did Trapp even play? He brought nothing as usual. Morales was one of the better players but he is more of a circulator. Tough to play out of the back when no one can advance the ball at CM. McKennie didn’t seem to know where to be. Really need an more attacking midfielder to combine with Pulisic and Boyd, especially if Zardes is at forward. They were on an island with no one to combine with in the middle of the pitch. All in all another crap result. We need a real manager. Unfortunately this 2 year nightmare is going to continue.