On the first I mentioned one of the simplest things that we did badly Friday night. We need to kick the ball harder. THe ball didn't move fast enough along the backline. Add in slow speed of thought and it meant we were constantly under pressure.
Steffen's pass is a pass that never should have been made. That's where the calamity begins. Then he does a poor pass. Then the real horrorshow begins. I don't disagree with there being more issues. It's a long topic to discuss.
Dest got beat badly, no doubt. That happens. He's partly to blame, but it doesn't mean a goal until Chicharito is left wide open. McKennie was MIA on the first goal.
In what world is the guy that is pressing the highest up the field supposed to mark the opposing striker??? Mckennie had no responsibility on the first goal. There are plenty of others who did.
That is the pass that Berhalter wants him to make. Steffen and the backs made passes like that all night.
Maybe he's just trying to expand your mind. "A social group characterized by a distinctive social and cultural tradition maintained from generation to generation, a common history and origin, and a sense of identification with the group; members have distinctive features in their way of life, shared experiences, and often a common genetic heritage; these features may be reflected in their experience of health and disease."
2nd goal. Not too good at this media stuff so sorry. Long about to pass to Mckennie here. (Long actually takes kind of a clumsy touch which doesn't help either.) McKennie is surrounded by 3 guys. The blue space is WIDE OPEN. Clip the ball into space toward the sideline for Lovitz to run on to. Easy peasy. Or even towards midfield where Morris (yes that white circle is his arm) is checking back. WIDE OPEN. That's where things go wrong (possibly earlier though highlites don't go back). This is on Long but more so on GGG and his obvious instructions to his defenders. For here, Mckennie makes a poor pass and decision, the little square ball to Morales was open and his ball to Steffen isn't great. But even still, it shouldn't have hurt us, but Steffen has been instructed to play tiki-taka. annnd, he aint up to it. But, Berhalter liked how we played this one, so all is well.
Something along those lines is what I expected. I knew one of the CB's (Pretty sure it was Long?) had to shift over to cover Dest and as a result the remaining players in the center (Zimmerman and Trapp) have to cover runners and floaters in the box.
Our midfield keeps getting outplayed by any decent side we go up against. Been happening since 2017. Historically we've always lacked talent but we at least had a work rate and mentality to not allow everyone to just run amok and slice and dice right thru us. The only real solid midfield performance I remember against a quality side featured Danny Williams and McKennie vs Portugal under Sarachan. I also believe more needs to be said about how misused McKennie is under Berhalter.
Danny is playing in the Cypriot league now. https://sbisoccer.com/2019/09/danny-williams-joins-pafos-fc-of-cyprus-first-division
People putting any blame on Trapp for Goal 1, i advise you to watch the angle from behind the Mexican keeper. Then come in here and eat some crow.
We should have got Tata just to keep him away from Mexico. He's the guy who managed to keep us 0 shots on-goal, 0 shots off-goal, 0 blocked shots, against Argentina in that Copa semifinal. I think that is the only time in history that has happened, at least between NTs. It's huge. It means Martino basically cut us off completely, guessed every move by our team/coach and made it so they didn't need a keeper at all. Even Tahiti got one shot on-goal and one off-goal against Spain. And they managed 33% of the possession, we only got 32% against Tata's Argentina. It's scary that Mexico has that guy now. It's going to be tough to get even a single point out of those two games.
One thing it's easy to forget about Friday's game: It was 1-0 in the 78th minute. We were lucky not to have paid for some very poor play earlier but we were still in it til the second goal at 79'
They scored two more after Trapp left. Which doesn't mean Trapp is any good. Just that bringing in Lletget to try to create something for the forwards left another hole for Mexico to exploit. Frankly, I don't think we were ever in the game. Had we scored and tied it, they'd have scored the 2-1 right away. They were missing chances left and right because they were fine so far they were in front.
Trapp is just hanging out from that angle too. What I like about that angle is seeing Trapp check his back shoulder, sees Chicharito start calling for the ball, and then turns back to watch the game. I suspect he thought "hey, that was the guy just ran by me, oops, need to focus on the ball".
Do you have a link for that or did you see it on tv somewhere (or perhaps you were there). I would be interested to see that. I was hoping they would show a better angle replay after the goal so I could see what happened in the middle of the field.
We would have been very lucky to come away 1-1. I didn't even notice Trapp left the game. I've always called Egg's midfield the light brigade. He doesn't take the midfield seriously enough. Leaving Morales in there late in the middle of the Grand Canyon carrying a yellow card and being asked to stop a counter that includes Lozano...…. it's all so "cavalier". He needs somebody on the bench like Canouse who can jump in for such cases but instead he stockpiles the Yueil's and the Mihailovic's of the world. I don't think anybody thinks much of Egg's in-game sub strategy.
Trying to play the rest of this possession based “System” through a non defensive, wannabe Pirlo, deep lying diagonal ball hitter, when the players in the pool that vaguely resemble that role are not international quality is the problem from which all others stem. Fix that and then we can talk about the other issues and players. IMHO of course.
I wonder if Boyd is having second thoughts about committing to the U.S. For that matter, what's on Dest's mind as well?
It's possible. Also possible both are thinking "I wasn't that good against Mexico, I need to do better going forward."