USA vs. Canada, 10/15/2019 [R] - Post-Mortem

Discussion in 'USA Men: News & Analysis' started by schrutebuck, Oct 15, 2019.

  1. ttrevett

    ttrevett Member+

    Apr 2, 2002
    Atlanta, GA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Tons of talk about how low we've sunk, about how the players on the field didn't play well, etc. Let's look though at the players on the field.

    Steffen, having a good year, but not world class
    Yedlin, been off for a while, no one would say he's an outstanding defender
    Ream, a champ'ship level defender, consistent at that level, not outstanding
    Long, a good MLS defender
    Lovitz, consistent MLS defender, not really all that good
    Bradley and Roldan, much has been written about their mediocrity, nothing has been written about them being outstanding in any way currently
    McKennie, a very solid member of a good Schalke team
    Pulisic, currently a second or third off the bench option for a good Chelsea team
    Morris, an MLS level attacker, again, not a world beater by any stretch
    Sargent, a developing talent with potential, certainly has not attained any level of success at the senior level yet.

    My point is that looking at this group, maybe they didn't actually play that badly, but were playing a team that could match them and with a little more to play for, beat them on a given night.

    Clearly I think Berhalter is not the right guy to lead this group, as I think his tactics are not suited to our horses and he doesn't want to change his tactics. I do think, however that we really don't have many very good players, and the ones we do have probably need a good number of good players around them to be able to really show their skill. We don't have a game changer, we don't have a "get me the ball and I'll stick it in the back of the net striker" like we saw against Peru. We don't have a "You shall not pass" central defender, even with Brooks healthy. We don't have a #10 that can hold the ball in traffic and play the ball through the lines with ease.

    What we do have are a bunch of good players who need a good system, probably defense first and counter when we can, to be able to really show their ability. We have defenders who can do well when the ball is in front of them and their #6's are covering for their weaknesses. We have some speed on the flanks but that only works if they have the ball played in front of them and the defenders are caught upfield, again only if we're countering. We have zero, if it was possible, less than zero strikers who can affect the game with their size and speed.

    I guess maybe we shouldn't expect so much from what we have currently, at least, what was on the field against Canada, especially with the guy who was deploying them.
     
    jnielsen, TimB4Last and Patrick167 repped this.
  2. deejay

    deejay Member+

    Feb 14, 2000
    Tarpon Springs, FL
    Club:
    Jorge Wilstermann
    Nat'l Team:
    Bolivia
    Players have nothing to do with this? Klinsmann himself said we need more nastiness. Since then we've lost Jones, Beckerman, Dempsey. New players are not nasty at all.
     
    juveeer repped this.
  3. DHC1

    DHC1 Member+

    Jun 3, 2002
    NYC
    If any of our core players were even close to their individual ceilings, this would be a highly topical take - but we're not even close on that front. If our players play near their best, Canada isn't good enough to keep up - shouldn't be a blow out but should be a marked difference between the two side.
     
    Gacm32 repped this.
  4. Master O

    Master O Member+

    Jul 7, 2006
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
  5. 50/50 Ball

    50/50 Ball Member+

    Sep 6, 2006
    USA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    David is only way above Jozy on potential. Today, he is not a better player and may never reach the level.
     
  6. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    being a little more discreet about details is something we could learn from. we seem obsessed with the PR angle. here are the players we will start -- and sometimes in articles a day or two ahead. here is the basic formation. etc. etc. berhalter drones on and on about his system. one can intuit some things from that. a little mystery is useful.

    the interesting semi-counter-factual is if canada doesn't have to sub kaye early on how does it come out. i didn't think they were effective early. after the sub they shifted davies inside and i think that strengthened the spine and it clicked better. ream, who was touted based on slow and depleted cuba, was out of his depth on foot speed. (brooks would be about the same and just as sloppy on the ball.)

    our lousy midfield didn't help us any. but in any event, i somewhat resist the idea he was a genius who had it all sorted from minute 1. but i do think unlike berhalter he adapted and whether purposeful or by accident happened upon a successful concept.

    if they show up the same way berhalter will have done his scouting and adjusted tactically. the question would then be is he willing to make personnel changes to alter the matchups.
     
  7. Patrick167

    Patrick167 Member+

    Dortmund
    United States
    May 4, 2017
    Twellman said on the broadcast that they shifted with the sub. It isn't true. They simply put Fraser in where Kaye was. It was a 4-2-2-2 with a box in the midfield from the beginning. Of course, what was a box was seen by Gregg as a diamond...
     
    Robert Borden repped this.
  8. Robert Borden

    Robert Borden Member+

    Chelsea
    Canada
    Apr 19, 2017
    Toronto, Ontario
    Nat'l Team:
    Canada
    Agree to disagree, David is better now at a much younger age and at a much higher level than Altidore
     
  9. ttrevett

    ttrevett Member+

    Apr 2, 2002
    Atlanta, GA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Who, other than McKennie is not at his current ceiling? Sargent has potential. Pulisic has been on a pretty steady level for the past few years (look at his stats for BVB even when he was playing regularly in the 17-18 season).Yedlin is a marginal right back for a poor Prem team. The others are MLS/C'ship level players who don't light the world up even at those levels. The world market for football talent tells us that we really don't have a lot of exceptional players. Everyone is laughing at Chelsea for paying that much for CP, when he is playing like a player worth less than half that. Would any team pay 10+M for anyone on the field for us the other night, other than CP? Sargent may be worth more than that but that would be purely speculative at this point. McKennie, as many have said, is a jack of many trades, master of nothing.

    I just think it's time that we need to maybe recalibrate our frame of reference for the craptastic results we have seen. Maybe it's not down to a great team playing terribly. Maybe is a not so great team playing how they can with little chemistry and poor management.
     
  10. ttrevett

    ttrevett Member+

    Apr 2, 2002
    Atlanta, GA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Hercules is arguing my point in a much more articulte way in Master O's post above.
     
  11. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    nah, don't buy it. he starts better backs we can mark your forwards. if we start better mids the ball gets to our forwards more. i like our forwards against your backs, but they have to get the ball to be effective. we were struggling to get the ball forward......because the mids were hard hat guys not suited to the task.

    i think we have more talent but the tactics are absurd and the selection drops it down to a talent push.

    "our starting Xi" etc. kind of assumes it should be what GB starts which IMO is a joke. i advocate experimentation not because i think we should burn games but because i think this is so transparently not our best xi.

    we should be able to field something like

    Pulisic Jozy Morris
    Green
    Adams Holmes
    Lichaj CCV Long Cannon
    Steffen

    bench
    Wood
    Arriola
    Sargent
    Pomykal
    McKennie
    Gall
    Morales
    Lima
    Miazga
    M. Robinson
    Horvath

    sorry, no version of canada matches that, i like your forwards, but no
     
  12. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    two key offensive problems we have are his choice of mids can't work the ball upfield and keep it, and by starting hard hat types, he actually reduces how often the forwards get the ball and the incisiveness of the balls to them. right now it's a get it wide and cross it low percentage offense. if you have mids who are dangerous in their own right then they have to respect them as danger themselves, and cannot just drape back on the forwards and double them. it also creates a plan b where not everything has to come from wide or be basically created among the forwards themselves.

    ussf pulled the stats but i would be curious who actually leads the team in assists, and i am pretty sure it's the forwards + mckennie on goals and then the forwards again on assists. the midfield is barely involved and when it is, it's in more of a cherry picking crash the box role.

    pulisic and sargent were getting crap, the former for losing the ball on attempted slalom runs, the latter for going way back to defend. but the fact they were acting like mids to supplement offense and defense says something about the lack of quality behind them, that they felt so compelled. that implies pulisic didn't think the mids could get him the ball, or that sargent didn't think the mids were hacking their job.
     
  13. DHC1

    DHC1 Member+

    Jun 3, 2002
    NYC
    • Pulisic is playing much worse for Berhalter than either Chelsea, BVB or under Klinsmann/Arena, it's not even close
    • We are agreed that Weston is playing far below his B1 level
    • Steffen has looked worse for the USMNT than his club
    • Sargent looked much worse than he does for Bremen
    • Yedlin was capable of playing head-to-head vs. Man City
    We have the talent ceiling to beat Mexico, particularly at home, if we play a game that frustrates them and take advantage of our speed/athleticism. Not much has changed over the last two decades wrt to that. As you said, it's not a "great team" but it's a lot better than what we've seen.

    TLDR: If we switch coaches with Mexico, we switch results IMO.
     
    btlove, sXeWesley, russ and 6 others repped this.
  14. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    this is somewhat mythical. we tried playing a different way. the coach that time was bright enough to bring in touch players to play fancy soccer -- gringo, kljestan, etc. -- and we did get some epic FRIENDLY results. however the very coach attempting this took one look at our world cup buzzsaw draw and decided his best path was to alter course. you're kind of telling me, well, see, it was working. kind of. the coach thought he had a better chance with top notch DMs than with second rate but decent technical types. i agree.

    the deal with GB is he isn't even calling in the touch mids to play dutch soccer. he is calling in a third rate version of JK's thug mids to try to play something like what JK tried. as i said 20 times yesterday, to change how we play FIRST CHANGE PLAYERS. only then will the tactics work. canada won because the carpet matched the drapes. they set out to bang us around in the midfield and put out people suited to that. they set out to speed merchant us up top and had the guys for it. we set out on a missionary trip to sell jesus with a fair amount of satanists in the group.

    and at least one implication of this for correcting the JK history is one has to be honest with oneself about whether the pool can hack the missionary dream at this point. his assessment, despite the upsets, was not yet. he never went back there.

    ok, GB sure as sh*t isn't starting touch players, and then the question becomes if sufficient numbers are anywhere in the pool to try. this might involve shock and dismay EXPERIMENTATION. you want to play touch soccer?? go get pomykal holmes green mendez ledezma and some people who are more attacking oriented, and can complete a pass.

    otherwise, don't even bother.

    a rational person looking at our recent results and where we have had success would say go wing play and speed and firm up the midfield, change tactics and sit back deeper and counter. 442 or 451 even perhaps. if you want to play 433 it might be wise to have 10s capable of not tripping over the ball for 90 minutes, and who can complete a pass facing where they play, that is not magic johnson showtime.
     
  15. puttputtfc

    puttputtfc Member+

    Sep 7, 1999
    I would take David over Altidore on effort alone. David busted his ass on Tuesday and I haven't seen that commitment from Altidore in years in a USMNT jersey.
     
    y-lee-coyote and Robert Borden repped this.
  16. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    at least one reason to consider a 451 or 442 is you would use forwards as wing mids and it would be 2 fewer of this bunch of mids who can see the field. the talent is up top. if they feel the need to come back to get the ball, with this bunch, either swap out mids or push them back into midfield equivalents of their positions. there is no sense in our best 3 people up top waiting for balls that don't come.
     
  17. um_chili

    um_chili Member+

    Jun 3, 2002
    Losanjealous
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    One note btw about the references in this thread and elsewhere (e.g., the ESPN article) suggesting that this game was Couva-esque. (ESPN called it Couva-lite, for example).

    I see the analogy, since both are surprising and portentous losses in meaningful games. Beyond that though it should be said that the actual games were not that similar. We outplayed T&T in Couva, though not by a ton, and their goals were a bit lucky, while we had no luck. 2-1 was a result that flattered T&T; IMO the right result would have been a draw. That's not to say that T&T didn't deserve to win, they certainly did (and we 150% deserved to lose, playing poorly with a bad game plan), just that there are different stories for different losses, and for that game the story was that we played poorly but still better than T&T so that the loss was a bit unlucky.

    The Canada loss was totally different. They outplayed us from whistle to whistle, the stats show some evidence of this but do not do justice to the full story of the game. Unlike vs T&T, Canada fully deserved to win 2-0; if anything that scoreline flattered us not them.

    So the comparison to Couva is tricky. In one sense, Couva was worse insofar as its implications for the team and program were greater--the loss prevented us from making the WC. But Canada was worse in a different sense--it seems to suggest that we are getting worse and worse compared to regional opposition, and for me that is a scarier outcome because while a bad and unlucky outcome can be written off as a fluke, getting beaten in all facets of the game by a mid-level Concacaf team (no disrespect to Canada, but they are not traditional Concacaf elites by any stretch) portends something very bad that may stretch into the future if we don't do something to fix it.
     
  18. TheHoustonHoyaFan

    Oct 14, 2011
    Houston
    Club:
    FC Schalke 04
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    #468 TheHoustonHoyaFan, Oct 17, 2019
    Last edited: Oct 17, 2019
    If you need players with that bite, aggressiveness, and attitude then pick those players.

    Morales, Williams, Acosta, and Canouse won't lay down for anyone. Why was Acosta sent home early from Cupcake 2019? Why did Canouse not get any run at Cupcake 2019 and complained that he was not given a fair chance to compete for the #6? Why was Cannon not given any run at Cupcake 2019 and only brought back as a replacement for Adams at RB before GC 2019?

    We have to pick players that will fight and compete, not pick players who will marvel and be impressed that Trapp is good at doing crossword puzzles! I once asked the question what would Jones and Dempsey think of the Trapp-initiated crossword puzzles team building exercises. The push back on this board was telling.
     
    UncagedGorilla repped this.
  19. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    here is the deal. GB System 433 soccer with this ensemble has been thoroughly tested and shown to make us the worst team in North America, definitively, 0-3. going any further down that packaged trip is pointless.

    either radically switch personnel, or drop it.
     
  20. juvechelsea

    juvechelsea Member+

    Feb 15, 2006
    what people are missing with the "go find players with bite" arguments is more than half our problem is offensive.

    and imo when we tried other nominal "players with bite" morales and perhaps holmes were the only ones who looked the part.

    and imo if you started the ones with bite plus adams you might get your defense but still lack your offense.

    so among other things you need to decide if our goal is klinsi negative 433 soccer or if the goal ever was to actually prime the attack. if i want to prime the attack i give less of a sh*t about the defense and my aim is for them to have to defend me while i serve my forwards. you then might pick the attacking players who also have some defensive facility eg holmes adams

    i think we have an identity issue.

    i think the one virtue of JK is his was never an identity issue. the players matched the style, including when it changed. this is like BB right before he got fired when he showed up with a horrorshow roster to GC that was neither technical nor athletic.
     
  21. Master O

    Master O Member+

    Jul 7, 2006
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Ultimately, USSF isn't going to change anything. They're just going to run the program into the ground.

    I've already written off this qualifying cycle. The only hope for this program is in 2026, when the entire country will see the USA embarrass itself in front of the entire world. Maybe then there'll be change, but I'm not holding my breath. :(
     
  22. bsky22

    bsky22 Member+

    Dec 8, 2003
    It isnt the players. It is the players Berhalter and Arena picked.

    Here is a 23 that are much nastier that the soft MLS players. Not sure they replace all of what Jones, Beckerman and Dempsey brought, but Arriola, Morris, Holmes (probably but has only got one appearance), Mckennie, Adams, Morales, Lichaj, CCV, Alvarado, and Miazga all bring some bite to their game and are more talented than who they would be replacing. Something like this should be baseling as we try to aggressively integrate young players.

    ------------------------------Altidore/Sargent---------------------------------------
    Weah/Arriola-------------------------------------------------Morris/Holmes
    -----------Pulisic/Lletget---------Mckennie/Jona Gonzalez-----------
    ---------------------------Adams/Moralles-----------------------------------------
    Dest/Lichaj--Brooks/CCV--Alvarado/Miazga--Cannon/Yedlin
    --------------------------Steffen/Horvath/#3-------------------------------------
     
  23. DHC1

    DHC1 Member+

    Jun 3, 2002
    NYC
    Altidore's problem isn't commitment or effort for the USMNT - watch him in games, he's always sweating like a madman because he's exerting maximum effort.

    He often injured and doesn't have the engine that other players have. He also has come up small vs. our strongest competitors. That's different from lack of effort

    p.s., it's ironic that I end up defending MLS and its players so frequently as I'm sure many posters think I hate it.
     
  24. bsky22

    bsky22 Member+

    Dec 8, 2003
    @deejay Here is Holmes in his one short appearance. You dont think this is an upgrade over Roldan? Id love to see an all touch video of Roldan against Canada.

     
    TheHoustonHoyaFan, Namdynamo and Winoman repped this.
  25. ttrevett

    ttrevett Member+

    Apr 2, 2002
    Atlanta, GA
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    [QUOTE="DHC1, post: 38238553, member: 21979"

    TLDR: If we switch coaches with Mexico, we switch results IMO.[/QUOTE]\

    Everything about that quote would be arguable aside from this last sentence. I think you would have to agree that to say the talent levels between the US and Mexican team are such that all we need was Tata and we'd be the dominant team in the region is not accurate. Even "our" brightest light on the club scene, who probably isn't "ours" anymore, Dest, was pantsed on the field by one of Mexico's better but not far and away best players, Tecatito, and made to look decidely average for the rest of the match.

    We are a bang average side, as Burley would put it.
     

Share This Page