I think we should never underestimate the rivals, but if we lose 4-1 against Senegal, I can't imagine good results against Japan or the Netherlands.
Lol the absolute worst game I’ve ever seen defensive transitions. Absolutely shambles. - levya needs two Tyler Adams level ball winners to play. He makes zelalem look like jermaine Jones. - pepi is far behind Sargent at this stage. Let’s relax on him some. He’s got some staggering holes in his game - Reyna never looked like “this dude is hyped at bvb” - yow isn’t good enough Overall, the midfield was slow and unathletic. Really poor. The defense was bad. There’s no playmaker through the middle. Busio is more of a second forward. the second goal was quite literally the worst goal I’ve ever seen given up off a corner. There aren’t any match winners outside of a locked in reyna and busio if he has someone to play make for him. Completely outmatched athletically. Looked timid and actually scared. Which is alarming
u17 results are generally crazy and the most consistent above average team can often times win it all it seems, but yeah not a lot of hope for this team
I think the entire US soccer system immersed too much into the possession ball. That slow possession soccer is useless and turnover prone. We can't compete with African team physically and it's understandable, but we really lack the speed of move and thought, for both defense and offense. Modern soccer requires speed, creativity and accuracy, and possession ball is optional. Our next opponent is Japan and we can watch how they handle the physically superior team if we are willing to learn, I put the words here.
Styles make fights. Surely this was the most athletic opponent in the group, and the glaring difference showed. Sight unseen, I doubt we have that issue v. Japan. Maybe we have others, but are more equipped to deal w/ them, especially if Wicky makes the adjustment to be more direct and press collectively. As of now it seems he's following USSF's insistence to play gradual possession in a 433, while they gaslight us, saying we should trust the process.
Good lord. A group of sixteen and seventeen year olds played poorly against a Top 24 U17 squad in the world. Gotta love this fanbase.
I think there's a lot of overreactions here. I'll start off by saying that a lot of the issues here stem from the coach and how he prepared for this game. This team was not ready to go, and an athletic African team is not the matchup you want if that's the case. I think people making judgements about players after this game are going to be too harsh. No player is going to play well if they aren't set up well, especially in midfield. I think especially Gray got way too much hate considering he was the only player in the back 6 making tackles, but there are comments about players in here that just played below average and are questioning how good these players are. I even see comments about people questioning Reyna's talent because of this game. Are we serious? Do we expect him to dribble through this entire team? Senegal is good, they played great, we came in with low energy and got punished for it. The histrionics here are nuts. Results have an incredible amount of deviation at this level.
Watched it all. I think disgraceful is just a ridiculous word to use. Adults hiding behind internet anonymity and calling teenagers "trash" or their performance "disgraceful" is just ridiculous and more than a little pathetic to me. It's just the usual, self-centered emotional reaction, but it's just tired, and now it's directed at 16 year olds. Yay! I have no issues with thought-out criticism or discussion. I just think there's no reason to be a dick about it, and frankly, the comments are often overreactions over one game.
But overall it’s silly to care too much about u17 Games. There might be 2-3 players here that amount to anything for the full team. And possibly the best player of this age group might not even be in Brazil. alas, I look forward to the next game!!
Disgraceful.... Lack of effort Tactical scheme Player selection Quitting in the face of diversity Lack of fight I could care less what you think of me or the fan base. This program is rotten
Granted a bad time to say this, but I thought he did a great job in qualifying, did well in that tourney in august, I'm not gonna dump on him over 1 match, heck not even the players. Before kick off we knew a couple of things: #1 Senegal probably would've won CAF qualifying if a team hadn't cheated (overage players). #2 We're in the group of death. #3 This U17 is probably the weakest since 2013. #4 He probably was a bit too conservative in his choices. The team then gave up back to back horrific moronic goals basically when it was supposed to be half time, and w/what looks like the worst goal I've ever seen the US males ever give up, period. Then they collapsed. For me, it's the last thing that's a problem. Really, you're gonna cave in emotionally because you gave up 2 horrible, horrible, pathetic goals? Regardless of giving them up, you're still in the game, its U17 soccer, tons of goals get scored, you can get 1 back and even if you don't, you can advance as a third place team. What you can't do is give up a million goals before you even have your match against the favorite in the group. Now we just need to pray that the Dutch rest guys on match day 3, and collect a bunch of cards against Japan/Senegal and so are forced to. Other than that, there's zero chance to advance. But anyway back to the original thing. This was a Czech 3 USA 0 WC '06 type game. Just an everything went wrong game. I think this team can turn around and win on match day 2, hopefully by multiple goals. I don't have a problem with Wicky and have generally been happy with him. I'm not gonna flush him over one game, but yes, definitely disappointed w/his performance today. He needed to make a sub after the second goal just to slow down the momentum of Senegal, instead he let the team melt down. As for the U20's, well, it's this group that feeds that one, and this group aint all that to begin with, so I'm not bothered.
I think some of you ignore the bigger picture. There would be no reason to ask Scally to go forward, if we had any semblance of offense, but we don’t. That’s often why the fullbacks often are exposed at the back once the team loses the ball. Scally and Bello have been asked all cycle to shoulder an offensive load they shouldn’t be asked to shoulder because they have the ability to push the play forward, which most of the attackers don’t. With Bello, he has actual defensive issues when you watch him play for his club team. With Scally, it’s the opposite. You watch him play for NYCFC, he plays in a team where he’s not one of the main offensive difference makers, and he’s very reliable defensively. None of the issues you saw were Scally getting consistently beat. What you saw was him being caught up the field, the team loses the ball and he can’t recover. This being youth soccer, other players don’t properly cover for the fullbacks going forward. If you ask him to play differently, he can do that, but you also are going to lose some of the little offense your team has. I try to take a big picture look with this age group. Who can make plays? Who tries to move the ball into attacking areas? Who shows talent? This is a youth team and few of these players (likely even fewer in this team) will make it. I think it’s important to evaluate their talent and consider other circumstances surrounding the team. Just like you aren’t going to hold it against Pepi or AOC that they get no service and score less goals than they should, you shouldn’t hold it against Scally that he’s asked to play a more aggressive offensive role, which makes his defense suffer.
Nobody called anyone trash. The team performance is disgraceful. That's on the coach. After the first 15 minutes, while leading it was obvious thet we will lose the game. Pulisic isn't trash either, but the team performance versus Canada was disgraceful. Thath's on the coach too.