Pre-match: 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup Group Stage: USA vs Guyana

Is it, though? D-Day represented a challenge, overcoming a major obstacle.

I would argue this is more like Berhalter's Enola Gay. Overwhelming firepower advantage and victory is nearly-assured - unless you got your science wrong, in which case the planet will explode.

 

We are who we thought we were.

 

It's kind of like that. Except in the two test firings, the plane crashed in one and the bomb fizzled in the other. But it's showtime so we hope it works now.

 

As I showed with Zardes, the practical meaning of "regular time" can be misleading. You can play tons, score at a relatively slow rate, and people will advocate for you because in those thousands of minutes you managed 6 goals. Weah has twice the rate and like 3 goals in 300-something minutes, playing on top notch European teams. He is a bench guy, yes, but the numbers suggest if he played full time minutes he'd have twice as many goals as Zardes for the same effort. In fact, if a potential role for him is sub, he has basically demonstrated his value in that specific role.

The more complicated cases are players like Wood and Green who this year had tepid midfielder-like strike rates. This is where I see "playing time" as a rubbish argument. I in fact want to be on the cutting edge of Sargent, Pulisic, Weah success. I don't want to wait for their elite clubs to fully recognize their usefulness in crowded circumstances. I don't need that stamp of approval. I know what I need from the fact that when used they score for both club and country at a faster rate than the other guy.

I don't take seriously the PT arguments because they tend to lump Weah and Wood like they are in the same boat. But I also think that at a certain point you are only weakening your team when you leave off whole chunks of its recent starters and subs on supposed form. One player, I get. About a half a dozen form omits is basically dropping the quality of the team. This is a long camp and club form -- even an indulgent version -- doesn't magically make Zardes as good as the others. It simply makes no sense to leave off several A team guys and claim the B team is in better form. That is buying your own scouting bull a little too much. Wondo was never Dempsey even if Dempsey was struggling at Spurs. Pretending otherwise is silly. And if you didn't see hints of that in the past 2 games......

 

You don't have to be a jerk. I watch the games. I even said I basically ignored what he said to wait for how it looked. It matches what I see them trying to do.

The point I was trying to make, that you are walking past to give me a fake slap, is does it match the original rhetoric. I don't remember "pretty," "play from the back," etc. I wouldn't be surprised if that is what he wants to do and it would be a snob's delight. The question is did he sell one thing then pursue something else. That is a textual exercise as opposed to merely watching games.

I also then would say the original sales pitch isn't matching what he really wants to do, it's questionable whether we have present personnel to do it, and it's questionable whether pure pretty and pass from the back can work in Concacaf. Teams generally do not back off and let you knock it around. They kick you in the shins if you hold the ball too long.

Do you have anything to say about what I was actually trying to get at?

 

Interesting how some of the most-capped players our program has produced-- LD, Bradley, Altidore--are also the most polarizing. There are some players who people uniformly admire--DMB, Earnie Stewart, maybe McBride (though he was way polarizing before the 2002 WC, then that seemed to fall off). Wonder if any members of the Holy Trinity will become lightning rods in this respect.

Anyway: Hard to deny that the forward situation is not dire, love or hate Jozy. Wood has fallen way off form, and while there are some mysterious and hopeful lesser-known quantities (Wooten? Weah?), for this GC it's hard to see where the goals will come from. Then again, it's also hard to see where our opponents' goals won't come from with the defense and goalkeeping looking so shaky.

This is not a new thing, btw. the 2006 forward pool was so thin Arena basically played a lone striker set and we scored only one goal from the run of play (preview of what Dempsey portended). 2002 and 2010 had more firepower, hence better WC results (though 2009 may have been the peak: both LD and Dempsey at their zenith, Altidore playing well, and Davies still in the mix--hence that unforgettable Confeds Cup run).

What is new is that we've always been able to look to a strong goalkeeper, even if we didn't have strong goalscorers. This is the first time I've been worried about strikers and keepers at the same time.

 

He is 36. Do we care if the people who compete this week can play in 3 years? Are not retired?

I used to run track. I was watching a DVR'd circuit meet from Morocco last night. In the coverage they had American female pole vaulter Sandy Morris, who has won the indoor world title but usually takes second in outdoor events. She wants an outdoor world championship. She said she has brought over some different length poles than usual to try on the circuit this season.

Way she put it: I am willing to lose a couple circuit events I should have won, right now, to figure out something that wins me worlds in the fall.

The quicker people catch on to the trade off of "do I want to make the world cup/advance there by playing with formations and the pool" vs "do I want to chase Gold Cup tomorrow by falling back on every old fart who seems in form that I can find, even if they won't be around in 3 years" trade offs, the better.

People also need to grasp that I want to be learning my lessons and figuring out my mistakes now, not trying to find replacements with a few qualifiers left and advancement at stake.

And the thing is that for the most part last cycle, "playing to win" did not actually work. What's worse than tunnel vision? Unsuccessful tunnel vision. I thought we learned from JK chasing trophies with players whose useful career wouldn't last the cycle but apparently not.

 

We should be so fortunate -- because it will mean the present sh!t show has ended.

 

Well, we prefer just to skip by them and crucify the coach instead...

 

I think y'all are taking club form way too seriously when the question is not would Hannover play them and would they score on Bayern, but instead can they score on Guyana and Honduras.

I have no doubt Sargent and Weah and Green would do it. Weah showed few signs of rust in Poland.

The one parse I would do is I am not sure if a rusty Wood would. That is specific to him. He started out not able to hit the side of a barn and when he gets rusty he looks very sloppy. In contrast, for all the crap Sargent took for sitting in Germany and for not doing much do to poor service, he had the one decent shot on Jamaica. His reward? Seeya.

FWIW I think the stats themselves often capture the difference between players who suck when rusty versus are raring to go. Some of the splinter accepters have great strike rates in spite of their treatment. Some do not.

Can we make some personalized distinctions? We're only dealing with a few dozen people so this abstracted one size fits all 30000 feet BS feels very fake. Some of the rusty ones look like HSers when they don't play. Some look fresh and ready to eat someone alive.

A real coach would grasp this. That and that ambitious player A on elite team B who sits but plays well when used is not necessarily worse than unambitious player C on cellar dweller team D who is handed all the time he wants, on paper has more goals, but really fritters away more chances and is less of a player. And has fewer NT goals, and in most any objective sense would be considered superior, unless we were trying to be too cute and overthink it.

Part of the reason we suck is how "bent" stuff has gotten over club snobbery and its counter-balancing false abstraction, pure playing time. How about sweep the BS out of the way and line up the best 23 and XI. I grant that there are few obvious choices but we seem to make the decisions beyond them not by concrete evaluation of performance but rather the very sort of abstracted bull that Berhalter himself seems to use. Some who are critiquing the critics sound awfully close to implicitly defending the coach's approach, if by accident.

Even while we stink. That alone should give pause.

 

you will need to explain this. where did the three goals while playing on top notch euro teams occur? I missed something.

 

Same amount of goals Bobby Wood scored that season with Union Berlin as he was getting call ups (and scoring) for the Nats. And that was a time when we arguably had a little more depth and forward.

Edit: like a lot of caps. 24 from 2015-2016.

 

he played the same style at col that he is now trying to do with the national team

nothing has changed or been misleading. You will notice them playing out of the back consistently and trying to play a possession based style. It isn't going well at all but thats what he's trying to do. You can argue its not working, it will never work or that its just dumb but you can't argue he is being misleading or somehow selling one thing and doing the other. In fact all the interviews this week he and the players have all said they are sticking with the same tactics.

I do love the idea that you can't play from the back in concacaf...bruce arena must love that. lets see those fancy euro teams come here and play haha.

 

These players should not be on the roster (either because they are not good enough or replaced injured players):

Omar Gonzales
Jordan Morris
Gyashi Zardes
Will Trapp
Christian Roldan
Jonathan Lewis
Djorde Mihailovich
Reggie Cannon
Nick Lima
Daniel Lovitz

The thing is that you don't need 23 anyway for any particular game. So, you can still put out an A team lineup with injury replacements and do well. But those players have to be well coached and not look lost and confused like they have the past 3 months.

So, Guyana aside (Zardes will start, maybe Trapp too); I'd like to see starting lineups without any of the above players (of course, Lima being the #3 RB choice will play). I'd like to see consistent lineups. I'd like to see the team play like they understand what they are trying to do and can solve problems on the fly.

I watched Jamaica v Honduras, who should be our semi-final opponents. They are terrible. We should win, or at least lose well in the final. Anything less is a disaster.

There is no reason this lineup can't win this tournament with adequate coaching.

Arriola------Altidore-------Boyd
-------Pulisic---------McKennie
----------------Bradley-------------
Ream---Miazga----Long----Lima
---------------Steffan---------------

It is not the optimal lineup because of injuries, poor roster construction and coach over-thinking (to be kind)..

The major problem, as we saw in the Hex, is that Bradley/Pulisic in midfield is soft and easy to play through. Of course, every midfield GB has trotted out, without Adams on the field, has been the same. If we are well coached and don't rely on the players at the top of this post to do anything, we can win. But if we lose, it will be because the midfield is too soft or one or more of the players that should not be here were relied upon.

 

Not to mention he sure as hell isn't scoring AGAINST top notch teams in the SPL and Scottish cup.

 

Soon to be added to the pool Jesus Ferreira 4 goals. With Sargent, Soto, Pepi and Ferreira all on the cusp of the pool it should be much better in a few years. There are golden generations but correspondingly there are sh*& generations and we are suffering through ours right now.

 

Stupid MLS ref allowed ridiculous levels of hacking. If that's the new standard many players will go down in this tournament.

 

McKennie was at the Pre-Game Press Conference with Gregg. Does that mean he is going to be the Captain? Does that mean he will even play?

I tried to look at who Gregg took to prior press conferences but couldn't find anything.

 

FTFY in a very important way.

 

there is no way pulisic is still available by the semi.

 

Are we talking about the same CONCACAF?

 

Actually, we are choosing to wallow in the sh*&; as we are excluding equal or better U23s to play with that lost generation. Arena mostly ignored them. But JK tried hard with some. Dave tried hard with others. They are not good and we would probably do best to ignore them going forward.

 

I am so sure Omar will start against Trinidad. Setting up a redemption storyline.

Here's something I forgot happened in that Trinidad game - immediately after conceding the own goal, Omar followed it up with a major foul in the box on a T&T forward, not only slide-tackling him from the wrong side, but sweeping the leg on the follow-through just to make sure (Omar did not get the ball). A definite penalty, and possibly a red - but it was CONCACAF officiating, there was no VAR, and the ref didn't see it, possibly because he was distracted by a shiny object.

This happened minutes after the own goal, and was so flagrant even the commentators blurted out "And that's a penalty" on the replay.

Something to remember when some pundit, in the course of this Gold Cup, inevitably states, "Omar Gonzalez, he was just unlucky with the own goal in Trinidad."

 

At least one thing the club form people miss is international play is a different animal requiring higher level attributes. There is more of a premium on hold up play, on precision finishing, on passing, on powerful heading.

Wondo had 14 MLS goals the year he missed the sitter against Belgium in the World Cup. Those 14 goals may have more in common with 5 goals on Cuba and Belize than what we really need for high level international games.

The "hot hand" might get a brace on Guyana. But that's not really what I need them for. I need goals on Mexico and Costa Rica and Honduras. That may require a very sharp skill set. Certain players in the pool have those skills. Certain do not. Going on a MLS streak does not mean you have international soccer tools. Get them confused at your peril.