https://www.espn.com/soccer/manches...the-inside-story-on-how-everything-fell-apart "The staff behind the scenes were also immediately impressed. Van Gaal was warm and inclusive to the point that the feel-good factor returned. His personality and charisma chimed with Woodward's desire to make United punch their weight, the two men working together and the club spending heavily during a major rebuild. But while Van Gaal got United back into the Champions League in his first season, the football became predictable. He demanded that his players stick to his philosophy of a possession-based game. At a time when their Premier League and European rivals were developing quicker, high-energy styles of play, Van Gaal's United were getting slower. "I liked Louis," one player sold by Van Gaal told ESPN FC. "He was a brilliant coach. Tactically, the best I have ever had. But his football was restrictive and he didn't allow for flair in the final third of the pitch. If a player shot and missed, he had to explain himself after the game. Louis hated players shooting with their first touch -- he basically ordered them to take a touch before shooting. Crazy, really." Van Gaal sent every player video clips via email of what they had done wrong. When they ignored him, the emails soon came with "read receipts". During team meetings, the manager would criticise players in front of their teammates for the most basic technical mistakes." sound vaguely familiar? i think the sales pitch is "i am giving you modern football." i think it's a naive, slow variant of it. we have athleticism more than skill. i want the speedier variants. i see anticipating future development with current tactics as childish. no one does aspirational tactics. you don't pick formation and style for the team you wish you had. you pick tactics to maximize what you have now. we can walk and chew gum at the same time. normal process when a high school opens is the team starts out sports playing sub varsity and progresses with player age. you start change with the kids, not the adults. the adults you play what cynically maximizes our chances. and you change that when the kids with skill actually show up. and i think until they get someone like reyna or pomykal as playmaker, you will see us coming a mile away and we can't create against a defense that gets back.
Kudos to Berhalter if he's true to his word that Adams is a CM. Hopefully, he's doing an entire re-think of his tactics now that the Hex is approaching. The March camp will be a litmus test - crossing my fingers.
I really hope we have everyone back healthy in March and he has zero excuse for calling in his MLS favs tho we all know they’ll be there.
Very very rarely. One of the laments all through Donovan's and Dempsey's later years- was that we rarely got them healthy together.
I give no credit for failing to understand the obvious: that when you have a player that is dominating, and playing at the highest level possible in the elite league, and you have a couple of other players orders of magnitude weaker, and inferior both in talent and in the level of competition they play against, and you prefer the latter to occupy such a position you have made a catastrophic mistake. I'm also skeptical in general of any suggestion that he's made incredible leaps in his understanding of the pool. I get the sense that he is utilizing the winter camp to help build us up for U23 Olympic qualifying, that maybe he finally got a clue w/Will Trapp, but I don't get any true sense that he's radically changing anything. Instead I get the sense that the European players are in form and in season, so they've gotten a bit more love than usual, and that some guys are just injured as well and unavailable. I am working under the assumption that he will still be going to his MLS grab bag of non-entities immediately after he makes all the obvious selections (Steffen when healthy, Pulisic, Adams, McKennie etc) and we will continue to see a pile of players who have zero business being called up in January, instead being called up for full internationals in March, and major competition as well (guys like Lovitz, Zardes, Bradley, Roldan, maybe even Baird , some hack MLS CB instead of Richards or Miazga etc). I'll give my mea culpa's when I see clear evidence that I'm wrong, but for now, all I see is a handful of moments of sanity (it appears he's seen enough of Trapp to throw him below at least 3 or 4 other options in central midfield, he may have seen enough of Baird to regard him as a non-option once other guys are healthy) rather than some pragmatic approach where he's bleeding guys in as a he feels they're ready. I've just seen way way way too many guys not get any run, while other total scrubs have gotten a giant pile of call ins: Lovitz, Baird, Roldan, Zardes, Trapp over and over and over and over, heck even Boyd who flashed early and fizzled the rest of the way, these guys seem to have an automatic ticket in for no apparent reason while guys like A. Robinson, D. Holmes, Morales and Sargent (until the fall), Nova, heck even Gooch, or a guy like Wood who was more productive in qualifying than Jozy can't get a sniff. Why? There aren't any clear answers that are reasonable other than a clear MLS bias. Anyway, just color me a skeptic. I view Berhalter as kind of a know it all, idiot, whose in over his head, not really understanding how to build a national team properly and not knowing how to utilize the pool intelligently until I see signs he's gotten clued in. It's gonna be a white knuckle qualification, sounds like even if we had lost that second Canada game he wouldn't have been fired, so maybe there was a never a chance to eject him before qualification began, but I have serious, serious concerns going forward, and as I've said earlier, i see the little moments of hopefulness in his latest callups here as more pragmatism, than Berhalter seeing the light and getting a clue, I think it's same old same old when it comes to "the group" come march. The one saving grace in all this is that because World Cup 2022 is so so so far away, time itself may save us from the sheer scale of Berhalter's cluelessness. If the team can find a way to qualify, it's just hard to imagine we won't have breakthrough's with at least some of our kids: We've already seen Pulisic breakthrough in '16-'17, McKennie in '17-'18, Dest and Weah beginning to break through in '19 Sargent fitfully getting minutes in '19, Gio Reyna breaking through in '20, Weah seemed ready to break through in '19 before injury derailed it for now. Now we've got Ledezma, Llanez, Mendez, Pomykal, Richards, Araujo, Gloster, Taitague, Bello, Parks, Servania, Kayo, Aaronson,Leyva, Busio, The Tillmans, Siebatcheu, KDLF, Ferreira, Ebobisse, Soto, Toye, Pepi, Ocampo-Chavez etc (some more than others obviously) all coming through or already kinda through. Given we're still just a touch short of three years away from opening kickoff of that cup we should have answers on nearly all of these guys if not more when Berhalter is scratching his head over whom to call in for slots 12-23 on the bench. Some will fall off, others like Carleton and Taitague might wake back up, and others might just go from A to B to C and be right in the team sooner rather than later, but given that were still nearly three years away from kicking off that tournament, nearly all of these guys will have shown us enough to definitely be a part of the 23, to be in the debate, or to have fallen out of the discussion entirely. It definitely feels like regardless of what Berhalter thinks of guys like say Antonee Robinson (if the AC Milan Rumors proved true), or where a guy like Gio Reyna stood, what they and their clubs might choose to do might force the issue entirely and take it out of his hands, period. That's my hope. That enough of these guys just flat out make the starting lineups regularly in elite leagues, get serious minutes and are productive and obviously must start or at least must call in caliber and so it becomes a no brainer for even someone as seemingly clueless as Berhalter in 2019 (or Berhalter in general to me).
What do posters think about Sheffield United’s system that everyone is talking about? It’s been an impressive first half of the season for a team with de minimus wages. it’s not pretty though so I’m guessing certain posters won’t like it.
They’ve been fun to watch! One of the my favorite things about the game is there are so many views and ways to play the game. For me the “Europeanization” of the game has made the game more bland than it used to be. There was a time when Brazil played like Brazil. Now you could dress their national team in a European jersey and no one would know they were Brazil in disguise. And Ireland played with twin towers (Quinn and Cascarino). They made teams come to Dublin and play on a rugby field. Every ball played long and high. Every ball contested for like it was a rugby game. It was fun to watch a sophisticated team like Spain go there and play. A real battle of styles and views of the game. Sheffield gives us a little taste of that.
Cs get degrees A year and a day after Gregg Berhalter's first match in charge of the #USMNT, what grade (A-F) would you give his tenure so far, and why? (Not particularly eager to hear #bantz on this one so if you really feel compelled to do so, please try to make it entertaining)— Charles Boehm (@cboehm) January 28, 2020
Yeah, I think I've mentioned before that in our last 5 World Cups, we had projected starters missing either for the entire finals tournament or for selected games due to injury.
C-, because it's hard to be too tough on a coach who hasn't had his top players healthy all year. I get that injuries happen but this past year has been extreme with most injuries happening to our very top players. A lot of anger at him seems based on things he may or may not do with a full squad, but he's done little to remedy those fears with how he's handled the players he has had available.
F+. I think forcing a system rather than building around our best talents is utter folly. That being said, I can get my head around being experimental when we have two years before qualification starts and if that experiment means losses early on, I understand. I cannot understand however, why one wouldn't be broadly experimental in looking at the pool / turning over every rock while being experimental. To experiment while doing so with a narrowly construed roster leaves one open to the results of the experiment which were a horrible failure. I am hopeful that the experiment is over as evidenced by him saying that Adams is a CM. Hopefully, that will cascade down and we'll see a return to what makes the USMNT better than the sum of its parts.
True. The one game where GB got to actually use his plan of TA @ RB was the game against Ecuador. We completely dominated the game. We pinned them in their half for almost the whole game and didn’t get caught on any counter attacks. All the problems were in the attack. Morris and Mckennie struggled to gel that game. Arriola missed sitters, Pulisic struggled to find space in a packed middle, and Zardes was Zardes. Ecuador’s coach said that was the best US team he had ever faced. That was the one game GB actually had with TA.
Yeah for me, his failure to expand the player pool has been my biggest problem with his tenure. This January camp was much better. I don’t have a real opinion about his system yet, since he has only had one chance to use it. I think TA was the player the system was built around (which is kind of insane to me. I think we should never make a system around any one player).
We can agree to disagree but the system was clearly built around the deep-lying playmaker who is expected to dominate our team in terms of ball touches. We put a couple of guys there who are quite poor defenders and have "defensive gravity" where our nearby players all must get closer to the player because of his poor range and lack of defensive bite. These compensations are terrible and put our best players in situations that accentuate their developmental areas and hide their strengths.
Why would you not think think the system was about getting number advantages (which is what GB has said and it does) in important ares like the center of the field. I know Pep ran the same system not to protect a Dmid, but to overrun the opponent in the middle of the park. And the one game GB got to do it, it did just that. Ecuador had Zero presence in the middle of the field.
who touched the ball for us the most in the Ecuador friendly, where I recall they weren't really making much of an effort? There are lots of ways to get numbers advantages in the center of the field and they do not all entail putting a weak non-elite player in the center of it all and who is expected to dominate our team in terms of touches. Is it your contention that Ecuador would have had more midfield presence if Adams was the DM instead of Bradley/Trapp?
Different parts of the system do different things. The moving the outside back into central areas part is about getting numbers into the center and is a thing Berhalter has moved away from with time. The deep lying playmaker is a different aspect of the system and is the piece that mandates a player of the Bradley/Trapp/Yueill mold sitting in the #6 position. In my opinion, it makes us really dull and predictable with the ball. Many feel these are related pieces, with the deep playmaker taking a spot on the field instead of a better player of a different type; originally sending Adams to right back to make way is what really pissed people off. I tend to agree that Berhalter is too focused on having a specific type of player there and the sacrifice in quality over type for a team with real personnel limitations is a bad trade off. But, these parts do not have to be connected. We could very easily, for example, play Adams as the 6, eliminate the more stagnant types and still play Dest as an outside back filling the middle from either the left or the right.
Ecuador was totally trying. They were just beat down into submission. They opened the game with tons of energy trying to impose their will and we were most dangerous during that part of the game. They fell back into a shell and hoped to hit us on the counter once they saw they could not press us into mistakes. It was a smart tactic because our attack was not able to break them down and create many good opportunities after that. Trapp played pretty good that game. The Trapp + Adams middle held up very good. Would Adams @ DM + Yedlin @ RB have been better? I’m not sold either way. It would have been an interesting experiment had that been used in the 2nd half. So in my opinion the system hasn’t been proven or disproven to work. We’ve had one game in a yr to see it. This this brings me to my other major criticism of GB. His during game tactics and subs have been poor.
C. We could have gone for a better coach, but the requirement that the man for the job must belong to the Inner Circle and not have a Spanish last name killed any chance. So we're stuck with a mediocre coach, and on top of that dealing with a delusional fan base who think the player pool is much better than it really is.
This is honestly how I feel as well. The results compared to the quality of the opponent have been abysmal, and the fault in the approach is glaringly obvious. There is virtual unanimity on that, from his harshest critics to his apologists. When elite players play with the tentative reluctance of a hostage reciting a "death to America" letter in a hostage video, things have gone wrong badly -- F+ wrong.
USMNT fans should thanks their stars every day for clear eyed poster who let us know that our pool is terrible and that pulisic’s ceiling is Fabian Johnson.
Can someone explain why he talks about Zardes and Sargent differently? With Zardes, he ignores the weaknesses and just focuses on positives he brings. With Sargent, he focuses on everything that JS needs to work on. Is what league they play in? Age? Something else? Gyasi Zardes might be far from the most technical player and his international career goal-scoring average (0.21) is not flattering.Gregg Berhalter believes, however, that people overlook Zardes’ strengths and focus on the negatives.#USMNT #MLShttps://t.co/t9TNFJpnBQ— Franco Panizo (@FrancoPanizo) January 27, 2020 full quote from Berhalter when I asked him to assess Josh Sargent's form lately pic.twitter.com/hpvcgEucQj— scuffed (@scuffedpod) January 27, 2020
Zardes is what he is, at 28. Criticizing him is pointless at this point. At 19, Sargent has room to improve, even though he's shown no evolution in the last months.