Post-match: International Friendly: USA vs Jamaica; June 5th 2019

Way too convenient to throw the coach under the bus after this one. The coaches revolve, the problems remain...the scapegoating continues.

 

Adams and McKennie are plenty strong enough to deal with physical defenders.

Pulisic's going to get the shit kicked out of him though.

 

The coaches didn't revolve past Arena. GGG's just a younger Bruce Arena. Bruce found "his guys" and rode them out of the WC. GGG's focused on "his guys", and making whatever tweaks necessary to fit them in his "system".

 

Took me a couple of days to shake of the 'toaster and bathtub' mindset.

I've been willing to give GB a bit of a leash to prove himself. In 5 games I've now moved to WTF GB?

The warning signs are blinking red, red, red. Warning signs that he's in above his head. Tab, why didn't you bring Sargent or Adams to U20?...Ans: I've spoken to Gregg, they are part of the full national team now. Gold Cup roster: no Sargent. WTF?

Provisional roster submission: no Jackson Yueill. Good runs of MLS games; so call him in just before the GC. Ok, what the heck, it's only a camp. Get a look at him in person. Oh, now you start him in a run up game. WTF? (And I'm a Quakes and Yueill fan!). So apparently, GB is soooo sure of who he needs to take to the GC that he has the luxury of starting a player who isn't eligible. Some poster suggested, maybe Yueill plays like one of the 'best 11' so he's 'filling the spot'. Ok, who? I'd say he's closest to a poor man's Adams. ...you know, our most excellent right back... (which had even RB Leipzig tweeting out a WTF GB).

Clear signs the guy's completely overthinking things. He's lost. In over his head.

 

Ok, now that my spleen is fully vented...

My first thought early in the game was 'these guys look tired'. Bad touches and donkey passes from the get go. To me those are signs of fatigued players. I've seen it way too many times in US tourney's. US coaches ride their 'best 11' into the ground and by the fourth game, the fatigue shows. Same with Bruce's WC elimination game. No squad rotation.

So, maybe, just maybe, GB's been riding the guys hard in camp practice while he can, and didn't give enough recovery time for this game since it's a meaningless friendly and he already knows his GC roster anyway. Maybe...

 

Because it's a youth tournament, and no one outside of the US will actually care if we win it?

(I say this as someone who stayed up until ~2AM for ET/SOs in the last two quarterfinals. They're a load of fun, but utterly meaningless aside from being a scouting showcase for clubs)

 

Why don't the Jamaican guys catch MLS fever? Are they just better coached?

 

Well a guy like Djordje seemed to realize he wasn't in MLS anymore and kind of shit his pants out there. Mental mistake after mental mistake. Sucks for the kid, you could see he was pissed at himself.

In a few cases they're just better players. I'd take Kemar Lawrence at LB for the USA if such a thing were possible and not feel unsafe.

 

I would be thrilled to have Kemar but that's about it from the roster.

I blame the manager. He should have put the guys in a standard formation, 4-3-3 or the like and let them go.

I am a big believer in putting players in a position to play fast and know their assignments. Greg failed his men this time.

 

The OTHER thing with a guy like Pomykal is when he's playing in Frisco he's playing against seasoned adult professional players. In Poland he's playing against inexperienced kids...

 

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Oh make no mistake that was a stacked squad, but in the end the majority of those players (like most at this tournament) are going to have a ceiling as solid mid-level pros.

It's nuts to think about that since 2003 we've made it to the QF in five of the last nine U-20s, (and took it to ET in *all* of those!). We've been hyped about these kids before. Hell our 2005 team kept Messi from scoring for 45 min with Marvell Wynne as a starting defender and Chad Barrett scoring the winning goal. I want Paxton to be the second coming as much as anyone, but his ceiling might be Benny Feilhaber too for all we know. I've been watching too long to put too much stock into these tournaments, fun as they are.

 

Jamaica featured MLS and USL players. I'd have to say they were better coached. They certainly looked the more fluid and well drilled side.

Mihailovic is a DM/CM who was tasked with playing as an off-forward/amid in 3G's 3421.

The France featured some pretty experienced players, which was one of the reasons why they were one of the favorites to win the whole thing.

 

With a different manager, Feihaber is a hundred cap guy with three world cups. That's a pretty good career if Paxton pulls it off.

 

yeah....benny played well in huge international games in the world cup and confed cup (where the US made its deepest-ever run in a FIFA tourney ending spain's 36-match unbeaten streak!)...not to mention in his last start for the USMNT in 2017 he set up the only goal with a beautiful assist vs Jamaica in a 1-0 win. He's better RIGHT NOW than a lot of GGGs pets. (a lot of the veteran players in the wilderness are)

Not his fault that he suffered under some bozo managers. Should've been a much more prolific player for USMNT.

 

Marvell Wynne chose not to push his career or his development. Talent can be readily judged from a distance, but mentality, work ethos, and ambition are a bit harder to discern in the same manner.

 

There's a reason why national team managers don't try to pretend that they are Pep and run out gimmick formations, or try to change their formations too often. They don't have the practice time sufficient to really get enough players on the same page where they play together without having to figure it out as they go. Teams that understand each other's movement look much better than those that are going through the "wait, coach told me to do ....." thing that we saw going on the other day. Guys were literally at a loss deciding where to pass, since they weren't on the same page. People describe quick one-touch passing and good movement as "instinctive" but really it's a combination of having the right players in the right positions and lots of practice and game time together. I hope GGG is able to straighten out his approach, but given what we've seen so far, he's still stuck in the "I have clever ideas and I will MAKE them work" mode.

 

I agree 100%. I would go vanilla in any short camp scenario.

Let the talent shine.

My other team besides the USMNT is the Chicago Bears. Under Lovie Smith they had a top defense for a decade with multiple complete roster turnovers.

He traded some trickery for absolute mastery and his guys flew to the ball because they knew their jobs.

 

Actually, in some ways, it was not always as bad as it seemed. Some players were a lot worse than others. The team as a whole had a pass completion rate of 85% which is not out of the ordinary range for the US team. Mihailovic was the primary offender, completing only 67% of his passes. Roldan seemed pretty bad to me, but completed about 39 of 47 passes (83%). Of course, pass completion rate does not take into account the fact that some missed completions are far stupider than others.

Yeul was a pleasant surprise, completing 35 of 40 for 87.5%. Trapp, despite the bad press, was pretty good at 62 of 65 for 95%.

 

Those numbers mask the number of terrible unforced turnovers in the middle of our own half. We couldn't build past midfield for most of the game, and spent a lot of time recirculating the ball without any incisive effect...

Yeuill, while maybe somebody to bring into the next Camp Cupcake, did not mesh well with the others and you could tell that he had no practice time with them. All of these guys should be able to pass around in our half without handing the ball to the opposition, especially when under little or no pressure.

 

Still relying on forcing short balls...

"We're going to work on building out of the back as usual," said Long. "They have some good pressure, so that's going to be a good challenge for us, just circulating the ball and being a little more potent in the attack."

Berhalter added, "Any time you're in some high-pressure [situation], there's going to be some errors, and it's about staying calm, being brave, opening up, moving for each other and you can solve it."

 

Wynne never developed the ball skill to a level required to bring his game up to international standard. He relied on his speed. Was an effective MLS right back in a stay at home 4-4-2 system. In the years he played for the Quakes I never saw glimpses of a higher ceiling that was somehow unexploited due to lack of ambition.

 

As a Quakes fan, I've seen a lot of Yueill's game. And I've always thought he has a high ceiling. His work rate is incredible and he can both see and execute on defense splitting passes and long cross field balls to open up defenses. He's reasonably good at holding the ball in traffic.

His weakness is that he makes really bad mental mistakes leading to give-aways in his third and opening up his team against a counter. He actually is quite capable of making these mistakes all over the field, but of course, the ones that lead to a counter are the ones people remember. He's cleaned that up a bit under Almeyda. But that was one of the reasons past coaches were unwilling to give him significant minutes. I suspect he will have to go through the same learning curve at the international level where the game is played faster and the counter attacks are deadly.

 

I did.

 

Berhalther's main system with the Nats, a modified 433, relies on wide forwards to work the flanks.