CB happens to be a position we're deep at with prospects right now. The younger CBs on that squad will be the Zimmerman, Miazga types (both of whom recently won trophies with their club teams.) Hard to call up a U20 to the senior national team that doesn't actually play in club football. Impossible I'd say. EPB doesn't play right now primarily due to the fact that Besler/Opara are playing exceptionally well. And I think there is some whiff of truth to the notion that EPB has told Vermes that he's leaving when his contract runs out at the end of the season. Hence Vermes has no reason to play him while Besler/Opara are playing well.
He's making his own team worse, IMO. As good as Besler and Opara are, I think EPB is presently better than both. I firmly believe he'd be the best CB in MLS, if he was played regularly. Like we saw with Pulisic, some players are just better than the older veterans. Pulisic was not an anomaly. That was a really nice cross that took hop right before him, and he had to clear that with his weak foot. Thats actually really easy to whiff on. You'd like to clear it down the field, but you gotta get it out of danger some way. He had 10-15 clearances in that match, he was definite MOTM. He deserves no blame for that goal.
And none of the "prospects" should go to the Gold Cup until they earn first team playing time regularly. The senior NT is not a daycare. Lennon is the only one who plays regularly, but he's not good enough, IMO.
Good draw to get NZ. However, the Kiwis are all saying how they are happy to only face such a depleted US roster.
They still won't beat us. I've been watching them this tournament, they are not very good at all. We should handle them without issue, if not, we really don't deserve to go through. They are worse than the Saudi's, and we would have beat them without the red card and not really playing all that well.
Just finished watching and haven't read the thread yet (anti-thought pollution). Holy shit. This ref was awful. I knew 10 minutes in that there was no way we would finish with 11. The ref was card happy both ways, UNTIL he sent off CCV. That was always his intent, to insure he damaged us. I thought it would have been Jones with a 2nd, but the ref was too smart for that. He wasn't going to let us by with getting double serve a suspension. The yellows on SA were simply window dressing. That guy should be banned from ever reffing again. He makes PRO officials look world class. Quite literally may be the worst refereed match I've ever seen. Difficult to judge the players when the whole match is flaming sack of dog dung. That said, EPB was the standout. DLT was decent. Klinsmann had his best match. Sabbi coming on meant Herrera wasn't the absolute worst player on the pitch for 20 minutes, so Aaron probably has to feel good about that. Too bad we couldn't have stopped the suspensions with him. Bofo was a non-factor. Acosta had his worst game. Short of Sargent going down, I don't think we could have had a worse day that ended with us winning the group. Yay. We won the group. I guess I'll be happy about that at some point. That point is not right now. I need to get some blood pressure pills and take all of them first.
Extremely doubtful. Fasting has exceptions for travellers, new moms and others who have good reason not to I'd guess the U20 squad is incuded
Poor refereeing doesn't usually get to me that much but this was on another level. The ref was calling every bit of contact early on and ruined any chance of fluidity in the game and then started handing out cards like Halloween candy. He also seemed to have no idea how to handle persistent infringement...Jones was constantly hacked down. It became pretty clear that we wouldn't finish with 10 men. I don't have many takeaways from this game since it was so disjointed and then we played an entire half a man down. EPB was outstanding, once again. DLT had some nice runs with the ball. Adams covered a ton of ground and his pass to find Sargent on the sequence leading up to the goal was brilliant. Jones had a strong performance. Lennon's directness paid dividends once again. Acosta was not good. Losing CCV is a huge loss. Glad can fill in at CB but who plays RB then? I'm thinking we'll probably see a back four of Glad - Redding - EPB - Acosta. Jones has been a net positive in this tournament and I'm not sure if we have anyone else on this team that can play the physically imposing enforcer role he does. The only game I've seen from New Zealand play was against Vietnam. Vietnam looked better in possession and had a few decent chances while New Zealand looked more capable on the counter. I think our most likely lineup against New Zealand is: Klinsmann Glad - Redding - EPB - Acosta Lennon - Adams - Williamson - DLT Sargent - Sabbi/Ebobisse
I generally think hating on the ref is a BS excuse and that people overplay that card. In this game, however, I think the ref did a terrible job and his interventions skewed the outcome of the game beyond recognition. I don't think it's worth conjecturing if the ref had it out for the US in particular, but I think he was calling more and more tacky-tack fouls until the red card in which case he was like "holy shit I might have overdone this" and spent the second half swallowing his whistle and failing to issue cards he should have. Pretty much the worst thing a ref can do--alter the outcome of a game through bad and inconsistent calls. That said, I think this was a pretty fair outcome. Not a lot of chances for either side. Both sides had one egregious defensive lapse and the other team capitalized (actually Saudi had another--Glad's free header in the box). But again, the ref messing with the outcome makes this game impossible to read as an indicator of where the teams would have stood on an equal playing field. I was impressed by the Saudis' organization and counterattacking potential, though after the first 15min or so we seemed to grok their game plan and contain it pretty effectively. And it's been said before but man we got the favorable side of the draw. We avoided France, Germany, Mexico, Zambia, England, and Italy. If we can get past New Zealand and then Venezuela or Japan, we'll be in the semis, where we could get the hosts or maybe Portugal. Truth is I have no idea how good any of these u20 teams are and am going either on how well the senior team does or in one case buzz I've been hearing (Zambia). So good signs: team playing reasonably well; won the group; good R16 draw; good side of the draw overall. Bad signs: lots of suspensions to key players. Tournament continues to be really interesting. Should be an entertaining game next up.
Ha, the corrupt investigating the corrupt. The whole hierarchy of FIFA is predicated on political and economic favoritism. There is no longer Sport, only heavily influenced spectacle.
I'm not sure FIFA was ever un-corrupt. And there have been match fixing scandals at the highest level going way back--Germany v. Austria 1982, Peru v. Argentina 1978, etc.
Suspensions are not ever over-turned. We are playing without those three in the next match. Get ready for that.
If we make it through NZ we can call this an annoying but important learning game. If not it will most likely be because of defensive breakdowns caused by not having CCV on the field. Any chance of an appeal? I know they never go anywhere but you can argue that wasn't even a foul.
The type of scheduling that only FIFA can justify. There is NO level playing field, only impressions of propriety.
This guy has apparently never gone up for a header. That second wasn't a foul either. The arm didn't move
Glad I recorded it and didn't stay up. The shouting and cursing would have woken up my family. Nothing to add to the observations here except to guess that the ref was told at half time he was too card happy. So he overcompensated I'm the second half by not giving cards. Overall this was about the worst international reffing I've seen. The constant whistles in the first have made sure not one hit a rhythm going. That ruined the game even before the ref card