It is hard to figure out where this team is going to go. The Canada match this window was a complete change of defensive shape and posture. Some of that shape was kept tonight, but also, the team sat back. This game was more like the GC games where they were "for real", but it still didn't seem like Gregg was doing anything to maximize the chances of winning. The margin of error, like all the GC games until the final, was high. Leaving McKennie and Sargent out there to get a second tournament yellow, up 3-0 and 4-0 with no chance of losing, thus missing a semi-final leg (the only good Hex practice) was strange. Like all his subs all year except for the Canada home match. Like a USWNT match against poor opposition, you can really only tell who doesn't belong. If you can't get it done against Cuba, you are not getting it done against Honduras or Germany. Got it done: Sargent McKennie Morris Yueill Ream Long Guzan Morales Boyd Cannon Limbo: Yedlin (he might have played hurt for a stretch that seemed poor) Didn't get it done: Arriola Lovitz Roldan Lovitz and Roldan should have been dropped long ago. Hardly worth wasting time on them. One of the worst teams in MLS just sold Lovitz for $50K. Tells you everything you need to know. Arriola is super likable and has some big supporters in the media. But he went from being involved, scoring, playing great to missing good chances, playing ok, to invisible and squandering offensive moves. Some of it probably has to do with RW, which has been a place where everyone has looked bad for some reason. Arriola looked best at LW, Boyd looks best at LW, Morris has looked great at LW; all three struggled at RW. Whatever the case, Arriola was less effective than he was in Couva. He has completely tailed off. What seemed like a hard team to crack for Weah in June, now seems like it needs him to get healthy super quick.
it is about making money. You want to show games in prime time on the USA East Coast and in Mexico. Games have to be at night and you can't play in the dark. The requirement is only for League A. I doubt Cuba is even renovating their stadium since they had to assume they would be relegated. They can play the next CNL in League B in their lightless stadium.
i expressed concerns he would revert and he did. guzan yedlin roldan lovitz reamthecb. basically back to his old tricks. cuba was a lousy opponent so perseverating sufficed. the result was positive but the means with which it was achieved suggests he doesn't grasp where his problems lie, still.
i get that but part of the fun of ccl and LoN is seeing teams in their native habitat, and I would rather we play cuba in cuba. i once watched a jamaican team's home game in ccl against club america, in texas, in a baseball stadium. it was entertaining but absurd. to me these stadium rules are used to either exclude teams from smaller countries or render the proceedings somewhat farcical. i get it's for better tv but when ccl first started they allowed you to play anywhere and day games if need be. i would prefer to play cuba during the day and have it be sincere than this cayman wierdness. i also think that while we are probably talking american hs stadium money we should see that that's a lot for many of these small countries. we preferred that pitted mess of a cayman stadium, injury waiting to happen, over lights?
Strangely, Lovitz starting the first game next January would be a better sign of his failure to learn. He should be third on the depth chart now and possibly pushed down further by Sousa or Gloster if they make 1st team debuts. Add in whatever Gaspar showed. I can't imagine a world where Gregg doesn't call Lovitz and Roldan and Trapp into January Camp. But he doesn't need to. But if he doesn't, or doesn't play them then leave them out in March, it would show some progress. Crazy that we have to wait 6 months to see if a guy sold by the Montreal Impact, to an expansion team, for the MLS equivalent of a sandwich and free advice, will continue to be starting for the USMNT.
I agree. That we played our road games in this tournament and they were in Toronto and Cuba in Cayman is a huge missed opportunity for the USMNT. Very unlucky draw.
no, we will have several games scheduled before next summer. and i thought we already discussed the fallacy that playing games to win makes us better. we showed up to games fresh from GC and promptly went in a tailspin and lost our second LoN match. the idea that games that count are all that matter is eurosnob xeroxing. it's what you do with the games, and there is no requirement they be used wisely.
agreed, very strange, and the Cayman is really the next option? If I’m Cuba I have US host it and take the revenue from it. They had to know they’d lose regardless, oh well. Yep, very strange federation Cuba has.
to me that's passive. we should be allowing others to host tournaments, and scheduling road games routinely. it should not boil down to "what did concacaf hand us." we should already be playing at least something like portugal or ireland away, a few times a year. and since we lost away to canada i don't think we were above the task presented us. they got their butts kicked and hopefully learned from it. and while cuba away is tepid sauce this is part of concacaf. ok, some of the region looks like this. soft team, crap field. can you get a result. the argument concacaf is beneath us is about a cycle stale. plus, sorry, but some of the arguments veer toward the unprofessional or utopian. in europe someone gets to go play andorra or faroe or the like, and they don't pout about it.
We won. Check. We played as team much better. Check. Our strikers are in form and giving our head coach more options to pair up top when Jozy comes back, certainly moving Zardes further down the pecking order. Now Jozy when fully fit is not a lock as Morris and Sargent are young and proving their worth with goals. And if anyone watched Mexico at home to Bermuda right after our game, Mexico got scored on early and had to find a match winner in extra time to beat a small, island nation in Bermuda. So one must recall that CONCACAF, our region is a region that will serve up crap fields, worse refs but often odd upsets if the better team is not up for the test. I feel like now that 2019 is over, 2020 can be a year to improve on these first steps in the right direction.
I'm all for playing Ireland until we beat them. But the better UEFA teams don't really care. Road games against Poland, Serbia, Greece, Norway would be interesting. The refs would be good though and the fields would be good and they only hate us in Serbia. But those teams are super busy and there is little money in it. I'm arguing against the idea the CONCACAF is beneath us. That we could use a road game in El Salvador or Nicaragua. We just will never schedule a friendly there for many reasons. Not least of which is those Feds don't want to play there either if they can play here and make a ton more money. We lost in Bradley's home town. A terrible loss, but we didn't lose for the reasons we get murdered in Costa Rica every cycle. The Caribbean is kind of the same everywhere, this game last night wasn't a terrible approximation. Usually the crowd is not a factor, it is the refs, field, weather, and travel. We don't ever play in Africa or South America or even Asia. The travel does suck, but European Clubs play in those places.
I got Dan Lovitz in the back Christian Roldan in attack Pants are matte black Got the watch band black to match Coachin' is my dream, ha You can whip Tim Ream I been in the Caymans You ain't been up off that screen, now Can't nobody tell me nothin' You can't tell me nothin' Can't nobody tell me nothin' You can't tell me nothin' ....
Regarding the actual game, I'm not going to be negative. I think we did what we needed to do. Some specific thoughts: The Positives: Morris is really on the run of his life. I'm shocked at how consistently good he's been. I almost want him to go on a Landon Donovan style loan to Europe in January assuming he's healed up. Sargent - This one is a bit tricky because honestly you see the things that make him a better player than Zardes but a lot of those things don't really fit what Gregg is asking the forward to do. I'd been annoyed about Zardes over Sargent and still kinda am but I can at least see the parts of his game that don't fit. Now, I may still argue that's on Gregg for not finding a way to work the system around the better player. Sargent was mostly pretty good last night but I have some specific concerns about his game vs the system that I can get into more in-depth another time. Long - He's largely been back to his Gold Cup form. He needs to make that move. You can see how much his mindset affects his game. His speed is something else for a CB. Very impressive watching him outrun the Cuba guy who was coming at him full speed and really had every right to beat him for speed. I also thought his passing was better but, it's Cuba. Boyd - Nice half for him. Between that and the goal at Besiktas, maybe he's coming around again. The Negatives: The midfield - We reverted to Roldan over Lletget and that was a big mistake. Gregg needs to learn that he will never have a functional midfield with three 8's. In Yuell's defense, he played more like a 6 last night but neither Roldan nor McKennie are capable of playing as 10's. I thought the midfield was especially poor given how much space Cuba left us. Yedlin - I've been as big of a Yedlin supporter as anyone but he was bad last night. Poor touches, misplaced passes, bad decisions, you name it. He was so bad in the first half, it made Lovitz look roughly equal by comparison. Speaking of Lovitz - Get him out of here. One of the worst players I've ever seen suit up for the USMNT. Hope he enjoys Nashville. Holden saying Bradley is the auto-starter at the stupid regista position. Worst news of the night. Overall, I hope Gregg takes the lessons from the Canada game into account when formulating our strategy going forward. If he does and focuses on creating that functional midfield dynamic we had but with Adams at the 6, I think I will expect us to do well in the hex. If we keep trotting out Bradley, Ream the LB, McKennie at the 10, etc, I think qualification is far from a foregone conclusion.
I am still interested in this team. And I am hopeful with the young talent we have coming through. But there is a long list of areas where a close observer can in good faith second guess the decisions our federation and coaching staff have been making. And while those arguments may come across as manic depressive at times, so be it. Don't fail to hear the message because of its packaging. This program deserves criticism. We failed to qualify for WC18. The process to replace the manager took forever. Highly qualified candidates like Tata were not even considered. In the end we appointed a young mid table MLS manager, a product of the US Soccer coaching license system, the brother of a key US Soccer executive. It wasn't a hiring process. It was an appointment done behind closed doors. Results since then against quality opponents haven't been good. This federation has a reputation for not tolerating dissent from reporters, something which pretty much every other serious federation takes as part of the deal and a force that ultimately drives higher levels of competition and performance. So we come here for it.... Those grievances are top of my head, and I know many here could add to them. You don't get a lot of rope from the fans in this situation. It sucks for Gregg that there was only really downside for these two games. Good on Gregg and the team for dominating Canada (this time) and getting the business done on a crappy field away vs Cuba. Winning with 4 goals on a field like that is not trivial. But two dominating wins in these two games should be expected. After the impossible became possible on 10/10/2017, the demands from the fans went up. As they should.
c'mon, we both know the question is not can they beat this level of team. it's can they beat the ones in the hex that you have to get results from to qualify. march and LoN will tell you a lot about where we stand. the naive version is we don't know where we stand beyond behind mexico. but personally i think splitting with Jamaica and Canada is a concerning hint. we will figure out where we sort next summer. honduras is going to send elis running at us and strikes me as another canada type team. i think right now on talent we should be roughly 2/3 depending what you think of CR right now. do we play to that level next summer.
pounding on reversion, last night he showed his A/B team is basically the lousy bunch his A team used to be, players like roldan and lovitz are still in the mix, bradley will be back, and if this is who he would use to squad rotate or chase an away result in wcq haha that's where i say this misleads. canada beat a similar bunch of players. all you got out of that game last night, if he wants to use this bunch, is some of them like sargent are serviceable, and that he would stubbornly double down on them in the clutch, and only get results from Cuba. what i want to see is canada game 2, is movement in the selection. but cuba shows if they aren't available he would think the lousy guys of september are actually wise choices. we are barely progressing.
Even using the sub-optimal team that Gregg likes, it has to be an upgrade to have Ellis running at Dest and Long than Zusi and Omar. It has to be an upgrade, if we play him there and he isn't hurt forever, to have Ellis running through a midfield three instead of two, and those three being Adams, Yueill, and McKennie instead of Bradley and K. Acosta.
Regarding the hex specifically, I got to watch a few of the Hex teams play this round and I think it is largely a pretty even group from 2-6. I do actually think the US could and probably should finish second. Mexico - Clear favorites. US - Probably the second most talented but definitely not utilizing that talent correctly the majority of the time. Talent is young. Costa Rica - The only time that could really challenge the US as second most talented. Their talent is aging out and I haven't seen the same level of guys to replace them. Jamaica - Dangerous if they can get on the same page. I don't really understand the math of them being in Group B for Nation's League but they did what was expected. They have some top-end talent. Honduras - After 2014 and the youth cycles they had in that time period, I expected Honduras to be a lot better than they are. And they could still get there. They actually looked pretty good in Nation's League. El Salvador - They are not a very good team but obviously going there would be a brutal game. USMNT should hope they get in over Canada. Canada - We all saw them twice. They're trending up. Obviously good enough to trouble the USMNT. Putting on my Nostradamus hat, I don't really see any of those non-Mexico teams except maybe Costa Rica as being teams that should threaten the US as the #2 team in the region but even they are not what they've been. If their old guard ages out, they may be in danger of not qualifying. Selfishly, I'd prefer Canada to get in because I like the different styles of play. That's why I enjoy Jamaica being on the ascendancy. I think it makes us better to be challenged in different ways than back when the entire Hex was Central American teams.
we had an annual college opponent that had a horrifying pitted field. your choices become either get the ball off the ground or the soccer equivalent of obsessively "watching the ball into your glove," which slows down the play. you cannot rely on bounces and a rolling pass can become a bouncer. you probably are better off playing key balls in the air to avoid dealing with the bounces. those are not the fields to go purist.
Looking at the two Canada games you can take it as equal pieces of data. However, an optimist (but not a Gregg apologist) would say that Canada at home was possibly the only game we tried, 100%, to win all year. Maybe Ecuador too. All other games had some element of being a training exercise. Like I said, that is the optimist take. It is hard for this optimist to even think we will play 100% again for the next 8 months at least. If Adams comes back, and Gregg plays him over Bradley, we will finish 1 or 2. If he doesn't or he doesn't, it will be a slog with a few games where qualifying is in the balance.
yueill started over morales because we wanted to connect passes and chase a win, and not just destroy and chase a tie. i mean, my response to the lineup last night, as it was, was whether he had fielded enough offense. that having "lletget" instead of "roldan" -- in type if not that particular player -- was the difference last week. that we simply need another AM for these kind of games, not more defense. i think there are games you want morales for but not this one. this one you needed goals and a result and then put morales out there to close.
Even against team as mighty as Cuba our defense looked shaky, Sargent and McKennie spent more time defending than attacking i am afraid. Only Ream and Guzan defended well, Guzan made at least 3 good saves (against Cuba for ********'s sake!)
my concern is that it's an ensemble company, like arena's, where frustrating players are merely shifted to smaller roles and not replaced. to me you are supposed to be identifying impact players and not rewarding loyalty. if holmes is better than roldan it shouldn't matter that roldan is around more often. that just becomes a conservative selection loop. conservative selection loops are how you end up with villafana out there at LB in a key qualifier. because you go deep enough and it becomes "you would have me risk this game to trial people." when the reality is that the regular bears their own heavy risk of suckage being left be. he is worse than any coach in recent memory at churning the roster to find quality, and letting go of weak links. over time he is drifting towards improvement but the churn is so slow and most of his "mistakes" are still around at either the edges of the XI or as the B team bench. under most other coaches disappointments would go bye bye and you'd try someone new. this to me reflects his naive learning curve. this is not MLS. you don't have to carry disappointing contracts. you call someone else and see if you like them instead. this is at minimal risk to the first team if they are already bench fodder that might not play or might see 10 minutes. ok, so the new guy comes in and we risk him those same 10 minutes. oooooooh. big risk there. not like the other guy sucked or anything.