I am easily as embarrassed as a fan of the national team as I have ever been. Couva was worse overall, but I feel we are lower as a program now than then. Berhalter needs to resign as soon as possible. It’s unbelievable that he took no accountability in the postgame interview.
The only way to save face for the Berhalters (and USSF) is hire Dave Sarachan as Assistant Coach, give him the wheel behind closed doors, and pretend Egg continues being the main coach.
Couva was a worse direct result (US out) but I'd argue the US played much better soccer that night than tonight. Were a bit unlucky on what they conceded. Whereas tonight, they should have conceded more and probably should have only scored 1.
Guys, Canada has arguably the best core of attackers in CONCACAF that we've seen from any team outside of Mexico since we've been good. Davies, David, Cavallini, Hoilett, Arfield, Kaye - they would all start for us. If you watched Canada's games in the Gold Cup, you could see that they just needed to upgrade at D and probably move Davies closer to goal. So this game, on the road, is not an embarrassing defeat. It was a poor performance, however. And they just wanted it more. The intensity deficit was my biggest disappointment.
I completely agree with that assessment. The level of embarrassment is at an all time high. Berhalter has to go now.
I used to argue on here with people who were frustrated by bunker and counter soccer and wanted us to play beautiful futbol. I would always point out that our pool as a whole did not have the skill or tactical nous to play a deep possession style. Do you see now,people?Did you like that?
Some observations: Gregg’s inflexible tactics played into Canada’s hands. Gregg is making some terrible roster decisions. That being said...who else is there to choose from...which leads me to... We don’t have enough quality talent. We also don’t have talent that bleeds for the shirt. The talent we have feels it’s their god given right to win. The fed really boned Greg by not giving him a full cycle. He’s still running training exercises, but the games are meaningful now.
Roldan and Lovitz are so bad and undeserving of game time in a US shirt that it actually makes Chris Albright’s inclusion on the ‘06 squad seem logical. What an awful time to be a fan of this team. It’s just impossible to be even keeled or patient any more. We’ll never be a soccer nation until the Fed steps in and takes accountability and heads roll, or even journalists for that matter, step up and explicitly ask the “WTF?!” questions we are all wondering during times like this.
you simply don’t understand the ambition and vision that Berhalter has. Open your eyes and you shall see. Did you watch the Cuba game FFS?
He's the best coach we've have had in 10 years. This whole idea if we don't have the horses to win why show up mindset is terrible. If we are beat out by Canada or Honduras in some gut wrenching matches so be it but Egg has to go. The team is under performing and he is making poor selections.
This is all true, but the lost generation of talent and the lost time of the Klinsmann era really REALLY screwed us. It will all sort itself out eventually but the past two cycles have been a huge setback.
The game thread and this one have given me a good chuckle tonight. Nice to see "Mr. Critical" Grant Wahl jump on board. Where's that been the last five years buddy? Gents - I've been telling you what is happening/going to happen for the last five years. I don't see why anyone is surprised here. The quicker you stop paying attention to the team, the better you'll feel (yes, I know I'm technically "paying attention" by reading BS, but not the point).
Apparently Pulisic was pulled because he had "flu-like symptoms." I'd argue in a game where everyone shit their pants on the field, no one would have noticed if anything went awry.
Greg Berhalter: Bad coach? Or the *worst* coach? There are issues with almost everyone on the field, but I feel like it's pointless to catalog the players' faults when Berhalter's "system" so clearly excels at one thing above all others: Making the whole team *less* than the sum of its parts. I will say, Pulisic is broken right now. But Berhalter has only managed to kick the pieces apart instead of helping him put himself back together. What an apt metaphor. It looked like the whole team had taken root at some points.
We don’t have the horses and Gregg is making decisions tactically and roster wise that are leading to poor play. Both can be true. A more prudent coach would be getting slightly better performances and results, but we’d still be playing the same soccer we have more or less for the past 30 years. It’s an absolute tire fire on all fronts.
Maybe Davies would start for us. That's it. Not being able to score a goal on the backline was horrible.
Care about the tactics a little, care about the ref lettingCanada play hockey in grass, but just plain gutted by the quality of play by the players in the field: dribbling into trouble, not passing quickly enough not defending properly. Just a TERRIBLE performance by the team.
Yeah, it's no disgrace to lose to this Canada team on the road in a closely fought game, but the quality of the performance was just so poor. Canada could easily have had a couple more goals, and the US hardly had any good chances (maybe just one when Morris set up Pulisic in the box).
The fact that people are putting our *current* state on Klinsmann is *laughable*. What did he do set off a stupid bomb to force all these horrible decisions since then? This is ludicrous.
The only observations I can think to make are: First, there is no excuse for not playing hard, which has nothing to do with talent. Second, all the emphasis in the Berhalter era on his system/tactics seems to have resulted in all of the leadership, such as it is, residing with the coach and none with the players. The complete lack of leadership from any of the players on the field is sort of staggering in a game like this. They seem passive, resigned to leave it up to Berhalter to fix things, or not.
I'm not sure I've ever seen a more embarrassing defeat. We couldn't seem to string two passes together. We looked completely and utterly lost in every facet of the game. Canada is improved but they are hardly a world class side. If we can't hope to be competitive against Canada, and we were not competitive, I'm at a loss. It was not an intensity deficit, we were trying, we just looked outclassed, out-coached, and utterly clueless. USMNT is in a bad place right now.