This type of player 1. Historically has no place on a US team because 2. We don't coach it in youth soccer and 3. Don't know how to coach it professionally or in the usmnt system. All of the playmakers in MLS are foreign. All of the US youth teams are filled with great athletes who also play soccer and when we do try and field playmakers they fail because they have no idea how to play with run fast, kick hard all over the field.
I know you are a moderator but cut it out with the rah rah BS. If you have a post about the positives of the match then post them but don’t use your position to make ad hominem attacks on those who have real criticism.
i got some grief pregame for proposing shock and dismay road games or different opponents do people realize the last time we played outside the USA was nearly a year ago, 0 out of 13 games this season last year we played 4 road games out of 11, last road game in November 2018 what team on the planet do you think gets to play a neverending home schedule do we look battle hardened in any way shape or form rapinoe was saying something about cash cows
that's not what the trend line says. the trend line says a 1-0 win last year became a 0-1 loss became a 0-3 loss. the more we try to play his way with his people the more blood we exsanguinate.
1. No 2. Definitely yes. 3. Nope, look at the lineup. Mexico has better players when idiot Berhalter picks the side and the XI. Give a competent coach the reigns, and it's even up or damn close, and the youth results already underline that the tide is changing, but the man at the wheel of the boat has got about as much of a clue as Louis CK did in his comedians getting coffee boat story. Utterly clueless. This isn't calculus. Give Hugh Jackson Baker Mayfield, and he sits him on the bench and gets himself fired, give some obscure guy named Kitchens Baker Mayfield, he starts him and keeps the job and the hype surrounding said team a year later. It's not difficult. Get someone who understands how to rebuild a broken program by turning to youth and a handful, and I emphasize handful, of veteran glue guys, and then we'll see someone special. Engage in nepotism bullshack, and we get this s--- sandwich instead. In all sports you can see rapid changes just by chucking a moron out the door for a competent. Coaches typically don't make a huge difference, and its only by degrees across the sports, but when coaches do make a huge difference is when they are really, really bad, and really really good, and we're seeing the former. A man bound and determined to force square pegs into round holes, and use his guys come hell or high water. After 9 months running the show we've got zero signature wins, we aren't scoring goals, we're giving up a ton of goals, and we've got at least 3 contenders for "worst loss I've seen in decades" performances in the losses to Jamaica, Venezuela, and the curb stomping tonight, as well as a "worst win ever" contender in the 1-0 "victory" over vaunted Curacao. Do we really need to see more to see where Berhalter fits in the spectrum of coaches? I think every USMNT fan anywhere would take mediocre at this point versus what we've got instead.
as i said before, this is the culmination of the snob attitude that they would rather work on playing pretty than care about whether they win. and whose mantra is this historically holland and their pile of world cups i keep advocating german or italian styles but apparently organized team defense prior to offensive virtuosity and trophy piling is anathema
"might?" There's zero accountability because the press has never demanded it, and we've never had the numbers to make the absurd circle jerk fed of arse clowns afraid for their cushy jobs. I don't see that changing because the past two years have essentially been a perpetual downward trend line w/no positive stories beyond youth tournament soccer and only diehards pay attention to that. They had a chance to hire a real coach and make some news with said hire after the WC. They totally ---- the bed, to such a degree it has felt like this was the US International Badminton federation rather than a multimillion dollar enterprise. The easiest way to see this is how clearly and succinctly CONMEBOL told us to go f ourselves when it came to our high minded suggested that we host another Copa America here. It's kinda funny in retrospect, just how epic their dismissiveness was. Like something Lady Olenna might have said in GOT before that show went to merde.
amen. i've been saying for weeks how do you dominate U20 in the region and then somehow become midpack as adults. berhalter seems obsessed with playing guys 25-30 years old in the middle of their careers even if that is the shallow end of the pool, hence trapp morales and he even still calls nagbe and when he does give kids time it's dest he starts the only ones he has properly eval'ed are pulisic and mckennie who if you didn't start them a riot would occur the commentators gave pulisic crap but i am glad he handed the pk to sargent sargent then needs to man up and finish the sucker put the ball in the hands of the deep end of the talent pool
lobbing a stinker in here but between the lack of big saves and the poor distribution, on an accountable planet steffen would have a keeper competition he should be a big deal but he ain't playing like it kind of like a lot of the other entitled brats who aren't held accountable or subjected to job competition you want people to play well more often -- there have to be consequences for bad nights
the sheer logical beauty of what they have set up is that it is literally true that jay did not hire his brother but having been elevated back into a soccer role he might be in the cabal that would have to fire him, which might even be worse and i think this was the plan all along you couldn't get berhalter approved as a soccer exec while berhalter was approved as a soccer coach but apparently it works in reverse
to me this is literally the worst coach they have hired in 30 years the tactics have become naive beyond what you would have children run -- ok, johnny, we will win the ball, pass back and back and back to a keeper not known for distribution, and then if he does find someone, try and pinball our way back upfield and the selection is the furthest from optimal i have seen, the coaches would have a favorite or two but not half a lineup i mean if we're going to knock the ball around that fast like a pinball game you know maybe you might want to find and start some players with actual technique and if they didn't exist then maybe try something else
Wes can become (and, at Schalke, is on his way to becoming) a 2-way "holding" midfielder - almost exactly the "Bradley" role. But he doesn't have to play with both Trapp and Morales next to him. And he has a real ACM in front of him. And Schalke doesn't play Mexico - nor do they win all the time. A Schalk-ish 4-2-3-1 would not be a bad formation for our guys. CP is useless with no ACM. Wes is not clean or creative enough on the ball to be a real ACM. He is starting to become a decent "turn and carry" B2B who can also crash the box because he has tons of energy. Put Morales next to him as a clean-up player if you want. But we can't get goals out of the creative nexus of wide CP, Zardes and Boyd. It ain't enough. Who is the ACM? It can't be Wes. He's not that guy at a top national team level (yet, anyway.) Or bring CP central and get a creative, or at least fast winger in the mix. Heck, push Dest up. (and get rid of Zardes.) Sarge and Morris at least made the Mexico defense open one eye. But we simply can't play without one ball-holding player beside CP. I think we probably have to accept the CP will have to be shoe-horned in to the AM position (unless someone else steps up to grab it) and we will need to give him some good wide options to let him relieve the triple-team. But Morales/Wes/Trapp have the combined playmaking skills of... well... let's just say it ain't enough.
i keep pushing a particular set of attackers like green, gall, holmes, pulisic, arriola, lletget, sargent, weah, and then get called an idiot for doing it i agree that some sort of dutch clockwork thing with us is horrifically naive but i think if we played an athletic counter game we have plenty of weapons part of the problem is not pretending we still have the personnel to run some klinsi-esque midfield of 3 DMs basically.....fewer workhorses, more ball skill i mean every time they put lletget on the field goals and assists happen....that pass was gorgeous.....his reward......20 minute sub behind trapp/morales/mckennie...... and at least part of this, not to break your eggs to be mean, is not pretending mckennie is a 10
that's part of what i don't like, is we hired a new coach to change things and i think the inferiority complex is even worse i remember being top regional dog and the talent levels are not so disparate this is acceptable
A media worth a damn would have responded with, "What did you think of Hugh Dallas' narrative back in June of '02? And that three armed PK narrative back in '00?" Were those as convincing a narratives as the bullshack you're trying to sell us right now, or are you going to start being honest?"
the scheduling is just shoddy i mean who misses russia, is in a rebuilding period, and then schedules last year's buzzsaw and then follows that up by having a mexico final lead you into a mexico rematch like we're going to fix what needs to change from one game to the literal next one there is no rocky training montage effect when you have maybe a week to practice before you do it again and what about some road games like we're toughening them up at all telling you, cash cow.....
i liked it. that to me was a telling statement about who he trusts and wants to put his confidence in. didn't work out, but i thought it was a subtle middle finger to the sideline. here is the guy i think should be taking the reins. and you're only subbing in the guy i trust to take this. now, i am not sure if that's how this really works out. but at least like sarachan he gets where the future of this team is, which is basically his age range. i think a chunk of our problem is that despite all these U20 boomlets we refuse to stick them right out there and give them our trust. we say, go get your career started, except we should know from landon and pulisic that you can deliberately give your best prospects a push along. if you don't run with the youth advantage and just leave it to its own devices, don't be surprised if a lot of it fizzles out.
there is a certain naivete where we don't acknowledge that c. 2010 barca/spain was a generational alignment of the stars that has retreated towards the mean with lesser mortals in control but as it is, yeah, we refuse to admit that to get to that endgame they were trained to play that way since before age 10 and to me the highest level of naivete is thinking you can come in with fairly finished adults and remake them as soccer players worse, at least when klinsi was trying this he brought in gringo and kljestan, you know, technical people to try and knock it around [and then when we weren't very good at it, he switched to negative play which worked for a few years til father time caught up with that midfield] [but at least he was in touch with, to play a particular way i need to select towards that style] this is instead trying to take a bunch of jocks and make them into ballerinas