Yedlin makes sense why he was there, given he’s the only player with prior World Cup experience. I probably would have brought Cannon over a Moore, but preferably I would have taken a very long look at Jones or Tolkin to see if either was a serviceable as a back up left back. Jedi was exhausted and we didn’t really have anyone to bring on for him. I would have brought Pepi instead of Ferreira, and would have taken a look at Vazquez to determine whether he should have gone instead of Wright. I don’t feel particularly strongly about Long given that he didn’t play, and neither would have McKenzie or EPB had they been there. Was LDLT able to play? He could have given Musah a breather, but he was either not good to go or Berhalter just wasn’t comfortable putting him in. If the latter was the case he should have spent more time looking at players like Pomykal, Williamson, Parks, and Cardoso as we had no depth at the 8. I didn’t care that much about Roldan as the last man on the roster. I would have considered Tillman as I feel like he’s shown he can be a goal scoring threat late in matches. But don’t think this was a critical choice either way. Who knows with Scally. I haven’t seen him get enough run with the national team to be able say it’s a huge deal he didn’t get any run. We were also hurt by the fact that all our games were so tight. There was never a point we could take our foot off the gas and give guys a breather.
^ That all seems fairly reasonable... Sure, but the issue with this is, Scally didn't just emerge on the scene as a viable option in the current Bundesliga season... he did that LAST season. He was having solid games against the likes of Bayern Munich. There WAS time to work him into the national team. Certain people were calling for it in every window. Gregg kept delaying and delaying, until finally throwing Scally into the deep end against Morocco and Uruguay in June, and here we are. Four World Cup games: Moore x2, Yedlin x2.
Certain people around here (the "relax folks" < eyeroll > crowd) loved to mock certain other people for worrying so much about the bottom roster spots that would never matter. Well, we learned why they do matter. When the bottom of your roster is full of crap players who you don't trust at this level, you overuse your top 11-15 guys, and then they wear down physically and mentally over the course of the World Cup. Another thing I’d like to put out there:A lot of people said not to sweat the selections for players 20-26 on the roster.But this group ran out of gas…Can’t have it both ways. Either contributing depth is important or it’s not. Pick a lane.I’d rather have 26 who can play— USMNT 🇺🇸 Thoughts (@USMNT_Thoughts) December 3, 2022
There's an implicit assumption here that we have 26 players who can play without a drop-off that would have cost us. Cristian Roldan's spot didn't cost us under Berhalter's evaluation, because he didn't even trust Luca de la Torre. I can understand the argument for "we didn't find better CMs than Kellyn Acosta or de la Torre" but its clear that if Berhalter was going to rotate, it wasn't with Cristian Roldan. The fatigue question is difficult. If we don't play our best, do we get out of the group? But if we do, are we out of steam? Maybe Berhalter made the wrong call, maybe he didn't, but that has little to do with Roldan.
Roldan is just one spot, we're talking about around six spots, 20-26. And if Yedlin replaces Roldan as the "vibes guy who doesn't actually play" 26th spot, what value is lost exactly?
Fox Soccer put out one of those "the future is bright " posts and listed 22 year old Chris Richards who missed the World Cup, but not 21 year old Jesus Ferreira who started the most important game in 8.5 years.... but maybe they should have also included Pepi and Tillman. The future is bright, we can't wait for 2026 🇺🇸 🙌 pic.twitter.com/mNAjEGt4Ii— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 4, 2022
Per Transfermarkt, I think this is basically how the depth chart ended up this World Cup, minutes wise. GK 1: Turner - 360 GK 2: Horvath/Johnson - 0 RB 1: Dest - 309 RB 2: Yedlin - 31 RB 3: Moore - 20 RB 4: Scally - 0 CB 1: Ream - 360 CB 2: Zimmerman - 278 CB 3: Carter-Vickers - 90 CB 4: Long - 0 LB 1: Robinson - 360 LB 2: Scally? - 0 DM 1: Adams - 360 DM 2: Acosta - 0 CM 1: Musah - 345 CM 2: McKennie - 275 CM 3: Aaronson - 60 CM 4: Acosta - 40 CM 5: de la Torre - 0 CM 6: Roldan? - 0 FW 1: Weah - 320 FW 2: Pulisic - 315 FW 3: Reyna - 52 FW 4: Aaronson - 45 FW 5: Morris - 2 FW 6?: Roldan? - 0 CF 1: Sargent - 158 CF 2: Wright - 135 CF 3: Ferreira - 45 A few judgment calls there (e.g., Reyna played as a false nine part of the time today and Wes played RM part of the time against England, but I think the above is generally accurate if we're slotting the players into the formation we typically play). Also the large amount of stoppage time in this tournament means some of the subs' minutes were longer than they appear there, but TM doesn't track minutes that way.
My point is that if Berhalter doesn't trust the players he brought, he's not going to trust the players he didn't bring. As many of us said, the end of the roster wasn't likely to play. And it didn't. We had a week of camp and then right into games. I understand lots of fans just want to through shit at the wall, but coaches don't do that. Right or wrong, Berhalter's plan to was to ride the horses until he couldn't ... I don't know why anything thinks changing the end of the roster would change that.
So then what's the point of discussing anything? Gregg is always going to Gregg, that's a tautological statement. "It doesn't matter if Joe Scally may have played better than Shaq Moore, because Gregg played Moore over Scally." I think the point is what would some reasonable coach do in a certain hypothetical scenario. We already know who Gregg would pick and who he would play, and that we'd go out in the round of sixteen because our top guys got run into the ground, while guys like Reyna were barely used, and Ferreira given the start in the most important game in 8.5 years, there's nothing to discuss there! At least not in terms of "the 26 man roster"... what Gregg actually did is already being discussed plenty in other threads, is it not?
I'm not sure what your point is. You complain about the 26 man on the roster; I say it's likely irrelevant. That's literally a discussion. And for the record, no, I don't think whomever you posit was going to play as well as MMA. So it comes down to the same trade-off: do you risk losing early or burning out your players later? So yeah, Berhalter or no -- I have the same point. If I am sitting Musah, I'm playing de la Torre. I don't -- and clearly Berhalter didn't -- think he could perform well enough over even a tired Musah. You're conflating one discussion -- rotate or ride your best lineup -- with a discussion about the back of roster because you want to talk about the latter. I also have no idea how Reyna is relevant to this. There's plenty of discussion about him. Or how Ferreira is relevant to the end of the roster. If you want to say you'd have brought another striker, great! I said a while ago, I'd have brought Pepi over Wright and nothing changed my mind. But holy crap, if you think Ferreira was trash, the mistake was Ferreira, not Roldan.
Since you're focusing on the midfield only... Even without making changes to the 20-26 spots on the roster, what if the MMA midfield was better rested because some other coach who isn't Gregg went with these midfields over the group stage instead of running MMA into the ground (not by game but different options): 1. Adams - Musah - McKennie 2. Adams - McKennie - Reyna 3. Acosta - Musah - Reyna Not having to play de la Torre if you don't trust him, not having to play Acosta as a non-6... and that's before replacing Roldan with some other midfielder you may have integrated into the team at some point over the last year and a half instead of continually calling in Roldan... Mihailovic Cardozo Parks Pomykal Williamson Booth Mendez whoever.
The bottom of the rosters didn't negatively affect things. They didn't affect things, period. The middle of the roster (the 12-18 guys) didn't contribute as much as I believe they should have, CCV in the Iran game being a significant exception.
Hey, that's actually an interesting argument! It has nothing to do with the back end of the roster, which was kind of my point. It would have certainly kept us fresher. Would we have controlled the game enough to get five points in the group stage? Maybe. Reyna did not look up to speed to me, but he's clearly talented. Certainly we could have done MMA against England and then played more with Wales and Iran. Berhalter had his XI and rode it. It definitely contributed to losing. It did get us through the group. Does this version work better? Perhaps. If I had to guess, rather than planning out, he was making decisions day by day. Opening game, Best XI (in his mind) plus Reyna, who was not at full speed even against the Dutch, was probably less so. Then we didn't get the win, and MMA makes most sense against England, and he remembered rotating against Panama and trying hard for the point at Azteca and boom. Finally, in a must win Iran game, play your best XI. I'm not saying it's right. I think he, like most coaches, was a bit conservative in decision making and he was definitely reacting to the points situation as he went. Your way might have been better. Unlike you, though, I thought Reyna was very mediocre today and looked slow and a bit sluggish. I don't think we control the game like Musah or McKennie did. But that doesn't mean we don't collect the points.
Arguments like this always come with the assumption that somewhere out there there is a good option. In fact, it's probably true the opposite is true. I am saying that there's a good chance that none of these options would have been good enough to garner the same result as MMA. But I do think we should try to build a broader pool for next cycle if only to account for things like injuries and de la Torre not playing, etc. There will be less trade-offs needed next cycle as well.
The top of the roster guys should improve between now and 2026, but the guys in the 12-18 should be massively better than this roster's 12-18. In other words, the improving player pool will add significant quality to our depth in 2026.
Probably. And I certainly hope so. Honestly, I expected more out of Aaronson, Gio, LDLT (though I suspect there's a lingering knock there), any of our backup fullbacks, etc.
Of the 6 who didn’t play, 2 were goalies and not really relevant. I’ve already said if we brought a center back other than Long they wouldn’t have played anyways, The questions are more 1) should Berhalter have played Scally? and 2) are there other 8s Berhalter should have brought instead?. I don’t really know the answer on the first question, but it’s not like Yedlin or Moore were the ones who cost us the Netherlands game, In regards to the second, it sort of depends on the health status of LDLT. I don’t know that there’s another 8 option that really made alot of sense either way, The criticism is less who Berhalter picked and more that he didn’t do more to explore and develop his potential options. But the 8 is definitely where we most could have used extra depth.
I'll add, that Gregg painted himself into the corner of having to use Acosta as an 8. KA is fine as a back up 6. But, 8? ......