Page one shows that we had a lot more distribution in the final third (not a little more, but a lot more) almost the entire match than they did, save for a brief spell between the 65-70th minutes. Quick summary conclusion? They were a hell of a lot more clinical than we were.
[QUOTE="fishmonger, post: 41015871, ...Wouldn't surprise me to see Holland go far.[/QUOTE] Gapko, van Dijk... - North Brabant Noppert - Frysk Timbers - Utrecht Hateboer, Teze - Groningen Yes, I'm a petty pedant, lol.
When we made a mistake, they finished. When they made a mistake, we did not. It's not that simple; there's always a lot more to it. But it's a big part of it.
You're absolutely right. I was remiss in mentioning that. In any case, two of those were "third team in the group" kinds of opponents. One was the sort of team that you think might make a run, but ended up crashing out in the group.
We can see that Pulisic made the classic Higuain mistakes in this game. (1) He had time and space. He did not need to take the shot first time, especially with his weaker left foot. He was off balance and the shot was weak. (2) He should have controlled the ball with a clean first touch, dribbled around the keeper and put the ball in the net. This is what a world class player does. Pulisic is an above average player, but he is not world class. This mistake changed the complexion of the game. Beyond that, we saw some poor defending. Van Gaal had a good game plan to move attackers quickly forward into the penalty area and have the trailing midfielders receive the ball in the open area at the top of the box. Well played.
That’s it. If you don’t have an Erling Haland type, some beast of a human being, the 433 is very easy to play against. And the story of this team was that we don’t have that quality center forward. We’ve got some decent options at forward, but no one who is what Christian Pulisic is at attacking mid/wing. The main thing that I want for the next cycle is that the coach adapts to the player pool, not the player pool must adapt to the coach.
Well, we had one this cycle. He did end up adapting. Hell, today he even put in Gio to play a forward line with Pulisic and Weah. You know what came of that? About the same as what had come of Pulisic and Weah and Ferreira. But it's time to move on. Coaches have only a certain amount of time that they can really motivate players and establish trust without being able to remain fairly clear-eyed, and giving the next guy a full cycle or close to it to figure it out is in everyone's best interests.
I hope that Doyle is aware of some murmurs of possible European club moves for Berhalter and not just speculating, because that would really be the best thing for all parties involved if there's any truth to it. He earned himself some credit with his group stage game plans, and now's the time to cash in on that and make a bold career move. It would be great if he ended up in the Eredivisie with an eye to break into the top 5 eventually with some success like Marsch at RB Salzburg... and that might be great for our pipeline.
Gregg did a good job with the team. I hated "the system" from the first day until the last, but he did a good job. I know it changed a bit, but I still hated it. I don't believe in systems, I believe in principles. Principle #1 is that you mark any players that come near your goal, and you do it at all times with no exceptions. This principle was violated and is a big reason why we're going home.
"The #USMNT didn't adapt, they didn't adjust, we made our tactical plan based on [targeting the flanks]." - LVG I think that’s about it. Easy game for the Dutch and disruptive for fans & pundits that we are so successful. Concerning given the attitudes
To be fair, this is what EVERY side does against Pulisic at every level that he plays at, with both club and country. For whatever reason, refs don't protect him the way they protect stars, probably because they don't view him as a star...
The idea that Williamson, Pomykal, or Parks would have saved us, is pretty far fetched to me. First, these guys are injured, injured & injured every time one hopes to they are making progress. None of the 3 really had a great MLS season. Closest was Parks, but then he got, wait for it... injured. They weren't better than Acosta or frankly Roldan or even freaking Llegett in MLS last year. I know they show flashes of being better. But blaming Gregg for not taking them, it's a strreeetch or maybe MLS propaganda considering the source (I like Doyle!). If he wasn't gonna play LDLT, he wasn't gonna play any of those guys either...even if they did make the roster. The MLS guys not there that I would have taken...Mihailovic (but doubt Berhalter would have played him) & Tolkin (definitely wouldn't have played), or maaaaaaybe Vazquez.
That is plain simplistic and downright silly, just ask Liverpool. I don't believe our opponents will allow us to play a 4-3-1-3. FYI, MMA is rated as one of the top group stage midfield trios at WC2022 by
Sure. Just thought it was an interesting article. I think the argument isn't "he should have brought Paxton Pomykal" it's more "he should have called Pomykal a while ago ... but to your point, injuries + qualifying, etc. I think the dynamic of pool building, trying players and trying to get the other players integrated was a challenge this cycle. We were building a team nearly from scratch -- this was not a team with 15 players holding over. A lot of players came into the team later in the cycle -- Musah, Reyna, Pepi, etc. were not there in 2018 or 2019. We had COVID, which not only cost a year, but also squashed the schedule which had knock on choices like a B team Gold Cup, etc. We had a LOT of injuries that kept players from playing together. The Qatar World Cup traded a longer pre-tournament camp for ... one window in September. There were a lot of short camps. Berhalter definitely leaned to focusing on a smaller group the whole time. Right decision? Maybe. A whole lot of people we did try were clearly not the answer, either. But I will say central midfield was the one area I feel like we could have given a few more people time -- even if it was someone like Williamson.
As to pool building, I think he did a fairly good job of it, and he was actually proactive in doing so, but his decisions at the margins were questionable, both during the cycle and right at the very end (I'm still not sure that I don't take Pepi instead of Wright, even though I don't think that choice ended up affecting the length of our run in the end). And I still don't know what the ******** he was thinking when it came to the September window. That's the biggest "c'mon, man..." moment of the whole cycle. At least it seems that he learned some specific tactical and personnel choices from it. Tactically, I think that there's an element of coming around to the right thing after trying almost every alternative, but getting it mostly right in the end, but still rarely positively impacting a match in progress. That's where I think he still needs to progress as a manager. The thing is that he's intelligent and he's humble and he clearly has an appetite for learning. I won't bet against him in the long run, especially if he gets himself in the right situations with his career moving forward. Maybe when he's Van Gaal's age, it will be time for him to come back for a second cycle...
Berhalter did cast a pretty wide net over his whole tenure, but got very tight the last 6 months. The thing is he gave Williamson a good amount of time in the Gold Cup. And Williamson, surprise!, showed, "flashes", but nothing more. Then got...hurt. He did slow play Pomykal. I think my recollection is that he should have called him a window earlier than he did, but maybe not even that. It was pretty frustrating that he only played him 5 minutes when he did call him. That was bad IMHO. But then Paxton got hurt and never, for me, played well enough to deserve a recall. Others can say he was good enough in 2019 to just roll the dice with. That's a valid opinion, but not one that many coaches would make. Parks was never quite good enough, but he was the one making the push in 2021-2022. Then he would get hurt, of course. Unclear if GGG ever rated him at all, he should have. But I think the larger point - and one that you agreed with in the Berhalter thread I think - is that if Berhalter wasn't going to play players 18-26 on the roster he choose, he certainly wasn't going to play these guys either. Right or wrong.
I actually think the biggest strategic error in pool building was the time spent building the joint pool for the Olympic trials. This is easy in restrospect, because we sucked and didn't make it, but still, we spent a lot of time on younger talent that clearly wasn't going to be USMNT level at this young age, but it costs us time going after a few more slightly older guys. The other one that you kind of wish to have back is Gold Cup 2021. We found Zim and Miles there, so there was some good out of it. And I think in the end, it would have been too much soccer for the stars, but it really was another 4 weeks the team could have been together.
I've said this multiple times on the game threads. 3G will never win anything worthwhile, because he lack the balls to win. Yes, it takes BIG balls to win BIG. It's like he's afraid of losing, so he plays not to lose.