“We don’t have a Memphis Depay right now” -Gregg BerhalterReyna responds with Depay’s signature celebration after scoring today: pic.twitter.com/pk93POKGe1— Connor O'Bryan (@ConnorOBryanVDS) January 22, 2023 Can’t make this stuff up.
There is nothing wrong with redundancy except that it is usually redundant. But a lot of redundancy is unnecessary so I believe we should stamp out and abolish redundancy.
Calm down. It's one goal. He's still a late-sub for his club, he has a long road ahead. No one knows how far he'll get.
Why wouldn't Zidane be interested beyond personal reasons? He has no current job, the France job was taken and Ancelotti is just off a CL and La Liga trophy with Real Madrid. Why not reach out?
Dortmund had 10 games from oct 11 to nov 11. Gio started 5 of them and came off the bench in five. The starts included 2 of 3 champions league games and sub performance included one Pokal match. Adding this most recent game, Gio now has 3 goals in the last 11 games. One of which included a PK. All this sound very much like a late game sub, instead a valuable part of the rotation. Most clubs like their late game subs to also take their PKs and start CL matches (including ones against Man City).
In addition, Dortmund's biggest challenge is staying in a CL position in the BL. They are currently in 6th place but only two points away from 2nd.
I'm not sure if I really agree or disagree (I wish to disagree), but I'm quoting your turn of phrase because it's just that quotable.
Yes, but that's not going to bother me much, especially if he does it again and again. If he plays well he'll be just fine, and he'll be just fine in our setup. The problems arise if he's not doing as well as we'd like.
Even more problems if he’s not doing as well as the coach would like. It’s really unfortunate, because that kind of stuff is toxic for a team. Tim Weah, who deserved to start and played well (especially in the first two games), is the guy nobody is talking about in regard to this. Guy had a solid World Cup and deserved his minutes. We should be talking about him, not about the orange slices incident. That kind of dynamic is awkward in the locker room…where the spoiled kid with the crazy parents can force your coach to sit more deserving players.
The Reyna saga seemed to distract from the positives in general. Weah, surely, the great Ream resurgence, CP producing, Turner putting the keeper doubts to rest. Given the social media noise you’d sometimes think the tournament was a total flop and it’s all because Reyna was treated poorly.
Reyna was a bench warming injured player before the tournament. He didn’t produce in his USMNT games either. After Berhalter steps in and says “I’m not just going to give you special treatment here, nephew, you’re going to have to earn it and beat the guy in front of you.”, suddenly Gio starts finding ways to show up to his league games and to score a couple of goals. Berhalter gave him the discipline that Claudio should have, and I guarantee you that somewhere down the road if Gio ever grows up he will publicly apologize to Gregg and thank him for what he did.
Berhalter benched several “star” guys for underperforming or unprofessionalism, including Weston McKennie, Dest, Antonee, Steffen, and all of the other guys too. Most of them responded by playing better at their clubs and with the national team. That was a unique characteristic of this Berhalter era. The guy would bench players when they slacked and they would respond by playing better.
Pulisic seems more like a ,Bucky Barnes than Captain America Does anyone think his defacto role as Leader is stunting the emergence of others on USMNT? If he's still "the dude" in 2026 I'm afraid we'll have as hazy a team identity as this time around.
I do not remember even once that "benching" caused better play except for the "rest effect." Benchings, unless for good or obvious causes, is a good way for coaches to lose control of the locker room. I think that most of the perceived "better" play after benchings was simply an unrelated effect. It is a case of an "effect" coming after an unrelated event and that event being misinterpreted as the "cause." Or, in another analogy, it is a case of not understanding relationships. something like: "All elephants are gray but not all grey things are elephants." There are a number of players that improved after benchings but that improvement was much more rest related than for any other reason. There are also a number that resented Berhalter and never played up to their abilities for him regardless of benchings. There is also a number of players that get angry at being benched and they come back playing with that anger but we only have one, maybe two, player that has enough discipline to play well when angry. So using benching as a punishment for perceived poor performance is counter productive at best but usually it has the opposite of the desired effect. Any coach that regularly uses benchings as punishment or incentive is a fool at best. Berhalter is just that kind of coach.
This is just your normal made up dumb shit. Let's try this again. Dortmund had 10 games from oct 11 to nov 11. Gio started 5 of them and came off the bench in five. The starts included 2 of 3 champions league games and sub performance included one Pokal match. Adding this most recent game, Gio now has 3 goals in the last 11 games. One of which included a PK. After today's game, that is 4 goals in last 12. Gio looked incredible in his club games leading up to the World Cup. It was amazing how much he had improved while being out. It was if the game had slowed down for him. Any coach that isn't looking for a way to Gio on the field with this group is moron. It looks like there are a lot of morons on here.
What you are describing is how poor Berhalter's player selection was. He benched Mckennie and Reyna for disciplinary reasons. The rest was just looking to get inferior MLS players minutes. It is kind of fun watching that BS narrative about how the players liked and respected Berhalter and that the locker room was great narrative slowly fall apart. I cant believe that they wasted this cycle on trying to market to us how they restructured and rebuilt the team culture. This federation and those that support it are a joke.