On a less contentious note did anyone notice that both coaches (GGG and Dely Valdes) had similarly spectacular egg-like bald domes? If the average person has a forehead, those two have like an eight-head in the aggregate. If I were more inspired and had the time I'd find and post side by side pix. Truly it's a spectacular head-to-head matchup.
I didnt watch closely as the game was at such a low level. I guess that is what you get when you roll out 10 MLS players and Miazga. Gotta wonder what Miazga did to deserve that. Seven of those ten players were in January camp. Five of them started a game, Lewis came off the bench and Cannon didnt get a shot because he didnt understand the role that is no longer being used. Morris and Altidore would have been there but werent healthy and Gonzo was busy moving slowly in Liga MX. These are players that he has been looking at all year and still considering. The team could be improved slightly by Bradley for Trapp and Long ot Zimmerman for Gonzo, but not in any material way. We have wasted a half a year on players that have no business playing at this level. Those are the players that MLS has developed and for some reason, we have 17 of them on our roster. People who are happy or even satisfied with 3 wins, 11+ GD, 0 conceded, blah, blah, blah are ignoring how rough we have looked for long stretches against very poor teams. We have one more game with no competition. Then a tiny test against Jamaica or Panama. If the issues dont become apparent by then, the game vs Mexico is going to hurt a lot.
Winning ugly is fine but it usually indicates you'll run into a problem against an actual good team as you speculated. Usually. We'll see if the team can raise it's level of play against better competition. Read almost every post in this thread, awesome stuff. I'll just add that yea it appears we are being way too conservative with the player pool. Some of these guys are just wasting our time and any potential younger/better replacement's time.
The game was up for grabs at 0-0. Pulisic came on at 65' and less than 60 seconds later provided the corner kick that was headed across goal and Altidore finished. Before Pulisic, the view was that Panama could have go ahead in the final 25 minutes, so maybe we needed an insurance goal, and we got it. There were no guarantees.
He was bad in the first half, including a red card challenge, and completely anonymous traffic cone in the 2nd. Hooray! "The problem" may have been moreso other players. But, we saw good play from Miazga, Cannon, Morris, and Altidore. These are players who we want to see more of/see on the roster. In the B game, it's not enough to be *maybe not the worst on the field* as the only alternative to MB we've ever seen.
I was thinking the same thing and was going to mention it but you did it for me. It was refreshing to hear him criticize the team and not clamor for a reason to spin positivity. I also thought Landon did a good job in a similar vein regarding the lineup and Greg’s plan re: mass roster changes and not really learning that much due to it.
At first I thought the point of Trapp was to make us miss Bradley, but now I think others are correct and Wil has always been Berhalter's voice on-the-field.
Can't read too much into the game. Obviously, it's good that we won and we were the better team. Panama generally played hard so it wasn't like they just parked the bus. Unfortunately, the officiating was horrible - for both teams. I like that TripleG played the bench, especially giving Johnson an opportunity to play. It used to drive me nuts seeing Howard play in games where it really didn't matter and not give an opportunity to have backups compete at the position. We were lucky that Howard was generally healthy. I never bought into the narrative of the USMNT having challenges of competing in CONCACAF after not qualifying for the last WC. We are and will always remain a top 3 team in the region. Other nations will come and go and we may have a poor cycle like last time, but it doesn't change the long term outlook. However, as it's painfully obvious, we have a long way's to being competitive consistently on the world stage. The drop off between the "A" and "B" Team is significant. Alright! Let's beat who ever we are playing next!
They mentioned during the broadcast how close the two of them are. Omar will have to look a lot worse than last night before Berhalter will see enough to leave him out of the squad.
Heh. Hard to tell from the play whether the header across goal and the cross that reached him was part of a planned set play, or just fortunate.
It was a very good corner kick. I think it was the only good free kick/corner from Djorde all night. He took at least a half dozen of the things. You would think Trapp would take them since accurate long balls is his thing, being "in the mixer" is not, nor is breaking up counters. What does Trapp do on corners and free kicks?
You act as if he's been the head coach for 3 years and still hasn't tried out "the obvious". Also, I look sincerely hope he tries out adams at the 6 soon, both because that's where I'd like most to see him and so that the endless angry criticism drops by 2/3.
If it's Thursday it must be another gunnerfan7 anti-Trapp scree. An excellent example of boringly predictable, BS reactivism ad nauseum.
I realize T&T is not strong competition, but the team looked great there. I think the team is getting it - the first team certainly seems to be. I think that our current B team is simply not good enough at execution to consistently deliver on it.
That's not fair. He moves up and down the field WAY better than any of those guys. His lateral movement, however...
This. Every day man/woman can make a difference with the power of social media. Blast his twitter, facebook, and instagram accounts. Call this snitch out.