amen, i see this plus the DP/international slot rules as changing the dynamic for US players and undercutting the domestic player somewhat. teams can now start 8 (or more with green cards) internationals and 3 domestics. and those 3 aren't necessarily anyone worth it. this has to ripple down to the team in terms of amount and quality of players prepared to help out. i know the snob thing is some "invisible hand" now elevates the level of our players to compete, but that's not how reality seems to be working. it looks to me like it's hard for our young players to break in, no better than europe, and not even easy for veterans. it's becoming more like europe here -- and then i get to hear the half informed make half decade old arguments and say we need to get more like europe at home. an interesting way of conceptualizing some players like jozy and bradley is they are here almost akin to an international, on a different salary scale. "duh, that's a dp." but it's interesting to consider that there might be a conflict where the MNT pool who are DPs or closer to DP money are in a way almost like foreigners. rare birds plucked from italy or holland or whatever at a significant markup.
In short, Herdman copied David Wagner's tactics with Schalke. That's exactly what Wagner is doing: 4-2-2-2 with squares instead of triangles.
It boils down to the US fielding better, brainier soccer ATHLETES. The Canadians brought a side with stronger, faster and more dangerous players in the deciding areas of the pitch. That has become a common sight in recent years. We were never a side that relied on physicality to win contested games. Now we mostly make the opposition look like Charles Atlas.
It probably also doesn't hurt that many, if not most, Canadian players also played youth hockey well into their teen years...not a sport for "non-athletes"...
adjustment time is an exaggeration. if something is clicking you usually improve in that facet by no later than game 2. you start to get inconsistent upsets punching upward. you show better in more and more of the parts of the game and more and more results. personally i think this "takes many games" gibberish is providing extended political cover for a coach. it's a political argument about the necessary sample to make a judgment. if the fed refuses to fire him now you will hear some variation on this argument even though we should already know enough. i would go rational and say that a coach with no winning history trying something experimental should be on the shortest leash possible. you give the longer leash to the winning resume or to a change accompanied by system continuity. to me the experimenter only earns the longer leash by manifest success. ok, i see where this is working. even when we were winning games in GC they were gimmees and we had to work too hard to win them. i think i have seen 1 play the whole year, against mexico, where we built from the back, played lengthy keepaway up the field, maintained positive forward play, and had a chance. that is the level of system traction. the results speak for themselves.
This thought crossed my mind last night, as well. If we can't successfully play it out of the back on a field the quality of BMO, how in the world is it gonna work in San Pedro Sula or in Kingston when the field has ruts in it? We won't make it past midfield the whole game.
I don't have to imagine it. I saw it last night. This is a combination of you reacting to last night, and you not watching him with Newcastle. He has advanced, he just sucked like everyone not named Morris last night. IMO, one reason everyone sucked is that they played unnaturally. High level sports are too hard for that. You have to play your natural game. Yedlin was part of that. I noted elsewhere how he was often the free man in the attack, but he always waited to cross the ball. It was noticeable and weird.
Funny thing about the, "need to learn the system" idea...The longer a player plays in the "system", the worse he looks.
Can someone explain the utopian iteration of Gregg's system to me? I get that he wants to play out of the back, and string passes, and switch the field a lot, and create most chances outside-in. Fine. But his back four was ... a flat back four last night. So I see things like that, and I'm confused how those dots connect. Maybe it was a one-night thing because usually you see a Cannon or Ream (God help him recovering...) press forward and the line re-balance behind, but... (And that's not to mention his 9 playing like a 6, essentially. How the hell do you do any of the above and find any height to your team shape when your 9 is unavailable as an outlet and in fact is crowding passing lanes for your freaking 4, 5 and 6? That shit infuriates me.) Like, argument aside over whether he should be doing it or whether the system works: what IS the system?
setting aside the issue of player compensation, it occurred to me that the Fed treats the USWNT as more of a hot seat. perhaps because the team is more successful they do not tolerate downward form dips for very long. they assume the team has talent and hold the coach to account for failure. interestingly, the snob drive to change the player and style through the coach would invert that process as the player becomes a viable blame object, eg, "system needs time to work." ie the players don't yet do what i am telling them to. otherwise we should assume our players are reasonably talented, leave to the coach how to exploit that talent, but then hold him accountable to substandard results. that he was trying a system thing then is just his excuse for not getting the expected results, and is actually grounds for firing. i appreciate you tried something different, and perhaps we needed some of that, but this is your one note, it doesn't play, and the results aren't there. i mean, i hear WNT coaches routinely fired for this very thing. they come in with an innovation. for whatever reason it doesn't click. personalities. fit to team. too risky. not defensive enough. bye bye. the excuse doesn't become a shield. how long do you think the WNT puts up with "work in progress" before they pull the plug. we're aspiring to bigger things but it actually sounds like MNT is now kind of gullible and fails to maintain expectations. that while aspiring to better we give unusual license to get worse. you usually only get license to suck if there is an explicit draft strategy hinged on losing, even then heinke got fired before the process got anywhere, because even they had standards. i also think the odd nature of this roster leaves many players probably feeling dependent and thus less publicly critical. MB might be gone if he attacks his coach. many of the kids have marginal status that can incentivize kissing up. pulisic is able to make faces and hand the ball to the rookie because of status, and he still got yanked. pomykal is currently outside looking in and an outlier. i want the players to stand up but many are young and just learning how to deal with down periods and the media. what is the constituency with the heft to get this done but who don't feel dependent on him for their jobs?? [the irony being, i think a lot of younger players would fare better under a new regime.]
I thought that was exactly what we relied on for the last 25 years. Physicality. Now we are trying to forego in lieu of possession based finesse. Problem being we have mostly non-technical physical athletes. We may have different definitions of physicality: Muscle off ball Devil may care challenge for 50/59 ball Most miles run Imposing physicality on other team to annoy/throw off game Set piece dominance. That’s how I think of it anyways and what was our bread and butter for the 90s, 00s, and 10s until 2015ish
Name one player that looks better in Berhalter’s “system” than they do with their clubs? Or even remotely as good. We’ve had loads of those over the years that have shone for the USMNT. Now? Maybe Morris. I dunno. Everyone else looks appreciably worse. We are far far less than the sum of our parts. 100% on coaching.
I'd say it's 50% crap coaching and 50% crap players. I'm quite certain that even if we fired this guy tomorrow, and hired a better coach (not a top one, no top one is going to want to come to this mess of a federation), we'll still struggle to qualify and will be three-and-out in Qatar. But yes, I'd prefer a better coach. Egg is just not that good. And that's being generous.
In the ultimate analysis, for sure the players should be under a finer microscope. I’m just saying that Berhalter has been SO bad and the player performance so consistently worse that what we see from these guys on a week to week basis that I’m withholding judgement. Heck, nobody’s going to argue that Sarachin is a great coach, but he had our players playing reasonably close to their expected level.
Greg's System works best when there is no opposing team. It's formulated on a certainty that the opponent will not... oppose. That's why it looks really good against really weak (unorganized) opposition, but immediately falls apart as soon as pressure is applied. A virtual house of cards.
Starting Lichaj, Duane Holmes and a just-recovered-and-not-quite-match-fit Morales would have improved us a little bit. But just a little bit. Add another little bit with a better coach who'd take the job (Sarachan?) and we'd have lost only 1-0.
Ggg's system has been beat for years with two simple tactics. Press high and clog the middle. The first gives the opponents plenty of turnovers and keeps the fullbacks home. The second takes away the crosses into the box. Since there is no plan B, any team with decent players can pull it off.
As the board's token Hull City fan, Lichaj is underrated. He's not a world beater by any stretch but he is consistent and versatile. I think Holmes is much better than Roldan.