The attack was a bunch of guys trying to play hero. The outside backs were bad. Up the spine we were hard to break down and create good chances against. Despite the hero play from our front line we created some chances. We had spells of possession. So overall not terrible. Certainly room for improvement. Certainly. Dempsey: “I played there 3 times. 2 draws and a loss. This is a good result.”
These players don’t know where their teammates are going to be, or what kinds of runs they’re going to make. They are not finding one another quickly enough. I don’t know if that is purely a familiarity problem, or a coaching problem. But you can’t dribble out of these swarming defenses the way test and Reyna and Aarinson tried to do over and over.
I will say not putting those early chances away will come back to haunt you. Miles puts it in, and this is a very different reality.
The team needs to move the ball quicker. No team chemistry whatsoever. That was a HORRIBLE El Salvador team. I don’t want to hear this away, CONCACAF crap... you beat the team ahead of you. This is what happens when you lose your hunger.
USSF has had some big huge ********ups over the years, but losing Hugo was maybe one of the biggest. I'd love to see him coach this group.
Tim Ream was the man of the match for the US. Gio Reyna was good, but not good enough. I’d say he was the second-best starter, followed by Tyler Adams. Aaronson was probably the worst player for us. He had a really bad one.
Davies is on drugs if he thought Sargent was good and his best performance ever. He was absolutely terrible.
I am afraid you haven't watched them closely. Adams has a greater future ahead of him, he'll be moving up shortly.
Goes to show you a good coach can take mediocre talents and make them a decent team. Can't say the same for the US coach.
Klinsmann was somewhat successful early on in his tenure. But after awhile he soured. Also, the team quit on him. And plenty of US fans, who we're so in love with the self-entitled Landycakes, couldn't get over his snub from the World Cup. US soccer went right back to just throwing mediocre (in world terms) US retreads at the problem thinking it'll be OK. The reality is, the US talent pool is growing. But the coaching pool is flat out piss poor. We should be trying to bring in a quality world level coach to run this team.
Turner - 6 - He did what he needed to do. Dest - 4 - Trash. Ream - 6 - alright not great Miles - 6 - alright not great Yedlin - 4 - Trash McKennie - 4.5 - poor Adams - 4.5 - poor Aaronson - 4 - not good at all tonight Konrad - 6 - had some hunger Reyna - 4 - trash Sargent - 4 - trash Pefok - 6 - Better than Sargent Acosta - 6 - should have started Robinson - 6 - better than Dest. Roldan - 6 - played with some heart Lletget - 4 - nothing
Everyone has forgotten. You take these Porsche players and put them on an El Salvador muddy back road and what do you expect will happen? You can see it in the players’ movement and body language…the guys who are new to qualifying are thrown off by the experience. This is CONCACAF on the road. You guys don’t remember?
They just got out-coached by a former USSF coach... the coaching pool is bigger than USSF wants to admit... but casting a wide-net isn't as profitable as whatever they do now I guess.
The phrase “if you tie away and win at home you’re in“ seems problematic to me in the following way. Who wins them all at home? So when you look at your away games, you say to yourself, “we need to win against the weaker teams away.“ It’s my understanding that this was one of those weaker teams. I think when and entire team of better players doesn’t out play their opponent, over and over, and many of them are in unfamiliar positions compared to their club rolls, then you have to start to look at the coach. That just makes sense to me. I’m not saying we won’t qualify, I’m not saying we won’t get better. We already have gotten a lot better over time. But this was really an unsatisfactory performance in my opinion. The lack of sharpness wasn’t about these players suddenly losing skill as individuals; it was about them not understanding what they were doing together as a team. Everybody knows who’s responsibility that is.
Gregg certainly doesn’t make the players play bad… but he makes some tactical decisions that are truly baffling. He refuses to play Reyna in the middle, where he plays for one of the best teams in the world. He refuses to play Dest at RB, where he plays for one of the best teams in the world. He shifts Dest to the left for Yedlin, the second choice right back at a mediocre Turkish side, and arguably our 4th or 5th best right back. His substitutes consist of Pefok (who just isn’t the answer at ST— worse first touch than Zardes), Lletget (minnow killer, flops against good teams), Acosta (most inconsistent player in our pool), and Roldan (wouldn’t be a top 5 player on El Salvador). I’m not putting this all in Gregg, and I’m trying not to overreact. But his talent evaluation and tactical decisions are just so baffling. I’m sure I’ll get roasted for this post, but some of these things are VERY concerning, and Gregg should not get a pass because of his successes in less important summer tournaments. I’m willing to see how the next two games go, but any less than 4 points from them, and we should make a managerial change. We won’t, but we should. The last thing we need is to wait until it’s too late, like last cycle. If you want to be one of the best teams in the world, you beat El Salvador, plain and simple.