That account is gold. We’re starting to chase ghosts out there, and they might as well be our ghosts because our players are closer to death than anything else. #LaSele #USMNT— CRCFutbol is Back (@crcfutbol) October 14, 2021
I just get whiplash from the fanbase. People hate backpassing or sidepassing, even when it actually opens up the defense (for example, the June game against Costa Rica). People also hate when pass forward too much and lose the ball. They also don't really like direct passing that ends in those nasty, nasty crosses. What they really want is direct passing that always gets through onto goal. Shockingly, what every single defense in the world is trying to stop is direct passing through the middle of the field into goal. With our better players, we've managed to put together some good offenses at home erratically, but in both games this window. You can see the plan when it works. But when it doesn't, I find it funny that it is BOTH aimless backpassing AND turned over direct play. Yes, yes that's what happens when your opponent is better, or you are playing worse. It's not the tactical plan necessarily -- it's that the difficulty is higher sometimes.
Or maybe you are giving Arriola too much credit. It wasn't a genius move from Arriola. He is supposed to move inside every single time that Dest joins the attack. The only time Arriola is not supposed to come inside is if Dest stays back.
The consideration was primarily defensive IMO: old, tired Costa Rica won't be able to build out of Calvo/Matarita on the left and we will have more of the ball to wear them down faster. Bring in Weah at the half and you capitalize on this. Not sure I like it better than what we saw play out but who knows what would have played out. I'm happy we get a proof of concept of Weah contributing. I think we see clearly that Weah/Aaronson/Arriola/Hoppe will all be wing options with various roles to play and none of them are guaranteed to start when everyone is healthy. This is a big deal!
Thought I posted his accuracy earlier. McKennie was 88% and Adams was 89% for passing. Maybe the 12% is so noticeable that people forget. I also don’t see Adams getting called out for a very similar stat line.
"It's abundantly clear Busio and LDLT are better options than Acosta and Lletget", when the former 2 have zero good starts for the nat'l team, lack strength in cm to battle in CCAF, and have an objective weakness in picking out passes in the final 3rd. That's a faith-based assertion, actually. Acosta has at least shown he's good in a counter. So use him in that regard, while limiting him otherwise. Lletget's last 2 bench appearances were better than Busio or LDLT this window. So use him in that regard and limit him to a 10-role d unlocker, at home, in front of ball progressors. He's yet to have been used that way. It's on the road and/or in front of 2 6's, so he comes back to the ball. We've seen recently Busio should be situational at best if a starter, and a bench player. LDLT has never started to see, but for him is probably the same based on club play & attributes. So aside from the core and style versatile players, they should all be used situationally, that play to their strengths, but away from their weaknesses. Berhalter hasn't done this, just haphazardly cobbling together lineups, so the result is a grass is greener reaction from many fans.
I think that's a disaster waiting to happen on the road or against a better foe. I'd be okay with that in some of our remaining home games. But I'm more defensively minded than most. Let's see Busio play 90 as an 8 or in an easier game before I test him as a 6. SKC moved him off the 6 despite some amazing regista-work, and Venezia doesn't play him as a lone 6, either, and mostly up further. And I don't really trust McKennie to really consistently protect the back. That said, I remember the Switzerland and Honduras games back in June. And OMG, I'd really like to see Busio get the openings Yueill couldn't exploit. I never hated the passing 6 idea like others did. That's part of why I'm curious to see why there's so much support for Busio at the 6. He's not going to defend better than Yueill or Trapp or Bradley in any material way. He's just going to pass better than most of them (except Bradley when he was younger). Or maybe in the next six months, he adds some more strength and a bit o' speed and really focuses. But he's not a dude who can do what Adams and Acosta can do in terms of covering.
That seems like a simple question, but it really isn't. It's a "on the one hand, on the other hand" sort of thing. On the one hand, his approach to bloodying a lot of players in the B part of the pool in the Gold Cup was a good idea to deepen the pool for these Covid induced insane game schedules, but on the other hand relying on them TOO much gives you a Panama result. On the one hand, his ability to bring out the best in players is a great quality as a coach to have -- think Zardes in Columbus -- but on the other hand, he tends to LIKE his players too much --Zardes again, and Ream. On the one hand, he doesn't appear to ask his younger players to do too much tactically because they ARE young and inexperienced and he rightly knows their inherent talent will win out, but on the other hand his system rigidity and tactical simplicity makes his teams vulnerable to more experienced players and coaches on the other side. Anyway, I can go on, but you get the point. Could we have gotten somebody better? Sure, but open up the bank account--oops!! not much in there. Could we have gotten somebody worse? That question answers itself. More knowledgable folks on here can chime in on this one. Has there been ANY national team coach in this position --- namely, given an amazing group of extraordinarily talented 1st division professionals who all seem to be under 23 years of age AT THE SAME TIME and VERY inexperienced playing top level club football? This is uncharted territory. The COVID hysteria makes it worse. If you look at the top sides in national teams, they all have a crew of super talented young bucks who are just getting started, coupled with guys who have played 5-7 years or more in tough leagues as first choice starters, Think Phil Foden. If Phil Foden were in our pool, he'd playing 90 every important game. But if he gets only 45 minutes to an hour in the first round of Qatar, would that be cause for England fans to go nuts? In contrast, we have nobody like that second group of bloodied vets, like England does, that would allow us to ease in a Phil Foden. Nobody. We have guys talented enough to BECOME those guys, and we will. But not now.
This is one of the big changes I'd really like to see Berhalter make. When we have Adams, he covers a ton of ground, has an almost unlimited engine and is also able to make good, safe passes in that lone 6 role. Acosta, or anyone else we stick there, is simply not capable of playing the same type of game effectively as the competition gets tougher. If Adams is out, we need a restructure. You can't just drop a far lesser player into the team and not change anything tactically and expect anything but a major performance drop off, especially if that plays mans the most important part of the field. It's like a basketball team with one 7 footer and a bunch of guys 6' 6" and when the 7 footer goes out, they just stick one of their guys half a foot shorter in the same spot and don't change anything else.
I never would have guessed that. McKennie had a lot of opportunities, especially earlier on, bursting through into space where his final ball kept getting intercepted, but like anything, we tend to count the hits and ignore the misses (and in this case, the reverse).
Other sports analogies are probably a better fit. Players have to be complementary…you cant have a bunch of people who play the same role in the same spot. Do the Mavericks win a title without Tyson Chandler? Chandler may not have been an indispensable player in Chicago, but he certainly was in Dallas where they needed veteran leadership and physicality at a defensive position.
You are right. He did boss the NL finals this year. I meant the consistency of his game during his first year with Juve.
It's not a pass if you dribble into a TO. Sofascore has McKennie as having lost possession 23 times, Adams 11, Musah 13. Which probably plays into why they gave him the worst rating - 6.9 to 7.1 & 7.3. He's been erratic in possession his first 3 qualifiers, and hasn't produced from the most advanced mid spot in 2 of 3 matches. Don't think people are being unfair to him. It's backed by data.
Umm, yes, Weah started against Panama. Weah and Arriola were the starting wingers. This is very easy to look up on the internet. https://www.google.com/search?clien...a#sie=m;/g/11q2tf2g6c;2;/g/121p62k5;ln;fp;1;; The reason I put slashes between each of them is that Musah+Adams played 90 minutes and Weah+Aaronson played 90 minutes.
I've watched all of Busio's games with Venezia. He is definitely to be preferred over Acosta and Lletget. We saw an inkling of that in his cameo against Costa Rica. He was very good last night.
It is about tradeoffs. But I'm pretty sure that Busio/McKennie/Musah is a better midfield than any midfield that includes Acosta.
I mean, to give Berhalter some credit, we've gone in circles here. We've tried both going to a 343, which basically replaces Adams with a centerback. But then Acosta really started playing well and doing a pretty decent replacement Adams. And the 343 looked like crap against Honduras. So then we roll out a 433 -- and much simpler for the team after everyone said that going to a different though very similar formation was a real problem -- and Acosta, who was really good all summer and wasn't a disaster in September, suddenly drops a deuce in Panama. What makes the game in Panama definitive? We know he's not a passing genius but that was bad for Kellyn Acosta. The dude has a track record, and I don't see why we'd expect that over and over. A formation change has had mixed results. Most other player attempts at the 6 have had issues -- Busio, Sands, etc. Our entire gameplan really involves getting most players up and having the 6/CM cover ...
By beasted UNL, you mean the final, and really the 2nd half, after a poor 1st. So that's a pattern forming here. He's like a less extreme Acosta. When he plays better teams, can ball win and run into space, he thrives. When those spaces are congested in a possession match, he makes a lot of mistakes. Just not to Acosta's extreme. Acosta's inept, McKennie's erratic. And McKennie doesn't have the vision to be your most advanced cm when he's tasked to be your orchestrator in and around the final 3rd. So he doesn't have a role in cm in these situations, bar there being a major gulf in talent between him and the alternative, which certainly isn't true when everybody or near it is available.
And Tim Weah was Leo Messi against a tired and beaten Jamaica. Busio came on in the 78th minute against a bunch of 30 year olds on their third game in 7 days. I'm excited about the dude, but that cameo was perfect because it integrated him into a situation where he could succeed and get confidence. Next step is a start, but no one should be translating that performance to 90 minutes.