His games w/ Venezia aren't with the nat'l team, so you have no proof, thus you can't say it's obviously true. And again, Lletget played better off the bench at Honduras, plus arguably at El Salvador, so you can't use that as an argument comparatively. It's easier to come off the bench vs. tired legs and play situationally. Seb has benefited from this, as has even Roldan often times. The latter has especially looked terrible as a starter. So you're indeed making assertions off partial faith.
No, I thought he played pretty well against Honduras and I don't think it was this limited time against Mexico. He has weaknesses, no doubt, but both his weaknesses and his lack of offense are completely oversold. The dude has been involved with a LOT of US goals. And I'm not sure he needs to be the "most forward" CM -- we don't need a most forward, for that matter. I simply don't think you need to play a 10 to run an effective lineup out there. And I think people are failing to appreciate a lot of what Weston does very well.
Arriola did make a run and fall down. That’s true. Otherwise he’s technically weak and has done little to nothing in 40 caps. Weah already has a more important and memorable moment in many fewer caps. Some of us actually follow Weah’s careers so we know his capabilities. He’s much more skilled than Arriola who wouldn’t even make Lille’s bench. Obviously he’s younger and stronger and faster as well. I’ve done nothing to put him on a pedestal—I simply noted he scored a goal that Arrriola could not have.
Maybe not egregious but it could have been saved and we’ve seen Turner make more impressive stops recently.
He was also 11/12 on long passes too. He was about as far away from inaccurate as it gets. What I think could skew 1st viewings is just the sheer number of passes he made. He completed 86 passes, 58 in the opponent's 1/2, and 28 in our half. So he had 12 passes he didn't complete but % he was fantastic. For comparison vs Jamaica, Adams & Musash combined for 88 passes and 46 in the opponent's half. Vs Panama was such a crap show, its barely worth mentioning, but, Lletget a whopping total of 23 completed passes, 14 in the opponent's half, Acosta 24/13 Musah 13/7 (in 45 min) . Yikes
'scuse me? Turner has had 8 clean sheets in 11 appearances with the USMNT. Please get your facts straight before you post. (or put an ** on your posts with a footnote, "**I haven't checked with reality or actual records as part of my posting process.")
Not my recollection he played well v. Honduras, but regardless, 3 straight mediocre performances should warrant dropping in similar situations when everyone (or near it) is available. You don't need it when you transition and have 2 wingers who can pick out a pass and/or beat their man. But you certainly need it when the opponent's compact. McKennie nor Musah is the type to figure out how to create offense from the top of the box. And then the opponent knows they don't need to defend us out there, restricting space outside. It's already proven an issue when the opponent hasn't been very compact. We only scored 4 across 2 home matches vs. mediocre at best comp for a final rd of qualifying. That's below par for us. We saw how often attacks died in the final 3rd. McKennie was as much of a culprit as anyone. If it's Adams-Musah-Gio w/ Aaronson & Weah at wing, I bet we score 3 or above. Even w/ a lesser 10-type I bet we do. As it was, we needed to be fortunate to even nab our 2nd.
News flash: there is no such thing as proof in soccer. There are various kinds of evidence, which obviously we are each free to assign our subjective weights to.
First of all, I'm glad we won Thinking back on the game, even though we mostly dominated, we were a bit luck to win. He starts Steffan who promptly gives up a soft goal. A goal that Turner would have saved. All I read here is this endless crap on distribution. GB starts Turner on Panama with a crap defense. How exactly is Turner supposed to distribute with that group? Distribute to who? Our second goal was lucky. Could have easily been blocked. Then that sliding tackle on CR, could have been called a PK if there was video review. I dont believe the ball was ever touched. Dominating a game is good but its the ball in the net that counts. We did not have that many testing shots even though we passed it around nicely. Fast forward to the end of the game. Im scratching my head on why would GB put Zardes on? He's not great on possession, not good at 1/2 field game, and he heading is mostly dangerous on our keeper. So why? Only GB can answer that. Couple that with his plan to start Arriola again. Shows once again that GB is clueless and makes bad decisions. We will not beat most better teams, if we advance. Im not sure that we will. GB is just plain bad and his Swedish team, Hammarby, had it correct... no offense. We're 3 points behind Mexico and 1 Point ahead of Canada. Losing to Panama hurt us badly. Canada beat them 4-1 BTW
My recollection of 2006 was that we qualified three games early, and then fielded a bunch of players in the last three games who wouldn't otherwise have received any minutes in World Cup qualifying. So that might explain it. And 2010 makes sense to me because a lot of players on that 2006 side, either because of age or injuries, essentially retired from international soccer immediately after the tournament (Reyna, Pope, JOB, McBride, Berhalter, Gibbs), were phased out prior to the Hex (Lewis, Keller, Conrad, Albright, Olsen, Convey, Wolff), or were phased out during the Hex (Mastroeni and Ching). The 2010 squad had a good bit of turnover if I recall.
If everyone is available, there's an interesting conversation to be had, period. Assuming Adams and Pulisic are givens, you have Aaronson, Reyna, Musah, McKennie and Weah (who I don't think it quite in this group's class but provides a different style) for what is essentially 3 spots. Five high quality players for 3 spots. So yeah, there's probably a situation where Reyna in the midfield makes more sense, especially giving Aaronson or Weah a more direct role on the right to pair with Dest and offset Pulisic. But there's also a situation where you want your best defensive midfield. Or you want to make sure you have wingers as late game subs and rotational choices. For example, in a 3 game window ... do you play Reyna in the midfield with the A team (and Aaronson on the wing) or do you save Aaronson to be the lead B team winger? There's lots of matchup considerations. What I don't agree with is that 3 mediocre performances and you're dropped -- well, then Pulisic isn't playing, either. And Dest wouldn't likely have started this window. Prior performance should go into future projection, but it ain't the only thing. But I'm speaking more anyway to the highly likely scenario that everyone won't be healthy and ready to go. Which has never, ever happened. And if I'm looking at McKennie at Busio or de la Torre, there's a completely different calculus than Gio Reyna.
I feel like no one here has ever watched a World Cup. Teams don't come in dominating every game. Every team has close calls and moments where an individual execution matters. We're nowhere near France's talent, and even France has those moments. Enjoy the ride, people. This is small sample size theater.
Now you're ironically promoting practical nihilism, after you've acknowledged absolute belief in something. Yea, you can only get to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which we're not even close to when neither has performed in that capacity for the nat'l team. And even for club you're confident off LDLT being solid at a modest level like Lletget & Acosta, while Busio's produced a small sample at a higher one.
As someone who works with data and statistical analysis, I have a pretty good understanding of how to sift through evidence and try to weight it correctly. My observation is pretty far removed from nihilism. And any irony was unintentional. I would rather focus on Busio than LDLT because I have seen him a lot more the past few months. Yes, based on what I've seen I'm pretty confident he is to be preferred over Lletget and Acosta. Of course I have no proof.
It's the going in circles and not really getting anywhere that gives me pause. We switch formations, but no don't like that. Acosta has a good game and we ignore it. Then, he plays poorly and its an issue again. That kind of going in circles to me is a lack of decisiveness. I don't even think Acosta is bad. I just think he's no Adams and you need to secure that area of the field definitively, not just throw in someone who is sorta kinda that type and hope he has a good game. While I must admit I was surprised how badly Acosta played in Panama, his history isn;t exactly one o . Mostly, I think this issue isn't as big a deal once qualifying is over and we're not rotating guys in and out so much. Then, it only becomes an issue if Adams is injured. But by if he goes out, we are going to need a serious re-think in my estimation because Acosta simply can't do the same things. and we end up a much more limited team. I mean, would anyone really think a single player covering that part of the field is a good idea for our main formation if we didn't have Adams and Acosta was the best we had? I do think we covered more for him in the summer without Adams. You saw the 8s dropping deeper, which did help and is one option. But then that kind of throws our offensive setup into question and we get really defensive. A significantly lesser player changes how the game develops and that needs to be accounted for. I'm not saying I even have a great answer for what to do. But I think this is one of those spots where Berhalter can be prone to ignoring what different players do to his plans and just assumes he can plug and play. And frankly, there is no time until qualifying runs down and we start playing friendlies to try out significant formation and style changes so nothing is really able to be done about it at this time.
McKennie's passing was actually pretty good. He has good vision and was changing the field on a lot of driven switches. His problem and the reason everyone thinks he had a bad game was because early he was stripping CR playesr of the ball, taking off dribbling through players. He would then have a long touch and a CR player would make an easy steal. he did that like four times. He was probably trying to get the goal back instantly but I also think he sometimes is think several steps ahead as I will make this pass and sprint into the box only to make a mistake because he's not concentrating enough on what he's doing in that instant. I still think as he gets more experience he will settle down and be even better. Jermaine Jones said he need to be better but how good was Jones at that age? How many times did Jones lose the ball or make sloppy passes while with the US. Both are very impactful and dynamic but each is also a bit of a Tasmanian devil that spins out of control by going full beserker a lot. Both add something that is missed when they don't play but neither is.was perfect.
At this point, I'm not interested in what Lletget does well because what he does poorly is generally the focus of his play. Negative backpassing, CONSTANTLY. I'm done with it. I'll take my lumps with Busio as a late sub, ftr, I would NEVER play Busio without two of Adams, Musah, and McKennie on the field for the reasons you indicate. He's getting better defensively, Italy is perfect for him in that sense, but for now, I want him as the option because he moves the ball forward, is an excellent passer, and is one of our best late game subs when it comes to ball striking and set pieces which is a problem right now.
For all the talk of MLSers, it's ironic that their insurance depth may well be the difference in this qualifying campaign. Both Canada and Mexico have thinner benches.
It's not a given there's a great solution. I think there's always this assumption that if you just keep trying things something will fix the problem. And sometimes, where you are is still your best option. Acosta had given a lot of us comfort that he'd execute in WCQ. There wasn't a ton of reason not to have him as the first option to Adams being out. Now he has had a bad game at the six and we need to think about whether that's a bad game or a rework is needed. We'll see the response.
We could have lost last night, for sure, they had a legit penalty claim that was denied. The result was always potentially in doubt until it was 2-0 and Ruiz flubbed that opportunity. As for rotation, I'll more than own up to being fine with the rotation, I just had 4 or 5 core complaints: #1 wrong striker, it should've been Hoppe, not Zardes. If they do that, it's at worst, 0-0, if all other things are equal. #2 I Scally in at FB for that one, he would've helped A TON in providing proper runs, quality passing, and better defending than the two fullbacks we did bring. #3 I wanted Richards, not McKenzie in, McKenzie's been in bad form, and been a mess pretty much since he went to Genk (it may just be that he's a high upside prospect that just isn't panning out, a la Miazga, the flaws in his game are defining him rather than the strengths, at least for now). #4 I wanted Arriola nowhere near the field period, it was obvious he was spent after the first match, he worked his butt off against Jamaica. The 45/45 idea was nonsense. In retrospect, I was fine w/too many changes, but it's also reasonable to argue that my changes would have been far better than his. I'll also note that I wasn't strong enough in ----ing on Lletget. I understood why Egg wanted him in there to stabilize a young and raw group with his veteran presence, but he was an actively destructive force when it came to the attack on the night, repeatedly ruining forward momentum (along with Bello just being totally out of it). Should also be noted that the critique of Arena's 11 against T&T wasn't that he failed to rotate 3/4's of the lineup, it's that he rolled the exact lineup out and that they were instantly sluggish and obviously fatigued. He stated at the time that all the health metrics/data from testing said the opposite, so take that for what it's worth, I guess the tests they were using were wrong, or our eye test was lying to us.
I wanted to start Pepi all three games and pull him for Zardes (or Hoppe) to have someone fresh run late. I have no idea what Ricardo Pepi thinks of that. I was right in that we didn't need 30 guys, but Bello and Moore well underperformed what I expected. I'm not sure Scally does much better, but given the results, who cares if he did worse. He's got more offense than what we put out there (and so do Cannon, Reynolds for that matter, playing or not). I don't think I made a call, but I would have rolled out the same CB pairing from game 1. They are CBs, they can play 270, and I'm a big believer in CB cohesion. In the end, this is somewhat of an unknowable. It's actually a very tough decision and plan, and it's easy to sit from the peanut gallery because we will never have the world see the results of our decisions.
That's a quality post and it was written in 1 minute if the clock on these posts is correct. I'm guessing you have a high i.q. I've been musing in my head over a post that would be titled, if posts had titles, something like "Isn't Berhalter's 'verticality' ;problem really a lack of 'horizontality'?" If we look at Berhalter's career, we see that he tends to think that players play direct and you add a 10 like F.Higuain (Crew)to deliver them the ball. This idea has gone dead in soccer since coaches figured out that you take the 10 out of the game and your opponent has squat. In order to avoid a too long post with too many discussion points, it would make more sense to post some clips of horizontality but I'm too lazy. The extended hilites are a bit brutal in this one (look at the goals only)but note how each of the goals scored involve horizontality which starts out of the back (Larentowicz, Ciman and Delgado) but somebody went to the trouble of editing out some play on Toronto's winning goal at 11'56" which is too bad. Obviously there's a difference in what you can get away with in MLS vs. in a WC competition. Another good instance was under Sarachan when we played Brazil, which came in dying moments when Sarachan put Delgado on for his first ever appearance. I'll try to find that one
Give me examples because I can point to clean sheets in literally every single start of the Gold Cup that weren't penalty related. Additionally in the qualifying window how many bad goals has he given up. You speak as if you never witnesses the horror show "when playing it out of the back goes wrong" high comedy that was Steffen's goalkeeping (and admittedly inept defending) circa 2019 and 2020 never happened. It did, and it was well and truly horrific. If there's anyone who makes a defense anxious, it sure as hell isn't Turner, and it absolutely is, emphatically, Steffen. There's a reason people were ready to roll with Horvath after a good half and extra time against Mexico despite Steffen getting literally every single start previous to that for several years going w/only 1 or 2 exceptions. Everybody is nervous when Steffen is back there. EVERYBODY. Well, except for you and like 2 people in here who inexplicably have forgotten the past several years of Steffen howlers, and playing it out of the back keystone cops. It took all of 45 seconds for yet another "what the hell is he doing!" moment to happen with Steffen, but you're all over a Zardes own goal when dude has kept a million clean sheets and has a ridiculous goals saved stat circa the gold cup and early qualifying. This is just insane. And I say all this as a HUGE steffen fan who tends to think he'd be fine w/more reps with the current A and B backline options, and less playing it out of the back stupidity.
This is the key point. Busio plus any two of those three is a well balanced midfield. With Busio there is a clear defensive liability but you can mitigate that by pairing him with the right guys. Btw I don't think Lletget is better than Busio defensively. They are both liabilities.