In theory, we could still use a 4411, more or less, to the same effect. ————-—JS/HW/JF/TW—————— —————Aaronson (or Gio/JF)——— —-Pulisic————————McKennie— ———Musah—————Adams———— Jedi——————————————-Dest ———Ream—————-Zimmerman—— ————————Turner———————- Essentially, Bob’s empty bucket formation with two DM’s (Musah and Adams), two AM’s (Pulisic and McKennie), and two forwards. Now, Bob played one target and one speedie for forward so it’s not exactly Bob’s strategy. I’ve got one target forward who needs to get mean. I want him fighting for everything. Don’t get a red card. But I want the most aggressive man for the job tomorrow. Every time their center backs touch the ball, he better be ready to make contact with one of them. In other words, force turnovers. If Aaronson plays, we sort of get another forward for that job. Someone who will harass the crap out of their backline. Relentless. That’s what I want tomorrow. But Aaronson has enough skill to also offer us something to go up the gut when their center backs try to close up shop and make us go for hopefully crosses to get a goal. Pulisic and McKennie, alternating, one goes out wide for the cross option, the other one crashes the box. Both seem to thrive in that arrive late in the box. Even tiny Pulisic likes to get in on some headers and volleys. Use McKennie and Adams to control the middle and breakup counters. Fullbacks in for support. Ream and Zimmermann making sure they don’t get good shots on goals. Main thing I would tell this team is to be direct but disciplined. We don’t have to score in the first half. We just have to play the game where we are the frustrator not the frustratee. Expect Iran to foul hard. Expect Iran to counter very quickly. Do not expect Iran to have nothing go forward. Think of that they’re just waiting and when they attack, they attack with numbers. Exploit the space when they attack. And hit them in these transition moments. Cut off Mehdi Taremi from the game!
So if two forwards are better than one what can we say about no forwards? In particular against a team that parks the bus.
If we stay in the 4-3-3 I would expect it to be for Weah. In a 4-4-2, possibly in the nine spot. edit - not that plays as a nine, he would just replace that position.
Nice thing about 442 to me is we solve our 9 problems since we can play Pulisic and Weah as a pair up top and still get another of our midfielders on. I'd be happy to see something like: ...............Pulisic..Weah .........Reyna.............McKennie ...............Musah..Adams Robinson..Ream..Zimmerman..Dest ...................Turner Keeps Musah and Adams in deep midfield keeping things tidy, keeps McKennie involved and puts him on the right where he can attack more. Gets Reyna on the field. Aaronson could take the place of a few people if he must be on the field or first attacking sub off the bench. The forwards can go wide if needed but we'd still get width from the fullbacks as we often do anyway. No more crosses to no one, keeps speed up top to bother the defense and stretch the game. No target but when have we actually used a target anyway? None of our 9s are good at it and we seldom play to them anyway. Makes it simple to defend similarly to how we did against England.
If that’s my XI, I would switch Reyna and Pulisic. Believe it or not, I trust Pulisic’s work rate to track back on defense more than I trust Reyna’s who still has his immature moments. But I think that tweak could make that line up tick.
Should add that I don't think they should make such a dramatic change for Iran. We spent four years preparing to play a certain way and I don't think it makes a ton of sense to change it suddenly for a big game. I just think this is the sort of option that should have been worked on over the past several years.
Iran is weaker in the air than Wales and England. I think we'll direct more. Especially would like to see Ream play some long diagonal balls to McKennie and Weah.
We played with a 4-3-3 for the whole cycle. I think for this game we should go back to it and go back to our high press trom the get-go. And hopefully we don't get burn on the counter.
I think yesterday showed the advantages of the 2 forward system. In my opinion, that was Josh Sargent’s best game in a USMNT shirt (in how long?), and Tim Weah actually looked very threatening in that vertical forward role.
Yep, what they were running -- at least in the first half -- looked similar to what they ran against England: a hybrid 4-3-3 4-4-2 depending on where Pulisic was playing, but with more fluidity. I'd like to re-watch and see.
Good point. Weah plays forward and so was often more even with Sargent in his hold up role. We didn't see a lot of Sargent-Weah interplay, though. Pulisic played the second striker in the hold up play really -- he'd often play underneath and often collect Sargent's pass back (along with a number of central mids). It's also worth noting that Robinson played his usual very forward role and Wes slipped in behind him wide -- our attack was almost more a 343 but like this: AR --- JS --- TW WK -- CP -- YM -- SD ----TR--TA--CCV (although TA came up a lot so) That said, I think Pulisic played more forward against Iran than he did against Wales or even England. And when Aaronson came in, he plays a lot more like Weah.
Moving forward, please, let’s be sure to incorporate a good two forward option in our repertoire. We can keep the 433 too, but we need some flexibility.