I've been playing around with a lot of data and something that I found illuminating was playing around with the Heatmaps at the WhoScored site. Going by heatmap, the entire game revolved around Pulisic. What's needed in that heat map is Aaronson in CAM instead of Ferreira at the 9. The heat map shows MMA stuck in quicksand and unable to get out of center circle. They dominated the center circle like Custer dominated the prairie in South Dakota. For comparison, check out the combined Aaronson/Adams heat map v. Spurs.
Child's play. According to van Gaal: "Argentina in my view is a top country with top players in their selection. The tournament is starting tomorrow for real, for us. Although I don't want to downplay the countries we've beaten, Argentina is a different country to the ones we have played."
The Dutch are known to be direct and say what they mean. I’m not surprised by what he’s said in the least. Aside from Morocco, all the teams in the final eight are countries with impressive results on the world stage.
Especially if you rely heavily on energy to counteract superior skill and get results. Which is part of the appeal of the World Cup for me - teams that win with skill and less hustle often survive longer. (And the appeal of soccer for me - lesser teams can upset giants in tournaments.)
The US had more skill than Wales and Iran had. There was no reason for GGG to run those guys into the ground.
Actually there were a lot of good reasons for playing the guys he did when he did - even if I'd have preferred he figured out a way to get Aaronson and Reyna more minutes. But even then, that doesn't help us with Adams and Jedi who were always going to play all the games. Dest and McKennie's minutes were managed (and Pulisic's by injury). It made the Wales result all the more unfortunate since we might have been able to rest guys in game 3. So really it seems to come down to Musah and while I think he probably was pretty gassed at the end, not sure that's why Adams and Dest and Jedi all fell asleep on pretty basic defensive plays. Hard to say team fatigue caused those errors. My main criticism of the coach there is that we hadn't play enough teams of the Netherlands quality - Adams somehow didn't see the danger of the moment which might have helped had we played more clinical teams? But ultimately, it's hard to say how much those 3 disasters were attributable to fatigue or experience - going into the game, I actually thought we would be in okay shape energy wise which brings me back to my initial point - we were outclassed.
There were no good reasons to run MMA into the ground. GGG had accomplished the bare minimum. He'd qualified for the Rnd 16. Why then proceed to set up these guys to get blown out? There was nothing to lose here. This was the game to get fresh legs in. Switch up the system. He didn't do any of that. Instead he continues with the same players. And he continued with that stupid press. Against a supreme transition. Dumb. I'm currently watching Croatia vs Brasil. Modric excepting, those Croatian players are struggling with basic passing. Fatigue will do that. But at least the coach isn't trying a dumb ass high press.
A lot of this I agree with but so much I don’t. “Outclassed” is where I vehemently disagree. I’d say we beat ourselves more than we were outclassed. Besides those three brain farts (which credit to the Dutch for punishing us for going to sleep on those three plays), at what point, did any of us look at that game and say the Netherlands were the superior team? I certainly didn’t. Personally, I save “outclassed” for what Portugal did to Switzerland. Heck, the Netherlands overwhelmed Qatar. It was clear the whole game which team had the class to win and which didn’t. I did not feel overwhelmed. Even when they scored, not once did I say, wow, nothing we could have done there. No. Every time, I was yelling, what the hell are you doing? Pick up your mark! I was yelling at the TV at Adams when he was letting Depay get a free run. I was yelling at the TV when Dest let the slowest man on earth run past him. I was yelling at Ream and Jedi marking the same man while Dumfries stood there open for seconds waving his hands in the open just hanging out on the back corner. Those were 3 boneheaded and uncharacteristic mistakes that we made. And the Dutch made the US pay for every error that we made on the night. Heck, we would have lost to El Salvador 3-1 if we made those kinds of mistakes. You can’t go to sleep at this level. Point being, would you not feel confident of your chances if we could have a rematch? I would. I’m not saying that we still wouldn’t be the underdog. But I’d have a lot more confidence that we would force the Dutch to do a lot more than just gift them three goals because we lost our concentration. We can blame this on fatigue. We can also blame this on lack of quality games together ~ due to youth, injuries, and competition. We can blame this just on it just not being our day. But I don’t blame the quality mismatch between the Dutch and US. Again, they’re still the big dog. But not by that much.
Rosters: Netherlands EPL: 3 B1: 2 Serie A: 4 La Liga: 2 Ligue 1: 0 USA: EPL: 6 B1: 2 Serie A: 2 La Liga: 2 Ligue: 1 Not the big mismatch, except at coach.
I’d add this, if you’re just outclassed on the day, as a rough estimate, if you had a series of games, you would expect to lose 10 out of 10 games against them, or 9 out of 10 games. Maybe 8. I’d give the Dutch 6 out of 10 games they would beat us. With us beating them 4 out of 10. ....If we ever played soccer that way.
100% and that's where some of the obsession over a tiny sample size becomes so silly. The broad picture is that we are able to actually get out and play with elite opposition with the current core of talent in a way that has never been the case in modern program history, and that was extremely visible in each of the games. The micro is that Jesus Ferreira had a senseless loose touch in a defensive position on the stroke of halftime and that ended a contest in which we were otherwise playing rather well and in keeping with the broader picture above. It is what it is.
Also, I’ll say this, I would take the Netherlands again, before I would take Japan, who actually did outclass us in our World Cup warm-up match.
That's a pretty simplistic way to look at it though. I mean yeah, Depay and LDT play in the same league.
Klinsmann made the point on BBC that we were outclassed and gave as an example the way the Dutch understood when it was time to take a touch first or put a foot on the ball and when to shift gears and go one touch down the pitch at goal. I think we might have seen that more with a manager like Vanney. Of course, we'd want to avoid the trap of becoming Spain. MMA just never were able to get a transition game going and there have been stories on this in the media with clips giving multiple examples of botched transitions. Bringing Acosta gives one a good sense of Berhalter's cluelessness in this department. Reyna, Aaronson, Pulisic, Weah together on the pitch would have helped.
Gakpo and Pepi also play in the same league, one is scoring goals at the World Cup while the other was Gregg's biggest surprise exclusion from the World Cup roster in favor of Ferreira and Wright who were predictably trash... Taylor Booth also in that league, just won player of the month... As the USMNT prepares for the Netherlands I'd just like to note that Ricardo Pepi has been scoring at a higher rate than Cody Gakpo in the Eredivisie this season.— Steve Fenn //\\ Mast: StatHunting@skrimmage.com (@StatHunting) November 29, 2022
Wasn't that what LVG was looking at when he came up with the plan to beat us? Substituting an outstanding passer by Prem standards like Ream for Long, who played v. Japan, didn't help because the issue was the MMA receivers. The whole point of LVG's formation was to cut off service to our fb's to force the cb's to connect with the mids. Against Wales' 532 we got service to the fb's and that was what stopped those up the middle counters. People complained at the half about going up the flanks all day v. Wales. Well, there was a reason for it. We approached the situation like Man city and were actually up 1-0 when Acosta fell asleep on the throw in and let the tying goal in.
I agree with a lot of this - I've never (before) felt going into a game like that that we had a very good chance to be near their equal and take the game to them. Then the game happened and I thought we looked outmatched. Part of it was we were outcoached probably, part of it was youthful mistakes - but I also think there was a talent gap. They had better first touch, were stronger in the tackle, , clinical finish, and expended less energy disrupting our attacks which they used to expose us. Definitely agree we could have beat them especially if it was the first game of the tournament, but that also speaks to our talent - we have to work so hard to score because we have few (if any) natural finishers. We certainly beat ourselves with uncharacteristic errors but guys like VVD are on another level to players we have.
A single World Cup match is a 'small sample size', but there are obviously many events that take place in a given match. These events are worth examining.
I disagree - we don't have anyone performing currently at the level of Depay, Dumfries and VVD. And our drop off of skill from our top players is greater than theirs.
VVD is a god, and Dumfries is an emerging superstar who played like it in that game, but Depay's no Ballon d'Or type, he's kinda overrated.
I'm bummed Pepi didn't make the trip - it's my personal biggest disappointment about the roster - but are you saying Pepi would have had a bigger impact than Gakpo in the World Cup? Rosters aren't picked based on league resumes thankfully.