News: Tab Ramos on USMNT: I want to hear the president of the federation say something and you don’t hear

United4Evra · Jan 13, 2023

juvechelsea said: ↑

i found the revival of the 433 amusing because i am old enough that for a season and change under an english coach i played 433 in this country decades ago. and we played english style kickball. i have seen colleges play it that way. you skip the mids. play to the forwards, who either cross to each other in their channels, or leave it back to the mids.

i get people find this crude but it skips having to do a 20 pass build. and, well, let's be blunt, i watched some world cup teams outleting balls to wings with long passes, sometimes ground, sometimes air, then hit a cross in. holland had some of that. ironically for a van gaal team there was next to no farting around a la barca.

personally i thought we'd chatted over how to win the ball with a press but not really planned how to score goals. for all the talk about possession we had hustle mids. and the plan seemed to be more to play the ball around than score goals. the goal scoring plan, to me, looked little different than an english 433 like i remember it. this was not a dutch 433 trying to interchange and pass the ball in the net. this was whack hopeful crosses to the 9. but without good crossers or a target striker. which any english team with common sense would have before they bothered with crossing soccer. i thought that bit was somewhere between naive and simply undercooked. try to pass it around through packed defenses. then whack crosses to no one. and we scored twice in 4 games.

and the other thing i remembered from 433 was it was an awful formation to sit on a lead. if you spread the field you're swiss cheese in transition. if you pack the middle the wings are open. it's too few guys to cover too much green. this is also naive. it's a naive formation to defend. as a result we like klinsi before packed the MF with hustle guys. they can't pass their way through a press or a swarm. we can't possess. defeats the point. if i can't play the offense a 433 suggests, then there are better formations to play mckennie musah adams in to defend. like can we at least defend well and not ship 4 goals in 4 games.

i think the snobs behind this fetish have their ideas, and they think GB is one of them. but in reality this is nothing like barca and i am amused the snobs don't riot about it. as a result it's neither offensively aggressive nor defensively sound. we water down the wing forwards for defensive purposes but then the wingbacks are picked for offense and not defense, which is a blatant contradiction. we play attacking wingbacks but defensive mids and wings.

to me we're stuck in between functioning concepts. either get offensively aggressive and just say GA are a cost of doing business, play for 3-2 wins. or get defensively sound where we churn out 1-0 games. right now this is a little too much set up to be like 1-1 or 2-2 or on a bad day 3-1. not a shutout but not blowing the other team out either.

lost what the point is, and like i said, if the idea of the 433 is nothing more subtle than a bunch of crosses, then the english version of the 433 is much more direct. quit losing the ball in the build. whack it all the way up. let them whack it in ad infinitum. if you lose the ball it's deep other end on the hoofball.

anyhow, that's the way the thought pattern goes. personally i prefer 352 or 442, sit back, counter, and that can be done as ground soccer. or did people not watch how argentina or japan played. i think presses are childishly overaggressive and take away the green space into which to play fast guys like weah. i think the 433 is naive defending. i think premising an offense on 20-30 passes through world cup defenses is pie in the sky stuff that even clockwork orange couldn't win a title with. i think at a point here it comes down to are we trying to win -- because whatever happens in UCL, world cup winning teams are usually also organized and tough on defense -- or are we trying to make an aesthetic point. it sticks in my head some of the same folks trying to sell GB ball as a "winner" were the ones saying they would rather lose than play how bradley did. that to me says they care more how it looks and whether it works as winning soccer is secondary and bluntly sales.
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Agree with much of this. Good post.

I think the USMNTis probably caught in the middle right now. Our midfield is pretty damn good on it’s day as we basically won the midfield battle vs England. Our wingers are quite good, and we have some really useful players in Reyna and Aaronson (for different reasons). On the other hand, our CBs are a bit subpar particularly in distribution and defending in a high line. Our weakest area is striker, by far. Still, if we had played Reyna at the tip of a diamond, and had Pulisic and Weah as wide strikers, I think it really would have fit our squad a bit better when playing the likes of England and the Dutch.

gogorath · Jan 14, 2023

United4Evra said: ↑

RE: Berhalter “defensive structure”… well, IMHO, if he is obsessed with that structure, then he either doesn’t understand his personnel very well or he has no idea how to execute a defensive 433. He’s running two ball winning 8s ahead of a 6 and also giving Musah and McKennie free reign to crash the box and support wing play.
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McKennie and Musah didn't crash the box in the World Cup. That was the point of my post. What was a common offensive tactic for Berhalter -- late-arriving 8s -- disappeared almost entirely when we played tougher competition.

RalleeMonkey · Jan 29, 2023

Cindy Spoke.

Pegasus · Jan 29, 2023

gogorath said: ↑

McKennie and Musah didn't crash the box in the World Cup. That was the point of my post. What was a common offensive tactic for Berhalter -- late-arriving 8s -- disappeared almost entirely when we played tougher competition.
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They were protecting the back line. Leeds may find their central defenders lookin better with both Adams and McKennie.

gomichigan24 · Jan 30, 2023

United4Evra said: ↑

Agree with much of this. Good post.

I think the USMNTis probably caught in the middle right now. Our midfield is pretty damn good on it’s day as we basically won the midfield battle vs England. Our wingers are quite good, and we have some really useful players in Reyna and Aaronson (for different reasons). On the other hand, our CBs are a bit subpar particularly in distribution and defending in a high line. Our weakest area is striker, by far. Still, if we had played Reyna at the tip of a diamond, and had Pulisic and Weah as wide strikers, I think it really would have fit our squad a bit better when playing the likes of England and the Dutch.
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Ream is definitely very good in distribution, though a high line plays against his strengths. Zimmerman distribution can be hit or miss.

Long term Richards and Robinson are the best potential combination of being able to play a high line and distribute. We just need Robinson to come back healthy and not having lost a step.