Kam Your ranking judges some teams based on a single 2 game FRIENDLY window, and others on more than a year of matches. (Including 2 tournaments) No consistency. You gotta stay consistent at least.
Not an outlandish pick but it's a huge gamble to bet on Canada's success with the Swiss cheese defence they have. I thought they were at least somehwat decent defensively at the World Cup other than that shambolic performance against Croatia. Post World Cup they have started to leak more goals. Also to sides like Jamaica etc... Chile have a higher chance to make the quarterfinal than Canada does. I don't see Jesse March being able to fix Canada's problems in defence in time for this Copa America
Well, there are several caveats. One, I said at home we should beat Brazil but we're going to have a mental block. Two, I said our best team and our best team will be missing Dest and possibly Adams is not the Adams of yore.
Would one predict the US to beat Brazil? No. Who would put money on that? But we can do it. Sure, we can. I'm sure the players go into the game with confidence. The US, by the way, has a horrific record against Brazil. 1 win 18 losses Probably the worst record against any team we've played that often. That one win required our goalkeeper to stand on his head to keep Romario and company out. The famous Kasey Keller game. Famous to Americans anyway. I don't think we're going to be able to count on that with Turner in the nets. This may not be the best Brazil team, but they're #5 in the World for a reason. In their last two games they beat England in London and drew with Spain in Madrid. Hello?? Yes, they did have a string of bad results in South America. Lost to Colombia in Colombia. Lost to Uruguay in Uruguay. Lost to World Champs Argentina at home 1-0. Not exactly the easiest run of games. We are a decided underdog if we face Brazil. ...............but can we get a result? Sure. I'm sure the players and staff go into the game thinking we can get a result. Lest we forget, we drew with England at the World Cup. What were they ranked at the time? #5. In fact, I'd say we were slightly the better team on that day.
Brazil also has a full time coach now which they didn’t have during those qualifying games (when they were waiting for Ancelotti and had an interim coach who was also coaching a club side at the same time).
I'm not expecting a win. But I would expect the team to not get humiliated. I would expect them to play like they have a tactical clue. I would expect them do better than they had against Holland and Germany.
But Brazil is bringing a depleted team: no Casemiro, no Gabriel Jesus, no Richarlison, no Emerson, and of course no Neymar because of injury. They got Vinicius though, who is already World Class at 23. His second leg against Bayern was a masterclass. And they got Raphinha. Brazil always produces top attackers. The problem is at their back.
That depleted Brazil is still better than the US. Chile with Gareca looks like a different team, I think they're favourites against Canada, but I don't think they're better than the US, at least not now.
Oh I believe you, if he's GK of the 20th century for Concacaf, I buy it. I have nothing else to go on if he's El Tri's #1 rated guy that century, probably good chance he is. With Johnny U, I can kind of buy it, there's some footage, complete stats for the most part, even some games in the Super Bowl Era, he was injured for the notorious loss in III, and healthy for the notorious worst Super Bowl ever played (a million turnovers in their victory over Dallas in V). Johnny U is kind of easier. One of the helpful pieces too is that all those great QB's of the seventies and eighties? All of them worshipped Johnny U, Joe Montana played with his #, I think Joe Namath loved him, same with Marino etc. From an interesting preview article from the LA Times before Super Bowl XIX: "...Namath is Hungarian. His father worked in a steel mill in Beaver Falls, a short drive west from Pittsburgh. Unitas, Lithuanian, grew up in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Washington. His father, who drove a coal truck, died when Unitas was young. Marino’s father, Dan Sr., drives a truck for the Pittsburgh Press. The name Montana was Montagna when the family lived in northern Italy. Joe Sr. runs a small financial loan service in Monogahela, but for years worked as a Western Electric equipment installer...." Even Jim Kelly, who at the time of the article was a USFL guy getting ready to move to the Bills was from a nearby local town. How crazy is that? Johnny U, Joe Namath, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, and Jim Kelly, grew up basically in the same generalized town/region. Insane.
We've literally won every single major tournament we've sent our A side to since 2021, Back to Back to Back Nations League titles, won by a collective score of 7-2, won a Gold Cup with a B/C team in '21, we haven't lost to Mexico since 2019, admittedly Canada were the better side in 3 of four matches between October '19 and January '22, but we pounded them in the NL final in '23, and would have likely pounded them even harder if they hadn't broken Reyna's leg, deliberately (or semi-deliberately). We've dominated the regional tournaments other than a Gold Cup that neither the US nor Canada send even close to its best players too. We've also been dominant at the U20 level and the U23 level. We're also dominant in terms of players in the CL, in European Competition and in Big 5 leagues and in Europe in general. By every single metric we're better and by a lot. I guess you could say we sucked at the Gold Cup in '23, but that team wasn't even a B team, let alone an A team, and again, Canada didnt send their best either. You could argue we sucked in qualifying, but even that is deceptive. I think Canada was pretty clearly the best in qualifying, but we also know that was basically a product of elite level unsustainable finishing (which has regressed since I believe) and goal keeping, which has also fallen off a bit, we featured mediocre goal keeping (Turner finished in the middle of the pack, Steffen was the worst keeper in qualifying statistically who played enough minutes) and terrible finishing, but still finished first in the measure of xG and the xG allowed #'s by a decent stretch. We're the best in the region and its not close. The only issue I see is with coaching and goalkeeping, but none of the big 3 have great coaches from what I can tell (I'm a Marsch skeptic, Mexico already hired the potential replacement as an advisor to their current dude in Herrera), Canada has the better keeper, and El Tri has decided to retire Ochoa, kinda weird timing to me.
Concacaf is the region of failed states like Mexico, Caribbean tourist traps, and Central American banana republics. It's not hard to be better than them when the USA has more people, money, and soccer infrastructure behind it than 99% of these places. That disparity is even more pronounced in Concacaf youth tournaments when the USA plays joke opponents like St. Kitts or some other Caribbean island with 3 people living on it. Those places can't compete at all.
We aren't dominating anything. We barely qualified for the WC and were extremely lucky to win Federation Cup on the last second own goal. In all tournaments except the quals we are playing at home what is a huge advantage in Concacaf. Just imagine all those tournaments being played in Mexico or God forbid Costa Rica. How often we win in Costa Rica? Our WC performance was putrid. Nobody is afraid of us. Mexico, Canada, Panama, Jamaica, CR they all believe they have equal or better chances against us. We might have longer bench but we aren't much better team.
Read more of his posts. I know that post comes across that way. I disagree too, but he's typically far more cynical, negative, and betting on the low end of outcomes. This take from Suyunty struck me as unusually positive, it almost sounds like he's not trying to jinx things. In fairness, if Brazil plays as horribly as they did in qualifying last year, he's right, we should beat them. After opening with a pair of nice wins they were shocked at home by Venezuela, the only time I can remember Venezuela ever taking points from them away, and then responded to that horror by getting their heads kicked in at Uruguay. They then responded to that negativity by stringing together another pair of losses in the next window, this time at Colombia and while hosting Argentina. If that Brazil shows up? We can beat them, or at least send them to extra time. The one problem for me? That March window. They looked real, real dangerous in that one: they beat England in England, and then tied Spain in Spain, putting 3 goals on them. They blooded teen wunderkind Endrick, and he provided them with goals in both matches. So.......I'm not nearly so confident. I don't really care that we're at home, I think that's meaningless in terms of traditional intimidation value. Our fans sing and play dumb ---, idiotic songs, they don't scare anyone, they get outnumbered and dominated on the regular by El Tri fans, I just don't see the advantage. Yes its an advantage compared to playing this where '28 will supposedly be (Ecuador?), but we don't scare or intimidate anyone. I view Uruguay as better, period, I view Argentina as better period, I view Brazil as capable of being better period especially if they play more like they did at the WC, and in 2024, than they've played in qualifying so far, and Colombia is playing quite well in qualifying as well, and in that March Window they beat Spain in Spain, and beat Romania in Romania (both of Romania's goals in their 2-3 defeat were scored after Colombia had kicked their --- at least by scoreline through 80 minutes to the tune of a 3-0 lead). So for me anyway, no, I don't see that. On our day we can beat anyone, but we simply haven't shown evidence of playing consistently enough as a tournament team to produce such results. In '21-'22 WC Qualifying we could not put together 3 straight good games once, in windows 1, 2, 4 and 5 we produced at least one turkey game in each window (in window 1 we sucked the whole window, in window 2 we had the Panama crapshow, in the window 3, pair of games, we were awesome against Mexico and horrible at Jamaica, in window 4 we struggled with El Salvador and Canada, in Window 5 we finally had a good window until we stepped on a rake in the second half of the Costa Rica Ocho finale, at the WC we could not put together a complete game in any match save Canada: great halves against Wales and Iran, a great game against England, a rake stepping defensive performance against Netherlands). I just don't see evidence that when we have four games lined up if we make the knockouts between June 23rd and July 6th, the evidence suggests to me that we'll step on a rake once or twice there. I highly doubt we make the semifinals. That being said, it is possible. When we are on our game we have the talent to play with anyone, but the consistency piece, the coaching piece, and the mess that is our goalkeeping, the horror that was losing Dest's attacking prowess which nobody can really defend other than Dest himself screwing it up? All of that adds up to me figuring we'll butcher a game at some point, either the group stage finale, or the QF, or both. I hope they surprise me. I'm looking forward to them hopefully proving me wrong.
I'll give you a "touche" for the Jamaica match. True enough, that kind of fits with my counter to Suyuntuy's take, in that we have not been capable of stringing together quality matches over multigame windows virtually ever under Berhalter. In terms of qualifying for the WC, I don't know, we did qualify, we finished first in the xG stats by a good chunk, which says basically a mix of randomness, bad finishing, and Steffen's horrible goalkeeping are the only reasons it was ever even in doubt, and in doubt is a real, huge, stretch. Even if we had lost the tiebreaker with Costa Rica, it wouldn't have been Couva redux, it would have been a playoff against craptacular New Zealand, you'll figure me if I am highly doubtful that we lose that home and home (then again, we did ---- our pants in a home and home with T&T). I don't think the comparison to playing the Gold Cup or NL in Mexico is meaningful. We already play those finals against Mexico as away games, or did you miss the countless bottles and trash thrown at our players anytime we're near the stands? Those are road games. As for playing away in Central America, that's true, but I think it's more about us not having a home advantage, them having one, and our refs being the most incompetent, in the bag, terrified of opponents fans, and in some cases, just okay with insane violent bull----, morons around than anything. Indeed I think if we played in regional tournaments like UEFA or the AFC, I would be scared less (in terms of roadies) than I am in our region, because our refs are either incompetent, bribed, or in favor of grand mal stupidity. Do recall El Tri managed to strangle McKennie three (or was it two?) consecutive times at one point ('19 Gold Cup, '21 NL, '21 qualifier), deliberately eye gouge Aaronson, and then strangled a Canadian player in the '21 Gold Cup, and then in the NL semi's in '23, they decided they'd just attack our players, and nobody in any of those matches, none of them, was ever red carded or even yellow carded (correct me if I'm wrong) once for any of it until NL '23. That to me tells us more that are region is horse ----, than that we're not dominating it. The only reason we struggle on the road in concacrap is because of the insanity of the regions we play (which are only really replicated in Conmebol and CAF), and the gross incompetence of the refs (which are unparalleled in any region save maybe CAF and Coulibaly and the coke mule from South America/WC '02). You make some good points, but so do I. I think the most telling point about us is that we win the tournaments we try to win, and our player development program has finally woken up and it shows in the talent we're sending to Europe, no team in our region is remotely close. Another poster referenced the youth tournaments, but even that isn't really telling to me. When we were bad, we even sucked at that level, failing to qualify for the U17 WC in '13, U20 WC in '11, and U23/Olympics in '12, and '16 and '21....the fact that we are nailing down all those levels on the regular, and have dominated in the U20's for the first time ever underlines where we are now. I don't dispute the region is crappy, that's why I call it concacrap, doesn't mean we aren't the kings of it at this point, if not the kings of coaching or apparently goalkeeping.
The refs in Central America allow 1st degree assault on the U.S. team. Soccer there more closely resembles Rugby Union than Soccer.
There's a level of hubris on these boards as if CONCACAF is "beneath us." Its silly and untrue. Yes, we are the best team in the region right now in May of 2024. But Mexico will come roaring back. Costa Rica will be back. Honduras will be back. ...............and the reason we want to play in events like Copa America (and play friendlies against the likes of Germany, Ghana, Brazil, and Colombia) is to keep testing ourselves against other nations as well. What I would say is that we're #11 in the world in FIFA rankings for a reason. When the Copa America draw was undertaken, we were the 4th highest seed at the event after Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. With Colombia and Mexico right behind us. We're right in that mix of teams. So stop with the damn inferiority complex. Its pathetic. Waah, waah, waah............its impossible for Berhalter to get a result against Uruguay. Waah, waah, waah. Well, Berhalter has faced Uruguay twice. Uruguay won neither game. Of course, we can get a result against Uruguay.
Some of those guys like Casemiro just aren’t good anymore so it’s not a loss that they aren’t going. Or are coming off poor club seasons like Richarlison. Neymar is being left off because of injury but the others are all form related. We’d be better off if they were bringing some of those guys given they aren’t in the best form. I also think this tournament is going to be Endrick’s coming out party and he’s their next top star.
This is something people simply don't acknowledge in terms of our road struggles. Playing on the road is hard to some extent for ust about everyone but there are fundamental differences between playing on the road in UEFA or the AFC or Oceania, and playing on the road in Central America. We play in a region where: 1.) Away fan behavior since the 80's is as bad as anywhere on earth and usually sets the standard, and is only matched in a modern sense in CAF and some places in Conmebol. 2.) Acceptable levels of violence are not just higher, but orders of magnitude worse than anywhere else in the world and are not remotely consistent. They are biased by the inherent nature of away bias (the studies have shown that refs respond to perceived fan pressure the closer in proximity the fans are in any environment (which is why the Chinese designed ---- box in Costa Rica is so huge: it pushed fans back from the field, so its not as tight as it was at saprissa), but they are also biased culturally (what's acceptable coming up as a ref in Central American domestic leagues has simply not been reffed as acceptable anywhere else since the 70's and 80s in terms of rough play, and EVER in terms of player assaults). 3.) The teams themselves are simply more cynical than anywhere else in the world other than Conmebol and CAF who probably medal stand with them but aren't quite up there. 4.) Fan devotion and intensity is as high as anywhere else in the world in general, particularly in Central America/Mexico. I'm forgetting stuff I'm sure. But the key is, when we talk about this, other teams fans think and say: Yeah but Panama sucks, Honduras sucks, Guatemala sucks, El Salvador sucks etc, and they simply don't get that away matches in these places are simply not like playing roadies in Asia, or Near East Asia no matter how intense their fans are, Europe hasn't had this scale of fan intensity and insanity since the seventies and eighties before Heysel. I will asterisk this by saying that fan craziness in France post covid has been pretty wild, especially around I think Marseille. But yeah, my point is, qualifying matches away in Central America absolutely make the medal stand of most intense and difficult matches to play in period. Consider the playoffs Concacaf has played in over the past 20 years: In '06 little T&T knocked out the AFC's fifth best, Bahrain. In '10, one of the worst Costa Rican sides of the past 40 years still managed to push Uruguay, drawing away and falling 1-2 on aggregate, you will recall, this Uruguay made the semifinals in '10, and won the Copa America in '11. In '14 Mexico annihilated NZ in the playoff 9-3 including 5-1 win at home after finishing 4th in the region and only advancing to the playoff after the US managed to score two goals in injury time to knock Mexico in, and Panama out of the WC (the favor would not be returned 4 years later when Mexico choked against Honduras and Costa Rica choked against Panama). This was basically a 5th place concacaf Mexico side that absolutely obliterated NZ. In '18, we sent the worst side to the playoff since Costa Rica in '10 and T&T in '06 in Honduras that qualified thanks to second half collapses by Mexico and Costa Rica (including a ghost goal in that game) sent Panama through over the US. Honduras managed to hold Australia away before getting smashed on the road. In '22, as we know, Australia proved their mettle again, smashing Peru in a playoff, while in Concacaf, an old, broken down, craptacular Costa Rica, still managed to knock out NZ, and then later beat Japan and scared the hell out of Germany in a do or die finale to the group stage. This region, no matter how crap the teams, always is an exceptionally difficult out at home. The only team that's managed to beat a concacaf side away in a playoff has been not surprisingly a Conmebol side, Uruguay. Every other one has either fallen, or in Australia's case, held serve. It's a miserable experience to play down here, it's not soccer, its war, and its not coincidentally, the only region that literally had a "soccer war" although to be fair, Yugoslavia kind of matched that in 1990 with the Red Star-Dinamo riot that previewed a war, but we all know the former Yugoslavia is on another level entirely historically for European hatred in the post WWII world.
Its not hubris. Mexico is gonna come back. We just don't know when it will happen and its important to note that w/their pipeline as plugged up as its been the last six or seven years there's a tail effect: you're unlikely to see significant change at the senior level until you see significant young players killiing it at the youth level and you haven't since at least 2015-2017, so to me anyway, if our U20's usually leave an imprint 1-3 years later, and their most recent U20's ('22) sucked, we don't really have any good news on the way, for now. There's no way humanly possible Mexico can stay this bad for decades, but they do actually have to fix the problems (or steal all of our dual nats) to yield the benefits and there arent really any tangible signs they've done much of anything until at least, publically claiming to take steps to reform development in '23, but there's obviously gonna be a delay, so its too late to have a major impact on '26 (more than likely anyway) so Gold Cup '27, and Copa America '28 and WC '30 are the next that might be impacted by changes, but even at that level, shouldn't we already see signs of this happening? They did win U17 qualifying in '23 so there's that, but they've always been good at the U17's, it's the time inbetween age 16 and age 21 that things are going sideways. We'll see if they can turn those '06's and '07's into something meaningful probably in the next 36 months. I tend to be skeptical since the changes needed haven't even been suggested at until the past 18 months. As for Honduras and Costa Rica. Of course. You won't find anyone crapping on Costa Rica here. We have put up two decent fights, maybe 3, in qualifying against them in 40 years. It's not an impressive track record, and they've managed to leave their mark at the WC in '90, '02, '06, and w/this golden generation in '14-'22. I assume they'll get there again, but w/that tiny population, you just don't know when. Honduras has produced very good sides for the region in 2000-2002, 2010-2018, but they started rebooting next cycle, when are they good again? I don't know. They stepped on yet another rake in the Gold Cup in '23 after totally imploding in qualifying in '21-'22, Nations League was more promising where they beat Canada and Mexico at home before being knocked out away in the '22-'23, and '23-'24 versions of the tournament. We'll see.
The even increasing number of subs may make this a more viable tactic. IIRC, in the last WC Final, France finished the game with only 4 of their starters. I am not a fan of this, the larger countries already have a deeper player pool, all of these additional subs give the larger countries even more of an advantage.
Besides the roughness in CONCACAF many of the teams play on some of the worst fields in the world and purposely keep the grass high and dry to slow play down. Add in pranks at night to keep opponents up and it's a tough stew. Oh yeah I forgot a lot are hot and humid year round which makes it very hard on teams from cool or cold climates.
Brazil, Colombia and Uruguay are better than us but, as I wrote, home field advantage matters and I expect the NT to give any of them a good fight. Argentina, France, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium* are the teams I'm quite sure would beat us even at home. If it's true the new guys in Brazil are as good as their fans think, then they'd be the #6 team unbeatable for us even at home. "Uruguay and Colombia are close games when we have the home advantage" is what I wrote, and I think it's accurate. Since it's likely we'll be facing either Brazil or Colombia in the playoff to make semis, we'll find out soon enough if my estimation was correct. ---- * Belgium are a team that does well playing away from home. Uruguay is like that, too, usually. I forgot that.
Uruguay and Colombia may be better than us. But anything can happen on a given day against that opposition. There's no way I'd bet on those games. We have a better recent record against Uruguay than Colombia. Our game against Uruguay is last. May be meaningless if we take care of business in our first two games (and Uruguay does too). May have already clinched advancement. So we probably rest a bunch of key guys. 2016 Copa America we were talking for half a year about how we were lined up to play Brazil in the quarterfinal. The Brazil drew with Ecuador, lost to Peru, and were knocked out of the tournament altogether. We got Ecuador in the quarterfinal and beat them. So, who the hell knows what's going to happen. Shenanigans tend to happen at Copa America.
It’s not the case with Uruguay but Brazil and Columbia will definitely turn out a bunch of fans if we play them in the semis. It won’t be as dramatic an advantage as Mexico has but it also won’t be a true home field crowd. Columbia turned out a bunch of fans even for our January camp friendly last year. I’m also not that afraid of Belgium. Their golden generation is aging out and the generation behind them is not the same level. They really should have lost to Canada at the World Cup. France, Brazil, and England are the three most talented teams in the world in my mind. Though I don’t worry as much about England because that’s the sort of game we always seem to get up for. But those are my top tier teams. And the next tier of teams that’d I really be concerned about is Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Argentina. All have plenty of talent but not as much as the first three. Uruguay has a ton of top end talent that they are a tough opponent, but not as much depth. But with a team like Columbia I’d argue we have the talent advantage and I put them on a similar tier as us (along with teams like Japan and others). The biggest thing for me to start Copa America is can we get through the Panama and Bolivia games with two wins and not having to expend as much energy in the group stage as we did in the World Cup (where by the time we got to the Netherlands there was no gas left in the tank).