I think we disagree on the notion of playing an aspirational style and the hopes of the team evolving to eventually play it well. I see the players as developing mostly outside the control of the fed and those attempts to evolve an entire player pool to play a specific way seem a bit unrealistic. Players develop mostly outside control of the fed and then the national team blends these players into a unit. Evolution of the player pool will happen as players come in and out, so I don't really see that the national team exactly evolves over time, especially once you start crossing generations. And when the player pool progresses, we play how those groups are best served when the time comes. I don't believe in "If you build it, they will come" in regard to player development. So yeah, not exactly El Salvador, but I want the team playing however is most likely to maximize results with this group. Surely it will involve some possession, but against better teams with this group of players, it will involve a lot more defending and striking quickly than stroking the ball around.
Also, I loved watching Spain, they were a fantastic team and fully deserved the title. They also were fairly direct in their attacking play when they got the ball and when they got the lead they reverted to long, drawn out possession. This was not the old Spain passing the opponent to death until they generated a small handful of chances. This was a dynamic team that put teams on their heels and relied heavily on attacking quickly in transition.
On Adams I think we saw at timed this summer where the lack of fitness came into play. He's one I think we sometimes forget how good he is when he is healthy but I think the decision to just plug him in during Copa and figure out everything on the fly was a bad decision. Of course by seasons end if we take club form into account the only guy in top form going into the summer was Johnny and it caught up to us.
Right, and I don't want them playing exactly like Spain. I understand the idea that players don't develop at the national team, or at least mostly, but I do think there's value to some level of aspiration. I think the players can push themselves and a national team might discover ways to use existing talents that are underutilized at club, and I think a national team can push players in their efforts to better themselves in their own time. I also think we're not entirely sure of what we can do until we try. And I think there is a very real trickle down of how the US plays to the elite level of youth players. That will push what they choose to work in and focus on in terms of individual development. But all that said, it's a balance, and I do think when you have Christian, Dest, Reyna, etc., you should use them to their fullest, and that's not super conservatively.
Agree. Spain was really helped by having somewhat un-Spanish wings as well. Your comment is one of the reasons I tend to get frustrated on here at times with the tactical discussion, though -- the discussion end up at extremes. I've never wanted tiki-taka and frankly, even the long discussion "disorganize the opponent with the ball" was somewhat abandoned ages ago. I simply want a plan with the ball that isn't "kick it long and hope to outfight people for the ball" or "kick it long and if you lose it, just counterpress." And I think this team should absolutely have the ability to hold the ball to control the game. The problem with giving away the ball is that you become a punching bag to better teams, and you are just hoping your keeping holds. We're good enough to not do that. As you note, we're not super good at recognizing or exploiting the moment to attack. Some of that is tactics. Some of that is player IQ. Some of that is simply ability. Spain set a record with 15 goals in 7 matches, I believe ... yes, the Euros are better opposition, but scoring is hard and often requires a moment of brilliance. And Tim Weah ain't Yamine Lamal.
This is one of the big problems with the internet in general. Everyone gets progressively more extreme wanting to "win" the argument and eventually two people are arguing for more extreme versions of something neither of them really believe. In soccer, the best teams are never all one or the other side of the coin.
One more thing and I'll stop hogging the thread, good teams also always have the ability to vary their play, speed up and slow down, explore wide then come down the center, etc. and that's one of the things even good US teams have struggled with over the years. And I do think a lot of that is down to soccer IQ.
I'm a tactical ignoramus so take this with a grain of salt. Shouldn't an overall, multiyear strategy be adaptable enough to maximize our chances as favorites, as underdogs, and in fairly balanced games? Especially for 2026, because the 48-team tournament and privileges of hosting mean we should get a pretty light group. (My first simulation on a very flawed simulator gave us a group of Japan, Czechia, and Burkina Faso which sounds about right. Three more sims gave us Greece, Italy, and Algeria in the R32, where obviously getting Italy would be a bad beat. But the sim doesn't appear to realize we'd probably be the seed in Group A and that host group winners will probably be paired with 3rd place finishers, so we might be looking at opponents like Tunisia, Iran, Austria, or Egypt in the R32.) It seems like one way to look at the criticism of Southgate is that his team ends up treating Slovakia or Denmark as though they're on a par with Spain or France, and so they end up relying on lucky breaks or moments of brilliance they would need to beat Spain or France.
Wow, these simulators are fun to waste time with. My first try on another one has us winning a group with Australia and Paraguay both qualifying and Gabon eliminated. Then we play Oman, who stunningly finished behind only Turkey with top seed Canada and second seed Algeria eliminated. (So again, they're unaware of host groups and not pairing them with third-place advancers.) We beat Oman and Ecuador only to lose a quarterfinal to Belgium. Good times. EDIT: On my 2nd or 3rd time with that one, we finished behind Japan and Mexico beat us in the first knockout game. But. In the next one we won a group with 6 points over Sweden, Senegal (qualified 3rd), and NZ. In the knockouts we beat Qatar, Denmark, Uruguay, Poland, and Portugal to win the 2026 World Cup. So I'm saying there's a chance.
The thing is it’s not as if he started every game and went 90. He didn’t play against Columbia, went 45 against Bolivia and Panama, and then did 90 against Uruguay. It’s not as if he was the one at fault for is losing to Uruguay or Panama or that Johnny really showed a ton in the minutes he got (of which he for a decent amount this summer).
Yes, theoretically. Your constraint, of course, is time. What's the value of focusing training versus dispersing your training hours across a bunch of different tactics? I honestly have no idea where that sits on the spectrum -- how much can you cram in. And I think player IQ really matters here. My big thing is simple: we should have a plan with the ball. This includes patterns of play to advance the ball and generate attacks. This does not eschew over the top play or counter-attacking. This does not mean tiki-taka or Man City or Berhalter ball. It doesn't even mean dominating possession. Liverpool has a plan with the ball. If you have a plan with the ball but are super concerned about keeping it or giving up counters, you can always boot it long. You can always invite the opponent up and counter-attack behind. These things require less practice and less of a plan (offensively) to execute. But if you play a passive defense, counter attack offense but don't have a plan with the ball, you aren't flexible. You can't control the game when you want. That's not flexible. ------------------------------------------- Going to a passive defense and counter-attacking might be more productive against some of the top teams, but I'm skeptical that we can't with the ball against top teams. We can break presses, we can hold the ball, we can pressure well enough to force turnovers and not let teams batter us. (Yes, the Colombia match. But we held up against Uruguay and other presses -- I would challenge our players on this point.) That tells me we can do that. What we should be tinkering for is optimizing how aggressive we are on the counter, deciding when best to pressure to force turnovers, versus sucking the opposition in. We had large scale tactical adjustments with Berhalter, and we had additions to the patterns of play. What I rarely saw, though, was the middle scale -- lowering the line versus team X, more overloads versus team Y. We had the 442 moment against England but by and large he was more of a "we win by imposing our will" kind of guy than a "exploit the defense" kind of guy. ** If we had a Christian Benteke, I would be much happier with booting it long being a key cog. But I'd still want a play to play with the ball.
Which is easier in your opinion? japan, czechia, burkina fasso or uruguay, panama, bolivia Japan trounced us just before Qatar WC. The Chechs know how to play. Burkina Fasso is unlikely to be any worse than Bolivia, Most people would assume it will all get easier with 48 teans instead of 32. Your simulator just showed why that is not necessarily the case.
Japan group, mostly because it doesn't contain Uruguay. Elo is helpful here. Uruguay presently 6th, Japan 17th. Panama and Czechs are about equal. Bolivia is a tiny bit better than Burkina Faso. A 48-team WC group will be dramatically easier than a 32-team WC group. It will be a little easier than a decapitated Copa America group.
This is something Argentina is really good at. In terms of knowing how to vary how they play based on the game state.
I think with Southgate and Deschamps they play a conservative style which very much limits variance and leads to tournament success given how talented both those teams are. Though it’s also only led to one tournament win between the two sides despite lots of knockout round success. The flip side is I think if you gave Nagglesmann France or England they’d both look much more impressive than they do under their current coaches (and Germany looked great under him during this tournament).
In theory I think you're right. (See Tifo/Athletic video pre-ENG-USA on why Phil Foden wasn't playing much.) In practice.... does it limit variance? Hard to say because samples are so small. Sure seemed like they ran a huge risk of bouncing out to Slovakia. Was that because they were so conservative or because they just had a bad day / Slovakia had a good day? Would a different, more dominant, higher variance approach mean that they wouldn't have to rely on sporadic moments of brilliance?
I think England in the group stage for instance did a good job of limiting xG given up (lowest in the tournament). This may have been true in the knockout round also but I haven’t seen the stats. I think the idea is you keep things pretty tight defensively and you count on moments of brilliance from your elite attacking players. Which limits (but doesn’t eliminate) the variance of knockout tournaments.
I thought they defended super aggressively but weren’t an all out pressing side. The Euros overall saw a ≈ 10% reduction in high turnovers. Austria’s PPDA was 10.4 which puts them right about where Arsenal were last season. PPDA isn’t the perfect stat for determining who presses highest because success at it can be due to being a ball dominant team with a great counterpress or opponent strategy but it does give some insight on defensive intensity. Like for comparison’s sake according to the chart Hugo Perez posted in 2022 WCQ the USMNT’s PPDA was 5.87.
Sure but I just meant they were very different on that front compared to the other teams mentioned and did it more than anyone in the tournament.
I don’t think this has changed since I read about it a few years ago but in games with low total chance volume the probability of an upset (relative to who won and lost the chance volume battle) goes up! So playing for 1.25 to .5 xG match is worse for the favorite than playing for 1.75 to 1.0. That’s just about the result during regulation time because it was run on league data, so there is a chance that ET and PKs changes the calculus.
They also seemed to ride a bit of luck. https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5605423/2024/07/02/austria-play-style-euro-2024-rangnick/
Though this was balanced out by the bad luck they had in their game against Turkey where they badly underprepared their underlying numbers.
Sounds right to me: They need someone in there that is going to really command respect of those young players and play an aggressive front-foot style of football. They’ve got a lot of attacking players, a lot of speed, dynamic players, and what it means to be American is to be brave, and it’s to go after teams, and you need a coach with that type of staff.”