We had our moments against Holland and that game would have gone differently had our offensive players been as clinical as theirs.
I think the US talent/team belongs somewhere between 12-18 other than that horror show period of '15-'18 most recently. I think Holland in recent years has been more 10-14. Are we or were we better? Probably not, but it was nowhere near the gulf that exists between England and the US, and the performance is what mattered, and it was an erratic, ugly mess, and LVG pointed pretty directly to asteroid impact site level flaws in our approach that he could exploit, and proceeded to do so. In fairness, it was a weird game, where we finally generated a whole bunch of xG, produced lots of chances, didn't finish any but the least likely, but still, the attack woke up just in time for the defense and midfield to collapse from exhaustion. I'm not really here to talk about that, but as always we disagree in how to evaluate it. If we were in a group of death, and crashed out, but performed beautifully in defeat, I'd prefer that to playing half a game against Wales, half a game against Iran, and falling asleep against the Netherlands, while showing heroically for a full game against England. I don't know that there's anything we can take away that's usable from that tournament. Because the approach worked, but killed us in the knockouts, and it worked by the teeniest of margins (missed finish by Moore for Wales, a later critical yellow card tackle that prevented a potential goal of the century candidate from Bale by Acosta, against Iran we were basically scrambling the last 25 mins desperately on defense). As for Holland, yes and no, basically Holland had a great minute 80ish to minute 100ish, and other than that Argentina obliterated them (then fell asleep, like they did against France in the final). It's also worth noting that the Netherlands group stage performance included a fairly even battle with Senegal (I'd give a slight nod to the Netherlands there), and a match with Ecuador where Ecuador was quite unlucky in only pulling a draw. 1.62-0.25 xG for Ecuador in that match. 1.15-1.11 xG for Senegal in their match against Netherlands. So I don't know, I think we underperformed, especially defensively and with finishing against the Netherlands and were pretty erratic in general, while Netherlands was pretty good, but not anything special at the tournament. They played 4 quality teams, after all, and were out xG'd by all of them, suggesting randomness, and better finishing gave them that performance (only team they out xG'd all tourney was Qatar).
Yep, these accomplishments count for something to me. I certainly didn’t enjoy the stretch from 09-19 when we couldn’t beat Mexico to win a regional trophy, not to mention when that losing culture extended to dropping home qualifiers as well. I would applaud any coach who got us back on track in the manner that Berhalter did.
The positives from the World Cup were that for the first time the US out-possesed and out shot opponents over the 4 games. That's something to build on. The main negatives were the lack of goals and the substitutions.
This actually understates the youth of our World Cup squad -- because we had the youngest starting lineups in the World Cup even with Ream starting every game. Ghana had a younger 26-man squad, but unlike Ghana, we mostly had the younger players starting and the veterans on the bench. And if we brought the roster that was the consensus projection at the beginning of 2022, which also had Pepi instead of Wright and Steffen instead of Johnson, it would have been not only the youngest roster in the 2022 World Cup, but the youngest roster in the history of the World Cup.
Blind and Humphries you are referencing, I assume. Who would you replace ARob and Dest with? Those would be our offensive counterparrts to Holland's Blind and Humphries.
I've been wanting to give some positives in retrospect. Basically I think Berhalter didn't do the best job thinning the herd when he took over but I think he got the selection right as the WC Finals date drew closer. -Ream and Zim performed as well as any other pairing in Qatar in group, going by the numbers. -Pulisic was great along with Weah. -Turner was as good as we had and he wasn't too shabby. -Our problem at the 9 was well known. Choosing Sarge to start off with was the right choice. Too bad he got injured. He had turned in a good performance to kick us off. Our fullbacks were always somewhat problematic and lived up to their rep. Do I blame Gregg? Somewhat, I do, yes. We need to look for better solutions for that area of the pitch, even if we keep one or both of ARob and Dest. I think that is a very long discussion and I doubt we ever really get to it. It's just too hard and national teams don't do hard things, as a rule. The midfield just wasn't balanced as Greg never really understood what he needed from a midfield to get over the R16 blockage. That will remain his biggest failing, imo, even as I'm happy to point out the positives in the bullet points above.
I think you may have left the guy out who I was referring to, as well as his counterpart on our team who I was also referring to.
We don't have offense players as good as Holland's. They started Cody Gakpo, now at Liverpool. We started Jesus Ferreira. And no matter who you want to pick from forward pool, even those not on the WC roster........................they're not as good as Cody Gakpo. We can go all around the field like that. Tyler Adams is a good central midfielder. But ya know? He started for a relegated English team. Holland was starting Frankie de Jong of Barcelona. We started Ream and Zimmerman at CB. They started a 3 man backline of van Dijk of Liverpool, Ake of Man City, and Timber (who moved to Arsenal and tore his ACL). Would it have been great to beat Holland? Sure. But we're not as talented as a top 8 nation. We're not as deep and we're not as talented. Holland brought guys like Matthijs de Ligt of Ajax, Teun Koopmeiners of Atalanta, and Xavi Simons of Leipzig off the bench against us. We countered with Haji Wright, DeAndre Yedlin, Jordan Morris, etc. Sorry, but do people not see the talent gap? Are we that delusional? Sometimes its Ok to say "they're better." I think we could have had Pep Guardiola as our coach, and it would have been a challenge for him to beat a top 8 program with our 2022 pool.
Sure, I agree with you here. However, should Pulisic have finished his opening chance (the best of the game), I think the US wins.
Yes he should have finished his chance. We don't know how or IF that would have changed the outcome of that game. It would have changed the game, though it was early enough that the Dutch tactics probably wouldn't have changed in the first half. At the end of the day, the Dutch were clinical with their chances and the US was not. The Dutch player for player are the more talented team.
Against Holland, we started Pulisic. He was a UCL winner at Chelsea and is now a starter at AC Milan. We started Adams who had been a UCL player in the B1. We started McKennie who is starter at Juventus. We started Musah who is now a starter at AC Milan. We started Weah who has Ligue 1 title and is now a starter at Juventus. We started Turner who is an EPL player. We started Jedi who is an EPL starter who has had interest from ManCity and AC Milan. We started Tim Ream who is an EPL starter. Gregg had plenty to work with. Please cut out the bs. No one is claiming, the US should've defeated Holland, but a less incompetent match could've been played. Ok, so what is there positive to say about Gregg? He did get the team out of Group Stages. He did the bare minimum.
Ok, now compare these guys to their Dutch counterparts like that other poster just did. Which side had more talent?
Got it. So because Tim Ream starts in the Premier League and Virgil Van Dijk starts in the Premier League they're exactly the same quality.
Depay scored against the run of play minutes after Pulisic's golden chance. Thats the definition of a difference in maximizing opportunity.
A pretty disingenuous comparison at best. Characterizing Tyler Adams as a champions league starter is a stretch, personally I think the talent gap is much larger than where you’re at with it.
A pretty ignorant post to be charitable. Adams had 5 starts in 14 appearances in UCL. I don't think the talent gap is large at all with Holland, especially taking into the account the different age demographics of the teams. Reasonable people can disagree, no imbecilic snark needed.
But you're equating two players ability based on them starting in the competition. That's like equating Khiry Shelton and Lionel Messi because they both played in MLS this season.