Pre-match: Concacaf Nations League Quarterfinals @ Jamaica (Nov 14) & v Jamaica (Nov 18)

you are deeply confused, son. i am sure there is a list of guys you like from venezia who 5 seconds ago were serie B. or guys on championship teams. i am sure you don't make the same logical error on them of confusing "part" and "whole." i didn't know we were calling all 25 from furth.

worse, you compare picking individuals from second divisions, who might be excellent players, with calling up guys who have been evaluated as B team level in our system. literal leftovers who got caps and nothing much happened, or they even lost in the gold cup semis to panama when under their own power with no pulisic or weah help.

to give an example you would understand, i think tsakiris might be an interesting player eventually. but he is literally SJ B team. and he got first team minutes. he did squat.

compared to, i go sign some dude from the english championship to take his job. that player might be in a second division. but he was A team on that team. and when i bring him over here, surprise, he is better than tsakiris. because while nominally a second division and in your silly head "B League," that league is actually good, as good or better than here. and he is not struggling in that league and on a B team.

 

i mean, you get germany is good and we've had guys like landon, twellman, and mcbride wash out of there and not just be serviceable pros but be excellent.

which is then my response every time i hear some yokel pretend like reyna or campbell's relative minutes situation at dortmund is some sort of form signal.

and which we have seen repeatedly from guys like sargent or pepi or pefok that their numbers go up the second they leave germany but we pretend that's a form change, that they found something in holland other than a lack of defense, and not it's hard as heck there in germany.

 

and then i end up watching MF play F like last time because weah and reyna were out and CP sent home at which point given all the CFs he called, nothing was left. and we lose 2-0 with next to no offense other than hoofing it long to vazquez.

or the backline equivalent.

and like i explained, if you double book starters at multiple slots then you have a tired solution to any sub needs, but eventually after dust settles a hole someplace you can't fill well. back in WCQ for 22 they could shift aaronson up high for pulisic, but then there wasn't much left in MF. or you leave aaronson put but then that idiot would call arriola or someone like that.

 

your arguments are basically just circular reasoning in defense of an indefensible status quo. for starters, we are losing a lot. quit pretending it's working or appears optimized. i am sure we can do better than this crap.

your game is then to pretend that somehow while losing all this, we still magically arrived at optimization, by accident, and just were awaiting a coaching upgrade.

i know people like you and you're the folks who talk crap about anyone new even if they turn out to be weah, richards, or reyna, all of whom got sandbagged longer than necessary. meanwhile aaronson has more caps than weah because he was getting union minutes and stats while they were fighting for PT at PSG, bayern, or dortmund. which, to a scout, would sound backwards, but to a lazy box score reader or stats guru, looks better.

your game is then that once reyna or weah or richards is inside the circle, you defend them like you were always their buddy. even though you were the loudest guy on here saying no and calling someone like me crazy.

your other game is then to repeat over and over the one guy off a 25 man you dislike, as though it is discrediting. without admitting we have cycled through a ton of CBs and watched a lot of them play like crap, and maybe need to look outside of the circle if we ever plan on improving the position. if not my guy. someone else. come up with someone else.

because i just watched ream lose me the last game and everything after that is noise. on that basis alone go jump in a lake for saying the lousy team i just watched get whooped by mexico is somehow finished product. you can mock dietz all you want. i mock someone who thinks a 2-0 ugly loser is somehow complete and just needs the coach another window. that's effing funny.

 

what part of "call him up and see" is so hard? why do we handle personnel as we decide between A and B right now on paper. and net effect is we always call A and never B. and then some authority worshiper says, i trust the apparatus chose right between A and B in the abstract.

this has not been how things were done for 30+ years now. why not call both A and B in, and see who plays better?

i mean, we called in 4 keepers. or 4 CF. why can't we call in some new 10s and compare?

oh, but the coaches have looked, and you trust that. and these coaches don't lose us any soccer games. they are perfect. pffft

and it never occurred to you that perhaps it wasn't so much that green stunk in comparison, as that maybe the brass had decided it wanted 8s and not a pure 10. only to then figure out reyna could ball. at which point we have a 10.

at which point maybe that 10 needs a backup that tries to play more that style. and if you make that shift then the dam should break. bring the 10s in for a look.

do you get where maybe it was a "fit" thing and not a "talent" or "form" thing? and that reyna hints we should look more that direction and less this diesel two way crap?

kind of like for a period any passing 6 we could find got a cap? until adams came along and that crap ended? at which point johnny and the more physical options became "viable?"

 

I think everyone noticed.

But now that's there an explanation, or perhaps we've all noticed that it looks a lot more like a 3 ATB roster ... I think that it's valid to still be unhappy with the choices but I think it's a bit disingenous to act like we don't have someone to play those positions if someone goes down.

 

you're pretending that the coach waited on the player until he was deep into tenure and had looked around. when in reality this was an emerging youth player he wouldn't have been considering when he started. when he started is irrelevant. it's about the ability to promptly take a risk when justified.

and i simply explained he did so on the absolutely biggest stage possible and it worked.

just like landon and beasley worked in 2002.

your ilk always argues for the older man team and ignores the 2006 results we get for it.

 

i think it's disingenuous to frame it as "we have someone" as opposed to being "well prepared." every coach has a roster and subs and could come up with something if required.

isn't the task doing it well?

we had a good all conference keeper in NCAA. recruited a couple good backups but they have a feud with the coach over his attitude and their sitting behind the starter and quit. keeper gets hurt in a collision. coach hasn't fixed his feud and was running along on autopilot with a weak 4th string guy behind him. he sees the game, goes gaffe o matic. we win but it's ugly.

i will assure you next practice he'd made up with one of the backups, who was back out, and had brought in a two sport guy who played keeper in HS. and it was fine until the starter was rehabbed.

but personally i think you're a bit of a screwup if plan B isn't ready already. you don't try to squeak by and learn a lesson and fix it. my coach should have kissed butt with the backups before the starter got hurt. should have fixed it at least by the game we were down to 4th string. if you are fixing it after, you're not anticipating, or even quickly responding. you're on autopilot.

this feels very autopilot. and my experience in soccer when you think you can fudge something that fudge becomes the problem.

example, arena goes to couva with an attacking bench that does have dempsey but has no other productive options. mostly stalemate DMs. like he's gonna sit on a lead or tie. in a road game. he runs out the same tired starters from the first window game. we fall down 0-2. he plays his 1 card and puts on dempsey and gets 1 back, but then it fizzles. we lose. out.

to me it's been a bad US trend since maybe arena 2 to act like the game is only possibly going to go 1 way. maybe it was my select experience of teams trying to bunker my team, but games routinely don't go to plan. rosters should never assume no one gets tired or hurt. that's basic. and to me also provide for some tactical variety. like you might have to win some other way.

one reason i am glad to see vazquez is that seems to reflect we might have to win some other way. ok, then, handle the rest of the 25 man like it also.

 

also, if you watched the last window, so much of the offense was coming up jedi's left wing that not having a backup is just silly. like mexico the whole offense was either whack it up to vazquez at the end, or hit it wide to jedi. if the whole concept is this sort of assymetrical thrust up the L you can't have one L player.

and you couldn't have played if you think the answer is, push some tired RF back there to do the running and make things happen while tracking back.

and you haven't been watching the team for years if you think it's ream.

a lot of what i am hearing is basically blind faith. to me it's not usually blind faith prevails, it's coach goes out and finds some new guy. or retasks an old guy, and i don't mean moves him back during the game, i mean, like, we turn beasley into a back or something. those are usually actually openly announced on a team sheet. i don't have to have faith. i just notice we called fossey or are listing musah as a back now. ok, that's what he's doing.

and that's setting aside, more broadly, this roster simply reflects too few tough decisions made and accountability, for the last game, or for a whole string of games for a couple years really.

 

Once again, you lose all credibility as you keep perpetuating this lie.

Unless you think Gregg Berhalter unleashed a global pandemic that suspended all international play for nearly a year.

Gio Reyna debuted for Dortmund on January 18, 2020. The next international window where the US played a game was in November of 2020, because, you know, millions of people were dying due to an airborne virus.

Gio Reyna started that game and the next, right before his 18th birthday. He then started every A game right up until he got hurt in a WCW that he also started with the exception of a friendly at the end of a four game window that included the Nations League final where he played 120 ... and he came on as a sub there.

Please, please, let me know how he was "slow-played."

 

The criticism was around people claiming we had no one. You are welcome to claim Pochettino has a bad plan; just don't claim he has no plan.

Also, perhaps a bit of humility? Pochettino is undoubtedly better than you at this; maybe, just maybe, it'll work?

 

I don’t argue for the older man team. I argue Poch needs more than one or two camps to pick his best team.
You are very dense.

 

It's not the status quo.

We are literally one window into a new coach.

We were losing, and we changed a major component of the team. Things weren't going right and we made a very large change -- and one of the few things we have full control over.

Acting like the full effects of a coaching change can be seen in a window in which exactly one of our core players (and maybe 2 starters?) played both games is just dumb.

Well, he won one game, but when he didn't have Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Balogun, Richards, Dest, Weah or Reyna, he lost on the road. In his first window. CLEARLY THIS IS NOT WORKING BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE JULIAN GREEN.

There's no logical tie there. We've given a new coach about six days to fix things, and we've taken the vast majority of good players away from him, and your takeaway is that the issue is that the 3rd string 10 isn't good enough and we need to try a guy who once had a goal 10 years ago and a CB who was overwhelmed a couple of months ago at the Olympic level?

P.S. And literally no one in the world thinks Jedi is a poor defender other than you. He might be the best defensive fullback in the EPL, and he's been exceptional there for us. The impression I have of you is any counterattack makes you frightened no matter how far from goal dangerous it is.

And weirdly, no, most international teams or club teams don't play like your NCAA team. I wonder why.

 

I am quite tired of the players using that excuse. I only works a few times. After that it reflects more on not being very smart especially if it's players that have done it before.

 

Guys. This is literally what the ignore button is for.
What's funny is I can tell who you're arguing with by the nature of your comments without seeing theirs.

 

Does anyone have insight on Jamaica's "The Office" grass surface conditions currently?

 

re "weah as solution," are people forgetting he's got a red to serve?

 

Winning away matches in any federation ain't easy.
And frankly, we don't actually play a lot of away games that matter.
Before the Nations League it was very small. Basically WCQers.

Berhalter's overall away record wasn't gleaming or anything.

What was his first away game that mattered?
2-0 away loss to Canada in the first Nations League?
The games right before the COVID shutdown.

 

you can engage in all the nasty ad hominems you want. you're a lousy person.

here are the facts.

my response:


that's him getting tooled up on the cross for goal 1 by the same jamaica team we're about to play.

do you forget he gets caught way out of spot and then scally gets burned far post and we chase the game 1-0 for more than 90'??????????



the crosses for goals 1 and 2 come from his side and are poorly closed down. goal 3 he gets backdoored for the volley finish.

anyone else have anything stupid and personal to say about the inaccurate reading of jedi's defense?

you ask me if i watch the games?

do you?

 

goal 1 jedi clears the ball towards his own net which is scored.

lot of chances off crosses from L side.

goal 5 the runner waltzes his run inside of the LB for an uncontested throughball finish.

do you watch your own games? do you know why you are losing?

 

this is the uruguay loss.

on the play that earns the kick, robinson miscontrols the ball, then after it cycles back to him, plays it to the other team, who after a single pass reyna then fouls.

he is then marking air just in front of the guy who gets the header whose save is finished for the winner.

do you watch your own games? do you know why you are losing?

 

this is completely dishonest. you are ignoring my argument that we can call up someone from a german II or U19 team like we did for green or pulisic or donovan. like we called up morris from college. it is "different" but do not pretend like "it is not done."

having framed it on your own fake terms and assumed your own conclusion, your argument is then to line up dates of when he was promoted to first team.

except, you neglect there were people calling for his promotion when on U17 -- akin to what happened for pulisic, who skipped U20. that was roughly 2018-19. which any idiot would know was pre-covid.

in short, your self serving chronology is WRONG.

my whole point is we don't have to wait. my point is campbell could be moved along. i was told this same gibberish re we need to wait for the first team promotion. now he's dortmund first team so it's some other excuse and send him to U20.

have you see him play youth ball? the kid is a star. schalke's youth coach was raving and saying any other team he'd be b.1 already.

WHY DOES THE US HAVE TO WAIT ON GERMAN CLUBS? WHY CAN WE NOT MAKE OUR OWN EVALUATIONS? after all the long term history is they missed on donovan, twellman, and mcbride; transferred away pulisic; benched reyna.

does that sound like i should assume the accuracy of their opinions? it's a good, loaded league, but no.