Expectations for the Hex

It's difficult to get a handle on this because---

Over a year was wasted under 'interim coach' Sarachan

Then Berhalter struggled to implement his system. The 2nd Canada match did appear to mark a departure from what he had been doing. Was that the new norm? One can hope.

In terms of talent, I do believe we have the depth of talent to field a 'complete team'. That is, we can place fairly high quality players at each position. This contrasts with what happened during the '18 cycle when Graham Zusi played right back.

 

moreso if we hadnt immediately reverted four days later vs cuba.

 

The problem was not Zusi, it was Villafana and Omar. Still "on him" but different people.

Arena's concern was how hard were people playing, he stereotyped, but he thought he knew who. Chandler couldn't even commit, and people forget FJ in the regional playoff game.

Yedlin sucks on defense like Brooks. He was identifying the right culprits, but with his antagonism to youth he couldn't fill back the holes he opened.

Arena's problem, to me, was not who he sidelined but his conservative lineup impulses. He would uncover a few decent players at Gold Cup and then revert back for qualifying. To me there is a lot of continuity with GB on this. Nostalgia, favoring mid career guys or older players. The team needed fresh blood and yet when you look at who brought in a lot of the current core it was all JK, or it skips to Sarachan for the youngest. He would never call in Pulisic for a Guatemala quali, or Green for the world cup. "Next cycle, son." It's a sort of attitude where they trust and would rather go off a cliff with aged Reyna or Omar or Bradley than try something new or risky. We'd rather take "too old" risks than "young" risks, which strikes me as the opposite of where the most upside and least downside is.

Irony being fans beef about Arena or GB but they often subconsciously mimic him if you ask for an emerging European kid to be brought in. To me First Cycle Klinsi would have Reyna and Richards in soon, even if it was a qualifier.

 

https://www.mlssoccer.com/post/2020...ational-team-will-qualify-2022-fifa-world-cup

Bruce thinks they will qualify. Bedoya thinks playing from the back is naive, we aren't ready for the tactics, but is hopeful we work it out. "Everyone in the world wants to play like Barcelona." Amen. If you want that you need to start age 5 not with grown adults.

 

It's interesting, if we had essentially a typically average caliber international coach for the standards of the World Cup itself, I'd say I expect us to finish behind Mexico, strongly in second, w/a big gap to third place behind us. I think 2026 is when we take the hex crown back, we're still too unsettled now, even w/quality coaching.

However, we have incompetent Egg running the show, and while I laughed off talk that we could actually fail to qualify a year ago, after looking at his 23's for the past year, and watching the performances against Jamaica, Venezuela, Curacao, Canada and Mexico. I do think it's unlikely because of the talent there, however if the coach is so thoroughly incompetent that he can get nearly half the 23 wrong, and consistently gets nearly half of the 11 wrong, then it is very possible we could fail to qualify outright.

What gives me hope is the simple fact that Fifa's rankings, despite supposedly being tweaked to be more like ELO strike me as still insane (how are we second? I guess the Gold Cup?) have gifted us an automatic birth into the hex w/no semifinal qualifiers to worry about which could've been a total disaster this cycle. The fact that we don't have any consequential games until late next summer and that nearly 2/3's of the matches will be played in 2021 when our kids have had another full year of chances to develop and also to show our recalcitrant coach that yes indeed, they are superior to the total hacks he's loyal too.

So I imagine we'll probably finish third, or nearly third simply due to wasted opportunities/rosters through this fall.

 

To me it's like the tactics are batsh*t wannabe stuff, but the sheer weight of the talent boom coming up should make even that silliness academic. Except he's slow walking them too. At that point, while an optimized team could beat Mexico in an isolated game-- Sarachan managed it -- and we should probably on paper be second when all games are done, we are being held back in every way possible. So I think anywhere from 2nd to 5th. Not run well enough to lead, not so bad we can finish last.

I've beefed generically about I don't think the system is built for Concacaf, but if you think about last cycle as the breaching of the home fortress, and road inconsistency, then nothing about the new system screams changing that. This is still trying to play end to end, not controlled stuff. To me chasing 4-0 open, end to end results when you need a Mexico home win is naive. It's punch down tactics when we need to punch up. We need something to get whistle to whistle and win 1-0 sometimes.

 

I think the saving grace, potentially, is that he has moved on from how he started.

I think he was initially under pressure to keep Bradley or Trapp as the center of the team. Trapp's subpar play, MB's injury/poor play, generally poor team results with both of them, and, if others are to be believed, added influence from McBride, means that it could be that he has abandoned ship and is going with more of the youth movement.

His recent roster and comments on Adams as DM make me more optimistic. I'm actually slightly (very slightly) excited to watch the game tomorrow, for my first USNT game in years.

If Adams/McKennie are installed in midfield, and just a couple of the young guys develop, if he brings in Robinson and potentially Chandler, this team could very easily win the Hex going away. I realize downplaying the talent is big here, but there is not much difference currently in teams. That doesn't even consider that we have generally outplayed Mexico with less talent, and that US room for improvement is much greater due to the youth that is breaking out. Mexico, of course, has that elusive EXPERIENCE that aided us so much during the last Hex.

 

Jordan Morris.

And that's about it. I can't think of a single other player that looks better for country than for club, or at bare minimum, just looks as good as they normally do other than Morris.

That's the ultimate indictment to me. Not only does he have no clue who to call in for a 23, who should serve as depth to the 35, or who should be in the 11, he's also superb at getting the absolute minimum out of virtually every single players given talent.

That's why he should've been fired 10x over the past year.

 

I imagine like many, I didn't want Allarydyce because I wanted us to be more ambitious. I didn't anticipate we'd ignore all the available, proven, and interesting talent performing at the '18 World Cup and plenty of other tournaments, and instead turn to a guy who was a sub .500 coach in a mediocre league w/zero titles, and zero accomplishments of note to his name. Additionally, I never thought Berhalter was going to be such a massive, entitled, epic delusional idiot either. I didn't want him, but at the time I thought he'd be at least competent, he's instead been the worst USMNT coach ever in my soccer watching life, and by a country mile as well. Whatever one may say about Sampson, and they can say plenty, he'll always have the 1995 Copa America semifinal run, as well as a quality 1998 hexagonal campaign to his name, he had a bad cup, and a bad run up to it, but he was great, even w/his limited experience from 1995-1997ish.

 

I don't care, I don't think it's an interesting exercise. We all know about 90% of the talent worth a damn for the USMNT is currently aged 15-23. Give me a poll of best 50 or 100 U25, I think we'd kill it (although Mexico's U17 team after being outplayed by us and still winning in the concacaf qualifying final then turned around and dominated at the World Cup while we ---- our pants for a couple of days and then got booted straight back home).

 

This is only relevant if you look at it from a balanced perspective:

#1: How did we play

Answer: Not very good.
1. Dominated Guyana.
2. Dominated T&T
3. Stunk against Panama
4. Top 3 worst ever USMNT performance in win over Curacao
5. 3-1 win over Jamaica flattered to deceive. Outshot and outchanced by Jamaica in the match.
6. Lost to Mexico in a tight game that they controlled completely during the decisive 2nd half.

Basically we played like garbage except against Guyana and T&T, we also had a worst ever caliber performance against Curacao where we could have legit lost to a team, very easily, that is more well known as a cocktail mix ingredient than actual concacaf competitor.

#2 How did we do at grinding out results even when we played like crap?
Well, we collected 3 scalps of teams in bad performances (Panama, Jamaica, and Curacao) where we were either outplayed, or no better, so there's that.

I think the '19 runner up performance was deceiving for far too many people. We had zero quality performances against legit teams the entire tournament. We crushed a T&T side that is well and truly horrible. We beat a Jamaica side in a game where we were actually outplayed, and we pounded a bad Guyana side. Not sure what any of that says other than that, yeah, we grinded out a nice collection of results, but if we play anywhere remotely like that bad we will literally lose every single road game we play in the hex. Every single one of them. Heck, maybe even El Salvador if they're still in the hex when everything locks.

That to me is the point. Yes It's important to win when you're not playing well, and that wasn't something we were doing in tune ups before the gold cup, so there's that, but we also literally played every single one of those games in the relatively friendly confines of the US. What happens when we have to play in Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Jamaica, El salvador or Panama or whomever is the sixth side? I think it's very reasonable to argue if we're playing no better than what we did in the Gold Cup, we will lose, period, on the road and of course, w/three coin flip games in terms of performances against Panama, Jamaica and Curacao, we could easily lose multiple games at home. Again.

 

It's not at all equivalent, but there is some experience:

2017 U20 Qualifying tournament that we won was hosted by Costa Rica.

2017 U17 Qualifying tournament that we lost in brutal fashion took place in Panama.

Definitely not the hex, but at least both of those tournaments were hosted in Central America and a rather large chunk of our young elite players played in those qualifiers.

 

Scoring goals was indeed VERY MUCH a problem.

We got all of our goals against Panama and Honduras at home. Other than that, we were total horse bleep in terms of generating scoring.

2 goals combined against Mexico/Costa Rica in 4 matches.

3 goals combined against Honduras/T&T/Panama on the road.

1 total goal scored against Mexico/Costa Rica combined at home.

I fundamentally and completely in all ways disagree. Already wrote an insanely longwinded post about this earlier in a separate thread, but our performance in terms of goal scoring was the second worst we've registered in qualifying in the past six cycles, and the only reason there were worse performances is because literally everyone, everywhere in the attack was injured during the summer and part of the fall of hex qualifying in '01.

You could say I'm cherrypicking, but I think when you have a failure like 2017, you need to dig under the hood and see if you can spot trends, and if you do, you spot them very quickly. Contrary to your rosy depiction of Altidore, I have a much uglier one, as in, held scoreless in 8 of 9 appearances in the hex. Yes he collected some goals against horse ---- teams at home in qualifying, but he always does that, what he never does is score against Costa Rica or Mexico home or away (he failed to do so again, just as he has against them in every single qualifier he's ever played against either of them in the hex), or produce against any team of quality on the road, which again, he failed to do (not remotely shocking that he scored his hex goals in a blow out where they weren't even needed (match day 9 when we kicked Panama's head in for 90 minutes). Jozy did absolutely nothing the rest of the hex.

When you look under the hood you find a couple of things:
#1 Our worst performance on the road against the weak sisters of the hex ever in terms of goal scoring other than 2001 (and the injuries excused '01, we didn't have the injuries to justify the putrid performance in '17).

#2 Tied for our worst performance since I started watching qualifiers ('97) in terms of defending (13 goals given up), and the worst performance ever for us in terms of goals given up to Mexico/Costa Rica (the traditional threats to us).

#3 Our worst performance ever since I started watching in terms of our home performances against the big dogs (losses in both games, outscored 1-4).

#4 The most garbage games I've ever seen from us in a hex as well, hosting Mexico, @ Costa Rica, hosting Costa Rica, @ Honduras, and @ T&T, literally five of the worst eight performances I've seen since the Honduras disaster in DC back in 2001 and at least we had the excuse of injury for that 2001 debacle.

There are many reasons we sucked, no doubt, but the attack, the goal scoring was ABSOLUTELY a HUGE problem. If you look back at our track record through qualifying all the way back to '97 which is the furthest you can go before it isn't helpful anymore (1989 might as well have been 1957 considering how radically different soccer was in the US to what it is today) the issue is blatantly obvious. Yes we've always collected the bulk of our goals in home games against the patsies, just as we did in '17, but what was different was two fold: #1 the sheer scale of how anemic our attack was at home against the powers, and how thoroughly inept it was on the road against anybody was at a level unparalleled over the past 22 years and six cycles. Again, the only exception you can find is '01 which was even worse, but again, dig deep and you see that Mathis, Wolff, McBride, and Reyna were all hurt, and Donovan and Beasley were only just seeing late sub minutes for the first time. We were basically flipping over sofa cushions looking for options that summer and fall, depending upon Joe Max Moore and friends to save us, and I don't think it's fair to compare that to '17 when other than 1 game, we basically had our best attacking players available and still sucked. It says something when Dempsey, who could have died on the field for all we knew w/his heart issue, Pulisic, and Wood we're the only guys we could rely on down the stretch, Jozy was totally irrelevant.

 

I agree. Except the I fully expected that the Fed would get some blah, totally wrong manager. I say this as someone who was totally opposed to the Klinsmann hire.

So, when there were guys that were at least very competent, I was like Grab.Him.Now.

But, yes, Jay's Brother has been shocking. And, this really beside the point, but when you lose a really ugly gold cup final to Mex, and then get curb stomped 0-3 in a friendly that was muuuuch worse than that, don't say things are great and talk down to the fans.


I'm not a big Ellis fan but based on what Jay's Brother has shown so far, she would be much better. Pia would.

 

Okay, let me simplify the question at hand. You have to pick one of the following two people. There is no way around it. They are the only choices as they are the last two soccer coaches alive in the world that would consider taking the job.

You have to pick one or the other. Do you pick Barhalter or do you pick Martinez? Those are your options. Choose one.

 

Until the USA can at least match Mexico in midfield, it is wise not to expect them to beat Mexico.

 

havent checked in in a little while- is it clear what, exactly, a "numpty" is yet?

 

Its something everyone I know in Aberdeen was fond of saying when I lived there. It basically means idiot

 

This hex is such a nerve-wracking race against time.

We have 2.5+ years to the World Cup. The amount of development that we could see in Pulisic, Adams, Reyna, McKennie, Dest, Llanez, Ledezma, Pomykal and so on is kind of crazy. I have no urge to set expectations for World Cup level competition, but I will say I am pretty darn confident our playing pool in 2022 will be of a caliber to roll the hex, if nothing else.

It's too bad it's this fall. At this point, I just want us to be healthy. But why does this hex start so early relative to the World Cup? It's starting even earlier than last hex, and the World Cup is pushed back four or so months.

 

Yup, quibbles about the coaching and such aside, if we keep getting players popping up and they get on the field, on talent alone we should qualify. We're looking at two attacking talents with Pulisic and Reyna that are perhaps better than anything we've had before, Adams and McKennie in midfield at least the equal of past players, Brooks and Dest along the backline. There's over half your lineup that competes with anyone the US has ever fielded. The only place I don't think we have players as good or better than ever before is in goal. It's just a matter of getting them on the field in spots to succeed. If we don't qualify serious questions need to be asked across the board. Failure last time around when the talent was more than sufficient was bad enough, but if they fail twice in a row there will be little valid argument left that the fed and coaching staff is anything but completely incompetent. The ONLY reason failure happens short of gross incompetence is a rash of injuries to multiple players at important times, admittedly not impossible.

 

When was the last time we even tried playing a ball into the box from that far out. We never do it any more. We're "too good" to try that kind of stuff. No, we've got to try to make <5 yard passes all the way to the goal mouth because that's what "good teams" do.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=202840634232650

 

They should change their name to Mexican League Soccer II

They're making a huge effort to draw the eyeballs of MexAm fans.

I've been saying for a while, MLSII would much rather that their academies develop the next Mexican star than the next U.S. star.