Our best players give us the best chance to win. In fact neither Japan or Uruguay fielded their best squads; Both tried experimental reserve players similar to our squad.
It's not gonna be that though, the players on that metaphorical plane are not gonna be our top 26 consensus guys, there are gonna be some glueish, great in the room, adequate on the field types, that always happens...I'm really curious how many WTF decisions we see in May, I think definitively more than in '22, but how many more?
USA (4-4-2, right to left): 1. Turner (GK) — 6. Musah, 13. Ream, 3. Richards (McKenzie, 80'), 19. Scally — 8. McKennie, 4. Adams, 11. Tessman (McGlynn, 68'), 21. Weah — 9. Sargent (Agyemang, 68'), 10. Pulisic. The moment Richards left and McKenzie came in everything changed. I remember think uh oh. Richards was eating every aerial ball and then we had Ream and McKenzie of neither is very good in the air.
I love how the Lalas types of the world enjoy calling this current iteration soft, saying they take playing for the national team for granted and knew they were going to start, etc. This is literally the first time I can recall and yes, I’m old, that we actually have any genuine competition for spots. Those glorious teams of the Halcyon days we put on a pedestal, always consisted of 6-8 good players who 100% would start and play all game every game and 20 average at best guys to round out the numbers. Credit to Poch of course for hammering on this point sure, but he couldn’t have made his point if we hadn’t have painstakingly raised the overall level of the pool over all these years and that’s due to MLS, dual nats like Dest and our guys willing to challenge themselves in Europe. It takes all paths. Sorry if this is apropos of nothing, just found myself appreciating how far we’ve come collectively.
I think we just have to admit that the current floor is a fair bit higher in the technical and tactical level while we have maintained good physical levels. In the last decade the tactical and technical blueprint has been standardized across all age groups and it shows. US youth teams know how to keep possession and what are the tactical expectations. Technically, you can see that the baseline is solid without being spectacular. Once again, the US youth teams are drilling the kids well.
Most MLS NP teams play the same way. Hopefully the tactics will adapt to keep pace with the rest of the world.
ultimately its like the "indiana jones doesnt matter" theory, cause those same pampered, tattooed, badge fc divas are going to be there with a different group of roles players behind them. itll just be a matter of how much poch actually uses them when the time comes. the one thing poch has in his favor is that i seriously doubt he will take no less than half a dozen injured/barely fit players in the first place.
Indeed. This isn't an all-Pro team on paper. This is an actual team that needs to exist together and play together. Intangibles seem important to Poch. Saying that, the vast majority of the guys this board thought were cast aside due to intangibles, are back in the group. It sure doesn't look like players are being "blacklisted" that are performing well in club soccer right now. So what are we talking about? Scally is back, no matter what people say about some golf cart incident. Reyna is back. I don't think we'll see any WTF decisions. I think we'll see a Roldan or Berhalter picked over a Johnny or Musah, though. Which shouldn't be a WTF decision at this point. Johnny's barely playing club soccer and has played 2 minutes for the USMNT since the debacle against Switzerland. Musah's not playing in club soccer and hasn't had a good performance for the USMNT in a while. Sargent may be scoring in the Championship, but he just doesn't score for the USMNT. Why not? Nobody knows. The exclusion of these types of players shouldn't be a surprise. Poch came into this job without much knowledge of our pool and players (other than the top Euro guys that he knew). Its taken him a year to filter thru our pile of players and to find a system that works. We do understand that the man had four games with the "A" team before that Nations League. FOUR. The friendlies against Panama and Mexico. Then the Nations League series against a poor Jamaica team. That's it. Then the Gold Cup came and he was able to further challenge his picks from the domestic pool that he'd evaluated at January camp. We've seen momentum building since that Nations League as Poch has started to settle on his team and tactics. That Uruguay game was a stunner. I don't care who was missing from the two teams. Even if we just evaluate that as our B team knocking the bejeezus out of their B team. Both teams were made up of players trying to impress their coaching staffs and win WC places. That was a stunner. That's Uruguay; not St. Lucia. As we know...............NONE of the cycle matters once WC26 happens. We've had really good cycles marred by the WC and WCQing. Arena won Gold Cup 2017 with relative ease. So what? The 98 cycle was also really good until the World Cup. The opposite is just as true. Nobody remembers any of our problems during the 2002 cycle, and how much of a grind WCQing was. They don't remember that we only advanced from the group prior to the Hex by one point after failing to beat Costa Rica home and away. Failing to beat Guatemala away. We were on the brink of disaster. I was there in the stands when we lost to Honduras at home in a hex match. Nobody remembers that we were knocked out of the quarterfinal of the Gold Cup in 2000. I was there. I was in the stands. It happened! What they remember is WC2002. None of the rest mattered at all. The narrative of the cycle will be written by the WC26 story. Not Copa America under Berhalter. Not the Nations League or Gold Cup under Pochettino. Not some blowout friendly loss to Switzerland. As of right now, I'm really happy with the momentum that the group is building.
Pulisic just had his version of the flu game, so I probably should have used Jordan rather than Willis Reed.
Some dorks like me remember that the only reason the '02 qualifying campaign was difficult was ref incompetence at the semifinal level, and an absolute litany of injuries annihilating our depth in the attack (ACL's for Wolff, and Mathis, lesser but still game missing injuries for McBride and Reyna which is why Donovan got used as a sub earlier than Arena seemingly intended). I believe all of our best attacking players other than aged Earnie Stewart were out for the loss at Azteca, at Costa Rica, and home against Honduras. In any era, if you lose your 2 best midfielders, and 3 best strikers, you will struggle, 23 years ago, that guaranteed we'd lose, especially against strong opposition at Azteca, and at Saprissa, the DC loss was awful, but also understandable. I get your point, but much like people pretending we got lucky in '02 (actually, we were quite unlucky other than the O'Brien handball), people falsly remember the collapse in 2001, as players failing, when it was actually about the team getting completely and thoroughly depleted through a litany of injuries to every single one of our best players other than Eddie Pope, and all of our best attacking players save Stewart. Nobody wins if that happens, sure as hell not El Tri, or Costa Rica or Honduras, and definitely not us back then either).
This, and I'd argue that while urgency alone won't score against a bunker, the lack of urgency, focus and intensity was visible for much of that game, domination or no. And, to your point, for a decent portion of that year prior. The single biggest thing is that we are approaching a home World Cup, we are facing a team that caused our massive disappointment at the Copa America, we have a new coach to impress, and we're playing in a continental tournament that we've never lost and can keep up the domination. And there was nothing. No urgency. No fire. And yeah, apparently players ********ing around in practice and the such. We weren't looking for revenge on Panama. We looked like we still thought we could cake walk them.
The time in between matches and the inability to buy players makes all of us impatient, so I always like to note that we are STILL feeling the effects of the Lost Generation(s). The time from 1990-1996 is still mostly a barren wasteland of talent, and while that's going to be ages 30-36 in this World Cup, teams do tend to grab a whole lot of CBs, GKs and often strikers from those ages. And lo and behold, striker is a recent improvement and GK and CB a weakness. We're also just starting to see some of the younger groups starting to fill in. People were concerned with the lack of players popping at 17 or 18 -- and still are -- but the reality is that most of these guys start to really hit their stride at 23, 24, 25 and continue to improve through their late 20s even as physical tools start to decline a bit. Just look at the both starter quality and depth that has filled in from 2001 on. These guys largely weren't ready in 2022 (except a healthy version of Reyna and maybe Pepi) but now are filling in across the board. There are guys who weren't even on radars, like Arfsten. The stars are vitally important, but you need the depth as well. By 2030, 1996s will be 34 and we'll more or less be rid of the Lost Generation effect. I have no idea what caused it, but hopefully we won't see a repeat.
The whole problem of both Panama games is that we let them use the underdog playbook without adjusting. It reminded me of the post Saudi game where Scaloni told Argentina "Boys, you have to realize that we can lose these games." Ever since then, Argentina has scrapped hard for every single minute.
The nations league game was a great example of the coach dropping the ball on that. If you are the better team in a knock-out situation, but you haven't been able to break through, and there will be 30 minutes of extra time coming, the most likely way to lose is to give up a goal in injury time. If you are better, there is no need to push for a very late goal yourself and leave openings at the back. At about 85 minutes or so, play a little more safe and then expect to win it over the extra 30 minutes where you have time to come back if somehow the underdog sneaks a goal.
I don't think so either, as besides scaring them into giving more effort, he wouldn't have plugged in Enzo Fernandez and Julian Alvarez as starters, who ended up carrying them the rest of the way.
My hypothesis is that the 1990-96 generation flopped because they didn't have the inspiration past and future generations had. 1990s generation had Pelé in NASL, 2002-10 generation had the '94 World Cup. Current generation grew up on the '10 and '14 teams, plus maybe a bit of the Beckham Effect. The generation that produced the teams from 2015-19 didn't really get to witness anything special either in or by their country. 1998 was a colossal failure thanks to Harkesgate and 2006 was a flop due to aging and/or injured players. While 2002 was a massive success how many of those kids had parents who let them stay up late/wake up early to watch any of those games?
Multiple things happened. Soccer development was at it's worst in the 00's. MLS contracted in 2002. The only positive was the 2002 QF run but that was only watched by the hard core fans. But, yeah, very little soccer on TV.