If you want to play Weah at right back, Pulisic can play right wing and Haji looked good on the left. Pulisic looks good on the right at Milan. Practically every other coach Pulisic has had plays him in a variety of spots. Not sure why he is exclusively a left wing for the US. We could try several different looks but we keep coming back to the same few possibilities.
I have a more negative assesment of Haji. Both his play against Colombia and generally. He has improved but I still don't want him in the starting lineup.
What about Adams at RB, given he has experience there? I think Johnny can hold down the DM role. I’m also very disappointed that Reynolds wasn’t brought as the backup RB. If berhalter insists on putting in a bunch of crosses and building the attack through the fullbacks, then he’d be a much better choice than Moore.
scally did great defensively. diaz is a top 1on1 attacker. of course vini,jr. will be another story. at the same time he did NOT benefit from having a senior international mf'er next to him. i don't remember mcK having a less effective game in a national team shirt. after 4 or 5 (of the 15 giveaways) mcK should have been getting the ball from him. don't they train together in the build up? he should know scally's weakness. we do!
This. If you want to be more dynamic, Weah drops to the back and Pulisic goes out wide with Haji on left. The chances of this happening? Probably zero.
He was terrible in progression which has been my biggest issue with Scally. But, as much as Dest helps with that, I don't think we are doomed to yesterday with Dest out. Colombia is good, but there were too many completely dumb choices, too many dying ducks and way too many times we simply lost a duel and seemed like we didn't want it. Our team is much better than this, and we can absolutely progress the ball without giving up so many turnovers that we get crushed. We're not that bad. It's not to say we won't have mistakes, but we are better, even without Dest, than yesterday. I understand the other POV on high level strategy, though I don't agree. I'd rather live with the mistakes and punt on trying to do something with the ball, as long as we are reasonably smart. But yesterday was focus and effort and mental toughness, and that's worrying. I don't know if there's a coach that can fix that, but it's worrying that it happens too damn often. How are you surprised by Colombia's intensity? They haven't lost in 21 games? Did you think they were there for a kick around? Our guys looked on vacation.
I think Weston at CB helps this team for this upcoming tournament. Vs. Colombia, I kept noticing players like Balogun and Pulisic making runs and not being rewarded. They stopped making the runs and were obviously frustrated. Then I noticed how the usmnt tried to invite pressure in one side to isolate players like Pulisic, ARob and Weah. The ball didn’t make it to these players enough in the right moments, obviously. at any rate, I think there are three possible problems Weston at CB could help solve: 1) direct play 2) vision 3) ability/skill to make the right pass Regarding 1), this is either a tactical issue where the coach doesn’t want players playing 40+ yard passes behind (and over) lines, or else some players lack the ability to make the pass (like Scally’s crosses) (3). I think there’s a little of both. Weston will make those passes as good as anyone else in the team. 2) some of the players lack vision to play the way Gregg wants them to. We all know Musah can ball, but there’s a reason why he doesn’t start: he lacks vision when it comes to creating chances. WM has the vision and ability. The rest can’t defend anyway so adding him there won’t be much different defensively. And you know Weston is one of those dudes that will play his ass off for his team if he’s sold on an idea. We all know Greg ain’t changing his formation or the requirements of positional play within his system. So move parts to reinforce the system. move Gio back into a #8 role and have Adams as the 6
No matter what is done with the defense we still have the Gregg clown as leader so we will intermittently play horribly and sometime we will rise up to just poor but Gregg is clearly incapable of actually making the team exceed the sum of its parts. We are coached by a loser so that makes the whole team look poor no matter what the players do. They are setup to fail and so, from time to time, they do exactly what the coach designed the team to do, fail.
6.6 is not a good score. The higher scoring players were: Reyna, Pulisic and Johnny between 7.0 and 7.5. Ream was part of a group consisting of himself, McKennie and Weah between 6.4 and 6.6. I don't always agree with these score generating systems. But this is broadly correct. And Scally at 6.0 is also about right.
Not sure about forcing McKennie to CB at all but agree about all the unrewarded runs. I noticed early that McKennie would do a one touch to Scally and the make a sideline run and Scally never saw the return pass or made it. Haven't finished my re-watch yet to see if it happened the whole game but losing Dest also affects Weah and Mckennie because of how all three would play together until one of them was able to get free and receive a nice pass into space.
If Scally remains in the lineup any decent opposing coach will know that they should funnel the ball to him. At this level the weakest link is exploited without mercy.
I think Colombia was happy to have Jedi be the facilitator. Whenever Puli got the ball, he was doubled immediately, but they were happy to see Jedi dribbling into trouble on the sideline. Jedi is a lot better than Scally but I believe Colombia saw something to exploit watching film and it wasn’t Joe Scally.
Jedi was bad. But he has a body of work behind him. My prior is he will be much better during the rest of the summer.
So Columbia didn't score from a mistake by Scally. So they were not coached by a "decent opposing coach".
And the fact that any player got a rating above 5 says that the evaluations are bogus at best. Actually I would rate Pulisic at a 4.5 (not taking into account that he played out of position) and things go down from there. I wonder if the coach could be given a "0"
I will ignore your troll and say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder when it comes to Scally. I have seen various former USMNT players talking about his performance anything from Scally played well to Scally is where attacks go to die. Scally will never be a Dest but its up to the coach to figure out how to get the best out of his players. Its like complaining that we don't have a Messi and that is why we lost. Under GGG we have never played better than the sum of our parts and rarely played equal to the sum of our parts.
It depends on what you expect of Scally. Most of what I see criticized is that he did not provide any real offense. So, if you expect our offense to run through the right back, like it often does with Dest, then yeah Scally was a disappointment. If you see the position as primarily defensive, he did well to stifle one of their best players. Personally, I think it's great that Dest can add to the offense and he's a big player for us because he's so good at doing so. But the way we play should not be predicated on finding another right back who can add this when Dest is out because it is a unique characteristic of Sergino Dest, not something we can expect any of our other right backs to provide. So, I thought Scally did fine, he defended well and didn't give it away much. But we need to find another way to attack rather than just expect our right back will weave down the field and create offense from the back while our players further up field fail to create unless that right back is Dest. Expecting one player to play like another is a good way to be disappointed any time you make a change. Dest is a particularly unique player that is not replaced in any sort of like for like swap when he is out. We need to accept that fact or we will just be disappointed in whoever we play there.
The problem with Scally isn't that he isn't Dest, it's that he wasn't even really capable of basic passes or ball progression. Let's not act like not dribbling into trouble is something only a select few RBs can do. He defended well, but it's okay to expect him to be able to make a pass or two.
Scally was fine. I do expect Berhalter to experiment with somebody else against Brazil. Then we'll see...........................
Fair enough, I'm sure my opinion s affected by my belief that we rely too heavily on our outside backs for our offense in general.
Sure. He just reminded me of a right footed Lovitz. It's actually really strange, because he was a pretty good offensive player at the youth level, but both for club and country, he's not very capable there.
i couldnt be a bigger fan of weah, and not being a moron i recognize wes as one of, if not the, best players we have in any given match- but their danger, and willingness to go at people comes with a lot of possession lost as well. you take that all day in the attacking third for the positives they bring, but getting out of the back? obviously scally didnt do anything when he did get forward, but he wasnt giving the ball away in our half. and if you cant see how wes/timmy play completely different with juve than they would with us im not going to explain it to you. scally passed the test. we dont have to reimagine the team in dests absence.