Friendlies and games against the Grenadines of the world don't really count to know where you're really at. We only got a handful of competitive games against above-abysmal opposition to have an idea if Poch is working or not.
Meh, wasted window. I'm kicking these two friendlies to the curb. Good news is us fans do have much to look forward to with a new Head Coach in Pochettino. Argie coaches go long on getting after it. They take training and game day very serious. This generation of players, talented as they are, better get their thoughts together.
We will likely have at most 1-2 matches against a Grenadine-type opponent, in the Gold Cup. Probably one. Our opponent in Nations League Quarters is likely to be Jamaica or Honduras (it could be Nicaragua, but I'm betting on Jamaica).
He was a decent central defender. Too bad he screwed it up against Wales. Uncle Gregg may still be here if he doesn't.
First, it must be said if you are a defender and you are facing towards your own goal, then you are already in trouble. Canada plays a long ball. Wiley should have been tucked more inside staying goal side of the defender. The US defenders have to scurry back and Wiley has to put that ball out wide with his head. Instead, he makes a boneheaded decision to head to Turner, and his execution was poor. McKenzie has to play the ball with his left foot out wide, but instead he swivels and hits it with his right. Another poor decision. I'd say the blame was 66.6% Wiley and 33.4% McKenzie. McKenzie is generally a two-footed player, so I was surprised by his mistake. Lack of situational awareness.
What? That was Zimmerman's only notable defensive mistake he made all tourney. Then he cleared one off the line v. Iran to allow us to advance.' And what does this have to do w/ Gregg not still being around? He got fired for a bad year post WC Zimm wasn't part of. The reverse is more true, that Gregg may still be around if Walker's in that Panama match instead of CCV (who Zimm had to save v. Iran). So that validates his reincorporation.
Pepi is a half step forward and to the outside. The defender is running diagonally, already moving towards to the center of the field when Fossey, to my eye, cleanly knocks the ball to Pepi, angling to the right, towards the outside of the box. The defender has come across, is moving left, to the inside of the box. I don't even know if Fossey made contact, but if the defender does NOT go down, he has ZERO chance of changing direction 90 degrees before Pepi gets his shot off. He had zero chance of stopping that if he stayed up. Going down was his only option. Now, if you want to say Fossey tripped him ... okay? I don't actually see it when I watch the replays. He pokes the ball. The other guy is there. The other guy falls, but I don't see contact with Fossey. Maybe there was, but it feels much more like an assumption to me. If anything, there might have been some jostling with Pepi, but no one ever calls that. The AR who called it would have been shielded by Pepi, as well, which is frustrating. I don't know how they could have seen anything.
I might actually put more of the blame on McKenzie, who was more in control of making a better and safer play (Wiley was struggling to catch up with the ball, it seemed to me). But whatever, they both effed it up. I'm reminded that McKenzie is also the one who made the weak clearance- straight up the middle, soft and low- around the 39th minute when NZ almost ended up scoring. Of course, his "oh no" clearance happened to go straight to Musah, who then gifted the ball to NZ just above our box. Another example of a double-screw-up in our defensive end.
Okay, thanks for elaborating. I see it all quite differently (I do think the defender had a chance to slide in for a block; I do think there may have been a legit foul on Fossey; and again, I don't think defenders are likely to take dives in situations like that). But analyses that differ like ours are part of what make this forum worthwhile. I almost always agree with your posts here, so at least we have that! Cheers.
Haiti. Honduras, El Salvador, Trinidad are borderline abysmal when planetary scale is considered. The World Cup is a planetary event.
Wiley is the person who is closest to the initial pass in, and is the person who heads the ball. He's not even really pressured. Except instead of heading it to the keeper, he heads it sideways. In front of goal. Was it a mishit? Dumb? I don't know. McKenzie should have realized where the attacker was and clearly it sideways instead of trying to hit it back up the field. But the header is what created the situation. The attacker doesn't even hit the ball. McKenzie hits it off his shin and it bloops perfectly to beat Turner, who was, I suspect, coming out to collect a simple header back to him. It's one bad play, one less than optimal and a ton of bad luck.
It may have been a foul on Fossey for sure. My issue there is more ... the center ref didn't see it live. When you watch the replay, it's far from conclusive (Fossey clearly touches the ball before the defender if he does). The AR would have been shielded from any contact by both Pepi and the defender. How was that called long after the play? I honestly think New Zealand complained their way into a foul.
First, that was a terrible, terrible mistake in judgement by Zimmerman. We had the win in the bag, and he gave it away. That was MLS dumb at minute 82. The Uncle Gregg comment (hint: Uncle) was said in jest, but if Zimmerman does not do what he does, we have the 3 points and the approach to the England match is a bit different. Maybe we win the game and the group and we advance past Senegal instead of losing to Netherlands? And just maybe we see less player decline post-World Cup? Nah. We'd still have the same team culture.
I agree with all of that, including the bad luck part in terms of the ball ricocheting over Turner's head and into the net (and yes, I think Wiley mis-hit it, probably because the ball bounced away from him faster than he gauged)... and yet I think the end result was more McKenzie's fault. Wiley put us in a worse position for sure, but one way or another we had a tricky situation developing. Despite Wiley's error, we needn't have conceded there. McKenzie was dealing with a ball that was more within his power to control than was Wiley, and McKenzie should have cleared toward the touch line, or tried to take the ball with him toward the touch line. Either would have been fine.
In matches against soccer nobodies like New Zealand a little bad call or a freak goal or just about anything, even a red card, should be meaningless. We tied through being bad for 90+ minutes and we got exactly what we deserved. In fact, given the near total lack of intensity we deserved to lose but NZ was not good enough or merciful enough to just go ahead and put us out of our misery. We did not play good enough at any point in this window to beat anybody and we got EXACTLY what we deserved. I have seen pickup weekend teams play with more backbone in poring rain or driving snow. It is hard to get excited about anything on the field when the players just stumble around accomplishing nothing except filling time. Right now this team, to stretch the definition of team, is playing like their ranking should be around 120 not 20. Or to say it another way this team's match play is simply rank.
I didn't get to watch the game. But today I was thinking of some of the old players who had soooo much heart. Frankie Hedjuk was one of those guys. He played with so much joy and I truly believe his joy came by going at about 120 % ALL, THE, TIME. We need that so badly. I look forward to the opportunity to see Fossey play.
This team has a very consistant lose-first game-but-bounce back the second game trend. 1. Lost to Japan 0:2, then bounced back to tie Saudi Arabia 0:0 (famous quote — I don’t want Pepi scored 4 goals as a center forward…) 2. Lost to Colombia 1:5, the bounced back to tie Brazil 1:1. 3. Lost to Canada 0:2, then bounced back to tie New Zealand 1:1. Good consistence.
The US also has a pattern of starting matches slowly. Hopefully, Pochettino works on motivating them to show up in the first half of games too.
Ya. WCQ home vs. Costa Rica. Giving up a goal the first minute? Also last National League semi vs. Jamaica. Be lucky to get one own goal back at last seconds.
I remember McKennie getting into the Mexican player's gills and they ripped his shirt and Dest took offense. Weston is the only consistent hard man.
Somewhere I saw something referring to an expanded tourney for 2025. Poch needs to work on who we can line up as invitees to Gold Cup or a Confed Cup type deal which could double as dress rehearsal for the big event in 2026. I'm sure we'd have interested countries who want to test the waters under "tournament" conditions for heat, accomodations, etc. Is this still on?
And even that is degraded by the fact that sometimes he just loafs, floats around, goofs off. His intensity is not Tyler Adams intensity, its more switchable. Tyler's always intense, unless he's run into the ground like at the WC. McKennie it just depends upon where he's at.