soooo, we got exactly what was hoped for. Made it out of the group then lost in the bracket.. enough time to rest but not too much downtime and we reaffirm the areas of concern.. yay Galaxy
Meanwhile San Jose is thumping Necaxa 4-0 who had in the “group” stage beat Seattle 3-1. If you told me the rules for this tournament were set by the Queen of Hearts, I’d believe you.
yep. Definitely some skew in one direction that I've noticed. doesn't negate poor set piece defending but there is some noticable bias
So we decided to play like poop. Mad. They couldn’t give me a couple more games in this freaking tournament.
I’ve been a defender of McCarthy because of his superior shot-stopping ability and because I hadn’t seen a lot of examples where his weakness of not coming off his line was costing us goals. But one of the corners we conceded tonight would have 100% been punched out by most MLS goalies and the other one would have been cleared by many. I don't understand why McCarthy stays so glued to his line. Past injury and he’s shying from contact? That being said it's still our man-marking on corners that is our biggest problem. It's just chaos out there and we just aren’t physical enough. Everyone other team in the world is grabbing, hugging, tugging and bumping when defending corners. We stand next to the guy and watch him jump over us. Yoshida in particular is really soft on corners. Their second goal came when his man got behind him to tap in the loose ball. We missed both Caceres and Garces in this game.
Neal is turning out to be a poor aerial defender. He let in another header from a set piece. Believe it's 3-5 goals now this season.
Funny how we go from the Chivas games to this.... whatever that was. Embarrassing to have Greg's daddy, Brian Schmetzer, calll out his weakness now 4 years running and deliver a whooping behind it. But the ineptitude to play for 90 minutes without any response at the other end is just special. WTG guys! I see this as a dry run at the playoffs and foresee similar results as the coaching staff has shown that they are completely incapable of training for set pieces or making any adjustment in tactics when other teams shut down the spaces. Leave it to Greg to take out the hot keeper in Micvic and put a hapless Mc Arthy. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. Now Micovic wants out? Excellent player management Vanney. Now back to more exciting soccer. Ten games today and Columbus and America join the fray!
McCarthy isn’t good at coming out on corners but he is far from hapless. He has made so many brilliant game-saving stops that he is worth every penny. His shot stopping passes both the eye-test and the stats back it up. His save % is 77%, which is 3rd best in the league. His PSxG-G (post-shot expected goals - goals allowed) is 7th best in the league. I understand the frustration, especially. after a game like last night. But also appreciate all of the times we didn't surrender our 3pts because McCarthy has the reflexes of a cat.
This is the part I didn't get. To be fair, Pec should have scored 1 earlier, but we just looked abject in the final third. EDIT: Would have been nice to try out Reus here first. Grumble...grumble.
Here's the problem. When the other team knows a GK will NEVER come off his line and claim a cross or punch a corner etc, it's like a forward who will never use his left foot. He can be successful if he's really good, but the defenders have less to be worried about one half of the field in covering him. In our case, the offense has one less thing to worry about and can plan kicks and plays that they wouldn't try with GKs who are better in the air. I can assure you that a striker who is worried that the GKs fist might connect with their head is going to be more hesitant or going to take a peek first to see if the GK is coming, which will throw off their timing. That's not to say it's the right thing for a GK come off his line all the time. Plenty of GKs do so wildly and miss when they would have been better off staying home and reacting. It's just that the offense never knows if you are going to come out or not. Then, you add in the fact that our defenders are pretty soft and finesse or relatively small. That's often a problem when you favor defenders who are calm in possession and playing out of the back. It's not that the two things are mutually exclusive, but it tends to work out that way. The really calm guys like Jalen Neal are built differently and tend to have a different mental makeup than the guys who are great at emergency defending and being physical in the box. Frankly, Neal played better with Ferkranus or Zimmerman on the USMNT because they complemented each other's strengths and hid their weaknesses. Yoshida definitely was caught ball watching when the ball hit McCarthy in the face and Yoshida's man ran past him and put in the rebound, but most of our problems marking on corner kicks involve not fighting through picks designed to free up players in the box. To me, that's partly physicality, partly coaching, and partly heart. Given our physical shortcomings, we have to be really dialed in to be successful. I think we have been better marking after the first few months because the players were dialed in and the coaches were hammering home this stuff in practices. Last night, we simply weren't dialed in at the beginning of the game and it showed. We got better later on. I'm sure it will be a point of emphasis in practices between now and the next league game.
This paints a gloomy future for our defense issues. And older CB in Yoshida paired with a young, thin, inexperienced if talented "finesse" defender who can not or will not engage an attacker in close quarters or fight through picks. It sounds like we need to trade Neal if we can't give him a Zimmerman to pair up with. It sounds like we need cbs who already have the muscle, mentality and know-how to defend set-pieces and don't have to rely of this coaching staff to show them how. Not a great future view for our defense.
I thought Garces was pretty physical and athletic (quickness, hops) despite not being a big bruiser. He will improve our defense if he can get on the field consistently. Plus he’s young and should just get better.
And we may already have two solutions to these issues in our roster : Garcés and Micovic. That's why I think 2025 could be the year we win something, not 2024.
Well, doesn’t look like I have to worry about making game threads for League Cup games while I’m gone. Also, hola from Barcelona!