This makes the lineup decision even more nonsensical: Balogun beauty. Silky finish pic.twitter.com/WrhHMIzfDN— Stu Holden (@stuholden) April 6, 2026
Can't mentally rewind to the turnover, but what I thought I saw from the cheap seats on the first goal was two guys collapsing on Bruno even though Richards was going to get there. Bruno feeling that excess coverage collapse on him is why he thinks a backheel will work and it's why Tincão was so unpressured. Yeah, seemed like we have everyone well inside the box on that one, even though Portugal had not bothered us on aerials (had taken at least one of their corners short before this). We did not need to be like 10v7 inside of 12 yards at the expense of leaving a guy all alone at 19. Again it was Bruno who saw this and exploited it. There was also a touch of luck in it that it got through a lot of bodies, but still. I do look at that with a bit less pessimism than others, because those goals were so straightforwardly preventable, it wasn't like they came from class we couldn't keep up with.
True, but it must be said that even in our good autumn run, we still managed to give up quite a few goals of the straightforwardly preventable, "c'mon, man..." variety. It seems to be a pretty consistent theme with this bunch, and not specific to any particular player being involved or absent. Our "starters" have done it. Our "backups" have done it.
If you take another look at 5:20 it is a little more complicated than that and why most open field goals are scored in the "confusion" of transition. The ball turns over and a through ball is sent to Bruno splitting the 2 CBs. Trusty gets to Bruno first and his aggressive charge forces Fernandes wide. With Richards charging hard Trusty correctly backs off and moves to cover central. You can see Tillman in his recovery run looking at the wide attacker but correctly makes a decision to defend the open weak side attacker. With full view of the future Morris could have gotten to the goal scorer if he had gone after him at a dead sprint as soon as the ball turned over. Alas we can't see the future or go back in time.
McKennie just scored a similar goal for Juventus. It does happen and transition offense and defense often decides matches. My hope is with a few weeks of training together the defense tightens up. I think there's a good possibility it does based on the players having little time together so there's not much cohesion.
I saw this one live and was thinking the same thing. Overall, it’s one of the greatest goal scoring plays that I have ever seen from a YA. World class stuff
How? We started Pulisic as a false nine. Balogun scoring a sweet goal doesn’t change that we were experimenting with a new tactic. Does Agyemang’s ripping his Achilles make it a good idea, to see how we might play without starting a striker? If you had just posted that video in the Balogun thread, or the YA thread in this forum, it would make sense. Here, it doesn’t.
Seriously.................................the whole thing was about Pulisic. Pochettino experimenting to see if that would put Pulisic, our best player, in a better position to succeed. If it had worked, we'd have another interesting tactical option. It didn't work. Pulisic remains a puzzle.
Obviously, your mileage may vary, but I'm philosophically opposed with this type of experimentation at this stage of World Cup preparation. You should have your best healthy team out there, and play them as much as possible in both games, at their best positions. Which is what I thought we were getting based upon what the coach talked about before this window. The only further game preparation we're going to get is two Friendlies where everyone's goal is going to be not to get hurt.
I agree, mostly. However Pulisic is a very unique case in that we can easily remember how good he was just a few months ago. And we can see that much of his game has returned but we cannot say what will shake him out of the doldrums and get him scoring again. I think that both coaches Milan's coach more that the USA coach, need to keep trying varied and very different things. But I also think one good goal will break him out and, baring another injury, put him back on track. But that is just an old man's ideas and they don't pay me enough for any kind of well thought out narrative.
The goal is on Tillman and Weah. Tillman takes too heavy of a touch coming back towards Richards which causes the ball to move towards a defender that wasn't really in the play when richards made the pass (ie tillman had a man on his back that was manageable but the heavy touch towards a 2nd defender makes it a crisis) then decides to play a ball to the middle of a diamond with 3 Portugal players covering the interior middle, towars portugal's goal, towards our goal; and Weah out wide. Weah has to run into the diamond to get the ball, and at speed he chops a low % outside of the foot ball to McKennie, who has to take it out of the air chest high with his outstretched leg. Nobody is confusing Mckennie's first touch ability with Berbatov's, so not a shock he is more pinball bumper just getting the ball down than actually pulling our butt out of the fire. I don't blame him for much in this, I gues if he just lets the ball go it's a turnover to portugal but farther away from out goal. There's a thread about "why we aren't elite". Those breakdowns where we aren't really under pressure but our faulty technique suddenly puts us under pressure leading to breakdowns in the defensive scheme - the elite nations do that much less frequently. That said, I'd rather have that happen to TIllman now, in a friendly against a true contender, so it can be addressed in the film room and on the practice field, than to play another top 16-40 team and think "wow, should I dip into the college fund for Semifiinals tickets" because the heavy touch/poor decisions never happen.
It's not Weah that hits the ball to Wes; it's Freeman. This goal is definitely a thousand little things. Tillman takes a heavy touch and forces it into Freeman when two defenders were close. Freeman hits a rushed ball to McKennie when Pulisic is right there open. McKennie is one of my bigger culprits -- it's a tough touch and pass here and instead of knocking it to an uncovered Pulisic right next to him, he chooses to go to Freeman ... who is backwards. This is always my personal pet peeve -- if you are in trouble, stop going back -- if you are likely to lose the ball, make it towards their goal. Freeman does not counterpress hard. I'm not sure he could have bothered the pass in, but maybe he could have enough. I agree with HHF that Trusty likely makes the right general decision to come central, but he's too deep -- he needs to trust Richards will block off that passing angle. He's not actually even really blocking off the cross across the goal where he is. Morris is too slow to get back. He was caught in no man's land and I don't really think it was his fault. But he's a bit slow to get back. Like Freeman, I'm not sure he gets there in time but maybe he does. Jedi also takes a bit of time to recognize the danger. I don't think a dead sprint would have helped much, though. He gets caught going forward when McKennie commits the turnover -- clearly Poch thinks this was a mistake but again, I put a lot on McKennie knocking what he had to know was a 50/50 ball back towards our goal. Of course, maybe he saw what I saw -- this ball goes sideways to Pulisic, and we have a break. These little points of execution make all the difference.
A lot of reading into tea leaves here, and just deconstructing the debris of his potential reasoning, but it definitely seems to me like he knows most of his first XI, and his key subs, but is really struggling to figure out about slots 15-26 for sure, and decided to give a ton of players a chance to show what they have in a last window. Like you I just think its well past too late for this. I thought this experimentation was largely going to end in the fall, and he'd use October/November/March/May to roll out his core, give a debutante with high upside (say Gozo, or Albert, Kochen etc) some run a la Donovan/Beasley, Julian Green in '14, Regis in '98 etc, but basically the last 3 windows would be about consolidating his starting XI, and his key first off the bench subs in a standard game. Instead, it's continued to be experimentation all the way through the last of the windows (at least for halves of games). I tend to think it shows just Poch struggling to figure out his XI, and struggling to figure out who his key backups really should be, and this window was actually worse in a lot of ways than November, as guys that he probably had nearly settled on, as key reserves nearly all stumbled through a terrible or at least subpar window in nearly all cases. Yikes. Its confusing. I still think most of the 26 picks itself, and its pretty obvious, and the Agyemang injury, combined with likely 1-2 or 3 more injuries over the next 4-5 weeks, could open up more slots unfortunately (I'll be surprised if we stay healthy all the way through camp and roster announcements, that just doesn't happen, '22 in particular was quite an aberration in terms of how few "knocked out, period" injuries we had in the lead up to the cup). For me, the most bothersome thing about a march I didn't watch (away on a trip), was that it was in a lot of ways unnecessary: The false 9 was really quite pointless and stupid, and we already know the depth chart for the most part and the last battles involved, There are about 4 or 5 guys fighting for 1-2 spots in CM, there is a 1 man fight for the last striker slot until Agyemang got hurt, there is confusion over which of the collection of bad CB options should form the group, and just how many FB's/WB's you should take considering the 3ATB piece, and the positional versatility of guys like Weah and McKennie and even Dest. But it's still pretty clear, so why experiment so much? I'm confused about it, and just imagine that Poch really isn't clearly sure of where certain players stand, or he wanted to get a clear answer on what set ups, and what players could handle things most effectively and was willing to throw away the value of just rolling out his XI and his key non-injury related subs, and see how it went....it's genuinely weird, and yet, I suspect that all of us could nail down 22-24 of the 26 consistently.
It was also a Saturday - Tuesday window. Poch has rotated pretty heavily his whole term. We'll see a far less rotated team at the World Cup, but no one should be surprised by heavy rotation in friendlies, mid-season. I also think the experimentation isn't entirely about who's on the roster, but what he can ask people on the roster to do. For example, the breakdowns against Doku were probably pretty illustrative, both about Weah's one on one ability and the help defense. Much like he tried to get Musah going as a winger, this was for Pulisic. I think he also wanted to play a much more defensive game after the ass-kicking, but didn't necessarily want the team to think we were backing down. I think there were specific auditions in this window -- namely, Johnny. But I don't actually think most of the choices were deciding who is on the roster. I think there was standard rotation and then tactical experimentation with players.
Interesting breakdown in part because I don't know how much rotation if any will be needed considering the colossal doubling in rest time between games compared to Qatar '22. It just doesn't really seem relevant to me. Group Stage: June 12th 6 days off June 19th 6 days off June 25th Round of 32 5 to 7 days off July 1st, July 2nd or July 3rd Round of 16 Looks like July 6th, or 7th generally Things get weird if we're a 3rd place team and I can't figure that, but generally speaking: the group stage rest is a locked in 6 days, and it appears, knockout rounds are 5-7 days rest (there may be 4 days, but I can't figure out how it would work with 3rd place teams). So to me anyway, rotations based on rest won't be a thing, injuries are a different thing all together, but rest won't be something to worry about.
I don't mean he was prepping for the World Cup. I mean I don't think he wanted to play guys playing every week at club for 180 minutes in four days.
The thing is if we are going to play brave with the ball as Poch wants. then we will lose it in transition moments, it is going to happen. Bayern does, so do Barcelona and City. Heck we turned Portugal over numerous times. Given Poch's game plan we will need fast, quick, and aggressive players in order to handle transition attacks against us. That is why players like Adams, Tillman, Aaronson, Trusty, Miles, Cardoso, Morris, and Musah are so important. When the ball turns over they have the ability to quickly recover and engage the attackers 1v1. Ream, Tessmann, McGlynn, and even Arsten are almost useless in transition and/or help defense situations.
Interesting summary of the play perhaps you should look at it again. Tillman's pass was to Freeman whose first touch takes him around the defender., his 2nd stutter touch takes him into the 2nd defender. At that point if you watch the overhead view at 6:00 Freeman could have tapped back to Malik, instead he tried to go down the line to Weston which is how the play was designed. I suspect we will see that same sequence at the WC given that we saw it time and time again this camp. It is clearly something Poch has been working on; Either Pulisic or Tilman makes a hard run towards the CB passing the ball wit the intent to swing the ball wide in order to bypass lines of pressing defender and start fast transition attacks. It worked numerous times this camp.
Pulisic at striker was designed to get Pulisic off. Pulisic has not scored a goal for the USMNT since November 2024! Poch said after the Belgium match that he was going to make a tactical change to help Christian and he did. The change gave Pulisic a couple of golden chances but he just couldn't finish.
I agree with you. I didn’t like Poch’s experiment there. But Balogun’s goal doesn’t change that, is my point.
Repped because you made a good point, but I’m gonna disagree. Before the fact, I see your point. I understood what Poch was trying to do. But it didn’t work. So it’s a mistake by Poch.
Noted: It was the prayer ball from Tillman to Freeman, not Weah, that lead to Freeman having to win the 50/50 ball and then hit another low % ball to McKennie. Point stands, elite teams rarely run Zeno's rondo of successive 50/50 balls. Someone settles it, plays simple and restarts the build-up.
Disagreeing with the manager is a time honored BS tradition and is what makes this place interesting!
We already lost one to probable overwork and he didn't even get a lot of minutes for us but added to the ridiculous workload of the Championship his body broke. A Friday and Monday game after getting back from an international break? Kind of criminal really.