There's no one there. Why people don't care? Because we play like crap. Why do they play like crap? Because no one cares.
I mean who would you have manage the team other than Varas? Bruce Arena? How many coaches do you think are going to be willing to be the interim coach for a single window other than those already employed by US Soccer? Varas is fine for one window. It’d be a struggle to bring in anyone else and it’s not like he’ll be doing this in October. As for Pochettino, he may change things up for all I know, but style wise he’s fairly similar (except with maybe more pressing). He’ll just in theory be better at coaching it than Berhalter. But he very much likes to build from the back, play a high line, press, etc. And the pool is better than it was in the 90s, but that doesn’t mean it’s good enough to do well in a major tournament without some luck going on our way. And today was much less about the tactics and more about a lack of motivation by the players and not really playing hard. And yeah that’s bad, but hard for an interim coach that everyone knows is going to be out in the next week to do anything about.
There’s some for sure. Guys like Banks and Akinmboni and others. There’s prospects, just probably won’t be ready by 2026.
The lack of any sort of 3 back system and/or 2 striker system is what really gets me about the current approach. Our predictability has been a huge vulnerability.
This is where we really miss Dest as he was very much part of our ball progression to help mitigate some of the issues we’ve seen, And the reason people play out of the back is not because they get bonus points for doing so, but because if you can do it you’re not just ceding possession and it provides a tactical advantage compared to not doing it.
It’s weird how much we send the ball backwards over and over as though we are scared to take teams on and attack. I agree we don’t play out of the back - we often play to the back. It would be great if all the passing were probing an opponent and finding moments but often we avoid dangerous attacking moments to go backwards. On their goal we were just kinda staring at them wondering what next.
On the contrary. A team this unmotivated, but not without talent, is probably a challenge to a coach considered a maestro man-manager.
How trippy would it be to see Claudio and Gio exchange ice packs -- I mean jerseys -- after the game? ....sorry....
Balogun seems to always play with with a blind midfield, then get subbed off about the time the passers come on the field.
Reminder that the coaching staff was all Gregg's boys from Mikey Varas to Nico Estevez... unless you're a conspiracy theorist who thinks Poch was secretly coaching this team despite not having signed a contract yet.
Marsch: "Our players know the US pretty well, too... I had anticipated that Mikey, with Gregg Berhalter being a big influence for him, would play a similar style of football. So we were able to craft a match plan to deal with some of those things... and we executed really well"— Charles Boehm (@cboehm) September 7, 2024 LOL. We cannot get the stank off soon enough.
I'm in this camp too. ...and if we stop trying to constantly play it out the back, it might even play to the strengths of some of our players (Turner, who can hit a solid long-pass; Aaronson, who can pressure well on long-balls and help force turnovers; and Pulisic, who seems to do best with space to run into... etc. etc....).
I know. Even in the two long paragraphs you wrote, you never even mentioned Chris Richards by name. In this game, I saw him fail to track a runner (Larin, I think) moving into the middle of our area in the THIRD MINUTE of the game, right after one of Cardoso's giveaways. Richards moved toward Ream's mark, and completely whiffed on the open player to his right. ??? Schulte saved the resulting blast on goal, but we easily could have been down a goal right there, and probably should have been. Later, Richards played a long pass across our own box toward Ream, but it had poor weight and direction, and nearly put us in serious danger. Later yet, Richards played a square ball across the back toward Lund, bypassing Ream. Oops, intercepted. Canada's attack was fortunately thwarted, and we got the "my bad" raise of the hand from Richards. This guy sucks, as I said during the Copa. He's just not good enough. It's a shame that he's apparently one of our best options. Listening to his postgame interview was also painful. He says that what the Copa taught him was that the team had to have the right "mentality" and come out and compete hard in every game. Thirty seconds later he apologizes that the team didn't have the right "mentality" in the first half tonight. Brilliant. What a team we have right now.
If you actually read full my comment which at one sentence would take you a whopping 30 seconds, you would see that I didn't say Gregg was "pulling the strings" I said the coaching staff for this embarrassing loss, the first home loss to Canada since 1957, was "Gregg's boys" like Mikey Varas to Nico Estevez. Are you disputing that??
Your problem was I did read it, and recognized you attributed it to Berhalter, on the basis technically his assistant was at the helm. It was an assistant that had his own coaching philosophies w/ the u20's before he coached under Berhalter for a brief period. Same as Hudson, who managed differently than Berhalter. Even his long-time assistant Callaghan did, until there was an unofficial manager set to take over that time too. He gave the ball to Canada and let them hang himself. You're insane to think Berhalter, the past manager, had more imprints than Pochettino, the future one. That is besides drafting off some of the roster he built because you can't totally start from scratch. So in that sense, Berhalter was part of the failure, in the same Klinsmann was in the WCDQ post his departure. But Gregg's not somehow influencing tactics and new selections, expressly or tacitly, as you intimated by attributing it to Mikey being his assistant. There is of course a none of the above option that there is a top-down philosophy at USS to play this way most of the time. You'd probably call that a conspiracy theory too, but only when convenient.
Not only can Richards not play out of the back, he can't even be relied upon to safely play the ball AROUND the back. He was a disaster in the Copa, and he gave the ball away at least twice tonight against mighty Canada when not even trying to play the ball forward. The only reason he's not getting roasted here again (except by me) is because of the horrific giveaways by Cardoso and Ream in this game. Ugggghhhhh.
OK Marsch: "Our players know the US pretty well, too... I had anticipated that Mikey, with Gregg Berhalter being a big influence for him, would play a similar style of football. So we were able to craft a match plan to deal with some of those things... and we executed really well"— Charles Boehm (@cboehm) September 7, 2024
Oh my god, I forgot about that. Yes, I saw that too. Looked like he thought he was shooting at Canada's goal. Just an amazing lack of accuracy and control on his passes. I can't believe he's playing at this level either. He literally scares me whenever he's got the ball.
I already saw that. Again, Varas was the US u20 coach well before he was the US senior assistant. So how was Gregg a big influence on him? Marsch's (mis)perception likely based on superficial association would fit USS prioritizing building out of the back, with that being a criteria in hiring Pochettino, or whoever they do. Tab said it was a priority, & criticized them for it.
Several of these golden generation players will soon be in MLS. They aren't as good as many still hype them up to be. They'll blame MLS for "bringing them back" and then they'll say they are finished bums and move on to the next "big thing" that's in Europe. Seriously, some of these players aren't that good as many paint them out to be.
Damn. Not a good birthday. Have to work from 4AM to 7 PM. Quick dinner. Then at least I have my boys to watch and enjoy on tape delay. Nope. Canada > USA, easily. That embarrassing. Never thought Kristoph Lund would be the only redeeming quality on the USMNT. Yikes.Yikes. Yikes.
Well, under this circumstance, and some others, I'd play DeJuan Jones, who was pretty good in the GC, & out-played Reynolds. Could beat a set defender even. Even when Dest is out, but Weah & Wes are available, they're additional options. We have better alternatives at those positions, unless we have to be defensive, then Scally's good. We should be flexible-minded about where we extract players from, & how + when they're used. Pushing these buttons will go a long way to determine whether we succeed or fail. BTW, another idea would be to play Scally at RCB, maybe a Tolkin or Wiley at LCB sometimes. Then we wouldn't need a 2nd true CB, which is a weakness. Or if we're confident in 2 at the time, then it just deploys Scally in a more suitable way. Additionally, having wing-backs instead of true rb's would open us to a whole new set of possibilities. It would be nice if our manager could get creative & in a logical way. IIRC, Tuchel won big games playing 2 non traditional outside CB's, 1 of which was Reece James.