Can one make Tyler Adams's life hard post Qatar when he never played until this past March due to injury?
One thing about this match that I think I can say definitively is that Canada cared a lot more. If this were more of a one-off ok but it’s beyond a trend, even in big time matches at Copa they weren’t as invested as the opponent. I know it’s a friendly but the lack of desire to grind Canada’s (or any other team’s) dick in the dirt at any opportunity just shows how different this iteration of the Nats are. Job one for Poch: locate the chips and place them on shoulders. It may leave some talented players behind, but there’s enough in the overall pool to get the best of the rest that hate to lose more than they love to win.
I think this was a bit more than just a friendly. Canada's program feels like they are going in the right direction given Copa and the US has been in the toilet during the same time frame. So Canada backed up their positive momentum and we bolstered our negative slide. But I do agree that it isn't the end of the world and not having a coach (and our best FBs) contributed to the loss and makes it sting a bit less. IMO, I think Canada's best 11 is a bit better than ours when everyone is healthy... but we are so much deeper. If you take away Davies or Bombito I would give the US's starting 11 the nod. Take away both and they would not be even close to us. That is how important those two players are to that team. Canada aside... there is a clear lack of consistency WRT the intensity our players are showing. Even our "best" offensive player in CP seems to go from having a great game to disappearing. It sometimes happens between halves as well. The lack of intensity across the board in the first half yesterday is completely unacceptable. That should never happen. We also have a bunch of players with "touch yips".... E.g. 1) I don't think I have missed a single minute Johnny has played for Betis and I have never seen him play that poorly. 2) We put Ream in despite his lack of pace to help us pass out of the back and he hands the ball straight to Canada at the top of the box? Now, if Poch actually signs on... which I no longer think is inevitable given all the misinformation and false starts... then I think he is the type of coach that could really shake things up. We need a change in mentality. The belief/pride is just not there any longer IMO.
Which is exactly why I said, "But, right now, Canada is the better team, unfortunately." We have the better players, mostly, but they did not play as a team and most of them seemed unmotivated or uninterested. They, probably, just need good guidance and a decent "system" fitted to their strengths. Right now we a like a ship that is without its captain or first officer and we just hit some avoidable shoals. But we have not sunk and we can get the ship repaired so that it is "ship shape and Bristol fashion." And the add a captain that will keep us sailing straight and true. Of course it is always possible that the new captain will sail us right back on the shoals or find some brand new shoals to ground us on. Unfortunately many of our players can't swim and don't even know how to run the lifeboats so they really need the captain to navigate the shark infested waters of international soccer. But last night did resemble the sinking of the Indianapolis in WWII with the first goal representing the torpedo that did the job and the Canadian team the sharks.
Hopefully the new leadership will tell the players not to misplay their passes and not to ******** around on the ball taking 7-10 touches when they should be taking 3-4.
Agree but Johnny gets a pass for lack of reps. I got a better sense of why Spurs bought an option on him. He needs to get a little better at some stuff which should get sorted with a lot of play in LaLiga this year. I kinda figured this game was a waste when I saw Tilman CAM and Balo 9 starting. Musah is a head case and I have no idea if he'll sort himself out. I wanted to see Musah with Johnny 45' and the next 45' Aiden with Johnny. I got to see the problem with Johnny and Musah together: They are too similar in some areas. We didn't get to see Johnny with Aiden. Aiden helped Musah play the way Musah wants to play which I'm not sure is all that smart. Scally will not be everybody's cup of tea and I think Americans like an offensive type defender in the RB spot. As we go up the ladder in a competition we will be facing some pretty ferocious left wingers whom Dest can't handle consistently, especially if he's far forward where American fans want him to play. Wanna go out in R16 again? Play Dest.
Clearly the nuances of the English language eludes you. I will try to keep my language simple and straight forward in the future.
Being better in a friendly isn't being better. When Canada can consistently beat us in actual competitive matches then I will admit they are better. 16 Mar 1991 USA v Canada W 2-0 North American Championship 16 Mar 1997 USA v Canada W 3-0 FIFA World Cup 09 Nov 1997 Canada v USA W 0-3 FIFA World Cup 30 Jan 2002 USA v Canada W 0-0 CONCACAF Gold Cup 09 Jul 2005 USA v Canada W 2-0 CONCACAF Gold Cup 21 Jun 2007 USA v Canada W 2-1 CONCACAF Gold Cup 07 Jun 2011 USA v Canada W 2-0 CONCACAF Gold Cup 15 Oct 2019 Canada v USA L 2-0 CONCACAF Nations League 15 Nov 2019 USA v Canada W 4-1 CONCACAF Nations League 18 Jul 2021 USA v Canada W 1-0 CONCACAF Gold Cup 05 Sep 2021 USA v Canada D 1-1 FIFA World Cup 30 Jan 2022 Canada v USA L 2-0 FIFA World Cup 18 Jun 2023 USA v Canada W 2-0 CONCACAF Nations League 09 Jul 2023 USA v Canada W 2-1 CONCACAF Gold Cup
Jesse is such a competitive guy. He just couldn't resist the subtle digs. Too bad the fan base can't take that because I'm tired of soporific BigSoccer ball at this point. This team needs Poch in a bad way.
I think Cade's as fast as Davies, but that means he's not getting by him because he's so predictable to try to get down the line, & the defender has a head start. It was insane for that person to claim Cade wasn't fast. Julian Araujo has good pace and Cowell made him look like he was standing still before.
Sad that this kind of performance was not surprising. Have to face that this team lacks both grit and top level ability. If I were Pochettino, I would wonder what the hell I was thinking. Pulisic was almost the worst. Please just play, dude. Johnny helped him avoid that label, though. Hard to swallow that Canada can dominate the US in the US, but that’s where this path has led us.
I don't know that anyone is locked in with a new coach coming in, but I would give him another start given his performance. Here's why, for my thought. And we have a bunch of these guys. Johnny doesn't make a lot of incisive passes, or line-breaking, or danger-creating passes. He's pretty ball secure and he can make the easy pass. Put him on a team with a bunch of Brazilians and Spaniards, including someone else near him who can make the harder pass? He'll look great, because everyone around him is also good at passing and receiving and moving, etc. Make him be the passing focal point of a team far less skilled than those? He's not that guy yet. Maybe he will be -- he's very young. But right now, no team is going to make him their deep lying distribution. He's a young, skilled, smart defensively, ball secure CM who might get better. He takes nothing off the table in a good team. But I'm not sure he's bringing much offensively. Was great to see him finally look like the Columbus Morris with the US. I think there's a decent chance we see some of our CMs move to winger with Poch. Scally needs to be challenged. Not sure Marlon Fossey is the guy, but his offense seems to be getting worse and worse. I am hopeful that a coach like Pochettino can inspire more urgency from the this team. But I think people need to come to terms with the idea that while Berhalter could not get consistent focus and energy from this team, he likely wasn't the cause of it. I really have never seen so many athletes that clearly need to be constantly given "wake-up" calls, etc. They really do only seem to get up for games against top teams in competitive environments. They should want to get up against Canada. They should want to show out for the new coach. Pulisic, maybe Balogun, are the only outfield players who showed any fire in the first half. I guess Brenden worked but he still seems too small for a confederation that allows straight mugging.
This match was very simple. The team, especially the midfield, lacked any intensity or focus. They were static on offense and defense. Lots of standing and looking. The centerbacks weren't great, and made most of the clear mistakes, but between not having fullbacks who can do much on offense and having a midfield that should be able to but decided that running was hard, where do you go? Were this just this game, you'd chalk it up to an interim coach in a pointless window. But it's the same thing time and time again. Yes, we are missing a couple of the guys who provide that fire. Yes, it is an interim coach. Yes, we again, played a passive gameplan defensively when we used to play like Canada successfully. But still, we can't ignore that this is also just how guys like Tillman and Johnny play. We can't ignore that Musah is super athletic and skilled but just a bit too much of a nice guy who disappears a lot. With Tillman and Johnny out there, he should have been taking the LEAD as a usual starter. But he's not. And that's it. It's not even we can't play out of the back. We can. It's not that Canada made us do it -- their press is fine but most of that was not forced. It's not that we can't beat their athleticism -- it's a weapon for them, but we actually controlled them well on the counter and if our midfield had done anything, then our scoring wouldn't be Pulisic and Balo trying to score on their own all the time. Want to take advantage of Bombito? Get him out of the one on one and put him into a structured set up. But this team simply does not show up in a huge percentage of our games. Colombia, Panama, and this -- three of the last five lacked any fire. But we can go back further. The first loss to Canada in Nations League where everyone looked hung over. The tie in El Salvador to start WCQ. The first half of that Honduras match. The Panama match. How many times have we gotten wake-up calls? Berhalter absolutely couldn't solve it, and perhaps Poch can. But these are supposed to be pro athletes playing for their country and while a coach may help solve it, it's on them. And I will put a special call to Pulisic: time to actually be a leader here. And the leader's role right now is to call out your teammates who haven't shown up. Including your friends. Do it privately first if you must, but this level of effort cannot be acceptable. And two, I'd go to Mikey Varas and tell him that the next lineup should be 100% based on intensity and effort in practice and that we're pressing New Zealand. We should absolutely bench the entire starting midfield and quite a few others. We need a PLAYER to get in the other players' face and set the tone for how we start matches.
Lund seems BL-ready to my eyes if he can't get a gig in Serie A. At the start of the game I was wondering what happened to Lund as he staggered around; later the old Lund emerged. He is pretty aware of his defensive responsibilities.
Also, there's speed, and then there's speed with the ball. Cade v Davies may be a negligible speed difference, but if you're the offensive player, that means you aren't winning that unless you are running onto a perfect ball with a head start.
This is a perfect challenge and opportunity for Poch, really. It's clear that this is a motivation issue. He's known as a motivator. Pulisic was the best player on the pitch in the first half playing on an anemic side. In the second half, he moved more centrally, got hacked to pieces from every direction and stopped playing, pretty much. A hyper-motivated Canada team came to play a rivalry match while we were in transition with a lot of players out and half-assed it until they were down 2-1... That's all there is to it. It sucks, they should fight for the shirt if nothing else, but that's the way it is... (And even then, all Canada can do is play the antagonist. It was more than enough on a day when we spent half of the first half with the ball at the feet of Ream looking for someone open and only finding Lund, or giving the ball away, but that's what it was...) As for actual, relevant analysis, I'd say that we really miss a Bombito, but that Miles plays a reasonable facsimile of that for us, and it's kind of stupid that we haven't been using him.
The '94's were pretty young too at that time, a few of them were past their prime: Caliguri, Dooley, Hugo Perez, Wegerle and Clavijo. Beloved Cle Kooiman, he of the Joe Dirt meets a Carnie operator styling choices, was 33. Most of the core guys were in that prime area of 23-27: Lalas, Wynalda, Captain For Life, Cobi Jones, Meola, Burns and Sorber boys, Earnie and Ramos etc. So honestly, if the current iteration aren't ready for '26, then they simply never had the mental make up for this thing which is a bit inexplicable since they're really the first generation that entirely went to Europe as teenagers nearly across the board. Something's wrong beyond maturity. I used to take pleasure in seeing how we won guys like Musah, and Balo in part because of the chemistry and joy the guys played with and shared getting together, but now it has the durian level stink of self-satisfaction and sitting and laurels and all that. It's alarming. In fairness to the '98's, before the first game even kicked off Sampson had gone full Il Duce, captain for life was booted w/o explanation to most of the players who had no idea what was happening supposedly, the stupid formation thing, then the isolation encampment which left them like Vermeil's Eagles in 1980, not mentally engaged, and then everything that could go wrong on matchday 1 happened (including a post hit if memory serves), and following that the Iran game where we had like 4x the xG they did but hit the post and cross bar like 4x the first 40 minutes. The team just somehow lost the plot between Summer '95 and Summer '98, and its hard to figure out how or why since they showed a lot of toughness in qualification, and even beat Brazil in Feb of '98 (well, Keller beat Brazil along with Preki).
The weather is perfect, as is the water in Nantucket Sound. This is the time of year, though, however idyllic, when I'm especially wistful.