Roldan and are you watching the game? 2021 Thread bump

I do too, but with the jerseys I had to be so locked in on the ball that I feel like I missed the forest for the trees. I honestly can count on my fingers how many times I noticed Tillman too.

 

This site had Cardoso as our second highest rated starter. Grain of salt, but same with the ESPN link. https://www.goal.com/en/lists/usmnt...evils-in-ugly-second-half/blt0b4f95d0a18ce371

 

Just say that you have no response to this objectively true characterization.

 

That analysis is so amateurish. But good to see you're already abandoning your own "eye" so quickly.

 

I wish he would demand the ball more in the middle. When he is aggressive he does good things. I wonder if players are asked to think about shape and other instructions more than in the past. Some players need to play instinctually.

 

Cardoso looked more impactful on the defensive end (to me)yesterday than Roldan did.

 

So Johnny has a "more impactful half" one single time in 22 caps and now he's indispensable. That's what the narrative has been.

I'm not surprised by the obvious agenda. I'm just pointing it out.

 

You know, that’s a good point. DMs can do the job with hard work and physicality, or they can do the job with brains and positioning. And with the ********ed up jersey situation, a DM impacting the match via positioning was too hard to notice.

 

Maybe you have an agenda too? Perhaps? Possibly?

 

Did anyone claim he was indispensable? I thought Cardoso was far better than Roldan or Berhalter. I also don't think the system suited any of those four players (including Tessman) particularly well. And objectively all of them are well behind Tyler Adams, so there's that.

 

To point out the obvious agenda, yes.

 

Well, yes. I think being a pedant in this instance is a tacit admission that the characterization is correct.

A guy who has been objectively bad for his other 21 caps plays one half where he doesn't suck out loud and people think his WAR is off the charts because we gave up 4 goals after he left the game.

The ball knowledge in the fan base is very low.

 

From ESPNFC:

 

In the 2nd minute of the match, after Cardoso ignores a Belgian jogging by in front of him, another Belgian backheels the ball from the touchline toward that runner, who's able to send in a free cross from the goal line while Johnny trails behind him by 15 yards. Cardoso also should've been able to block Belgium's first goal.

So a random USMNT fan on X drops a vid of Roldan making a longish pass directly to a Belgian defender? That isn't going to be persuasive on a day in which both teams, fans in the stadium, and TV viewers/stream watchers broadly complained that the team uniforms were too similar to differentiate between each other. (It also ignores that Roldan went 21 out of 23 on his pass attempts.) I'm sure that guy worked long and hard to find and post a Roldan lowlight, but the two from Cardoso are easily identified just from the general match highlights above.

FotMob gave Roldan a grade of 6.6, which was 6th out of the 19 US players (and above the overall team grade of 6.3). The players rated above him were the 2 goalscorers, the 2 assist men, and Malik Tillman (who with Agyemang and McKennie had the top grade of 7.2). The others who played in cent-mid/def-mid (Tessmann, Cardoso, and Berhalter) all had a score of 6.2.

 

Watch Ream and Roldan on that second Belgium goal. Slow. Ballwatching.

 

I think he has some culpability on the second goal but was overall pretty decent all game.

But he's had a bullseye on his back so if we play poorly, it doesn't matter if he was involved; it's on him.

Look at all the folks saying we fell apart when all the MLSers when in. The collapse started at about 40' and aside from Roldan, there were no subs until 64' -- we gave up three goals in that span with exactly one change.

Our wins in the fall were not exactly stacked A team and when we've done it ... it's not been great for close to 2 years now. But people act like they can't do anything wrong.

We played pretty well for about 40 minutes and then we started falling apart. None of the subs really helped but things were already going and there's certainly no justification that Roldan coming in suddenly caused a collapse.

I think the actual situation is we went ahead and Belgium started responding. They got more focused; we got less. They figured out that our set defense was not reacting well to switches and started just setting us up left and right to get Doku to attack.

People want to pick on the players they hated before the game, but this was just a collective failure to execute once Belgium had us on our heels.

 

He was.

His lollygagging on Goal #1 let them tie it up.

 

Guys I changed my mind. The Roldanstans have hassled me to the point of near death. I have decided he is World Class and should start for us.

 

Epic is how I would describe this meltdown.

 

If the players, including Roldan, are rated as high as the are I wonder what you have to do to get a 2 or 3. I suppose that scoring three or four own goals might do it (BTW That has been accomplished in pro soccer before but not recently) but even that might only drop a player to a 4.5 or so the difference between 6 and 7 in rankings is much less than the difference between 4 and 5 an so the rankings make little sense. I would not give any USA player more than a 4.5

 

Ok Roldanstans…let me have it. I think he’s about our 9th best midfielder and our best locker room guy. Put him on the squad, no doubt. But out of the list of the following players, in a World Cup knockout match, how many would you bench for Roldan?

McKennie
Adams
Cardoso
Tillman
Reyna
Morris
Musah
Tessman

I’ll give you Berhalter am I missing anyone?

 

Depends on what you mean by bench? If you are talking starting then I start Roldan over:
Morris
Musah
Reyna

 

Ok you have him 6th. I can understand that. Maybe some guys play in different areas and he gets on for 15 minutes in our third group stage game after we’ve got things taken care of. Absolutely.

 

I would start Roldan over a traffic cone, maybe. But anything above a traffic cone would not hamper our attack/defense as much. And traffic cones do not, usually, get the red card that Roldan would be getting with competent refs. The only way he avoids reds is by staying out of the way of better players and, possibly, by looking so beat up all the time. He even looks beat up at the start of matches.

 

Reyna is irrelevant to Roldan; they don't play anything like the same role.

I'd play Roldan still over Johnny, who I have yet to see play a good game for the US, over Morris, who I think makes too many mental mistakes right now, and Musah, who has gained weirdly mythical status by simply not playing.

Adams, McKennie and Tillman are clearly better players in all ways. Tessman is a better player, but I would say that Roldan plays a certain role better than him.

The tactical choices were a challenge for everyone today, but I don't think any of the guys in the CM roles (not that CAMs, but the CM roles) played well at all.

Not Roldan, not Johnny, not Tessman, not Berhalter. Some of that is what Poch chose to do with dropping them back into the back 3 and playing a very passive defense (or maybe we just did that).