"improvement" - you want to take what Berhalter was doing and make it better? No way. How about playing 3 back and 2 dmids in front of them for the build out of the back? I thought that was a huge improvement. I never felt like Panama had any ideas about how to get the ball. With Berhalter there would be 2 cb's wide and one dmid and fb's high. That meant the ball always went wide. Poch's build was concentrated on getting the ball thru mid to the attackers and they were successful in some instances which were squandered by our attackers not combining / finishing well enough,
I noticed that too…maybe this match doesn’t have VAR so there’s no reason to hold the flag if you think there’s an offside
I think there are some options we can try other than Sargent. For one, with Balogun out, Pepi should be the undisputed starting 9. Maybe he is and the manager wants him to start against Mexico so he came off the bench tonight.
The alternatives. I want a new big soccer rule…you can’t say a player shouldn’t be playing without naming an alternative. That right there would clear up a lot of crap posting.
It's not that he shouldn't get a chance. It's just that he hadn't done anything with it. But he did something positive tonight. Finally. So fine, give him another chance.
Dos a cero on the opener…its a good omen. Some takeaways: - Aaronson looks tailor-made to be the central hub for Pochettino. His level of focus and commitment is there on both sides of the ball and his connecting play in tight spaces is adequate to supply Pulisic with opportunities. - Pulisic was excellent at his usual standard. He very well could have had three assists in this one. All three chances he created were perfect passes. Musah was the only one to finish his chance. - The first scoring sequence was excellent. The ball by Ream to send Robinson up the line, the job by Robinson to physically get by his defender, the combo work by Aaronson and Pulisic, the assist by Pulisic, the aggressive and well-timed run by Musah, and Musah’s tap-in finish…this was all high level and precise. - Fantastic dime by Haji Wright and congrats to Pepi on another Texas goal. - Matt Turner had a good game. - Tim Ream had a good game and looks to have Pochettino’s confidence. - Robinson continues to be a key player. - Busio is an interesting option with a different dynamic than other midfielders and a high work rate. Very professional. He’s in Serie A now, so he could have more of a presence in the squad. - Are they saving McKennie for Mexico?
He has 4 goals and an assist in 532 minutes of national team play. What kind of returns are you expecting?
Apparently you haven't followed the team for long because.....even a draw would have been an improvement. We lost our last two matches to Panama. Lost 3 out of our last 4. This was a nice improvement with a mix of players thrown in to test their play. Its been 4 years since we had as much possession as we did against them.
I see it's 81 degrees currently in Austin at 1000AM as i write this. I believe it was 80's something when they were playing yesterday. I liked the pace of the game, personally. There was something professional about it that I missed during Gregg's days.
omigosh, we played thru midfield? What a concept. I thought we had to play wide so Dest could put on a dog and pony show before getting beat going the other way. Remember all the comments about 'without Dest we can't get forward' at the Copa? We played the game we wanted to play. We had a 3man back line with 2 mids in possession build out phase and invited Panama to take the ball away. They declined to try so we used the time to rest our forwards in the 80 degree heat and look for the best opportunity to break out. We were driving the car, Panama were sitting around waiting to be scored on. Panama took over momentum sometime after the 30' mark but their shots were Hail Mary's and I was impressed with how many we had in the box on defense. That may change but it was a good idea for this Poch initiation game. When we came out after the half we had the momentum again and scored. Up 1-0, we concentrated on getting back to defend and when Panama were getting tired we put in a lot of subs at one time and 2 subs, Wright and Pepi, combined for the insurance goal. The two goals were quite similar.
Aaronson - I think Poch is smart in that there is a lot of exchange among personnel in that central 10 position. I see other managers doing the same thing at clubs. It makes sense as a way of foiling attempts by opponents to gum up the middle which worked really well v. MMA but against Poch's "box" of ------puli--------aaronson -------------(10?) -----morris------busio ---cb--------cb--------cb- it was hard to tell who was the phantom 10(?) and who was live. Heck, Sarge could drop in, too., or, as we saw, the right mid (musah) could drop in for a visit as well and come away with a goal. Agree with your praise otherwise. Have to add a word about McKennie since you asked: McKennie needs a spot carved out special for him. That tends to restrict what the other players can do. I think Poch wanted to see what a free and unencumbered team of willing warriors could do. pulisic - this was a good chance to see a left handed Pulisic. Notice how the 2 goals we scored were similar. We could easily play Pulisic on the right when it behooves us. busio - if it helps with your project, you may wish to recall that Gio was BMOC with u17's but when they put him up top to lead the line in concacaf u17's, it went stale and LW Busio had to be returned to CAM/9 and Gio had to be moved to left wing. The team played better that way. I happen to think Busio may get swamped athletically in too many situations to be tapped for a starting spot against high level competition; otoh, Busio distinguishes himself from MMA by performing like the thinking man's midfielder.
In the most recent Opta rankings, the Eredivisie on average ranked below Denmark, Belgium, MLS and Argentina, amongst others. It was ranked 13th in the World. And Tillman never has to face the best team, by far, and gets to basically play every match with all the best players. Of course, the UCL matches are at a much higher level, but after a few teams, most of his games are cakewalks. I think he's a better player than he's shown with the US -- it was a nice MLS assist today -- but those Eredivisie stats are inflated.
My personal favorite is "international caliber player." Eastern Samoa is ranked 241st in the World, but their players are by definition, "International caliber." Someone has to play.
Tillman has gone 90 v Juventus (10th highest "power ranked" team according to Opta - and clearly better than PSV) and Sporting this season. (Opta also has Ajax as 3rd in Ered "power ranking" so ymmv... and Denmark has 12 teams total so...) PSV has had a pretty weak level of league competition so far this year, just due to accidents of schedule, but in the past 12 months or so Tillman has started against Sevilla, Arsenal, Lens, Dortmund 2x, Juve and Sporting, as well as subbing in v. Lens, Sevilla and Arse and playing Feyenie 4x, AZ 2x, Ajax 1x... basically, he's had enough "top level" competition to have a good sense where his game can be. He has certainly played a higher "Opta" level of competition than Aaronson this past 12 months, but I don't think that says much. The question is whether Poch wants a more creative distributor who can score a bit at the 10, or a relentless pressing player who can also link up, or whether he will try Tillman at LWF, which is his most common position for PSV these days. I think that Tillman could work well with CP if they get on the same page, but Tillman's clearly not meshing with the USMNT as well as he does in the PSV system.
I sensed more urgency yesterday. Just a sense that the players were not just going through the motions. The last couple of years it’s just felt like the team was sleepwalking at times.
The more a coach can relieve CP of the pressure of feeling like he has to control the tempo of the game, the stronger we will be with this line-up. Absent Tyler, we need to find a ball-carrier with vision or a deep-lying playmaker or even just a really solid holding midfielder so the ball does not have to be forced through CP too much. If Poch can manage that, I think it frees up the offense a lot.
He's played in Champions League, and has one assist in just under 1,000 minutes (he has drawn two pens). Point being, yes, he has played tougher opposition, but the insane production he has in the Eredivisie is understandably not repeating. He has a goal in the last two years against Feyenoord and three assists versus AZ ... but his production against higher quality opposition is not at the level people are expecting. I like him and I actually think offensively he will excel under Pochettino as closer in passing and the 1-2 game, which he's great at, is a common choice for Poch. He will just need to actually defend. But there's a subsection of the population that sees his aggregate numbers in the Eredivisie and keeps question why he struggles for the US when he's killing it for PSV ... and a big part of that is that he's playing on a dominant team where usually everyone on his team is better than their opposing counterpart. When he plays Go Ahead Eagles, he's playing a team Opta puts on par with DC United ... but he's on a team that Opta ranks as a Top 6 Bundesliga team. Now Opta rankings aren't gospel and might not even be very good, but even ignoring the MLS reference ... the spread within the Eredivisie is massive. He does play tougher games, so maybe we should be indexing to those tougher games where the level of opposition and teammates are closer than that. And his production there isn't spectacular for an attacking mid. It's okay; he's young, improving and like I said, I expect him to perform better under Poch. But people are looking at 13g and 11a in his last 2,200 Eredivisie minutes and wondering where this superstar is. Some of that gap is definitely that the Eredivisie is not as good as people think top to bottom because they tend to only think of the top, and part of it is that being on PSV makes league matches even easier. It's not all of it ... but it's a decent chunk.
My point was we don't need weird and vague Opta league rankings (that are incredibly general with leagues the size of Denmark vs leagues with the diversity of talent like the Ered) to talk about how Tillman performs against top competition - he's had plenty of those games to judge him. And, as you note, he is not dominating them in a way you think "he's got to be the guy" but he is also not being shredded. I've watched many, if not most of those games. Tillman is a real player and he will outgrow PSV in a season or 3. But it's hard to say how well he will do at a top club level, and if his talents will translate to the USMNT.