Haha I don’t think it is that crazy as tons of countries do it, just is a different approach. Build confidence through winning, get the offense clicking and your attackers scoring lots of goals, etc. Argentina’s last 4 opponents leading up to the World Cup were: Angola Mauritania Zambia Honduras Morocco played Madagascar Spain is playing Peru Brazil played Panama England is playing Costa Rica France is playing Northern Ireland Netherlands is playing Uzbekistan I think I would have preferred a mix maybe in this window? One hard, one easy or something like that
If the ref was from Concacaf, then then the anti-US bias was not surprising since Concacaf officiating is usually biased against the US anyway. Everyone here knows that Concacaf teams are given free reign to assault the US team at every opportunity and fouls are not called. I've said for years that US Soccer should formally protest Concacaf officiating to FIFA and then formally request UEFA officiating for any US matches involving Central American and Caribbean teams.
I don't disagree with the premise. Playing crap teams are for experimentation. We're past that now. That said, regarding the above. 60% of our team plays in a top 5 league so what are you talking about?
A lot of people remember when we scheduled friendlies against top teams all the time.That doesn't happen anymore because of Nations Leagues in UEFA and CONCACAF. Just part of the enshittification of football.
That's what England did yesterday. They even fielded players not in their World Cup squad. They're being roasted in the media and people actually played money to watch a kick-about in the sun.
Maybe he has learned that he will need him to play. Give him minutes with the starters for valuable "meshing". Perhaps Richards really has torn ligaments...
I suspect Richards was held out out of caution and will play vs Paraguay, 60 min. Then hopefully Trusty or McKenzie take his place (assuming Ream starts).
I'm not sure either goal was Miles Robinson's fault. Havertz and Sané's runs could have been stopped.
Time flies, dude. That was 1999. The tv coverage of it now looks like some kind of Zapruder film. Kirvoski goal around 1:25. Beautiful one. Beat Markus Babbel to curl one around Oliver Kahn. Tony Sanneh picks the picket of 6-time Bundesliga winner Jens Jeremies for the second. Then the third was a team play that Reyna literally taps in like we're playing against the Maldives. It was days like that which made us think Project 2010 wasn't some sort of pipe dream.
Dude, everyone knows if you don't make the World Cup Final game, you're not really in the World Cup. Don't you understand the only way the US wins the World Cup is if I hold the US to absurd standards on a message board that hasn't had a new member in ages?
I don't think he had much responsibility on #2; he could have stopped it but he's not the one who created the situation. Number 1 ... he needs to react better to that.
its just a higher level of intensity than even top club football imo plus some of these guys dont get that in club but i agree somewhat - seeing pulisic get stuffed and blocked and making poor ddcisions ater poor decision in many of his recent usmnt games including germany is just baffling....he should know better but he doesnt, for 1 example i think he just has this internal monologue going where he is "the star" and hes out to prove instead of just playing to win i think pulisic would benefit so much by being the robin to a batman.....but theres no one on the usmnt that would be pulisics batman but back to your main point, which is a good one, i am baffled about it too for the same reason you mentioned...BUT the more I think about it - its like - imagine a team like germany - they can create a "net" of defense that shuts almost everything down vs almost every team they play.....and its about that collective challenge...that even the experienced usmntersmight not be fully used to or comfortable with.....