↑ No he was mostly responsible for the goal. Was he #5 or #7? No he was the one that let the goal scorer run by him. As far as the goal was concerned the through ball was offside.
I want to write a 500 word reply to this, but I’d commit about 5 yellow card fouls in doing so, so I’m just gonna hit POST REPLY and let everyone imagine what I would have written.
Don't know if anyone has said that, but imo we earned two clear penalties. Dest was taken down. And, Balo. Martino poo-poo'd the Balo shout. But, that's what guys that are trying to be the cool guy do "for me, it wasn't enough." And, above all else, Kyle aspires to be the cool guy. I'll re-watch tomorrow. Hot take - what does Jedi do better than Arfsten. No disrespect to Brendan, but imo Arfsten would be than Aaronson in Aaronson's position. Hot take 2 - Reyna is a game changer. The question is, can he and Puli play together in that dual-10 position? Hot take 3 - This formation doesn't need a destroyer. You've got 2 d-mids. And, the way we play, those 2 guys have to be precise passers who are going to be super efficient. I'm not sure Adams (who is awesome) should be a starter. Take, I think Brendo is good in that dual 10 position in that he works his but off and frees up the other guy. And, he's not so good in that other than covering tons of ground, his key attibute is ball-progression. With this formation, these tactics, we don't have guys dribbling through the middle third of the field. If anyone is covering ground on the dribble, it's the wing. I love Luna. I'm not sure he makes my roster. I, myself would continue to give looks to Wright and Pepi. I know Pepi fluffed that chance. Balo has fluffed chances for us, tool My point is not to put down Balo, just saying don't judge Ricardo on that one chance.
More or less. I'd just say that the real killer on the left was (a) not a lot of attempts in the first half and (b) Brenden. The game opened up there very well with Luna. I don't have any issues with Arfsten's and Roldan's games today. (A) is absolutely intentional. Reyna and Dest are really great offensive players. Tessman is better offensive player than Roldan. Poch loves overloads and I suspect that we actually tried to run overloads over on the right. But I think it was uncoordinated, and instead of being Dest-Reyna and one of Scally and Tessman, we often ended up with both Tessman and Scally crashing forward. In the first half, especially, that pushed Reyna back to cover. And he's the best attacker of the three (and I love Dest, but Reyna has final product over him). We often had three guys with 4-5 defenders and the best of our guys hanging back. Some of this was probably just guys in new roles -- Scally got forward but it early on it was very ... predictable and always early? Almost as if it was perhaps over-executed direction. Tessman's coming from a spot where he should be more of a late arrival and he was a bit high when not actually making a run -- again, I wonder if this is just something we didn't get to practice much. I think Tessman can be good in combination play -- not great, but good enough perhaps. Any non-Dest RB I am less sanguine about. Dest, Reyna, Weah, Malik Tillman, etc., all clearly have the skillset. I think maybe by the World Cup, we'll see this kind of overload really, really work, but it probably requires a very specific group if we are really running four guys on a wide attack, which is pretty damn aggressive. Also: I think we played a very professional game this game and I mean that in a totally full way. This was nothing near an A roster and aside from getting in our own way a bit and one or two defensive breakdowns, we outplayed a World Cup team and won the game. I'm not shocked at the 1 xG and think it definitely could have been a disappointing 1-1 but to use a terrible corporatism ... we should feel good about this. We might actually, finally have some real depth at some positions.
Defend. He's faster, too and I think stretches the field more in certain ways. I think Max is more skilled, but Jedi also gets a lot of scrappy goals for the US. Not a hot take. They can play together ... but can we defend with them together? I really like Reyna's offense. But Malik Tillman is a helluva defender and a very good attacker as well. It's a good choice to have. He's Pulisic's backup, and I think he clearly outplayed Brenden tonight. Poch won't.
Oh, I wasn't discounting Paraguay at all. Quite the opposite. That's why you have to go at them sometimes, they don't make positionsl mistakes. The 2nd goal was off a deflected pass. They don't give up much in terms of clear chances. I wasn't being critical of our offensive play. We were good. Not great, but good.
On the whole right b left thing, remember the right had an extra guy. Scally was joining in upfield MUCH more than ream. Right side: Reyna, Dest, + Scally. Left side: Aaronson + Arfsten.
OK. But also, we created enough for a third goal because Pepi should never have missed that sitter! And this, against a very good defense. It's encouraging if we play like this without Puli and McKennie. For almost the first time in ages, I am starting to feel optimistic about our WC chances. Sure, it's just a friendly and it's just one game, but this was indeed encouraging.
Luna indeed was a bit wasteful and not able to beat his marker in some essential plays. I agree that Pepi shouldn't be crucified for the miss. I like Pepi.
I think that XG is wild and why I dislike the over reliance on AI based spreadsheet analysis these days. I largely agree with you, although it’s not just overloads with Poch, all of tgus is very reminiscent of Spurs and it’s also about isolating a 1 v 1 merchant on the weak side and this is also where Aaronson let himself down. Oart of my enthusiasm is that I’m seeing CP in the Aaronson role, where tgat finishing and slashing you said was missing would come from and/or Tillman, I just think it’s obvious we can field 5 competent attackers that can combine this coming WC and that’s what the system really needs, one turd in possession ruins the whole punch bowl. I also think I respect Paraguay a lot more than others seem to have. I watched a lot of COMNEBOl qualifiers and this is a legit WC opponent as you alluded to. I see Weah, Balo and CP being able to occupy the weak side slasher role of Son, whilst 4 others do the work of Kane, Erickson, Lamela and Dele between them. That fast, fast, slow tempo that was so effective with Tottenham is coalescing for us in my opinion and this isn’t pointless possession, it’s proving with a purpose. We just comfortably outplayed a legit South American team.
Absolutely and it was totally predictable lol. You let a team get away with murder, and they will keep pushing the advantage (multiple cards not given, multiple fouls not given, multiple PK's not given).
Very pleased. Hard not to see the building blocks falling into place a little better under Poch now. Excited for the next match. and potential hot take: Poch is gonna take one or two of these guys from tonight to the WC in place of a more well known Euro player. We all Know it’s coming, just don’t know who yet
Argentina definitely does this except in smarter, clever ways, and Brazil does it when they're losing to a team they think "is beneath them".
Nah I liked to see the fight. Teams gotta know we ain't backing down. This is not the same as weah in Copa America.
Japan rolled out their C/B team, what did Paraguay roll out, not sure, also we had more of our First XI for Japan (at least I think we did). I think garnering results against tough, defensive minded South American teams, while dealing with a "ref/Paraguay fan" like this is quite an accomplishment. Hmm, just looked at the Japan 11, and I only see 5 starters, so scratch that part. Both of these starting lineups seemed A/B/Cish.
One complaint people had during the Qatar cup, that turned out to be correct vs the Dutch, is that Gregg wasn’t rotating the squad, we were wearing them down. It’s a 48 team World Cup. Our rotation strategy should be based on wanting to win the 6h match and make the semifinals. If we’re worn out in the semifinals and lay an egg Poch won’t have made any mistakes. If we’re worn out in the quarters, Poch did something wrong (or had bad luck with injuries.) One of the ways Poch will succeed or fail is, will he rotate enough to keep our guys fresh for the quarters, without rotating so much that we miss out on a result because of a weaker player starting for squad rotation purposes. And one slot where that probably will play out is who plays next to Pulisic behind the striker. Tillman, Reyna, or both? Time to earn your money coach.
No, it is not. But it is more like the stupid card that cost us qualifying several years ago. If our coach has any guts he sits the stupid player for the next several matches and looks HARD for a replacement that will not macho the USA to death and makes it publicly known that the stupid behavior will NOT be tolerated.. Of course Weah's stupidity was much worse than this because it was in an important match as was the stupid red that cost the USA qualification for the WC a few years back. Certain behaviors are totally unacceptable on a quality soccer team, or at least they should be. BTW: The Paraguay coach should do the same for his stupid player.
Didn’t watch as it was a massive Riverhounds night but nice to see it went well. Great opening goal, assist and finish both.