Was a nice afternoon out there, like a walk in the park for our guys. Good to see Tillman get his mojo and with Luna and McGlynn they make a a pretty interesting 3somein the front. Long term, I do think we still may struggle once the competition gets better. Agyemang isn't good enough, and the outside backs are gonna get exposed. But for today, was good to get the 5-0.
7 v 5 drills went well. Ageymang motm for Trinidad. Luna and Tillman clearly levels beyond the rest of the cast, they can book their tickets. McGlynn looked great, but I remain highly skeptical. Not only does this opponent exaggerate his strengths, it completely hides his serious weaknesses. Won’t really know anything useful until knockouts.
Good stuff. Pochettino dominated Badge FC so thoroughly in the opener that the Badge FC fans didn’t want to hate post and complain after the game.
Tillman plays a lot of balls to places where he expects players to already be heading to. Would be interesting to watch him get a lot of time with players that actually are already going to those places.
That was very uninstructive. We punished some big mistakes & took advantage of a lot space (still inefficiently). It just lifts a weight. We'll learn moderately more from the Haiti game. They've given us a couple competitive games on our park, unlike T&T. The Saudi Arabia match will be telling of us and some individuals.
Tillman was easily our best player. His club play makes this unsurprising. Today's game would only be surprising to those who give too much weight to prior national team play relative to the much larger sample of club play. You give some weight to both obviously. Anyone giving the appropriate weight to club play would come in with a prior that Tillman is our best player on the field today. And he confirmed that. Big time.
The thing about McGlynn is that he has one super elite skill and it’s the sort of thing that might get him on the World Cup roster (particularly if it’s a 26 man roster). But I’m otherwise skeptical he has the physicality required for higher level (though I thought he was good today).
The way we passed the ball to create space in the first half was some of the best we’ve played in a while. New blood had some ideas instead of the constant working it through the wings and dribbling we see with a lot of the regular 1st team. Luna and Tillman looked great. Arfsten too, even though I’d have liked to see Tolkin. Agyemang ain’t it though.
Freeman I think will be fine as the tournament goes, despite his one mistake defensively. I would like to see Tolkin start at left back though. I also think we got to go Wright as the starting 9 and getting Adams back will help a ton defensively against better teams.
it’s great to get back on the winning track! Winning the first match of a tournament sets up the whole favorable experience. it’s hard to tell a lot, Given thequality of the opponent. Clean sheet was nice. Tillman looked the part.
To be honest, anyone looking to push for playing time in the World Cup needs to look good consistently in this tournament, especially Mexico and Canada. Saudi Arabia is near the low end of meaningful competition in this tournament. happy with the team performance, and the starters generally deserved to keep their spots, but as you said, there’s not much to read into it.
We won. Everyone played fairly well. Tillman has had a strong three games this summer. Let's be a little optimistic.
Give credit where credit is due. He did manage to get into a spot where Luna could bounce one off him.
I think he is capable of doing well at a good Dutch or Belgian team, but I don’t know if a move like that will make sense financially.
Great professional win, hard to pick a MOTM since it was so effective across the board. Even Freese had a great moment with that one save. Not to get too excited but a good night for Poch, he looked pleased.