Pre-match: USA v Australia Game 2 6/19 3 pm ET

I see both the US an Australia as both coming from really good, energetic games where they executed their game plans well. Both were a little lucky with the amount of goals they received. Both are built to counter each other. The one advantage that we have is that we already did well against a similar caliber opponent. Turkiye is a good team but they were not playing effectively against the Australian bunker.

 

Midnight Oil's Diesel & Dust was on that back in '87 (probably earlier). Love that band.

 

Ever since they changed their name they have not been the same.

 

The Arfsten shout is really interesting.

 

The only way to miss advancement with 6 points would be if 9 or more groups had 6/6/6/0 point distributions. 27 teams with 6 points, and one of them is 9th in the 3rd-place table. This is an absurdly unlikely event, but has to be ruled out for mathematically certain advancement. If a group has just one draw, then it's impossible to get 6/6/6/0. Now that five groups have at least one draw, 6 points are 100% certain to advance.

 

Haji is very effective coming in from the left. He's big and scary running at you. Might be a nice wrinkle. All we need is whomever is on the field, to have their best game. We have the horses. Let's hope they run their best race.

LFG!!!

 

Cannon fodder?

 

AC/DC. They did give that to the world, for which I am grateful. And they call the game soccer, which is awesome.

Regardless, I hope we rout those brutes 4:0.

 

I also have 14 pages, but the upper right of your post says it's #340.

Still a pretty active thread…

 

I can’t stop looking into World Cup coverage man. Never a dull moment with the forum, podcasts, discussions and dialogue etc.

 

The heat and humidity make it more likely to be defensive and bunker.

 

Last forecast I looked at said 70F at noon Friday.

 

Same for us with Paraguay replacing Turkey Turkiye in that scenario.

 

Popovic likes rotating players. Don't be surprised if he selects a completely different front 3 for the US game, leaving Irankunda and Toure to come on as impact subs. I think there will be at least 4 player changes and one or two positional changes as well.

 

1. Agree
2, Agree. It's hard to but a Fosters in Australia. It's an export brand these days
3. Agree, although we aren't on our Pat Malone on that item
4. Margot Robbie.

 

Popovic likes to list it as 3-4-3 but having attended all our home games in the last couple of years we would only be in that formation for maybe 5 minutes of each game. Even when attacking against weaker teams our formation is more like 3-4-2-1

 

We usually lose but in the last round of qualifiers we played a 5-4-1 (it was only Popovic's 2nd game in charge so we weren't as disciplined at it) and got a 1-1 draw with 2 own goals. I think the 5-4-1 was more a reaction to Japan being well on top for most of the game rather than a deliberate tactic. We managed to beat them 1-0 at home which was our first win against them since 2010. Most home crowds in Asia are very vocal. Because we have so much diversity in Australia (much like the USA) there is always a large contingent of away supporters at our home game.

 

Why not Zendejas?