Well any game plan is juggling risk reward. Even if what you say is true, it's still true that they accepted their destiny to sit back and defend because they thought there was less risk in letting us have control. If they feared our creativity/scoring prowess more than our athletes in midfield, they would have challenged us to prevent us from having comfortable possession. They didn't, though.
I was hoping FIFA would ditch auto-qualifiers with 3 hosts. The next 3.5 years are going to be both boring as shit as a fan and genuinely detrimental to building a team.
Yeah, I would guess that specific xG model didn't take into account player positions. It seems to me that all 3 of their goals were better chances than any of ours. I would guess both first half goals would be 0.5+ xG if taking into account defensive/goalie positioning so only 0.48 xG at the half seems way low to me.
This is something I agree with that has been lost in the shuffle of everything else. No offense to Weah, but I don't see much there besides a "he can run fast so dump the ball in behind for him" player with a great shot. Good against specific teams and for specific situations, but far from undroppable for me.
I don't think we came out dominating. I think we played into the Dutch gameplan / strategy. We did what they expected us to do. Give LvG credit - they scouted us well. Score that first chance and well... who knows?
Qatar participated in the first part of AFC qualifying and then played in both the Gold Cup and Copa America.
I think van Gaal is a great coach. But that said, I thought that while we've had plenty of games without generating chances, this wasn't one of them. We had plenty of chances, especially against a van Gaal team with a lead anchored by van Dijk. Like, do you think chance CREATION was our issue today? It's the World Cup knockouts. It's against the Dutch, who are more talented than us and have a monster backline. You have to convert your chances no matter how you get them, and Pulisic, Wright and Ream didn't. On the defensive side, we made more errors today than we did all the group stage, but that also has nothing to do with midfield creation. I think the discussion is interesting generally, and especially for the future more than today. (I mean, if you watched Gio Reyna today, he's either not 100% or not as good as people think. One or the other. But he's young.) But really, chance creation was the issue TODAY?
I disagree. For a guy who hardly got time with the team he did fine. In fact all of our forwards did besides Jesus.
They played in the Gold CUP!!!! The FREAKING GOLD CUP?????? Is there anyway that USSF would be able to pull that off? Never, with those fools in charge. admittedly they also played Copa America
seeding will still matter. Right? The size of the next world cup throws everything we know out the window.
The Netherlands. Better talent. More rested. I think van Gaal is a better coach than Berhalter, but they are stylistically similar. We lost on execution today.
Yeah, but I would welcome him or someone like him. He's 71 though - not sure how much more he wants to do this.
I understand that part. My recollection though is that in the first 7 minutes our CBs were able to pass it forward. So what changed? And BTW, this is why I'm not a fan of a 4-3-3 formation. Unless the forwards are disciplined enough to drop back to a significant extent in these situations, it is hard for the 3 midfielders to get open. McKenzie vs Mexico comes to mind. And yes, I'm sure the Dutch and Barcelona can play the 4-3-3 competently, but it requires a long familiarity with it.
It was a good effort, reminded me of the Morocco game a bit. We actually edged them on xG but they have more clinical finishers so not surprising they got 3 and us 1. Some questions I have are: If Pepi is here, he starts today, right? If Gregg rotated more, maybe we don't tire so much in the last 10 and manage to tie it up. Who is the next coach and how long do you give Gregg in the new cycle? I can see maybe you keep him around for a year, see who he can recruit, and then move on before the real building for 2026 begins.
It wouldn't be so bad if we could get lots of friendlies with Euro teams in Europe, but the Nations League has all but wiped those out. So, yes, playing a plethora of non-competitive games against sub-par competition will be a huge hurdle going into 2026.
I don't agree with the post you were responding to, but I think their plan the entire time was to avoid the midfield and attack down the flanks. I think this because its what the NED camp keeps saying: 1599099824732704769 is not a valid tweet id 1599100557444030464 is not a valid tweet id And you can see it in action down Robinson's side... they were just looking for ways to release Dumfries whenever Robinson was high up the pitch: 1599084208424484864 is not a valid tweet id normally I think those moves get snuffed out by Adams, but I think his assignment today was to mark Gakpo really closely, which he did well, but the Dutch have more than one dangerman...
And in a system that doesn't play to his strengths, Lewandowski has 1 goal in 6 games for Poland at World Cups. Striker output is largely a function of the team they play in. If you don't build a team behind them that creates chances in varied ways, they're easy to mark out of matches. Teams playing the US didn't even need to try to mark our strikers out of games because their job was to...chest balls down at midfield, maybe? I'm still not sure what Berhalter wants from them.
There weren't any really good chances though, other than Pulisic, and Wright if he had a better frist touch, but that was created by the Dutch.