He also used the new rule - at the VAR official's prompting - and took away Ream's yellow and gave one to Almiron. Like it or not, Poch is rolling with Tim and there's no way he doesn't pick up a yellow in the next few games. That was a use of VAR that I can get behind.
What I find most remarkable about this comment is how good the players not named played and are. Robinson killed it. McKennie was fantastic. Adams murdered everything in his bath. Richards was crazy good…as was Ream. And Freeman was as good as any right back we’ve ever had.
Tillman's first-half-ending 30 yard pass to Balogun for the third goal was sublime. On a platter. Didn't hear much praise on that but wow.
Our intensity dropped. Tillman and Pulisic are better than Berhalter, but he was not bad in any way. A lot of great distribution, and he had 2-3 strong defensive plays. One small shift in the midfield didn't change the game. You basically have to be weirdly obsessed with a player to think that. I think it's just kind of sad that you were at that game but your two posts here are simply attacking a player even most of the Eurosnobs here think played well. Enjoy!
I'm just rewatching the match. Nearly at HT. Been watching Pulisic fairly closely, and never saw a specific challenge where it looked like a kick to his calf, or where he came up hobbling. So my suspicion is that Poch used the work "kick" a little like sometimes you hear "knock" which is a generic, non-specific way of saying he was feeling something in his calf. Actually I think I heard he said "tightness" so I bet it's just a mildly pulled calf muscle. If so, let's just hope it's very mild because calves are usually a little slow to heal. Apologies if this was already discussed above (I haven't been able to keep up with every post!) p.s. I just saw Balo's 3rd goal. What a fantastic solo effort. And what a fvcking great half of football that was.
This was the 4th highest point swing in Elo ratings in our favor ever in the modern era (after our 2002 World Cup and 2009 Confederations Cup knockout stage wins and our 1995 Copa America win vs Argentina). That was in part because we were, as it seems clear now, ranked artificially low prior to this. We're now ranked 26th by Elo, around where we were heading into the 2022 World Cup. I mention that because a couple months ago dlokteff ran some simulations that showed us having less than a 1/3 chance of reaching the Round of 16 based on our Elo ratings at the time. I asked how those numbers would look if our Elo ratings were more in line with our 2022 level, given the similarities with (and arguably improvements in) our player pool. If I recall, dlotkeff said that pushed it to a little below a 60 percent chance of reaching the Round of 16 (and that's without taking into consideration the effect on those odds of entering our 2nd game with 3 points in the bag).
Everyone calm the ******** down. Good start, very good game but it was 1 game. Just 1 game. Saudi Arabia beat Argentina in the first game last WC. Lets see it done again as the hill the steeper.
All your posts on this thread are bashing Berhalter. After what might be our best win ever. And your response to me calling your take bizarre was to call me an asshole. Yeah, I'm the weird one. Enjoy your day!
I don’t think Berhalter was “bad” myself. I’m not a fan by any stretch, but we was solid. I think he was the worst US player and the gap in quality was obvious, but still probably a 6 performance. I still would’ve taken three midfielders over him, but he didn’t embarrass himself out there and had a nice breakup and I remember him slipping Tillmann(?) in nicely on the wing.
This is completely different in a lot of ways. This was a favorite dominating; not an underdog scoring an upset. That said, I doubt Australia plays us like Paraguay did, and we don't know how this works out against better teams.
It IS on top of turf - but there's two feet of layers of stuff between the turf and the grass. The turf is covered with a permeable base ("Permavoid") along with fabric and sand, along with underground sprinklers and space for air flow. I don't know how they do this...but some amount of artificial turf is stitched into the top layer of natural sod that was laid down. Oh, sod off! I don't understand why this is done. Maybe to ensure that the players do slip occasionally? Net, net - the players didn't slip because of the field turf two feet below. Safe to say the players are playing on a surface that's a far cry from natural grass.
Agreed. It's just hard to support this seem some days because they're always these insane people who swear we should be a top five side and start spouting this game as proof and it's just was a very good game. I am very impressied with how we play but it's a step, just a step. There is so much more to go and we will be tested so many different ways. Let's enjoy the moment, Let's take a day and then see how we play against Australia Who's going to come at us with a totally different cages Style much more counter attacking.
The US Soccer match recap ... https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/20...ogun-brace-match-recap-highlights-vs-paraguay
Yellows get wiped away after the group stage The rule says 1 yellow resets after the group stage. So if Tyler gets a yellow vs Turkey it seems he would then miss our first knockout game, no?
100% The shouting down of non-emotional reactions to the performance is a bit unseemly. This is the news & analysis sub, if people want nothing but high-fives and orgasms, they're in the wrong place.
Also the tray the pitch was on was wider than the football field. The pitch actually overhung the turf.
Agreed on all points. Anyone talking about a poor Paraguay defense, needs to explain how they only gave up 10 goals in 18 games in CONMEBOL WC qualifying. The only team that gave up less was Ecuador. Poch must have seem something to exploit and the team did it perfectly.
I don’t think I saw any “worst player” last night. The collective sense of ability and composure was among the best I’ve seen for this team.