Post-match: USA v Paraguay friendly 11/15 (R)

I agree with you on all counts, but everyone seems to have decided it’s 3ATB and totally new and different.

It looks a lot to me like the Tottenham 4231, with a Dier like CB/MF hybrid role and a Rose or Walker playing like a winger.

call it what you will, it’s coming together nicely.

 

I think Wes is in there as well.

 

I think it's important to note that the come-from-behind draw against Ecuador last window and today's win against Paraguay are both very good results.

Ecuador kept 13 clean sheets in CONMEBOL qualifying and only conceded 5 goals in 18 matches. Paraguay kept 10 clean sheets and only conceded 10 goals in 18 matches.

Both are very good defensive teams.

 

Really solid team performance from a lot of USA players that had not had a tremendous amount of playing time together. Which as an old coach, this can be credited to Head Coach Poch for thinking that this FIFA break is when he can take a look at a unit that without having star lock starters, these guys tonight really showed what a USA team can be like if they just stay compact on defense and in the attack, share the ball like the rock is a hot potato. Good on him and good on the boys tonight!

This is a seriously funny take! HAHA!!!

 

Arfsten isn't a FB either.

It is 3421. Poch can say whatever he wants. I think what he means is Scally isn't playing like a traditional CB (overlapping runs).

But my club team plays 3421 and I see it every week. This is exactly what it looks like.

 

someone commented on reyna/dest having great chemistry tonight- which is understandable in the sense that they havent played together in so long- but i disagree with that reasoning because ultimately when gio is pushed wide to any degree they want to get to the same spaces too often. what their play showed very clearly tonight was that the two of them are among our elite in speed of thought and play. we saw that less and less as reyna interchanged with ba or dropped deeper.

off the top of my head id say that group consists of reyna, dest, weah, puli and wes (with asterisks for dests occasional lapses in positional discipline when used in a 4 man line and general stubborness in what he wants to do, and for wes' cavalier style in general).

which brings me to what brought you to tesserman- his speed of thought is lacking. its not that doesnt have decent ideas, or see openings at times but thats when we see him hitting a defender in the shins a beat too late. and its not a requirement to be a top player for us- adams isnt even at a beckerman level in terms of instinctive, one touch connecting passes. but hes got better range/accuracy than he gets credit for when he has that extra second or two on the ball.

but back to tesserman, i think thats what you (and i, and everyone) sees at times. i think hes got pretty top notch (again, relatively) ability to play balls that set him apart- but that margin closes pretty quickly if you need extra time/space or a slower tempo in general.

 

I am not as down on Scally as most. I thought he was fine. The game was more open when Freeman was in, but he has more juice. He is more athletic and better at RWB. RCB is closer, but the recovery speed helps.

 

It's almost like semantics at this point doesn’t it? Arfsten plays like a wingback whether he's "officially" a fullback or a wingback. And Scally was a lot more stay at home.

 

After a really, really rough start, Poch has had us trending in the right direction the last few windows. Loved the grit the team played with today. Things are looking way better than they were about 6 months ago.

Gio had a really good game, even for Gio, but anybody that has been paying attention knows what he brings to the table. What has me pumped up is that he looked really active. Went 70 and looked like he belonged physically. This window we have almost ALWAYS looked better as a team with him on the field. He seems too be one of those guys that just shines when playing for country. Dude calms things down for us. Even Pulisic said in his interview with Kate Abdo, that he makes him feel more comfortable when he is on the field. I'm to the point now, where I don't give a crap what he is doing for club. I don't care if he looks like he is hobbling around on a walker when he is on the field in Germany. As long as he is healthy and can run reasonably well like today, he has a spot on my roster.

I've been a bit down on Luna lately, but I thought he was a spark when he came in today.

Not worried about the Pepi's miss in the slightest. It happens, and he put himself in position to score, like he always does. Balo is my number 1, but we are going to need Pepi.

Loved Dest in this setup. It suits him perfectly. He didn't even have a particularly good day in my opinion, was a touch off. He is going to be a huge part of any success we have. Loved him and Gio together.

Don't think Scally did himself any favors today.

 

Yeah, I think he’s missed the chance with this showing. Almiron abused him all match and he didn’t actually do anything in possession. I appreciated the experiment but Scally needs to prove mo

Felt like Tanner grew into the game and was up to the physicality and pace of play in a way I wasn’t sure he had in him.
Freese was bad on the goal, he was glued to the goal line and flat footed, have to claim that cross. And he didn’t do anything else positive in the match.

 

Ream was the only one with no mistakes on that goal. Scally was horrible, Miles did fall asleep, and Freese backed up instead of moving forward (not sure it would help though, but still a mistake).

 

I keep seeing in the press how the fight marred an otherwise impressive win… for me, it enhanced it.

 

I think the issue is just that we have one setup when we're in possession and another when we're on defense, and coaches tend to label the formation based on our defensive setup, but especially in a game like this where we had so much of the ball, the formation in possession feels more representative.

 

To be fair I didn't play close attention to Scally all game, but there was a sequence in the 2nd half where he had 2 turnovers in a row, and then shortly after, misplayed a simple pass and then kicked it out when he tried to recover. It was bad. Embarrassingly bad.

 

Thoughts:

• It's always important to put games into context. The context here is that Paraguay is a good defensive team with solid talent and is a WC team. They didn't have their best team, but probably had more than us.
• The other context is that the ref basically allowed wrestling for much of the game. That made this messier than it would otherwise have been. We have to win in those situations, but it always favors the less talented team.
• Tactically, this was super interesting. Poch will call it a 4231; you could call it a 343 with a hyper aggressive RB -- I don't know that we really need to know or care about the answer given that it probably comes down to where Arfsten played in a set defense ... and when the hell did we see that? I don't remember Paraguay ever really attacking with possession. Maybe someone else remembers.
• After my back and forth with @sXeWesley , I am fairly convinced Poch's attack plan was to run overloads on the right side. We crashed Scally forward; we crashed Tessman forward. Poch loves these kind of aggressive overloads -- though it's kind of fascinating he did it on the side with Almiron -- maybe the thought was that while they could counter against it and did ... we'd push him back.
• It didn't really work as planned. A lot of possession, not a ton of xG. I think it could work someday, but my feel for why it didn't work was largely because both Scally and Tessman were too aggressive and lacked feel for timing with their teammates. Scally made his runs basically at the start of every possession (whether by direction or his own choice) and it pulled his defender into Dest's space while he ended up offside and not helpful.
• Same somewhat happened with Tessman. The CM role coming up there is all about timing -- you need to pop into space when your teammates create it for finishing, or make clean runs through the pop. Tessman hovered a lot and early at the top of the box ... a good spot, but he got static and was easy to defend. In the end, Reyna ended up dropping back a lot to cover for him and Scally (Almiron, remember) and that's not good.
• I don't think Tessman played each individual play on the ball poorly at all; the opposite. But i don't think he was very effective this game because of this -- a lot of camping, not enough movement, not the right timing. People hated Lletget, but he has a lot of US goals simply by understand when to make his run. Tessman didn't do that today. I don't think it's necessarily a long term issue.
• Come the second half, we largely solved this with holding Scally back a lot more. Tessman still played a bit too high for my liking, but it opened up a lot more space for everyone else. It's not a surprise we could get the ball more to Balo in the second half -- there were 1-2 less defenders in the area.
• For all tactical machinations, our two goals came off a corner scrum where a clearance / blocked shot went direct to Roldan, who made the simply pass to Arfsten, who shook his defender and made a great cross to a great header against a confused defense ... and a turnover where Roldan harassed a Paraguayan into passing directly to Balo, who laid it off for Reyna in a bit of their both quick reactions. Then we got lucky -- Reyna's pass was for Roldan and got blocked ... to Balo.
• I think people are starting to come around on Arfsten. Everything about that first goal was perfect and I don't think he's getting enough praise for it. He absolutely creates a large amount of separation with his stepover and there's no hesitation, he hits the ball perfectly to Reyna. It's simple, and much harder to do than people give credit. I thought he played very well overall, but that's the level of execution required for scoring most of the time, and he has it.
• Good game for Reyna -- he still has his vision and touch and the header is a nice add -- but I will say that he was not tested defensively. This is not a "don't call him in" or "don't play him" but Paraguay provided very little pressure there. A good sign we can cover, perhaps. But I'm thinking right now he's a great sub behind Tillman and Pulisic. Feel free to argue.
• The criticism of Roldan is incorrect to me. He played a very defensive role and played it well. He also was involved in both goals, and while his MLS assist was nothing special, it was the smart move and very quick. There are guys who would have hesitated. Larger picture, we couldn't have him be more offensive -- with Scally, Arfsten and Tessman all coming forward, who's played defense? And it's Cristian Roldan, so yes, let him play defense. It's like criticizing Tyler's lack of assists or something.
• I don't think Scally played poorly overall in the sense of the vast majority of the time he was fine. But the goal is largely on him, IMO, and a bad mistake. And the problem with defenders is that consistency is vital. I hope he gets more time -- I think he's a fine player but we need to stop pretending that playing in the Bundesliga means you don't make defensive errors.
• Miles and Freese both played a role in the goal as well, and I do think the staff needs to have a conversation in particular with Freese about aggression levels. Guzan feels right here -- it's a breakaway, your defense has ********ed up, you need to be forward more and going for the cross especially given the situation. To go far in the WC, you often need a keeper who stops a few goals he shouldn't. Right now, Freese is not that guy at all for the US.
• The only person I thought was poor en masse today was Brenden. He's a far better off ball player so this role isn't his best ... but man if his decision making didn't exacerbate it. Was he too eager to impress? Was this direction from Poch. Give the ball to Max and make a run -- that's your game. Dribbling into four guys is not anyone's game, but it's definitely not yours.
• I think people are also beginning to see how Freeman gets into open spaces and distorts the defense in ways that Scally didn't ... look, I know all the sprint numbers but this is like the homeless person's version of the Sargent - Balo debate ... for whatever reason, one guy gets past guys and one guy doesn't despite what the speeds say. Obviously Balo >>> Sargent in that respect and Freeman > Scally and so on, but still ... Maybe it's quickness, maybe it's timing. We saw a lot today it's not just how fast you run but when you do.
• Good win. I bet the xG was closer to 1-0 or 1-1 than 2-1 and so the offense needs more bite and the defense needs to not make the 1-2 errors a game they are -- or someone needs to bail us out, which isn't happening so much. But we were the better team, we pounded away, we executed and won.

 

Yeah, that one pass he put directly to the defender in front of him could have been a disaster as well.

 

No, he lost his balance during the scuffle.

He could, but better not to.

 

Not sure that if everyone is healthy, Wes would be ahead of either CP, Tillman or Gio. He would be ahead of everyone but Adams though. Considering his versatility and our players fragility he might pop up anywhere in the line up. A pure joker.

 

There were other US players that looked like they were under a lot of pressure IMO. The beauty of Gio's game is that he looks like he isn't under as much pressure. He knows how to set his body angles, and knows where he is going with the ball before he gets it. It makes a huge difference. His speed of thought is better than most in the pool.

I've watched a ton of Gio and I know he has his weaknesses, but I thought that today he was really solid.

 

Nobody is more athletic than Freeman, his combination of speed and strength is pretty unique even by world standards. I'm with the most: Scally just a poor player.

 

Scally played RCB and did well. The team switch to a back four when Freeman came on to play RB. Freeman was an upgrade over Dest.

 

This.

My seats were on the 6. It was really really bad.

 

Tessman playing on a mid November evening wasn’t getting the time he needs.

But on a June afternoon in Texas or Florida, he might.

It’s those small, small, factors where a manager can win or lose you a match. If that kind of situation comes up, do you go with Tessman or not?

 

That's fair. I was thinking on the goal. Still, it was a bad sequence, but only one bad sequence, if that makes sense?

 

i think we have a really interesting mix of "cm"s and "am"s in wes, malik and gio. imo wes' best fit is as a cm (in this setup, which, as you said, is obviously a 3421)- but a big component of that is interchanging/pushing ahead of tillman or reyna*.

malik showed (against an admittedly low level of comp) his ability to pressure, chase and tackle (which isnt a common combination) as a true 8/cm, while gio dropping deeper amplifies wes' attacking ability in being one of the very few guys who can read, anticipate and deliver the right balls for those runs mckennie makes from deep.

*the obvious omission to that is puli, which would ironically go a long way towards "unlocking" him as well- having options to play to, and with, that he trusts and are (close enough to) his level that he wouldnt feel the need to constantly take too much responsibility for creating everything, which only lessens his impact, too often creating nothing.

but thats all irrelevant because a) adams is inarguably necessary to cover any backline we will put out, and b) i simply dont believe poch will take gio to the world cup. puli is the only player we have that doesnt have to play along with his bullshit purity test. and even if that werent the case, we cant trust reyna to be able to (physically) contribute over three weeks...

...he says, as if puli, adams and mckennie are the most reliable of workhorses

and thats just the hand we have to play ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. no one else can do what tyler can, and in this setup (as opposed to playing a lone 6, by far his best role) even he is a substantial hitch to the ball (and man) movement you need in the middle on the pitch. adding any second non-reyna option to that mix gives us a pretty hard ceiling imo.

however we rate those alternatives, or pretend a go get em attitude somehow negates quality i dont see a lot of upside.