my cognitive dissonance is his problem before was he would score on bad defenses and i'm asking myself has that really changed here. to be fair, the diss last time was no knockout goals. he's past that. and the martinique goal was nice and tidy. and the haiti assist was creative, and in a way i haven't seen much of on this team lately. i guess one test of this will be mexico. i still feel like dike playing this way was predictable, zardes may be perseverating, and whether this kicks the ball downfield very far if the only change from fall 2019 to now ends up pefok. to be fair, part of quali will be the sort of teams we've already played and beat. for some of whom zardes might suffice. but part of this exercise -- the more important part to me -- is developing a set of people for mexico away, costa rica away, world cup play. particularly considering i am not sure sargent can hack those games either. where if any of them have to play i think they are capable. is that progressing or did i just rehabilitate wondolowski so i can sub him into belgium and watch him miss a sitter? this is the danger of going back to comfort if the first experiment fails. personally i'm like next experiment and not back to the guy who couldn't beat mexico and canada. but, if you wanna see, well, mexico it is. score me the goal you couldn't last time. if that doesn't change we've not solved the real problem.
This was the #41 ranked team (as per Elo, FIFA ratings are trash) vs. the B/C team of the #17 ranked team, so two teams around #40. You couldn't expect fireworks, although the game was fun. But several mistakes were made, many chances were wasted, and far too many defensive errors were forgiven. Why? Because it was two teams around the #40 mark playing. Think Russia vs. Finland or Senegal vs. Morocco. Fun to watch, and with plenty of close calls, but not a contest of clinical sides. The problem now is that Mexico is going to expose the weaknesses of this team. Because they've done well so far, but let's not forget they're the B/C team and prone to error. Unlike Canada, Mexico has the experience to sniff those weaknesses and take advantage of inexperience. I doubt it, but there's a chance we lose hard, if they score first early.
if the suggestion is GB uses possession to tire the opponent out, that's malarkey. qatar showed you how that works. they were content to let us pass the ball around the back and didn't chase, just stayed central and hawked passing lanes. what did make qatar work was a little tempo. to me it was a tale of two halves and particularly when the subs came in. much better tempo. not italian tempo, but moving towards the point where by the time i'm reacting to pass 1, pass 2 is already underway, where they do start chasing and getting tired. but if our idea of possession is passing around the back, slowly, no skip-balls across, maybe occasionally a ball to the 6 who passes back, have at it. also, if your 8s, 6s, and 9s just kind of stand around, and vaguely try and shift into space for passes, and don't actually make runs i have to chase, same thing, not scary. i will say that everyone standing around in slot not showing much leaves them in defensive position when we lose the ball.
You are off on your Crew take. Or at least part of it. Neither Meram nor Santos are "chalk on the boots" wingers. Meram was most dangerous playing on the left and darting in for a "meathook" shot with his right. He was inverted most of the time. Finlay was the wide guy on the right. As for Santos, he is a weird player to link with Berhalter. They only had 1 full season together, 2018. Pedro came in in August of 2017. He often plays inverted and cuts in frequently, as his right foot is not especially strong. His best year was 2019 when he played centrally for the injured Higuain, and that was under Porter. Who tends to favor one speedy winger (Diaz, Etienne) paired with a guy who likes to drift inside (Santos). Pedro, even when on the left, tends to come central and let Valenzuela overlap or Zelarayan drift wide. If he is staying wide, it usually means Valenzuela is hurt and his replacement stays at home more, or Santos is actually playing LB. But Berhalter has always been adaptive. All this talk of "the system" and Berhalter being married to it was BS BS from day one, put forth by people who watched little to none of Berhalter's Crew, or if they did, could not comprehend what they were looking at. Gregg has always adapted, well, after year 1 anyway, where he did not & got annihilated by NE in the playoffs. Lesson learned. It might not happen at the speed some would like, but it does happen. He'd often have Afful tuck inside and act as another midfielder instead of overlapping, to much success. Where do you think the idea with Adams came from? Not left field. I tried to tell people from jump he is more pragmatic than dogmatic, but it fell in mostly deaf ears. Sure, he has a "system" that he would prefer to use. A way he wants to play. And types of players he likes to use in it. And you want to lay that down as a baseline when guys enter the program. In fact, USSF has decided to teach a baseline syatem at all levels. His guys were useful in that regard. But he is not going to be married to it. Or them. If a better player emerges, he'll replace someone. Even if it means changing the system. You do not see Trapp or Bradley or Yueill out there much, do you? Are we in a 4231? He gave Dike his shot. And will again. No manager worth his salt is gonna throw guys on the trash heap as fast as the reactionary dipsh!ts on this board. Guys get nervous. Make mistakes. Or the other team can exploit them in some way. Does not mean that guy cannot improve, settle down, or help in other situations if their weaknesses can be gameplanned. It takes a lot more than 23 to qualify. Sorry for length, and certainly not all directed at you.
this is very interesting. can you point to any instructional videos or material breaking this “committing a defender” idea down
I"m not sure if the highlighted part is aimed at me but it probably is. I was responding to what you said about needing to explain Qatar's "domination." I felt like they were dangerous to us on the counter and part of that was us giving away possession at times and places that let them get good counterattacking runs. As the match went on we stopped yielding so many of and as dangerous as those counterattacks. You don't like the manager or the system the team usually plays, I get it, but I don't think my description is somehow inferior as a discussion of what happened. There's no question the attack for this team has not been potent (and yet, we battled for a win to reach the final).
You can count on Zardes being much more active than Dike. You need to set up Zardes for him to be effective, he is not one to make his play and score.
As if only having one arm to work with and being in serious pain doesn't impact your ability to do a myriad of things like post-up effectively. And 4 goals (2 v. Luton, 1-QPR, 1-Boro) of his 9 (so almost half!) came against top half C'Ship clubs. But never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
Apparently there are enough poutine places in Salt Lake City for Yelp to have a Top 10 list...who knew?
The weird thing about this Mexico team is that they are not providing Funes Mori with the kind of service he needs and they really aren’t scoring the goals they should be. They shouldn’t have been that reliant on Lozano. I think that this is a 1-0, 2-1, or 2-0 game for whoever wins.
Has Horvath outplayed Steffen? I think he did. He was excellent against the Swiss. Steffen had a major blunder against Honduras and Sargent saved his bacon. I believe Horvath hasd a better midrange passing game than Steffen. Turner is as good of a shot-stopper as the other two, he is probably the weakest passer of the 3 but I need more data.
Why is everyone saying things like "prepare to get killed by Mexico." On paper they're better, but what have they shown in this tournament?
They’ll just cheat and get a few more Brazilians to become QATAR citizens. They've been warned by FIFA, for what that is worth.
My understanding from the original poster that made that claim was he scored when those teams were below the bottom half of the standing NOT where they ended up at the end of the season. I never verified because frankly, I don't have the time to do it. If you have, thanks for the correction.
There is nothing misleading about Pep's quote. It is short, to the point, and something you hear from him all the time. "the objective is not to move the ball it is to move the opponent". You can move (unbalance) the opponent with quick, short attacking pass combinations, or by hard dribble attacks that forces them to move and commit. We have been poor with the former and almost non-existent, (with the exception of Hoppe), with the latter.
i hear what youre saaying. i really do. but the standard is europe and south america for being "good" none of this concacf stuff matters as far as answering the question of what level this team a and b are really at. i think the style that the team is using is aesthetically boring (even against weak teams) ...its like watching paint dry and furthermore I dont think it will actually work to produce results against the top 20...like it does vs the rest. barely.
mexico is not 9. so which is it? i just used it cuz its basically close and was the first one i found on google. besides, gregg is o wins 1 tie and 2 losses in regualtion vs mexico...if you include extratime he is 3 goals for 6 against. if thats good enough for you...i guess thats where we will never agree. the best euor team he has beaten is north ireland's c team and the best south american team he has beaten is ecuador....a team the us has always doen well against. anointing time has not come yet, imo. praising what theyve done so far is like an NFL or NBA team getting props for pre-season.
We may well lose but Berhalter has the boys focused and motivated. If we lose it won't be without a knife fight in a phone booth and as long as we have Head-Turner turning heads, Acosta continuing to channel his JJ-lite persona, and Hoppe showing his Deuce-face and Deuce-moves we have a good chance to come out on top.
We obviously aren’t very quick with the ball in many spots. I was kind of frustrated with how slowly the CB’s moved things no matter the pass. But, Pep has a different raw material to work with. Everybody wants to move it quicker, unbalance, bypass a defender.