Or as the initimable Ray Hudson once said, "possession without penetration is just masturbation, and right now, we're playing with ourselves"
One of the most infuriating points of the game for me was when we had a free kick about 40 yards out (I think right before half). Instead of playing the ball into the box, Busio played a square ball and it ended up having to be played back to our keeper or something. That’s not a play someone with confidence plays.
Yeah that's an interesting one. For Concacaf the reason's easy--more money and relevance. For smaller nations, more officially sanctioned opportunities to play means more experience and better player development. For fans like me who just love to see the team play, more games is just more of a great thing. Competitively it's hard to explain. One tournament to determine the champion of the region should be enough. Then again, all leagues have cups alongside league play for two chances to win hardware, and those aren't regarded as redundant. I wonder if UEFA is having the same questions asked about whether the UNL renders the Euro tournament irrelevant. I didn't get the sense that it did, but then the appetite for games among European nations is generally much higher so perhaps that's no so much of a puzzle.
That was a set play I'm pretty sure. I agree it was awful, but that wasn't a Busio decision. He stood over the ball for a while, and then that play happened. A player with no confidence doesn't stand over the ball ready to whip one in and then decide to play square.
I suspect that as a CB in a back four, his lack of athleticism is getting exposed, and that there's a ceiling as to how good he can be in that role. I don't say that he's bad, but that I think in that role we have a number of better options. I still consider him strongly for a 23-man roster because he can back up the 6 and the CB... and if we decide to play a back 3 situationally (I'm not wild about it but Berhalter might) then he fits right in as the middle back. But in almost every situation he would be the last CB option at my disposal in a back 4.
They ran out of gas because it was their fifth game in a tournament where they barely rotated. They had nine players start all five of their games; they used the same lineup in every game except the one against Grenada, and only made two changes for that game. They also didn't get a lot of minutes from subs, because of lack of depth. That started to show in the quarterfinal against El Salvador, and was even worse on Thursday night. Qatar's World Cup objective is probably just to reach the knockout rounds, and anything beyond that is gravy. The team cohesion they get from a very consistent starting lineup probably gives them their best chance to do that, even if it means running their starters into the ground by the end of the group stage.
Indeed. In the knockout rounds, even with favorable refereeing, I just can't see this team making a run. There's no depth at all.
If that was a scripted play then fine ( though it was a failure, not on Busio’s end), but it looked to me like he decided he didn’t think he had a spot to play it into and just laid off that responsibility to Moore(?).
There is plenty of legit skepticism to be had about Berhalter's roster selection and his approach to tactics / system / whatever-you-want-to-call-it. But I hope skeptics would be willing to admit that, at least in tournament settings, his teams play hard for him. And by USMNT standards (don't throw Pep at me) they look like they know what they are trying to do (even if you don't agree with it).
I for one have already said that Berhalter has the squad very focused and very motivated. To see subs come on and fly all over the field as if the opponent insulted their mother and grandmother is what you want at the international level. Berhalter himself came out and complained about the lack of aggressive, effective attacking intent after the Haiti match and has continued that same theme after the last 2 matches. The squad is not effectively "using the ball to unbalance the opponent". The manager can clearly see that and I believe most knowledgeable fans can clearly also see that.
I think all of us skeptics admitted that after the Mexico match. I've said that's the best/most important thing he has going for him. The issue we still have is that the performances remain underwhelming, even with the best talent we've ever had, both in this tournament and Nations League. We simply shouldn't need to be winning games at this point because we're trying harder. We should win matches because we have better players, more talent, that is managed and set up in a way that plays inferior teams off the field. Instead, we get an early goal and hold on, or get outplayed and then grab a late winner. As so many here say, this is a website for analysis, and I'm not cool with those who just say "we literally won every game in this tournament", even though we can hardly score more than one goal, and have been largely outplayed. I've said it thousands of times, it's about overall team performance. It was against Haiti, it was against Qatar, and it will be tonight. Hell, I don't even care about a win tonight, as I'm not even remotely expecting one. But if the team can just play Mexico straight up (much like Canada did in the semi), that would say a lot. I have big doubts they can, as they got run off the field against Qatar, but the point remains the same. It's about stringing together good performances, where we can see that the team is consistently looking equal or better than the collective talent suggests. The next time I see that with the US under Gregg will be the first.