Post-match: USA v. South Korea - September 6, 2025 - International Friendly

Here’s another “confounding” question for you. If all the Badge FC guys are at another level, than why are they struggling to beat teams made up of players that are the peers of many of the non Badge FC guys you and your buddies bash on here? Or is that level not as large as BS posters like to think it is? And an experience coach that has coached many levels see the value in testing some of these players against quality sides?

 

Here's the very basic reality:

• South Korea is very well organized on defense
• They had very little offense and if they didn't have Son, they don't score or even come close
• We had plenty of chances to score and somehow failed to do so
• We didn't dominate the game but we generated far more chances

The big difference here is two-fold: one is Son versus our stars. Son is simply better than them, and has always been so.

And the converse of that but really the same point, we made a couple of mistakes and they pounced. When they made mistakes, we failed to do so, skying shots or hitting them right at the keeper.

We need to tighten up the mistakes. Some of that is as simple as replacing Blackmon -- who, frankly, should probably get a but of leash for facing Son after two days or practice or whatever -- with Richards and presumably Berhalter with McKennie.

But there's also something there in terms of instruction and pressure that needs to be fixed.

But on the offense ... I think we just have to hope to get lucky. Playing Balogun or Pepi will help. But we always seemed to be trying not to score.

You can either stick with Poch and hope he fixes the defense and finds some tweaks on the offense. Or you go get Bruce or Schmetz and go play defensively. I don't really think there's any other real option.

 

when you sit back in a low block and defend…. When you win the ball, you have to be able to play out of and through a team that is on top of you. Japan is going to press the shit out of us and we will have players like Weah and Pulisic. We will get an idea if that could work.

 

So Berhalter is this cycles Brad Davis?

 

It’s not that wild. Adams was not great. I think Berhalter and he never coordinated well. I blame part of Adams not looking good on that. Not all. But certainly a part. Not sure what else you are lumping in there to entertain yourself.

 

Yeah, I don’t know if posters here are ignorant about next year’s cup, or they’re posting hysterically while drunk, or what, but we’re gonna be a pot 1 team in a 48 team World Cup. If we get 1 point in our group that would be a much worse failure than the 2018 qualifying campaign, which was the nadir since before the first Bush administration.

 

Hope, as the scholars say, is not a course of action.

 

It's a good thing I'm not the coach.

The theory du jour was that Berhalter was too complicated or too restrained or too bad at tactics to generate offense, but this looks very much the same.

 

I think what gets lost in the moment of arguing stuff on the internet is the fact that there's a position to be taken that probably falls somewhere between needing a full, healthy elite XI in a friendly against Korea, and starting an XI against a World Cup-level opponent with only 5-6 "real" starters, and much of the spine consisting of 3rd-choice options, even.

That situation was definitely forced on Poch against his will in the Gold Cup because of the CWC and some health situations, but while we're figuring out if Blackmon is a decent option for the final CB spot, we still don't know how we're going to get the most out of our starting or even 2nd-choice midfield options, for example. We've got Adams, McKennie and probably Tillman, and then we've got Johnny, and Tessman, and maybe Musah, and maybe Reyna, and maybe Morris, and maybe Berhalter, and maybe Luna, and maybe Roldan, and maaayyybe LDLT, and maaaaayyyyybe McGlynn (or, in theory, Busio) if you want to squint really hard, and we still don't know how we're going to deploy them to greatest effect even in a vacuum. But we're spending a lot of our dwindling time figuring out which of some of those "maybe" guys take up the final spots.

I'd rather find out of we can finally get some mileage out of Johnny or not, as starter or sub, and if Adams/McK/Tillman is really our best triangle, or if we should go with another for the sake of synergy, or if we'd prefer to go with 2 center mids and 3 backs, or if we'd rather go 352 and sacrifice the wingers, etc.

 

It's not that difficult to imagine. The Pot 4 team will bunker and secure a 0-0 (and that's if they're not one of the Euro playoff winners. Draw them and we could just lose, especially if it turns out to be a powerhouse that slipped in qualifying like Italy). And then you have Pot 3, which is around the level of Canada/Panama, and we all know how much trouble they've given us lately. The Pot 2 team will likely outclass us so there's another loss.

 

I don’t know, man! But I know some of the guys being given chances to play are not going to contribute at the World Cup.

I actually make it a point NOT to bash on players. There are some that I’ve been consistently critical on, but it’s more about work ethic than talent.
I’m critical right now because we’re coming into a huge home World Cup and we seem absolutely lost as a team. And it does feel like we’re wasting some of our call-ups where there isn’t a moment to waste.

I’m perplexed and venting. Call me out all you want, but as a passionate usmnt fan, I am disappointed and bewildered on how we got here.

 

IMO, Adams was put in a situation where he was tasked with doing nearly everything everywhere all at once. Luna was given a fairly limited role and did... ok. Berhalter was asked to do fairly a lot and didn't do well at all. He had a CB behind Adams who was in over his head marking Sonny on his debut, and a 37 year-old formerly excellent CB who is starting to lose the mobility necessary to defend at this level behind him. Adams had a poor game, but I don't put the blame for his game on him as much as I do the fact that he was just asked to do too much in defense, possession, and attack against a roughly mid-level WC opponent.

Son is a better attacker than Pulisic, but it's not night-and-day. The big difference between Son's lights-out effectiveness on his own yesterday, and Pulisic's lack of effectiveness yesterday, was the impact that Korea's defense collectively had on Pulisic, versus the (distinct lack of) impact that our first-half defense had on Son.

What would be interesting for the sake of argument would be to observe what impact our back 3 with the addition of Richards might've had on Son's game yesterday, if we'd come out like that from the opening whistle.

 

Playing three at the back worked for him in that he was able to go forward compared to the Gold Cup when he was playing a more stay at home role.

 

I mean I’m not thrilled with how the national team has looked but most of the guys people are casting about as solutions haven’t really shown much with the national team either.

Not that everything Pochettino has done is perfect but a big part is guys just aren’t performing and that’s on the players more than anything. Part of why I never felt strongly about firing Berhalter is that I don’t think the coach ultimately matters a ton in terms of how well do.

 

I think that's a viable angle, though I also think prioritizing CB depth is not exactly a crazy point of view.

For me, I think McKennie, Tillman, Musah and Johnny -- despite his struggles -- were left home for other reasons than depth chart and even cohesion. I think Pochettino just really thinks it is super important to be playing at club. Is he right? I don't know.

Once past that, I don't think anyone in the next group is clearly better at this (and the end of that above group is overrated actually). The next group all have their strengths and weaknesses. Busio, Tessman, Morris, Roldan, Berhalter, de la Torre, toss in a few more. I think for what was played yesterday, we'd have been better off starting someone stouter defensively -- Morris or Roldan, really, but they are all in the vein of fine.

If we can't win a game with 3-5 fine guys on the field, we are screwed. This was a subpar performance across the board -- the "fine" guys could have played better and the better guys could have played better.

That game was winnable. We were not doomed because Blackmon and Berhalter are destined to make mistakes (though it's Blackmon's first game) and we're not doomed because the stars can't score (they will at sometime). Everyone needs to play better.

If we can stay healthy, we won't have to. Someone like Arfsten might be the backup LB, and perhaps Berhalter sneaks on the roster as #23 or 26*, but I think what we will almost certainly see is a roster very like Qatar -- some argument on the reserves focusing to veterans but overall mostly as expected.

So yeah, I don't necessarily disagree with you. But there's so much noise after every loss that largely doesn't make sense to me.

* My bet for angry WC call up is Cristian Roldan, who looked good yesterday, is killing it for club, and actually fits a need much more than some of these other guys. Despite the angst, I hope he gets the Berhalter spot on Tuesday -- he's a much better defender than Seb.

 

Just to hit on this -- guys like Ricardo Clark, Jay Demerit, Johnathon Spector and Charlie Davies started our win against Spain in 2009; Berhalter, Pablo, Tony Sanneh, Hejduk, Eddie Lewis all started against Germany in 2002.

Plenty of teams progress without having elite talent at every position, and the US has as well.

Now, one could make a strong argument that that is why we need to sit back and simply defend and they may be right. But we've done far better than we are right now with far worse talent.

 

I realize this isn't the right thread, but it's the most active so if someone has the answer let me know. Have Chris Richards and Mark McKenzie ever started a match together? ChatGPT say Zero. Perplexity punted on the question. Gemini said it's highly unlikely.

Is this true? That seems not very smart.

edit. Found one. Last Sept. against New Zealand. the one were McKenzie cleared it off the guy for a goal at the end. Don't remember much about that game, but that one was coached by Varas.

 

I’d totally agree with you and I want it to be true BUT well into the gold cup we still had Berhalter and Freeman arguing over who should press an outside mid and Luna, Arfsen, and LDT confused on the left. I would think those issues would have been cleared up on a tournament team.

 

So I think a good part of it is definitely the players. We’re just not as good as we think we are and don’t have the depth when guys are missing or hurt. So we look much worse when we don’t have the full complement of top guys.

In terms of Pochettino not that everything is perfect, but I think there are two main things going on. The first is just a major culture clash in terms of how he thinks about the game, what he’s used to, etc. This is always one of downsides of a foreign coach. The other is the transition from coaching club soccer to coaching internationally and maybe not everything translating the way it would if he were with the players day to day.

More generally it’s clear he had almost no familiarity with the player pool before he took the job and he’s still figuring that part out. And at the same time he’s clearly not getting what he wants from some of our mid tier guys.

I’d also say these jobs are unique. I don’t think Jessie Marsch is a better coach than Pochettino for instance. But I feel like he’d probably get more out of this US team specifically for a variety of reasons. More generally I think that’s why the most successful international coaches seem to be ones coaching their own country.

But I’d say overall that I’m very much not optimistic about the World Cup next year.

 

Please don't pretend that the match did not change when Son went off at 63 with Korea comfortably up 2-0.

Richards, Freeman, Roldan, and Balogun came on just as Son was going off. It was a different game from that point forward.

 

Did the US really have plenty of chances? I remember some good approaches but something always fell apart before it became a real chance.

 

Ok. I misunderstood your statement then. I thought you were blaming “the quality of Berhalter “ as the driving factor of his poor performance. I think this is an organizational issue I put on the coaching staff.

 

Except Brad Davis was one of the top assist men in MLS over a 5 year period from around 2009 IIRC. This is Berhalter's first good year in MLS.

 

I actually share many of your concerns. Let’s hope the boys come together and put on a good performance against Japan