True, you’d rather have Musah be that deep. But there are times where I just wonder if we need Adams or Johnny there earlier in the match and then change after the hour.
Berhalter still doesn’t have a very good record against the top teams, if you take out Mexico and Brazil. /s Lots of great effort across-the-board tonight; great game for building team confidence. Haven’t seen too many people shout out Reyna for his defensive efforts. He was back a number of times helping stop the attack at the box. Many others such as Weah also did great on help defense, but Reyna was way above his average defensive contribution, which was fantastic to see.
I literally told my brother at that moment in the second half: if they score on this possession I’ll never complain about coaching tactics for this team again.
Very good to see the intensity for the game and the discipline on defense. Kept it compact and attacked with focus when possible. An all around team effort that they should be proud of.
It was a fun game. I liked our bounce back ness. And it's only our second result ever against Brazil. So that's a big positive on the long v arc scale.
reyna was praised numerous times in the game thread. As for taking this nice result too seriously: it's a friendly, just like the last one. Getting a point in two games with a -4GD at home against Brazil and Colombia is OK, but we gotta do better if we want to progress as a soccer nation.
Part of why you generally often can’t take too much from friendlies and I think that’s mostly true here too but just good to see the team respond and have a bounce back performance.
I mean hopefully we pull a repeat of the 2009 Confed Cup where we started poorly but had one of the best wins we’ve ever had as a program.
Fun, open game against one of the most famous national teams in soccer. So if the course the thread is full of Debi Downers
Yeah. As a former keeper, I think his time at Arsenal scrambled his brain. He was being instructed day after day to maintain possession at all costs. While his foot skills have significantly improved, he’s never going to be that kind of keeper. Not being able to do that and the ensuing howlers have shattered his confidence. If he can relearn to just make the safe play - maintain possession when certain, otherwise boot it long, I think he’s still capable of being a very good keeper. One with outstanding shot blocking and mediocre foot skills. If he tries to be something else he will fail. Hopefully the positives (several great saves) and the negative (the goal and a few other nervy moments) are a great lesson for him today. Overall he was a positive today and can be even better if he plays within his limitations.
I hope so. If I'll give some praise to Gregg it's that he's used the friendlys well. Much better than Jurgen and others. Getting our asses beat by Colombia but then rallying to match Brazil in the run of play and scoreline is a useful sharpening prior to the Copa.
I don’t usually take much from friendlies, whether the result is good or bad but mostly it’s just good they didn’t came with much more intensity and it showed from the start.
Really fun game. Lots to digest. My immediate takeaway from this thread is surprise at folks struggling to name the goal scorer from the '98 win.
He should have buried it but then again MLB hitters should crush a lot of hanging breaking balls. Shit's hard at that pace. Pulisic is the least of our problems really.
such an interesting match/performance. i said beforehand i hoped to see a lot of rotation/minutes distributed (and stand by that) but obviously gregg prioritized either rehabbing the colombia mess or he was just going to keep a narrow focus regardless, but credit where its due. i still worry about how willing hes going to be to use our depth next week, but after colombia im just glad we got our bearings back. the biggest thing i want to credit berhalter for is going with scally (both matches), letting him make his case at the very least. we dont know how close gregg actually was to going in a more extreme direction (and thats still an option, though youre more than a little dumb if you still think its necessary), but i know at least 83% of you guys can absolutely suck it. on that note (and i mentioned this in the pbp) can people stop wringing their hands over gios willingness and/or ability to defend now? i thought he had a massive game all over the pitch. we were fortunate in the first half brazil put their first 3 shots directly into turners stomach, but he had a play in the second half- i want to say @60th minute- a simple but decisive snatch on a ball across the box where he looked like a real gk again. out of nowhere. and after that he played pretty well. im still on high alert, but that was a huge relief. i thought richards was good, ream didnt hurt us (brazil didnt capitilize) and jedi was hella good... i want to say he was more measured getting forward, but its really just that we were crazy inbalanced vs colombia. and no, that wasnt because scally lost possession every time he went forward (though he did), we just neglected that side and tried to force everything through ream/jedi, and were drastically inbalanced left-to-right. all the missed passes in/out of the back just ruined our shape. we completely turned both of those around- we attacked down both sides and kept our shape all night. anyways, to finish on jedi specifically- not handing out another goal on a platter was priority 1, but he pocketed raphina. both fbs were really good defensively, maybe 1 or 2 balls let though cleanly that we dealt with well enough and i thought both were about their good average offensively. didnt like musahs positioning. i dont like quibbling over goals but i look at him first, second and third on the only one we gave up. he did some ok things, but covering the backline/keeping that area above the box clear werent them. reyna made more defensive plays. wes had a pretty poor night for 80 minutes but made a couple of big plays late. johnny was really good when he came on, though i still want him more anchored to the backline. thats not at all criticizing his play/passing going forward- i just dont want him going forward all that much. well, when adams isnt out there with him, that is. puli is pretty dialed in overall and it aint his fault brazil set up to let him take a pk from the top of the box. i thought weah was really good, i just want to say again- to no one in particular- we should pull him at 70 minutes, almost without fail. i mean, i get this match in particular (not gonna lie, i dont care how much of this hes been planning for months or if it only happened because of colombia- i half expected gregg to run every single player as long as the result held/90 minutes, whichever came first )... the one thing we did see tonight we usually dont (im not sure we have ever)- i liked that we more intentionally went at brazil early, most notably taking 3 "speculative" shots in the first 15 minutes. we werent helter skelter or anything, but we didnt just slowly advance and then pass, pass, pass, reset. pass, pass, pass... that was the biggest departure for us from our "norm", and something id like to see more- particularly against boliva and panama. i thought pepi did some noticeably good things in that same 15 minutes or so, and continued doing less noticeably good things most of his night. i just dont get why berhalter rates him behind balo- he does so much of the shit gregg loves. he presses and tracks back better than anyone else we have and is still a presence actually in the box. we didnt get the ball to him in those dangerous positions (far too familiar), but starting him and bringing on balo late, when a game is more open- even if very infrequently- just makes so much more sense than the other way around. we really shouldnt this thrilled with a draw in a friendly (these dummies on tv talking about "historic" result), except its entirely that we really needed after the last one. i havent read anything here yet but im sure its going to insufferable, and friendlies are going to matter quite a lot all of a sudden. i think theres like a 90% chance someone has already posted the words "signature draw". but whatever. it was absolutely needed imo and we got it. ill fight with yall tomorrow. not sure if my outlook for the copa has changed at all (big picture), but that, too, will keep. the last thing ill say is where the hell is miles? its weird we didnt see him at all. was he kidnapped? secret injury? please advise...
I don’t even think he’s mediocre with the ball at his feet. He’s okay. He’s just not outstanding. And it’s fine if a club like Arsenal has those expectations, but too many managers insist on playing that way when they don’t have the talent for it.
Reyna gave great effort, but I don’t think he deserves more praise just because he’s usually lazy. Most on here are praising the team, because they all put in great effort.