The whole argument for Turner had been his shot stopping and that seems to have abandoned him. Which is probably not a huge surprise considering how little he’s played at the club level the last couple years.
Feel like the problem is he played this year and was horrible for Forest. Just kind of an MLS+ goalie I guess. There’s no one really obviously better than him but we used to have EPL star goalies.
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One thing re: Gregg and this player group, I wonder if some of the weirdness among the players is a function of just how familiar he is to them.
Not that this group is so deep that a manager really has a lot of leverage with guys who are used to being in the XI, but I could see things simply being healthier bc the next guy isn’t somebody they’re used to.
Hopefully they can hit the transfer portal before the World Cup
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We just got Balogun from the portal
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USMNT, the original portal merchants.
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Some context on this chart.
No Mexico (almost):
The whole idea of “doing something” against great teams has kind of always been aspirational 
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That Spain win in the Confed cup is still probably the best win in the last 30 years easy. Good memories on that list, Jozy dropping a hat trick on the Netherlands away. We were cooking for awhile there. While Klinssy and Bob’s charts aren’t amazing, I don’t think they were dealing with an overall talent pool that is apples and oranges comparable and they were still drawing better results. If all the lists just went to 20th ELO where the first two top off at, Gregg would have zero wins.
This “generation” was supposed to be the payoff finally with getting guys out of the MLS and professionally abroad from Jurgen’s plan. I think we are 14th in the World currently ranked with national team players minutes in Europe this past season. Whether that ends up paying off or not against top teams is still debatable to me, but not in this current system.
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Maybe mls wasn’t the boogeyman it was thought to be. The team is still quite young, no?
Correct. Very young by national team standards.
The Nations League has also killed the ability o get a lot of good friendlies which makes it tough.
I don’t envy a national team coach hire where your entire legacy is judged as awesome of failure based on getting out of the WC pool and winning a quarter final game. That’s it. We’ve vanquished Mexico and Concacaf (even if Mexico helped by imploding I do think this team gets some credit).
Canada is getting praise and has one goal in three games. England hasn’t won a major tournament in forever. But if you can’t make the semis in Copa and WC you aren’t going to last in the USMNT.
Some NT coaches have a huge responsibility with roster, but the US isn’t deep enough for that to be as critical. I think it really hurt having Weah and Dest out, Adams still limited (though he was solid last night), Aaronson limited, and then lose Balogin. And yet despite that, we essentially drew against #14 Uruguay with a competent ref/VAR.
Turner has struggled lately at least with distribution, but I think they need a true scoring 9 more than a GK. Maybe Balogin will become that, but there’s no pure scorer on the team that the opponent is focused on. I didn’t watch Turner in the EPL to see how he earned his demotion. I do worry sometimes with GK on bad teams because I think that affects them. He needs to play though. GK sitting on the bench are worse than GK on bad teams.
Don’t think anyone is saying making the semis is realistic or is the goal. If they are it’s a bad take.
Getting out of a the group was a very realistic target. Winning a knockout game was a reasonable stretch target.
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Signaling to the team that Bolivia equalized during the game is the biggest loser mentally ever. That irked me to no end.
Go be a sneakerhead somewhere else, Gregggg
When we needed a win and Uruguay needed a draw.
To me it’s not that Gregg did something horribly wrong in the Copa. It’s just that he’s clearly run his course and there’s no real reason not to make a change ahead of a huge tournament.
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this feels extremely like one of those things that depends entirely on your opinion of the coach. if you’re happy with how it’s going, it’s a sign of how connected he is to his players, how engaged he is, how he
motivates them and perfectly understands which buttons to push, etc. if you’re not, it’s a sign that he has no idea what he’s doing.
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Pretty strongly disagree with this. The intent from the USMNT had to be to try to win the game.
We were losing any grip on the game, there was 30minutes left to play.
There’s no tactical reason to be telling players the score there.
If it’s 0-0 with 5 minutes left and the other game went final? Sure.
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I can’t find it on Twitter but he said the day before about the other game “not to focus on it, control what you can control…” etc.
A day later he’s signaling the score in the middle of the game. Pathetic.
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i doubt he thinks there was a tactical reason. it just seems like feelingsball to me! he tried something to motivate them (or something, who knows what his goal was) and it didn’t work, or it at least has the outward appearance of not working. that’s the game if you’re a coach. doesn’t mean it’s predictive in any way of coaching ability?
It’s objectively the wrong thing to emphasize though. It’s not feelings ball.
You don’t say “we just control us and need 3 points” and then wave your fingers around excited that Bolivia tied the match (with 30 minutes to play).