Hardman I thought did a good job w that group. Def helps to have an elite talent.
This game is nutty. It’s like they filled the Gatorade coolers with adderall. Canada has messed up at least 5 breakaways and should be up by 3 minimum.
Canada wins in a shootout. Canada are kings of concacaf.
I think Marsch is pretty obviously a bad manager
His Leeds teams were a tactical disaster
You guys mock Pat Kelsey’s whole deal - Marsch is the Kelsey of the soccer world - he altered his mannerism and personality to become Ted Lasso, I’m not even making it up
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FC Cincy letting Miles Robinson go for the Olympics. Should hold down the backline with Zimmermann. Could likely be our starters at the WC as well, I don’t think Richards did anything to lock down that spot.
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Not sure I should be rooting for Uruguay—those were some brutally tough tackles, lot of cynical fouling—but they play hard as heck and I’m happy for them.
Nunez in particular I thought ran until he had absolutely nothing left in the tank. Respect.
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I don’t think I can really talk bad about CONCACAF refs anymore after watching all these CONMEBOL refs. They completely lose control of every match, it’s amazing. Lucky Rodrygo didn’t get his leg snapped last night, could’ve and probably should’ve been about dozen yellow cards prior to the red.
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That’s fair…but watching the Euro refs is refreshing. Granted, there is less physical tactics in those games.
Paywalled, but the Athletic did a pretty good deep dive into the USMNT. Shows us with similar talent to Turkey or Uruguay, but way way below the elite teams. Nothing surprising, but still think it shows we have vastly underperformed with GGG at the helm.
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Haven’t read yet, but if the talent level is similar to those two countries how does it conclude we have under performed? Did those two teams accomplish more prior to this tournament than the US? Not questioning the conclusion or lobbying for Gregg…just curious the how it was determined.
Insight from Twenty First Group — a sports intelligence firm which advises clubs, leagues and investors — allows us to drill a little deeper. Its player model generates ratings for more than 145,000 players worldwide, using factors such as the strength of a player’s team, their position, their playing time, and their contribution to the team’s attack or defense.
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They said the WC result fit the talent level
I think anyone agrees they shouldn’t have been eliminated in group play in COPA
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Oh, I get that and it is true. But that dumb red card just skews things so much given how early it was. Again, not defending this group/coach because they clearly haven’t done enough, but I think saying “vastly underperformed” is exaggerating.
Yeah I don’t think it shows we underperformed with Gregg I think it shows we performed right at expected median performance
What are the expectations for USYNT’s performance in the Olympics?
More of a youth tournament (U23 with 3 overage) and a lot of teams have trouble getting guys permission to go, so hard to gauge completely. France, Spain and Argentina are the big favorites. US probably in the next group.
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I think he’s going to be fired in a couple days so not really worth going back through, but I am going to anyway because I don’t like him. In 6 years, there’s 1 top 30 ELO win not named Mexico who has the worst team in their history right now. If the perceived talent is top 15ish in the world, top 5ish in North and South America regions and top 1 in CONCACAF as argued in that article, I’d say the past 6 years qualifies as vastly underperforming. We should be dominating CONCACAF at the least, not squeaking through WC qualifying on 3rd based on goal difference like in 22 even if we have a golden ticket to the next one.
Anyway, I think the dude is cooked by midweek so at least I can retire the GGG slander hopefully and not talk about him anymore. I might just invoke my Dutch dual national fan card if we do keep him.
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Should get out of this group. Then just depends on the draw. It’s group A vs. Group B in the knockouts, but if we finish 2nd to France in group A would draw Argentina from Group B in the first knockout round and that would likely not be great.
Olise and Lacazette are the senior players on France and Julian Alvarez and Otamendi are on Argentina just to give an idea of the talent levels of those squads compared to ours. Tall order to beat either of them.
I’m obviously skeptical on the import of national team schematic coaching, but I think it’s obvious Gregg has gotten what he’s going to from this group, and even if you’re one of the rosier Berhalter guys (like me) it seems like he’s sort of value neutral in terms of what he brings (again, my take of his performance is that they’re operating at the 50th percentile) so may as well see if there is a value add out there. There’s also just so much noise around him at this stage the juice just isn’t worth the squeeze.
That said, I’m always skeptical of the “but all we’ve done is beat Mexico” argument because the simple structure of international soccer at this point guarantees that our schedule really only contains them and Canada as feasible peers - ie lots of not beating anyone better is rarely playing anyone better.
The Copa performance was terrible, losing to Panama is terrible, should never happen.
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