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| No. How are you really? |
How do you talk about something that didn’t matter?
With just a handful of well-known exceptions – e.g., Walker Zimmermann and Aaron Long – just about every player who started for the U.S. Men’s national team tonight are only in the picture if you’re looking at the edges or deep into the background. And, given the comparative youth of the current starting set, providing a novel approach and/or skill-set strikes me as the only way any of tonight’s bubble boys can bounce into the first team. That’s where you start...
The place I want to go from there is a back-to-front TED talk about what worked and what didn’t tonight – and, no less significantly, when. But first the recap.
I don’t know much about the Serbian national team that beat America’s freshest B-Team 2-1, but I have a pretty good idea about how it won the game. Taking advantage of the rift that opened on a lonely free kick in the first half helped (think this is a full highlight package; go nuts to the extent it is), sure, but the game turned at the beginning of the first half. That’s when Serbia started pressing the American back-line and deep-lying midfielders. That pressure didn’t force mistakes, so much as exploit and punish them. A Serbian player ran down every long touch – which had ample company, unlike Serbia’s free kick – and they read every telegraphed past like they were jamming the channel. The winning goal came well before the pressure evaporated – and it followed from chasing a loose touch and a soft, telegraphed pass – and that left it up to the U.S. to claw their way back to level terms.
As in the first half, it took the U.S. a while, maybe even too long, to tilt the field toward the Serbian goal. The Portland Timbers’ Eryk Williamson kicked off the hottest rally of the 2nd half with a flying tackle and a great leading feed to an overlapping DeJuan Jones, a move that forced a save from...hold on, yeah, the lineups are up. Guess it was “D. Rosic” who made that save. I count that as one of the U.S.’s brighter team moves of the evening – it was a lot of soloist stuff prior, with the best of it coming from the San Jose Earthquakes’ Cade Cowell – and, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see those 20 shots, but I doubt I felt all that inspired by a quarter of ‘em, maybe a third...
...still, how fun was it to see Brandon Vazquez ping home that beauty of a goal for the U.S.’s bright, shining moment of that night? And Julian Gressel’s cross? The beauty of that thing should deepen a little more every time you watch Vazquez’s run, because timing/weighting that ball to meet a run that happens that fast made me feel good about...things (and bravo to whoever showed that highlight...could that have been an HBO Max crew? do they even have one?).
With just a handful of well-known exceptions – e.g., Walker Zimmermann and Aaron Long – just about every player who started for the U.S. Men’s national team tonight are only in the picture if you’re looking at the edges or deep into the background. And, given the comparative youth of the current starting set, providing a novel approach and/or skill-set strikes me as the only way any of tonight’s bubble boys can bounce into the first team. That’s where you start...
The place I want to go from there is a back-to-front TED talk about what worked and what didn’t tonight – and, no less significantly, when. But first the recap.
I don’t know much about the Serbian national team that beat America’s freshest B-Team 2-1, but I have a pretty good idea about how it won the game. Taking advantage of the rift that opened on a lonely free kick in the first half helped (think this is a full highlight package; go nuts to the extent it is), sure, but the game turned at the beginning of the first half. That’s when Serbia started pressing the American back-line and deep-lying midfielders. That pressure didn’t force mistakes, so much as exploit and punish them. A Serbian player ran down every long touch – which had ample company, unlike Serbia’s free kick – and they read every telegraphed past like they were jamming the channel. The winning goal came well before the pressure evaporated – and it followed from chasing a loose touch and a soft, telegraphed pass – and that left it up to the U.S. to claw their way back to level terms.
As in the first half, it took the U.S. a while, maybe even too long, to tilt the field toward the Serbian goal. The Portland Timbers’ Eryk Williamson kicked off the hottest rally of the 2nd half with a flying tackle and a great leading feed to an overlapping DeJuan Jones, a move that forced a save from...hold on, yeah, the lineups are up. Guess it was “D. Rosic” who made that save. I count that as one of the U.S.’s brighter team moves of the evening – it was a lot of soloist stuff prior, with the best of it coming from the San Jose Earthquakes’ Cade Cowell – and, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see those 20 shots, but I doubt I felt all that inspired by a quarter of ‘em, maybe a third...
...still, how fun was it to see Brandon Vazquez ping home that beauty of a goal for the U.S.’s bright, shining moment of that night? And Julian Gressel’s cross? The beauty of that thing should deepen a little more every time you watch Vazquez’s run, because timing/weighting that ball to meet a run that happens that fast made me feel good about...things (and bravo to whoever showed that highlight...could that have been an HBO Max crew? do they even have one?).
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| You have to pay a fee for less feet. |
You win some, you lose some, their coach seating is better than your coach seating, etc. But, again, how much does any of that matter? The question turns on how strongly any of those players/performances signaled to whomever gets signed as the next head coach of the U.S. Men’s Team that they could provide something someone else on the roster could not. Thus begins the back-to-front review of the roster.
Gaga Slonina spent the entire night in goal and made a couple good saves, but the defenders left him for dead on both goals, so he’s not the problem. He’s also at the wrong end of a rather long queue. Next...
Things get trickier with the defense. In the big picture, they did fine. It’s fair to ask exactly how much they had to do outside the times Serbia raised its intensity (i.e., they pressed), but I doubt the way a couple of them flailed under pressure padded their resume. Jalen Neal stood out in the most fatal incident (and again, if less fatally, not two minutes later), but he wasn’t the only defender (looking at you, Jones) who put a foot wrong, and I heard Zimmermann's name in the same sentence as "the rift" identified above. As noted in the twitter thread for this one, more than a couple players looked a turn or two below fully-dialed in. Mistakes were made, etc. Timbers fans should recognize the "they did mostly fine, but whoops!" pattern, even with different colored jerseys.
I didn’t hate what I saw out of most of the starting midfield – i.e., Paxton Pomykal found good spaces and kept things moving and Aidan Morris made himself useful by keeping moving (Alan Sonora didn’t show up much, tho) – but I didn’t see anything truly remarkable from any of them. And even if you, like me, saw the midfield named among the handful of theories that limited the U.S. team in Qatar 2022, I pretty sure that you, like me, doubt that any aspect of Pomykal’s or Morris’s (or Sonora’s) performances tonight convinced any coach, new or old, to kick the current starter to the curb. And I imagine the same applies to the players who replaced them in the second half...
Now, part of me wants to attribute some part of Alex Zendejas’ late 2nd-half revival to players like Paul Arriola, Williamson, Kelyn Acosta or, hell even Jones, coming on. For all that I feel like they improved the Americans’ odds of an equalizer once they found their feet, and for all I feel that those same players somehow made Zendejas better...I guess my point is that I didn’t see a discernible difference in the quality of chances that the U.S. created between the first half and the second half. Bottom line, the U.S. played best any time they could scramble the Serbian defense enough to find a player in space. They did that in both halves, and that makes me think that, all things being equal, it was all just soccer players making soccer plays, only different players and at different times.
All that brings things to the front line, if after an early introduction to Zendejas. The story doesn’t really change when you get up there. The outstanding Gressel/Vazquez goal provided the rare perfect moment in a night that had its share of good ones, or maybe just good enough ones. Honestly, it’s hard to complain about much of anything: I was entertained, the U.S. had a real chance at a draw (c’mon, the win died the second Serbia went up) and they had some good moments. Moreover, the loss doesn’t hurt anything beyond any and all of these players’ chances of making the first team – and, even then, I doubt it hurt any of them all that much.
If I had to name two players I’d like to see the next (and perhaps old) coach take a look at, I’d go with Zendejas and Cowell. Neither player is perfect – Zendejas was nothing more than “who is that guy?” for 65 minutes and Cowell held the ball too often on most plays (but when he didn’t...good shit) – but they did things, forced issues and provided that wee tickle that makes the beautiful game worth watching.
At the end of it all, I’m not even sure I can be bothered to call that a tough loss. In the grand scheme, it was a fuck-around by a bunch of understudies. Still, I had fun watching and, won’t lie, a shiver still runs up my spine every time I see an MLS player getting his chance. And seeing Vazquez take his, even with all the aimless running around, felt great.
I’ll be back on Saturday if I’ve got Telemundo. Till then...
Gaga Slonina spent the entire night in goal and made a couple good saves, but the defenders left him for dead on both goals, so he’s not the problem. He’s also at the wrong end of a rather long queue. Next...
Things get trickier with the defense. In the big picture, they did fine. It’s fair to ask exactly how much they had to do outside the times Serbia raised its intensity (i.e., they pressed), but I doubt the way a couple of them flailed under pressure padded their resume. Jalen Neal stood out in the most fatal incident (and again, if less fatally, not two minutes later), but he wasn’t the only defender (looking at you, Jones) who put a foot wrong, and I heard Zimmermann's name in the same sentence as "the rift" identified above. As noted in the twitter thread for this one, more than a couple players looked a turn or two below fully-dialed in. Mistakes were made, etc. Timbers fans should recognize the "they did mostly fine, but whoops!" pattern, even with different colored jerseys.
I didn’t hate what I saw out of most of the starting midfield – i.e., Paxton Pomykal found good spaces and kept things moving and Aidan Morris made himself useful by keeping moving (Alan Sonora didn’t show up much, tho) – but I didn’t see anything truly remarkable from any of them. And even if you, like me, saw the midfield named among the handful of theories that limited the U.S. team in Qatar 2022, I pretty sure that you, like me, doubt that any aspect of Pomykal’s or Morris’s (or Sonora’s) performances tonight convinced any coach, new or old, to kick the current starter to the curb. And I imagine the same applies to the players who replaced them in the second half...
Now, part of me wants to attribute some part of Alex Zendejas’ late 2nd-half revival to players like Paul Arriola, Williamson, Kelyn Acosta or, hell even Jones, coming on. For all that I feel like they improved the Americans’ odds of an equalizer once they found their feet, and for all I feel that those same players somehow made Zendejas better...I guess my point is that I didn’t see a discernible difference in the quality of chances that the U.S. created between the first half and the second half. Bottom line, the U.S. played best any time they could scramble the Serbian defense enough to find a player in space. They did that in both halves, and that makes me think that, all things being equal, it was all just soccer players making soccer plays, only different players and at different times.
All that brings things to the front line, if after an early introduction to Zendejas. The story doesn’t really change when you get up there. The outstanding Gressel/Vazquez goal provided the rare perfect moment in a night that had its share of good ones, or maybe just good enough ones. Honestly, it’s hard to complain about much of anything: I was entertained, the U.S. had a real chance at a draw (c’mon, the win died the second Serbia went up) and they had some good moments. Moreover, the loss doesn’t hurt anything beyond any and all of these players’ chances of making the first team – and, even then, I doubt it hurt any of them all that much.
If I had to name two players I’d like to see the next (and perhaps old) coach take a look at, I’d go with Zendejas and Cowell. Neither player is perfect – Zendejas was nothing more than “who is that guy?” for 65 minutes and Cowell held the ball too often on most plays (but when he didn’t...good shit) – but they did things, forced issues and provided that wee tickle that makes the beautiful game worth watching.
At the end of it all, I’m not even sure I can be bothered to call that a tough loss. In the grand scheme, it was a fuck-around by a bunch of understudies. Still, I had fun watching and, won’t lie, a shiver still runs up my spine every time I see an MLS player getting his chance. And seeing Vazquez take his, even with all the aimless running around, felt great.
I’ll be back on Saturday if I’ve got Telemundo. Till then...
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