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US Men's National Team (11 Viewers)

Overall there was not a lot of creativity or running at people. Lack of vision. To many turns backwards or pass backs when they could have attacked the space and top of the box or switched fields. To often playing the easy ball back to the same side when the run was open on the opposite side. Through balls were easily read and cut out, esp to Morris.

As much as I think Yedlin, Morris and Roldon need to be dropped from the team permanently, Yedlin did fine. Was probably the best player for the opening 15-20 mins.

The team improved with the intro of Mihalivic and moving A Morris higher. Cowell looked like he was trying to hard. Some potential there, needs to calm down a bit.

Neal looked solid when he came in. Mizaga was fine outside of falling for the fake on the free kick leading to the goal. Long was Long. Both are probably third choice.
I'm not sure the love for Tolkin. He came across to me as the lord of bad/long passes. Didn't offer much and was easily nudged off the ball by Antonio. Some potential there though.
 
Canada's already weakened lineup to a big hit today as Eustaquio was replaced by some guy I have never heard of. In looking him up, he gets almost no playing time in the Belgium second division. Canada's depth is going to be tested at this Gold Cup.
 
I believe Vasquez, Cowell, Sonora and Morris are all cap tied for good now.

Slonina and Gressel are two more that can be tied in this tournament.
 
So I initially considered this a B to B-Minus squad but I think considering we are missing players like Tillman, CCV, McKenzie, Horvath, EPB and others who would normally bolster this type of squad, I am lowering my score to a C-Plus to B-Minus for the over all roster.

Although as @Dinsy Ejotuz correctly pointed out, when you consider the starting lineup only, we are probably below a C level on average.
 
NewlyRetired said:
So I initially considered this a B to B-Minus squad but I think considering we are missing players like Tillman, CCV, McKenzie, Horvath, EPB and others who would normally bolster this type of squad, I am lowering my score to a C-Plus to B-Minus for the over all roster.

Although as @Dinsy Ejotuz correctly pointed out, when you consider the starting lineup only, we are probably below a C level on average.
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It's absolutely, at best, a C level team. There are 2 players who would start over most every position, if not 3.
 
B Maverick said:
I'm not sure the love for Tolkin. He came across to me as the lord of bad/long passes. Didn't offer much and was easily nudged off the ball by Antonio. Some potential there though.
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I'm glad to see somebody else with this take, because to my eye Tolkin didn't stand out as having a particularly good game. He saw a lot of the ball for sure, but not a lot of positivity came of it. Not that he was bad, just meh.

I also agree with your Cowell take. Had the look of someone who could be a cut above the rest of this roster, but not much of what he tried came off.
 
I expected Cowell was going to start any ways on Wednesday but maybe this explains why Morris looked so dead for most of the game.

================
Brian Sciaretta

@BrianSciaretta

Jordan Morris was not able to participate in #USMNT training today with discomfort in his knee that he experienced in the Jamaica game. Whether or not he plays on Wednesday will come down to how he responds to treatment.
 
Particularly in the first half, the US attacked almost exclusively on the left. Which gave a lot of usage for Tolkin and a lot of chances for us to see Morris not make the impact we wanted. Which probably does a lot to explain our impression of both players on the night. Holden pointed out a few times where Yedlin made a forward run and never got the ball. And, sure, Yedlin is historically a pretty terrible crosser. But he did pick the absolute right ball on the Sonora whiff. That imbalance also meant the Zendejas seemed to have problems getting on the ball in the first half.
 
some interesting tidbits from the Athletic today on Balogun

========================

“I saw that there were a lot of quick transitions so, as a striker, I have to be particularly careful with my movements,” Balogun told the Ligue 1 website. “In the Premier League too, there is a lot of transition, a lot of speed in the game, but here (in France) the transitions are maybe even faster. A lot of teams are able to wait in a block and then go forward in two seconds to bang a goal in.”

Reliable goal scorers are at a premium in football, though, and it would be naïve to turn your nose up to a player who has just scored 21 goals playing in a very new environment. Balogun initially set himself a target of 10 goals and ended up surpassing it by more than double. If that was the test, he passed with flying colours.

There are no concerns about Balogun’s presence in the penalty area, as 19 per cent of his open-play touches occurred in the box and he managed to fire off 3.42 shots a game. Shot volume is important but a bigger indicator of future success is the location and quality of chances a striker is forging. Again, Balogun shows up well in that regard with an average value of 0.18xG (expected goals) per shot dispatched from an average distance of a little over 15 yards out.

There is variety to his finishing repertoire as there was a 68-46-13 split of shots with his right foot, left foot and head, and a split of 8-5-2 in non-penalty goals. All six of his penalties were converted right-footed.

He is, however, fond of shooting from the left channel in a similar fashion to Thierry Henry’s trademark curled finish.
 
Balogun in the English rags today

===================
According to reports, Arsenal have ‘told’ Folarin Balogun to ‘find a new club’ after he rejected the chance to discuss a new contract.

The 21-year-old progressed through the ranks at Arsenal and he has made ten senior appearances for the Premier League club since the end of 2020.

Balogun had a pretty ineffective loan spell at Championship side Middlesbrough in 2021/22 but he shone in Ligue 1 for Reims last season.

Recruited as Hugo Ekitike’s replacement, Balogun hit the ground running in France and he ended up scoring 21 league goals for the Ligue 1 outfit.

This summer was always going to be a turning point for the forward and Arsenal have ‘slapped a £35m asking price’ on him amid interest from AC Milan and RB Leipzig.

With Gabriel Jesus, Eddie Nketiah and potentially Kai Havertz battling for starts next season, Balogun may struggle to get a game if he stays at Arsenal.

And 90min are reporting that his representatives have been ‘told to work on finding a new club after he again rejected the chance to discuss a new deal’.

A ‘permanent departure appears the most likely scenario at present’ as Balogun has ‘reiterated that he has no intention to be farmed out on loan’. The report adds.
 
My guess for Wednesday
=============

.............................Slonina

Reynolds..........Miles............Neal...............Jones

.......................Busio............Morris

...........................Milhailovic

Zendejas.................Vasquez.............Cowell
 
NewlyRetired said:
no shock here

==========

Steven Goff
@SoccerInsider

Toronto FC announces Head Coach / Sporting Director Bob Bradley has been fired. Assistant Coach / Technical Director Mike Sorber is also out.
Click to expand...
rough day

===========================


Hartford Athletic

@hfdathletic

Hartford Athletic announced that Tab Ramos has been relieved of his head coaching duties. Assistant Coach Omid Namazi will be promoted to head coach.
 
FreeBaGeL said:
NewlyRetired said:
Arsenal have ‘slapped a £35m asking price’ on him amid interest from AC Milan and RB Leipzig.
Click to expand...

Do we think there's any actual interest from AC Milan or do they just include them by default in every article about USMNT transfers nowadays?
Click to expand...
yeah feels like more the latter. I think this is the 4th or 5th yank to be "linked" with them.

We just need to wait it all out. Hopefully the dominoes will start dropping. The last thing we want is all our guys getting to their new teams late in preseason.
 
NewlyRetired said:
what a mess up north

=======

SportsCentre
@SportsCentre


Canada Soccer’s finances have worsened to the point that both senior national teams may not play in international windows this fall and the organization may eventually need to contemplate filing for bankruptcy protection
Click to expand...




Rick Westhead

@rwesthead

Canada Soccer interim general secretary Jason deVos: “We are in a real struggle. It’s not imminent, but we need to explore what bankruptcy entails and how it might affect our organization.”
 
El Salvador is down 0-2 at home to Martinique after 17 minutes played. I've no idea what kind of roster ELS is playing, but this doesn't bode well for Hugo either way. There was a time I thought he'd be a good candidate for USS to take a look at.
 
Ramsay Hunt Experience said:
Particularly in the first half, the US attacked almost exclusively on the left. Which gave a lot of usage for Tolkin and a lot of chances for us to see Morris not make the impact we wanted. Which probably does a lot to explain our impression of both players on the night.
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Definitely true. I think the news that Morris tweaked his knee might explain his ineffectiveness.

As far as Tolkin, he had the problem of no real connectivity on his side. But I find the comments that he hit aimless long balls a bit off the mark considering the only two chances we created in the first half both originated with a line breaking pass by Tolkin (one a switch to Yedlin and the other a deft chip to Sonora). And his passes started finding people as soon as Cowell and Mahailovic came into the game.

I feel the same way about Zendejas who got zero service unless he dropped almost all the way back to midfield and then dribbled too much because there was no outlet. It may be a problem. It may have just been game state. We need more data points to properly assess. I wouldn't get too high or too low on anyone just from that game.
 
NewlyRetired said:
NewlyRetired said:
what a mess up north

=======

SportsCentre
@SportsCentre


Canada Soccer’s finances have worsened to the point that both senior national teams may not play in international windows this fall and the organization may eventually need to contemplate filing for bankruptcy protection
Click to expand...




Rick Westhead

@rwesthead

Canada Soccer interim general secretary Jason deVos: “We are in a real struggle. It’s not imminent, but we need to explore what bankruptcy entails and how it might affect our organization.”
Click to expand...
Don't they have go fund me in Canada?
 
Capella said:
For roster purposes, why do they prioritize the Nations League over the Gold Cup? Isn’t the Nations a relatively new thing?
Click to expand...
I thinking it's timing. Seems like 50%+ of our best players are looking for a new team next year. Pre-season start in July with an average date of July 15 for the first club friendly. Gold Cup final is July 16. Many of our best players will be integrating with new clubs and need to be available for physicals prior to that.
 
I am posting this here because I believe the long term financial health of MLS will have an effect on the national team.

As I posted many months ago, I was not a fan of the Apple TV deal that MLS signed. I was nervous that it was going to fail in a very bad way.

Alarm bells sounded when the Athletic posted the following early in the season:

"The Athletic reported that the deal included an opt-out clause “that allows Apple to walk away from the agreement if the league doesn’t drive a certain number of subscribers to Season Pass in a set timeframe.” When Apple announced it was offering customers one free month to try out the deal, it made some wonder if things weren’t looking good."

Then a couple of months later, Apple made a short statement: Apple senior vice president Eddy Cue said in early June that they were “off to a great start with subscriptions and viewership” but refused to share anything specific.

Now just today we learned the following interesting tidbit:

“MLS sources confirmed the league is nearing Apple’s required subscription threshold that kick-starts an agreement for the company to share subscription revenue with MLS,” wrote Evans. “The league’s players, per terms of the new CBA, would also receive 12.5% of the increase in media revenue this year if the amount exceeds $100 million of the 2022 media compensation, which was about $65 million when excluding fees paid to the USMNT.”

=================

Things certainly seem to be headed in the right direction given what was expected to be a very rough start. More importantly, the league still has not had the ability to promote Messi at all. Given that he has his own personal stake in Apple, I am going to guess there is going to be a lot of synergy to help drive subscriptions once he starts playing next month.

I am still leery of this deal with Apple but I feel a lot better than I did before the season started.
 
oh dear. I just saw US Soccer chose Sean Johnson for the press conference today. That usually(but not always) indicates he may start in the next game, which would make no sense given we need to cap tie Gaga and Johnson is far behind Turner, Steffen and Horvath. Hopefully it was just a random choice for the presser.
 
NewlyRetired said:
oh dear. I just saw US Soccer chose Sean Johnson for the press conference today. That usually(but not always) indicates he may start in the next game, which would make no sense given we need to cap tie Gaga and Johnson is far behind Turner, Steffen and Horvath. Hopefully it was just a random choice for the presser.
Click to expand...
Very dumb.
 
NewlyRetired said:
My guess for Wednesday
=============

.............................Slonina

Reynolds..........Miles............Neal...............Jones

.......................Busio............Morris

...........................Milhailovic

Zendejas.................Vasquez.............Cowell
Click to expand...
Unfortunately, that looks like wishful thinking to me.
NewlyRetired said:
oh dear. I just saw US Soccer chose Sean Johnson for the press conference today. That usually(but not always) indicates he may start in the next game, which would make no sense given we need to cap tie Gaga and Johnson is far behind Turner, Steffen and Horvath. Hopefully it was just a random choice for the presser.
Click to expand...
I was expecting this
 
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Augsburg lost quite a bit of money on Pepi (they spent $20m on him) so this is far from ideal but the situation in Germany was so bad Pepi refused to return so hopefully cutting ties is best for everyone involved
 
when people spout uninformed or extremely biased opinions on US Soccer on twitter, it is a complete dumpster fire.

when people dig in and do real work, it is a treasure trove.

check out these two awesome graphics. The first shows minutes played with each other for the Nations League game against Mexico vs the minutes played with each other for the Gold Cup game against Jamaica

 
I didn't watch the game unfortunately.

Reading the comments... seems all over the place.

Don't like the old guard... and yet there were a ton of new faces in that starting lineup. :confused:
Expectations of playing better- against a top JAM squad- with a bunch of guys who have never played together or much at all for the US. I'd expect disjointed.

The graphics Andy posted kind of sum up what I was trying to say.

These kind of lineups, tbh I just hope to see flashes of individual something and a modicum of team shape. Sounds like the shape was there, even if there wasn't a lot of flashes.
 
NewlyRetired said:
when people spout uninformed or extremely biased opinions on US Soccer on twitter, it is a complete dumpster fire.

when people dig in and do real work, it is a treasure trove.

check out these two awesome graphics. The first shows minutes played with each other for the Nations League game against Mexico vs the minutes played with each other for the Gold Cup game against Jamaica

Click to expand...
Crazy that Miazga and Yedlin have more than double any other Gold Cup combination. What year was that in...2017?
 
El Floppo said:
I didn't watch the game unfortunately.

Reading the comments... seems all over the place.

Don't like the old guard... and yet there were a ton of new faces in that starting lineup. :confused:
Expectations of playing better- against a top JAM squad- with a bunch of guys who have never played together or much at all for the US. I'd expect disjointed.

The graphics Andy posted kind of sum up what I was trying to say.

These kind of lineups, tbh I just hope to see flashes of individual something and a modicum of team shape. Sounds like
Click to expand...

It was a strange game. The US has played worse, with a better roster and against much weaker competition, so this was by no means a complete mess no matter how it may read in thread while the game was going on.

The US had more possession, more shots, more shots on goals, more corner kicks and more dangerous chances created. Some of that comes naturally from being behind most of the game but any unbiased watcher would say, at worst, it was an evenly matched game where the US was chasing the game.

The US did not give away stupid short passes. Almost all possessions were lost due to mid to long range passes rarely finding their target. Given how little the team had ever played together, some of this may be due to not knowing the runs players make or what kind of balls they prefer (to feet or run on). Some of it was clearly execution though.

The two players in the starting lineup that had a chance to shine individually were Sonora and Zendejas, but neither did. Sonora for the most part was poor. While he is known to be weak defensively (he makes Gio look like Roy Keane in comparison), he was suppose to be good on the ball. Outside of a couple of good touches, he really did very little and had lots of chances to make plays.

Zendejas was the opposite. He almost never got the ball (we spent a decent portion of the game watching Tolkin and Morris show that they have played exactly 0 minutes together, on the far side of the field). Zendejas was forced to pinch WAY inside to finally touch the ball but there was almost no space to operate in that area.

The most important part of the game though for me (which was seeing what kind of depth we can get for the main squad) was a failure. Granted it is just one game and could easily change as the tournament progresses. For this one single game, Tolkin did not appear any better than Vines as a back up LB, Aiden struggled and does not have the look to back up Adams and Sonora did nothing to think he could back up Gio at the 10 and Zendejas was so invisible, it is hard to say he is in front of Aaronson for depth on the wing.

All the positives really came from the subs. Mihailovic looked good, Vasquez did what he was supposed and buried his one chance, and Cowell added some much needed energy (which was stark since he replaced Jordan Morris's corpse).
 
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Alexi saying what most of us are thinking. Of course even thinking this it does not explain why he was not just announced just after the Gold Cup was over.....

I am not going to lie and I will say some of the line up choices did seem like GGG may have had input

=========================

Alexi Lalas

@AlexiLalas

Of course you protect the "new" head coach and try to put Berhalter in the best light possible. If #USMNT has a good Gold Cup, Berhalter was active behind the scenes. If the USMNT has a bad Gold Cup, Berhalter was hands off and can distance himself.
 
NewlyRetired said:
I am not going to lie and I will say some of the line up choices did seem like GGG may have had input
Click to expand...
ok so lets talk about Morris and Long, since these two appear to stand out the most.

Neither player is anything close to what they were before their injuries (both major injuries and Morris had two of them).

I am all for loyalty and I think it is very smart to see what they still might have. But both have received numerous chances to date post injuries, and neither has really stood out. At best Morris has had a few good moments with the Nats but Long has been consistently weak IMO post injury. If neither pops during the rest of this tournament, I think it is time to move on.
 
NewlyRetired said:
It was a strange game. The US has played worse, with a better roster and against much weaker competition, so this was by no means a complete mess no matter how it may read in thread while the game was going on.

The US had more possession, more shots, more shots on goals, more corner kicks and more dangerous chances created. Some of that comes naturally from being behind most of the game but any unbiased watcher would say, at worst, it was an evenly matched game where the US was chasing the game.

The US did not give away stupid short passes. Almost all possessions were lost due to mid to long range passes rarely finding their target. Given how little the team had ever played together, some of this may be due to not knowing the runs players make or what kind of balls they prefer (to feet or run on). Some of it was clearly execution though.
Click to expand...

And how many great chances did Jamaica even create? It's not like they were dominating going forward and Turner bailed us out or something. The goal came off a set-piece from an ordinary foul in the middle of the field.

Even the PK was just a stupid/flukey kick in a relatively non-threatening situation.

I would say in the run of play the US had each of the 3 best goal scoring chances. We screwed up a set-piece and had a flukey PK where we didn't see a guy as we were kicking. It's not like we were on our heels and it felt like the ball was going to go into our net at any point.
 
Not unexpected that Chelsea is going to take a bath here on Pulisic. Still, players being sold for significantly less than what they were bought for does not bode well for future buys of teams wanting yanks.

====================


Fabrizio Romano

@FabrizioRomano

AC Milan are negotiating with Chelsea for Christian Pulisic after Loftus Cheek deal agreed. Two separated deals and negotiations. #Milan #CFCMilan insisting to pay less than €25m asking price, player keen on the move but no agreement between clubs yet.
 
Lots of extenuating circumstances to explain the result against Jamaica.

None of those exist for tomorrow night. A significant multi goal win is the only result that should be expected. Anything less will be a disappointment and may cost the US the chance to win the group.
 
:wall: ......I hope they at least explored selling him with an immediate loan back until the end of the MLS season...I know Cincy clearly thinks they are going for it this year but still......:wall:

=========


Michele Giannone
https://twitter.com/MicheleG3
@MicheleG3

Per sources, Borussia Mönchengladbach wanted Brandon Vázquez as M. Thuram’s replacement. They flew to Cincinnati to watch him & even went to his house to present team project. Personal terms agreed, offer sent, but Cincy said no sale this summer against Vázquez’s wishes.
 
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