Each of our last 2 managers prior to 3Gs did the same thing. JK with Bradley and Bruce with JK. It is a tradition at this point!
JK got crucified for losing his players and then losing. Badly. He messed up the chemistry of the entire program and left it a heap of cinders. If your messaging destroys your team's confidence in themselves and each other, then you're a negative.
In retrospect, yeah. At the time IIRC I thought it was a good call. The team unquestionably was deteriorating. Now with hindsight he should have gotten like 6 months to turn it around because his replacement was poor. I almost would say the same thing about Jurgen…in retrospect maybe the next set of qualies would be better.
Given the context of what Ream said, this is a little concerning from Marsh. Marsh didn’t understand what the US was doing, what Mexico was doing, and how that interplay resulted in the things we saw on the field.
If Mexico is choosing to go direct, it’s because they are in some ways conceding ground to what we know as MMA. It certainly doesn’t play to their personnel strengths to go direct. They’re afraid of Adams and McKennie.
Absolutely. They know they don't have enough quality to play through our midfield. They can go direct, or they can try to press us into coughing up a cheap ball in an opportune position. Hence Reyna back deep to help Ream mind the ball. Reyna can evidently hold down his end for an entire game defensively a bit better than I was expecting, but he wasn't put back there for his defense, primarily. That was all about making us press-proof, giving us some composure in the back, taking away the one real weapon that Mexico might've otherwise had. Of course in that game that meant that we were taking him away from being further up the pitch where his playmaking is more likely to result in goals and scoring chances, but it was worth the tradeoff. Especially since he was able to score on a loose ball one of the few times he was really able to get forward.
I mean, it could be that, or it could be that Marsch's desire to rag on Berhalter overcame his interest in telling it like he actually saw it.
It's such a weird talking point... I'm ALL for non-biased punditry; like many of us here, I have sat and rolled my eyes at the cringe when, during in a pre-kickoff show v Argentina, every American pundit picked USA to win Argentina leaning on arguments like "believe it, this can happen!!!" and other such nonsense. So, I'm very much against that kind of stuff. But this Marsch comment was without question an utter head-scratcher even in real time. It's a very weird way to say "Mexico have done nothing in attack, are sending up long balls with middling success at best, and are lucky to not be down by more"... which is pretty much how the 1st half went, IMO. Curious what he's going to say about Gregg/the US during the Copa, when this side faces ACTUALLY tough opponents.
I found Ream's comments very interesting. He basically said they knew what Mexico was going to do and executed a plan to beat it. Which sounds like............................good scouting and coaching. Sounds like we set up a great gameplan and executed it very well. For some reason there's a category of people who can't admit that for quite a number of head-to-head matchups now...........................Gregg Berhalter and staff have outcoached that of Mexico. What's frustrating for American fans is why we can't execute a gameplan to comfortably beat teams like Jamaica, El Salvador, etc. in the way we should. Why does a home match against T&T feel like a struggle even when we win 3-0?
I think it’s 1) if the other team does a good job of playing a low block it’s going to look ugly no matter what, 2) poor reffing and often poor field conditions in CONCACAF games, and 3) in a game like that your best tactic is playing more direct and brute forcing things. But the problem being that playing that way against a Jamaica or Trinidad is not the way you need to play to beat better teams.
We aren't good at breaking down bunkers especially ones with big and physical players. If we go against say shorter teams that bunker we may have better chances on free kicks and corners but we aren't good and need to hope the defending team is worse than we are at executing. I do think we are starting to get a few players that add more variety to attacking a bunker and more are on the way. I mean I used to watch Barcelona struggle against those types of teams for years with much better talent than us. Like us they'd have less trouble in CL usually because teams wouldn't bunker as much and also because CL teams didn't know them as well as teams they play all the time.
I get it...........................but coaching and developing a gameplan against teams in a low block/counterattacking style doesn't require some sort of revolutionary tactics. People say "oh, we're not good against bunkering teams." Well....................then effing figure it out!!! You know? Gameplan and coach. And if Balogun or somebody isn't the right player for the style required, call up Vazquez or Pefok or somebody with a different skill set. If you need to start somebody in central midfield who can play with the ball in tight spaces like de la Torre, then that's who you start instead of Musah. [I get it. Luca wasn't available in this window] Is it some sort of freaking surprise that Reyna did well against T&T and Jamaica doing just that? We can't just throw our hands up and say "playing games against bunkering teams is hard!!!" Waah, waah, waah. We better effing get used to it and figure it out. Cuz the gap between us and some of these CONCACAF teams is only widening. And they're watching/scouting these games like Jamaica in the Nations League. They see what works against this USMNT. You think Bolivia and Panama aren't watching this film with the upcoming Copa America games in mind?
The problem with game planning a bunker is if one goal is scored your in real trouble. Now you have to score and are set up with personnel for a bunker. I think we'll get better and better at it with more practice going up against them and make teams pay for doing that. We have a few signs we may be starting to figure out a few things. It's hard going from the defend and counter to team to being the teams defend and counter against. It is an advancement an all of our youth teams are playing the same way so all of them should be going up against bunkers also.
Well, when we do beat them to expectations, which does happen, people ignore it. And when we don't, it's largely because either we execute poorly or because they execute their bunker well. So much of any game against an opponent that chooses to basically only defend comes down to if you can get an early goal to open it up. Because of expectations. If you go back to that game, despite being very rusty, despite Paredes and Tillman (and Balogun) basically losing every ball hit to them, we still peppered the hell out of them. We outshot them 26-1. We also had FOUR penalty shouts, of which we got zero. And we won 3-0. So even though we were missing our starting two wingers, and their very young and inexperienced subs couldn't control a ball at all, we absolutely dominated them. It's just that the goals didn't come until the 82nd minute. So basically now, it's not enough to dominate the team, and not enough to win by a 3 goals, but rather we have to do it on a specific timeline so as to not stress people out. I don't think people will be happy until we win these games 6-0, with a goal every fifteen minutes on the nose. It's almost like no one here watches soccer. And no, it's not all the time, either. We've won most of our games recently pretty easily and by pretty decent scores. But no on remembers those games. It's not to say that there isn't room for improvement, but the T&T match, like, that's soccer. Sometimes it takes time to punch it in against a bunker. Especially when all three of your starting attackers look like ass.
We absolutely have a gameplan for bunkering teams, and it's pretty standard bunker breaking stuff. What people might have to admit is that our players are simply not good enough to always beat a bunker even by CONCACAF opponents if executed well. This should not shock anyone. It happens to basically every team. The best teams are beating a bunker are very precise and execute extremely well, and that's not us nor our players. The best teams to beat a bunker tend to have a world class player to simply beat others in the attack. We don't. I mean, against Jamaica, our best player gets the ball on the break with space in the box and can't get a shot off. If that's Argentina's best player, it's a goal. If that's France's best player, it's a goal.
It's ironic that, in the USA, fans and media and governance are highly sensitive to anything a coach says publicly. 'They are constantly telling coaches what to say and what not to say. And yet they think they want people like Balotelli and Mourinho and exclaim "wouldn't that be something". When reality happens they are shocked. "He shouldn't have said that. He can't say that. He should say so and so". In Europe they love it when a manager says something interesting and they will make big headlines and discuss it endlessly without suggesting it is destructive. A subset of that would something like Arteta's criticism of the league when he said it was supposed to be the best league in the world yet a ref did something or other bad. The matter was refered to authorities but after examination, instead of inferring the worst they inferred the best and let matters lie without further. Americans have the habit of taking something with 2 meanings and insisting that the meaning was the one that would be the most reprehensible. Usually it ends with 'he should just shut up". Soccer is an international sport and we need to become more cosmopolitan. The sport would be a lot more interesting with free speech which would also allow for solutions that repression will never allow. However, that means you will get many foreigners saying stuff that means one thing to them and another to an American
He definitely could get an MLS job without issue or probably in a lower tier European league, but he seems pretty locked in to either the USMNT job or a top 5 league job.
I want to resurrect this thread for a moment. Let’s say GB makes a bunch of controversial decisions at the Copa and they all fail and we suck and GB gets fired. If we were to be looking for a new coach, what strengths did GB have that the new guy would just need to maintain as a status quo? The team seems to have terrific chemistry. I don’t think there are any egregious talent ID issues…by that I mean maybe Aaronson or Tillman is better in the offensive spark plug role, but I don’t think there are any decent players not already in the pool (excluding uncommitted dual Nats, of course.) The way I look at soccer lineups there are two real decisions to make and the rest of it is variations on a theme. Are you going to play with 2 central defenders or 3? And are you going to play with 1 striker or 2? I think GB is very very much correct to go with 1 striker. Not so sure about the 2 central defenders. So I think the work here is half done. What isn’t working? IMO there are two things about GB that consistently disappoint me. The main one is the team won’t take advantage of quick attacks. So a replacement who is an improvement would have to be willing to take the dawgs off their leashes. The other is that we tend to give the opposition, I dunno, 20% too much respect. Overall we should be a bit more aggressive. We have the horses now. Anyway, when an organization changes coaches and it’s obviously a short term hire, the biggest thing is to pick a coach who fits what you already have in place. When we hire someone after 2026 we will want someone based on HIS program but for now, a new coach shouldn’t have that leeway.
One other thing about this: when we do break the bunker early, we often don't remember having to break down a bunker at all, because the other team stopped bunkering after 15-20 minutes. And so the narrative remains that we can't break down a bunker.