Post-match: USA vs. Brazil - June 12, 2024

I think it makes a difference if you can hire one of the handful of elite club coaches yes. I also think that the coaching can only take you so far vis a vis your talent level (and Germany has plenty of talent and one of the top analytics companies thinks more than anyone in the tournament).

Flick had also pretty clearly lost the team which is also an important factor.

 

They maybe talented but boy were the half-assed.

Absolute night and day between them and Colombia.

Buncha talented dudes sleep walking around out there (compared to Colombia)

It makes all the difference in the world.

 

Flick was pretty elite. Herve Renard isn't 'elite', yet has been brilliant at international level. Leio Scaloni wasn't elite. Nestor Lorenzo isn't elite. Just be good enough.

 

Scaloni also had a super talented team with the best player of all time. It’s also incredible how much credit Renard gets for a single win where Saudi Arabia was incredibly lucky and after which they failed to get out of the group. He’s had success in the African Cup of Nations, but he’s also had some pretty big failures as well. He’s also never gotten a team out of the group at the World Cup.

Nestor Lorenzo has yet to coach Columbia in an official competition and is coming up on the midway point in the cycle. It’s been a good start for sure but let’s see how he does in the Copa America and World Cup.

Scaloni and Lorenzo were also completely unproven before their current jobs. We too could hire a completely unproven coach and it could work out but it could also fail spectacularly. Either way I don’t know if the fanbase would be thrilled if we hired someone like Mikey Varas as head coach. As that’s who the equivalent of hiring Scaloni would be whose coaching experience was mostly coaching the U20s and as a senior team assistant. We too could hire someone with that background, but it doesn’t mean it will work.

I don’t think Flick is on the level of Naglesmann and again it also matters that he lost the locker room. Once a coach loses the locker room it doesn’t matter how good they are.

And on a global scale Berhalter is mostly a replacement level coach. But at the international level talent matters much more and while there’s some randomness or variance in knockout soccer very few coaches can be expected to consistently outperform the teams talent level.

And there’s not a huge number of coaches out there who are 1) interested in the job, 2) satisfied with what USSF can pay, and 3) represent a clear upgrade on Berhalter. Now maybe an outside party can pick up the tab on the salary, which would help, but doesn’t solve the problem that from appearances it looks like USSF believes the men and women’s coach have to be paid the same.

On top of that it’s very clear the player pool very much wants him as the coach. They’ve said as much publicly and you can see it in things like the way Pulisic reacted to the Brazil goal in coming straight over to Berhalter. He very much believes in the project.

At the end of the day it’s also the case that these are results based jobs and if Berhalter has a poor Copa America he’s likely out (and the line for that is either failing to make it out of the group or losing the quarterfinal in a similar fashion to the Columbia game. Now ironically if Berhalter were to be fired Varas would probably be the interim coach (which is how Scaloni initially got the job and then got it permanently later).

 

Yeah, one can spin each and every situation.

 

Indeed, Flick was an elite manager who failed with Germany. You don't have be 'elite' to succeed or not elite to fail, even with Top-5 in the world talent.

 

When you manage to crush even the spirit of Ronaldinho, I don't know what else needs be said.

 

You can make exactly the same point between our play vs Brazil and our play vs Colombia.

 

Disagree. I didn’t see a lack of effort on the usmnt side against Colombia. I saw an inability for the usmnt to play against an elite press. We aren’t that talented. We however can play out of the back when the opponent doesn’t press or presses less.

Brazil didn’t have much of a press.

Biggest reason the Brazil game was competitive.

 

Colombia had less of a press than Brazil. Our players were flat-out careless and absurdly mistake-prone vs Colombia, far more than usual, mostly when not even pressed, especially after the subs late in the game when the game went to hell.

If you can't see that, and you can't see that the Colombia match was a far, far worse player performance than is typical for this side, then we really have nothing to discuss, honestly.

 

Ream in particular had a number of bad giveaways versus Columbia and now be that I can remember against Brazil. And he wasn’t the only one.

 

Which turnovers against Colombia do you think are the best example of being the product of an elite press?

 

The last 2 Colombia goals came when we had subbed out Ream, Reyna, Pulisic, Johnny, Balo and McKennie. The 3rd from last goal came when those players had been subbed out as well apart from Johnny who was subbed out last and just looked exhausted. The players subbed in were Wright, CCV, Tilman, Musah, Pepi. LDLT.

Musah, Wright, CCV aren't beating a press. Tilman might sometimes, sometimes not.

Berhalter said something about not being compact enough v. Colombia. I think the Brazilian manager was more interested in testing who was best 1v1 going into this tournament. The Colombian guy was more interested in drilling teamwork, maybe because he already knew his individual player's form. In Berhalter's case, it seems to me that too much effort is expended in trying to prove to a particular player (perhaps to the peanut gallery at the same time) that there's a reason he isn't starting. I won't go into why I don't like that much. If there's a problem, Gregg should solve it in the selection process. I wouldn't carry any bad eggs.

 

I mean it can go either way, but swapping a RB for a RB is not managing the game. Shaq came into the game to give away a free kick and corner which were dangerous chances against a team like Brazil.

The flow of the game didn’t necessitate that change whatsoever and it’s not a sub at the 90th minute. That’s was 84 minutes. There were other positions that could have used subs.

GB did the same stuff in the previous World Cup, so if you consider that a success then that’s great. Thats what COPA is going to look like. Again, he doesn’t seem to be changing anything drastically from his first cycle here but does appear more willing to learn.

 

Did a re-watch of most of the first half then ff to 76' when Aaronson came on. What did Pepi actually do for us in the time he was on as a starter? I couldn't see anything at all. Aaronson was active as heck and sped up the game but our other guys were tired and struggling by the time he came on. Berhalter used Aaronson on the right side to help out on Vinny which worked nicely. Aaronson and Cardoso need more time together so Aaronson gets used to Cardoso's movement.

It seems to me that Berhalter is headed to his predictable doom trying to get a 9 to work when he really doesn't have one (esp with Sarge nursing a bad ankle).

 

We were trying to be more compact between the lines the entire game. It’s likely that we did not try to press as much and Brazil pushed more forward, which resulted in us being deeper. Like Balogun’s touchmap was “deeper”
than Pepi’s but Pepi’s was pretty deep.

FYI there was a study done on whether it makes more sense to change how a team passes the ball depending on whether they are tied, even, or trailing and it found that teams (up and down the table) who are more consistent in their passing mix tend to do better than teams that change based on the game state.

 

That seems intuitive enough. I’d be interested in reading that.

We were applying the press (Wes especially in moments) first half and found success at times. We didn’t necessarily capitalize on it as a unit. Makes sense though since we so rarely have had those opportunities in the past.

 

Dinho is correct, this Brazil is a very bad team full of very good players. I'm not even sure it's their coaching. They're acting as a bunch of divas where each wants to be the hero.

It's a TEAM sport. Being a TEAM has always been our strength. That's why I lamented but understood leaving Donovan out. That's why I get not playing Gio in Qatar. That's why I think even though we only have one proved top level player (Puli), we can still make a run.

 

Ronaldinho said that stuff as part of a sponsorship, using his sponsors slogan in it. I think it came out that he was DMing Vini asking for tickets.

Why was leaving LD out a team first thing? The look on the actual team’s faces when it was announced did not make it seem like one.

 

In retrospect, he and Turner especially really felt like two guys who hadn't played a first-team professional game in some time and were just OFF. And then, with just a single game under their belts, they cleaned it up significantly in time for Brazil. I'd really feel better if we had more competitive depth to sit them both, but I'd wager that their performances going forward will look more like what they did against Brazil than they did against Colombia.

 

Hate the layoff between the Brazil game and Bolivia game for the usmnt.

11 days is a long time.

 

For all the mocking of Flick, he won a freaking TREBLE five years ago. People want a top club coach ... well, you don't get much better than that.