Gregg is a fucking moron. US won despite really, really dumb coaching.
1) Weird lineup confused the players resulting in giving up a goal in the 1st 2 minutes and let the Mexicans get behind the American defense despite having 5 fucking defenders.
2). Gregg finally adjusted, leaving slow, old Tim Ream as LB in the 2nd half which was an easy target...they subbed a young fast player out there and it only took a couple minutes to score.
3) Despite all the offensive talent on the US they did not score in the run of play...scored on 2 corner kicks and a dubious pk.
Horrible outcome for the US because it will extend this train wreck of a situation longer...
The USMNT has a ton of talent but major coaching deficiency. The defense is crazy porous. Having watched the Swiss loss (which really should have been something like 1-5), one of the major problems is that Dest is the best player we? have, but they play him at fullback even though he is completely worthless at defending. How can you be a defender when you spend 3/4 of your time on the other team's side of the pitch and fuck up half the time you are actually asked to defend? Brooks is also not great on his own.
USA has some amazing individual players, but they still haven't figured out how to put it together as a team. This is supposed to be USA's "big chance," but it seems more like my UW football thoughts thoughts pre-2019...
*I watch 10 times as much soccer played by 10 and 8 year old players than by international pros, but how in the fuck is Dest a starting defender for Barca? He has incredible talent, but you'd think a team with actual coaching would put him somewhere that masks his deficiencies and amplifies his strengths. To the soccer nerds: Is he actually a good[/i] defender for Barcelona?
Dest is being played out of position (LB) and told by shitty coaches to play like that. He’s an average player for Barca but that should be more than good enough for us.
Brooks is good but slow...has to be paired with a much quicker CB (not Tim Ream) and preferably one that does not pass it regularly to the other team...
So two things right off the bat:
1.) All of my opinions are based off of 90 minutes of soccer against higher-ranked Switzerland. It's like forming an opinion of Brandon McKinney by only watching the Ohio State game...
2.) I was unable to watch USA/Mexico because--and this still amazes me--I was unable to find a single pirate stream, and CBS wanted me to sign up for a trial streaming membership in order to watch. How the fuck does a championship game between USA and Mexico not have 42 streaming links out there to choose from!? I went to be thinking it was a 2-2 tie, as Google told me that was the final score ("Weird that they would allow a tie in a championship game, but this is soccer, after all, and I guess this is a lame tournament...").
From the perspective of a USA soccer fan (which is how one can experience what it's like to be a Coug...), everything about this game was embarrassing. Not only was the stadium packed with Mexican fans, and not only was there no live stream outside of CBS, but all of the highlights I was able to find in-progress on YouTube were awesome so long as you speak Spanish. The massive disparity in support was quite obvious.
Anyway, one thing I was able to see in the Mexican YouTube highlight video (because the names were printed on the screen) was that the formational change that Gregg made seemed specifically designed to play Dest at a more natural position. In fact, it's exactly what Taylor Twellman was calling for after the Swiss humiliation. Against Switzerland, they played a four-man back line, with Brooks and Dest on the left. You're right about Brooks: he's a giant dude who wins 1v1s but is terrible in space. Dest, theoretically, is the fast guy who protects him back there. Instead, Dest spent the whole game on the Swiss side of the field, and Switzerland worked the ball down our? left flank over and over and over and over and over again, and the only thing saving five or six goals was that the Swiss striker was terrible at putting the ball in the back of the net. On the few occasions Dest was actually back to defend, he lost 1v1s, committed penalties, and gave up a PK with a hand ball (that last one not really his fault, but shit happens). The commentary after the game was that Dest needed to be moved forward so that he could continue to create and be a problem up front without being such a liability on the back end--that the four-man back line wasn't working when one of the four was never there and two of the others are slow.
They're going to have to figure it out. I'm not sold on Sargent, Reyna seems overrated at this point, and I'm not sure what Brenden Aaronson even does out there, but Dest, Pulisic, McKennie, Musah, and Lletget seem legit up front. The defense, though? Ouch.
