re: US of are we the best bad team? v. Not Ronaldo | Friendly | 6pm CT (TNT)

Kind of feel like I should sell my World Cup tickets.

We dont have any baws on this team who will say frick you and will us to victory

No Dempsey, Gooch, mcbride like guys who will carry us

We need to stop thinking we can play with these top Euro clubs... we're not there yet. Not even close.

Jurgen thought we could, Gregg thought we could, and now Poch thinks we can.

We need to be bunkering, muddying shite up and looking to hit on the counter.

Spare me the "look at all our guys playing in Europe though!" Nah frick all that, this team is not much more talented than the teams of the 2000's, it's just that there isn't as much of a stigma for these big clubs to bring in US players like there was then. In fact, more teams are actively looking to bring in Americans to reach that market.

It's so much easier to play in Europe now for an American and we've ignorantly begun thinking that our talent has increased. It hasn't.

This team is dreadful.

quote:

---

there’s something missing from this team that comes off like they don’t want/need it as much

---

This is the biggest concern. Certain players aren’t acting like that, but those players aren’t the highest quality in our pool.

Players with fight (ignore talent level for now):
- Luna
- Berhalter
- Freeman
- Richards
- Agyemang (always working at least)
- Pepi
- Roldan
- Trusty (tonight is all I have seen him, and he was barking)
- Arfsten
- Aaronsen
- Adams

Along for the ride:
- Pulisic
- Tillman
- Tessman
- Balogun
- Weah

Hot and cold:
- McKennie
- Cardoso?

(I’d put Gio somewhere, but he always plays the game that comes to him and I rarely have issues with his performances in the USMNT.)

— The guys with “fight” mostly aren’t our most “talented”. Only two of our 100% starters in Adams and Richards, by my estimation, are players that fight beginning to end.

— Three or four of those in my “along for the ride” list are sure starters. Our most experienced players don’t have the pride and fight to succeed when it comes to international football. If we get down in the game, these guys become a shell of themselves and it degrades team effectiveness overall… Noticeably.

— Those hot and cold players are capable of being REALLY good when things are good. McKennie has a different fight when we are up or even in score. Cardoso is just here because we have seen him do well recently after a tough experience last calendar year.

It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what needs to happen in terms of pride, but one thing that is clear to me is that they need to watch the film of all of the USMNT games the past 8 months and tally passes completed and careless turnovers, and weight the roster selection a bit with that stat set.

How many times JUST TONIGHT did we give the ball away because the passes were just wildly fired into a tight spot and couldn’t be controlled? But that has been a theme against teams that were either pressing us or outright better than us. We even had that issue a few times when we beat Uruguay.

The MLS players can’t play passes as fast as needed to beat better squads, especially not with the quality necessary to beat effective building out of the back.

Our player pool is a fricking mess, man. I don’t really blame Poch… when you have shite and bread as the only ingredients, you have to ally least TRY to find the best shite sandwich recipe.