Informal Analyst: What the USMNT has learned from Mexico and Uruguay

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You're probably feeling a bit better after the US Men's National Team's tepid draw against Uruguay on Tuesday night than when you beat Mexico 3-0 against Mexico on Friday night. Drawing the fifth ranked team in the world – even one less player, and even a friendly game played in third gear at a baseball stadium – is not bad. It's not bad especially when head coach Gregg Berhalter talked about the possibility of creating significant opportunities through possession of the ball, and when it's done by guys who are largely second or third choice to their place, and especially when there are three promising teenagers on the field (and a host of other very promising young players).

We will get to all this in a minute. But we must start with frustration.

Frustration came on Friday from this defeat, as the United States has repeatedly clashed with what started out as a big five-man press and has finally become a seven or sometimes eight-sided press in a dogmatic way. and without hesitation. It is a frustrating international meeting because the United States was crushed by Mexico as it has not been for 10 years. This is a frustrating international meeting because it reminds us that after almost two decades of relative stability in this rivalry – it was about 50/50, and if something had rocked in the direction of 55/45 US for a moment – it's clear that Mexico is just better right now.

This is the first thing everyone will remember legitimately from this international date, and that's how it should be. When your biggest rival takes you to the stake, it leaves a mark. It's disappointing.

But "disappointment" was not all that was exposed. Let's dive into:

"The way we wanted to play"

The dogmatism of the United States against Mexico was a 180-degree adjustment from the defeat in the gold medal final. In the Gold Cup, the United States has too easily and too often been content to throw long balls in front of the press and have never been smart enough or patient enough to stretch El Tri horizontally; everything was too vertical too often.

On Friday, during the friendly match, it was the opposite. the United States just tried to play everything. And the players bought.

"We could have played a bit more of our striker, played a little more direct, changed it a bit," goalkeeper Zack Steffen said afterwards. "Obviously, the score is such as it is, but we played as we wanted to play. "

The accent is mine.

The idea is that by wanting to play this way against Mexico and trying to make it work better, they would start releasing the courage to use the ball to demolish even good teams involved. This is a work in progress:

Watch this clip again. Mexico is pressing with seven, and has reduced the pitch by half. But if there is a little more comfort and a little more conscience (born from reps) of Weston McKennie, he would understand that he can either play short-term that Alfredo Morales has his own. advance in space, or that the big switch – the horizontal switch – on the left, Sergino Dest is activated. Or, he could have kept the ball, shot in his own defender, turned to his left and pulled into the defender of Reggie Cannon, then pass Cannon by the wing.

These second and third options would have been difficult individual games, but you must be able to make difficult individual games in order to use the ball to beat very very good teams. The United States, for about 20 years, had been successful in not using the ball to beat very, very good teams – enough to get to the knockout stages of the World Cup three times in four tournaments, and to make a miracle run at the Confederations Cup final and at Dos-a-Cero Mexico, to death at the Gold Cups and Hexagonals.

But there seemed to be a ceiling as to the height of a team like that who could climb. At their peak (2002 and 2009), the United States was among the top 10 national teams, but most often between the ages of 15 and 20. Becoming a legitimate team of the top 10 year after year is difficult; In the last 50 years, only France and the Netherlands have actually got the password of this exclusive club. Mexico has done everything and its football culture is stronger than that of the United States, and they are not there yet. It takes courage, commitment and a willingness to go beyond what you already do well.

The United States must always be a good counter-attack team. Being good at the counter is a way to get into this top 10, but that can not be the case. only part. The United States must become better, more courageous, smarter and more ruthless, and Berhalter's logic that his argument "internally, we think we are making progress", is that fighting against Mexico is worth the long term, because it is the best way to bring the United States to a higher level of international football.

And so, this:

This is a repeated game pattern. The United States played so much against Uruguay in the first 20 minutes of Tuesday night's game that Oscar Tabarez finally changed the defensive form of his team (they started with a 4-5-1 and went to a 4-4-1-1 to take away some of the time and space of Jackson Yueill on the ball) and the confrontation line (they went from a low block to a intermediate block) to remove all this. Berhalter responded by dragging Cristian Roldan deeper into a double pivot, forcing Uruguay to return to the low block.

And then, when Uruguay really tried to push higher on the ground …

Tim Ream had what was, I think, quite easily his best match in an American uniform. But more importantly: there is no dogmatic aversion to wanting to play over the team that demands it in this match. Perhaps the lessons of the two games in Mexico had been synthesized at least a little.

Do not read too much in this: the game was played in third gear by both sides. Do not read anything: Uruguay does not become Uruguay because it is acceptable to lose. These were promising and repeatable good times, and an idea of ​​what the United States must do with at least some regularity against the best teams over the next decade if they want to get back into the top 15 and then make it unlikely – but still possible to jump into the top 10.

On a more practical level, this:

Losing to Mexico at home did not cost the United States a trip to the 2018 World Cup. The defeat against Costa Rica at home was lacking, and the loss to Trinidad and Tobago on the road, and the only management of draws in Honduras and Panama. All these teams are betting that the United States can not beat them with the ball – they are not going to let the United States go out in transition against them – and they are betting properly.

Playing this way at the moment, facing good teams in games that do not really matter, makes sense, because it is wise to prepare in the long term to face the less good teams in games that really do it.

A touch of naivete

Roldan must take the yellow here:

It reminds me of a similar mistake of Kellyn Acosta at Azteca in a World Cup qualifier match two years ago. At the highest levels of the game, it is now common to erase a guy and eat the card rather than let a team go on break.

Whether it's Roldan or Yueill or McKennie or Tyler Adams or Michael Bradley or whoever else could be in the mix … you have six more guys pushed yourself forward, and 100 million dollars Uruguayans about to take off in space. You must take the yellow.

Expand the player pool

These three guys made their debut with USMNT in these games. Dest is still in part an orange cone, but he is brave and inventive and an attacking force on and off the ball. Pomykal has multiple facets (I think he ends up becoming the left-handed 8th number on the left in the US) and without fear, and a real two-way player. Robinson looked good on the defensive, as one could expect, in his two cameos, and also showed courage on the ball to 1) take up space, and 2) hit passes that Aaron Long would not do.

At 18, Pomykal is 19 and Robinson is 22. They will come back.

Sargent is 19 years old, Cannon is 21 years old, Lletget is the old man at 27 years old and Yueill at 22 years old. All represent, both in club form and what they showed in a few minutes to their country, a progression of their talents compared to the previous generation. And there may be others to come – the U-23 Americans drilled Japan 2-0 on Monday night, Mason Toye scoring a goal, Chris Gloster scoring 90 points on the left-back and a few other players making their appearance.

How many of them will make the jump in the next 12 months? Nobody had Dest, Pomykal or Robinson on their radars in September 2018.

"Talent" has not been the only problem for the United States, but it has definitely been a problem. And these guys named above are not just prospects (with the exception of Gloster, who is still a lot); they are pros who play high-level football every week and get into the picture.

In two games, Berhalter has just introduced four new players into the team, while expanding the roles of three others. The pool of players becomes healthier and the level of talent increases.

For what it's worth

The United States beat Uruguay between 1.73 and 1.05 on Tuesday night, according to Opta. If Tyler Boyd does not miss two meters, and if the whistle is heard by a penalty rather obvious at the end of the first half …

Wing work

Jordan Morris scored the goal and overall was very good. But he still likes to take too much time to make his decisions when he receives the ball in the space – he takes an extra touch, then raises his head, and then goes away. Boyd, meanwhile, is all about taking seven keys when we would do:

This sequence had two distinct chances to turn into a very good look. The United States did a very good job – twice – to place the ball in the "optimal assistance zones" around the center of the field, but Boyd and Morris were not decisive enough to punish. l & # 39; Uruguay.

Christian Pulisic? Tim Weah? Jonathan Lewis? Paul Arriola? One of the kids like Ulysses Llanez? Pomykal on the wing?

It should be Pulisic, but for all his gifts, "release the ball early" is not actually part of it. He has work to do, like everyone else who may be in the dock. And these guys must be Well, because in this system, they are the ones who finish the kill patterns with a pass or a shot.

What must happen

Berhalter's system proved effective enough to create very good chances and limit opposition appearances via ball possession (Uruguay did not create anything, neither did Mexico). "Bend-Don" t-Break "is a good starting point for any defense.

At the same time, the United States has shown no progress with its ability to create useful turnovers. They did not do it at all against Uruguay, neither against Mexico, nor against Mexico at all in the Gold Cup final, and even against a team as good as Mexico, you can create useful business numbers. Things like this happen when you do it:

Until now, the constitution of the group of players has progressed, as has the creation of Berhalter, but there has been some regression in the use of defense to create moments of transition.

I do not leave these two games worried that the United States is trying to silence all the media they see, be it in hell or on the high seas. Berhalter is not an idiot; he beat Jesse Marsch and Tata Martino in the playoffs when necessary. But I'm afraid that the default defensive form of the United States and the middle of the bloc are too passive. In the modern game, "defense" is not limited to being difficult to break down; it's for the key moments of the transition and so far it does not seem to be anywhere on Berhalter's project.

The big question

To defeat Mexico anywhere will require the United States to be good in transition. To qualify for the World Cup itself and to break out of the group stage, the United States will have to be good in transition. Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Sargent and most other promising young players entering the pool are all, for now at least, better players in transition than they already have.

It's all about Adams, though. I'm a big fan of Yueill, and I think Michael Bradley still has a role to play, but Adams is literally world class to create turnovers, and turnovers are the most valuable motto of the modern game. We discussed everything later:

In fact, I am encouraged by a lot of what I have seen in the last 14 games, and particularly by the cohort of new talent entering the team.

But the next step for the USMNT is not to become tiki-taka Spain with the ball; it's becoming a team that forces bad business numbers and exploits them. It's a team that's not only hard to play, but is rather scary to try.

And I think that should mean Tyler Adams as the first choice d-mid. It's an open question, though, whether this will be the case.

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