OT: USMNT beats Honduras 1-0, advances to Nations League final
The US men's soccer team faced off against Honduras last night in the Nations League semifinal, and pulled out a tight 1-0 win. I'm not exactly sure what the Nations League is, but from what I can tell, it's a new CONCACAF tournament leading up to the Gold Cup.
The US will play Mexico on Sunday at 9:00 pm ET for the final.
If you want a detailed recap of the game, I found one here. I watched most of the game myself, and Honduras definitely played a scrappy (even dirty?) game as an overmatched team. They were constantly on the ground in the second half, requesting stretchers to be taken off the field for "leg cramps". They did everything they could to disrupt rhythm and throw off the Americans. Their strategy almost worked too, except for a late goal that the US snuck in.
I haven't watched much soccer lately, and I'm sure there are plenty on this board who know way more than me and will have more intelligent opinions. From my perspective though, the US controlled the ball for most of the game, but they didn't seem to have good chemistry in building their attacks. Not sure how much of that was due to Honduras' scrappy play, or a young team still trying to gel.
Anyway, I always enjoy watching the national team play. Hoping for a win on Sunday!
Also, I noticed most of the guys from egrfree2rhyme's post were in the lineup, except for Daryl Dike. Any ideas why he wasn't in there?
People suspect Dike’s absence is mostly due to club team schedules and the timing of the nations league and the upcoming gold cup. The nations league is coming right after the European leagues finished their season so it’s a good time to pick a squad of mostly Europe based players since they’re all available. The gold cup will be a couple weeks before the Europe leagues start up again so some of those Europe based players will be in training camp and unavailable for the gold cup, and you’ll see a more MLS heavy squad. Since Barnsley turned down their option to sign him permanently he’s an MLS player (for now) so we’ll probably see him in the gold cup.
There's talk that Daryl Dike might be linked to Everton. LINK Having recently lost their manager, Carlo Ancelotti, to Real Madrid, Everton might have to wait until they have a new manager in place before entering negotiations with Dike.
Daryl Dike still is in the USMNT training camp, but because CONCACAF limited the Nations League rosters for the semifinals and finals to 23 players, USMNT Coach Gregg Berhalter had a tough choice to make when deciding on which forwards would be on the roster for Honduras last night and Mexico on Sunday. I guess he made a wise decision to have Jordan Siebatcheu Pefok available last night.
According to this article, Dike will play against Costa Rica in a friendly on June 9.
More than likely timing and the euro players will be taking a break during gold cup. I think he'll be our #9 for gold cup.
From my perspective though, the US controlled the ball for most of the game, but they didn't seem to have good chemistry in building their attacks.
This has been an ongoing problem.
I think 2 things are at play... youth and Berhalter's system.
Berhalter stresses strong individual position play.
It's problematic right now for the US because it causes hesitation and you cannot do that at this level. You can get away with it against what should be lesser competition (even though Honduras gives the USMNT fits for some reason) but as we saw against SUI, a quality side will mop the floor with a team that has to think about what to do rather than just intuitively doing it.
Sunday and the next two friendlies should shed more light on where this team is truly at.
I will say I do have hope that Berhalter will be good for US Soccer in the long run.
And time together
That was the second-youngest side the USMNT ever fielded in a competitive game and they gritted out a win against a top-4 CONCACAF side. Was it pretty or cohesive? Not really. But that experience really benefits all of our young players and we should feel good that we won a game where we didn't play our best.
Some additional problems that seemed to come to light last night.
Berhalter's system asks a ton of the DM (the #6) who has to cut out passes through the mid-field, shield the CBs and initiate the offense by shuttling the ball between defense and attack (and make lots of decisions about when to go wide, when to play direct, etc). Unfortunately, Adams, the best player in that role, has some kind of niggling back injury and there's no backups that can pull off all the facets of the position (I think he should go with dual 6's rather than one guy if Adams can't go, pulling one of the other MFs back, because...)
Both of the first choice wingers (Pulisic and Reyna) like to cut inside, but that put them into the same spaces as the advanced MFs (Lletget and McKennie), creating a lot of congesting and limiting options in the final third. It also led to a fair number of turnovers in which the front 5 (and sometimes the two outside backs as well) were caught upfield, leading to a fair number of situations where one of Honduras's wingers was in space against a CB, which is not great even if you've got really good CBs.
I generally like the ideas Berhalter has of how to play ... high pressing, utilizing attacking outside backs, having two wings that can cut inside, and even the vital role for the #6 so long as Adams is available, but it's going to take time playing together and he does seem pretty tactically inflexible when he has to insert players who don't have the skill sets to do the specific jobs of each position.
Some of the credit has to go to Honduras as well. It's hard for any team to break down a well-organized low block and they disrupted any flow of the game in the second half (I saw something that Honduras players were down for 9 minutes with "injuries" in the second half - that's 20% of the time!)
On top of all that, Honduras didn't press the center backs and instead man-marked Yueill a lot in the midfield area, which shrunk many of the US' passing lanes and affected the timing and patterns of play: the goal had to come from a ball over the top from Brooks and then headed behind the backline by McKennie.
We definitely missed Adams yesterday and I think Berhalter should have adjusted with a midfielder like Musah who could turn with the ball, beat a defender off the dribble, and then make a defender step towards him by attacking the space in front of him.
I think Berhalter is a good manager but it's been tough to evaluate him as he hasn't had a normal year managing the team yet. He's barely had any competitive matches. First was the Gold Cup, then Nations League Group Stage, which wasn't all that difficult. That's 10 competitive matches in 3 years as manager. And for most of 2020, he couldn't really do anything with the squad.
I expect Mexico will boss us this weekend, but I just want to look competitive with them.
CONCACAF is so boring. US-Mexico, US-Mexico, over and over...
One confederation for the Americas, please.
It's nice for the US to win the Gold Cup every once in a while and have a relatively easy WC path (2018 notwithstanding). I do not want to have to go through Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay every cycle.
If we did combine with CONMEBOL, it would probably be very beneficial for the players and their development. But I think you could also argue it would be worse for the USMNT overall. Same with Mexico. The Americas would probably get 8-10 bids to the World Cup. I think it's likely that the US would be one of those bids. But it's still less likely than us getting a bid through CONCACAF. Obviously 2018 was a disaster, but it was a disaster because it is actually fairly easy for the US to qualify.
Exactly. Be careful what you wish for. Players aren't "developed" at the national team level; so regularly competing against Brazil and Argentina wouldn't make your players much better.
Many of the benefits of what you're hoping for can be accomplished through combined tournaments like expanding Copa America to include the top 2 or 3 CONCACAF sides (more competitive games against better competition), but qualifying for the World Cup against Colombia and Chile is a very different animal than Honduras and Costa Rica.
Missing every other World Cup would be far worse for player development in the US than anything else.
Also, if you think jet lag is a factor in players flying back from Europe to the US for qualifiers, try having them fly to Chile.
Huh? While Chile is a long flight (9 - 10 hours), Chile is on the equivalent of US Eastern Daylight Time. Not a lot of jet lag compared to an 8 hour flight to Germany and 7 hours +/- of time zone differences.
My very quick search found the shortest flight between London and Santiago as 18 hours. That's what I was mainly talking about (lack of direct flights). Now, you're probably talking about that being broken up by a few days of training, but that extra travel time would take a toll on an increasingly European based first-squad team.
That's not what you mentioned. You mentioned jetlag.
Jetlag is a result of crossing multiple timezones quickly.
An 18 hour travel day just sucks; it shouldn't induce jetlag.
We made the same point at the same time... so not disagreeing with you. But rather a minor suggestion. MDT is UTC-6. Santiago is UTC-4.
So Santiago is equal to EDT.
Having done both there's a big difference between 6 or 7 hours change between the US and the EU and the negligible difference between the US and Chile.
Chile is is UTC-4. Same as Eastern Daylight Time. So no factor for maybe west coast based athletes. But even that is a stretch as the general rule of thumb is 1 day of recovery per 2 timezones crossed.
The US finishing was beyond disappointing and if not for Sargents great defensive play that result would have been a CONCACAF 1-0 loss.
The repeated quality of service balls was really disappointing too. Even on many free-kicks (no excuse for that).
I also saw more clustering around the ball on midfield/ defense ( four nearest defenders ball watching and then all running to the ball leaving other opponents wide open - odd to see at such a high level of play). And very relaxed backline defending often running a trap with one person not in sync leaving many easy chances for Honduras, who were equally poor at finishing.
You see some potential but I worry about coaching tactics and few players who clearly are not at the skill level needed ( and could hurt the entire team's chances). Let's see what happens Sunday.
Lletget was really bad on a lot of the dead balls as the game went on. Most didn't clear the first man, which is the cardinal sin (their first two corners were great, the first got McKennie a free header that he just couldnt get over, the second got Dest an open shot pulling around the frontside of the box that got deflected out).
I think the clustering in the attacking third is because their 433 sets up as a 4123, and the 2 attacking MFs were getting in the way of Pulisic and Reyna as they tried to cut inside. It seems like they either have to tell Pulisic and Reyna to play as more traditional wingers (which would be a waste of their talents) or play one of the attacking mids further back.
Honduras was able to counter attack us pretty consistently, and we were very lucky they never put one in the net. The drop-off from Adams to Yueill at defensive midfielder is severe, but I'm not sure if it will matter. A lot of the US' issues has to be on Berhalter. We have been consistently vulnerable to counterattacks over his tenure, and I think a lot of it is playing with the wrong tactics for the players he has.
On the plus side, Mexico played poorly as well, but they have a good manager who will undoubtedly take advantage of the flaws in Berhalter's system, as he has done every time they've played.
Kind of disagree about the difference Adams may make. A lot of the issues seemed to be Yueill's positioning and reading of the game, which I think would make a significant difference with Adams, who reads the game very well and also has been playing in a system at Leipzig where the outside backs play high up the field and the DM is charged with covering for them to prevent quick counterattacks. (Leipzig does play with a double pivot in midfield, which I think is the root of the US's issues facing counterattacks. You can't push both outside backs high with only a single player deep in midfield to cover.)
He's also not a flashy passer but he is accurate and secure and moves the ball quickly, which seemed, to my view, to be Yueill's major issues last night.