EAST HARTFORD, Connecticut — The first half of the U.S. men’s national team’s friendly against Germany on Saturday went about as well as USMNT fans could have hoped.
The second half couldn’t have gone much worse.
Defensive breakdowns led to a pair of quick-fire Germany goals in the second-half, dooming the Americans to a 3-1 loss to at Pratt & Whitney Stadium.
Niclas Fullkrug and Jamal Musiala scored goals three minutes apart early in the second half to erase the positive energy from a promising first half for the Americans.
Fullkrug gave the Germans the lead in the 58th minute when he latched onto a perfectly-timed Robin Gosens pass that unlocked the U.S. offside trap, giving the Borussia Dortmund striker an easy finish past Matt Turner.
Just three minutes later it was Musiala showing why he’s one of the world’s best young players, dribbling at the American defense and creating havoc before making it 3-1.
The USMNT enjoyed a promising first half, creating chances and putting pressure on the German defense, though the visitors did control stretches of the opening half, showing off their quality in attack from Musiala and Leroy Sane.
Christian Pulisic opened the scoring with a beautiful finish from 20 yards out in the 27th minute after dribbling through the German defense.
https://x.com/brfootball/status/1713278618476986833?s=20
Gio Reyna made his first USMNT appearance since the Concacaf Nations League Final, starting and playing 45 minutes.
The USMNT now heads to Nashville to take on Ghana on Tuesday.
Luca is a defensive liability in the middle, please just put him on the wing and let him just whip crosses in. Would have rather seen Maloney than him. I hope the Ghana game will be better.
Yeah I said on the other thread if you put in Luca for Gio why didn’t you let him play higher like Gio was. But to be honest Luca wasn’t responsible for either goal and Gio certainly had a role in Germany’s first goal (one of many).
what you’re saying is you want to see the useless LDLT in just not where he played. i think half the issue is people think he’s in the top 6 mids where we even have this discussion. he definitely isn’t a 6 but if we’re turning him into an 8 he’s not in the top 4 AM at our disposal either. or did the fall off from reyna not abundantly make this point?
– Pulisic, Weah, and McKennie haven’t figured out how to play with Balo yet. They hold the ball a half second too long and then it’s either offside or been covered. That takes time and some clear words in film study. That combination between Balo and Christian that led to the goal should help Pulisic to understand this.
– Pulisic should not be taking corners
– There needs to be some threat in the middle. It can’t always be crosses across goal. There has to be someone around the top of the box that the ball comes back to once in awhile. The attack is too singular, the defense just knows get to the endline because that is all that happens.
-This team doesn’t get better by not playing, bringing in a bunch of guys who don’t dominate lower leagues or youth leagues won’t “challenge” the starters to get better. Getting whooped should motivate them not having to beat out journeyman or “starlets” with 1 MLS goal this season.
– Germany looks like they’ll be tough under Nagelsman. That being said they’ll probably come out unmotivated against El Tri and lose 3-2.
On playing thru the middle, Musah has shown he can, too, good on the turn and can carry with strength. Yes he’s answered the bell at the 6 since Adams went down, but Yunus is versatile and has shown he can play higher in the middle and perhaps he can get more minutes there again
My issue is it never comes back after Yunus or Wes move it up field they the middle. Also, neither have shown much threat to score. If Yunus can establish his scoring boots he’ll be a complete player, that free header miss today hurt.
Wes is great in the air but needs to be up there so it matters. Yes Yunus is imperfect but he can play make and he’s proven it, often, in the uni even tho he missed his header. Others missed good chances too.
It’s funny to me because Yunus was a revelation playing the 8 before Tyler got hurt, remember?
Usually when someone says I can’t believe he’s still only 20… It’s overused hyperbole but with Musah… That kid is a MAN… And he’s still learning.
He wasn’t at his best today but man he should be really hitting his peak at the WC.
I was also confused at the LDL strategy.
I can’t remember which of you guys said it, but bringing in Ferreira as a #10 .. If GB would ever actually play a double pivot Gio is your guy, and I’d like to see JF back Gio up..
I’m wondering if Jones and Lund were underwhelming in training or Scally is the much better option to switch Dest. Made me wonder if GB wanted Dest on Sane, or Scally playing in the BL…. Interesting to see what happens vs Ghana.
Bac: one thing I didn’t notice is according to The Straight Red Card guys and Tactical Manager that we switched from a 4-3-2-1 with Yunus and Wes in double pivot and then went back to 4-3-3 when Luca came on. I said it somewhere I think putting Lund or Jones out there against Leroy Sane is kind of setting them up to fail. I didn’t think Scally was bad, Dest you’re just betting his offensive contributions equal or better his defensive lapses.
Did they tell the players?
JR, McKennie is not a 6. The You Tubers pander to the Gregg haters because they make up the majority of their audience and keep their channels running. Who are the two 6s going to be? There is a very large sample size that says McKennie can’t play the 6 including the game yesterday and the Holland game. There is likewise a large sample size that says teams target Adams at the 6 pretty effectively. There is a small sample size that says Musah is a better 6 than Adams against CONCACAF level competition. There is a large sample size that says Pulisic, Mckennie, Weah, and Reyna are the best attacking players. If you play a 4231, one of those 4 is sitting unless you play McKennie as a 6 which is going to leave giant holes in front of the two centerbacks like there was in both halves yesterday. The 4231 wasn’t effective defensively in the first half, Germany just squandered their chances. Gregg put his best 10 field players on the field in the first half and of those players maybe 2 at best would start for Germany and most of them wouldn’t even make the bench. A formation isn’t going to overcome that level of disparity in talent unless you take the Canada qualifying approach to bunker in and try to get goals on counters against the run of play, which is statistically provides the best chance of beating a team that is significantly better and doesn’t take brilliant coaching. That isn’t how I want to see them play in a friendly. Now if it is The Copa or WC, yes. The you tubers will complain no matter what he does. His best midfield option yesterday was LDLT; a guy that didn’t play a minute in the WC for the very reasons on display yesterday.
Tele: I agree YouTubers like Tac, SRC and 11 Yanks do pander to their base and do start to believe in their own hyperbole because they get likes and super chat donations.
– Wes can’t be a lone 6 in the 4-3-3 I don’t dispute that. In the first half we were more solid and tougher to play thru when Germany was in possession because we had numbers. Most of the German danger came in transition as we push our CMs wide to make triangles with wings and FBs that leaves an empty desert to slow the counter. Wes and Yunus ran themselves to exhaustion in the first half chasing the counters.
-Gregg bet Luca’s build out play would make up for his lack of bite. It didn’t. Shifting back to a 4-2-3-1 helped giving Luca a second body but the Germans had shown how powerful their Porsch was and clearly let off the accelerator a bit too.
super reading in this thread this morning
JR, McKennie isn’t good as a dual 6 either. He was supposed to be playing that role against Holland because Musah didn’t have the legs after playing an 8 in attack and a 6 in defense for the three group games. McKennie didn’t really play a 6 against Mexico because he didn’t need to as Musah could handle it on his own against the lesser competition. It seems like the people who advocate for the 4231 so Reyna can play a 10 with little defensive responsibility always put McKennie as a 6. That isn’t his position. A 433 gets Pulisic, Weah, McKennie, and Reyna on the field togethor but the 8s have a lot of defensive responsibilities and those need to be Reyna and McKennie right now.
Tele, we’ll see if once Gio gets back to full fitness if we get back to 4-3-3 with Wes and Gio as the 8s. I’m not sure a 4-2-3-1 or the 4-3-3 is the right formation either. We are still very one dimensional.
– 1st US game to sell out at Hartford, and on a drizzly day.
– Nageslman’s halftime adjustments, coupled with Reyna’s minutes restrictions, tilted the 2nd half to Germany.
– Ream is still a quality defender.
– We really missed Adams and Tillmsn today. LDLT looked out of place
Crowd looked and sounded great until the German second goal. Yes there were a lot of German fans but not an overwhelming amount. Joe Gyau had to be thinking “now you guys get grass instead of turf!”
It was almost like the instructions were NOT to pass to Balogun. We finally have a proven high level goal scorer and Berhalter really needs to find a way to get the ball to him more often.
Anyway I prefer to play this level of opposition because it’s a rude awakening of our real level. Until we can compete regularly vs these types of teams round of 16 is our ceiling. Next friendly slate I want to play France and Argentina. Let’s walk the walk.
Actually Balogen was offside 3 times teammates did try to connect with him. It is beyond my pay grade to blame Balogen for being too eager or his teammates for passing too late. Either way, they need to work that out.
Weah showed he is still fast and McKennie that he is still a fierce competitor (but he might be better off in on some of those difficult passes he tries to make that he find something simpler).
I was pleasantly surprised by Richards and Scally who both did better than I expected.
I think it’s a combo of both the Balo’s a little eager and sometimes they held it too long.
for it to be a rude awakening for real there need to be tactical changes or personnel consequences. the problem is the coach kind of “knows” what he wants to do and who with. so he doesn’t know what to do with this information any more than the holland game. this is part of my issue with him assuming his conclusions this bad. it pretty obviously needs to be run some bodies out there and reward the ones who play well, including people like richards who i usually like but played badly.
3-1 holland. 3-1 germany. we have tried your ideas. we have tried your personnel. “scoreboard.” please step aside, fanboys, the kids table is over there. you can pick lineups on big club reputations and systems on aesthetic aspirations over there with the toys and cheese pizza. you can come back to the adult dinner table when you have an offense that gets the ball to the striker(s), that fits the personnel, and can keep strong opposing teams to a competitive scoreline.
some of you need a history lesson. your “old fashioned” forerunners once beat germany 3-0 at home including a kirovski howitzer. as recently as the lousy 2018 cycle we beat germany 2-1 in germany.
i thought we should have run iran and wales off the field. you just got beat by a soccer IQ german team that slowly walked the ball upfield and just ripped the formation to shreds by simply taking the next easy pass.
you are not smarter about soccer, you make this worse. you can lecture us when you get the scoreline flipped. this coach hasn’t flipped a good team european scoreline in his whole 5 years running it.
this is not canada. this team has a history.
I’m not the biggest Berhalter fan but as I mentioned in a prior post, we kick and run because we’re crazy fast on the wings but our midfield pool largely lacks the ability to play through the middle. When he’s healthy, Gio has finally become that one player we have who can actually play through the middle and link up with our striker…otherwise it doesn’t matter who it’s been, the guy gets isolated and seldom sees the ball. Malik Tillman is showing signs he might be another but he’s out hurt.
Who else do we have in the pool who can solve that problem who we’re not calling up?
sorry but kick and run is a horrifying oversimplification. go watch the costa rica friendly a few years back, honduras, some of the games this summer. go watch japan or morocco. or leicester a few years back. you can counter on the ground. what you do is get back, swarm the opposition on our end of the field, then play the ball into the open areas. there is a nice sequence where pulisic plays it to weah and he blows by germany today. mbappe often plays like that. quit the lame stereotyping.
sorry but this team, right now, is not rostered to build from the back and possess the ball for 30 passes and score some press-breaker goal after passing circles around teams. we do not have the technical midfield to execute that. we rarely score nice precision goals like pulisic’s finish today. this roster is meant to score athletically — to score goals off deadballs, send balogun and weah behind the defense, and get goals crashing the box off counters.
either that, or if you want to have your banger midfield, then put in a banger defense behind them so we can hope to hold germany to nothing and be competitive. and come up with an offensive strategy besides keepaway.
the personnel carpet doesn’t match the tactical drapes.
people always pretend like i have not given other options. in terms of personnel,
first, we have some underused internals like miles, lund, and aaronson. i fundamentally disagree we had the best XI even within this safe 23 he called.
second, people left off, koleosho richardson pefok wright mighten gaga sands ferreira EPB green holmes gressel sargent rogers sandler. some of them played well this summer but apparently as with reyna that doesn’t count if he wasn’t coaching. JR will now pick 1 or 2 who are either hurt or playing for a competing youth team this time and pretend they all were. third, some of the U23 types like keyrol figueroa, vargas, dietz, rodriguez, and buck. fourth, there is always some new U20 who emerges.
worth noting that these players do not have to start to make the team and improve it. they are competition for LDLT and ream and johnny as much as wannabe starters. JR exaggerates how good those scrubs supposely are and then implies how unrealistic, weak, or unproven that list above supposedly is.
i do not understand the complacency or comments that we are playing to win when they don’t actually do it.
IV
“second, people left off, koleosho richardson pefok wright mighten gaga sands ferreira EPB green holmes gressel sargent rogers sandler.”
I would argue that the players you named have performed less well for the USMNT than the guys who played today.
Germany’s goals came mostly as a result of the US not challenging players around the 18. At least one of the goals was the result of a deflected pass, another was after a geman player had the ball just outside the 18 and had “all day” to spot a runner for a relatively easy goal. The third was after what I thought was a great save by Turner, but it was a German not a defender who got to the ball first after Turner pushed it away.
I think that in a nutshell the USA did not make it hard enough for
Germany; doing so does not take a lot of skill, but it does take some athletic defenders with better soccer brains than the current crop. I don’t think anyone in the list you gave really addresses that.
IV:
Koleosho: declined call up
Richardson: accepted Morocco call
Mighten: hurt, limited minutes for last place team in Belgium
Wright: benched and ineffective for mid table Championship team (Sarge better numbers and has been out since August)
Gaga: he’s been ok on an epically bad team wouldn’t have stopped any of the goals and probably not 1 or 2 Turner did
EPB: hurt and really kind of bad
Sargent: hurt (how do you not know that?)
Pefok: apparently he’s sick but let’s be honest 1g 9 matches doesn’t really compete with either Balo or Pepi’s production
Ferreira: FCD needs points and have a match tonight, I don’t know that he’d make it anyway but FCD would have begged no
Sands: yeah ok, I’d have been fine with that
Holmes: career average player in Championship, every year gets hot for three weeks and then nothing for 6 to 9 months,
Green: see Holmes only make it 2Bundesliga. Struggled with Furth and Stuttgart in Bundesliga but sure he could have changed the game against a bunch of Bundesliga All-Stars Gundogan
Gressell: he’s not quick enough to be defender (if you thought Dest was on skates against Sane) so you’re going to sit Weah for him?
Rogers: got benched and was sold for a loss by a mid table Norwegian side
Sandler: mostly known as a prospect who never has lived up to expectations playing CB on a mid table Dutch team. Ok I’d probably ask him ahead of just off injury list CCV, not sure he’d accept.
Lund: that’s a big ask to put your young LB with caps against Uzbekistan and Oman to start against Leroy Sane with 97g in EPL and Bundesliga combined I mean I’m sure he saw that kind of speed and technique in Sweden or Serie B
Miles: would of had a lot of trouble against their high press
Aaronson: he was fine brought some energy late but who do you take off for him, if your just saying at half instead of Luca yeah for sure.
So you threw 17 names up there and maybe 3 were realistic to have come off the bench but none are close to the starting XI and that’s not because I’m a fanboy it’s because I have eyes and actually watch them play whenever I can. Most of them aren’t even good enough to beat out the backups.
related point but japan whooped canada 4-1. earlier in the year i pointed out a run of results starting with summer 2022 friendlies where we lost to japan, tied saudi, tied wales, tied england, lost to holland, lost to serbia, tied colombia. oh, and beat iran, uzbeks, oman. some of you need to consider that perhaps concacaf is in a down ebb right now and what inconsistent regional success we have may be a poor indicator of how this stands globally.
also, it’s kind of ironic that the folks who said we needed to try their ideas because we’d plateaued internationally, and regional dominance no longer sufficed, hang their hat on intermittent regional hardware, and their ideas do not actually travel well and make us more competitive with europe as the sales pitch suggested. but then i remember this debate starting bradley’s era and being pushed by folks who said they’d rather risk not qualifying than look like that again. so i think this was always an aesthetic argument posing as winning tactics. because a team that usually makes the world cup and often the knockouts would not let you in the door unless you mouthed some words, insincere or not, about your ideas winning precisely the sort of games it has not shown it can do. but if we hold you accountable, it has to start winning these type games, no matter how much you like the other team’s resumes.
this is not going to compete for world cups until the defense can hold teams to 0-1 goals nights like this. this is not going to compete for world cups until we can find the 9/strikers, have offensive ideas more sophisticated than whacking crossing in, and IMO until this goes to goal (like pulisic today) precisely when the instinct being taught is to hold up and either pass back or take it to the flag, germany was slow motion but 99% of the time it was trying to work the ball ever forward into danger. if your response to this game is oh but germany is a good team, i thought your sales pitch was we were going to become that.
IV,
“people always pretend like i have not given other options. in terms of personnel,
first, we have some underused internals like miles, lund, and aaronson. i fundamentally disagree we had the best XI even within this safe 23 he called.”
It must be lonely to be the only one with sufficient perception to see the truth.
It’s interesting how you like to insult the rest of us on SBI for the USMNT fucking up.
You haven’t ever written anything about what is wrong with the USMNT that someone else on this site hasn’t also pointed out.
Most of the stuff you have pointed out, everyone here already knows about, but you act like it’s some incredibly perceptive insight that only you can bring.
It is telling that the USMNT has a great first half and then once Germany had had some time to check things out, they turned on the style and then got their work done.
The USMNT fielded the A team and as far as that goes were pretty cohesive but Germany have national team cohesion AND club cohesion. A lot of their guys came from Bayern ( and many of them had recently played under Nagelsmann there ) and BVB.
Once Germany woke up there was no way the USMNT could match their cohesion. Even if Gregg had called in and fielded your “other options”.
You know how everyone is bitching about the USMNT not getting the ball to Flo, did it ever occur to you that maybe Germany knew Flo was the main man and set up to deny him the ball from the start?
It may be that Gregg is too stupid to figure out what Germany was doing to us. Or it may be that Gregg knows what they are doing but can’t do anything about it.
Could we have beaten Germany today? Sure but this was a friendly so the USMNT only had a short time to try and put it out of Germany’s reach before the pre planned subs came on and ruined everything for us.
And guess what, it appears that Germany’s bench is a lot deeper than ours and they had the advantage. Who knew?
Also if there is some motivational advantage that can give you an edge in a friendly, I would say Germany, with all the recent turmoil and it being Nagelsmann’s debut had the motivational advantage .
In the end, we gave them a scare but they are just a better team with better players and more of them along with a better manager.
The USMNT can beat a team like Germany but everything has to go right. And today it did not.
Not all that glitters is gold. And, the old blind pig always finds an acorn sometimes.
“The U.S. surprised the Germans with a 4-3 victory in a Washington, D.C. friendly at RFK Stadium in the U.S. Soccer Centennial Celebration Match on June 2, 2013, as Clint Dempsey recorded a brace. Jozy Altidore added another tally, and the visitors scored an own goal.”
After Dempsey scored a golazo from the top of the box on the half-volley, it was 3-1 USA at minute 60. Another “meaningless” friendly.
10 years on, have we learned anything?
Still lacking creativity and cohesion in the attack, and uncharacteristically lax in defending.
Proof will be in the pudding when the WC rolls around, and looking forward to seeing how we adjust v. Ghana on Tuesday night.