The U.S. Men’s Olympic squad’s run in Paris came to a frustrating ending on Friday afternoon.
Morocco blanked Marko Mitrovic’s squad 4-0 in quarterfinal action on Friday, with four different players getting on the scoresheet. Soufiane Rahimi opened the scoring in the first half before Ilias Akhomach, Achraf Hakimi, and Mehdi Maouhoub padded the result after halftime.
It marked the U.S. men’s furthest advancement in an Olympic Games in program history.
Morocco’s early pressure eventually led to the opening goal of the match. Nate Harriel fouled Rahimi in the box, allowing the tournament’s leading goalscorer to extend his total to five tallies, making it 1-0.
Tanner Tessmann’s header attempt was saved in the 49th minute, which marked the U.S. lone effort on target in the match.
Akhomach extended Morocco’s lead to 2-0 in the 63rd minute, drilling a right-footed shot into the bottom corner of Patrick Schulte’s net.
Star full back Hakimi added further insult to injury in the 70th minute, stroking home from long-range for a 3-0 Morocco advantage.
Morocco capped the final score at 4-0 before stoppage time after Maouhoub slotted home from the penalty spot. Harriel was whistled for hand ball in the box, summing up a forgettable day for the Philadelphia Union right back.
The USMNT fought valiantly in France to rebound from an opening night loss to the host nation, but will be disappointed after being blanked on Friday in a do-or-die match.
For many of these players, these experiences in France will serve as springboards into their club seasons in Europe, as well as potential senior USMNT careers going forward.
JR,
If you assume that Gregg was a major architect for the Olympian effort, syncing it up with whatever plans he had for the WC 2026, then it seems like some of the steam went out of it after he got canned. Or it was liberated from his clutches when he got canned. It depends on your POV.
As you know, I have long found the entire US men’s Olympic effort a waste of time.
Nevertheless these guys did very well and should be proud of themselves.
It was a job well done and that is always a good thing
here’s the deal. the fed and many of the posters on here acted like it was of huge importance and significance that we qualified and did well at the olympics, given recent previous failures to even make it. we get there, we win half the time, lose to the good teams, and go out quarters. if it mattered like you were saying before, you should care about the result and see my point that we should have done better rostering. unless it was just people’s ego involved before, about not even qualifying which is sated by merely being there.
i am just saying, if your own rhetoric is followed to its natural end, then the roster needs to match the importance and goal. you would start with a list of every U23 and work your way down. not call the B team. and you’d call serious overagers.
just like some of you talk about playing to win all the time but seem to have lost the plot that GB’s regulars could do it. they assume the right people are getting called even if results suggest otherwise. again, the follow through is not there.
nah, i think we like to talk big. teams that actually make success happen demand results and encourage competition. we’re in some adolescent phase where moderate achievement is taken as a sign of success. rather than viewing quarters or round of 16 as a sign further work is needed, it’s this must be the coach, the system, the team. except, no, did you watch holland? france/morocco? obviously not. not if we want bigger things.
you can talk all the smack you want but it comes down to this. if we wanted a better copa result you needed to blow off oly and asset strip the youth teams. if we wanted oly we blow off copa, experiment with the senior team, and send the best to oly. i think we instead arrogantly think anything that shows up in the crest these days suffices. outside U20 — where release is not as big a problem — we have gotten a summer long lesson that we have to demand more to get the results we want.
we split our chips between the tournaments. we lost both bets. the people who act like olympics mattered have evaporated to the wind on their little theory. cause what i have been seeing for a while is U23 is a backwater and this time we lucked out that the U20s qualified them.
No shit? You want a medal ?
IV,
No shit? You want a medal ?
Maybe making grand sweeping conclusions about a national team pool based on one (even 4) games is a little silly? Have Morocco played that well the whole tournament (honest question, I haven’t caught all games)? I mean the speed of their passing and movement was pretty amazing. My observation of our guys was that they looked sluggish and sloppy from the very beginning of this game. It reminded me of the world cup 22 game against Netherlands when our guys just didn’t have legs, maybe some more player rotation would have helped…doesn’t that sound familiar. Still proud of our guys and enjoyed watching them play. Also gained alot of respect for Hakimi for the way he picked up Paredes after the final whistle, that is a captain.
Julian Alvarez started his season July 17, 2023 it just ended Aug. 2, 2024. He made 75 appearances for club and country. Accomplishments include: EPL champion, Copa America champion, Club World Cup champion.
Oh yeah his club season starts the EPL season in 2 weeks.
Only 2 Moroccan starters were born in Morocco, and only 4 of the 16 that played were born there. Rahimi was the only starter that didn’t come thru European club youth teams. Our youth development is improving but it’s not at the quality of France, Belgium, and Spain where these players were born and raised and developed. Those guys have every right to represent Morocco. Their federation has done a very good job mining their diaspora for talent.
Yep. Moroccan federation has been mining Europe since the fan base blasted the federation for not mining. This is the way for a lot of African nations. Algeria. Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Nigeria etc… are all mining European leagues. As does The US.
see this sounds cute except USSF made an executive decision to shutter bradenton and hand development to the clubs — who have then for about 15 years shown they aren’t up to it. your response to stuff is so passive. if you don’t like the NT results, well, there can’t be better players than who GB picked, this is what we are. if the clubs are mediocre or bad at development, well, this is how it is, we should shame them but it is what it is.
i mean, what i am looking at, it’s traditional club/college (6) (and the snobs swore college was dead) for turner, horvath, johnson, miles, ream, pulisic (who also did european youth),. european development (9) for CCV, jedi, lund, musah, LDLT, johnny, malik, balogun, sargent (who also did club at the same StL club ream came from). and MLS academy work (11) for richards, moore, scally, mckenzie (who also played college), adams, reyna (who also youth played in europe), weston, pepi, aaronson, wright (who also youth played in europe), weah (who also youth played in europe).
in other words, you’re wanting to leave this theoretically in MLS hands while roughly 60% of the roster is either normal select or european developed.
also, the fanboy mimics want to do “england.” give it to clubs. yes, EPL has a nice TV contract and rich cosmopolitan league, but we can tie england at world cups. i thought we were trying to win.
you know what france does, as in 2 times champion this century, finalist last time? centralized development. clairefontaine. whole chunks of the year in residence together.
if we are going to imitate, imitate good stuff. and the time to assume you have a winning recipe is on the awards stand with the trophy — not when you’re going out early in tournaments with a roster that suggests your primary concept of player development isn’t actually working that smooth and isn’t even effective enough to kick the dirt over 3-month NCAA players.
in short, your passive response to our development situation is unacceptable. either start granting money to academies, or build up regional or national residencies. i mean as it is you’d be smarter to go to scott gallagher that used to show up at my tournaments than to play for the dynamo academy or several similar MLS setups. there are a handful of academies, eg, dallas, living up to their responsibility. if that is the case then if USSF has a brain it grabs some of the work back.
or maybe we want to imitate the meh english too closely. hmm
So here’s what I’m suppose to understand
-this team was a bunch of B teamers that had no talent who only was good enough to beat bad teams
-this team was also full of guys who should have been given a shot at the Copa America so that top players like Gio could have been brought to Olympics (even though many teams came out publicly saying they did not release many of the players brought up in this thread)
-even though no US team (at any level) has advanced past the quarterfinals since 2000 in an international tournament this is a major failure
Exactly. Make sense of fans i never will. And most on here said we would be grouped.
this is really not hard to understand. “pool,” ie, anyone that age. versus “roster,” ie, who we called. in typical bad faith you’re suggesting i am saying the “roster” could have done better — which maybe incrementally with better coaching — but my point is they didn’t tap the pool well. all possible U23s. all possible overage.
to the extent you’re suggesting a lackluster copa bunch couldn’t have helped U23, you’re either deeply confused or being insincere. this was basically a men’s B team. suggesting the men’s A team wouldn’t have helped in a U23 event is dishonest. and the reality is chunks of this B squad made the gold cup quarters as a men’s team and then obviously made these quarters.
you’re the one who seems to be pretending if we take our best then somehow they are playing france senior then. i’m saying we could take a big chunk of the NT and are you suggesting to me that can’t give france or morocco U23 a tough game or even beat them?
c’mon, be honest, man.
i mean, are you trying to tell me that scally and lund wouldn’t have been upgrades on who played wide back? musah reyna cardoso malik wouldn’t have all started ahead of their mids? pepi couldn’t have been starting striker? esmir, luna, cowell?
and i grant maybe x% say no. but x% > 0%. at any level from bunchball to select to college to pro it’s always can i upgrade. every little bit helps when you are trying to win individual games.
and that’s setting aside we have several overage players in weird career situations who might have been happier in the olympics than running cardio and scrimmaging with some U19 team on the other field because they aren’t wanted on their first team in europe.
my bet is we barely asked at all. i see the spin artists busy at work CYA with vague implications we did some work. i want names. otherwise like i said, “not released” can equally mean “never asked” or “got told no.” it’s passive voice. passive voice is routinely used to hide things. “mistakes were made.” i want answers not hiding things. tell me my whole list said no.
and you continue to not get my point which is why did players need to do 2 straight senior tournaments as though the first didn’t hint at issues.
JR,
If you assume that Gregg was a major architect for the Olympian effort, syncing it up with whatever plans he had for the WC 2026, then it seems like some of the steam went out of it after he got canned. Or it was liberated from his clutches when he got canned. It depends on your POV.
As you know, I have long found the entire US men’s Olympic effort a waste of time.
Nevertheless these guys did very well and should be proud of themselves.
It was a job well done and that is always a good thing
“It marked the U.S. men’s furthest advancement in an Olympic Games in program history.”
Not true. US finished in 4th place in 2000.
I believe it was most wins, not furthest advancement.
2000 also won 2 games counting the shootout. tied the gold medal team in group round (and won the group) and didn’t struggle til the final 4. lost in the semis to spain, which, we know what that became in a decade. that US bunch including landon was then the genesis of the 2002 world cup team that went the deepest ever. sorry but comparing that to a 2024 team that advanced second, lasted one knockout, got spanked every time it played anyone any good is hype.
we will see how france and morocco finish but even if they get medals the margin to them sends a different message about competitiveness.
Penalty shootouts count as draws. I stated a fact. This team won the most matches, didn’t say they were better than 2002. You then decided that since that fact didn’t match your narrative to make my comment about something else altogether. Never have I commented that this year’s team was very good or had a realistic chance of a medal. I don’t see many on this team with a realistic shot at helping in 2026 barring a rash of injuries. Had Mitrovic had access to the best u23 players and 3 overage players with WC experience would he have done as well as Clive Charles. Who knows?
This is where I disagree. The WC rosters will likely be 26 player rosters. I do think Pax, Yow, Paredes, Busio, Tolkin, Sculte, and Tessman will be in the mix going forward. Other than that I also see Luna, Neal, and possibly Cowell. Two years is a long time. Quite frankly we need these players to further develop at their clubs. Injuries will probably happen.
2tone: I think Schulte has the best shot given his position. Then Paredes if he plays LB. After that I don’t have a lot of confidence in any of them. Obviously, Busio and Tessmann have the opportunity to showcase themselves in Serie A this year. Luna has to leave MLS if he wants a chance. Of course it all depends on manager but we are really unlikely to see major changes no matter who takes over in terms of personnel.
JR
” I think Schulte has the best shot given his position. Then Paredes if he plays LB. ”
As long as Matt is on top of his game, Schulte is just a less good, younger version of him. He’s no better at distributing the ball than Matt is. The USMNT has plenty of shot stoppers; what they lack is a modern keeper with reliable, credible, heart attack free distributing skills.
As for KP he’s going to have to convince someone that he is a better left back cover for Jedi than either Dest or JScall.
V: I should have been clear I’m talking about Schulte and Paredes making the roster not necessarily contributing to the squad. Schulte is way better with his feet than Turner, not the shot stopper that a fit and in form Turner is though.
An awful lot of talk about something I don’t see as very important. It’s a nice, but very meaningless competition. It presages nothing regarding future results on the international scene. What should be a goal? Of the various competitions, Copa was undoubtedly much more important since we don’t have to qualify for 2026 and the Copa presented the best opportunity for a real competition before the WC. It seems to me that the Olympics best function was to give chances for younger players not quite good enough for the national team to show their worth. If they win some games, good. If they lose to better teams, well, that happens, but it is nothing to get upset about IMHO. One thing the competition did was to show that guys like Paredes, Yow, and Tolkin have real futures. There are probably others like P Aronsen and Tessman who will contribute. I think that should have been the main purpose and so we accomplished what we should have been aiming to do. One of the benefits of getting older is I no longer get excited about things that aren’t really important.
here is my argument in a nutshell, not hard to understand. assuming we already know what happened in march. jamaica showed us that senior team wasn’t good enough. so you needed to make changes there to chase copa. including calling some younger or different players. which might have depeleted olympics somewhat, but that’s backwards, U23 feeds NT. that’s prioritizing copa. that’s using the march feedback and trying to shore that team up. let’s see how far we can go in copa with a roster reflecting NL didn’t go so hot.
OR
you tell yourself you got what you wanted out of NL. you say you really want olympics to work. you go more experimental with copa — as we often have — and you do all hands on deck U23. we want an olympic medal. we could bring the NL bunch to copa but that’s redundant and hurts the medal chances. so if oly is the priority, anyone the right age shifts to oly.
your odds then go up that one of the two happens because you are aggressively pushing resources to one or the other.
we instead stuck with the mediocre NL squad who stunk up copa — leaving some U23 prospects down — but left the U23 prospects with a watered down olympic team which, well, didn’t do its job either.
i recognize your “repeated xeroxed lineups of assumed best players all year” notion of the NT is very popular right now but its primary adherent got fired because it failed. he was wrong, you are wrong. there needs to be more competition and 20% experimentation in NT squads. and if we want to win a youth deal then the callups need to reflect that.
and if we were getting the supposed vast pushback on oly, well, then, like i said, you shift the chips back to copa — but only an idiot does the same guys who barely beat jamaica and think that gets anywhere. that’s confusing USA cardiac kids luck with performance meriting the protection from competition they get.
most teams i have been on, say, select or college, if the results are too close or not quite what was hoped, they go recruit some people.
Don’t know why it’s hard to understand that the US firstt team players said no thank you to the Olympics.
They prioritized a break after Copa and pre season with their clubs. And justifiable so.
Now come LA 2028 I expect their will be players that will jump at the chance to be apart of a home Olympic team squad.
This result still doesn’t hamper my excitement about some of these players. Excited to see them further develop the next two seasons at their clubs before the WC.
Keep your ears and eyes open for a young striker named zjoel Imasuen these next two years.
Also Amir Richardson isn’t coming to play for the US. He has been approached multiple times and has said no. He wanted France and when France said no thank you he chose Morocco. He is a Moriccan now.
this is mythical hooey. first, coaches make those decisions primarily, not players. second, there were zero news articles where reyna or pepi or someone like that said “they called about olympics and i told them no, send me to copa.”
we then go to copa with a xerox squad and do bad and get the coach fired. we then go to the olympics and some of the U23s i said send to copa instead are praised, eg, yow, paredes, dietz. but because the olympics team is watered down, nothing there either.
i do remember articles where specific U23s were told no. they are not usually the star NT guys i am saying could have been allocated differently. they are not usually the overage guys i am proposing.
people made fun of me saying not getting much out of this summer. check the scoreboard and verify me on that. that’s copa team out in group; olympics team out ugly in quarters; and we managed to qualify U20.
and maybe some of the critics can tell me what the value was on sending basically the same roster to TWO TOURNAMENTS IN A ROW. you’re pretending i was like, drop them off NT duty all year and assign them to olympics. did nations league not suffice? did jamaica not clue us in this needed a second look? but i have to endure copa atop that. because “those are the best chance to win.” ok, dude, whatev.
i mean, standard operating procedure for decades has been if we had 2 tourneys, say, copa+gold cup, or NL+gold cup, or confed cup+gold cup — that we mix it up a little between the two. A and B or something like that.
to me it is typical of the american fanboy mentality to be like we will run our best out to all the march/summer tourneys and run rampant and then we barely make it out of jamaica in one — though we do win — and out in group in the other.
fantastic. you just spent both tournaments and most of our high stakes soccer for the year, proving THE COACH SUCKS and WE NEED CHANGES ON PERSONNEL AND TACTICS.
trying to squash teams like a bug with a roster we ASSUME is our best is clearly not working. so perhaps it’s time for some forms of old school subtlety. one team gets A another B. some experiments in both teams. some form of priority among the NT events, U20, and olympics.
the whack part is you’re knocking me with THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT known. we know it didn’t work. we know rotely doing the fanboy/GB playbook isn’t paying off.
if we were not going to take olympics super seriously. if we were getting the claimed pushback on players. then as i have said for a couple weeks, you call some of those guys for senior play. you maybe prioritize mixing up the roster for copa or NL. you make some decisions and priorities. we are on auto pilot. auto pilot is flying us into hillsides. stop.
BS: we’ve always prioritized one tourney over the other. GC over Copa in 2007, NL over GC the last two times. And we’ve never prioritized Olympics over a NT event. No team in the Olympics prioritized Olympics over their NT.
JR: no, you’re fudging. you’re the one who repeatedly dismissed my calls to bring in younger or experimental players as “calling U23s we’re gonna send to the olympics.” you’re not getting our best chance at copa was to go younger or different. not default.
i think the deal is in your head before oly you thought the best U23 weren’t up to it. you dismissed dietz. you acted like yow and paredes and such were promising but belonged with the kids. i see everyone is now changing their tune on that. don’t diss me because you’re a lagging indicator, dude. maybe next time give less grief for saying x y z could help senior.
or we can call the useless LDLT and malik like you want and circle the drain.
and your basic thrust here is circular. you’re assuming copa should have been prioritized here then chiding me for suggesting it could have been different. 2007 copa was a backwater event for us. and you fundamentally undermine the idea we didn’t care about oly when you’re like leave the prospects down.
you’re just not as committed as i am. i’m like if we’re leaving some down just make it the priority.
i have a memory of heckling ben olsen at a dynamo game over how bad copa 07 went. you’re repeating my point back at me, which is usually we favor one or the other senior event. since we had a ton of senior and youth stuff, and NL ran on an almost winter schedule like GC used to back in the day, we could have said NL — our regional championship — was enough — like GC used to be — then gotten cute with the summer.
and as i keep saying, if GB does that the man probably still has a job. no one is firing the senior coach over a a meh performance by an experimental team while we send the best U23s to oly. they are firing the coach if we prioritize copa and he does awful.
so at least give me the credit that if we prioritize “your thing” we shouldn’t do it with “your players,” ie, who GB showed up with.
it’s crazy having to argue with people we did it wrong knowing it turned out crap. you’re gonna bicker with me knowing how it turned out? and i kind of like not wasting events/games to learn obvious lessons. so we get to fall 24 only to be back to january 23 on who’s gonna coach this cycle, and to have disproven his chosen ones but have a year and change left and one tournament to figure it out. bravo.
You don’t get better by purposely making your varsity weaker so your JV team can run up the score. Could one of these guys sat on the bench like Luca sure. But what would we learn about Max Dietz by playing him 19 minutes against Bolivia? Or playing Paredes 19 minutes instead of BAaronson in Copa? McGuire playing Sargent’s 18 minutes? What do we learn from Gio replacing Mihailovic? That he’s good? Ok, don’t we know that? Don’t we know Pepi is better than McGuire? What I don’t know is if Pepi can score against strong veteran CBs outside Concacaf?
Fwiw guys, Morocco had better players, played like a better team, seemed very well coached and prepared.
I hate the result but Morocco was just impressive.
I am glad that 3 or 4 of our guys will be pushing for A team time ASAP.
I take that part as a good thing.
While I liked the different approach to set pieces, shots on goal or playing the ball far post or deep center instead of to the first defender, that sort of nibbling at the edges maybe hinted at the utter lack of a focal point to the offense. I liked the wings, particularly Yow and Paredes, but then what were they given to set up? McGuire made little impression as the sole real target player and otherwise it was what I would charitably call false 9s. In the “yeah, he wasn’t born to play striker” sense.
Also, the aesthetic obsessed US continues to resist basic soccer 101 ideas like maybe when I am barricaded on my end I need a back to goal striker or 2 as a longball outlet. Because that would be saying kickball is an ok practice. Ok, then, you better show up some pure speed or skill to get out of our end. And I see us now resisting speed, because we ignore the Mbappes of the world, and it’s just not aesthetic. And who tries to dribble people? We should pass the ball 5 seconds too early!
No, I did like us hitting diagonals and what I said on the set pieces. But we come across like a pipeline that has not done the same hard look at self the women have done. They pushed Horan back to 6, where her glaciality hurts less, they emphasized defense, they get the ball upfield quick, and then they vary their runs into the box and play like a team rather than whack and hope.
People need to sit down and say, ok, if this is what we have, what are the tactics to keep us in the games with the good teams. Cause what I saw is every time we came out of a shell against the good teams we got stretched and punished. To then be pushing “let’s work the ball upfield on the ground, and let’s take the air out of the ball way upfield”……not working. Dating back to Japan or Holland or whatnot, they steal the ball, quickly counter, handful passes, no slow build, shot, goal, before we can complain “but we were trying to win the possession stat!”
So look at, who do we actually have, and how do you plan on winning.
I mean the very fact that France can score on us in like 15 seconds off a handful of passes should be preaching very hard that (a) endless tiki taka builds are unnecessary and (b) are not inherently “what good teams do.”
The middle Morocco goals are no effing around, move the ball quickly and perhaps even crudely (the lofted switch they win the header on), get the heck down the wings, and then go to goal or cross it to someone sprinting through the box rather than waiting at the spot in a chaise longue for perfect service. Counter with speed.
And the funny thing is people are acting like Morocco has always been good, when it’s a recent thing. And it’s because they do the exact opposite of what we do. Defend as a team. Not foul or get terminal cards. Get down the field in a hurry. Create a chance. Sprint into the box for your run. Not stand around passively playing keepaway waiting for cracks that rarely show up in elite teams, and which we cannot sign players in a transfer period to create.
We want to imitate the good teams? What we do isn’t imitating anyone “good” right now in international soccer. Teams whooping our butt are ten times more direct and play with speed. And a US player pool should have a bunch of speedy guys, and I know at least some of them can just go to goal and stop farting around.
I finally found a resource with previous overage players. Do you really think Z, miles, mihailovic are the equivalent of:
1996 Keller (GK) Lalas (DF)
2000 Friedel (GK) Agoos (DF) Hejduk (MF)
2008 Guzan (GK) Parkhurst (DF) McBride (FW)
That’s 3 good keepers (2 among our best ever), 3 good backs, and one great forward (among our best ever). Parkhurst is the only goofy one.
Sorry, no, buzz, this bunch of current has-beens or B teamers is not up to previous standard. And that’s rough on Miles but Miles isn’t yet Miles again.
I can’t quite read what our goal here was. We talked big. We then sent a watered down team that didn’t have all the U23s possible or good quality overage. A handful shined, and should be rewarded within the pipeline, but that starts to sound more like a January camp game and less like an age group showcase.
Related point, but if the goal is more to test a group of up and coming players and less to run out a B team, I want to see less of Busio types becoming the new Roldan, and more of people I haven’t seen. Busio has 13 senior caps and should be as “graduated” as the next one. Mihailovic and Z as well. Not that they’ve done amazing with it — but then that’s the point. If we’re veering from “here to win” to “here to test some fresh U23s,” well, keep it totally fresh.
I don’t think it helps the senior team near as much as some of you do to be like, oh, I thought the overaged or Busio did well. You mean guys with tons of caps already slotted B team?
No, what the senior team really needs is more Yow/Paredes/Dietz emerging. And to maybe take a risk on locking down Esmir, Pukstas, and Luna.
No, you either do that or this needs to look more like a U23 all star team plus serious overage like you want to give France and Morocco a run for their money.
Last point but can US fans quit talking like This is the Future after we beat Guinea or the Best Team in Oceania? France and Morocco argue strongly the other way, that most of the best may be already graduated/extracted or have been left down on U20 or whatever happened with Campbell. Quit making “calls” based on the laughers. Start assessing based on who held their own in the tough ones we lost. When we do that this pipeline gets a clue.
“Toothless” USMNT Olympic squad suffers “MASSIVE” quarterfinal loss to Morocco……..because Morocco brought in the necessary quality to get the job done. They somehow have a unique ability the United States do not seem have…..AND THAT IS THE ABILITY TO HAVE THEIR TOP YOUNG ATHLETES RELEASE BY THEIR CLUBS FOR COMPETITION. The USMNT was toothless against a team that beat us base on our very own mistakes and their INDIVIDUAL talent.
————-MOROCCO————————–USMNT——————–
—————-53,2%——–POSSESSION——-46.8%——————–
—————-8————SHOTS ON GOAL——–1———————–
Morocco were able to get national team quality players in Achraf Hakimi, Le Havre’s Yacine Kechta and Oussama Targhaline, Reims’ Amir Richardson and the AS Saint Etienne player Benjamin Bouchouari……what did we think was going to happen lol
The arrogance of thinking we can do well with B-Team players from our talent pool, that are not even fit to start for the USMNT were going to make a “dent” at the Olympics is absolutely nuts, This OLYMPIC TEAM should have had these players on the field:
Ricardo Pepi – 21 yrs
Giovanni Reyna – 21 yrs (has all the time in the world)
Malik Tillman – 22 yrs
Johnny Cardoso – 22 yrs
Joe Scally – 21 yrs
Diego Luna – 20 yrs
Cade Cowell – 20 yrs
Yunus Musah – 21 yrs
Folarin Balogun – 23 yrs
Aidan Morris – 22 yrs
……and just maybe we would have had a shot at a Medal. Participation trophies is what we prepared for (base off the Coach and Players selected), then participation trophies are what we are leaving with. USMNT cannot afford to field anything BUT OUR BEST IF WE WANT REAL RESULTS because even our best doesn’t put us up there with the worlds best. We didn’t field our best yet had the firepower to do some serious damage and showcase some young first team talent in this competition…….
Oh well
hey man, I love your passion!
agree for sure that if we don’t field our best, the depth can be exposed. but it’s better seems to me, even without all; those guys you mentioned, still did more as a group that how many cycles before it? but I hear you
“those guys you mentioned, still did more as a group that how many cycles before it?”
……maybe the timing during that period was wrong and they needed time mature and developed, and this was actually the cycle that they were suppose to shine. Most of them are CURRENTLY with the senior National team, and/or playing for first division clubs……..this was their time
fwiw i have been saying call richardson for years.
+1
How many times has Amir Richardson turned down a call from the US? Multiple times. He doesn’t want to rep the US. He wanted France…. France said no thank you. So he went to Morocco.
Hearing from multiple sources first team players did not want to play in the Olympic team. They priortized getting a little RandR after the Copa and preseason with their clubs.
If the US didn’t play at Copa you probably would have seen more of those players on the Olympic team.
This was Moroccos only tournament this summer. Of course they could get some of their you u23 players and overage players.
Is Yamal with Spain…. nope. Is Harnacho with Argentina…. nope.
Is Barcola and Emery with France….. nope.
Because they all played at the Euros.
this is a fake argument. i never said Back to Back people all summer. what you do is make a choice. you already saw the 23 at NL in march, you got your trophy. i think it hinted at problems and that alone should have provoked some shakeup.
you then have a choice if age appropriate or overage useful players do olympics OR copa. we chose to double down on the NL team for copa. and then, as you say, release them to their teams. doubling them up would have been dumb as it defeats part of the point by tiring them out a little.
as i have said several times now, my theory was, given NL went awkward, you either err on the side of calling up some U23s to copa — to shore it up and see if we can improve the senior team — or you err on the side of chasing olympics and use the older and experimental guys for copa. and maybe send some of the guys with career issues to olympics as overage. does dortmund really want reyna back? does juve really want weston back?
no, the problem here is the combination of arrogance about the xerox roster for copa MEETING the fanboy sensibility of always calling perceived best players, and being dismissive of anyone else MEETING half cooking the olympics then throwing out excuses.
No country with a summer tournament prioritized the Olympics or came close to “splitting” their roster. Bade and Mateta have 0 NT caps, and Lacazette hasn’t been called since 2017.
with no expectations in watching this group play, I came away feeling ok about it all, hopeful some belief was earned for the next cycle as well as for these players, even tho it fizzled out today. we’ll see. they qualified, got out of their group, the USMNT is hardly used to that so pretty tough for me to feel harsh about things. actually enjoyed this, mostly
we still have a skill/talent gap as seen in this age group, I agree Mat, but not like we’ve seen in the past, we’re closer imho, but the gap is still there.
American players still seem to fully mature with intangibles and stuff like that later than others, but this group showed some improved understanding, again just my opinion, even tho getting knocked out. Probably get some disagreement on that, but Tessman, Tolkin, McGlynn, others with their warts and all on talent/skills, just seemed to play with more soccer smarts, even if some mistakes which some might label ‘stupid’…stuff still happens, yes.
anyway, 0-3 sucks, not an unjust result imo, but the whole Olympic experience with this team has been a net positive for me
Another knockout round fiasco for team USA. This is becoming a trend sadly…
The olympics was a good revelation of our real talent pool. We played 2 good teams and lost 3-0 and 4-0. You can paint it any way you’d like but that’s the hard cold reality. Mostly we don’t have the talent to really compete.
Of course our overage player choices didn’t help. Mihalovic was useless and awful aside from a couple of free kicks. And we called in 2 “veteran” defenders for the result of 7 goals conceded vs. strong teams.
At the same time, Morocco is able to bring in the likes of Hakimi… what can really expect will happen.
Morocco could get their best u23 players and overage players because this was their only tournament to play this summer.
It’s not hard to understand this.
US first team players said no thank you.
Two soft penalties but it was still one-way traffic. Pundits suggesting the US had a chance in this game clearly didn’t see any of Morocco’s previous matches and/or didn’t take into account the US’s two previous wins over weak opponents.
Tessman, Paredes, Schulte, and maybe 2-3 more could possibly land on the final 26 in 2026. Let’s hope the new coach gives them a shot.
Yeah. I also think a lot of coaches could well give a long, long, long look at Diego Luna, Cade Cowell’s always an X-factor because of his freakish athleticism if he ever develops some judgment and control, and I sh!t you not – do not sleep on Kavan Sullivan, who hasn’t even quite turned 15 yet but has already been appearing for Philadelphia Union. 2026’s probably a little too early for him, even with the phenom that he is, but given Sullivan’s glaringly obvious career trajectory I could see him legitimately making it, especially on a 26-man roster.
I agree Paredes and Schulte seem likely to make it, and one thing I’ve seen suggested is potentially moving Tessmann to CB, especially if you give him license to rumble forwards the way “Sideshow Bob” David Luiz used to with Chelsea. It could well get Tessmann on the field at a higher level faster, for both club and country. Big, physical guys with his technical and passing ability are rare, and like Luiz he’s got a lethal shot-from-distance and is really, really good at dead balls. It definitely seems worth a look, especially since CB is a glaring area of need for us.
It’s way too premature to start comparing Tessman to a guy like Luiz. You’re not doing either man a favor.
+1 to all of this DC Josh
hope they get a shot and let’s see
Help me understand — this is an “under 23” tournament, except that you can have a few over, and maybe bring in a star who participates for sentimental reasons and sells tickets, up to you. And then also “under 23” is commonly understood to exclude players already on the senior team, unless you blow that off because you want to win….
So what is the purpose of this?
This is a “FIFA would desperately love to kill it because they don’t control it but the IOC would love to keep it because it might make them some money” tournament.
What nkh said.
Also, yeah, the fans here are getting all worked up over a crap shoot tournament. Nigeria has won more Golds than any other country. If a big country wants to win they send their best and win it. Usually they don’t and they don’t.
The expectation of the US Men’s Soccer fandom is so warped. This country’s players are at get our of the group levels. And it’s fun to watch! They have the chance to pull a USMNT vs Spain at the Confed Cup every now and then but they cannot compete on the regular against bigger teams….or Morocco apparently.
DaveP.
Soccer had always been a part of the Olympics. In theory though, they were supposed to be amateurs and thus did not compete with the professionals from Brazil, Argentina, Italy, etc.,etc.
We all know that eventually real amateurism died the same death that honesty did in politics. Which is to say it became extinct.
So in 1992 the honorable people from FIFA officially declared Men’s Olympic soccer to be an Under 23 Youth tournament. Save amateurism!
Not being a senior tournament, clubs do NOT have to release their players.
The vast majority of clubs will not allow their best players to play in the Olympics. And you can see why.
For example, since September of 2023 the USMNT has played 14 games. Throw in these 4 Olympic games and that makes 18 games. If a guy like CP had played in the Olympics he would have missed a significant part of preseason ( bad since there is a new manager) and maybe worse, he would have had no break. None of you care but this may increase the chances of a significant increase in injuries, which is very bad for a thin team like the USMNT.
FIFA’s aim was to try and save amateurism but , in reality, they wanted to prevent Olympic football from siphoning off money from FIFA’s World Cup. It was like watching two great drug cartels war with each other.
And the strategy certainly worked.
Eventually FIFA threw the Olympics a bone by allowing the three vintage players. This allows teams to occasionally flex their muscles for a special occasion.
Brazil ( home team, desperate to wipe the brown off of their shorts after a humiliating 2014 World Cup disaster) flexed in 2016. They called in Neymar, who wanted to play both Copa America and the Olympics but had to choose the Olympics. Had they not won the Gold medal in 2016 heads , literally, might have rolled.
France ( home team) and Morocco ( nothing better to do and with a 100 % WC qualifying record, three straight wins) are doing that now.
The FIFA World Cup and the Olympics are arguably the two largest sporting events around. The difference is the World Cup focuses on football while there is a much wider menu of events at the Olympics such as beach volleyball and archery, marathon race walking and skateboarding to focus on.
Olympics soccer can still be fun to watch and there are some okay players.
Think of it as having the negatives of the World Cup (very few cohesive, well organized teams) without having the positives( lots of good to great players) to make up for it.
It is a true JV tournament. It probably means Mitrovic is not a serious candidate to replace Gregg. Of course, this is the USSF so who really knows?
Since 1992 when it became U23
Gold: Spain, Argentina (2), Brazil (2), Mexico, Nigeria, Cameroon. Only Argentina turned that into WC success and it took 14 yrs and a G.O.A.T. Brazil has won the last two and has one of its poorer teams currently.
Silver: Spain (2). Poland, Argentina, Brazil, Nigeria, Germany, Paraguay
Bronze: Mexico, Nigeria, SKorea, Brazil (2), Italy, Chile, Ghana,
4th: Japan (2), USA, Portugal, Australia, Belgium, Honduras, Iraq
Honduras and Nigeria played for the Bronze in Rio. Qatar should have been their day. Everyone in their primes 27-29 yrs old. Neither even qualified. Nigeria has 3 medals never past the quarterfinals at WC. Mexico a lot of guys on that Tokyo Olympic team got grouped in Qatar and Copa ‘24 and their only NT hardware is 2023 GC that US and Canada brought 2nd teams.
That’s a long ways to say Olympics aren’t much of a predictor of success.
The Olympics isn’t important? USA is leading in the medal count. Double digits in silver & bronze as before the U.S. match.
IV,
“i mean, standard operating procedure for decades has been if we had 2 tourneys, say, copa+gold cup, or NL+gold cup, or confed cup+gold cup — that we mix it up a little between the two. A and B or something like that.”
Bullshit.
They’ve prioritized one over the other because they’ve never had and still don’t have enough players to put the same effort into both tourneys. Bob prioritized the 2007 Gold Cup because it got him the Confederations Cup which was the best possible rehearsal for the 2010 World Cup. And Bob knew that from Day One. Tell Bob Bradley your “theories” to his face and he might rip you a new one. You’re being intellectually lazy and factually barren. Read the history.
From the New York Times:
By Jack Bell
July 25, 2007
Bob Bradley, the coach of the United States men’s national team, has a certain austerity with words, a thoughtfulness before he speaks and a measured cadence when he finally does.
Bradley, his players and U.S. Soccer were excoriated by some American fans after the United States sent a young and experimental team to the recent Copa América in Venezuela, where it lost all three of its first-round games. In one of his first interviews since returning, Bradley repeated Monday what he had been saying all along: do not lose sight of the big picture.
“I always use the expression that there is a lot of work that goes on inside a team that fans and the people outside don’t see,” Bradley said by telephone from California. “This summer, we’ve established some good starting points. It was important for us to defend the Gold Cup title.
“We always know there’s work to be done, improvements to be made. It’s important to try and see all sides that when you win, you still look at the little things that we need to improve, and if you lose, you still know there can be some positives. Of course our job is to win, but you need to look at the whole picture.”
As that “whole picture” begins to come closer into view, it is clear that Bradley believes his job is to prepare a large pool of players for World Cup qualifying matches, which will begin early next year, and to look down the road two years to the next big international tournament the FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa then the World Cup in 2010.
“We knew at the start of the summer that it was going to be a unique challenge to immediately switch gears and go from the Gold Cup to the Copa,” Bradley said. “We all understood the challenges, and we still feel like we gained experience.”
He added: “Obviously, it means a lot to our fans, and without a doubt there are many circumstances that come into play. Nonetheless, in terms of the big picture, I certainly understand the disappointment, frustration that many fans expressed.”
The decision by some players to return to their M.L.S. teams (Landon Donovan) and the reluctance of some European clubs to release their players for another summer tournament (for example, Everton, which recalled Tim Howard) put a crimp on Bradley’s choices. But it also gave him the opportunity to look at young players like Drew Moor, Michael Parkhurst and Brad Guzan.
Hired last December as the national team’s interim coach and the full-time coach for the Olympic team, Bradley had the interim tag deleted in the spring. It is now likely that American soccer officials will select a new Olympic coach so that Bradley can focus on the national team, which will play a friendly next month in Sweden.
Coach Bob Bradley was criticized after a young American team was routed in the Copa América.
That will be followed by games against Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 14, and against Switzerland in Basel on Oct. 17. (There is also likely to be a match in South Africa on Nov. 17, a game that has been announced by that country’s federation but not by American officials.)
“I don’t want to sound like the games in Europe are more important than games in South America, but we all know that we have to start playing better in Europe,” Bradley said. “I think that in the last two World Cups, we’ve shown that we’re capable of playing with the best teams, but that the margin at that level is small.”
“so at least give me the credit that if we prioritize “your thing” we shouldn’t do it with “your players,” ie, who GB showed up with.”
Credit? For you ? ???
“it’s crazy having to argue with people we did it wrong knowing it turned out crap. you’re gonna bicker with me knowing how it turned out? and i kind of like not wasting events/games to learn obvious lessons. so we get to fall 24 only to be back to january 23 on who’s gonna coach this cycle, and to have disproven his chosen ones but have a year and change left and one tournament to figure it out. bravo.”
You’re crapping a book out your ass bitching that you deserve credit for saying that the guy, who has since been fired, and the USSF cabal, who should be fired, basically got this entire re-build from Couva exercise wrong?
Why do you deserve credit?
You were the only guy who was critical of Gregg?
You were the only guy who saw that this might go tits up?
Nothing you wrote leading up to this, at least the stuff that was coherent, was original or particularly illuminating. You wrote nothing someone else here didn’t say. We were all held hostage and made to helplessly watch this slow motion train wreck.
In fact, nothing that anyone posted about the Bounce pass era was surprising, just like Gregg’s entire tenure. Predictable. Mediocre. With a bit of luck and if everyone did everything right , maybe the USMNT could have exceeded expectations a bit.
But they never did.
Gregg’s era was great if you wanted to argue glass half full or glass half empty. Plenty of copy for both POV’s.
And that is another way of saying the entire era was a waste of time. There was progress but there could have been more, a lot more.
You, IV, were not the only person who said as much. No soup for you.
IO2T,
“The Olympics isn’t important? USA is leading in the medal count. Double digits in silver & bronze as before the U.S. match.”
So??? Most here are talking about the men’s team, the one led by the Serb who did not play for Fulham.
It is a big deal to the USWNT and they should medal. The women are, and always have been important to US soccer, more so than the men.
But are any of those medals you are talking about in men’s soccer? Americans are not interested on non-medaling Olympians.
SBI is about soccer and the men, who did well, are now out. So yeah, when it comes to US men’s soccer, the Olympics are no longer relevant or important to the many American Olympic loving fans, who will now switch to other sports, like women’s 25M pistol shooting, where they shoot right at the camera. Fascinating.
That’s to bad. Thought they would have put up more of a fight.
Two years until the WC….. still time to see how some of these players develop these next two seasons in Europe, MLS, and Liga MX.
“That front 3 is dynamic. Aaronson has shown well he can play a false 9…”
“Huh”, Did you not watch the game? Paxten beat multiple players multiple times. They both have athleticism.”
“Tolkin is just so good defensively and has the pace and ability to get forward.”
“I’m ready to believe this team can accomplish something USA, USA, USA, God Bless this team!”
Guinea & New Zealand suck (All Blacks ARE dope at Rugby) and have standing with American athleticism yet these are your comments. You have more.
Your point here? They got out of the Olympic group since 2000 my guy.
They came up against a better side. That’s soccer.
Still excited about said players.
So we lost… you were correct. Do you want a trophy?