The U.S. men’s national team will rekindle its rivalry with Mexico during the October FIFA window.
Estadio Akron in Guadalajara will host the latest USMNT-Mexico friendly on October 15, U.S. Soccer announced Monday. It will be the USMNT’s first trip to Estadio Akron and their first road friendly in Mexico since 2012.
The match will come three days after the USMNT hosts Panama at Q2 Stadium in Austin, Texas.
The USMNT are currently riding a seven-match unbeaten run against El Tri in all competitions. October’s match could mark the second under Mauricio Pochettino, who will reportedly become the USMNT’s next head coach.
The Americans will first host Canada and New Zealand on September 7 and 10 respectively in the first matches since their disappointing Copa America showing.
October’s matches could serve as crucial preparatory exercises for the USMNT before entering the CONCACAF Nations League quarterfinals in November.
Mexico and Panama aren’t scheduling Brazil though. You play India you are going to learn how you do against a poor performing low block. Wow! Did we learn much playing Caribbean minnows last summer?
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USSF didn’t push for byes in NL, it’s a calendar issue. It’s set up to give small nations as many games as possible. In order to give Suriname group stage games you need fixture dates. There aren’t enough because summer was Copa America and then they need to have NL done next March so they can start WC qualifying and Gold Cup. You could argue holding a NL every year is dumb, but unless the other Feds cancel theirs there is still no one to play.
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Once again there is not going to be a massive reboot under Poch or anyone else. The roster will be very similar and if it is Poch his tactics aren’t vastly different.
first, sorry, but who watches recent games and thinks were settled anywhere on the field? even if you think poch wanted the same “types” for a similar “concept,” performance and execution were crap. is turner still the 1? who starts at back? who plays wingback? who are the mids? you keep alternating between this being so good we can’t improve on the lineups, and it being rotten.
second, i have said over and over GB’s lineups seemed at cross-purposes, eg, wingbacks to get forward, but mids chosen mostly for defense or two way ability. we want to possess but musah and mckennie hardly seems to be how to do that. as a result the team was neither fish nor fowl, neither a shutdown machine like the women nor an offensive juggernaut or possession winner.
if poch has a brain in his head, even if he aims to take this in a vaguely similar direction, he puts more fitting kids on the field to execute it. if you want possession you need more technique in the midfield. if you want defense then jedi and dest and others are a problem. if you want offense you might load up on attacking types instead of going halfway with it.
last, GB’s rote lineups despite inconsistent performance suggest he was either fielding teams based on “reputation” or he was letting club form dominate over how NT games went. something other than NT games was deciding who got the next NT game. i can’t imagine that’s how a topflight big club coach operates a NT. they are used to benching stars who don’t fit.
“We got hammered this summer”
We did get hammered by Colombia. We played well against a disjointed Brazil, beat Bolivia, lost by a goal to Panama because of an unnecessary red card, lost by 1-0 to a very good Uruguay team that we didn’t really test much but didn’t run all over us either. There will be some reorganization and sadly your guy Gio is likely to be one reshuffled because he can’t get on the field for a club. Some guys at the end of the roster ie Luca or Lund may see their roster spots rotated. But we’re talking 4 or 5 guys who don’t see a lot of minutes anyway. Poch uses a modern style, his fullbacks will be asked to push high and provide width, Jedi and Dest are his kind of FBs sorry that disappoints you. If Poch really is coming and they’re just ironing out details he’s already giving instructions to Varas. That is what Hayes did with Twila Kilgore.
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I’m not sure why, the A league NL groups are different this year but Costa Rica is in a group with Martinique, Guadeloupe, Suriname, Guyana, and Guatemala. So if they did it the traditional 3 team groups pick 2 of those and that’s our qualifying group if we didn’t have a bye. If we have to play pragmatic for a result against Canada, Mexico, or Panama in a friendly we’ve probably lost the plot anyway. Beating India 4 or 5 nil with fringe guys doesn’t prove anything (see Grenada 12-1 aggregate a few years ago).
second, your theory on NL defies basic logic. the really poor teams are cordoned off in leagues B and C. whether we as league A level get a bye has nothing to do with who B and C teams play. our bye status merely cuts us off from playing the non-bye A level teams by participating in NL qualifying. eg CR, honduras, TnT, guatemala, martinique. what we need is some winnable games easy enough we can implement system but hard enough we can differentiate personnel. that’s roughly nations league group play level, really. the 3 regional teams we are playing pose hard enough a test it discourages thorough system work, in favor of just fighting and trying to win, and it’s harder to evaluate talent playing mexico as only so many will excel — and we need to decide a team and not just a couple standouts.
if we’re not playing league A, then we shouldn’t have this NL thing at all, or at least this often. the schedule then opens up for choice.
you just don’t seem to get that the last thing a team that got hammered this summer needs is more panama type games. or mexico or canada. we need to go off grid and sort out where it went wrong. we need an easier opponent where we can try things. these kind of tough games are entertaining and red meat for the “base” but where this team sits now, they are in the way of the change and growth this requires. the last thing this needs is varas saying play like GB is still coaching, same people on the field. what this needs, as i have said for years, is more of a spirit where we’re trying something new this window, and this may take off and we’ve struck goal and we win the friendlies, or it may fail and we try something else next window. but that the goal is not to assume the conclusion but to sort out what makes this hum 2 years from now.
all due respect to dissing “india,” but part of what this team needs is the ability to figure out how to create in the half court mode. and what we need is less tough contest and more sustained drill or talent expo. i want to try these 15 or so guys today. i want to see them do the 5 things we taught in practice this week. the US has lost the big picture that the idea is to end up end of the cycle with a drilled team of players chosen for scheme fit and based on NT performance, not just some all star reputational team who can’t play together or execute the scheme.
and we have played infinite mexico type games so if that was going to fix mckennie being able to complete a pass in a hard game, it already would have. to me the basic problem is we excuse sloppy in the tough friendlies and then get to the Big Games and surprise surprise we execute sloppy. the tough games serve no purpose other than a butting of heads with other good teams. we don’t seem to drill on being tidy — or at least get it sorted — and there seems to be no accountability to the wheels coming off system in the tougher games. if you are seinfeld style learning no lessons from your stout schedule, why are you bothering other than ego? and we aren’t that good in the tough ones to have earned the ego.
The Nations League concept, it seems, impacts the US program more than any other competitive soccer nation. Before FIFA dreamed up this cash grab, the US could book friendlies against quality opposition during these windows. With this new concept, if you are in Europe or South America, the League games will likely be worthy competition..not so here. With a new coach due to start in October, the best we can do is CONCAFAF opponents, unless we pick minnows elsewhere down in the rankings. Not a favorable situation.
WC qualifiers already going in three regions and Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, not just NL this time, traditional competitions as well.
except, as i said below, if there is no NL, i have my choice of a bunch of concacaf. not just 3 other teams that we then dutifully scheduled. plus our choice of oceania.
and if there is NL then the seeding process seems to result in more measured opposition. to me it’s not just that NL exists but deciding to push for a bye through its group round. to me our halting group round performances before suggest we haven’t mastered the competition for a bye to do us any good. and a more mixed quality schedule would allow for more talent eval and system work for a new coach.
it’s not just the NL, it’s the bye. the bye “frees” us to play what’s left that window, which it turns out, isn’t much.
to me the solution to this is a single NL tournament a cycle. 2-3 windows of this nonsense and it’s over.
not 3 versions of this a cycle. otherwise it’s redundant of GC anyway.
it’s interesting that you had folks (not me) saying we needed more games that counted, mimic europe, and they don’t like how it looks when whole swathes of the schedule are spoken for. because we’re not in europe.
i don’t like the way we schedule right now, which seems mindless, arrogant, and not conducive to finding time to adjust selection and tactics under a new coach. we get dusted every good team we play. so the last thing we need to do for a new coach is set up a series of hard games that encourage roster and tactical conservatism. there is a reason the varsity’s first scrimmage of the new season is usually against the JV. let me make sure i have the right kids on the right team before i get started. and let me test out a lineup and how i have taught them to play, in a confidence building situation where they aren’t playing out of their minds.
i gather we have secured ourselves a concacaf bye for the fall — apparently only to figure out yet again that in the nations league world, with a limited number of bye teams, and everyone busy, there is little left to play. we are left aside to schedule “freely” from a very short list of also “free” teams. this is a booby prize that we seem eager to win.
this makes no practical sense. we have not actually mastered NL based on the 2 group rounds we played. we give ourself a bye but few real choices how to use it — everyone on every other continent is busy — except oceania and the top 4 concacaf.
what we really need right now is NL qualifying like everyone else. a mix of opponent quality, with less life or death games, where we can calmly spend some windows evaluating talent anew and bedding into poch’s ideas. either that or blow up NL going forward, so we are free to schedule as we need.
the worst case on this is you get varas pushing the same old tactics with similar names, which is basically a waste of september. poch then comes in for october with 2 harsh rival friendlies that discourage precisely the reset this thing needs.
last, when you finish 3rd in the previous WC qualifying, seem to routinely blow at least one game each NL qualifying, and can’t beat good teams, you aren’t as ready for the brazil colombia mexico canada schedule as you think. didn’t we just re-prove we haven’t quite mastered regional soccer? what this needs is some room to try things and then circle back around to dog eat dog next year after we have experimented.
The problem is that when they made a nation’s league competition on every continent (South America will be in WC qualifying) there are few national teams available for either the September or October windows. International friendlies that are intercontinental are very hard to come by with so many different competitions and qualifiers now. I don’t think this is the fault of USSF.
Gary,
Nations League was designed to help the “weaker” members of a given conference, not Mexico and the USMNT. It gives the weaker teams more regular games with good teams like the USMNT. This gives them more revenue and makes them better teams.
This is great for them but not so great for the USMNT and you could really see it in the Berhalter era, which is when the NL really became a thing. IV likes to bitch, moan and whine and bitch about the scheduling but the USSF tied everyone’s scheduling hands when they went along with the NL concept.
Previous administrations had more flexibility and could get big time games vs, Brazil, Germany and the like but now all teams are scrambling because of their own NL commitments.
This is the price you pay for being in a powder puff conference like CONCACAF. They are hard and brutal but a lot less talented than the USMNT. The USMNT should always be favored to win any given CONCACAF game, even though they aren’t easy. You have, in normal times, the easiest possible path to World Cup qualification. Your primary competition is always many steps below you, so you never get tested and get overconfident, soft, lazy and complacent which describes Gregg’s teams perfectly.
Literally the only team available in the top 100. Africa Cup of Nations Qualifying, WC qualifiers for Conmebol, Asia, and Oceania. Nations League for Concacaf and UEFA. You have to have been eliminated in first round qualifying of Asia, Africa, or Oceania to be available. We are talking teams that Oman, Trinidad, or Bolivia would beat by 3 or 4 goals. You’ll learn much more playing Mexico on the road than India at home.
oh, i went down the regional schedules myself and saw it was slim pickings. my point is i doubt the NL bye we received happened by magic. to me the better situations are either no NL or we are busy with NL but the group varies in quality where we can use different games different ways. this situation, to me, is the worst case, is a bye gets us out of concacaf but then there is no one to play but the other bye teams and oceania. that serves a cynical purpose of getting us advanced in NL and GC next year but gives us zero real scheduling freedom. and when’s the last time we weren’t in NL or GC?
and then as i said, the unthinking way this has worked is at cross-purposes with getting new players out in a changed system under new coaching. you can mock tahiti or syria or whatnot but the last thing we need is mexico and canada as we work on the car’s alignment, check under the hood for loose parts, decide if we want to put in aftermarket upgrades.
i like those games as contests but they are all we are getting right now and they are poor for fiddling and nuance and experiment. it’s like when sarachan had an almost U20 team and they handed him england brazil colombia. they exposed about everyone on that whole team.
as i have said before, the urge to schedule like brazil and try real hard to win the next friendly is getting in the way of winning at stuff like copa or the world cup.
and i am not saying don’t try to win soccer games, i am saying don’t be so scared you might lose one that you quit trying things. unless we are undefeated for a year the system and roster should not be this static. we should be constantly looking for an edge and the fact we do lose fairly often should be sending the message this can’t possibly be the best long term lineup to get wins on the biggest stages.
conversely, if y’all want to pretend every mexico friendly matters this much, well, then when we play even bigger games than that, say, uruguay or colombia or panama — they should have mattered even more, and essentially say that the friendly had steered us wrong.
at some point this team needs to get that losses are something to learn from. we are too concerned with short term W and L and not enough with information. does this lineup really work. how smooth does the system look over time. can i do better? if we’d asked those questions, no, this has looked meh a long time with meh results. QED.
Let me put it in American football terms playing India or Syria or Myanmar. This isn’t Texas scheduling Rice for their home opener it’s scheduling Trinity University which maybe is not even fair to Trinity because they’re usually a pretty good D3 program. If we had to play in Nations league qualifiers you’d have games like Suriname, Guadeloupe, and Nicaragua not much better (probably worse).
the part you’re missing is maybe what a rebooting team needs for a first window or two is fluff. a semi-competitive opponent that they ease past 3-0 or better. let the coach work on his system. let the coach evaluate who he likes. in fact, your own JV or huston-tillotson, instead of SMU. you need confidence building, you need a game you can execute a game plan easily, and you need some games where standouts can stand out, and where trying noobs and prospects doesn’t risk losing the game so much.
saying nah, let’s schedule SMU, is your ego talking. yes, we can maybe handle SMU, but is that really the highest priority right now? is it all in the end about showing off and winning soccer games, even when you need a tuneup? you know very well your program is having some work done, and an excellent opponent is a poor situation for working heavily on the team.
we know with canada and mexico and panama the games tend to turn into physical free-for-alls where system is almost secondary or is like muscle memory. it is not a good game for teaching system nuances. nor is this schedule what one does to try new people. there is too much conservative fear if i touch the lineup we get dusted. when what this team needs to do is take some risks.
no, there is a reason the first scrimmage of the season is usually the JV. if what i see is varas calling the same people to play the same way, perhaps justifying it by the quality of opponent, that’s a complete waste of time. and it in fact underlines my concern that maybe we are too busy pursuing strength of schedule or ticket sales or whatever, to think about what we’re really doing. we schedule like we are argentina or france. this needs work. you can’t do work if you have to play colombia or brazil or canada or mexico every time. and we’re not doing well enough playing those games to justify the lack of roster churn. so you either schedule a little easier or tell yourself A B C games are just going to be experiments even if the results are less predictable.
in short, schedule like we have longer term goals and foci than trying to win the next game and bragging about it.
i mean i hear the same ol’ snobby excuses for our schedule, like we are above everyone. did copa not give us the opposite lesson?
you only need so many of these “measuring stick” games. we got them all summer. we measured up poorly. we don’t need more of that, or worse, to convince ourselves it was imagined.
we need to go away a little bit, retool, find some fresh faces, get the thing sorted, then pit ourselves against good teams again.
an ohio college football program hires a new coach for a struggling, mid-conference team. my point is if their first scheduling call is to ohio state or mount union (depending on their level), that sounds cute until gameday arrives and they lose 56-0. the new recruits then hit the transfer portal. teams should use measuring stick games sparingly, have spent a lot of the season building to that point against easier teams, and then take any results and lessons fully to heart. otherwise, my response to naive snob schedule culture is any idiot can call up ohio state for a game and maybe get one, but doing that alone does nothing for you.
brazil scheduled honduras in 2019. beat them 7-0. they went on to be awful last cycle WCQ. it may just expose the team as what it is. it’s what you do before and after the game that matters. are you working on your team to prepare. do you learn your lessons. it’s like we believe in magic.
maybe it’s that i see this as midtable or relegation delusion. i played for a good select team. everyone seems to think playing the big dogs makes them better. and yet we don’t all tie for first next league season. in my experience some ambitious teams actually do badly, like honduras.
i think it’s about aspirational ambition. talk is cheap. anyone can aspire to be something. you know what good teams do? they make calculated roster changes and work on weaknesses. if they lost 5 games all year they are fussing why those 5.
IV,
“we need to go away a little bit, retool, find some fresh faces, get the thing sorted, then pit ourselves against good teams again.”
Why don’t you tell us how that happens for the USMNT? Please use terms that are NOT vague and nebulous like:
“go away a little bit”
How long is that? where do you go?
“retool”
With what or rather who? What are you retooling? Goalkeeper ball distribution?
“find some fresh faces”
Yeah? where? At your nearest high school, college or select team practice? Like they haven’t been looking 24/7/ 365?
” get the thing sorted”
Meaning what exactly? Do soccer teams get things sorted over one week of practice? two weeks? Two three or four games? Or maybe you need five games?
“then pit ourselves against good teams again”
Such as? Are these good teams just sitting around waiting for us to be ready to play them?
Here’s another thing you probably don’t get.
Playing a team in a friendly is one thing.
Playing that exact same team in a tough group or knock out game is a completely different thing. Motivation drives focus. A much more focused opponent can be significantly more difficult to overcome.
National teams are dynamic meaning they don’t stay the same from game to game. You tend to evaluate teams based on their laundry.
You think the USMNT is a club. It’s not. It’s not USMNT FC.
With a club you can actually do many of the things you have suggested to fix the USMNT. EPL teams have the squad size and a range of competitions such as domestic and foreign cups , reserve leagues, loans, blah, blah, blah in which to “retool”, “sort out” or find some fresh faces. A club can even buy some fresh faces. National teams can’t.
Imagine loaning Cole Campbell or Taylor Booth to Mexico or Scotland to get them international experience.
National teams are built around major tournaments. FIFA gives them access to players in order to prep for and play in those tournaments.
But otherwise, and this is something you may have missed but FIFA did not, players don’t belong to the USMNT. They belong to their clubs, who have first call to their services and their time, which is in any case, limited.
These is no comparison between the amount of time a player can spend with teammates and his coaches at his club vs his national team. Look it up.
That is one of the reasons most national team players get to spend very little time with their teammates. Because most of the time that a player has available for his national team is injury recovery time or vacation time. So the national team is just going to get the bare minimum of a player’s precious available time.
You know why big boy teams stay as big boys? Because they have so many good to great players that they can navigate around the barriers and work through the circumstances I mentioned.
Mostly the big boys play enough solid defense so that their big guns can eventually come up with a moment of genius. Then they can make that moment stand up.
I don’t doubt that a good manager can get this group of players to play solid defense. Finding some magic is debatable and then being able to make it hold up, that too is debatable.