January camp success.
The U.S. men’s national team closed out the first international window of the year on Wednesday night by playing party pooper to Miguel “Piojo” Herrera’s Costa Rica managerial debut. Goals from Brian White, Caden Clark, and Patrick Agyemang led the Americans to a 3-0 victory in Orlando, Florida.
By rotating the starting lineup from Saturday’s 3-1 triumph over Venezuela, Mauricio Pochettino ensured every outfield player on the roster got a chance to start. This affords each player an opportunity to impress the new boss while Pochettino gets a view of each of his options.
The rotation also led to January camp’s first-time goal scorer trend continuing in the 21st minute as White netted his first international goal from a bloody-nosed Diego Luna assist.
“I was surprised because his nose was broken. I didn’t want to say anything [or create] too much drama because he was bleeding,” Pochettino described the ordeal of Luna breaking his nose prior to the opening assist. “I said, ‘How do you feel?’ He said ‘Coach, please let me keep playing’…and the first action [was an] assist and we scored. I said, big balls!’”
Clark was up next in the second half, smashing home his first international goal in his second cap in the 78th minute provided by Emeka Eneli’s ball-winning counter press and assist. The goal marked the fifth-straight USMNT goal scored by a first-time goal scorer for the first time since 1985-87.
Following his first goal at the weekend, Agyemang put the cherry on top of a dominant January with his second goal in as many caps. DeJuan Jones provided the assist with a beautiful trivela through-ball.
As he works to get back in the goalkeeping conversation, Zack Steffen came up with a couple of saves throughout the match to keep a clean sheet on his return between the national team sticks.
While many of these players likely won’t be in March’s CONCACAF Nations League squad, they should take plenty of confidence into the start of their club campaigns in MLS.
The USMNT will return to action in March where many of the expected European stars will be back among the fold.
Tele57,
Whatever happened with Gregg, Pochettino is not about to let a still young, experienced, recent #1 USMNT keeper go without giving him a good once over.
Given the current agonizing of SBI fans over of the state of USMNT keepers, Zach just might be that bargain, DIY fixer-upper that everyone dreams about.
Our keeper situation really is only that bad because our centerback situation is even “worse”.
If Van Dijk were an American the keeper wouldn’t be such an issue.
If Pochettino can get the defense solidified the identity of the keeper would become a lot less of an issue.
1) Poch is getting paid the big bucks for the WC not a January camp outside a FIFA Window
2) If Poch was really all that; he would be coaching Argentina;
3) Traditional Americans have been telling you 1st generation Americans for decades that every US player has value. Poch mentioned this isn’t an “alternative” team and the people who use the phrase Camp Cupcake, suddenly act like he’s the best coach we ever had.
4) Poch still uses right footed players at LB, & right footed midfielders as RW; evidence he’s slowp
5) Matko got called in; he plays for no club; so he wasn’t called up because of his club form. The coach is from Argentina. Matko’s parents are from Argentina. Guess, who got called in because of his ethnicity. Mitrivic added Djorde in the Olympic squad for this reason. Anthony Hudson added Tyler Boyd to a GC provisional roster for this reason. You people of privilege always comment without addressing your prejudice.
6) Name calling from middle age adults in the comment section is proof of this
7) Don’t pay attention to the liars & manipulating commenters
Did you have some left footed LB in MLS in mind?
John Nelson, Sam Vines, Dan Lovitz and Marco Farfan. Christian McFarlane is a young prospect but he’s been representing England.
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Going into camp, he had Tolkin and Arfsten who are both left footed. When Tolkin left camp early left him with one who is more LWB than LB. Then Jones who has far more starts at LB than right despite being right footed. You could also argue in possession at times Jones slid into MF and Ream became the widest defender on the left side as a LCB.
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As far as left footed RW, Kamungo, who had not a great season 0g 5a. Arfsten would be the leading goal scorer among left footed players with US eligibility, with 4. Not everyone’s preferred foot is listed but those two are about it for left footed Wing players.
IO2T,
1) “Poch is getting paid the big bucks for the WC not a January camp outside a FIFA Window”
He did not get paid to coach this cupcake? That’s pretty generous of him.
2) “If Poch was really all that; he would be coaching Argentina;”
Scaloni was named manager of Argentina in 2018. At the time Pochettino was not available. Scaloni led Argentina to the Final in 2022 and won the World Cup. He’s still quite young and seems decent enough. For now he seems pretty secure. I don’t know if he is better than Pochettino. Maybe we’ll find out in the future.
3) “Traditional Americans have been telling you 1st generation Americans for decades that every US player has value.”
So what? What do non- traditional Americans have to say? By the way, what is a traditional American?
“Poch mentioned this isn’t an “alternative” team and the people who use the phrase Camp Cupcake, suddenly act like he’s the best coach we ever had.”
It’s not “suddenly”.
That was apparent the second he was hired. You can look it up. The best coaching job that was ever done on the USMNT was by Bora who got them out of their group in the 1994 WC and had them lose 1-0 to Brazil. You can look it up if you want to know just how amazing that feat was. Unfortunately, that also helped Alexi Lalas have a career in punditry but there is no free lunch. It remains to be seen if Pochettino can match that but he has the team looking good.
5) “Matko got called in; he plays for no club; so he wasn’t called up because of his club form. The coach is from Argentina. Matko’s parents are from Argentina. Guess, who got called in because of his ethnicity. Mitrivic added Djorde in the Olympic squad for this reason. Anthony Hudson added Tyler Boyd to a GC provisional roster for this reason.”
If I were the manager I would pick players based on their hair. Which means a guy like Cole Palmer ( I know he’s English but that godawful bowl hair cut is hard to ignore) would never get off the bench. And Mix would be on the team.
IV, SBI’s leading authority on the subject, has established that club form is irrelevant. Just ask him. He’ll tell you.
Managers have prejudices? Who knew. I always thought it was part of the job description. You know the phrase “coaches decision”? Matko looked to me like he belonged and he scored. He may never play for the first team but , and this goes for all these guys, the better the Cupcake guys are the more pressure they put on the first team and it keeps those first team guys on there toes. It keeps them from getting complacent. I could give shit where Matko comes from as long as he’s good enough and he’s eligible.
” You people of privilege always comment without addressing your prejudice.”
You have no idea what kind of privilege , if any, people who post here have.
We could all be russian bots here to promote a subversive unamerican sport like soccer at the expensive of real American sports.
“Unfortunately, that also helped Alexi Lalas have a career in punditry but there is no free lunch.” One of the all-time best comments on SBI.
Are we done?
reminder: steffen’s issues were game to game consistency and giveaways playing from the back. it remains to be seen how much we’re gonna try and build from the endline, looked to me more like we were getting the ball out wide and a little upfield earlier.
and consistency, if we give him a more serious opponent, he either hacks it or not.
same deal schulte, his win was his first in 3 caps.
i thought what was important is they both saw the field, put up a game tested performance, can be compared.
if this was GB we struggle through these games whacking crosses in, maybe or maybe not get results, backup keeper plays 180 unconvincing minutes, and we’re complaining after about is the unused 3rd string better or worse than what just happened.
before we would listen to self serving gibberish about how the guys who dominated the PT must have earned it, even after playing bad. now we kind of know who stood out from the pair.
poch i thought did well by mixing up the lineups. like game 1 was starting attack backup defense i think. i think game 2 was incumbent defense backup offense. then sub some starters on. so freese was the only one not to play, and we got definite ideas within the pool.
GB would decide who the winners were before the games got played. that’s a shallow analytics version of merit. this kind of roster competition is more like real merit.
we need to save “i have my mind made up” for world cup finals and big events, not every friendly.
Until the last 2 goals I thought we were squandering a lot of chances. It’s nice to have some legitimate goal scorers who can make such good strikes. As for Steffen, in the Bundesliga, before his injury, he was outstanding playing for a really bad defense. His quality was apparent then and it puzzled me how he fell out of favor. I have a question that maybe someone can answer. Around the 39th minute the US had the ball a bit inside the CR half way line when a US player made one of the most audacious and best passes I’ve seen in a while. It went about 30 yards, with one bounce and was threaded through 3 defenders near the top of the box. The announcer didn’t say who made the pass or who received it. Does anyone know what players were involved in that? One thing I’ve noticed is that the US is trying more through passes, which is something I like to see. I think that is better than hit and hope and try to run onto one of those 50 yard passes.
like i was saying, under GB i thought we tried to work the ball up slowly, play keepaway by the flag, then cross. low percentage stuff. i think under poch we are getting it forward faster, holding the ball up near the center circle, trying to egg the defense up, then like you’re saying, playing guys behind the drawn up defense.
i think that’s gonna tend to favor faster CFs — and maybe more accurately passing setup players — but you maybe need one guy rostered who can play different as a CF sub in case it doesn’t work.
I think Gregg became so obsessed with keeping possession that he forgot the point was to score goals. If you look at the team from 2019-2021 NL, they score a lot of goals and hit teams in transition regularly. That week when first Embolo dominated Brooks and Dest for Switzerland and then Elis had chance after chance in the semifinal scared him. He vacated the middle of the field to prevent the long ball down the flanks. Adams protected the backline but no offense could be built because he wasn’t available the only one there, Wes and Yunus had to cover for Dest and Jedi.
he played like we was trying to sit on a lead when it was 0-0. and a 433 is a lousy formation for sitting on a lead. i played it one season when i switched select teams before switching back. 433 is entertaining but is basically let’s just have fun going end to end, not something you can control. and meanwhile the general concept is try and hold the ball. poor companions.
I think it was Cremaschi to Gutierrez in the 41st minute. Then Gutierrez dribbled around a couple defenders at the top of the box but his shot was blocked by a defender. Does that sound like the play you were thinking of?
Sounds right. Thanks. BTW, don’t know how others feel, but I don’t care for this play by play guy they have now on TNT. He seems so interested in impressing us with his knowledge of historical soccer trivia that he sometimes leaves out events on the field, like the pass I was interested in.
IV,
“before we would listen to self serving gibberish about how the guys who dominated the PT must have earned it, even after playing bad. now we kind of know who stood out from the pair.”
If you’re referring to the keepers, we don’t know shit. But that does not mean the coaching staff don’t know.
Zach was clearly a project for Pochettino from day one. Given his age and experience and the overall situation, that makes sense.
This was supposed to be the harder of the two games so it made sense to use it see where former #1 Zach was now that the staff have had a camp or two with him.
Freese reportedly did well in training but it looks like they will get to him down the line.
Gary, if you go back and research, I think you will find only two players that refused callups during Gregg’s tenure. One was Ream and the other was Steffen. Neither were called back up again until Ream was added to the Qatar squad. That was likely out of desperation because all the centerbacks he gave opportunities to leading up the WC played poorly. Turner and the backups weren’t playing poorly for US when given the chance so he likely didn’t have the same level of desperation at goalkeeper.
This was a team made up of CR domestic players. Most caps were GK Alvarado 26 caps, and MLS cast offs Allan Cruz (25) and Alejandro Brann (13). The team came mostly from Herediano, Saprissa, and Alajuelense. Those teams haven’t defeated an MLS team in Champions League/Cup aggregates since 2019. The players they had weren’t as good as the MLS players and they had only a few days under their new manager. They had the benefit of better fitness (being in week 3 of their season) that gave them an edge the last 15 minutes of the first half. I thought once the 2nd goal went in they pretty much stopped. They do have league games this weekend. I’m excited to see what Poch can do at this summer’s gold cup, whomever shows up to play, but I’m not ready to say any of these guys are pushing for spots with a full NT. Those opponents were very weak.
I always felt GB did Steffen dirty with the WC snub. He could have built up his confidence but kicked him to the curb instead thinking it would build Turner’s confidence. Just another example of GB’s leadership shortcuts making the team weaker…not trusting the players to be professionals.
Like others have pointed out, Pochettino is clearly at a different level than any previous USMNT coach. The teams he puts on the field are playing with more confidence and are more dangerous. Past editions of the USMNT would have wilted under the Costa Rican press and rough play. We’ve seen it time and again, even from our best eleven. They wouldn’t play with any kind of confidence or cohesion when being pressed, making dumb give aways, and giving up cheap goals. But, last night they played through that, kept a clean sheet and punished CR. I know we had veteran CBs on the field, but that was just good coaching as the high press from CR was predictable. Ultimately, everyone did their part.
meh. steffen cost us the CR away game. i thought he earned his shuffle behind turner. the better debate is if GB ever played a backup keeper or had accountability does steffen get ahead of the gaffe prone horvath or seanjohn.
the reason we can have this convo is the backups have three recent games to discuss. before 2 keepers would have played and there would no competition off the coach’s head and paper for those slots. the third string keeper would under GB be holding a clipboard and handing out water.
people make fun of me saying try some stuff and rotate bodies but you see where at least a handful of new ideas emerge when you do it.
I have a feeling we will see Luna, Steffen, Ream, Clark, Agyemang in March.
Steffen could be the starter.
Ream is still the most talented CB in the pool.
Luna because Tillman is injured.
Clark because he showed he can play on both wings and this current USMNT isn’t deep on the Wing.
Agyemang due to injuries.
23 man roster in March:
GK: Horvath, Steffen, Turner
D: Scally, Dest (if playing), Ream, Richards, Trusty, Mckenzie, Jedi
CM: Adams, Tessman, Mckennie, Musah, Cardoso
AM: Reyna, Luna
FWDS: Puli, Pepi, Brendo, Clark, Weah, Agyemang
Lot of guys helped themselves this camp. I’ll toot my own horn on this one, too – I thought the quality of this roster was in Diego Luna (who proved it, emphatically) and DeJuan Jones (who also proved it, emphatically, after having a quiet, shorter shift against Venezuela…now that is the guy I was expecting to see). But where I’ll spike the football and do a happy dance in the face of the doubters was with Zach Steffen. I knew what my eyes were telling me on the guy and that’s the guy who showed up against Costa Rica, and that guy is the most athletic, complete keeper in the pool. At least when he’s on, and while Steffen’s form for Colorado did flicker at times we were seeing that guy more and more as the year progressed.
I always thought Steffen was a lot more in Pochettino’s keeper picture than most folks believed, especially since Pochettino seems to be a master psychologist and really seems to have that knack for finding the best version of a player and getting it out of him, and the best version of Zach Steffen is really good. (The less said about Steffen’s not best version, the better. Anyhow, moving on….) Luna and Jones also picked an auspicious time to show well since there’s always been a HELP WANTED sign over the backup LB spot behind Jedi and Malik Tillman is out for the next several months at the 10 spot. Once Luna gets in there with the senior roster, I suspect he’s going to be really hard to get back out again, and DeJuan Jones is so criminally underrated you’d almost think he was in Witness Protection. (Maybe for not much longer, though.)
Where my crystal ball completely failed me was on Patrick Agyemang and Benji Cremaschi. I knew nothing about Agyemang and I didn’t really rate Cremaschi. Neither is probably near the 23 yet – Cremaschi in particular is in a very crowded position – but both would seem to have a (admittedly narrow) path to the World Cup roster and I do suspect we could see both in this next summer’s Gold Cup. Agyemang struck me as an even bigger version of Hajji Wright and when I wondered aloud about whether his finishing compared to Wright’s (Wright has some flaws, especially with his back to goal, but he is a very good finisher) Agyemang answered with…that. He’s tailor-made to dominate the Championship…and the Championship is very much a potential path to the Prem, so Agyemang is a guy to keep an eye on, for sure. Cremaschi again showed that working with uber-elite Barcelona legends every day really helps young players develop…who knew?
I was glad to see Caiden Clark recovered well after a fairly sour performance against Venezuela…as Johnnyrazor pointed out, players do seem to look a lot better when they play in their best position. (Again…who knew?) Jack McGlynn and Brian Gutiérrez are nowhere near the 23 yet, as crowded as the central midfield is for the USMNT, but they did send out some nice resume builders for European scouts, which could one day get them in the picture. It’s also probably time to start talking about Matko Miljevic…yes, yes, his professional track record is, uhm, checkered at best and while I won’t talk about diva shitbaggery, the guy is a genuine talent and could really help somebody at the MLS level if he can get his head screwed on correctly. I’d love to see him get another chance and run with it…if I’m an MLS GM, I probably would take a chance on him. (After reading him the Riot Act, anyhow.)
There really were two main takeaways from this camp, IMHO – the level of MLS continues to rise and there’s legitimate talent in the league now, and Pochettino is a massive upgrade on Gregg Berhalter. All told, this was by a bunch the most successful Camp Cupcake in recent memory, it found some guys who can help and likely boosted the careers of several others, and it definitely hinted at a very steep upward trajectory for the USMNT. I don’t credit US Soccer often, but scoring Pochettino was an absolute coup for them and it’s already showing up huge on the field.
“I always thought Steffen was a lot more in Pochettino’s keeper picture than most folks believed”
I thought the same because:
1. Zach played in England where Pochettino has a ton of contacts.
2. Pochettino seems to get along well with Pep who probably knows more than a little about Steffen.
3. Zach is young for a keeper and has a lot of useful experience that can’t be ignored given the dire state of the USMNT goalkeeper situation. Pochettino had little to nothing to lose by checking out Steffen. Buy low, sell high.
His exclusion by Gregg was no surprise when you consider that Steffen was one of the first guys to come out publicly against Gregg stating that the team had no identity.
Vac, Steffen’s not being called up anymore came directly after he declined a callup. It could have been coincidental but I suspect that had more to do with it than anything else. Especially considering same thing happened to Ream earlier. It was only really poor play for the US by the rest of the cbs in the pool leading up to the WC that got Ream back on the team.
The refusal was most likely the final straw of a long process. If your keeper doesn’t think much of you then maybe he shouldn’t play for you.
I guess we’ll have to ask Gregg. Only he knows for sure what went on between those two..
Keepers are different from centerbacks; you have more of a margin of error with a CB.
As I recall Matt was the only guy who stepped up and took charge. Once that happens you want to continue with that guy.
Zach is probably more talented but that just means he’s more talented.
It doesn’t mean he’s a better keeper.
Tele57, at what point did Zach turn down a call up? I did some searching and couldn’t find references to this. I’m not saying you’re wrong just don’t remember it.
JR, my recollection is that he declined for the freindly against Morrocco. I looked up the roster and only Johnson and Turner. He was then left off the roster for Japan and Saudia. If I find better info I will add it here.
JR, Here is a link. Who knows what is true or not on the internet but I recall hearing about it at the time and thinking he was done with the team since Ream was in exile at the time from doing the same thing.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/4344089/2023/03/24/usmnt-zack-steffen-world-cup/
Tele57,
Whatever happened with Gregg, Pochettino is not about to let a still young, experienced, recent #1 USMNT keeper go without giving him a good once over.
Given the current agonizing of SBI fans over of the state of USMNT keepers, Zach just might be that bargain, DIY fixer-upper that everyone dreams about.
Our keeper situation really is only that bad because our centerback situation is even “worse”.
If Van Dijk were an American the keeper wouldn’t be such an issue.
If Pochettino can get the defense solidified the identity of the keeper would become a lot less of an issue.
quozzel,
“I was glad to see Caiden Clark recovered well after a fairly sour performance against Venezuela…as Johnnyrazor pointed out, players do seem to look a lot better when they play in their best position. (Again…who knew?) ”
I believe for many players, “best position” changes over time and depends on the circumstances.
The very nature of national teams is that the majority of the players are going to wind up playing at a position that may not be thought of as their so called “best position”.
If Caden Clark plays only his so called “best position”, he ain’t ever getting called into a meaningful USMNT game barring an injury epidemic.
Ale Bedoya, an attacking central midfielder did not play on the “wing” until Landon got Bob to suspend him. That’s how Ale became a starting ( for one half) USMNT winger. .
If you have a Haaland, a Van Dijk, a Rodri, that’s one thing. But we don’t have a lot of guys like that. Many national teams don’t. We barely have a goalkeeper. Maybe Weston should play there.
We have only one “best position” starter guy, Ricardo Pepi.
What we mostly have is a number of guys like Timo, CP, Weston, Musah, Jedi , etc. who can play a number of roles well.
Some players play on teams that may not play the same way the national team does. Some starters are so far ahead of their backups managers are often tempted by the positionally correct players versus, best 11 players dilemma.
For example, I can see a situation where if Dest, Jedi and Scally are unavailable and it’s a big game, Musah, Weah and Weston could be the desired fullback rotation.
If it’s a tough game I might well play Weston at left back over our plethora of backup left backs, Lund, Tolkin or Jones. or any of the other.
That kind of crisis decision making hits national team managers much more frequently than it does club managers.
National team ball is tournament ball and that is can be quite a different game than club ball.
The best national team managers often evaluate players based on how capable they are about temporarily adapting to a variety of roles. Clint often lined up in four different positions over the course of his career. I think his best role was called punishing mistakes. Landon regularly turned up anywhere and everywhere he was needed.
The national team manager may find that a player might be most useful at a different position from the player’s regular club position.
And, of course club, managers do the same thing; they put guys in the positions of need.
And given we have such a young comparatively inexperienced player pool it should surprise no one that many of our guys are still finding their actual for real, “best” position.
I said “big balls”. Hey soccer dorks, the USMNT really have a coach. We have never had this kind of cohesion and understanding. It’s happened quickly, and most remarkable, is that it is happening no matter who is on the pitch.
Noticeable difference…the US has never looked like this. We now have the answer to what the team would look like with a true World Class coach. Thank the oligarch.
before it was basically get the ball down in the corner and improvise and when there is no plan the improvisation depends who is out there. so we played different if it was weah or reyna wide.
i think this is going to trend more like older US teams where we will play x way and you either fit that or not. a lot of this shallow analytics all star team stuff before was kind of “roll the ball out and see what happens.”
From the shuffle of shame to bathroom mid second half to the big balls comment. It was a fluid performance for Poch with many ebbs and flows.