Copa America 2024 - Referendum on Berhalter

Well one friendly in and glad to hear that the seat is getting hot for GB. We got utterly thrashed by Columbia, and we’ll see how they respond tonight vs Brazil. I absolutely hated that a guy from Southampton runs US Soccer, and thought he whiffed on re-hiring Berhalter. The group is terrible (Panama and Bolivia, along w/powerful Uruguay) so if we can’t get to knockout stages he has to be sacked. Even then, a quarterfinal against Brazil/Columbia looms.

Biggest Issue(s). insistence on putting Matt Turner in between the pipes. Turner lost his job at Nottingham Forest and was dreadful vs Columbia. He’s the worst #1 GK we’ve ever had, and GB wants to reward him for winning the pathetic Nations League.

The backline. Dest out hurts going forward, it’s Scally chance to show what he has.
We all love Tim Ream, but he looked like a player that doesn’t start and a split second of rust at this level will get exposed.

The attack looks slow and methodical even though we are supposed to have dynamic offensive players.

 

They played a whole lot better and deserved the draw. Very entertaining end to end match.

 

I caught 80% of the game and was pleasantly surprised. I was expecting the worst after seeing the Columbia score line.

 

Yes Colombia walloped the US, but the US brought it upon themselves. I won’t solely blame the subs, but sometime around the 72nd, I realized that the team had completely lost the game plan. They stopped moving without the ball which led to impossible passes or the ball carrier trying to dribble through the entire opposition. Colombia pounced on the resulting turnovers and made the US pay.

Turner is a mystery and it’s crazy how we’ve gone from having such great keepers to all these question marks. He played much better vs Brazil (to be fair, so did the defense in front of him).

It does still seem that we’re going to struggle scoring against these top teams. Our nines are still starved for chances. I hope they did a lot of work on set pieces this camp.

I was surprised that Ream went 152 minutes across the matches. You’re going to have to give him a break during the tournament so I figured we’d see some other pairings in central defense.

I thought that Johnny played pretty well but really hope that Adams gets healthy (and stays healthy).

The final Copa America roster is due Saturday with (I think) four players from the friendlies getting left off. I would guess Sargent will be one and the third keeper (Johnson?) another.