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.

 

Argentina toyed with Canada, the final score (2-0) has to be something the Canucks can build on, but it could’ve been 6-0 quite easily.

 

Let’s hope other venues do a better job, but the quality of the pitches has not been good so far. Argentina players say the Atlanta field was a disaster. Looking ahead 2 years, we have all these stadiums and so few of them have natural grass.

 

Golazo from Pulisic, and a much needed goal from Balogun, but Bolivia was pretty poor. Not much was concerning other than Richards having a couple terrible giveaways that good teams would’ve punished us on.

 

Wow. That was a loss for the history books.

 

Not going to blame GB for Weah losing his composure, but one thing is for certain, the lack of pouring it on Bolivia might comeback to haunt even if we do the unimaginable and beat Uruguay.

 

I'm always amazed when players something so rash like that. Everything is on camera these days. You can't get away with a cheap shot anymore so it must just be momentary blind rage that allows something like that to happen. But he's a flippin' professional athlete so get a grip and don't ruin things for his teammates and the US.

 

Happens all too often for the USMNT.

I thought they were going to be able to hold on for the draw, but unfortunately one too many bounces didn’t go their way.

 

I thought the US was the victim of some terrible officiating against Uruguay, but I hope that it was not egregious enough to provide Berhalter cover. He needs to go. He's clearly not working as a manager and the US needs to try something else rather than wasting another World Cup window.

 

The Good (yes there was some ): Flo Balogun scored a couple nice goals, and looked like the CF we all expected he would be when he announced his intention to play for the US. Unfortunate he had to come out early, because he was wreaking havoc against Uruguay.

The Bad: The Red Card. Weah looked sick to his stomach in the booth (nice to see Gooch standing next to him for support). Ironically, if this leads to GB getting shown the door, this might not end up being a bad thing in the long run. However, for this tournament that was a disaster.

The Ugly: FIFA has a major issue for 2026 and that’s the quality of these pitches on stadiums that have the fake turf. Haven’t looked up what venues are hosting, but I think the majority have the fake stuff. They are going to need to install the sod a helluva lot earlier then they have for the Copa.

Rarely to I agree with Alexis Lalas, but even he knows GB has to go, and he had a good point right after the last game; The WC is coming and you want everyone on board and united behind the team, you won’t have that with him’.

I don’t want to hear 2 years isn’t enough time (it’s more than enough), what we don’t have is another chance to host for decades. I don’t want to hear about the lack of $$ (we can find it), and how much $$ will be generated for the sport in this country if we make a decent run? Ten-fold? Hundred-fold? We have to dream big, unfortunately I’m very leery about the decision makers.