Striker urgency, expected goals against, and where Balogun's incentives reside
Plus the five faces of Gregg Berhalter.
Welcome to the Scuffed Newsletter, a weekly email guide to the U.S. men's national soccer team. Sign up free to get it in your inbox every Friday. This week Watke discusses the striker situation, Belz discusses defense and the Discord Download is fresh as ever.
Who is the striker?
Thomas from twitter asks: Please just tell us who our striker in the World Cup is going to be.
There are only 319 days left until the World Cup. We have some good candidates, but none who have laid certain enough claim to the position for us to be able to relax. The situation is not tenable for us, so I appreciate Thomas’ sense of urgency. That is why I have chosen to respond to his question even though it is not a question.
We thought it would be Josh Sargent. The difficulty is there’s little to indicate he’s good at striker. And he now no longer plays striker. The other main issue is he very rarely scores. USMNT dark-web is mapping out contingencies where Sargent is moved increasingly further back in the field — first to midfield, then maybe fullback — until we find a position where he is good. Point is we’re not counting on Sargent at striker. Although it’s possible after we work Sargent back through all the positions he’ll loop back to striker and be inexplicably very good. It’s also possible he could suddenly by attrition be starting at striker in the next qualifying window and score a bunch of goals and be our favorite striker again. This goes for every candidate below:
Most everyone agrees the best possible thing would be for our striker to be Ricardo Pepi. It might even be the most likely? One certainly hopes so because he is the striker we love the most. But he flagged a bit by the end of last year and now must go find his way on an entirely new continent (he transferred to Augsburg, in case you missed that news). I think sometimes we underestimate how hard that is. I’m imagining suddenly having to go to Bavaria, and I can tell you for certain, in my case, that it would not go well. It takes me at least 18 months to reach basic function in a new city, and that’s in the United States. Pepi seems cut from something entirely different, though, so everything should be fine, but I had to at least raise the issue.
Daryl Dike is moving too, all the way to England (West Brom), but he’s done that very successfully before. So successfully, in fact, that he even managed to become better during that transition. And he’ll be playing for the same coach in the same league, and it’s one he’s particularly suited for. He is very big and kicks the ball very hard, and that’s what the Championship is all about. He combines that with some thoughtful box movement. The issue is these things are not alone sufficient as far as Berhalter seems to see it.
A big thing he seems to care about is combining deeper in the field, which is a reason Jordan Pefok isn’t likely to be the first choice either. Maybe Matthew Hoppe is stewing in the disrespect he’s getting in Mallorca and will burst forth in another ball of fury, but he’s dropped out of the picture for now. Jesus Ferreira is definitely still around, so his cool ease could still win the day. And Nico Gioacchini continues to exist too, although I’ll confess to not being able to tell you off the top of my head what team he plays for [Editor’s note: Montpellier].
And then there’s a significant contingent (of which I am frequently a member) who think the real and true striker is Tim Weah. This despite Berhalter having never played him at striker and Weah himself having told us that he doesn’t like playing striker. So maybe it’s not it, but let’s negotiate from there. How about a three-man front of Weah, Reyna, and Pulisic. A sort of spiraling attack-gang, alternating positions, each of them sometimes central and dropping in, and so forth? It might sound wild but I’ve seen serious people suggest it.
All that said, it’s probably just going to end up being Gyasi Zardes. I don’t think I really need to explain that.
-watke
Defense wins championships
A heavy preoccupation of this podcast is the U.S. men’s national team’s ability to create chances and score goals. Even in our most comfortable victories — the 2-0 wins over Mexico and Jamaica come to mind — we have not attacked with the cut and thrust that would scintillate global football.
But we can defend! That matters a lot, of course. What got me thinking about this was a question we answered in the Monday Review from a listener who coaches college basketball in New York. He (aptly, imo) called the USMNT a “mid-major” soccer nation, and asked how Berhalter's preferred style might be flexible enough to help us beat lesser opponents to qualify through CONCACAF, but also give us a chance to beat the best teams in the world, should such an opportunity arise.
I’m not smart enough to articulate a “style” that can do both, but I do know Berhalter has established defensive solidity in this team. If you want to beat bad teams and good teams using the same squad and scheme, perhaps the most important baseline characteristic of your side should be not conceding a lot of goals. And we have that. I don’t have a good explanation for why, but we do. Tyler Adams plays a key role, because of his ability to see the field, cover ground and protect a back line. Obviously the emergence of physically-dominant, mobile, and mostly-reliable centerbacks Miles Robinson and Walker Zimmerman has helped.
The USMNT has conceded only 5 goals in its eight World Cup qualifiers, tied with Canada for fewest in the Octagonal. One of those was an own goal in Panama City, another was Michail Antonio’s bomb from 35 yards in Kingston.
Carlon Capenter, the StatsBomb analyst who helped coach Daryl Dike in college, put together something that gives underlying heft to the scoreboard stats.
4.53 expected goals against (that is, the cumulative general goal-scoring likelihood of the shots taken against us in qualifying) is a pretty good showing for the defense.
The weakness of this national team is in the attacking final third. Picking the lock. Stringing together three or four discrete, high-quality moments to beat a goalkeeper. Tim Weah stepped forward and provided a lot of that in the last international window. Maybe now, with the return of Gio Reyna and a fully-fit Pulisic, we’ll see it more consistently, from more players.
Until then, at least we can defend.
-Belz
Discord Download/Midweek Minutes
Musah did 71 minutes of cooking in a mid-week Copa Del Rey match for Valencia, helping them progress to the round of 16 with a 2-1 win against 2nd division F.C. Cartagena. This thread of moments from @hi_im_chai is a must-watch and includes Musah playing a 20-yard through-ball, overlapping his own said through-ball, and playing in a lovely cut-back.
Elsewhere, lock-down right wingback Christian Pulisic came on in the 79th minute to help Chelsea hold on 2-0 against Tottenham in the EFL cup. Weston McKennie missed a free-ish header in the opening minutes of a 1-1 draw with Napoli, then helped create Juve’s equalizer by running onto a ball in the channel and clipping a good cross at the marker. The ensuing scramble ended with a goal. He had several other good moments, video here.
@Jordan points us to some excellent follow-up reporting by Doug McIntyre on Pepi’s transfer to Augsburg, noting that Augsburg had been in the mix “for months” and that the $20 million “wasn’t even the highest bid.” Both points would seem to add confidence to the selection by Pepi and his team. @pkeeler with a good caption but excellent image:
@pc makes a good point here re: Folarin Balogun & his agent:
@germanwigends adds some other USMNT players to a chart that already had Top-5-Timmy Weah in the “these guys provide a bit of magic” section:
& finally, @jackie didn’t get enough credit for sending Brenden Aaronson to thanksgiving or Christmas, so here’s some seasonal soccer-themed content:
Emoji Review - The Greggs
People who try to keep their emotions in check can be unfairly labeled “boring” and “dull.” Sometimes the label is fair. In Gregg Berhalter’s case? Who’s to say. Not us. But on the Discord, his image is deployed to communicate a range of emotions. There are five Berhalter emojis.
:berhalter_teach:, for discussions of Gregg’s tactics, his leadership style, his slide presentations, and pedagogy in general.
:gregg_cringe:, for when you’re frustrated, perhaps with Coach Mr. Berhalter himself.. Credit to illustrator Dan Leydon.
:gregg_cute:, for when you’re feeling cute and want to start Kellyn Acosta as an 8 later.
:silent_disapproval:, for when you see a bad take, and want to express your profound lack of support for it.
:berhalter_screech:, thanks to Gregg’s fiery, borderline unhinged reaction to Gyasi Zardes’s Gold Cup semifinal winning goal against Qatar, we can express, oddly enough, violent agreement.
- Coach Beard, MJM-borne69 (Matt)
Weekend Playbill
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