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USMNT 2024


Captain Ron

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Starters or not the back 4 is a fucking mess. We have one consistently good player back there, a guy with a torn ACL and a guy that's 40 years old. The rest ranges from occasionally passable to completely unreliable. 

That's Poch's biggest task imo - figuring something out that works along the back line and getting them playing at a level that doesn't instantly take us out of games. 

I'm going to need to see a lot to be optimistic going into 2026. So many question marks in terms of quality and availability - feels like Antonee and Pulisic are the only two you can reliably count on. 

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1 hour ago, ztejas said:

I've seen it. Not that this is encouraging.

I'm concerned that the USSF didn't give enough time for an overhaul. 

But - also - we are seeing the same player pool issues that existed whether or not GGG was in charge. That I've been harping on for years now. 

I think that for his first camps, he wanted to see as many of the healthy regulars as possible. 

Like in NFL training camps vs preseason games or college senior bowl week, the coach was as focused or more focused on the practices than the actual game(s).

I didn’t really give a shit about the Mexico game and apparently our players and our coaching staff didn’t either.

I am more interested in who comes in for the next window that what happened in Mexico. After all, we play Mexico so much that unless there is a trophy on the line, it’s hard to give a fuck.

 

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7 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

he's been in italy a year and a bit and he's that fluent? that's impressive.

 

6 hours ago, ztejas said:

Think he's both good with languages (smart) and he takes it seriously and studies outside of work. I remember he reportedly spoke very good German early on at BvB.


If you got me a hot tutor, I could speak that well in 6 months…

🤌 🤌 🤌    🇮🇹🍷🍕

…largely because it is so close to Spanish, but also because “horizontal lessons” are a great way to learn a language*.

 

*I have heard, but my Argie novia always spoke English with me, unless she was pissed off. Then I was just trying to decipher a word that I could try to translate in my head. My Spanish was still practically non-existent when we were together. 🤷‍♂️

But I do try to decipher my Italian amiga’s posts before translating them. Frequently most of a sentence is just tweaked Spanish. 

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7 hours ago, ztejas said:

Spanish to Italian and vice versa is very easy but don't think CP was a Spanish speaker. 

Croatian?

Hershey dialect of yinzer?

He did have an Italian nonna, so maybe he was exposed enough at a young age that he could already detect the separation of words before he got with a smoking hot tutor. 
 

 

Edited by Napoleon
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On 10/20/2024 at 11:18 PM, Napoleon said:

Croatian?

Hershey dialect of yinzer?

He did have an Italian nonna, so maybe he was exposed enough at a young age that he could already detect the separation of words before he got with a smoking hot tutor. 
 

 

Hershey is on the other side of the Appalachian range, he's not a Yinzer.

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14 hours ago, The Dog said:

Aged like milk:

 

 

Aged like milk? This take was DOA.

Sort of. I mean the point of the take wasn't that Pulisic was or wasn't going to succeed in Italy, the point was that to help grow the MLS, Pulisic should have brought his name back to the league. Sure it grows the MLS ... some. But in the end, it would not have improved his game, the USMNT suffers, and some middling league growth wouldn't translate into anything measurable for the USSF in any near term.

But the improvement of the USMNT very much dictated by our players getting to Europe ASAFP. They get better faster and they show that US Players are worth the efforts, so more players can make the jump.

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3 hours ago, PittsburghTiger said:

Hershey is on the other side of the Appalachian range, he's not a Yinzer.

I dated Pittsburgh lady and I was just showing off the fact that I knew that vocabulary word.

(She did not have a Yinzer accent.)

Actually, I didn’t encounter that accent in Mount Lebanon, but have found the “milk & bread” (“bread & milk”?) video shorts to be quite amusing.

And I have a greater fondness for The Steelers than I did growing up in Dallas in the ‘70s.

PS- And I love the airport. 

Edited by Napoleon
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1 hour ago, Captain Ron said:

 

Aged like milk? This take was DOA.

Sort of. I mean the point of the take wasn't that Pulisic was or wasn't going to succeed in Italy, the point was that to help grow the MLS, Pulisic should have brought his name back to the league. Sure it grows the MLS ... some. But in the end, it would not have improved his game, the USMNT suffers, and some middling league growth wouldn't translate into anything measurable for the USSF in any near term.

But the improvement of the USMNT very much dictated by our players getting to Europe ASAFP. They get better faster and they show that US Players are worth the efforts, so more players can make the jump.

Just to follow up really quick..

Actually I was kind of mistaken on this, here is the quote from Donovan:

Quote

The World Cup is coming in three years. This is once in a lifetime. He’s going to be in the prime of his career, his life as a soccer player, his earning potential — I’m sure he’s making plenty of money — but the ability to come to MLS kind of like [Lionel] Messi did. I’m not so sure that wasn’t a big reason for Messi, the World Cup coming here.

I think it would have been a great move … for the Galaxy to go out and get Christian. Bring him here, pay whatever you have to pay him. Bring an American superstar who has global recognition back to MLS ahead of the World Cup. I think it would have been a great move and I can hear the Twitterverse going crazy.

Yes, some of the bring recognition to the MLS.

But the follow up:

Quote

My biggest thing is he needs to play. I know we all said when he went to Chelsea, ‘He’s going to play a lot.’ He didn’t play a lot, especially last year. At Milan. I would think he’s going play a lot but you just don’t know.

So leading into the World Cup, what if he spends the last six months leading into 2026 like he did this year, then what happens? He’s not playing a lot and he’s not in good form going into the World Cup.

And that's just wrong (see improvement comes from playing at the top level.

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2 hours ago, Napoleon said:

I dated Pittsburgh lady and I was just showing off the fact that I knew that vocabulary word.

(She did not have a Yinzer accent.)

Actually, I didn’t encounter that accent in Mount Lebanon, but have found the “milk & bread” (“bread & milk”?) video shorts to be quite amusing.

And I have a greater fondness for The Steelers than I did growing up in Dallas in the ‘70s.

PS- And I love the airport. 

I confess that at times I do fall back into Yinzer Vocabulary, and there is nothing wrong with that.

Mount Lebo is hardly where you find Yinzers, upper-crust WASPS and well to do Catholics, yes.

🤣

The airport is being completely redone.

 

Edited by PittsburghTiger
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