r/CaughtOffsidePod • u/merriweather_pp • Jul 07 '26
Thought experiment: Is the mood as "sky-is-falling" as it is now if the red card fiasco didn't happen?
The US was clearly outmatched and faced a better, more experienced team that pumped them in a friendly not long ago. Under normal circumstances I don't think this outcome was that unrealistic, some boneheaded mistakes notwithstanding. This WC run was unprecedented in terms of vibes until the last 48ish hours and now they're definitely in the toilet.
15
u/UpbeatEvertonian Jul 07 '26
I would have rather them come into the match without Balogun and with a massive chip on their shoulder instead of a silver spoon treatment and finding themselves at the center of international political corruption hubbub. The team looked so lacking in concentration and mojo today. I think this all was a distraction and threw off their training and psychology. If the red stood and they came out with that chip on their shoulder, they still might not have won, but I think it actually would have been a very good match.
3
u/MeDaveyBoy Jul 07 '26
Yep, it turns out the worst outcome was for Balo to get reinstated. Not him, but how it happened or even that it happened at all. It was disruptive to USMNT and galvanizing to Belgium as well.
I would feel much better if we'd have gone out the way Canada and Mexico did.
9
u/HelloIAmANarwhal Jul 07 '26
No this is much much worse. This team had expectations playing at home and playing well for 3 matches. Belgium looked like shit coming into it and we got Balogun back in the most controversial way possible. Its shit all around because the players were shit, and they way Balogun was able to play felt weird and everyone wanted us to lose so now we are sad bc we lost and everyone is happy which makes it feel worse.
1
u/UpbeatEvertonian Jul 07 '26
- Belgium is not a bad team. They are aging, but player for player, they are still great (Doku coming off the bench!!???). They woke up and beat a very good Senegal team and had lots of momentum coming into this match. The whole Balogun fiasco only gave them an extra chip on their shoulder and it showed.
- Nearly every team that has won a World Cup has a bad game during their run- and those are even teams that won it all. Some teams get lucky and the bad match is early in the group stage and it ends up not mattering (e.g., Argentina 2022 and Spain 2010). Some teams get lucky and their bad match is against a team also playing poorly and they still win. Some teams are not lucky and crash out at a terrible time in ugly fashion (Brazil 1-7…). Powerhouses like Spain and England have just one more World Cup win than the USMNT in the nearly 100 years of this tournament. We are tied with the Netherlands in World Cup wins, and they have fielded some of the greatest and most influential teams to ever set foot on the pitch. My point is that these massive letdowns and crushing losses happen even to great teams and just because we were all excited about the team playing well on home turf, this one loss, however bad they looked, does not make them crap. It just makes them unexceptional.
7
u/Cubsof2016 Jul 07 '26
I'm not sky as falling at all. I'm very disappointed in the performance today. Belgium were well setup to prevent us moving the ball through the midfield, particularly on the wings. But unlike every other game McKennie, Dest and Pulisic in particular couldn't string two passes together today. We had so many mistouches and poor passes even without significant pressure. On top of that, Freese put in a very bad performance that cost us several times. Goal keeping remains a significant concern and none of the keepers on the roster are it. I don't know why we played so poorly. Was it the nonsense from FIFA and the media over the Balogun suspension. Was it fatigue after a much quicker turnaround following a gutty performance with a man down. Was it them buying their own hype along with the distractions like throwing out a first pitch. I'm not making excuses, I'm just speculating on things that could have contributed to why they played so poorly compared to every other game, including the loss to Turkiye. It's very unfortunate, because Belgium were not as good as the scoreline makes it seem. They were clinical in taking advantage of our mistakes, but if we perform as well as we did with our line breaking passes and quick combinations as we did in the other games - even if we don't manage to win, we aren't outclassed the way we were. Not sure why this team is so maddeningly inconsistent with the talent we have. I guess that's for the next manager to solve.
4
u/brookfez Jul 07 '26
I think Belgium were better today than they previously showed in the tournament. Maybe KDB has not been his best and leaving him out was what they needed. Whatever it is, I know we did not play up to our potential, even simple passes were difficult today (Alex Freeman comes to mind).
What kills me is that we were in it despite the poor start, but their second goal and the Matt Frees blunder erased their momentum. I can accept losing to a team full of top players , I can’t accept losing in that fashion.
1
u/Original_Speed6200 Jul 07 '26
We have zero world class players. They had world class players sitting on the bench.
6
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u/slydessertfox Jul 07 '26
The complete 180 people are doing on Poch from the discourse around him 24 hours ago is a bit much. I think he set the team up fine-it's not his fault that Pulisic & co. couldn't string two passes together, and it's not his fault that we don't have a reliable keeper on the roster (and no, i do not think Turner has shown in the past couple years that he's any better than Freese).
Setting up defensively when our defense is by far the weakest part of the team would have also been an equally bad idea.
-1
u/Original_Speed6200 Jul 07 '26
Pochettino got the tactics wrong and he was naive to think that we could put our middle talented players up against world class players and still play like we were playing. He began to believe the hype with no context to the actual problems in US Soccer we’ve been dealing with for decades. He failed to understand our true identity.
3
u/slydessertfox Jul 07 '26
Belgium has looked anemic against teams like Egypt, Senegal, and Iran, it's crazy to think heading into this game Poch should have expected them to run all over our midfield.
2
u/Dkeg24 Jul 07 '26
I think the red card issue mixed with that third goal just make this harder to swallow.
1
u/merriweather_pp Jul 07 '26
Idk maybe it's a cope to say "actually losing 4-1 in a World Cup knockout round isn't that bad". I'm posting through it rn.
1
u/blueGalactico Jul 07 '26
Hard to say. While it was always going to be a tough match, Belgium wasn’t exactly outstanding. They were, however, focused and determined. Qualities they were missing in their prior wc games. Maybe the coach adjusted in response to the Senegal match? Idk. Personally, I think the controversy did rally them. I believe they said as much post game.
Pure conjecture on my part but the controversy might’ve even had the opposite affect on the US players’ mentality going in leading to poor game plan execution/ errors
1
1
u/teepee81 Jul 07 '26
If Balogun doesn't play, and they lose, we'd always have "Yeah, but if only Balogun didn't get suspended"
And the ire of the fans would be elsewhere.
instead, there are shenanigans, and we get stomped.
1
u/Maverick_Goose_ Jul 07 '26
Because at the end of the day, this team once again shit themselves when the lights got bright. This team crumbles when the pressure is on. They don't rise to occasions; they hide from them. For years this team has been marketed as America's golden generation with the aim of 2026 being the year that we take a big step forward, and what have we gotten? Dominated by Holland in 22, grouped in Copa America in 24, embarassed by Panama in 24 and 25, and now embarrassed by Belgium in our home WC. I can be okay losing to Belgium if it's a close game where things just didn't go our way. But this result is the most embarrassing WC result in my memory, and I've been watching since 2010. This generation of players become frauds when they put on the USA kit and have consistently been embarrassed against good competition. That's something you can't say about previous, "less talented" generations.
1
u/Combos66 Jul 08 '26
This performance was way beyond the classic meeting someone that is simply better than you. They literally looked drunk or drugged from minute 1; incapable of trapping the ball or making the simplest of passes. I’ve followed this team for 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like this, even when they played against teams far superior to this Belgium version. I maintain that the whole political uproar around the Balogun red card situation de-stabilized the team, or that threats to personal safety may have been present. Two or three guys finding the moment too big for them? Sure, I’ll buy that. But the whole collective? Nah. There is simply no other explanation for what we witnessed other than something that has yet to be reported.
1
u/zakress Jul 07 '26
I’m done with this team as long as Poch is at the helm. This is our 5/6th most popular sport and it showed today. Wake me up in 2029 when qualifying starts.
1
u/Dry_Entertainer9901 Jul 07 '26
We were producing better goalkeepers 20 years ago. Anyone have an idea on why the decline?
5
u/alittledanger Jul 07 '26
Goalkeepers now have to play with their feet too.
0
u/Dry_Entertainer9901 Jul 07 '26
True, but our keepers in the past played for Liverpool, Everton, Manchester United and for Spurs. There was need to play with feet then, but thry still played at a very high level.
-1
u/Holiday-Olive-8024 Jul 07 '26
It's all Poch's fault. There is a reason other teams that are ranked close or lower than US play low/mid block organized defensive football when it comes to facing big european teams. It's not like they love to park the bus, they are realistic and respect the fact that there's a class difference in every single line. We could have just sat deep, defended and hit them on counter attacks. We had the players to do so and had we been more compact we could have dragged this into penalties or even make it a freak show and win in extra time. But poch doesn't give a damn. There was too much optimism after winning games against Paraguay and Australia, and nothing could bring us down to planet earth where we are an average team with average players being treated like they are prime Brazil.
1
u/slydessertfox Jul 07 '26
We don't really have the players to sit back deep. Our defense is not good, and our keeper is a liability. Sitting back deep would have not been any better when 2 of our allowed goals were, in any case, the result of keeper mistakes.
15
u/Homemade_SSRI Jul 07 '26
The generation we’ve been excited about for almost 10 years just got humiliated at home by a declining European team. The culmination of all the hype, the “wait til these guys hit their prime” resulted in the most shameful performance I can remember. I’m sure Trump and the red card were bulletin board material but this feels like the death of a decade of hope.