Gregg Berhalter, Brendan Aronson, Weston Mckinney discussed on ExtraTime

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That they don't get the white pieces and move first, which is always an advantage. So I think that head coach Gregg berhalter did so many things right. I thought his lineup choices were right. I thought both the progression shape, the seal shape, all of it, was incredibly impressive and largely spot on for those first 45 minutes. The fact that he did not make a change, either a sub or a tactical adjustment. For me, it was a mistake and it gave whales an opening to get back into it. Dial was the 66th minute where alter finally made his first change, Brendan aronson coming on. With Weston McKinney, we saw him sort of holding his groin in the first half, struggling at times. So whether it was tactical or not, he made that change. And then he made a triple change in the 74th minute Haji Wright Kellen Acosta and Deandre yedlin all coming on. What do you make of sort of the way he reacted to what Wales brought? I thought they were the right moves. I thought that came about ten minutes too late. I'm generally a proponent of making earlier subs, especially when you have guys who are carrying knocks. And especially in this era of having 5 subs, you spend them first, change the game first, especially because to speak to the Welsh adjustment. They brought in key for more, right? It wasn't anything masterful from the Welsh coach. They brought in a 6 foot 6 dude and started launching long balls to them over our press. And that pushed our back line deeper because they were dealing with him and then dealing with knockdowns. Stretched us out a little bit, but it also stretched them out. And that's why the U.S. had so many opportunities to get on the ball in space and drive the game forward. I guess a backpedaling defense, which they didn't have in the second half. The other thing that Wales did was they brought the press to Zimmerman and ream. Because Zimmerman and ream were really hurting them in the first half, especially with those long balls into the channel for Timmy waya. He was always attacking that space in behind. And not just on the goal, but a lot of it was like direct play from the back because the Welsh front line, like Gareth Bale doesn't not press. He is not going to spend his energy closing down opposing center backs. Although he tracked a couple times. There's a difference between pressing and tracking. Difference between pressing when it's scoreless and tracking when you're down a goal. And so that did end up changing the game. And I thought the changes that berhalter made were the right ones. In terms of getting players who could punish whales when they were trying to build out of the back themselves.

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