I put up a Twitter poll asking what player people would like to see evaluated after the US-Ecuador friendly and Wil Trapp was the choice. This article will break down his performance and maybe attempt to make some predictions going forward.

FYI – This portion was written prior to the re-watch. My impression after watching the game live was that Trapp played the best game I’ve seen from him in a US jersey. I recall several nice passes, him giving advice/instruction to others, but not much about his defense because I don’t think Ecuador did any attacking.

My hypothesis there is that Ecuador was practicing for the Copa America where they’ll be behind the ball all game against Brazil, Colombia, etc. I’ll try not to let confirmation bias color my viewing. I’ll check back in when I’m done…

And…we’re back

Just finished watching (and re-watching) Trapp’s 58 minute performance against Ecuador. My initial impressions haven’t changed much. His passing was excellent. He clearly knows Berhalter’s system inside and out. And he had very little to do on defense.

Let’s start by nit-picking. It’s a short section.

Negatives

Here, Trapp plays a bad pass and then doesn’t get the ball when he tries to win it back. The outlet pass is cut out by Tyler Adams and the counter comes to nothing, but this was Trapp’s worst moment.

And here, Trapp gets caught with the ball and Ecuador gets another chance to break. Trapp catches up and commits a foul to slow things down though, so it comes to nothing again. I have a feeling “and it came to nothing” could be Ecuador’s slogan for the upcoming Copa America.

And that’s about it for the negatives. There may be some more nuanced watchers out there that would be able to critique his positioning or something, but I watched his entire performance (paying attention to nothing but Trapp) and these are the worst plays I could find. Not bad.

Ecuador put Trapp under very little pressure though. One of the criticisms I’ve seen/read of Trapp is that he does not play nearly as well when pressed. I’d imagine this is true for most players, but it does make me hope Trapp starts against Chile. Chile is a better team than Ecuador and they are going to press. If Trapp can continue dropping in dimes in that scenario, then maybe we’ve got something here.

Positives

Trapps’s passing was on point. Less than two minutes into the game, he hits this pass:

Same pass, different camera angle

I sorta feel like I could just stop here. This pass is why Trapp is Berhalter’s first choice 6 and why he fits that “quarterback” role so well. Bradley doesn’t hit or see these passes as well as he does and neither does Tyler Adams (yet – we’ll talk more about that later).

Trapp’s ability to hit those passes allows the wide forwards to stay high and wide. If the 6 can’t hit those passes then the wingers have to drop back and move towards the middle to be available.

There were so many of these lofted diagonal balls that I finally stopped making gifs of them. In his 60ish minutes Trapp probably played 6-10 of them. As the TSS guys like to point out, when something keeps happening, it’s part of the plan. Here’s one more. This one was a little shorter and hit with nice touch.

The number of them specifically hit down the left to Arriola might even indicate that Berhalter identified the Ecuadorian right back (Paredes – an attacking RB with Watford) as a liability to target. I’m starting to sound like a broken record, but it’s just so nice to have a coach where there are identifiable patterns, tactics, etc. (Credit to helpful reddit user isotopes_ftw for consulting on this section btw)

Line-breaking Passes

If you read my column about the USMNT’s offensive strategy, then you know that playing line-breaking passes into pocket’s of space for the two 10s (or “Free 8s”) is a big part of the plan. Trapp also did that quite well. Ecuador had their two lines of four dropped so deep that there wasn’t much space to be had, but Trapp did slip a couple nice passes through to find Pulisic/McKennie in space.

This is the play that Arriola really should have scored on. The play starts with Trapp slipping a ball between two Ecuadorian defenders to McKennie who then touches the ball to Zardes.

And here is the “offside” play Zardes biffs, but Arriola finishes. Still not sure if it was offside or not, but again this play is started by Trapp threading the ball between two guys to find McKennie in a gap between the Ecuadorian lines.

Defense?

I don’t know what to tell you. There was one play where Morris lost a runner and the Ecuadorian attacker took a terrible shot, but Trapp had nothing to do with it.

Trapp is looking pretty confident in this clip. He wins the ball and does a little fancy footwork to tap it to McKennie, but seriously I think Panama in January had more attacking intent than these guys.

What about the future?

I think and hope Trapp is going to get the start again against Chile and that will give us another data point to evaluate. Bradley may start, but I still think Trapp is a little ahead of him (wrote an article examining this a little while back). I also believe the future of the position is Tyler Adams. In the 75th minute Adams hit this pass:

Yes, please.

RB Leipzig doesn’t ask Adams to play in the same way that Berhalter does with the national team, so I don’t know that he’s going to get a lot of chances to play those type of balls with his club team. However, if Adams is able to add that sort of passing ability to his already incredible field coverage…we may have our first Barca/Madrid level player. Exciting times.

Tuesday’s Lineup?

One of the nice things about having a sane coach is that the lineups are much more logical and therefore predictable. I got 9/11 for the last game. Having said that I have no idea what’s happening for Tuesday’s game. Berhalter has already said he’s making several changes and at least two starters are definitely out (Adams went back to Leipzig and McKennie is hurt). I’ll take a crack anyway though. Complete with rating system.

I actually reached out to a couple Chile fan/journalist types on Twitter to see if I could get a lineup prediction/rating from a Chilean perspective as well, but didn’t hear back. I thought of it last minute though so it’s really my bad. I’ll try to get those in the future.

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