Welp. That was fun. Overall, it was a satisfying tournament. If you’d told me before the tournament that we’d beat France in the round of 16 before bowing out I’d have taken it. Still…it feels like the team could have made a deeper run, right? The loss was a bit frustrating because it appears we hit an iceberg or two a lot of people saw coming. Anyhow, lets get to the grades. They aren’t great.

Grades from previous U20 World Cup games:

USA vs Nigeria

USA vs Qatar

USA vs France

The notes:

The final +/- grades:

MOTM – Timothy Weah (+13)

Weah showed out against Ecuador. He ran all day, he passed the ball well, he tracked back, and he scored the only US goal on a nice strike off a corner. Weah really grew as the tournament went along. I’m not sure if it was knocking the rust off after not playing a lot or getting to know his teammates, but he played very well against Ecuador. Is it too late to call him up for the Gold Cup too?

Other Positives

Chris Richards (+11)

Richards wasn’t flawless today. The Ecuadorian #9 (Campana) was almost an athletic match for Richards and managed to get the best of him a time or two. He actually had -8 among five events IMO. BUT, Richards still had 19(!) different positive events. Richards is a force of nature back there. I’d rather have him in the full NT than Omar any day of the week. Richards makes very few mistakes and usually can cover for any he does make with his supreme intelligence and athleticism. I know Bayern’s U23 team got promoted to the 3. Bundesliga, but I still don’t think that’s a high enough level for Chris. I hope I hear rumors about loans to a first division team somewhere.

Sergino Dest (+11)

Dest may be almost as good a prospect as Richards. He’s another one that I think could push into the full national team really soon. Aside from the one rough match against the Ukraine (and I wouldn’t be surprised if their grim, Greece-like march to the title continues), he’s been excellent. He wasn’t as involved on offense as he probably would have liked, but his defense was superb again.

And that’s about it for the positives. Ochoa was pretty good in replacing Scott and Pomykal/Gloster/Soto were all so-so.

Room to Improve

Aboubacar Keita (-11)

This poor kid. He’s a decent defender and he can hit a really nice pass on occasion, but today wasn’t his day. Ecuador was basically daring him to try passing out of the back in the first half because there was about a 50% chance it was going to them. Tab actually took the keys away from him at half time. He didn’t pull him, but Keita didn’t attempt a single pass like that in the 2nd half. Pomykal or Durkin would come collect the ball from Keita if it wasn’t Richards. Let’s hope he gets some reps with Richmond in the USL and continues to develop. This should have been James Sands. Keita wasn’t ready.

Chris Durkin (-9)

Durkin was a disaster. As near as I can tell he’s in the team to be a metronome, start attacks, etc. If you’re going to carry a d-mid like that who doesn’t play great defense…he’d better be pretty amazing at that stuff (think Pirlo). Instead, he was a turnover machine that also didn’t play defense. At some point his confidence seemed shot too:

If Durkin has any kind of confidence he controls that ball and plays it to the keeper, Richards, Dest, or maybe even makes a move and buys himself some time on the ball. I had him down for 15 different negative events. Maybe it was a little harsh, but when you’re doing stuff like this it’s not going great.

-4 for that one. Ugh.

de la Fuente/Mendez (both +1)

Neither guy was straight up awful, but neither of them were good. Nobody pretends that Mendez is a cover every blade of grass defender, but if he’s not contributing special moments with his left foot then he’s a drag on your midfield. He had a couple decent moments (there was a really nice pass in the 51st minute), but not enough.

de la Fuente on the other hand was losing balls and killing attacks all day. I had him down for five positive events…four of those events were defensive. Not really what you’re looking for from a tricky winger. All four negatives were lost balls.

Summing Up

Not enough guys played well today. Maybe that’s on Tab, maybe not. There’s a college football saying that seems appropriate though. “The other guys are on scholarship too.” Ecuador was good. The better team on the day won. I think the US could have played better and I would have loved to see Servania or Cerillo out there at the 6 with McKenzie partnering Richards (was he healthy?), but sometimes you get beat by a better team. Ecuador was that better team.

I’ll compile the numbers, take a look at them, and write some sort of wrap-up in a couple days. I’ll also try to do these for the Gold Cup games. After that we’ll see how it goes.

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