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Speaker 1: gambling problem called one eight hundred gambler. Well, it was
Speaker 1: a nice run. It was a nice run, but I
Speaker 1: mean I think ultimately, if you look at the teams
Speaker 1: in the World Cup, you know there is a kind
Speaker 1: of a class of eight, and you know, Spain, we
Speaker 1: all know who it is. Argentina. Belgium now counts, although
Speaker 1: they've gotten a little older. But remember in twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: they were one of the three four best teams in
Speaker 1: the world. And I mean, I think it was pretty obvious.
Speaker 1: I think the first seven or eight minutes you could
Speaker 1: say it was nerves. But after that we weren't winning
Speaker 1: enough one on one battles, we weren't maintaining enough possession,
Speaker 1: we got very few good shots on goal. We looked
Speaker 1: like we were outclassed. We looked like we did against Paraguay.
Speaker 1: Just flip the sides and so. And I also think
Speaker 1: it's a little bit like the NFL playoffs, is that
Speaker 1: the better teams you face, the better coaches you face,
Speaker 1: and you know you can get through the AFC or
Speaker 1: the nf C South, you know, then you match up
Speaker 1: against you know, the Buffalo's and the Philadelphia's and the mcveigh's,
Speaker 1: and you know, just the better coaches and the better teams,
Speaker 1: and your flaws become gigantic holes. And I mean Matt
Speaker 1: Freeze looked like an MLS goalie tonight. I mean when
Speaker 1: he had Tim Howard. We've had Tony Meola, Casey Keller,
Speaker 1: Tim Howard who was a huge physical presence, a great athlete,
Speaker 1: hyper aggressive, big strong presence in goal. Matt Freeze looks
Speaker 1: like an MLS goalie. You know, an embarrassing mistake playing
Speaker 1: with his feet. I mean, that's that's that's like that
Speaker 1: stuff you see in a Tuesday night in the MLS.
Speaker 1: That's just not good enough. And again it's not exposed
Speaker 1: against Paraguay that didn't have much of a dynamic offense,
Speaker 1: or or Australia, but it does get exposed against Belgium.
Speaker 1: And you know, I thought, again one of the things
Speaker 1: I've said throughout this tournament is soccer fans love to
Speaker 1: kind of project that you don't understand soccer. You could
Speaker 1: see it very quickly, first five or six minutes. We
Speaker 1: just could not maintain any fluidity or any flow. We
Speaker 1: couldn't win the one on one battles until the very end.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get quality shots. And when Belgium was in
Speaker 1: their offensive end, it was just easier. There was much
Speaker 1: greater ease to get quality shots. Tim Reims, a thirty
Speaker 1: eight year old defender. Although there are things I like
Speaker 1: about Tim Reim, he got physically dominated on that second goal.
Speaker 1: So the back end was our weakness. And again you
Speaker 1: face better countries and better players and it's completely absolutely exposed.
Speaker 1: Also listen, Christian Polistic. If you look at the best teams,
Speaker 1: Harry Kanes had a great tournament, so is Messy, so
Speaker 1: is Imbape, so is Earling Holland. For Norway, Christian Pulisic
Speaker 1: did not. He's a slight player. He's always been fragile.
Speaker 1: He gets banged up again and I didn't think he
Speaker 1: played with any confidence today. You know, he wasn't winning
Speaker 1: his one on ones and he kind of you know,
Speaker 1: gave the ball up early and his one on one opportunities,
Speaker 1: he just gave it up. That that feels a little
Speaker 1: bit like kind of bailing your lacking confidence. Then later
Speaker 1: he gets injured on a legal play. Was not a foul.
Speaker 1: So I mean again, I don't think it's overly complex.
Speaker 1: I think we faced a team that beat us handily.
Speaker 1: I think it was five to two in a friendly
Speaker 1: with great scoring opportunities, and you know, we kind of
Speaker 1: felt like we weren't playing some of our best players.
Speaker 1: But you know, in this instance, we played our best
Speaker 1: players and we were just outclassed, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can blame Pochettino. What I really like about this
Speaker 1: is that you can't blame the coach. We love Pochettino
Speaker 1: before Belgium. We can't look at him with dismay. Now
Speaker 1: is that soccer is always going to be about who's
Speaker 1: got the worst, who has the most passing, dribbling skill,
Speaker 1: who can create better opportunities more shots on goal? I mean,
Speaker 1: how many quality shots did we get on goal tonight? Two?
Speaker 1: The even the Malie Tillman goal on the free kick
Speaker 1: was a ricochet. So I think I would rather lose
Speaker 1: this way than be frustrated. I mean, Baligan really only
Speaker 1: got one opportunity on goal. A couple of the notes
Speaker 1: I wrote down, you know, twenty two minute mark, no
Speaker 1: shots on goal, Belgium two to one, physical domination, Pulisic shaky.
Speaker 1: First USA cornerkick was at the end of the first half.
Speaker 1: I just think when you see a team that has
Speaker 1: a higher level of skill, more experience in bigger games.
Speaker 1: Inside one point, stue Holden was asked about how do
Speaker 1: you get better in big games and his answer was appropriate,
Speaker 1: you play in them, and Belgium just felt like they
Speaker 1: had been in more games like this. You know, it
Speaker 1: was funny in the first seven or eight minutes, I
Speaker 1: saw that they were calling it nervy and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll give you that for about five minutes, and then
Speaker 1: it was really really clear we could not There must
Speaker 1: have been six, seven, eight, nine straight moments where it
Speaker 1: would come down to a one on one battle in
Speaker 1: Belgium always came out with a ball and we met
Speaker 1: our match. But we know now if we flipped goalies,
Speaker 1: would we have a greater opportunity. Yeah, but we weren't
Speaker 1: going to beat Belgium. I thought Matt Freeze felt like
Speaker 1: a little bit out of his depth. This was a
Speaker 1: little too big for him, and it happens. But we
Speaker 1: kind of know where we stand, you know, the Argentinas.
Speaker 1: You know, we're closer to Brazil than we've ever been,
Speaker 1: We're closer to Portugal than we've ever been. But there
Speaker 1: does feel like a gap, a skill gap between England.
Speaker 1: Five of the top thirty three players in this tournament.
Speaker 1: Where I was reading an article before the tournament by
Speaker 1: Fox five of the top thirty three were from England.
Speaker 1: And I mean you watched Jude Bellingham and you watch
Speaker 1: Harry Kane against Mexico. They were easily the two best
Speaker 1: players in the pitch. And you watch that in NBA games,
Speaker 1: you know, you see that when you watch great football teams.
Speaker 1: You could just see the best players jump through the television.
Speaker 1: So it didn't matter if we were playing a four
Speaker 1: to two three one, or or we had gel Rena
Speaker 1: substituted in at half, it just didn't matter. We just
Speaker 1: got outclassed. And that's where we stand as of today,
Speaker 1: you know, and something to remember. We have the best football, basketball,
Speaker 1: baseball and hockey league in the world. And you can
Speaker 1: look at the Olympics and say, well, look at what
Speaker 1: we did. Our men's and women's won gold at the
Speaker 1: Olympics in hockey. But hockey is dwarfed in revenue by soccer.
Speaker 1: Soccer's got forty five billion dollars annually in revenue in soccer.
Speaker 1: That's like six to seven billion annually in hockey. Because
Speaker 1: of the international elite events, sponsorships, the international television rights.
Speaker 1: If you want to dominate international soccer, it is much
Speaker 1: harder than dominating international hockey. It's just it means more
Speaker 1: to far more countries. It's just hockey is just not
Speaker 1: as broad. It often feels like a cold weather experience,
Speaker 1: a cold weather country experience. Whereas everybody can play soccer.
Speaker 1: Norway's good at it, Cape Verde is good at it,
Speaker 1: Argentina and France are amazing at it. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we generally are kind of the hub of revenue globally
Speaker 1: for sports. Soccer is different. We spend about four hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars between our men's and women's team annually, four
Speaker 1: hundred million, and that's that's on par with many of
Speaker 1: the top teams, but not greater then. And we also
Speaker 1: don't have the cultural fixation, fascination, intensity or passion that
Speaker 1: other nations do. I don't look at this World Cup
Speaker 1: is a failure. I think we earned ourselves another World
Speaker 1: Cup sometime very soon. Our infrastructure is so capable of
Speaker 1: hosting it. But I think it's just it's the one sport,
Speaker 1: the one Rubik's cube we're trying to decipher, and it
Speaker 1: really comes down to revenue. It's massive, very difficult to
Speaker 1: buy your way to championships. And again, we have some
Speaker 1: really nice players, but saying in a globe with two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen countries that were not in the top eight,
Speaker 1: there's no great shame in it. But I thought we
Speaker 1: were outclassed, and I will say Sebastian Berhalter adds great energy.
Speaker 1: We had great fight until the end, but we met
Speaker 1: our match. And that's okay. I mean, it's not okay.
Speaker 1: It's infuriating. It's in Seattle. But I don't think you
Speaker 1: walk away from this and say so we gave it
Speaker 1: a good run, we gave it a good fight. You
Speaker 1: just keep chipping away. Remember England has won one World Cup,
Speaker 1: Spain has won one World Cup. This shit is hard,
Speaker 1: you know, And I'm sure I'll just get blasted my
Speaker 1: text tonight when I wake up tomorrow. We'll we will
Speaker 1: never compete. This is worthless. We got out class tonight.
Speaker 1: Belgium added on that final goal. So if you count
Speaker 1: the friendly against tonight five to two and four to one,
Speaker 1: our back end was completely overwhelmed. A clean sweep in
Speaker 1: the two times we face Belgium gives you a sense
Speaker 1: of where we currently are on the soccer global map. Remember,
Speaker 1: our average age is under twenty seven, so a majority
Speaker 1: of this team is with more European and international experience.
Speaker 1: It's not on our soil, but generally group stages aren't
Speaker 1: our greatest challenge. It's the knockout stage. But this is
Speaker 1: a very young team going forward. Twenty six point nine
Speaker 1: years old is the average age, still one of the
Speaker 1: youngest teams at this World Cup. The volume