Camp Cupcake gave us fun moments & instructive goals

Freedom within the system

“Big Balls” Luna

Just over a month ago I wrote a blog here about the USMNT under Mauricio Pochettino, and the sacrifice of pitch control for a little bit more attacking freedom than the team had under Gregg Berhalter. The particular thing I was focused on was whether the freedom the first stringers had early in Pochettino’s US career had would carry on into this camp.

The verdict is that it did. The verdict is that, as I suspected, Pochettino has largely kept the structure that Gregg Berhalter established, but has given his players more freedom to take risks within it. Or maybe another way of looking at it: he hasn’t so much given them freedom to take more risks but has actively demanded it of them

I think the players have largely responded. Certainly in this camp they did.

A few takeaways:

• The big star of the show was Diego Luna, who took about 10 minutes to get in the game but then started opening up space for both himself and his teammates with a series of clever one-touch passes into the half-spaces. The US had largely been pinned until he solved Costa Rica’s weirdo defensive stance like that.

Then he got his nose broken trying to make a play defensively. Then he got back on the field and, with his first touch, did this:

As the tweet¹ says, Luna’s got special vision and ability to weight passes. He’s a natural playmaker – a natural No. 10 – in a way that very few US players are, or can hope to be. It’s very, very gratifying to see that translate at the full national team level in his first look.

EDIT: I had to add this clip after publishing. Great observation from Charlie B:

• Watch the first clip again and note how Brian White sets up the center back by dropping off the line and out of his site, which then allows him to start sprinting before the pass is actually hit. This is the kind of sophisticated, next-level off-ball nous that I was talking about Pat Agyemang (who came off the bench and scored himself a banger, as did Caden Clark) needing to develop after Saturday’s win.

Given Agyemang’s improvement curve over the past two years, I suspect he’ll get there. As for White, his ability to find chances and do the fundamental work of the No. 9 – i.e., creating passing lanes for both himself and his fellow attackers with his off-ball movement – was especially valuable for an otherwise very inexperienced US midfield.

• That midfield – the deep-lying guys, Emeka Eneli and Benja Cremaschi – struggled with their ball progression for big chunks of the game. I love Eneli’s tools, but he needs to be better about checking his shoulders and understanding when to turn and play forward. Cremaschi, meanwhile, needs to work on his body shape when receiving in traffic.

• Those ball-progression struggles from the d-mids, combined with that wonky shape from Costa Rica, ended up putting a lot of the game on the feet of the US backline. The first promising attack for the US on the night started on the foot of Miles Robinson, who was a sort of elbow back. The sequence on the opening goal, meanwhile, basically started on the foot of Tim Ream.

They spent all night trying to break lines and play into the pockets. This wasn’t scripted, I don’t think. Rather, this was them assessing the game and taking the types of risks with their distribution that Pochettino demands.

• I was curious when I saw that right side of Robinson, nominally in a back four, and Indiana Vassilev at right wing. One of the things I’d talked about last month was the pattern of play, under Pochettino, in which the fullback pushes up, creates a triangle with the winger and one of the central midfielders, and picks vertical passes.

We actually saw a lot of that on the US’s left side, with DeJuan Jones having some good moments and a few not so good. On the right side, though, Vassilev almost always stayed wide, almost like a wingback, while Robinson more often than not slid inside to become that elbow back or, more conventionally, a third center back as the US’s shape shifted from a 4-2-3-1 into a 3-2-4-1 with the ball.

This is the sane thing to do if you’re starting a center back at right back in what is nominally a four. I’m not sure we’ll see a ton more of it, as Poch really does like his attacking fullbacks and aggressive triangles, but I was impressed with the level of tactical flexibility and just, like, basic knowledge of the strengths of the player pool this tactical adjustment showed.

He is, in short, putting his guys into spots where they can succeed. Even if it’s not 100% what I would have done, I can’t find any real faults with the process so far.

That’s a win. That makes me feel good about what I’ve seen over the past six months, and excited about what’s to come in the next 18.

1. We’re taking that word at BlueSky, it’s ours now. Vichy Twitter doesn’t get to have it.