On the Gold Cup & the Club World Cup

Once again, there are no new Power Rankings

Courtesy of DAZN.

I was on This is MLS twice this past week, once last Tuesday and then on Friday. They’re both a little out of date now, but in case you’re a completionist, here’s a link to Tuesday’s show, and I’ll embed Friday’s below:

Some good convos in there, though I do miss the old ways where a 30-second digression could turn into a 10-minute deep dive.

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I also did some writing after the first round of Club World Cup group stage games, which is also out of date, but actually holds up decently. CLICKY!

I’m putting this together now as Seattle are down a respectable 1-0 to PSG in the middle of the second half.¹ And no matter how the rest of this game plays out, and whatever happens when Miami play Palmeiras and LAFC face Flamengo, here will be my takeaways:

1. MLS teams performed well for the most part.²

2. The way Brazilian and Saudi teams have invested has paid tangible dividends, and is the obvious path forward for MLS teams to put in more than just “respectable” performances in the future. Goals cost money in this game of ours, and our Brazilian and Saudi friends have spent it.

3. I am very worried MLS will get shut out of the 2029 version of this tournament³ given the way the most ambitious Liga MX teams⁴ have stepped up their spending over the past three years.
   That would be a catastrophe for the league.

4. Of all the MLS players who took the field, the biggest winner was Cristian Roldan. Best player on the field vs. Botafogo, and went toe-to-toe with the world class Atleti and PSG central midfields.

I’ve always been a Roldan fan overall, but a Roldan skeptic as a No. 6. Since he moved back to that spot in the middle of last year, however… I mean, there’s just no room for skepticism anymore. He’s been incredible, and has now shown it against three of the best teams in the world in games that really matter.

The thing I keep thinking about in that context is, will we see him suit up for the USMNT again?

I’ve had my criticisms of Mauricio Pochettino, but he’s been admirably open-minded about calling in the guys who are doing the best work at the club level no matter the league, and Roldan is emphatically checking that box. And there’s precedent for a guy playing his way back into the team after a long absence: Tim Ream was a fringe player from November of 2019 right up to the 2022 World Cup – including zero appearances in the 14 months before Qatar. And then he was suddenly a starter.

That was obviously under a different head coach, and I don’t think d-mid is as much of a need now as center back was then.⁵ But if Roldan keeps playing like this for the next year, he will get a look.⁶

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Just want to take a moment to agree very strongly with my old podcast-mate’s⁷ assessment of Big Pat’s USMNT performance thus far.

There are real shortcomings in Agyemang’s game – his reads can be slow (he should’ve had himself a goal vs. Saudi Arabia late in the second half when Damion Downs made that inside-out run and hit a perfect, low cross to the spot; Pat was three steps behind the play) and his link play can be sloppy.

But he moves the chains. He has an incredible amount of gravity that sucks in opposing center backs and even draws in fullbacks because of his ability to run the channels, and that puts the fear of god into backlines. They play deeper and softer with him out there. That gravity opens space for the attacking midfielders, and that type of time and space is not something we’ve seen the US have a lot of over the past 18 months.

Will it work against better backlines than the US has faced thus far in the Gold Cup? Well, we saw Agyemang do the same thing in January against Venezuela and Costa Rica, and then against Canada in March and Turkey two weeks ago, so I am hopeful.

But even if he isn’t the answer in the long run, he is clearly a menace against the type of teams that have been punking us for the past year-and-a-half.

I think the way I would put it is he helps us win the fight. And once you win the fight against a Concacaf team, then you can start kicking their ass at soccer, too.

It’s been a while since one of our forwards did that. And I think it’s the first bar anyone has to clear if they’re going to dislodge him from the starting No. 9 job.

1. Turned into a respectable 2-0 loss.

2. LAFC logged the one truly disappointing performance. One that many of us saw coming, I think.

3. Which has ruled. I thought it would suck, but was dead wrong. It’s been so much fun in large part because the investments the most ambitious non-European teams have made.

4. Club America, Cruz Azul, Tigres, Monterrey, Toluca… and even though they don’t spend like that, Pachuca always seems to hang around with that group, too. Best academy in North America.

5. That said, neither Tyler Adams nor Johnny Cardoso have been great, and the other guys currently in the rotation are more 8s than 6s. Let’s hope Tyler remembers how to play on the half-turn his next time out.

6. Obed Vargas, by the way, will definitely be getting a look with El Tri soon after his showing. And the Sounder are, I’m guessing, going to be fielding 8-figure offers this summer.

7. March to the Match, we hardly knew ye.