Welcome to the Scuff Podcast where we talk about US soccer. The U.S. drew the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Zero at an empty stadium in the southeast of

Spain on Tuesday. It's difficult to imagine going into a World Cup with less momentum.

No goals in the final window, very little real chance creation, no evidence that we will ask difficult

questions of any of our opponents in

November there are some mildly optimistic ways to think about what will happen in

Qatar and we will get into those rest assured but I got to say, it feels a lot like it did after we lost to Panama a year ago

when you said essentially no weight should be given to the long-term project that Berhalter was building. Is that unfair today? No, I think it's totally fair. I think like the dominant theme going into this window after you know the roster release and some of the controversy around that was

system and we've been talking about Greg Berhalter and his system since since

his first January camp of 2019 when we saw the inverted right right full back

come into the middle and place under mid and ever since then

we you know we constantly talk about the system and it's capitalized in our voices.

But the thing is like there isn't really that much of a system right I mean the system itself is not particularly rigid or specific

So it almost starts to just blend into at this point.

We're just talking about profile, right?

So when we talk about we want to forward that it's the system.

There was nothing about either of these two games in this window

that showcased like what that sort of platonic system forward does.

You know if the idea is Berhalter prefers a forward like Ferreira who can come into the

midfield or you know come in and combine he never did that in these two

windows right he's not doing it so if if the system isn't actually what we're doing on the

field and it's hard to even call it the system. Like his system is basically just our

It's an aspiration. It's an aspiration. Yeah and even then I'm not even sure

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