Welcome to the Scuff Podcast where we talk about US Soccer. It was a one-one draw down in Wellington between the USA and the Netherlands.

Greg, how are you?

Well, I'm doing all right, Bells. We are still mat mathematically alive which is what I like to say anytime we are in a World Cup

Some of the math right now is the Netherlands plays Vietnam and we play Portugal and I guess

the the fear is that the Netherlands could

Outdo us on goal difference if they really come come correct in that game

Yeah, that's that's a fear but for me the only fear is time zones and kickoffs because I'm I'm sort of a coin toss on our opponents for the

quarterfinal we're talking quarterfinal. We're talking quarter final already. We're already skipping around a 16 which is probably a bit of hubris so maybe we'll come back and bite us.

But if you're talking about quarter final versus one of Japan or Spain and semi-final against the other one or a rematch against the Netherlands

for me it's sort of all awash right now. So I don't think there's a huge advantage there and really my math is just

don't lose to Portugal and get eliminated from the World Cup yeah yeah

because we play you know if we finish second the group, we play the winner of group G and if we finish first in the group we play the runner-up from group G. That's like one of Sweden, Italy, Argentina, probably, so, yeah, I probably am way too cavalier about that because Sweden

are much better than the other three teams in that group, I think.

So, you know, if you can get a decent drop-off to play the runner-up you should

definitely be trying to do that. All right let's drop a baker's dozen on Portugal.

What's funny is we absolutely can do that. Right. And I will say, I mean before we get into the

line of some timeline and everything, I thought this game was, I was pretty frustrated watching it

last night and then I watched it again this morning and I felt much better about it.

Overall we were unfortunate in that second half. I think it's fair to stay fair to say I still think any

game against a good team is kind of gonna be a crapshoot for us but we definitely

dominated that second half last 20 yeah yeah We definitely I think you're spot on that our team will be frustrating a lot and if we are losing it's going to be even more frustrating because

You know we talk about that psychology of watching your team losing and doing a bunch of low percentage stuff and that frustration building every time.

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