Hello and welcome, hello and welcome everybody to The Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell with me today to break down the USA's nil-nil-nil draw away to El Salvador to start World Cup qualifying is a gentleman who never get startled by fireworks.

It's Joe Lowry.

Joe, if we make the podcast World Cup, if we finally qualify for it and they play the arizona anthem will you get antsy if fans start shooting off bottle rockets oh taylor you should see me on july 4th i'm like a dog cowering in the bedroom i can't i'm just kidding fireworks are great they're actually one of my favorite things they're so much fun anybody who doesn't like fireworks well in in, in most situations, I think, are a little bit strange.

So what I'm hearing you say is that we should get Giorana, like a red, white, and blue thunder shirt that you can put on the dogs when they do get nervous, and that way, when we have away games, we can put them on the whole starting 11, and then no one will get nervous during the opening anthems. because that was a sort of maybe statement of what was to come from that crowd.

I wouldn't say it was like aggressively hostile until maybe... opening anthems because that was a sort of maybe statement of what was to come from that crowd.

I wouldn't say it was like aggressively hostile until maybe the end when they tried to block

the bus from leaving and I'm not even sure how that resolved.

But I think it was definitely an intimidating atmosphere from the start for the U.S.

Absolutely.

I mean, people being led into that stadium eight or nine hours before kickoff, that is insane. Right? And the fact that there were actually some people going there at that time. There were a bunch of people there were three hours before kickoff. I mean, this is playing on the road in Conccaf, and it's awesome. In a lot of ways, it's extremely challenging to play in in even more ways. and it just made this game fun, at least in one way, whereas the play on the field for the U.S. at least wasn't especially fun. I agree. But I was up for it from the start, man. They had the flyover. You had Sir Gino Desk getting bashful because they just stuck the camera in his face for 30 seconds and he didn't know what to do because we had those weird like two minutes of silence. You had players belting out the anthem and it really felt like, okay, we're up for this one. It matters. It's World Cup qualifying. And I would say for the first, I think we talked about this last night on the quick take, for the first like 16 minutes or so, it was looking okay for the U.S. And I think actually maybe inside the first 10 minutes is where we see them being more dominant, playing the way they wanted to, moving the ball. And then I think they start to get nervous. I think they start to get anxious. And I think more importantly, they start to be more conservative. I don't think that was the tactic. This is my overall takeaway. I think they got more cautious and in being more cautious

they couldn't just be as aggressive as they needed to be. And then the rest of the game was

trying to get back to that initial level of intensity. So Joe, that's my read on the opening

approach and how it went from there. Agree or disagree on that? Or if you prefer, what did you make

of the U.S.'s opening line-up and tactics?

Yeah, I'll get to the second part.

I think in response to what you're saying, Taylor, I agree. I think I agree.

And it's a little hard for me to tell what changed because I'm not sure the overall attacking approach necessarily changed after the first 10 or 15 minutes.

I just think some of the shine

wore off. And I think the passes got sloppier. The U.S. weren't able to move the ball forward

as well in the first five minutes. They get into that right half space, the right side of the box,

twice, in behind El Salvador, or three times actually, in behind El Salvador's back line.

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