Now we can roll out a rested Mendez, durkin, and McKenzie against Ecuador. Would love Uly to start as well, kid is so dynamic
I thought pomykal played great today. He's a very good holding CM, but I don't know how they'll want to line up next round.
Mendez starts and then replace him with Ledezma around 60ish minute. Sucks that Richie missed 10 months due to injury and just got back less than 2 months ago.
Won the South American U20’s but didn’t look too strong in their group, albeit one of the tougher groups. They’ll have the advantage of an extra day’s rest. And fucking FIFA, starting the match with two Western Hemisphere teams at 11:30am est and the match with Senegal vs South Korea at 2:30.
And hasn’t been dangerous enough to be a lock starter. Uly or Rennicks should start in place of Konrad.
Konrad is 2-2.5 years younger than most of the guys he's been playing against, and has looked like it this tournament. Uly has looked better, but I actually really like him as a 60th minute sub. He's maybe the best player on the team when it comes to just getting the ball and running at defenders, which is exactly what you want in that role against tired legs.
I still think Konrad + Dest combine well enough to create chances and keep possession to be worthy of starting together, but he looked so far off the pace today
That’s the other thing with our team, might be the youngest team in the tournament. France has 15 players born in ‘99 and we have 6. One player being Matt Real, who doesn’t play and Pomykal is 15 days too old from being an ‘00.
It's funny that there are people on twitter who are like: "LOOK HOW STUPID YOU ALL ARE FOR QUESTIONING TAB RAMOS WE JUST MADE THE QUARTERS AND BEAT FRANCE" when 99% of the criticism of Tab was the way he picked his squad, and he picked an Xl today basically in the exact way that people were begging him to do so. (And did not, against Ukraine and Qatar)
I honestly can’t figure out if Servania is good. I’m leaning towards no, but he has good energy and is competently mediocre both in possession and in defense. Seems like he’s a guaranteed starter at this point around Pomy and Durkin, but probably shouldn’t be.
He's not one of the better prospects on this team, but Tab did him no favors in his deployment in his 2 starts before today. He's a defensive minded 8 or a 6, and Tab had been playing him where his job was to break lines or try to beat players with the ball, which he's not good at. Today he was played as a 6, where his job was to break up plays and play simple balls to pomykal and Ledezma, and he predictably looked much better.
Just watched USA FRA on DVR with no spoilers... team looked aggressive, decisive, big and fast. Well fucking done.
Was so hard to stay off Twitter all day. Made it though. Those kids were put in an awful fucking spot, so much worse than it should have been, and they came fucking through. Paxton just absolutely bossed that second half. Covered the entire field between the 18s.
Even though he just destroyed frances midfield I still have to question if his best position isn’t a false 9....
Yea thought he was good too. It looks like, through the middle of the match, social media was on him pretty hard for inconsistency of effort or positioning....and I wonder how many missed the back injury he got early on or just forgot about him playing through it.
Would rather have seen Uly start over Konrad but this is fine. Sub in Ledezma for Mendez around 60 min mark.