00:00Howdy y'all! Sorry about that, hello there everybody, welcome to the Adam Cleary Football Channel where we absolutely agree,
00:08yes this soccer of ours can be very exciting and entertaining, but also a bit confusing.
00:14So if you would like to know how this United States team just beat Australia, but did it without their
00:20best player, and also why they looked so good in the first half, but got a little bit nervous in
00:26the second, then take a seat, because it's just what we do here.
00:34Okay, so I'm going to start with all the Christian Pulisic stuff, because I do think that's going to be
00:39the narrative coming out of this game.
00:41How do you win a game at a World Cup without your star player?
00:46Well, as we saw against Paraguay, the US tactics are actually a really good example of how you platform an
00:52individual star player in this sport.
00:55And it's pretty fundamental this, if you've got one player who can do things that no other player can, how
01:02do you set the entire team up in a way that will let him go and do those things?
01:07And the way Pochettino has them doing this is because despite Pulisic being the player on the left-hand side,
01:13it isn't normally him that occupies that space.
01:17In fact, it is Anthony Robinson who gets all the way up from the defence to play on this side
01:23here, so that Pulisic can move into these more central areas and be nearer the box, be nearer the goal,
01:29and more importantly, be nearer the centre-forward.
01:33But why is that good? Well, because it creates a bit of confusion for the opposition about how you then
01:39match him up and try and take him out of the game.
01:41Because if you have got a back four all of your own, theoretically, it should be the full-back here,
01:48the right full-back, who deals with Pulisic.
01:50But if he's coming into the middle of the pitch like this, and he ends up getting dragged with him,
01:55that leaves all that space for Anthony Robinson, or just whoever's playing the left-back, to get out there and
02:00do whatever he wants, which is bad.
02:03The motivation, often, is to leave him out there where he's supposed to be and tell one of the central
02:07defenders to deal with him in this area instead.
02:11But then the question is, when he's all the way back here and he starts drifting out here, then what
02:17do you do?
02:17Does he get pulled all the way out of his zone and leave this enormous gap to his central defensive
02:22partner?
02:23Do you let the centre-forward be 1v1? It creates a lot of confusion.
02:28And, yes, the correct answer is that you just leave everybody where they're supposed to be.
02:32He picks him up when he's wide and then he passes him off when he comes in-field.
02:37And then, ideally, you get a central midfielder to sort of sit around him and help you to double up
02:41regardless of where he goes.
02:43But the problem is, that is very difficult to do.
02:47You are asking three of your players to rotate, to synchronise, to stay in good communication against one player who
02:55can do whatever he wants.
02:57So, that does work as a way to defend that, but it's really, really hard to do.
03:02Like we highlighted this clip on the socials, Paraguay gets set really well against him here.
03:07They have doubled up on him.
03:09This player here is cutting off his route into the middle of the pitch.
03:12That's really good.
03:13And if you look at this guy's body language, he is ready to either run with him if he opts
03:17to go outside,
03:18or he can get out there quite easily to get Robinson if he magically appears in this space.
03:24And the thing is, this, as a still image, is actually really good defending.
03:30You've got all your bases covered.
03:32Everyone's in the right position.
03:33You're making it as hard for him as you possibly can.
03:35But two things, one, football is not played in still images, and two, this is why you have to talk
03:42about individuals as being separate from tactics as a whole,
03:47because Pulisic, despite being in a bad situation there, just beats both of them regardless.
03:55He jumps through the middle of both players.
03:57He breaks the system.
03:58He breaks the plan.
04:00And even though he does not score in this game, in fact, I'm pretty sure he doesn't even have a
04:05shot,
04:05his presence and his play alone are the reason why they score four goals, why they have 17 attempts on
04:13goal,
04:13why they have, like, 63, I think.
04:15It's not actually there.
04:16I can't see it.
04:18Possession of the ball.
04:20He runs at players in the gaps they leave, and that is what disrupts defenses.
04:25That breaks down these blocks, as we call them, which is just lines of players.
04:30All defending the space.
04:31And just the very short version of this, right, is that players like Christian Pulisic are so important to teams,
04:38because regardless of what they actually do in a game, whether it's good or bad, their presence alone creates problems.
04:46Like, other teams will never want to defend them with just one player.
04:50They'll always try and have an extra man around them.
04:53So that means if you can just keep them involved, if they're playing well or not, then someone, somewhere, will
05:00find themselves free.
05:02So welcome, then, again, to the rather large chunk of the audience at the minute who are discovering this sport
05:08for the very first time
05:09and wondering how it all actually works, what does a system, let's get rid of all the bad guys, right,
05:16what does a system built around one star player actually look like when you take out that star player?
05:26Well, for starters, it looks like this.
05:29It's the exact same other 10 players that started against Paraguay, but with Ricardo Pepe coming in for Christian Pulisic.
05:36And I've got them here in the same 4-2-3-1 formation.
05:40But, of course, the beauty of the way the U.S. play is it doesn't matter if it was actually
05:45like this
05:46or whether or not they went back to the back five with Dest and Robinson
05:51and then actually had Pepe there with Tillman in between them.
05:54It doesn't really matter what they were setting up with at the start
05:57because this is exactly how it looks when they get the ball either way.
06:03And I have no way of knowing if you find this interesting, but I'm pretty sure it was actually a
06:08back four.
06:09There was large periods in that second half when they were defending
06:11and they got into a back four rather than what the temptation would have been,
06:15which would have been a back five.
06:17So I don't think he did change the system.
06:19He just brought Pepe in with a very specific instruction,
06:23which, I mean, you do have to do because even if you bring him in to play the same position
06:28as Christian Pulisic,
06:29he is a very, very different footballer.
06:32By and large, even though he can play out there, he's like a penalty box striker.
06:36He's a lot more similar to Florian Balogun.
06:39And he doesn't really like being in this sort of left inside channel or out on the touchline,
06:44which is where Pulisic makes things happen.
06:47That's not really his game.
06:48But of course, saying every single word of that, though,
06:52if we go and look at his heat map from the game, which, again, if you're new here,
06:55just shows you all the positions on the pitch where he had a touch of the ball.
06:59And the bigger and redder the blob is, the more of it he actually did.
07:03He was very comfortable out there.
07:05You can see he had most of his touches in that area where you would expect to find Christian Pulisic.
07:11He held the wit when he needed to.
07:13Occasionally, he got into the box when he was able.
07:15But by and large, he did what would have been happening otherwise.
07:20Is that English?
07:21And yes, OK, he didn't really create any chances.
07:24He didn't exactly rinse the Australian back line.
07:27But the key thing is, he didn't have to.
07:30And I think, although you'd have to ask him yourself, what Pochettino was trying to do here
07:34was just basically think about the idea of, OK, we haven't got this one player,
07:40but what is it we can do to recreate what he would have done?
07:44And like we said before, what he does is these runs around and between defenders,
07:50with and without the ball, that disrupt the opposition's defensive shape.
07:54And Ricciardo Pepe was brought in because he has got pace and he does like to run with the ball.
07:59And even though he isn't the same player, he can do that same thing a bit.
08:04And obviously, that's really good, right?
08:07But the reason I would be heaping praise on Pochettino for this
08:10is not just that he had the idea to bring in a player who can do a limited version
08:15of what your best player does, but that he encouraged the rest of the team
08:19to then pick up the slack in the same area.
08:23Like the first goal, the ball is into the channel here, right?
08:26And instead of looking to get it under control, come back and play into this space behind him,
08:31which is what you would normally do, Balogun just thinks,
08:34actually, I can get in behind here.
08:37And that's the same kind of run you would normally expect,
08:39because it's the kind of run that will drag the opposition defence away from where they are
08:44all the way back to their goal.
08:46And in theory, make loads of little spaces in between them in the process,
08:50which is exactly what happens.
08:51And yes, it is an own goal, sure.
08:53But first of all, look at the massive gap behind these defenders if anybody had run into it.
08:58And if he hadn't put it into his own goal, that is then a tap-in for Pepe.
09:03A run in behind, which is what Pulisic does.
09:05And in the exact area of the pitch, you would expect to find him.
09:09But one of his teammates taking responsibility for making that happen.
09:14And then, of course, you've got the second goal.
09:16And this is just textbook how you break down a block.
09:18You can see Australia are really, really deep.
09:21The US are cycling it round.
09:23Nothing's really going on.
09:24And then a little bit of a gap and an inside channel run where they're able to find one of
09:30their players.
09:30And then from there, it's a bit of a scrap.
09:32And they get the free kick that leads to the goal.
09:35And it's on the opposite side to where Balogun makes the run.
09:38And it's a very different moment of the game.
09:40But if you just sort of look at them both happening at the same time,
09:44it's the same concept.
09:45This is exactly what Pulisic is in this team to do.
09:49And he's got two of his teammates here making it happen anyway.
09:52And look, right, this is really good.
09:54The US have a route to goal which has yielded six whole goals now,
09:58which is based around one star player who has actually played one quarter of the games.
10:04Like, not in the US one quarter sense.
10:06I mean, he played one half in one game.
10:08And there's now been four halves over.
10:10You get what I mean, right?
10:11He's played 25% of the available minutes.
10:13And yet they're still finding a way to be able to do it.
10:16But what I would say, the most encouraging thing,
10:19if you want to think about their long-term ambitions in this tournament,
10:23these are going to be new graphs for you potentially.
10:27This.
10:27This is a momentum graph, right?
10:29Which collates possession, territory, chances, all of that.
10:32And it basically shows you the way in which a game swings backwards and forwards.
10:37And normal matches, it does go up and down all the time.
10:41So if it's not doing that, you know you were dominating.
10:44And that's pretty good.
10:46And if we just look at it in a bit more detail, you can see, yeah,
10:49they were on top of Australia for almost this entire game,
10:52except for this one 15-minute spell between the 75th and the 90th minute.
10:58When the Australian subs, they were trying absolutely everything,
11:01and they managed to wrestle control of the game off the US,
11:05and they finally had a good spell.
11:07And this was the only bit of the game where the US had their backs against the wall.
11:11But if we just overlay the XG race here,
11:15which just shows you the combined value of all the chances that are being created.
11:19Again, might be new.
11:19Just go with me on this, right?
11:21That goes up when you do things.
11:23And if you look at the Australian line,
11:26that barely, almost imperceptibly, goes up during that 15-minute spell.
11:33Now, don't get me wrong.
11:34The US don't do anything, really, from the 50th minute onwards,
11:37but they've got a two-goal lead.
11:39They don't need to.
11:40It's their opponent's best spell here.
11:43And this tiny little moment is the best thing they let them make.
11:48And that is what we call in football, right, suffering.
11:51It's like your ability to lose your momentum,
11:55to stop creating things going forward,
11:56and then just get comfortable sitting in, defending, holding your shape,
12:01running down the clock until you either get an idea
12:03or you just get the momentum back, right?
12:05All the best teams in the world, all of them,
12:08you might think of them as being good going forward and scoring goals,
12:11but the really good ones, the ones who go far in competitions,
12:15wink, wink, they have the ability to do that.
12:18When they're not at their best, when they're not playing brilliantly,
12:21can they not throw the game away?
12:24And that is the first time I have ever seen the USMNT suffer and suffer well.
12:31And look, like I said in the last US video,
12:33I don't think anyone should be getting carried away.
12:35They're yet to play an opponent of a sufficient calibre to make a real assessment,
12:39but you've seen a lot of this World Cup.
12:41A lot of teams have not played opponents of sufficient calibre and really struggled.
12:46And this team now has six goals in the bank.
12:50They're clear out of their group.
12:52They're probably going to top it.
12:53They're going to have a nice run for the next two rounds.
12:55And if they can keep doing this bit,
12:58they've got a real chance of doing something.
13:03What's the word I want?
13:06Generational, impressive.
13:07Something that could really change how football is considered in this country, I think.
13:12But oh my God, yes.
13:13OK, so the Scotland game is about to start, which is where, of course, my heart really is.
13:16So I'm going to wrap it all up there.
13:17If you have enjoyed this, we will be explaining so much about this tournament,
13:21including the remaining of the USMNT game.
13:23So please do subscribe to us here at the Adam Cleary Football Channel
13:26if you'd like to watch all of that.
13:27You can get me across all the social medias at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y.
13:31I'm having a billboard time doing loads of silly verticals while I'm over here.
13:36But until next we meet, which, I mean, if Scotland win,
13:39I'll probably do something on that as well.
13:40Thank you very much for watching.
13:41I hope you've enjoyed it.
13:42I hope it's made football make a little bit more sense because that's what we do.
13:47I've been Adam.
13:48You've been just great and handsome, by the way.
13:50I'll see you soon.
13:51Bye.
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