USMNT vs. Canada review: Jesse Marsch goes down & Gio Reyna starts again!

Ryan Bailey (0:21)

Welcome to the Total Soccer Show! This is our review of the USMNT 1, Canada, nothing. The fourth victory of four from this international window and a second consecutive CONCACAF rival defeated with another teenage goal scorer. My name's Ryan Bailey. Joining me post-match, we've got Mr. Taylor Rockwell. Hello, Taylor, how's you?

Taylor Rockwell (0:42)

I'm doing well. That was two hours of my life I could use back.

But happy to be here with you all. Happy to see you dancing, Ryan. I appreciate all of your dance introductions that we've gotten during this international window. It's made it fun at a time when I know this was not fun for you.

Ryan Bailey (0:56)

I dance regardless of quality of the game. That is my professionalism on show Taylor Rockwell. Also here joining us this evening, Joe Lowry. Hi Joe, how are you?

Joseph Lowery (1:06)

Hey, I'm great. I love RTSS late night records. I mean, obviously later night for you guys than it is for me. But still, we do get Ryan dancing. We get things like dancing equating to professionalism. I mean, it's just good stuff all the way across the board.

Ryan Bailey (1:18)

Mostly good stuff.

Taylor Rockwell (1:20)

Ryan, there are shades of The Simpsons with Conan O'Brien. Like, sit still, only I may dance. That is how I feel in our introductions that Joe and I need to just sit and observe your beautiful moves.

Ryan Bailey (1:30)

We are doing The Potsch Man tonight, not The Bartman. Wow. No, not that one.

Taylor Rockwell (1:36)

You went for it.

Ryan Bailey (1:37)

I went for it. Hey, you got to go for these things, don't you? But here we go. We have four wins from four from this window. Plenty to talk about from this game. Not the most quality on show and a slightly scrappy affair. We'll get into that in a moment before we do so. We are streaming live on our YouTube channel. The comments are already coming in. MT Brand saying, Ryan, how can you hate on International Soccer with scintillating action like that? Excellent question. We'll get into that. I'm sure at some point do get your comments coming in if you're watching live.

If you're not watching live, hey, welcome as well. We've also got our Patreon, patreon.com/totalsoccershow where we've got all our bonus stuffs. All right. Admin, check. Let's get to the action in Minnesota.

Started off with a great national anthem. Did very much enjoy that.

Obviously, this is a friendly affair, Taylor, but you can't. This is a no-lose friendly. Obviously, a fierce rival, historic rival in the North in Canada here. We had Justin Ellis with the goal, assisted by Alex Freeman, the goal made in Orlando there. Of this window, we've had 7 of 12 goals scored by teenagers, 13 debutants as we already knew. So that's the talking point we can get into shortly. But Canada in this one, quite competitive, quite physical, quite coca-cathy, I suppose you could describe here. Not too much flow to this game. I think Canada certainly would say they had the better of the second half. We can probably agree there. I think, Taylor, this has been a great window for the US, but a slightly flat ending despite the win. How do you feel?

Taylor Rockwell (3:06)

Yeah, that about encapsulates it. I'll say this, in most windows, we either have the US start poorly and then in the second game, because we usually only have the two games in the international break, it's usually starts poorly, finishes strong, or starts well, finishes poorly. And you never quite get both strong results. So to see four good performances in four games, I'll take some solace in that, some positivity from that. I did think this was a really ugly game. I think Canada made it an ugly game, at least in the first half. I think the US were content to let it be an ugly game in the second half.

And Joe, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. But from a tactical side of things, it felt to me like, once the US had the lead, they sort of did the thing that you talked about as being LAFC's weakness of like, all right, you guys can have the ball now. You're welcome to try to beat us. And it didn't seem like that was really benefiting Canada very much. I feel like most of their chances they were getting were from their high press, from forcing turnovers, from forcing mistakes, and then from attacking in transition. I feel like in that second half, they got some good opportunities. They got some OK opportunities, but nothing that felt really like heart and throat moments of defending for the US.