Speaker 1: Here we go, Here we go. It's another episode of
Speaker 1: First eleven Dave Johnson with Bruce Murray. Yes, we have
Speaker 1: DC and I a Columbus trew coming up on Saturday.
Speaker 1: Click local home radio if you're not going to the
Speaker 1: game on Apple TV. Of course, we're on iHeartRadio, the
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio app and iHeart Sports DC and Bruce Murray.
Speaker 1: I don't think there have been enough opinions about the
Speaker 1: US men's national team, so we need the weigh in.
Speaker 1: And you, as a US Soccer Hall of Famer, you
Speaker 1: as the one time all time leading scorer on the
Speaker 1: US men's national team, we need to listen to you
Speaker 1: listen to be eliminated by Panama, which has always been
Speaker 1: for whatever is in a difficult side, just unacceptable. A
Speaker 1: year from the World Cup, everyone is saying that what
Speaker 1: is your takeaway?
Speaker 2: I'm one hundred percent with him. Landon Donovan came out
Speaker 2: with it with a great take and he said, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm tired of the Golden Generation. And he said, you know,
Speaker 2: these guys are at the big clubs because of the
Speaker 2: people that came before them, and now the American players
Speaker 2: cheap labor, so they work hard and all that stuff, so,
Speaker 2: you know, for for for us to keep going back
Speaker 2: to this great generation. I I watched Canada play and
Speaker 2: I said to myself, man, that looked like the teams
Speaker 2: I played for in the nineties, right, just willing to
Speaker 2: you know, you know, lay it on, you know, leave
Speaker 2: it on the field, right. You know, if I passed out,
Speaker 2: you know, I got I died on the field, I'd
Speaker 2: take it, you know. But that's what Canada plays like,
Speaker 2: and that's how we used to be, and it's just
Speaker 2: so disappointing. The other thing, Dave that bothers me is,
Speaker 2: you know, we have this rotation of hundreds of players
Speaker 2: it seems like coming in all the time, and there's
Speaker 2: a new flavor of the month. Get rid of that
Speaker 2: nonsense and stick to a group and give those guys
Speaker 2: ten games together, do something. But you can't just go
Speaker 2: around and around, and it's just not That is not
Speaker 2: going to work. And right now the alarm bell should
Speaker 2: be ringing because the United States has to figure out
Speaker 2: a way to play that's going to be successful. I
Speaker 2: watched the game yesterday. Sorry for the long day answer,
Speaker 2: but I watched the game yesterday. I watched Israel play
Speaker 2: Norway and I watched the Israeli team and the Norwegian
Speaker 2: team taken on players for fun and if they lost it,
Speaker 2: other guys would be there trying and recuperate the ball.
Speaker 2: We are stale. We get a chance to run at
Speaker 2: somebody with the ball and we're panicking and we give
Speaker 2: it to the next guy. Stop passing the responsibility and
Speaker 2: take on the responsibility. If you're not good enough, it'll
Speaker 2: show right.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it's still a great generation of
Speaker 1: talent and players, but that doesn't always equal to national
Speaker 1: team's success. You can point to several other countries England, Belgium, Spain,
Speaker 1: they talk about a golden generation. Often that is a
Speaker 1: sure sign that they're going to underperform. That's not a
Speaker 1: great moniker, it seems when you talk about a golden generation.
Speaker 1: I think what you're getting at here is there's two
Speaker 1: different things there. There's talent, and it's great that you're
Speaker 1: having all these players all of these places at big clubs.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about winning the World Cup and having
Speaker 1: a national team, and so those are two separate issues.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, no question about it. Uh, the way we're
Speaker 2: playing right now and we're gonna we're gonna struggle to
Speaker 2: get out of of you know, the group. In fact,
Speaker 2: it would have been tough for us to qualify it
Speaker 2: unless we were you know, obviously we're hosting the World Cup.
Speaker 2: There has to be an immediate fix, and it has
Speaker 2: to you know, go back to the what what is
Speaker 2: the United States best at? Right We're best at working
Speaker 2: or we will work out work anybody. But I don't
Speaker 2: see that with this group right now. And you know,
Speaker 2: people can chrish now you're an old guy and used
Speaker 2: to play on the team and all that nonsense. Here,
Speaker 2: you guys, that's not true because when I played on
Speaker 2: this team, there was guys that would work their socks off,
Speaker 2: but there was also guys, uh you know that could play.
Speaker 2: You know, you got your Cat Ramos, you had John Harks,
Speaker 2: you had Eric Wanalda. You know, you always have players.
Speaker 2: But if you watch Canada and you watch Panama, they
Speaker 2: they are they're trying to win every single ball. And
Speaker 2: it just seems to me that we're not that team.
Speaker 2: And we've got to get a little bit of dog
Speaker 2: in our game because right now, if we don't get
Speaker 2: things fixed, we're going to be an early exit in
Speaker 2: the World Cup.
Speaker 1: Okay, is there time to fix it, and is the
Speaker 1: key develop a core group and develop an identity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is, there is time to fix it, but
Speaker 2: it has to be a core group, and it has
Speaker 2: to the experimentation has to stop. It's been going on
Speaker 2: for the last six years. You know, I'm tired of it.
Speaker 2: I know Landon Donovan was talking about the other day.
Speaker 2: It's really easy to see. You cannot keep bringing players
Speaker 2: in and that's going to be the new answer. That
Speaker 2: doesn't work. You have to give these guys or a
Speaker 2: semblance of the team that you want and shut the
Speaker 2: shop off. Man. Okay, I heard this player is good
Speaker 2: and he's playing over in Norway. Forget about it. We
Speaker 2: need to go with the guys we got. We don't
Speaker 2: have a whole lot of time.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's switch to DC and I. DC and I
Speaker 1: coming off a loss, to put it mildly, to Orlando
Speaker 1: and I, it was just a bad night, and for
Speaker 1: head coach Toyla saying.
Speaker 3: I don't think that we were set up well enough
Speaker 3: tonight to really be organized to prevent a lot of
Speaker 3: the spaces that Orlando was able to find early in
Speaker 3: the match. And I'll start there, you know, and that
Speaker 3: man I take ownership of that. There's no doubt about that.
Speaker 3: You know. I want the players to come back in
Speaker 3: and be ready to fight and be ready to get
Speaker 3: ready for Columbus next week. That's really what I care about,
Speaker 3: because we have to have the type of self reflection
Speaker 3: that's going to help us prepare for next week and
Speaker 3: move past this, because honestly, there were some moments in
Speaker 3: the game that I think we can build off of.
Speaker 3: So it's not completely you know, it's not completely one
Speaker 3: that we just move away from and say there wasn't
Speaker 3: anything in it that we can show to continue to
Speaker 3: build on. But in the end, Orlando City was much
Speaker 3: better than us tonight.
Speaker 1: You heard the College of troyl Is saying he was
Speaker 1: talking about just not being ready in the right shape.
Speaker 1: He did think there was some things to build off of,
Speaker 1: but in general, just a bad night. So as you
Speaker 1: try to transition to a tough opponent on Saturday, your
Speaker 1: thoughts on how this team can be better prepared.
Speaker 2: One of the things that really jumped out at me
Speaker 2: was our full back play, which is which is one
Speaker 2: of our strengths, actually became our weakness the other night
Speaker 2: because we got caught up the field and so we
Speaker 2: have to find out a way when we're playing these
Speaker 2: teams that can really hit you on the counter. I
Speaker 2: mean the Orlando is the second best scoring team in
Speaker 2: the league, and they also remind me of Inner Miami.
Speaker 2: Once they win the ball and they go, they go,
Speaker 2: they're like, they're like in one hundred miles an hour.
Speaker 2: We've got to figure out a way to get another
Speaker 2: player into the middle of the field to slow those
Speaker 2: things down. And we didn't do that, and our full
Speaker 2: backs got caught up the field when these counters went,
Speaker 2: so it was really difficult.
Speaker 1: So learning lesson or should our alarm bells be going off?
Speaker 2: No? No, I think it's a learning lesson because you know,
Speaker 2: you know, you've got to see it before it happens,
Speaker 2: so we'll know going forward if this happens. Wait, we've
Speaker 2: got to count attacking team. Okay, let's do this. We
Speaker 2: know what to do now. We got hammered that that
Speaker 2: game back in Orlando. You guys, remember that game. This
Speaker 2: is how we're going to do it. We'll say this though,
Speaker 2: they've got four or five of the best attacking players
Speaker 2: in the league, Dave, you know, in Muriel and Goulo
Speaker 2: Paso Leach, I mean possibly scored a goal in Croatian.
Speaker 2: You won't see a better goal this year. I mean
Speaker 2: he cut Insigne on his left foot and just murdered
Speaker 2: into the upper corner. Kim never had a chance. Kim
Speaker 2: had a good game actually, because it wasn't for him,
Speaker 2: it might have been a few more.
Speaker 1: All right. The thoughts of Bruce Mario, the national team
Speaker 1: DC A not in again. We're with you on Saturday,
Speaker 1: beginning at seven to fifteen. iHeartRadio, iHeart Sports DC and
Speaker 1: sync with Apple TV. Thanks for spending some time with
Speaker 1: us on first eleven,