USMNT World Cup Qualifying continues, but where’s Josh Sargent? | EP 209 | SOTU PODCAST

What are your expectations for the USMNT in these next 3 games?

Alexis lalas and Gregg are the reason soccer sucks in America.

US has to come in hungry and can't overlook the first game against El Salvador.

Lalas did not answer the question about bringing in so many MLS players in this window. In this case we aren't talking about the quality of the players, but the fact that MLS is currently in off season.

Thanks for mentioning african football

Sargent had his chance. He was our “main striker” for a while and couldn’t produce. I wish him the best of luck and maybe after this World Cup window, we could give him another chance. But for right now, Pepi is our best bet and, whether you like it or not, Zardes can actually put the ball in the back of the net for the US.

The problem is that Joe Scally can play well at left back and this roster has no natural replacement for Antonee Robinson….

Alexi's way of thinking is the reason we failed to qualify for 2018.
His thinking is that of overly attached mother. And MLS lifers are his kids.

Who cares about the NFL OT rules!

C’mon, you saying Zardes, Ferreira, and a few more others are in form over Sargent? Berhalter has his favs and that’s that, too bad they all are from MLS.

People say MLS exports players and send them to Europe but I think it's only Americans from MLS going to europe cause if you look at Julián Aruajo he been in MLS, before these other players and those players are getting drafted to Europe before him which is odd because there were rumors that Inter milan and this other club were interested in him but as soon as he switches Nationality everything disappears. Til this day im still wondering what happened?

I disagree with Lalas's VAR rant. It is better late than never. VAR is a system to get more calls on the field right. If there were a poor referee in a tournament you wouldn't argue that once you start the tournament with the poor referee you need to continue with all of his assignments. No, you'd say "get the bad referee out of the tourney so there aren't more mistakes going forward." What complaint could someone legitimately have for a midstream switch to VAR? "Team X benefited from a bad call in game X and VAR denied us the opportunity to benefit from a bad call in game Y?" Not only is there no reasonable expectation to be able to benefit from bad calls, it' would be an argument made in hindsight after a situation happens to play out. Mistakes are presumably honest mistakes and a matter of chance who they affect. Is there any reason to believe that a home team is much more or less likely to benefit from a mistake than an away team, for example? Is there any expectation that a team will prepare differently with VAR in place than without VAR in place? I don't see any legitimate reason to not introduce VAR in the middle of a tournament. In fact they should have been using it wherever possible previously. It's like in tennis. They don't not use the rain roofs in matches where they are available just because there are other matches where they are not available. I think previously they also only had the challenge system on the show courts as well. The top seeded players tend to play far more on the show courts than other players, so they had more access to the challenge system. But it was in no way unfair unless one argue that the top players are somehow benefiting from having greater access to games with less bad calls other than for reasons which are the direct result of their greater chance to win the match (which is begging the question the match is supposed to decide, anyway). Because that is the effective difference between a game with VAR and without VAR. Without VAR an extra amount of random chance is added to the outcome of the game. The team less likely to win the game should benefit from this variability. But that variability is the variability of bad – or at least incorrect – officiating. And – what is most important – incorrect officiating is something that should be endeavored to always be reduced.

This team is too much for Berhalter, he’s clearly holding them back