Obviously discussion of this game has to start with Tim Weah. We know he feels absolutely awful. Tyler Adams told the media that Weah addressed the team in the locker room after the game and apologized. He also posted the message below on Instagram apologizing to fans. We think it’s appropriate. 

Still, his red card completely changed the match. And it’s inexplicable. Inexcusable. Maddening. We are big Tim Weah fans and he usually plays so hard for this team. Still, this red card might cost us moving out of the group stage and waste all the preparation and effort that the players, the coaches, the US soccer staff, and the fans have put into this tournament.

We need Weah to recover though, both for this tournament – if we can get out of the group stage, and longer term. We feel bad for him too. Hopefully the team can find it within themselves to pull Tim out of the darkness soon. 

We have to say it. Weah’s red card ALSO reflects poorly on Berhalter. First, he described it as “silly”. That’s not even close to the right language for a coach to use. Even publicly he has to be stronger than that and at least say reckless or careless.

This is now two games in recent memory that a young USA player has done something inexplicable in a moment of madness. Against Trinidad and Tobago Sergino Dest picked up two yellows in quick succession, got sent off, and almost cost us qualifying for the Copa America to begin with. We’ve long felt that Berhalter’s biggest strength as a manager is in man management, as the team is extremely tight knit. We have to wonder if that’s weakening given those two plays. Something is wrong. You could watch 1,000 soccer games and not see two plays as irresponsible as those from Weah and Dest. 

We disagreed with almost everything he did after Weah got sent off. Let’s review the key tactical decisions:

1. Move to a 4-4-1 for the rest of the first half: we liked this, it was the only real logical choice

2. Changing the shape to 5-3-1 in the second half and generally playing for a draw: we hated this. When superior teams in the Premier League for example go down a man, they don’t immediately concede all possession. We’ve seen Arsenal control matches with only 10 men. The gap between Arsenal and mid table Premier League team is honestly not as big in our view as the talent gap between the USA and Panama. Because we only had 3 in midfield, we entirely conceded possession the entire second half and in the end it caught up to us. Plus the extra CB we brought on failed to stop the goal!

3. Substitutions: Pretty much all wrong.

     A. Adams -> Cardoso: we’d have rather seen Musah given his greater agility, and greater ability to play both ways and create in attack

    B. Reyna -> Carter-Vickers: hated it. We hated the change in shape but we also hated Carter-Vickers as the man to bring on. How many times will Gregg put our players in positions where they aren’t best placed to succeed? Carter-Vickers is a burly bruising center back not well-suited for playing quick central Americans. He gets beat by quick movement in the box for the goal. Shocker. We should have put on Miles Robinson – he faces quick central Americans every week in MLS and has much better agility to keep up with them and neutralize their effectiveness.

    C. Balogun -> Pepi: Hated it. Balogun was awarded Man of the Match. He was playing great in a very tough situation. No need to make a change. IF, and that’s a big IF, you want to make a change, why Pepi?! Our only attack at that point (with 5 at the back) was the quick counter-attack, and Pepi doesn’t really have the pace to hurt anyone on the counter. We’d have gone with Haji Wright if we HAD to take off Balogun.

It felt like every debatable call went against us. How did Panama not get a yellow for blatantly running into Matt Turner and taking him out of the game while making no attempt on the ball whatsoever? Their last two yellow cards at the end frankly could have been red given how dangerous and far from making any attempt on the ball those tackles were. No PK for Pulisic in the first half is another close call that went against us. The ref even tried to give a PK to Panama in the second half on a play where Carter-Vickers clearly got the ball. We feared he wasn’t going to listen to VAR he was so biased.

He’s last on this list because he shouldn’t have been on the field if the ref had been in control of the game. He HAS to make that save though. It’s not that hard a shot. It’s hard not to think about how many times our goalkeeping excellence bailed us out in past tournaments. Start contrast here.

USA advances. However, we have to assume Panama will beat Bolivia. Gambling markets are giving Panama about a 60% chance of beating Bolivia. We think that’s probably a bit low given just how bad Bolivia has been through 2 matches. Regardless, we can’t play for a draw we have to play for a win

If we win and Panama wins by the same margin of victory, we go through on better goal difference. If they make up the ground on goal difference, Panama is likely to go through on total goals scored – which is the 2rd tiebreaker. Right now, we both have 3 goals for. It’s conceivable that we could win 3-2 and Panama could win 3-0. That would put us both on +2 goal difference with 6 goals scored. A more likely scenario in which goal difference is tied though would be 3-0 for Panama and 1-0 or 2-1 for us though, in which case Panama would go through with 6 goals while we crash out with 4 or 5. 

As noted above, the first tie breaker is goal difference. Goals score is next. If we win by 1 and Panama wins by 3, it’s possible we could end with the same goal difference and same goals scored. In that case – Panama would go through on the 3rd tiebreaker, head-to-head result.

For the sake of completeness, we’ll not that these scenarios send Panama through and the USA home. If they get more points than we do in the 3rd match we won’t need tiebreakers to settle this one.