World Cup woes: Recapping Team USA's journey to the Round of 16

USA USA USA USA Birchie, what say you don't have it in my soul in my heart anymore. I know last night was a tough one. This is a good look for me in the t-shirt slouching on the desk. No. There it is. Um so that's your Belgium stance on the desk is your USA stance. Actually one foot on the ground and one foot missing a kick is really my USA stance. Oh hello good evening. Welcome to the sports office. We're on tv. We're not we're not alone. We're on the stream. You can join us. You can text the show at 248-200-5042. We will read your comments on the air and I need to get take care of some business people. This episode of the sports office is brought to you by drumroll together let's drive visit chevydetroit.com all right let's drive you both were at campus marshes thank you canner campus marshes which my voice text translates to campus marshes marshes yes i was gonna correct it and i was like i think he knows what i picked up what you were putting down um give me first kelly princess of the pitch your sense of of last night's match what you expected and how you received what happened um poorly i received it poorly um not great i i was just completely shocked by that i know this was a good european team there but they're european teams they're good i did not think for one and just these individual mess-ups these um these man-to-man no one won their matches and this normally the u.s is so aggressive and they score first and they they come out and they're just on the attacking side of the pitch the entire time they control the midfield they belgium did all that they took that script and they used it and just left team usa without answers it was really stress i was shocked by this going into this match the united states was the highest scoring first half team in all of the world cup this world cup i tweeted at one point will it reminded me of game seven for the pistons biggest moment yeah worst performance i know you feel that way as well i definitely do the difference is that the pistons have played that same team and played that same team pretty competitively in the first six games of that series last night we ran into a big boy for in this world cup and we got humbled in a very harsh way and there were some really fleeting moments of joy at campus marshals i don't know if you were there last night i had to take off after our hits but but yeah when malik tillman tied the game i took a video of the crowd reaction i don't know if we can play it right now let's do that let's let's get into some good feels before there's a man lying down behind the wall which means the wall can jump i've never seen over a crowd that way yeah i'm middle of their backs did you hand that to your two-year-old up on your shoulders he was long since asleep the entire day yesterday was built around getting them to sleep by 7 15 so mom and dad could dash down to campus marshes it's outstanding yeah it really was and then unfortunately we gave up the go-ahead goal a minute later and all of the excitement was popped out of that crowd like a balloon and we never got back on our front foot again it felt to me i mean as much as you could see the shock and awe on their coach's face on the sidelines and even him at one point mouthing what are we doing yeah you get the sense that they were really kind of standing around they seemed very flat-footed they played on their heels yeah it was uncharacteristic any sense of what led up to a performance like that in this big moment i i think belgium really planned for it and they gave the u.s multiple guys to take care of which again is normally our game plan so you see everyone on on the wings they're just not sure where to go next because there was too much space to cover and again they're losing their their matchups right there you're man to man and they just looked better they did not rise it seemed like the moment was just too big for them and you're right this was our first big boy test and it did not go well does this just tell you how far they have to go yes still yeah it bothered me a little bit last night that taylor twelman who otherwise does a fantastic job basically signed off that broadcast by saying quote the future for american soccer is bright i'm tired of hearing about a bright future for american soccer the future was bright in 2002 when those guys made a legitimate run into the quarterfinals when those guys beat a global power in portugal and went toe to toe with another and were robbed in that game on a missed handball call against germany that that was the only time in in my life that relative to the top competition of the day we have stood up on the global stage beside maybe group stage games against portugal in 2014 and england in 2022 and i don't want to be dour and i'm not going to go so far as to call this world cup a failure for the u.s but it was far from a success in my opinion it was far from a step forward i'll push back pretty ardently on anyone who says that it was yes they won three games in a watered down 48 team field on our home soil yes they won a knockout round game brackets in the diluted first of its kind field of 32 in the end we beat the 27th ranked 41st ranked and 67th ranked teams in the world which we absolutely should have and against the two highest ranked teams we played we lost and against the one power we played belgium we were outclassed from the awful start to the very bitter finish and it wasn't the result last night that was so dispiriting for me as it was the way that we lost we were on our back foot from the very beginning and never found our way into that game besides maybe the first five minutes of the second half i honestly don't know if we connected three passes in the attacking third of the field for the entire game it was just another harsh stark reminder that against the powers that be in the round of 16 we are entirely out of our depth and that was with what we all agreed was the most technically advanced team we have ever fielded but 2014 against belgium same story 2022 against the netherlands same story and last night the same sobering story and we have a long long way to go because while we might be getting better so is everyone else and i'd argue in 2002 the future was bright well the past remains brighter than the present 24 years later yeah it is really overshadowed it and to your point it was almost as if as much as they had learned and as much as they gained confidence going through those early stages in those against those better teams kelly i mean there was something that was just completely amiss when you look at the takeaways the positives and i know that all of those players are putting the best possible spin on this loss how do you see that the united states metro detroit our fans here in this little element the the pedestrian fans right the garden variety fans will receive this game and maybe just kind of the the tenor of where u.s men's soccer is yeah um i i actually quite disagree with a lot of that please yes well please race debates no no i obviously yes we were very outmatched i mean for i when when we came into this people kept asking what do we expect from team usa and it was actually very it was pretty low we were ranked 17th coming in and i'm not giving a ton to rankings because because 20-something norway just kicked the butt out of brazil right so we've seen a lot of these rankings have been a little rough and belgium i think was 10th or something yeah anyway that's to say with rankings but um you you just watch this this team whose bar was so low but we we kept getting excited we kept you're right and we took out some some some smaller teams but we raised that bar and i think that's why we thought we could do so well in these knockout rounds but these are european teams and for soccer in america i it's just still taking so much time argentina coach uh maricio pochettino he he woke up and you you know out of birth yeah you're playing with a soccer ball with a soccer ball and again you've got norway who's got erling haaland you have these powerhouses mosala over on egypt you have these huge names who've been playing soccer forever in the highest premier european leagues so no um i do think it is a success just because of how many people are watching now how many boys and girls then maybe the next generation um the next messy right here could be watching and i think it was a huge leap with social media and it being held here in north america so but but they can only get better and get more important if we go to matches if we if we fund i agree you know if we support this we say soccer is important that's going to kind of tumble it or you know uh snowball it into these players getting better because then they'll want to be here i think a success in the interest that it drummed up in american soccer for sure hey i agree t-shirt that they raised the bar as the tournament unfolded but we failed to clear it in the end that success to me was not winning a knockout round game against the 67th ranked team in the world in a knockout round that never existed before this world cup it was getting in to the quarterfinals proving that we could do something we had never done before aside from o2 on our home soil and to watch us flail last night to watch us fail to ever mount an attack other than the occasional gaffe by belgium again was just dispiriting for me as a long time and long time believer in usa soccer well and to the point that kelly raised does it not raise the public consciousness and a little bit of the awareness of how far they have to come and maybe that support will continue to grow and that i mean other other cities are getting mls teams these guys obviously are not msl caliber players they've got to be well above that the class of the world play in the world cup but perhaps this can be a little bit of a launch pad in your opinion will is that possible no i hope so and i think the other potential launch pad is that hopefully if we can maintain and retain pochettino as head coach entering the next world cup boy will have developed more of an identity tactically and psychologically under pochettino i think that was lacking a little bit last night i really felt like in that first hydration break when we were clearly on our heels he could make a few tweaks to get us back into the match and it never felt like that happened again that's part of the issue with hiring a head coach you know in the same year as as as the world cup taking place so you hope that if we can summon the funds to retain him that entering next world cup this team will have a better idea of who it is and how to win against teams like belgium all right we're gonna take a hydration break we're gonna have we're gonna have some orange juices and juice boxes and maybe drink some belgium beer we're gonna come back on the other side i want to get your opinions on who we might root for now because it feels like it's always more fun to watch all right welcome back i feel like we have to just go to it real quick we're just laughing about it over the break um someone texted it and said uh what did they say have you why don't you talk about taylor swift's wedding wait was that a text we got it mentioned taylor's wedding here we go we're just laughing about how everybody and their brother was there including dean blandino rules expert on nfl on fox isn't that kind of strange a little bit strange it was interesting because there was an interview that taylor swift did on jimmy fallon or somewhere before leading up to and she said you know what when when you have to sit around and make these tough decisions about who you've got to cut and who can't be there why don't you just invite everybody they clearly did and sitting at home dean was like let's go i'll get the invite right every single person he's ever met yes and matthew stafford right there and of course george kittle all of the tight end you guys were there i'm trying to find some i don't know if any lions would have made the cut i would think if any did it would have been um sam laporta because he's part of tight end you with those guys i mean i'm on instagram so if you didn't post it it probably didn't happen it didn't happen no jared goff i'm on it i feel like kristin would have probably posted about it if they were there right okay on it investigative reporter get on it we've got uh the pit the dan campbell would be a great wedding invite i just do want to say yeah he would he would be a hit well i think we need to extend an invite to him to come on the couch here on the sports office one of these days before camp because a little bird told me they are spending their off-season trip this year i believe they are in town oh or at least for part of it because you wanted to come on the sports office well we're gonna get that to happen i mean i don't know how miller's going to facilitate that but maybe i'll have to steal miller's phone i'll break into it and we'll get dangle because i think that's the only way it's gonna happen all right we're gonna just keep keep going on the world cup for just a touch longer before we hit on the tigers there have been some crazy wild matches um the specifically today the finish can we talk did not talk over the video howard while it's rolling all right we'll talk over this take a look it was in the what final three minutes they had or three goals in the final uh 12 minutes yeah and no surprise that uh number 10 was in on the scoring as well it is this is a clinical strike right here really half volume right through the keeper's hand it was so fast electric i feel like it wouldn't be the world cup if we didn't have some of these big names if we didn't have all of these big names you know there's gotta be messi and boppe all in even harry kane for english my my guy from spain i love the young and from spain yeah i always butcher his names i don't i don't want to do it thank you not happening by the way i was hosting my world cup show match day live yes weekdays talk all about it and that's going to continue even though the u.s is out yes yes know that um and i had an argentina fan who agreed to come on oh wow and it was wall all this chaos was going and she came on right after like time time elapsed and i went this could have been a way different i really gambled with that one yeah well we had nate wangler on yesterday and nate is nate is terrific and i'll tell you something nate was very tentative when we asked him for his prediction on the match last night yeah um we said heart of hearts and he goes and we were like oh he doesn't want to say the u.s and he had you know his gut was right what he thought and expected to happen you gotta drink yeah we do like that i drank the kool-aid drank the kool-aid and drank a lot of bomb the boots are gonna still be yeah those are nice i'll just norway those would fit for norway right norway winning in kicks and the stories of the world cup are really my favorite thing i mean i love the rowing i love all of the shenanigans that goes along with it and all it's been so fun to watch so fun so that that leads us to our next thing our next team to root for it's it's got to be norway it's norway for me it's really hard although i'm a liverpool fan so we man city harling holland so we have that but he's just likable it's really hard great hair on that guy i have a i have a spain t-shirt my stepfather was from spain i had a spain t-shirt from 2014 i believe the year they were supposed to win it all and then i was very disgruntled but i still have my spain t-shirt so i may rock that at some point and hopefully it'll serve me well this time but i mean i absolutely love the underdog stories anytime there's an underdog on the pitch you gotta root for norway's first world cup since 1998 i ever making it this far and their biggest star has the country on his shoulders and he's carrying he's killing it so cool and thus he's still doing amazing things at age 64 he might be the first ever golden boot winner to also miss two penalty kicks on the way to winning the golden boot it's so many twists and turns in this world but continues to be incredibly compelling every step of the way and the more you watch it i feel like the more addictive it becomes because you get all of these little nuggets in the stories and fox has done a tremendous job and that is why we are on the stream tonight is because the coverage continues on our linear broadcast and it's been just so much fun to watch all of these yeah these commentators speaking of broadcast have you guys been watching zlatan yeah he's so funny yeah oh wait oh yes yes yes yes my favorite story about him is lebron james sent him a jersey an autograph one and zlatan signed it himself and sent it back to him no he's just like he's got that like arrogance thing yeah it's been amazing go and he's got some pretty good insights on the set too he's got a real feel for the game yeah they did a great job putting assembling all of those analysts and those groups and i absolutely love carly lloyd what is she eight months pregnant and just rocking it out there she's so good she should have played for us last night we could have used her out there she probably has better balance center of gravity and she wouldn't have missed so um all right tigers are playing tonight they're up 2-1 in the third inning scooble on the mound my goodness so will we've talked about them building on what they started they looked well on the on the road trip played well on the road trip yeah this up and down thing will it come to an end in your opinion anytime soon hopefully for the better and this is a huge week for this team they've got scooble making two starts on this homestand which itself could go a long way towards deciding the fate of this season but obviously a five-in-one road trip you want to come home and win five more out of these six and go into the break feeling like we might have a chance to make a run coming out of the break so the moment's upon them they gotta seize it my blood pressure all right i'm getting what are you i love joey joey love being a tiger um he's been instrumental in in his time here um but similar to a family like you know sometimes it doesn't last forever you know we had some philosophical differences um and we're we both just agreed it's probably best for the players and everybody um to separate and and so you know we hugged a little bit we teared up a little bit um you know i'm better as a manager for having worked with him and um he's a tremendous baseball mind tremendous baseball person and sometimes like a family it just you know it doesn't last forever like a marriage right yeah i would hope we're still kind of very much still scratching our heads over that sometimes like a family it has to be a marriage that he's alluding to correct you were saying sometimes families bicker and sometimes families disagree but usually families come back together yeah not always marriage well stay tuned for joey return in 2027 so i will say i'm sure there's a lot of people on the outside fans that say oh he was way too aggressive that's why they had to get rid of him yeah this has to go deeper than that do you have any sense will of if it's anything about his coaching strategies or if it's strictly just a difference in philosophy with how they were running the bases so aj referred to philosophical differences today that stem from multiple conversations this season even going back a couple seasons and base running has obviously been a strength of the tigers the past two years 24 and 25 it has very much not been a strength this year in terms of all the base running metrics they've gone from a positive team to a negative team this year they've made more outs at home than they were last year more outs at third than they were last year obviously a lot of that is under joey cora's purview i also wonder and aj didn't refer to this himself if joey cora as an infield coach and former infielder thought believe that maybe these players should just be playing one position and that maybe the tigers are flexing guys around and moving guys around like colt keith like kevin mcgonigal like spencer torkelson even a little bit too much and that it might be time to have these guys these young players especially simply play one spot to find their mlb footing i don't know but both of those roles were his infield and base running and maybe they disagreed on both well i excuse i read somewhere probably from you honestly if it was smart probably not then that they're still going to be aggressive in the in the runs it was just maybe more on the coaching side yeah that's great insight yeah i do believe that there was something like that but it's interesting too because when we've been in the clubhouse enough to know that when you talk to those players perhaps the players feel a similar way the same way about playing somewhere every day and they have not been able to do that keith does i know colt feels that well i've heard colt feels that way all right that's it for us we're uh we're gonna say goodbye we'll see you back here