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Message: [QUOTE="Forza Azzurri, post: 4753817, member: 1452"] So, I wasn't particularly interested in watching us play a friendly against one of the Stans and did so only out of obligation (like watching our football team during the Gerg years). Very glad I did. Some interesting things. We went with our standard 4-3-3 but did so with an offensive trident and De La Torre as the 6. De La Torre as the 6 meant that we were really playing with a regista. That is not the historical role of the 6 under GGG (or any other manager for that matter). Our 6 is usually a ball-winner. I saw two immediate impacts of that change. One, was the increased fluidity of our offense. I thought DLT did a really job of linking D and O and making the correct decisions when on the ball. We scored in the 4th; hit the post in the 16th and generally looked dangerous. Then, as CRV pointed out, it petered out. What CRV failed to mention (and, to be fair neither did the color guy on TNT), the petering out coincided with DLT getting hurt and having to exit and the insertion of Tessmann. With Tessmann at the 6, the offensive fluidity was lost. If you noticed, when first inserted the team continued to try to play through the 6 with Tessmann acting as regista. However, as the game progressed, the team bypassed Tessmann altogether and played more direct (later stages of the second half when we started looking more dangerous again). The other impact was on our defense. De La Torre is not a ball-winner. We got absolutely carved open when we turned the ball over. Not sure Adams would have stopped all of them but he is so good at both anticipating and covering ground that he would have snuffed out a number of them. He also tends to sit in front of the center backs whereas DLT was much more penetrating and tended to be further upfield. If we are going to play with a regista, we are going to have to make some defensive adjustments because, as we saw during the World Cup, a better team will cut us to pieces. I also saw a lot more player movement outside their "zones". Pulisic popping up in the center, Weah coming all the way over the left. And also players switching roles. No idea how much of this was intentional or what the plan was. Almost impossible to tell on TV. Will need to see more games to try to understand what GGG is actually trying to do. I really like Balogun. He is very comfortable dropping between the lines and combining. His exiting at halftime further compounded our offensive issues. At one point in the second half, the color guy said that Pepi hadn't seen much of the ball but that it wasn't his fault. Well, Pepi is also not comfortable dropping between the lines. He seems to be almost exclusively a finisher. A few other random thoughts. McKennie's touch, other than the one on the goal, was awful. He had a rough night. Pulisic also did not have a good night. Our service into the box remains awful. I thought Richards was very good. I wish GGG would invert Dest and Robinson and have Dest play higher up. He is just so dangerous. Now looking forward to the Oman game just to see what carries over, if anything, in terms of strategy as I suspect that Oman will also play with that really low block. Although, with DLT out, not sure there is another player on the roster who can play that regista role. [/QUOTE]

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