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Does the USMNT need to get tougher? | The Cooligans

Christian Polanco and Alexis Guerreros discuss the Americans’ performance against Jamaica in the first leg of the CONCACAF Nations League quarterfinals.

Video Transcript

Here's my worrying trend.

Do you remember when Damian Lowe sends his shoulder into Christian B's back and then almost either stomps on his hand or scrapes his hand with the boot and clearly did both of those things on purpose.

Right.

That moment was clearly a, oh, these boys are playing around us.

We need to muddy this up a little bit.

Right.

Could cough it up.

Yeah.

Could cough it up, you know.

00, you just got con, you know what I mean?

It was that moment and that changed the energy of the match.

Momentum started to slide to Jamaica's where Jamaica started to impose themselves a little more in that match.

And that's something that I think we saw outside of matches like against uh England in the World Cup.

There were moments where the times where the game got a little bit in the mud, a little dark already all of a sudden, you know, the United States men's national team would pull back.

That's one of the things that I had hoped would go away with Mauricio Pochettino, someone who's Argentinian, you know, also, you know, managed in England and kind of understands you gotta, you know, sometimes you gotta put your feet down, you gotta get in them trenches, you know what I mean?

And it felt like in that moment the US didn't break, right?

Because they still took care of business bending a little bit, but they bend a little more than I expected.

The, the loss of momentum was to me, a potential worrying trend, not necessarily a worrying trend but a potential worrying trend where if you're going up against the nation with a little bit more quality on the pitch than Jamaica, you may, you may be punished for it more than you were here.

Do you not see that?

I could, I mean, this is usually in conquer CF when us plays away or plays away.

I mean, it's, we're really, you know, the powerhouses in Concacaf are us Mexico, Canada when any of those countries play away in like Central America somewhere.

It's just, it's not a pleasant experience, you know, same thing, not a warm welcome with Jamaica.

So it's, it's something that I think we, we underestimate sometimes and we want to be more dominant than we are, but it is hard to play in these places.

It's hard to play in Jamaica.

I agree.

But to lose it in that instance, in that way, if we were home and that happened where like second half, we're just like we're getting out conca casts and we're not controlling the game, I would be a little bit more concerned but I'm in these away games, I'm like, get, get the win, get the three points and go home.