 the U.S. team is bad. It’s not. The problem is that the U.S. was really bad last year when this phase of qualification started, and it hasn’t really ever made up for it. Jurgen Klinsmann was fired two games into the USMNT’s final-round qualifying bid, after a home loss against Mexico and a 4-0 thumping away to Costa Rica. The team was a mess, and Bruce Arena was brought in to stabilize the ship. And he did. In his first four games in charge, he led the team to two home wins and two road draws, the exact kind of record that leads to easy qualification. But the record didn’t earn back any of the points the team dropped in its first two games. Arena stopped the bleeding, but he didn’t fill in the hole that Klinsmann had dug.
This team as currently constituted is just about good enough to qualify for the World Cup. The problem is that it isn’t much better than that.
Arena’s emergency stabilization job was built around two main pillars. First, he handed the keys of the attack to teenage superstar Pulisic, and second, he narrowed midfielder Michael Bradley’s responsibilities, shifting him from the hub of the team to a more traditional deep-lying playmaker. Everything around them has been in flux. Personnel has changed, formations have changed, tactical approaches have changed.
Without much continuity, the team ends up in trouble when the game plan breaks down. Against Costa Rica last week, the defense was badly exposed without protection from midfield. Cameron and Ream were both called upon to step into midfield frequently and neither were able to do the job. And against Honduras this week, the attack sputtered when Pulisic wasn’t able to get on the ball. Since starting to play with the senior national team, he’s averaged 53 touches per 90 minutes, but against Honduras he only got 42, and the U.S. struggled to create chances without his influence.
The defensive problems will likely sort themselves out eventually. The team is currently missing half of its starting defense, as both John Brooks and DeAndre Yedlin are injured. If they get healthy and back on the field, the defense will immediately take a step in the right direction.
On the attack side, the solution is less clear-cut. Pulisic is the team’s crown jewel, and it’s Arena’s job to figure out which players in his fairly deep attacking talent pool best complement the young star. Arena has yet to settle on the best combination. Pulisic has played as a winger in a front three, as a wide midfielder with two strikers in front of him, and as the attacking midfielder at the tip of a diamond. In the last two games alone, he played with four different strikers in Wood, Jozy Altidore, Clint Dempsey and Jordan Morris. Settling on a more consistent lineup might not only help get the best out of Pulisic but also allow the U.S. to develop a more effective plan B for those times an opponent is able to take Pulisic out of the match.
Arena is facing the same challenges all managers do. He has to balance the need for short-term results against the desire to develop a team that over the medium term can steadily improve and peak at the right moment. Up until this week, it seemed like he had gotten the balance mostly right, winning enough to put the U.S. solidly on course while also developing a basic plan. This week, that plan broke down. Now October’s matches can’t serve as a platform to help build the team for the future; instead, they’re all about short-term goals.
There’s nothing wrong with this team that time can’t fix. But with two must-win games on the horizon, time is the one thing this team doesn’t have.More action from the UK's most remote hospital. At the Gilbert Bain in Shetland the team of doctors and nurses work alongside GPs, paramedics,coastguard and the fire and rescue service to provide emergency and medical care to the island's 23,000 residents. They also deal with thousands of oil and gas workers, fishermen and tourists 24 hour a day, 365 days a year."The days of closed risk scoring models for fraud management are over," writes Andras Cser, Vice President, and Principal Analyst - Security and Risk Management at Forrester Research in the report: "EFM solutions have evolved and matured a great deal in the past two or three years, with considerable improvements to the model building and testing lifecycle, link analysis, and reporting."
Forrester’s report recommends: "invite vendors that have productized and proven models in your vertical...offering pre-customized, transparent, ready-to-use, and low-code models for your specific vertical." For Feedzai, this recommendation perfectly aligns with its new fully packaged Feedzai Solutions, which addresses the importance of selecting a partner that offers an agile, easy to deploy, and low resource solution for financial institutions that can assess risk in real-time. With the configuration of machine learning models and a comprehensive library of out-of-the-box scenarios, Feedzai’s new offering presents itself as a turnkey solution that better protects customers with quicker time-to-value.
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Brazil, Geoff & Maria Muldaur (1970) https://bunkstrutts.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/geoff-maria-muldaur-brazil-1970.mp3 In 1939, Ary Barroso was stuck in his house during a rainstorm, so he wrote Aquarela do Brasil. Three decades later, multi-talented musician Geoff Muldaur and his wife Maria (nee D’Amato) recorded it as Brazil. In 1985, Terry Gilliam adopted the song for his cinematic vision of a retro-future dystopia, and now it’s immediately recognizable as the Theme to Brazil.
Live Bat cams.
Alpine football [via].
Charming the worms.
Pre-WWII smoke screen.
Mr. Hitler, Leadbelly (1942).
Rocket cats from the 16th century.
It’s legal in Brazil to kill motorcycle thieves.
[Top image: László Löwenstein, aka Peter Lorre, in promo for movie Crime and Punishment, 1935.
So I added Brazil to my Watch Later. Mind you I got about 50 there. As for killing motorcycle theives, I can only say, that concept aside, I really enjoyed the video. Brazil is one of the places on my ‘bucket lit’. Well, the whole Spanish/Portuguese speaking south and Latin America, and….Switzerland.
The movie has nothing to do with the country, but it’s one of my favorites. Dark humor for sure – I didn’t get it the first time I saw it, but the second time it floored me.
I used to be somewhat fluent in Spanish, not so much anymore although I can read it and usually get the gist. Portuguese is misspelled Spanish pronounced with a French accent. Never figured out why.
A smooth, luscious and flavorful protein packed soup with the goodness of veggies and spices which is filling.
Heat 2 tsp olive oil, add 1/2 cup chopped cauliflower, 1/4th cup chopped sweet potatoes, 2 tbsp chickpeas, 1 tsp chopped garlic, 1/2 tsp cumin seeds, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4th tsp black pepper.
Saute all ingredients, add water and allow it to simmer for 5 mins.
Add 1/8th tsp Red chilli flakes and Stir well.[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat if the Nazis actually won World War II? Can you imagine how the world would have changed under the control and utter destruction of the Nazi regime? Well, Cinemaware, creators of the fantastic Wings! Remastered Edition, asked that very question back in the late ’80’s with Rocket Ranger and now they’re revisiting it via Kickstarter. Rocket Ranger Reloaded is similar to the Wings! reboot in that it’s crowdfunded, dramatically updated, but is still in touch with its heritage.
After their tremendous success with Wings! Remastered’s Kickstarter campaign and development, it makes perfect sense for Cinemaware to revisit another of it’s classic properties; and Rocket Ranger looks like it could be a perfect choice. The Kickstarter campaign has a funding goal of $89,999, and with 9 days to go there’s still a bit over $40k to be raised. That’s cutting it pretty close, but thankfully a demo was recently released so we have an opportunity to see if it’s worth a donation.
Don’t worry if you’re not familiar with Rocket Ranger, it doesn’t take much to get up to speed with the story. During World War II, the Nazis made a technological leap