Player Grades: Man-to-man, USMNT manhandle Mexico

The US men's national team beat Mexico 3-0 on Saturday night. Julian Hall became the first US player in 20 years to score in each of his first three caps in the first half; Cavan Sullivan became the youngest goalscorer in program history in the second. In between Tala Rangel had a world historically bad performance in goal, so bad that his own fans were doing "the chant" at him for the game's final 25 minutes.

Before we get to the player grades I want to touch on the part of the game that was the most interesting to me: Mexico setting the terms of the engagement, and how that ended up defining the first half of the game.

• Mexico came out marking man-t0-man with a high, hard press, and as a result the US basically didn't get a touch in the attacking half for the first 10 minutes, and by the 20th minute Mexico had something like 60 touches in the attacking half while the US had just 10. El Tri also had a few good chances during that time, in large part because the US 1) couldn't quite figure out how to play through, over or around the press, and thus were turning the ball over in bad spots, and 2) were playing at 3/4s speed in general.

• At about the 20th minute head coach Mauricio Pochettino had his No. 10, Malik Tillman (who might've popped a quaalude before kick-off) and his left winger, Gio Reyna, swap spots. I think the idea was to get Reyna – who's always hungry for touches – into the central channel where he could use his skill and nose for the ball to check deep and, you know, get on the ball. And because Mexico were man-marking, that meant a runner was always going with Gio, which meant there was at least a bit of imbalance in El Tri's shape (even though they were still on the front foot controlling the game).

• The reason elite teams around the world don't man-mark as high and hard and uncompromisingly as Mexico did tonight is because there's a clear way to beat it: a bit of skill in the build-up to create time and space to pick your head up, combined with off-ball runs into the depth.

Just think about it: if you're being man-marked, the defender is just automatically shadowing you wherever you go. So you check back towards him, he follows you, then you spin into space and you've created dynamic superiority. Combine it with a well-timed, well-weighted ball... it's not the prettiest soccer, but it's how you score.

The first run into the depth came around the 25th minute, from Cavan Sullivan. The second came like two minutes later from Alex Freeman, and it was that one that led to Julian Hall's opening goal.