Jeff Rueter

It's the sort of thing that really does risk slowing the game down even further.

And it's the sort of thing that feels almost like an overstep of litigation.

Yeah, I mean, I would agree with Wilson's take.

It seemed more like South Africa just wasn't up for it.

And you almost wonder if they were trying to return the favor after 2010 and the Sheba Lala moment and trying to give...

Mexico, their own sort of kickoff for the tournament.

Look, it's not really a vintage generation for Mexico.

They haven't really produced, you know, the next Andres Gordado, the next Carlos Vela, the next Chicharito.

They're still trying to figure out what the path forward will be for their development.

And the Liga Mequis is also obviously, you know, done away with promotion and relegation there.

unrolling some of their old policies to not bring in players from outside the league, players who have developed.

They've actually started to get the dual nationals who come up through MLS academies more often when you look at Brian Gutierrez, who is in the lineup today, and then young Obed Vargas, who did not appear from the bench.

So I think that they looked more composed maybe than we saw throughout a lot of this cycle.

It's another one of those where a nation doesn't have a qualification to sort of figure out their routines, their patterns, who they trust, and all these sorts of things.

But

Yeah, I mean, I think it was a game where this felt like one of those pivotal clashes that not just was going to be who else is going to be in control of Group A along with Mexico, but who is maybe going to be better positioned where if other results don't go their way, they're one of the more favorable third place teams, just one of those groups that seems to have three teams that could feasibly advance through.

Yeah.

You know, with Sun Hyung-min, you saw a lot of kind of him pulling back from shooting in a way that maybe you're not used to with him in a major game of this magnitude, where you would see him looking to dish off even when he had advanced into the box or when he did have seemingly a pretty clear shot.

There were a couple of times just before he had exited around the 69th minute where he was just looking over his shoulder and just kind of doffing it off rather than just trying to put one on frame and see where it went, but...

That's been generally his league form since he came over to MLS.