Jesse Eisenberg recently made the courageous jump to television to star in FX’s Fleishman Is In Trouble, a drama based on the 2019 best-selling novel of the same name. Eisenberg plays the titular Toby Fleishman, who is going through a messy divorce with Claire Danes when she suddenly disappears, leaving him a newly single dad of two in New York City, who relies on his two close friends for help while piecing together exactly what went wrong in his marriage.
While we are all used to Eisenberg’s fast-talking characters, Fleishman’s thoughts are actually narrated by someone entirely different: his friend Libby, played by (fellow Now You See Me alum!) Lizzy Caplan. Libby chronicles Fleishman’s story while also navigating her own personal life.
Caplan revealed earlier this year that she was drawn to Libby after becoming a mom for the first time. “In many ways, I identified with Libby more than I’ve identified with any other character I’ve played,” Caplan told Vanity Fair. “[Libby] feels very trapped in her life, and I started shooting the show when I was a new mother to my first baby…I was getting to have this very fulfilling acting gig at the same time that I was fulfilling these lifelong domesticity dreams that I kicked down the road for so long.” Caplan’s onscreen husband is played by Josh Radnor.
Fleishman is in Trouble airs new episodes on FX on Hulu every Thursday.
Natural Light/Busch/Coors/Pabst Blue Ribbon/istock/Uproxx
The craft beer world in the US has exploded over the past decade. But beer drinkers still aren’t shying away from cheap, easy-to-find, grocery store lagers. Sure, beer geeks might go crazy about their local microbrewery’s fruited sour, milkshake IPA, or barrel-aged stout. But walk into any grocery store from Olympia to Orlando and you’ll find the coolers filled with bargain-priced lagers — people drink them and occassionally even like them!
Since the holidays are upon us and gatherings are a pretty sure bet, the time is right to find a few great, easy-drinking lagers to bring to get-togethers. That’s why I decided to blindly nose and taste eight of the most popular, cheap lagers available pretty much anywhere. Keep scrolling to see how everything turned out.
Here’s the lineup:
Corona Extra
Coors Light
Bud Light
Miller High Life
Natural Light
Busch
Heineken
Pabst Blue Ribbon
Part 1: The Taste
Taste 1
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer smells kind of skunky. There are also notes of wet grass and cereal grains. Maybe a little citrus and floral aroma as well. The palate is a mix of skunk and sweetness with more earthy, herbal hops and sweet, caramel malts, and corny sugar. The finish is dry, crisp, and refreshing.
Taste 2
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
This beer starts with a nose of bready malts, cereal grains, and citrus. That’s it and it’s all fairly muted. I had to try really hard to find anything. The palate is really sweet and sugary with just a little bitterness at the end. It doesn’t really taste like much.
It’s the epitome of barely yellow, fizzy water.
Taste 3
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Aromas of sugary sweetness, corn, cereal grains, and wet grass greet you before your first sip. The palate continues this trend. There’s a ton of sugary sweetness right off the bat as well as sweet corn, cereal grains, and herbal, grassy malts. There’s no bitterness whatsoever. This beer is sweet on sweet.
Taste 4
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Sweet corn, caramel malts, honey, lemongrass, and slight earthy, grassy hops are prevalent on the nose. The palate is centered on flavors like corn sweetness, bready malts, honey, citrus peels, cereal grains, and slightly bitter, floral hops. It has a nice mix of malt sweetness, corn, and piney hops.
Taste 5
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Notable aromas include sweet corn, cereal grains, caramel malts, and floral, herbal hops. Drinking it reveals a mix of sweetness and hops with sweet corn, toffee, citrus peels, and earthy, herbal hops making an appearance.
The finish is dry, sweet, and leaves you wanting more.
Taste 6
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
The nose is sweet malts, cereal grains, corn, and nothing else discernable. It’s surprisingly fizzy for a beer. It tasted more like a malty, slightly hoppy hard seltzer or flavored sparkling water than an actual beer. It’s borderline flavorless.
Taste 7
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Sweet corn, cereal grains, wet grass, caramel, and floral, herbal, earthy hops were the overwhelming aromas on the nose. Sipping it revealed corn syrup sweetness, honey, citrus peels, and more earthy, herbal hops. The finish is crisp, sweet, and thirst-quenching. Not overly exciting, but it does its job.
Taste 8
Christopher Osburn
Tasting Notes:
Sweet corn, sugar, citrus, and slightly bitter hops are found on the nose. Honestly, I couldn’t find anything else to mention. The palate continues this trend with sugary sweetness, sweet corn, cereal grains, and light citrus taking center stage. It’s fairly water and fizzy but refreshing.
It’s safe to assume people don’t drink Natural Light for the overwhelming flavor. They drink it because it’s refreshing, light, and low in alcohol, calories, and carbohydrates. It helps that it’s ridiculously inexpensive.
Bottom Line:
I’m convinced that Natural Light is popular because drinkers are trying to be ironic. It’s more a fizzy, flavorless novelty than an actual beer.
Bud Light is America’s favorite light beer. It’s a favorite of people who see that it’s the cheapest beer at the bar and think, “Sure, why not? It’s still technically beer, right?”
It’s low in alcohol and equally low in flavor.
Bottom Line:
Bud Light is a real head-scratcher of a beer. It’s almost flavorless, but it’s tremendously popular. You can thank over-the-top advertising for that.
Sure. I could have picked Busch Light instead of regular Busch, but I wanted to mix it up. This adjunct lager is brewed with (according to the official website) premium hops, barley malt, grains, and water, it’s known for its crisp, easy-drinking, no-frill flavor profile.
Bottom Line:
This is definitely not an exciting beer. It’s muted, watery, and boring. It does have a little more depth than some of the light beers on the market though.
The most popular Mexican beer, this beach-centric lager is brewed with simple ingredients like water, barley, non-malted cereal grains, and hops. It’s known for its sweet, light, refreshing flavor without a ton of substance.
Bottom Line:
Corona Extra is always shown with a lime wedge sitting snuggly in the neck of the bottle and for good reason. Without this added citrus, it’s an overly sweet, sugary mess.
One of the easiest-to-find, most popular imported lagers in the world, Heineken is the kind of beer that’s always there. This European pale lager from The Netherlands is known for its earthy, fruity, hoppy flavor.
Bottom Line:
Heineken has a rather unique aroma and flavor. Even the freshest bottle or can has a little dank, skunk flavor to it. If you can get past that, it’s a refreshing, malty, floral sipper.
As light beers go, Coors Light has a little more going for it than most of its counterparts. This 4.2% ABV light lager is brewed with 2-row lager malt, hop extract, lager yeast, and corn syrup. It’s cold lagered, cold-filtered, and even cold-packaged. Everything about this beer is cold.
Bottom Line:
Coors Light doesn’t mess around. It lists corn syrup in its ingredients. It’s not concerned with what you think as long as you crack open one of its ice-cold bottles or cans. And, truth be told, they’re pretty okay.
Miller High Life is one of those beers that you’re just as likely to find at a college party as you are at a retirement party. It’s a throwback in a glass bottle that never seems to go out of style. Plus, the beer inside is crisp, refreshing, and hits the spot every time.
Bottom Line:
Miller High Life is well-known for its crisp, refreshing, easy-drinking nature. It might not be the most complex beer in this world of over-the-top beers, but it serves its purpose and it does it well.
This classic bowling alley beer has been brewed the same way since its inception way back in 1844. Its popularity rose a decade or more ago when hipsters and young people began drinking it ironically. There’s nothing ironic though about this smooth, crisp, Noble hop-driven lager.
Bottom Line:
PBR deserves all of the attention it gets. It’s a classic, crisp, no-frills throwback beer. It tastes exactly the way you expect it to taste when you see its iconic label.
Part 3: Final Thoughts
It’s not easy to blindly taste cheap, grocery store lagers. They’re either crisp, refreshing, and memorable or watery, bland, and highly forgettable. It feels like there is no in-between.
You’ll find the first part of the list is filled with forgettable, bland beer and the second half is populated by bargain bangers.
About midway through The Walking Dead series finale, I turned into the Leo pointing meme. To prevent a violent conflict among the living, as opposed to fighting the real enemy (zombies), Daryl Dixon gives a Rick Grimes-like speech. “What the hell you doing? We all deserve better than this. You built this place to be like the old world. That was the f*ckin’ problem,” he said. “We got one enemy. We ain’t the walking dead.”
Norman Reedus said the thing! But it took some convincing.
“I didn’t want to say it, I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t want to say it, and they kind of talked me into saying it,” he told Vanity Fair. “But if you remember way back when Rick says it, he was like, ‘We are not the walking dead,’ and he made such a big thing of it that I was like, ‘Well, I can’t make a big thing of it now because that’s what Andy did way back then.’ So I kind of just incorporated it into the dialogue, and I didn’t want to shout it from the rooftops, because that’s what he did.” Instead, Reedus “figure[d] out a way to just make it part of the sentence without making it a poster,” he added.
AMC may differ. There’s a 75 percent chance that you’ll be able to buy a “we ain’t the walking dead” poster at Hot Topic (are there Hot Topics in France?) by Black Friday.
Fleishman Is in Trouble is FX on Hulu’s latest star-studded limited series, one of those things the basic cable network does best. This one, which premiered on November 17, stars Oscar nominee Jesse Eisenberg, Emmy winner Clare Danes, the beloved Lizzy Caplan, and The O.C.’sAdam Brody (as a character named Seth who is absolutely not Seth Cohen).
Here’s the official show description from FX:
Recently divorced 41-year-old Toby Fleishman dives into the brave new world of app-based dating with the kind of success he never had dating in his youth, before he got married at the tail end of medical school. But just at the start of his first summer of sexual freedom, his ex-wife Rachel disappea<span class=”yZlgBd”>rs leaving him with 11-year-old Hannah and 9-year-old Solly and no hint of where she is or whether she plans to return. As he balances parenting, the return of old friends Libby and Seth, a potential promotion at the hospital that is a long time coming, and all the eligible women that Manhattan has to offer, he realizes that he’ll never be able to figure out what happened to Rachel until he can finally face what happened to their marriage in the first place.</span>
You’re here because you’re wondering if Fleishman Is In Troubleis based on something. It is! Fleishman Is in Trouble is an adaptation of the New York Times best-selling book of the same name by Taffy Brodesser-Akner. The novel came out in 2019, and there was quickly a bidding war for the rights to adapt it. Brodesser-Akner, a journalist known for splashy profiles of celebs including Bradley Cooper and Gwyneth Paltrow, is the creator and an executive producer. She wrote seven of eight episodes. Brodesser-Akner, who is married, was inspired to write the fictional story after a plethora of friends started getting divorced once she hit her 40s.
“It almost felt like fan fiction, or like fan fiction with your Barbies — like, what if you got your Barbies to be these famous people? I can’t even describe it,” Brodesser-Akner toldVariety about seeing her book get adapted to the screen.
You’d think getting absolutely jacked for Marvel’s Eternals or acting across from Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi would be one of the most daunting tasks in Kumail Nanjiani‘s career, but nope. The actor had the most trepidation over his latest role as Somen “Steve” Banerjee, the villainous founder of the iconic male stripper empire that’s the center of the new Hulu miniseries Welcome to Chippendales. Nanjiani opened up in a new interview about what it’s like playing a character who has absolutely none of the actor’s personal traits.
“Welcome to Chippendales is the role I’ve been most nervous to take on, because I never played anybody like [Somen],” Nanjiani told InStyle. “I’ve mostly played people who were, in some ways, different versions of myself. Generally they were funny or had some element of likability to them.”
After revealing that he was concerned about playing the role because he didn’t want to play “a bad guy from my part of the world,” Nanjiani ultimately dove into the project, but one thing he didn’t do is bring the character home. He’s not about that method acting life:
He learned how to break out of unpleasant emotions and turn things on and off between takes in order “to have a normal life and be a good husband and be present at home, and not bring it home with me,” he says, especially considering his wife was also a producer on the show. (“I want to have a good life, a happy life!” he says of actors who go full-on method).
Nanjiani also had another trick in up his sleeve: That new jacked bod.
“I really still enjoy working out. I get a lot out of it. It’s for me, mentally, been really good,” he told InStyle. “It grounds me in my body, it’s good for stress, I sleep better, and it makes me better at my job, you know, because so much of acting is about sort of feeling your body and being in your body.”
Welcome to Chippendales struts it stuff November 22 on Hulu.
Anitta has an amazing evening at the American Music Awards last night (November 20). The Brazilian superstar won her first AMA and she also performed alongside hip-hop icon Missy Elliott.
Anitta was nominated for her first American Music Award this year and she won. She took home the award for Favorite Female Latin Artist in a category that included Karol G, Becky G, Kali Uchis, and Rosalía. In her Instagram Stories, she wrote, “And we wonnnnnn. Omg thank you SO MUCH. My fans I love yall so so so much. I’m so grateful.”
Anitta also made her AMAs performance debut at the show. She opened her set with a sensual performance of her global hit “Envolver.” Anitta wowed the audience when she executed the sultry dance move that helped the song go viral on TikTok earlier this year. She then brought the hotel to the AMAs to sing her love song “Lobby” alongside Elliott. Elliot made checked-in at the halfway point and made a grand entrance. She gave a fierce performance of her fiery guest verse with Anitta by her side.
Among the Latin artists, Bad Bunny was the big winner of the night with two AMAs wins, including Favorite Latin Album for Un Verano Sin Ti. Colombian singer Sebastián Yatra and Mexican-American trio Yahritza y Su Esencia won their first AMAs.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
It’s been 34 years since the release of Willow, a fantasy adventure movie that was billed as the next thing from George Lucas after Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies. Directed by Ron Howard, Willow wound up doing … okay. And the reviews were mixed. But considering this was a Lucasfilm property, it was treated as a failure and that was that for Willow.
Now, 34 years later, Willow returns with an all-new Disney+ series. Over the years, thanks to Willow being one of those movies that always seems to be on cable, it’s built up a pretty decent fan base. And, as executive producer and writer Jon Kasdan says ahead, it also helped quite a bit that the newly launched Disney+ was looking for content. So the idea hatched between Kasdan, star Warwick Davis, and Ron Howard on the set of Solo: A Star Wars Story was met by the executives with actual enthusiasm. Also, it doesn’t hurt that the fantasy genre is much more popular now than it was in 1988.
Unlike the movie, the series (I’ve seen seven of the eight episodes) has the time to really develop a group of characters who, led by Willow himself, head out on a grand quest. It’s during this quest that, over the course of a few episodes, a same-sex love story develops. As I say to Kasdan ahead, this isn’t some bullshit scene between two extremely minor characters. It’s as if, finally, a Disney/Lucasfilm property did this in a way that feels real and also serves the story.
Also, Lawrence Kasdan has made it clear he’d be open to another Solo film but isn’t too keen on the idea of a series. Now that Jon Kasdan has just made his own series based on a popular character from a movie, does he agree with his father?
You got Willow back. A thing a lot of people couldn’t pull off.
I know. I feel like the last time we talked I was probably quietly plotting this thing and too shy to say it. And now it’s a reality.
Warwick Davis said that this all happened on the Solo set.
It did. It all happened right while we were sort of shooting and on the beach there. We met and I told him I wanted this to happen, and he was enthusiastic. But we both thought like, Yeah, nice try. Good luck. And then a few months later, Ron Howard came on to help with the movie. And that was the moment when, really, the three people who could make this happen came together completely. That was the triangle of Willow.
By the way, “help” is doing a lot of work there.
[Laughs] It was a big… He filled big shoes and he came in with gusto. But one of the things that happened while he did that was that we would just be sitting on the set between set-ups talking about, “So Willow, man, how are we going to do this?” The most amazing part of it was it was right during that period when we were together every day, that Disney+ launched and it became clear that their first thing out of the gate was going to be Favreau’s Mandalorian, the first live-action Star Wars ever. And Ron saw it instantaneously. I’d say within 40 seconds of reading that news, he was like, “This is how we’re going to get Willow into the world.”
So let me pretend I’m a studio executive for a second. What I would be thinking is, ”Well, when Willow came out, it did okay, but not that well. The reviews were average. Why do you want to bring this back?”
Well, what was interesting about it was the moment Ron and I walked into – and you know, you walk into the sort of Seven Dwarves building at Disney and you have this meeting and it’s intimidating – but what we were greeted by was such warmth and enthusiasm. And I can only assume there was a mandate to generate as much content as they could.
That helps.
And so what I think they saw in Ron and I are two people who were passionate about magic and fantasy.
And to be fair, over the years, Willow has built a following.
They weren’t diehard Willow fans, but they knew that there was an opportunity here to do something that wasn’t Star Wars, that wasn’t Marvel, but was in the sort of wheelhouse of Disney and felt like something that should be in the Disney World.
And is in the fantasy realm, which has become a lot more popular since Willow came out.
Frankly, when we had that meeting in 2018 or 2019, well, we all anticipated that Game of Thrones had sort of changed the landscape of what was possible on television. And Stranger Things being equally influential, because I think that’s the show that each one of these streamers looks at and says, “I want one of those.” But I think even since then, in the last four or five years, the amount of fantasy content that has been made and produced has been surprising to everyone.
So going into this, you can’t just do what the movie did because it wasn’t a huge success. How do you build on what people did like, yet make it different?
The flip side of working in these beloved IPs is that you’re always sort of stuck between a rock and a hard place…
Well, this feels different because, yes, this is a beloved IP by a lot of people, but for the majority of people, it’s not.
Well, that’s right. So what I think you’re trying to do is you’re trying to figure out a way to satisfy the desires of fans of the thing – people who love it and have some expectation about where they’re going to go – but also acknowledge that you’re making a show in a different world and a different time. And the sense of humor and the sense of what’s cool is different than it was in 1988. And you’ve got to remember there was a lot of elements of Willow ’88 that, from a 1988 perspective, were very contemporary and hip and modern. And none more so than Val Kilmer himself, was just a totally unusual thing in a fantasy movie.
Yeah, it has the Iceman.
It was the Iceman. And he was basically like the Iceman just walked into the Robin Hood, Errol Flynn role.
He did.
And you were like, Okay, this is something I’ve never seen before. But for kids, it was like me, 43 now and 8 then, it was our Han Solo. I mean he just had all that swagger and coolness.
Well, to be perfectly honest, I was 13 when Willow came out and I remember seeing it in theaters and being like, “Yeah, that was fine.”
Totally.
But I watched this series and I really enjoyed it. I just cruised through all seven episodes I was sent.
Oh, I’m so glad. That makes me so happy.
There’s something about this series that the movie doesn’t quite have, and I can’t put a finger on it…
Well, I’m thrilled you felt that we give you that. I mean, you know, it’s funny, that I think that Ron would probably agree with you. And I think that one of his frustrations with the movie was that it didn’t give him the time or the space, frankly, the real estate, to do all the things he would have wanted to do to build out a Sorsha-Madmartigan romance the way I think he would’ve loved to. And to tell a deeper mythology the way Star Wars was so able to. So this is a dream come true for him. It’s an expansion.
I remember the way it was advertised. It was basically like, “Hey, from the guy who brought you Star Wars and Indiana Jones, here comes Willow.” And that’s really unfair.
It’s really unfair. And I think on the weekend it came out, they all thought, ”Well shit. Now what? We’re saddled with this. We’ve got to be on that tier of success. That’s impossible.” It was never going to be that. And what it provided for us was this extraordinary opportunity to just have this unspoiled little corner of a vast entertainment empire. In the emblem of it in the show is this old dusty book, which seemed to me the perfect metaphor for what we were trying to do, which was like there’s something lost in a library. You haven’t heard of it, but open it up. There’s more to read. You know?
You mentioned the love story from the movie, that it doesn’t get to be fleshed out as much as Ron Howard wanted it to be. I got to say, you and your team deserve a lot of credit. And I won’t say which characters, but I do want to mention that there is a love story that develops between two same-sex characters. And it’s not the bullshit we get sometimes where it’s two characters we’ve barely met. These are two main characters and it develops over the course of the series.
Well, I appreciate it. And I think there will be those who give us a lot of credit and those that give us a lot of flack for it too.
I’m sure that’s coming. I have no doubt that’s coming.
It’s a tricky thing. But the way that I’m finding that I am able to talk about it is that it felt totally organic to the story we were telling.
It does. It develops as the story goes on.
And the two actresses who were at the center of that story, they were both passionate about serving it right. About getting into the nuance of not really of a political landscape because the show takes place in a world that’s not our own, but into an emotional landscape that was really honest and sincere. And that’s what I’m proudest of about that is that you really feel the love between them.
When your dad was on the tour for the ILM documentary, he mentioned how he didn’t think Han Solo would work as a series. but now that you just did this series with Willow, which has worked really well, do you agree with your dad that Solo doesn’t work as a series? Or are you changing your mind?
Well, what’s funny about that is that I loved working on Solo. I love Alden.
What I think is making it increasingly difficult for me to imagine is the wealth of Star Wars content we’re getting over the next couple of years. The different places the universe is exploring. The corners of it that we’re going into. Andor being just the latest and most extraordinary example probably ever of just a direction Star Wars can go that I never thought it would. And when you put on top of that all the shows that are coming in the near future, I guess with all this stuff, and this really ties back to Willow, I think I saw a reason to do it. Which was there was this girl at the center of it and a story sort of promised in her magical potential. And with Solo, I think we’d all have to feel there was a reason to go back there that wasn’t being served in one of these other corners of the Star Wars universe.
Okay, so that’s a “no”?
[Laughs] But sign me up! I’m ready to go!
That’s a “yes.” All right.
It’s a very tough one because I really do love that thing and I love all the people who’ve been so supportive of more stories.
The 2022 American Music Awards went down last night and per usual, the broadcast was a spectacle featuring performances from some of the biggest artists. One of them was a surprise inclusion, as it wasn’t previously announced that she would be performing: Cardi B.
When it came time for GloRilla to take the stage, Cardi popped up to join in on a fiery rendition of their collaboration, “Tomorrow 2.” GloRilla’s medley ended with “Tomorrow 2” and Cardi’s surprise appearance got a big crowd reaction. After emerging, Cardi did some rapping down the barrel of the camera and some light choreography, all of which made for a fun surprise.
They also shared a behind-the-scenes clip on social media, with Cardi writing, “THEY DONT WANNA SEE NO GANGSTA B*TCHES WIN.” GloRilla quote-tweeted the post and added, “Industry done f*cked up letting these gangsta b*tches in !!!!”
Cardi and GloRilla were also both nominated for Favorite Female Hip-Hop Artist but lost to Nicki Minaj. Latto and Megan Thee Stallion were also in contention in that same category.
Check out GloRilla and Cardi’s AMAs performance of “Tomorrow 2” above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
The USMNT is back in the World Cup. On Monday, the Americans will play their first game on this stage since their 2014 loss to Belgium where Tim Howard played arguably the best game a goalkeeper has ever played in the tournament. A whole lot has happened since then for the American men’s side, some of it was extremely bad (not making the World Cup in 2018) and some of it extremely good (making the World Cup in 2022, and also Tim Weah).
The thing with the United States, as it is constructed heading into Qatar, is that it’s a team that isn’t necessarily built for right now. Yes, the level of talent has never been higher, and some of the best players in the side are at some of the most prominent clubs in the world. There are Americans at Chelsea, Juventus, AC Milan, Leeds United, Borussia Dortmund, and Lille. The oldest of the seven guys in that group is Weston McKennie, who turned 24 in August. There are teenagers on the roster at clubs like Borussia Monchengladbach and Valencia, the starting goalkeeper — a position where players tend to peak a little later — is 28 and plies his trade at Arsenal.
There is one player on the entire roster, DeAndre Yedlin, who has played in a World Cup before. He played 115 minutes across three games with zero starts in 2014. Other than Ghana, no team in Qatar will have a younger roster than the United States.
This raises the question: What is the expectation for what this team can and should achieve in their return to the biggest stage in the sport? Unlike the women’s side, which enters every tournament in which they participate with the belief that they will win and more often than not achieves that goal, one can argue that the men’s side’s No. 1 priority should be building a foundation for 2026, when the World Cup is coming to America as part of a shared bid with Canada and Mexico. It is possible that nine of the team’s 11 first-choice starters (basically everyone but the non-Cameron Carter-Vickers center backs, comprised of Aaron Long, Tim Ream, and Walker Zimmerman) will be firmly in their primes in 3.5 years when that rolls around, and the team is guaranteed to make it as the host nation.
None of this is to say that the team should just be happy to be there. For years, much has been made of how this is a “golden generation” of American talent. Even if their best days are expected to come down the road, that does not mean it’s unfair to say they put forth a similar effort to the 2014 squad, which got out of the group before falling in the round of 16.
Group B is difficult. England is one of the best sides in the world and is one of the favorites in this tournament for a reason. The way they play, too, could and should flummox the Americans, which have not always done an especially great job figuring out opponents that want to stay compact and force you to break them down (hold this thought!). It can very easily be argued this does not maximize the talent the Three Lions are bringing, but in international football, pragmatism and playing to limit mistakes is not a bad idea. Regardless, while the team is going to play to win in every game and anything can happen on a given day, it would take something special to topple the English.
As such, the United States needs as many points as possible from their games against Wales and Iran — if the USMNT cannot get a result against them, the hope immediately becomes that England is able to win every game in group play. In 2018, every team that accrued five or six points in group play moved on. Two of the teams that accrued four (i.e. a win and a draw) advanced, the other two finished in third. To put it more plainly, a win and a draw has the potential to get hairy, a win and two draws and they’re very likely moving on, and a spot in the round of 16 is all but guaranteed barring some craziness if they get two wins. If they get seven or nine points, well, that would be nice
Beating Wales and Iran — the teams they play first and third, respectively, in group play — will not be easy. Wales, which has not made the World Cup in 60 years, is going to stay compact and likely concede possession to the Americans. When they win the ball, their best moments will come when they play direct. The pace possessed by the trio of Gareth Bale, Daniel James, and Brennan Johnson could give the United States trouble, especially if gigantic striker Kieffer Moore is there to hold up play and lay the ball off to the more pacey players around him.
Everything will come back to Bale, though, the talismanic, 5-time Champions League winner who is still capable of single-handedly willing Wales to wins. The longer the United States goes without putting the Welsh away, the more likely it is that Bale (for however long he is on the pitch) punishes them. A source for optimism for the USMNT is that Wales has one win and five losses in their last seven games.
Iran, meanwhile, has made five of the last seven World Cups, although they have never made it out of the group stage. Beyond the unrest occurring in the country that has led to players supporting protesters, the manager who led the team to qualification was fired in September and replaced with Carlos Queiroz, who previously led the side from 2011-19. Their top players are Mehdi Taremi and Sardar Azmoun — the latter of whom has dealt with a calf injury in recent weeks — and are quite good. The rest of their team is happy to sit back and absorb pressure, hoping that the opposing team will open up pockets of space that they can try to exploit.
All of this presents a problem for a United States side that has had two pretty consistent issues under Gregg Berhalter: they struggle away from home, and they have put forth some total stinkers against sides that are happy to play on the more conservative end of the spectrum. Take their last two friendlies prior to the World Cup, where the team lost 2-0 to Japan and picked up a 0-0 draw against Saudi Arabia. They put two shots on goal, both against the Saudis, with 11 total attempts across 180 minutes of joyless action.
It’s only fitting, then, that they are walking into a tournament away from American soil where the three teams that they’ll play in group play set up in a way that they’ve struggled to break down. The hope for the USMNT is that the squad has enough experience against these sorts of stingy opponent, enough individual quality possessed by its best players, and enough of the sort of optimistic naiveté that comes with being on this stage for the first time.
That might not happen! There is a very realistic scenario on the table where the United States gets rinsed by England and slogs its way to somewhere between 0-2 points in the other two games. When this team struggles, it really, really struggles, particularly when it comes to creating chances. The silver lining is that would be, one could argue, more of a setback than a disaster. It would be a big setback on a big stage, sure, but for a group this young, part of the journey is learning how to get over obstacles, and the World Cup is the biggest obstacle in the sport.
But the talent is there, the big match experience is there (they have a Champions League winner, for goodness sake), and the experience alongside one another is there. They’ve never had fullbacks like Sergiño Dest and Antonee Robinson. They’ve never had a collection of midfielders like Tyler Adams, Brenden Aaronson, McKennie, and Yunus Musah. They’ve never had the variety of attacking talent Christian Pulisic, Giovanni Reyna, and Weah possess. For everything about what the future holds, they have the talent to get out of the group and hope they can win a single-elimination game against some of the best teams in the world. The expectation, and the hope, is that Monday is simultaneously the end of a years-long effort to return to the World Cup and the start of something special.
Michael B. Jordan is making his directorial debut with Creed III, the third installment of his starring vehicle, but it’s not all about him. We’re willing to forgive the 35-year-old actor for enabling Drake and 21 Savage’s fake promotional cycle around Her Loss because of what he let slip about the Creed III soundtrack during his panel at ComplexCon yesterday (November 20).
“I’m probably gonna get in trouble: Dreamville is executive producing this album,” Jordan said, as first reported by Complex.
It’s difficult to name a more dominant hip-hop label than Dreamville right now. The J. Cole– and Ibrahim Hamad-founded powerhouse’s roster boasts the likes of Cole, Ari Lennox, Bas, Cozz, EarthGang, JID, Lute, and Omen. Their star-studded compilationD-Day: A Gangsta Grillz Mixtape coincided with this year’s Dreamville Fest in April, while Lennox’s Age/Sex/Locationand JID’s The Forever Storyestablished them as individual forces.
In the Sylvester Stallone-lessCreed III, MBJ’s Adonis Creed individual greatness is threatened by an unsuspecting opponent. He runs into his childhood friend Damian (Jonathan Majors), whose boxing potential was extinguished by prison. They reconnect in the ring, setting up a delicious dichotomy between loyalty and betrayal. Damian is coming for it all. “There’s no enemy like the past,” the official trailer description reads.
Creed III hits theaters 3/3/2023. Watch the trailer above.
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