“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
― Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
What a dramatic year this is for the USMNT. We won the not-so-dramatic Nations League (again), and we now have two very dramatic, competitive tournaments in quick succession: the Copa America in June and the Olympics in Paris in July.
And then the World Cup—on home soil, no less—less than two years later.
I have been following this team for a long time. Wracking my brain, I’m certain that I’ve never before been as high on our player pool as I am right now. Not when Clint Dempsey was pouring in goals in the Premier League in 2012, not when Landon Donovan took us to the quarterfinals of the World Cup in 2002.
The talent today is amazing, broad, and deep. It is unprecedented. Our best players today are all still getting better—most are only just entering their prime. Pulisic, Weah, Balogun, Dest, Weston, Tyler, and Jedi are just entering their mid-twenties. At the same time, more and more young players are stepping in and proving they'll be pushing the leaders before long. I’m thinking of Reyna, Musah, Jonny, Pepi, Tillman, Paxton, etc. It's a truly exciting time to follow these players.
After winning the Nations League in March, we now have the two big competitions of the year coming up. Copa America kicks off next month, and it’s a huge tournament. We’re drawn into a winnable group with Uruguay, Bolivia, and Panama. Topping the group would likely mean avoiding Brazil and Argentina until the semifinals. A trip to the semifinals or finals of this prestigious tournament would be a spectacular event for this team.
And then the Paris Olympics kicks off at the end of July. It is nearly as big a competition as Copa America. It’s a tournament that features the world’s best soccer nations with the singular restriction that all but three of each nation’s players must be under 23 years of age.
We have an opportunity to play some great soccer this summer and go toe-to-toe with the world's best. Our best players are approaching their prime and are ready to go. Only a small handful of countries in the world still have rosters clearly superior to ours. This has never been true before. We need fear no one, and we should expect to beat—at least on paper—almost any nation we face.
Bring on 2024!
The Other Side of the Coin
At the same time, just as our player pool is peaking, I've never been lower on our coach or our federation. It is the worst of times.
Let’s talk about the coach first.
Watching this team play feels exactly like watching a poorly coached team of superior talent beat only the teams with clearly inferior talent. It’s painful and frustrating. The USMNT today plays as less than the sum of its parts. This is an utter break with USMNT tradition. The talent of the players is encumbered—not enhanced—by the rigid system we play under coach Gregg Berhalter. We lose to teams who are better, we lose to teams who are on par with us, and we often lose to teams who are slightly inferior to us.
We are out-coached every game.
Case in point: The Nations League semifinal against Jamaica at the end of March. We fielded a team of players from the world's top five leagues. It was a team of astonishing quality relative to USMNT history. And yet we really, really, only barely beat—on an own goal in the 95th minute—a Jamaica team made up of Euro 2nd division players and MLS lifers. They were missing their best players. Their roster was two levels below ours. Yet the match was woefully even. Jamaica even outplayed us for parts of the game. Reggae Boyz coach Heimir Hallgrímsson ran tactical circles around Berhalter.
Gregg called in a great roster (finally!), but he again deployed several players in the wrong places and employed poor tactics. He withheld Gio Reyna until the 2nd half for what can only be his own personal reasons or some unending vendetta.
Reyna turned out to be the best-performing player in the pool and eventually won player of the tournament—despite Berhalter playing him only half the first game and out of position in the second game.
After that lucky escape against Jamaica, yes, we thoroughly beat Mexico in the final. Again. We beat Mexico again. It never gets old to beat our rivals, but it is no longer an impressive feat to beat this weak incarnation of Mexico. Nevertheless the mainstream media commentators—most of whom get or seek paychecks from MLS or the federation—predictably trumpeted this triumph and sang Gregg's praises.
There are two simple reasons we look so good against Mexico these days:
1. Our players are better. Much better. The gap in talent has never been this large in our favor. Mexico is at the nadir of their player development cycle, and their own federation's corruption has led to an increasingly insular league keeping their best players rather than letting them go to Europe to develop.
2. Mexico is the one team on earth that we play who tries to outplay us with inferior talent. Any normal coach who looked at the disparity in talent between the two teams would set up in a low block and hit us on the counter. This is what Panama and Jamaica do. But Mexico cannot do this on account of their soccer identity and national pride. They simply cannot admit by their playing style that the US is better. So they keep coming out trying to outplay us, and this is the one time Gregg can out-coach someone.
It's no coincidence that the only matches in which Berhalter looks good are the matches against truly weak nations and Mexico. Gregg looks good against our nemesis to the South because that team—bless their corazones—remain paralyzed by pride.
Still Getting It Wrong
Still, stubbornly, for some inscrutable reason, Berhalter played Reyna out of position against Mexico. After the normally-docile TV commentators joined the fan base and demanded that Reyna start after his scintillating second half appearance against Jamaica—which won that match for us—Berhalter finally started him. Yet he deployed him as a strange, deep-lying, left-sided midfielder, like a cross between a "6" and a left back. It was bizarre. Reyna played stretches of the match at midfield, as deep as our central defenders. I wish this were a joke.
With Reyna’s unique attacking talents, he should play centrally and high up the field. But Gregg always has his own ideas, especially when it comes to the son of his erstwhile best friend. Some commentators (again, those who coincidentally depend on MLS or the federation for their paychecks) called the Reyna-at-left-back experiment an instance of Berhalter's innovative brilliance—since we did in fact win the match—but in reality it made the match closer than it should have been in the first half. The Reyna experiment was just one more in a string of indecipherable, poor tactical choices that just so happen to harm Reyna's ability to shine.
Reyna shone nonetheless, scoring a beautiful goal on one of his rare forays into the attack to finally put the game away in the second half. Had it been in doubt at that point, it was no longer in doubt: Reyna was player of the tournament.
When will Gregg let Reyna have the keys to the car? I don't know. I don't know what has to happen. Someone has to pry those keys from Gregg's stubborn hands. Gregg, please, for the love of the soccer gods, just do what every half-brained soccer fan can see and has been demanding forever: Let Reyna play the “10” role in the center of the field and connect with Pulisic and Balogun (our two other most talented players). Let Reyna run the offense. Don't insist the fullbacks Jedi and Dest play farther up the field than the midfielders. Don’t insist every attack has to be a cross from the wings into the box. Let the midfielders and wingers cook. The wingers are fine without these overlaps, and it suppresses Jedi's best quality—his speed—if he's already high up the field with nowhere to run when we get the ball. Let our most talented players play in their most comfortable roles. This is what Hudson and BJ did, and that brief respite from Berhalter Ball provided what remain the USMNT’s best performances this decade.
Those are my thoughts. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
We have a tremendous, talented roster, one that is fully capable of making history and pushing deep into the world’s major tournaments. We also have a coach who is in far over his head at this level but who just so happens to be the brother of a longtime high-ranking official in MLS and the federation.
A Fair Shake
I don't want you or me to be blinded by Berhalters's family connections or poor track record. He does have some positive traits. He sometimes makes good choices. He did try some tactical variations against Mexico other than the Reyna head-scratcher, and not all were foolish. He fielded pretty clearly our best lineup in the match. This has been the case since Qatar and his rehiring—after four years of nonsensical lineups, Berhalter has been getting roster construction and lineups generally right. Credit where credit is due. He still won’t call in John Anthony Brooks, Duane Holmes, Reggie Cannon, or several other good players with whom he has quarreled, but most of those players are no longer truly needed, and he has made a passable peace with Ricardo Pepi and (probably) Giovanni Reyna.
Berhalter remains poor at tactics, in-game management, instilling confidence in his players, winning away from home, and competing on equal footing against good teams.
But credit where credit is due. He has incorporated Folarin Balogun quickly, and if he can now figure out how to get him the ball with space to run at defenders, we could be in business. Playing Reyna at the “10,” as BJ did last summer, will help.
I’m fairly certain that the hiring “process” that brought Berhalter back after the post-Qatar debacle was predetermined, dishonest, and fraught with corruption and nepotism—and I think we could easily find a better coach any day of the week—but I will support this team even with Gregg at the helm. I seek to be both a passionate fan and an impartial observer.
Therefore, I seek today to give Berhalter a fair shake before and after this huge Copa America. This tournament should be viewed as the ultimate test for Berhalter prior to the 2026 World Cup. If the team performs well, I will be the first to call for him to stay through 2026. If he and the team do poorly, I hope we can all join in calling for a better coaching appointment in advance of this historic home World Cup.
So I will present now my expectations and grades-to-be for our performance in next month's Copa America. What type of performance would deserve an “A,” a “B,” or an “F” at the Copa America?
What Would Earn an ‘A’ at the Copa America?
We are hosting this tournament here in the US of A—so one of Gregg's major Achilles Heels shouldn't be exposed. We have almost never won away matches with Berhalter at the helm, but every match of this tournament will be a home match. On paper, we should win the tight matches since we’re on home ground.
But will we? I fear the status quo will continue: the good teams will outplay us, the equal teams will be better coached, and the weaker teams will set up in a low block and hit us on the counter while Berhalter chooses not to deploy the tactics best suited to unlock defensive opponents. I worry we will not get far in this tournament, but we should. Thus I earnestly hope and pray to be wrong about my fears, and I will grade this team’s performances honestly during and after the tournament.
Gregg, please prove me wrong and take this talented US squad on a roll to the final in the Copa America!
Rather than put these predictions in this article, which has already grown quite long, I'm creating a separate post for in-advance grades for the Copa America. That will be published in the next few days.
The Other Elephant in the Room
In addition to my concerns about—and ongoing opposition to—Gregg Berhalter serving as coach of the USMNT, I also said I've never been lower on the federation. I will explain that complex situation—and my reasons for realism and pessimism—in a third post, which also resides already in my drafts folder and will be forthcoming very soon.