Neil W. Blackmon
Last month, I was in Trinidad on business and a client and I headed out to Couva, the quiet little town in the Trinidadian countryside where American soccer dreams went to die.
“What a night that was for Trinidad to win that game, after all the fuss the US made over the field and the way the staff seemed to treat the game like a formality,” my proud Trinidadian friend exclaimed, only partly trying to get under my skin.
The 2-1 World Cup qualifying loss on October 10, 2017 to an already eliminated from World Cup qualification Trinidad and Tobago “B” team my friend refers to, of course, eliminated the United States from 2018 FIFA Men’s World Cup qualification and, in less important news, ruined my birthday. Simply being in Couva and seeing Ato Bolden Stadium again- which on that rainy October day was playing host to CONCACAF Women’s Olympic qualifying matches– was emotionally taxing.
“How are things going for US Soccer and the Men’s National Team since that October night?”my client asked me earnestly.
I wish I could have replied “Well,” or even, “It’s a long road, but the Americans are on the right path.”
The Catastrophe in Couva, as I’ve called it since hours after it occurred, should have sparked systemic change in US Soccer, beginning with Soccer House in Chicago and filtering down to the various state organizations and communities that handle the bulk of youth development in the United States.
It hasn’t.
Instead, both on and off the field, the US Soccer Federation and USMNT remain stuck in the Couva mud, at times quite willfully ignorant or at a minimum oblivious to the reality that, to paraphrase the Big Lebowski, the plane has crashed into the mountain.
In many ways, the US are farther away from a healthy culture- and certainly World Cup qualification- than they were that muggy, rainy night in the Trinidadian hills.
The latest evidence of collective US failure and regression came last month in Toronto, where a listless US Men’s National Team lost 2-0 to northern neighbor Canada in a game that wasn’t really that close.
It was the first victory for Canada over the United States in men’s soccer in 34 years, and worse, it was no fluke.
The Canadians played harder, had a better game plan and were more technical in every respect. Had Jonathan David finished an early chance after an astonishingly poor Cristian Roldan giveaway, the US would have had to chase the game for 80 minutes. As it ended, the 2-0 scoreline flattered the Americans, who were nowhere close to Canada’s level.
There will be a return fixture this weekemd in Orlando, and after last month’s embarrassment, US Soccer is billing the game as “payback.” That the US needs “payback” against Canada is a testament to how far the Americans have fallen. That the US will have to chase “payback” without three of the federation’s best players- Christian Pulisic and (like it or not) Jozy Altidore and Michael Bradley, doesn’t seem to bode well. Canada have played well of late and even with Pulisic and Bradley, the US are all too often stolid and predictable, a plodding, unimaginative team that isn’t particularly difficult to play against.
That’s deeply troubling, given the reasons offered by Soccer House in Chicago for bringing in Gregg Berhalter as the team’s manager.
“We have to become difficult to play against again,” Berhalter said this January, days before his national team debut. “We have to evolve (tactically) but we have to retain and recapture what made it hard to play the Americans.”
Berhalter was brought in to bridge the gap.
As a former USMNT player, he would value and appreciate the grit and toughness of the best American teams of the past. He would use that understanding and build upon it, implementing a system that would help the US evolve tactically into a country whose football, not just fitness and toughness, could challenge the world.
That was the goal before Berhalter too and, as my friend Matt Doyle wrote at MLS Soccer last month, “it was a noble goal” and “absolutely the right thing to pursue.”
The problem is it isn’t working.
The US aren’t difficult to play against, and haven’t been in year one under Berhalter, have shown little on-field progress in becoming either a) the build-from-the-back and keep the ball group Berhalter wants to build systematically or b) the hard-to-play against band of ragamuffins who weather World Cup groups of death and score 92nd minute goals to win World Cup groups, let alone both.
Since a testy Gold Cup final loss to Mexico— perhaps the best the US have played under Berhalter, at least in terms of being difficult to break down— the US have undoubtedly regressed. The Americans closed the summer by being run through mercilessly by Mexico on Labor Day weekend, unable to string passes together or deal with even token midfield pressure. The Canada loss built upon those errors— except in the competitive setting of the new CONCACAF Nations League— with the US outclassed in midfield (despite Canada losing a midfield starter in the game’s first 10 minutes) and overwhelmed in transition. In truth, had Canada finished a bit better and not been profligate with multiple first half chances, the game would have been well out of hand, instead of finishing with the deceptively touch and go scoreline of 2-0.
At this stage in the Berhalter era, and now two years removed from the catastrophe in the Couva mud, it’s difficult to identify any single area of the US men’s program discernibly better than it was prior to the World Cup qualification failure.
The US Player pool since Couva is still frighteningly incomplete, and players that could help- like Ale Bedoya or John Brooks (above), have been injured or oddly out of the picture.
The American player pool is still frighteningly incomplete, even with the much-needed addition of fullback/wingback Sergino Dest of Ajax, who picked the United States over Netherlands late last month.
Defensively, the United States lacks a viable centerback pairing, with their best talent, John Brooks of Wolfsburg FC, rarely healthy and no genuine playing partner to pair him with even when he is available. Matt Miazga has played relatively well at Reading, but Gregg Berhalter doesn’t seem to rate him, and in fact elected to bring LAFC’s Walker Zimmerman, a rangy but inconsistent defender with limited passing ability, to the November camp instead. Berhalter has preached that club form matters immensely, making the decision to bring in Zimmerman, part of LAFC’s failed playoff defense that hemorrhaged goals, as opposed to Miazga, who has been steady in the English Championship, all the more curious.
In midfield, Wil Trapp knows Berhalter’s system but has shown repeatedly he isn’t up to the tempo of the international game. Cristian Roldan played well initially as one of Berhalter’s “two number tens” but he also seems to be a step behind the pace of the game against better national team sides, and his ghastly performance against Canada makes his November callup morbidly fascinating.
While Trapp and Roldan get consistent run from Berhalter, veterans that would help the team accomplish the admirable goal of being difficult to play against, such as Philadelphia Union midfielder Alejandro Bedyoa, have been left out in the cold.
Fabian Johnson, a top 20 chance creator among Bundesliga wingers only a year ago, per Opta, has told TYAC as recently as this summer he would be happy to rejoin the US fold. Berhalter has not called him in— depriving the US of a wide midfield and fullback option.
Darlington Nagbe is precisely the type of ball mover in traffic the Americans lacked against Canada and Mexico; the only move he’s made during an international window of late is one from Atlanta to Columbus.
In their stead, there is little in the way of the projected youth movement.
Tyler Adams has spent most of his 2019 in German physio rooms, trying to get healthy, helpless to render aid.
Weston McKennie still seems a man without a position, a talented player who can plug a lot of roles but one whose time at Schalke, where at least until this season they played little tactical football, has done him a disservice.
Beyond McKennie and Adams, the American midfield youth movement lacks proven- or even highly encouraging- commodities.
There have been a few bright moments that showed promise— the commitment of Dest, the emergence of Reggie Cannon as a fullback option, the encouraging debut of San Jose midfielder Jackson Yeuill—but in the main, the US are still reeling from Couva and reliant on players they should be able to relegate to veteran voice off the bench type roles.
The US midfield continues to rely on aging players like Michael Bradley, who should be role players but now but can’t be due to development failures that caused a dearth in options.
Michael Bradley is 32, but still an essential part of the US midfield thanks to the dearth of options truly better than him in the center internationally. Bradley’s locker room chops and leadership are invaluable, but is it truly fair to Michael that he carry such a heavy load through another qualifying cycle? Forever a polarizing figure, largely through no fault of his own, Bradley will never complain about it. But it is instructive Berhalter has to rely on him as much as he does a year away from qualifying.
Other veterans, like Bradley’s Toronto FC teammate Jozy Altidore, remain the best option at their position, although in Altidore’s case he seems, when healthy, to be the placeholder for the improving Josh Sargent of Werder Bremen.
Tim Ream, also 32, has been asked to carry a starter’s minutes while the US works out defensive combinations. His passing and positional understanding remain valuable as a depth piece–but the Fulham man is long past being a qualifying mainstay.
In attack, the US remain entirely too reliant on Christian Pulisic, whose best club moments come as a secondary creator that blitzes the channels and latches onto balls in space, to win one on one battles and provide attacking verve. Sometimes Pulisic delivers, but at only 21 years old, sometimes he fails, as we saw against Canada, when he delivered the quality off-ball run only to punch his shot weakly at Canada goalkeeper Milan Borjan.
Complementary attacking pieces are few and far between, with the notable 2019 exception of the reliable field stretcher and workhorse Paul Arriola and Jordan Morris, who helped lead Seattle to an Audi MLS Playoffs championship last week and has been good for the national team almost all year.
Those are only a few areas where the US lack depth and Berhalter has lacked the ideas, or the willingness to call up personnel, that would get the US back to being difficult to play against, which was, one could argue, the easier of his two stated primary goals when appointed manager.
Morris and Arriola aren’t gamechangers, but they are, one would think, a decent start, especially for a manager willing to think pragmatically, or play off the counter.
Berhalter is willing to do neither, at least for now, and with US Soccer General Manager Earnie Stewart’s proclamation this week that Berhalter’s “job is safe” because the “US have made progress,” it appears Soccer House is invested for long haul.
Maybe the commitment to ideological change and tactical rigidity will payoff. Maybe Berhalter is right that the US simply have to approach his system with a greater degree of urgency and intensity.
Then again, the US have been difficult to play against and played lovely soccer in the past in a less dogmatic system that privileged deploying personnel in the manner that best suits them to a more pure, ideological approach. For this US group, like others before it, there certainly seems to be the personnel available to sit deep, defend and use electric pace and talent on the break. Two of the best technical moments in the history of US Soccer- Charlie Davies’s qualifying goal at Azteca in 2009 and Landon Donovan’s goal against Brazil at the Confederations Cup that same summer– for example, came playing on the counter.
There’s nothing wrong with not building from the back or playing like Barcelona. Leicester City won the Premier League with a strong spine and attackers that were lethal on the break. Greece won a EURO by defending and picking their spots getting forward. Costa Rica and Jorge Pinto recently made a World Cup quarterfinal with a 5-3-2 that relied heavily on one technical conduit (Bryan Ruiz) and a pair of pacy, physical forwards to find goals. Sometimes, doing what is pragmatic and practical plays more effective soccer than the ideologically pretty and pure.
For US Soccer, time may prove them correct.
The US likely will even look better in the November friendlies, beginning tonight in Orlando, buoyed by a good home crowd at the usually boisterous Exploria Stadium and a lighthearted fixture on a Cayman Islands cricket field against Cuba. None of that should alter the long-term evaluation, that this is a men’s program still very much finding its way forward, and all too often, stuck in the same spot it was in two Octobers ago, spinning its wheels in the mud.
Neil W. Blackmon co-founded The Yanks Are Coming. Follow him on Twitter @nwblackmon.