Those who follow the United States men’s national team had hoped to discover more about their favorite international soccer squad’s degree of readiness for the 2022 FIFA World Cup through two games scheduled this month in Europe against opponents that likewise had qualified for Qatar.
Despite the 180 minutes of soccer the Americans played Tuesday against Saudi Arabia and last week against Japan, there might have been more to learn in the 30-second Volkswagen commercial aired at halftime that features young star Christian Pulisic.
After being serenaded by an eclectic chorus that includes U.S. legend Clint Dempsey, each reciting the word “pressure,” Pulisic is stretched out on a coach and is asked by a therapist: “Where do you think this pressure is coming from?”
“Everyone,” he says. And ain’t that the truth.
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The World Cup is 58 days away. It has been eight years since the U.S. men got to be a part of this festival. And pretty much everyone who might be on the roster was a kid when Dempsey and pals kicked off against Ghana on that summer night in Brazil in 2014.
Think about it. Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Pulisic were 15. Yunus Musah, Gio Reyna and Ricardo Pepi were 11. Only four of the starters in the 0-0 draw Tuesday against Saudi Arabia, the final U.S. prep game, were pros when the Americans last competed in the World Cup. On the entire roster for these games, well more than two dozen players including those who withdrew because of injury, just one player ever appeared in a World Cup game.
Coach Gregg Berhalter used the word “anxiety” in his short talk with reporters and said, “We lacked a little confidence, and I think that hurt performance.” Quite honestly, he simplified this more than is necessary.
It’s so much more than that. The USMNT journey back from the ignominy of 2018 never was going to follow a straight line – no matter who was hired as coach, no matter how many of the program’s players now suit up for brand-name clubs in the most prominent leagues.
This is a program lacking in onfield leadership because no one who really matters has been on field for these sorts of games. The youngest players from 2014 – Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore – are just far enough past their peaks to be unavailable to help. The dearth of talent between that age group and the Pulisic cohort was one reason for the failure to qualify for Russia 2018 — and left the 2022 group on their own.
And this group has faced a World Cup cycle unlike any in the 92-history of the event.
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The combination of the winter World Cup and the COVID-19 pandemic has changed this year’s tournament in so many ways, almost without exception for the worst.
The North American qualification process was squeezed into an impossibly short time frame and demanded teams play three games in six days on four occasions in a seven-month period. Domestic leagues are rushing to contest as many games as possible before going on at least a six-week hiatus. This may have something to do with the absence of (at least) four key starters for the game the USMNT played against Japan.
The World Cup itself will begin precisely one week after the last of the major national leagues goes on break. The MLS Cup final will be Nov. 5. Spain’s La Liga will complete its last round of games on Wednesday, Nov. 9. England’s Premier League will push that to the weekend ending Nov. 13.
So some of this was avoidable and some of it was not. It has had an impact, though, and lately for the USMNT it’s been an inability to find the inspiration and energy that carried them through the desperate need to make it through the CONCACAF octagonal.
Even into the recent friendlies, the on-field performances have seen the players spiral into a mental funk.
“I feel for them. It’s a difficult situation to be in,” Berhalter said after the Saudi Arabia draw. “Everyone’s fighting for roster spots and instead of coming out and really performing like the team we know we are, we lacked a little confidence in that. I think that hurt performance. There were certainly spaces to take advantage of today and we didn’t do that enough.”
Think about the assignment this team was handed. After its predecessors botched qualification for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the first time the USMNT had missed in three decades, this group was presented with a single commandment: Get there, or else.
They got that done. And now, in the middle of trying to gain and hold jobs with the clubs that pay their salaries, and to remain healthy enough to continue playing in their leagues and not jeopardize their positions on the U.S. roster, and in some cases struggling to do achieve either or both of those, they’re asked to take a 10-day break and once again find the energy and connection that carried them through the biggest games a year ago.
Some would consider these excuses. Excuses for what, though? For failing to entertain or improve in a couple of friendlies in empty stadiums? Even the site of those games, one in Spain against Saudi Arabia and one in Germany against Japan, underscores the unique nature of this particular and peculiar World Cup.
If it hadn’t meant jetting nearly the entire roster across the Atlantic, risking still more fatigue, U.S. Soccer could have scheduled a couple more exhibitions domestically in front friendly crowds sending off the home team in style.
None of this will be an excuse if the U.S. delivers a performance on this level in the opener Nov. 21 against Wales. Because the Welsh have faced all the same obstacles with their league schedules. And they had to continue even longer – more than two months after the Americans finished – to earn their World Cup spot.
The default position for many USMNT fans appears to be fury: at the coach they don’t like, at the player selections the coach they don’t like has made, at the changes the coach they don’t like doesn’t make when the team performs poorly and at the changes he does make when those maneuvers fail to produce the desired result.
America will be at the World Cup, though. Given how little time there will be to gather the members of the USMNT in advance of the World Cup, the proverbial “plane” to Qatar justifiably might be split into a half-dozen flights from different parts of the planet.
Gregg Berhalter will be leading this team into the World Cup whether fans want him in charge or not. He’s made it clear, through the consistent selections of players like Aaron Long and Ricardo Pepi over fan favorites John Brooks and Jordan Pefok, that he will be doing this his way, and there’s nothing any of you or I can do about it. He has accepted the responsibility, as any good head coach does, of doing things his own way.
There’s never been a World Cup like this, and never a U.S. team like this, either. The talent that’s led to two continental trophies and three wins over rival Mexico in the past year, that’s still there. But the foremost members of the USMNT will arrive in Qatar without experience, with essentially no one to ask before the first game begins: Hey, what’s this like? They will find out together.
If the players are as lacking in energy and aggression against Wales as they were in the past week, though, that alone will be the first great upset of Qatar 2022.
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