Time For a Change

When the U.S. Men's National Team was poised to rehire Gregg Berhalter after the 2022 World Cup, I was all for it.  Even after all that stuff with the Reynas airing his dirty laundry came out, I still felt he was the right man for the job and that certainly shouldn't have disqualified him (especially after the details of what actually happened emerged).  I no longer feel that way.  Not after what happened in Copa America.

While it's not the low of failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, it's pretty close.  Nobody thought the United States would win the Copa America.  Getting out of a group that included Uruguay, Panama and Bolivia was the bare minimum people were expecting.  Instead, the Americans lost two games and managed to do something that had never happened before.  For the first time in 20 global/regional international tournaments they've hosted, they failed to get past the group stage.

That stat is bad enough.  What makes it worse, though, is what this Copa America meant to the U.S. Men's National Team.  It's less than two years until the United States hosts the 2026 World Cup.  This World Cup won't be like the 1994 World Cup.  People are expecting the U.S. to make some noise two years from now.  This was the biggest tournament the team will play in before that.  It was supposed to be the test of how they stack up against the top South American teams heading into the biggest tournament in U.S. soccer history.  Not only did it not go well, it was a total embarrassment!

It isn't just that they lost.  It's how.  After a great opening win over Bolivia, everything turned when Tim Weah got a (deserved) red card in the 18th minute against Panama.  The U.S. is better than Panama.  They know this.  Panama knows this.  But Panama's also a familiar opponent, made the game ugly, and took advantage of playing with an extra man for the better part of the final 70 minutes.

So, instead of the Uruguay game being essentially meaningless and only deciding seeding, it became a must-win.  While Uruguay is a good team, it was definitely a winnable game, and the U.S. started off well.  However, they generated no offensive chances until the end (when they were down a goal and had to press the issue).  No matter how well you play defensively, you can't win if you don't score.  It's that simple.  It was a must-win game, but they showed little to no urgency and at no point did you think the goal they needed (which eventually became the two goals they needed) would come.

Once again, the U.S. men fell to a highly-ranked opponent.  They've proven they can beat the other CONCACAF teams (the loss to Panama notwithstanding).  What they haven't done in Berhalter's tenure is beat a top team from Europe or South America.  In a pre-tournament friendly, they got their butts kicked 5-1 by Colombia, but did earn a draw against Brazil in their next game.  If the U.S. wants to be taken seriously as a contender on the world stage, they need to win those games.  Or, at the very least, be competitive against those teams.  That hasn't happened.

Since Berhalter's rehiring, the results simply haven't been there.  The team's record is right around .500 over the past 12 months, and the wins haven't exactly come against a who's who of the top teams in FIFA (Oman, Uzbekistan, Canada, Trinidad & Tobago).  They won the CONCACAF Nations League Finals in March (big freakin' deal!), but their only other win in 2024 was the Bolivia game in Copa America.  Meanwhile, they got smacked by Colombia and had a loss to Slovenia in January, in addition to the losses to Panama and Uruguay.

You can't say it's because of a lack of talent, either.  By all accounts, this is the best group of players the U.S. Men's National Team has ever had.  They're pretty much all based in Europe playing for some of the top clubs in the world, and, for the most part, actually playing.  Now, they aren't the "golden generation" as some want to claim since they haven't done anything to earn that title (which will always belong to the Landon Donovan/Clint Dempsey teams anyway), but the players are certainly good enough to hang with the world's best.

Berhalter seems to have the support of the locker room, too.  During the whole Reyna saga, the players publicly declared that they wanted him back, and they all seem to genuinely like him.  Even after they fizzled out of the Copa America, they had Berhalter's back.  But what else would you expect them to say...especially right after the game? 

And, frankly, the fact that the players like him so much may be part of the problem.  How much accountability is there in the locker room?  Have they gotten too complacent?  As Carli Lloyd said during the postgame, the women's players hated their coaches when she played for the National Team.  But you know what?  They got results.  So, whatever they were doing was obviously working.  And does it really matter if the players like their coach as long as the team wins?

You can't exactly get rid of the players, either.  Sure, you can make changes to the lineup or go to a different tactical formation, but the players themselves aren't the problem.  You aren't replacing Christian Pulisic or Tyler Adams with someone better.  Because that person doesn't exist.  So, it's up to the coach to get the best out of the talent he's got on the roster (and there's plenty of it).

Which brings me back to the coaching.  Jurgen Klinsmann got the boot in 2016 after a pair of disastrous results in World Cup qualifying.  He was replaced by Bruce Arena, who only lasted until the end of that unsuccessful qualifying campaign.  So, it's not unprecedented for U.S. Soccer to dismiss a coach based on the team's poor performance.  And that's exactly what the 2024 Copa America was.  Actually, scratch that.  It wasn't just a poor performance.  It was a terrible, embarrassing performance.

Fans of the U.S. Men's National Team deserve better than the display they saw at Copa America.  Sure, there were a bunch of other factors that had a direct bearing on the results (terrible officiating is right there at the top of the list), but the bottom line is they failed.  The team didn't get the job done on the biggest stage they've had since the Qatar World Cup and the only big stage they will have until they host the next World Cup.

The performance at Copa America did nothing to inspire confidence heading into the only home World Cup for a generation.  Keeping Gregg Berhalter as the team's manager wouldn't do anything to restore that confidence, either.  In fact, it would just be doubling down on something that clearly isn't working.  So, there really seems to be only one logical solution.  The U.S. Men's National Team needs a change at the top.  Immediately.