Following the final whistle, Jurgen Klinsmann approached Lionel Messi for a quick embrace. It was a sign of respect between two of the game’s greatest strikers, but Klinsmann insists that respect on the field of play proved to be his side’s undoing on Tuesday night.
Messi and Argentina put the U.S. Men’s National Team to the sword on Tuesday night in a 4-0 win that catapulted Argentina to the Copa America final. It also ended the USMNT’s run on a sour note, with only a third-place game remaining to recover a bit of goodwill in the wake of Tuesday’s resounding defeat.
It took just three minutes for the USMNT to find themselves behind the eight ball. A moment of magic from Messi found Ezequiel Lavezzi for a third-minute header. It left the U.S. shellshocked, and then never recovered against a team widely recognized as one of the best in the world.
“I think it had to do a bit with the early goal,” Klinsmann said, “but then you are trying to scream onto the field, ‘Go at them! Go! Become physical! Step on their toes!’ I think tonight you could clearly see in that moment, once we were down 1–0, we had far too much respect. They smell that. They feel that. And they start to play their game with all the quality they have.
“After that early goal, I think our players could feel they were just probably in every position on the field just better than we are.”
Battling from behind from the first moments, the U.S. effort remained disappointing. As goal after goal flew in from Argentina, the U.S. failed to muster a shot on the day, one which will go down as a wasted opportunity.
Throughout the tournament run, Klinsmann has said that opportunities like Tuesday’s don’t come too often. It’s the No. 1 team in the world, after all, and the U.S. was given a chance to go at them in a legitimate competition.
They failed, and not just on the scoresheet. Unable to muster much of an attack and inexplicably careless in defense, the U.S. was knocked out without a fight.
Klinsmann lamented several small moments. Just before Messi’s masterful free kick that swung the tide even forward, Klinsmann says the start forward took the chance to move the ball towards net. The USMNT didn’t object, and Klinsmann hinted that it was their admiration for the star forward that made the difference throughout the night.
Overall, it was a night where positives were hard to come by, but Klinsmann said the goal was to take Tuesday’s match as a step back ahead of a pair of steps forward.
“Hopefully when we play these teams every year, when you play them on a regular basis, I think that respect kind of gets smaller and smaller,” Klinsmann said. “It’s all mental and the more often we can play these teams, these caliber of teams, the more we’re going to learn. The more I think the players will be more and more confident to take them on. With some teams, it already kind of happens. Today it didn’t because it was just a number too big for us.”
The key will now be to put the Argentina defeat past them, as the U.S. will now approach one final clash with a South American contender.
Whether it’s Colombia or Chile standing in the USMNT’s way, the third-place game will offer Klinsmann and co. a chance at a bit of redemption. In Colombia, the U.S. could exact a bit of revenge against the team that saddled them with a tournament-opening loss on the big stage. Against Chile, the U.S. would have another chance to take down one of the world’s elite, a team that is coming off a Copa America title just last year.
Still, any progress will need to be made in the face of overwhelming disappointment. With one match still to play, the U.S. will need to review, and improve upon, each aspect of Tuesday’s game ahead of another chance to go toe-to-toe with one of South America’s elite.
“We never really got going,” said goalkeeper Brad Guzan. “When you go down a goal and give their players too much time and space on the ball, they have the ability to pick a pass. They have the ability to bring the ball out of the air. In that aspect, we probably gave them too much time and space.
“Of course you look back at it,” he added. “We’ll look back at the video of the game, the mistakes, the goals, places where we could have done better like we do with every game. We’ll look back at it and now we’ll turn our focus and attention to the third-place game.”