Hugo Perez has coached many of the current players in the U.S. men’s national team squad and although his focus is on helping El Salvador reach the 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States, the former USMNT player didn’t hold back praise for the current roster.
Perez watched from the sidelines on Monday night at Exploria Stadium as El Salvador fell to the USMNT 1-0, finishing second in Group D of League A in Concacaf Nations League action. La Selecta came into the match needing a victory to top the group and reach the tournament’s knockout stage this summer, but conceded a second-half winner to Ricardo Pepi.
El Salvador fought valiantly against the USMNT in both of its head-to-head showdowns during the Nations League, with the Americans needing a 90th minute equalizer from Jordan Morris to earn a 1-1 draw last June. Perez has posted a 10-9-18 record since being appointed manager of El Salvador in April 2021, leading La Selecta to the Gold Cup quarterfinals that summer and also earning victories since then over Honduras, Panama, Jamaica, and one draw against the United states.
After going toe-to-toe with the USMNT in Monday’s latest showdown, Perez praised the current generation of talent in the U.S. Soccer program.
“Look, I know all those players. I don’t know what percentage [of them] started with us in the national team,” he said postmatch. “I know they have an interim coach right now. I hope, for the sake of our football here in America, let’s face it, the U.S. wants to win the World Cup. It’s a great opportunity that they’re not going to qualify for the [2026] World Cup, they’re already in.”
“I’m sure they’re going to make the right decision who they’re going to bring, or leave [Anthony Hudson] as the coach,” Perez added. “Basically, the coaches are important, don’t get me wrong, but the players that they have, okay, those players that they have right now..you’re talking about a generation for another 15 years.”
The USMNT made seven starting lineup changes from Friday’s 7-1 victory over Grenada to Monday’s result in Orlando. Star talent remained on the field with Christian Pulisic, Gio Reyna, Weston McKennie, and Matt Turner all reclaiming their spots in Hudson’s lineup while Pepi made an instant impact off the bench.
Several other USMNT players were not included in the March window due to respective reasons including Tyler Adams, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Malik Tillman, and Josh Sargent. The growing number of senior options will only continue to grow as well as several youth talents continue to make their way to Europe.
Perez will now prepare his El Salvador squad for a deep run in this summer’s Gold Cup before gearing up for World Cup Qualifying starting in March 2024. The USMNT could be on La Selecta’s radar later this summer, providing another opportunity for Perez to defeat one of FIFA’s growing programs.
“we don’t have a national style really.”
And this matters because?
What national style does France have?
Other than give the ball to Leo as often as humanly possible what national style does Argentina have?
Berhalter’s tactics won
all arguing about tactics need to keep that in mind whehter you hated the tactics or not…he won with them
AND he was able to adjust from what was needed/worked in CONCACAF to very different ideas in the World Cup…see England game for example
He qualified 3rd by tiebreaker and our team was lackluster at the world cup despite the fact that he was handed the most talented team that ever put on the USA uniform. He then went public with what should have been private and poured gasoline on the whole Reyna fiasco. He is as bad as the the elder Reynas. The federation needs to clean out the old guard and replace them with people that have ideas rather than agendas.
“won?” we finished 2nd in 2019 GC, 3rd in WCQ, 2nd in our WC group, ended the WC with 1 win — iran. meh. better than it was but i thought this was the golden generation. do you mean summer 21? i don’t think he understands why that went different. if he did it would have kept repeating.
the trick to 21 was we played more like first half grenada — attacking selection, devil may care approach, de-emphasized defense. so we beat mexico 3-2 in OT. conversely GC we won a bunch of 1-0 games with tight defense. the US ever since then falls in the middle where 1-1 isn’t a success recipe. you need more GF or fewer GA. pick one.
your comment speaks for why i think we take the wrong portions of the schedule too serious. in order of seriousness it’s like WC, WCQ, NL, first GC (A teams), only then second GC (B teams). we won the second GC arena’s cycle and he then blew qualifying. it doesn’t mean as much as you think as teams typically save their starters for the following qualifying. to me what really matters is peaking at the end of the cycle and if you took a half look at how we finished, we backed into the world cup, tied ES, got clobbered in the last friendlies, meh at the world cup. i don’t get where people think this is on some high. over a period of several months we basically beat iran and grenada. whoop de do.
The USMNT is still a relatively young squad. Their level of talent has been growing, but we’re still not comparable to other national teams. We have enough talent to contend, but not enough to dominate. Part of the problem is that our players are still lacking experience….due to lack of consistent playing time and injuries. A bigger issue has been that we’ve lacked a coach who can get the most out of the talent we have. Gregg was too robotic and rigid in his tactics and what he required of his players. When the tactics worked the team played well. When they didn’t neither Gregg or the players could adapt on the fly. More/higher experience by the players will help with this over time, but we still need a more capable coach. Someone who’s able to evaluate talent develop a strategy/formation that plays to our strengths and minimizes our weaknesses. That wasn’t Gregg and I don’t think it’s Hudson.
“i also think something very basic has been lost here in the berhalter era. tactics are supposed to be primarily a device to win. a competitive advantage. it’s kind of become an aesthetic end in itself lately.”
What really been lost here is that until you actually get to a competition you care about , every game is preparation for that tourney. In our case that tourney is Copa America 2024.
You evaluate every one of these games as a single entity. Since you don’t know what the coaching staff is evaluating for Gregg when he returns, then you’re just guessing.
not sure how this is preparation for one summer event halfway in but not this one or the ultimate one. and not our region’s, someone else’s.
the history is CA actually tends to counter-predict our fortunes. the cycles that sucked at CA went on to do well. maybe because we usually send the Bs.
side point, there is a fanboy obsession where scheduling good teams makes you good. if this was true coming off 2018 we would have been gods. the reality is curacao might agree to play argentina, get their brains kicked in, and come out still curacao.
why? said it a jillion times but the teams that improve off a hard schedule are the ones who learn from the games, whether the tactics work, which players are exposed. that if they lose the team isn’t the same next time. if we instead view them as “work” for a pre-established unit, we don’t learn much and it’s just a result, a barometer, but in a passive sense.
It is almost as if the people who came up with the World Cup designed it so that everyone had to kind of drop what they were doing put together a team and try and win the thing. Qatar aside, the summer schedule was such that there was a high likelihood that a lot of players would be injured or needing a rest for next season. The point is the tournament is structured to favor the big boys like Brazil and France, etc.
“not sure how this is preparation for one summer event halfway in but not this one or the ultimate one. and not our region’s, someone else’s.”
CONMEBOL is a far tougher region that CONCACAF. Copa America would be very hard for any CONCACAF team. I would expect the USMNT to have a hard time but perhaps get better as the tournament goes along.
Copa America is the only chance this cycle for the USMNT to play WC level competition in competitive circumstances. Set about halfway through the cycle it should give people an idea of the state of the program.
And we can evaluate just how effective whoever the manager at that point is.
If Gregg/Hudson do well great.
If we look awful also great because we still have time to deep six the manager and look for someone better than Jason Kreis.
“side point, there is a fanboy obsession where scheduling good teams makes you good. ”
What was I thinking? Well, I have this insane, radical idea that if you play tougher opposition with something on the line it makes you better as a team.
I see now, going by your logic, that the USMNT should schedule USL teams like the Pittsburgh River hounds or the Rowdies. Or maybe Stanford.
Copa America is not a predictor of how a team will do in the World Cup.
There is no such tournament, no such predictor.
Certainly not the Gold Cup. Bruce won the 2017 Gold Cup before traveling to Couva.
The Confederations Cup was thought to be one but it didn’t really work out that way.
The best predictor/guarantee is to have as many top class players as a team like France. That helps insulate you from injuries and a loss of form. ( see Benzema, Karim Pogba, Paul and Kante, N’golo)
Have as many of them as possible be established stars for those teams that play in vital games in the Champions League on teams that play more or less similar styles.
Have them led by a manager who has enough of a track record so that the players will buy into them totally.
And make sure the manager is savvy enough to make the best of the extant player pool and deal with the various obstacles they will encounter along the way.
The USMNT that went to Qatar was far way from what I just described
“said it a jillion times but the teams that improve off a hard schedule are the ones who learn from the games, whether the tactics work, which players are exposed. that if they lose the team isn’t the same next time. if we instead view them as “work” for a pre-established unit, we don’t learn much and it’s just a result, a barometer, but in a passive sense.”
With the exception of Bora, the USMNT has never had a really good manager. The USSF ought to learn from that and get someone legit in here now that the World Cup is back here again.
We’ve had mediocre managers who made more or less the most of what was there but that’s not good enough. Bruce did a good job with what he had in 2002 but that team was also extremely lucky.
And we’ve never really had a competitive player pool, compared to the top dogs.
Argentina and France were the equivalent of two contending Champions League teams.
We’ve had players pools that showed up and gave everything to decent effect but again, that’s not the same thing. If the other teams give the same effort as our guys, they blow us off the pitch. Just about every time.
The World Cup is largely about the knockout stage.
In the group stage , that’s when the big teams play it safe, rotate their squads, figure out what works, figure out whose parents are complaining the most, all that stuff. So you get these ties with England where they do just enough not to get beat. Now, it’s England who could lose to us accidentally, but the point is they played for the tie.
Usually the big boys do just enough to get through, though sometimes they screw up and fail.
And the USMNT sucks at knock out games probably because that’s when the other guys have to get serious.
Even in 2002, our only knockout win came against who? Mexico. A team that DMB said he and all the guys absolutely knew they were going to beat as soon as it was announced. El Tri never had a chance.
Using my own model, I’m picking France as my favorite to win the 2026 World Cup. With Italy next in line.
I do agree with Hugo but the problem continue to be USSF.
i agree to a point. some of the earlier wave of this bunch eg pulisic are in their mid 20s now (24). they may have a good cycle or two left. they do not have forever. this needs to come together faster. by next world cup he’ll be 27. this can’t be some 10 year project to change how soccer is played, at least not with the same set. there are some teens and guys around 20, different timescale. gaga at his slot could literally have those 15 years from now.
personally i wish they separated out a developmental push to take this in a direction — say, more technical players — from the tactics and selection of the senior team — which is pretty well molded and is what it is. but that would be contrary to empire-building ideas where everyone from U15 up has to play the same way.
on that point, we should have to “win something” serious before a coach gets the power to tell every, i dunno, YNT age group, regional pool, state ODP team we play “433 with…..” i mention empire building because we often enough seem to have clanger tactics and there is a lot of power in telling so many pyramid teams how they will roll. i also feel like it’s fighting reality, that sometimes your nation produces a type (but maybe not fitted to the tactics), or one age group is technicians but another is athletes or tall kids or bangers.
i also think it ignores that in a country with 30-ish MLS academies, some USL ones, colleges, select teams, etc., variety of approaches and personnel, we don’t have a national style really. we don’t truly control down to U5 or even U10. we don’t control the academies increasingly churning out players. some do well, some not. some play one way, some another. if they want to fix that “bradenton” or equivalent has to come back so the perceived leading age groupers are together in a place playing the same way.
“we don’t have a national style really.”
And this matters because?
What national style does France have?
Other than give the ball to Leo as often as humanly possible what national style does Argentina have?
Problem is we have a surplus of the attacking players. The redundancy is apparent. There’s no two players alike but a lot of players like the same area of the field. A few cycles ago it was a whole bunch of right side midfielders and no playmakers. Now, it’s a whole bunch of playmakers, who are bad decision makers. Someone has to play defense, someone has to make a play for their teammates. Someone has to draw fouls. Someone has to feed the CFs every time they are on the field. CP, Reyna, Zendejas, BA, all like the same space. Alan Sonora, Mihailovic, Tillman, Booth are similar to the 1st 4 players. Like being central more than often. Zendejas & BA may be the exceptions, none of these players are ask to press 4 their clubs, or put no effort to pressing, or are even good at pressing. Reyna did the best pressing I’ve ever seen in a U.S. jersey but he had CP, & Dike, who suck at pressing. While Musah & McKennie like the same space. MMA midfield has a winning record, scoring for this midfield isn’t a priority. It’s apparently clear! All I’ve listed is a few reasons why we see disjointed, choppy passing, and bad touches. Too much hero ball! This is a big reason why we may never see the US play at its best. Most of our players try to do too much. Again we are in generation: versatility but you can’t play everybody every where just to get them on the field. US need’s forward thinking not we must have every 10 on the field at the same time.
i see the problem as we haven’t really decided how we’re going to score goals, and then selected to that concept. people want an all star team of the big names or the “hot form” guy. people don’t ask how attackers A B C D fit together to do anything. to me they need to sit down and decide one of two things: (1) we will play x way and score goals by ______, then pick to that concept, even if it means benching names or form players; or (2) you pick the players you want out there and then you work back from them to some functioning set of tactics where they work together as opposed to just whack crosses or play james harden iso ball.
you do that sincerely and thoroughly and you will find a coherent unit to a system who do what is wanted. “we are a crossing team.” go pick crossers and header guys/finishers. “we will play balls to feet in the box.” different set. “we will use speed and counter.” another set. quit running it like an all star team or elias sports bureau.
i appreciate the “hustling” concerns — i came off a club team that you didn’t see the field if you didn’t defend hard, even upfield — but my issue with that is GB seemed to pick non-9s (9 was usually the “form” guy) to hustle around, almost to excess, which weakened the offense to the point we had 2 goals in qatar, but then compromised the value of attacking hustle by having some backs who couldn’t mark, particularly fullbacks. are we defending and playing for 1-0, or what? cause if the backs are picked for passing why not play the grenada first half bunch and just attack. cause you won’t pitch the shutout. to me GB was caught in between, a former back who wanted to press, but who having sold change decided to have some players in there for their offense.
personally i think presses are naive and childish diving in, and believe in a division of labor where the back 5 (+GK) destroy and the front 5 besides active tracking are there to attack. picking forwards for pressing is silly unless you are completely overmatched. i’d like to see us sit back and counter, chances over possession, which i think salvages some guys like mckennie who can crash the box and score but are mediocre at passing completion in a possession offense. we have athletes who aren’t messi technical gods. we have speed. we can defend. save your energy, sit back, let them come to us, win it, send weah long wide., ball into the box, christian and mckennie crash the box. what we used to do with landon. i appreciate the people who want this more technical but i don’t see that as our best players’ strength. we are speedy athletes.
this has tried to be a crossing team for 3 years with modest success. end that. i could theorize a balls to feet offense run through sargent and ferreira but the wings and AMs don’t seem that interested in feeding it. pass.
what they seem to want to do is put the ball behind defenses and square it in. roll with it. and i think it’ll work even better if we sit back and open up some green space to play into. and to be blunt this may not favor reyna or some others. but it’s what offense best suits the most productive players. weah, pulisic, etc. i think they want to get out and run. snobs want to flee “landon” but i think the talent and team are still back there. this isn’t a half court possession team or a mcbride team.
The USA lacks a coach with the requisite levels of cynicism, ruthlessness and practicality. Modern soccer coaches are more concerned about winning their way than winning because it is positioning yourself as a tactical genius that gets the bucks. A good international coach needs to a) get the defense organized b) work on defending and taking set pieces c) laying out a tactical plan and setting his expectations for his players and most important d) fairly but ruthlessly evaluating his team and weeding those players that are not up to scratch without sentiment or favoritism. Such coaches aren’t household names but they are out there and probably could be found for a reasonable price if our federation suits had any initiative.
“Again we are in generation: versatility but you can’t play everybody every where just to get them on the field. US need’s forward thinking not we must have every 10 on the field at the same time.”
Really? I guess maybe hiring a manager who knows how to coach might be a good idea. What do you think?
We’re all going to be dead before the USMNT has a word class or even a very good player in every position.
A really good manager will figure out how to make the most of his best players and then figure out how to get something out of the rest. Gregg , who did a reasonable job, never did get the hang of doing that.
In former Balon D’or winner Ruud Gullit’s, biography he claims he never felt comfortable playing for the Netherlands. But he did it anyway because that’s what you do for your country , play even if you’re not comfortable. He had 66 caps and 17 goals) and led them to their only trophy the 1988 Euros.
I hear so much crap about playing USMNT players out of position and that’s them being uncomfortable is why they can’t perform.
They can’t perform because they are wussies who suck. For me , if you’re a center back who can’t fill in at fullback or midfield , for example, then you better be all world at your primary spot or I’m not calling you up.
Weah is played at fullback by Lille and the USMNT fanbase lose their panties in horror. It’s a good thing Timo is good enough that he seems to be seizing the chance to play and make an impression. You’re never going to be a top ;player if you aren’t pushed to play beyond what you think is your best.
That’s the value of playing these semi pro intramural teams. It gives the USMNT manager a chance to experiment with certain players while still making it possible to retain the illusion of a winning “attitude” which is always important.
I’d have Perez right behind Curtin as North American-based coaches I’d want for the USMNT. Truthfully it might be closer than that…I’d really agonize over that decision, personally. And I’d have both guys ahead of, say, Jesse Marsch and certainly Gregg Berhalter. Perez is just so underrated, and his tactical wrinkles and man-management skills make El Salvador an absolute pain to play every single time out despite the fact that they have something like the square root of the talent of the USA, Mexico, or Canada.
I always refer back to that profound statement that was the central theme of Moneyball: people are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons – age, appearance, personality. In Perez’s case his problem is that he’s a rumpled-looking little guy pushing 60 who looks like an accountant from San Salvador, and despite the fact that he played for the USMNT it was during an age when the team was terrible, and his pedigree is anything but sexy: he knocked around on a variety of semi-pro teams as a player – his capstone was playing for the Los Angeles Aztecs in the NASL and a stint with the Commies (I do not kid, they really are) at Red Star Paris in the French third division. But the man can flat-out coach him some soccer.
At the very least, the man deserves an interview and genuinely serious consideration, and he’d certainly be high up on any list I’d personally make.
meh. the people pushing this theory are going off aesthetics. the reality is he’s won like 3 games total — including only 1 of their grenada contests (tying the other) — since the ocho started. for a team that is prettier to look at, they averaged less than a goal a game. so it’s not like they were an attacking bear of a loser.
and i agree with the poster on the other page who was like, true, he had a decent opening gambit, but he didn’t coach a full game.
ES didn’t adjust as the game went on like a team down 1-0 with nothing to lose as they were clinched secure in the “gold cup” slot ahead of 3rd place. at that point screw it i am playing 4 forwards chasing a goal or two because 1-0 is nothing but a moral victory, and i need a win to move up the standings. so what if they lose 3-0. they have to risk it to chase 2-1.
and lest people forget they had us down 1-0 their place and let us back in at the very end.
to be fair i could see someone him having opportunities all over CONCACAF, including MLS and USL but also latin american jobs due to bilingual and running ES, but i think people underrate how hard MLS is and noob coaches usually get handed a trash fire and not LAFC. to me if i wanted to fix a trash fire — like my dynamo — i go hire a proven coach who has won before, not someone who polished up a team that remained an also-ran.
if i had my pick of the regional bunch it’d be suarez from CR or one of the recent panama managers. CR was dessicated old and he had them tie us and go on the playoff. panama punches above their weight. but CR played defensive soccer and panama emphasizes athleticism. so the fanboys want slicker ES, results be darned. it’s a little narcissistic as they look a lot like us. but i didn’t think either team punched above their weight. ES to me was a more dangerous opponent when they were lumberjacks.
Perez gets more love than managers from Panama or Costa Rica because he’s American and played for the NT. He also used to manage the U15s (Pulisic, McKennie, Tyler, and Zendejas all played for him) and he’s been pretty critical of USSF which fans like.
i also think something very basic has been lost here in the berhalter era. tactics are supposed to be primarily a device to win. a competitive advantage. it’s kind of become an aesthetic end in itself lately. the idea is to suit your players and win more often than the other guy. canada used to be worse than ES and has rocketed past. panama has become a regular danger, again, ahead of ES. CR nearly caught the US just being a stingy defense. i don’t see ES as particularly technically gifted or suited to what they try, nor has it rocketed them to canada-heights.
kind of like i appreciate what we’re trying to do but it took a talented team to 3rd in the region, which doesn’t sound like the money tree for our pool.
and if you show up and everyone else is doing “it,” then you’re not a special ray of sunshine. you may be the slickest version of that team in recent memory but i think they were scarier with ruiz and a bunch of legbreakers.
Did you mean Carlos Ruiz because he’s Guatemalan or Bryan Ruiz because he’s Costa Rican? There’s no one named Ruiz in their top 10 goal scorers so maybe that’s why your downplaying them you’re confused on what team you’re talking about.
————————————
Canada rocketed past because they have two once in a century players. David and Davies both did come up in Canadian youth development programs but flourished after moving to Europe at 18. Both are immigrants, ES doesn’t have a lot of immigrants coming in mostly people moving out. Canada’s pro league MLS is much stronger than ES’s league. As MLS academies have flourished, Canada’s NTs are now filled with players from Vancouver, TFC, and Montreal instead of English League Two. Canada didn’t get to the WC because John Herdman is better than Hugo Perez. They got there because Alphonso is exceedingly better than anyone ES has ever had. At the end of the day when nothing else was working they could lop it long to Davies or David and get a result. ES has no one like that and that’s not Hugo Perez’s fault. He also doesn’t have the best keeper in Concacaf history in Navas to keep out goals.
“i also think something very basic has been lost here in the berhalter era. tactics are supposed to be primarily a device to win. a competitive advantage. it’s kind of become an aesthetic end in itself lately.”
What really been lost here is that until you actually get to a competition you care about , every game is preparation for that tourney. In our case that tourney is Copa America 2024.
You evaluate every one of these games as a single entity. Since you don’t know what the coaching staff is evaluating for Gregg when he returns, then you’re just guessing.
I really hope an MLS team comes in for Perez. Miami I’m looking at you. You aren’t getting anywhere with Neville. Vanney isn’t exactly working in LA either.