The U.S. men’s national team extended its unbeaten run against rivals Mexico to five matches in all competitions, but needed a late equalizing goal to do so.
Jesus Ferreira’s 82nd minute tying goal helped Anthony Hudson’s squad fight back to earn a 1-1 draw against El Tri in the first-ever Continental Clasico. Uriel Antuna’s breakaway finish early in the second half propelled Diego Cocca’s squad in front, but the Americans used a clinical counter attack to avoid a first head-to-head loss since 2019.
Cade Cowell’s dangerous upfield pass in the fourth minute almost led to an early goal for the USMNT as Jordan Morris’ pressure led to Carlos Acevedo racing off his line to clear his lines.
However, that would be the best look for the Americans in the first half as Mexico held the edge in possession and chances. Luis Chavez missed a pair of long-range efforts while the USMNT backline were able to keep Alexis Vega and Roberto de la Rosa in check.
Sergino Dest and Julian Araujo battled heavily on the right wing, with the AC Milan defender holding his own and keeping the 21-year-old right back at bay.
Mexico continued its pressure in the second half and was able to make the USMNT pay only 10 minutes after halftime. Kellyn Acosta’s poor back pass and Aaron Long’s mistimed clearance allowed Uriel Antuna the opportunity to pickpocket Long and race upfield before slotting home past Sean Johnson.
It was Antuna’s 10th-career international goal.
Luis Chavez’s dangerous left-footed free kick in the 69th minute forced Johnson to scramble to his left but the veteran keeper watched the shot miss just wide.
Johnson’s diving two-handed save on de la Rosa’s right-footed shot just three minutes later kept Mexico from icing the victory. A failed offensive attempt from the USMNT led to a fast break for El Tri and de la Rosa’s low drive forced Johnson to punch the striker’s shot out for a corner.
Carlos Rodriguez rattled the crossbar in the 80th minute and the USMNT made Mexico pay on its ensuing counter attack.
Sergino Dest dangled past three Mexico players before springing Alan Sonora upfield. Sonora’s link-up with Jordan Morris led to Morris’ cross into the box, which was tapped home by Jesus Ferreira for a 1-1 equalizer.
Neither team could find a winning goal, having to settle for a 1-1 draw.
The USMNT is back in action this June against Mexico in the Concacaf Nations League semifinals.
i think this is a mediocre team when it settles for flag crossing and gets interesting when it goes at the heart of defenses and plays balls to feet, either square-backs after throughballs or playing guys to run at the interior of the defense. i was always taught that if you either take the ball to the flag or pass it there all the time you lack ideas. and i think the net effect of such play is time wasting. it’s keepaway like what teams do when they are ahead. you don’t start games ahead. and we haven’t sorting a crossing offense. it’s dumb minute 1 tactics.
i liked dest ferreira johnson morris. the second half of that was pointless as they won’t be there end of this cycle. acosta’s passing and deadball service weren’t great, long gave up the goal, and vazquez and cowell didn’t really shine. (though i want to see vazquez for a coach with a clue.)
he needed ferreira as second striker pushed higher up right under vazquez as his “big” and then maybe drop the wings back some to compensate. as it was vazquez was isolated and ferreira not high enough.
maybe having seen that people understand why i thought this should have been more experimental. it wasn’t effective to win with the veterans. and what new did we really learn? worse, i think this coach was bedding in a chunk of his pre-determined gold cup team and so how much does any of this actually matter? which is what i am on about when i say it doesn’t seem to matter how things go when they show up. i will see the same ol. they may even give up the goal that nearly burns us. but they “have experience.” which i thought was the point to these games was handing that out now. i really hope i don’t see this many O-30s and near future O-30s for gold cup. it’s not a winning strategy and it’s not kicking the metaphorical ball downfield for the next world cup roster. but then people keep finessing this caretaker’s coaching history…….
The problem initially was that Acosta and Sands couldn’t move the ball forward and Mexico was man marking Dest so he couldn’t do it so Ferreira had to drop deeper to try to connect the lines. When he didn’t the CBs just ended up hitting lofted balls towards Vazquez. Without Dest getting the ball Cowell was just standing around watching the ball on the other side of the field. It was an early 2000s US vs Mexico match give them all the possession and hope to get lucky using our athleticism on a counter. If Morris’s “shot” goes in in the 5th minute El Tri goes under pressure and leaves themselves open for counters and it ends 2-0 USA. This was the poster child on why people want possession based tactics but mixed with attacks on both the flanks and the middle.
i thought it was poster child for defend and counter. only goal we shipped was pressing with a high line. we don’t have the defense for it. nor do we seem that great a possession team. it’s more skilled than before but not unusually so compared to other teams. our tactics are not a competitive advantage.
i think this is an athletic fast break team being held back by a dated fashion choice and fanboys who want to construct a new national style from scratch. with players not specially suited to play that way. eg mckennie is a box crashing scorer and not a possession player. to me the fanboys seem to miss this is an ostensibly possession team usually out there with hustle players to play defense instead but not even in that defensive a formation. an odd hybrid neither fish nor fowl. 1-1 being a perfect expression of halfway offense and halfway defense.
You talk out of both sides of your mouth. You say this team has so much talent that we should be competing to win the WC, but then say all we can do is play hard and run fast.
How about a US manager influencing the game in a positive way with in-game adjustments, tactics and subs! For the first 60 minutes it was a real slog, with Mexico eventually taking control and getting a deserved goal. But as soon as we changed to a 3-man backline and got the wingbacks higher and more involved, we started looking so much more dangerous. We started creating chances, the goal was a really nice sequence. We still looked vulnerable on the counter but it was much better, and Mexico looked really flustered at the end, it felt like we were more likely to get a winner than them. Kudos to Hudson! He is doing the USMNT a great service right now in a thankless job.
we’re seriously patting on the back someone for climbing back to a tie from the hole they dug us? what purpose did all the 30 year olds (or soon to be) serve? amusingly enough his cynical conservatism — players who can’t possibly make the next team — didn’t actually get him the win.
and in terms of adjustments the goal was dest morris ferreira. all starters.
side point, i thought his lineup was predictable as were the players who had no chance to see the field. one of my beefs with how this is run is it is analytically based, overplanned, and not open to actual performance. to me that’s why the bench often outplays the starters, is he doesn’t have it sorted right and/or isn’t putting hungry guys out there.
The constant pessimism of so many US fans bores me. If you expected to see a fantastic performance in a meaningless and obvious cash cow game with no European players, then you’re not being realistic. If you expected to see nothing more than a domestic league allstar game, then you got about what you expected, with some excitement towards the end, and enough chippiness at the end to feel a bit of the genuine rivalry. You can’t run out all new/young players together at the same time, because they would get overrun and then nobody gets anything from that. Who exactly did you expect to start and take Mexico by storm? Did we have some young star leading his league in goals on yesterday’s roster that I missed? Was Balogun there in disguise? Hudson tried to get what he thought were the best 11 available out there together, seems logical to me. It wasn’t working, so at 60min he made some subs and switched to 3 in the back. It made a difference. As far as young players, Cowell got a start and didn’t do much with it. Aiden Morris and Sonora came in and brought some composure to the middle. It wasn’t a great game, but there are some things to take from it.
Mr. Voice,
” one of my beefs with how this is run is it is analytically based, overplanned, and not open to actual performance. to me that’s why the bench often outplays the starters, is he doesn’t have it sorted right and/or isn’t putting hungry guys out there.”
Hungry guys can play just as shitty as guys who are full.
Typical criticism from people who have a tenuous grasp on soccer.
“Winning” or “losing” the first half is useless. You have to play 90 minutes ( sometimes more) before you can say you’ve won, lost or tied.
The narrative that the bench “actually” outplayed the starters is bogus.
They had a different job and it’s a useless comparison.
Soccer has simple rules..
After 90 or more minutes the team with more goals wins.
If they have the same number of goals they draw.
No team gets points for leading at half time.
Even if you trail for 89 minutes , if you score in the last minute, you still draw.
For the US/ Mexico game, I turned off the commentary and watched it as I would any game from the stands.
Both teams looked like they had gotten together a few days before , practiced a bit and this was what you got.
From that standpoint it was okay and reasonably exciting.
jb: i think this pool should be competing at an elite level.
is it? if you look at games under this coach, he has lost to serbia, tied colombia B and mexico B, and beaten ES and grenada. before that at qatar we beat iran, tied england and wales, lost to holland. last friendlies we lost to japan and tied saudi arabia. does any of that feel like we are closing in on the elite? nope. i have every right to be chagrined. the team deserves better as do the fans.
and i am not backing off one inch beefing about a half dozen older players out there who can’t possibly contribute to the future but if we’re being cynical didn’t even get us the win now. if you can’t do either one of those things — be part of the next world cup, or win me games today — why are you out there?
personally i find it very contradictory to be ostensibly on some sort of long term new national system project but then running out 30 year olds for much of anything, who aren’t part of that future. if i was jaded — which i can be — i might think that in reality these coaches seem more concerned with result orientation than whether anything consistent and effective in the way of system is being built.
in a few months there will be nothing memorable about this game other than the 2 goals. the system didn’t work well, few of the older players played well, and we didn’t get the result. we basically learned ferreira can score on a certain level opponent, that morris can occasionally do fancy stuff, and that dest can get out and run well when he wants to. none of this is news. good teams learn things from games. and if your goal is cynically win games with experienced players, as i explained above, we don’t actually do that much. dating back to last september it’s like 3 total wins and 2 of them on minnows. and iran wasn’t exactly france. meh. so what.
V: you claim to have been watching games, well, ES was a second half goal (1-0) from a sub, and this was a second half tie-from-behind goal after we retooled the formation at half. serbia whooped us and we played colombia to a scoreless tie. the only game i thought we had a creative and effective first whistle game plan was grenada and that’s so lopsided a contest to begin with, it’s hard to say how much was coached and how much was just we should have won. after all, grenada had some chances first half.
i digress. my bigger point is we didn’t lift the world cup, we got knocked out round of 16. all the conservatism and nibble around the edges is an odd response to how bad holland looked. but then the history of US soccer is when we reach roughly this level we get an ego and quit pushing and taking foot off gas. the formation and system ossify and we start reflexively defending the lineup even when it didn’t win anything hardware wise.
based on what i saw in qatar every job except DM and GK should be up for grabs and based on continued injury history i wouldn’t even say DM is safe. the problem with US soccer is we applaud round of 16 instead of asking why didn’t we win. when we start asking the correct question — why didn’t we beat holland, who do we need to see if can be replaced — we will move onwards. that and when we get a system that makes us better than the sum of the parts — or functions on the field like we ever played together — instead of appeals on paper to snobs.
personally i don’t get how snobs watch what i do and don’t say, sorry, dude, this isn’t even close to pep, to barca, to city.
Mr. Voice,
“V: you claim to have been watching games, well, ES was a second half goal (1-0) from a sub, and this was a second half tie-from-behind goal after we retooled the formation at half.”
Which proved what exactly?
Can you prove the second half sub in the ES game would have scored if he had started?
Can you prove that the person he subbed out would NOT have scored?
You can’t can you?
You point this stuff out like there was some solid scientific basis behind them when in fact there might be nothing other than “because I say so”.
And that’s fine but your opinion has no more validity than anyone else’s and certainly much less than Anthony Hudson. Mr. Hudson’s opinion is more valid than yours or mine because he gets to act on his opinion.
Some teams start faster than others. Leeds for example often gets out quick but then as time goes by they often emulate that Filipino team, the Manila Folders. The USMNT has traditionally been a slow starter which is not unusual for national teams that don’t have a lot of playing time together. Why a bunch of guys who barely know each other should start off a game slowly should shock absolutely no one.
Gio has been on a run with BVB where he comes in late and scores. Would he have as many goals if he had started those games? Maybe but I doubt it. Frankly, if my team always left their scoring until late in the game I couldn’t care less as long as they score before the game ends.
If you score early then you have to prove you can keep a lead. And lots of teams are pretty bad at that.
Just looking at this USMNT player pool they are probably better at defending than scoring but that’s only because they suck so bad at scoring. I’d say it’s a toss up as to which side of the game they are worse at.
“the history of US soccer is when we reach roughly this level we get an ego and quit pushing and taking foot off gas. the formation and system ossify and we start reflexively defending the lineup even when it didn’t win anything hardware wise.”
Give me a break. The USMNT is about participation not winning. The story is that the USMNT is typically the least talented team in the group and manages through hard work, pluck and luck to get out of the group.
They deserve all the credit in the world for that.
But what you don’t understand is that the USMNT got into the knockouts by pulling out all the stops.
The contenders, who did just enough to get through ( sometimes they did not and got upset), can now take off their gloves and kick in their extra gear.
A gear the USMNT usually doesn’t have as you saw vs. the Netherlands
Not even with this allegedly best all time deep and talented Qatar bunch. Our treasures turned into horse poop.
Louie’s guys were better and better coached but it also helped that the USMNT were gassed and had nothing, no second gear, no diva shitbag Reyna scoring late off the bench, nothing. No depth. Nada.
“based on what i saw in qatar every job except DM and GK should be up for grabs and based on continued injury history i wouldn’t even say DM is safe. the problem with US soccer is we applaud round of 16 instead of asking why didn’t we win. when we start asking the correct question — why didn’t we beat holland, who do we need to see if can be replaced — we will move onwards. that and when we get a system that makes us better than the sum of the parts — or functions on the field like we ever played together — instead of appeals on paper to snobs.”
No shit sherlock. Tyler is a good defensive #6 but he’s not world class. And you’re right, his body may not hold up until 2026.
Our keepers, at their best are maybe B+ level. No A + keepers there, not that you absolutely need one. As short as the World Cup is we have a number of keepers who could stand on their head for a short run. Still, the Qatar roster could be entirely replaced, all 26 for 2026 and it wouldn’t shock me. But they don’t have to.
Gregg had to build entirely from scratch.
When he comes back from his hiatus, he won’t have to.
With any luck, and assuming any of the lessons he should have learned stick, a good draw maybe six or seven (as many as possible really) new ( or greatly improved ) players of Champions League quality, might get them past that initial knockout game but after that it will be a crapshoot and with the new format it will be harder to get to the semis. Right now the best hope the USMNT has for a standout 2026 is:
• That in the next two plus years or so a brand new 11 of world class or near world class players develops from somewhere.
• That the USMNT somehow lucks out and either finds out that Gregg is not as limited as he seems or that they actually hire someone worth a damn.
3 of the 5 matches under Hudson have been B to C rosters because they haven’t been during int. windows so to expect anything other than mediocre is fantasy. I think we can all agree that Grenada doesn’t count for much, which leaves only the ES match to critique for the actual “group”. The squad didn’t play very well that much that’s undeniable. In that match you have Perez who managed a good portion of the roster in their teens and knows them well and knows what causes them problems. You also are faced with general disinterest the US had played ES 3 times in the last 18 months, ES scored 1g on a Miss hit cross. If we needed to win our own lack of offense should have motivated but a draw was all that was needed. The biggest factor in that game was club form. Hudson rightly ignored our top players lack of recent minutes, but stamina was a huge factor, guys are just not in 180 minutes in 4 days form. Especially given travel to and from Grenada. These players need to either improve or find clubs that will play bigger minutes while still being challenged.
That was a rough game to watch. A lot of Sleep walking in the first half and not great in the second half.
A lot of players looked like they didn’t want to get injured in this meaningless game.
But that midfield pairing will lose games. Neither Acosta nor Sands did anything to advance the ball in any meaningful way.
I still think Dest is not a defender. Much more suited as an attacking 8 role. What he can do in tight spaces with his quick passing and ability to dribble out of pressure would be better suited in the midfield. If I am a club looking at buying Dest this summer I would be looking at him as a midfielder not as a defender.
amen. i have been saying for a while i see his skillset as wide attacker not back. he’s not a good natural defender. he is an interesting aggressive attacker who can beat people off the dribble and create. that’s a wing’s tool box. barca has even used him some along those lines. why can’t we?
“Neither Acosta nor Sands did anything to advance the ball in any meaningful way.”
Before this game was there any reason to think either of those guys could “advance the ball in any meaningful way” at this level?
At the international level, history indicates that both guys , are at best, destroyers. Did you expect otherwise?
The USMNT constantly keeps trying to convince people that certain players are international level when it’s pretty clear that the evidence is that they aren’t.
Over his entire career Kellyn has been very honestly telling us who he is.
Maybe we should start believing him.
“I still think Dest is not a defender. ”
He did a very good job at right back in the World Cup before he ran out of gas in the Netherlands game. As far as I’m concerned that matters more than anything else he’s done for the USMNT.
He may not be a defender but if he keeps impersonating one that well I’ll be happy..
sorry dude but i grew up having it drilled into me that the real rest of a formation or personnel choice was the Big Game. so what if it works on grenada. the question is precisely if it works on holland in the key match. jedi and dest got lit up. there is some prior history of this, jedi lost his job before after brazil and england got after him in 18. dest was tooled up by mexico in a couple previous games.
personally i think you could have a really cool attacking unit with pulisic 9, weah and dest wide, reyna and mckennie central, adams as 6. that gets you upside dest — his dual abilities to dribble at people, go to net, and shoot or take it to the endline — and either eliminates your dest downside worries or pushes them 40 yards upfield where mistakes aren’t terminal.
personally i believe in a division of labor, defense does its job and is picked to pitch shutouts (with attack as cherry on top and not replacement), offense is picked for offense and to wreak havoc. i feel like this hybrid mess isn’t really effective as offense or team defense. 1-1 is not a world cup champion recipe.
Mr. Voice,
The USMNT isn’t in high school anymore.
Mistake from guys like Tyler and Dest cost the USMNT vs Netherlands but this was a case where the entire team was day late and a dollar short. Good teams make up for mistakes. That wasn’t going to happen vs. Netherlands because the USMNT was not a good team that day.
Hola. Is anything wrong at SBI? Illness, computer problems, financial stress, other?
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I had thought there might even be a live blog of the USMNT–Mexico game, and even the postgame articles were a bit slow to appear. Is that just the new normal? Is Ives okay, and everyone else too?
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Can we do anything to help, apart from commenting on the game in Glendale? What did everybody think?
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I am still having problems viewing new articles…have to log in every single time to check for something new, have seen other comments suggesting others having similar issues.
if you come here by social media it’s current but if you go to the website the first articles showing up are days old.