The U.S. men’s national team earned a 3-0 friendly victory over Uzbekistan on Saturday night in St. Louis, but returning head coach Gregg Berhalter admitted that plenty of improvement is needed after a lackluster performance to start the September window.
An early strike from Timothy Weah paired with second-half stoppage time goals from Ricardo Pepi and Christian Pulisic helped the Americans capture a winning result at CITYPARK. However, the Americans were made to grind for the result over 90 minutes and easily could’ve came out on the other end of the scoreline if not for a few lucky breaks on the other side of the field.
“I think we use this game as a learning tool,” Berhalter said. “We can improve and we need to improve and we will. I think that it’s a good baseline for us to start and say this is what international competition from other regions looks like and so that we use as we go.”
Matt Turner made three key saves for the USMNT and even received help from his post to repel Khojiakbar Alijonov from tying the match in the first half. At times, the USMNT looked frustrated in the final third, striking the post once themselves and also being denied on three occasions by Utkir Yusupov.
Pepi, Malik Tillman, and Brenden Aaronson all made an impact off the bench, contributing on the final two goals of the match and earning a confidence boost heading into Tuesday’s showdown with Oman. All three players took advantage of Uzbekistan’s defensive switch to a back-four from a back-five, which is something Berhalter admitted helped pad the final scoreline.
“I really, really liked the mindset in the last 10 minutes of the game,” Berhalter said. “You could see the guys still wanted to push. It wasn’t about holding onto the 1-0. It was about getting aggressive. As they moved to a back four, we had more space and I liked that the guys wanted to attack it.
“We gave the ball away in some tough spots,” he added. “That was the first thing. The second thing is when we were building, we were methodical about our buildup trying to attract the opponent. I thought then we lacked the speeding up the attack once we broke through that front five and that could have been better.”
Pulisic, Yunus Musah, Tim Ream, and Sergino Dest were the only outfield players to feature in the entire 90 minutes while several others received important minutes off the bench. Tanner Tessmann, Mark McKenzie, and Kristoffer Lund all featured off the bench and will be among several players seeking a start against Oman in two days time.
Uzbekistan certainly held its own against the USMNT for majority of the match, giving Berhalter and his coaching staff a lot to ponder ahead of a first-ever meeting with Oman.
“And then the other thing I’d note is that our press after [losing possession], defensive transition, needs to get better,” Berhalter said. “I think we gave them too many opportunities to get behind us when we could have been positioned better to win the ball immediately after we lost it.
“If we had to take our time to draw out their defense, and then find someone once we break their top five, then we need to speed up the attack,” he added. “We need to have numbers getting forward, we need numbers entering the penalty box, we need runs behind the backline and I thought that’s what we lacked at times.”
What needs to stop is the breakdowns in transitions that allow inferior teams to effectively counter attack from a defensive position. There is no way that this should be happening. The fundamental rule of soccer is that it is far, far, far easier to gift an opponent a goal rather than earn one yourself. Any coach that doesn’t realize that and take immediate corrective action, be it personnel, formation or philosophy needs to be given the boot posthaste. GB seems to be enamored with his offensive scheme but he needs to focus on transition defense and risk management when we have the ball.
if you remember the 2019 issues getting countered on it was a two part problem. part 1 was sloppy mids gifting the ball away either dribbling or passing. part 2 was quality of the midfield at defending. part 2 they got in adams who would sweep up more mistakes. adams is not here. they have tried various people but musah was the summer answer for adams not plugging the hole. we instead tried LDLT and tessmann who didn’t really plug the hold well. so you start to get joy off our turnovers.
part 2 i don’t know if they ever solved short of trying reyna some this summer. to me if you want a better possessing mdifield you just need different players. i am not an LDLT fan but i think what his buddies see in him is a missing technical element. i don’t buy he’s as good as we can do technically, but i think part of the solution is just upgrade the AMs to get less sloppy players. but that requires sorting out weston’s role, making a decision musah moves, and we move glacially and resist change. i also think we subtly use the MF as much or more to break up plays than to create them.
last, i thought the backs were unusually ineffective passing the other day, the likely result of a team content to sit back and clog things meeting us trying to force the ball in.
Is anyone else tired of this negative underdog BS attitude throughout the program? “I think we use this game as a learning tool,” Berhalter said. “We can improve and we need to improve and we will. I think that it’s a good baseline…”
What? This is not the 90s! I hate how he talks he never speaks directly never has any strong emotion he needs to tell them they need to tighten up!
i feel like it’s ahistorical. before 2017 this was a top 10 team. 2002-2010 in particular. we used to routinely take friendlies or even tournament games off good teams. i feel like he’s talking about canada or something which is odd because he was LITERALLY ON THE QUARTERS TEAM AND PART OF THAT RUN.
personally i see it as the mentality of the insurgents who went after bradley and his style c. 2011. they seem to want to pretend it was always some 11 men in the box bunker and kickball team. have they seen landon’s algeria winner? do they remember some of the guys on that 2002 team and the goals they could score? i think it’s they want more room to tinker around without accountability which you get if you pretend this is year zero of a project as opposed to compare this to how we used to be.
to be BLUNT, if you can’t match the golden years then don’t try to tell me this new stuff is inherently better for us. to me in the 2000s the ball already started to stay on the ground more even as we remained an organized defense. i don’t see what GB does as the revolutionary. it’s kind of how arena would play — only he’d do it on a lead.
i mean, how many years does it take to implement this system? we’re past a cycle. to me if you can’t basically get it installed in months there is an issue. more than a year is a joke and a hint it doesn’t even work, won’t ever. again, as i prodded above, what specifically is it you think GB is working on that fixes this? i thought i watched literal regression even within his system’s progression. like a lot of that was watching wales 2020 or something.
Just because the computer said we were top 10 doesn’t mean we were top 10. No actual human would have said that.
Berhalter admited the team has plenty of room to improve. He did that without calling out any player by name (something Klinnsman used to do which I think, was one of the reasons the team struggled in 2017-18 as he lost several key players, not physically, but psychologically). So good on GB for that. But the easy giveaways must stop.
As to the problems attacking, I still think the US has not identified a center forward and central attacking midfielder yet. The hold-up play of the forwards is wanting and while they are OK in the air, they are not Giroud or even McBride.
The attacking mids all seem to want to play out wide and drift there most of the time, none seem to me to be very comfortable in the middle.
No reformation of the starting positions will fix those two things, the players must adapt and do better. (Or better players found.)
Turner has gone back to England to be with his wife. Luca was fitted with a clear face shield so I’d say he’s at least a game time decision.
I’d rather they didn’t risk Luca in a friendly. The dude needs to heal up…yes, in a pinch you can play with a mask but it sucks – I had to do it once – and even with the mask you’re still risking further injury. There’s no pressing need here.
Also, we need to shuffle things around anyhow. We need to take a good long look at Malik Tillmann as a 10…I’ve always personally thought Malik Tillmann was the big sleeper in the pool and the guy with the highest potential who never gets talked about. We like young phenoms and he was one…until he tore an ACL and set himself back 18 months. But with his touch, athleticism, insane change of pace, and slick moves on the ball I’ve always thought he had some of Gio’s magic with the ball at his feet, and he’s a better athlete…he won’t be exactly the same kind of 10 as Gio but I still think he could be a difference-maker and with Gio’s fragility we’re going to need multiple guys for sure at that spot anyway.
who among you really believes that if we play like we did saturday this is a top 4 team at a world cup? folks nitpick criticisms of how he runs this thing. but do they really believe this looks good or gets big results? at what point do you see this turning that corner? and how, exactly? not, you’d love it if we made the semis. as in, how do you see this set of players playing roughly this style advancing that deep? like what sort of exponentail evolution of this thing do you see lifting a world cup? to me the plodding ineffectiveness hints there is little more ceiling in it. it’s not like we play pretty but hit the post 10 times. we grinded down the uzbeks, and that’s about what this is good for. uzbeks, iranians, northern irish. and unlike some previous versions of the US, it’s not like we completely owned the uzbeks. they had their chances and were just too sloppy a defensive minded team to do enough with them to make that a game.
sorry but what about yersterday do you see scaling up into world cup dominance? if it’s that we won the game we used to beat 2009 spain and italy at their place, not uzbekistan at home. people seem to have forgotten klinsi 2011-13 was prettier than this trying to knock it around — before having the same issues getting it to a 9 to finish.
i get some think we are on a project. spell out to the others what that project is, exactly. how will what we see evolve, precisely? maybe folks think like a switch will just flip. magic. this is not how soccer works.
I think where you and I differ is you think we have a chance to win the next WC. Look at the last 3 WC winners they all had superstars 3 or 4 world class players and a 8-10 really good players with them. We’ve got 3 or 4 really good players and 6-8 average top league players. The Spain win was great, the other matches that tourney we lost 3-1 to Italy, 3-0 and 3-2 to Brazil. In the WC you have to beat teams of that caliber 4 straight matches, we’ve never done that. Most countries haven’t that’s why only 8 countries have won a WC. We are at least a decade away from having the top end talent and depth to compete for a title. Doesn’t mean we want to see better just means we’re more realistic about what’s possible.
all due respect dude but (1) this is a home tournament and (2) we were a 2009 confed cup finalist that beat brazil and had a lead on brazil in that final. i expect an ageing argentina to come back to the pack. we catch up to that pack and get on a roll and this is good enough a pool to make a run. and all it takes is a run.
second, i feel like part of what you hide behind is the crap performance this coach shows. yeah, based on this, not happening, BUT THAT’S MY POINT. i thought we saw hints of something scarier this summer. the whole point is i think we have some serious talent and it’s being wasted, in terms of selection, formation, tactics.
i kind of think you’re fanboying other team’s stars and neglecting part of the game is, a la bradley vs. spain, figuring out how to negate them. you do that and we need one goal. we don’t have to be actually better soccer players, more market value, we just need a strategy to stifle the other team and win a soccer game with even so much as a CP midriff special. i think that can happen any given sunday. i think it’s gross to give this coach cover like this team sucks and he’s doing fine. this summer hinted we could get far more out of this porsche.
i mean beat spain and had brazil down for a bit.
We didn’t beat Brazil in 2009. We’ve beaten them once in 1998. They smoked us in the group stage and then after we went up 2-0, dominated in the 2nd and we were lucky to lose 3-2.
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Comparing friendlies is pointless. Woo hoo we beat Germany in a game that didn’t count. Kind of like it’s pointless to scream about a meaningless friendly 3 yrs away from WC. Teams goals are always different. Sometimes it’s just to work specific things.
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After rereading your original I don’t think making the semis is out of the question. But a lot of things need to go our way. Yes we looked good against Canada and Mexico, two teams that didn’t make the knockout stages. Those aren’t the teams we need to beat. They have no where near the talent to compete for the semis. Berhalter shouldn’t have been rehired as I said before Qatar, but we’re stuck with him thru Copa America so you might as well save yourself the stress and just except it until then.
JR,
Since at least 1998 winning the World Cup was always theoretically possible for the USMNT.
Possible is one thing, probable is a whole nother topic.
We. could always get lucky but betting your life on it, maybe not a great idea.
It gives IV one more thing to argue over how prescient he is compared to the rest of us lesser beings.
IV: that’s my point we beat Spain but we lost to Brazil and Italy. You’ve got to win all those games to win the WC. We only got out of the group because Italy laid an egg against Egypt and we won the 3 way tie for second on GD. We have to win 5 games in a row in 2026 to win and our home field advantage has been quit over rated. Imagine squaring off against Argentina in the quarters in Las Vegas with Argentine fans outnumbering US fans 2 to 1.
IV, they will be a top four team going into the WC when they have the top 4 best players in the world and that won’t be 2026. With luck, a team can over achieve in a tournament like Morrocco that clearly isn’t a top 4 team in the world or the US and Korea in 2002. It takes luck to actually win a world cup and if any of the tournaments were played again a month later, a different team would probably win every single one. Ultimately, the coach has far less to do with the results than the players at the international level. If you think the path to winning a WC is through the coach and not the players your expectations are unrealistic. The US isnt a great coach away from winning the WC. With a better coach, they would certainly play better as a team, be more entertaining to watch, and would be better against weaker competition, but that’s not going to win them a world cup. Also you should be a huge Berhalter fan now because he essentially said the same things you said about improving the attack after the Uzbeckistahn game. Does that make you question your own opinions? I am obviously kidding because everything he said was pretty basic and didn’t require great insight but it doesn’t support that the failure to break down teams parking the bus lies solely on the coach and none on the players. The one telling thing he did say that I don’t agree with is that he equates numbers forward with chances but he did say numbers forward of players in the box. When US pushes numbers fwd against a low block, their numbers are out wide and in spots where you can’t score which doesn’t create chances and just leaves them vulnerable to counters. The best teams in the world aren’t going to play a low block against the US. A better coach would mean better results in CONCACAF and freindlies, but not necessarily at a WC or even the COPA which hopefully the US can play in from now on for the pure point of playing in another tournament that has top teams in the world.
Tele: sorry but this is not an all star team tournament, no, it is not as simple as having a few elite players or germany and belgium wouldn’t lose. it is a team test. this is why turkey or korea or morocco can go on a run.
sorry but this is like the people who 2 years after the world cup start saying retrospectively that being top 5 league “predicts” world cup success. they ignore that all these brazilians and argentines and such, due to the 18 year old rule, weren’t developed by manU or chelsea. what they really mean is brazil makes these players, they compose winning world cup teams, and after the ball is rolling chelsea bandwagons.
to me what is missing is the sort of graduate school they have in other countries. like a portuguese winger school. like they churn out wingers who can invert. we have the talent. what we’re missing is the YNT/MNT setup where we turn good players into ronaldos. but i think a great coach with 3 years could extract more from our players and put them in a good system and not this scared nonsense.
It takes some luck too, so that your world class players fit together. If you have all square pegs and round holes no matter what formation you use you aren’t going to beat 3 top teams in a row without multiple elite players.
Yea it’s always a PROJECT or work-in-progress w/ the program! This is not a work in progress there’s no underdog here they need to play hard and dominate teams with the players they have and they don’t.
Greg’s attitude is a problem he he complicates things and he doesn’t instill any fear or urgency. Well this game wasn’t great but you know it’s a good stepping stone… What the hell are you talking about stepping stone or project? How about yeah we played like hell against the team that wasn’t nearly on our level and we need to tighten up in our players need to tighten up they’re all playing in top level teams in Europe there’s no excuse!
what exactly is the “project?” what are the future add-on teachings we haven’t seen? how does he plan on tweaking formations or tactics? i keep hearing “it takes time” but what i see is tactics that don’t fit personnel. the next window and the next i don’t see where they installed some sneaky different way. or like the set pieces get fixed. or like it progresses down a road.
i don’t think new tactics take 5 years. it’s an accountability dodge. you can’t judge me because my project isn’t over. and he won as you see, he has his job back.
at worst it’s blaming the players while claiming to be their champion and out to fix them. i mean if you show up at a NAIA team with a fair amount of scrubs, and you install a precision passing offense, you will lose a lot, and it will over the long term be your fault only. at a point a la golf you have to play the ball as it lies. you cannot set out to remake a bunch of 20 year old soccer players. how many NT in the world do you think run their program aspirationally — i wish we could be a “x” type team — as opposed to “what wins me the most games through 2026 without having to rewire the whole pool?” like taking for granted who they actually have. eg northern ireland doesn’t even pretend to play pretty soccer. they might be wise to reteach the U10s, but at 20 you’re not turning a kickball team into barcelona. or, in our case, an athletic team. it’s a cult.
At least Berhalter recognizes the shortcomings and knows what the team has to do. All he has to do is get them to do it.
i think he’s full of it. eg i thought before the game he was saying we needed to press less because it’s exhausting and would mix in more midblock defending. now he’s like i want more press and transition.
this looked a lot like the old tactics but c. 2019 before adams when we tried passing 6s. we dropped that because we couldn’t even win concacaf playing that way. couldn’t find the 9s like last night. then against good teams the 6s have to defend and the people we tried couldn’t defend and we were getting killed on counters. plus the passing 6s before were more like tessman, probably worse than LDLT at keeping it moving with tempo, to give the kid some credit.
that last paragraph there reads like coaching word salad full of contradictions. more in the box and more wide? does he want to get countered like mad? if we are already down in the corner where does he plan on playing behind the defense?
i simply don’t think what he’s trying to do works very well, it’s really like half hearted 1990s english crossing soccer except we don’t play kickball and try and pump balls in the box every 30 seconds. we fart around a lot which limits the chance count in the actual box. i think he could be talking like he wants to do more interior attack, go to net, faster tempo, but i am not sure if we have the people for it. i kind of think this bunch should sit back and counter and use wide speed. but that would be ditching the dutch/spanish model we want to mimic. but it would fit the actual personnel better. get pulisic and reyna pushing the ball forward fast, weah speed wide, balogun behind defenses. i have no idea why you have those guys and try to be either a touch team or a whack-a-cross team. does berhalter realize mcbride retired?
I don’t think he’s saying press more, I think what he’s saying is there were players that were not where they were supposed to be which either allowed to much space for them to run into or gave them too much time to play the long ball.
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What I don’t understand is under Berhalter my Crew almost always used a 4-2-3-1 with Higuain sitting underneath Kamara, Kamara, or Zardes. So they scored a lot of goals thru crosses to those strikers (all good with headers) but Higuain could shoot when the striker cleared the space, or he’d play Meram or Finley in behind. If teams took away the outside you could play thru the middle.
JR –
That’s part of the reason I keep scratching my head about this almost religious adherence to a 4-3-3. Our personnel really isn’t particularly suited to that; we’re a natural 3-5-2 or 4-2-3-1 team. And Gregg has plenty of experience – and success – with the 4-2-3-1.
It is a little perplexing. My guess would be, if there’s a reason for that, it’s that we really didn’t have a natural 10 other than Gio this past cycle and he was both very young and was hurt more than he was available and that left MMA as our best midfield by a bunch. But Gregg seriously needs to kiss and make up with Gio, and start seeing if guys like Malik Tillmann and Diego Luna are ready to contribute, or he isn’t even going to make it to Copa America as the head coach. Everyone is thoroughly over Berhalter Ball at this point.
Hey Q,
The federation isn’t gonna get tired of Berhalter ball…
When I saw his comments when he announced the starters, and his comments after the game, here’s what I heard:
“I’m going to continue to do everything the way I want to and all you people listening are pretty dumb if you think otherwise”
I’m telling you Roger Daltrey had it right, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss”
Bac, the hard-core Who fans would be mortified that you credited Daltry for Townshend’s lyrics. Doh!!
What you are talking about applies to when the US has all its players. Reyna isn’t available. GB is talking about the game with Oman. Since I know nothing about Oman, as I suspect is true of all the posters here, and GB and his staff have certainly studied some game film of Oman, we are not in a position to make informed criticism of the US plans against Oman until we see them applied and see how they work out. I’m no GB fan, never have been, but I believe in fair analysis and criticism based on facts.
Hey Tele…
Mad props for spelling Pete TownsHends name right!
JR, I think you are focusing too much on formation instead of philosophy. Formation is much more critical in how you defend. You can have the same philosophical approach to attacking with different formations. For instance, deciding you want to base your attack on pushing your outside fullbacks higher than your forwards is a philosophical approach. I guess you could argue in a 3-5-2 you don’t have outside fullbacks but you could take the same approach with the wingbacks and leave yourself vulnerable to counters. People say BJ played a 4231 in Nations League. Did he really or did players interchange roles when attacking? It is hard to actually tell Watching on TV because you only ever see a small portion of the field but when Eustachio broke Reyna’s bone, Reyna was not in a place on the field you would expect to see a 10 and he was pushed wide a lot of times also against Mexico and Canada.
Oh Tele I completely think we used the same formation in NL we did Saturday but it’s not worth arguing that here because people won’t actually look for the truth. They saw Gio in MF and just assumed even though he was off set and not playing underneath Balo. He was definitely playing as an 8 against Canada. Berhalter used to play a 4-2-3-1 with Columbus that’s what I was referring too.
That is correct, everyone has talked about how Reyna was awesome playing centrally… But he was – like you said – out wide plenty.
It really seemed like they just “knew” or “felt” where to be… much more fluid.
And having Musah at the 6 helped
JR
“They saw Gio in MF and just assumed even though he was off set and not playing underneath Balo. ”
People seem to think that there are definite zones where each player is is tied to. As if the players had a shock collar that prevented them from straying out of their zone. I bet Gregg would love a bunch of those for his guys.
As Tele57 says, that’s more of an issue with defense. That’s why it is hard to find a good back 3 because depending on how you do it, a back 3 has much more area to defend than a back 4 does.
On attack I much prefer the description I used for Donovan, he was nominally a winger /attacking midfielder but actually, he was great at being wherever he needed to be at any given time to facilitate an attack, similar to Clint, who nominally started in 4-5 different positions over his career, and was usually good about being where he needed to be in the final third to score.
We don’t have guys with those instincts anymore, at least not at the level that Clint and LD were.
Pulisic is just developing it and maybe Flo and Pepi have it. I haven’t seen enough of them yet.