The U.S. men’s national team has it second pre-Copa America friendly lined up against one of the world’s top teams.
Brazil will oppose the Americans on June 12 in Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida. It will mark the second Continental Clasico for the USMNT after squaring off with Mexico in 2023 in the first edition of the annual match.
“Getting the opportunity to play against Brazil is special,” USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter said. “When you talk about wanting to challenge ourselves against the best teams in the world, you can’t ask for much better than Brazil.
“With their extremely talented player pool and rich history of success on the world stage this will certainly be a great preparation game for Copa America,” he added. “The fan support in Orlando has always been outstanding, and when you play against the five-time World Cup champions at Camping World Stadium it should be even more electric.”
It will mark the first head-to-head showdown between the USMNT and Brazil since 2018. Brazil is currently ranked No. 5 in the FIFA Men’s Rankings and reached the quarterfinals of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Led by several international standouts such as Neymar, Gabriel Jesus, Casemiro, and Marquinhos, Brazil will be seeking a 10th Copa America title this summer in the United States.
The USMNT will also face Colombia on June 8 at FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland.
We rarely do well against stop S. American teams, Brazil in particular. We generally do better against top European teams. My concern is that a bad loss will damage the team’s confidence going into Copa America.
Gary, I am not worried at all about that. These games are mostly meaningless like a world Cup tune up. They will provide a camp for fringe players to make their case for final roster selection but the games themselves don’t usually mean much. The crappy performances against Japan and Saudi Arabia were not at all reflective of how the team performed in Qatar.
first, we’re about to play NL, not copa. second, one reason i would like to see different faces mixed into NL is hoping they could improve the copa roster and chances. third, speaking to by drumbeat on “do the games matter,” the process of improving goes faster if you admit to yourself as coach which decisions work really well, meh, or badly. my issue with US soccer is it tends to treat these tournaments as a chemistry experience for a final product as opposed to a test of whether that group should be in the final product.
for example, jonathan spector shipped a couple goals in the 2009 confed cup final where we were up on brazil. as soon as dolo was healthy he was gone. and in 2011 bornstein got torched in the gold cup final we had a lead in. the coach got canned and the player was pushed aside.
the coaches now seem to pick teams off paper and there is either no correction to NT track record or it’s glacial that one is accountable or the player can be rehabilitated back into the roster. and so i am watching brooks get his umpteenth chance.
it’s no help that the fanboys seem to think we are at a personnel endgame despite very very meh results. some combination of the coach must know if this is who to pick, or their european affiliations say it all. that to me is circular. steffen is back in MLS. other dudes are in europe. it’s a process that corrects over time. we should therefore not assume it’s absolute correctness. show up for the NT and do a good job and come back. show up and lose games and let’s see someone else. the results aren’t good enough to lock in either scheme or personnel.
doesn’t make a ton of sense, brazil and colombia are already in group D with which we cross-over for QF round, and then it’s group C and D still for semis. odds are we could see one or both twice.
i am also concerned based on the upcoming schedule and the provo roster that when the results are screaming freshen it up a little bit, the fixtures we face could encourage status quo thinking and the provo roster already tends to suggest it. case people forgot we ran out a fairly first choice side for TnT away — give or take perhaps the MF — and lost. the roster then reads like we will see most or all of that TnT group again in march and this summer. this is why i ask if the games matter. i get the fanboys think a certain GB-approved set are “it” but if they are our ceiling isn’t very high. i kind of think we should be acting more like a team that scooted past TnT on aggregate, lost gold cup, hit and miss since roughly summer 2023.
but anyhow, my point is this is a sleepwalking schedule, we will probably already see one or both of the june friendly opponents anyway. and such friendlies are normally trialist games when this team needs some freshness and direction change, who is the keeper, what does the backline look like, how are we getting the attacking elements on a page. i am not sure setting up a buzzsaw is the approach to sort that out. i think it’s an excuse for the default coach to run out most of his default selections a la klinsi in the same tournament a decade ago. we then backpat him about the tough schedule no matter what happens so we don’t learn a thing from how it goes.
You act like there weren’t extenuating circumstances in the TnT matchup. Unlikely Brazil will put 11 guys in the box or that Dest will flip out and get red carded. US was up 4-0 on aggregate and cruising to more when Dest was sent off. Is Dest temper a concern? Certainly, but to throw out the entire roster because of it is nonsensical. Especially when your big suggestion was add James Sands. Your provo roster is also for March not this summer so it has no bearing on who plays in this meaningless friendly vs Brazil.
Ronnie, don’t know how much you know about the area. National harbor has MGM if you like gambling and a lot of pretty good restaurants but might be a little pricey. Annapolis is a pretty neat little town and is t too far from Fed Ex. Of course all the monuments in DC and the museums on the mall also.
Neymar has not played since Oct doubt he will be back and people were making fun of his weight gain. I feel this will be a good game, but I fear Gregg will come out in 433 like he did againt Germany 🤦♂️
This would be a great game to go to- I wish it would have been announced earlier. I’ve already spent enough money on soccer games for now. I was able to get tickets to the USA vs Uruguay game at Arrowhead Stadium. I also got tickets for the Brazil and Mexico games at Sofi Stadium. My plan it to hopefully sell the Mexico game tickets for a profit to recoup some of the money for the other games. I also bought some Arsenal vs ManU tickets at Sofi. What a great next few years of soccer we are going to have.
Copa America ticks are officially on-sale tomorrow.. make sure that you get some!
I hear you, I’m going to the US vs Colombia game so that’ll be my one game for the year that I try to make happen annually!