Haji Wright’s March international window was originally supposed to take place with the American forward receiving a slight break from action, but instead its featured Wright excelling for the U.S. men’s national team.
Wright came off the bench on Thursday and registered two extra time goals in the Americans’ 3-1 CONCACAF Nations League semifinal win over Jamaica. The in-form Coventry City striker scored the winning goal for Gregg Berhalter’s squad before adding an insurance tally only 13 minutes later.
After watching the USMNT concede the opening goal after 42 seconds, Wright was able to work his way onto the field and have a say in the final score.
“It was a difficult day for us,” Wright said postmatch to reporters. “We didn’t start well, obviously when then scored 1-0 in the first minute of the game. It was kind of hard to get into the game, they were in a low block and we were just trying to break them down the whole game.
“They did well for most of the game, but fortunately for us we got a goal in the 90th minute and once we scored we knew we were just going to keep going and destroy them really because they had nothing left in the tank,” he added. “We applied the pressure and were able to score two more goals.”
Wright’s 2024 has been filled with plenty of positive moments and Thursday’s performance will certainly go down as one of them. After scoring the winning goal for Coventry City in last week’s FA Cup quarterfinal triumph over English Premier League side Wolves, Wright now has his first two USMNT goals under his belt since the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
He originally wasn’t chosen in Berhalter’s 23-player roster, but Josh Sargent’s recent injury forced the USMNT head coach to make a switch. Wright, who was set for a short family vacation in Dubai with his girlfriend this month, changed his plans and now the USMNT is reaping the rewards of having him in the squad.
“He actually got Coach’s Man of the Match, and for good reason,” Berhalter said. “You have to shake off the disappointment of not getting selected in the first place and then you come into the group and it’s always a tough feeling because you feel like you’re second choice. When I called him and told him he wasn’t in the team, the message was, ‘You’re doing everything right, you can’t do anything more so just be patient’. I told him that this camp, we opted for this but when we called him to come in, and I’ll share this with you, he was getting on a plane to go to Dubai. He had a family vacation planned for the international break.
“So I call him and he was like, ‘Well, I’m at the airport and my whole family’s here, my agent’s already there, my girlfriend, she planned the whole thing’. This really happened! What do you do, right? I said, ‘Haji, I’m going to give you 10 minutes’, I didn’t give him a timer but I said, ‘Let’s hang up and you just think about it, process it. I know it’s a lot of information right now for you to handle and I know you have your parents, the bags are packed, and you’re at the airport, but just think about it for 10 minutes and give me a call back’.
“He called me back and he said, ‘I’m in’, and, when I heard that, it really shows what type of guy he is and what his character is,” Berhalter added.
Wright’s impactful substitute showing, along with Gio Reyna’s, will certainly give Berhalter more to think about heading into Sunday’s Nations League Final vs. Mexico. Both players gave the USMNT a necessary spark at AT&T Stadium on Thursday night and will be fighting to be part of the starting lineup on Sunday.
It remains to be seen how Berhalter will shuffle his squad against El Tri, but Wright’s brimming confidence could be vital in whether or not the Americans lift a title for third-straight edition.
Hallgrimsson did a great job to get buy in from his players to stay organized and in their lines. He had a great set piece throw that looked well practiced. But is putting 9 guys in the box including 6 defenders great coaching? I mean they pressed some early first 15-20 minutes but then pretty much just absorbed pressure for 70 minutes until they finally broke. They had 2 shots the final 75 minutes while giving up 16. Only 10 touches in the US box all game just 2 in the 2nd half. Your defense has to be perfect for 90+ minutes. With all the injuries and yellow card suspensions it’s what they had but I don’t know that it was brilliance. We saw the limitations of the style at Euro 2016 with Iceland getting blasted 5-2 in the quarters and failing to get out of the group in 2018 WC. It can punch you above your weight once or twice like Iceland over England but to beat 3 or 4 quality teams in a row in an international tournament it just isn’t going to do it.
JR,
“But is putting 9 guys in the box including 6 defenders great coaching?”
What’s your point?
Jamaica’s manager had a plan for how to win the game. He got his guys to believe in him to the extent that they executed it effectively. They came to within almost literally one second of winning the game.
I don’t know if it is great coaching, but it is very good coaching. Other teams try the low block in these kind of games and not all of them play it as well as Jamaica did.
If you don’t like the low block what I will say is, to quote a famous actor, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”
Heimir Hallgrimsson did not have all his best weapons but then he was coaching against Gregg, our beloved incompetent.
Let’s put this another way; switch them.
Give Hallgrimsson the USMNT job and Gregg the Jamaica job.
Could Gregg get the Jamaica to be positionally disciplined? He hasn’t had a lot luck trying to get the USMNT to be that way.
V: let me put it this way Heimir is a very good coach. What he was able to do to make Iceland relevant was amazing. However, it’s also such a limited tactic. He won’t ever win a tournament with that style. It’s Iowa football and its “punting is winning” style. Against good teams your defense will run out of gas and eventually the other team will push thru. Who will it beat, Concacaf teams like Honduras or Trinidad. On occasion it will beat Panama, Costa Rica or Canada. It won’t ever get them thru the knockout stages of a tournament, even the GC. We saw them be less pragmatic last summer, but they still dropped out 3-0 to Mexico in the semis. Just as Iowa wins the big ten west and then gets smashed by Michigan or Ohio St in the Championship game. My question is though if you place a CB as your #10 which breaks up attacks but never allows you to get out and keep the ball did you out coach anybody or did you just play not to lose. “We scored on the last kick” or “it worked for 94 minutes” yes but if they had also just held possession for one more minute the games maybe is over before that corner.
JR,
This is Jamaica not France, Spain or Belgium in their heyday.
You’re criticizing Hallgrimsson for making the most of the hand that he was dealt.
Which is what any good international team manager has to do.
The quality of the Jamaica player pool is not his fault. The contentious relationship the Jamaican FA seems to have with its star players is not his fault. If he keeps it up, he will have earned a shot at working with a better player pool.
Jay-Raz, if Jamaica had Bailey or Grey on three of there counter break outs all it would have taken is one quality shot in the back of the net and game over.
The low block defend for 90 minutes is not fun to watch or play against but will always be a game plan when trying to make lemonade out of lemons
2: They didn’t have Bailey or Antonio and but did have Gray and played pretty much the same way, just booting it long all 2nd half. Panama had an unmarked man inside the 6 take a shot in added time. He went near post and I think Blake had it covered that went wide. Had he gone far post it’s 1-1 and going to extra time again.
Haji did great, he’s having a great season. However, you can’t even compare his performance to Balo or Pepi from last night. The situations were very different. Balo was playing as the lone striker and only had 15-20 minutes with Gio where Haji had 60 minutes. The formation also changed after Brenden came on so that changed how the defense had to play. Jamaica’s subs were also not at the same quality as their starters. I mean Reid vs Tayvon Gray, that’s a significant step down. Factor in the physical and emotional toll that first 90 minutes took on the constant under pressure backline of Jamaica. Be happy for Haji and enjoy the runs he made and the passes that he connected with Gio on but it’s hardly definitive proof that he’s better than Josh, Flo, or Pepi. He was the right man for the moment last night. Let’s enjoy that and be happy we have depth at CF.
JR,
“Be happy for Haji and enjoy the runs he made and the passes that he connected with Gio on but it’s hardly definitive proof that he’s better than Josh, Flo, or Pepi.”
I don’t think Monaco uses Flo to his best advantage. That said Gregg is in an enviable position with this group ( you can throw Pefok in there) Overall, they have been solid and it is up to Gregg to make sure he uses the one that is best suited.
I don’t think Gio worries about who he is assisting. He’s assisted guys like Haaland ,Bellingham, Reus, etc., I remember once reading something to the effect that Erling said : “Gio is a smart player. He knows to get the ball to me.”
it’s fairly telling that the goals were the best skill player on the team relegated to bench over moralizing and theories on club form, and a guy who was omitted and 10 minutes from a plane to somewhere else. i keep getting lectured on how the coach knows what he is doing and circularly the team must be the group it should be, then watch the touted starters lose their portion of the game, as they did against germany in the fall, holland, japan, etc. it is thus telling the subs came in and the game changed.
it is very simple. you cannot play tiki-taka with bulldozers. the fanboys adore a set of status quo starters. but then they always seem to love the current lineup so why should that decide anything. problem being, the current all star approach is bulldozers playing at being technical.
if we want to begin winning games again, if you want to play technical half court soccer, you need more guys like reyna and BA and some of the people we leave off, who can thread a needle. i enjoyed that rather than running around reyna would sometimes just step on the ball, stand there, and hit the perfect pass. they might be weaker on defense but the idea is win 3-2 by being better on offense. in which case put 5 good attackers on together. no more pressing selections. 5 guys with some skill or finishing.
or. you go the other way, kind of like jamaica did on us, patch the holes in the defense, select only mids who defend like beasts, play more like a 451, and try to catch teams on the counter with speed. in which case individual screwups like the 3-on-1 matter less as we try to create more of those chances and score on volume, while allowing 0 goals if we can help it.
right now you have sloppy athletic pieces out there trying to break down half court defenses and we either end up crossing or turning it over and getting countered. the personnel doesn’t fit the system. the system isn’t working. so either bring in reyna and folks like that who can break a team down half court, or make the whole offense us sitting back and trying to score on athletic breaks. at that point weston the box crasher is useful.
i don’t know where wright fits in this but he does somewhere and that’s a good thing. i think right now we need to get a little humility and watch who is actually performing in these events, and build around them somehow. and i have suggested the two main directions this needs to go. the worst scenario is we see what happened as “the team works” and just tweak things a little and play wright 30 minutes more. what i am seeing in key games requires full overhaul.
I’m definitely wondering what Wright’s ceiling is. I don’t think we’ve seen it yet. There’s some aspects of his game I don’t particularly like – his movement has gotten better but it’s still off what you see from Balogun or Sargent or Pepi. Despite his size and physique he’s still not the target man you’d expect. And his first touch lets him down a fair bit.
That said, there is that physique. He’s a pure beast and even Jamaica and the Championship – who are both known to be kicky and physical as all hell – have zero joy trying to rough him up. He’s got very good speed for a player so large. He’s really good on the ball and when he runs at a defender you see them just shrink from him, like: what am I supposed to do with THIS? And his finishing is really, really top-drawer. You either have that knack or you don’t, and he absolutely has it.
So could he make it in the Prem? Maybe. Contrary to popular belief, Prem players are not perfect either. Wright will have to up his game some but who doesn’t, at that level? I do think we’ll get the chance to see. The guy we saw last night and have been seeing for awhile with Coventry is going to be intriguing to a whole lot of people.
I also think he needs to be a regular call-up for the USMNT. He has a skillset no other player on the roster offers. I do think he’s more of a wing forward than a true winger or true center forward but without question he adds something significant to the roster.
Haji is a player that relied on his size as a youth player. When size stopped mattering as much (when he was at Schalke) his effectiveness waned. This is where the story ends for many an US player with his size and skillset up to that point. But he didn’t stop working on his game.
He drops a couple notched to the Danish league and starts baggin goals. He steps up a notch to Turkey. He keeps bagging goals. He arrives in the Championship – another step up – and after a some adjustment, starts baggin goals. He’s been on fire there this calendar year after a slow start.
So I agree with you. It’s very possible we haven’t seen his ceiling yet. He’s living Jurgen Klinsmann’s wish for US players to continually challenge themselves. He’s meeting those challenges. What’s the next step for him after clearing every hurdle he’s encountered (including a World Cup goal versus a team with world class defenders)? It would be a top 5 league. Why not the Prem?
And to think some people didn’t even think he belong in the USMNT smh
he underlines my desire for more roster competition. given some field time he has a higher strike rate than either pepi or balogun. mind you, that’s subject to who gets to start a few and who goes on a run what period. and he can play wing.
also, at risk of pointing out the obvious, but…..morocco (semis), holland (quarters), and jamaica (regional semi)…..that’s who he’s scored on. i like gamers who fill nets in big contests. i like green for similar reasons. if you want to win the big ones you need to start noticing who shows up and does their job in this level contest as opposed to hat tricks on guatemala.
last point but i wonder how much of this is GB hasn’t really fully gotten his nails in him. i mean to me the problem with, say, balogun last night was they would feed him a diagonal into open space and instead of turning and going to net he’d play it wide then run to goal for his cross back in. and crossing wasn’t working.
what works for this team is either feed, turn, and shoot; or playing guys well-weighted throughballs as they make runs between defenders. it is not the system garbage. it is zero surprise to me the team is better in desperation mode subbing in all its attackers. because the selection is wrong and the tactics hold this back. we either need to throw on more attackers all the time and try and win 3-2, or we need to tighten down the defense and get it done 1-0. last night is about the 3rd time i have seen us have to open it up to compete in a NL finals. and yet we revert back every time.
either that or you can’t give up that first goal, and pick some other wingbacks, play a defensive formation, and then you can have musah and weston flying up on athletic counters as opposed to trying to play possession with sloppy mids lacking the final product.
the idea that a former YNT player from weston’s cohort who got sandbagged for his career situation, needs to make another transfer move, is silly and self-defeating. he is finally finding his career footing and getting his due from GB. stop. if you get confused why i am asking stop, go look at his resume and how many unsuccessful destinations he bounced through before it clicked.
I like that what is his ceiling.like when Goku unlocked Ultra Instinct. Haji can def unlock ultra Instinct and be a EPL level striker. I could see Wright and Toney at Brentford in a two forward 4-4-2 formation.
I love your connections. Even if I don’t always understand the reference.
I’d actually like to see Haji at a team like Brighton, who play attacking football and look to get on the front foot with possession and penetrating play