U.S. men’s national team attacker Tim Weah won’t play any part of his side’s group stage finale next Monday.
Weah was sent off in the first half of Thursday’s showdown with Panama after striking Roderick Miller’s head. The Juventus winger originally was shown a yellow card in the 19th minute but VAR upgraded the decision to a red card, ejecting Weah from the match.
Weah was jostling with Miller for positioning before raising his hands high on the defender. The 24-year-old was visibly frustrated walking off the field at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, leaving the USMNT at a serious disadvantage for the remainder of the match.
It marked Weah’s first red card with the USMNT.
The USMNT proceeded to lose 2-1 to Panama, their second head-to-head defeat in two years.
“We talked beforehand about the tendencies of this referee, we knew what he’s capable of and to be honest I think we played right into his hands,” USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter told reporters in a postmatch news conference. “And we made that decision I think pretty easy. Tim got bumped, he got checked and he reacted. He apologized to the group and I think he understands what a difficult position he put the group in.
“Nonetheless it happened and as a result we lost this game and we’re going to have to move on and figure out how to win next game.”
Weah’s ejection will officially rule him out of next Monday’s group stage finale vs. Uruguay, which could be a key decider for first place. CONMEBOL rules state that a red card comes with a one-match suspension and the federation could also impose a greater sanction for Weah’s incident.
His absence will certainly force head coach Gregg Berhalter to make a change at right wing.
Always been a huge fan of Weah, loved his maturity. Very surprised he reacted the way he did. But that one play cost us that game and probably the whole tournament.
Sorry nonsense by Weah. Regardless you have to contain your emotions in tournaments.
Quite frankly the US still isn’t good enough to actually still dominate teams with 10 men. The better national teams have still dominated lesser national teams with 10 men.
For 72+ minutes? Dominate? Which teams? Have you watched the Euros? Have you watched this Copa? Ok…Spain and Argentina maybe.
Yes I have watched. I have seen better national sides dominate lesser sides with 10 men for a long time.
David Gass on Soccerwise after the game said the last time a team played over 70 minutes down a man and won was 1989.
In Copa America
Not a national team but 74 minutes. Chelsea during Mourinho’s first go around went down o-1 to West Ham and lost a man to a red card. They came back to win 4-1. It helps to have a Drogba.
Going down to 10 men means really hard but it doesn’t mean impossible.
yeah, i’ve won games with 9 or 10 left back in select ball. fairly often actually. for starters, you don’t bunker. you do roughly what we did. ditch a striker/forward slot from the formation.
JR needs to decide whether it was wise or unwise to try and play for a tie. his tactical debate with me on the other page seemed to suggest i was being harsh. and i couldn’t help but note that his offensive on these comments is to now argue we’d have never won. if you read the subtleties there, you should be asking, “what about the tie you seemed to be pushing on the other page, son?” did you ask the stats man if they ever got a tie from that situation?
our colleague also neglects that as with TnT, this spiral started up a goal while down a man. both games we quickly surrendered the lead. error 1. and what’s being fundamentally missed here is that sometimes playing in a more honest manner seeking a winner, raises the likelihood that all else fails you get the tie. error 2. GB’s tactics, to me, basically shut up shop and best case scenario was a tie. that is hoping not to lose. that is a negative way to go about soccer.
i may like defensive soccer but it’s from a countering perspective, where you aren’t going to score on me, so i am not losing, but you’re gonna screw up and i will take my goals your end. GB abandoned any potential of sneaking one and basically naively hoped a defense he should know better than to expect shutouts from, might get one.
what’s amusing to me is seeing all the “we suck and deserve it” roster diss posts meeting up with tactical conservatives who wanted to neuter the offense and pretend we had an all world defense. since when.
David Gass is a national media member who reports on MLS, NWSL, and both women’s and men’s national teams. So no I didn’t break into his post game recap to ask him the statistic of how many ended in draws. I realize you like to make up “facts” to fit your narrative like “the U20s lost to Colombia in 2019”, but when I give you a stat I’m going to give you the source not a vague “we used to …”
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A tie was the right play, it would allow us to control our own destiny with a win or draw with Uruguay. With the loss we now depend on results from Panama’s match even if we win. Whether a 5 back was right for the draw is debatable but it was far from Berhalter’s 4-3-2 he used when Dest was red carded that was dumb.
Dumb dumb dumb