The U.S. men’s national team’s road to a fourth-consecutive CONCACAF Nations League title will run through rivals Panama.
Panama and the USMNT will meet in the semifinal round of the 2024-25 Nations League on March 20, 2025. The winner of the semifinal tie will meet either Canada or Mexico in the Nations League Final three days later.
SoFi Stadium will host both the semifinal round and final.
Mauricio Pochettino’s squad finished second among the four quarterfinal winners after defeating Jamaica in both legs. The Americans claimed a 1-0 road victory over the Reggae Boyz last Thursday in Kingston before earning a 4-2 second leg win in St. Louis on Monday.
Ricardo Pepi and Christian Pulisic both scored two goals apiece while Tim Weah also found the back of the net.
Panama defeated Costa Rica 3-2 on aggregate after winning 1-0 in San Jose before playing out a 2-2 draw in Panama City.
It will mark the second recent head-to-head meeting between the USMNT and Panama in multiple competitions. Panama defeated the USMNT 2-1 in Copa America group stage play last summer, a match which saw Weah shown a first-half red card in the loss.
Thomas Christiansen’s squad also eliminated the USMNT in the semifinals of the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup before falling to Mexico 1-0 in the tournament final.
The USMNT defeated Panama 2-0 in October friendly play, which was the first match that Pochettino was on the sidelines for.
Anibal Godoy, Adalberto Carrasquilla, Fidel Escobar, and Jose Fajardo are among the leading players for Panama.
The USMNT will be seeking their first trophy of the Pochettino-era.
i thought we got very little out of the fall schedule before november and the semifinals bracket is then every team we already played in september and october save NZ.
i thought we benefitted from some creative redeployment and run patterns from a short list of key attackers. move puli here, weah there, jedi here. puli up the gut, jedi flashing some added interior threat, weah handling the chalk on boots part.
as well as more directness in the attack. this needs more creative tweaking. few fresh faces and maybe a little of the cleverness used for the right side.
i say this because an infinite loop of the best regional opposition doesn’t seem to help that process — seems to encourage conservatism on tactics and personnel — and the fall friendlies were the part we could control.
i thought some of the most obvious star players showed well in the new scheme. i thought a chunk of the more debatable folks — other than perhaps pepi and weston — looked, well, still debatable. if we are looking long term, big game, and not making the usual US mistake of treating a mismatch blowout like the unit won the world cup. we played well for about a half the second night.
At least they are still hinting that some other teams will be added to the Gold Cup from other regions but nothing is finalized.
JR: you’re still erring the wrong way on this. we need more confidence building, idea testing “jamaica” or worse contests where we can tinker with who we play and how we play them, such that the run of play looks better and the results improve. i think the constant high stakes games are actually counter-productive. i think we only need some of “this” to test what we have done. i think if it’s constantly a “mexico” or “canada” (or whoever is in gold cup, or was in copa america), they are too busy fighting to stay head over water to mess with whether the personnel are right and we have come up with some scheme quirks.
if you noticed, the cuteness arrived with a slightly easier opponent. this needs a little more clinical and clever and a little less blood and guts. or, put different, work rate should be default and we should be looking for the inspired workers.
i mean, just look forward. setting aside january camp, my understanding is we have a march window, 2 games right before gold cup, then gold cup. then 5 official windows from there to world cup. not a lot of chances to see people, especially if you get conservative about it.
i personally found only the first half of jamaica game 2 to be very convincing. the rest was meh and poor defense. we were “this” close (a turner save) to tying jamaica away, and game 2 was a mixed bag. this needs more work and acting like every game is the super bowl doesn’t allow for clever ideas and some fresh personnel.
IV how does facing weak opponents like Vietnam teach anything? That would just lead to more “cuteness” as you say. You could put out a roster of MLS journeyman and beat India 3-0 what does that show you for a World Cup match with Argentina?
Note to all: Until IV is named USMNT coach, expect him to criticize who ever is. Sometimes IV’s right sometimes I think not.
For example, IV always seems to want Green on the roster, Green who could not rise above B2 at the club level and whose biggest claim to fame was a WC goal that bounced off his shin. True he made a nice run to get in position and (i think) it was Bradley who served him the ball, but too often Green would lose the ball when I think he should not have.
Pochetinno seems to me to believe that a defender’s important attributes are a great soccer brain, the ability to concentrate for the full 90+, and good technique. Apparently he thinks those are more important that athleticism hence Ream is still getting starts. To that end he wants his defense to be organized. I do worry that Ream is too slow and that at his age injuries take longer to recover from so he might not be available for every game.
Dennis,
Don’t forget that Green scored an important goal in the 2014 World Cup ten years ago. IV believes that players are frozen in time once they do that. They don’t get better and they don’t get worse.
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Ream is IV’s version of Moby Dick. Tim is a white whale and IV can’t rest until Ream is harpooned and processed.
Ream is slow but if you look at the best veteran CB’s out there many of them are not super quick anymore.
Cruyff always said the faster player is the one who starts running first. And that is how these older CB’s survive. They process the game faster and get to where they have to be before the enemy does. It’s that simple.
That said you still need a certain level of athleticism and speed but I don’t think Ream has run out of gas there yet.
If we were a big boy team Timmy would probably have been phased out by now but if there is a better American ball playing CB who is adept at playing and passing out of the back, then I would love to know who that is.
Ream plays because we don’t have a clearly better alternative. AND, because Pochettino is on an abbreviated timeline .
He needs to win every game he plays and therefore has no time to experiment.
If there is an alternative to Timmy, that player will have to excel a the club level. And, according to IV, club form is bullshit.
As far as I can tell, there’s no obvious successor out there. Richards is a different sort of CB and he has been a inconsistent, injury prone disappointment. The rest of the pool have had their moments but almost all of them are untrustworthy, and have a howler a game habit.
Trusty may be good but he has yet to play enough for anyone to tell, so there is that. You could try to bring back JAB but I don’t know about that.
Reyna back training with Dortmund. Could be available this weekend. Dortmund need a boost sitting 7th.
I only watched the first 15-20 minutes of the Hon-Mex match but am not surprised at the scoreline at all. Honduras didn’t even try to do anything besides bunker and clear. To be sure, Mexico came out flying, but still. No runners, no counters, just emergency defending and hopeless clearance. It’s why I have never been a fan of parking the bus, it is just almost always a losing strategy.
They did the same last year in NL quarterfinals, taking a 2-0 lead to Mexico. It didn’t work then either.
US v Canada in the Final. I think Canada has the better team than Mexico, but with the games being held in LA it will be overwhelmingly Mexico fans. So Canada will have to deal with that.
Panama will be a bit weaker with one of their starters missing the Semifinal due to a red card.
Gotta beat Panama first. I expect that to be a tough game.
I don’t think the USMNT has lost to Panama with a full strength team(ala the 2023 Gold Cup) or one that wasn’t down a man in a match(ala Copa America), so while I expect it to be a rugged game due to Panama’s propensity to muck up the game with fouls and a low block, I don’t however see us having trouble winning that semifinal either. If we score early, I can see it getting out of hand before the final whistle(similar to the Jamaica game but maybe one less goal for Panama)
RT: dude, if every speck of talent has to be there your coach’s tactics and personnel ability aren’t very good. put differently, that the coach is rolling the ball out for the talent who are getting him any results he gets. if you identify impact subs and get a working scheme the whole 23 man can execute, then you should be able to win with whoever you have. because “whoever” sits behind the starters should be better chosen than recent coaches have identified. we’ve tolerated a fair amount of indifferent or bad play. and still were getting a lot of it from RF, some backs, and the bench.
to me it was telling of GB he couldn’t beat better teams and seemed doomed by the absence of Plan A choices.
IV,
“to me it was telling of GB he couldn’t beat better teams and seemed doomed by the absence of Plan A choices.”
Not just you.
They fired GB. He’s not there anymore
V: per usual missing my point. my point is good coaches offer value added beyond picking a list of obvious reputation players and rolling the ball out. i get GB is gone. gone with him should be these lame “but we’re missing x” excuses. because he should be able to pick a deeper roster of better chosen players, and his scheme should have more of a clue. if you pick better people. if you identify more than just a starting 11. if you coach them up. if you have a scheme that adds value to the team rather than is an anchor. if poch is that — and the first half the other night was one of the few inspired evenings in recent memory — then i am less convinced by “but we’re missing x.” the other players shouldn’t suck bad without x, and the scheme should work like clockwork without them.
US has decades of history of teams able to compete and get results when key guys were suspended or hurt.
US has decades of history of fighting to draws or wins with red cards, as well. scheme functionality plus fighting spirit.
if this is working right i hope to hear fewer personnel excuses.
IV,,
“V: per usual missing my point. my point is good coaches offer value added beyond picking a list of obvious reputation players and rolling the ball out.”
No shit. Tell us something that every person here doesn’t already know.
“i get GB is gone.”
No you don’t. You keep bashing Pochettino for Gregg’s flaws. You keep insisting that the ” good players” are out there , Pochettino just has to pick them. So far, Pochettino is using Gregg’s xeroxed roster players and getting better results. You wanted him to dump them because as you put it “when they arrive. they don’t spend windows playing the last coach’s guys.. ”
Part is that is Pochettino, part of it is that some players have improved over time at their clubs ( see Pulisic, C., Pepi, R., Weah T., McKennie, W. etc.) and that is something you don’t believe happens. Of course you’re now the johnny come lately jumping on the band wagon talking about how y’all can “see what a difference it makes when you get good coaching.”when you are the guy who said “this roster sheet doesn’t scream change is coming.”
“gone with him should be these lame “but we’re missing x” excuses.””
They are not lame excuses. The USMNT is not France, Spain or some other big boy team.
There is CP and maybe Jedi. Then there is Weston, Weah, Adams, Dest . Then the rest, then there is a level below that.
It’s dynamic situation and things are getting better but they are not there yet.
” because he should be able to pick a deeper roster of better chosen players, and his scheme should have more of a clue. if you pick better people. if you identify more than just a starting 11. if you coach them up. if you have a scheme that adds value to the team rather than is an anchor. if poch is that — and the first half the other night was one of the few inspired evenings in recent memory — then i am less convinced by “but we’re missing x.” the other players shouldn’t suck bad without x, and the scheme should work like clockwork without them.”
“US has decades of history of teams able to compete and get results when key guys were suspended or hurt.”
“US has decades of history of fighting to draws or wins with red cards, as well. scheme functionality plus fighting spirit. if this is working right i hope to hear fewer personnel excuses.”
Yeah? The USMNT usually plays weaker teams so getting results with US guys suspended or hurt should not be surprising.
Then again the biggest thing is WHO is suspended or hurt.
Losing Dest or Adams, okay.
Losing CP? That’s very different.
Pochettino is working to close that gap but they are not there yet.