State of the USMNT: How much needs fixing before 2026 World Cup?

On January 28, 2019, the U.S. men’s national team blew out Panama, 3-0, to start the Gregg Berhalter era. They maintained heavy possession of the ball, and generated basically all of the match’s good scoring opportunities. It was a statement of sorts, about the type of identity Berhalter wanted to establish and, following their World Cup qualification failure in 2017, the USMNT’s resumed place in the CONCACAF hierarchy. A few months later in Missouri (St. Louis’ Busch Stadium, to be exact), the U.S. drew with Uruguay, too.

Those results would have been awfully useful in the summer of 2024. Instead, the U.S. suffered a red-card-addled loss to Panama and a 1-0 defeat to Uruguay on the other side of Missouri, at Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium. The results meant that they were duly eliminated from Copa America, the biggest tournament on the docket between the 2022 and 2026 FIFA World Cups, and one they were hosting.

There was a lot of poor fortune in these two defeats. Tim Weah not only lost his head and suffered his second career red card against Panama, but he did so in the 18th minute, forcing his team to play a man down for well over an hour. A draw would have been an acceptable result, and it almost came to pass … but didn’t. Uruguay’s game-winning goal, meanwhile, was onside by a toenail at most. In all, the U.S. attempted 34 shots worth 4.1 xG in the tournament, but turned a plus-1.6 xG differential into just a 3-3 scoring margin.

Bad luck aside, the elimination was powerfully symbolic, and not just because of Panama’s involvement; it was the first time in 20 home tournaments that the U.S. didn’t advance to the knockout rounds, and, just 23 months before it co-hosts the 2026 World Cup, it leaves the team with an overwhelming sense of stagnation despite having as many players as ever playing for major European clubs.

Without delving too much into who the manager is and should be, let’s talk about the overall state of the national team. What are the biggest issues that the USMNT needs to address between now and when the World Cup kicks off in about 23 months? Why have things seemingly stagnated?

They keep getting CONCACAF’d

In itself, Monday’s loss to Uruguay was a useful experience, the type that you’re looking for from a tournament like this.

The atmosphere, with a mixed crowd of 55,460 at Arrowhead, was charged. Berhalter’s team stood up to Uruguay’s physicality for the most part. Granted, losing forward Folarin Balogun to injury after a collision with goalkeeper Sergio Rochet, and having right back Joe Scally limping around for the entire second half after suffering a nasty tackle late in the first, hurt the cause immensely. But Uruguay lost a starter to injury, too.

In the end, Uruguay scored because Chris Richards’ foot was evidently one millimeter too big, and the U.S. lost for the same reason they usually lose — they just don’t have enough good attacking ideas — and not because they didn’t meet the moment.

There’s been a burgeoning narrative making the rounds when it comes to Berhalter’s poor record against the world’s best teams. Using the numbers at EloRatings.net, under Berhalter the U.S. has played 12 matches against teams that were in the world’s top 15 at the time of the match. They have three wins, five losses and four draws in those matches. Aside from the June 8 collapse against Colombia, in which their opponents scored three late goals to romp 5-1, most of the losses were at least relatively competitive, and a couple of the draws — 0-0 against England in the 2022 World Cup, 1-1 against Brazil four days after the Colombia humiliation — were particularly solid results.

All three of the wins in that sample were against Mexico, of course. While that’s being used against Berhalter at the moment, it’s fair to say that generally speaking, U.S. fans enjoy beating Mexico.

The team’s current seven-match unbeaten streak against their neighbors to the south is one of the brighter things about the Berhalter era (a phrase I’m loosely using as a reference to the period from the start of 2019 to the present, even if Berhalter was out of the job for about eight months in 2023). And overall, a slightly below-.500 record against the top 15 suggests top-20ish status. Based on raw talent levels, that’s approximately where the U.S. should be. That they lost to Uruguay on Monday tracks, too: Uruguay is a better team with more major-club talent.

It was the loss to Panama in Atlanta that cost them, however, and it was the continuation of a small trend.

The USMNT vs. Panama in the Berhalter era

Jan. 27, 2019: W, 3-0 (friendly)
June 26, 2019: W, 1-0 (Gold Cup)
Nov 16, 2020: W, 6-2 (friendly)
Oct. 21, 2021: L, 0-1 (World Cup qualification)
March 27, 2022: W, 5-1 (World Cup qualification)
July 12, 2023: D, 1-1, with a loss in penalties (Gold Cup)
June 27, 2024: L, 1-2 (Copa America)

After three straight wins against Panama, the U.S. has won just one of the last four meetings. Similarly, they have won just one of their last four against Canada, and one of three against Jamaica.

Never mind their results against better, more talented teams; right now the team is failing to meet its general ambition levels because it can’t reliably beat the teams it’s supposed to beat. They’ve played 49 matches against non-Mexico CONCACAF opponents in the Berhalter era; in 37 matches against these teams before the last World Cup, they averaged 2.39 points against, a sample that even includes a series of frustrating World Cup qualification results. But in 12 matches since the World Cup, they’ve averaged only 2.0 points per game with three draws and two losses. Obviously not all of these results featured Berhalter’s first-choice lineup (or even Berhalter himself), but a lot of the easy wins early in Berhalter’s tenure didn’t either.

Granted, they won’t have to beat any CONCACAF teams to qualify for the next World Cup: they’re already in as co-hosts. But in a 48-team World Cup, they’re likely to be paired in a group with one or two teams over whom they have a clear talent advantage. Before you can worry about advancing deep into the knockout rounds, you have to beat those teams and qualify for the knockout rounds.

Under Berhalter, the U.S. has both shown too much respect to outmanned CONCACAF foes and still managed to underachieve against them. In road matches in World Cup qualification, they seemed to forego a lot of the ball-control identity that Berhalter has otherwise stressed, seemingly playing for a draw despite talent advantages and sometimes not even managing that. The Copa America loss to Panama was obviously defined by Weah’s red card, but Berhalter’s quotes made it sound like they were playing a man down against France.

“I can’t fault the effort of the group,” he said, “especially after going down a man. The guys dug in and we were close to coming out with a point but it’s a shame because there was more in this game and silly decision by Timmy that leaves us shorthanded … One lapse, we got punished for it.”

Playing a man down is obviously difficult under any circumstances, and it should be noted that the U.S. still actually created better scoring opportunities than Panama. Both Ricardo Pepi and Chris Richards failed on high-value late shot attempts that could have produced a draw or even a win. In all, the U.S. created 1.08 xG from just six shots, while Panama created 0.77 from 13. Still, if you’ve got both the identity and the midfield the U.S. was supposed to have, you should be able to put together something greater than a 28% possession rate, shouldn’t you?

The U.S. relegated itself mostly to a long-ball game against Panama, almost willfully sacrificing possession to defend for 70 minutes. Was that really the only option?

The midfield’s disappearance

You can make a case that attempting a little bit more verticality would be a good thing for the U.S., which has at times gotten bogged down with aimless possession against less talented teams. But at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, Berhalter and his squad earned quite a bit of positive attention for their dynamic and athletic midfield play, which for the most part combined solid passing, aggressive ball progression and quality pressing. In three of the last four matches the U.S. has played, the ball has been taken completely out of the midfield’s hands, rhetorically speaking.

(The above graphic shows combined touches for players denoted as midfielders — central, defensive or central-attacking — for each U.S. match since 2019.)

At the 2022 World Cup, a four-game sample that includes matches against more talented England and Netherlands teams, U.S. midfielders (mainly Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams and Yunus Musah) averaged 212.5 touches, 161.5 pass attempts, 46.5 combined progressive carries and passes and 20.0 ball recoveries per match. At this Copa America, midfielders averaged 132.7 touches (down 38%), 90.7 pass attempts (down 44%), 22.3 progressive carries and passes (down 52%) and 12.0 ball recoveries (down 40%).

U.S. midfielders have had fewer than 150 touches in a game nine times in the Berhalter era. It’s happened a few times through the years when the team was winning comfortably: It happened in the 4-1 win over Canada in 2019, a 4-1 win over Honduras in 2021, a 5-1 win over Panama in 2022 and last summer’s 2-0 win over Canada that featured two early goals. But after it happened six times in 82 matches, it also happened in three of the last four games: the 1-1 draw with Brazil and the losses to Panama and Uruguay. That shift is noticeable, even with extenuating circumstances like Weah’s red card and a couple of injuries, and even if three matches don’t officially constitute a trend.

So where have the midfielders’ touches gone? Well, against Panama, they went straight to the other team. But in other recent matches, they have frequently gone to the fullbacks.

Antonee Robinson’s role, for instance, changed significantly between the World Cup and Copa America.

Key Antonee Robinson stats

– Chances created: 0.75 per match at the World Cup, 2.00 at Copa America
– Combined xA+xG: 0.06 at the World Cup, 0.18 at Copa America
– Combined progressive carries and passes: 15.3 at the World Cup, 7.0 at Copa America
– Ball recoveries: 10.0 at the World Cup, 5.3 at Copa America

Robinson is now relied on far more for chance creation over the past month and far less for both ball progression and ball pressure. Beyond that, Joe Scally had by far the most touches in the first half against Uruguay before the injury limited his effectiveness. The focus of the USMNT’s attack is drifting to the edges.

Robinson is one of the best left backs in the Premier League while Scally, still only 21, has been a Bundesliga mainstay for three seasons now. It would make sense if players like Robinson, Scally and another right back, Sergiño Dest — a shining light for PSV Eindhoven this season before an April ACL tear — would take on more importance in certain ways. But despite the lineup similarities between 2022 and 2024, it appears a lot of players’ and positions’ roles are changing.

When your team is succeeding, you call that evolution. When it isn’t, you call it an identity crisis.

Reyna’s stagnation

Dest’s injury aside, maybe the most noteworthy (and frequently ineffective) shift in the lineup has come from Gio Reyna taking a lot of Yunus Musah’s minutes.

Reyna has had one of the most confusing years you will ever see from a professional soccer player. Since last summer, he has played more minutes for his country (704) than for either of two clubs, Borussia Dortmund and Nottingham Forest (592). Plus, about two-thirds of his minutes with the U.S. have come from a midfield position, one-third on the wing.

Reyna played all 90 minutes against Uruguay. He was ostensibly a left winger, the replacement for Pulisic, who shifted to the right side in Weah’s absence. Musah filled Reyna’s role in midfield … but Reyna spent a lot of the match drifting back to his old position, as pretty clearly evidenced by where he touched the ball.

(Source: TruMedia)

For much of the first half in particular, Reyna ended up drifting to central areas while the U.S. was in attack; this resulted in both a cluttered midfield and isolation and relative non-involvement for Robinson on the left. Reyna ended up creating two of the USMNT’s best chances in the second half, but he accomplished very little else and committed the foul that ultimately led to Uruguay’s goal. It was a frustrating end to a frustrating tournament for him.

Reyna has finally begun to move past a long run of injuries that held him back for much of 2021-22, but he still spent most of the last year either sitting on the bench for multiple clubs or playing multiple positions for his national team. There is just no way a player can develop properly in this sort of situation.

After Reyna signed with super-agent Jorge Mendes in January, the first thing Mendes did was steer him toward a loan at the wrong type of club. With rumors swirling about LaLiga teams being interested in his services — Reyna’s prodigious technical skill would make him a better fit in LaLiga than most members of the U.S. player pool — he instead ended up at Nottingham Forest, a team near the bottom of the Premier League table, with a counter-attacking coach (Nuno Espírito Santo) who isn’t particularly fond of playing younger guys.

Since that move, Reyna played 231 total minutes in Nottingham and created one assist. He created some bright moments with the national team in this span and scored the goal that put away March’s Nations League win over Mexico, but it was a lost season at the club level. That’s a trend.

Reyna in all club competitions

– 2020-21 (age 18): 2,681 minutes, 7 goals, 6 assists from 45 chances created
– 2021-22 (age 19): 571 minutes, 2 goals, 1 assist from 22 chances created
– 2022-23 (age 20): 1,017 minutes, 7 goals, 4 assists from 11 chances created
– 2023-24 (age 21): 592 minutes, 0 goals, 1 assist from 19 chances created

Reyna has played less in the last three years combined than he did for Borussia Dortmund as an 18-year old in 2020-21.

Two years ago, when I talked to BVB youth coach Otto Addo, he spoke equally glowingly of both Reyna and Jude Bellingham. Part of that was undoubtedly because he knew he was speaking to an American writer, but it was easy to see the young American as a natural successor for Marco Reus in Dortmund. Now it appears the club will likely move on this summer. He’s still only 21 and could easily get back on the right track, especially if he lands with the right club for this coming season. But laminating Reyna’s name into the U.S. lineup of late has not necessarily benefited either Reyna or the U.S.

You could potentially say that about the so-called U.S. golden generation as a whole, too.

Roster staleness is an issue, and club form should matter more than it does

One line from Jeff Carlisle’s post-Uruguay piece on Monday particularly stuck with me: “There seems to be a level of comfort inside the team that is unhealthy.” At the end of 2020, about two years out from the Qatar World Cup, I wrote a piece about what we’ve been referring to as the USMNT’s golden generation, one that included a lot of the ultra-young players that Berhalter would come to rely on: Pulisic, Adams, McKennie, Reyna, Weah, Dest, Musah, center-back Chris Richards, plus others with a steady lineup presence like attackers Josh Sargent and Brendan Aaronson and hopefuls like Nicholas Gioacchini, Richard Ledezma, Sebastian Soto and Jesús Ferreira.

Indeed, the U.S. still boasts a large group of steady contributors that is only now coming into its peak age range. This is a great thing, even if some players from that above list inevitably failed to develop at the same rate as others. (That’s always going to happen.) But this generation has produced quality depth more than difference-making star power. The top names on the depth chart are justifiable, but it benefits no one to consider them unassailable. Club form should probably matter more than it does at the moment, or else depth isn’t really depth.

Let’s revisit Ryan O’Hanlon’s USMNT player rankings, which he based almost entirely on (a) who players are playing for and (b) how much they’re playing. It wasn’t intended to be a pure “Who’s the best?” list, but it was rather noticeable that, while Berhalter’s 26-man Copa America roster included 10 of the top 12 players on the list (and Dest, one of the players not selected, was injured), it also included six unranked players, plus three more ranked 37th or lower.

Dest aside, the players ranked eighth (Club America winger Alejandro Zendejas), 13th (Heidenheim midfielder Lennard Maloney), 14th (Hoffenheim center-back John Brooks), 16th (19-year old Hajduk Split midfielder Rokas Pukstas), 19th (Monterrey forward Brandon Vázquez), 20th (Inter-bound Venezia midfielder Tanner Tessmann) and 22nd (Greuther Furth center-back Maximilian Dietz) didn’t make the roster and based on recent roster selections, you could conclude that most of those guys didn’t get serious consideration either. In addition, the No. 5 player on the list (attacking midfielder Malik Tillman) was credited with a single minute of action against Uruguay, while No. 12 (center-back Mark McKenzie) didn’t play.

That Adams played 180 Copa America minutes despite being unranked on O’Hanlon’s list made sense: He was unranked because injury had prevented him from playing much during the club season, and his importance to the team is undeniable. It perhaps made less sense that Reyna (No. 37, behind even veterans like Matt Miazga and Julian Green) played 201 minutes, that Sargent (No. 48) and Aaronson (No. 42) saw action ahead any number of unselected and higher-ranked attackers, or that unranked Ethan Horvath and Sean Johnson were the other goalkeepers selected.

Horvath is Cardiff City’s second-choice goalkeeper in the English second division, but he became an important contributor when Turner left the Panama match injured. Meanwhile, there are 11 fullbacks listed in O’Hanlon’s top 50, two of Berhalter’s four fullbacks, Kristoffer Lund and Shaq Moore, were unranked. If Scally couldn’t continue against Panama, Berhalter would have had to go with Moore, who has played just five full 90s for MLS’ Nashville SC this season.

Berhalter’s selection of familiar faces for an important tournament made sense in a way: after all, now maybe wasn’t the best time to learn things about relative unknowns. But without World Cup qualification, this was also the best opportunity to see what potentially important future players could do in matches with particularly high stakes. We probably know what we need to know about Horvath and Moore.

Depth is only depth if you use it, and Berhalter’s selections are starting to look awfully stale. The U.S. has been particularly reliant on figures like Adams, McKennie and Pulisic for a while. Now is when you need to be finding out about guys like Tessmann, Pukstas and Tillman.

Moving on from Berhalter probably wouldn’t hurt

Five-and-a-half years under one coach is a long time. None of the starters from that 3-0 win over Panama in Berhalter’s debut remain high on Berhalter’s depth chart. Of the 17 players who saw minutes in that match, only one (Johnson, now the emergency No. 3 keeper) even had a spot on the Copa America roster. Some of the more exciting young contributors in that game — 21-year old Djordje Mihailovic (who scored the opening goal), 22-year old Corey Baird (who assisted it), 21-year old Jonathan Lewis (who assisted the final goal) — were long ago eliminated from serious USMNT consideration.

Of course, it must be said that the Berhalter era has not been without its achievements. The U.S. won the Gold Cup in 2021 and the CONCACAF Nations League in 2021 and 2023. Despite having one of the youngest squads at the 2022 World Cup, they also had one of the clearest and strongest identities and advanced to the knockout rounds. Playing Mexico seven times without a loss is pretty fun, even if Mexico is going through a down cycle of its own. Key American players remain on Berhalter’s side, and sporting director Matt Crocker was so sure about Berhalter that he re-hired him less than a year ago when both Berhalter and U.S. Soccer had a perfect opportunity to amicably part ways. If important U.S. Soccer figures were sure about Berhalter before Copa America, there’s no reason to think they would be swayed by a result driven in large part by a red card.