The United States men’s national team is good enough, on a good day, to beat any of its World Cup group stage opponents. England is there for the taking, despite the whole point of manager Gareth Southgate’s tenure being to make England less there for the taking. Wales has drawn once and lost four times since belatedly winning its spot in this tournament by defeating Ukraine and is reliant on a Major League Soccer part-timer, Los Angeles FC’s Gareth Bale, for much of its offense. (This is not necessarily the worst bet.) Some of Iran’s national team players have supported the ongoing protests there, and the subsequent crackdowns have led to calls to ban the nation from the tournament entirely. But the saga’s impacts on the squad’s form are impossible to predict, and Team Melli has sporting hurdles to overcome as well. Iran nearly fired coach Dragan Skocic in July and then actually fired him in September, despite his record of 15 wins to only two losses and one draw. Skocic was replaced with legendary journeyman manager Carlos Quieroz, who had previously coached the team to the 2014 and 2018 World Cups but more recently flopped with Colombia and Egypt.
The reason that the U.S. is more likely to bow out in the group stage than make a run in this tournament is that it simply does not have enough good days. Consistency has been this team’s hobgoblin for the past year, particularly throughout World Cup qualifying. Every commanding win seemed to be followed by a floundering defeat. A surge forward against Mexico turns into a stumbling draw against Jamaica. The Americans dismantled Panama and then lost to Costa Rica; beat El Salvador and then fell to Canada.
The flip side of “can beat any of the Group B teams on a good day” is “will lose to them on a bad day.” England is in dismal form entering the tournament—it has drawn three and lost three of its past six games—but if the U.S. gives the ball away as cheaply as it did in a warmup friendly against Japan, it’s going to hand star English forward Harry Kane a second World Cup Golden Boot to complete the pair he started in 2018. Wales and Iran are both built to capitalize on their opponent’s mistakes, much like the Canada team that has given the U.S. so much trouble over the past year. There will be no easy games for the Americans. Indeed, too often it’s the U.S. that makes the game easier than it should be for its opponents.
Plus, there is more than one input to consider here; America’s fate is not actually a binary. The U.S. might play well and be downed by an English team that’s rediscovered its form. It might look good but not quite good enough and still draw Iran when it needs a win. One win, one draw and one disheartening loss might be enough to get to the knockout rounds, but not necessarily. Two teams with four points advanced in 2018 and one—Iran—was sent home. Turn that win into a draw or that draw into a loss and you can forget it. If we assume the Americans will throw out at least one stinker in those three games, their margin for error in the other two games disappears.
It makes sense that the U.S. is inconsistent. It used the youngest roster throughout World Cup qualifying by a considerable margin, overwhelmingly favoring players only a handful of years into their professional careers. (The average age of the World Cup roster has been lifted by the inclusion of geriatrics like 35-year-old center back Tim Ream and 33-year-old goalkeeper Sean Johnson.) And their international progress has been hamstrung by the pandemic, which canceled nearly a year of repetitions together that would be awfully nice to have right now. Many players have been depressingly injury-prone, with starting goalkeeper Matt Turner and big names like Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, Yunus Musah, and Sergino Dest all missing time with ailments as recently as last month. All should be good to go for the tournament, with McKennie being the most recently recovered.
While these players’ rapid ascents in the club world have been the source of the great hope thrust upon them, those tenures may be working against them as well. Playing at some of the biggest teams in the world brings both pressure but also a bit of leeway. The Americans are squad players on those teams, getting regular starts and substitute appearances (some more than others), but not the pressure of stardom. None of them has to be “the guy,” on whom responsibility for success or failure ultimately rests.
Inconsistency is not inexcusable. Every team plays poorly some of the time. Many do so relatively often. The trouble for this iteration of the USMNT is that it hardly ever wins a game in which it doesn’t play well for the entire match. (Often enough the team starts poorly and grows into the game after halftime, finishing strong, like in its 4–1 win over Honduras early in qualifying.)
Since goals are so hard to come by, it’s easier to steal games in soccer than in most other sports. It only takes a few bounces one way or the other to pull off the reversal. Berhalter knows this. The ideas he brought to the job were designed to prevent opposing teams from stealing games, particularly during difficult matchups in World Cup qualifying. The team would be better at limiting opposing counters and at breaking down defensive opponents. In theory, this would take away some of the variance and make the U.S. harder to beat when it plays well. But because it doesn’t play well often enough, now the U.S. has the opposite problem: When the team’s form is finicky, it sinks.
This version of the USMNT doesn’t seem to have access to many of the typical emergency responses that teams use to rescue bad games. It’s a regular scout troop when it comes to pilfering goals. It doesn’t draw a large number of penalties, hasn’t presented much attacking threat on set pieces, and lacks a forward (or any other player) who regularly creates goals out of thin air. When its attackers counter, they seem too happy to take the inevitable tactical foul rather than fight through it and keep a promising play alive. Generations of U.S. teams earned some of their most famous wins by cutting against the game’s momentum. Playing “well” looked different for them. They did not have to be dominant; many were designed not to be. Before he became the team’s offensive centerpiece, Clint Dempsey was beloved because he had a knack for scoring goals in games where nothing else was working, even when he himself didn’t seem to be playing well.
The U.S. was dangerous on set pieces in the CONCACAF Nations League finals and the Gold Cup—way back in the summer of 2021. It has players talented enough to create goals out of nothing: Look at this from Dest, or this from Weah. But both qualities have been lacking of late.
And this, I think, is a major reason why the fanbase is so disheartened entering this World Cup. There is a certain subset of games during which there seems to be nothing to hope for. When the team is up against it, it doesn’t feel like it matters when a U.S. player is fouled in a dangerous area, or when certain players finally get the ball on their foot. The vibes start bad and stay bad, which is unforgivable for a fanbase used to the thrill of a sudden reversal. Christian Pulisic, the face of the team, had that match-winning knack as a teenager, but his confidence, and the fans’ confidence in him, has waned. Gio Reyna seems like he ought to have it, too, but his injuries have limited him to so few appearances that he hasn’t had the opportunity to show it. Maybe they’re still too young. (Pulisic is 24; Reyna just 20.) Maybe they’re waiting for someone else to become the Man, or for the Man’s form to come back around to them.
For the U.S. to have a successful World Cup, it has to solve one of these problems: Either play well every match out or find a way to win when it doesn’t. For it to have a great World Cup, one that matches the lofty expectations fans have placed on the team’s talented group of players, it will probably need to figure out both. Based on the past year of games, you’d have to be a real optimist to think it might.
