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      U.S. Beats El Salvador to Inch Closer to World Cup

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      A victory over El Salvador moved the Americans another step closer to a place in this year’s World Cup in Qatar.The goal celebration, it turned out, provided the match’s final moment of drama.Seconds after United States defender Antonee Robinson scored what proved to be the winning goal for the Americans in their 1-0 victory over El Salvador on Thursday night, he wheeled away from the goal, did a handspring and then pulled up grabbing his left hamstring. Playing through 30-degree temperatures — U.S. Soccer had scheduled the game for Columbus, Ohio, in January to try to gain a mental, if not meteorological, advantage over its Central American rivals — had suddenly seemed to backfire.Robinson, though, was only joking. He quickly turned his (faked) anguished steps into a full-blown strut, to the delight of his teammates and the immense relief of his coaches. And just like that, the United States had moved another step closer to claiming a place in this year’s World Cup in Qatar.aaaaannnndddd…. we’re flippin’🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️ @antonee_jedi 🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️🤸‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/8tiyj37Zof— U.S. Soccer MNT (@USMNT) January 28, 2022
      The victory, combined with other results on a chilly night of qualifying matches in North and Central America and the Caribbean, kept the United States securely in contention to take control of its qualifying group in an important showdown with Canada on Sunday in Hamilton, Ontario. When the final whistle blew in Columbus, Canada was leading Honduras at halftime.United States Coach Gregg Berhalter made only one notable change to his lineup on Thursday, inserting Jesús Ferreira, a surprise starter over Ricardo Pepi, his former F.C. Dallas teammate, at striker. Ferreira offered energy, movement and some excellent connections in the first half. But he failed to convert two excellent chances in the first 20 minutes, and the Americans drifted into halftime with the majority of the possession and a near-monopoly on the frustration.The breakthrough came early in the second half, after Timothy Weah shed his defender and fired a shot at the near post that ricocheted off the goalkeeper and high in the air in the 52nd minute. A header across the goal eluded players on both teams and bounced directly in front of Robinson, who buried a one-time shot with his left foot.The goal, and the 1-0 deficit, seemed to take the life out of the Salvadorans, who now have been shut out in five of their nine qualifiers. A comeback seemed out of reach even before Robinson’s injury gag: El Salvador has yet to score two goals in any of its matches in the final round. Finding two against the United States in the cold was beyond a long shot.But the Americans seemed to ease up as well: Christian Pulisic departed just after the hour mark, presumably to bank a bit of rest before the Canada match, and Ferreira and Weah soon followed him to the bench.Jesús Ferreira made a surprise start for the U.S.Emilee Chinn/Getty ImagesWith three games scheduled in eight days in the current qualifying window, the United States has a chance to move into a commanding position to claim one of the region’s three automatic berths to the World Cup early in the final three-game window in March. (It was mathematically possible, though extremely unlikely, that the Americans could have claimed a World Cup place by next week if a complicated series of results broke their way.)Through eight of the 14 qualifiers, the United States was in second place entering Thursday’s games, one point behind Canada, the surprise group leader, one ahead of the archrival Mexico and Panama.Mexico kept pace by rallying for a 2-1 victory against Jamaica in Kingston, and Canada remained atop the group by beating Honduras, 2-0, in San Pedro Sula later in the evening.The United States can take control of the group if they can beat the Canadians — weakened by the absence of the Bayern Munich wing Alphonso Davies — on Sunday. They will then face Honduras on Wednesday in St. Paul, Minn., hoping to make it three wins in a week.“We’re in a good position,” Pulisic said earlier this week, “and by the end of this window, we could be in a great position.” More

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      U.S. Beats Mexico and Then Rubs It In

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      Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie scored and the Americans, fueled by a perceived slight, reveled in their third win over their rival this year.CINCINNATI — Michael Jackson’s 1988 song “Man in the Mirror” — a classic tune, but no one’s idea of a rousing sports arena jam — was blaring over the stadium speakers late on Friday night as the U.S. men’s soccer team rollicked and embraced happily on the field.A bit less than half an hour earlier, Christian Pulisic had charged toward the sideline to celebrate the first of the Americans’ goals in their 2-0 victory against Mexico, lifting the front of his No. 10 jersey to reveal the same phrase, “Man in the Mirror,” scrawled in permanent marker on his white undershirt.At that moment, even reasonably well-informed American soccer fans might have been left scratching their heads at the references, struggling to understand what, exactly, was afoot.if you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself then make the change… pic.twitter.com/ST7fa1e3hr— U.S. Soccer MNT (@USMNT) November 13, 2021
      Welcome to the ferociously competitive, wonderfully petty and endlessly amusing rabbit hole of a rivalry between the soccer teams of the United States and Mexico.The feuding neighbors’ World Cup qualifying match on Friday night — an important one, with three points and first place in the group standings up for grabs — had all the hallmarks of a classic: two scintillating goals, two physical altercations, one red card and multiple instances of borderline inscrutable taunting wrapped inside layers of allusion.“We fiercely dislike Mexico’s soccer team,” U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter said afterward, “and we’re fierce competitors, and we want to win every time we’re on the field.”To understand the Michael Jackson song and the homemade shirt and the Americans’ generally self-satisfied air after the game, one must go back to Tuesday, when Guillermo Ochoa, Mexico’s goalkeeper, suggested in an interview that the United States looked in the mirror and hoped to see Mexico, seemingly implying that the Americans’ wanted to mold themselves as a team in their rivals’ image.On the Richter scale of sports trash talk, the comments barely registered. But the young American team, which has had mixed success in building an identity through the first half of the 14-game qualifying tournament for the 2022 World Cup, seemed happy to run with them anyway, to use them as extra fuel.First came an unprompted response from Berhalter in his news conference the day before the game. He quipped that the Americans’ two wins over Mexico earlier this year had not done enough to win Mexico’s respect. His team would have to do more on Friday, he said. (The American fans had their say, too, booing Ochoa every time he touched the ball on Friday night.)Then came the players’ response on the field. The teams battled through a nervy first half, with goalkeeper Zack Steffen making two athletic saves to keep the Americans even. Then everything — the teams’ attacks, the players’ emotions — bubbled over in the second.Hard fouls and frequent skirmishes revealed the distaste the teams have for one another.Jeff Dean/Associated PressIn the latter of two on-field kerfuffles in the game, Mexico defender Luis Rodriguez menacingly grabbed wing Brendan Aaronson’s face from behind, prompting a long, ugly sequence of arguing among players from both teams. As the teams pushed and shoved, and as three yellow cards were shown, Pulisic was preparing to enter the field as a substitute. When he did, the rough gave way to the sublime.In the 74th minute, forward Timothy Weah received the ball on the right wing and calculated a sequence of dribbles down the edge of the penalty area, measuring out a pocket of space. Upon creating it, he thwacked an inch-perfect cross toward the mouth of the goal, where Pulisic flew in to head it past Ochoa to give the United States a 1-0 lead.It was Pulisic’s first touch of the ball in a competitive match for the United States since September, when he sustained a high ankle sprain during a qualifier in Honduras. As the sellout crowd of 26,000 roared, Pulisic paused to display his “Man in the Mirror” shirt before being mobbed by his teammates.Afterward, he sheepishly batted aside questions about his shirt, framing the episode as a little joke.“I think you guys know the message,” he said. “I don’t need to speak on it too much. It’s not a big thing.”Weston McKennie, center, with Tyler Adams and Christian Pulisic after McKennie’s goal doubled the Americans’ lead in the 85th minute.Julio Cortez/Associated PressWeah was much happier to elucidate. The night before the game, he said, he and defender DeAndre Yedlin asked one of the team’s staff members to draw the shirt for Pulisic to wear during the match.He painted the prank as a matter of pride.“Before the game Mexico was talking a lot of smack, and beating them shuts them up,” Weah said. “We have to continue to win games and continue to beat them, and that’s the only way we’re going to earn their respect.”After Pulisic’s goal, the Americans pressed for a second. When Weston McKennie delivered it in the 85th minute he prompted chants of “Dos a Cero!” — a reference to a famously recurring score line between the teams — from the stands.And after the final whistle, the team’s staff conspired to play “Man in the Mirror” over the loudspeakers to accompany the team’s postgame celebrations as a final, cheeky send-off.It was a comprehensive win for the Americans, who outshot Mexico by 18-8, and it pulled the United States into a tie on points with their archrival at the top of the standings with seven matches to go. The top three finishers in the group qualify automatically for the World Cup next year in Qatar.But more than the points, the young and inexperienced American players may cull more intangible benefits from the experience: a petty slight, a few impish inside jokes, a night of joy and perceived revenge — sports teams have bonded together over far less.“We talked about how we thought they didn’t think they gave us enough respect, and we had to go out and earn it,” Berhalter said. “And I think we went out and earned it today.” More

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      Panama 1, U.S. 0: First Loss for U.S. in World Cup Qualifying

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      A listless performance by a shuffled lineup in a defeat at Panama cost the Americans some valuable momentum.Continuing the good vibes from one performance to the next can be tough, it turns out, when you switch out all of your top performers.That was one of the harsh lessons learned by the U.S. men’s soccer team on Sunday as it fell limply to host Panama, 1-0, in its fifth qualifying match for the 2022 World Cup.Things had looked so different on Thursday, when the Americans stomped to a 2-0 win against Jamaica in Austin, Texas. But with a quick turnaround between matches — and a third game to play on Wednesday night in Columbus, Ohio — U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter made seven changes to his lineup.The result of cycling in all those different faces was an utterly unrecognizable showing from the Americans, who struggled to connect on passes or mount attacks as they absorbed their first defeat in qualifying and fell to 2-1-2 in the final round standings.“We know we’re playing in extreme heat, extreme humidity, and we know we traveled four and a half hours, and we know we have another game on Wednesday, and we wanted to rotate players,” Berhalter said. “If it didn’t work, then it’s on me, and it’s my responsibility.”To be fair, Panama offered a stiffer challenge than Jamaica had on Thursday. It had allowed only two goals in its first four games, and a loss last week in El Salvador left the Panamanians eager to regain their footing in front of their home fans.The loss, in Berhalter’s 40th game as the team’s coach, ended its unbeaten streak at 13 games. The United States plays its third and final match of the month against Costa Rica on Wednesday night in Columbus.Such an aggressive rotation of lineups from game to game during qualifying has become a preferred option for many coaches — and especially those who believe they have deep pools of talent — after FIFA tweaked its scheduling rules to allow confederations to hold as many as three games in each international window. Many coaches, Berhalter included, have been hesitant (with a few exceptions) to ask players to start three games in the course of a single week.That meant the 18-year-old striker Ricardo Pepi, who scored two goals against Jamaica on Thursday, started Sunday’s game on the bench. So did Tyler Adams, one of the team’s leaders and midfield linchpins, and Brenden Aaronson, one of Berhalter’s best playmakers over the past two months.Weston McKennie, another regular, stayed in the United States to rest a sore leg. And Antonee Robinson and Zack Steffen, who play professionally in England and would have faced a lengthy quarantine upon their return if they had traveled to Panama, did not make the trip, either.(Other top American players, like Christian Pulisic and Giovanni Reyna, never joined the team for this camp while dealing with their own injuries. Pulisic, for example, spent Sunday watching an N.F.L. game in London.)Striker Ricardo Pepi, who scored in the past two U.S. qualifiers, started Sunday’s game on the bench.Arnulfo Franco/Associated PressThe United States, so sharp and aggressive against Jamaica, looked stagnant from the start against Panama. Clunky touches and wayward passes kept the Americans from establishing any sort of continuity or assembling anything close to a threatening attack; they managed only five shots, but none of them were on target.Panama was clearly the aggressor. In the 14th minute, Rolando Blackburn found himself open in front of the goal, with a teammate’s cross hurtling toward his feet, but he shanked the point-blank shot wide of the right post, squandering the best chance of the first half for either team.The American goalkeeper Matt Turner, who seems to have established himself ahead of Steffen as the team’s starter with a string of assured performances this fall, was tested throughout the night, watching attacks swirl before his eyes, rising to intercept several dangerous crosses and making numerous nervy saves.He was beaten, finally, in the 54th minute, after Panama won a corner kick. Left back Eric Davis swerved the kick sharply toward the near post, where multiple players jumped to meet it. It was unclear at first who got the pivotal touch — U.S. striker Gyasi Zardes was there, as was Anibal Godoy of Panama — but the result was clear: The ball ricocheted inside the left post. Godoy, Panama’s captain, was more than happy to claim it, sprinting to the sideline with his hand in the air before being mobbed by his teammates.“You don’t normally expect to give up a goal on a ball like that,” Berhalter said.Berhalter exhausted his substitutions soon after the halftime break, hoping to alter the trajectory of the game. Adams and Aaronson came in to start the second half, with hopes they might provide a spark. And about 20 minutes later — and with the United States now trailing — they were followed by Pepi, DeAndre Yedlin and Cristian Roldan.But the jolt of energy never came, and the Americans missed a chance to build on the positivity that seemed to be bubbling within their group.“I think the way to look at it — and this is how I looked at it, and now it obviously doesn’t look like the best choice — but I think we need to wait till Thursday,” Berhalter said. “If we would have played the same players in this game, I’m not sure we would have positioned ourselves in the best way to win again on Wednesday.” More

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      USMNT Beats Honduras in a Crucial World Cup Qualifier

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      Illnesses, injuries and a suspension marred the start of World Cup qualifying. A trip to Honduras offered a chance to right the ship.SAN PEDRO SULA, Honduras — For even the most assured players and talented teams, a maiden journey into the heightened drama of the World Cup qualifying tournament in North and Central America can feel like splash of cold water to the face.Here, world rankings have a way of losing their meaning. Club pedigrees and players’ salaries can quickly be forgotten. It is a rude awakening, a rite of passage. And the United States men’s soccer team is experiencing it yet again.Beginning last week, the Americans embarked on a three-game series of qualifying matches over seven days that they hoped would establish a baseline state of confidence for the long path to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Much of the last week had, instead, left them looking frazzled and unsure.After draws in their first two games — on the road against El Salvador and at home against Canada — the Americans’ game late Wednesday night against Honduras at the spartan Estadio Olímpico Metropolitano represented a final chance to salvage the week. A loss would have sent the team home in the beginnings of a tailspin. A draw would have prolonged the slow boil of anxiety.Instead, they strode off 4-1 winners, a result — delivered by four second-half goals after an abysmal, disjointed first half that felt like the nadir of an awful week — that will provide a kernel of positivity to cultivate in the weeks to come.The most valuable thing the players and their coaches will bring home, then, could be the lessons learned: about the perils of trusting too much in past results; about the precarity of the challenge that remains ahead; and about the fragility of a team’s best-laid plans and ambitions.“It’s a different animal than we’re used to,” Coach Gregg Berhalter said after the game, referring to the qualifying tournament. “So I think that this whole window was great for this group. We really needed that in terms of the eye-opening of what this experience actually is.”Brayan Moya’s diving header in the first half gave Honduras a 1-0 lead on Wednesday night.Moises Castillo/Associated PressThe fear was that they were tiptoeing onto the same path an earlier version of the team traveled three years ago, when the United States fell one point short of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, ending a streak of seven straight appearances at the world’s most-watched sporting event. On some level, it seemed irrational: Even with the disappointing results from the first two games, the United States is heavily favored to qualify, perhaps more so after a win that will buoy their mood, and their hopes. But the bad memories of the last cycle remain raw in many people’s minds.“I can see it being, you know, just memories of the past, memories of the last qualifying round coming back,” Berhalter, who was hired after the 2018 World Cup, said of those concerns on Tuesday night. “And people say, ‘Oh, we’re in the same situation.’ I can understand that completely. What I’d say is this is a different group, and we’re focused on winning games, and we’re focused on getting points.”Such talk had not been convincing before Wednesday’s resounding win.Few would go as far as to call the Americans hubristic: The notion of this regional qualifying tournament as a gnarly obstacle course, with challenging factors unique in world soccer, has long been ingrained in the psyche of the team and its fans, and the players over the past week have spoken of the process with all due respect. They know, too, that it will continue with three more qualifiers in October, and two more a month after that.But the lofty standards imposed on the squad, the high expectation and calls for perfection, are in many ways of the teams’ own making.Berhalter said earlier this week that the tournament’s 14 games should be regarded by his players as “14 finals” — effectively labeling the entire slate of games as must-win contests.Christian Pulisic found little space to work, then left with an injury.Gustavo Amador/EPA, via ShutterstockBefore the first game last week, midfielder Tyler Adams laid out the team’s ambitious to-do list: “We’re looking for a nine-point week, bottom line,” said Adams, 22.And Weston McKennie said last week the United States needed to assert its position as the best team in the confederation. “The only way to do that is to dominate it,” he said two days before taking the field for the first World Cup qualifier of his career. “And to dominate, you’ve got to win your games.”These things, for a variety of reasons, did not come true against El Salvador and Canada. And for a half against Honduras, it did not seem as if they ever would. But then the halftime substitute Antonee Robinson pulled his team even three minutes into the second half, and the U.S. started to turn the tide. Ricardo Pepi, an 18-year-old striker from Texas, gave the Americans the lead in the 75th minute, and then set up midfielder Brenden Aaronson, another substitute, for an insurance goal in the 86th.Sebastian Lletget’s finish off a rebound three minutes into injury time closed the scoring, and, at last, restored the team’s smiles.Wins have a way of quieting, if not totally erasing, questions and distractions swirling around a group.On Sunday afternoon, for instance, McKennie was suspended for violating team rules and had to miss the team’s final two games of the week. McKennie said on Instagram before the game against Canada that he had broken Covid protocols.Berhalter said the disciplinary move was for the team’s long-term health. In the short term, it hurt. The suspension deprived the team of one of its best players, and McKennie’s teammates spent the ensuing days awkwardly answering questions about his conduct. World Cup qualifying runs through March, and Berhalter suggested that McKennie, who plays for the Italian powerhouse Juventus, would be back in the picture soon enough.“It’s an open-door policy,” he said. “There will very rarely be a situation where a player would never be allowed back into national team camp. That’s not how we operate.”Yet McKennie’s lapse was only the most high profile of the personnel headaches that have befallen the team since even before it gathered late last month.Timothy Weah, one of the team’s best attackers, never joined the group after hurting his leg while training with his club team in France.Christian Pulisic, the team’s captain and top player, missed the first game while trying to regain his fitness after testing positive for the coronavirus, and then limped out of Wednesday’s win with an ankle injury.Goalkeeper Zach Steffen was ruled out for the first game, and then the rest, first by back spasms, then by a positive coronavirus test.Gio Reyna injured his right hamstring in the first game against El Salvador and was sent back to his German club without taking the field again.Defender Sergiño Dest sprained his right ankle in the game on Sunday and departed, too.These issues made for a particularly complicated situation during a cramped window of games in which Berhalter had made no secret of his plans to rotate his lineup. But they also were just a taste of the ways things can spiral in the unforgiving landscape of World Cup qualifying.“It happens,” said Aaronson, 20, of his team’s simmering turmoil. “You have to get over things. I feel like as a team we just need to get over things.”Pepi scored the Americans’ second goal, giving them the lead, and Brenden Aaronson, right, added the third.Moises Castillo/Associated PressThe next games will arrive fast: Jamaica, Panama and Costa Rica next month, then Mexico and a trip to Jamaica about four weeks later.Before then, the team has some growing up to do. Only six of the 26 players initially called into the squad had any experience in World Cup qualifying. Thirteen of them were 23 years old or younger at the start of training camp. Nine of the starters against El Salvador were appearing in their first World Cup qualifier. (That 10 members of the team are playing for clubs in the European Champions League this year reiterates the level of talent being unfulfilled thus far.)One problem that needed solving as they took the field Wednesday night was finding some scoring: Heading into the Honduras game, the United States had not produced more than one goal in any of its previous six games.They left the field after putting four past Honduras, letting them breathe a collective sigh of relief.“It’s a massive experience that we needed, just to show that with all the adversity we’ve gone through, we’re ready to come back from it,” Robinson said. “Obviously there’s been disappointing times on this trip. But in the end, we’ve ended it on a real high, and now we can attack October with everything we’ve got.” More

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      USMNT Ties Canada, Its Second Straight Stumble in Qualifying

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      After settling for disappointing draws in its first two World Cup qualifiers, the U.S. men’s soccer team heads to Honduras in search of answers, and its first victory.NASHVILLE — If every World Cup qualifying campaign is a roller-coaster ride of highs and lows, then the United States men’s soccer team has not yet left the ground.The Americans have played two games in four days to start the final round of their regional qualifying tournament for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and though they expected to win both matches, they have settled instead for two disappointing draws.These are early days, still. There are 12 games to go. And two points are better than none.Tras las segunda fecha de #WCQ, @miseleccionmx sigue en la cima con paso perfecto, y @fepafut se colocó en el segundo puesto. pic.twitter.com/a8EuFXL9Cw— Concacaf (@Concacaf) September 6, 2021
      But there has been a restless desire within the team and its fan base for an assured start to this qualifying cycle given the disaster of the last one, when the team failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. This group, which includes young talents employed by some of the world’s best club teams, had hoped to begin the healing process.Instead, there are more questions about the team’s competence, more anxieties about history repeating itself and more desperation to win the next game, which arrives Wednesday night in Honduras.“There’s ups and downs and bumps in the road, and we just have to keep responding when we’re called on,” said Gregg Berhalter, the U.S. coach. “We can do two things. We can feel bad for ourselves or we can continue on with a positive attitude and try to get a positive result in Honduras.”Tajon Buchanan, left, and Canada have as many points (two) as John Brooks and the United States do after two games.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressThe stage was set in many ways for a restorative performance on Sunday night at Nissan Stadium in Nashville. The grass was lush. The home crowd was genteel. The novice players’ nerves were supposedly settled.In other words, none of the excuses Berhalter had tossed around over the weekend to help explain his team’s underwhelming 0-0 tie last Thursday in El Salvador — about the knobbly field of play, the hostile atmosphere, the number of team members playing their first qualifying game — were applicable as the Americans registered another dissatisfying draw, 1-1, in their second game against Canada.The team’s failure to meet the moment left it searching for answers.The Americans looked ungainly passing the ball. They took the scenic route when shortcuts were needed, lumbering around the perimeter of the Canadians’ dense defensive shell. It was a familiar set of problems: copious possession, scant production. The United States kept the ball for 71 percent of the game, but Canada’s sit-back-and-counterattack game plan worked just fine, and the result seemed fair.“We needed much faster ball movement,” Berhalter said. “Everyone could see from the outside, we took way too long on the ball.”He added, “We have to figure out ways to break down a compact defense because I’m sure there’s going to be other teams that come to the United States and do the same thing.”Christian Pulisic, the Americans’ captain and best player, who returned to the lineup after missing the El Salvador game while he recovered from a positive coronavirus test last month, was critical, too — even if it was unclear whether he was targeting the coaching staff, his teammates, himself, or some combination of the three.“I think we need new ideas at times,” he said, adding: “It just felt like we couldn’t break them down. We just need some new solutions. Obviously it wasn’t good enough.”Pulisic went on to suggest that the team could have conducted itself differently after taking the lead early in the second half by making adjustments and perhaps adopting a more defensive mind-set.“I think it’s important in games like this, tough games, to just grind it out and win these games 1-0 at times,” he said.Such pragmatism requires some savvy, and it is unclear how much this team possesses. The squad is populated by intriguing youngsters, many of them technically skilled in ways that subvert longstanding stereotypes about American soccer players. Trophies in two tournaments this summer — the Gold Cup and the Nations League — stoked excitement about what the group could do.But this month the group’s youth, and acknowledged naïveté, have looked like liabilities.“It’s a team sport,” midfielder Tyler Adams said when asked about the players’ strong pedigrees. “It doesn’t matter where we come from. If we don’t go out and do the things we’re good at, we’re just a group of names on a piece of paper.”It has not helped matters that this team has been depleted by a combination of bad luck and indiscretion.Before Sunday’s game, the team announced that Gio Reyna, one of its best attackers, would be out indefinitely with a hamstring injury and that Zack Steffen, Berhalter’s first-choice goalkeeper, would leave the squad, too, after testing positive for the coronavirus.Sergiño Dest left the game with an ankle injury in the first half. Alphonso Davies, right, departed with his own pain in the second.Christopher Hanewinckel/USA Today Sports, via ReutersThe team also announced before kickoff on Sunday that the star midfielder Weston McKennie would miss the game in Nashville after violating the team’s coronavirus policy.“I am sorry for my actions,” he wrote in an Instagram post. “I will be cheering hard for the boys tonight and hope to be back with the team soon.”For McKennie, who tested positive for the virus last October, the indiscretion (which the team declined to detail) hinted at a worrying pattern of behavior. In April, McKennie was suspended by his club team, Juventus, after he hosted a party at his home in Turin that violated a local curfew and needed to be broken up by the police.Berhalter late Sunday night declined to say whether McKennie would be available for Wednesday’s game in Honduras.These bouts of misfortune and personal slip-ups are hard to digest when each game carries so much weight. There is only so much time to get things right, only so many setbacks a team can withstand.“The way we’ve been framing it to the guys is that every game is a final,” Berhalter said. “Fourteen finals, that’s how we have to approach it. So the urgency is always going to be there until we’re mathematically secure with qualifying.”The Americans last month unveiled a marketing slogan — “Only forward.” — that reflected a desire to put their recent failures behind them. But Pulisic on Sunday could not help dwelling on the past, noting that in the last cycle the team had lost its first two matches. Those poor results precipitated the firing of Coach Jurgen Klinsmann.By that standard, the Americans are in better shape now. By any other measure, they are falling worryingly short of expectations. More

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      USMNT Faces El Salvador in World Cup Qualifying

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      Ahead of World Cup qualifying, a young team with a fresh attitude says it is unburdened by the failure of its predecessors to qualify for the tournament.SAN SALVADOR — As drama goes, at least by recent United States World Cup qualifying standards, the news rated a raised eyebrow, not a blaring alarm.Christian Pulisic, still finding his way back to fitness after a positive coronavirus test and 10 days in isolation, had not traveled to El Salvador with his United States teammates on Wednesday, one day before they were to open the final round of qualifying for soccer’s 2022 World Cup. Pulisic would not play in Thursday’s game, the team announced, and neither would goalkeeper Zack Steffen, who was enduring a late-breaking case of back spasms. He had stayed back in Nashville, too, where the United States will return this weekend to face Canada.“We feel like we have a deep team,” Coach Gregg Berhalter said. “Now’s the time to show it.”It was the kind of clipped confidence that has become Berhalter’s signature throughout his coaching career. Losing two starters was not a crisis, but “an opportunity,” he said calmly. Berhalter talks a lot about opportunities. This summer’s Nations League had been an opportunity to prove his best players could go toe to toe with rival Mexico and win, which they did. The Gold Cup that followed had been an opportunity, too, for a different set of U.S. players. The Americans beat Mexico to win that one as well.Christian Pulisic remained in Nashville, where he will train on his own while his teammates face El Salvador on Thursday.Mark Humphrey/Associated PressIt’s a lot easier, Berhalter and his players have found, to talk about opportunities when you’re collecting trophies. For the bulk of the current United States team, though, the eight-team final round of qualifying that begins with three games over the next week is just that: an opportunity to show that a new generation of talents — the current roster’s average age is about 24 — can move away from past disappointments, can rely on new players, can write its own story.“When Greg first came in to the national team, he put a plan in place that I don’t think any national team coach has been willing to take the risk of doing,” midfielder Tyler Adams said. “Basically changing the whole way that the system would work, inside and out, whether it was our tactics, the players that we wanted to have, what certain positions needed to do, the qualities that we needed to have, and basically how we could develop and get better leading up to this point, to our first qualifying game.”He, and they, know there will be stumbles: bad fields, bad weather, bad referees, even bad results. They might come immediately, or they might come in a month or two, but they will probably come. In the last cycle, the United States failed to win a single road qualifier. Then it was the last game, not the first, that had been the biggest opportunity lost.Any assessment of the state of the U.S. team at the start of this qualifying cycle’s final act has to start at the end of the last one: with that crushing loss at Trinidad and Tobago that led the team to miss the World Cup for the first time in a generation.For weeks, Berhalter and his players have been asked about that night. Midfielder Kellyn Acosta’s memory is probably clearer than most — he had entered the match as a second-half substitute and was on the field when his team’s world went dark — but he has learned not to rehash it much in interviews. Midfielder Brendan Aaronson, who was only 16 at the time, struggled to remember if he had seen any of the game live. His teammate Weston McKennie was certain he had not. “I don’t really watch sports,” he said.But the fact that most of the players couldn’t remember the match subtly spoke to something else, something probably more important to them and their coach today: They weren’t there. They weren’t part of it. And they certainly weren’t to blame for it.“I don’t think the group now really sees it as a burden,” McKennie said of the shadow of 2017. “I think it’s more, we’re not really going to focus on what’s happened in the past. Obviously it’s going to be in the back of our heads somewhere, but that’s not going to be our main fuel, our main focus: trying to redeem what happened years ago.“I think right now we’re just trying to create a legacy of our own.”Several of the young stars who could start against El Salvador on Thursday — including Adams, McKennie, Gio Reyna, Josh Sargent and Sergiño Dest — did not make their national team debuts until after the Trinidad defeat. Berhalter wasn’t hired for more than a year after the loss. It was 2019 before he coached his first game.The United States beat Mexico in a cup final in June, then did it again in August. Jack Dempsey/Associated PressNow, though, his team is humming. The summer tournament triumphs gave the players a taste of CONCACAF competition, and of the rough play and hot nights and dubious calls that have often marked World Cup qualifying in the region. And for the first time, the final round will open with three matches in a single window, a clutch of games that should, in theory, favor a Berhalter team that boasts of more depth than the likes of El Salvador, Canada and Honduras.They all know every game matters. For years, the qualifying calculus has been a simple formula: Win your home games and then pick up points on the road. But the new breed is not interested, not really, in how things used to go.“Our mentality is to win all the games we can,” McKennie said. “I don’t think we have a formula where, ‘Let’s win our home games and grab a couple points on the road.’ Our goal is to prove we’re the best in CONCACAF, and I think the only way to do that is to dominate it.”Said Adams: “There’s no Plan B for us. There’s only been a Plan A, and that’s to qualify for the World Cup.” More