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      World Cup Draw Analysis: First the Picks. Now the Hard Part.

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      Louis van Gaal said it all with just the hint of a playful smile. The Netherlands’ draw for the World Cup was not easy, he said, with his characteristic bluntness, and nor was it lucky. It was, instead, “colorful.” That was a better word. Ecuador’s sunshine yellow, Qatar’s rich maroon, Senegal’s deep green and that blazing Dutch orange: colorful.He tried, as best he could, to hide his delight. He knew, after all, that the dice had fallen for him, and for his team, just as he had predicted — in graphic and not entirely serious terms — that it would. Everyone wanted to draw Qatar, the host and by a gulf the gentlest prospect of the top seeds. Only his team had been chosen.The #FIFAWorldCup groups are set 🤩 We can’t wait! 🏆#FinalDraw pic.twitter.com/uaDfdIvbaZ— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) April 1, 2022
      But van Gaal is too long in the tooth to be fooled. He knows, too, that World Cup draws are not just bombastic and saccharine and filled with time-wasting and content-filling and Idris Elba; they are chimerical, too. They have an oracular quality. Often, they do not mean what they seem to mean at first reading.Consider Spain and Germany, for example, drawn together early on in Group E. Their encounter will mark the end of the tournament’s first week; it is the only time two of the anticipated contenders to win the competition, to be crowned world champion, will meet in the opening phase. Both seemed to have drawn the short straw.A Guide to the 2022 World CupThe 32-team tournament kicks off in Qatar on Nov. 21.F.A.Q.: When will the games take place? Who are the favorites? Will Lionel Messi be there? Our primer answers your questions.The Matchups: The group assignments are set. Here’s a breakdown of the draw and a look at how each country qualified.U.S. Returns: Five years after a calamitous night cost the U.S. a World Cup bid, a new generation claimed a berth in the 2022 tournament.The Host: After a decade of scrutiny and criticism, there is a sense that Qatar will at last get the payoff it always expected for hosting the World Cup.And then the balls kept on rolling and the names kept on coming and it turned out that both had, in fact, landed on their feet. Japan will be no pushover, and whichever of Costa Rica or New Zealand fills out the group will hardly be content to go quietly. But none have the resources or the quality or the pedigree of Spain and Germany, and both will be confident of making it through.Or look at England, which managed to make the semifinals in 2018 — and the final of last summer’s European Championship — by virtue of winning knockout games, in regulation time, against Sweden, a pale Germany and Ukraine.Its good fortune seemed to have held, drawn with Iran, the United States and one of Scotland, Wales and Ukraine, a group far richer in geopolitical intrigue than it is in elite quality.“I prefer putting balls in the net than flowers,” said Dragan Skocic, Iran’s Serbian coach, when asked about meeting the Americans, a reference to the two nations’ exchanging bouquets when they met at the 1998 tournament. “Football transcends the political stuff,” said his American counterpart, Gregg Berhalter.Spain Coach Luis Enrique with his Germany counterpart Hansi Flick. Their teams were drawn into the same group.Kai Pfaffenbach/ReutersBut the group stage draw is not really a draw just for the group stage: It is a road map for the entire tournament, too. If England is to win — as it believes it can, this time, with rather more logic than that of the stopped clock — the incline grows immediately steeper once the knockout stage starts. Senegal, the most complete team Africa has sent to a tournament for more than a decade, may lie in wait in the last 16. Then it could be France, the reigning champion, in the quarterfinals. Whatever lies beyond that may not be immediately relevant.There will, of course, be some teams who are pleased with their fates: France, certainly, should have little trouble with Denmark and Tunisia and one of Peru, Australia and the United Arab Emirates. The two South American contenders, Brazil and Argentina, will be confident, too.Even the United States should not be too displeased. “We have the youngest squad at the World Cup,” Berhalter said. “For us, that’s a benefit. The guys are fearless.” England might be comfortable favorites to win their group, but there is no reason to believe the United States — returning after an eight-year absence — cannot finish second.And there will, of course, be teams who are left to rue their lot. Canada, for example, gracing this stage for the first time since 1986, has a group without a true heavyweight but somehow harder for it: Croatia and Belgium finished second and third four years ago, while Morocco sailed through the arduous process of African qualifying.Ultimately, though, Van Gaal was right: There is no way of knowing, eight months in advance, who has been lucky and who has not, of which is the smooth draw and which the rough. After all the pomp and the circumstance, the video montages and the marketing spiel dressed up as mission statements, all you can say with any certainty is that it will, when it comes, be colorful. More

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      The U.S. World Cup Match Schedule Is Set

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      After all that waiting, the United States finally learned its World Cup schedule at the World Cup draw on Friday, and it won’t have to wait long to play once the tournament begins.The Americans will open the tournament on its first day, Nov. 21, with a match against the winner of a June European playoff: either Scotland, Wales or Ukraine. Each of the teams would arrive with its own World Cup story: Scotland hasn’t played in soccer’s biggest championship since 1998; Wales hasn’t qualified since 1958; and Ukraine, should it qualify for its second World Cup, and first since 2006, would be playing only months after Russia invaded its territory.A day-after-Thanksgiving matchup against England comes next, on Nov. 25, and the United States will close the group stage against Iran four days after that, on Nov. 29.The U.S. team has previous World Cup experience against its two known opponents. It last met England in the tournament in 2010, when the teams played a 1-1 group-stage draw in Rustenburg, South Africa. England had taken an early lead that day before goalkeeper Rob Green surrendered one of the softest goals in England’s World Cup history on a long-distance shot by Clint Dempsey.The Americans’ last meeting against Iran in the World Cup — in 1998 in France — was also the teams’ first meeting on a soccer field. Iran won that day, 2-1, eliminating the Americans from a tournament in which they eventually finished last.And while both teams made a show of promoting peace after years of bitter political fights between their countries, not everyone got in the spirit of it. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, released a statement broadcast by state television after the game, congratulating Iran’s players.“Tonight again the strong and arrogant opponents felt the bitter taste of defeat at your hands,” he said. More

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      European Playoff Will Determine Third U.S. Opponent in Group B

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      Friday’s World Cup draw assigned groups to the 29 teams that have qualified for the tournament in Qatar in November. But the moment the draw ended, fans — especially those of teams with a big “to be determined” in their groups — started asking: What about those three playoff spots?We won’t know who has won them until June.One spot — the European team that will land in the group that holds England, the United States and Iran — will come from the war-delayed European playoff: Ukraine must play Scotland, and then the winner will face Wales for Europe’s final place.Let’s do this. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/hTU7SNRDq0— USMNT: Qualified. (@USMNT) April 1, 2022
      The other two spots will come from so-called intercontinental playoff matches, which are effectively second-chance games for teams that didn’t qualify directly out of their regions. Those matches will be played as elimination games set to be held in Qatar (where, it should be noted, it will be blistering hot in June).In one, Costa Rica, the fourth-place finisher in Concacaf, will meet New Zealand, the Oceania champion, for the right to play Spain, Germany and Japan in Group E.In the other game, Peru, which came in fifth in South America, will play the last Asian survivor: either Australia or the United Arab Emirates. The winner’s prize there? Games against France, Denmark and Tunisia in Group D. More

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      Christian Pulisic Leads U.S. Past Panama and to Brink of World Cup

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      Christian Pulisic led the way with three goals, but the Americans still must go to Costa Rica to guarantee their place in Qatar.The United States men’s soccer team is not in the World Cup, not just yet. There is still one last trip to make, one last job to do, one last game to play.It would be hard, though, for a team to keep the Americans from going to Qatar now. And it would be nearly impossible to persuade them, or anyone else, that — at last — they do not belong back on soccer’s brightest stage.That was the biggest news to emerge from the United States’ 5-1 victory over Panama on Sunday night in Orlando, Fla. Bigger than the four first-half goals they scored against the overwhelmed Panamanians. Bigger than Christian Pulisic’s hat trick and the rested legs, bigger than the padding they’ve added to their goal differential that has made Wednesday’s trip to Costa Rica far less terrifying than it might have been.What’s left to do? The Americans head to Costa Rica knowing they do not even have to win to qualify for the World Cup. Merely avoiding a heavy defeat — a loss by six goals or more — will ensure the Americans will finish with one of the automatic qualifying places from their region, North and Central America and the Caribbean.Canada became the first team from the region to qualify on Sunday, thanks to a 4-0 victory at home over Jamaica, and only Mexico and Costa Rica remain in contention for the other two. (Panama was eliminated with its loss on Sunday night.)The U.S. has a much better goal difference than both Mexico and Costa Rica, however, and that reality — in the event of a tie for the automatic places after Wednesday’s final games — was its own kind of comfort in the glow of Sunday’s rout. What it effectively means is that even a historic defeat for the Americans at Costa Rica would come with a lifeline: a playoff against the Oceania champion in June for a last-gasp place in Qatar.That back door was the least of anyone’s concerns after a performance in Orlando that ranked as the Americans’ best of the seven-month qualifying campaign.“We want to go there and win the game,” United States Coach Gregg Berhalter said. “Just like I’ve been saying in the first two games: We go into each game preparing to win.”The tension that the Americans carried into Sunday’s game — a mix of injuries, illnesses and suspensions melting together with the lingering angst from a failed qualifying run in 2017 — dissipated in a flurry of early goals.Pulisic, a veteran of that last campaign, which ended with him in tears on a muggy field in Trinidad, opened the scoring by converting a penalty kick in the 17th minute. Six minutes later, the lead was two, thanks to a Paul Arriola header, and four minutes after that it was 3-0 after a slotted finish by the surprise starter Jesús Ferreira.Pulisic made it 4-0 during first-half stoppage time, converting a second penalty, and he completed his first national team hat trick with an effortless — for him — finish in the 65th minute. Pulling down a cross with silky control in Panama’s penalty area, he spun in traffic and slipped two defenders to slot home his third goal.“Christian’s a guy who’s been through it before,” Berhalter said later, and anyone who has lived through 2017 knew what he meant. Pulisic had worn the captain’s armband on Sunday, and played like the leader Berhalter needs him to be if the Americans are to close the deal on Wednesday.His only mistake against Panama, it seemed, was an awkward attempt at breakdancing after his second penalty kick and a yellow card for arguing only moments before Berhalter subbed him off. Other key players were soon subbed off, too, the Americans resting weary legs that had delivered a tie at Mexico and a big win in the span of four days, and still had one game to go.A fat goal difference — the Americans’ is plus-13 now, compared with Costa Rica’s plus-3 — will help.Canada became the first Concacaf team to qualify for the 2022 World Cup. Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images“We knew we had to come out on the front foot and getting that goal early set the tone for the whole match,” defender Walker Zimmerman said of the lopsided victory. “Those goals add up, and they’re huge for us.”But a late consolation goal by Panama defender Aníbal Godoy, who was at fault for conceding both penalties in the first half, served as a reminder of how things can still go wrong if Zimmerman and his teammates aren’t careful.In 2017, the Americans had also thrashed Panama in Orlando in their penultimate game. All the team needed to do after that was go to Trinidad and Tobago, which had already been eliminated, and avoid a loss.Instead, the United States got it all wrong, losing by 2-1 as other results around the region went against them. In two stunning hours they went from assuredly in to definitively, and shockingly, out of the World Cup. The margin was more narrow then, but the lesson has stuck with the current team, most of whom — with the notable exception of Pulisic — were not part of the squad back then.“The goal obviously has always been to qualify for the World Cup, and this is just another step in the right direction,” midfielder Tyler Adams said. “But at the end of the day we still have another game to play. We haven’t clinched yet.”It is a message he will surely repeat over the next three days, until the job is done, until the ticket is punched, until the United States is finally, officially headed back to the World Cup. More

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      World Cup Draw Time, TV and Rules

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      The hard work of qualifying is over. Now the teams headed to Qatar later this year will learn their opponents.The World Cup field is almost complete. On Friday, soccer teams will learn the answer to the critical question they and their fans want to know: Who will they play when the tournament opens in November in Qatar?The World Cup draw — part gala, part pep rally, part math seminar — will deliver intriguing clashes of styles, testy political collisions and, if past events are any guide, a few uncomfortable moments.But given the stakes of the draw, it is also one of the biggest events on the global sports calendar. Here is a look at how it works.When and where is the draw?Friday at noon, Eastern time, at the Doha Exhibition and Convention Center in Qatar.How can I watch?Television coverage in the United States will be on FS1 and Telemundo starting at 11:30 a.m., Eastern time. The draw will be streamed at FIFA.com and on NBC’s Peacock service in the United States. The New York Times will also provide minute-by-minute coverage.How does it work?Each team has been assigned to one of four pots, based on its world ranking. One team from each pot will be placed in each of the eight World Cup opening round groups, to ensure the teams are divided by strength. There are also rules to keep them apart from regional rivals. Each group may have no more than two teams from Europe, for example, and no more than one from any other continent.The entire process can feel a bit methodical at times: First, a ball is pulled from one of the bowls containing the names of each team in that pot. Then a second ball is drawn to place the team in its position, which must be done carefully to ensure that rules about regional rivalries are followed.It can go badly wrong, as the Champions League learned in December. It had announced its highly anticipated knockout-round matchups before discovering its mistake, and had to stage an embarrassing do over.Who will actually draw the teams?Soccer luminaries including Cafu (Brazil), Lothar Matthäus (Germany), Adel Ahmed Malalla (Qatar), Ali Daei (Iran), Bora Milutinovic (Serbia), Jay-Jay Okocha (Nigeria), Rabah Madjer (Algeria) and Tim Cahill (Australia) will do the actual drawing of the balls out of the bowls.Who’s in Pot 1?Since the teams are ordered by their world ranking, Pot 1 traditionally contains the tournament favorites as well as the host nation. That means, in addition to Qatar, this year the pot includes Brazil, Argentina, Belgium, France, England, Spain and Portugal.What about the other three pots?Pot 2 consists of the United States, Mexico, the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Croatia and Uruguay.Pot 3 is Serbia, Poland, Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Iran, Japan and South Korea.Pot 4, nominally the weakest teams (though perhaps not this year), holds Canada, Ghana, Cameroon, Ecuador and Saudi Arabia.Three teams that have not yet been determined will also be in that pot. A European spot will be taken by Ukraine, Scotland or Wales. Another spot will go to the winner of an intercontinental playoff between Costa Rica and New Zealand, and the last to one of Peru, Australia or the United Arab Emirates. All of those places will be decided by games in June.Who’s missing?The chief absentee is Italy, a four-time World Cup winner and the reigning European champion. After missing out in 2018, Italy was eliminated for the second straight cycle when it lost a playoff semifinal against North Macedonia.Whom will teams want to draw or avoid?Qatar, which has never qualified for the World Cup on sporting merit, is by far the weakest team in Pot 1, and every team in the other pots will be eager to land in its group. No one will especially want to play Brazil, because it is No. 1 in the world and because, hey, it’s Brazil. France is the defending champion.Germany and the Netherlands look to be the strongest teams in Pot 2, and Serbia and Poland (with the FIFA world player of the year Robert Lewandowski) could be dangerous from Pot 3. Any team that can qualify from South America is going to be strong, and Ecuador in Pot 4 should frighten many teams ranked above it.The same goes for Canada, which has a host of young talent and breezed to first place in its qualifying group ahead of the more traditional powers the United States and Mexico.Who is going to win the World Cup?The favorites are Brazil, France, England and Spain, in that order, bookmakers say. More

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      U.S. Ties Mexico, Extending World Cup Wait

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      Fine margins are the hallmark of World Cup qualifying. For the Americans, their rivals and a handful of other teams around the world, Thursday was no different.MEXICO CITY — As the final whistle blared late on Thursday night, Jordan Pefok fell to the grass and covered his face with his hands.Pefok, a striker for the United States men’s soccer team, was tired, to be sure. He and his teammates had just battled Mexico to a 0-0 draw at Estádio Azteca, a commendable result at an altitude that can leave even elite athletes gasping for air.But, more than that, Pefok seemed crestfallen. About 20 minutes earlier he had missed a sterling chance from point-blank range, shanking a shot so wide of an open goal that everyone in the stadium, fans of both sides, gasped in surprise.What made the blunder even harder to believe was that Christian Pulisic, in the first half, had missed a surefire opportunity of his own from an eerily similar spot, whipping his close range shot straight at Mexico’s goalkeeper, even as the whole of the net gaped before him.Either chance could have provided the winning difference in the American’s crucial, third-to-last World Cup qualifying match. How much will the miscues be rued? It will take a few more days to know for sure.But in this way, the night — at the stadium in the Mexican capitol and inside others around the world where simultaneous contests were being played on Thursday — provided more reminders of the fine margins, hidden pitfalls and cosmic plot twists that regularly conspire to make World Cup qualifying cycles so entertaining and so maddening.North Macedonia won at Italy on Thursday to keep its World Cup dream alive. The Italians? They’re out for the second straight World Cup.Carmelo Imbesi/EPA, via ShutterstockItaly produced dozens of chances in its playoff against North Macedonia, but the reigning European champions will miss the World Cup after they failed to score and their guests found a way. Sweden, likewise, is still alive after finding an extra-time winner against the Czech Republic, and Ecuador clinched its place in Qatar despite losing, 3-1 at Paraguay.Uruguay is going to the World Cup after winning at home, but Canada lost and will have to wait at least a few days. The same is now true of Mexico and the United States, too; like Canada’s team, they are close enough to touch a World Cup berth, but also aware it can still slip away.“I’m disappointed I missed a chance, and I would have loved to have won the game,” Pulisic said after his team’s draw at Mexico. “But this is the situation we’re in now, and we’re happy with it.”Luck of course has a way of evening out, and in other ways, the United States was fortunate on Thursday.All week long the players had been asked how they would manage their nerves in the hair-raising atmosphere of the Azteca, where rowdy, capacity crowds can induce claustrophobia in visiting teams. But the stadium they entered Thursday was oddly tame.Capacity in the building was drastically reduced — to 50,000 from 87,000 — as part of an ongoing effort from the Mexican federation to curb persistent offensive chanting from the home team’s fans. The traveling American fans, cloistered as a group in a corner of the upper deck, at times made more noise than their far more numerous counterparts.It was the Americans’ third consecutive draw in World Cup qualifying at the Azteca, a quietly surprising statistic that perhaps paints a picture of a team finding itself increasingly comfortable in its chief rival’s home.Just like the U.S., Hirving Lozano and Mexico were left lamenting missed chances to score.Eduardo Verdugo/Associated PressAlso working in the United States’ favor was an unexpected result in one of the other games: Panama, which began the day in fourth place, managed only a tie at home against Honduras, a team languishing in last place with little left to play for.The Americans will meet Panama in their next match, on Sunday in Orlando, Fla., and Thursday’s scores now mean a win there would put the Americans in a strong position to earn one of the three automatic qualification spots in the region. They close their World Cup qualifying campaign on Wednesday on the road against Costa Rica, which also notched a surprising result, a 1-0 win over first-place Canada, to leapfrog Panama into fourth.“I’m looking forward to getting home and having a good performance,” United States Coach Gregg Berhalter said.Berhalter’s biggest challenge for that game could be managing personnel in his somewhat depleted traveling party. The team was already short-handed by injuries, entering the three-game window missing four important players: right back Sergiño Dest, midfielders Weston McKennie and Brenden Aaronson, and goalkeeper Matt Turner.Then, before the game, the team ruled out defender Reggie Cannon, who tested positive for the coronavirus, and during it another two starters, Timothy Weah and DeAndre Yedlin, picked up yellow cards that ruled them out of the contest on Sunday night. To fill the sudden gaps, Shaq Moore, a defender who plays in Spain’s second division, was quickly called in. He will meet the team in Orlando ahead of Sunday’s game, and more than likely be in the starting lineup when it kicks off.For the available players, the Panama game could represent a punishing turnaround. Many of them, particularly those in the starting lineup against Mexico, were visibly laboring by the end of the match.Afterward, Berhalter praised his players for expending every ounce of energy and in the same breath played down the potential physical consequences for doing so.“We’ll recover,” he said. “There’s plenty of time to recover.”One factor helping the team’s cause will be the re-emergence of attacking midfielder Gio Reyna, who came on as a second-half substitute. The game marked Reyna’s first appearance for the team since September, when he sustained a leg injury that would keep him sidelined for months.Reyna was the player who had supplied the potential assist to Pefok, cushioning the ball cleverly out of midair onto his teammate’s foot, before it was squandered. Reyna became visibly agitated after the miss, holding out his hands in disbelief, staring at Pefok for several seconds after the ball had trickled out of bounds.The gesture may have come across as unseemly, but Reyna moments later delighted the crowd with a dizzying dribbling run, a meandering high-speed journey from back near the American penalty area almost all the way to the Mexican goal during which he beat a half dozen opposing players, some of them multiple times.Berhalter compared the run to the famous solo goal Argentina’s Diego Maradona had scored at the Azteca at the 1986 World Cup.“I had visions of that while Gio was dribbling,” Berhalter said. “Unfortunately he didn’t have an opportunity to finish it off.”In World Cup qualifying, after all, there is often a razor thin line between glory and disappointment. The Americans will hope, in the coming days, they land on the right side of it. More

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      U.S. Faces Mexico With Simple Goal: ‘We Just Have to Qualify’

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      The bitter sting of a missed World Cup shadows a young team nearing the end of its qualifying road. Three games will decide its fate.MEXICO CITY — There is a tendency among professional athletes and coaches, when faced with the hype of high-stakes competition, to undersell the sense of occasion.A big game, they might say, is in fact just another game. Looking ahead at a stretch of daunting contests is futile; better to go one day at a time.But when the United States men’s soccer team gathered this week in preparation for its final three qualification games for the 2022 World Cup, Coach Gregg Berhalter was uncharacteristically blunt with his staff.“This is probably the biggest week of our lives as professional coaches,” Berhalter said he told them. “That’s just honest.”On Thursday in Mexico City, Berhalter and his team embarked on a set of matches — three of them, in three countries — that will determine if they will return to the World Cup for the first time since 2014. It is unlikely the fate of either the United States or Mexico will be decided on Thursday night; results in other games could change the math, injuries and absences have complicated both teams’ plans, and two more matches remain after Thursday, offering either confirmation or a last-ditch lifeline.A place in the world’s biggest sporting event is typically motivation enough. But Berhalter and his players have been burdened with the task of redeeming the failures of their predecessors, of smudging away the memories of 2017, when the team squandered a ticket to the 2018 World Cup in stunning fashion.The current group, the great majority of whom played no role in the failure of five years ago, began the day in second place in their regional qualifying group — a strong position, given that the top three teams earn an automatic spot in the tournament and the fourth-place team gets a chance to make it through a play-in game. But the disaster of Couva, Trinidad, in 2017 means the United States long ago surrendered the privilege of tranquil optimism.After their game against Mexico on Thursday, the Americans will play Panama in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday before traveling to Costa Rica for their final qualifier on Wednesday night.“We just have to qualify — there’s just no other option,” midfielder Tyler Adams said. “I think that when you’re in big games, important games, you always have to remember what motivates you and what you’re doing it for. And for us, we’re doing it for all the U.S. fans. We don’t want to let down our nation.”Christian Pulisic, right, is one of the few holdovers from the U.S. team that missed the last World Cup. “We definitely don’t want to go through that again.”Alfredo Estrella/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAll week the American players have repeated the word “responsibility,” the understanding that their fortunes in these games will ripple far outside their group, and well into the future.That remains one of the curious aspects of national soccer teams: their reputations, their standards, their expectations, how people perceive them to play, how people evaluate their characters — these things get passed through generations, even as players and coaches and other personnel change.The same could be said for their traumas. In 2017, the Americans went to Trinidad knowing that a win or a draw would guarantee them a ticket to the World Cup. Instead they lost, and a series of unlikely results in simultaneous matches on the final day left them on the outside looking in for the first time in a generation. The American players finished the night slumped on the field, some of them with tears in their eyes. A few, like the star Christian Pulisic, did not speak publicly about their disappointment for months.Time moves slowly in international soccer. The images and sensations of that night — the heartbreak and disgust and nausea — continue to stalk the program. Adams talked this week about watching that match on his couch at home. He said he spent the ensuing years wondering if he might have sneaked onto the World Cup roster if the team had qualified for Russia.“Hopefully we have all learned from the past that we need to be better,” said midfielder Paul Arriola, one of the few current players who was part of the last qualifying campaign.As the last stage of that effort began Thursday at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the United States and Mexico found themselves in the unusual, uncomfortable position of looking above in the standings and seeing someone else — Canada — in the top spot they have long claimed as their own.Goalkeeper Sean Johnson during a training session at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium on Wednesday.Eduardo Verdugo/Associated PressMexico is ranked 12th in the world by FIFA. The United States is 13th. Canada is 33rd. But Canada — which was unbeaten against the U.S. and Mexico in qualifying (2-0-2) — has looked to be the most assured, the most dangerous team in the region over these past months, while the two traditional powers have struggled more openly with the highs and lows of the grueling, monthslong competition.The Americans started the process last September with youthful bravado. Never mind that the majority of them had never experienced the stress and strain of World Cup qualifying matches in this region. Midfielder Weston McKennie declared the team would look to “dominate” the tournament. Adams trumpeted their lofty target: “Nine-point week, bottom line,” he said heading in to the team’s first three-game window.Those things did not happen. The team’s first two games were duds, and they finished the first window with five points instead of nine — no reason to panic, but a cold reminder of the challenge that lay ahead. Since then, it has been a learn-on-the-fly process of melding the team’s many raw talents into a coherent group.Berhalter, who has openly marveled at the difficulty of managing such a young team in such a tough circumstance, has gone through a learning process of his own.“When you’re at a club, it’s a building type of thing,” said Berhalter, who coached for almost a decade at the club level before being hired by U.S. Soccer in 2018. “When you’re at a national team, I think it’s a winning type of thing. My mind-set had to change to be much more about winning every game. That’s what we want. That’s obviously what the public wants. Winning also means qualifying.”The urgency of that task was felt most acutely by the people who were on the field four years ago. Pulisic, for instance, was one of the players with tears on his face after the loss in Trinidad.“I’ve been looking forward to it for years now,” he said about washing away the bad taste of that experience. “Of course we use it as motivation. We were extremely upset. And now we want to qualify. We have the opportunity now. We definitely don’t want to go through that again.” More

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      Crunch Time for the U.S. Men’s National Team

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      Crunch Time for the U.S. Men’s National TeamAndrew KehReporting from Mexico City ⚽️The team remembers what happened four and a half years ago. The idea that the United States could miss the 2018 World Cup seemed absurd — until a wild turn of events on the final day of qualifying in its region.Honduras upset Mexico. Panama upset Costa Rica. And the Americans, shockingly, were upset by Trinidad and Tobago, meaning they would sit out their first World Cup since 1986. More