The precise nature of the process United States soccer technical director Matt Crocker followed in choosing to reappoint Gregg Berhalter as head coach of the United States men’s national team will never be known to all of us. We’ve been led to believe it was highly mathematical and analytical, and all stuff that would fly above our heads.
Whatever formula it contained, however, was flawed.
The young players primarily comprising the USMNT had made significant progress from their introduction to the lineup a half-dozen years ago to their success at the 2022 World Cup. A good deal of that advance was the product of the culture Berhalter had built, and it made some sense for Crocker to try to preserve that momentum as players such as Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, and Tyler Adams advanced into their primes.
It was a fine idea, but just a little too fantastic.
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Because the chemistry that made the program work had been inextricably altered by the debacle involving Berhalter, Gio Reyna, and Reyna’s family following the World Cup, there was no way everything could return to its normal state after everything that occurred.
Crocker made the easy choice then, and what turned out to be the wrong one. Now, it’s his turn to get it right: He must hire a coach who will show the players only one person can be in command.
Whether it’s reaching into the stratosphere to corral the genius of Jurgen Klopp or landing somewhere closer to Earth with Jose Pekerman, David Wagner, or Wilfried Nancy, Crocker must hire a coach who is not only a leader and strategist but also someone who owes no one anything.
MORE: Top candidates to replace Gregg Berhalter
After Berhalter had informed Reyna he would be deployed as a substitute at Qatar 2022, and after Reyna had reacted to this news by visibly pouting in practices and a closed-door exhibition game, the U.S. coaches considered sending him home but chose to retain him. And after all of this was revealed to the public under unprecedented circumstances, Reyna’s mother reported to U.S. Soccer a decades-old incident of domestic abuse allegedly perpetrated by Berhalter against the woman who would become his wife.
When the federation chose to launch an investigation into this circumstance, the necessary step given the gravity of the allegation, Berhalter’s relationship with his team never could be the same.
This wasn’t obvious at the time. Once Berhalter was cleared by the federation to return, the one concern in regard to the roster was whether the coach and Reyna could repair their relationship. That turned out not to be a problem at all. Reyna started regularly in midfield after Berhalter’s return and was named Best Player at the 2024 CONCACAF Nations League.
The issue was everyone else.
It turned out a team whose core group carried an average age of 25 was not adult enough to handle the balance of power shifting so firmly in their direction. They had made a strong case for Berhalter’s return, and their position was affirmed. They had, in a very real sense, saved their coach’s job. And he owed them.
They repaid him by behaving, far too often, with stunning immaturity. The first obvious incident involved right back Sergino Dest being tossed out of a Nations League game last fall at Trinidad & Tobago for kicking the ball into the stands and yelling at the referee, earning consecutive yellow cards that added up to a red. The team’s one real veteran, 36-year-old defender Tim Ream, could be seen haranguing Dest as he walked off the field.
Maybe that worked for Dest, but he since injured his knee and was lost for this summer’s tournament. Forward Timothy Weah revealed these problems were not limited to a single player, though, earning a straight red card for striking a Panama opponent less than 20 minutes into an essential group game this month at Copa America. That ultimately led to the USMNT being eliminated from the tournament.
It was more than this, however. Their disinterested play against rising power Colombia engendered the embarrassment of a 5-1 pre-Copa defeat. Their lackluster effort in the Nations League semis this past March against Jamaica nearly got them eliminated before a late own goal led to an extra time period they dominated to advance.
Christian Pulisic is the best player in the history of the program, but that does not entitle him to take every set piece when his record of producing threatening moments is meager. Players who’ve shown they can’t be trusted to control their emotions can’t be trusted with automatic spots in the lineup. Strikers who don’t score goals can’t keep getting chances when the team is so desperate for offensive punch.
“I think we need more focus, more intensity from every single training session – demanding more from each other,” Ream told reporters after a loss to Uruguay finished the U.S. at Copa America. “I think we need more guys who are willing to step forward and take over games. It’s a fantastic group, as everybody knows, and one that is very close, but sometimes the intensity falls through the cracks.”
Berhalter was a better strategist than his most fervent critics ever would allow. Because he was neither European nor South American — and worst of all American — he always was going to encounter the suspicion he did not truly know the game.
He set out not only to win games and tournaments with the USMNT, but also to deliver on the promise his predecessor, Jurgen Klinsmann, had presented upon being hired nearly a decade earlier. He intended to change the way the Americans played soccer.
And that part of it worked. At the World Cup in 2022, the US ranked 12th among the 32 teams in possession. They were in the upper half in touches in the opponent’s box and ninth in touches in the attacking third of the field. The program that had relied exclusively on defend-and-counter strategies through a quarter-century of World Cup appearances began to control games and dictate play, even at times against such powers as England.
Under Berhalter, the USMNT did change the way they played soccer.
But then they changed the way they played that soccer.
Which is why a change in the direction of the program was inevitable. And, at last, welcome.