Berhalter’s U.S. team has won ‘all or nothing’ games before. Can they do it again?
Reporters pushed their recorders close to Christian Pulisic’s face after the United State’s disappointing 2-1 loss to Panama.
The winger’s voice barely rose above the noise of the vehicles moving in the tunnels, but his message came through clearly.
“I don’t feel pressure for it… If a win against Uruguay is what we need, then that’s what we have to go do,” Pulisic said. “We’re privileged to be in this position and have this opportunity to represent our country. I feel lucky to go into games like that. I’m excited for it.”
On Monday night, the U.S. will go into their group finale likely needing a win to secure a spot in the knockout phase of Copa America. If they lose against Uruguay they will have to hope Bolivia, who have conceded seven goals in two games in this tournament and are yet to score, somehow beat Panama.
A draw in both contests with also suffice for the U.S., which holds an advantage in goal differential.
“It’s an all-or-nothing game for us,” said Gio Reyna. “We need three points. It’s simple. It’s pretty much a knockout game.”
But it will not be the first win-or-bust moment for this U.S. team.
In 2019, a bounce-back CONCACAF Nations League win against Canada changed the tactical approach of the team and reinforced the intensity needed on the international stage. But two other games stand out for the impact they had on the mentality of this team and their ability to navigate must-win scenarios: one in World Cup qualifying against Honduras in 2021 and the other against Iran in Qatar in 2022.
“We’ll probably look at that (Iran) game as kind of a replica of what we’re going to face going into the last game of this one,” Tyler Adams said on Thursday night.
“I think it’s a good experience to draw on,” Tim Ream added to FoxSports.com. “We can look back on that and look at the effort we put into that one to get a result and move on and go through. It’s something that we can definitely use to our advantage come the game against Uruguay.”
This is how the U.S. found wins in those two games, and how the lessons learned may have readied them for what will be the biggest challenge yet…
U.S. 4, Honduras 1
Goalkeeper Matt Turner remembered how cold the locker room was on an otherwise balmy night in San Pedro Sula, Honduras.
The U.S. started off their first window of World Cup qualifying with draws on the road in El Salvador and at home against Canada, earning an underwhelming two points. Now, at halftime against Honduras, the U.S. was trailing 1-0. They had come out in a different formation, playing with a three-man back line. They looked disconnected and overwhelmed.
In the locker room, an air conditioner blasted cold air. The players walked across towels so they wouldn’t slip on the tile surface. They were silent. But when U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter spoke, there was no panic. He would change the formation back to a 4-3-3 and make a triple sub at halftime.
“We’re going to get a goal,” Berhalter said in the speech captured by U.S. Soccer’s cameras on their Behind the Crest series. “We’re going to get a goal. Once we get one, we get the next one. But we gotta believe. We’ve gotta believe and we’ve got to embrace this battle.”
Turner remembered the speech clearly in an interview with The Athletic in 2022.
“I think a lot of us were feeling (pressure). And he was basically like the calming influence for us,” Turner said. “‘Listen, it’s not as bad as you think. You guys are right there’. … It was like, ‘We got this’. Not like, ‘What is wrong with all of you?’.”
If the U.S. lost the game, it’s fair to say the program would have been scrambling, just three games into World Cup qualifying. Considering the failure of not making it to Russia in 2018, the pressure on the team would have been enormous.
Berhalter’s changes altered the game. Antonee Robinson scored the equalizer in the 48th minute, 18-year-old Ricardo Pepi netted the winner in the 75th and Brenden Aaronson and Sebastian Lletget rounded out a 4-1 scoreline.
The feeling the players had at halftime – that things can slip away from you quickly – was something that stuck with the group.
“I just wanted people to realize like, this is a wake up call,” Tyler Adams told The Athletic for the podcast From Couva to Qatar: Remaking the USMNT. “I just wanted people to realize that this could easily determine how qualifying turns out to be.”
For Berhalter, however, it was about teaching a young team that you don’t have to panic when things aren’t going your way.
“When you’re working with a young group and your back’s against the wall, it’s 1-0, you start picturing what they can be picturing,” Berhalter said on the podcast. “So any type of nervousness by me, any type of turning on them by me … I wanted to set the right tone for what we’re looking for.
“What I needed to give them at that moment was confidence. That’s what I needed to give them. And you’re not going to give people confidence by screaming at them. So it was pretty clear what needed to be done.”
The game, Adams said, was a “really important turning point for us in qualifying”. For a lot of the players, it was about learning how to turn a game back in your favor even at a moment when everything feels like it’s stacked against you.
For as difficult as the atmosphere was in Honduras, the U.S. would see that energy amped up just more than one year later in Qatar.
U.S. 1, Iran 0
There was always going to be tension around the USA-Iran World Cup game in Qatar but Adams, who wore the captain’s armband at the tournament, sensed a day earlier than his team-mates that it was different than anything else he had experienced before.
“As soon as I walked into that press conference, you could just tell immediately how hostile it was about to be,” Adams told the Netflix documentary Captains of the World.
The U.S. midfielder faced some tense back and forth with a reporter from Iranian state-owned media, including a question about the U.S. Soccer Federation displaying Iran’s national flag on social media without the emblem of the Islamic Republic in a show of support for recent protests in the country. Adams was corrected on the pronunciation of Iran. He was asked about racial strife in the U.S. The midfielder managed to navigate the moments with the calm of a statesman.
The hostility from the conference carried over into an almost surreal environment at Al Thumama Stadium in Doha.
The 44,000-seat stadium was filled with Iran supporters. The pressure of the politics mixed in with the stakes of the game. A win in the Group B finale would send the third-place U.S. through over Iran. Iran would advance with a win, or with a draw if Wales lost or drew with England.
“High emotions, high stakes,” U.S. assistant coach Luchi Gonzalez said in the locker room before kick-off. “This is that on steroids.”
The atmosphere was another level of intensity from any other environment the U.S. team had played in during that cycle. In the press tribune, you had to turn and yell just to be heard by a seatmate.
The U.S. broke through first with Pulisic’s goal in the 38th minute but it also knocked him out of the game. As the scoreline remained 1-0, the final minutes of the game turned into one of the more extreme sporting experiences one could imagine. The U.S. dropped into a bunker to protect the lead. Center back Walker Zimmerman entered to win every header on every long ball directed toward the back line.
The final 9 minutes and 53 seconds played out in added time like an eternity. In the final minutes, fans of both teams were putting their hands over their faces to cover their eyes. Finally, the whistle sounded and the U.S. was through.
The game had tested this team in a way none had ever experienced.
“You see how resilient this group is, you see how unified this group is, you see what type of energy and output they put into every single game, and then along the way there’s some pretty good soccer,” Berhalter said that night. “And so I think that’s the American spirit, the way this group plays, and I think people will appreciate that – especially back home.”
The U.S. would go out in the next round to the Netherlands, a knockout game that served more lessons – this time in defeat. But the way they battled to best Iran was an important marker for this young group’s growth.
“It’s a good experience to have in our back pocket,” Adams said on Saturday. “I think going into the Iran game we knew what we needed to do and we accomplished that goal.
“It’s a similar situation now, obviously, a win in the best circumstances to go into the next round. But we’re all confident again, when we have 11 players on the field that can go toe to toe with anybody.”