Copa America 2024: Urgency Needed From USMNT Against Panama

The USA might have registered a comprehensive win against Bolivia in their opener but also never seemed to get out of a middle gear.

My long standing gripes against Gregg Berhalter’s style should be well known, and the USMNT should get credit for recovering from a massive 5-1 failure against Colombia in the warm up friendly.

A tepid 1-1 draw against Brazil in which Matt Turner had to make double digit saves is closer to where most expect this team to be in Berhalter’s second cycle. Which is why I think the USA’s 2-0 win against Bolivia in the opener was a disappointment.

Now, Berhalter is correct that the USMNT generated like 3.0 xG while holding Bolivia to barely 0.2 depending on where you get your numbers from. There were a number of impressive individual performances from Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams’ return, Folarin Balogun getting a much needed goal, and Gio Reyna doing well in a much deeper role. I have no problem highlighting the things that went well in the USMNT’s opening game.

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Now whether or not Gio should have been getting the ball that deep by design (hint - he shouldn’t be), after Pulisic’s wonderstrike opener…the USA didn’t do a whole lot for the next hour. Yes, Balogun scored right before the half but the U.S. lacked any semblance of urgency for another goal until Ricardo Pepi entered the match and couldn’t buy a goal and generated about half of the USA’s expected goal total in half an hour.

What the USA failed to do after Pulisic’s opener was press the issue and really push for a second. This team took their foot off the gas for the better part of at least thirty minutes if not an hour after an opening stretch that was truly dominant. From a Gio Reyna miss from close range in the 12th minute to Balogan’s second the USMNT generated exactly one shot, which was blocked.

While Pepi didn’t score, he at least understood the assignment which I don’t think his head coach did. Berhalter might be pleased with what he thinks is a dominant win but he’s already behind Uruguay in the group because his team took an hour off and couldn’t find any goals late. Uruguay and the USA might be tied on three points and still have to play each other, but La Celeste already lead the Yanks on goals scored tiebreaker. We can lament Pepi’s finishing as needing to be better but bad shooting days happen, long stretches where you can’t generate shots simply can not in a tournament setting.

Now the USA has to deal with a known quantity in Panama that beat them in WCQ and tied them in the last Gold Cup and held Uruguay to a single goal for 85 minutes in their opener. The road for the USA isn’t getting any easier and they’re already behind because their head coach didn’t get his players into a higher gear soon enough against Bolivia.

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Coasting against minnows in CONCACAF qualifying is not the same as doing it at Copa America or the World Cup. Every game, every goal, every minute of a group stage needs to matter. Weston McKennie wasn’t decisive or impactful enough in this game, the U.S. set pieces mostly via Pulisic are still generally awful, Berhalter didn’t do enough to account for one of his fullbacks hanging back more (which Joe Scally should do, he’s not Sergino Dest), and 8-for-20 shooting against a bad team is simply not good enough but that is a solid enough chance total to build off of.

Berhalter may very well get this team into a quarterfinal, and if the U.S. wins their group they might not even have to deal with Brazil who dropped points against Costa Rica in their opener…or maybe the Selecao will be the second place team out of Group D and the U.S. could see them in the quarters. If the USA gets to a quarterfinal in two years it will likely be against a Top 10 team in the World, so they might as well get their practice in now at Copa America where they’re going to have to beat three Top 10(ish) teams in the knockouts to win the whole thing.

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I don’t want Berhalter and the USMNT worrying about three games from now - I want this squad as a Pot 1 team to behave like the top seeded team they are in this group. Two years from now when the USA gets pulled out of Pot 1 as the host country at the World Cup, I want them to be disappointed with a 2-0 win over a Pot 4 team. Because they should be - not because they played badly, but because their performance is only good enough for second place at the moment.

For a team that should have aspirations to reach the semifinals of the World Cup in two years and the semifinals of the Copa America in another week or so…settling for second place is only going to make the road harder.

It’s time for the coaching staff and players to finally start living up to the expectations they should have in Berhalter’s second cycle. Not the expectations they assume they have time to build up to still. Because they’re out of time. This is the best experience they’re going to get between now and the World Cup and the lack of urgency against Bolivia should be just as unacceptable as the 5-1 pasting Colombia gave you before the tournament.

This means going out and reminding Panama who the best team in CONCACAF is long before the 85th minute. And whenever that first goal gets scored, the foot should firmly stay on the accelerator until the second one is scored. And a third. And a fourth. And until however many it takes until Berhalter is comfortable making wholesale changes to his lineup.