Sports Illustrated did a Post Mortem on all the contenders, oh and you too United States, about where they need to improve to do better at the next World Cup.
[Mod's, this is just the US section of a much longer premium article; hopefully you see it as fair use ...]
"So, with that in mind, let's take a look at all of the favorites (and the
United States men's national team) who have been eliminated and see if there's anything they can do over the next four years to give themselves a slightly better chance at conquering the randomness.
. USA: Can you find more dudes?
The calls for Gregg Berhalter's job during the World Cup were baffling to me. (OK, I'm not baffled; almost everyone hates their manager because of everything I just wrote.) The USMNT was the youngest team at the World Cup, they made the round of 16, and they went toe-to-toe with both
England and the
Netherlands.
Herculez Gomez grades Gregg Berhalter for his time in charge of the USMNT and speaks about his future.
The results won't show it, but this was America's best performance at a World Cup since America started qualifying for World Cups again in 1990. Most of that comes down to the massive increase at the top end of the talent pool, but Berhalter deserves plenty of credit, too. The manager's job is to get the talent to play up to its capabilities, and that's what happened in
Qatar. This team did not underachieve.
- Carlisle/Borden: The case for, against keeping Berhalter as USMNT coach
- Roundtable: What the US did right, wrong at 2022 World Cup
Of course, you can convince yourself that they did underachieve... if you have a completely unrealistic understanding of how good the team's players are.
Ultimately, here's what happened in Qatar: The US had nine players who were up to the requisite starting level of a team that makes a deep knockout-round run in the World Cup.
In the starting XI, they were missing a second top-level center back next to
Tim Ream, and then a third attacker between
Christian Pulisic and
Timothy Weah.
The bigger problem was the lack of depth. While the midfield was one of the best at the tournament, there was no fourth guy who could come on for
Weston McKennie and maintain a similar level of performance.
The same is true at fullback;
Antonee Robinson played every minute of the tournament at left-back, while whoever replaced
Sergino Dest was, well, a lot worse than Sergino Dest. Up top,
Brenden Aaronson was ineffective off the bench, and when Gio Reyna finally got to play against the Netherlands, he too was totally ineffective.
The Reyna story then blew up over the weekend when Berhalter's comments at something called the HOW Institute for Society's Summit on Moral Leadership were made public. About one unnamed, under-performing player, he said, "We were ready to book a plane ticket home, that's how extreme it was." It was
quickly revealed that this player was Reyna, and both staff and players were frustrated with his lack of effort in pre-tournament training. Given his, um, subdued performance in the Round of 16, it seems like Reyna wasn't ready to contribute -- for physical or emotional reasons, or both -- in Qatar. That just massively exacerbated the team's lack of depth.
This showed up, I think, in two ways. Firstly, the team faded in almost every second half -- not because Berhalter refused to adjust, but because his good players got tired and the only options to replace them were, to put it simply, much worse at playing soccer. And since there was no depth across the roster, some of the stalwarts like
Tyler Adams,
Yunus Musah and Robinson were just totally gassed and made killer mental errors against the Netherlands.
We love to act like some brilliant manager can just magically come in, sprinkle some tactics and make all of our players better, but that's just not how soccer works. Ultimately, talent is -- by far -- the most important driver of national team success. If the US wants to be better in 2026, they're gonna need Aaronson to be better and Reyna to be back fit, as well as being fully reintegrated into the program. But they also need at least one other rotation fullback --
Borussia Monchengladbach's
Joe Scally, perhaps? -- and at least one other top-level central midfielder -- ??? -- who can spell the starters and still provide quality minutes.
In other words, the team in Qatar went nine deep. Get that up to 13 -- or 15 -- by 2024 and then the ceiling gets way higher and the manager can justifiably be held to a higher standard.
