United States head coach Gregg Berhalter watches the run of play during the Group A match between ... [+]
It is damning to the entire American soccer ecosystem that the enormous promise Gregg Berhalter made early in his tenure as the U.S. men’s national team coach was so readily embraced.
From the very early stages, Berhalter pledged his first World Cup cycle would be about changing the way the world views American soccer. It was the kind of big, defiant idea that must have felt therapeutic to say during the bleakest period of the modern USMNT program after they failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. It was also something a more experienced or media-savvy manager would’ve never uttered.
Because, when you break down what that could mean, it was both absurd and counterproductive.
For starters, the soccer world just doesn’t think that much about American soccer. A few follow MLS closely, and far more have a cursory knowledge. Some are more aware of Americans playing for European clubs than others. And most have seen enough good American players in Europe through the years to know that the stereotype of all Americans being rubbish is dated.
The idea that there is some more fully formed global opinion about American soccer is more telling about what Americans think of themselves: That because they’re American, they always matter.
And even in an alternate dimension where such was the case, the work of changing a national soccer reputation isn’t really the business of the national team so much as the domestic league system and player development academies.
Want proof? England’s reputation as a top footballing nation comes largely despite the habitually disappointing performances of its men’s national team. Americans’ and other foreigners’ worshipful view of the English game owes mostly to the wealthy and successful Premier League, whose teams are enormous commercial successes and regular continental contenders.
Perhaps we know South American giants like Brazil and Argentina better because of their national sides, but even those are direct products of the sport of soccer being a culturally defining trait, the way baseball and apple pie supposedly apply to the U.S.
The idea that any national team coach and cohort of players could by themselves advance the game to such a degree is laughable. Don’t agree? Then ask yourself, how have your views of Moroccan football fundamentally shifted in the aftermath of the national team’s run to the 2022 World Cup semifinals?
Yet that’s the standard Berhalter laid down from the start, ensuring that no team he ever sent out to contest an international fixture could match it in reality and that eventually there would be dissatisfaction turned to outrage as has occurred in the aftermath of the USMNT’s group stage elimination at the Copa America.
After consecutive losses to Panama and Uruguay, coupled with some unimpressive friendly performances before that, the calls for Berhalter’s job have become far louder and more mainstream than at any previous time in his tenure.
In response, some have posited that just as significant a problem is that the talent level at his disposal isn’t as high as the American soccer public believes.
But if that’s the case, the reason that belief is inaccurately high can be traced back directly to Berhalter’s grandiose pledge, one a qualified coach would only make if he knew he was working with a truly transformational generation of players and not the 16th-highest valued squad in the global game, according to Transfermarkt.
If a manager is inflating his talent publicly, that’s arguably even more damning of his suitability for the national team job than if he had a talented group that was underachieving. The whole point of national team coaching is that you apply the best approach for the talent you have and that you can’t go shopping for a striker, goalkeeper, or defensive midfielder if it doesn’t work.
There was no need for this. Prior to the 2018 qualifying collapse, most American fans were relatively happy with the USMNT. Both the 2010 and 2014 World Cups were viewed as moderate successes. Had Berhalter pledged merely to return the program to its previous level of regular World Cup group stage contenders with the ability to pull off the occasional upset, that would’ve satisfied most of them.
It also would’ve eased the pressure on a group of players that is still on the younger side in terms of international football. It would’ve colored the 2022 World Cup second-round showing in a more positive light than it ultimately received. And it might’ve even made this week’s embarrassing setback survivable.
Instead, Berhalter has very likely hit the end of the line, even if U.S. Soccer’s decision doesn’t come immediately. The calls are too loud, too numerous, and too reputable to ignore for long. And if their expectations are unrealistic, it’s because Berhalter told them they should be when he first took the job.
