Official 2022 USA World Cup Qualifying thread

Real football season is here.

Nobody cares about commie kickball.

I can't believe I forgot about the game.

I just read that we were outplayed in the 2nd half. That surprises me. In the first game, while we didn't have that many scoring chances, I felt like we were in control of the game.

Well I say it surprises me. Now I've done a little research. We were without 2 of our best players. Reyna was injured and we suspended one of our better players Weston McKennie for violating team Covid-19 protocols. Will he play the next game?

In the first game, we were without our best player - Pulisic - who himself is coming back from Covid.

So when 25% of you better players are out or injured, is it that shocking we aren't amazing?

PS. I've updated the title to reflect the key development of McKennie being out.

https://www.frontrowsoccer.com/2021/09/05/two-big-losses-reyna-out-of-last-2-wcqs-mckennie-suspended-for-honduras-match/

I thought this thread would have at least 100 replies. Posters here love to mock the national team and root the other way.

I was at this game, the level of play didn't come close to the level of fan enthusiasm, people are going to get tired of watching this kind of play. There were 43,000 screaming fans and the team did show squat. Really disappointing.

Heard they got booed off the field. Covid protocols. Such a joke.

Yeah I’d be shocked if to many people actually cared about this lol

I thought they showed some good fight. The problem is Berhalter is not a good coach. Not only did he lack ideas and a plan after the US goal, waiting until past the 80th minute to sub for clearly tired players was plain stupid. Everybody could see they needed some fresh legs after the Canada goal. Yet Berhalter kept the starters on and almost lost the game.

I don't know what US Soccer can do about the coaching situation during this qualifying period, but Berhalter isn't the guy for 2026, at the very least.

Agree about Berhalter, he's a fraud. Losing a couple players shouldn't make a difference, that's why you have a TEAM and a system. The problem is Berhalter has brought in over 60 different players to camp so he has no continuity and everyone is his favorite at one point or another. Pulisic is our only hope.

sub sub elite local hobby jogger wrote:

I thought they showed some good fight. The problem is Berhalter is not a good coach. Not only did he lack ideas and a plan after the US goal, waiting until past the 80th minute to sub for clearly tired players was plain stupid. Everybody could see they needed some fresh legs after the Canada goal. Yet Berhalter kept the starters on and almost lost the game.

I don't know what US Soccer can do about the coaching situation during this qualifying period, but Berhalter isn't the guy for 2026, at the very least.

I'm not sure Berhalter has ever been the guy. Heck his hiring was shrouded in secrecy and his brother at the time was a senior executive within US Soccer! Talk about a nepotism hire. His style of play isn't good for the players he has (Pulisic can't be as creative. Why is Dest a stud for Barcelona but a dud with the USMNT? Plenty more examples I could come up with )...that being said at least he has a style of play, which is something previous USMNT coaches haven't really had.

Part of the problem (and like I said, there are many) seems to be the mindset of USSF and their conflicting messages about what constitutes success. Prime example is how they celebrated winning the recent Gold Cup and the CONCACAF Nations League. Thats great. You won tournaments against teams that you'll see in World Cup Qualifying. Yet, now you're not beating those same teams in World Cup Qualifying...yet you have said the goal is a run in the World Cup...AND also in that same time frame, you failed to qualify for yet another Olympics (I think this is 3 in a row) against the same teams from CONCACAF.

Honduras away is gonna be a huge challenge . The US seems to always struggle with their speed , especially on the wings.

Well there are so many players in the pool right now because there's too many darn competitions and they have to rotate to give the top guys a break. I think the Nations League is what to expect of our A team. Also, all the Covid stuff is making any kind of consistency basically impossible. But the most important competition is World Cup qualifying and we are stumbling out of the gate right now.

International football is hard to development a certain style of play when they only have a couple days together and most of our starting 11 is flying in from overseas these days. The best teams typically have all their players concentrated in the same league on a few top teams, so they might have more familiarity and rhythm to work from. That said, the US team might be the most talented team in CONCACAF right now and teams are just ceding possession to us and we don't know what to do with the ball. I loved the US goal last night, it was a glimpse if what we could create. But besides that, it was a bunch of individual efforts and passing around the back and to the side. It's hard to penetrate when teams stuff the box, but there are always ways to get results when you clearly have the most talent on the pitch. We should be dominating teams like El Salvador, Canada, and the like.

We NEED to beat Honduras but I'm afraid it's just gonna be another lackluster draw. Yea, playing on the road in CONCACAF is tough but get used to and grind some results. Everybody is facing the same challenges.

I’m also it 50 and for the first 4 decades of my life, nobody gave a crap about soccer. Now people act I like they love it so much and have been following it all their lives. Amazing what marketing can do to people

fat guy in a little coat wrote:

I’m also it 50 and for the first 4 decades of my life, nobody gave a crap about soccer. Now people act I like they love it so much and have been following it all their lives. Amazing what marketing can do to people

Explain yourself. How has marketing increased the popularity of the world's most popular sport in the USA?

Film Rep wrote:

Real football season is here.

Nobody cares about commie kickball.

From a non-American perspective, it's crazy to me that Americans aren't interested in the world's most popular sport. Yet they love Ice Hockey - I have perfect 20/20 vision and when I attempted to watch an Ice Hockey game I had no idea where the puck was 90% of the time. I'm convinced nobody watching can actually see the puck but they just daren't admit it.

Britain gets strongly associated with Cricket but I've never met anyone who plays Cricket, Football is our religion here. Harry Kane, Gareth Southgate and Marcus Rashford are probably more well known than our prime minister.

Runner10287 wrote:

Heard they got booed off the field. Covid protocols. Such a joke.

You want to see covid insanity? Look at the Argentina v Brazil game that got stopped by health Nazis 4 minutes in. The quarantine rules are absurd.

Very disappointing games. After the Nations League and Gold Cup tourney wins this Summer, done with two completely different groups of players, I thought the US would play much stronger in these games.

In El Salvador they looked scared. I saw players flinch during the anthems when fireworks boomed in the background. Clearly they were intimidated by the atmosphere there, but that should have gone away once the game started.

Against Canada, that was an especially disappointing performance. Canada has improved and Davies is a great player, but the US is a far deeper with more high quality experienced players. So much for that top 10 FIFA ranking.

I hope we can pull it together and turn things around against Honduras.

I'm changing the title and making this the official thread.

Original title was "After suspending one of its best players for violating team Covid-19 rules, US men's World Cup hopes in trouble already!"

Match tonight vs Honduras at 10:30 eastern

Hey someone changed the painfully pathetic rojo thread re-title. It’s kind of bearable now.

Anyway, the two results thus far are not enough to have me concerned. If we come out of the next two matches with less than 3 points between the pair then I’ll be worried, but we can definitely take Jamaica at home and should be competitive tonight.

Our depth is good enough to not be concerned about sending McKennie back to Italy. Everyone relax, starting with the team who seem nervous and tense.

British Guy wrote:

Film Rep wrote:

Real football season is here.

Nobody cares about commie kickball.

From a non-American perspective, it's crazy to me that Americans aren't interested in the world's most popular sport. Yet they love Ice Hockey - I have perfect 20/20 vision and when I attempted to watch an Ice Hockey game I had no idea where the puck was 90% of the time. I'm convinced nobody watching can actually see the puck but they just daren't admit it.

Britain gets strongly associated with Cricket but I've never met anyone who plays Cricket, Football is our religion here. Harry Kane, Gareth Southgate and Marcus Rashford are probably more well known than our prime minister.

I wonder if soccer is more popular than Hockey in the US actually. Hockey isn't super mainstream.