The U.S. men’s national soccer team is supposed to be building toward the 2026 World Cup this summer. Instead, the team has taken multiple steps backward.
The goal for the United States at the 2024 Copa America was to qualify for the knockout stage and give themselves a chance to beat a quality CONMEBOL opponent in the quarterfinal. Reaching the semifinal would have been considered a resounding success.
With defeat to Uruguay on Monday night in Kansas City, the United States fell well short of that goal, relegated to elimination in the group stage at the hands of their fellow Group C opponents.
As the heat ramps up on USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter in the wake of the Copa America failure, The Sporting News reviews what will come next for the United States and if they will make a change at the top.
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Gregg Berhalter has had ample time, resources and talent with which to build the U.S. men’s national team toward its goal of reaching the upper echelon of global footballing nations.
Instead, the United States sit largely stuck in the mud. While Berhalter has previously had excuses to fall back on — whether it be a tough draw, key injuries or other reasonable explanations for defeat — this time, the failure falls squarely at his feet.
To some extent, Berhalter is a victim of his own success. When he arrived, the USMNT was fighting for CONCACAF supremacy with Mexico. But now that the team has established itself as the clear power in its own federation, fans crave something the U.S. has hardly ever tasted in modern international history: a notable victory against a top opponent from outside CONCACAF in a major competition.
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Since the 1950 World Cup win against England, the U.S. has only ever secured one true signature victory of its kind, the victory over Spain in the 2009 Confederations Cup, a tournament which doesn’t even exist anymore. Their only ever World Cup knockout victory came against Mexico, and a win over Brazil at the 1998 Gold Cup remains a distant memory at a much less heralded competition.
Under Berhalter’s watch, the United States has yet to secure a single signature victory against an opponent outside of their region. His two best results as head coach are a draw with England at the 2022 World Cup and a draw with Brazil in a pre-Copa America friendly. The latest disappointment utterly wasted the final opportunity for the United States to face top competition in a competitive environment before the World Cup in 2026.
The USMNT has a collection of talent within the squad never seen before in the nation’s history. Yet nothing at the 2024 Copa America displayed any kind of confidence that the United States look ready to make good on their talent explosion in two years’ time.
Berhalter’s side has received multiple violent conduct red cards in recent years, from Sergino Dest’s red, which put Copa America qualification at risk in the Nations League, to the Tim Weah red against Panama less than a week ago, which served as the catalyst for their disastrous defeat to Panama.
One dubious dismissal can be chalked up to player stupidity, but multiple moments such as this fall on the coach to adequately prepare his side to resist frustration against opponents who are primed to weaponize it.
While his pragmatic approach to international football has often served them well, he has become married to the notion, resulting in multiple tactical errors in key Copa America moments. His decision to sit back and defend with 10 men against Panama looks catastrophic in hindsight, failing to bring on Yunus Musah in a game which was there for the taking despite the disadvantage.
Berhalter underutilized proven performers Musah and Haji Wright across the three games, and his cautious tactical approach to the Bolivia match left the U.S. vulnerable to elimination on goal differential even had they secured a last-gasp result. In a must-win match against Uruguay, they could only muster eight shots worth 0.58 xG. Even amidst brutal officiating, the failures fell right at their own feet.
His lack of in-game awareness was laid bare during the defeat to Uruguay as midway through the second half, with the game scoreless and the opponent preparing to take a free-kick, he appeared to signal to his team that Bolivia had equalized against Panama. Instead of fully focusing his players on their own match’s result, he allowed them to lose focus and start worrying about outside results with nearly a half-hour still to play.
Sure enough, his inexplicable loss of focus saw Uruguay score the game’s only goal on that very set-piece opportunity, and the U.S. would fall short of the required result.
USMNT fans and Gregg Berhalter appeared to realize Bolivia had leveled the score vs Panama and only seconds later Uruguay took the lead 💔 pic.twitter.com/Q1kkr2Gd6N
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While U.S. players have repeatedly supported the 50-year-old throughout his tenure, they have not displayed the kind of togetherness on the pitch which usually reflects a desire to play for an inspirational coach.
The U.S. got up for a friendly against famed Brazil in a Copa America warmup match but looked ill-prepared and under-motivated against equally dangerous but less vaunted Colombia in a 5-1 defeat just before that. Anyone can get psyched for a match against Brazil, but Berhalter failed to get the same juice from his side days before.
In fact, after elimination at the hands of Uruguay, defender Tim Ream’s honest reflection was, intentionally or not, a condemnation of the squad’s togetherness under Berhalter.
“I think we need more focus, more intensity from every single training session, demanding more from each other,” Ream said to reporters after the match. “I think we need more guys who are willing to step forward and take over games. It’s a fantastic group as everybody knows, and one that’s very very close, but sometimes the intensity falls through the cracks.”
In the end, Berhalter’s left the U.S. with too much of a gap between where they are and where they want to be by 2026, and he has not shown an ability to take that next step U.S. fans so desperately crave.
The question of whether you believe Gregg Berhalter should be dismissed is not mutually exclusive to whether he actually will be.
U.S. Soccer has shown an unfettered faith in not just one individual but its process on the whole. Sporting director Matt Crocker, hired just over a year ago, re-hired Berhalter in one of his first major actions in the oversight role. Since then, the message has largely been one of steadiness and even keel.
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It’s unclear what the approach will be after early Copa America elimination, but one early report indicated there will not be a major change.
Former U.S. international Eric Wynalda, who currently serves as an analyst for Sirius XM and ESPN, reported days prior to the final group match that, to his knowledge, Berhalter would remain in charge regardless of the result against Uruguay.
However, in a bit of somewhat conflicting reporting, Jonathan Tannenwald of the Philadelphia Inquirer stated that following conversations with former USMNT player and U.S. Soccer Athlete Council member Stu Holden, and other “well-connected sources across the U.S. Soccer landscape,” Crocker would indeed, as Tannenwald puts it, “make the move if results warranted it.”
Following the defeat to Uruguay which left the U.S. out of the Copa America, U.S. Soccer released a generic statement.
“Our tournament performance fell short of our expectations. We must do better. We will be conducting a comprehensive review of our performance in Copa America and how best to improve the team and results as we look towards the 2026 World Cup.”
Following the defeat to Uruguay that left the USMNT eliminated from the Copa America, Gregg Berhalter attempted to make the case that he should remain in his position.
When asked if he is the right man to lead the U.S. men into the 2026 World Cup, he replied, simply, “Yes.”
“Do you believe that you still are the right voice, the right person with this group to push it forward ahead of the ’26 World Cup and into the ’26 World Cup?”
Gregg Berhalter 🇺🇸: “Yes.” pic.twitter.com/0GRg52qW4s
However, he was forced to admit that a review of his performance and the reasons for the failure will take place, and that he will not be the head of that review.
“We know that we’re capable of more, and this tournament we didn’t show it,” Berhalter said after the Uruguay defeat. “We should have done better.
“We’ll do a review and figure out what went wrong [and] why it went wrong, but it’s an empty feeling right now for sure.” He went on to clarify that those leading the review will be his bosses, including U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, nice president of sporting matters Oguchi Oneywu, and president Cindy Parlow Cone.
Gregg Berhalter’s record, on the whole, is one of the best in U.S. head coaching history. His 43 wins rank third in U.S. history amongst all head coaches, behind only Bruce Arena and Jurgen Klinsmann.
Yet he has only won 10 of 25 games played against teams outside CONCACAF, drawing eight and losing seven. Against teams inside the top 20 of the FIFA rankings at the time of the match, he has won just five of 18 games, with four of those coming against Mexico. The highest-ranked team Berhalter has ever beaten not named Mexico is 20th-ranked Iran at the 2022 World Cup.
Kyle Bonn is a soccer content producer for The Sporting News.
