After a disastrous early elimination from the 2024 Copa America, the U.S. Soccer Federation has dismissed men’s head coach Gregg Berhalter. It was first reported by Doug McIntyre of Fox Sports, and later confirmed by U.S. Soccer.
The 50-year-old American was in his second stint in charge of the USMNT. He took charge of the side through the previous World Cup cycle and was re-hired last summer to lead the all-important run-up to the 2026 tournament.
After his re-hiring, though, Berhalter made it just a single year before it all fell apart, leading the side to an embarrassing group stage exit from CONMEBOL’s championship tournament on home soil.
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup just two years away, U.S. Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker will embark on another search to find the coach who will take charge ahead of the coming World Cup on home soil.
The Sporting News details the reasons why Berhalter was dismissed with such a pivotal two years ahead for the USMNT.
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U.S. Soccer officially confirmed the departure of men’s head coach Gregg Berhalter on the evening of Wednesday, July 10.
“I want to thank Gregg for his hard work and dedication to U.S. Soccer and our Men’s National Team,” said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone in the official release. “We are now focused on working with our Sporting Director Matt Crocker and leveraging his experience at the highest levels of the sport to ensure we find the right person to lead the USMNT into a new era of on-field success.”
U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker, who re-hired Berhalter for a second stint in 2023, will now lead the search for a new head coach.
“Our immediate focus is on finding a coach who can maximize our potential as we continue to prepare for the 2026 World Cup, and we have already begun our search process,” said Crocker in the official U.S. Soccer release.
Berhalter’s dismissal was not only because of the 2024 Copa America disaster, but it certainly starts there.
The USMNT was eliminated in the group stage of the competition on home soil, seeing the United States become the first Copa America host not to reach the knockout stage in the current format of the competition dating back to 1975.
The most glaring result was the 2-1 defeat to Panama, which saw the U.S. play a man down for over 70 minutes thanks to Tim Weah’s early red card. While it’s easy to blame the defeat on a fluky incident, ultimately the result falls at the feet of the head coach. Chalking up Weah’s lack of discipline to the rogue actions of a single player is reductive, as it is Berhalter’s job to prepare his side for the obvious wind-up tactics Panama employed.
Furthermore, the U.S. could still have taken the game to Panama down a man but decided instead to bunker and absorb pressure. After the loss, Berhalter peddled that the tactic largely worked — but the result ended in defeat, and thus his approach failed.
Elimination from the Copa America group stage with the most talented team the U.S. has ever had is unacceptable, and his reaction after the match proves Berhalter is too process-oriented to handle a tournament where results are all that matter.
MORE: Breaking down Gregg Berhalter's record as USMNT head coach
The 2024 Copa America was the final chance before the coming World Cup for the United States men to prove themselves capable of a signature win against top global contenders in a competitive environment.
And they blew it.
The USMNT got one game as desperate underdogs against Uruguay and fell short, unable to even secure another opportunity against one of the top CONMEBOL nations on their side of the bracket.
Now, stuck without any competitive football (barring the CONCACAF Nations League and Gold Cup) until the 2026 World Cup begins, the U.S. must press forward knowing they’ve wasted their only chances for true growth.
While Berhalter has largely led the USMNT to North American control, especially by establishing dominance over Mexico, the most glaring hole in his head coaching tenure is the lack of a signature competitive win on the global stage.
Berhalter’s two most impressive results as USMNT head coach are both draws — one a scoreless draw against England in the 2022 World Cup group stage and the other a 1-1 draw against Brazil in the Copa America warmup matches. Meanwhile, he has failed to secure a single victory against any nation in the top 15 of the FIFA rankings not named Mexico.
With the U.S. set to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup with Mexico and Canada, the USMNT had aimed to be a legitimate global contender by this stage in the process. Instead, the team has yet to break into the upper echelon of football nations.
Nobody expects the U.S. to be on the level of France, Spain, or Argentina, but proving they are capable of beating nations such as those on a given night is essential heading into the most important tournament of the federation’s existence. They have yet to do so — Berhalter had ample time to build towards that goal, but he couldn’t manage it.
While questions have begun to creep in the aftermath of the early Copa America exit, make no mistake — this is the most talented USMNT team that has ever taken the field.
In a friendly against Colombia earlier this summer, the United States men deployed a starting lineup of 11 players all contracted to clubs in Big 5 European leagues, which had never happened in the team’s history. That doesn’t happen by accident — the players have earned their places at that level.
Yet it feels as if this crop of players has hit a proverbial ceiling with the national team. Weston McKennie has stagnated despite a bright season with Juventus. Folarin Balogun hasn’t lit up the scoresheets as anticipated. And Chris Richards has not been able to translate his growth at Crystal Palace to growth at the national team.
It seems as if only Christian Pulisic has managed to translate his strong club form to the national team level, while Gio Reyna is the only player whose USMNT form has been immune to struggles at the club level.
One of Berhalter’s biggest strengths as USMNT head coach has been an ability to secure the commitment of talented dual nationals over other international sides, but his ability to then get the most out of their ability has been shaky at best.
One of the most glaring revelations from the USMNT’s early Copa America exit came in the mixed zone as Tim Ream chatted with reporters after defeat to Uruguay left them out in the cold.
The 36-year-old defender, a veteran of the U.S. national team, was asked what the team was missing from its day-to-day activities. His answer was a — likely unintended — glaring condemnation of the Berhalter regime.
FULL answer from Tim Ream to me @Univision @TUDNUSA
Worth every word, every second. https://t.co/ksWHtGLZKy pic.twitter.com/SoIZIxJhT3
“I think we need more focus, more intensity from every single training session, demanding more from each other,” he said. “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.
“We just have to continue to put our heads down and continue to work, and continue to be humble enough to know that there are things that we can continue to improve every single day, every single training session, every single game. If guys have that mindset, they can continue to be on an upward trajectory — when we start to think that we’re a finished product then guys are going to start to stagnate and stay at the level they’re at instead of pushing on and stepping up again.”
Essentially, Ream is insinuating that the team has become so close-knit that they have let their guard down and lacked the desire to improve further.
One of the biggest arguments for retaining Berhalter last summer was that the players vociferously backed their World Cup boss, and their voices eventually won the day. It appears as if their comfort level with Berhalter is actually becoming a negative, as the head coach has failed to sufficiently put the players under pressure to continue improving.
One common theme often spouted by detractors of national team coaches is that handing an international boss a second (or third or fourth) cycle is a losing proposition. It’s a reductive argument that’s nearly impossible to support, but it is rooted in some kind of warped truth.
While coaches can be tasked with multiple World Cup cycles, coaches are often incapable of achieving multiple steps of growth within a national team’s long-term plan.
Berhalter successfully achieved a number of objectives directly in front of him at the time he was hired, including building a talented pool of young players and achieving dominance within CONCACAF.
Detractors like to point out that the U.S. finished third in 2022 World Cup qualifying and saw Canada progress further in the Copa America, which are both truths in a vacuum. But the U.S. has managed to overpower Mexico, Canada and nearly every other CONCACAF nation in the region when the larger picture is reviewed.
Yet with that step of the growth process achieved, expecting Berhalter to then lead the charge toward the next rung on the ladder was a losing battle.
To put it bluntly, U.S. Soccer cannot get anything wrong in the lead-up to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The coming tournament on home soil is the most important men’s competition in the federation’s history. This is the chance to blow the sport wide open in this country and energize a fanbase at a level never previously reached in the United States — but they can only achieve that goal with a positive performance.
A flop at the 2026 World Cup would be a devastating missed opportunity for the sport’s growth in this country, leaving the trajectory of the national team twisting in the wind and decades behind where it could have been.
Thus, while Berhalter is a good coach who has plenty of merits as USMNT boss, the recent shortcomings left U.S. Soccer with no choice but to make a change, as failure in two years’ time is quite simply not an option. Now it’s up to the federation to nail the coming hire and take this sport in the United States to a level that’s never before been achieved.
Kyle Bonn is a soccer content producer for The Sporting News.
