The United States beat Granada 5-0 on Friday night in their last game in the United States before the 2022 World Cup. (Photo by John Dorton / ISI Photos / Getty Images)
In a non-corrupt alternative universe, the 2022 World Cup kicked off Thursday in front of 90,000 holiday fans in Los Angeles. That’s what American football officials dreamed of, anyway, and this, the second week of June every four years, is when the most prestigious sporting event on the planet usually begins.
But in a Qatar-disrupted universe, the U.S. men’s team entered a 20,000-seat stadium on Friday night. He defeated a small Caribbean island in 170th place in the world in a game not shown on English cable television. His two best players, after receiving the night’s rest, raised their feet and relaxed.
This is how Austin, Texas, sent the USMNT to a World Cup that feels far away. This was the team’s last game on American soil before the World Cup, but it ended without drama or post-match ceremonies, just before midnight ET with the eyes of the sports world. put in the NBA. The United States will fly to El Salvador this weekend, then rest for the summer holidays. It will meet again in Europe in September, albeit briefly. And then, 24 hours after the players played their clubs in November, they will meet in Doha, with a first World Cup match seven days away.
So this one, a three-week tour and four cities in May and June, is the closest thing the USMNT will have to a pre-World Cup training camp. There was a dilute media day in Cincinnati and a big promotional shoot in Austin. There were team links (video games and birthday dinners and golf) and an inescapable feeling that World Cup list places were at stake.
However, there were several players absent, some injured, others simply resting. There were no film sessions on opponents in the World Cup. And “we didn’t have many days of training,” admitted head coach Gregg Berhalter. “We are learning more from these guys in the games” and yet two out of four games are against far inferior opponents who will not be close to replicating the challenges that await us in Qatar.
It all adds up to the strangest and most contradictory World Cup expulsion the USMNT has ever had.
The story goes on
A pre-World Cup camp without a hype
The reason for all the curiosities, not to be forgotten, is that in 2010, a small peninsular emirate with summer temperatures that regularly reach three digits won the right to host this World Cup. Qatar initially promised a space-age cooling technology that would defend the deadly heat and allow the tournament in its traditional window from June to July. But in 2015, FIFA, which had branded the idea of ”high risk” even before choosing Qatar’s bid over an American one, moved its flag event to winter .
In doing so, he turned the 2022 football universe into a mess.
Throughout the 21st century, sport had developed a rhythm. The players had developed four-year habits. They conclude the European club seasons in mid-May, then join their national teams and prepare for the most important matches of their lives. They would train in isolation, practicing opponent-specific tactics and declaring their cases for places on the lists or in the starting eleven. Crowds of patriotic fans would then go to the World Cup. The cameras would follow every step of the way.
But here in Cincinnati, on the last Sunday in May, in a training session to which the media was invited, there were no cameras, and only one journalist. When USMNT players returned to their downtown hotel the next day, there were only two autograph applicants. In a stadium of 26,000 people two days later, for a friendly against Morocco, there were thousands of empty seats.
It didn’t look like a typical expulsion series, players and coaches agreed. “I don’t think we’re there yet when it comes to accumulation,” Berhalter said that week. “I think this is an important training ground for us as a group, but I don’t think the world is saying, ‘The World Cup is just around the corner.'”
The curiosities of preparing for the Qatar World Cup
Berhatler, however, had a different set of concerns. The hype is expected to finally “increase.” Whether or not he will have to choose a World Cup team with just one week and two first-hand test matches during the five months prior to the decision. The United States will play El Salvador on Tuesday. He will play two friendlies in Europe in September. And that will be all.
September is when the implementation of the group stage game plan will probably begin, but it will end abruptly. MLS players are likely to gather for a mini-camp in the United States in early November, but there may only be six or seven on the final roster. The rest of the USMNT will fight, with a tunnel vision as narrow as possible, for their European clubs until eight days before the start of the World Cup.
So, said Berhalter, this is where most of the assessment will be done.
As an observer of detail-oriented football, Berhalter would have liked an intense, uninterrupted training block. He had planned to gather his entire group in Dubai ahead of Qatar, he said, until the US drew a match on the opening day of the World Cup, which made the schedule too tight. He could have used these weeks of June, but his first team had played 23 consecutive games against American and Central American enemies; and CONCACAF, the governing body of football in the region, had launched two more this month; the USMNT had to engage in a third and fourth match against world-class opponents.
“We’ll never have enough time on the field, which is a shame,” Berhalter said in April. “But that’s what it is.”
USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter will have limited time with his players before the 2022 World Cup. (Photo by Omar Vega / Getty Images)
“We need to be really effective in these weeks of June,” he continued. But many players arrived with tired bodies and minds after running out of nine-month club seasons aggravated by the World Cup qualifying phase. The coaching staff understood the need to relieve some of the stress. “We just have to be aware of how we are pushing them and how we are occupying their time,” Berhalter said. He left some, especially Ricardo Pepi, off the June list.
For many of them, a critical piece of World Cup preparation will be the upcoming European low season. It’s “really important,” Tyler Adams said earlier this spring, “that you get back in, get your body, your mind back, have a good mental break, and be able to start [2022-23] season well. “
It’s also important for Adams and an alarming number of regular USMNT people to really get into the field.
Adams, Christian Pulisic, Zack Steffen, Antonee Robinson, Sergiño Dest, Yunus Musah and Pepi were not regulars at their clubs when the 2021-22 season ended. Matt Turner will go to Arsenal as a possible reserve. Brenden Aaronson is leaving for Leeds and will have to fight for his place. Weston McKennie, Chris Richards, Gio Reyna and others have been injured and have no guaranteed places on their respective teams when they return, wherever they return.
Across the entire group of players in the United States, and even during the starting eleven, the future of the club is uncertain. This uncertainty is an inevitable feature of professional football, but it is present at an unusually high rate within this USMNT, and is amplified by a mid-season World Cup. Some players, like Adams, do not have to play regularly to play for the national team, Berhalter said, but it is part of the calculation of the transfer market.
“Things are changing fast in football,” Berhalter said this spring. The main indicator of the shape of the World Cup will be the shape of the club. “It simply came to our notice then [on the roster]. ”
Berhalter will travel to visit some of them during the fall, but will spend much of the months leading up to his first World Cup as a home coach in northern Chicago. It will scan your games and the data extracted from those games, using screens. He will have only 10 more days with them before the 23 or 26 player lists arrive at FIFA on November 14, a week before the first USMNT match against Wales.
“When we get to Qatar, it’s basically preparing for a match, and you go from there,” Berhalter said.
“It’s a less-than-ideal preparation, in terms of the time we’ll have,” he admitted in the morning after qualifying. “But all the teams will do the same. So we can deal with it, just like everyone else. “