KANSAS CITY, Mo. – U.S. men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter is a planner. In the months between USMNT games, when his work is less pressurized and hands-on, his methodical brain obsesses over details and possibilities. He spent long summer days ahead of the 2022 World Cup analyzing group stage opponents. He likely spent much of this spring mapping out game plans for the 2024 Copa América.
But he couldn’t have prepared for this, a decisive Group C game with confusing scenarios, a suspended star and an injured goalkeeper, as well as an opponent whose influential coach will be missing and whose motivations are unclear.
The USMNT will face Uruguay here on Monday at Arrowhead Stadium in a match full of mystery. And he will probably – perhaps, but not definitely – have to win to reach the round of 16 of the Copa América and avoid total failure.
USMNT Copa America Scenarios in Group C
In the simultaneous final of the group stage, Panama will face Bolivia in Orlando. The simplified version of several dizzying scenarios is that the US should match Panama’s result.
After Thursday’s self-defeating 2-1 defeat to Los CanalerosThe USA and Panama are tied on three points in the third and final round of Group C.
Uruguay are on six points, with a plus-7 goal difference, and will top the group unless they lose to the USA by four goals.
In second place – the most significant place – the USA (+1) leads Panama (-1) in goal differential; therefore, the US will advance if they both draw or win by the same margin.
However, if Panama starts increasing its goals, the permutations will become complicated. The second tiebreaker criterion is the goals scored throughout the group stage — and there, with each team having three goals, Panama has the advantage. A 3-0 Panama win and a 1-0 USA win would take Panama to the quarterfinals and the USA would be eliminated.
An easier way to process these permutations is from the Panamanian perspective: they must improve the US outcome; and if they both win, their margin of victory must be at least two points better than the US margin.
Uruguay firing on all cylinders
The superficial view, then, is that the US is in a pretty good place. The problem is, well, everything else.
Panama could very well beat Bolivia, who scored five goals for Uruguay and are clearly the worst team in Group C.
Uruguay, on the other hand, is humming. Marcelo Bielsa, a revered Argentine coach, restarted La Celeste and turned them into the most impressive team at the 2024 Copa América. They are talented, coordinated and aggressive. They press man to man tirelessly high up the pitch and attack opponents immediately after winning the ball.
“We know they will be extremely high intensity and really forward-thinking,” American defender Antonee Robinson, who played against Bielsa’s Leeds United in the English Premier League, said on Saturday.
“The way they maintain their intensity throughout the game is on a different level,” Berhalter added on Sunday.
“They play a high-risk, high-reward game,” Robinson noted, sometimes leaving space that vertical attackers can exploit.
But the USMNT’s most vertical striker, Tim Weah, will not be available.
Berhalter’s options after Weah’s suspension
Weah was suspended for two games due to a costly red card against Panama; and the USMNT has struggled to adjust to his absence.
They had just three days to come up with a Plan B and figure out how to replace a player whose skill set is unparalleled in the current group of players.
Weah, when healthy, has started every U.S. A team game the past two years; he is a constant presence on the right wing because his directness on and off the ball adds dimensions to the U.S. attack, dimensions it would otherwise lack.
So how will Berhalter reconfigure the USMNT without Weah?
Option #1: The closest thing to a like-for-like replacement would probably be Haji Wright, a striker who has often played centrally in the past but now plays on the wing for the USA and his English club Coventry City.
Wright is more comfortable and effective on the left wing; Christian Pulisic could move to the right, where he spent most of last season with AC Milan in Italy. Such a change, however, would require other adjustments later on.
Option #2 would be to play Gio Reyna out wide and bring in Yunus Musah to replace Reyna in midfield.
If Reyna is considered essential in midfield, the No. 3 option would be another versatile attacker like Brenden Aaronson or Malik Tillman on the wing.
But both options have a familiar flaw: when the US plays with two wingers who both I prefer to divert inside the field, into spaces between the lines – as Reyna, Aaronson and Tillman do, and as Pulisic usually does when playing on the left – the American attack often struggles. Without Weah in September 2022, for example, they scored zero goals in 180 minutes against Japan and Saudi Arabia.
Last but not necessarily least, option #4 would be something completely unpredictable: perhaps a 3-5-2 with Pulisic partnering Folarin Balogun up front? Or a 4-4-2 with a diamond midfield made up of Adams, Weston McKennie, Musah and Reyna?
In the past, Berhalter preferred consistency. He fielded roughly the same personnel during the 2022 World Cup and the exact same lineup in the USMNT’s first two games at the 2024 Copa América. But he has, at times, been willing and able to adjust his system to combat a specific opponent. .
Uruguayan mind games?
In the build-up to Monday’s game, reasonable doubts have arisen as to whether Berhalter knows exactly what he will counter.
Uruguay did not mathematically qualify for the quarter-finals, but with their place almost confirmed, fans and media speculated that Bielsa could play as a sort of second-tier team, to rest the starters in the round of 16.
Assistant coach Diego Reyes was asked several times about this possibility on Sunday. He said, after talking about “many variables”, that Monday’s starting lineup has not yet been defined.
Sitting next to Reyes was backup goalkeeper Franco Israel, an unusual choice for a pre-game press conference that raised suspicions of lineup rotation. But it was almost too unusual – and perhaps a misguided strategy. Rumors in Uruguayan football circles suggest that Uruguay’s lineup will remain largely unchanged.
“My guess is they’re going to play their strongest team,” Berhalter said Sunday.
And they won’t assume a place in the quarter-finals is guaranteed. “We are focused on tomorrow’s game as if it were our last,” said Reyes.
Bielsa also suspended for Monday’s game
However, the team will be without coach Bielsa, who on Sunday was suspended for one game because the Uruguayan players arrived late for the second half of Thursday’s victory over Bolivia.
Bielsa can still prepare his team, of course, but he won’t be in the dressing room or on the sidelines on Monday. He will not be allowed to contact them once they arrive in Arrowhead. Two of his longtime assistants, Reyes and Pablo Quiroga, will step in and take over.
The suspension will limit the ability to capitalize on Bielsa’s mid-game wisdom. But this will not limit Uruguay’s ability to play BielsaBall. His brilliance lies in his teaching and coaching, not his in-game adjustments. “It’s a well-coached team,” Berhalter said on Sunday. “Regardless of who is on the sideline, it will be a very similar style of play.”
And the assistants are in tune with his philosophies. Reyes, from 2007, accompanied him from Chile to Athletic Bilbao, from Marseille to Lazio (briefly!), from Lille to Leeds and now Uruguay. He seemed confident that he and the team would be able to accomplish the task perfectly.
“We have been working with Marcelo for a long time,” said Reyes.
A crucial match for USA and Berhalter
Uruguay, most importantly, is fully healthy, with all 26 players available.
The U.S. will be without Weah and could be without goalkeeper Matt Turner, who injured his left leg in the first half against Panama and left the game at halftime.
Turner underwent “limited” training sessions on Saturday and Sunday, Berhalter said. He is questionable for Monday. Ethan Horvath would be the starter if Turner couldn’t go.
None of these circumstances are ideal for entering a game of enormous consequence, easily the most important for the USMNT since Qatar. A win would provide proof of concept and propel US players into the playoffs and beyond. A defeat could trigger a crisis and cost Berhalter his job.
