Happily qualified for the 2022 World Cup, the United States men’s national team awaits Friday’s tournament draw like everyone else.
It’s hoping for a favorable group — say, led by host country Qatar. It’s fearing a difficult one — say, one involving Brazil, Serbia and Wales. As always, the goal of the group stage, be it of dream or death, is to advance.
“It all starts with getting out of the group,” coach Gregg Berhalter said. “Once you do that, it’s tournament time.”
Advancing out of group play come November shouldn’t be the ultimate goal of this USMNT, though.
Winning a game in the Round of 16 should. They haven’t accomplished that in two decades, when Berhalter was a player and the Americans defeated Mexico, 2-0, before losing to Germany 1-0 in the quarterfinals of the 2002 World Cup.
That performance led to a wave of excitement and confidence around the national team, which at last appeared to be approaching its vast potential. No country this big and this wealthy should not be able to compete with the best in the world. Finally, it was assumed, the future had arrived.
Yet in the two ensuing decades, the USMNT has won just two games in a World Cup play … total.
It defeated Algeria in 2010 and Ghana in 2014. Neither was a particularly good team. Both went winless and finished last in the group in those respective tournaments. (The Algeria victory required late heroics from Landon Donovan, the program’s most memorable moment of the past two decades.)
So it’s understandable why Berhalter isn’t talking about anything more than group play. After all, a pretty bad American team didn’t even qualify for the 2018 tournament.
“I don’t want to paint it like I have low expectations, but time and time again you see top teams fail to make it out of their World Cup group,” Berhalter said.
Good. That should be the focus internally. This is about winning. Not the entire World Cup — that would be improbable. Just some games, especially in the Round of 16.
It’s fair to see this as a different group than before, one full of quality young talent. Never before have the Americans boasted so many players signed to elite leagues and teams in Europe. This won’t be a collection of MLS All-Stars trying to grit out victories.
But there must be victories.
For too long the USMNT has been able to appear like it was making progress without really making any progress. There is no reason to apologize for qualifying or advancing because you defeat weak teams or find random results against a favored side — like a 1-1 with England in 2010.
Everyone does it. But that isn’t how you make a deep run.
You have to win. And you have to win against the global powers. Eventually there is nowhere to hide in this tournament. Belgium, Brazil, France, Argentina … a string of them is going to be there.
The USMNT has yet to show it is capable of that and until it does, then there is only so much faith anyone should put into them. A 2-0 victory over Mexico in CONCACAF qualifying is the most impressive clue that this will change. Still, the rematch was a tie and the U.S. went 0-1-1 against Canada. The Americans finished third in qualifying behind their two North American rivals.
It’s progress, but not enough.
The U.S. program bottomed out with the humiliation of not qualifying in 2018. Even if it had reached Russia, it likely wasn’t going anywhere. The USMNT finished fifth in CONCACAF and neither Costa Rica nor Panama, which qualified second and third respectively, won a game in the actual World Cup. Honduras, which was fourth, lost in what is essentially a play-in round.
Since then, the USMNT replaced its new coach, most of its players and even its president. The side is led by Christian Pulisic, the 23-year-old Pennsylvanian goal scorer for Chelsea in the English Premier League.
He was a teenager when the USMNT failed last time. Now he’s the main draw … and for World Cup cycles to come on a team that will likely boast an average age of under 25 come November.
As such, this World Cup should be seen as an opportunity. The draw will be the draw — celebrated or feared — but either way the U.S. should be good enough to get through its group.
They may be highly unlikely to win the World Cup, but they need to be beyond just looking to survive. Get to the tournament time, as Berhalter put it, and see what happens.
Mainly, learn to win. In group play and then the knockout round.
Two decades after seemingly beginning to answer that challenge, it’s still the next step in front of them.