For the United States men’s national team, it was an era of great promise and disappointing results.
Jürgen Klinsmann set the trend when he took over the team in 2011, assuring fans that the U.S. would no longer be the hard-working team that occasionally, but inconsistently, produced results against the world’s elite. Instead, they would be more proactive, cultured and entertaining. A revamped youth system would ensure a steady supply of talent – talent that would be good enough to play abroad. And those players would be accustomed to the pressure that comes with higher expectations, having proven their worth in Europe’s top leagues.
“We are still in the merging phase,” Klinsmann told Fifa.com in 2015, after his contract was extended and his roles expanded to include technical director for the entire men’s programme. “It will probably take years.”
His successor, Gregg Berhalter, was even more direct. He began his first camp with the stated goal of “changing the way the world sees American soccer.” He oversaw the most youthful roster turnover we’d ever see from a national team, resulting in the U.S. becoming the second-youngest team to compete in the 2022 World Cup. He preached and embodied an unprecedented level of tactical flexibility, changing from a possession-first style to a more direct one as World Cup qualifying progressed. Berhalter promised that the men’s team would have a wide range of approaches to each opponent.
“The idea is that it’s a fluid style of play where the players are focused on breaking lines, playing through the opposition and creating scoring opportunities,” Berhalter said in his introductory press conference. “I think that executing it at a very high level takes a bit of time, but it’s based on simple principles.”
The Klinsmann years are over, and Berhalter has long since taken his allotment of “some time.” In between, the U.S. has spent the last 13 years led by what the political world might call a “candidate for change.” In hiring a succession of revolutionaries, U.S. Soccer tacitly subscribed to the idea that fundamental changes were needed at the top of the men’s program.
This summer we saw the fruits of their labour: a disappointing first-team group stage exit from the Copa América; an U23 campaign at the Olympics that was a mixed bag at best, ending with a decisive 4-0 defeat to Morocco in the quarter-finals.
There weren’t many redeeming factors in either campaign. The US certainly missed injured fullback Sergiño Dest at the Copa América, and we now know that Tyler Adams has been struggling with back problems. But it would be shortsighted to attribute the poor performances to those factors alone.
There were also a few strange omissions from the Olympic roster (hello, Diego Luna), but it’s not like the tournament was about the performance of one player. As in other competitions, the U.S. dominated against weaker opponents and then got thoroughly defeated by teams of similar or greater talent.
The summer of 2024 was supposed to be the period when the lofty promises of change and progress would bear fruit—the last chance to do so in a multi-week international competition before the U.S. co-hosts the 2026 World Cup with Mexico and Canada. The youth system had paid off, with Berhalter able to name a starting XI filled with players who had plied their trade exclusively in Europe’s five most prominent leagues. And those players were all in—or near—their prime. should were an encouraging moment for the sport ahead of a home World Cup.
Instead, the U.S. failed at another tournament, they have a head coach vacancy, and the Olympic journey is over. And so this new era begins not with answers, but with a series of questions: Has Has American soccer changed? Can this team be what previous eras wanted it to be? What has been gained in pursuing this goal? And perhaps more importantly, what has been lost?
It’s not that the pre-revolutionary team didn’t have milestones to show for it. In fact, they’ve done so more often than any team since. Klinsmann’s predecessor, Bob Bradley, powered a win over Spain en route to the 2009 Confederations Cup final and came within an overtime goal of a quarterfinal spot at the following year’s World Cup, producing perhaps the most viral USMNT moment of all with Landon Donovan’s tournament-saving goal against Algeria. Before Bradley, Bruce Arena’s first stint included the best World Cup finish of the modern era in 2002, a fourth-place finish at the 2000 Olympics (under the watch of Clive Charles) and a long-awaited rise to become Mexico’s equals in Concacaf.
after newsletter promotion
The U.S. had an identity in those days: a hard-working group of players, with a few gems like Donovan, Claudio Reyna and Tab Ramos lifting the bar, and a team spirit that lifted things up even further. Arena was fond of saying during both periods that he had “confidence in the abilities of the American player” – a sentiment that came through in countless ways as the team struggled for results. The games themselves may not always have been pretty, and occasionally the U.S. disappointed in big moments (see: the 2006 World Cup). But there was no doubt about what the team stood for, or how it intended to go about its business.
In that context, it’s notable that the US fell in both of this year’s tournaments to nations with a track record of punching above their weight, of asserting a defined national identity. Panama’s famously direct and physical style set the stage for the Copa América encounter. Morocco sent many of its best players to the Olympics and played much the same as when they became the darlings of the 2022 World Cup: solid defense, pace on the counterattack and a flair for the big moment.
“I think five years is a long time, and there’s a lot of building blocks that have been put in place,” U.S. Soccer athletic director Matt Crocker said of Berhalter’s tenure. “I just want the best coach possible that can help the team win.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking that both of this summer’s high-profile losses were the kind that the U.S. could have been on the other side of in previous years. It’s as if the team has been so focused on carving out a new path to international recognition that it’s forgotten what it took to get there in the first place.
The next coach’s sole purpose: to help them remember.