With the United States’ men’s national team having been unceremoniously dumped from Copa América, becoming the first host nation to fail to get out of group play in the process, a host of questions have swirled around the team.
What do the players think went wrong?
What comes next for coach Gregg Berhalter?
Why did a referee refuse to shake Christian Pulisic’s hand?
We’re going to introduce one more less crucial — but perhaps just as interesting — question to the mix: Would the U.S. still be alive if it had competed in Euro 2024 instead?
Martin Rogers: YES
I know, I know, it sounds incongruous to even suggest that the United States could have gotten further at the Euros than at the Copa América. Both tournaments are loaded with talent at the top — and world champion Argentina is doing its thing in the Copa — but Europe is stacked with far greater depth than the South American and CONCACAF teams combined.
But there are some complexities at play here.
With Euro 2024 having 24 teams, four of the third-place teams in the group stage advance to the knockout round, whereas Copa permits just the group winner and runner-up — as Gregg Berhalter’s men painfully discovered. With Bolivia the weakest team in the entire tournament, it effectively made Group C a three-teams-for-two-spots fight. Once the U.S. was upset by Panama, the writing was on the wall.
The Euros are different, in that we saw teams like Georgia save themselves with a win on the final day of the group stage. Even Hungary, which had lost two of two, nearly busted into the bracket by scoring in the final minute of injury-time in its final match against Scotland. There is more wiggle room, let’s just say.
No question, Berhalter’s group was miserably poor over the past week and change. It is not what you want to see two years out from a World Cup, and the coach’s position is rightly in jeopardy. But that’s not what we’re arguing here. The question is what would happen if the Americans were magically inserted into Europe’s biggest tournament.
For a start, I think they’d be better suited there. All the U.S.’s key players, and every single one of the starting XI against Uruguay, plays club soccer in Europe. The Euros style of … everything, tactics, physicality, refereeing (ouch) is more familiar to its players than the game against Panama in particular.
In terms of the Euros, I think the U.S. would have made it to the Round of 16 — and likely no further — because I went all soccer nerd and predicted it all out. There are only eight European teams higher than the U.S. (No. 11) in the FIFA world rankings, but given that UEFA’s seeding policy goes off Euro qualifying results, I went ahead and hypothetically inserted them as a third seed into each group because scientifically, er, it sounded about right.
The results were as follows:
There you have it, a five in six chance of advancing. Berhalter would like to have his time back again with those kinds of odds.
Doug McIntyre: NO
As usual, Martin makes a well-reasoned and (almost) compelling argument. It’s true that it’s not outright crazy to think that this U.S. team could have performed better in the more controlled and less chaotic environment of the Euros, where the consistency of styles, fields and officiating would probably have benefited them, as he suggests.
I’m of the belief that in their heart of hearts, these Americans think that the sort of shenanigans they were subjected to in what turned out to be a fatal loss to Panama last week in Atlanta is beneath them at this point in their evolution as a team. Would a defender from, say, Albania have employed whatever bush league tactics were enough to provoke the usually super chill Tim Weah to the point that Weah took not one but two swings at his dome, as he did with Canaleros center back Roderick Miller before being shown his straight red card?
It’s hard to see that happening. At Germany 2024, the tackle that floored Christian Pulisic in the Panamanian penalty box later the same game would’ve been reviewed by a competent video assistant referee and surely determined to be a clear and obvious foul — resulting in a result-changing spot kick for the USMNT captain and his squad — instead of being inexplicably overlooked by the VAR.
I asked defender Chris Richards afterward if it felt like he and his teammates had been “Concacafed” by Los Canaleros and Salvadoran center ref Iván Barton in their second Copa America group stage match. He didn’t let me finish my sentence. “That pretty much sums it up,” Richards said.
Yet all of that ignores a rather unpleasant fact for U.S. fans: This team was woefully out of form at USA 2024, and has been for the better part of a year now.
In Berhalter’s first game back with the squad last September, the Americans went 85 minutes without scoring against (checks notes) Uzbekistan before two stoppage time goals produced a far-too-flattering 3-0 friendly win. Germany beat the wheels of the U.S. a month later in East Hartford, Connecticut; only a first-half worldie from Pulisic prevented a 3-0 loss that day, and it could’ve been even uglier than that had Die Mannschaft been just a little more efficient in front of Matt Turner’s goal.
In November, Berhalter’s side almost had to settle for an embarrassing home draw with regional rival Trinidad and Tobago in the first leg of the 2023-ending Concacaf Nations League in Austin, Texas before being rescued by another late rally. It’s a good thing for them that they were: The U.S. lost the return leg in Port of Spain, forcing the Copa America hosts to back into the tournament on aggregate.
Even the MLS-heavy C-team’s defeat in the post-January camp loss to Euro 2024 participant Slovenia seems like a bright red flag now. That fluky extra-time win over Jamaica in the Nations League semis certainly does; only a 95th minute Reggae Boyz own goal allowed an otherwise dreadful performance to be mostly forgotten when the Americans topped chief nemesis Mexico dos a cero a few days later in the final.
In other words, I’m not at all convinced that the same U.S. team we just saw get grouped at the Copa in front of partisan home crowds would’ve tied Italy, Switzerland, Serbia, Poland or Turkey, as Martin suggests. The idea that this current version of the USMNT could take another point off of England, as they did in the group stage of the last World Cup, seems absurd right now – no matter how many American fans would’ve made the trip to Germany to cheer them on against the Three Lions. Do U.S. supporters really believe with any confidence this squad would have beaten Albania, Scotland or Ukraine on European soil had they played any of those teams last month?
Every match is a final in major tournament play. None of those teams would’ve gone quietly, even with the Americans at their best. They very much are not right now.
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