The USMNT has midfield dilemmas and no simple solution

EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — Gregg Berhalter, at his idealistic soccer core, loves control.

He ceded it in moderate doses throughout his first four years with the U.S. men’s national team. But his coaching utopia is full of positional play, possession and command. Those ideals manifest in tactics and personnel decisions. They underpinned the USMNT’s defensive solidity at the 2022 World Cup. But they also stoked its biggest shortcoming: Without a central playmaker, and with a preference for security over fluidity, the Americans scored less than a goal per game in Qatar.

Which, in turn, framed Berhalter’s central second-cycle challenge.

To elevate the USMNT, he must solve that shortcoming without compromising defensive strength.

And his first attempt, Saturday against Germany, exposed the complexity of the task.

The simplest decision that defined Berhalter’s World Cup was his strict adherence to the “MMA” midfield, at the expense of Gio Reyna. He ran Yunus Musah, Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams into the ground while Reyna wasted away (and initially sulked) on the bench. The preferred trio, two “8s” and a “6,” were largely excellent, and bossed games, just as Berhalter desired. But the lack of a true “10,” a creative engine, was sometimes glaring.

So the simplest fix was to insert a 10 — Reyna. Interim coaches piloted it in March and June. Berhalter rolled it out again Saturday, hoping to battle-test this new-look Musah-McKennie-Reyna midfield against an elite foe.

But the result was semi-alarming.

It was defensive frailties, a 3-1 loss, and a total lack of control.

And it was evidence that, if Reyna is the attacking solution, Tyler Adams can’t be the mainstay who sits to make room for him.

Tyler Adams ‘was definitely missed’

Adams is currently injured, and has been for much of 2023. These “MMR” trials have, in a way, been enforced. Nonetheless, thoughts of Adams were inescapable as Germans waltzed through the exact areas that the 24-year-old pitbull typically patrols. Where Adams would have hassled them, Reyna sauntered near them and stood off them. Where Adams typically disrupts counterattacks, Musah and McKennie were absent, drawn forward or pulled elsewhere.

“He [Adams] covers a lot of ground, he wins a lot of balls, he breaks up a lot of plays,” McKennie said two hours after Saturday’s game. “So, I mean, he was definitely missed.”

He was missed in transition and in slow builds, in the open field and in tight spaces at the top of the penalty box. The USMNT’s issues began farther up the field, at the top its defensive shape, but they were the type of issues that Adams often erases — the types of fires he frequently puts out.

They began at the line of confrontation. Reyna and the U.S. forwards struggled to shut off access to the German central midfielders, Ilkay Gundogan and Pascal Gross. McKennie and Musah, meanwhile, were repeatedly dragged wide by attacking mids Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz — leaving gaping central holes for Germans to check or run into.

In more advanced attacking phases, when Germany had established control in the final third, the lack of American pressure on the ball was startling. Musah seemed hesitant to step or make decisive tackles. Reyna, as per usual, seemed incapable of making any defensive impact. And finally, in the 39th minute, after tempting fate for much of the first half, they were punished.

Berhalter: ‘It needs to be tighter’

The USMNT also punished Germany. This, of course, is the give-and-take, the trade-off between solidity and dynamism. Reyna represents that trade-off more than anyone else. He brings dynamism, the ability to unlock an opponent with a single touch in an unscripted moment. In the 26th minute, he combined with Joe Scally and Tim Weah; then slid a first-time, expertly weighted ball into the path of Folarin Balogun, who squared to Christian Pulisic for the best U.S. chance of the afternoon.

The USMNT also leaned into its dynamism as a unit. When it lost the ball, it sometimes looked to counterpress. When it won the ball, it almost invariably looked to play forward — and on the counter, it posed a real threat.

But counterpressing and counterattacking come with a price. They prevent a team from settling into its defensive or attacking shape. When one fails or the other fizzles — and when Tyler Adams isn’t on the field, playing “rest defense,” his head swiveling, searching for fires to extinguish — they leave players scrambling to recover.

“When you give the ball away too quickly, in midfield, as we're trying to get our attacking and buildup shape, it's gonna look, A, disjointed; and B, guys are gonna look out of position,” defender Tim Ream explained.

In other words, they’re a choice — chance creation over control — that Berhalter doesn’t always like.

“The threat that we had a lot in the first half I think was really good, it put Germany on their heels a little bit at times,” Berhalter said postgame. “But, to me, it's also about controlling the tempo of the game. And that's what we really need to learn. We [spent] so much energy, also with our own counterattacks, that then it's hard to really stay consistent in all of your actions. Your defensive shape. To me, that's a learning experience: The games against opponents like this can't be that open. It needs to be tighter.”

The midfield dilemma

Better on-field decisions and tactical tweaks can tighten them. So can a player like Adams. The question, as ever, is whom to replace to get him on the field once he returns from his hamstring injury.

Musah, the group’s best athlete and ball-retainer, seems necessary if a game plan revolves around control.

But Reyna also seems increasingly necessary as Balogun’s chief supplier.

And McKennie, at the moment, is the best all-around player of the four.

Piecing them together into an optimal trio — perhaps Adams-McKennie-Reyna? — will go a long way toward defining Berhalter’s second USMNT act. There are, it seems, plenty of viable solutions, but none without pitfalls, and none that satisfies everyone’s talent.

Reyna said this past week that his ideal role would be as a “free-roaming No. 10” in front of “two No. 6s.”

McKennie, in a separate interview on perhaps the same day, said that his “favorite role, for sure, is to play [as] an 8, both sides of the ball … I'm someone that just likes to be free.”

And Germany, on Saturday, reminded everyone that, against the masters of modern soccer, freedom and openness can be self-destructive.