U.S. Soccer Seizes Limelight With Cheer and Loathing in Las Vegas
The CONCACAF Nations League had all the makings of a ho-hum, regional afterthought to the 2022 World Cup, one where U.S. national team fans could casually look in on their men’s squad, with its caretaker interim coach, while anticipating the fireworks of the Women’s World Cup in July.
Then Vegas happened.
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And the Nations League tournament transformed into something strange and wonderful. Or at least strange.
Sunday night’s final between the U.S. and Canada is suddenly worth watching—if you can find it. CONCACAF, whose superpower is making TV deals that crimp soccer fans’ ability to actually view the sport, has deigned to allow Paramount+ streaming subscribers to see the match, which starts at 8:30 ET. (It will also air in Spanish on Univision.)
The Yanks face a Canadian squad that’s had their number recently, in a match likely to provide some thrills. But the title game has a hard act to follow, given the craziness surrounding Thursday’s semifinal round.
Let’s recap. Ahead of Thursday’s U.S.-Mexico match at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, news broke that after a global search, U.S. Soccer had found a replacement for former head coach Gregg Berhalter—out of the job since January because of a nasty dispute with the parents of one of his players.
The new hire?
Former head coach Gregg Berhalter.
U.S. soccer-fan Twitter exploded with lots of Gregg hate, which is often expressed because Berhalter has used MLS athletes on the national team, and the squad has had trouble scoring under his leadership. Also, because he spells his name with a redundant G.
Most of the current U.S. roster, in contrast, seemed pleased with the news, including Christian Pulisic, the face of the team.
Perhaps to emphasize the point, Pulisic scored two goals in a 3-0 trouncing of archrival Mexico in Thursday night’s semifinal.
“Today is a testament of the work that (Berhalter)’s put into this team,” Pulisic said. “So, if that’s not enough evidence, then that’s all right. People are gonna hate no matter what.”
Though the contest was never in doubt, it was nearly as exciting and divisive as the Berhalter news, with dirty play, fights, and two players on each team drawing red cards and ejections. U.S. firebrand Weston McKennie was one of the ousted players, even though he emerged from a 1 v. 7 scrum on the sidelines with his jersey cartoonishly ripped halfway off his body.
During the fracas, as McKennie pushed away one of the Mexican players stripping him of his shirt, the American’s hand made what looked to be incidental contact with the neck of a Mexico player. It was nonetheless an automatic ejection. Soccer frowns on chokers.
It also frowns on homophobia, and the referee ended game with five minutes still to play after Mexican fans twice chanted a slur that has gotten them in trouble before from FIFA.
With all that, the game was still only the second weirdest event on Thursday, after the Berhalter hiring.
Give U.S. Soccer credit, though. On Friday, the organization kept a straight face throughout its hour-long introductory press conference for a coach who literally needed no introduction. U.S. Soccer officials said Berhalter was the candidate who emerged from its “process”—a gauntlet of interviews, performance reviews and tests that, when described by U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker in his Welsh accent, sounded like something cooked up to reform Alex the Droog in A Clockwork Orange.
Crocker’s eyes seemed to light up when describing how well Berhalter did on the “psychometrics,” which according to U.S. Soccer included “personality profiles,” “abstract reasoning testing” and “competency model scoring and feedback.”
More important was Berhalter’s passing muster during an investigation of the incident that cost him his job in the first place—an episode of domestic violence against his now-wife when they were dating in college. The 1992 incident—which Berhalter admitted and apologized for publicly—was revealed to U.S. Soccer by the parents of U.S. player Gio Reyna, who were angry that Berhalter had not given their son a more prominent role at last year’s World Cup, and upset that the coach had alluded to Gio’s less-than-team-first attitude during an off-the-record speech in December.
U.S. Soccer paid a law firm for an independent investigation, which concluded that Berhalter had atoned for the 1992 incident and found no more issues with his behavior. It also found that Reyna’s parents, former U.S. national teamers Claudio and Danielle, disclosed the incident to U.S. Soccer to get him fired.
That didn’t happen. “We take accusations of domestic violence very seriously,” U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone said Friday. “There was an independent investigation of the matter, we trust those findings, and Gregg has our full support.”
Berhalter won’t rejoin the team until September, by which time he hopes to have mended fences with the younger Reyna. “There is work to do,” he said of that relationship.
There is work to do on the field this summer, too, but Berhalter won’t be involved in that. For the Nations League final, and for this summer’s CONCACAF Gold Cup tournament, the team will still be guided by interim coach B.J. Callaghan, who himself replaced an interim coach. Anthony Hudson initially took over for Berhalter, but ditched the temp gig to coach a club in the Qatari league.
Callaghan might have been a mere footnote in U.S. Soccer history. Thanks to the past week’s events, though, his brief tenure will go down as an oddly memorable one.
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