USMNT end international break with more questions than answers

By Doug McIntyre
FOX Sports Soccer Writer

The United States men’s national team played to a disappointing scoreless draw with Saudi Arabia Tuesday in Murcia, Spain, in their final game before the 2022 FIFA World Cup kicks off in Qatar in November.

The tie comes on the heels of last week’s dreadful 2-0 loss to Japan, raising serious questions about how far the Americans — which reached the second round at both the 2010 and 2014 World Cups before failing to qualify for the planet’s biggest sporting event four years ago — can go at this year’s event.

Here are three thoughts on Tuesday’s match:

Concerning Gio Reyna sub compounds U.S. frustrations 

Failing to win or play well at all in either of their last two tune-ups is bad enough. Seeing Gio Reyna leave the field and head directly to the locker room after an unplanned 30th minute substitution Tuesday makes it worse. 

“He felt some tightness and came out for precautionary reasons,” U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter, who confirmed the twinge occurred in the 19-year-old’s hamstring.

That isn’t a great sign.

The plan for the 19-year-old, who missed most of the 2021-22 season with hamstring issues, was never to play all 90 minutes in both of these September friendlies. But Reyna was supposed to be able to go for at least the entire the first half against the Saudis, as he had against the Blue Samurai last week. 

On the one hand, it’s smart for the U.S. staff not to take any chances with one of their most talented attacking players. On the other, the World Cup is now less than eight weeks away. It’s completely fair to wonder how realistic it is to expect Reyna to play a major part of things for his country in Qatar if he’s still not back to full fitness by then.

Reyna is one of the few Americans who can change a game on his own, so the U.S. will gladly take him even if he’s limited to a role off the bench. It’s not ideal, though. As these two matches showed, the USMNT needs all the help they can get.

Americans better defensively but sloppy in attack once again

Berhalter and his players were quick to admit that the performance against Japan wasn’t acceptable. They vowed to be better in this one. Better they were — but not by nearly enough. 

“Instead of coming out and really performing like a team, we lacked a little confidence,” Berhalter said in his post match press conference. “There was certainly spaces to take advantage of today, and we didn’t do that enough.”

At least the U.S. managed a couple of shots on goal in this one after not putting a single effort on target against Japan.

Like last week, they only created one truly dangerous scoring chance. Like last week, Jesus Ferreira — who came on before the hour mark for the ineffective Ricardo Pepi — was unable to convert it. 

And Tuesday’s attacking troubles came with star winger Christian Pulisic, who sat out last Friday because of a minor ailment, playing all but the final quarter-hour of the contest.

Defensively, the coach stuck with center back pairing Aaron Long and Walker Zimmerman but moved Sergiño Dest from his normal spot at right back to the left to make room for DeAndre Yedlin. While the Americans didn’t give the ball away with nearly as frequently as they did in their last outing, there were still a couple of nervy moments that keeper Matt Turner was forced to bail them out of — especially after Mark McKenzie replaced Long in the second half.

USMNT must be far better at the World Cup

The hope for the U.S. is that the two surefire starters missing this month because of injury (Yunus Musah, Antonee Robinson) are not only good to go when the curtain goes up at the main event, but that their presence helps restore some of the self belief that Berhalter said was lacking over these last two matches.

The U.S. will need even more than that if they are to survive group play at the World Cup, though. Pulisic, Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie will all have to both avoid injury and sharpen their form over these next eight weeks, too, taking their teammates on their backs in the process.

“I know when the guys are confident we’re very dangerous team, a very dynamic team,” Berhalter said.

Can this young U.S. squad prove that when matters most? It’s hard to be sure based on this latest evidence. If the Americans are to be successful in Qatar, they must play like a different team than the one they were in September.

One of the leading soccer journalists in North America, Doug McIntyre has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at multiple FIFA World Cups. Before joining FOX Sports in 2021, he was a staff writer with ESPN and Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.