USMNT Meets Honduras After a Week to Forget

The biggest fear is that they are tiptoeing onto the same path an earlier version of the team traveled three years ago, when it fell one point short of qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, ending a streak of seven straight appearances at the world’s most-watched sporting event. On some level it seems irrational: Even with the disappointing results from the first two games, the United States is heavily favored to qualify. But the bad memories remain raw in many people’s minds.

“I can see it being, you know, just memories of the past, memories of the last qualifying round coming back,” Coach Gregg Berhalter, who was hired after the 2018 World Cup, said of those concerns on Tuesday night. “And people say, ‘Oh, we’re in the same situation.’ I can understand that completely. What I’d say is this is a different group, and we’re focused on winning games, and we’re focused on getting points.”

Such talk has not been convincing so far.

Few would go as far as to call the Americans hubristic: The notion of this regional qualifying tournament as a gnarly obstacle course, with challenging factors unique in world soccer, has long been ingrained in the psyche of the team and its fans, and the players over the past week have spoken of the process with all due respect. They know, too, that it will continue with three more qualifiers in October, and two more a month after that.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/08/sports/soccer/usmnt-honduras-world-cup.html