U.S. Ties Mexico as World Cup Remains Just Out of Reach

Mexico put together a number of dangerous chances, too, and controlled 63 percent of possession. It left the field to a cascade of boos from the Estádio Azteca crowd that deemed the result a missed opportunity, an opinion most likely shared by the home team, which remained in third place in the qualifying table with two games left.

The Americans had started this process last September with youthful bravado. Never mind that the majority of them had never experienced the stress and strain of World Cup qualifying matches in this region. Midfielder Weston McKennie declared the team would look to “dominate” the tournament. Adams trumpeted their lofty target: “Nine-point week, bottom line,” he said heading in to the team’s first three-game window.

Those things did not happen. The team’s first two games were duds, and they finished the first window with five points instead of nine — no reason to panic, but a cold reminder of the challenge that lay ahead. Since then, it has been a learn-on-the-fly process of melding the team’s many raw talents into a coherent group.

Berhalter, who has openly marveled at the difficulty of managing such a young team in such a tough circumstance, has gone through a learning process of his own.

“When you’re at a club, it’s a building type of thing,” said Berhalter, who coached for almost a decade at the club level before being hired by U.S. Soccer in 2018. “When you’re at a national team, I think it’s a winning type of thing. My mind-set had to change to be much more about winning every game. That’s what we want. That’s obviously what the public wants. Winning also means qualifying.”

The urgency of that task was felt most acutely by the people who were on the field four years ago. Pulisic, for instance, was one of the players with tears on his face after the loss in Trinidad.

“I’ve been looking forward to it for years now,” he said about washing away the bad taste of that experience. “Of course we use it as motivation. We were extremely upset. And now we want to qualify. We have the opportunity now. We definitely don’t want to go through that again.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/sports/soccer/us-mexico-world-cup-score.html