U.S. Men Fail to Qualify for Olympic Soccer Tournament

But it remains an important barometer of a country’s ability to produce young talent, and for a regional force like the United States, which was still reckoning with its senior national team’s stunning failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, missing out again and again had become a referendum on the nation’s soccer progress.

Once a regular in the men’s event, the United States last appeared in it at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, when it won only its opening game against Japan, tumbled out after the group stage and finished ninth. But soon, missing the Olympics troublingly became the norm. The Americans, who had failed to qualify for the 2004 Athens Games, then missed out on both the London Olympics in 2012 and the Rio Games in 2016.

U.S. Soccer made reversing that recent history a priority this year. It hired Kreis, a veteran of several head coaching jobs in Major League Soccer, to lead the team, and tried to take full advantage of some of the talent produced by the league’s recent investment in player development. All 11 United States starters on Sunday play for teams in M.L.S.

The Americans beat Costa Rica (1-0) and the Dominican Republic (4-0) in their first two games, but an errant pass led to a first-half goal — and a 1-0 defeat — against Mexico in their group-stage finale. The defeat was a blow to the United States team’s momentum, and perhaps to its psyche, as it represented the first big test of the event, but Kreis moved quickly to dismiss it and turn his team’s focus to the semifinal.

“I think we’ve been searching for a little more sharpness in this whole tournament,” Kreis said after the loss. But the only thing that mattered, he added, was not that result but that “the most important game is coming.”

It came on Sunday. And the Americans lost it.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/28/sports/soccer/us-honduras-olympic-qualifying.html