I feel every sports fan in their life will at some point say “it really sucks to be me”. But it’s becoming clear that being a fan of the US Men’s National Team is the worst of the bunch. There are so many factors to this, and potentially one of the reasons why there is so much vitriol surrounding Gregg Berhalter and US Soccer Federation is our inherent American-ness.
We don’t like losers, and we especially don’t like losers that get embarrassed. There’s this other layer that doesn’t get discussed enough, and it’s a certain type of hurting. Let me explain.
When I was eight years old Brandi Chastain hit the winning penalty kick against China and whipped her shirt off in exultation at winning the 1999 World Cup. When I was 11 years old the United States went to the quarterfinals of the World Cup and were only stopped by a phantom handball from Germany. From that moment on, I don’t think I’ve missed a US game, I have watched more Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga, and Serie A than one ever should in their life. I have become so involved and obsessed with the game that I coach it, I write about it, and I talk about it constantly.
Being an American soccer fan requires you to constantly prove yourself qualified to be a fan to everyone else in the world.
We are ridiculed by Europe and South America for calling it the wrong name, and we’re slandered by our American peers for even liking the sport in the first place. Without a match ever being played or a ball being kicked, being an American soccer fan means you’ve already been ostracized by literally everyone else in the world including other Americans.
25 years and an all top-5 league starting XI later where are we? Stuck with a federation that cares about profit over product, and a mediocre coach that has never won a god damn thing outside of CONCACAF. That last sentence feels harsh and hyperbolic, but I mean it as fact - Gregg Berhalter has never won MLS Cup, has never won US Open Cup, has never won supporters shield as a coach, not one.
So the hurt I tend to feel after losses like the one against Colombia are categorized in the same vein as a toxic relationship. Oh my dear USMNT, why do I love you so much more than you love me? Why do I make every effort to support you when you don’t do the same for me?
And that frankly feels really fucking pathetic, and that feeling of hurt, and pathetic, and frustration is likely what you see from the general fanbase that will bottle all of that up into much more toxic framing.
Let’s take a step back because I want these thoughts to actually resonate with you instead of reading this from a place of anger. It’s actually pretty easy to not suck.
Many of our former teams that came from much humbler beginnings would be performing at such a higher level than we are now. For 20 years from about 1994-2014 the United States were not a good team, but they were a team that everyone feared playing against. Players from Major League Soccer and second division Europe was a VAR away from World Cup semi-finals. They defeated the 2009 Spain National Team widely regarded as the best international team of all time and then took Brazil to the brink in a competitive FIFA final. They won the group against England in 2010, survived the group of death against Portugal and Germany in 2014… This national team has history and with that history comes reputation.
“We’re nowhere near the level we need to play at if we want to win games coming into Copa América,” Christian Pulisic said after the Colombia math. “It’s better that it happened now, but we can’t be anywhere near playing like that and expect to win games.”
I’m sorry but that reputation is in tatters. Our team is not feared, they are not difficult opponents, they don’t work tirelessly for each other or for the badge. At the end of the day this is the Coach’s fault, but let’s also lay some much needed blame (and pressure) on the players, and let’s lay some much needed blame on the federation who hired Gregg Berhalter TWICE in respectively bizarre scenarios.
Can we talk about that for a second? The US Soccer Federation is one of the wealthiest and best resourced football federations on the planet. They have the might and money of a country that can literally achieve anything it makes a priority. So with that in mind USSF hired an above-average MLS coach who never won anything in Columbus while Gregg’s brother was second-in-command within the federation. At this time in 2018, Joachim Löw, Laurent Blanc, Antonio Conte, and Zinedine Zidane were out of contract. I know it’s hard to imagine they wanted the US job, but again - the United States landed a man on the moon.
Fast forward four years (from the hiring, not the moon landing). Gregg Berhalter and the USMNT do fine at the 2022 World Cup. A solid group stage showing followed by an embarrassing loss to the Netherlands. Berhalter’s contract is up at the end of the tournament, US Soccer hires a new sporting director with Premier League pedigree in Matt Crocker… things are looking up.
By the beginning of 2023, the pool of available coaches has narrowed a bit. Now on the table were Jesse Marsch, Patrick Vieira, Julen Lopetegui, Jose Mourinho and Hansi Flick. The United States are about to host the 2024 Copa America and the 2026 World Cup, they have to splurge for a huge name right?
Gregg Berhalter gets rehired.
Gregg Berhalter has taken this team as far as he can and I thank him for taking many young and inexperienced players to the pinnacle of their careers. But he has run his course with this team, and he is not the coach that should be leading us through the next two years. And all of that is to say it’s just as much Matt Crocker and USSF’s fault as it is Gregg Berhalter.
At this point you can’t tell me you’re not jealous watching Jesse Marsch lead Canada to 0-0 against France in France. You can’t tell me you’re not asking yourself why you support this team that doesn’t seem to care about you. It truly hurts me to type this. I love this team, but they don’t love me back.
“We’re not framing it as a lesson learned,” Gregg Berhalter said “We’re actually framing it as a wake-up call. Really poor performance against a top team and I think if you give, or I know if you give a team like that the opportunities that we gave them, you’re going to have no chance to win. It’s never going to happen. And that’s what’s really disappointing about the game.”
We are five years into Gregg’s tenure. There is no such thing as a wake up call. Maybe it’s time to set multiple alarms because it seems like this team has been hitting the snooze button for far too long. Getting dominated 5-1 by Colombia wasn’t just a wake-up call; it was more like a fire alarm with flashing lights and blaring sirens.
I’m trying reaaaaally hard not to be just like that toxicguy42069 you’ll read about on Twitter later, but this is how I feel now.
I hope we win against Brazil. I hope we win our group at Copa America. I hope we make the semi-finals, I really do. But if we don’t, we need to take a long hard look at ourselves to ask if this is the right person to lead us into 2026. We need to ask ourselves if we are okay with mediocrity. We need to ask ourselves if we are okay being embarrassing losers.
And I know it took me a long time to come around to this opinion but I feel the need to explain something. I am a very optimistic person in general and it takes a lot for me to feel negatively towards another human. I really try to empathize with the person that is the target of criticism. Gregg Berhalter is a person - a human being doing his best, and I hate to think what he’s going through and how difficult it is to have the negative feelings of a passionate fan base targeted at you. That must be really hard.
This is not sarcasm by the way. I really feel like collectively we forget this all the time. Gregg Berhalter is a real person with thoughts and feelings that is doing his best. That does not absolve him of being the wrong person to lead this team.
I’m not very patriotic, but I guess in this way I do feel an American exceptionalism. I want to root for winners, or at least I want to root for losers that make me proud.
Here is how we could not suck right away: Put BJ Callaghan back in charge, let the team play with freedom and passion and fight. Let Gio Reyna float in dangerous attacking zones instead of playing ball shuttler. Play to our strengths which right now is the left side of Antonee Robinson and Christian Pulisic. Lock down our defense by not trying to play out of the back all the time. Cede some possession in favor of giving up less goals while allowing us to spring counter-attacks in transition more often.
There ya go. It’s not perfect and I’ll want a top tier coach before the 2026 World Cup, but we could survive and even thrive in life without GGG.
I’ve said a lot… What do you think?
Imagine being an African American soccer fan in his 50s who like you have followed the game and I live in the Deep South lmaoo. Imagine the jeers I get when o mention my love for the game they always ask what country are you from lmaoo
preach. This is the kind of catharsis a fellow, lifelong USMNT supporter is turning to these times in our moments of need