The US men’s national team booked yet another trip to the Concacaf Nations League Finals weekend at rainy Energizer Park in St. Louis, flashing some new tricks picked up from new boss Mauricio Pochettino – amid a renewal of the collective spirit established years ago under his predecessor Gregg Berhalter – in a confident 4-2 dispatching of the Reggae Boyz.
Here are a few talking points from an emphatic, if imperfect, quarterfinals win.
Thirteen of the 16 players who took the field Monday night are MLS alums or products of MLS academies. But two of the top performers hail from FC Dallas' prolific youth system, both with plenty to prove on the international stage and much to gain under the Poch regime.
Ricardo Pepi bagged the Yanks’ third goal of the night with a deadly daisy-cutter from long range – his first USMNT goal scored from outside the penalty box – and also created two chances for teammates, completed 89% of his passes and won 3/3 aerial duels. It was another impressive outing for the matchwinner of Thursday’s 1-0 first-leg victory in Kingston, further cementing his case for the starting No. 9 role and sending him back to PSV with renewed confidence.
A bit further down the US spine, Tanner Tessmann was a quietly influential traffic cop in central midfield, completing 73/74 passes and notching five recoveries and four defensive actions to keep the engine room tidy. He also ranged forward into the final third to play a clever dummy that bought space and time for Christian Pulisic to strike, forcing an own goal for the USMNT's second tally of the night.
“It's been a, I think, an important step for me in my career,” the Dallas homegrown, an Alabama native now fighting for minutes at French power Olympique Lyonnais, told TNT’s Melissa Ortiz of his November window in the postgame show. “First two starts, today was my first full 90 minutes. So just feeling really confident and really pleased with the game today. Two wins, so that's most important.”
Poch’s verdict was rather effusive.
“Tess today, I think was fantastic. I think if you say to me, I need to put a note from zero to 10, is 9, 8, 9, you know?” said the Argentine. “He played a fantastic game, I think was amazing in the way that he was in two phases, in a defensive and an offensive, with the ball and without the ball. Is that what we expect – I think he’s young, but it's very good talent, and hope that he can play more in Lyon and be ready to help us.”
Given the limited time and bandwidth national team coaches have to work with during these fleeting camps, it would be understandable if Pochettino stuck with one of the clearest and obvious strengths of his team’s core: The sturdy, occasionally downright silky left-flank partnership Pulisic and left back Antonee “Jedi” Robinson have struck up over the past several years.
But no! Here the coach tried something quite new. Pulisic slid into a central attacking mid role, Tim Weah was deployed on the left wing in his first appearance since his fateful red card in the Copa América loss to Panama and Jedi got scootched more centrally to create overloads, pinching into the channel instead of hugging the touchline per usual.
Jamaica were left reeling, repeatedly losing any semblance of defensive organization as they struggled to track runners and keep pace with the USMNT’s movement and passing triangles.
“We try different way to play in our buildup. I think we are going to do some tests in the future also,” explained Poch. “[It’s] our second training camp. The first was more simple on the ideas; that second time was to implement some different [concepts], using different players in different position to try not to give reference to the opponent. That rotation, that mobility to appear and to change position, I think is in the way that we like to play and we want to play. And I think what we were finding is [to] see the player performing in different position, maybe non-natural position, but become a natural with time.”
A fixture on the attacking right edge under Berhalter, Weah looked game for this new challenge, and capped a solid return with a thunderbolt of a goal after the lively Yunus Musah found him alone at the back post, shortly after Demarai Gray scored the first of his two goals to salvage some pride for the Reggae Boyz. Intriguingly, TNT’s broadcast crew explained the coaching staff had made the switch with Weah’s left-eye dominance in mind, a data point they include in their player profiles.
“It's a dominant eye that brings you in a position to feel comfortable with the ball,” related Pochettino to reporters later. “If you are an offensive player or defensive player, depending how do you defend, your body shape, always, we try to check, because we need to understand the player, like if we talk with these guys, and also try to understand how they are, what they like.
“We need to understand why, in a natural way, how they move, and try to find the best space and the good position for them to give more, be more fluid in the game, have the continuity on the game, arrive better in the box, or defend better in our box, or in the transition, in the defensive transition, to have more capacity to better angle to receive the ball.”
Weah’s first return to the fold after the ejection that fueled the Yanks’ stunning Copa crashout – he missed the September and October windows due to injuries – provided a reminder of both the strong camaraderie the core of this squad built during the 2022 cycle, and the confounding decay in team culture earlier this year.
So it’s noteworthy that the vibes appear to have soared back to their previously lofty levels over the past week. Jetting to Kingston and showing the intestinal fortitude to dig out a muscular away win in the first leg of this tie certainly helped, as did the flying start on Monday, where so many attacking pieces clicked so quickly from the kickoff.
“For sure, we should definitely feel good after these results. We’re obviously learning a lot of new things,” Pulisic told Ortiz after the final whistle. “With a new coach, some things have changed.”
Noted Weah: “This group has a special connection, and every time we're out there, we give it 100% and we just have to continue. I think we take a lot of positives and some negatives from this game. Obviously, we don't want to [concede] the two goals, but we move on, we're happy, and we need to be better next time.”
Though clearly annoyed by the loss of concentration around Gray’s two second-half goals, Pochettino’s smile quickly returned as he took stock of his first two camps in charge. Though he’ll gather what’s likely to be an MLS-heavy group in South Florida for January camp, he won’t see most of this month’s roster until they reconvene in the Los Angeles area for the Nations League semifinals and final in March.
“I'm going to miss you all, players and staff, because it's like 10 days was too little, and yes, you want tomorrow to see again these guys,” he said of his message to the group. “I said, look, my only advice is, look after yourself. We need to be stronger in March. We need to play the semifinal. But the most important is to build … Yes, that is a good thing that they start to miss in between [camps], and to say, oh, we need to be desperate to arrive to March and to be all together. That is, I think that we improve a lot, and then we start to feel that we are a real group of people that we are going to fight for something special.”
