U.S. Soccer Fires Coach Gregg Berhalter While Canada Tantalizes Us With What Could Have Been

By Phil West | July 11, 2024 | 8:15am

Photo by Hector Vivas/Getty Images

Sports U.S. Soccer

U.S. Soccer Fires Coach Gregg Berhalter While Canada Tantalizes Us With What Could Have Been

You could say that Jesse Marsch’s villain origin story dates back to June 2023, when he was under consideration to lead U.S. Soccer’s men’s national team.

Six months prior, Gregg Berhalter — who may be authoring his own villain origin story after being dismissed from his second term as USMNT head coach on Wednesday — led the Americans to a decidedly average and ultimately disappointing World Cup performance in 2022. The U.S. advanced out of the group stage in Qatar but, at a quite predictable place for an off ramp, was eliminated by the far superior Netherlands in the Round of 16, well before Lionel Messi’s Argentina bested France in a memorable final.

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At year’s end, Berhalter’s contract was left to lapse, and a few days into the new year, a whole awful scandal emerged involving Berhalter and former teammate turned vengeful soccer dad Claudio Reyna. Though Reyna emerged more blemished in the brouhaha, Berhalter did have to navigate uncomfortable domestic violence revelations it brought to light, and he eventually faded into background in what amounted to a six-month hiatus.

Marsch, who had been let go by Leeds United in February after a tumultuous year coaching in West Yorkshire, was considered a leading candidate in a ballyhooed post-World Cup coaching search that left the U.S. arguably rudderless after Berhalter’s appointment ended ignobly, with two different interim coaches overseeing the team in the first six months of its current World Cup preparation cycle.

On June 15, 2023, Marsch’s agent surprised everyone by reporting that his client wouldn’t be the next American coach after all. The next day, U.S. Soccer announced that its extensive search had led it right back to Berhalter, to the dismay of many fans who were hoping to depart from his cerebral yet sometimes ineffective approach to possession-based soccer.

Marsch, who adheres to a more aggressive style of play than Berhalter (specifically, one championed by the Red Bull global network of clubs), got the chance to criticize Berhalter first-hand as part of CBS’s Concacaf Nations League coverage in March.

Then in May, Marsch did one better: He took Canada’s vacant head coaching spot, leading the newly resurgent national program that is quickly morphing into one of the U.S.’s chief soccer rivals, all while noting that he wasn’t treated well by U.S. Soccer in last year’s search process.

Even though Marsch’s new team exited Copa America on Tuesday with a 2-0 defeat to tournament favorites Argentina, Canada did scrap through the group stages, outlasting a lively Venezuela team in the quarterfinals to get to the semis. That’s a lot better than the U.S. did in the tournament that they were hosting — which is typically for South American teams exclusively, but was expanded this year to include North American and Caribbean teams.

And so, Marsch’s first international tournament with his new team turned out to be Berhalter’s last with the team that Marsch wanted to helm.

The U.S. thought it had a relatively easy path out of the 2024 Copa America group stages. They opened with Bolivia, which turned out to be the worst team of the 16 entrants, and then faced off against Panama, a Concacaf opponent the Americans typically handle at home. Get two expected wins there, and the group stage finale against an immensely talented Uruguay team would basically be a bonus game.

After a 2-0 win over Bolivia that should have been more lopsided in the host’s favor, the Yanks stumbled to a 2-1 loss against Panama in a match that got physical and ugly early, altered by the normally-unflappable Tim Weah getting a red card in the 18th minute. This made the July 1 match against Uruguay essentially a must-win contest (though, by the tournament’s calculus, a U.S. draw would have worked in certain scenarios, as Berhalter would later illustrate).

In the end, the U.S. lost to Uruguay 1-0, while Panama beat Bolivia 3-1, which bounced the U.S. out of its only major tournament before the ‘26 World Cup. At one memorable juncture of the simultaneously-played matches, Bolivia scored to even things up 1-1 with Panama before either the U.S. or Uruguay had scored. Berhalter appeared to signal the 1-1 scoreline with his index fingers to his players, in a moment bitterly memed by disgruntled U.S. fans after the loss. Shortly after that unfortunate coaching moment, Uruguay scored — a goal that appeared offside but was allowed to stand in the U.S.’s second straight questionably-refereed match.

In what turned out to be Berhalter’s final match coaching the U.S., his team mustered only three shots on target and one big chance, per FotMob’s metrics, with less than 0.5 of xG (expected goals) from all chances generated. In the Panama match, the U.S. also managed three shots on goal, including Folarin Balogun’s exquisite goal four minutes after the red card that should have allowed the U.S. to settle in and defend. Instead, Berhalter’s side disappointingly conceded within four minutes after that and ended up losing the possession battle by an alarming 3-1 margin.

That’s not to say that Canada played beautifully in any of its group stage matches, scoring just one goal from eight shots on target in the three contests. But once it trudged through and got the needed four points to escape the group, its quarterfinal match against Venezuela was an energetic maelstrom, with Canada achieving seven shots on target and 16 total shots to the Vinotinto’s three shots on goal and 15 total shots.

Marsch has an unwieldy acronym he shared in a Coaches’ Voice article, S.A.R.D., to showcase his overarching philosophy to players. S is for sprinting, A is for “all together” (as in ball-oriented pressing), R is reingehen (“going in,” as in committing to attacking the ball), and D is dazukommen, or the second wave of a press to follow the first. It’s decidedly risky, as his time at Leeds might attest, but the tactic can be electrifying in certain situations. I’m hard-pressed to recall any Berhalter-coached U.S. performance in the previous year, by contrast, that was ever consistently electric.

That means, a year after rehiring Berhalter, the U.S. must again go looking for a new head coach when it hasn’t shown much efficiency in doing so last time out. Rumors have Berhalter being replaced by either a longshot big name like former Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp or, more realistically, LAFC head coach Steve Cherundolo. Some fans, seeing Canada’s pragmatic run through the tournament, are pining for the American coach who sang “O, Canada” on the sidelines during Copa America, even though it’s not his home and native land.

The immediate worry, present with or without Berhalter steering, is that U.S. Soccer will squander a talented generation of players in a World Cup that the U.S. is hosting for the first time in 32 years. There’s now a debate afoot as to whether this really is a “golden generation,” as it’s sometimes been touted, but it’s an impressive roster that’s been assembled in large part by the very coach now being questioned for his coaching acumen.

It’s unusual to get a repeat chance at hosting a World Cup, and good teams can get an additional boost playing in their home stadiums: witness France in 1998, which won it all in Paris, or South Korea in 2002 and Brazil in 2014, each getting to the semis as hosts.

In the meantime, the 2024 Copa America winner will be a CONMEBOL team, a perfectly reasonable expectation given that it’s still officially a CONMEBOL tournament, even with the North American exception. But the real surprise is that an American mercenary leading a Canadian team ended up being the last American standing.

The USMNT’s next scheduled match, by the way, is a friendly on Sept. 7 — against Jesse Marsch’s Canada.