USMNT: Tactically tense Gregg Berhalter must let Christian Pulisic loose

Gregg Berhalter has spoken of the difficulties when dealing with a spatially drifting player like Christian Pulisic. For the USMNT’s benefit, however, the head coach must let his star winger loose.

Gregg Berhalter is into his second season as the U.S. Men’s National Team head coach. As his time at the Columbus Crew illustrated, — and his first year with the USMNT strongly hinted at — he is a tactically stringent and focused manager. He has a system that he believes in and he expects his players to execute particular roles that make up that system.

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In Columbus, this was a 4-2-3-1 with two very advanced full-backs, a central midfielder that would often drop between the centre-halves, and a possession-based approach that would utilise the range of Wil Trapp in midfield to feed to the offensive full-backs.

Berhalter has not used the same base shape for the USMNT, but he has implemented specific roles. That might be Tim Ream in a defensive-minded left-back role with Reggie Cannon flying down the opposite flank. Or tucking Tyler Adams into midfield as an inverted right-back. Or even using Christian Pulisic as an attacking midfielder to get him on the ball as frequently as possible.

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Berhalter abandoned that last experiment fairly quickly, but its focus illustrated the friction between his detailed instruction and Pulisic’s free-roaming playing style. This drifting movement off the ball to pick up pockets of space between the lines is what makes Pulisic so dangerous, which Berhalter recently explained.

Speaking to the Chelsea Mike’d Up Podcast, Berhalter discusses the brilliance of Pulisic’s spatial awareness, as well as some of the difficulties that can come with it.

“Part of it is he has such an ability to operate in space, he has such a good understanding of where space opens up and where to attack space and sometimes that leads him to leaving his position,” Berhalter said. “Which, if you play a strict positional game, then you’re going to have problems with that. Because what that means is now, say for example he’s playing left wing and he’s drifted into the middle and your fullback’s not high to occupy the left-back, now it can cause him to be easily marked.”

You can see the inner difficulty that Berhalter has with a player like Pulisic, someone who excels when they are let loose of the shackles of the system. Lionel Messi is very similar. He is at his most dangerous when he can walk around the pitch, seemingly meandering from space to space, before then receiving the ball in an entirely different part of the pitch from his starting position.

It is this very drifting that makes him so difficult to mark and allows him to turn and dribble forward before being committed by a pressing defender. Pulisic is no Messi, of course, but he uses a similar approach: drop off the defence, receive the ball on the half-turn, and use the extra space to then drive towards the penalty area.

To Berhalter’s credit, he later concedes that it is up to him and the rest of the USMNT to allow Pulisic to play in this manner.

“You need this inter-change when he leaves his space,2 Berhalter explained. “What I’ve learned is you want to take advantage of the quality you have. As coaches, we need to adapt to that. When you have that high level of quality, we need to adapt to them.”

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There is obvious friction between how Berhalter wants to structure the USMNT and how Pulisic fits into that. But such is the winger’s unique brilliance, at a level that no other player in the squad can match, Berhalter must set him loose. To tie up Pulisic in tactics and instructions would only be to tie his own hands behind his back, and Berhalter cannot afford that.

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