World Cup Qualifiers Preview: USMNT vs El Salvador, Canada, Honduras

Next Man Up Mentality

The United States will need players to step up, especially amid the COVID and injury concerns.

“We have to be very cautious with COVID during this window,” Berhalter said. “It’s spreading like wildfire and there’s a chance that anyone coming in to camp can be excluded because of that…. so we purposefully brought a larger number of players.”

Twenty-seven players is a lot, and he even mentioned that when you get to 30 players it really messes up with training and condition with the limited staff they have. However, having twenty-seven really helps ensure that if a player contracts COVID or is injured, there are contingencies in place.

Then, there’s just positional pieces that are still a question mark, particularly at the wing positions.

We already know that Pulisic will start at left wing, with a 99% probability (by my own calculations) that Ricardo Pepi starts at the striker position despite still trying to find his first goal with his new Bundesliga team.

Now, with Giovanni Reyna out of the roster as he recovers from their recent injuries, it is still question as to who will join Pulisic and Pepi at the top in the right wing position. Could it be Paul Arriola (a Berhalter favorite) or Gyasi Zardes, who each provided goals in the team’s last visit in Allianz Field in 2019? What about Jordan Morris, who recently rejoined the squad after a two-year break?

Perhaps you could slot Weah in there, but like mentioned above, he’s coming off an injury and there’s questions about his fit. And then there’s Brenden Aaronson, who has proven at times to be an effective finisher for the USMNT when needed.

Suspensions may also become an issue. Tyler Adams, Zack Steffen and DeAndre Yedlin are all carrying yellow cards. This is important to note because if Adams gets another yellow card during the El Salvador match, he will have to miss our game against first place Canada. We don’t want that. We already experienced this with Weston McKennie (yellow card accumulation) and Miles Robinson (red card) who both missed out on the Nov. 16 match at Jamaica due to suspension. Berhalter did remind us that we have players who can step up in these situations.

Weather could also be a problem, but Berhalter didn’t seem too worried about it. “When I think about historic World Cup qualifiers in our history,” he said, “certainly the two that come to mind are the game in 2001 against Mexico in Columbus, and then in the game in Denver against Costa Rica where the weather is playing a key role in that, and really giving us the upper hand. So we expect to embrace the conditions and enjoy the conditions, and really take it to our opponents.”

It’ll be interesting to see how Berhalter navigates these challenges, how the players themselves deal with it and who’s going to step up to score goals and help the USMNT earn 9 points during this window.

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