Soccer

USMNT ‘focused’ ahead of Nations League title defense

After two home windows of worldwide friendlies, the United States males’s crew shifts consideration again to aggressive matches this week to defend its Concacaf Nations League title and try to qualify for subsequent yr’s Copa America.

“November turns the page and now it’s about competing,” coach Gregg Berhalter stated Wednesday. “We want to win the Nations League again. This will set us up to do this. We want to play in the Copa America. This will set us up to do that. So the guys are focused.”

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The U.S. hosts Trinidad and Tobago Thursday in Austin, Texas (9 p.m. ET, TNT), earlier than the groups play once more Monday in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The winner of the mixture sequence qualifies for the 2024 Copa America within the U.S., whereas the loser will drop down and play a second home-and-away sequence towards one other Concacaf crew to be decided to qualify for the 16-team match.

All 10 CONMEBOL groups will take part, with the opposite six different groups coming from Concacaf.

Christian Pulisic (AC Milan), Timothy Weah (Juventus) and Tyler Adams (Bournemouth) will all be unavailable on account of harm, with Adams the one of these three anticipated to be out long run.

Monday’s return journey to Trinidad and Tobago would be the crew’s first go to to the Caribbean nation since shedding in 2017 to overlook out on the 2018 World Cup.

While the crew has virtually fully turned over since then, Berhalter stated the defeat is “always still in our minds.”

“Just like we can embrace the good stuff, we also have to embrace the bad stuff and it was a great learning moment for us collectively,” Berhalter stated of the 2-1 loss in Couva that noticed the Americans fail to make the finals in Russia. “The coaches involved, the players involved and, in my opinion, it’s not about ignoring that, it’s about embracing it and leaning into it.

“And we speak about preparation on this camp, some of it stems from classes discovered in that camp as properly.”

The U.S. has won all three matches against Trinidad and Tobago since 2017 by a combined score of 19-0, including a 6-0 win this summer in the Gold Cup, as Jesús Ferreira scored a first-half hat trick.

Trinidad and Tobago qualified for this quarterfinal round of the Nations League after finishing second in its group behind Panama. The U.S., Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica all bypassed the prior round directly to the quarterfinals.

Berhalter also addressed U.S. Soccer’s official announcement that it had hired Emma Hayes as the women’s national team coach, with a reported salary that will make her the highest-paid women’s coach in the world.

“Everything you hear about her is how thorough she is, how process-oriented [she is], it is how shiny she is, how she’s so targeted on crew tradition and teamwork,” Berhalter said. “And I believe it is an thrilling step for the ladies’s crew, which has already been a groundbreaking crew and already been a crew that has been — efficiency on the sector, breaking down boundaries off the sector, you title it, they’ve completed it.”


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