USA vs. Canada Match Diary & Player Ratings

Berhalter said it: This is a "must win"

I don’t think anyone was impressed by the El Salvador match. It was a Chevy Lumina, a grilled cheese sandwich…serviceable, but only impressive if you’re an unfrozen caveman. And troubling if you remember that the 2018 cycle was a bunch of road draws, followed by the “a road point is good!” affirmation, followed by shock losses to Costa Rica and T&T. And that was that.

This match starts with terrible news: Reyna is out with a hamstring, Steffen is out with Covid, and McKennie is out for a “violation of team policy”. Yikes. Okay: Hamstring I understand; I’m in my 40s now, I often pull a hamstring while making soup. But Steffen -- was he vaccinated? McKennie -- what did he do? I need to know how pissed off to be.

If Steffen wasn’t vaccinated, then I continue to be stunned that these gigantic sports teams (I’m talking about Man City) continue to say “If you don’t want to get vaccinated, that’s cool -- if you get Covid, just take two weeks off, we’ll keep paying your wages, and we’ll hope you’re better when you come back!” When did giant corporations turn into Ned Flanders’ overly-permissive beatnik parents?

Here are 11 players who have not been naughty:

Pulisic | Pefok | Aaronson

Lletget | Adams | Acosta

Antonee Robinson | Brooks | Miles Robinson | Dest

Turner

Jordan Pefok is tonight’s contestant on “Who Will Replace Jozy Altidore???” Acosta is Gallant to McKennie’s Goofus, and Lletget is the guy with comparatively-healthy legs for the first time in his life.

Here’s kickoff from The Music City, which is what Nashville calls itself mostly because of the Grand Ole Opry, which is like calling yourself “The Cradle of Sculpture” because you have a Michael’s Arts & Crafts in your town. But I digress…

8’ - Great work by Adams to corral Davies. Davies is so much more dangerous than any other Canadian player -- I feel like if you contain him, you don’t have to worry much about the rest of the team.

13’ - A mistake from Dest gives Canada a chance, but Turner swats the shot away! What did I just say? The one thing you can’t do is hand chances to Davies.

18’ - It’s interesting how there’s absolutely no dress code for soccer coaches. Some coaches wear Italian suits and look like the money guy in a bank heist movie. Berhalter’s wearing Old Navy pants a Nike t-shirt -- he could arguably get kicked out of a barbeque restaurant for being underdressed.

20’ - Robinson with a shot! Our first shot! It’s good that we have a shot, not good that our top goal-scoring threat so far is Antonee Robinson.

27’ - Some pushing and shoving on the field; I’m not sure what this is about. Anger over steel tariffs? Residual frustration over the US-Canada border not being set at the 54th parallel? Hard to say.

35’ - I wish Reyna was in this game, because this is the game Dortmund play every week: Teams back it in, play with five at the back, and try to counter.

40’ - US off the post! We break Canada down for the first time tonight, and Pulisic almost breaks the deadlock! Good ball from Brooks, good work from Lletget to create some space. That was pretty much the first time all night we’ve connected a pass that’s not a square ball.

42’ - And now Dest is coming out. All during the Gold Cup, we talked about building depth, and now that depth is being put to the test.

HALF TIME: 0-0. In 135 minutes of World Cup qualifying soccer so far, we’ve created two chances and finished zero. So, here’s what I want to talk about: I like this robot.

That, it seems, is “CHAMP” a robot that is apparently part of a Make a Wish-type thing, built by Volkswagen. Now, I don’t often elbow aside Make a Wish kids to pursue my own interests, but Volkswagen: How much do I gotta pay to drive that thing? Come on, you’re a business, and I’ll bet I’ve got deeper pockets than that kid. Are you seriously going to turn down my money? How will you explain that to your shareholders?

Also: Can the robot play striker?

45’ - Here come 45 more minutes of the entire Canadian team sitting deep. 90 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border, so, you can imagine basically everyone in the country being packed near the bottom. That’s the formation Canada will be playing.

54’ - GOAL USA!!! BRENDAN AARONSON!!! THERE WE GO!!! It took a good win from Aaronson, a well-placed cross from Robinson, and you know what else: GOOD REFEREEING FROM THE CONCACAF CREW! Because they played advantage after a foul on Pulisic. I’m stunned, absolutely stunned. Good refereeing was the absolute last thing I expected.

61’ - GOAL CANADA!!! Wow, what an incredibly easy goal. Guess who created it? The only guy who could create it did create it: Davies. Yedlin was so asleep he should have been wearing one of those long, 19th century night caps.

68’ - The US has a counter, but it’s whistled dead because of a foul on Adams. That’s the first time I’ve seen Adams break up one of our own counters.

78’ - Adams brings down a Canadian player on the edge of the box but there’s no foul! That was risky. Are the players trying to make us feel grateful for a draw?

82’ - Here comes the signature Berhalter line change: Sargent, Konrad, and Roldan come on, Aaronson, Pefok, and Lletget come off. This seems like-for-like; I’m a bit surprised there’s no formation change.

FULL TIME: 1-1. This is trouble. I feel like the very-forgiving CONCACAF format is making us feel a lack of urgency. Last cycle, we kept saying “eh, it’ll work out”. Even in the last game against T&T, we figured we wouldn’t actually lose, or one of the other games would go our way, or something would work out. Right? As this one wound down, I don’t think any of us felt that it was actually do-or-die. And I guess it wasn’t, but tying Canada at home is very, very bad.

Berhalter: 3. That’s two garbage games in a row. This team doesn’t seem to have any plan for how to play against a team that’s clogging the box.

Turner: 6.5. The one real bright spot. If Steffen made himself more vulnerable to Covid than he needed to be by not getting vaccinated, maybe just hand the gloves to Turner.

Antonee: 4.5. Active, but forced a lot of his passes.

Brooks: 3. Way too many giveaways. The whole team was guilty of forcing passes that weren’t on, but Brooks more than anyone else. Also completely lost his man on the goal.

Miles: 5. Mostly solid but failed to hold the line on the goal. If he had stepped up, Davies would have been offside.

Dest: 4.5. Was one of the only players to provide any offense with his forward runs, but neglected his defense.

Adams: 5.5. Solid on defense but, for the second game in a row, failed to put his foot on the ball and help the offense ramp up the pressure.

Acosta: 4. Why can’t anybody in the midfield control the tempo? We play a few square balls, then say “to hell with this” and play a diagonal ball that’s not on. Maybe it should have been Roldan instead of Acosta today because we needed offense more than defense.

Lletget: 5. When he got free, he was one of the few players who played positive passes. But it was a lot of checking back and playing backwards passes.

Pulisic: 5. Was dangerous at times but faded badly in the second half.

Aaronson: 5. All credit to him on the goal; he started it and he finished it. Really, none of our offensive players were in the game, and it’s hard for me to tell if it’s lack of movement by the attackers or lack of imagination from the midfielders.

Pefok: 3. Okay, I’m saying it: We have a striker crisis. There’s no tip of the spear -- we’re holding open auditions and nobody’s been consistently good. The fact that I’m wondering when Zardes will will get healthy is a very bad sign.

Yedlin: 3. Came on, got roasted for the tying goal, and that was pretty much his night.

Roldan, Konrad, Sargent: NR.

Weston McKennie: 0. We don’t know what rule he violated, but he hurt the team.