Perhaps no moment better exemplified the mounting pressure — and its slight relief — on the United States men’s national soccer team than the one that occurred in the 67th minute on Wednesday.
Christian Pulisic, the talented American winger, who plays for English club Chelsea, has sputtered and looked frustrated in his recent performances for his country. And against Honduras, on a frigid night in St. Paul, Minnesota, Pulisic wasn’t even in US coach Gregg Berhalter’s starting lineup. But after he entered the game as a substitute in the 64th minute and scored a goal three minutes later, Pulisic calmly celebrated by running with his arms outstretched, then raising his fist and hugging his teammates.
With an emphatic 3-0 victory over Honduras to close this three-game window of World Cup qualifying, the United States remained firmly in control of their destiny and eased some, but not all, of the burden on their collective shoulders in the face of at the end. final set of games in March. It is those games, now, that will decide whether the United States will go to the World Cup this fall.
With the United States winning and Mexico defeating Panama, 1-0, the teams remained tied for second place in the eight-team qualifying group from North, Central America and the Caribbean.
Canada defeated El Salvador, 2-0, to remain in first place. The top three teams in the standings at the end of the regional qualifier in March will receive an automatic entry to the tournament in Qatar in November.
“Three points was pretty much a necessity, just with where we are and where we want to go,” US defender Walker Zimmerman said. “We really assumed that about ourselves.”
Three days earlier, the United States had made things harder for themselves by falling, 2-0, to a revived Canadian team on the road. After the game, questions arose about the United States’ coaching, its tactics, its verve.
But even in the brutal cold of Minnesota on Wednesday, the United States dominated as expected against Honduras, which is bottom of the qualifying group and had already been eliminated from World Cup contention. The United States scored in a way they hadn’t before, and seemed much more comfortable.
“Our goal in this window was to stay second or move to first place and it looks like we will,” Berhalter said after the victory.
The United States played its previous two games of this qualifying window in outdoor stadiums in cold-weather venues: at home against El Salvador in Columbus, Ohio, last week, and on the road against Canada in Hamilton, Ontario, on Sunday. . But Wednesday’s game at Allianz Field had the worst conditions.
The wind chill was negative 8 degrees Fahrenheit at the start of the game and decreased as the game progressed, making it the coldest US home game in team history. US Soccer said it chose Minnesota because it not only wanted to limit its travel during this three-match-in-seven-day stretch, but also gain an advantage over its Central American rivals.
Bench heaters and hot drinks were provided. Players wore gloves, balaclavas, and gaiters around their necks and sometimes over their faces to keep warm. US goalkeeper Matt Turner wore a muff around his waist to keep his hands warm, but took it off just minutes after a referee ran over to talk to him. Still, at least one Honduran player, goalkeeper Luis López, was unable to finish the game due to the adverse effects of the cold and received intravenous fluids at halftime.
When asked about the conditions, Berhalter said US Soccer provided the referees and team from Honduras with warm-weather clothing and other teams in hopes that conditions would be safer for them.
“When we go to those countries and it’s 90 degrees and 90 percent dew point and it’s unbearably humid and guys get dehydrated, cramps and heat exhaustion, that’s the nature of our competition,” he added. “When we scheduled this game at this location, you have to go by daily average temperatures and it was the best guess. We wanted to minimize travel. We knew we were going to play in cold weather for two of the games and we thought we would do it for the third game as well instead of changing the weather. A cold snap came and it’s something we can’t control, but all we can do once it happens is try to mitigate the risk.”
Before the game, Berhalter made several changes to Wednesday’s lineup due to recent performances and injuries (Tyler Adams and Chris Richards). He inserted Kellyn Acosta into midfield, for example, and put Jordan Morris at forward in place of Pulisic, a decision Berhalter called “very difficult.”
“The hardest thing to do as a manager is talk to a player and tell him you support him and are behind him 100 percent, and then you don’t start him,” he said.
But it worked and the United States was in control from the start. In the eighth minute, midfielder Weston McKennie headed in Acosta’s free kick, the United States’ first set-piece goal of this qualifying campaign. (“A pretty wild stat,” Zimmerman said.) It was also only the third time in 11 qualifying matches that the United States had scored in the first half.
More such goals followed: Another free kick by Acosta was finished off by Zimmerman in the 37th minute and Pulisic added the third goal, following an Acosta corner kick.
After the match, the United States’ attention turned to warm-ups and their upcoming matches in March. Next month, the United States is scheduled to play tough away games against arch-rivals Mexico (March 24) and Costa Rica (March 30), and will host Panama on March 27. Entering Wednesday, the United States was tied with Mexico, with 18 points, for second place in the qualifying group.
“The hope is that it gives us a lot of momentum, not just because we got three points, but the way we got three points,” Zimmerman said after Wednesday’s win. He later added: “Hopefully we can take a lot of positives out of this game, keep the things we did well and carry that into the next window.”
Qatar is still within reach of the United States, but not yet.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism