USA passed and pressed like a modern club side. Will they have convinced the world?

“On day one,” Gregg Berhalter said before the World Cup, “when I got the guys together, I said, ‘We want to change the way the world views American soccer’.”

As mission statements go, that sounded pretty ambitious. Can you imagine some congressman getting appointed to a term as Secretary of Transportation and being like, “We want to change the way the world views the American commute?”. Sure, dude, you’ll probably make some strategic investments in light rail or whatever, but we’re still going to drive lifted F-250s with truck nuts. It’s just who we are as a people.

In Berhalter’s case, however, the moment seemed ripe. A restructured youth development system and booming Major League Soccer academies were turning out better American players younger than before, and European scouts were noticing. Throughout this World Cup cycle, Berhalter rarely fielded a line-up that couldn’t have qualified as an Olympic under-23s squad, but these kids were playing for Champions League heavyweights such as Chelsea, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig.

So why shouldn’t the USMNT play like those clubs?

Turns out there were a lot of reasons why not, ranging from “Have you seen international football?”, to “A global pandemic locked down the world at unprecedented scale and it was kind of hard to train for a year there”. (Not ideal, from a coaching perspective. Lot of tactics talks on Zoom. Lot of learning to bake sourdough.)

Along the way, Berhalter’s vision for how exactly the world ought to view American soccer started to get a little hard to pin down.

At first, the mantra was “disorganise the opponent with the ball to create goal-scoring opportunities”, which apparently meant “be Manchester City, but against Curacao”.

By year two, the emphasis shifted to “a dynamic three in midfield who can cover ground, press in a 4-3-3, aggressive”. Be Liverpool — who, coincidentally, had just won the Premier League — but against El Salvador.

Last year, “verticality” was the buzzword du jour (Bayern Munich ought to be able to handle Honduras, right?) and Berhalter’s line-ups favored the kinds of players Jesse Marsch might have liked (and some he actually did recruit when he got the Leeds United job).

The road to Qatar 2022 had some memorable highs (beating Mexico in a final that one time; beating Mexico in a final that other time) but also lows (any game against Canada). The identity thing never seemed totally sorted out. Inconsistent qualifying performances were understandable from a liquid line-up that could never get the team’s highly-breakable best players on the field all at once, but that made it hard to know what to expect come tournament time.

In the end, it was deja vu all over again.

At the 2010 World Cup, the United States advanced out of the group stage with a plus-one goal difference from one win and two draws, including a ballyhooed stalemate against England, and then lost in the round of 16. Sound familiar?

In 2014, they advanced with four points, including a respectable draw with Portugal, but lost in the round of 16 again.

This time around, for all the world-changing talk, the result was more of the same: five points, a draw with England, got out of the group, and you can guess how the round of 16 tie went.

So was the whole Berhalter project a disappointment, a diaphanous dream of some idealised football altogether too beautiful for a country that remains one hundred per cent sure LeBron James could be the world’s best attacking midfielder if he ever felt like it?

Actually, you know what, maybe not.

Results aside, this team really did look different than before. They played like they knew what they were about, and what they were about wasn’t the scrappy counter-attacking game that’s kept the USMNT punching above its weight for the last 20 years. Maybe, just maybe, American soccer had changed.

“What I see is a vision,” Netherlands manager Louis van Gaal said after prepping to face Berhalter’s team in that round of 16 game, and that’s coming from a guy who knows a thing or two about coaching. “What I see is a team that is keen to execute that vision, and that is of the utmost importance.”

But what exactly was that vision, in the end, and how is America supposed to measure progress?

Warning: weird data ahead

First, a word of caution.

Taking stock of a World Cup side using stats is always a tricky business. There are only a handful of games to go on, and this is a chaotic sport where even a full club season of 30-plus matches is barely enough to draw conclusions from data.

World Cup games are especially wacky, too. Opponent strength varies widely. The schedule is cramped. One team might be fighting for its life while the other lets its third string stretch their legs. Penalties and red cards up-end matches. Even in close games, the stakes are so high that a single goal can dramatically change how teams play, as this year’s USMNT repeatedly reminded us.

Each new edition of the World Cup brings new, potentially data-distorting innovations, such as draconian digital offside mannequins and footballs that need charging. And since we only get a snapshot every four years, it’s tough to compare stats across tournaments in a game that’s always evolving.

Phew, that’s a lot of caveats.

Despite it all, there’s something to be said for trying to stake out a little patch of objective ground truth in the world’s most mythologised, most argued-about and probably most misremembered sporting event. Data has its limitations, but so too — and please don’t tell him this, it’s not worth it — does that extremely loud man at the end of the bar.

So sure, whatever, let’s try it.

In search of the cold, hard facts of Berhalter’s new American soccer, the play-style that was supposed to change the world’s mind about whether my editors should let me get away with not typing “football” there, let’s see what did and didn’t show up in the numbers…

Possession

Surprise! The one stat everybody thought would be synonymous with Berhalter’s preferred style of play didn’t stand out at the World Cup. The United States ranked 13th out of the 32 teams with 53 per cent possession — which is, by definition, just a little above average.

That did make them a more ball-dominant side than their Jurgen Klinsmann-managed predecessors in 2014, who took only 43 per cent of the attacking touches in their games, but not that much more than Bob Bradley’s 2010 team, who had 49 per cent possession.

If the new American footballing identity was just “We will have slightly more of the ball than the other team, whereas before we had ever so slightly less”, you could maybe forgive the world for not snapping to attention.

Long balls

They did at least try to play like a principled possession side. The Americans only launched a little over four per cent of their passes at least 30 yards forward, good for eighth-lowest at the World Cup so far in a category where the six outliers are the powerhouses everyone liked to win this thing.

This stat is noteworthy in part because the US spent a lot of the group stage defending a lead and didn’t trail for the first time until 10 minutes into the knockouts.

Teams that aren’t confident in their passing might protect a lead by shipping it long distance and taking their chances on second balls. This team tried to play through pressure on the ground instead. It didn’t always work, but it was ambitious in a betting-on-yourself sort of way.

It also marked a cultural shift. The United States ranked in the bottom half of the 2010 and 2014 World Cups for their frequent long balls. Hitting and hoping has always been a cherished part of the national identity, like scratch-off lotto tickets and fireworks-related trips to the emergency room. We’re a nation of ill-advised gamblers.

Score this one for Berhalter winning hearts and minds.

Field tilt

The United States may not have had a ton of possession but they had it at the right end of the pitch. By field tilt — a name for one team’s share of both sides’ touches in the attacking third — they ranked eighth again, just below some heavy hitters.

Berhalter said after the 3-1 loss to the Netherlands that his team “were clearly on top, clearly dominating” early in the game, which triggered a million arguments about what it means to control a football match. As a simple proxy for what he may have had in mind, you could probably do worse than field tilt.

It’s good to have the ball near your opponent’s goal. It’s bad for them to have it near yours. If you can maximise one and minimise the other, you’re in control.

There’s more to football than that, sure, and the struggle between field position and control on one side and space and speed on the other is part of what keeps things fun. But it’s pretty clear which side of that argument wins more games.

Spain ranked first at the 2010 World Cup for field tilt. Germany in 2014 ranked second. Even 2018 France, an unusually counter-attacking champion with a dysfunctional midfield and Kylian Mbappe doing zoomy-motorcycle noises up the wing, still came in 12th for their share of final-third touches. Sort any competition by field tilt and the best teams are almost always toward the top.

Against World Cup competition, the US has always been squarely in the “space and speed” camp. Even a pretty good 2010 team ranked a little below average for field tilt at the World Cup, and Klinsmann’s 2014 version finished second to last, between Algeria and Iran.

If the USMNT really does become a field-tilt side after 2022, that could change the way even America views American soccer.

Possessions reaching the final third

Berhalter’s World Cup 2022 team may not have been great at scoring goals (three in four games, and the expected goals numbers weren’t that much better) but they were very good at getting the ball close to goal. As of the day they went out, only three teams in the tournament had successfully taken a higher share of their possessions into the final third than the Americans’ 46 per cent.

That’s not a totally new thing for the program — the US’s 37 per cent final-third entry rate ranked 10th at the 2010 World Cup — but it’s a reassuring sign of life from this year’s attack, which couldn’t put it all together in front of goal.

“When you look at the difference of the two teams, to me there was offensive quality, offensive finishing quality, that Holland had that we’re lacking,” Berhalter said after the round of 16 loss. As in: we did all the other stuff — don’t blame me. He may have had a point.

Cross entries

This team’s inability to turn final third possession into chances wasn’t just bad luck, though. It also had to do with the way they tried to create chances.

More than just about any team at the World Cup, the Americans’ approach to putting the ball in the box looked like a Texas jewellery store: lots and lots of crosses.

Compared to the other stats on this list, a low cross entry share isn’t really that related to winning. Croatia, for example, made the final of the previous World Cup four years ago with the third-highest cross entry share in the tournament. But they also had Mario Mandzukic up top, whereas Berhalter tended to prefer strikers who were good with their feet but didn’t exactly strike terror into opposing centre-backs as target men.

Relying on crosses is nothing new for the USMNT, but this year’s team turned those balls into the box into just over one expected goal per game, much less than in 2010 or 2014.

Counter-pressing

If it wasn’t generating chances, what was the point of that whole high-and-wide possession game? Well, it made the US pretty good at the other part of football: keeping the ball out of their own net.

In particular, they joined some elite company as the fifth-best team in Qatar at winning the ball back quickly after losing it in attacking areas.

When other World Cup coaches looked at the Americans, that front-foot defending was the first thing they saw.

Van Gaal called them “energetic”. England’s Gareth Southgate praised them as “a very athletic team who are very well organised defensively”. Their counter-pressing when they lost the ball could make it hard for opponents to get out of their half.

This was another big shift from 2010 and 2014, when the US were bottom half for their counter-pressing. This team has always been athletic and energetic, but that energy has never been this organised and concentrated on winning the ball back fast and high.

Changing the way the world views American soccer

You know that old Jurgen Klopp line about how a good counter-press is the best playmaker in the world? Yeah, well, obviously it didn’t work out like that for Berhalter’s anaemic attack, but the sentiment does sort of tie together the different parts of the United States’ tactical identity at this World Cup.

They passed well enough to tilt the field toward the opponents’ goal. They overloaded wide areas and crossed a lot because they didn’t really have a central playmaker. They pressed loose balls in the middle to cut off counter-attacks, then hoped for a few bounces to go their way.

That’s exactly how they produced their tournament’s what-might-have-been moment in the opening minutes against the Netherlands, when a Sergino Dest cross led to Weston McKennie winning a loose ball in the middle and a big chance fell at Christian Pulisic’s feet…

What a CHANCE for the @USMNT! 😱

The USMNT is knocking early against the Netherlands pic.twitter.com/PMuZwBYJuM

— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) December 3, 2022

It’s true that, as Michael Cox writes elsewhere on The Athletic, the chances the Dutch had on Saturday “came from more deliberate play and more obvious combination football” compared to the American opportunities, which “tended to come from freak events”. But this whole sport is made out of freak events.

The new American style, if that’s what we saw at this World Cup, is about trying to control the chaos everywhere else on the pitch so that accidents will happen where they’re more likely to help than hurt.

Was it successful? That’s up for debate. Results were same old-same old, and expected goals (another fraught measure of success for all the reasons caveated earlier) still had the US middle of the pack…

…but something had definitely changed.

This traditionally counter-attacking side played on the front foot for long stretches of all four of its games, including against a couple of major European powers. The United States passed and pressed like a modern club side, which helped them take full advantage of a new crop of kids playing at some of the best clubs in the world.

You could see the new style literally taking shape, as Berhalter’s emphasis on building from the back gave the US a series of well-structured pass networks in its adjustable 4-3-3 that captured the new tactical identity…

And you could see the new American soccer in the numbers, as metrics like long ball share, field tilt, and counter-pressing rates captured a style that has a lot more in common with the best teams in the world than it used to. The results may not be there yet, but the signs are encouraging.

“I think the American public should be optimistic,” Berhalter said after what may be his final game in charge of the national team. “I think when you look at the way that we want to play — and did play — it should be positive. Guys should gain confidence about the fact that we can play with anyone in the world the way we want to play.”

We’ll see if they managed to convince the world of that, too.

 (Photo: Clive Mason/Getty Images)