Jesse Marsch talked the talk before Saturday’s match, ruffling quite a few feathers south of the border with his unfiltered perspectives on the US men’s national team and its federation.
And his Canadian men’s national team duly walked the walk in Kansas City, soundly beating their US counterparts to earn their program’s first win over the Yanks on US soil since 1957, via a 2-1 scoreline that actually flattered the hosts.
“Yeah, of course, I enjoyed it, and I was certain that we would play well,” Marsch, reportedly a finalist for the USMNT coaching job last year before an 11th-hour pivot back to the since-deposed Gregg Berhalter, told reporters afterward.
“I wasn't certain we would win, but I was certain that we would play well. And so from the beginning, to see us with confidence and personality and loud on the pitch – it was not easy with the heat and everything, but we were on the front foot the whole match.”
Lights out from Les Rouges
The Canucks were far superior to a startlingly flat US side in the first half, preying on their ponderous buildups with sharp pressing and rapid transitions. A composed finish by Nashville SC’s Jacob Shaffelburg after one such turnover provided an early lead, and with an expected-goals total quadruple that of the USMNT’s in the opening 45 minutes, the visitors had ample reason to rue not adding another goal or two to the scoreboard.
They fixed that with a ruthless second after the break, Jonathan David both engineering and finishing the move after a Tim Ream turnover at the top of his own penalty box.
“I don't have to tell the players that Christian Pulisic is an important player for their team. They all know that,” explained Marsch. “But certainly making sure that when he would get on the ball, that we were closing space, that we were being aggressive with him, that we were trying to eliminate his ability to have time and space on the ball was important.
“And then in buildup, we wanted to make it hard on Tim [Ream] and try to make sure that Tim wasn't able to just pick us apart. We knew that they liked to play through the middle, and when they played through the middle, we wanted to really jump on their players, win balls and play forward and get into transition. So those were some things that I thought we did well.”
Lackluster USMNT
Goaded by the quality and urgency of substitutes Aidan Morris and Luca de la Torre, the Yanks rallied in the friendly’s final half-hour to set up a close finish, but there would be no coming back from their woeful start.
“All around the park today, our mentality wasn't quite there,” US center back Chris Richards said on the TBS postgame show.
It was an unwelcome reprise of the complacency that torpedoed their Copa América campaign, which ended prematurely at the group stage – and resulted in Berhalter’s firing – while Marsch and Canada advanced to the semifinals.
“I think our biggest thing was mentality. First half, I feel like we lost a lot of challenges, lost a lot of second balls,” said Richards. “At halftime we determined that if we at least win half of those second balls, that we're going to give ourselves a better chance in the game.
“We've learned in Copa that mentality is the number one thing. I mean, you can control that. If you're on the pitch, sometimes the ball might not go your way, you might hit the post, you can miss passes, but a non-negotiable is mentality, and I think we lacked a bit of that in the first half today.”
The USMNT attack was so toothless, their passing sequences so often disrupted by Canadian energy over the 60-plus minutes, that interim coach Mikey Varas, the interim head coach who is leading the US while the process of hiring Mauricio Pochettino drags on interminably, held up his hand with postgame mea culpas.
“At the end of the day, I think with the ball, that's on me, because I want to present some ideas to them; you just never know how it's going to translate from training to the game after three training sessions. And I asked a lot of them,” said the US U-20s coach. “That's on me, multiple goals, because when you don't have a lot of time to work and you want to play a certain way, it creates confusion.”
But he could not and would not fall on the sword for the lack of pace, intensity and commitment from a squad that retained plenty of talent and experience even with a few starters absent.
“The messages at halftime were, we can't be so static with the ball. We're not passing just to pass the ball, we’ve got to play in behind more, we can't go backwards all the time,” said Varas. “But the biggest message was, we’re losing all the duels, we're not running enough, we're not fouling in transition.
“The response in the second half was better … [but] all of them will know that the mentality in the first half [was poor] -- and they’ve got to search there. They’ve got to search deep inside: Why? You know, that'll be something that I challenge them with.”
Concacaf kings?
Arriving hard on the heels of the two nations’ starkly contrasting displays in Copa América, the result can only bolster the perception that Les Rouges, not their southern neighbors, are the top side in Concacaf at present, at least until Pochettino or whoever takes the helm on a permanent basis can weave some magic.
“I don't want to start talking like that yet,” said Marsch. “I'll talk more about just the adaptation for this team to be the team that I want them to be, tactically, mentality-wise. It's been a real pleasure to coach them, and that's what I think you see tonight. It's the discipline, it's the organization, it's the aggressiveness, it's the understanding of what we want the game to look like.
“I challenged them when they came back in that we couldn't pick up where we left off, that they had to continue to employ things that I knew were going to make them better players with their club teams. And I think, as soon as I saw the first training session this week, I was like, well, they've done exactly that.”
