CINCINNATI – The US men’s national team sounds a lot like the New York Red Bulls this week, as they have clearly and repeatedly proclaimed their intention to push the tempo and dial up the speed and physicality against Mexico in Friday’s massive World Cup qualifier at FC Cincinnati's TQL Stadium (9:10 pm ET | ESPN2, Univision, TUDN).
“We want to continue to be aggressive. We want to continue to push them and see what comes,” said head coach Gregg Berhalter after he revealed his roster last week. “Continue to high press and make it uncomfortable for them. We’re okay with playing a fast game, it's something that we have the athletes to be able to do that and we want to put speed into the game.”
Notably, Berhalter emphasized Ricardo Pepi’s strengths in harrying defenders and counter-pressing to justify selecting a smaller corps of strikers and earmarking the majority of minutes to the FC Dallas homegrown this time around.
“When it comes to just the press, I feel like it's a very important moment for us to win the ball up high in the opponent's half,” said Pepi on Tuesday. “And also, I like to just work hard and recover the ball close to the goal. So I think that's a little more motivating for me as a striker.”
After using a more passive mid-block structure for long periods early in his tenure, pressing has lately become a central part of the USMNT’s identity under Berhalter. Though Tata Martino’s El Tri side are also comfortable with those tactics – they used them to roast the US in the second meeting between Berhalter and Martino, a 3-0 friendly win in 2019 – the Yanks seem to have identified high intensity as an area of advantage in this latest installment of their ancient rivalry.
“I think the game is going to be really intense, it’s going to be hectic,” said midfielder Yunus Musah on Tuesday. “It’s a derby and we want to really win the game.”
Musah has been a key cog in the energetic “MMA” central midfield trio alongside Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams, and will need to be both rugged and precise against El Tri, who could field a significantly older but very technical and experienced engine-room group. The USMNT are saying they want to boss possession, but were effective when conceding it in their Concacaf Nations League and Gold Cup final wins over Mexico earlier this year.
“In the midfield it’s a tough matchup against guys like Hector Herrera, they had Edson Alvarez in there as well, just to name a couple of players,” said Kellyn Acosta. “It's a game of duels – duels all over the field. And I think the team that wins more duels will hopefully prevail. We had two great results over the summer and obviously, it was definitely great for [us] confidence-wise, but being here in qualifiers is a different beast.”
Players like Adams and Philadelphia Union product Brenden Aaronson are very familiar with high pressing systems from their club environments, though there’s always risk in relying too heavily on intricately synchronized approaches in the tight time constrictions of an international window.
“Defensive pressure is not an easy thing to teach, especially when you don't have a group for a whole year,” said fullback DeAndre Yedlin. “It’s not a club team, it’s a national team, we’re together for 10 days at a time or two weeks at a time. But you can see it getting better and better.
“A huge emphasis with our team is we want to be on the ball. And obviously to be on the ball, you have to keep it, but when you do lose it, you want to win it back as soon as possible. So that's kind of the emphasis that we put on defensive pressure there. I think it's easy to argue that most people would probably play worse when there's pressure on them than when there's not pressure on, so we try to make it hard for teams to play.”
The hope is that Berhalter and his staff have implemented enough collective understanding over the past two-plus years for the group to quickly get on the same page for this matchup of the Concacaf Octagonal’s early leaders.
“Going into this Mexico game, I think we want to make them as uncomfortable as possible,” said Aaronson on Monday. “Come in here and just do what we've been doing in all the qualifying camps, just keep pressing, keep making it uncomfortable for them playing out of the back, because we know they're going to want to play out of the back. So yeah, I think that's something for us to really focus on.”
