Soccer newsletter: U.S. men’s team players show support for Gregg Berhalter
Hello and welcome to the weekly L.A. Times soccer newsletter. I’m Kevin Baxter, The Times’ soccer writer. Today we’ll discuss the upcoming U.S. national team camp, Banc of California’s popularity among MLS visitors, how Erling Haaland’s record scoring pace might prove to be the thing that prevents Manchester City from winning the Premier League and why we wait for iconic figures to die before we decide to truly honor their legacies.
But we start with the support former U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter is getting from national team players as he awaits a decision from the federation on his future.
Berhalter coached the team for the last four years and compiled the best winning percentage for a permanent manager in U.S. Soccer history. But his contract ran out on New Year’s Eve, shortly after the federation began an investigation into a 1991 incident in which the coach admitted he kicked the woman who later became his wife in the legs during an argument when they were 18-year-old college freshmen.
The physical altercation, which was not reported to authorities, didn’t become public until Claudio and Danielle Reyna, longtime friends of the Berhalters, told the federation about it. What followed is a Shakespearean tale of friendship and betrayal fueled by the Reynas’ displeasure over how Berhalter used their son Gio during last year’s World Cup in Qatar.
Earlier this month Berhalter released a statement describing the incident as “a shameful moment and one I regret to this day” and during last week’s MLS media day in San Jose, national team players Walker Zimmerman and DeAndre Yedlin, both defenders, came to the defense of their former coach.
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“Gregg has done a great job for the national team. The record speaks for itself,” Zimmerman said of Berhalter, who was 37-11-12 with the U.S. “He did a really good job of creating a team culture and a chemistry that was impressive. He has handled a lot of things very, very well.”
Yedlin agreed.
“Gregg’s a great head coach,” he said. “He did a great job of banding us together and really making sure we’re all fighting for the same goal. I’ve really enjoyed working with him.”
Whether he’ll get to continue working with him is uncertain. U.S. Soccer hired the Atlanta-based law firm of Alston & Bird LLP to conduct an independent investigation into the 1991 incident as well as “potential inappropriate behavior towards multiple members of our staff by individuals outside of our organization,” the federation said in a statement.
Berhalter would like to return as coach and said he looked forward to “continuing my conversations with U.S. Soccer about the future.” At the same time, the federation has reached out to other candidates, with the French newspaper L’Equipe reporting last week that former Real Madrid coach Zinedine Zidane was approached about the job and turned it down.
In the meantime, Berhalter assistant Anthony Hudson will serve as caretaker manager for the team’s first training camp of 2023, which opens Saturday.
LAFC midfielder Kellyn Acosta declined to address Berhalter’s current situation directly, but said the coach was “a guy I respect a lot.”
“He’s the guy that gave me the opportunity to make my debut in a World Cup, and I think he did a great job in the World Cup,” Acosta said.
None of the American players addressed Gio Reyna’s role in the controversy. After arriving in Qatar, Reyna reportedly was told he would have a limited role in the World Cup, and in response, he put so little effort into training that the coaching staff considered sending him home. Reyna apologized to the team for his behavior but that didn’t stop his parents, both former national team players, from stabbing Berhalter in the back.
St. Louis City goalkeeper Roman Burki, who played with Reyna for Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, did talk about his former teammate last week and suggested a strong work ethic wasn’t something Reyna always had.
“What happened in the national team, I really don’t know. So I cannot talk about this,” he said. “But I’ve known Gio for a long period of time. When I was there, he was a really young kid. Gio was always special. [But] he had to learn how to work hard.”
LAFC’s Acosta, Long to get USMNT call-up
Speaking of the national team, the roster for the first training camp of the new World Cup cycle will be announced Wednesday and there will be a few surprises.
Those expected to be among the 23 players called in are Acosta and new LAFC addition Aaron Long, both of whom were on the team in Qatar. The January camp, which falls outside a FIFA competition window, traditionally has been limited to MLS players but this week’s call-ups will include some young players from outside the U.S.
The inclusion of Long and Acosta suggested there will be continuity between Hudson’s and Berhalter’s teams, but it’s also a nod to Acosta’s skills as a leader. His 55 caps rank fourth among active national team players and he’ll be counted on to provide a veteran presence for newcomers such as Julian Gressel, a veteran German-born MLS defender who recently became an American citizen and will train with the national team for the first time. The Washington Post last week reported Gressel will be among those who will be at Dignity Health Sports Park when the week-long camp opens Saturday.
The U.S. will play a pair of friendlies next week, facing Serbia at Banc of California Stadium on Jan. 25 and Colombia at Dignity Health Sports Park on Jan. 28.
Banking on the Banc
During Media Day interviews with MLS veterans, Yahoo Sports’ Andy Deossa asked players to name their favorite road stadium. The runaway winner of the informal survey was LAFC’s Banc of California Stadium.
Sporting Kansas City’s Alan Pulido said he appreciated the fans, the noise and the atmosphere while Seattle’s Raúl Ruidíaz said he simply likes the color black, the dominant hue at the Banc. The Galaxy’s Javier “Chicharito” Hernández likes the stadium because he enjoys the intensity of the El Tráfico rivalry games with LAFC.
That intensity, of course, also is present when the rivalry moves 12 miles down the freeway to Carson, which is why LAFC captain Carlos Vela said his favorite road stadium is Dignity Health Sports Park.
“For me,” he said in Spanish, “the best [road] game is there.”
Is Manchester City better with Haaland?
Despite going goalless in his last two Premier League appearances, the first time he’s been kept off the scoresheet in consecutive Premier League games this season, Erling Haaland’s 21 goals in 17 games leave him on pace to destroy the Premier League’s scoring record of 34 goals in a season set by the Blackburn Rovers’ Alan Shearer in 1994-95 when a season consisted of 42 games. At the same time his team, Manchester City, is on pace for its second-worst season in six years and its first without a league title since 2020.
Those two facts might be related.
In City’s best season under manager Pep Guardiola — in 2017-18, when it set EPL records with 100 points and 106 goals — it had four players score in double digits led by Sergio Aguero’s 21. Yet Aguero’s total accounted for just one-fifth of the team’s total and, two years later, when City scored 102 times, five players had 11 or more goals.
This season only Phil Foden, who has seven goals, is on pace to finish with more than 10. Haaland, meanwhile, has scored nearly half of City’s league-best 46 goals and has more goals than seven teams in the EPL.
His numbers are off the charts: Through his first 17 league matches, he had taken 67 shots, including 34 on goal. That works out to an average of two shots on target and 1.24 goals per game. Six of those scores have been game-winners. If he and the team continue scoring at that rate, Haaland will finish with about 45 goals and City with 97 — yet the team will end the season eight points behind Arsenal in the table, as close to sixth place as it is first.
Opponents clearly know Haaland is the most dangerous threat on the team and despite the stats, they’ve now found a way to slow him. But Guardiola hasn’t found a way to make them pay for that; with Saturday’s loss to Manchester United, City has lost consecutive games in all competitions for the first time this season, and with Haaland scoreless in 2023, City hasn’t had multiple goals in a match in nearly three weeks.
Perhaps that’s because Haaland doesn’t fit neatly into Guardiola’s preferred style of play. Under the former Barcelona midfielder, City plays a possession-based, short-passing game, which is why it leads the league by wide margins in passing and possession and has controlled the ball more than two-thirds of the time this season. Haaland, meanwhile, is averaging just 14 passes a game; four teammates are averaging more than a pass per minute.
None of this is to suggest Haaland is a drag on the team. Add his three assists to his 21 goals and he’s had a hand in 24 of City’s 46 goals. How could a player that productive be anything but a plus?
But City is playing too direct when it targets Haaland, a specialist who does one thing very well — score goals. His addition this season has turned what traditionally has been a well-balanced, versatile team that plays wide into a one-dimensional, vertical one. And when opponents are successful at neutralizing Haaland, City has had trouble finding a scoring alternative.
Consider that in the first Manchester Derby this season, Haaland had a hat trick in a 6-3 win. Saturday he wasn’t a factor in a 2-1 loss, taking just 19 touches and two shots, neither of which was on target.
“It’s about the whole team. We defended so, so well,” United’s Luke Shaw said of the approach to stopping Haaland.
That’s a playbook City opponents will exploit.
Why do we wait for our heroes to die to honor them?
In the final days of 2022 the world lost Pelé, the most transformative player in soccer history, and U.S. Soccer lost Kevin Payne, who was instrumental in the growth of the national team program and MLS.
Pelé, the only player to win three World Cups, used his speed, skill and improvisation to change the way the game was played and paved the way for the likes of Diego Maradona, Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. For the first 12 years of Pele’s international career, soccer was a slow and punishingly physical game played with a leather ball and without yellow or red cards. But he was a butterfly not a brute; a dancer not a boxer. As a result Pelé, more than anyone else, made the beautiful game truly beautiful.
Payne, meanwhile, was one of the first U.S. executives on the business side of the sport to combine a strong passion for soccer with knowledge of a spreadsheet. Payne was president, general manager and later CEO of D.C. United when it won MLS Cups in 1996, 1997, 1999 and 2004. Most recently, he was CEO and executive director of U.S. Club Soccer, and his fingerprints are everywhere in the American game, which is why he was enshrined in the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2021.
After both men’s deaths, the idea of naming awards or stadiums in their honor was floated.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who attended Pelé’s funeral in Brazil, asked each of FIFA’s member associations to hold a minute of silence at games in Pele’s memory. He also suggested every association name at least one stadium in their country after Pelé.
“I think the young people around the world, the future generations, have to know and remember who Pelé was, and the happiness he gave the world,” Infantino said. “In 20, 30, 50, or 100 years’ time, when goals are scored in the Pelé stadium in any country in the world, and people ask who he was, [they will hear] he was a great, great player who brought excitement to us all.”
Meanwhile, MLS has a long tradition of naming postseason awards after former players, coaches and executives, and Payne is more than worthy of having one christened with his name. The league’s MVP award, for example, is named after Landon Donovan, the coach of the year award is in honor of Sigi Schmid and the league’s top executive receives the Doug Hamilton award. Donovan still is alive while Schmid and Hamilton, a former Galaxy president and general manager, are, such as Pelé and Payne, dead.
Which brings us to my point (and yes, I do have one).
Why do we wait until people such as Pelé, Payne, Schmid and Hamilton die before finding ways to honor them? Pelé hasn’t played a game in decades and Payne retired from U.S. Club Soccer in 2021. Their careers had ended and their contributions were fixed. If they deserve recognition now, in death, didn’t they also deserve it while they were alive and could appreciate knowing their contributions would be memorialized?
This isn’t only a problem in soccer. Major League Baseball’s Rookie of the Year award was changed to the Jackie Robinson Award 15 years after Robinson’s death and the Cy Young Award, given to the best pitcher in each league, was first presented in 1956, the year after Young died. The NFL’s top community service award was renamed for Walter Payton a year after the Chicago Bears great died.
The NBA, to its credit, has named several of its top awards after people who are still alive.
The danger of doing that, of course, is people who are alive have the ability to do something stupid that tarnishes their reputation and bring embarrassment to the league that named an award after them. Imagine if the NFL had named an award for its top rusher after O.J. Simpson, the first ballcarrier to run for more than 2,000 yards in a season?
In the case of Pelé and Payne, there was little chance of that happening. Both were solid citizens and worthy ambassadors of the game. So lost in the waiting to name something in their honor was the chance to have Pelé cut the ribbon on a Pelé Stadium somewhere or to present the first Pelé Player of the Year Award; lost in the waiting was the chance to see Payne announce the winner of the MLS/Kevin Payne President of the Year trophy.
Here’s hoping we don’t lose many more opportunities like that.
And finally there’s this …
Tyler Adams, at 23 the youngest national team captain at last year’s World Cup in Qatar, was named U.S. Soccer’s male athlete of the year.
Podcast
Don’t miss my weekly podcast on the Corner of the Galaxy site as co-host Josh Guesman and I discuss the Galaxy each Monday. You can listen to the most recent podcast here.
In case you missed it
How the Santa Clarita Blue Heat became a hotbed for rising women’s soccer stars
Galaxy coach Greg Vanney enters season with experienced roster
Harvard-Westlake’s Alyssa Thompson selected No. 1 by Angel City in NWSL draft
Chris Klein to return as Galaxy’s president for 11th season despite MLS sanctions
Chicharito, Carlos Vela and Alan Pulido weigh in on future of Mexican soccer
LAFC reloads roster as it prepares to chase more trophies than any other MLS team
Quotebook
“This was the hardest decision that I’ve ever had to make in my life. There were so many back-and-forths about it, but in the end, I decided that it was the best for me.”
Angel City’s Alyssa Thompson, the first high school player taken with the first pick in the NWSL draft, on going pro rather than going to college
Until next time...
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