Belgium<\/a> had already fashioned a few promising scoring chances and seen a goal by Charles De Ketelaere disallowed for offside. But going behind seemed to alert Belgium that the game had indeed begun. From there, they methodically strung together five goals of all shapes and sizes: a daisy-cutter from outside the box; a low, placed shot; a curler; a penalty; a close-range finish. They all went unanswered until, in the late going, Patrick Agyemang finally tallied another one for the Americans.<\/p>\nRemarkably, things might have been much worse. Matt Turner, finally back in goal for the US after a dozen games displaced by Matt Freese, made a raft of strong saves to keep the rout from running up further.<\/p>\n
Pochettino\u2019s side gathered up more of the possession over the course of the game. But a Belgian team that cruised to qualification for the upcoming World Cup without losing a game threatened more, connected and moved more incisively, and ultimately proved far more clinical in front of goal, converting half of their 10 shots on goal. Therein lay the difference between this ascendant USMNT program and the sorts of opponents it aspires to match. Still.<\/p>\n
To Turner \u2013 poor Turner, let back on to the field at last, only to get his chance in this game \u2013 the contest brought to mind another handy defeat three-and-a-half years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt reminded me a lot of the Netherlands game in the World Cup, where you\u2019re going against a really experienced team that knows how to suffer, knows how to accept pressure and then turn around,\u201d he recalled, likening Saturday\u2019s humbling to the 3-1 round-of-16 defeat to the Dutch at the 2022 World Cup. \u201cThey were absolutely clinical in the final third.\u201d<\/p>\n
This loss to Belgium also felt like a yardstick of sorts when laid beside the 2-1 extra-time defeat to the Red Devils in the last 16 of the 2014 World Cup. Then, as now, the Belgians produced chances on an industrial scale, only for the score to be held down by an American goalkeeper \u2013 Tim Howard setting a World Cup record for saves.<\/p>\n
If Saturday\u2019s first-half suggested that the USMNT had gained substantial ground, asserting themselves against a global soccer power, albeit hardly a World Cup favorite, the second posed the question how much progress had really been made in almost a dozen years.<\/p>\n
Usually, the sensible answer lay somewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n
Yet this particular loss felt revelatory in the same way those knockouts in 2014 and 2022 did, even coming as it did in a friendly. The Americans flashed the same old na\u00efvet\u00e9, not to mention a skill gap exposed by an opponent that could match the US for physicality.<\/p>\n
Some good may yet come of Saturday\u2019s dreary afternoon. Looked at one way, the timing of this truncheoning was terrible, just as the glare on this team sharpens in the home stretch to the long-awaited World Cup on home soil. Pochettino and his winger Tim Weah, who acquitted himself relatively well in the impossible task of chaining down J\u00e9r\u00e9my Doku, saw it another way.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely a difficult experience,\u201d Weah told TNT. \u201cWe just have to get back into the lab and continue working. \u2026 Right now is the best time for this to happen. We have a World Cup to think about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis type of thing is good because we have the time to improve,\u201d added Pochettino. \u201cIt\u2019s a good check of reality for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Certainly, much the better to suffer this collapse now than in three months. If you learn from it, that is. If time reveals it to have been a teachable moment, rather than a portent.<\/p>\n
Leander Schaerlaeckens\u2019s book on the United States men\u2019s national soccer team, The Long Game, is out on May 12. You can preorder it here<\/a>. He teaches at Marist University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mauricio Pochettino was literally unmoved. To his left and right, his assistants pumped their fists, clapped their hands,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-502512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}