Premium: Through the Trapdoor
The USMNT gets a pre-World Cup wake-up call in a 2-0 loss to Japan. And then it has to share a charter flight with a bunch of media scribes.
ON BOARD THE USMNT CHARTER FLIGHT TO ALICANTE, Spain — Act like you’ve been here before. That’s my usual mantra when finding myself in unaccustomed situations like sharing a charter flight with the U.S. men’s national team and going through the VIP wing of the airport in Düsseldorf, Germany, the one that actual rock stars pass through when they travel to their next concert.
And the fact is, I have been here before. Back in 2013, I flew with a few other journalists on the USMNT charter ferrying the team between World Cup qualifiers in Kingston, Jamaica, and Seattle. When commercial flights between two game locations are a hassle, the added convenience is nice, and we journos pay our own way to prevent any conflict of interest. Media and soccer teams flying together on charters has actually been somewhat common in Europe for travel to Champions League games.
The mere fact that there is a charter plane is a sign that U.S. Soccer has come a long way financially over the years. Back when the federation was basically broke, in 2000, I remember flying back with the USMNT on a commercial flight from a World Cup qualifier in Barbados and sitting in economy next to U.S. goalkeeper Zach Thornton. Poor Zach was stuck in a middle seat, and he was a big guy, so he was pushing up against his armrests in a major way.
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Middle seats in economy class were a way of life for U.S. national teams for a long time (more so in the not–too-distant past for the women’s team). Say what you will about Jürgen Klinsmann’s tenure as the USMNT coach, but he did more than anyone else to pressure U.S. Soccer into spending more on travel accommodations (flights, hotels, etc.), which was possible once the federation started bringing in more revenue. As a result, you couldn’t excuse a bad performance by saying you had been staying in a roach motel in Central America or, for that matter, Florida.
We’ll get to the no-excuses bad performance the U.S. delivered in Friday’s 2-0 loss to Japan soon enough here, I promise, but having brought you onto Friday’s charter plane, I feel like I should share some details to answer any questions you might have:
• No, the media doesn’t interact with the players onboard. Media and U.S. Soccer staff board first and sit in the back half of the plane. The players and coaches board after that and sit in the front half. It’s not like I’m going to walk up to Christian Pulisic and ask him for an interview. Everyone’s a pro here. (Again: Act like you’ve been here before.)
The vibe is a little like the old Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue launch parties that SI writers would be invited to; the models tolerated our presence (kind of like the USMNT players do now), but it’s not like they were overjoyed we were there. (The one exception was Chrissy Teigen. She always liked meeting writers for some reason. Maybe it was because we weren’t the leering mid-level sponsor bros who were also at those events and took pictures with the models, but you’d have to ask her. I have yet to meet Chrissy’s USMNT equivalent. Remind me to tell you the story of when Cristiano Ronaldo came to that SI swimsuit party when his then-girlfriend, Irina Shayk, was on the cover.)
• Times have changed since the 1970s. When I recently re-watched the classic documentary Once in a Lifetime about the New York Cosmos with Pelé, Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia, someone in the movie was talking about the charter flight the Cosmos took to the 1977 Soccer Bowl in Portland, Ore., and casually dropped the nugget that at least two sex acts took place on the plane. That is, um, not the case on this flight.
• The plane itself is totally fine, but it’s not like we’re flying on a PJ with captain’s chairs, leather sofas and a fully-stocked bar or anything. (All those things seemed to be in play when, for example, Leeds United flies in Tyler Adams once his transfer has been arranged.) In fact, this plane is six seats to a row, with about the same amount of legroom as premium economy on a commercial flight. It’s no different for the players and coaches up front. I’m kind of bummed there’s no wifi available on the plane, but it’s only a two-and-a-half-hour flight from Düsseldorf to Alicante, so the time saved is still worth it.
• Somewhat scarily, we go through significant turbulence on the flight, including seeing lightning strikes outside the plane. It’s enough that one of my scribe colleagues wonders if, should the flight go down, we journos might be listed as “X number of others on the plane” in news reports.
• I can’t help but remember rank-and-file players like Alan Gordon, my favorite MLS player in history, who took his first charter flight from Los Angeles to Toronto when David Beckham joined him on the LA Galaxy in 2007. When the flight attendant came to offer Gordon a pre-takeoff cocktail, he looked around at the first-class leather seating, the lie-flat beds and the fully stocked bar up front. “Let me tell you something, ma’am,” Gordon said, turning on the charm. “This is nicer than my apartment.” The flight attendant laughed. “No,” he replied. “I’m serious.”
• The best part of the experience might be the VIP lounge at the airport, where the staff (presumably thinking we’re actual VIPs) constantly brings you drinks, food, wifi passwords and just about anything else you might want. This must be how the other half lives, and it’s kind of nice.
When one of the servers says she likes my hat, I consider telling her that my name is Gio Reyna or Iron Maiden drummer Nicko McBrain. I’m the only member of the media/USSF staff contingent who gets a beer, which I’m kind of proud of. I’ve also never flown out of an airport where nobody checked my ID before. They did make us go through security, though.
The other reason it’s a subdued flight is that the U.S. basically stunk up the joint on Friday against Japan. We should talk about that, too.
Zero shots on goal. Turnovers galore, especially in the first half, mostly by the centerbacks and midfielders. Cool domination by Japan. Let’s be honest: The U.S. looked bad in Friday’s 2-0 loss, and hardly like a team that will advance in the World Cup playing this way.
Midfielder Tyler Adams plays for a high-pressure club team at Leeds United, so he knows the ways to solve pressure, too. After the game, he could only shake his head over the U.S.’s inability to get things right. Starting centerbacks Aaron Long and Walker Zimmerman got exposed trying to pass the ball, and Adams, Weston McKennie and Luca de la Torre couldn’t keep possession either.
“I felt like we were just playing into Japan’s hands,” Adams said. “We could have figured out quite easily that they were pressing us high, and the solution I think in the beginning of the game was probably to play a little bit more direct, a little bit in behind to settle that pressure and have them think to drop off a little bit and create more space and calmness on the ball. But it was difficult. We didn’t find solutions early on.”
One of the main reasons Zimmerman clawed his way into a lock starting position during World Cup qualifying was his improvement in passing the ball out of the back, a steadiness that eventually won over U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter and helped vault Zimmerman ahead of ball-playing centerbacks Tim Ream and John Brooks. But Zimmerman took a step backward with his passing against Japan.
“We were pretty disappointed with how it went, especially the first half,” Zimmerman said afterward. “We played it into their pressure a good bit, and a lot of their chances came from our mistakes. So that’s something we obviously have to look back on and realize we can’t force it so much inside all the time, especially when teams are put in a shape to make us do that. And maybe there are times we can stretch them and get in behind with some runs and be a little more direct.”
The U.S. doesn’t have a prototype speedy forward who can run in behind defenses to keep them honest, however, and Jesús Ferreira and Josh Sargent certainly weren’t that on Friday. We could write a whole treatise comparing the 2022 U.S. forward search to 2010, but part of Bob Bradley’s quest in 2010 was to find a defense-stretching striker to replace Charlie Davies after his auto accident. Bradley settled on Robbie Findley, and while you can understand the thought process, it didn’t exactly work out.
McKennie in particular had an off game, losing possession frequently (including on the play that led to Japan’s first goal) and sometimes not tracking back quickly enough to put out the fire. His Juventus team has been struggling lately, and U.S. fans will have to hope that form doesn’t carry over to the World Cup.
About the only semi-bright spot for the U.S. was goalkeeper Matt Turner, who made some solid saves and kept the scoreline from being even worse. It should be said that Turner wasn’t sending Ederson-style balls deep to solve Japan’s pressure either, but that’s not Turner’s game. Shot-stopping is, but while that’s Job 1 for a keeper and enough for many watchers to lean toward Turner as the No. 1 for the World Cup, you can’t escape the feeling that Berhalter will still favor Zack Steffen if he’s healthy.
You can be certain that the U.S.’s World Cup opponents will watch the Japan game and see that the U.S. can be pressured, and the Yanks will have to hope they learn from what happened on Friday—just as they did following a similar performance in a 3-0 friendly loss to Mexico in 2019. The key difference now, though, is that the U.S. has only one more game to play before the World Cup.
“We try to use these games to replicate what a World Cup scenario would look like, and for us that would be that we didn’t get three points at the end of the day,” Adams said. “So we need to figure it out. Because we obviously have high standards for ourselves, especially going into a World Cup in two months, so we need a better performance coming out of this camp.”
That chance comes on Tuesday in Spain against fellow World Cup entrant Saudi Arabia.
We want to hear the Ronaldo story! (Great insight into your profession, by the way…)
Thank you for saying what’s been on my worried mind for the GK situation. Turner is the CLEAR choice and I saw so many comments about how the game locked up the starting job for Turner. I just have a bad feeling that GGG is going to start Steffen if given the chance with some BS like “you can’t lose your job due to injury.”