Premium: The Ball is Round. The Octagonal is Tight.
USMNT Bags a Point in 1-1 Tie with Jamaica on Weah's Goal, Now in 2nd Place Behind Canada in the Octagonal
KINGSTON, Jamaica — The youngsters on the U.S. men’s national team often sound like much older men. Captain Tyler Adams speaks as though he’s 22 going on 40 and considering a run for public office. Yunus Musah may be 18, but the Italo-Anglo-Ghanaian-American is the sturdiest player on the team and has a burnished British accent to match it. Then there’s Tim Weah, the 21-year-old whose favorite catchphrase is a wise man’s line from a coach who won the World Cup 67 years ago.
The ball is round.
Sepp Herberger, who led West Germany to an unforgettable upset of mighty Hungary in the 1954 World Cup final, said the words: “The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes. Everything else is pure theory.” It became a cultural touchstone, a symbol of the infinite possibilities in soccer and in life. The classic 1998 German film Run Lola Run is not a soccer movie at all, but it begins with an epigraph from a policeman quoting Herberger—and setting the stage for the 80 minutes of pure adrenalin to follow.
On Tuesday at The Office, the USMNT and Weah had a “ball is round” World Cup qualifier. Playing in front of his Jamaican maternal aunt on a trip to his family roots, Weah scored a savvy left-footed goal in the 11th minute to continue his terrific form and put the U.S. ahead 1-0. But just as the U.S. was dominating a game more than at any point in the Octagonal, Jamaica’s Michail Antonio equalized with an even better goal 11 minutes later, thundering a blast from distance past Zack Steffen and waking up the Reggae Boyz. “It was moving like a Jabulani ball back in the old days,” Steffen said, referring to the unpredictable ball that gave keepers nightmares during the 2010 World Cup.
Weah says he treasures the time he can spend over Christmas with his family in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, when he can get away from the pressures of playing for reigning French champion Lille for a bit and decompress. “Meditate. Zen. Relax,” he says of his visits there. “Get away from all the football, all the extra stuff, all the city life and all that. The weather’s nice, so everyone’s outside. You’re back to the roots, basically. I love it. Just go sit on the ocean, enjoy the breeze, enjoy the people. It’s just really a humbling experience going back there each time. It reminds me of where I come from.”
In the end, Jamaica had more chances to win the game than the U.S. in a 1-1 tie that would have satisfied most American teams over the years in an away qualifier but instead left this group disappointed.
“Obviously, the fans want us to win. We want to win as well,” Weah said afterward. “But the ball is round, you know. Things happen, and we just have to continue what we’re doing. I think we’re on a great path right now.”
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U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter said he was satisfied with a point on the road, but he noticed the reaction of his players as well. “In the locker room after the game, you can see it on the guys’ faces,” he said. “They weren’t happy with the point. And that’s a good sign. It shows that this group is highly motivated to win games and have high expectations for their performance.”
“It wasn’t really much of a soccer match,” said Steffen. “It’s more just physicality and who could run longer and just continue to fight.”
The draw left the U.S. on 15 points after eight games in the 14-match tournament and in second place behind Canada, which stunned third-place Mexico 2-1 in frigid Edmonton. Those three teams and Panama are packed just two points apart at the top of the table; when the Octagonal resumes in late January, three of those nations will likely qualify automatically for the World Cup, leaving the fourth-place team in an intercontinental playoff. The U.S. doesn’t want to be that team, so every point counts.
That the U.S. got even one point felt somewhat fortunate in the second half. Jamaica’s Bobby Decordova-Reid had a sitter in front of the U.S. goal thanks to a DeAndre Yedlin error but shot it over the bar, and Damion Lowe’s late header past Steffen was disallowed for a borderline foul by Lowe on Walker Zimmerman.
“I think the ref blew the whistle pretty early,” Zimmerman said afterward. “He had his eyes on it from the beginning of the play, thankfully. Sometimes you don’t get that call, but I do think it was a foul. He hit me before hitting the ball.”
The main challenge for the U.S. players heading into this game was to put the thrill of beating Mexico 2-0 at home on Friday behind them and buckle down without suspended starters Weston McKennie and Miles Robinson for a potential trap game on the road, the same kind of situation that had resulted in an ugly 1-0 loss at Panama last month.
“It’s always difficult when you have a big win like that,” Adams said, “but our main focus, and I told the team right away is, ‘Listen, we didn’t do anything. Beating Mexico doesn’t automatically qualify us for the World Cup.’ … I think in the beginning of qualifying, if a team scored a goal like that on us, then maybe we don’t come out with a point. Maybe we come out with zero, and I think now we’re showing our growth that at the end of the day we know what we need to play for.”
Few U.S. players have raised their stature during these World Cup qualifiers more than Weah, who enjoyed his third straight impressive performance after being involved in the game-winning goals against both Costa Rica and Mexico. Weah’s mother, Clar, was born in Jamaica, and he spent the days ahead of the game in Kingston discussing which family member made the best Jamaican patties and the influence of his Jamaican roots growing up in New York City.
“I’m super-proud of being a New Yorker,” Weah told me in a one-on-one interview. “New York’s the state that made me. Obviously, it’s a huge melting pot, so you’re getting a bit of each culture. The Hispanic influence is there, the Jamaican influence, the African influence, the European influence. So having that and growing up in the football system there was amazing. You get a bit of every flavor. And seeing guys like Tyler [Adams], Joe Scally, Gio [Reyna], all those guys come out of New York. I just hope that we can continue doing it for the future. It’s going to be dope.”
Weah says he likes to visit New York City in the summers, staying in SoHo and often venturing to play pickup soccer at Pier 40 on the Hudson River with people who have no idea that he’s a professional player. Over a week at Christmas time, he’ll visit his family in Liberia. It’s remarkable how little it comes up in his media interviews these days, but Tim’s father, George, is one of the greatest soccer players of the last 30 years—he won the 1995 Ballon d’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year awards with AC Milan, the only African player to have won either trophy—and since 2018 has been the president of Liberia. (Sports Illustrated’s S.L. Price wrote a phenomenal story about George Weah in 2001.)
How does Tim experience being the son of George Weah? “For me personally, I’ve always just been the chill type,” he says. “I’m not really out there much. My father’s always in the public eye, and it’s just something that we have to live with. It comes with his job, him being one of the best to play the game, and obviously with him being a president. But it really hasn’t changed the way I move, the way I act.”
Weah says he treasures the time he can spend over Christmas with his family in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, when he can get away from the pressures of playing for reigning French champion Lille for a bit and decompress. “Meditate. Zen. Relax,” he says of his visits there. “Get away from all the football, all the extra stuff, all the city life and all that. The weather’s nice, so everyone’s outside. You’re back to the roots, basically. I love it. Just go sit on the ocean, enjoy the breeze, enjoy the people. It’s just really a humbling experience going back there each time. It reminds me of where I come from.”
Still, Weah is a proud mama’s boy. He says his mother and her Jamaican side of the family have had a major influence on him, and sees her more often than his father since his dad is usually busy running a country. “My mom and dad are in the same place, but my mom is a bit more flexible in her schedule,” Weah says. “She has a charity and a little more time on her hands, so she can travel back and forth from New York to Liberia, Liberia to France. My dad stays in Liberia most of the time unless he has a meeting overseas.”
When he’s with the USMNT, Weah, 21, says there’s a fun vibe on the young squad, but he’s also quick to add that one of his closest friends is 28-year-old veteran Yedlin. The two have worked well together on the right side of the U.S. attack, and part of that chemistry, Weah says, comes from Yedlin welcoming him when he joined the national team for the first time in 2018.
“It was a bit of an older group at that time, so guys like DeAndre, Bobby Wood and John Brooks, I was hanging out with them. And we would always go out to dinner, and they brought me with the group. Building that relationship with DeAndre has been amazing. DeAndre’s like my brother. I treat him like family. Even when we’re not with the national team, I make sure I check up on him. I’m really close as well with his partner, Crystal, and they just had a beautiful baby, Seneca. I refer to Seneca as my niece. Anything they need, I’m there for them.”
Weah and Yedlin play their own roles inside the team, too. They were the ones who asked a kit man to put together the MAN IN THE MIRROR t-shirt for Christian Pulisic that he flashed after scoring against Mexico. And since September, Yedlin has been in charge of making the stadium playlist for all the music that gets played before home games.
Just as Yedlin has become a veteran presence inside the USMNT—an old man at age 28 in a starting lineup Tuesday that averaged 22 years, 341 days old—Weah has raised his stature in the squad over the last two months. “Tim is growing and establishing himself more and more in the team,” Adams says. “Obviously, him getting a run of games with Lille when he comes in here beforehand helps him a lot. And I think he’s a player that has a unique style of play and can help stretch the opponent, which he does often. He’s a unique piece for our team, and I think he’s going to be a huge part for us going forward.”
Six qualifiers remain. It will be incumbent on the U.S. to get at least six points in the two home games starting in late January—against El Salvador and Honduras—if the Yanks want to avoid feeling massive pressure during the final three-game window in March that includes daunting visits to Mexico and Costa Rica. But in eight games they have put themselves in position to qualify for the World Cup, which starts almost exactly one year from now.
“I think we’re on the right track,” Berhalter said after Tuesday’s game. “We’re basically having to get the guys experience on the fly. We’re playing an Olympic-age team, and it’s really learning as you go, and the guys have done a great job adapting to that. We’ve had very strong home performances. We’ve gotten five points on the road already in four games, and we’re on the right track. We’ll use the winter and spring of ’22 to hopefully get qualification, but the guys have been great.”
Everyone knows, though, that the ball is round. In this sport, that’s both an opportunity and a warning.
Great stuff. But i'm not sure for this cycle we can say Canada is stunning or surprising anyone.
I could see the “ air come out of the ball” for the USMNT when that equalizer rocketed into the upper right corner. To some extent, I wonder why our side seemed less energetic and fit than Jamaica. Steffen said “ it came down to physicality.” That being the case, the USMNT may be in trouble. Most teams seem bigger and stronger ….largely due to seasoned 28 year olds playing against 18-22 year olds. If we make it to the WC…..and that remains a huge “if”….. despite some brilliance and improvement, we shall have shown toughness and grit. Finesse isn’t going to be enough. My biggest disappointment was not seeing Scally on the pitch. I know Yedlin has played well, but isn’t Scally regarded as a clearly superior defender? Have you asked Gregg why he brought Scalky from Germany only to watch? Was he ill or something? Thanks for your great work. I am delighted to be a subscriber.