Sebastian Berhalter sparks USMNT into Gold Cup quarterfinals | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

It’s a journey of nearly 8,000 miles (more than 12,000 kilometers) from Austin to Riyadh, roughly a third of the way around the Earth’s circumference.

Yet on Thursday night in central Texas, Saudi Arabia showed the US men’s national team they’re quite familiar with the verb form of Concacaf, despite being newcomers to the Gold Cup, invited guests from the Asian confederation for the tournament’s 2025 and 2027 editions.

The Arabian Falcons stifled, baited and overall frustrated the Yanks on a muggy, tetchy evening at Q2 Stadium, forcing Mauricio Pochettino and his team to adapt on the fly as they sought to break down their crafty, organized visitors, whose sturdy 4-3-3 shape limited the USMNT to just 0.70 expected goals despite more than 67% possession and some 469 passes completed.

Sunday’s festive 5-0 destruction of Trinidad & Tobago, this was not.

“To move forward,” said the Argentine coach in Spanish postgame, “sometimes you have to suffer.”

Finding a way

Indeed, the USMNT did exactly that and walked away vindicated, notching another clean sheet in a 1-0 win that booked their place in the Gold Cup knockout stages with a game to spare.

The defining moment arrived via a set piece, Sebastian Berhalter curling in a scrumptious delivery for FC Dallas product Chris Richards to stab home the game’s only goal in the 63rd minute and set up a much less nervy Group D finale vs. Haiti on Sunday (7 pm ET | FOX, TUDN, ViX).

“We needed tonight,” Richards told FOX reporter Jenny Taft postgame.

“It was a tough game against a tough opponent, props to them. But that’s Concacaf for you; sometimes you’ve got to get physical. Sometimes you’ve got to get nasty. I think that's exactly what we did tonight.”

Berhalter's breakout

It was a vital strike, forged over long hours on the training grounds of both the USMNT and Vancouver Whitecaps FC, as Berhalter revealed to Taft.

“It’s something I’ve been working on, with Vancouver in training, and something I’ve harped on,” explained the central midfielder, son of former US boss Gregg Berhalter. “The coaching staff said this year I could be one of the best set-piece takers in MLS, and that's something I've been trying to put the work in, and it's paying off.

“I think we dug deep,” he added.

This was just the third international cap of Berhalter’s career. You’d hardly have known by watching him, as he totaled 72 touches, 48/54 passes completed (89%) and six defensive actions in addition to his game-winning assist.

"I am so happy with him. He's a player with amazing quality," said Pochettino, “and then he's very competitive – he’s so competitive. I really like the way that he's always involved. He's fighting with the opponent, he’s trying to be a little bit naughty with some actions. That means he’s really competitive and wants to win.

"Yes, I am so happy because I think we were following him, and now we decide to bring and I think, yes, happy because he's performing and helping the team to grow. That is so, so important."

Game-changing effort

The goal was Richards’ second game-defining play. The other: the Crystal Palace center back’s long, hard recovery run capped by a perfectly-timed block of Abdulrahman Al-Oboud's goal-bound shot after the Saudi striker broke into acres of space behind Orlando City right back Alex Freeman on a transition moment half an hour in.

It was just the sort of committed, borderline desperate play Pochettino has been crying out for his players to show him since he took over the program last fall. His subsequent praise was appropriately glowing, reflecting his belief that this extensive period together – even with stars of the program like Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie absent – is molding his squad into something greater than the sum of its parts.

"That is what we want and that is what we expect," said ‘Poch’ of Richards’ vital block. "You create that platform, that the players start to feel very confident, and they feel the power of the energy, and we start to play like a team, then starts to appear these types of situations.

"The spirit of the group forces you to do something sometimes heroic. And maybe even if you say ‘uff, it’s going to be difficult,’ but you try. And when you try, it's possible," he continued. "I think this situation happened with the energy on the team.

"It’s the energy that you are seeing now, and that is from now, what we want to keep, until the World Cup.”