🇺🇸 The States has the sauce: Flashy USMNT extends Mexico dominance
PLUS: Jamaica jokes & a lesson for San Marino in the Conca-catch-up
Reporting from Arlington, Texas
Audacity. Boldness. Trickery. Sauce.
The United States had it Sunday night. Mexico was missing it.
Pick your moment from the Stars and Stripes’ 2-0 victory over El Tri. Was it Tyler Adams, lining up a comet tail from 30 yards out? Sergino Dest shifting through Mexico’s middle for a shot or the cheeky move he made to win the corner that eventually led to Adams’ goal?
Maybe it was Christian Pulisic hopping over a sliding Jorge Sanchez in the lead-up to Gio Reyna’s finish?
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Whatever you think the best move was, it’s clear. The United States is the confident team in Concacaf, ready to pull out a flashy move against a rival they believe they can beat.
“That’s just who the team is,” U.S. center back Tim Ream told me after the match. “Mentally, we’re strong. We try to play with a little bit of swagger, but we know you still have to do the physical side of the game. If you do the physical side, you can do the other parts.”
Unbeaten in the last seven - five of those matches wins - against Mexico, whether the United States is the stronger team in the rivalry right now isn’t really a question.
The fact that the U.S. is currently better than Mexico and beating El Tri with flair, well, it’s something we’ve never seen before.
Mexico has always been the team in Concacaf that puts the sazón in their play, both in terms of flashy play and the experience to understand when to take the tricks out of the bag and when to leave them in.
This isn’t a plea for the glory days or a ‘They don’t make ‘em like ‘Temo any more!’ whine from a 90s kid. The systemic issues that have allowed U.S. players to blow past their counterparts of the same age when it comes to development are the same ones keeping Mexican players from having the skillset Blanco, Hugo Sanchez or even Giovani dos Santos had.
Frankly, that creativity the U.S. showed Sunday is what so often has been missing from the team in the worst performances of the Berhalter era. Just three nights before, who was ‘trying shit’ for the U.S.? Who was maneuvering past defenders, trying a cheeky nutmeg, threading in a clever through ball?
Some of that is down to what Jamaica was doing, with Damion Lowe playing as the midfield destroyer in front of three more capable defenders. But Edson Alvarez is no slouch in the Mexico middle, and there the Americans were, dancing by.
“We’ve been really confident in our team’s ability. Sometimes it’s hard when you come in and have a game really quickly and short training sessions to feel like you gel together in that first game,” Adams said after. “Jamaica was not getting the jitters out but getting some of the work we’ve been putting in not into effect.”
There is obviously a line between beating a player in a one-on-one that fits within the game plan and looking like a FIFA Street reboot every time you’re on the ball.
That line is personified in Dest, who seemed to be intent to gift a scoring chance to PSV teammate Hirving Lozano in the opening moments of the match and then seemed prepared to score and set up a few goals of his own later.
“Sergiño had a bit of a tough time early on but then grew into the game and you saw as the first half went on - you saw. I had to make sure that I wasn’t just sitting back and watching like I was in an armchair because it’s so impressive what he can do with the ball,” Ream said. “When he’s on his game, he’s on.
“Tyler doing what he does, breaking things up and pulling out a goal. It’s just who the team is and what each individual carries in the team.”
While the U.S. continues to work toward becoming a team that is greater than the sum of its parts (and get those parts working together in ways they simply did not in Thursday’s semifinal), the path forward is less clear for Mexico.
The players in the squad who you’d expect to provide those moments of magic, the unbalancing of a defense seem to either have hit a ceiling (Lozano, Uriel Antuna), haven’t shown at the international level what they’ve done with their clubs (OK, this is pretty much just Santi Gimenez) or are unable to push past their current levels to even reach the national team (Diego Lainez, Cesar Huerta).
Right now, the U.S. has the sauce. Mexico is missing flavor. Until that changes, the balance of the rivalry will stay the same.
Conca-catch-up and mustard
🇯🇲 Jamaica beat Panama 1-0 in the third-place game, and Reggae Boyz manager Heimir Hallgrimsson was in good spirits after, conducting a news conference in which he:
Joked that goalscorer Dexter Lembikisa was pulled in for drug testing because organizers felt he must have been high to try the shot he tried.
Said “Of course, we got some prize money, so probably the JFF can now pay our flight back home at least!”