ON WEDNESDAY, U.S. Soccer made the decision to fire USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter following a disappointing showing at the Copa America where the team crashed out in the group stages on home soil.

The announcement had comments from federation president Cindy Parlow Cone and Director of Sporting Matt Crocker who both thanked Berhalter and said the search for the next coach has already begun.  

“I want to thank Gregg for his hard work and dedication to U.S. Soccer and our Men’s National Team,” said U.S. Soccer President Cindy Parlow Cone. “We are now focused on working with our Sporting Director Matt Crocker and leveraging his experience at the highest levels of the sport to ensure we find the right person to lead the USMNT into a new era of on-field success.”

“Our immediate focus is on finding a coach who can maximize our potential as we continue to prepare for the 2026 World Cup, and we have already begun our search process,” added Crocker.

Now the USMNT will enter into another search period and while previous searches have lasted months with interim managers having extended runs (Dave Sarachan managed the team from November 2017 through all of 2018 and Anthony Hudson/B.J Callaghan led the team from January 2023 through July 2023), the indications are that this one should not take nearly as long.

“I think now we’re in a better place to have much more of a targeted search where I’ll be more inclined to go hard and go early with specific candidates that I feel meet the criteria that we’re looking for,” Crocker told media members on Wednesday.

Whether that means the next manager is ready for September remains to be seen.

Here are some thoughts on the news.

Results and regression

What led to this was the bottom line of results. Since Berhalter returned to the job last September, the team was poor in friendlies. In competitive games, the team lost to Trinidad & Tobago away in the Nations League and then needed a miracle equalizer against Jamaica in the semifinal just to make the final. The team defeated Mexico in the final, but that Mexican team is the worst Mexican team in generations.

In the lead up to the Copa America, the team dropped a 5-1 decision to Colombia. The second game against Brazil was a decent 1-1 draw. Then the Copa America saw the team fail to advance out of an easy group that featured Bolovia and Panama.

It wasn’t only the results. The team looked as if it had regressed since the World Cup in 2022. There were expectations that when the U.S. team brought the youngest team to Qatar that it was a sign that big things were on the horizon. But the team hasn’t just stagnated, it has regressed. The 2022 World Cup team in hindsight seems like a much stronger and tougher team than this one.

With the team regressing, and a World Cup on home soil approaching, the stakes are too high. The next coach will present his own risks, but the risk of the unknown seemed less than the risks of keeping Berhalter.

Players share blame

The team’s poor performances are not entirely on Berhalter. The players did not show the expected level of mental toughness in key situations since the last World Cup. Many of the main culprits are players who should know better. Tim Weah’s red card in Panama was the biggest reason the team didn’t advance out of the group. Sergino Dest’s red card led to a loss in Trinidad and Tobago. Weston McKennie went MIA at the Copa.

Many of the players have also put themselves in poor situations with their clubs. Look at the starting midfield in the Copa America. Gio Reyna barely played at Nottingham Forest since January. Tyler Adams hardly played at Bournemouth due to his frequent run of injuries. McKennie was benched down the stretch at Juventus and isn’t in the club’s plans anymore.

Then in the backline, the team is still reliant on Tim Ream at age 36 when it was clear from the last six months that he was aging out due to his declining role at Fulham. While Ream was losing his battle with Father Time, Berhalter stuck with him because he didn’t trust the other options.

Berhalter shares the blame in the players he has been selecting since September, but many of these players have not taken big steps forward with their clubs. Then moving forward with the national team, the players have continued to struggle.

With regards to systems and roles, I disagree with the criticism that Berhalter put players into awkward situations that don’t play to their strengths. It’s never possible for a national team manager to completely replicate the exact role each of the players have with their clubs. But Berhalter did try to put players into their strengths, whether it be putting Musah in the middle (where he prefers) when he was playing wing at this club, putting McKennie into a role where he gets on the ball more, keeping Weah on the wing where he prefers as opposed to right back.

If anything, Berhalter was too accommodating to his key players. There was little or no accountability for poor form or poor decision making. When Berhalter returned last September, there wasn’t much competition for places on the national team. It’s generally been the same players, even when the results and performances were going south.

The struggles with the Uzbekistan and Germany friendlies, the loss to Trinidad & Tobago, the near loss to Jamaica all saw Berhalter keep the same roster and make few changes.

But the players are still at the heart of the results and the performances. While the team did not live up to potential the past year and the firing was justified, Berhalter was not what was separating this group of players from being a powerful team on the global stage. The players brought the poor performances upon themselves. Whether different players should have been on the field is a completely different question. 

Unfortunately for Berhalter, U.S. Soccer can’t fire the players. Berhalter is the only change they can make with the national team.

Fresh eyes, accountability, clean slate needed

The next USMNT manager needs to bring fresh eyes on the player pool. There needs to be an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the players very deep into the player pool. The pool needs to expand so that there will be more competition.

Berhalter did not dig deep into his pool at major tournaments. He was only comfortable using 13-14 players.

The next manager needs to bring accountability where players are not called up or won’t start if they’re not playing well. This includes players who have been at the core of Berhalter’s teams. To do that, the player pool must expand where the manager trusts more players.

The next manager also must ensure that the players all begin with a clean slate. Whenever there is a coaching change midcycle, things are not going well. It’s not a bad thing for players to be on edge that everyone is now equal. It will help motivate players who weren’t playing well to be better. It also motivates players who couldn’t get chances that they now have a better shot.

The next manager will benefit from a more motivated player pool if he is willing to make a lot of changes and see things with a fresh perspective.

For me, it seemed as if things became stale the past year under Berhalter.

Who will be the candidates?

We will hear more in the coming weeks about who the coaching candidates will be. But the early wordings of the statements seem as if things are going to work much quicker than previous searches.

Matt Crocker is connected and has a history in the English game. It seems reasonable that a list of coaches who have worked in England (although not necessarily English) could make their way into the early stages of the conversation.

Domestic coaches who will be candidates are probably few. Steve Cherundolo seems like the one who has the most potential given his long and storied history with the USMNT as a player, his initial coaching in Germany, and his success with LAFC.

Jurgen Klopp has been reported to be a target. It’s not impossible although structuring payment is a huge hurdle, as well as gauging his interest in taking on a new project so soon after his run with Liverpool. But if he is interested, U.S. Soccer might try hard to find a way.

But it seems like Crocker might try to swing big. Then there are also candidates who have had success at World Cups and other major tournaments. Crocker got the job for reasons like this. He might try to make a splash with a manager like Cherundolo there if it doesn’t happen.

Berhalter’s legacy

It’s hard to write about a manager’s legacy the day after he is fired. The Copa America failure still is way too fresh.

Years from now, the view on Berhalter will probably be a little more positive. The negatives will probably get washed away with the perspective that second cycles now have a historically awful track record with USMNT coaches. Bob Bradley, Jurgen Klinsmann, and now Gregg Berhalter were all fired in the second cycle. Bruce Arena made it to the 2006 World Cup, but the team performed badly in Germany.

But looking at Bradley, the positives of the Confederations Cup run, winning a World Cup group, and winning the 2007 Gold Cup have seen him remembered fondly. Klinsmann’s history with the USMNT is more difficult despite impressively advancing out of a tough World Cup group and making the semifinal of the Copa America. The German manager was very stubborn and the reports of the inner workings of his teams reflect a tumultuous period.

Berhalter didn’t have what would be considered a “signature win” akin to Bora Milutinovic’s team defeating Colombia at a World Cup, Steve Sampson’s team defeating Argentina at a Copa America, Bruce Arena’s team defeating Portugal at a World Cup, or Bob Bradley’s team defeating Spain at a Copa America.

But Berhalter also inherited a tougher situation than any of the previous managers. He essentially had to construct a new player pool following the failure to qualify for the World Cup and a year-long run with an interim manager.

He was able to build a World Cup team from a young group of players and reset the narrative and turn the page from the program’s biggest failure in the failed World Cup qualification run five years before.

If he had walked away after Qatar, his reputation would be very positive (even including the Reyna family debacle). The past year has been a knock on his resume, but history will ultimately see a good but not great overall tenure. It might, however, take a long time to get to that point.