Gregg Berhalter is stepping down as head coach of the U.S. men’s national team because it’s starting to feel unimaginable that he could continue. The uproar has become too much. The team’s two largest supporter groups: American Outlaw and Rose 76made the call for a new coach after the United States’ disgraceful group stage exit from the Copa America in their home country. Ultimately the campaign was unsuccessful.American fans could be clearly heard chanting “Fire Greg!”
This coordinated fan effort to oust the coach was unprecedented and effective, driven by concern about the team’s trajectory with less than two years until the U.S. co-hosted the men’s World Cup with Mexico and Canada. In some ways, it was a sign of American soccer’s growth: so many passionate fans were vocally interested, and so many casual fans were paying attention and asking the tough questions. U.S. Soccer had to listen and act. I’d never seen such a concerted effort on a national team before.
On Wednesday, the news that had begun to seem inevitable finally became official. “Greg has earned the respect of everyone within our organization and has played a pivotal role in unifying our young team and moving our program forward,” U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker said in a statement. “Our immediate focus is to find a coach who can help us maximize our potential as we continue to prepare for the 2026 World Cup, and we have already begun that search.”
But something about the timing and reasoning behind this decision is disturbing.
First, consider Berhalter. He’s an accomplished coach who puts a lot of work and energy into a job he clearly loves. I’ve spoken to over 100 people in and around U.S. soccer over the past two years for a book tracing the history of the USMNT. In the process, I got to see Berhalter at work up close and personal in meetings with players and coaches. And it’s easy to see why people within the federation have so much confidence in him. He’s Disastrous defeat in 2018 World Cup qualifiers And he created a rare cohesion among the young team that Berhalter built almost from scratch. Since taking over in late 2018, he has posted a 44-17-13 record overall and 29-9-7-7 record in official matches. He has won the CONCACAF Nations League twice, and assistant BJ Callahan won a third championship following Berhalter’s strategy. Berhalter also won the Gold Cup in 2021. More importantly, he led an inexperienced squad to a series of impressive performances at the 2022 World Cup, reaching the round of 16.
Ultimately, his tenure was marred by a series of bad luck. Starting right winger Tim Weah was sent off in the USMNT’s second Copa match for punching an opponent before his teammates lost a late goal. Then a questionable offside goal in the final group game sealed Berhalter’s fate. But animosity toward Berhalter has been building for years, and the past few weeks have only confirmed suspicions that were already widespread. He did a lot of things right, but he just couldn’t convince a vocal segment of the fanbase that he was the right man for the job.
Crocker, who made the final decision to fire Berhalter, praised him in a conference call with reporters. According to ESPN:But he agreed with the widely shared opinion that the team’s improvement has stalled. “I think five years is a long time and a lot of the foundations have been laid,” he said. “It was a very young group to begin with and there has been progress but now it’s time to translate that progress into wins. There has been progress in the group but that progress hasn’t translated into enough wins. [the Copa].”
meanwhile Same phoneCrocker suggested that after a year in the job, he felt more confident in his judgment when it came to hiring a new coach. And the federation has the budget to hire a top-tier coach, which would cost many times more than the roughly $2 million plus bonuses Berhalter was making. Crocker won’t limit himself to domestic candidates — the U.S. hasn’t appointed a men’s senior national team coach without a U.S. passport since Bora Milutinovic in 1991 — but he declined to say whether candidates would need to speak fluent English, a requirement that has previously weeded out quality candidates.
As Crocker embarks on the hiring of a men’s head coach for the second time during his tenure, it’s worth wondering what will happen with the rigor he promised to bring to the hiring process last time.
The problem is that Berhalter was the original hire himself, and Crocker has not explained why the case for bringing him back as manager for a second time fell apart so quickly in the face of consequences.After the 2022 World Cup, Berhalter was out of work for six months while the U.S. Soccer Federation investigated a domestic violence incident that occurred during his freshman year of college. Feud with the Reina familyBy the time Berhalter was cleared of further wrongdoing, Crocker had replaced Ernie Stewart as hiring manager. Stay on the Road with Berhalter.
The decision was not made on impulse. ‘Rigorous process’ The list consists of a lengthy list of responsibilities and competencies that a new head coach must meet, and then candidates, selected through “advanced data analysis, sophisticated evaluation criteria and cutting-edge recruiting methodologies,” undergo “a battery of practical and psychological tests.” The winner of this process, Crocker reported, was Berhalter.
But just a year later, Berhalter was fired, largely due to the atmosphere.
The time to fire Berhalter was after the 2022 World Cup. There was plenty of excuse to search for a new coach. The last four permanent U.S. men’s national team coaches all signed new contracts after their first World Cup stint. None of them had been successful in their second stint. Only Bruce Arena, in his second World Cup in 2006, was eliminated in the group stage. Plus, Berhalter now had problems.
The team suddenly found itself out of time after bringing Berhalter back for another round, only to release him a year later.
Whoever takes over as new coach will not only be taking over from a coach who was beloved by the main players until the end, but he or she will also be doing so without a major tournament to help sharpen the team before the 2026 World Cup. There will be no real test other than the CONCACAF Gold Cup next summer (not the most prestigious or most difficult tournament). As the host nation, the U.S. will automatically qualify for the World Cup. It will be difficult to fit truly elite opponents into the friendlies due to overlaps with qualifiers and other tournaments.
Still, there will be high expectations for this team. perhaps While it heralds the arrival of a golden generation, it also sparks debate about whether we’re actually over-rating them. The current U.S. men’s national team seems to have the talent to take them to that mythical next level, but they’ve yet to deliver a breakthrough performance on the biggest stage. Oh, and there are disciplinary issues, too, with four red cards in key matches in just over 12 months.
Two years may seem like a long time, but it’s not in international soccer, where a new coach will likely have around a dozen training camps to get the team together. And that’s assuming Crocker has a new coach in place by the September international window (when the U.S. hosts friendlies against Canada and New Zealand), his stated goal.
There was a perfectly coherent argument for firing Berhalter after the Copa. The results were mixed. The offense was often inefficient, the defense was error-prone, and Berhalter had long stuck to tactics that didn’t quite suit the players. But all of this was true a year ago, too.
But there were also reasons to keep Berhalter. Obviously, his team was unlucky in the Copa America. There’s no time for a replacement coach to properly prepare for the World Cup. It’s not even clear who that replacement will be. Is there any guarantee the U.S. will actually get a better coach?
And more importantly, what happened to the analyses, tests and “psychometrics” that selected Berhalter as the best person for the job? Are they no longer valid due to a confluence of unfortunate events at the wrong time? The conclusion defies logic.
You either go with the vibe or you go with the process, you can’t do both. Crocker offered to bring science to his coaching choices, to be guided by rational analysis. But now that the vibe has soured, Berhalter is gone and the much-touted rigor has been abandoned at the slightest sign of resistance.
To be sure, the negative vibes surrounding Berhalter were problematic. If he had stayed, the narrative around this team would likely have been dire over the next two years. If you want to host a World Cup and ride that momentum to a higher level in the sport, your job is to capitalize on the enthusiasm. That’s hard to accomplish when a coach has lost the support of the public.
One thing is clear: Regardless of what Crocker does or how he claims to arrive at his decisions, U.S. Soccer has not gotten any better at deciding who to hire or when to quit.
Leander Schaerlakens is a regular contributor to Football The Ringer. Long-termHis book about the U.S. men’s national team, , will be published by Viking Books ahead of the 2026 World Cup. He teaches at Marist College.
