Two more U.S. national team World Cup starters have offered their support to Gregg Berhalter, with Antonee Robinson and Matt Turner agreeing with Christian Pulisic’s assessment of the coach’s “extremely unfortunate” situation.
Berhalter coached the USMNT to the round of 16 at the World Cup before his contract expired at the end of 2022. In the meantime, a scandal around his personal life has exploded into public view.
Irked by Berhalter’s treatment of their son Gio, the coach’s close friends Claudio and Danielle Reyna revealed a 1992 domestic violence incident involving Berhalter and his future wife to U.S. Soccer officials.
Pulisic hit out at the Reynas’ “childish” behavior in an interview with ESPN last week, lamenting the position they had put the coach and his family in.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Robinson praised the work Berhalter did with the USMNT while echoing Pulisic’s words about the difficult position into which he’d been placed.
“I think he did a very good job creating a style of play that suited a lot of the players that he brought in,” the Fulham left back said. “Getting a lot of talented players together, obviously quite young guys like Yunus [Musah] started when he was manager. And then [he got us] on the same page, bringing us to the World Cup where we didn’t do as well as we’d have liked to, but we still did I think very well in footballing performances that we’re all proud of.
“It’s situation that’s off the pitch and unfortunate having past things brought up, especially when it’s things that have been dealt with and could influence his life now. So on a personal level and a professional level, that’s unfortunate. I just hope it all gets resolved on his side really quickly and he can move on from it.”
Turner agreed, praising the culture that Berhalter created with the USMNT.
“From the outside, it’s not as clear the connection that he created amongst the group, the selections, the like-mindedness of people,” the goalkeeper said. “And it became this culture that sort of policed itself, which I think can be pretty rare when it comes to national teams getting together.
“We’re grateful for all the work that he put in and think we really did thrive during his tenure, and we’ll see what the future holds.”
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