U.S. men’s national team defender Chris Richards has admitted that the team must improve mentally following a humiliating 5-1 defeat to Colombia on Saturday.
The USMNT’s Copa América preparations got off to the worst possible start in Landover, Maryland, as a late collapse saw a one-goal game turn into a thrashing by the South American side.
Individual errors were at least partially to blame on all five Colombia goals, which Richards said could potentially be viewed as a positive.
“Some of the positives that we can take from the game is that we did play with one of the Copa favorites for 65, 70 minutes,” Richards told the media on Monday.
“We watched the tape back, I think almost all of their goals were goals that we gave to them rather than completely being broken down.”
Both Richards and Tim Ream admitted that the USMNT wasn’t up to the task mentally on Saturday, which will need to be corrected quickly with Brazil looming on Wednesday in the team’s final pre-Copa América friendly.
“From being on the field you learn how much these games mean to other teams,” Ream said. “I know we talk about these being friendlies and you’re not playing for three points or moving on in a knockout stage, but you understand and start to get a feel for what those games are going to be like.
“We’re moving into tournament play after this week. So knowing what it means to them, I think it needs to mean as much if not more to us and that goes back to the intangibles, the fight and the will to try to get a result.”
Asked about what needed to change going into the match against Brazil, Richards echoed his teammate’s thoughts on the mental side of the game.
“I think a few things willl need to change, not just structurally but also I think mentality, like Tim spoke about,” the Crystal Palace defender said.
“When you play these types of teams, even if it’s a friendly, you can tell the spirit, the fight that they have. And so I think for me, the one thing that we really need to change is our mentality.”
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