AL-RAYYAN, Qatar – Earning respect is one thing. Inspiring fear is quite another.That’s one of the sobering lessons the U.S. men’s national team is learning during the first World Cup experience for all but one member of its 26-player squad. By broad acclaim of opponents and pundits alike, the young Yanks have on balance been the better side in their meetings with Wales and England, yet still find themselves in a win-or-else situation in their Group B finale against Iran on Tuesday.“They were good. I thought they made it difficult, as we knew they would,” said Three Lions and Liverpool midfielder Jordan Henderson after Friday’s 0-0 draw with England, where the United States bossed the majority of play and were superior in terms of expected goals. “They have some good players in the team, well-organized, make it very difficult and created some half-chances as well.”All that said, the USMNT have now played 34 World Cup games in their history. They’ve won just eight of them. England, on the other hand, have 29 wins all time. It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will regret their lack of ruthlessness thus far in Qatar.“Yeah, it’s obviously a different beast when you get to a big tournament like this,” admitted striker Josh Sargent postgame on Friday. “So definitely you’ve got to learn how to close out games.”Coach Gregg Berhalter, himself a World Cup veteran twice over, has spoken of the stiff difficulty of both scoring goals and winning matches in this competition. On first blush that might sound bleedingly obvious, yet Friday’s encounter with the 2018 semifinalists and Euro 2020 runners-up was a vivid case in point.“It’s definitely mixed emotions,” said USMNT left back Antonee “Jedi” Robinson. “I’d say it feels a little bit better to draw this game than the Wales game, because I feel like we should have won that one. This game, I feel like it was a pretty even battle, any team could have come away feeling like they should have won the game.“We feel a little bit hard done by, but a clean sheet against a top side is nothing to be upset about. And now we get to go into the last game with it all in our hands.”
History offers a mixed bag on this front. The USMNT also drew their first two games at South Africa 2010. They were a bit lucky that Rob Green’s howler helped them snatch a 1-1 draw against England but felt brutally wronged after the 2-2 draw with Slovenia, where a late Maurice Edu goal was waved off by a baffling refereeing decision. They wound up group winners, however, when Landon Donovan’s memorable late winner versus Algeria took them to five points from three matches.It was a different story in Germany four years prior, where a hard-earned draw with eventual champions Italy kept the U.S. in contention heading into their third game against Ghana after an opening defeat at the hands of the Czech Republic. But the Black Stars expertly exploited American mistakes for a 2-1 win that ended the USMNT’s tournament early.“Every play matters [in the] World Cup. You’ve got to be focused, and every single play can have a potential outcome on the game,” said Berhalter after Gareth Bale earned, then dispatched a late penalty kick to peg back the Yanks on Monday. “It’s a high level that we’re playing in, really high intensity.”As was so often the case during qualifying, the USMNT created a respectable proportion of decent scoring chances, only to spurn them repeatedly, with the absence of a dependable finisher at the No. 9 position still a nagging concern.As Bale’s moment of magic reminded them, games are often won and lost inside the penalty boxes. Those small details could determine whether they produce the necessary win over Iran, or have to settle for moral victories as they jet home early.“You’ve got to score to really [not] let them off the hook,” said Berhalter after the England draw. “We had a lot of close opportunities. We played well, I think we showed what type of team we are, what we’re capable of. But it’s also difficult for me to say that we should have won the game, because you need to score to win the game and we didn’t do that.”
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