The U.S. men’s national team is off to the worst possible start in its preparation for Copa América.
Gregg Berhalter’s side was hammered 5-1 by Colombia in the first of two pre-Copa friendlies on Saturday, as the USMNT conceded five goals in a game for the first time since 2009.
The USMNT went down two goals within the first 20 minutes and though Tim Weah gave his side a second-half lifeline, Los Cafeteros mercilessly exploited several late U.S. errors to score three goals late.
It won’t get any easier now for the USMNT: Next up is Brazil, the final warm-up game before the Copa América begins.
Before moving on to the match in Orlando, let’s consider three takeaways from Saturday’s game at Commanders Field in Maryland.
Even though he has often been on the bench and/or out of form at the club level, Matt Turner has generally brought his best to the USMNT over the past few years.
Unfortunately for Turner, that appears to be changing.
The Nottingham Forest keeper was beat at his near post for Colombia’s opener — admittedly a difficult shot to stop from close range. But there were even more questions on Colombia’s second.
Rafael Santos Borré’s bicycle kick was extravagantly executed, but it was also a shot that an international starter would expect to save. Turner didn’t.
Midway through the second half, Turner was whistled for handling the ball outside his area — a basic mistake that led to a yellow card.
Questionable goals allowed have become a trend for Turner with the USMNT of late. Jamaica’s opener in the Nations League could have been saved, and a Trinidad & Tobago goal in November was simply a howler.
Could we see Ethan Horvath against Brazil? It doesn’t seem out of the question at this point.
The USMNT can only hope that it got all of its suicidal errors out of the way before the Copa América started.
All five of Colombia’s goals can be at least partially blamed on individual errors by the USMNT, and there were plenty more mistakes that very nearly turned into even more goals against.
Johnny Cardoso and Tim Ream had a miscommunication on Colombia’s opener, and the latter’s giveaway led to the second goal — featuring an unmarked Santos Borré scoring on the aforementioned Turner error.
The wheels truly fell off in the second half. All three of Colombia’s late goals were directly from giveaways, with Johnny Cardoso, Tim Weah and Cameron Carter-Vickers (with Ricardo Pepi failing to check back enough) the culpable parties.
It’s bad enough to conceded five goals, but Berhalter will feel even more frustrated when he reviews the film and sees how all of them were at least somewhat self-inflicted.
If the USMNT is going to make any noise at the Copa América (or the World Cup for that matter) it is going to have to overcome an increasingly vexing issue for Berhalter: beating good teams.
Per the Elo rating system, the USMNT has not beat a top-25 team outside of Concacaf since Berhalter took charge in 2019.
Saturday saw another opportunity go by the wayside, as sixth-rated Colombia never looked like the team that would break Berhalter’s streak.
The U.S. has another chance on Tuesday against third-rated Brazil, and yet another in its final Copa América group-stage game against Uruguay.
The way the USMNT performed on Saturday, it’s hard to see that streak being halted.