It always seemed like the U.S. men’s national team’s decision in goal was going to be a tough one, but no one expected it to go like this.
Gregg Berhalter named a USMNT World Cup roster without goalkeeper Zack Steffen, his most frequent first choice since taking over the job. Matt Turner, Ethan Horvath, and Sean Johnson are in the squad instead, while Steffen — even after moving on loan to Middlesbrough to get more playing time than he had seen at Manchester City — is out.
Plenty of observers wouldn’t have been shocked to see Turner get the start against Wales on November 21. Turner was one of the only players to come out of the September window without disappointing, and while he’s not first-choice at Arsenal, the timing of this World Cup means that the London side’s Europa League matches have kept him in action more or less weekly. His rapid ascent is, on some level, the story here.
The shock is that Berhalter felt the solution wasn’t simply going with Turner, but that Steffen wasn’t even second-choice, or third.
Speaking to reporters in a press conference in Brooklyn after the roster was unveiled, Berhalter didn’t go too far into the reasons behind his decision. It was plain that he didn’t make the choice lightly, calling it “heartbreaking,” but that still leaves the question of “why” unanswered.
Steffen hasn’t been at his best
On a surface level, one key here is pretty straightforward: Steffen has not played well since moving to Middlesbrough. Berhalter said as much, telling ESPN’s Fútbol Americas that the USMNT coaches felt they “needed more out of Zack” for club and country over the past 18 months.
Berhalter might be onto something on that front. Steffen had a high-profile error in his biggest Man City assignment, letting Sadio Mané tackle the ball off of his foot and into the net in last year’s FA Cup semifinal. His move to Middlesbrough began with him missing on a cross against Queens Park Rangers, giving away an easy goal in his second appearance at the club.
The list could go on here, which makes the point: Steffen, for all of his ability, has been unreliable in some fairly straightforward situations, and it’s not all that surprising that Berhalter has lost some confidence in a player he had long believed in.
It’s not just gaffes, either. There is no perfect metric for sorting good goalkeeping from bad, but in one important advanced category, Steffen is faring somewhat poorly among Championship goalkeepers. Post-shot expected goals per shot on target is an attempt to measure how difficult a goalkeeper’s shot-stopping load has been, effectively gauging just how hard it is to make saves based on a season’s shots on frame.
In that metric, using data from FBref, Steffen is 16th out of 25 Championship goalkeepers with more than 10 starts on the season, meaning that the saves he’d have to make are less difficult than most of the other starters around the league. However, his post-shot expected goals minus his actual goals allowed, on a per-90 basis (an evaluation that gets close to defining shot-stopping ability, or at least a combination of that and good fortune) sees him 19th out of the same 25 players.
In other words, Steffen has underperformed despite facing, in relative terms, a fairly modest challenge.
Interestingly, though, the data isn’t really better for Horvath, who is facing the fourth-easiest post-shot expected goals per shot on target with Luton Town, but only returning the 17th best post-shot expected goals minus goals allowed.
You can read that as an indicator that Horvath is part of a more organized defense, and that neither is doing anything special in the saves department. Both have had some gaffes as well, and the apples-to-apples comparison here doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence.
What you can’t do is parse very much in terms of who should be backing Turner up. Horvath may be in (slightly) better form, but Steffen’s experience with the USMNT is more extensive, and he’s played in Berhalter systems for most of his professional career. Generally speaking, in a case like this, a coach goes with the known quantity, but Berhalter is taking the opposite tack.
Hierarchy a key
The closest thing to a peek into what Berhalter was thinking came in that same Fútbol Americas interview, and it may have less to do with form or data than a word Berhalter only used once, but that says so much: hierarchy.
“Part of it was looking at the players that we do have, and exactly the roles that they would fill at the World Cup,” said Berhalter. “We feel confident that we have three really good goalkeepers, and the hierarchy in the goalkeeper line I think is set pretty well.”
What Berhalter means by hierarchy here is that Turner is a clear starter, rather than someone who was still battling for the job. It’s the kind of move you make to settle someone’s confidence, as opposed to keeping that fight for the No. 1 shirt going to stoke the competitive fire. To go so far as remove Turner’s seeming top competitor for the job, Berhalter’s read has to be that the Arsenal man is competitive enough as is, and that the wise move is to demonstrate just how strongly he feels about starting him at the World Cup.
There are other ways to do that, though, which could include just clearly announcing that Turner will start if healthy. And it only sort of gets at how Horvath got the call over Steffen. Both would be backing Turner up, so why not take both and have them competing to be the alternative? Iron sharpens iron, as the old saying goes.
The thing about that adage is that the sharpening comes from friction, and that’s probably what Berhalter doesn’t want in his team right now. Unity and cohesiveness seem to be the preference over having the most intense competition at this point. For the USMNT, the battle for playing time in goal appears to be more or less over, and the time to settle into and embrace the roles available has begun.
That thought process requires picking a second-choice goalkeeper that can thrive in that specific role, which is to say which player can give you his very best despite the hierarchy handing him some unwanted news.
It’s rare for a starting goalkeeper to have any particularly special appearance coming off the bench, but Horvath has just that: a near-legendary performance replacing Steffen in the 2021 Nations League final against Mexico, helping the USMNT get a massive win in terms of shifting the tone and perception of the team.
That’s very likely not Berhalter’s only data point in evaluating which player would be more likely to deliver if called upon as a substitute. Horvath did well for Nottingham Forest last season when Brice Samba missed games due to injury, and had to sub into the club’s promotion playoff final in stoppage time and help Forest cling to a one-goal advantage. He’s been able to perform when he wasn’t necessarily expecting to have to step in.
To understand Berhalter’s line of thinking, it’s helpful to think of the goalkeeper corps not as the best goalkeepers available, but the best goalkeeper available, and then the best option to be that player’s back-up. That may be splitting hairs, and it may be galaxy-braining the situation, but one thing the USMNT has been consistent about under Berhalter has been considering every decision thoroughly. Fans can and do disagree with the outcomes, but you can’t seriously argue that Berhalter makes his choices casually.
As for Johnson, a player who has been behind Steffen in Berhalter’s eyes for years, it helps to know your USMNT history. The program has long embraced the line of thinking that your third-string goalkeeper’s most important skill is in the locker room and on the training ground. Nick Rimando in 2014 and Tony Meola in 2002 can both speak to that. Both were still playing at a high level, but the thing that got them into those squads, the X factor for them against their competitors, was their positive influence on the rest of the team.
Yes, your third goalkeeper could play, but they very likely won’t. What they will do, every time, is have some impact on the rest of the group from an interpersonal standpoint, and Berhalter acknowledged that in his press conference on Wednesday.
“Looking at a guy like Sean Johnson, who’s been with this program since day one, been with us since day one, and we think he’s a really valuable piece of the team,” said Berhalter.
Think about it: Johnson is going to Qatar knowing that he’s almost certainly there as the third option, and that he’s not going to see the field. What Berhalter needs in that case is a player that embraces that role, rather than being disappointed he’s not the starter. It’s only natural for Steffen to have the latter mindset at this point, having been the starter for so much of the last four years. For lack of a better way to put it, if the third goalkeeper is there mostly to maintain good vibes, someone who is (understandably) frustrated and disappointed isn’t really going to be in the right place to give others a boost.
All of which adds up to an unusual situation when it comes to evaluating the USMNT’s analysis of Steffen. It’s almost like he narrowly lost out on three different one-on-one battles: he’s not playing as well as Turner, so he’s not the starter. He’s not thought of as having the same ability to step in as a surprise, so Horvath gets the role of primary back-up instead. And then, when it comes to helping others maintain positivity and focus, Johnson apparently has the edge.
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