If you ask most U.S. men’s national team players, or coach Gregg Berhalter, what a successful Copa América would look like, you are likely to get a somewhat squishy answer.
Berhalter was quizzed on that very subject last week and though he did say getting through the group stage was a must, what came after wasn’t as clear.
“For us, it’s really about the performance, going out there and having a solid performance that you put yourself in position to actually go ahead and win,” Berhalter said.
For USMNT midfielder Tyler Adams, however, the answer is clear: a place in the semifinal is a must.
“For me, [success] is getting past the quarterfinal,” Adams said in an interview with ex-USMNT goalkeeper Tim Howard in the Daily Mail.
“We need to — in a pressure situation — win in a knockout environment,” Adams added. “That’s going to measure a lot of our success.”
Reaching the last four would match the USMNT’s performance at the 2016 Copa América Centenario, in which the team beat Ecuador 2-1 in the quarterfinal before falling 4-0 to Argentina in the semifinal.
Winning knockout games in major non-Concacaf tournaments has become something of a holy grail for the USMNT. To date, the team has won just one such World Cup match: a victory over Mexico in the 2002 round of 16.
The USMNT fell to the Netherlands in the last 16 at the 2022 World Cup, making it three straight tournaments (excluding the 2018 World Cup, which they didn’t qualify for) in which they’ve been knocked out at that stage.
“[The Netherlands] handled business. They were composed,” Adams recalled of the match in Qatar.
Should the USMNT get out of its Copa América group, which contains Bolivia, Panama and Uruguay, then a likely quarterfinal date against either Colombia or Brazil would await.
The U.S. just played both of those teams in pre-Copa friendlies, falling 5-1 to Colombia before recovering for a 1-1 draw against Brazil.
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