USMNT vs. Morocco in three moments

The first and third goals gave USMNT fans plenty to ponder from this one

The U.S. men’s national team started its vital June window off in impressive fashion, rolling past a normally stingy Morocco side in a 3-0 win Wednesday night. The USMNT shut out a World Cup-caliber opponent, Haji Wright scored on his debut, no one got hurt – what’s not to like?

While being out-shot by a two-to-one margin, it was a game the USMNT largely controlled, with some early chances eventually becoming a quick two-goal edge that Gregg Berhalter’s side didn’t really look like relinquishing at any point. That’s a big credit to a group that mixed in several debuts while getting over Miles Robinson’s absence, as Morocco, a fellow World Cup qualifier, turned up with something close to its first-choice 11.

With that in mind, we spotlighted three moments that underlined important takeaways for the group heading into Sunday’s friendly against Uruguay.

Who needs symmetry?

Berhalter has largely played 4-3-3 with the USMNT, and the lineup listed before kickoff fit that formation without any real need to puzzle out who would go where. However, it became obvious almost immediately that the USMNT would actually be playing two formations: the familiar 4-3-3 out of possession, and what Berhalter referred to post-game as a 3-2-2-3 when in control of the ball.

The shift was simple on paper: Antonee Robinson would push up high and wide from left back, allowing Christian Pulisic to move inside and drop off the front line. Reggie Cannon would stay home and tuck in a bit to create a back three.

“We adjusted in our build-up to put Christian in position between the lines, that we thought he could really hurt the opponent,” Berhalter told reporters after the game. Berhalter late added that the USMNT “wanted to use Christian and Brenden [Aaronson] in those positions to really hurt the opponent, and then still have three guys high on the (Morocco) back line that could be running in behind them, and keeping their five pinned back.”

The first USMNT goal was a perfect illustration of what Berhalter wanted to get out of the adjustment. Robinson pushed up, really as a true left winger, while Pulisic moved into a central spot, finding a channel. Walker Zimmerman saw the same seam, going long to find Pulisic darting between Samy Mmaee (who had to set up a bit wider than normal due to Robinson’s positioning) and Ghanem Saïss.

Pulisic had some difficult work to do, controlling that pass and cutting back sharply to lose two defenders, but look at what was available from there: a completely unmarked Aaronson, and behind him a just-as-open Robinson.

At the time of this goal, Robinson’s position on the Opta passing network graph, which sets an average position of where he was when receiving the ball, was virtually in line with Tim Weah and Jesús Ferreira, making him effectively a fourth forward in possession.

Up 1-0 (and, shortly thereafter, 2-0), the 3-2-2-3 became less common, and in the second half it seemed to disappear, but while he was in, Robinson was still making sure to push high and wide in possession. That’s kind of the point: the USMNT got the favorable game state it wanted through some aggressive, calculated risk-taking, and then dialed things back a bit from there to make sure the game stayed in control.

Now, things weren’t perfect. Morocco created two dangerous counters at 0-0 when breaking USMNT pressure and moving the ball out to the left flank quickly. The risk Berhalter was taking was that Cannon, Aaronson, and Weah would be able to sort defending in that space on the fly, possibly with some help from the human dynamo that is Tyler Adams. Sometimes they did so, but other times, not as much.

Still, it’s a good place to start from in terms of honing a look that the USMNT might really need come November.

Haji Wright looking confident

Berhalter gave debuts to Malik Tillman, Joe Scally, and Haji Wright, with the latter two coming on at halftime and Tillman entering for the final 25 minutes. We’re going to focus in on one moment here, and that belongs to Wright.

Having gotten on the end of a good chance only to shoot close enough to Yassine Bounou that the Morocco goalkeeper could make the stop, Wright could be forgiven for getting inside his own head.

It’s been a long path to the USMNT for Wright, with a bold move from the LA Galaxy academy to the New York Cosmos coming before years of toiling in relative obscurity in Europe, going through numerous club moves in the process. Having truly earned his shot through incandescent form with Antalyaspor, it’s only natural to place a lot of weight on that first big chance.

However, Wright didn’t let the miss weigh on him, making a great run from midfield about 10 minutes later that forced the Morocco defense into some desperate scrambling. While he was eventually coaxed into going away from goal and having to wait for help, Wright improvised, doing enough to hold off any tackle attempts before laying the ball back, keying a sequence that became a penalty kick thanks to some good trailing runs from the USMNT and some reckless defensive work from Morocco.

The Moroccan protests took a solid two minutes, but once they cleared up, Pulisic bounced the ball to Wright, an old friend from youth national team camps, giving the debutant the spot kick.

(AP Photo/Jeff Dean)

That’s a gift, but it’s also pressure, and fortunately for Wright, he tucked the ball far enough into the bottom corner that Bounou’s correct guess wasn’t enough.

The USMNT has plenty of candidates to play the No. 9 like Wright does—combining the back-to-goal work of a target man with enough speed to stretch the game vertically—but no one has truly seized the job, and Wright’s competition in this window, Ferreira, plays the role very differently. Coming in with this kind of confidence, where a miss can be shaken off and a solo raid can be turned into a goal for the team, is surely going to go down as a big plus when the coaching staff considers their options going forward.

A new wrinkle for Aaronson?

Going back to the tactical approach from Berhalter, there was the obvious aggression that is asking your left back to also be a left winger, but there was also something different in the mix: a role in central midfield for Aaronson, who has largely played as a wide forward for the USMNT despite plenty of time in the middle with Red Bull Salzburg and the Philadelphia Union.

Aaronson’s work rate is never in question, but his arrival in the box to score the first goal underlines why playing him a bit deeper is a risk: he’s more of an attacking player than Weston McKennie, Yunus Musah, or Luca de la Torre. The decisions he makes are, as a result, going to leave more gaps, but against an opponent looking to sit in, there are plenty of times where that’s worth the gamble. That’s also the allure of playing Gio Reyna there when he’s available, and it may have been on Berhalter’s mind when he mentioned that Tillman could also be a No. 10 in a 4-3-3 “depending on if we can get his defensive work where it needs to be.”

In other words, Berhalter’s got a pretty basic question on his mind: “What if we need a goal?” The McKennie-Adams-Musah central triangle appears to be solidly Plan A for a good reason, but it’s also probably a bit conservative for some scenarios, a problem that cropped up in qualifying on a few occasions.

This window is a last chance to try some new ideas out before having to hone in on opponent-specific concepts within the game model. It’s hard to read the choice to play Aaronson as a very attack-minded right-center midfielder as anything other than an examination of how to break organized foes down. We probably won’t see it in Qatar against England, but it may be a really smart option for the opening game against Wales or Ukraine, and it may be straight-up necessary against Iran in the Group B finale.

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