USA eliminated from Copa America and I am not at all surprised

Believe it or not, this is the first time the States failed to emerge from the group stages in 20 football of the soccer variety tournaments that that the US has hosted in 20 previous such tournaments. To be fair a lot of said tournaments have been CONCACAF tournaments, which are a bit of a global joke as far as football is concerned, but this has been true of many other more-respected tournaments, including the World Cup.

I was one of those people that after watching the first game vs Bolivia that really thought that the US squad was looking good out there and was playing in a way that represented a team that is in the top 20 in the world. You may recall that my writeup had a heavy load of pessimism in it though because every single time I have gotten excited about the USMT performance in international tournaments, they have always let me down.

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There are a couple of places you never want to find yourself in when in a group stage of any international tournament and one of them is to find yourself in a situation where you must defeat one of the best teams in the world in your potential last game. Uruguay is one of the best teams in the world, has won the World Cup a couple times, and has won Copa America 15 times. The United States has accomplished neither one of those things.... ever.

So when they headed into this potential (and eventual) final game vs Uruguay, the only thing that was a shining beacon of hope was that Uruguay didn't actually need to win this game, they were already guaranteed advancement. They would advance with a loss provided it wasn't by 4 or more goals. I don't know if anyone has defeated Uruguay by 4 goals in my lifetime so that is an extremely unlikely scenario.

A draw for the US would have been acceptable if Panama had a lackluster game vs Bolivia, but Bolivia might be one of the worst teams in the entire tournament so this too, seemed very unlikely. The US needed a win and while they did play well, it was pretty evident that Uruguay was playing a primarily defensive game which is what you do when you don't need to win but just need to not lose.

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I said it before and I still think it is the case. This early departure from the tournament is primarily one man's fault despite this being a team sport. Tim Weah's red card for an egregious off-the-ball foul is being called "silly" by major publications such as ESPN and they are exactly correct. This one guy cost the US not just the game vs. Panama, but the entire tournament. With 11 players the USA would have likely cruised to an easy victory vs Panama, who the US was dominating up to that point. His punching of the defender in the head in the early moments of the game was one of the stupidest fouls I have ever seen in decades of watching and playing this sport. When you use your hands in any way in a game that is not supposed to have hands involved in it, you have to be a true idiot to think you are going to get away with it.

Weah is a major part of the USA offense as well so his 2-game ban after the red card further impacted the USA's ability to fully attack Uruguay as well.

I don't often pay attention to this sport but I do know enough about it to be rather enraged about this guy. I'm sure his IG and other social media is getting ripped to shreds at the moment. If he is smart, he will lay low for a while and let people forget about this. He currently plays for Juventus and I don't think any of their fans really care at all about this card, nor do Americans typically care about Juventus, so I suppose that is a good thing for him.

There have been calls for manager Gregg Berhalter to resign or be fired because of this early exit from the tournament but I'll briefly explain why I think that shouldn't happen.

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Keeping in mind that this opinion of mine is coming from a guy who was coached by some seriously good managers and coaches in his teens and 20's. I'm not saying I am an end-all on this opinion but the reasons why people are calling for him to resign are just anger-induced. He is a very capable and talented manager. He was the first American manager to ever be assigned to a manager position in Sweden, and in his first year at the helm the team advanced 7 positions in the ranking. Fans and upper management of any club team are extremely fickle though, and even though his performance in the following year was really sound he was fired for "lack of attacking play" and well, I guess that is reason enough but we also have to understand that American managers are always under the microscope in Europe a lot more than they would be elsewhere. I say this as an American. Managers from USA are not regarded as fit for the job in Europe and elsewhere. They're held to impossibly high standards when they take on these jobs and many people would conclude that many USA managers that take jobs, even assistant jobs over in Europe, do so in many instances so they can pad their resume/CV in order to get a head Manager job with the MLS.

This is kind of exactly what happened for Gregg when he returned to the Columbus Crew and was instrumental in leading them to the final, which they didn't win but still, it's quite an achievement to get to that point when you are managing a relatively poor club from Ohio.

The USA's departure from this tournament is NOT Gregg's fault and while the angry fans tend to focus on a manager in times like these, I look at the man's strategy with a sense of admiration. The way that he uses the abilities of his players to attack the wings and do early crossovers well before the corner is something that is not just entertaining to watch, but is also quite effective.

Also, changing managers this close to the World Cup, which the USA is also co-hosting, could prove disastrous. Players need time to adjust to a manager and vice-versa. Sure 2 years is a long time but all of the players on the USMT have obligations to their various clubs and it's not like they get together every weekend to talk strategy.

Gregg is not to blame here. If it hadn't been for Tim Weah's stupid stupid STUPID foul vs Panama, we wouldn't be having this discussion. USA would have won that game 3-1 or something like that and then the game vs Uruguay would have simply been a friendly of sorts. Instead, because of one guy, the Stars and Bars were fighting for their lives.

Am I upset that USA is out? Of course! Am I surprised? Not at all. It's just a shame that they went out the way that they did.