On Sunday evening at Exploria Stadium, the USMNT kids danced with those ghosts, and maybe – probably, almost, but not quite certainly – brought them to heel for good.
With a 5-1 thumping of Panama, the Yanks took a massive step towards Qatar 2022, producing perhaps the greatest performance of Gregg Berhalter’s tenure as head coach, on the back of what might also have been Christian Pulisic’s best-ever night for his national team.
Handed the captain’s armband in recognition of “his journey,” in Berhalter’s words, the teenage prodigy of the doomed 2018 cycle clinically dispatched two first-half penalty kicks to lead a devastating display of first-half dominance, vaulting the Yanks into a 4-0 halftime lead and ruthlessly crushing Panama’s World Cup dreams as the US edge closer to fulfilling their own.
“He was on the field when we didn’t qualify. And this was us saying to him, ‘This is a new group. This is a new team and you’re a leader,’” said Berhalter postgame of the 23-year-old Chelsea star. “We wanted to show that and we wanted to highlight that. And I think when I look at his performance, besides the three goals and the hat trick, I think everything else was in line. Everything else was exactly what we needed him to do in terms of his work rate, his effort, his energy, his intensity, and his leadership.”
