Laken Litman
College Football & Soccer Analyst
United States men’s national team players have been having small group conversations this week following Tuesday’s alarming 4-0 defeat to Switzerland. With the Gold Cup fast approaching – the USMNT’s first match is Sunday against Trinidad and Tobago (6 p.m. ET on FOX) before finishing group play vs. Saudi Arabia and Haiti – the squad’s more experienced players are trying to manifest confidence in the younger ones in order to create some kind of pre-tournament spark.
“It’s one of those [games] that you look at, you analyze it, and you recognize it wasn’t good enough,” veteran defender Tim Ream told reporters Friday afternoon. “But you can take so many different learning experiences from it. What is it going to take to get to that level for a lot of these guys? And, what do you have to do day in and day out to be able to put those things right?
“As hard as it is in that immediate moment after and how terrible it feels to lose the way we did and play the way we did, it’s something that you just have to take on board and understand what it takes to get to that level and compete at that level.”
The USMNT hoped to gain momentum before the Gold Cup with two send-off matches against quality opponents last week. While the team was able to take positives out of the first match, a 2-1 loss to Türkiye, the Swiss sliced up a youthful U.S. side and scored four goals in the first 36 minutes of the match. The result created an overwhelming amount of concern and criticism, especially given that a World Cup on home soil is now less than 365 days away.
While Ream, 37, hasn’t experienced this exact kind of situation in his career, he has endured plenty of highs and lows mixed with an abundance of outside negativity. He can impart some wisdom to his younger teammates on how to get things going back in the right direction.
“I think the overarching message for us is like, this is our group right now. This is who we have to rely on,” Ream said. “Each one of us has to have each other’s back and we all have to stick together. Anything that’s being said outside is, you know, it’s cliché, but it’s noise. There’s nothing we can do about what people say there. No matter whether you play the greatest game of your life or the worst game of your life, there will be opinions on each of them.
“It’s just a matter of, let’s put our heads down and back each other up, communication is as high as it possibly can be, and we get through it. It’s a storm and you can either run from it, hide from it, or you put yourself back out there and you say, ‘OK, we’re going again. This is it. What are we doing today to get better? What are we doing tomorrow to get better? What are we doing in this game that will help us win the game?’ And that’s all you can do.”
John Tolkin, who came on as a second-half substitute vs. Switzerland, echoed a similar sentiment.
“The biggest thing is not beating ourselves up too much,” the 22-year-old defender said. “Obviously we’re very disappointed and we know it’s not good enough and it’s not the standard we want to be playing at. But the second you start getting too negative and kind of self-defeating yourself, I think things can go very south.”
USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino is enduring a four-game losing streak with the squad. (Photo by John Dorton/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images)
Tolkin has only appeared five times for the USMNT. He may be one of the newer faces on head coach Mauricio Pochettino’s roster this summer, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t experienced adversity in his career. For example, he said going through relegation with German side Holstein Kiel in its first year in the Bundesliga has given him a unique perspective on what the U.S. squad is going through right now.
“It’s kind of a chaotic time right now,” Tolkin said. “It sounds maybe like we’re lying or something, but you really just have to look to the guy next to you and just fight for the guys each training session, each match. Because what you see online, all that media, all the opinions – it’s impossible these days not to see it – but you really have to lean to the guys to the left and right of you and trust that they’re going to work their ass off for you.
“We have a huge opportunity right now to kind of change the narrative and set the focus towards the World Cup coming up next summer, and that’s [by winning] this [Gold Cup] tournament and that’s what we want to do. And in order to do that, you have to block out all that other noise and focus on all the people in the locker room and the coaching staff and training staff and all the people we’re traveling with together who are working really hard to get us prepared for these games. So if we can do that, I think you’re going to see success on the field. And hopefully lighter spirits all around.”
Laken Litman covers college football, college basketball and soccer for FOX Sports. She previously wrote for Sports Illustrated, USA Today and The Indianapolis Star. She is the author of “Strong Like a Woman,” published in spring 2022 to mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX. Follow her at @LakenLitman.
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