Is Christian Pulisic already better than Landon Donovan?
Herculez Gomez raves about Christian Pulisic's two-goal performance in a 3-0 victory vs. Mexico.
LAS VEGAS -- Thursday's Concacaf Nations League (CNL) semifinal against Mexico was the U.S. men's national team's version of "Everything Everywhere All at Once," in that there were enough deviations from perceived reality to fill a feature length movie.
There was the news that emerged just before kickoff that Gregg Berhalter was making an unexpected return as U.S. manager. This after the U.S. Soccer Federation (USSF) let his contract expire last December, investigated him for a domestic violence incident, and then concluded it was satisfied with his explanation and maintained he was still eligible to return. In the meantime, the USSF employed not one, but two interim coaches: Anthony Hudson and B.J. Callaghan. It then used a search firm to hire a sporting director, in Matt Crocker, who simply led the USSF back to where it was last December -- handing Berhalter what is technically his second stint as U.S. manager.
The game against Mexico was chaos, and not just because the U.S. prevailed 3-0 instead of its usual 2-0 scoreline. There were two goals from Christian Pulisic, a third from substitute Ricardo Pepi, and four red cards -- two for each side.
The lopsided scoreline brought out the usual anti-gay chant from El Tri fans, and with Step 1 of Concacaf's anti-discrimination protocol already enacted, referee Ivan Barton blew his whistle with only seven of the 12 minutes of second-half stoppage time played. Concacaf insisted that the game was not abandoned and that it was stopped at Barton's discretion. It later issued a statement that it "strongly condemns the discriminatory chanting" and that "the Confederation is in the process of urgently establishing further details and reports from security and match officials and will make a further statement in short order."
That didn't change the U.S. team's thoughts on the crowd's behavior.
"[The chant] goes against everything that we stand for on our side," said U.S. keeper Matt Turner. "We've been very open and vocal about the strength of our team being our diversity, the strength of our nation being its diversity. So to use something so divisive during a spirited game ... it has no place in the game."
Oh, and the U.S. was led on the sideline by Callaghan, who was serving as a head coach for the first time at the professional level. No problem. While Callaghan led his side to its most lopsided scoreline against Mexico in official competition, he will probably only be in charge for one more game: Sunday's final against Canada. That said, his postmatch comments had him sounding like he'd been in the role for ages.
"We were confident in the game plan that we were able to put together and I think the performance from our side speaks for itself," he said. "We couldn't be more happy with the performance, but at the same time we also understand that we need to turn the page and already start the recovery and preparation process to play versus Canada."
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