Lay off Gregg Berhalter: USMNT’s failure against Colombia wasn’t coach’s fault | Goal.com US

After the U.S. Men’s National Team’s humiliating 5-1 loss to Colombia in a Copa America tuneup on Saturday, manager Gregg Berhalter stood in front of the cameras, and slammed his players: “From the 75th minute on, it was I think a lack of respect for our opponent [and] the game of soccer, what we were doing. We’re not framing it a lesson learned, we’ll frame it as a wake-up call.”

Predictably, social media exploded.

USMNT veterans expressed their indignation. Trolls broke out their memes. Seemingly everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Berhalter out! Bring his assistant, BJ Callaghan back! Even better, hire a new manager, right now, two weeks before the biggest tournament since the 1994 World Cup kicks off in the United States! It’s all over!

Sports culture is, of course, rarely rational (the whole thing would be kind of boring if it was.) But the past 72 hours have been a perfect microcosm of the Berhalter era for this US side. First came relentless optimism, then a poor result, then reactionary rage. So often, the manager has taken the blame – and rightly so at times. But on against Colombia, Berhalter didn’t do much wrong. He set up a system to try to beat the sixth-best team in the world, and watched from the sidelines as his players threw it away in a perfect storm of individual errors and defensive lapses.