KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The U.S. men’s national team was eliminated from the 2024 Copa América on Monday after losing a bruising match.
It faced Uruguay, the strongest puncher in Group C. For an hour, it neutralized one of the Copa’s most impressive contenders to date. It endured tough physical duels. At times, it looked capable of winning.
But what was needed was scoring.
For 90 tense, hectic minutes here in Arrowhead Stadium, nothing happened.
Instead, it conceded a controversial second-half goal from Uruguay’s Mathías Olivera, which appeared to be offside but was confirmed by a video review, and lost 1–0.
Panama, playing at the same time, defeated Bolivia 3-1, sending the Americans into a distant third place and into elimination.
At the final whistle, some players fell to the ground, others fell over, others remained standing there, defeated and bewildered.
Ultimately, though, it was their previous match that did them in. They arrived in Kansas City injured and reeling, beaten by Panama and pushed to the brink in Group C. A week ago, it had seemed so simple; suddenly, failure lurked in the bowels of Arrowhead, ready to pounce if the U.S. couldn’t defeat Uruguay, a flyweight giant in the sport.
“We have to play the best game of our lives,” Christian Pulisic said Thursday.
On the eve of the clash with Uruguay, he corrected that statement; it was an exaggeration; “maybe I was a little emotional,” he said. But the scale of the task and the stakes were clear. “We have to play a very strong game,” Pulisic said.
Thirty hours later they tried.
In some ways it was.
But Uruguay was stronger. Uruguay is stronger. Uruguay was the team that grew in the second half of Monday’s game and forced the US to fade. Uruguay was the team less disrupted by physicality.
The first half was intense and occasionally disorganized. Cracking tackles paralyzed several players. Two — Uruguayan Maxi Araujo and American striker Folarin Balogun — were forced off with injuries after fearsome collisions.
It was also littered with sketchy refereeing. On one occasion, official Kevin Ortega blew the whistle for a foul on American defender Chris Richards and drew a yellow card — then cleared him to give Uruguay the advantage. The resulting chance nearly led to an opener, but Tim Ream scrambled to avoid it.
The U.S. generally matched Uruguay’s intensity — no easy feat. The Americans were better in the first 30 minutes, a small victory in itself given the strength of Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguayan team.
But as is too often the case under head coach Gregg Berhalter, they couldn’t find a goal, creating just 0.3 Expected Goals compared to Uruguay’s 1.3.
“I mean, we had a good start and brought a lot of energy,” Pulisic said after the game, “but at the end of the day there was just not enough quality. I felt like we gave it everything, but we just couldn’t find the solutions to score.”
When Panama scored in the 22nd minute against Bolivia in the other Group C match, the U.S. had to score a goal some quality; it had to create something.
For a few brief minutes in the second half, Bolivia gave the USMNT life. The Bolivians equalized against Panama. If both games had ended in a draw, the US would have slipped through to the knockout rounds on goal difference.
But less than a minute after Bolivia’s goal was confirmed via video, the US conceded a goal on a set piece.
Panama later scored a second goal to regain the lead, and then a third.
Uruguay remained in control, recording a 1-0 victory and sending the American players to the locker room to defy defeat, heading for elimination from the Copa América.
They trudged on, dejected, broken, dejected, earlier than anyone had expected. Many had been asked in the preceding weeks about expectations and benchmarks for the Copa; external assumptions were that a quarter-final place would be acceptable and a semi-final successful, but some players went further: Why not try to win it?
Few seemed to even consider failing in the group stage. It was so far beneath the USMNT’s seemingly inflated sense of self-worth. And it would so clearly be a colossal disappointment.
But it happened, and now all eyes will be on what happens next. They will be on US Soccer’s sporting director Matt Crocker, and on Berhalter. A majority of fans and pundits now seem to agree that he should be fired. Will he be fired? And if so, who will replace him? And if not, how will he and the USMNT respond?
A team made up mostly of under-23s will head to the Olympics in Paris later this month. But for the entire USMNT, the next 18 months will be relatively barren. There will be monotonous, low-profile friendlies. There will be exhausting regional competitions.
This Copa America squabble will hang over their heads, as this was the tournament that was supposed to take the program to the next level; this was the stepping stone to the 2026 World Cup in North America. Instead, the U.S. will go into 2026 with almost zero evidence that it can compete with the elite of international soccer and compete.
Here’s how the match played out in real time:
