The U.S. men’s national team’s Copa America dream ended with a lack of fight and intensity from the players and that theme continued on Saturday in the program’s first match following the summer failure.
Mikey Varas’ squad fell 2-1 at Children’s Mercy Park to CONCACAF rivals Canada, suffering their third-consecutive defeat and fifth overall this calendar year. Despite a much improved effort after halftime, the Americans started the match slow and ultimately were sloppy at times in possession.
Errors from Tim Ream and Johnny Cardoso led to a pair of Canada goals scored by Nashville SC’s Jacob Shaffelburg and Lille’s Jonathan David. Second-half substitutions such as Aidan Morris and Luca De La Torre showed promise, but ultimately it wasn’t a good enough performance yet again from the USMNT.
“The mentality is on the players, they know it,” Varas told reporters. “We speak the truth to each other. I love those guys. But they know that mentality to fight, to run and to sacrifice, I can’t do that for them. That’s on them.
“I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know,” he added. “I felt that the trainings were intense. They were aggressive. But when the game comes, you gotta get going. And the players are the ones that bring that. Coaches can only get you so far from a mentality perspective.”
Varas was selected as interim head coach during the September window as U.S. Soccer continued to try and lock down its long-term coach for the program. A former USMNT U-20 head coach and assistant coach on Gregg Berhalter’s staff, Varas is familiar with the squad and the style of play that they are familiar with.
However, the lack of intensity and overall pride on Saturday is a worrying sign for the USMNT, who have suffered three-straight losses for the first time since 2015. Veteran defender Tim Ream, who challenged his teammates’ intensity after the program’s Copa America elimination in July, once again echoed similar topics after Saturday’s loss.
“It’s something that I think we need to get back to really taking much more pride in wearing the jersey,” Ream said to reporters. “And that’s not to say that we aren’t proud to wear the jersey, but I think there’s a certain standard that we need to hold ourselves to and we haven’t been doing that and that’s on us as individuals, as players, and it has to come from within us.
“You can’t coach intensity,” he added. “You either have it or you don’t and you either bring it or you don’t and we haven’t been.”
New Zealand opposes the Americans at TQL Stadium on Tuesday, seeking a bounce-back result of their own following a 3-0 loss to Mexico on Saturday night. Darren Bazeley’s squad lifted the OFC Nations Cup this summer and will kick off 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifying later this fall.
The All Whites will be no pushovers for the USMNT and while Varas admitted that some of Saturday’s loss can be blamed on him, the players need to take responsibility as well.
“I think with the ball, that’s on me,” Varas said. “Because I want to present some ideas to them and you just never know how it’s going to translate from training to the game after three training sessions. And I asked a lot of them, you know, and if there’s a goal, I mean, that’s on me. Both goals because when you don’t have a lot of time to work and you want to play a certain way it creates confusion.
“Players are going to take responsibility for quality of action,” he added. “The translation of the ideas weren’t clear enough because you shouldn’t be static and you shouldn’t pass the ball just to pass the ball. You’re trying to be trying to accelerate play as quickly as you can.”
