– Social Media Disappears After US Wins World Cup – World Cup 2022: Date, Time, Draw | Who’s in, who’s in the fray? – The World Cup containers for Friday’s draw have been confirmed With the USMNT automatically qualifying as co-hosts with Canada and Mexico for the 2026 World Cup and the tournament expanding to 48 teams next time, this was the last truly exhausting, geometrically organized qualifying campaign for the Americans. Well, let’s take a look at eight key numbers from the first and only Octagonal. See how USMNT got back on the big football scene:
1.8
On the surface, it does not look so great – third place, behind a Canadian team that has not been to a World Cup since the invention of DVDs and a Mexican team that seems to be on the brink of crisis at every half-time game. Overall, the USMNT results were … good. See how they compare to any qualifying campaign since the 1994 World Cup: -1998: 1.7 points per game, 2nd place-2002: 1.7 PPG, 3rd-2006: 2.2 PPG, 1st-2010: 2.0 PPG, 1st-2014: 2.2 PPG, 1st-2018 : 1,2 PPG, 5th In the six qualifiers before Greg Berhalter took over as coach, the USMNT averaged 1.8 points per game. In the qualifying tournament, after Berhalter took over … the USMNT averaged 1.8 points per game. Given that this is the most talented US team ever made and that two extra teams in the qualifying group should have weakened the competition, achieving the average can be a bit frustrating. But there is very little correlation between qualifying performance and success in the World Cup. One USMNT run to the quarterfinals came in 2002, after a poor run at CONCACAF with just 1.7 points per game and reaching the final day. On top of all that, there is also a lot to suggest that Berhalter’s team was better than the results indicated. Christian Pulisic and the US men’s team have booked their place for the World Cup. Roy K. Miller / ISI Photos / Getty Images
0.8
Many strange things can happen in 14 games. Choose any sample of 14 games in a Premier League season and you will be able to convince yourself that, say, Liverpool loses and Wolverhampton wins it all. In a low score game like football, it takes a lot of games to match a team’s actual level of performance with its results. First, let’s just look at the goals: they were scored, conceded and then subtracted from each other. Going back to ’98: -1998: plus-0.8 goal difference per game, 2nd-2002: plus-0.3 GD, 3rd-2006: plus-1.0 GD, 2nd-2010: plus-0.6 GD, T-1st 2014: co-0.7 GD, 1st -2018: co-0.4 GD, 3rd This time, the USMNT scored 21 goals (second after Canada) and conceded 10 (fourth after Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica.) 8. Only Canada (co-16, co-1.1 per game) scored better in the Octagon, and only one of the previous six American teams outscored their opponents in a higher clip than the Berhalter team just did.
0.96
Stats Perform only provides expected target data dating back to 2014 for the CONCACAF qualifiers, but it’s still useful to take a look as 2014 was the USMNT’s best ranking in terms of points. Dig a little deeper, though, and some of the warning signatures for the rest of Jurgen Klinsmann’s reign were already there. In the 2014 qualifiers, the xG differential per team game was just plus-0.26. In fact, it was better in 2018 (plus-0.4) than, you know, Couva and all that. In this cycle, the number jumped to co-0.96, which, for some context, is what one would expect from one of Europe’s elite teams. The competition is not comparable, but in general terms of creating and preventing opportunities, the USA dominated the CONCACAF in the same way as, say, Paris Saint-Germain in Ligue 1. Overall, the USMNT generated the most xG in the Octagonal (23.3) and received the fewest (9.8). Eliminate penalties, which may be a bit unpredictable, and the same goes for: Courtesy of TruMedia / Stats Perform Despite the best underlying numbers in the competition, they finished third. What does it give? XG is a much truer representation of team quality than all its points. the USMNT did the repetitive thing – creating and suppressing opportunities – better than anyone else, while the volatile thing – ending opportunities – did not always go its own way. But there is another explanation.
1.46
Despite what you see in the chart above, Costa Rica finished ahead of Panama. The main reason for the discrepancy, as the USMNT learned on Wednesday, is that Costa Rica is the only team in the region with a world-class goalkeeper. Kaylor Navas faced 42 shots in the Octagon and conceded six goals. Based on the quality of the shots he received, the Stats Perform model would expect the average goalkeeper to concede 10.97 goals. Thus, Navas essentially saved Costa Rica 4.97 goals. Meanwhile, the opposite was happening at the opposite end of the field in San Jose. With two goals conceded against Costa Rica, Zack Steffen completed the qualifier with five goals conceded from just 18 shots on goal. Faced with the same shots fired by Steffen, the average goalkeeper is expected to concede 3.54 goals, based on the model. This 1.46-goal deficit was the second worst in the Octagonal, despite Steffen appearing in just six games. These are all plans he faced, depending on the quality of the opportunity: Courtesy of Stats Perform / Trumedia Meanwhile, Matt Turner, who started the other eight games, conceded five goals from a shot that the average goalkeeper is expected to concede 5.81 goals. He actually saved an extra goal for the Americans: Courtesy of TruMedia / Stats Perform In terms of qualifying, there were theoretical arguments for both goalkeepers: Turner was a much better shooter-stopper than Stephen, but Stephen’s distribution skills were much better than Turner. The last 14 games have completely confirmed the first, but they have done very little to suggest that the second is of great value. The choice between the two seems quite clear at this point, but the last time both players were completely healthy, Berhalter went with Steffen. Will he change his mind within the next eight months? And most importantly, does he have the luxury of not doing it?
84.3
As everyone predicted in September, Fulham’s full-back Antonee Robinson was the USMNT’s most important player during the qualifiers. The back-to-back, self-proclaimed Jedi appeared in 84.3% of Octagonal minutes, more than any other player. He led the team in both the opportunities created and the expected assists. Courtesy of TruMedia / Stats Perform These numbers are amplified a bit by all the minutes he played. Among the children with at least 200 minutes, he was fifth in chances created every 90 minutes (1.5) and seventh in expected assists per 90 (0.18). But in the minutes that Robinson was not on the field during the qualifiers, the team did not score and conceded twice. He’s not a star – or even a real potential star – like other players on the roster, but he emerged to lock in a problem in the USMNT squad that has been plagued almost since the buck’s modern-day appearance as a regular tactical role. Antonee “Jedi” Robinson has played the highest percentage of USMNT minutes in the qualifying campaign. John Todd / Getty Images
8.8
Before the start of the qualifiers, Tyler Adams seemed perhaps the least credible among the USMNT quintet of protagonists in the Champions League. Not as a player, but simply as someone you would expect to be on the pitch. Having played 76% of the minutes in his last season with the New York Red Bulls in 2018, he has only played 40% of the available minutes in the Bundesliga since joining RB Leipzig. But somehow, the USMNT qualifying campaign coincided with one of the healthiest stages of Adams’ career. He was the only player other than Robinson to play in at least 80% of the octagonal minutes. Among the players who appeared in at least five games, it surprised the team to cut (2.8) and tackle (6.0) for every 1,000 touches of an opponent. Courtesy of TruMedia / Stats Perform The team simply does not have another player who can do anything close to what he is doing – sweeping behind the offensive line in possession, rarely turning the ball and erasing any counterattacks that cross the middle. The team scored three goals and conceded four in 20% of the qualifying minutes without Adams on the field. He is the most important player of the team.
50
Despite all the talk that the USMNT wants to dominate the ball, the results have been better without it. As Athletic’s John Muller pointed out after the game in Panama, the Berhalter team just wins more games when they have less possession. After the Costa Rican game, the USMNT finished qualifying with 1.5 points per game and a goal difference of 0.2 per game in the 10 games in which they had at least 50 percent of the possession. In the other four: 2.5 points and goal difference plus 2.3 per game. But that does not exactly tell the whole story. Measured by their xG difference, four of the USMNT’s worst five games were played when they had at least 60% of the ball, but their best game was a 3-0 win over Honduras. In it, they had 72% of the ball – more than any other match. Although the score lines do not indicate this, the USA dominated the balance of opportunities at home against El Salvador, Costa Rica and Jamaica, while they also dominated at least 60% of …
