Roller Coaster of Results

On This Day in 2021, the Americans Salvaged a Chaotic World Cup Qualifying Window

The week began with transcendence and ended with vindication. However, the middle threatened to derail everything the United States had built since summer's tournament victories began to feel like a distant memory. Ricardo Pepi was supposed to be the future—a promising prospect who had, a couple of months earlier, made the defining choice of his young career, choosing to represent the United States over Mexico on the international stage. On the night of October 7 in Austin, he didn't look like a prospect anymore. He looked inevitable.

Against Jamaica, with the kind of clinical finishing that separates good young players from truly dangerous ones, Pepi scored twice in the second half to propel the Americans to a 2-0 victory. The performance was clinical and controlled, precisely the kind of display that suggested Gregg Berhalter's faith in youth wasn't misplaced—that surrounding young talent with veterans like Walker Zimmerman and Weston McKennie, who had returned from his COVID protocol suspension, could yield the consistency the team desperately needed.

"He has this instinct for scoring," Berhalter said of Pepi after the match, his voice carrying the confidence of a coach watching a prospect become a presence. "It's really hard to teach that to players."

The win moved the Americans to eight points, their second consecutive victory after opening with disappointment. The trajectory seemed clear: the team was finding its identity and learning to navigate the peculiar brutality of CONCACAF qualifying. Pepi had announced himself not just as a future star but as an immediate weapon. Three days later, in a stadium 2,100 miles south, that narrative collapsed in 54 minutes.

Panama's Estadio Rommel Fernández felt hostile in ways that transcended normal home-field advantage. It was the anniversary of the defeat that ended the United States' streak of seven consecutive World Cup appearances, a historical wound that seemed to linger in the humid Central American air. More immediately, Berhalter had made the complicated calculus of rotating his squad—seven changes from the Jamaica lineup, removing Pepi for rest, benching Brenden Aaronson for the same reason, and pushing Yunus Musah to just the first half.

The injuries had become an inventory of misfortune: Christian Pulisic still sidelined, Giovanni Reyna back in Germany, McKennie nursing a quadriceps injury. Antonee Robinson remained stateside to avoid British COVID quarantine protocols. The team that had dominated Jamaica suddenly looked fragile, hastily assembled from spare parts. The performance matched the chaos of assembly. In the opening moments, the Americans appeared both nervous and overcompensated, lacking the rhythm and connectivity that had defined Thursday's triumph. Panama, by contrast, looked organized, purposeful and dangerous. Their home crowd, sensing vulnerability, became a physical force on the field.

In the 54th minute, Anibal Godoy—a 31-year-old midfielder with the experience of a man who had survived previous World Cup cycles—rose above the chaos to head in a corner kick past goalkeeper Matt Turner. One goal, one moment of American sloppiness, and the fragile narrative of momentum was shattered completely.

"Physically, the intensity wasn't there," Turner would later reflect, the words carrying the weight of a professional confronting his own inadequacy. "They got a huge boost from their home crowd, and we didn't match and exceed that." The defeat ended a 13-game unbeaten streak. More significantly, it created a crisis of confidence that threatened to undermine everything that had preceded it. Back in Columbus, Ohio, where the United States had established an almost mythical home-field advantage, the pressure accumulated like humidity before a storm.

Berhalter came under immediate scrutiny for his personnel choices. The seven lineup changes, the decision to rotate players who had been stellar the previous evening, the tactical adjustments that never seemed to take hold—all of it became ammunition for critics who questioned whether the coach was overthinking a chaotic schedule or simply making necessary adjustments for player welfare. "We were off," Berhalter admitted with the directness of a professional acknowledging reality. "Make no mistake about it: It was not a good game by us."

By Tuesday, however, his tone had shifted. When asked if he regretted the personnel choices, Berhalter showed no remorse. "I don't regret in any moment playing that lineup," he said firmly. "I regret more of our performance and attacking adjustments we could've made, but not personnel." The distinction was important—Berhalter was drawing a line between accepting responsibility for the loss while defending the broader strategy of building depth through this World Cup cycle.

But the present demanded results. With nine matches remaining in the Octagonal, the Americans sat at 3-1-2, in second place behind Mexico but increasingly vulnerable to slipping further. The home game against Costa Rica on October 13, traditionally a fixture the Americans struggled with on the road, became the moment everything either stabilized or spiraled.

Lower.com Field, Columbus's new downtown home for Major League Soccer, had inherited the mystique of the old arena where the Americans had dominated previous qualifying cycles. 20,165 supporters filled the venue; their voices, amplified by the cozy seating and partial roof, felt like a physical presence rather than mere background noise.

But before the crowd had even finished their theatrical opening "U-S-A!" chant, Costa Rica struck with the kind of devastating efficiency that suggested all the anxiety hovering over the American camp was justified. In the second minute, just 59 seconds into play, Costa Rican defender Keysher Fuller redirected a long cross from Rónald Matarrita past goalkeeper Zack Steffen, who had been frozen by an attacker in the box and questionable positioning by Sergiño Dest.

The stadium seemed to deflate. The doubts that had been building for three days—since the Jamaica triumph had felt inevitable, through the Panama collapse, during the sleepless reckonings of the past 72 hours—suddenly felt prophetic. Here we go again, the narrative seemed to whisper. Berhalter's initial response was calm, almost philosophical. "I think my initial thought was, here we go," he would reflect later. "We've got to respond. It was early enough in the game that if we stayed calm and stuck to the game plan, I thought we'd be OK."

But it was Dest who provided the actual response, and it arrived with the kind of individual brilliance that transcends tactical adjustments or squad rotation. Receiving the ball on the right wing in the 25th minute, Dest moved toward the box with the kind of mesmerizing dribbling that had defined his potential since joining Barcelona. He caressed the ball with his right foot, creating space, then shifted it to his left and unleashed a shot into the upper corner with the kind of precision that suggested inevitability.

The goal had been preceded by a sweeping 13-pass move involving nine American players—a play that seemed to encapsulate everything Berhalter had been preaching about verticality and purposeful movement. It was not just a goal but a statement about the team's tactical identity when executing at its highest level.

"It's a really important goal, and it was a really nice goal, so it's an amazing feeling," Dest said, still processing the moment, mentioning almost as an afterthought that he'd thought his shoelaces were untied when he struck it. By halftime, the Americans had begun to seize control, dominating possession and creating chances against a Costa Rican team that had seemed so threatening in that opening minute. The young American lineup, which had looked fragile and disorganized in Panama, was finding its rhythm against aging opponents who seemed to be tiring despite the match barely being half over.

In the 66th minute, the winning goal arrived in controversial circumstances that seemed fitting for a match that had lurched from crisis to crisis. Tim Weah, who had entered the lineup only hours before kickoff when Paul Arriola suffered a groin injury in warmups, collected a loose ball deep in the Costa Rican end after a deflection off Fuller. His shot at the near post was completely misplayed by substitute goalkeeper Leonel Moreira, who had entered the match after Paris Saint-Germain's Keylor Navas departed with a groin injury of his own. The ball struck Moreira in the ribs, bounced off the post, and rolled into the far corner. The goal was credited to Moreira as an own goal. It didn't matter. The points were secured. The crisis was contained.

What had begun with Pepi's ascendant performance in Austin had nearly collapsed in the humidity of Panama before being salvaged in the controlled environment of Columbus. Two wins and a loss—three games in seven days, with injuries and rotations and the perpetual chaos of CONCACAF qualifying. The Americans emerged with 11 points from six games, comfortably in second place behind Mexico. More importantly, they had demonstrated something essential: the capacity to respond to adversity, to learn from disappointment, to execute under pressure when the moment truly demanded it.

"We needed the points, and we can't lose again," Dest said, the weight of the moment evident in his words. "We needed it really bad."

Berhalter's experiment with youth had survived its first real test. The youngest starting lineup in American World Cup qualifying history—averaging just under 23 years old—had faced a team with an average age over 30, men who had survived previous World Cup cycles and knew exactly how to navigate the pitfalls of Central American qualifying. 

"World Cup qualifying is difficult," Berhalter said, addressing the criticism that had accumulated during the week. "People think it's a cakewalk. We're going to play the youngest team in the history of U.S. Soccer, and we're just going to breeze through these games. It's not realistic. What I will say is that the guys fight, and the guys give everything. That's all you can ask."

The long road to Qatar remained unfinished. Eight matches still lie ahead, including trips to Mexico and Costa Rica, where the Americans had never won a World Cup qualifier. But this window—with all its exhilaration and collapse and redemption—had established something essential: that Berhalter's vision of building a young team through rotation and experience could work, that setbacks didn't define the journey, and that the future, whatever form it took, would be earned through resilience rather than assumed through talent. For now, it was enough.