Culture

The Panama game was an important test for this USMNT generation – and they failed

Published

6 months ago

June 29, 2024

Press Room

The Panama game was an important test for this USMNT generation – and they failed

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We’ll get to the Panama game in a bit, but first, think back to December 2022.

The United States men’s national team had just been eliminated from the World Cup by the Netherlands, losing in the round of 16 by a 3-1 margin. A nation was looking for answers: why couldn’t Gregg Berhalter’s side get the job done?

“When you look at the difference between the two teams; to me, there was some offensive finishing quality that we are lacking a bit,” Berhalter said of the second-youngest squad among the 32 in that tournament. “It is normal. We have a very young group and they are going to catch up to that.”

Ah, youth. There’s nothing more exciting in soccer than the concept of potential; the promise that for as good as a player or team may be now, just wait until they find their sea legs. With experience is supposed to come the intangibles that round out an athletic skill set. These are often the traits that turn a good player into a great one: an erudite reading of the game or an otherworldly ability to anticipate the opponent’s next move, to cite a pair.

Still, it can be an underwhelming silver lining to fixate upon after a team is eliminated in a World Cup. Those only come around every four years and besides, there’s no guarantee that a player, much less a collective of them, will have squatter’s rights over national team spots as younger alternatives rise through the ranks.

At a certain point, a person or a team has to show that the proverbial “teachable moments” from past hardships have resonated and will inform better decisions thereafter.

Which brings us to Thursday night in Atlanta.

For a quarter of an hour, the USMNT was up for the challenge. Panama represents the type of foe that Berhalter’s side would welcome in these circumstances. In this all-Americas edition of the Copa America, ostensibly the CONMEBOL (South American) championship, one would think it’s better to face a CONCACAF rival you play regularly than one from a different confederation altogether.

After the final whistle, with his team having suffered a 2-1 defeat, Berhalter and his players repeatedly cited their familiarity with Panama. They knew Panama was a team that would play with chippiness in every action. They knew what Panama was all about and knew the approach they would take in hopes of shocking the tournament hosts.

It begs the question: if you knew where the opponent would lay its traps, why did you end up ensnared by one entirely of your own creation?

(Eliecer Aizprua Banfield/Jam Media/Getty Images)

Since taking over in 2018, one of the hallmarks of Berhalter’s USMNT tenure has been his ability to stymy, overcome, and eventually run laps around Mexico. For decades, those two teams have fought for supremacy in CONCACAF’s balance of power. As nations such as Costa Rica or Canada enjoyed strong stretches this century, their success was contextualized vis-a-vis the region’s twin powers.

The framing does a disservice to the rest of CONCACAF, a sort of soccer classism built on past pedigree and fame surrounding a nation’s top players. The nature of a group draw, offering every team its next three opponents, inevitably fixates on the perceived “toughest” opponent in the three matches, regardless of their spot in the queue. So when you’re focused on a game against Marcelo Bielsa’s high-flying Uruguay at the end of the group, you risk overlooking the teams you fear less.

Teams like Panama.

Even after watching the highlight of Tim Weah’s 18th-minute red card offense a dozen times (or, perhaps, especially after watching it so often), it’s tough to fathom his decision-making. Before and after the match, the United States emphasized they knew Panama would tap into the dark arts to wrestle control over the game.

Tim Weah receives a red card after review for this contact 🟥 pic.twitter.com/phw8bSzdKR
— FOX Soccer (@FOXSoccer) June 27, 2024

Tim Weah is sent off! 😱
The United States player is shown a straight red for violent conduct 🟥
Big moment in this game… pic.twitter.com/WEmV5B9DKt
— Premier Sports (@PremSportsTV) June 27, 2024
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The thing is, this wasn’t one of those cases. It wasn’t a response to a scything tackle or an incisive elbow behind the referee’s back. It was retaliation for an otherwise nondescript off-ball bump between a defender primed for a challenge and an eager attacker. For that to be the series of events that allowed Panama to play over 70 minutes with a man advantage? It undermines claims of “knowing” what to expect.

Well, maybe that’s unfair. There’s knowing what’s coming and then there’s planning accordingly. The latter part is of greater importance.

(Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

To be fair, the gamesmanship the United States claimed to have expected did present itself.

Chief among the examples was the 12th-minute challenge by Cesar Blackman that saw the Panama player clatter into a defenseless Matt Turner in mid-air without making a serious nod toward the ball. Goalkeeper Turner suffered a knee injury in the process, which may have limited his mobility when Blackman placed an equalizer into the net just 14 minutes later.

Of course, Blackman escaped the collision without seeing a yellow card, but that’s another story.

In a cruel twist, the player who seemed poised to bring the “offensive finishing quality” that Berhalter longed for in 2022 did his part. Even after Weah’s red card and before Blackman’s goal, Folarin Balogun opened the scoring with the kind of attempt that only a special striker could confidently convert.

(Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

The USMNT fought valiantly in the second half after Berhalter made a trio of adjustments to replace Turner with a fresh goalkeeper, withdraw one midfielder to add another defender, and swap out defensive midfielders to ensure stability. In theory, a 1-1 draw would have done wonders for the hosts, putting them on four points and Panama on one with one game each remaining.

GO DEEPER

What the USMNT needs to qualify for Copa America quarterfinals

Eventually, Panama’s extensive ownership of possession (74%, or 72% when only considering touches in each attacking third) gave them enough time to turn one point into three. As Christian Pulisic succinctly put it after the game, “it’s not so easy to keep the ball” when you’re playing with one man less. Panama created its best chance of the game in the 80th minute and didn’t waste it.

Weah’s teammates and coach were quick to mention that the Juventus man was contrite after the match, relaying that he’d apologized for his action and the disadvantage it caused. Seemingly, he’ll soon have another chance (whether in the knockouts or after this tournament) to make things right — as others of this generation, including Gio Reyna, Weston McKennie and Sergino Dest have done following their own incidents on and off the pitch.

For now, however, the damage is done. Weah’s ill-advised shove gave Panama an advantage it may not have needed but certainly relished. Tyler Adams referred to Weah’s infraction as a “lesson” to reflect upon for the future. Pulisic assured us that Weah is “gonna learn from it”.

Haven’t we heard this before? Given how infrequently the USMNT can schedule friendlies against teams outside of CONCACAF, is there any excuse left for not having some level of mastery over the finer points of playing rivals within your confederation?

How can a team expect to outfox Uruguay, or one of Brazil or Colombia in a potential quarterfinal — to say nothing of the broader field at a World Cup — if it frequently falls victim to the opponents it knows best?

GO DEEPER

The USMNT are in danger of blowing their big moment

(Top photo: Hector Vivas/Getty Images)

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Culture

6 New Books We Recommend This Week

Published

5 hours ago

January 10, 2025

Press Room

Our recommended books this week tilt heavily toward European culture and history, with a new history of the Vikings, a group biography of the Tudor queens’ ladies-in-waiting, a collection of letters from the Romanian-born French poet Paul Celan and a biography of the great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. We also recommend a fascinating true-crime memoir (written by the criminal in question) and, in fiction, Rebecca Kauffman’s warmhearted new novel about a complicated family. Happy reading. — Gregory Cowles

One of Europe’s most important postwar poets, Celan remains as intriguing as he is perplexing more than 50 years after his death. The autobiographical underpinnings of his work were beyond the reach of general readers until the 1990s, when the thousands of pages of Celan’s letters began to appear. The scholar Bertrand Badiou compiled the poet’s correspondence with his wife, the French graphic artist Gisèle Lestrange-Celan, and that collection is now available for the first time in English, translated by Jason Kavett.

NYRB Poets | Paperback, $28

Wilson’s biography of the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) approaches its subject through his masterpiece and life’s work, the verse drama “Faust” — widely considered perhaps the single greatest work of German literature, stuffed to its limits with philosophical and earthy meditations on human existence.

Bloomsbury Continuum | $35

Through a series of vignettes, Kauffman’s fifth novel centers on a woman determined to spend Christmas with her extended family, including her future grandchild and ex-husband, and swivels to take in the perspectives of each family member in turn.

People love the blood-soaked sagas that chronicle the deeds of Viking raiders. But Barraclough, a British historian and broadcaster, looks beyond those soap-opera stories to uncover lesser-known details of Old Norse civilization beginning in A.D. 750 or so.

Norton | $29

Fifteen years ago, Ferrell gained a dubious fame after The New York Observer identified her as the “hipster grifter” who had prowled the Brooklyn bar scene scamming unsuspecting men even as she was wanted in Utah on felony fraud charges. Now older, wiser and released from jail, Ferrell emerges in this captivating, sharp and very funny memoir to detail her path from internet notoriety to self-knowledge.

St. Martin’s | $29

In her lively and vivid group biography of the women who served Henry VIII’s queens, Clarke, a British author and historian, finds a compelling side entrance into the Tudor industrial complex, showing that behind all the grandeur the royal court was human-size and small.

Culture

Is Mikel Arteta right – do footballs really make a difference to performance?

Published

13 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Is Mikel Arteta right – do footballs really make a difference to performance?

This article was updated on January 9 to reflect the ball being used in Sunday’s FA Cup third round game between Arsenal and Manchester United.

Mikel Arteta was in no doubt.

Arsenal’s manager was dissecting a painful 2-0 home defeat against Newcastle United in Tuesday’s Carabao Cup semi-final first leg when — unprompted by any journalist in the room — he raised an unlikely issue that, he felt, helps explain his team’s inability to convert any of their 23 shots on the night into goals.

“We also kicked a lot of balls over the bar, and it’s tricky that these balls fly a lot, so there are details that we can do better,” Arteta said in the post-match press conference.

When asked to expand on his comments later, he added: “(The Carabao Cup ball) very different to a Premier League ball, and you have to adapt to that because it flies differently. When you touch it, the grip is also very different, so you adapt to that.”

Arsenal were certainly profligate, with Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz and Jurrien Timber all spurning fine opportunities. But was the ball being used — the Orbita 1, made by German manufacturer Puma — really to blame?

Newcastle forwards Alexander Isak and Anthony Gordon seemed to have no issues with it as they converted their own side’s chances, and the ball hadn’t held Arsenal back in previous rounds in the competition, where they scored 11 goals in three games against Preston North End, Bolton Wanderers and Crystal Palace.

Arteta’s complaints were met with a sceptical response in many quarters, not least from the English Football League (EFL), which organises the Carabao Cup, English football’s No 2 cup competition after the FA Cup.

“In addition to the Carabao Cup, the same ball has been successfully used in other major European leagues, including both Serie A and La Liga and our three divisions in the EFL,” it said in a statement. “All clubs play with the same ball (in the competition), and we have received no further comments of this nature following any of the previous 88 fixtures which have taken place in this season’s Carabao Cup.”

Puma is yet to respond to The Athletic’s request for comment.

But was Arteta’s outburst so outlandish? There are, after all, two external factors (aside from the players) which materially affect the outcome of a football match — the pitch and the ball. It stands to reason, therefore, that any unexpected variation in either of those could potentially influence the outcome.

As Premier League clubs, Arsenal and Newcastle are used to training and playing with the Nike Flight ball. U.S. company Nike has supplied the footballs used in England’s top flight since the 2000-01 season, when it replaced British firm Mitre as ball manufacturer, and players have prepared for and played with its balls in league matches ever since. Occasionally, however, they are obliged to change.

Arsenal also feature in the Carabao Cup, FA Cup and Champions League this season, with a different ball (made by other manufacturers) used in each instance. In addition to Puma’s Orbita 1, Adidas supplies the balls for the Champions League and Mitre for the FA Cup.

On Thursday, it was confirmed that the ball being used in Sunday’s third-round tie with Manchester United at the Emirates Stadium would be a special gold edition of the Ultimax Pro model — a nod to United having won the competition last season.

Something for the winners… 🏆
As current holders of @EmiratesFACup 23/24 season, @ManUtd will play with this gold limited edition Ultimax Pro match ball in the 3rd round tie against Arsenal on Sunday.
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Let’s see if they can take it all the way to the final… pic.twitter.com/LlekjNQAZh
— Mitre Sports (@MitreSports) January 9, 2025

Though they all have similar dimensions and are made from similar materials, slight alterations in design can make a marked difference.“The more ‘perfect’ a ball is, the more likely it is to be erratic,” says Justin Lea, founder of ball manufacturer Hayworth Athletic. “They all have their own personalities. If you look at the FIFA ball rules, there are ranges for everything. A ball can only retain a certain amount of water if a field is wet. There’s a range to the sphericity of the ball and the bounce of the ball.”

The game’s laws state a regulation size-5 ball must be 68-70cm (26.8-27.6in) in circumference and weigh between 410 and 450 grams (14-16 oz) at the start of the match. It must also be inflated to a pressure of 0.6-1.1 bars at sea level.

The Premier League is using the Nike Flight 2024 ball (Matt McNulty/Getty Images)

“There’s a certain amount of intuition with a ball,” says Lea. “The Brilliant Super from Select, for example, kind of goes where you want it to go. But the more ‘perfect’ a ball is, the more likely it is to be erratic. Some with thermal bonding technology and higher-end materials can get so spherical that the dynamics and the trajectory change. They can go in a lot of different directions.”

At the 2010 men’s World Cup in South Africa, it wasn’t just the honking sound of fans blowing vuvuzelas, a trumpet-like musical instrument, in the crowd that dominated discussion. Adidas’ now infamous Jabulani was also a hot topic, becoming arguably the most recognised and disputed ball in the sport’s modern history.

The Jabulani consisted of eight thermally bonded panels with a textured surface (named Grip ‘n’ Groove by Adidas), which were said to improve aerodynamics. For the players in that World Cup, however, it proved to be a nightmare, with goalkeepers and outfield players alike complaining about the balls swerving uncontrollably after being kicked.

“It’s sad that such an important competition has such an important element like this ball of appalling condition,” said Iker Casillas, whose Spain side would go on to win the final, in comments reported by the BBC. According to Brazilian news outlet O Globo, meanwhile, Brazil player Julio Cesar described it as “horrible” and like “the ones sold in supermarkets”.

Casillas did not like the 2010 World Cup’s Jabulani ball (Lluis Gene/AFP via Getty Images)

One of the most vehement opposers was former Liverpool midfielder Craig Johnston, who became an expert in the appliance of science to football equipment after his playing career ended and helped design the original Adidas Predator boot. In a 12-page letter of complaint to world football governing body FIFA’s then president Sepp Blatter that was acquired by UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, Johnston wrote, “Whoever is responsible for this should be taken out and shot for crimes against football.”

The general contemporary opinion surrounding the Jabulani was that it was not fit for purpose, but it was not universally disliked.

Clint Dempsey, who sneaked a shot under goalkeeper Rob Green’s body to equalise in the USMNT’s 1-1 group-stage draw with England, said in a pre-tournament press conference reported by FOX Sports: “If you just hit it solid, you can get a good knuckle on the ball… you’ve just got to pay a little bit more attention when you pass the ball sometimes.”

It also provided former Uruguay and Manchester United striker Diego Forlan with his defining tournament.

His former national-team colleague Diego Abreu told Uruguayan outlet El Futbolero in 2020 that Forlan got Adidas to send him a Jabulani three months before the World Cup started, and that he would practise shooting and taking free kicks with it. As it transpired, Forlan finished as the tournament’s joint-top scorer, with his five goals helping Uruguay reach the semi-finals. Such was his mastery of the Jabulani, he also left South Africa with the Goal of the Tournament award and the Golden Ball, presented to whoever gets voted the competition’s best player.

Forlan practised extensively with a Jabulani before the 2010 World Cup (Rodrigo Arangua/AFP via Getty Images)

The Jabulani remains possibly the most extreme modern example of a football’s effect on the quality and trajectory of a shot, and it’s unlikely we will see an outlier like that again. Still, many players feel noticeable differences when switching between different makes of balls even 15 years later.

“When I went to the Premier League, and I started playing with the Nike ones compared to the Mitre balls in the Championship, I found they felt so much lighter,” says former Reading and Cardiff City striker Adam Le Fondre. “I felt like I was going to get a bit more movement with it.

“Mitre balls were more like cannonballs. They wouldn’t move or deviate off plan — they’d act in a straight manner. As a striker, you might want to get a bit more of a wobble on it, or even if you don’t connect with it well, the Nike ball in the Premier League might still have gone in. They gave me a little bit more help.”

It’s not just in football this happens, either.

In October, Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick complained about using new basketballs instead of already broken-in ones in the NBA.

“I’m gonna send in a request for the league tomorrow that we play with worn-in basketballs,” Redick, who previously spent 15 seasons in the NBA as a player, told various outlets in a post-match press conference. “I’m not sure why we can play in real games with brand-new basketballs. Anybody who has ever touched an NBA ball brand new — it has a different feel and touch than a worn-in basketball.”

Lakers head coach Redick was unhappy at using new basketballs rather than worn-in ones (Sam Hodde/Getty Images)

At the beginning of the 2021-22 season, the NBA switched its ball manufacturer from Spalding to Wilson, which was cited as one of the reasons for a slump in shooting percentages across the league. “It’s just a different basketball. It doesn’t have the same touch and softness the Spalding ball had,” said Philadelphia 76ers forward Paul George in a post-match press conference. “You’ll see a lot of bad misses this year. You’ve seen a lot of airballs (shots that miss the hoop, net and even backboard entirely). Again, not to make an excuse or put any blame on the basketball, but it is different.”

It wasn’t long before players became accustomed to the different feel of the Wilson balls, and shooting percentages rose again. Still, it highlights how minor differences can affect elite athletes who are familiar with a particular piece of equipment.

Arsenal used the Puma Orbita 1 in training on Monday during the short turnaround between their 1-1 Premier League draw with Brighton on Saturday and the meeting with Newcastle (who have had extra time to get used to the Puma ball, as they entered this season’s Carabao Cup one round earlier than Arsenal, due to the latter getting a bye having qualified for Europe). But, judging by his comments, Arteta must surely be wondering if he should roll them out sooner in preparation for the decisive second leg at St James’ Park on February 5.

Besides, any extra time his players get with those balls could serve as Forlan-like preparation for next season — Puma has a deal to be the official football supplier to the Premier League from 2025-26 onwards.

(Top photos: Arteta and the controversial Orbita 1; Getty Images)

Culture

Book Review: ‘We Tried to Tell Y’All’ by Meredith D. Clark

Published

21 hours ago

January 9, 2025

Press Room

Book Review: ‘We Tried to Tell Y’All’ by Meredith D. Clark

WE TRIED TO TELL Y’ALL: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives, by Meredith D. Clark

Do you remember where you were in early December 2020? It was peak pandemic, so chances are you were at home and online. And if you were Black and on Twitter, you were probably reading or tweeting about the Negro Solstice.

On Dec. 5, an argument about the authenticity of the coronavirus ended with a pandemic denier saying that for Black people, on the upcoming winter solstice, during this extraordinary planetary conjunction, “our Real DNA will be unlocked.”

The twinned cosmic events seemed star-crossed to a few other Twitter users, and what followed is what the chronically online like to call a “poster’s holiday.” Jokes flew among Black people about turning into the X-Men, levitating, acquiring powers and beaming themselves into the future. People uploaded selfies with photoshopped glowing laser eyes. Someone refashioned the logo from the 2006 show “Heroes” into “Negros.”

Meredith D. Clark, a professor of race and political communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, uses this example to kick off her new book, “We Tried to Tell Y’All: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives.” She writes that the #NegroSolstice was a “life-affirming signal that Black people were somehow surviving a second year of lockdowns — and with our humor intact.”

It was undeniably one of the better chapters on late Twitter, yet few people outside the intended community knew what to make of it — if they knew about it at all. One person Clark interviewed for her book described Black Twitter as “a powerful, parallel Twitter,” and it often felt that way, like being in a kitchen at a party and having a completely different — and often more interesting — conversation than the main one going on in the living room.

Although it was all so chronologically recent — and although some denatured forms of it still exist — Clark noticed that young people around her seemed to be, already, forgetting the glory days of Black Twitter, and their importance. Often when an academic writes about a cultural phenomenon that exists outside the mainstream consciousness, there’s an attempt to explain it as a means to legitimize it. Clark, instead, memorializes Black Twitter, hoping to prevent further perversion of Black innovation, Black language, culture and style. (Just look at the complete and utter devolution of “woke.”)

Black Twitter’s most lasting legacy, according to Clark, is pulling off a “full-scale revolution” in how American news media reported on Black people — which she correctly argues has a direct correlation to how people perceive the value of Black life and govern it. She intends the book as a warning: To continue on in the tradition of white media elites will lead to a further disenfranchisement of nonwhite people (and working-class white people, too) and will lead to the collapse of the country. Her warning has prescience: It’s here.

For a time, Black Twitter forced the world to pay attention to Black people and their concerns. Clark describes its contributions as “a collective intervention on mainstream media narratives about Black life in America in the early 21st century.”

She gives the example of the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, created in response to the mainstream media’s use of discriminatory headlines and photographs of Michael Brown to construct a narrative of criminality after he was killed by Darren Wilson. Or the way Black Twitter compared the acquittal of Casey Anthony with the conviction of Shanesha Taylor, a young mother put in jail for leaving her kids in the car during a job interview. Each of these instances — and there are dozens, if not hundreds — lays bare the hypocrisy in our legal system and how it is normalized by unconscious journalistic biases.

Anyone who relied on Black Twitter as a source of relief and entertainment knows the community served as an antidote to the constant gaslighting that comes with living in America.

Clark excavates deeper: She doesn’t just ratify jokes and meme culture as collective processing. She frames the larger phenomenon as a necessary infrastructure of accountability that has been denied and would not be available any other way. Black Twitter exists for laughs, of course, but it also exists to resist the sane-washing of America (and the world) by constantly refuting the racist assumptions that underline Black existence in America and are often fortified by the media. If there’s a modern race and class consciousness online, it’s in large part because of Black Twitter.

The book does not fully tangle with the cost of being in these spaces and doing this work publicly — the harassment and the data surveillance and mining whose tolls we cannot yet fully understand. Sure, people launched careers off their accounts, but we made less money than was made off us, and there are a number of uncanny and unnerving similarities to all of the predominantly white industries — sports, music, Hollywood — that have extorted and extracted value from Black creatives since the beginning of time.

Also, Clark’s book implies that the cohesion of Black Twitter rarely splintered. But by omitting most of the ways Black Twitter occasionally cannibalized itself, Clark chooses to focus on a collective goodness of Black culture online — as if everyone shares the same goals of social justice, or even the definition of liberation.

Part of the magic of Black Twitter is (was?) how boundless it seemed at times. There may have been people who felt part of that community but didn’t post about it, or tweet along hashtag lines. It’s impossible to know what the group thought, universally, because the group itself was almost impossible to quantify.

Still, it would have been fascinating to read more on how certain debates crystallized along lines of class, gender and sexuality. For instance, the misogynoir funneled at Megan Thee Stallion after she was shot by Tory Lanez seems to fall outside the window of Clark’s research, despite having exploded Black Twitter’s notions of Black femme sexuality and agency. (It’s also worth noting that the word “transphobia” appears only twice in the book.)

Clark finished her book before the blast ratio of Elon Musk’s takeover of the site could be fully comprehended, but the same question lingers over her formidable body of work. What does the future hold? That’s for a different book.

Black Twitter has waned, but it is far from over. The conditions that created the need for Black Twitter have not dissipated; if anything, they are only intensifying. What Clark carefully and lovingly outlines is too necessary not to repeat itself. It was a rare moment in history to be in control of the narratives created about us. And at least for now, there’s a blueprint to know how to start again when the time is right.

WE TRIED TO TELL Y’ALL: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives | By Meredith D. Clark | Oxford University Press | 174 pp. | Paperback, $24.99