Gregg Berhalter fired by U.S. Soccer after Copa América flop by men’s national team

U.S. men’s soccer team manager Gregg Berhalter has been fired, the program announced Wednesday, nine days after his team crashed out of the Copa América in the group stage on home turf.

The failure in the biggest games the Americans will play before cohosting the 2026 FIFA men’s World Cup piled criticism on Berhalter, and he’d already had plenty since the last World Cup in 2022. Though many U.S. players play in Europe’s highest-profile leagues, in recent national team games they’ve lacked the required intensity and discipline in big moments.

As such, there was a growing sense that Berhalter wouldn’t be able to get any more out of them. And if you’re going to change a manager before a World Cup, especially one you’re cohosting, you can’t wait much longer than two years out to do it so that the next boss has enough time.

“Our immediate focus is on finding a coach who can maximize our potential as we continue to prepare for the 2026 World Cup, and we have already begun our search process,” U.S. Soccer sporting director Matt Crocker said in a statement.

U.S. Soccer president Cindy Parlow Cone said she will work with Crocker on “leveraging his experience at the highest levels of the sport to ensure we find the right person to lead the USMNT into a new era of on-field success.”

» READ MORE: U.S. Soccer had a big decision to make about Gregg Berhalter’s future as USMNT manager after the Copa América flop

Cone and Crocker thanked Berhalter for his tenure, and there are good reasons why they did. He departs with a record of 44-13-17 over 74 matches in 5½ years. His win total ranks No. 3 all-time, trailing Bruce Arena’s 81 (from 1998-2006 and a brief return from late 2016-17) and Jurgen Klinsmann’s 55 (2011-16).

After Klinsmann’s downfall and Arena’s emergency stint, Berhalter inherited a program that had fallen into major trouble. Not only had it failed to qualify for a World Cup for the first time since 1986, but the chemistry and fighting spirit honed over decades on and off the field was gone. Though the U.S. often had less talent than its opponents in World Cups and other big games, it made up for that with intangibles that delivered memorable results from the 1990 World Cup through 2014.

Berhalter took over in December 2018, and his hiring was immediately controversial. His brother Jay was U.S. Soccer’s longtime chief commercial officer at the time. All involved insisted that Jay was kept out of the process of Gregg’s hiring, but Jay had been involved in the hiring of Earnie Stewart as the men’s national team’s new general manager earlier in the year. (Stewart, a Hall of Fame U.S. player from 1990-2004, had been the Union’s sporting director before taking the U.S. men’s job.)

» READ MORE: Why U.S. Soccer was fine with having brothers Gregg and Jay Berhalter hold two of the most important positions in the sport

Berhalter left that behind by qualifying the U.S. for the 2022 World Cup, and winning many regional tournament titles. He also fixed the chemistry issues and created a rock-solid internal team culture, and was a successful recruiter of multinational players including Folarin Balogun, Sergiño Dest, and Malik Tillman.

Berhalter also benefited from U.S. players finally breaking through at big European leagues, including Hershey’s Christian Pulisic, Medford’s Brenden Aaronson, Weston McKennie, Gio Reyna, Tyler Adams, and more.

When the Americans got to the 2022 World Cup, they achieved the same results as their predecessors from 2010 and 2014: advancement from the group stage and a loss in the round of 16. Since then, there’s been an expectation that the team should be able to do more in 2026 with so many of its players in Europe.

One of those players, Reyna, became the centerpiece of a scandal that led to Berhalter’s removal from the helm for the first seven months of 2023. Reyna’s poor work ethic two years ago infuriated Berhalter and other players and nearly led to Reyna’s expulsion once the team was already in Qatar.

When Berhalter revealed that in a speech to a corporate leadership summit that he thought was off the record, the American soccer community exploded — and that was just the start. Reyna’s parents, former U.S. men’s team star Claudio and U.S. women’s team player Danielle, threatened to expose a decades-old domestic violence incident committed by Berhalter against his then-future wife, Rosalind, when she and Danielle were college roommates at the University of North Carolina.

Berhalter confessed to it publicly in January 2023. He had told U.S. Soccer privately the month before, and the governing body launched an investigation. That March, the results were published. It confirmed Berhalter’s story and exposed the Reynas’ many years of trying to influence U.S. Soccer officials on their son’s behalf.

» READ MORE: A timeline of the Reyna-Berhalter scandal that rocked U.S. soccer

Berhalter’s bosses cleared him to return to the job, and some of the team’s biggest star players — including Pulisic, Tim Weah, and Antonee Robinson — publicly lobbied for his return. Crocker, who was less than two months into his job, deferred to their desire, and reinstated Berhalter in June 2023.

That raised the pressure on a team that hasn’t often had much of it, whether on the manager or players. When the Copa América flameout happened — a win over lowly Bolivia and losses to Panama and Uruguay — Berhalter knew his seat was hot.

It also bears saying that the flop didn’t just call Berhalter’s tenure into question. It also brought up whether many of these much-hyped players are actually better than those of the past. They have lots of potential but haven’t proved much yet.

“We know that we’re capable of more, and in this tournament, we didn’t show it,” Berhalter said after the Uruguay game ended the run. “It is really as simple as that. … You look at the stage that was set, with the fans in this tournament, with the high level of competition in this tournament, and we should have done better.”

Berhalter promised that night that the program would review what went wrong, and Crocker made the same promise in a brief statement.

“I want to thank the U.S. Soccer Federation for entrusting me to lead this team for the past five years — representing our country is a tremendous honor and I am proud of the identity we have built on and off the field,” Berhalter said in a statement after his dismissal. “It was very gratifying watching this team improve over the years and I remain grateful for the lifetime bonds created with our players, coaches, and staff members. The Copa América result is extremely disappointing and I take full responsibility for our performance.”

He concluded by saying that his “approach and process was always focused on the 2026 World Cup, and I remain confident that this group will be one of the great stories in 2026.”

» READ MORE: Tyler Adams, Brenden Aaronson, and other USMNT players know they blew a big opportunity at the Copa América

On Wednesday, Crocker said he now feels “in a better place to have much more of a targeted search where I’ll be more inclined to go hard and go early with specific candidates that I feel meet the criteria that we’re looking for.”

That should cheer up a U.S. fan base that saw him make a big-time hire for the women’s team last fall in Emma Hayes. Now he can put his stamp on the men’s program.

“It was a very, very young group [of players] originally and there has been progress made, but now is the time to turn that progress into winning,” Crocker said. “So when I specifically looked at the results in Copa América … ultimately we needed to have found a way to win.”

The failure to do so, Crocker said, “had a significant weight on my decision” to fire Berhalter.