Honesty saves Gregg Berhalter’s USMNT from embarrassment after Jamaica loss

WASHINGTON — The only thing the U.S. men’s soccer team deserves credit for in Wednesday’s ugly 1-0 loss to Jamaica is coach Gregg Berhalter’s candor.

“I’m not going to make an excuse — that’s not what we do,” he said after the game at D.C. United’s Audi Field. “We know we need to improve. We know we need to get better. … We had one shot on goal today. That’s pretty poor, and we know that.”

Players were similarly candid, especially about the experimental 3-4-3 formation instead of the usual 4-2-3-1.

“We tried something different,” said midfielder Wil Trapp, who plays for MLS’ Columbus Crew and played for Berhalter when he managed there. “The tempo of it, the intensity of it, could have been better. … I think we could have been a little bit more consistent with finding passes through the middle of the field and breaking them down.”

Goalkeeper Zack Steffen, who also played for Berhalter in Columbus, said, “I think our spacing was a little off. When we had the ball, I think there could have been a little bit more communication to help our press and do a little bit less running. … It’ll help the guys in front of our back line. It’ll help everybody.”

Berhalter focused on the lack of attacking punch.

“We lacked speed. We lacked aggression in the final third,” he said. “When you talk about when the ball is wide, there should be four guys in the penalty box, and we only had two half the time. Even when we won the ball in good positions, now it’s time to counter, now it’s time to really enforce ourselves on the opponent, and we didn’t do that.”

The return of some starters who were rested against Jamaica might solve those problems in Sunday’s friendly against Venezuela in Cincinnati (2 p.m., Fox and UniMás). Berhalter said he is managing the 23-player squad, which he announced Thursday morning, to be at full strength by the tournament opener on June 18.

“We still have guys that won’t be able to start the game [Sunday], and that’s just the way it is,” he said. “The 18th [is] a marker of where we want to get guys returning by. We’ll have a number of guys that will be limited [or] inactive for the game, and we’ll put together a team that can continue to try to progress in one way or another.”

Sunday’s game will be played on a temporary grass surface installed over Nippert Stadium’s artificial turf, in spite complaints from the players’ union.