As Gregg Berhalter arrived at the airport on Wednesday, a day after a 10-hour interview at an undisclosed location with the US soccer executive, he received a call from athletic director Matt Crocker.
“You’re the guy,” Crocker told him.
The decision sealed a months-long process and a global search in which Crocker evaluated more than ten candidates for the US men’s national team coaching job, eventually narrowing the process down to a few finalists. Ultimately, he ended up with Berhalter, who had guided USA through the previous World Cup cycle but had also navigated issues off the field since the Qatar team’s return, most notably an independent investigation into a physical abuse incident 30 years ago that involved him and his family were involved and current wife, Rosalind Berhalter, when they were both freshmen at the University of North Carolina.
In March, the independent inquiry gave Berhalter permission to work for the association again, but there was no guarantee he would be given the opportunity. After Tuesday’s long interview and a follow-up meeting with Crocker and Cindy Parlow Cone on Wednesday morning, Berhalter made his way to the airport to go home.
Then Crocker called.
“It was a great feeling,” Berhalter said at Friday’s press conference announcing his return to coaching. “You can imagine how the last six months have been. I started thinking about my family. I started thinking about my girls and my son and everyone, my whole family, my extended family, everyone. And it was a great moment and when you think about the team and the possibilities your head is racing at 100mph but I was really motivated to come back and really tackle the next world championship and make the nation proud .”
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That US Soccer ended up here, back with the same coach who was in charge six months ago, struck some as an odd circumstance. Why had it taken them six months to come to this conclusion? Was time just wasted if they ended up back on the same bus?
But US soccer’s leadership on Friday insisted the opposite was true. Crocker was unaware of Berhalter before assuming the position of athletic director. He started the coaching search from scratch, using a “data-driven model” to identify candidates. Ultimately, the fact that they ended up on Berhalter was as strong a validation as anything else.
“What I found is that during the process, from the moment I met him to the end of the process, his passion, knowledge, leadership skills and growth mindset were expressed in abundance,” Crocker said. “And I’m really excited to be working with Gregg.”
(Image: US Soccer)
Crocker, who joined US Soccer from Southampton FC and previously helped develop the ‘England Football DNA’ for the national teams, detailed his approach to selecting the right candidates. It included a model that examined a coach’s playing style, approach to leadership and other “competences,” he said, including building relationships and the ability to “create and drive a vision and identity.”
The process accelerated when Crocker was released early from his job at Southampton and was able to continue to look for a coach. Crocker was originally due to join US Soccer in a full-time position on August 2, but was allowed to leave the club around the time Southampton’s season ended on May 28.
“We look at the behavior of coaches. “There’s a set of data sets and skills that you can use to tell if the coaches are frontline coaches or aggressive coaches and if the coaches can reflect our style of play and develop it,” Crocker said. “And that was the starting point. The second thing was mostly about things like the ELO rating, coaches who are successful coaches, coaches who have a reputation for developing young players.”
This initial process reduced the number to “double-digit coaches” and “a number of these candidates” then went through an “extensive process”. Crocker also said he’s in regular contact with the Players’ Leadership Council, which includes veterans Christian Pulisic, Tyler Adams, Tim Ream and Walker Zimmerman, and that their feedback influenced the original model of what players wanted from a coach. Notably, several players had publicly spoken out in favor of Berhalter, including Pulisic and winger Tim Weah.
The process eventually led to the day-long interviews Berhalter conducted earlier this week. Crocker called the interviews “rigorous and intense.”
“Anything from psychometrics (the science of measuring mental abilities), to abstract thinking and logical reasoning tests, to tests that gave candidates a chance to focus on certain elements around strategy and what they would do how they would develop the team and then prepare for certain elements of testing that they literally had to deliver under pressure at that moment,” Crocker said. “It gave us an opportunity to get really rich data and then it took us a certain amount of time to effectively tweak all those numbers, but what I’m happy to say is Gregg scores a goal every step of the way has been phenomenal and we are delighted to have him here.”
Berhalter confirmed he was in talks with Mexican club Club America, one of the biggest teams in North America, when he received an invitation for an interview with US Soccer.
“One thing I said to them when I got the appointment for this interview was, ‘I have to do this interview,'” Berhalter said. “I know we’re discussing something, but I have to go through this because if I never gave myself the opportunity, I would regret it for the rest of my life.”
He ended up getting the job he wanted – leading the US team to the 2026 World Cup.
After making the decision on Wednesday, Crocker made a presentation to the USSF Board of Directors on Thursday. The board had to officially approve the decision, although the vote was not unanimous.
“We have a very diverse and passionate board and as part of good governance you should have good discussions,” US Soccer CEO and general secretary JT Batson said on Friday. “And that’s a great part of an organization like ours. In this case we had a very lively discussion. We obviously voted to appoint Gregg as our head coach and just to put it in context it’s also a group that when we make a decision, even after a lively discussion, everyone closes their arms and goes forward, and the one person who did not vote Yes, we already had conversations today about his ideas on how to ensure we have the most dynamic and diverse workforce possible going forward.”
(Image: US Soccer)
Batson noted that the federation did not place any restrictions – including salary requirements – on the candidates it would consider considering during the search process. Crocker said he spoke to coaches who were under contract and others who were not, as well as candidates who coached at club and international level.
“I’ve been careful from the start to bring the best candidates to the table,” Crocker said.
He said there was no mandate to hire an American coach, but noted Berhalter’s passion for his country and the development of football in the US gave them “a competitive advantage”. Multiple sources on the search, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the list of candidates, confirmed that both American coach Jesse Marsch and former Crystal Palace manager Patrick Vieira were candidates in some way involved in the search .
In the end, the decision ended up back with Berhalter. However, Crocker said just because he felt Berhalter was the right person for the job doesn’t mean everything was back to business as usual. This has in part resulted in Berhalter not coaching either Sunday’s Nations League final against Canada or the upcoming Gold Cup as he and Crocker work together to strategize and best prepare the federation and program for the cycle ahead to prepare.
“That’s what we call evolution,” Crocker said. “So we want to work closely with Gregg to move the program forward and see what competitive advantages will bring us into 2026. With that in mind, me and Gregg will start this process immediately. … We really need to come together to discuss some of these big key priorities and some of these important competitive advantages that we’re going to strive for in order to continue to develop and continue to improve the team and work within the framework of the 2026 strategy.”
Berhalter indicated that part of that process will involve sitting down with winger Gio Reyna to discuss how to proceed. Reyna’s parents, Claudio and Danielle Reyna, briefed US Soccer on the incident involving the Berhalters 30 years ago. The conflict between the Reynas and Berhalters, who have been long-time friends, first arose over Gio Reyna’s role when he came on as a substitute at the 2022 World Cup and then with comments Berhalter made at an undocumented leadership conference in the days following the tournament Gio Reyna’s behavior without naming the player went public. Berhalter said he plans to meet with Reyna at some point but that will take place after Sunday’s Nations League final and ahead of the September international window. (He also said he would be meeting up with other players, including Zack Steffen and Ricardo Pepi, who didn’t make the 2022 World Cup squad.)
GO DEEPER
According to sources, Gio Reyna apologized to his US teammates for his lack of effort
“I would definitely acknowledge that there is still work to be done,” Berhalter said. “And Gio is an important player for this team. He is an extremely talented person. And I have the obligation and commitment to coach him like I coach any other player. I want to get the best out of him, we want to get the best out of him. And we know that if we can unleash his talents, he will transform this program forever. So there’s still work to be done and part of that is working with Matt and trying to rebuild the relationship that we know will be important going forward.”
Now, six months after being knocked out in the World Cup round of 16, and after hours of interviews and tests, USA can begin to move forward under their previous coach. Whether they made the right decision remains to be seen over the next few years – first at the 2024 Copa America, but ultimately on the biggest stage: the 2026 World Cup on home soil.
(Photo: John Todd/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)