Three days after trouncing Peru in Florida, the U.S. men\u2019s national team overcame a stiffer test against a stout South American foe.\u00a0<\/p>\n
World Cup veterans and up-and-coming youngsters combined to lead the USA past Chile in Tuesday’s 4-2 win in St. Louis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chris Richards nodded home a Sebastian Berhalter corner kick with about 20 minutes to help seal a 4-2 win over Chile in Tuesday\u2019s exhibition match in St. Louis. Earlier, teenage striker Julian Hall scored the equalizer for the USA less than three minutes after La Roja had taken their first lead of the match on a long-range strike from Maximiliano Guti\u00e9rrez. Berhalter, who also scored in the 4-1 win over the Peruvians, opened the hosts’ account late in the first half after being set up by Sergi\u00f1o Dest.<\/p>\n
Mathis Albert added the exclamation point deep into second half stoppage time, becoming the youngest scorer in program history in the process at 17 years, four months and eight-days-old, breaking the record set by Christian Pulisic a decade ago. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The Stars and Stripes will face Mexico, their fiercest rival, on Saturday in Glendale, Arizona in the third of four late September\/early October “friendly” games before closing this FIFA window against Canada next week.<\/p>\n
Here are my takeaways:<\/p>\n
Chris Richards rose up to the occasion. (Photo by Joe Puetz\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n While just about everything that could\u2019ve gone right for the Americans against Peru did, the Chileans were expected to provide significantly more resistance. They did. Though the U.S. dominated most of the first 45 minutes, the visitors had the better of the play both at the end of the first half \u2014 netting their tying goal in stoppage time \u2014 and early in the second. With an intentionally young and inexperienced roster in this, the first international get-together of the 2030 FIFA World Cup cycle, it would\u2019ve been easy for Mauricio Pochettino\u2019s side to fold.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead, they pulled level almost immediately; just 2:35 elapsed between Guti\u00e9rrez\u2019s screamer and Hall\u2019s response, which was made possible by another inch-perfect service from Gio Reyna. With the momentum back in their favor and 2026 World Cup starters Richards, Tyler Adams, Alex Freeman and Malik Tillman all inserted by Pochettino just after the hour mark, a USA winner felt inevitable. And it was.<\/p>\n “You saw the second half, how guys dug. They dug deep,” Berhalter said. “To go down a goal against a good team and to get two more is what it’s about.”<\/p>\n Julian Hall has two goals in two games. (Photo by Bill Barrett\/ISI Photos\/ISI Photos via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Pochettino split the first match this month evenly between World Cup starter Matt Freese and Barcelona prospect Diego Kochen. On Tuesday, he gave 45 minutes to both Chris Brady \u2014 the No. 3 behind Freese and veteran Matt Turner over the summer \u2014 and 25-year-old debutant Brian Schwake. Through two games of the 2030 cycle, the Argentine manager has almost as many backstops (four) as he did during his first almost two years at the U.S. helm (five).<\/p>\n Freese figures to get the nod against the Mexicans in what will effectively be an away game at 63-000-seat State Farm Stadium. But Brady played well against Chile, making five saves. Schwake was faultless on Guti\u00e9rrez\u2019s blast and Kochen has the highest ceiling of all of them. It will be interesting to see how the competition progresses over the coming week.<\/p>\n Will Cavan Sullivan start against Mexico? (Photo by Joe Puetz\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BROWSE BY Three days after trouncing Peru in Florida, the U.S. men\u2019s national team overcame a stiffer test against a stout South American foe.\u00a0 World Cup veterans and up-and-coming youngsters combined to lead the USA past Chile in Tuesday’s 4-2 win in St. Louis.\u00a0 Chris Richards nodded home a Sebastian Berhalter corner kick with about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}