AUSTIN, Texas — For a team in dire need of a striker to emerge in the lead up to the World Cup, Jesus Ferreira’s four-goal performance in the United States men’s national team’s 5-0 win against Grenada on Friday was certainly a welcome development.
It took some time to break the deadlock, but once Ferreira scored the opener in the 43rd minute, the floodgates opened as the team began its defense of the CONCACAF Nations League. His hat trick came in the span of 13 minutes — the third-fastest in team history — before he joined a group of just four other men to tally four in a game for the United States. No one has ever scored more.
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Earlier in the day, U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter had sensed Ferreira had been feeling the pressure. The 21-year-old FC Dallas striker was held goalless in starts against Morocco and Uruguay, prolonging the team’s drought from its starting No. 9s. Berhalter reassured Ferreira that scoring goals is just a piece of how he was being evaluated and that his work in other areas hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“I think that anytime a player is under pressure, you look for how they respond,” Berhalter said. “That’s the important thing, and no matter what the level of the opponent is, the player still has to perform.”
While Ferreira responded well, the level of opponent does matter. Grenada is a tiny Caribbean nation of just more than 100,000 people. It’s ranked No. 170 in the world and features a roster of players in a different stratosphere as the U.S. The plethora of chances the U.S. created was wholly predictable and the gulf in talent prevents anything that took place from serving as some kind of determining factor down the line.
It would have been one thing to break out against Morocco or Uruguay, it’s something different when one of the opposing players (Leon Braveboy) is coming off a college soccer season at the…
Source : espn
