SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — When United States midfielder Tyler Adams arrived just late to a ball in the second half of Tuesday’s CONCACAF Nations League match against El Salvador, the game had already descended into chaos. Just earlier, American winger Paul Arriola had been sent off following a questionable slide tackle and El Salvador had been doing everything within its power to hold on to a 1-0 lead.
When Darwin Ceren shielded the ball away from Adams, he made no attempt to win the ball back. Instead, Adams dragged Ceren down to the mud, earning a deserved yellow card. For El Salvador, it provided an obvious opportunity to try to wind down the clock, as players justifiably swarmed the area. Pushing and shoving ensued before the referee calmed things down and the game resumed.
Asked about the game’s peak CONCACAF moment a few hours later at the team hotel, Adams beamed.
“I took someone out, and then Weston [McKennie] took someone out, and then Christian [Pulisic] took someone out,” Adams said. “It’s just brothers, man. We just back each other up. It’s good to have to have guys like that on the team who are running at you — and it’s every single person on the team. There’s not that one guy on our team who is gonna stay away or something like that. Everyone’s supporting everyone.”
It was easier to smile about after the U.S. salvaged a draw on a stoppage-time header from Jordan Morris, but the fracas might have been the most instructive moment of the match. Here was a team playing on the road in a low-stakes match, in terrible conditions, and a fighting spirit still emerged.
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“Gregg [Berhalter] said that after the game, he was like, ‘I’m very happy that we had that emotional capacity to our game and that aspect of the game, because in the biggest games you need to be backing each other up,'” Adams said. “You need to make sure that when someone gets stuck in or something like that,…
Source : espn
