USMNT-El Salvador is last chance for Haji Wright, Ethan Horvath to prove they’re World Cup-worthy

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — With roughly five months until his team will assemble for the World Cup, United States men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter is about to set off into uncharted territory.

Under normal circumstances, the tournament might already be going on, but Qatar’s unbearable summer heat pushed the 2022 edition to the winter for the first time in the competition’s history. It will be bizarre and, likely, problematic for a number of reasons, one of which is that it prevents any real pre-tournament training camp.

Eight years ago, in advance of the World Cup in Brazil, the United States gathered at Stanford University a month before the tournament began. The team had two weeks together before it played three domestic friendlies in the span of 11 days, which was followed by a nine-day layoff before its opener against Ghana.

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The schedule was conducive to adequate preparation. It gave the team time to jell, get healthy, work on tactics and compete for the final roster spots on the same field. (Whether then-coach Jurgen Klinsmann took advantage properly is a discussion for another time.)

Berhalter will get none of those luxuries.

Instead, the final extended period he’ll get with the players is almost over. And while the pair of friendlies against Morocco and Uruguay were valuable, the same can’t be said of team’s mandated CONCACAF Nations League games against Grenada and El Salvador to close out this window. At least not to the same degree. The kind of impact playing against non-World Cup-caliber teams more than five months before the World Cup is minimal, at best.

That, however, is the reality.

The United States plays El Salvador on Tuesday at Estadio Cuscatlan in what will be its final game until a pair of European-based friendlies in September. After using a heavily rotated side against overmatched Grenada on Friday,…