United States men’s national team interim coach Mikey Varas said his players lacked the right mentality in a historic 2-1 loss to Canada Saturday at Children’s Mercy Park in Kansas City, Kansas.
It was Canada’s second victory over the USMNT on U.S. soil and first in 67 years.
“The mentality is on the players. They know it,” he told reporters. “We speak the truth to each other. I love those guys. But they know that mentality to fight, to run and to sacrifice, I can’t do that for them. That’s on them.”
Varas said he had no answers to why the proper mentality was lacking.
“I’m not a psychologist, so I don’t know,” he said. “I felt that the trainings were intense. They were aggressive. But when the game comes, you gotta get going. And the players are the ones that bring that. Coaches can only get you so far from a mentality perspective.”
Coming off defeats to Panama and Uruguay at the Copa América, the U.S. has lost three straight games for the first time since 2015 against Brazil, Mexico and Costa Rica. A defeat to New Zealand on Tuesday in Cincinnati would result in the Americans’ first four-game losing streak since 2007.
“All over the park today, our mentality just wasn’t quite there,” defender Chris Richards said.
Varas moved up from assistant after Gregg Berhalter was fired following the team’s dismal performance at the Copa América, where the USMNT exited a home competition at the group stage for the first time in history.
Before a crowd of 10,523 in a just over half-full Children’s Mercy Park, Jacob Shaffelburg put Canada ahead in the 17th minute after Tim Ream’s pass bounced away from Johnny Cardoso. Jonathan David added his 29th international goal in the 58th minute when Ream turned over the ball in front of his own goal.
Midfielder Luca de la Torre pulled a goal back with his first international strike in the 66th minute.
“We just weren’t intense enough at times,” de la Torre said.
Given his short amount of time at the helm, Varas took responsibility for contributing to Saturday’s defeat by trying to introduce new tactical ideas.
“I think with the ball, that’s on me,” he said.
“Because I want to present some ideas to them and you just never know how it’s going to translate from training to the game after three training sessions. And I asked a lot of them, you know, and if there’s a goal, I mean, that’s on me. Both goals because when you don’t have a lot of time to work and you want to play a certain way it creates confusion.
“Players are going to take responsibility for quality of action. The translation of the ideas weren’t clear enough because you shouldn’t be static and you shouldn’t pass the ball just to pass the ball. You’re trying to be trying to accelerate play as quickly as you can.”
Varas is not expected to lead the team for long, with ESPN reporting that Mauricio Pochettino has agreed to become the new USMNT coach with an announcement expected in the coming days.
Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.