EAST HARTFORD, Conn. - For a moment, the vibes were back with the U.S. men's national team. Jack McGlynn scored a stunner in the first minute of the match, leaving those wearing red, white and blue gasping.
Momentum was flowing and, even with a laundry list of big-name USMNT players watching this game on TV instead of playing, Mauricio Pochettino's squad - despite pouring rain - was putting on display what it was lacking at the Nations League in the spring.
Unfortunately for the USMNT, the vibes didn't last. They weren't undone by a lack of energy or effort, or intensity or "want-to" but rather some serious Turkish quality and a mammoth mistake.
McGlynn's fantastic goal seemed to be a tone-setter, but then Johnny Cardoso's giveaway in the box led directly to Turkey star Arda Guler's 24th-minute equalizer. From there, Turkey swarmed, with Kerem Akturkoglu netting his own just three minutes later.
And that's how it finished, with a 2-1 Turkey win, dampening the enthusiasm for the summer of soccer for the USMNT.
There isn't much shame in that. Turkey is a strong team, one that was a quarterfinalist at the Euros last summer. For the first quarter of the game, this U.S. team - the one lacking so much of their own top-end quality with the likes of Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Antonee Robinson not in the squad - was able to play with them.
Outside of a five-to-10 minute stretch midway through that first half, the U.S. looked solid. Cardoso's mishap, ultimately, proved their undoing.
“Until we conceded in the first 25 minutes, we were playing so well,” Pochettino said on TNT at halftime. “I think we were better than Turkey. When we conceded, it was a massive impact for us. It was a very emotional goal that we conceded… I'm so happy overall for our performance and its bad luck that we conceded.”
Another setback - and those have become too common of late. This was the team's third loss in a row - Panama, Canada and now Turkey - and, while this was better than the previous two, that isn't saying much. This was the USMNT’s second three-game losing streak in a one-year span (going back to Copa America last summer). That hadn't happened in nearly 10 years.
The Americans dropped to 5-4 under Pochettino, who replaced Gregg Berhalter after the team's early Copa America exit in 2024. Pochettino is the first USMNT coach with a three-game losing streak in his first 10 games since Manfred Schellscheidt in 1975.
“We have a lot of room for growth,” Tyler Adams told TNT after the match. “If you would've asked me in March, I would've said we're far away. After looking at a performance like that, there are a lot more positives we can take away. We've been working on the little details this week and we haven't had so much time together, just five days.
“The energy and the competition and the way the guys were able to compete in a game like today, shows that we have the opportunity to do something special. We need to replicate that game after game, it can't just be against Turkey. It needs to be against Switzerland now and then into the Gold Cup. Consistency is a big part of what we need.”
With the 2025 Gold Cup - and more importantly, the 2026 World Cup - coming, perhaps this was a positive step. On the day, though, it seemed another missed opportunity for a team that is struggling to seize such moments.
GOAL rates the USMNT's players from Pratt & Whitney Stadium.
