USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter worried about rising Covid-19 cases

The United States national team wants to secure their ticket to the 2022 World Cup as soon as possible and they are a few points away from obtaining their goal. They will return to action later this month during the international window for the second part of the CONCACAF World Cup qualifiers.

Berhalter worried about Covid-19 cases

The first game of the USMNT will be on 27 January against El Salvador in Columbus, Ohio, three days later they will go on the road to face Canada and on 2 February they will return home to host Honduras. USMNT coach Gregg Berhlater is currently holding camp with several Major League Soccer players to prepare for the three important qualifying games, but he has been dealing with players testing positive for Covid-19.

Berhalter announced the 28-man roster for the winter World Cup qualifying window and he has prepared an emergency plan just in case someone tests positive for covid-19 or the Omicron variant.

“We have to be very cautious with COVID during this window,” he said during a Zoom media call from the team’s Phoenix, Arizona training camp on Friday afternoon. “It’s spreading like wildfire, and there’s a chance that anyone that is coming into camp can potentially be excluded based on that. We already had one player drop off the roster because of it.”

“When I look at the threat of COVID and how quickly this new variant has been spreading, we can expect guys to come into camp and test positive,” he said. “That’s just the nature of it. So we need some protection on that.” Berhalter said.

Berhalter hopeful he doesn’t need to use any alternatives

“We also purposely brought a larger number of players from this group here because we know we’re in the bubble here. We know that we’re safe. We’re going to be traveling over to Columbus privately. So we know that’s going to be a closed environment. Then it’s just about having the rest of the group on standby in case we need [them]. We think we’re in pretty good shape."