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2021 Friendly: USA 4-0 Costa Rica - a pleasant win in the idyllic Wasatch Mountains

What a delightful mid-summer night

Soccer: International Friendly Soccer-Costa Rica at USA Jeffrey Swinger-USA TODAY Sports

Somehow after beating Mexico 3-2 in a fun, thrilling, scary, and... let’s go with quagmire of a game Gregg Berhalter was not fired and led his team in a friendly against Costa Rica, but any fan with eyes knows he’s on a short leash... OK, OK, I’ll stop.

In the end, the USA played very well. The team lined up in a 4-3-3 and played aggressive attacking soccer. The team scored early and often and thanks to goals from Brenden Aaronson, Daryl Dike, Reggie Cannon, and Gio Reyna, a dominant 4-0 score was the result.

Gifs of highlights and tweets I tweeted

I was running the SSFC Twitter account tonight and I’m extremely proud of this. So here’s some tweets I tweeted to recap the game.

Here’s a tweet about the first goal:

Here is the first goal:

So this wasn’t exactly right, but there was lots of positional play with Robinson pushing way forward and at times Lletget or Adams drifting over to cover defensively. Antonee was creating a lot of problems for the Ticos early.

This was Costa Rica’s best chance of the half, nice, if not lucky, play by McKenzie to recover and make the professional foul to hold off Campbell.

The resulting free kick went off of one of the Costa Rica players and went harmlessly out for a goal kick. A second goal was in the works for the US as the team struck in transition thanks to a pass from McKenzie to Dike.

This happened right before the half, Aaronson makes Diego Lainez look like Brek Shea!

Here’s what subs were made at the half.

Then the Stars and Stripes scored another goal.

Here’s another sub:

Then the USA made more subs.

I really wanted to do some SLC Punk quotes in the game since it’s the only cultural reference to Utah that I have, so I did that:

Maybe I should have done some quotes about cowboys, but Gio scored his penalty.

Costa Rica had a few free kicks after that and a couple of shots on goal that Horvath easily handled. The game wound down and the Stars and Stripes saw it out for a clean sheet and a 4-0 victory.

Declarations of Independence:

  • Gregg Berhalter pretty much got everything right in this one.
  • What’s it going to be like when Aaronson starts over Pulisic for World Cup qualifiers?
  • This was a friendly featuring two not quite first choice teams, but the USA took apart a competitive Costa Rica side. It was nice to see.
  • Ethan Horvath almost has a bald head, he’s that close to being the starting keeper for the national team.