USA vs. England, 2022 World Cup: Man of the Match

It was a chance to make a statement on the world’s largest stage and change the perceptions about how the world views American soccer. Well, if the world just wants American’s to be comfortable with nil-nil draws than mission accomplished I guess? The United States Men’s National Team played England to a scoreless draw on Friday afternoon and while the American’s looked like the marginally better team, and many celebrated the draw like a win, both sides seemed to be approaching the match pretty cautiously and content with a draw. That approach makes sense for England who have now effectively qualified for the knockout rounds (barring a total disaster against Wales on Tuesday) and sit in the drivers seat for top place in the group. The same can’t be said for the American team who had more to gain from a win that they would have been cost with a loss. The team will now go into Tuesday’s match confident that they can stand toe-to-toe with the likes of England but needing a win against an Iranian side that looks likely to play very conservatively as they will advance with a draw.

All that context aside it was once again Tyler Adams who was the clear Man of the Match for the US team, a solid follow up performance to his MOTM performance in the teams opener. Adams, was once again a defensive presence to be reckoned with, a duel-winning machine who also completed 40/46 passes.

All in all it was a positive night for the match, with even the match official scoring above a six in the community rankings. Walker Zimmerman was the only starter to score below a six in the ratings though the substitutes did drop off a bit

Here are the ratings for all of the players from Friday’s match:

Tyler Adams - 8.29

Matt Turner- 7.84

Christian Pulisic - 7.42

Tim Ream - 7.38

Weston McKennie - 7.37

Yunus Musah - 6.95

Antonee Robinson - 6.92

Sergino Dest - 6.82

Gregg Berhalter - 6.48

Tim Weah - 6.41

Referee - 6.08

Brenden Aaronson - 5.98

Walker Zimmerman - 5.91

Haji Wright - 5.62

Gio Reyna - 5.53

Josh Sargent - 5.38

Shaq Moore - 4.82

Was Adams your man of the match or would you have selected someone else? How are you feeling heading into Tuesday’s crucial match? Let us know in the comments section below.