Jesús Ferreira became the first player in U.S. men’s national team history to score a hat trick in consecutive games and 19-year-old Cade Cowell netted his maiden international goal as the Americans rolled to a 6-0 win over Trinidad and Tobago Sunday – a victory that was enough for the USMNT to advance to the knockout stage of the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup atop Group A.
North Carolina native Gianluca Busio also scored in the match in Charlotte, with Brandon Vazquez adding the final strike in second half stoppage time.
The U.S. will meet an opponent to be determined in next Sunday’s quarterfinal in Cincinnati.
Here are three takeaways, plus reaction from interim coach B.J. Callaghan, following Sunday’s game.
United States vs. Trinidad & Tobago Highlights
Ferreira does it again
The cold hard reality is that it’s going to take more than another hatty against another regional foe for most U.S. fans to forget Ferreira’s poor 45-minute cameo in the 2022 World Cup round of 16.
It doesn’t change the fact that the 22-year-old FC Dallas forward has done absolutely everything in his power since then to show that he can be a consistent goal-getter at the very highest level.
The Gold Cup isn’t that. These are still international games, though. Ferreira is still putting the ball in the net for his country at a rate comparable to (and in this particular two-game stretch, better than) some of the most prolific USMNT attackers ever. That’s a godsend for a program that suddenly has real competition up top between Ferreira, Folarin Balogun and Ricardo Pepi.
Ferreira must continue to produce, of course. If he goes cold in the knockout stage, nobody will remember anything else. More to the point, eventually Ferreira must prove that he can also score against the stouter defenses of Europe and South America’s best teams. For now, he’s firmly in the mix and he should be, as his Gold Cup performances to date have shown. And according to Callaghan, it’s not just goals he offers.
“What he does for the team, he makes players better around him,” the temporary boss told FOX Sports’ Jenny Taft in Charlotte. “That’s a guy you can build around. He’s becoming that.”
Cade Cowell continues to impress
At every version of the biennial Gold Cup, at least one fringe USMNT member seems to play his way to a long, sometimes decorated career in red, white and blue. The list includes the likes of DaMarcus Beasley and Stuart Holden. In 2021, Matt Turner parlayed his first sustained opportunity with the national team into a starting role at last year’s World Cup.
This could be Cade Cowell’s turn. The San Jose Earthquakes forward was arguably the most impressive U.S. player at last month’s U-20 World Cup in Argentina, where he scored three times in five games. And he was dangerous in all three group phase matches at the Gold Cup. He provided a spark off the bench in the tourney-opening 1-1 tie with Jamaica, started in the 6-0 rout of Saint Kitts and Nevis and then bagged his first senior tally and a helper on Sunday:
Cowell still isn’t the finished product, to be sure. He’s got plenty of competition for playing time with the full-strength USMNT both as a striker and especially on the wings, where lineup mainstays such as Christian Pulisic and Tim Weah are entrenched. Still, Cowell has brought energy, an ability to disrupt defenders, and Sunday contributed his first U.S. goal and assist – becoming the fifth teenager to do so. (The others were Pulisic, Pepi, Landon Donovan and Gio Reyna.) They won’t be his last.
“I think what you saw tonight is what he’s strong at,” Callaghan said afterward. “That’s a performance we expect from Cade. It’s a game we’ll want him to build on.”
The hardest games await the USMNT
With the U.S. resting Pulisic, Weah and almost all the other European-based regulars for the Gold Cup following last month’s CONCACAF Nations League triumph, Callaghan managed the expectations of American supporters by making mere first round survival the initial priority – a smart approach considering the shocking defeats both T&T and Jamaica have inflicted upon U.S. within the last decade.
But after a so-so start against the Reggae Boyz, the U.S. has been as close to perfect as possible. Sunday’s result is particularly eye-catching, even if the Americans actually dropped an even more lopsided beating on the Soca Warriors in the group stage of the 2019 Gold Cup.
The biggest tests still stand between this USMNT and a fourth straight regional title. A possible Nations League final rematch with Canada looms in the quarters. The Americans will almost certainly need to go through Jamaica – perhaps the most talented and experienced squad in the competition – or arch rival Mexico, or both, to claim the trophy.
For an untested group that was difficult to handicap coming into the tourney, we’ll soon find out exactly how good they are.
Doug McIntyre is a soccer writer for FOX Sports. Before joining FOX Sports in 2021, he was a staff writer with ESPN and Yahoo Sports and he has covered United States men’s and women’s national teams at multiple FIFA World Cups. Follow him on Twitter @ByDougMcIntyre.
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