HAMILTON, Ontario – The US men’s national team lost two members of their traveling party as they journeyed north into the bone-chilling cold of Canadian winter Friday night.
Gregg Berhalter opened his matchday-1 press availability ahead of Sunday’s Concacaf World Cup qualifier vs. Canada (3:05 pm ET | TV info) by informing reporters that defender Brooks Lennon and forward Tim Weah are no longer with the squad as they set up camp in this snow-covered industrial city on the southwestern shores of Lake Ontario.
“Brooks Lennon has returned to Atlanta United. He's getting evaluated for a slight ankle injury, and we're going to get some information in the next couple of days on that,” said the coach.
“And secondly, Tim Weah will be unavailable for selection in this game, as he was not permitted to travel into Canada because of a vaccination issue. Whereas in France, he's fully vaccinated, didn't meet the criteria for the Canadian entry. So moving forward, we have a roster of 25 players that can be selected for this game.”
A newcomer to this group, Lennon was not expected to play a big role in this window. Weah, on the other hand, started against El Salvador during the USMNT’s 1-0 win in Columbus on Thursday night and played a key role in the game-winning goal scored by Antonee “Jedi” Robinson.
The in-form Lille striker is a significant loss, and while he has continued on to Minnesota and will be available for Wednesday’s clash with Honduras at Allianz Field, it was apparently the product of conflicting interpretations of the term “fully vaccinated,” what Berhalter called “a nuanced technicality” across multiple nations.
“In terms of Timmy, he had one shot, one vaccination. He got COVID, he was awaiting the second shot, and due to the time of when he got COVID, he wasn't able to get that second shot yet,” explained Berhalter when pressed for further details. “However, in France, he's listed as fully vaccinated because the one shot-plus-COVID means you’re vaccinated and you're okay. And as a technicality, it wasn't acceptable in Canada.
“This is something we can't control, the nuances of the COVID protocol, and we just have to deal with it. And it will be about the next man stepping up and doing their job.”
When U.S. Soccer announced the roster for this international window, Berhalter explicitly stated that everyone on it was fully vaccinated. That was a conscious set of decisions on his staff’s part to ensure that all could pass Canada’s stringent COVID-19 precautions at the border and thus be available to compete in all three games.
It wasn’t until this week that they discovered that was not necessarily the case.
“We learned of this a couple of days ago,” said Berhalter, “and this was a technicality, a nuanced technicality that we were hoping was going to get pushed through. And unfortunately it didn’t.”
Weah’s absence opens a spot on the wings of the Yanks’ usual 4-3-3 formation. Depending on how Christian Pulisic is deployed after his quiet showing on Thursday, it could create additional opportunities for Jordan Morris, Brenden Aaronson, Paul Arriola or Cristian Roldan to contribute.
The decision will be carefully plotted by Berhalter and his staff, with hosts Canada currently atop the Octagonal standings with 19 points (5W-0L-4D record). But the USMNT are right on their heels in second place with 18 points (5W-1L-3D record) as Concacaf’s three automatic spots to the Qatar 2022 World Cup come closer into view.
