…when [Gregg] Berhalter leads the U.S. team into its first World Cup knockout match in eight years on Saturday, he will be up against an opponent that has taught him practically everything he knows about soccer. Nearly every fundamental belief that Berhalter holds about how the game should be played was learned during the six years he spent as a player in Holland.
“A lot of my basic ideas of the game are formed around the Dutch style,” Berhalter has said. “That had a huge part of forming who I am.”
Berhalter’s self-styled immersion program started in Zwolle in the Dutch second tier, where he found, like all Americans who travel to the Netherlands, that everyone spoke surprisingly excellent English. When he had questions, there were actually people who could answer them. This would not have been the case in, say, Genoa.
“He was humble, but not shy—he wasn’t afraid to speak in the dressing room about mentality or about work,” says Marco Koorman, a teammate at Zwolle during Berhalter’s first season there. “But when it came to tactics, he was quiet and he listened.”
U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter will manage his first ever World Cup knockout game on Saturday against the Netherlands, the country where he once spent six years learning how the game should be played https://t.co/C1VmbYXWKg
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 1, 2022