For all its positives, the U.S. experience at the Copa America Centenario ended with a dull, clanging thud.
Using previous tournaments as a litmus, U.S. national team coach Jurgen Klinsmann did well to push the USMNT into the semifinals of the Copa America. Klinsmann identified the semifinals as a possibility in the run-up to the tournament, and while some expressed doubts, the U.S. got there anyway. And as an unlikely group winner and a deserved 2-1 winner over Ecuador to boot.
But the way the tournament ended left the U.S. in an awkward place. In the semis, they were crushed 4-0 by Argentina and failed to register a single shot in a match for the first time since at least 1998. The U.S. didn’t just look beaten. They looked obliterated.
The Americans then bowed out meekly in a 1-0 loss to Colombia in a third-place game that always seems to lose a few notches of intensity.
And so it ended, not with a bang but with a whimper.
Even as the U.S. quietly exited through the tournament’s side door, Clint Dempsey went down swinging. The U.S.’s most dangerous moment in the third-place game came through one of those perfectly charged Dempsey free kicks into the upper corner. The only thing that saved Colombia was a springing David Ospina save to deny the sure goal at the last moment.
It had been the best chance for an American goal in more than 180 minutes, and nobody on earth was surprised it came off Dempsey’s foot.
After the initial Colombia game on June 3, when Klinsmann rotated another striker next to Dempsey to give him a proper wingman, Dempsey made a proper mockery of the idea that he wasn’t a national team starter anymore. Even if you strip away his veteran influence, ever-present danger from free kicks and slithery moves in traffic, he was still one of the most dangerous finishers in the entire tournament.
At the end, Dempsey led the team with three goals and three assists in 460 minutes, and his 20 shots were 64 percent of the American total. Further, he created 25 shots, 15 more than anyone else on the team. The U.S. might not have a prototypical No. 10 creating underneath the strikers, but as a creative force it doesn’t get any better than Dempsey for the U.S. and it hasn’t in a good long while. The U.S. would have been in a rough spot without Dempsey in this tournament.
It’s almost easy to forget that Dempsey is a ripe 33 years old and entering the twilight of his career. The question of where Dempsey goes from here now takes center stage, because it isn’t at all clear. As early as two years ago, Dempsey targeted this Copa America tournament as an event he had on his radar as a focal point. He’d do his best to play in the Copa America, he said, and then see what happened afterward.
Which means we are now in territory without a map, and where Dempsey’s national team career goes from here is anyone’s guess.
Of course, much of that is down to the coach, or at least it usually is. But according to Klinsmann, not this time. If this comment holds true over the next two years, Dempsey can basically pick his moment to retire internationally. Because it certainly seems as though Klinsmann will be reserving a spot for the Texas native into time immemorial.
“It’s totally down to Clint, because it’s all about quality,” Klinsmann told reporters before the Argentina match. “It’s not about age. It’s not about if you’re 18 or 20 or 35. If you get the job done – and right now, Clint Dempsey is getting the job done – that’s something you want as a coach. You want someone up front who is clinical... It’s totally up to Clint Dempsey how far he wants to take it.”
It was curious Klinsmann mentioned 35 specifically, because that’s precisely how old Dempsey will be once the 2018 World Cup in Russia rolls around. That’s around the cutoff age for an outfield player’s utility at a major tournament like the World Cup, but Dempsey’s ever-burning furnace of motivation continues to help him defy the limits of age. Counting him out of the World Cup in two years’ time would indeed seem to be more a matter of Dempsey’s choosing than Klinsmann’s at the moment.
Klinsmann said during the tournament there won't be any international friendlies on the schedule before the USMNT returns to World Cup qualifying in early September, when the Americans face very winnable games at St. Vincent and the Grenadines and against Trinidad & Tobago in Jacksonville, Fla. Dempsey, for his part, didn't say anything about his immediate future with the USMNT during the tournament, and hasn't met the media at all since returning to Seattle earlier this week.
His immediate mission is now to help the Sounders resurrect a season that’s quickly tailing away from them. The Sounders are dead last in MLS in goals scored, and they haven’t scored in an MLS match since June 1 without him. For now, that massive goal will occupy Dempsey’s field of vision as the season hits the ever important summer stretch.
There’s always the prospect of his national team status lingering off in the mist. Will he play at the 2018 World Cup? Figure prominently in the qualifying cycle? If he does make the World Cup roster, is it as a veteran presence off the bench, or will he have enough left in the tank to start and carry a fourth consecutive American World Cup team into battle?
Time will tell. But if Dempsey’s past is any indication, we’re in for one heck of a ride.
