‘We know what he’s capable of’ - Gregg Berhalter reflects on referee calls during shocking loss against Panama

Timothy Weah's disastrous first-half red card in Thursday's 2-1 Copa América loss to Panama was described by US men's national team manager Gregg Berhalter as a "silly decision," and the forward also apologized for it to his teammates.

In the eighteenth minute, the Juventus forward received a straight red card for reaching out and hitting Panamanian player Roderick Miller in the side of the head after an off-ball incident. Weah was originally given a yellow card, however following a video review, center referee Iván Barton modified it to a red card.

Gregg Berhalter spoke about some of the decisions made by the referee throughout the game and how it can be deemed a bit controversial to say the least. After the game, he let his feelings known about the referee calls and the red card for Timothy Weah.

He said, "We talked beforehand about the tendencies of this referee, we knew what he's capable of and to be honest I think we played right into his hands. And we made that decision I think pretty easy. Tim got bumped, he got checked and he reacted. He apologized to the group and I think he understands what a difficult position he put the group in. Nonetheless it happened and as a result we lost this game and we're gonna have to move on and figure out how to win next game."

“We need to advance” : Gregg Berhalter on final group stage game

After losing to Panama, the USMNT is now tied for first place in Group C. To get to the next round, they will probably need to defeat Uruguay, among the underdogs to take the Copa America 2024, in their encounter. Berhalter avoided using the term "must-win," downplaying the importance of their group stage decider.

The USMNT manager said, "I think we're all getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in terms of how this whole thing's going to play out. What we know, the facts are that Panama's going to play Bolivia and we're going to play Uruguay. That's clear. We don't know exactly what we're going to need from the game, but we're going to go in with the intentions of trying to play a very good game and try to get the result we need to advance and it's really as simple as that."