AL RAYYAN, Qatar — The mood here Friday at the Qatar National Convention Centre couldn’t have been more different than that of four days earlier, when U.S. men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter and captain Tyler Adams were subjected to a 30-minute siege by Iranian reporters who grilled the Americans on off-topic issues like naval strategy and immigration.
At Friday’s pre-match press conference, which preceded Saturday’s World Cup round-of-16 showdown between the U.S. and the Netherlands here in the Doha suburbs, the manager and player had a lot more fun. Berhalter told a couple amusing stories about his time as an Eredivisie defender, took a question in Dutch (he understood it, but answered in English), asked a Brazilian reporter for some intel on Saturday’s referee and even ribbed his captain a bit for not playing more diagonal passes. It was an afternoon of relaxed give-and-take.
Adams, in turn, announced, “That’s his job!” when asked for an Oranje scouting report, went into affectionate detail about several U.S. teammates and at one point said simply, “I’m very happy to talk about football.”
