SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Inside a luxury hotel roughly nine miles from the site of the final game of CONCACAF World Cup qualifying, United States men’s national team coach Gregg Berhalter was at ease Tuesday. Six days earlier, he called the forthcoming week the most important of his coaching career and though the team has not officially qualified for the 2022 World Cup yet, no rational observer would seriously still allow for the possibility that the U.S. won’t be headed to Qatar.
The United States can lose by five goals or fewer against Costa Rica Wednesday and still qualify on goal differential, but it has not lost a competitive game by six goals or more since 1957, a stretch that includes six World Cups, 16 qualifying cycles and several decades in which the sport existed in the country beyond the fringes of public consciousness. At Costa Rica’s National Stadium — against a…
