Hoppe was grinding – USMNT coach praises the striker’s winning goal

United States coach

Gregg Berhalter

talked about the reason behind his decision to keep

Matthew Hoppe

until the final minutes of the Golden Cup clash on Sunday against Jamaica, as the Schalke striker scored the game’s winning goal a few seconds before being substituted off.

The U.S. men’s national team manager believes he made the right decision when he didn’t sub him off earlier and the young forward proved him worthy.

"

I think the way he was able to get chances, he had a couple of clear looks at goal, and that's due to his movement in the box,"

 Berhalter said of Hoppe.

"He was grinding. When a guy puts that type of effort in and hangs in there and keeps going, we want to stick with him because we thought he was doing a good job and because he's goal-dangerous.

"It was great to see him score. Roldan made a great play, but it's also something we talked about: when there's no space between the backline and goal, we got to get it to the far post, and so it was a good play."

Although it was a youngster who netted the winning goal for the U.S., one of the players who impressed was Kellyn Acosta. He pulled off a great performance in the midfield, having been tested by the Jamaica team a couple of times.

"

When I think about Kellyn and the game he had today, we challenged him before the game,"

Berhalter said.

"We said, 'listen, this is going to be a physical game, it's going to be a difficult game and we need you in the sense of you winning tackles, winning duels but also controlling the game with the ball'.

“He's done it before so we were very comfortable that he would do it again and I thought he had a strong game."

Zack Steffen

might very well be the team’s first-choice shot-stopper, but the Manchester City goalkeeper has to compete for the role.

Matt Turner

pulled off some great saves and kept a clean sheet. The 27-year-old has conceded only one goal this summer.

"

Overall, I'm not really like looking too hard at myself in the mirror,"

Turner said.

"At the end of the day in knockout football, it's about the end result, and we were able to get the win today.

"Obviously, a clean sheet is huge and we broke them down in the end, got the goal so it was a great performance on all fronts and we're looking forward to being in Austin [for the semifinals].”

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