Arsenal and USA’s Matt Turner: ‘Arteta makes your mind work in different ways’

M att Turner’s football journey is not what you might call traditional. He didn’t start playing the game until he was 14 – and that was because he wanted to stay in shape for basketball and baseball. Even then, he only played in goal when another player went down with an injury. From there he has progressed from MLS standout to Arsenal to USA’s starting keeper at last year’s World Cup. But he always wants more, something that is clear when he looks back at the team’s performance in Qatar.

“There’s a hunger,” Turner says, reflecting on the US loss to the Netherlands in the round of 16. In the group stages, they had impressed with their style of play and went toe-to-toe with England in a 0-0 draw. The Americans had also achieved the main objectives born in the wreckage of the disastrous qualification campaign for the 2018 World Cup: make it to Qatar and reach the knockout stages.

But Turner feels the US were capable of more in Qatar, and falling short of that has stung. “I think [future US generations] will look at it as a stepping stone, but also a bit of a missed opportunity in some ways, because we were playing really, really well. I think a lot of us felt a lot of disappointment after,” he says.

What they achieved was commendable, though. The disappointment comes only because in the moment, they felt genuinely capable of making history – and not just in the future, but right then, with that team.

“If you had told us beforehand: ‘Oh, you’re gonna get to the round of 16. You’re gonna play well, but you’re not going to win.’ You would have been like: ‘You’ll take that. You’ll take that.’ Because that’s what a lot of [US] teams have done in previous World Cups. But being there, being on the precipice of a quarter-final,