How will USMNT lineup vs. Costa Rica?

How will the USMNT lineup for their final World Cup qualifier at Costa Rica on Wednesday (watch live, 9:05pm ET on NBC Universo and Peacock)?

How do you lineup for a game which you can afford to lose by five goals and still qualify for the 2022 World Cup?

[ MORE: How can USMNT qualify, and not qualify, for 2022 World Cup? ]

It is an intriguing proposition for USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter because there are a plenty of things going on here:

1) you want to rest your star players. 2) you have to avoid a disastrous defeat which could knock you out of automatic qualification. 3) you need a certain amount of experience sprinkled throughout the team to avoid any kind of heavy defeat, but you want to give fringe players a chance.

Below is how I would line up the USMNT in Costa Rica, from the start, while remembering that you can make five subs and four of them would probably come on at half time to get the job done.

—– Horvath —–

— Moore — Robinson — Long — Yedlin —

— Acosta — Adams — Busio —-

—- Weah —- Pepi —- Reyna —-

Okay, most USMNT fans would want to play Zack Steffen, Tyler Adams and Christian Pulisic to start. But what is the point? The job is 99 percent done. Those players have put in heavy shifts in two big games over the last few days.

The big question for Berhalter is this: do you start with your strongest team and if say it’s 0-0 or you’re only 1-0 down at half time, you then sub off most of the starters? Or do you start with a weaker lineup and then bring on the big boys at half time to close out qualifying in style?

I’d actually go for the approach of starting most of the back-up players to give them a chance to show what they can do. They are fresher, hungry to prove they deserve to be in the World Cup squad