Jesse Marsch on USMNT's loss to Slovenia: 'We're trying to be Spain 2010 and we just don't have the players'

An MLS-based roster lost 1-0 to Slovenia on Saturday

A youthful, MLS-heavy U.S. men's national team failed to take advantage of the opportunity in front of them in their 1-0 loss to Slovenia on Saturday, though Jesse Marsch argues the fault lies more in the gameplan than in the individual performances.

"When I watch a game like this, I think we're trying to be Spain 2010 and we just don't have the players to do that and we don't have the time with these small groups to execute what you want that to become," Marsch said post-game in the latest episode of Call It What You Want, a CBS Sports podcast.

"Of course, the players don't perform that great on the day. We can all say that. The overall performances were not good enough but it's hard for them to insert themselves in the game when they're only thinking about where they're positioned and where their spot is supposed to be on the pitch and not thinking about how, as a group, they're going to go after the game."

The friendly marked the conclusion of the USMNT's annual January camp, which serves as a chance for fringe players primarily based outside of Europe's top leagues to make an impression. This year's edition of the camp came during a fairly important time for the national team -- it serves as both preparation for June's Copa America and July's Olympics, which mark the first time the USMNT will compete at the Games since 2008.

At best, January camp is a decent opportunity to explore the team's depth and offer a few rising talents the chance to become familiar with the USMNT environment and then use it as a launching pad to rise up the player pool's ranks. Marsch, though, believes that head coach Gregg Berhalter's approach for Saturday's match -- and perhaps the training camp as a whole -- may have squandered the players' potential to impress and the coaching staff's ability to identify top talent.

"When I watch this game, the clear emphasis is build-up play, position play, passing the ball around," Marsch said. "This is what Gregg Berhalter is and this is what he wants. For me, it doesn't really access the qualities of the players that we have and now the players are, some of them, in for the first time, their first cap. They don't want to make mistakes. They want to make the coach happy but it doesn't represent a team that, I think, goes out there to play the match, to go after the game, to try to now win the game. It represents a team that is so focused on where their positioning is every time the ball moves that they're almost not free to go into the game."

Don't miss an episode of Call It What You Want where Jimmy Conrad, Jesse Marsch and Charlie Davies talk all things USMNT and the state of the beautiful game in the United States.

Saturday's team ultimately got some parts of the gameplan right -- they had nearly 70% of possession and outshot Slovenia 15-9. The USMNT put just three of those shots on target, though, and ultimately looked less clinical in attack than the opposition. Slovenia had four shots on target and the game's lone goal, scored by 21-year-old forward Nejc Gradisar in the 26th minute.

For Marsch, Slovenia's performance exemplified an ideal approach to the match. They may not have been the dominant side but demonstrated an authenticity in their own skills that made it easier for them to perform as a unit.

"When I watch Slovenia play, it looks like a team that's organized, that's clear, that understands their roles, that's able to execute on the day," Marsch said. "It wasn't a team that was all over the pitch and all over the place. They were almost always connected. Now, did they have the quality on the day to make the game look really easy and simple and create a bunch of chances? No, but they were almost never broken down. They never looked that stressed and they probably created moments that were more dangerous because they were clear with exactly what they wanted to do on the day."

The performance ultimately continues a longstanding issue for the team. Berhalter's first-choice players make up the USMNT's most promising team but the depth options leave a lot to be desired. The failure for anyone to truly break out of Saturday's game may not spell disaster for their prospects with the national team but it continues to delay the program's ability to build ideal squads for both the Copa America and the Olympics -- and perhaps the World Cup on home soil in two years.