ARLINGTON, Texas — The United States Men’s National Team beat Haiti, 2-1, to close out its Gold Cup group stage with a perfect 3-0-0 record. The win advances the USMNT to the Gold Cup knockout rounds, where it will face the second-placed team in Group A in the tournament quarterfinals.

The USMNT fielded a heavily-rotated lineup against Haiti and experimented with new formations and attacking channels. Here’s what we learned from a hard-fought night out in Texas against a strong Haiti side:

The USMNT is finally learning its way around set pieces

The USMNT has many strengths, historically speaking, but it’s been a long time since set pieces were one of them. So it was equal parts cathartic and exciting to watch the USMNT storm through the opening rounds of the Gold Cup full of set piece confidence. 

“Offensively, I feel like we’ve always had the ability to be good at them, but we’ve never been good at them,” Tyler Adams said with a laugh after the USMNT beat Saudi Arabia thanks to yes, you guessed it, a set piece. “So I think now it’s important just putting the balls in the right areas, making sure guys are making the right runs. Obviously, Chris [Richards] with a great finish, but I think it could be a huge trend for us.”

Adams knew what he was talking about there. The USMNT looked fabulous on set pieces again while playing Haiti, even while fielding a rotated lineup that didn’t feature its usual dead-ball strikers. When the USMNT opened the scoring against Haiti in the 10th minute, it wasn’t a set piece that did it — but it was set piece logic, created by Brenden Aaronson during a rare pause in the game and finished by Malik Tillman, that brought the goal to life.