GreggGregg Berhalter’s World Cup plan exists in many fragments across several mediums. There are whiteboards at the U.S. Soccer Federation headquarters containing tactical outlines and depth charts, as well as spreadsheets with detailed roster breakdowns. An internal database hosts all of the U.S. men’s national team’s logistics, and then there are the details constantly swirling in his own mind.

Even a regular World Cup, if there is such a thing, is a wildly complicated enterprise. The upcoming tournament in Qatar is orders of magnitude more complex. It is the strangest World Cup yet, hosted by a country slightly smaller than Connecticut with a population the size of Chicago’s, and held in the middle of the European club season rather than in the summer, to avoid Qatar’s infernally hot summer. The games will be played at an accelerated pace to make up for its awkward timing, jamming an already-tight 32-day tournament into just 29 days.

So Berhalter and his staff have been planning. And planning and planning and planning. There’s a dictum among the coaching staff: Have a plan; make a better plan.

The trouble is, in the international game, coaches can plan all they like, but they have little control over their player pool. Younger players, especially, can be prone to enormous swings in form—the U.S. will also probably have the youngest team at the World Cup and possibly its least experienced at the international level. Players who recently changed clubs or encountered new managers might find consistent playing time difficult to come by. And then there is the looming specter of injuries that can derail a team so close to the start of the tournament.

Berhalter’s staff is trying to deal with these variables as best they can, but they’ve lately encountered another challenge: The team’s recent results have been uninspiring, to put it charitably.

Something of a backlash has been brewing against Berhalter’s methodical approach, as fans and observers feel the team is not living up to its abundant promise. Two late-September friendlies—a 2-0 loss against Japan, and a 0-0 stalemate with Saudi Arabia—led to criticisms that Berhalter has been too dogmatic in his tactical approach, fitting his players to his system rather than the other way around. For insisting on building out of the back while most of the defenders capable of doing so are injured, leading to turnovers in perilous places.

Not all of the fan base is sold on Berhalter’s plan.

Berhalter is aware of the criticism, but he remains assiduously attached to his process. “I think it was a positive step for the group,” Berhalter said of the camp in a press conference after the Saudi Arabia game. “I think we got some clarity.” On the day we talked in late August, he had showed up at his office at the federation’s Chicago headquarters at 8 a.m. and would stay there until 8 p.m. He was traveling to New York the following day to attend a Nike event revealing the new U.S. World Cup jerseys before embarking on a five-day scouting trip to Europe to watch several players in action with their clubs. His staff had just come back from a five-day team-building retreat in Montana. Berhalter estimates that he watches 15 games every week and gets footage from another 30. He and his staff update their player reports weekly.