- Hey, GQ.
This is, oh, my God.
Cut.
Can I do the cuts?
Am I allowed to do the cuts?
Cut.
Hey, GQ, this is Gregg Berhalter,
head coach of the US Men's National Team,
and these are my essentials.
[smooth music]
Starting off strong with an antique Campana.
For me, this is essential for my favorite two cocktails,
Manhattan and a Negroni.
I've tried other vermouths,
this one just does it, makes a perfect cocktail.
And the key to this is after you open it,
you gotta put it in the fridge,
'cause if you don't,
it gets warm and the flavor changes over time,
so you wanna refrigerate that.
Well, I am the guy that, in my neighborhood,
that people know they can count on for a good cocktail.
So people come over and I'll be mixing it up,
you know, whether it's a margarita,
a Manhattan, old-fashioned,
oak old-fashioned,
whatever you want, I'll make for you.
[smooth music]
What you guys have been waiting for,
the sneakers.
First off, it's always Nike.
On this particular pair,
I think they've had a Renaissance lately,
the Jordan lows.
Cool color combinations,
they varied it up with the heel,
with the sole.
I really like this pair in particular.
So I got the Dunk highs on here
and the Jordan lows.
So normally, it's the opposite, right?
You have Jordan highs and Dunk lows,
but I switched it up for you guys,
keep you guys guessing.
So really into Jordan lows right now.
I like the back, the back logo's sweet.
And just really cool shoe, really comfortable shoe.
I recommend this for people that have a lot of walking to do
but wanna stay stylish, the Jordan lows.
Can't go wrong with Jordans.
I remember, you know, growing up,
the time when you got a new pair of sneakers, right?
Like, when I was growing up,
my kids have so much sneakers now
'cause we get them Nikes,
but when I was growing up, it was one pair,
and you don't get another pair
until that pair has holes in them.
So I would just play the heck out of my shoes
until they get a hole in them
and then my mom would take me to get new sneakers
and we'd come, a lot of times,
we'd come into the city, into the Bronx,
and get sneakers.
Zips back then,
that was when it first started.
But then, later on,
me and my brother were walking to Bergenfield,
to the sneaker store in Bergenfield,
and just be amazed at the sneakers,
you know, all on the shelves,
and we'd be touching every one,
picking them up, trying them on.
That's when Converse Weapons were around.
Nike had the Dunks, Nike had Air Force Ones.
But then, the whole game changed,
and I forget what year it was,
but the Jordan Ones,
and that's when it just became a different level
for everybody.
You know, I remember thinking that
you can jump higher in Jordan Ones,
do you remember that?
My friend had a pair,
I think they were, like, $65 at the time,
there was no way I was getting them,
but my friend had a pair
and I asked him to try them on
and I remember jumping down the stairs.
I started jumping high,
I was, like, man, these things can make you jump higher.
Into sneakers, big time,
and the collection I have at home is Jordan heavy,
also a lot of Air Force Ones,
Dunks, Off-White pairs,
Virgil I thought was a great design,
I got some cool Off-White pairs,
the Halloween blazers, Halloween pack blazers,
one of my favorite pairs that I have.
I think it's an underrated pair.
Yeah, that's my sneaker story.
[smooth music]
So my next item is a knife.
Not just a knife, a really good knife.
Any job, it's about the type of equipment you have
and I love to cook.
We make a huge Sunday dinner with the whole family,
everybody comes over, and we have Sunday dinner,
and it's a lot of work cooking for 20 people,
so you need good equipment.
And this brings me to this thing here,
the old samurai sword.
This is absolutely fantastic knife.
Layers of steel on this thing.
Probably 100 layers of steel,
and razor sharp.
You know, this is one of these things
you can cut through paper no problem.
Look at the wood handle,
nice angle from there, you see,
really comfortable in your hand,
nice weight, and again,
the key is sharpness.
When you're cutting onions, cutting garlic,
even meat, perfect knife,
vegetables, this thing can rip right through these.
In my house growing up,
my mom was a really good cook.
They would also take us out to restaurants at a young age,
it would be funny to see kids at, like,
a nicer restaurant,
and we'd be all dressed up,
and people were amazed at how well-behaved we were,
but also how much we liked to try different foods.
In sixth grade, trying escargot,
and actually loving it.
And then when we went over to Europe,
you know, one of our hobbies, me and my wife,
was to go and try all different restaurants.
So it's definitely something in our blood,
we love food, and I love to cook,
I love to cook for people also.
When I'm doing an onion, now,
I'll start off with an onion, dicing an onion,
the first thing is I cut the onion in half,
turn it on its side,
so now it's flat, you always wanna have a flat surface,
'cause with these knives, if it's not flat,
you'll cut your fingers right off.
Then I go sideways into the onion,
I go up, boom, boom, boom,
then I go vertical, and then I go cross-wise,
and then I get a nice dice.
[smooth music]
And next up, USA Today crossword puzzle.
This was introduced to me by my mom in 1995 or 1996.
They would come over to visit me in Europe
and we'd always buy the USA Today
and we'd always do the crossword.
So it's a special thing between me and my mom.
It's evolved to, now, when COVID happened,
you know, with Zoom calls,
I think that's one great thing to come out of COVID
is Zoom, right?
People got really comfortable on Zoom.
So now, me and my mom, every morning,
we do the crossword together on Zoom.
Great thing to spend time with her,
but also to rip through the crossword,
we get to catch up, and do it together.
First thing we do is we're like, all right,
what's your title today?
'Cause we wanna make sure we actually have the right one,
that we're doing the right one together.
And then we get after it,
and we'll talk while we're doing it,
we kind of race sometimes, see who can finish first.
Love doing the crossword
and I'm just looking at this one now for some clues here.
"Fluffy oven-baked pancakes," seven down,
oh, that's a long one, I'm not gonna get that right now.
Like a souffle maybe?
No, I'd have to work on that a little bit.
"Bears-eaters state."
Iowa, probably.
Anyway, we do the crossword together
and it's a good time.
[smooth music]
Talked about the life of traveling a lot,
being away a lot,
you know, the most important thing to me is family.
I use my photo albums to keep pictures of the family,
we share a lot of photos together,
but here are the cousins,
all the family, all my kids,
and the cousins, they're super close together.
Love using the phone to keep pictures of the family,
I love calling them, I love Facetiming with them.
The life of an athlete,
you are alone a lot.
To me, it's the support that the family gives you.
You know, when you come home after a game,
no matter you win or you lose,
your family's always there for you,
and that's the best thing,
is that when I come home from a long trip
and I open the door and I say hello,
and the family comes down,
and that, to me, is, you know, the most rewarding time
of going away and just of everything,
being with the family.
[smooth music]
Next essential item right here
is a comfortable T shirt.
I have one on right now,
here's another one.
This one is from a design, New York based designer,
Jason Scott.
And what I love about these shirts,
they're just so comfortable.
Cool colors, really comfortable,
and, to me, there's nothing better than
relaxing in a nice T shirt.
It was just a random internet search,
I was looking for comfortable T shirts,
I think I Googled comfortable T shirts,
and that came up.
And I ordered it and they sent some.
Isn't it crazy?
Like, anything you wanna know, Google, boom.
[smooth music]
Next up is actually a skincare product
and this came from my daughter.
She advised me to get this
and just think about athletes,
a lot of travel, a lot of sweat, a lot of outdoor stuff.
Your skin on your face gets messed up.
Your pores get clogged
and one thing that my daughter gave me,
she recommended was this thing here.
It's the Foreo skin cleanser.
And it's electric-operated,
actually the new ones have an app and, you know,
just last thing I need is another app.
The new ones have an app
and it says how long you can do it for,
but you put it on,
you go circular motion all over your face,
and when you're done,
it feels so clean, your face feels great.
In the shower, I always use it in the shower,
and I'll put the cleanser on my face first,
and then I turn this thing on,
and then I just go for it.
It takes a minute, 45 seconds to a minute,
but when you're done, your face feels really clean.
It's the cleanser, it's this,
and then afterwards always moisturizer.
I have Kiehl's that I've been using for years and,
you know, the product for men,
the blue bottle one, and it's great.
We're outdoors a lot
and you can see with these wrinkles here, you know,
that it's important to wear sunscreen and, you know,
so we always have sunscreen on.
Just you get a ton of sun exposure
with being outside playing soccer,
and so it is important to put sunscreen on,
I always tell the guys, tell the other players and stuff,
get that sunscreen on.
[smooth music]
In athletics, it's all about data, right?
Performance data and everything like that.
So for me, this gives me the sleep data
and the readiness score that I'm looking for.
That's primarily why I use it.
I wake up every morning, check the app,
see how I slept, see what my readiness is,
and then I'm ready to attack the day.
It gives you a heart rate variability,
gives you resting heart rate,
gives you REM sleep, deep sleep.
It's incredible, the technology now,
that this little thing is able to
give you all that information,
but really helps me.
You know, some days,
it actually tells me, you know, don't push it.
And when it gives me the don't push it,
I almost look at it as, like, a challenge.
Really, you're telling me not to push?
I'm gonna go for it.
You know, the sleep data's really important
just to know that you're getting enough recovery,
enough sleep.
So I love the Oura Ring,
I think it's a great product.
It's light enough, you know,
it's just a really easy product to use
and a funny story,
it looks like my wedding ring now,
but what happened is we're playing a game,
Nation's League Final, in Denver, against Mexico,
and a ball gets kicked out of bounds
and I go to catch the ball,
I reach over my head,
I catch the ball,
and it hits my finger, broke my finger,
I had my wedding ring on.
We win the final,
afterwards we're celebrating,
I go to the doc,
I go, doc, do you wanna take a look at this finger?
And he goes, get your ring off right now.
If you don't get your ring off,
you're gonna have to cut this thing off,
something's messed up with your finger.
So it turns out on that catch,
broke my finger, tore ligaments in my finger,
and I can't wear my wedding ring anymore.
So the Oura Ring fits perfect.
Instead of this hand, now I switch it to that,
and we're good to go.
[smooth music]
This looks like a mysterious thing, doesn't it?
Like it's some type of spy gadget.
But it's not.
No, so this is Kilian cologne
and what I really like about this,
besides that I'm smelling really good,
is the packaging.
The life of an athlete, you're traveling a lot,
this is the travel one,
and it's pretty cool because it's refillable.
You see, the top comes off,
and then this is the vial that it comes in,
and you can refill that,
and then it's a magnet, little magnet top.
Nice and compact.
And perfect travel size.
I think it's definitely a woodsy type of smell.
Woodsy smell with, like,
a little bit of a sweet undertone to it,
maybe some cedar in it.
But it's a classic smell and I've been using this
I think since, like, 2010, the same one.
I like smells, you know, being a foodie,
aromas are always nice,
and I don't exactly know how I got this one.
You can tell this is all beat up, right,
this is supposed to be black, all black,
but that's how long I've had this thing.
So it does get beat up, but it's durable,
it's really heavy metal there.
And the funny thing is every time I go through security
with a carry-on,
they stop, the security stops it,
and they say, "What is this thing?"
And I have to take it out and explain the whole thing.
[smooth music]
Air Pods.
These are the Air Pods Pro
and when I first started using them for running,
because they have the noise canceling,
it was, like, you're blocked out to the world.
I didn't love them for running,
but what I absolutely love them for is traveling.
The first thing I do when I get on a plane
is put these things on, I get out my phone,
I open Amazon Music.
Most times the playlist is Nectar,
'cause I think it's a great electronic playlist,
but I also make my own,
and just love to listen to music on a plane.
This case, you see, it's not the white case,
this is a case that my son actually got me for Father's Day.
I think my wife got me the Air Pods Pro,
and then my son got me this case,
and I was like, it's kinda, you know,
just adds a little bit of bulk,
I wasn't too sure about it,
but now it's an absolute game changer
because I clip this onto my pants
and I don't lose the case.
When you're on a plane,
it's easy for that case to fall down the side of the seat,
you know, and this thing,
you clip it onto your jeans right here,
and then you're done.
You don't have to worry about it.
And put it on, listen to music,
get my headphones on, and just chill out on the plane.
Music, to me, is a way to get you pumped up.
There's a lot of emotion, a lot of feeling in music,
and the guys do a great job of using that
to get them ready to play.
Thanks for having me, GQ.
Hope you enjoyed it,
hope you got to know me a little bit more,
and we'll see you on the pitch.