Bradley ready to channel emotions

Disappointment of World Cup qualifying loss will be motivation

Michael Bradley hopes there will be another World Cup in his future. The Toronto FC and U.S. captain will be 35 by the time the 2022 World Cup in Qatar rolls round.

“We’ll see,” he said Thursday after arriving home from Trinidad & Tobago, where Tuesday’s shock 2-1 loss, coupled with Honduras and Panama wins, prevented the U.S. from qualifying for the event in Russia next year. It is the first World Cup the U.S. has missed since 1986.

“Time will tell, how things unfold over the next few months, over the next year. Obviously the decisions will get made at the highest level in terms of what goes on inside U.S. Soccer. At some point, there will be a clear path going forward. And there’ll be time at that point to then have a real discussion with those people to see where it all fits.”

As for that post-mortem, Bradley said he had his views and would share them “in the right moments . . . with people on the inside.”

In the meantime he said he would “stand tall and face the music.”

Bradley, who has 140 caps for his country, is one of only two American players to play every minute of the last two FIFA World Cups. The defensive midfielder also represented the U.S. at the FIFA U-20 World Cup and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

“I can say that playing for my national team and representing my country has been something that I have always taken a huge amount of pride in,” Bradley said. “It’s given me some of the proudest moments of my career and I will continue to work and try to make sure that there are better moments still coming.”

As he did in Couva, Trinidad, after Tuesday’s loss, Bradley called the evening a “perfect storm.”

“We’re not the first country or big country to miss out on a World Cup and we won’t be the last. We had our chance in Trinidad to play 90 minutes to get ourselves in . . . It was a perfect storm in three stadiums that led to us not getting in.”

Bradley says the disappointment won’t go away any time soon, saying he was “very upset, disappointed, angry that we couldn’t get the job done.” But he won’t let those emotions carry over into his MLS team’s playoff push.

League-leading Toronto (19-5-8) plays its penultimate regular-season game Sunday against Montreal.

“As an athlete and as a competitor, you have no choice but to keep going,” Bradley said. “When things don’t go your way, when there’s adversity, you have no choice but to respond, to keep going, to keep working, to use it as motivation. And that’s what I’ll do.”

Bradley and Toronto striker Jozy Altidore, who did not speak to the media Thursday, appeared in 15 of the U.S. team’s 16 CONCACAF qualifiers for Russia 2018.

Altidore took to social media Wednesday to apologize for the failure to qualify. “I am so sorry we let you down this time around,” he said.

The 27-year-old Altidore asked U.S. team fans to keep the faith, saying “The best days for soccer in this country are still to come.”

Altidore, with 110 caps for the U.S., and Bradley have the support of their TFC teammates.

Veteran defender Drew Moor said he was “devastated” for Altidore and Bradley “and for all of U.S. Soccer.” Coach Greg Vanney, who played for the U.S. 36 times, said Tuesday’s results left him “gutted” for Altidore and Bradley and for the American program.

“My hope is that what comes out of it is a real honest assessment of where everything is at,” he said.