MEXICO CITY — There is a tendency among professional athletes and coaches, when faced with the hype of high-stakes competition, to undersell the sense of occasion.

A big game, they might say, is in fact just another game. Looking ahead at a stretch of daunting contests is futile; better to go one day at a time.

But when the United States men’s soccer team gathered this week in preparation for its final three qualification games for the 2022 World Cup, Coach Gregg Berhalter was uncharacteristically blunt with his staff.

“This is probably the biggest week of our lives as professional coaches,” Berhalter said he told them. “That’s just honest.”

On Thursday in Mexico City, Berhalter and his team embarked on a set of matches — three of them, in three countries — that will determine if they will return to the World Cup for the first time since 2014. The result was both a satisfying and frustrating one for the Americans: a rugged 0-0 draw against Mexico that could have just as easily been a monumental victory, but a scoreline that at least ensured the United States remained in control of its World Cup fate.

In games like these, a place in the world’s biggest sporting event is typically motivation enough. But Berhalter and his players have been burdened with the task of redeeming the failures of their predecessors, of smudging away the memories of 2017, when the team squandered a ticket to the 2018 World Cup in stunning fashion.

The current group, the great majority of whom played no role in the failure of five years ago, ended the day right where they began it: in second place in its regional qualifying group. That is a strong position, to be sure, given that the top three teams earn an automatic spot in the tournament and the fourth-place team gets a chance to make it through a play-in game. But the disaster of Couva, Trinidad, in 2017 means the United States long ago surrendered the privilege of tranquil optimism.

The other results in the region on…