US coach Gregg Berhalter said his side "have a long way to go to get the respect of Mexico" ahead of Friday night's World Cup qualifier between the two rivals.

Speaking in Cincinnati on Thursday, Berhalter said the USMNT will aim to gain El Tri's respect on the field tomorrow. He said: "When you hear things coming out from their camp, that we want to be them, where we're looking at some mirror that's Mexico and we want to see ourselves or something like that, it shows that we have a long way to go to get the respect of Mexico. The two victories in the summer I guess didn't do a lot to get that. We're going to have to do it tomorrow by our play on the field."

Berhalter also taked about Pulisic: "He's (Christian Pulisic) been training for four days (with Chelsea), and common sense is going to tell us you can't start a guy in a game like this when he's only been training for four days, and he's been out for two months. I understand (Thomas) Tuchel's concern. Our idea wasn't to play him 180 minutes in this trip anyway. He's not going to start tomorrow. Hopefully he will get some playing time. We will put him on the field and he can make an impact and help us get the impact that we want. "

Ninth-ranked Mexico leads North and Central America and the Caribbean with 14 points and the No. 13 U.S. is second with 11 points heading into today's game, which marks the halfway point of qualifying.