The U.S. Men’s National Team will face an unfamiliar opponent in the team’s first of three Copa America tune-up matches on Sunday against Puerto Rico.
Head coach Jack Stefanowski released his 21-man roster on Tuesday, which includes Tampa Bay Rowdies midfielder Jeremy Hall and San Antonio FC’s Manolo Sanchez.
Puerto Rico’s roster is primarily composed of players based out of their native country, with club sides Bayamon FC and Puerto Rico FC well represented within the squad. Alexis Rivera, Michael Fernandez and Samuel Soto have each been called up from Bayamon’s team.
The squad also features six collegiate players, including Florida International University duo Luis Bentacur and Darren Rios. Additionally, goalkeeper Matthew Sanchez is the highest-capped shot-stopper for El Huracan Azul.
Puerto Rico will meet the USMNT at Juan Ramón Loubriel Stadium in Bayamon, with the match kicking off at 12 p.m. ET.
Here’s the full Puerto Rico roster:
Goalkeepers (3): Matthew Sanchez (Loyola Greyhounds), Jose Arroyo (Penn State Abington), Bryant Velázquez (Western Nebraska Community College)
Defenders (4): Emmanuel D’Andrea (Sevilla C), Juan Velez (Criollos de Caguas FC), Elliot Velez (Criollos de Caguas FC), Alexis Rivera (Bayamon FC)
Midfielders (10): Jeremy Hall (Tampa Bay Rowdies), Manolo Sanchez (San Antonio FC), Juan Coca (Kultsu FC), Michael Fernandez (Bayamon FC), Samuel Soto (Bayamon FC), Marcos Martinez (Club Atletico Fajardo), Darren Rios (Florida International Panthers), David Caban (Unattached), Christopher Clark (Albany Great Danes), Christian Abreu (Guayanilla Pumas)
Forwards (4): Joseph Marrero (Puerto Rico FC), Jorge Rivera (Puerto Rico FC), Olvin Ortiz (Club Atletico Fajardo), Luiz Betancur (Florida International Panthers)
Perfect game for Young USNT.
the team is made up of mostly players from Club Atletico Fajardo (PR), Criollos de Caguas FC(PR), Bayamon FC (NASL) and Puerto Rico FC (NASL). If only Altidore wasn’t hurt. He he totally missed a chance to rack up his average as in this game he would have scored at least a goal on this team.
Club Bayamon FC in BEAST MODE (We are so in trouble)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8P10nMJS3n8
lol
Alvarado scored in that game!
Not that any of these guys are good enough for the USMNT. However, are they all considered dual nationals since they are American Citizens?
PR citizens are US citizens by default/law. You can get a PR citizenship document if born there, child of PR citizen, or resident for a period of time. I understand at least certain PR citizens are eligible for Spanish citizenship as well because of the colonial history. Which would then give you EU citizenship. So, actually somewhere between 1-4 citizenships/passports if so inclined.
Armas played for the US, Saunders for PR. Like people are saying, it’s pretty fluid because it’s really one country and there are no border barriers or immigration requirements.
Armas played for PR first, but because the Caribbean Cup was not FIFA sanctioned at the time he was able to switch to the US because they were seen as friendly games not a tournament.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/mar/22/puerto-rico-soccer-world-cup-1994
an interesting article from a few months back about PR soccer
Why doesn’t Josh Saunders get called into the Puerto Rico side. He has to be their top keeper yet he only has 2 appearances. Does he turn them down?
I guess his club probably wouldn’t release him for this one anyways. But I have wondered why he only has two appearances.
They only play a couple of games a year and my guess would be after his first two call ups he realized it wasn’t worth the effort.
Saunders played for PR at the time when the Islanders were a scrappy, punch above weight team in our minors, and Clarke was coaching both club and national team, and talked a few of his players into doubling up. PRI are toast and Clarke is gone and Saunders is back stateside, having fulfilled his dream to play in a qualifier, presumably (like the guys who play for Guam, perhaps). I think it’s now just a domestic league there and the impetus has worn off. They are already knocked out of this cycle’s WC qualifiers. This US game is their prep for the Caribbean Cup in June, which is their Gold Cup qualifier.
Teams at PR’s level have to play one or more rounds of 2 leg knockouts in WC qualifying to get to the point where we start. I assume Saunders’ 2 games reflect a home and away qualifier set in 2008 that PR lost. It doesn’t sound like he’s interested anymore because it’s not at least 4 more for the subsequent two cycles. He went to LA and then a few other MLS and minor league teams and who knows if he cares anymore. If all he wanted was to be in the WC experience once, he’s done it.
“Puerto Rico’s roster is primarily composed of players based out of their native country….”
Eh…
Still not too sure what the point of this game is supposed to be. None of the MLS based Copa America roster candidates are available yet so we have to draft in guys who didn’t even make the 40 man preliminary roster. And the opponent is basically equivalent to a USL team.
So the guys from Europe who aren’t going to make the 23 get some pay off for spending the week training. I believe the players get a bigger bonus for playing a game rather than just training. The roster probably for the Copa could easily have been released Monday (its due Friday before this game anyway) after last weekends games, but then you’d have 7 or 8 Euro based players trying to train with no one else around, probably not ideal.
Second the next meaningful match is St. V&G on Sept. 2, there will most likely be injuries or poor form between now and then, these guys who won’t be in the Copa get a chance to show their skills against like competition for a chance to make that roster.
The primary point of this game is to bridge the gap between the end of the league season to the copa america for half of our starting lineup. You want guzan, yedlin, brooks, cameron, bedoya, fj, wood, williams, etc to still be in season form rather than vacation mode next week. Hope to see the forementioned group all get 45min
Secondary point is to make a week long january camp for european based players. I know you don’t like JGreen! But this is a good group of young players to key tabs
Looking at this roster should be the easiest game of the year. Hopefully a confidence booster and chemistry builder if nothing else.
Yeah, with the way this cycle works, there is a big tournament every summer, and why not hold a nice, long camp or two and see what the pool has. We get to work over MLS etc. in January, why not sort through Europe etc. now. We need every player we can add and if you uncover even one diamond who can contribute, it served its purpose. Heck, being able to evaluate and rule people out itself has value.
Every game doesn’t have to be Brazil and one could argue that the big name opponent approach of recent years hasn’t really borne any fruit.
I also see hints of arrogance in the assumption we are above this game. We’ve given up a goal to teams like St. V. I’d like to see a dominating performance and clean sheet and the building of confidence and gel among the team.
I assume one or two strong performers not in the 40 might be held over for the rest of camp and kept in mind for the future. I’ve already said we should have included more of the experimental guys from the PR game in the 40 just so it wasn’t a dead end game if someone outside the 40 showed well. I don’t like the CA approach on defense and midfield of bringing in routine selections with winning as the goal. We have struggled for a year plus fielding these people, they won’t win, and we might as well experiment at the risk of results. I care about WC and qualifying, who cares about CA.