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Report: Yunus Musah out 3-6 weeks with leg injury

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Yunus Musah had been expected to be in the mix for the U.S. men’s national team’s World Cup qualifying squad in September, when he could potentially be cap-tied, but a reported injury could derail those plans.

Musah has been ruled out of action for Valencia for three-to-six weeks following a ligament injury during a preseason friendly, SuperDeporte reported Monday. The midfielder suffered the injury last Wednesday in a 3-0 win over Atromitos and will now likely miss the start of the new La Liga season in August.

The 18-year-old has made 36 combined first team appearances for the club since debuting in 2020. Musah will hope to have a speedy recovery as Valencia opens its season on August 13 against Getafe following four more preseason friendlies over the new few weeks.

Musah has earned six caps with the USMNT to date and was expected to be in contention to earn a call-up for World Cup Qualifying this fall, but his latest injury could derail his chances of appearing in September’s qualifiers. The USMNT begins the octagonal round of qualifying on Sept. 2 against El Salvador before facing Canada and Honduras on Sept. 5 and 8 respectively.

The New York native was a part of the Concacaf Nations League-winning side earlier this summer, despite not appearing in the semifinal or finals victories against Honduras and Mexico respectively. Musah is not cap-tied to the USMNT yet, but the former England youth national team player would be cap-tied by an appearance in World Cup qualifying.

 

Comments

  1. since musah saw no NL time he was on thin ice for the first quali roster, depending how many we called. setting aside my belief he’s really a wing, GC has not brought forth much MF competition for him — as discussed below, was structured not to. my concern would be that when we need a dynamic attacker this probably opens a crack for a roldan selection. busio is being deployed as a 6 and williamson is barely seeing the field. if one plays along with conservative selection approaches the selectee has to be within NL and GC. so roldan. this is one reason i dislike such “blinders” or the decision to call half the MF back to NL, where none has really blown my doors off. when someone A team gets hurt you then have thin gruel to replace from. imagine if GC had instead seen an experiment like in the backfield. you would have plenty to pick from.

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    • I see you’re point. Another way to look at it though is that this is a team sport so when you throw out a bunch of players who are “noobs” all at the same time the failure rate is going to be higher than it might otherwise be. A true comparison would be to put a noob on the field with the “a-team” to see how he performs compared to the alternative playing with the same guys. Coaches find lots of ways to nudge their guys onto the team and keep others off.

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  2. Bad news for Musah, but maybe good news for Lletget, Busio or Acosta? Would Berhalter call Green in without having seen him with the national team?

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      • GC sent his first team to NL, half his first team again to GC, and looked at a short list of players. the poster then is almost scared and apologetic to leave the approved list of summer roster players, despite how meh or bad many of them looked in action, which in a fair world should have us going outside the approved list. eg green holmes. and to be clear part of the way berhalter protected his regulars is basically in GC 2 new guys saw serious time and a third got a handful of sub minutes. this tends to preserve the status quo because naive people think (a) you need to be part of the team to be called again because (b) how do i know you’re not worse than this bunch. i find it hard to believe green or holmes are this ineffectual. hope you’re happy with roldan and zardes back.

      • reality is the inexperienced defense and keeper are the stars of the tournament and the more experienced offense is the anvil the defense drags behind it through the rounds. but with the way berhalter shaped his squad, the mids were protected from competition, and i wish the backs good luck in breaking into his no-defense first team. i expect no more than 2-3 backs break the next 23.

      • your post is all over the place, or just needs more punctuation to break it up a bit, but if I read the first part right you said that Greg brought in half the NL team to GC? Well, that’s false off the bat because the only GC holdovers from that 23 man roster are 3 in Yueill, Acosta and Lleget. If the insinuation is that he only brought in those 3 to somehow promote them more than others candidates in mf I’d again say your wrong! Some players asked not to be released(De La Torre), were not called in because of a promotion to a bigger league thus needed the full preseason with their club(Julian Green), and others have yet to find a club(CCV, EPB)! I like Duane Hl,es a lot but he didn’t have a good year last year and again transferred clubs, going back to his old club. At the end of te day there is not time to continue testing out a new batch of players with WCQ around the corner, and considering a record was broke for the number of newly awarded caps given to new players in our pool, it’s time to hone in on whose been given minutes to date and to trim things up a bit for the start of WCQ’s. There will be time to bring in a few new faces down the line once WCQ’s have already started

      • Yeah- my first reaction was just that. Hate seeing Musah injured- but sounds not too serious and thankfully Aaronson has looked awfully bright with his play which has characteristics that integrate perfectly w/ this team. I was really hoping he would be here at GC as he’d have provided a much needed spark. As well…. Williamson would be a much better suited like for like than Roldan- but it sure doesn’t seem GB sees it that way.

      • the point to my argument — distilled down — is he brought back half of his nations league mids as his gold cup mids. yeuill acosta lletget. once you do that the room for a noob to make a showing is shrunk before we even start. that favors continuity because there are few new options to watch at gold cup. the new options begin with roldan, who is not new. that’s a mistake. we then have two actual new names to consider at mid, busio and williamson. williamson looked decent but rarely plays, and thus has no chance to make the quali team. so it’s basically busio left to mix up the first choice team. before i even analyze that, you see how the very structure of this approach protects the jobs of the mids on the first choice team. their primary risk is roldan, who had been cut, and the only other threat is busio, who is a mixed bag and not really ready.

        so the process protects the regulars — and then musah pulls up hurt. what then? surely you see how this process favors the frustrating roldan — just like we may be rehabilitating zardes back onto the team — and excludes a lot of the young talent we would like to have actually seen.

        for comparison’s sake, look at how the young backs have shone this tournament with cannon hurt and no incumbents to fight for time. done that way we now have plenty of options at back if he is so inclined. two different approaches and surely you see how the more “open” version is more beneficial to the first team as regulars don’t consume half the roster before anyone else can see the field.

      • archie: why not push reyna and/or pulisic inside, fill the mid slots well, and then get the young wing talent on the field as wings, including aaronson but also weah hoppe konrad etc. not sure why we keep trying so hard to water down the midfield to keep the elite talents wide. most teams get their spine right first……

    • IV your have to remember that Clark would have been called had he not had an emergency appendectomy, Berhalter said as much in his roster presser. Now we have no way to know for sure who replaced him but Roldan would be the likely one given he’s the most like for like. I’m not sure why Williamson hasn’t played more I think if nothing else he’d make a great super sub because he would drive at the heart of a tired defense.

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