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Report: David Ochoa to file one-time switch to play for Mexican national team

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Just one month ago, David Ochoa was wearing a Nations League winner’s medal and celebrating the U.S. men’s national team’s dramatic victory against Mexico. One month later, it appears Ochoa is ready to switch sides.

Ochoa is preparing to file a one-time change of association to represent the Mexican national team, Fox Sports reported on Monday.

If Ochoa has indeed made up his mind, it would end weeks of speculation surrounding his international future since June, when he was with the USMNT Nations League squad. Ochoa spent time training with the Mexican national team shortly after, making it clear he was keeping his national team options open.

The Real Salt Lake goalkeeper and Oxnard, California native first emerged as a top USMNT prospect when he played for the United States in the Concacaf Under-20 Championships in 2018. Ochoa eventually played in the 2019 Under-20 World Cup despite being one of the youngest players on the team.

The 2021 MLS season has seen Ochoa earn the regular starting job for RSL for the first time, and the 20-year-old has impressed in his 13 starts so far this season.

Ochoa last represented the United States at the Concacaf Olympic qualifying tournament in March, where he was part of the U.S. team that failed to qualify. Ochoa had an up-and-down tournament, flashing moments of brilliance but also committing the blunder that led to a Honduras goal that ultimately doomed the United States to miss out on the Olympics.

Despite that showing, Ochoa showed enough to earn a call-up to the USMNT’s Concacaf Nations League squad, where he served as the team’s third goalkeeper.

Losing Ochoa to Mexico would be a blow for the U.S. program given his status as one of the best young goalkeepers in MLS, though it wouldn’t likely impact the USMNT in the immediate future given the presence of Zack Steffen, Ethan Horvath and Matt Turner as the consensus top three goalkeeper options for Berhalter.

The time of the decision seems rushed given Ochoa’s young age, and the unlikeliness that he would be a factor for Mexico’s national team in the near future.

Filing a one-time Change of Association with FIFA would essentially tie Ochoa to Mexico, even if he doesn’t actually play a cap-tying match for El Tri.

Ochoa is one of a handful of Mexican-American players weighing the option of playing for either the United States or Mexico. LA Galaxy fullback Julian Araujo and FC Dallas striker Ricardo Pepi are two high-profile prospects who Mexico would be eager to pry away from the USMNT player pool and have join Mexico Gold Cup midfielder Efrain Alvarez, and reportedly Ochoa, in a group of American-born players choosing to play for El Tri.

What do you think of this development? Worried about the possibility of the USMNT losing more Mexican-American players? Does the depth in the U.S. player pool make you less worried about these types of departures, or do you see Ochoa’s reported decision being a worrying sign?

Share your thoughts below.

Comments

  1. sorry dudes but pretending someone who has been in US teams since U18 suddenly discovered his mexican culturality and made a decision based on su lengua or something is silly. the guy started oly qualifying this spring. the guy was in NL camp this summer. this is a soccer decision based on disuse and the coach is the one who decided that he would risk the dual nationality problem to hand steffen, horvath, and turner all the summer tournament minutes. ochoa was good enough a keeper he was the oly starter and in NL camp, so spare me that revisionism. we made a choice how to hand out the minutes, took a risk, and he walked. own it.

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    • just like if musah wasn’t so eager to be american he could have stomped off after being unused that whole NL tournament and not cap tied in any way. i don’t get why we can throw 20 caps to steffen to get him a work permit — which isn’t quite meritocracy — but nothing to some other players to cap tie them. and before people start pretending, there is a growing akinola, araujo, efrain, ochoa list we may be losing. people can spin it as we have a bevy of resources and are now where people shop, but i don’t think we usually get picked on this bad. we usually lock in people and make them happy enough, even if they don’t get used for another 5 years. i mean, coming up to this, i think tchani was the only one who’d ever switched away, and every few years we’d lose someone who never saw a senior camp. we’re losing people who had a string of USAs and a senior cap. that’s not culture. that’s soccer related. one of these would be chance. several is sloppy. give them a 10′ sub in the 3rd group game and act like you care, and they’re yours. this is not hard.

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    • You are 100% correct Imperative Voice. We let it happen, but I do not the USMNT did show their love to David Ochoa before the switch. We need to find better recruiters for the mex-american young players. As no matter what we cannot let these guys choose Mexico over the USMNT.

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  2. Memo to the Mexican National team: You need to replace your Goalkeeper and we just happen to have a spare Ochoa laying around who is good but seems to be at the back of the line

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  3. Good luck to him. Hope he moves to Mexico with his family and we never hear from him again. And, yes, he should return the medal he got during the NL.

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  4. Imperative Voice is just talking crazy these days. Reyna, a kid getting first team minutes in the champions league is not going to get a look unless Arriola get’s injured? Same guy who has given a look at 50+ players isn’t going to look at the best young midfielder in MLS who then starts for team that wins a double in Europe? Nonsense.

    As for Ochoa, seems like a lot of people want to place blame on the federation or coaching staff but my guess it is a lot simpler than that. First it’s probably, which group of guys does this kid just like better? I can easily imagine he has a lot more in common with the players with Mexico than he does with say CP, Reyna, Musah etc. Does he speak Spanish with his parents in the home? Maybe he likes that level of comfort. Secondly, I’m sure he thinks he about what team gives him the best chance to play? There really isn’t a discussion that, it is a potentially an easier path to the field currently for Mexico. Sure situations in soccer can change quickly. But on paper Mexico seems more likely. Berhalter’s approach of you choose what’s right for you is best ultimately to have a team full of guys that are there for the right reasons. Being 100% bought in for the team is important.

    The only thing that is weird is the timing. There didn’t seem to be any reason for him to tie himself to one or the other right at this moment. Is there some rule about filing switches and age?

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    • WCQ is coming. If he can get in camps over the next few windows he can book his ticket to Qatar. With the US he’s unlikely to get even get into camp for those qualifying windows.

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    • I for one am so grateful that IV discovered an unknown teenager named Gio Reyna. I’d never even heard of that tiny club he was playing for Borussis Dortmund I think it was. I think it was pressure from IV that forced Berhalter’s hand to consider Gio. Oh wait Gio’s father is Gregg’s boyhood friend. Well maybe that’s just PR they weren’t really close I’m sure. Oh Gregg spent a Summer with Claudio in HS with his family in Argentina where Gregg learned Spanish and trained. Well maybe they were estranged, oh the two played on the NT together…. I mean maybe Gio got his mom’s genes so Gregg had reservations … his mom was also on the NT. It wasn’t like Gio had done anything for people to take notice of before IV heard of him. Oh he represented the US at U15, U16, U17 levels and had been a star in the NYCFC Academy! You know the more I look at this IV didn’t have anything to do with it. Mind blown!

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      • yeah well after all that family closeness he farted around a year before calling him. so what. he then plays him out of position and except for morris’ injury i would be curious if the initially nervous reyna — now one of our best players — finds a field home. quit pretending someone who sandbags prospects is their greatest champion. lame argument.

        just like i am sure his fans are taking credit for robinson, acosta, turner, moore, etc. that he “found” 3 years after driving them out into the roster outback and leaving them there.

    • that was never what i said. i said if morris wasn’t hurt does reyna ever get to start. i said if steffen isn’t hurt does horvath ever emerge. my argument isn’t hard to follow and it’s lame to manipulate it to say something other than the basic thing i had it saying. argue with me and not a straw man.

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    • he was on the team yesterday. U20. U23. senior team NL bench. he is gone now. oh but i am sure it’s home culture, language, etc., and not the fact the coach is messing him around. explains his resume full of USA until now. sure.

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    • IV for all your wokeness on the pandemic your continued poor memory on its role in your words Berhalter “ignoring” Reyna is astonishing. Let’s once again look at the timeline.
      Aug. 2018 15 yr old Reyna leaves NYCFC but for unexplained reasons he’s not able to play for BvBs YT until summer 2019
      July 2019 Reyna is invited on the US preseason tour
      Oct.-Nov. 2019 Reyna participated in U17 World Cup keeping him from playing in NL group matches (at this point he has not played a match above the U19 level)
      Dec. 2019 Reyna makes the bench for Dortmund but does not play
      Jan. 18 2020 Reyna debuts against Augsburg and makes 8 appearances all off the bench scoring a Cup goal and assisting in a goal in CL.
      Feb. 26 2020 Berhalter confirms in an interview with Doug McIntyre that Reyna will be called in for March friendlies against Wales and Netherlands
      Mar. 12 2020 US Soccer announces March friendlies are cancelled due to Covid 19
      Nov 2020 US Soccer returns to the field Reyna starts in his first cap vs Wales and goes on to start the first 7 international window matches of his NT career and then scores a goal off the bench in his first US sub appearance in the friendly following the GC.
      —————————————————
      He didn’t ignore him for a year, he was on the roster for March the first camp after his pro debut. You could argue that he should have been removed from the U17 WC for the NL, but you’d have been hamstringing a team that it was thought had a chance to make a deep run at a YWC based on minutes in a preseason friendly.

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      • As for your also tired “plays him out of position” remark according to transfermkt in matches for Dortmund
        RW/LW 41 matches 8g 9a
        AM 39 matches 8g 9a

      • inaccurate slop. you act like preseason european soccer forbids gold cup participation. it legally is actually the opposite — if we insist. so that’s summer 2019. there was also a september 2019 window you have forgotten about. you line up your sheets of cheese for lasagna coverage but you used swiss cheese. your ilk in making an issue of his age and club status also ignore we have previously had in collegians, players on II teams, and players on club age group teams. you are mirroring the coach’s preferences while making an absolute exclusion argument, which is false. the coach prefers first team players. that is a conservative approach. others have been called in from developmental or even academic situations, when deemed ready. i told you he was ready before he was first team. it’s only a lack of cajones that makes us wait on dortmund……and ironically you cite his preseason tour but then act like it’s too early…..make up your mind….

      • we have had the positioning discussion before. your game here is you toss in the development team play with the first team play and treat LW and RW like they are one position. he starts most often and scores most senior goals and assists as an AM. if you lump LW and RW and add in youth play that’s the only way you get the numbers close to equal. it’s misleading.

    • The September window in 2019 which was the last prep friendly for the U17 WC? A match by the way that Reyna scored as a wing by the way. So academy coaches at NYCFC, U19 manager at Dortmund, Lucien Favre, Raphael Wicky and Edin Terzic all played Gio at least half the time as a wing but Berhalter is playing him out of position?
      ———————————-
      Now you’re saying he should have been called in for the 2019 GC, when his highest level of play was U16 Development Academy? Please give me an example of any nation playing a 16 yr old with no professional games in a competitive competition. At that point he hadn’t even played for Dortmund’s YTs.

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      • you can reword your youth team argument over and over. it’s a youth team argument. i set you straight on what he plays in senior ball. we play senior ball too. i want what he plays in senior ball. to be clear, it’s also his more productive per-game position.

        we called morris from college. we called ibarra from USL. we called green from bayern 2. we called adu age 16. we called pulisic to quali games age 18. and more importantly, when given a chance, he looked like baby pulisic, so you’re like asking me to pretend he wasn’t ready. i’d seen footage of him on dortmund 2. i knew exactly what i had seen, and you don’t lose skills because it’s senior ball. you do have to play faster but i kind of thought someone with his abilities would scale up fast. you’re throwing around generalities and conventions for an unusual, special, unconventional talent. those kids get called at 16, 17, 18. spare me.

        heck, i’d be curious if you’re one of those people who even talks up mckennie should have been called in 2017 to save that team and then are other side of this one.

    • I’m telling you your timeline is wrong he never played for Dortmund until Aug. of 2019 not before the GC. He also never played for Dortmund II it was their U19 team that he joined then jumped straight to first team. Adu’s call up was for a Jan camp as well not a competition and he wasn’t called again for a year and a half, Freddy also had two full seasons in MLS under his belt not U16 Development Academy. Again no country would call in a 16 yr old with only Dev. Acad. experience for a competition. Even Messi didn’t debut with Argentina until after debuting for Barca.

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      • You keep switching between your arguments because you know you’re wrong on both.
        1. Reyna’s highest level of play before the 2019 GC was the DA Academy for NYCFC he had not played for Dortmund because of some sort of registration issue. No one would ever play a 16 year old with only youth academy experience in a competition. The US never has and no one else would either.
        2. Every manager Gio has played for in the last 5 years has played him as both an AM and Wing from NYCFC to Dortmund. So if you want to say he’s better as an AM or more productive fine but if want to see Berhalter is not a good manager because he plays him as a wing especially considering our 4-3-3 doesn’t even use a 10 your just spewing hyperbole.

  5. here’s the deal. if steffen doesn’t hurt his knee, horvath plays in a loss to switzerland and then disappears again. the job backing up turner for gold cup turned out to be carrying the clipboard and water because he literally played no one else. the coach already has favorites and in tournament play is quite content to ride out with his first choice every time. more so than any other position it reflects a pure meritocratic mentality. issue is, if a player is a strong prospect and dual national risk, a US coach with half a brain bends ever so slightly. an approach where steffen and turner get all the minutes sucks all oxygen from the rest and sends a “you’ll never play” message. steffen, horvath, turner are all in their 20s. players are looking for their chance. when’s his “chance?”

    a smarter coach would have used gold cup to lock down ochoa. you tell him he’s competing with turner and you give him the 3rd group game once we’ve advanced. this is historically how gold cup would be handled anyway. but i think the coach makes up his mind on paper before the games, had already decided “turner,” and views salesmanship as false hope. “go play with mexico and see how you like it,” i am sure he said. this is what’s going to happen if you favor certain players with all the minutes and don’t bend any to lock anyone down.

    bears reminding he also couldn’t be bothered locking down musah with even a minute. not to encourage the player to stay. not to legally tie him down. no matter what you think of him this is a weak point.

    i also think there are hints of the old, region-level arrogance and plateauing mentality coming back out. “we’re good.” “we don’t need him.” we haven’t gone back to the world cup yet. we haven’t had injuries. we haven’t seen how players grow in 5 years. before you write off 5-10 such players — where this may eventually accumulate — i think you want as much talent in the pool as you can get to grow into what they become and accumulate and compete with each other. we have a tendency to get fat, dumb, and happy right about this time in our growth curve. if you have higher aspirations you can’t get complacent about the roster now.

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    • dude…we get it you HATE Gregg Berhalter. Could you please limit your negative comments to perhaps one or two long winded explanations of why that’s so per article. Yikes…it’s really hard to enjoy discussion here when you are constantly griping about GB and talking down at every person who posts on here. I know free country, freedom of speech but dang it gets really old.

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      • IV does seem quite bitter. You think he knows GB? His dislike seems to go beyond someone you don’t actually know. I don’t really have anyone to talk to about soccer so I try to read posts on the site and I like to read everyone’s posts amd hear their opinions, but when IV goes on rants about GB I generally excercise my right not to read his opinion. He probably doesn’t care too much about mine either. Doh!!

  6. drip drip drip drip he shouldn’t be in the first 3 but a good coach knows how to keep the roster-edge prospects happy (araujo, reynolds, richards, efrain, akinola…..). lot of people switching teams on us or saying they’d rather do club summer preseason.

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  7. aw damn. That’s too bad- really like the way this dude plays. Seems premature-still a very young keep and…. things can change very quickly. There’s lots talking up Turner as our #1 when no one was singing that tune a month ago. I try to stay away from speculating what someone thinks or what is in their heart. His decision- his life- he who will wake up and live the life resulting from his choice.

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  8. Players have their own decisions to make, about what national team to rep. I’m not a dual-citizen, so I don’t know what it’s like to have a connection to another country. If players are upset because they’re not getting their butts kissed by coaches, then the Nats can do without that type of attitude. I remember reading a quote from Efrain’s father saying “It was traumatizing to his son…!” deciding on Mexico or the US. I thought to myself “What a drama king!” Losing a parent at an early age is traumatizing. Seeing violence at a young age in a poor community is traumatizing! We need players mature and mentally tough to do damage in the WC. Most Americans of Mexican descent are tough!! (Hercules & Bocanegra come to mind) At the same time, I think Americans w/ Mexican roots are a valuable resource. Alex Mendez, Cade Cowell, Gomez bro’s, Leo Sepulvda, Frankie Amaya are players good enough prospects to play internationally in the near future. They’ll have to make a choice. I don’t mean giving caps for incentive either. If the USSF isn’t making any effort to reach Latin Americans, then shame on them. Good luck to Ochoa except against the US.

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  9. Adios! We would like the NL medal back, thanks and your welcome.

    Hopefully, see you in the next Gold Cup, taking the ball out of the net.

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  10. I hate possibly losing a prospect…but I especially hate losing them to Mexico. If he truly feels more aligned with the FMF so be it, but if he feels he can climb up Mexico’s pecking order faster than the USMNTs he may want to talk to Jonathan Gonzalez about how that may work out.
    The part that hurts most in these types of situations is the number of years USSF has invested in these players….only to have them flip on them. I’d be one thing if USSF showed no interest…but that’s not the case with Ochoa.

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  11. So…if Herrera’s slide tackle knocked Horvath out of the Nations League Final, was Ochoa going to refuse to come in the game? Or go in and forever be cap-tied to the U.S.? Why not refuse a call up if your future national team of choice is still up for debate?

    The Olympic qualifying gaffe happened months prior, if he was hurt over some social media comments to the point of playing for Mexico, why go to Nations League with USMNT?

    The whole thing is a little bizarre. I’m sure we’ll get a post-mortem story on this in five years when he’s playing for a second tier club team in Mexico, has one cap in a friendly and blames someone from USMNT for how things turned out. Good luck, I guess?

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    • oh, you’re saying he should not switch “because counter-factual?” reality he picked up splinters that whole camp. if we put him in a game that whole sequence, or brought him to this tournament instead, played him one game, problem solved. your counter-factual where we get an injury and he gets in is not what happened and players make decisions in terms of what actually happened.

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  12. The people using this to claim race issues within the USSF don’t even take a moment to think that maybe these players feel more comfortable playing in a homogeneous group…

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    • If that were the case, he never would have accepted to play for the US youth teams….I see what you are trying to say…we can say the same about the majority of the german americans that have accepted to play for US.

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  13. I had a feeling. The moment the news came out that he trained with our El Tri, it was a dead issue for me. We shouldnt forget how he gladly celebrated with the USMNT after Nations League. He was all up in Horvath’s grill, patting him on the back for shutting down the team that (in his head at the time), he had to be thinking about defecting to. The good news is, we dont need him. Maybe he saw the writing on the wall. Dont let the door hit you on the way out. Good riddance to you for playing for OUR El Tri.

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  14. IDK about this kid…how was he able to face those guys after NL….and having played in several youth tournaments..what words did he say to make it alright?

    he won’t even play for MX now either…the guys in front of him are definitely serviceable and more experienced…

    once Tata gets fired (i’m sure he will during qualifying), the new coach will have absolutely no allegiance to him…and he won’t play….and who’s to say he will play anyway..one game and bye bye….

    sounds like he didn’t get what he wanted so he took his ball and went home….

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  15. Araujo has a lot of competition blocking him on the USMNT side: Cannon, Moore, Yedlin, Dest come to mind right off the top of my head. Pepi is a different story. He is unlikely to be able to play Jiminez or Chuky out of their positions this WC cycle. Pineda, Funes Mori, Pizzaro, Pulido, Vega, Antuna and Henry Martin are all in the hunt for roster spots and more or less have proven they can score in Liga MX. Not sure if he is competing against Lainez for a spot, but he seems to play better for the MNTs than he does for Betis. If Chicharito and Vela every come back in the fold :)grin, it will be even more crowded. Pepi could get cap tied to Mexico and find it hard to get on the field any time soon. In my opinion that is a more formidable group to crack than Sergeant, Dike, Zardes, Hoppe.

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    • the irony of your statement is on performance the job should be moore vs cannon but NL was primary dest and yedlin, both of whom are flawed defenders. yedlin in particular just sucks these days. dest you have to decide whether you want one way play. personally i thought araujo had some issues but i think we haven’t settled on a RB yet and a better coach gives him 30′ in at least one cap and sorts out in the process or later on what exactly he has. we’re dangerously flipping around the other way where unless the coach thinks you should start you’re expendable and he will make no special effort to woo or cap you. this is fair enough for world cup quali and finals but most coaches have the brains to lock down marginal players of interest when they can and figure out their usefulness later on. US soccer history would be dramatically different if we only cap tied the players we were sure about beforehand. the real quibble with this is ethical but fighting over dual nationals, to me, is the equivalent of transfer silly season in soccer. teams that magnetize and attract players prosper more, teams that think they are above such dirt under their fingernails later on figure out they at that point could use a CB, a wingback, a keeper, a 9…..and they remember that guy they blew off 4 years ago because “we’re good.”

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      • Araujo said no I’m not coming what did you want Berhalter to do kidnap him and throw him on the field against his will. You act like this is Fifa on Xbox and you just click x and everything happens the way you want.

    • He said yes in non-tying matches. He’s said throughout his career that he will make a decision when the time comes but that he was in no hurry to commit to either side. That’s been consistent back to Spring of 2019 when he was playing with U20 team.

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      • by that you mean the United States YNT? personally i think you’ve lived wrong or something if you take a few kids with a string of USA on their resumes down to like U15 and they suddenly get the urge to play for someplace else. i see where the new trend is to say they are weak and looking for a team who would play them, since we are doing so well. however most of them were reaching these decisions before the tournaments started.

        your ilk seem not to consider that some of this behavior may not be pure soccer evaluation but may be emotional tantruming and/or some gambit they came up with their agent to try and push berhalter along. part of your job is keeping the troops happy.

    • Youth teams are not binding complain to FIFA I guess if you don’t like it. Araujo has not flip flopped on this he’s consistently said he hasn’t made up his mind and that he felt connected to both countries for years.

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      • you’re missing my point. it’s not me arguing with FIFA about whether YNT binds. it’s me saying how do you lose a player with a string of USA YNT on his resume who started U23 and was just in NL camp and in the 23 (but not played to seal the deal). that’s not legal. that’s practical. i blame us less if efrain walks, who has a string of mexico. ditto rossi. when you lose someone who has been in stars and stripes for years, since they were a kid, you messed up. just be a man and admit it. and he’s doing it more than once. he doesn’t know how to keep the roster-edge players happy. some are looking at the big picture and playing along. some are p*ssed and going back to club. some are p*ssed and switching. at least complicate your application for sainthood slightly and acknowledge this coach had a rough first few years and has a glitch on this specific problem.

  16. It’s a shame. He seemed like a really formidable keeper when I’ve seen him play for RSL and does look like he might be somebody who might compete for a spot.

    Hate to lose him, but especially after Zack Steffen has secured his spot at City and the showings we’ve seen recently from Horvath and Turner, do I understand why he might feel there’s a brick wall of talent in front of him with the USMNT? Sure.

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  17. US has enough depth and should never beg anyone to wear the shirt. His performance during Olympic qualifying is enough to disqualify him from future US consideration. We don’t need any head cases and he seems like one.

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  18. In this case, David Ochoa is being a diva. He was upset that his name wasn’t called to the Gold Cup roster and now he is using some comments on social media as an excuse. There’s proof that Mexican fans have said nasty stuff about him just earlier this year when he represented US. I wish him the best but no player should be called up to the USMNT just because they can switch to Mexico.

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    • Perhaps it is pressure from fans, from family, from your enclave that sways your decisions. If so, this switch just seemed too easy. All he has ever played for is the US, as recently as June, and then suddenly a switch? Akinola makes sense for Canada given how he started immediately in the Gold Cup. The German-Americans Klinssman recruited all played significant roles in WC and WCQ, and we’re not on Germany’s radar. What assurance does Ochoa have from FMF of selection and success? Too early for a big decision.

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  19. Didn’t this guy go a bit off the boil upon his return to RSL after the Olympics where he had a bad run-in with another MLS team or a Liga MX team? I seem to recall that he was just fine during Qualifying until the semi-final with Honduras where he made a bad pass and gave away the goal. So it will be interesting to see how this switch goes. I guess Mex NT keeper Memt Ochoa is getting older even though he is currently with the Olympic squad. Is there a viable back-up in 5 years for El Tri?

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  20. I would only be concerned if we started losing players to Mexico or any other federation if they had a high probability of making the US national team. Guiseppe Rossi with Italy is the only one that comes to mind, and that reason was for ethnic solidarity with his family. I would be curious how FMF made the pitch to Ochoa, given Mexico’s results this year. 20 years old seems too young to make an irreversible switch.

    Recall that Klinsmann was able to convince a few dual nationals in Germany to play for the US, but none were on Germany’s radar, and we have a few in the pipeline today. It is a turn of events for European clubs to poach from MLS, and for federations to poach prospects.

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  21. Hate to lose a good talent to another federation (any federation). Wish him the best. But in this particular instance may be he should have to turn in his Nations Cup Winners Medal for the 2nd place participation ribbon.

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  22. Ochoa is not in the top tier of US keepers. He is likely around 5th to 6th. I don’t know Mexico’s keepers well enough to guess where he would fit. I suspect he thinks he has a better shot with Mexico than the US. From what I’ve seen he is at least a few years from being the #1 for either. If I were him, I would wait to file until things became more clear.

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    • The two Mexican goalies that came to mind are the starting keeper, Guillermo Ochoa at the age of 36, who may be good for another 2-4 years. The other one who started in goal for Mexico during the Gold Cup is Alfredo Talavera, 38-year-old.

      More Mexican goalies from Googling:
      Rodolfo Cota at the age of 34,
      Jonathan Orozco at the age of 35,
      Luis Malagón at the age of 24,
      Hugo González at the age of 31,
      Sebastián Jurado at the age of 23, etc.

      Goalies in the USMNT:
      Zack Steffen, age 26
      Ethan Horvath, age 26
      Matt Turner, age 27
      JT Marcinkowski, age 24
      Chituru Odunze, age 18
      CJ dos Santos, age 20
      Sean Johnson, age 32
      Brad Gusan, age 36

      Maybe David Ochoa is indeed a smart young man. He compared all goalies ahead of him from the two countries and weighed his options before gutting out a decision to make a switch. The odds of David Ochoa in earning a starting goalie role within 2-4 years is much higher if he plays for Mexico.

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    • Dennis and Simon have hit the nail on the perverbial head. If I had the option – if any sane person wanting to play in international competitions- I would choose Mexico. I think of Teal Bunbury. He would have spent the last years playing for Canada. He hasn’t had a whiff of the USMNT since declaring for the US. This is pure…where will I most likely get to experience a WC and nothing more.

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      • Please stop trying to re-write history…at the time Bunbury played, he was mediocre/serviceable…then he tore his ACL and took two years to recover fully…afterward he was never the same player, which means he was less than serviceable….so even though we needed players that cycle, he simply wasn’t good enough…not many were, which is why we didn’t qualify for Russia….

  23. Wonder if we’ve turned the corner where players choose mexico for a better chance to play but choose US for a better chance to win….

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    • This is a strong possibility. It really feels that, particularly after this Gold Cup, that there’s no chance he’s sniffing the pitch aside from a January callup. Turner, Horvath, and Steffen have GK solidified for quite a while.

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      • If Memo Ochoa is still Mexico’s # 1 keeper, he’s 36 so maybe will be done after Qatar. I have no idea who Mexico has backing Memo Ochoa up, but David Ochoa may feel he can rise to Mexico’s # 1 within 2 or 3 years.

        With the US, he’s blocked for 5 years minimum and likely close to 10 years, as Steffan, Horvath and Turner are all around 26-27.

      • nick, the flaw in your analysis is it’s post facto. yes, with the benefit of hindsight, we have 3 good keepers. this would not have been known when the rosters were set or until steffen hurt his knee. so we only know after the fact horvath and turner suffice. if i wanted to nitpick, we don’t actually know how they rate relative to ochoa — he didn’t play. but the others played well enough we are content. people can rate ochoa down since he’s out the door. the reality is horvath was an unplanned surprise and the coach then left ochoa off for gold cup. as i argued above, if the coach wanted ochoa — and wanted to foster actual competition — he could have left him off NL and then instead called him to GC and played him a game to secure his services. people would then have an informed sense if he’s better or worse. and it’s only after the fact with turner having played all the minutes that people are ok with the lineup and somehow certain ochoa doesn’t fit in anywhere.

        i think buried beneath this conversation is an implicit incumbency bias here where the team and fans get very sure of themselves. it’s odd because we haven’t won a world cup and when discussing european teams it’s always about how they have “roster competition.” but the NT people want immunity for their favorites. personally i think it’s arrogant after this summer to assume ochoa could only be worse than these three — even if they generally played well. steffen has a knee problem. steffen has shipped some goals. horvath has brain farts sometimes. i am sure turner has some minor flaw. think the old arrogance is coming back where ochoa must only be worse.

    • I bet you if the kid sees a straight path to the USMNT, he will wait it out. Pepi has a chance with us. Araujo not so much. Just last month Tanner began getting quality minutes with a BL1 team. If Araujo would have accepted the invite from us, he would have played big minutes because Cannon got injured. And now, he would be walking around with a medal.

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      • LZ: no one would have been saying we knew where keeper was headed before the summer. the coach shouldn’t get the benefit of how things turned out when he couldn’t have known that coming in. he tripped over horvath — who i have been touting for years — and then turner turned out great with the B team where he never played the guzan card. against that background of uncertainty a coach with a brain would have given ochoa a chance. he would have been working on the unsettled keeper position, he would have been giving a candidate a chance, and he would have eliminated this scenario. and ochoa is pretty good so we probably get the canada result anyway. if you give more players chances then they think they have a chance. if you hand the tournaments to steffen and turner almost exclusively, and then horvath gets the backup minutes, where is my window?

        keeper is probably the hardest sell for this argument, because we are now loaded and fairly content. but we wouldn’t have known that when the summer started and this player wanted his chance. and there are other positions like wingback, mid, and 9 where we could use help, and seem instead similarly arrogant. let’s throw more minutes down the dike and yedlin holes. let’s act like our mids could only be better than efrain.

        and my issue beneath all this is the coach tends to assume what he believes rather than prove it with games. having finally given minutes to someone not named steffen (or hamid or guzan) we now see what else we have. under GB-mentality, we would have assumed these two were not worthy. i’d rather have that proved on the field. and i think if that was decided more on the field — including cap-tying dual nationals we like — then the marginal players would also be less inclined to think they have no pathway. part of the reason there is no pathway is we have a weird way of handing out the minutes. either starters get all the time, or the coach pulls random ideas from his bum as opposed to tries the next big prospect. how do you get through this summer and never play musah? leave out green? never use reynolds or richards to test them out? but you get williamson, busio, moore, vines, bello, etc. time? odd.

      • re pepi specifically, the coach ignored him, ignored green, and doubled down on zardes and dike. i agree with you in that all the time poured into turner can be justified, but zardes and dike speak to how his perseveration sometimes doesn’t fix things. hoppe was probably the star of the frontline, playing out of position. so the surprises are often outplaying his purposeful choices. would horvath have emerged if steffen got to the final whistle of mexico? i doubt losing to switzerland and blowing out CR has the same effect.

  24. This is based on one report and I heard that Ochoa’s only social media post about this is that he is “undecided”. He’s a young guy. Give him some space, hope the coaching staff reaches out to him, and hope he sticks with USMNT. He’s only 20, so maybe he turns out to be a superstar and playing for Mexico would be really bad for us. Maybe he ends up being just pretty good. Regardless, I hope no USMNT fans go on his social media and push him toward L tree. That would be very counterproductive.

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