The U.S. men’s national team takes the field next week for the start of a four-match June window on home soil, but will be without one of its familiar faces in between the posts.
Sean Johnson has replaced Zack Steffen on Gregg Berhalter’s 27-player roster for the upcoming Concacaf Nations League and friendly matches, U.S. Soccer announced on Friday. Steffen withdrew from camp due to family reasons.
Johnson, 32, has earned nine caps for the USMNT, winning three Concacaf Gold Cup championship medals, with his last national team appearance coming in a starting role in a friendly win against Costa Rica in 2020. Johnson earned MLS Cup MVP honors in 2021 when he helped New York City FC to its first league championship.
Born in Georgia, Johnson began his MLS career in 2010 with the Chicago Fire after being selected in the fourth round of the MLS Draft. Johnson totaled 176 appearances for the Fire before being acquired by Atlanta United in 2016 and later being traded to NYCFC.
Johnson has since totaled 168 league appearances for NYCFC, amassing 49 clean sheets and remaining one of the top shot-stoppers in MLS.
Johnson will join Matt Turner and Ethan Horvath for international duty in June. The USMNT faces off with Morocco and Uruguay on June 1 and 5 respectively before taking on El Salvador and Grenada in Nations League group stage action.
Sean deserves the look but if you’re building for the future and looking at potential then Slonina makes more sense. 32 isn’t terribly old for a keeper but Sean isn’t Buffon just a solid MLS keeper. Steffen isn’t the #1 anymore. Hope his fam is good.
Gaga likely will be with U20s which should begin training in early June.
I gotta be honest I am not getting a warm and fuzzy feeling about Steffen leading up to the World Cup.
Hope whatever’s going on with his family is good, but sometimes injuries and circumstance has as much as anything to do with where a player’s at in his career, and he hasn’t seemed to be lucky with either of late. He definitely hasn’t seemed healthy and his form has not been good…now this, when he really needed to be solidifying his spot. Now Horvarth or Turner will get a real shot to make a case and both of those guys can genuinely play.
Wow. Hope Steffen is ok… Happy for Johnson’s inclusion, though a case could have been made for Frei as well. Hope this means we see Turner get most of the minutes.
I’m not loving where our keepers are right now. Neither Steffen or Horvath are seeing consistent minutes, and with Turner headed to Arsenal to be a back-up that makes our top 3 keepers seeing limited game time.
I’d therefore like the minutes to be split between Turner & Horvath. There’s 4 games….give them both 2 full matches.
I’m starting to feel as weird about the group as I did about qualifying in October. Keeper is definitely looking rough. Our best keeper is the backup to England’s backup.