The U.S. men’s national team’s September schedule is now official with a pair of Asian Football Confederation opponents making the trip to the United States.
Uzbekistan and Oman will face off with the United States this September for friendlies on Sept. 9 and 12 respectively, U.S. Soccer announced Thursday. St. Louis CITY SC’s CITYPARK and Minnesota United’s Allianz Field will serve as host venues for the friendly matches.
“We are very intentional and committed to presenting different challenges to our team during the next three years as we continue to develop the program,” USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter said.
“Uzbekistan and Oman are first-time opponents for us and both are preparing for the AFC Asian Cup, so we expect them to be good tests. We look forward to visiting two excellent soccer facilities and performing in front of the fantastic supporters in St. Louis and the Twin Cities.”
Uzbekistan is currently ranked No. 74 in the FIFA Men’s Rankings while Oman is ranked No. 73. Both national teams are part of the AFC (Asian Football Confederation) and would face off with the Americans for the first times in their histories.
Both Uzbekistan and Oman have yet to make a FIFA World Cup, but are regular participants in the Asian Cup every four years. Uzbekistan’s finished fourth at the Asian Cup in 2011 while Oman reached the Round of 16 for the first time in 2019.
Uzbekistan is led by all-time leading goalscorer Eldor Shomurodov, who has 37 goals in 66 international caps. Khalid Al-Hajri leads all current Oman players with 18 goals in 45 caps.
The USMNT already has its October window sealed with Germany and Ghana opposing the Americans on Oct. 14 and 17 respectively.
Apparently it was going to be Argentina and Brazil but Conmebol moved up their WC Qualifiers to begin in September. Talk about one extreme to another.
Fair points all, sorry for getting carried away. And no offense to Oman and Uzbekistan, who are both probably pleased to have the opportunity.
Who, by the way, is Michele Giannone? At first I had thought, oh, one of those new faces foisted on Univisión by the evil oligarchic Televisa. But he’s actually not bad so far, even though he desperately needs sunscreen and lotion. And where Fox has had no one on the sideline, he’s been out there, among others. Gracias otra vez, Univisión.
Re Canada and bankruptcy,
Good heavens. How did it get to this point? What did I miss?
Is this by any chance just a ploy to avoid paying the Canadian women their fair share? Surely the shining knights Davies, David et al. wouldn’t stand for that?
Total Soccer Show did a pod on it. Apparently in 2018 before the men became good the Canadian federation made a deal with CSB (marketing branch of Canadian Premier League) to handle all their rights. Not unlike USSF and it’s old deal with SUM. The difference seems to be that Canadian Fed gave it away for basically pennies. Canadian government is investigating to check for corruption. There also seems to be just some lack of business knowledge from the federation in general.
What Malta and Andorra weren’t available
In truth, with the expanded WC in 2026 the US will probably get one opponent of this rank in their group. So it’s not so bad an idea to play these types of games every now and then to make sure you practice “getting the job done”, since losing points vs. the “Oman” in your WC group would be catastrophic.
This said… I really do hope the USSF will also line up games vs teams like Argentina, Spain, Brazil, France etc… Because we really need to get accustomed to the speed and quality the top teams bring or we will have another deer im headlights moment in 2026 knockout stages if most of the teams we play are inferior on paper.
I really don’t care as much about the opponent as I do getting this group together as many times as possible.
I love hosting the world cup but no qualifying games hurts us
*ulp*
Is “ghastly” the right word?
Or is this hideous black hole of a schedule just further confirmation that the USMNT as a host country really only has to tread water until, say, 2025? Is the meaningless Gold Cup B/C team going to be playing these meaningless Sept./Oct. fixtures?
How exactly is this supposed to increase interest in, and viewership of, soccer in North America?
Oh, never mind, they’ve already given all that up. In favor of … streaming.
So who exactly is going to want to stream matches against Uzbekistan and Oman?
Show of hands?
One hand?
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Uh…you did see the part where Giannone mentioned “extremely tough window to find games because the whole world is playing official matches”?
One thing I am fairly certain of is, over the next couple years the US – and probably Canada and Mexico as well, to a lesser extent – will not be lacking for folks who want some. They’ll want to get their teams and confederations used to playing on this side of the pond, and on top of that we have all these big shiny new stadiums that will pack out if you put them in the right areas. (You think, say, Argentina wouldn’t pack the house for Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, even for a friendly? I do. And that’d be big, big money for the Argentinian confederation.)
I do think we’ll have some dud windows thanks to Nations League or qualifying, but everybody is going to want to come here and play.
Between Copa America, the Club World Cup, and of course, the World Cup, the US is going to be the center of the International soccer world until 2026…and better yet, everybody is going to be coming to us.
That’s likely to be pretty durn cool.
This is the problem since the creation of the Nation’s League. It has increased the amount of “official matches” which really favors Europe. The teams most of the world wants to test itself – European – against are constantly playing each other. UEFA created a very genius way to help maintain its superiority. This is why there are constantly rumors about Brazil and Argentina wanting to join the European Nation’s League. Who can they test themselves against? I hate the Nations League.
Mr. Obvious,
As you pointed out, for CONCACAF the Nations League was designed to give our less fortunate members access to regularly scheduled games against better opposition.
There’s no particular advantage to the US or Mexico who need the Nations League about as much as they need to be eaten up by a wolf and shit off of a cliff but we are not the only members of CONCACAF.
For us the Nations League dilutes the Gold Cup because the schedule favors our euros playing in the NL vs the GC.
If this keeps up, the Gold Cup will be increasingly marginalized. And who knows how much better the other CONCACAF nations will get?
Look at how much MLS has done for the other CONCACAF nations.
If Jamaica for example, can get themselves together ( they have a number of players who can potentially do a Balogun), a solid Jamaica is a serious threat to us, Mexico and Canada. And that threatens the USMNT’s automatic World Cup place after 2026.
Which is a good thing.
Still better than Canada who won’t be having a September window because they might be filing for bankruptcy.