Interim U.S. men’s national team head coach B.J. Callaghan has been forced into his first roster move of the Concacaf Gold Cup.
Jackson Yueill has been added to the USMNT roster for the upcoming knockout stage, U.S. Soccer announced Wednesday. Yueill will replace the injured Alan Sonora, who was diagnosed with a right hamstring strain.
The 26-year-old has earned 16 caps with the USMNT to date and was part of the 2021-winning side under Gregg Berhalter. Yueill, a Minnesota native, has made 170 combined MLS appearances for the San Jose Earthquakes, including 21 during the current 2023 season.
He has registered 12 goals and 15 assists at club level over that time.
Sonora, 24, made his USMNT debut during the January window and since has made five appearances across all competitions. The FC Juarez made featured in two of the Americans’ three group stage matches against Jamaica and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
The USMNT topped Group A on goal differential and will face Canada in the quarterfinal round on July 9.
We know who is pulling the strings, this move has shithalter all over it.
That’s pretty unpleasant and probably wrong.
Evidence of how what seems to be a place-sitter, unimportant selection at the bottom of the roster… a poor decision can easily compound if one isn’t careful. Yueill’s selection is based on nothing but momentum. OK, well, he’s been here before. There’s zero chance he’s anywhere near the team in 26 and he brings little to the table in the present. GC, the nature of this tourney- we should always try to look towards the future- give the valuable experience/get the integration process out of the way for players we think at least have a shot of playing a role down the road.
An awful lot of discussion about a subject that isn’t very important. This tournament is basically B or B/C teams from the top nations vs. their counterparts plus a bunch of minnows like Guadeloupe, St. Kitts, etc. It looks like the US team is good enough to win a cup that has become pretty meaningless with the advent of the Nation’s League. In addition to players who are injured, there are still a lot of decent European-based US players who weren’t called in for either competition, most of whom are better than most of the Gold Cup roster. Basically, what this competition is doing is allowing some guys to maybe fill in spots 20-25 or 20-23, depending on the competition, in future competitions. In short, who replaces Sonora really doesn’t matter in the larger aspect of the team.
For me the Gold Cup is far more important than the nations League. And once they are on the correct schedule again the nations League will not be the same year as the gold cup.
Difficult to tell what the Gold Cup will look like in 2025. We’d heard it would be expanded to 24 teams and include 8 invitees 2 from each of the other confederations. It was said to be June 16-July 16. Then FIFA announced the Club World Cup would be in the US during June and July of 2025. So are they really going to go big on the Club World Cup and try to run the expanded Gold Cup at the same time? Or is the GC expansion going to get scrapped?
Well beyond 2025 Nations League and Gold Cup will be different years.
Still talk that UEFA will not agree to this new FIFA club World Cup format. To be honest I don’t really care for that new format either. IMO FIFA should stick to international national team tournaments and stay out of the Club side. Bring back the CONFED cup.
I generally agree that who’s called into a B/C squad doesn’t really matter. However, I do take issue with calling in players who aren’t qualified to be with the team. Long, Roldan, and now Yueill are retreads who’ve proven time and time again that they don’t belong with the USMNT even at the C-Team Level.
For a meaningless tournament I’d much rather we call in fresh blood or people who haven’t gotten a chance to show what they’re capable of. If USSF had been intelligent they’d have listed the MLS players from the U-20 WC squad to the provisional GC roster and left the retreads off.
i was going to do a lengthy analysis discussing how your static hierarchical analysis assumes its conclusion and ignores change over time. that we don’t know who the As are in 3 more years or that the current B/C or even YNT aren’t As by then. that for example steffen was solid A starter at the beginning in 2017 but by the end was out; that at the beginning turner was on loan to the richmond kickers and off the NT radar, that he was the very sort of GOLD CUP FIND player your brush off would miss.
that whole argument is all well and good, but then i realized there is an even easier answer. sonora quietly was with the “a” unit at NL finals. he was there. he was rostered. he was just an unused sub the whole week. so everyone forgets that he’s like turner, ferreira, etc. he then underwhelmed when played at GC, also unlike the fellow “a” team slummers. this is the definitional example of having a free shot at a 23 man roster spot. this is not even TIV’s famous “let’s experiment.” this is we sent home someone who made the bench and dressed with the “A,” sat, then was tried with “B” and didn’t stand out there. “gimmee your job.” QED.
that is, we’d have a position competition IF we’d called another AM. this is where i start feeling like this regime either is too defensive at MF or deliberately protects players from competition by who they bring as filler when they miss. like you could have brought in ledezma and gone for his job — and he’d deserve it. or you could have provo rostered green or others, and same thing. instead we have 1 jillion defensive mids to pick from when one of 2 AM goes down. what a joke.
The biggest disappointment I have with Berhalter returning as USMNT coach is that it will encourage IV to write multiple loooong posts explaining why Berhalter is such a terrible coach (presumably IV would do better,).
So while many of will continue to wonder just what GB is up to, most of us will hope for his success even though we might question some of his decisions.
That seems reasonable.
Even if we had a new coach, IV would still find something to write long, boring posts about. He will have good points a reasonable amount of the time, but you have to wade through so much verbiage that you have trouble keeping awake before finding anything valuable. His writing style doesn’t help.
did you not watch the team from roughly the first 2 NL group games last summer through the mexico friendly, this year (including world cup and pre tournament friendlies), plus the jamaica game? for about a year we tied or lost about every game we played except the home ES game, both grenada games, and iran. japan, saudi, wales, england, holland, serbia, colombia, mexico, etc.
i get where some of you got excited about NL but then that looked NOTHING like recent years. we then reverted back to the old look for this tournament. and in this case regressive personnel work. a 20th DM when we have 1 healthy AM. i exaggerate but this is not that hard to follow.
y’all talk like we lost in the semis on kicks. we went .500 in group then got sent home first round with extreme prejudice by holland. as bad a knockout game as i have ever seen us play.
not my fault you don’t see the disconnect between that and the talent.
“So while many of will continue to wonder just what GB is up to, most of us will hope for his success even though we might question some of his decisions.”
Why would you “wonder just what GB is up to”?
It’s a waste of time and he’s usually, like his handlers the USSF, very predictable anyway.
Everyone hopes for Gregg to succeed.
The thing with him is Gregg’s good about doing just enough to keep you from grounding him but not enough to really trust him with the car keys.
The standard defense used for Gregg boils down to : “it could be worse”
That doesn’t strike me as really convincing. It’s the classic “settle for”.
After Couva, I had this insane idea that the USSF could do better but I guess they can’t.
I mean who else realistically would or could have been called in? All other players in Europe are starting to head back to their European teams for training camps.
Meet the New boss
Same as the Old boss
The roster made this choice. Pomykal, Acosta, and Tillman back playing but not close to 100%. That left Brooks Lennon, Yueill, and Keaton Parks. Lennon is more a WB than an 8, Parks hasn’t been in camp since 2018, so that left Yueill. Yueill played a decent amount ‘19 and ‘20, was on the roster for El Cashico in April, and plays similar system for Luchi in SJ. The staff doesn’t want to spend time bringing Parks up to speed. Is it fair, no. The starting MF is set Mihailovic, Busio, and Sands. Yueill is there to see out a lead in the last 10 minutes if needed. Whomever was involved in making the provisional roster clearly had no desire to put new players on there given the manager wasn’t in place (Berhalter wasn’t in place when the Provo was due). That decision seems short sighted but it has allowed Bj to stay focused on the task instead of teaching new things to a bunch of new guys.
JR
“has allowed Bj to stay focused on the task instead of teaching new things to a bunch of new guys.”
The Gold Cup is the perfect time to teach new things to new guys.
It is a competitive tournament where it is important to win but the opposition is not exactly Argentina or Brazil.
It’s a good learning experience, especially if “Yueill is there to see out a lead in the last 10 minutes if needed. ” meaning you probably are not going to lose the game for the team.
I’m really tired of this “familiarity with the system ” excuse.
For example, Parks is new to the USMNT but he’s not fresh out of college or high school. He’s been a pro since 2015. He’s not a fucking idiot. He can speak Portuguese.
If whatever scheme BJ has in mind is too complicated for the weak minded Parks to execute for 10 minutes at the end of the game, then there is something wrong with BJ’s scheme. And whoever put Parks on the Provo is a moron.
This is not the NFL, soccer is a lot simpler.
V: have you ever tried to coach a team at any level above 10 year olds in any sport? It’s not as easy as here’s a ball go figure it out. You’re going to spend a ton of time every practice just explaining stuff everyone else knows. Then the guys that know are going to be standing around losing focus waiting on Keaton. I wanted Parks on the original 23 but I get trying to play 3 games in 8 days with 2 days of travel, bringing in someone completely new is a challenge you probably don’t want. To my knowledge Bj doesn’t speak Portuguese and I don’t think any of the staff or other players do either so that probably doesn’t help.
JR,
If that’s what BJ thinks then he (or whoever was responsible) should not have had Parks on the roster in the first place.
Chances were that if an opportunity arose during the intermission that the current circumstances would be as they are.
The point being that not a lot of thought was put into roster composition.
Parks isn’t having a better season than Yueill right now. To be honest Parks is pretty far down the depth chart. I wanted Cardoso in this tournament from the start. Who I think should have been on this roster. And I wanted to see Taylor Booth on this roster too. Who both are on the bubble of becoming regular first team guys. Yueill is a good replacement right now.
V: If they had chosen to bring Parks from the beginning you have two extra weeks to get him to speed. Plus two very low stress games against SKN and TnT. When he wasn’t chosen for the original squad his chance was lost.
—————————
2tone: Cardoso is in season in Brazil right now including Copa Libertadores. Booth had a pretty disappointing 2nd half to his season, solidifying minutes at AZ is more important than blasting Trinidad. Hopefully, the goodwill of releasing him for preseason this year will allow his playing in the Olympics next summer.
I would have brought in Ritchie Ledesma instead, we’ve seen Yueill aplenty so we already know what he offers. I don’t get this call up at all, but the upside is there are still enough newer and younger options involved
JR
“two extra weeks to get him to speed. Plus two very low stress games against SKN and TnT. ”
In comparison to Copa America or WC qualifying or the WC itself, all Gold Cup games are low stress.
Or to be more accurate, there is enough stress to be useful in terms of revealing player and manager character but not enough to reduce our chances of winning all these games.
We are better than every other team we will run into except possibly Jamaica.
I hope they are running red hot when and if we get them. The USMNT needs a good test. That EPL front line is good but it’s an eleven man game so lets see if we are a more coherent team than Jamaica.
As for Parks and the provo roster, my criticism is I don’t believe in putting players on a roster, even the bloated 60 man if you are not willing to put them on the field. That’s why I didn’t believe in the USSF paying for Aaron Long’s Qatar vacation.
It’s lazy and unprofessional and shows the lack of attention to detail.
That’s not how winning teams operate.
Maybe the Gold Cup doesn’t mean shit, but it’s as good a place to start acting professional as any.
But will we get fooled again?
Pete had the USSF pegged right all along:
A change, it had to come
We knew it all along
We were liberated from the fold, that’s all
And the world looks just the same
And history ain’t changed
‘Cause the banners, they all flown in the last war
this is how obsessed with DMs GB and company are. i think he’s meant as a replacement for a. morris (who seemingly dropped off to preserve his canada chances) even though (a) it’s officially a sonora swap and (b) as i previously beefed we were already at 2-4 ratio on AM-DM. thing being the only specialist, effective AM left is mihailovic. i thought this was already too clunky. who’s subbing for djordje without sonora? busio? roldan? are you kidding me? those are not even half effective AMs. most of the first half of the last game was watching roldan get a run and then trip over a chance. even his supposed assist was him getting into trouble dribbling and dinking it backwards. which i would encourage the choice but speaks to his quality in the attack.
one of my beefs with GB and the regime is it feels like they don’t just believe in their overcomplicated nonsense but that the roster conservatism reflects their belief it’s so hard to master we must favor experience ie recent caps. that and at times they seem to favor defensive mids as opposed to any central creativity, to almost 3 DM lengths. i say this because it explains part of how it’s yeuill despite sonora as AM. they want tons of DMs. AMs are a luxury. so without aidan they want that pool topped off more than they want an actual second AM specialist. people can now commence to moaning that some are “actually 8s” even though they like scored their first ever NT goal like last week in a game we won 6-0. good luck relying on that in knockouts. if you look at the provo list it’s dominated by DM types who on a good day might be an 8 and are often 6s. others we listed for GC despite using in NL which is nonsense.
the other half of the equation would be my guess they ruled out (a) tillman as hurt, (b) bringing back A team AMs (reyna, aaronson), then (c) ruled out bringing in B team european options “because the season is about to start” and due to limited or no cap history under their “superefficient” scheme — speaking to my “european B teamer hole.” green, mighten, gall, llanez, we have some pure AM options abroad. not listed. but in reality we only provo rostered ledezma of the type. and giving themselves few AM options given the choice they went with yet another DM instead of AM.
i throw this out there because despite mckennie’s decent productivity — often from dead balls these days — i don’t think the fanboys get that the MF has been taken in a very defensive direction that aligns with the personnel choice here. if you ever beef we can’t seem to possess the ball, ask who your MF is. i think they are there, despite their reputations, more to destroy than create. they possess some attacking skill but that’s not why they are chosen.
there is a REASON i keep pushing reyna as 10. i think we need more committed offense. he has been played there some by dortmund. pulisic has been pursued by some for use as a 10. i personally don’t see why 1-2 DM isn’t enough. we need more offense. and don’t bother using st. kitts or tnt to explain to me why not.
A. Morris is cap tied to the US. Canada option is now gone. This is a replacement for Sonora. A.Morris is expected to be back.
what i read says “departed camp” for morris. that doesn’t sound like how gressel was handled. that sounds like done.
you’re then splitting hairs about replacements’ positions, or saying, no, he’s there for sonora. that misses my point about who is there to use. djordje is an attacker. the rest are not. djordje can’t play the remaining 270′ by himself. the games are about to get harder and more like jamaica where we struggled to score.
you can quibble about positions or remind me who we said we were replacing but it doesn’t fix the actual issue i noted. we have 1 AM left. we need more and not less offense.
Aidan is cap tied, he had turned 21 so his first competitive appearance tied him. He’s made 4 appearances anyway so even if he was younger he’d be cap tied.
I’ve been a Ledezma fan for 5 years but he really hasn’t done much for NYCFC. He’s had to play some as a false 9 but he still isn’t even regularly starting for them. None of those Euro guys you named are “pure AMs” either Gall (doesn’t even start for worst team in Serbia) is a winger, Mighten (couldn’t score League One) is a winger, Green long ago moved to an 8 role after being tried at CF and W he fills in a couple times a year for Fuerth when someone else isn’t available at AM, Llanez (a guy I used to watch LAG II) is a winger. You’d have been better off trying Mendez but he hasn’t played AM much lately either in Portugal.
(a) i looked up ledezma before i jumped. first off he’s on the provo to even use. that is reality. we are about out of AM and have no other provo options there. reality again.
second off he has 4A in 868′, which is about an assist every third game. that’s 4 more assists than roldan has this season or busio had in italy this year, btw, if we’re acting like relative form and numbers matter. plus how busio and roldan have looked when played upfield this tournament, meh. you know, if this isn’t just talking points.
(b) ledezma is playing mostly AM this season. you’re wrong.
(c) even if he was playing wing it is stats’ little brother pigeonholing to respond to roster attrition not by identifying players who COULD fill a need but instead by trying to rule out as many candidates with some experience as possible. by your argument reyna shouldn’t have been 10 because it wasn’t his most recent use, even if we needed an AM to replace musah being pushed back and adams out.
this is not how coaching works. good coaches don’t respond to attrition by going conservative and nitpicky. they ask around who do we have who has played some AM. and then in reality it’s ledezma’s PRIMARY USE THIS YEAR. so, whatever dude.
to be blunt, when you’re pushing this hard to rule out my potential AM candidates who have played the position before, or even primarily recently, you’re not responding like a coach, or being fair about the facts, you’re playing to the crowd trying to diss me hoping no one checks your math and looks what TM says they have played.
a team who lost 1 of 2 AM should be AM-shopping. duh. 3 DM rotating over 2 slots is more than enough to get us to the final. 1 AM isn’t. period. basic stuff really.
That headline should have read…
(I’ll just leave this here:) Jackson Yuell added to US Gold Cup Roster.
LOLOLOL…heads exploding across USMNT social media….LOLOLOL.
I’ll just say – Go Minnesota boy Go!
the second coming of GGG begin.
Just a dreadful choice (really, an average-to-below average player in MLS is the best they can do?), but they really hamstrung themselves with some lousy choices on the 60-man prelim and then the ones who were the best choices for this position got hurt (Acosta, Tillman) and are not yet back to full 90 fitness.
way too many on the provo either A teamers they were never going to call twice — waste — or guys with the same role type. you do not need 20 tessmanns or yeuills.
i will now have fanboys try to tell me that people with like 0 or 1 G and few A in their USMNT history are secretly “hybrids” or 8s, positional pedantry in place of “ummmm do we actually have enough central offense for good teams, jamaica and the winter/spring games being a better indicator than the past week.
there is also apparently some notion that the 2 teams are playing the same scheme and it comes down to theirs looked better because they think faster or something. whatever. this team like the last GC team (or even holland) looks like old vintage berhalter ball. the 2 teams do not play the same and as such i am curious what the future holds. last time we played attacking ball NL and defensive GC we ended up halfway between after. thing being i think the NL team is more instructive of scheme as it’s the first choice. and then the B team should be playing like the As so that our scheme and style choices aren’t so heavily personalized ie depending on who shows up that window.
Especially with Jesus Ferreiras recent showing – sorry, the guy can seriously play when he can face goal and doesn’t have to hold the ball up -and the emergence of Jalen Neal, Brian Reynolds, Djorde Mihailovic, and the fact that Tim Weah is likely moving to wingback for his club, Dest and Jedi are also far more wingbacks than defenders, and the fact that with a healthy Chris Richards and Miles Robinson and Zimmerman and (cough) Jon Brooks looking good for another cycle, plus CCV as well…
…I can’t help thinking we belong in a Dutch/Canadian-style 5-3-2, especially since no true right wing has really jumped forth and claimed the spot. I was hopeful Zendejas could be that guy but I’m a lot less optimistic now. I dunno, maybe he shows out the rest of the tournament.
IMHO, you split Pulisic and Ferreira at the second striker spot – good teams have good backups and I think Ferreira’s shown he’s at least that – and use the likes of Balogun/Pepi/Sargent/Vazquez/Wright as your 9’s.
That also allows you to play your fast guys at wingback and let them rampage up and down the field, and it puts that third defender in the back, which allows you to play two offensively-minded 8’s (like, say, Gio and Djorde, and probably also Malik Tillman if he continues to progress as well.) It also strongly favors an athletic team that can counter…which again, is also very much us. This would seem to be where our talent pool is at the moment.
I doubt Gregg even entertains the idea. But I’m with you: I’m flat tired of basically playing three 6’s and then wondering where our creativity and ability to attack and combine through the middle is.
Q: i used to play 352 in select and college and that wing slot is highly responsible tracking. in theory a CB slides over to help but often enough you are on your own as they may be spoken for with their own marks. we like to aggressively push the wingbacks up. i am skeptical you can use dest in a “on your own now, son” turnover of the whole attacking and defending wingspace to a single player each side. maybe scally and jedi-instructed-stay-back. jedi looked much better at his primary job in NL staying home more. that is not GB-ball. GB wants the wings pushed 20 yards up even if they squeeze his wing forwards and draw defenders to them both.
i did hear one of weah’s potential destinations was considering him as a 352 wing.
also if those are the wings then pulisic and reyna have to go middle or up top. neither of them is an end to end engine type.
i personally would like to see at least one of pulisic and reyna central. too much of the attack is wide and often crossed. mckennie scores poaching crosses and dead balls in the box. musah isn’t really producing yet and might yet be adams’ competition or platoon partner at 6. a true 10 gives you central playmaking on the run. it also in half court offers a way station between switching wing to wing. you act like you’re going sideways in half court then one of them goes to net. they can then feed balogun and weah behind the backs with more of a throughball (within the wingbacks) instead of everything going around the flanks.
this has too much talent to be a cross whacking team with 3 DM. i also personally feel like with more of a division of labor and technique up top, the other team has to sit back more and defend us. it’s the difference between chances they have to stop vs. possession they just have to watch. possession i can spring load for a counter. trap the sideways passing. the other i am too busy defending deep to counter in numbers. pep fans talk about possession as like defense but to me it’s more scary as a defender to be put in constant danger as opposed to watch people play keepaway.
Why do I have the horrifying feeling we’ve seen this movie before, and that it’s going to be Yueill doing his best impersonation of a traffic cone who makes the key bust that causes us to lose to Mexico in the final?
I mean, I get it. Sort of. He’s been with the Nats before, he’s been in Berhalter’s setup before, he’s not starting from zero. So as a coach I get why BJ doesn’t want to integrate new faces with just two games left in a tournament into a group that’s been together now for several weeks, and he’s going to go with a guy he knows.
But…still. Jackson Yueill. (facepalm)
BJ’s yet to put a wrong foot forward thus far, but methinks his memory might be a little short on this one.