The U.S. Under-23 men’s national team will also be in action this month as preparation ramps up for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France.
Duncan McGuire, Cade Cowell, and Kevin Paredes headline Marko Mitrovic’s 22-player for upcoming friendlies against Guinea and France. The Americans will face Guinea on March 22 in Olot, Spain before taking on France on March 25 in Montbeliard.
A total of 15 players on the U-23 roster have been capped by the USMNT, led by midfielder Gianluca Busio’s 13 senior international caps. Eight players were a part of the USMNT’s January training camp at which five earned their senior international debuts.
Busio, Jack McGlynn, and Jonathan Tomkinson headline 10 players that have featured in several international window of the new U-23 cycle. Maximilian Dietz, Nathan Harriel, Bryan Reynolds, John Tolkin, Tanner Tessmann, Esmir Bajraktarevic and Johan Gomez round out that group.
McGlynn and Paxten Aaronson were among several players who helped the United States qualify for the Paris Olympics after winning the CONCACAF U-20 Championship in 2023. New York Red Bulls midfielder Daniel Edelman served as captain of that U-20 roster.
Here is a closer look at the full USMNT U-23 roster:
GOALKEEPERS: Patrick Schulte (Columbus Crew; St. Charles, Mo.), Gabriel Slonina (KAS Eupen/BEL; Addison, Ill.)
DEFENDERS: George Campbell (Montreal Impact; Atlanta, Ga.), Maximilian Dietz (Greuther Furth/GER; Frankfurt, Germany), Nathan Harriel (Philadelphia Union; Oldsmar, Fla.), Bryan Reynolds (Westerlo/BEL; Fort Worth, Texas), John Tolkin (New York Red Bulls; Chatham, N.J.), Jonathan Tomkinson (Bradford City/ENG; Plano, Texas), Caleb Wiley (Atlanta United FC; Atlanta, Ga.)
MIDFIELDERS: Paxten Aaronson (Vitesse/NED; Medford, N.J.), Gianluca Busio (Venezia/ITA; Greensboro, N.C.), Daniel Edelman (New York Red Bulls; Warren, N.J.), Jack McGlynn (Philadelphia Union; Queens, N.Y.), Aidan Morris (Columbus Crew; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.), Tanner Tessmann (Venezia/ITA; Birmingham, Ala.)
FORWARDS: Esmir Bajraktarevic (New England Revolution; Appleton, Wisc.), Cade Cowell (Guadalajara/MEX; Ceres, Calif.), Johan Gomez (Eintracht Braunschweig/GER; Keller, Texas), Diego Luna (Real Salt Lake; Sunnyvale, Calif.), Duncan McGuire (Orlando City SC; Omaha, Neb.), Kevin Paredes (Wolfsburg/GER; South Riding, Va.), Griffin Yow (Westerlo; Clifton, Va.)
@JohnnyRazor – You had a bunch a questions and IV took dump in btween the thread so I’m going to have 3 parts and try my best not to waste peoples time.
1)- …any youth players left footed that didn’t get called in..? I can’t think of one @ the moment; I could find a left footed CB born in ‘01 or later w/ a lil research
2) I forgot about McGlynn, who I’ve been saying is a LB. He’s MLS’ Zinchenko except he likes the right midfield, where Z is in LM for the Ukraine. So with that same logic, that’s 3 LBs (Tolkin, & Wiley)
3) I wasn’t aware of Esmir, being left footed. (I think, teenagers should excel against teenagers and prove themselves before facing grown adults). In this case, Esmir needs to backup KP (Kevin Paredes) on the RW. He’s also similar to PA.
4) Now, that you pointed it out. The ratio of left footed players is a little better, strictly 4-3-3 speaking. Though, I know Mitrovic has used a 3-4-3 multiple times.
I like the baseball analogy, let’s stick with that for a sec. In a starting rotation which is 4-5 players, you don’t have 4-5 right handed players, (@ least teams that win stuff don’t), because on the offensive side; the opposing manager has to arrange the batting order according to the starting pitcher. More people are right handed making it more predictable to hit off righties. Starting pitchers usually have 4 to 5 types of pitches. Your pitching bullpen, which can be 8-10 players can’t all be right handed either. If your righty starts to give up runs, the worst thing to do is put in a right handed pitcher w/ similar stuff. Bullpen is made of pitchers who have 2, maybe 3 pitches, which is the reason why they’re not starting. Managers throw in a lefty to stop the bleeding. Now, back to soccer… Left footed players in all formations keep the ball in the middle and facilitate & push tempo. Tsimikas (Greece), Spizzanola (Italy), Hernandez bros (France), Marcos Acuna (Argentina), Eric Davis (Panama) to name a few. The more right footed players you have the lower the percentage of passes in the middle of the field goes drastically down.
Out of curiosity, do you have any quantitative evidence for those claims, either about pitchers or teams with left footed players?
Nkh: not a lot of data, but a long article from MLB about left handers
https://www.mlb.com/amp/news/why-left-handed-pitching-matters-in-baseball.html
Thought of a few:
Jack deVries RW (Serie C)
Kobe Hernandez Foster DM (USL)
Danny Robles AM (USL 1)
Leo Sepulveda (LB/CB (Liga Mx) I’m not sure he’s still eligible
Indiana Vassilev RW/AM (MLS)
Thomas Roberts CM (Norway2)
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Not an inspiring list, I’m sure there are some MLS Next Pro left footed players, which again doesn’t inspire. Sepulveda is interesting just played for Chivas in Champions Cup but hasn’t played for US since 2019 and you know Chivas. I’m interested to see how Kobe HF does in USL his European adventure didn’t go well. I’d forgotten Jack deVries did will in Italy U19 league but then couldn’t get on the field for Venezia first team and struggled in Finland now not scoring in Serie C.
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I’m in agreement on your need for left footed players. I also get IV’s point though if we were going to play his style of sit back and defend, have your keeper play long balls, and try to hit balls behind the backline on the counter. As you point out though IV’s style isn’t going to win the World Cup anytime soon.
Just incidentally, Esmir was excellent in NextPro last year and is a regular starter so far this year in both MLS and CCC. So, not different on that front than, say, Cowell or Glynn. That’s not the same resume as Paxton or Paredes, but it’s still as worthy of a U23 callup as a bunch of other guys on the roster.
Nkh: https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/37633113/why-does-every-club-want-sign-left-footed-centre-back
This talks a little about why left footed center backs, but again not a lot of data. Interesting that it’s been a belief that left footed players are more creative. About 12% of people are left footed but 20% of professional footballers.
Yeah… but when someone is making what should be an objectively verifiable claim, like “teams with left-footed players make more passes to the middle of the field”, I want to see the numbers. Honestly, there are often claims on here that should be able to be checked and just never are. And I don’t even know how you would effectively quantify “creativity”.
Right I thought the thing about creativity was funny. I found it in a couple different articles. It kind of seems related to some all time greats like Maradona and Messi being left footed but also to that since only about 1 in 5 players are their movements look different and are described as creative. There probably is some site out there with the data but those kind of detailed stats are usually behind a paywall like a scouting service not just a fan site. I can find data that says Lucas Hernandez is an elite passing left footed CB but I can’t find where those passes are to.
Actually a reponse to JR below but the way these threads run out is weird… I wonder if some the creativity thing is really just an extension of some of the left brain-right brain BS. It is true the Messi, Maradona, Cruyff etc were left footed. But Pele, Ronaldo and Beckenbauer were right footed. So… who even knows? But I now imagine that someone out there might have developed a “nutmeg-o-meter” or “stepover coefficient” to try to actually measure “creativity”. And that would be hilarious.
Also, yes, I hate how hard it is to get access to advanced statistics in soccer. They either aren’t there, they have a lot of limitstions, or the analytics depts play it very close to the chest. I get that the relevant data is hard and relatively expensive to get, but still. American Soccer Analysis always has some interesting stuff, but it’s just for US leagues and anyway, they’ve shown in a bunch of ways that value of many of the team-level analyses are highly dependent on the structure of the leagues. There are a few dataset out there to use as examples, but they’re usually pretty limited and I’m just too busy to put too much time into that.
Last year’s MLS Cup final Crew started one left footed player to LAFC’s 5. Crew had 62% possession and completed 186 more passes. So you can still play possession soccer and build from the back, if you set your team right. The Crew’s one left footed player was LCB Amundsen.
That defense does not look strong at all man I don’t mean to be harsh. I wish Rodrigo Neri was called up.
-Neri is with the U19/U20s.
-I expect an overage CF Wright or Vazquez (maybe Ferreira) and some help in defense Zimmerman or perhaps Jones or Moore.
Reggie Cannon maybe another overage defender with a shout. Can play CB or RB and by all accounts a good leader for the younger guys.
U20 roster (U19s currently) out for matches with Morocco and England. A lot of guys from last years U17 WC. Kochen in net and Cole Campbell should make his US debut.
U19/20 roster
https://www.ussoccer.com/stories/2024/03/twenty-four-players-set-for-u19-mens-youth-national-team-matches-against-england-and-morocco
I have no confidence in this squad. Too many similar or like players. Only 3 left footed players, which all play the same position. (A left footed LW is a fullback – Alphonso Davies, just like a right footed RW is a fullback – Tim Weah). Kevin Paredes (KP) only does fullback stuff. He plays LW for club, and the US coaches except 2 matches of the latest U20 WC, play him the same spot). Edelman is the only 6, and he’s a possession style, and not a defensive midfielder. Tessman is not a 6, Busio is not a 6. I’ve been saying this before watching over 30 plus Venezia matches the last 2 years. A Mo was a 6, now he’s been playing the right midfield or the 8, because Nagbe, the best midfielder in the MLS, has taken the defensive responsibilities so Morris doesn’t have to. Tessman is the only midfielder w/ bite, he’s an attacking midfielder and not a 2 way defender. Argentina had 5 left footed players on their WC squad. France had 6. Whoever wins the ‘26 WC, and the number of left footed players is equal or greater than 5, you will be 12 years behind the country’s that actually win WCs.
McGlynn
Esmir
Paredes
Wiley
Tolkin
So I guess depending on formation you could get 3 on the field at a time (maybe that’s what you were saying). Are there left footed youth players out there who didn’t get called?
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I think of it like a baseball lineup you want to be able to alternate right and left handers, but if you can start a LH that only hits .237 just to get 4 LH in your lineup when you could start a switch hitter (like Luna better with right but can go either way) that hits .275 are you better off. Are we choosing right footed players over left footed or are the left footers just not quality enough? I’m really asking I don’t know that answer.
one reason i might call several redundant players is i feel like i have a hole in my roster and i want a cattle call. what feels like it has changed in US rostering is we seem to call fewer “extras” than we used to. yeah, we might only dress 18, but if you need to cattle call positions x and y, why not call 25 instead of 22? that allows you to both audition and pursue a result with a better balanced call sheet.
fwiw this isn’t an official event, if you aren’t sure, call a bunch and stagger the lineups between the 2 games. it’s a fanboy obsession to think we need to call precisely an amount, or have some dramatic cut based on practice alone.
anyhow, to me the error isn’t just stockpiling, it’s not calling enough to balance the rest of the team out.
I think based on the roster this isn’t a tryout camp, those were in the fall. The roster for Olympics is 18, I think 15 field players and 3 GKs. So out of the 20 field players this camp approximately 12 will be in Paris. Taylor Booth a lock if he gets healthy and is released so that’s one fewer spots as well. Cremanschi another likely inclusion if he gets healthy.
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Mitrovic rotated the roster quite a bit in the fall. Using 21 players against Mexico, 22 vs Japan, 18 vs Iraq and Morocco (all the players who dressed). Many of these guys also saw action in January against Slovenia.
i haven’t thoroughly broken this roster down but my theory on footedness is it matters more for one-footed, technical types. if i have blazing speed wide and/or good defending ability, i can play either side. you might lose a little sometimes on the product, but i can get behind defenses or recover, as needed. the ones who struggle L vs. R are usually one-foot skill player wonders on their weaker foot, or crap defenders like dest.
and the fans concerned with is their LB left footed, to me, often seem less concerned with their defense than their offense, which depending who we pick or what we ask of them can be a bad idea. it’ll be like, x y z can mark. but they want “w” to cheat up high and hit left foot crosses. who then gets burned for goals every few games. ideally they can handle both but to me first priority is can they mark. and to me this is routinely slighted when we go “natural LB hunting.”
For the most part a very good roster.
Even without over age players they’ll have to trim it down from 22 to 18. So I’ll be surprised if anyone else gets added unless they just get really in form. I’d guess overage will be CB and a CF. Zimmerman and Vazquez would be my guess. A lot of times you’d get a GK but Schulte and Slonina are on the fast track to the NT so I think they want them to get the minutes. I could still see Kamungo getting on or maybe a more “established” guy like Bello. Obviously guys situations change and could raise their stock enough that they’re in preseason plans for their clubs and aren’t released. If Venezia earns promotion will they let Tanner and Busio go? I think with the games in Paris will help some of the Euro guys get released.
Disappointed not to see Jose Gallegos but he is just in Danish 2nd having a good season. I hope we have assurances that these guys will be released.
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I believe the U20 roster drops later today.
i think generally speaking required release is only a senior team thing. so i would assume this roster reflects that. i think we occasionally have january release issues senior team, but this to me reflects those are non-window grey area games.
along those lines the odd omit to me was campbell. the switch is final and dortmund U19 has about a month between games. maybe he’s getting a first team look, but i don’t understand.
or maybe the oddly allocated, somewhat sub-optimal roster means this camp is more about the marginal players than the best ones. maybe paredes and some of the others have been “advanced to the final” already and left off. eg i seriously doubt gaga is seeing much playing time at NL. or maybe they have been graduated. who knows. used to be to get graduated you had to be a dominant part of the senior team, not just have some bench minutes.
IV: I just mean that I hope we’ve talked with these clubs that they will release them for Olympics. Technically they don’t have to release guys for this camp but most do if it’s in a window.
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Campbell is on the U19 roster playing in Morocco.
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I don’t understand your Paredes and Slonina comments they are on this U23 roster. They haven’t been graduated.