The U.S. men’s national team’s fall schedule is starting to take shape.
Canada, New Zealand, and Panama will all oppose the Americans this fall in a trio of home friendlies, U.S. Soccer announced Tuesday. The USMNT will face Canada in Kansas City, Kan. on Sept. 7 before taking on New Zealand in Cincinnati, Ohio on Sept. 10.
Panama will oppose the Americans in Austin, Texas on Oct. 12.
The USMNT has not lost in any of the venues that will be hosting these matches; Children’s Mercy Park, TQL Stadium, and Q2 Stadium.
It will mark the first USMNT-Canada friendly showdown since 2016, with the Americans holding a 17-10-13 all-time record against Les Rouges. Both the USMNT and Canada are currently part of the ongoing Copa America tournament.
New Zealand will face the USMNT for the first time since 2016 and for the fourth time overall. The Americans have won two of their head-to-head meetings with the Kiwis, while also drawing once.
October’s USMNT-Panama showdown is the second on the 2024 schedule. The Americans are preparing to face Panama on Thursday in Copa America group stage play at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia.
Panama did eliminate the USMNT from the 2023 CONCACAF Gold Cup, despite holding just three all-time victories against the Americans.
All three friendly matches will serve as preparation for the USMNT ahead of the 2024-25 CONCACAF Nations League quarterfinals this November.
An out of left field thought….
USSF scheduled these 3 opponents to give the New USMNT manager (insert name) a low risk introduction to the USMNT player pool and CONCACAF opponents/tactics before Nations League starts up again.
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Never going to happen, but I’m trying to look for more positives these days.
There’s a thought but again as I’ve pointed out multiple times below. Literally only teams ranked in the top 120 that are available are New Zealand, Canada, Panama, and Mexico.
why isn’t there a second october game?
I’ve heard it just isn’t finalized yet. Probably Mexico and likely the hold up is what football stadium in Texas, Arizona, Nevada, or California is available.
what dingbat is making our schedule? we play panama in a couple days, and we schedule them again this fall? we are drawn with colombia and brazil as potential bracket opponents, so we schedule them for pretournament friendlies? it’s not even that they all have to be good. it’s just more informative that the games aren’t the same opponent.
it’s odd that with the continued problems playing road games we play our whole schedule at home. our last road game was the loss at TnT. even going back to 2022 we can barely win away.
before we dismiss this because it’s a home world cup, to me that gets into handling adversity which is not just road games, it’s tough ones at home. i personally think we are flattered by all this home game stuff. you look at our road or neutral results this decade and it’s barely beat northern ireland, tie wales, tie saudi, bunch of losses.
and to be clear the age group kids are routinely sent off on road trips; and other countries get to host their regional and world tournaments. answer i come up with is money for why we suddenly become the Permanent Home Team as adults. to me it used to be a couple road windows a year and having to play copa america in south america for a change.
It looks to me like berhaulter is taking a page out of the herb brooks playbook. Probably pretty smart.
Canada, Panama, and Mexico are literally the only teams in the FIFA top 120 available (with quick glance India at 124 highest ranked with an opening). I’d expect Mexico will be the other fixture that Oct window, probably in the southwest somewhere because Mexico would rather play there). Concacaf NL qualifiers start in Sept and October (US, Pan, Mex, Can have byes) so no CR, Jamaica, Honduras, etc. See the list of events in other regions in my post below.
first, you’re dismissive of the teams available out of region, but neglect our record out of region, our need for some road seasoning, and seem to have forgotten that we have gotten plenty of good soccer this year and not every game need be some insane challenge. we can schedule another oman uzbek pairing, it’s not against the law, and maybe run out some kids and experiments.
i mean when this summer is done it will probably have been mexico jamaica slovenia panama plus some south american teams.
second, we are hosts so who cares about rank? we go in pot 1 regardless.
third, now that i look at it, the problem is this. this seems to calendared to be basically regional programming time. nations league, world cup, or afcon. we for whatever reason configured 24/25 NL to let us skip qualifying but then who the heck are we gonna play instead? if we’re gonna be bland and uncreative anyway, basically end up playing League A type concacaf anyway why not just play for real?
i mean i am sure we campaigned for a virtual bye to the gold cup and NL again. give that up. play for real including 1/2 road contests.
put differently, you’re not asking “why” this specific set of concacaf is available. League A is playing. we aren’t. we for whatever reason campaigned to get advanced and freed of the group play straitjacket despite the availability options being narrowed/channeled in the manner you note.
last, i think you’re not 100% accurate on regional availability. looks to me like most of the concacaf teams from lower rungs are obligated for one or the other end of the window — BUT NOT BOTH. we have historically played friendlies with teams like puerto rico.
i get your argument is we are above this all, but to me we could use some games to try things, players, run up a score on someone and work on executing offense against teams other than mexico, canada, brazil, or colombia.
it’s a fanboy fetish that we have to schedule the hardest teams. the irony to me is we do it then don’t learn much from it. same system and 95% of the roster next time. if we’re measuring up, well, do the measuring. i think you only need a few of those. i think we use the schedule difficulty as an excuse to use the same tactics and personnel. we don’t actually notice if those games suggest change is needed.
the fanboy thing also neglects we could pick some available teams known for defense.
Not sure what you are looking at League A and League B in Concacaf are playing two match days in Sept and Oct. As for we can play weak teams. Did we learn anything from beating 84th ranked Bolivia or 76th Oman? Uzbekistan was 62. Panama (43) at least hung around with Uruguay. What good is going to do to play India, who is already eliminated from WC 2026? Do you prefer Myanmar or Thailand? These countries don’t even qualify for their regional tournaments or final rounds of World Cup qualifying. And we’ve seen our B/C team now routinely handles the Caribbean teams that qualify in League B, that defeat the teams available in League C on a regular basis. So what good is putting up 6 or 7 on Belize? By the way if your in League C of Concacaf you are not known for defense.
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Historically we’ve played lower teams like Puerto Rico. We did that once in 2016, outside an international window. We had to bring like 6 DMs because so many players were not released. Since ‘94 WC (the Modern Era) we’ve played 3 friendlies against teams of the quality your suggesting Kuwait ‘98, Latvia ‘06, PR ‘16 (twice right before WCs and once before Copa).
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Neither you or I have any idea how Concacaf came up with the NL format. Since they have 6 team groups but only play 4 matches in group play it doesn’t look like there was much rhyme or reason to it. My guess is they built the rounds around the limited dates they had available.
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It doesn’t particularly matter who we play anyway. If the idea is to play a 4-3-3 and using the same 20-25 players we’ve been using it’s a waste of time. The only way it’s valuable is if we try new players and/or new tactics.
JR do you really believe that all the small island countries and central americans voted us a bye without us asking for it? or eagerly voted for that qualifying nonsense last time where 5 teams went direct to the ocho on ranking while the rest of the region played off for a grand total of 3 spaces left?
are you not seeing the absurdity where we’ve set up a regional league structure we then get to skip?
does england get to host the euros every time? does france get to skip qualifying rounds for the world cup?
i think most US soccer fans are either entitled or oblivious of how much our region is tilted.
IV: Concacaf has two main goals. Make money and give the appearance that the small countries have a chance. In this format with only 6 dates over 3 windows there are only two real possibilities 16 team all knockouts or the weird groups but not round robin. If you did knockouts only a team like Suriname then gets one home match with the US and one away match. Then 99.9% they’re getting knocked out, with one attendance gate. With byes/round robin they get two home matches. Suriname isn’t likely to beat Costa Rica but if they play well and get some luck they could win the other 3 and make the quarterfinals. I doubt there was any vote as you suggest but I do think the smaller countries were probably ok with it. More money for them and a better chance to get to the quarterfinal stage.
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Everyone thinks 16 teams, 4 groups of 4 no byes. But it doesn’t work because the group stage wouldn’t have enough dates for the 6 matches so it wouldn’t be equal home matches.
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Why did we get to host the Gold Cup each year? Because it makes more money here.
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Why did the region try to go to using rankings to fill the hex instead of extended qualifying? I don’t know for sure. One how many times has US, Mexico, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama not been in the hex the last 20 years? But if you’re Guatemala you aren’t going to run through the hex but if you only have to beat other minnows and then win a home/away against the 4th place finisher from the hex that’s a more realistic chance. I just have to pull two upsets not 4 or 5 over the course of the hex. Of course it would have likely kept Canada out. But oddly the Concacaf President is Canadian, and suddenly the hex expanded to the Ocho.
Call “youth players”: Cole Campbell, Esmir, Luna, Dietz, Neal, Daniel Craig, Brady etc..
Not calling you out, but Daniel Craig is James Bond. Brandon Craig is the Union Academy prospect who is on loan at El Paso after a failed loan to Austin last year.
Thank you, but “Brandon” Craig is talent (even at USL) could needs polishing for 2030, and somewhat Ream-type CB. Austin never gave Craig a chance.
These teams are perfect: experience for youth players, start checking-out players for 2030.
I know it’s easier to schedule home games but perhaps the last Oct game will be in the road. At Mexico or Costa Rica would be nice
Panama, Mexico or Canada are the only top 28 Concacaf team available in October or you could be playing on a cricket field in Barbados or Belize.
If anything, it’s a chance to move on from Ream and give some other CB pairings some opportunities to gel. Perhaps even let Schulte or Slonina have some minutes.
The only thing I’ll say about that is the Euro based Olympians will have missed training camp for Olympics might be good to leave them off for September but bring the best of that group in October. Schulte if he’s not sold this summer should be brought in though.
what’s the objective reason for schulte? guy i watched in january came off his line when he didn’t need to and got beat in no man’s land for the losing goal. neither trusted his back nor got out quick enough to confront the play. meh. like i keep saying, NT performance should matter more.
what is it, that he’s the crew’s keeper — boss’s old team — being groomed on U23 — tautology, supposed to be the guy. that and what is this coach’s fetish for stick men.
personally i’m a celentano fan. gaga doesn’t seem fully cooked, i’ve noticed a pattern where i like some reaction save he does then i realize his team shipped 2 that night, which matches his overall numbers as well as how many he gave serbia in his cap.
Schulte did win MLS Cup, and MLS Next Pro Cup the year before. L’equipe named him Man of the Match against France U23s. Schulte and Berhalter’s time at Columbus do not overlap, not even with Sebastian Berhalter’s stint. None of the executives from Berhalter’s time there are even around.
IV,
“meh. like i keep saying, NT performance should matter more.”
You do keep saying that. And you are wrong.
The next “Great ” USMNT keeper will make his case at his club. Gregg and his staff need only to make the obvious choice.
And it won’t be an “objective choice” either.
They aren’t capable of developing a keeper anyway.
In the highly unlikely event there are two equally good ( that’s not true, one will always be a little more suited to “your” team than another guy) then you make your choice and live with it.
Because we don’t already play concacaf enough as it is. FFS😫
Only Concacaf and Oceania have open dates in September. Africa has Africa Cup qualifiers, Conmebol has WCQ, Asia has WCQ (3rd round draw hasn’t occurred so it doesn’t show on team schedules), UEFA Nations League (technically Level D has 3 team groups so we could have scheduled Liechtenstein and Andorra). I suppose you could also include eliminated Asian teams like Pakistan, India, or Nepal or CAF teams like Somalia and Djibouti who were eliminated before group stage of Afcon qualifying. It’s the plight of host nations now that qualifying starts, literally no one to play. Qatar paid to be included in a UEFA qualifying group and to be invited to GC and Copa in their lead up to 2022 WC.
It seems the Nations League really has become a scourge for friendlies across everyone. Just a bad concept all around.
I know the Euro teams aren’t really available anymore, but its hard not to be disappointed with this. We better not call in our top guys for Panama in the middle of their club seasons…
Let’s wait and see how Panama do this week before we dismiss them.
Yep, not trying to overlook them or jinx us. But still seems a lame fixture since our A team is already playing them this summer, and we play concacaf teams all the time.
Jb: if you look at my response above to Rico there is really no team ranked in the Top 120 who are available outside Concacaf. So I’d imagine the remaining Oct friendly will also be a Concacaf opponent, Mexico maybe.
Canada, fine. New Zealand and Panama, meh.
I know we’re a lot of times at the mercy of what we can get because of other confederations’ Nations League matches, but it’s still a major letdown compared to the run of meaningful games we’re getting now against top competition.
I don’t know how much we really get out of those last two games, unless we leave our starters at home, bring in our bench as starters, and give a bunch of other prospects a good long look in camp. How I’d use those games, anyhow.