A trio of U.S. Under-20 men’s national team talents were named to CONCACAF’s Best XI for the U-20 Championship on Tuesday.
Niko Tsakiris, David Vazquez, and Brooklyn Raines all earned individual honors on Tuesday after helping Michael Nsien’s squad qualify for the 2025 FIFA U-20 World Cup. The Americans reached the Concacaf U-20 Championship Final on Sunday before falling 2-1 to hosts Mexico in extra time.
Tsakiris, a San Jose Earthquakes homegrown, was also named the Best Player of the Tournament. He scored two goals and added two assists from his midfield position.
The 19-year-old has made 41 combined appearances for the Earthquakes to date.
Vazquez finished as one of six players in the tournament to have scored three goals. The Philadelphia Union homegrown forward also added two assists for the Americans.
Vazquez is still waiting for his Union first team debut after logging seven goals and five assists in 34 MLS NEXT Pro appearances with Union II.
The 19-year-old Raines scored a sensational strike in the semifinal for the USMNT U-20’s.
A Houston Dynamo homegrown, Raines has made 18 first team appearances to date for the Western Conference club. He has also appeared in five matches for the U.S. Under-23 men’s national team.
All three players will aim to use their strong tournament performances into larger club roles in 2024.
fwiw referencing rounds U20 teams got eliminated can be misleading. the 23 team had a soft group and NZ in their knockout and lost badly to the first good team they played, uruguay.
while one could argue the 19 team made it “just as far,” really? do you think those 2 teams were about the same, really?
2019 had a tough group, barely lost to the eventual champion ukraine in group, beat france in the knockouts (who in other contexts eg oly we treat as unbeatable and blow off), and lost close to ecuador, who finished 3rd. are we really treating those as equivalent.
You weren’t comparing them to 19 you compared them to 2000 or “when we used to develop World Class talent”. Donovan and Beasley lost to Egypt so let’s stop with the ‘23s got lucky.
Those ‘19s were either developed in Europe or MLS Academies not your precious little Bradenton.
As previously stated their were some really good prospects not on this qualifying team. We will see what happens next summer if any get released. Some players that are good enough to be role players and or starters for their club teams usually don’t get released for U20 WC’s.
Pulisic sould have been on the 2017 u20 team, but he wasn’t because he was playing for the senior team. Reyna, Musah, Tillman, Scally, and Pepi could have been on the 2023 u20 team but they weren’t be cause they were already senior players and clubs didn’t want to release.
There is real talent in the wider u20 pool that we may get to see at the U20 WC next summer. As always it depends on clubs willing to release. Even MLS clubs are not releasing.
i don’t buy what you folks are pushing. spain and france might be in the olympic final but the bronze was egypt vs. morocco. i was born, but not born yesterday.
i agree that “graduation” is as much or more an issue than “release,” which often involves inferior players. eg i’ve argued we should have sent reyna and some others that good/young to oly. but the quality of player i have heard release was declined is more like reynolds. similar names, but not similar quality players.
and to the extent you’re arguing up the quality of pre-2019 guys you’re making my point for me. if you look at 17 or 19 youth world cup teams, they are one level. pulisic is their age. my point is the 23/24 teams. the quality of player is not consistent at all. it went down in the years leading to 2017. it went up for a couple cycles through 2019.
i think it’s back down again. 2019 at one point could field half a NT lineup. is this more like half a NT lineup or like when pulisic was the only star we developed for a whole cycle? exactly.
all due respect but i feel like our batting average on the world class keller/mcbride/donovan/beasley/pulisic/reyna type players is falling off. there were several breakthrough players on the 2019 team. when you look at the 23 or 24/25 units who is the next pulisic? and before people get rolling with the excuses, a lot of those guys above we knew were stars age 17 or 18. closest thing to that level might be campbell who we had zero to do with building.
people can defend decentralized, academy oriented development but we used to have a few stars coming up every one of these U20 cycles.
i liked vazquez on skill and finishing. at times i liked norris on defense. tsakiris i like how he plays but he gets plentiful minutes in MLS and not much happens. keyrol looked like a raw 17 year old kid who wanted to dribble everyone, ie, not ready.
Donovan: played in German 4th and 5th division before returning to MLS and San Jose so his pro debut wasn’t until age 19
Keller: played all four years in college before joining Millwall
McBride: joined Wolfsburg in 2Bundesliga at 22 after completing college
Beasley: played in MLS from age 17-22 didn’t go to PSV until 22.
Pulisic and Reyna are the exceptions not the rule. We’ve never had teenagers having that much opportunity or success before or since. Sullivan appears to be the next player of that level. Dortmund just signed 15 yr old Mathis Albert from LAG and he has a Euro passport to join immediately but I’ve never seen him play.
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From this U20 group I’d say Kochen and Campbell are the top. Then it’s probably Banks and Akinboni who weren’t released who are both CBs so it’s hard to start in Bundesliga at CB at age 17. Taha is supposed to be one of the top 2006 prospects but he’s in a weird spot where they are not playing him with Crew II, but he isn’t getting many minutes with the first team. Figueroa, Birchimas, and Gozo all are eligible for U20s next cycle.
you misread my post in multiple ways. first, if you read the top part, i was lamenting us not developing that level players in any bulk. you then split hairs about their careers. my point is how many of the current crop match that?
you babbled on about beasley but in the process acknowledged he was playing MLS as a teenager. you’re just filibustering and spitting up nuggets because you can’t even keep your argument straight. my point is where is the next beasley? put down the player bios and look at the actual talent levels.
i don’t know if you’re just wrong or also dishonest on purpose. landon was on leverkusen2, not Eintracht Norderstedt. you constantly misread age group players from germany because you can’t seem to get the second team concept, or what it means when the first teams are loaded.
you also miss landon was like green or reyna, or even pulisic to some extent, who started getting NT games before his club teams would play him first team. he immediately played well and had a goal on mexico aged 18 when he was just starting pro ball. to then chuckle at me and say haha you want us to start german 4th division players is laughable. get a clue. you want me to list the current NT starters you chuckled at as age group germans because they happen to be at bayern or dortmund? cause to me if they start for that second team it’s a stamp of approval and yes if they came back to here next season they’d probably be a star for SJ or USMNT.
yeah, you’re right, it’s only ever been landon and beasley and reyna and green and dolo and howard and no you’re right we have never had good young players immediately.
it’s like you live to throw up a smokescreen and oil slick behind the USMNT against anyone pointing out this is not done as well as it used to be, and dismissing doing anything other than how the keystone cops do it. which, my point is, things did change, but debatable whether for the better.
you also contradict yourself, you like acknowledge some of your own little favorites may be getting hard done by stuck on II teams, while mocking landon on leverkusen II, which is harder to be on than DC2 presumably. so per usual you are hiding your subjectivity behind a spray of bio items and cherry pick nuggets you don’t apply to your own favorites.
i mean, you get the basic rules in germany are the B teams aren’t allowed above 3rd division? dortmund 2 — which you mocked on campbell — has only produced 2 starting NT players. the first team only made the UCL final. but the deal is if you are in line for those teams it’s 3rd or 4th division soccer, and it’s not an accurate talent representation, the teams often could be 2nd division if allowed to retain personnel and be promoted, and the individual talent is sometimes the future of the first team in the top few slots in one of the top few leagues.
IV: you bashed this group, but then compared them to guys four or five years older. We don’t know where Vazquez, Birchimas, Habroune, Medina, or Figueroa will be in 4 years. The best players in the U20 age group didn’t play in this tournament, whereas the other guys you mentioned (minus Donovan) were available.
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Donovan played for Leverkusen II in the 4th division also in the Oberliga the 5th division. That is fact. That’s U23 in Germany.
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Beasley and Tsakiris have played basically the same minutes in MLS before their 19th birthday. Results fairly close.
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Cremanschi, Esmir, Vargas, Buck, Baker-Whiting, Fletcher, Wydner all age eligible guys that for varied reasons weren’t available. Between 2006s I listed yesterday and those 2005s you’ve got a whole starting lineup of high rated prospects not there. If you took away the top 10 players in 2000 U20 team you wouldn’t qualify. Your much vaunted residency programs greatest success was in its first year and a 4th place U17 finish. In 18 years it only produced 33 national team players (according to US Soccer press release when it closed). You like to reference the 2019s U20s they were not part of residency. The 2019 U17s had Pepi, Busio, Reyna, and Scally all MLS academy players.
JR: dissing landon as a lower division german is funny. the whole point is he could come back here and while still an age group german he’d score on mexico and get loaned and start in MLS SAME FREAKING TIME PERIOD. it’s really not hard to understand that if dortmund is way up here notches above MLS then it’s B team might be guys who could impact our NT and start in MLS. i mean aren’t you the people talking up how good championship ball is in england?
i dunno, you exist on some odd planet where 18 year old meh players head off to europe and magically come back amazing. or at least you pretend to restrain opinion on those lines.
the reality is reyna, donovan, pulisic, were stars on their US U17 teams. THAT is why big clubs in europe sign them. that is why in a year or two they could skip U20 and be awesome on the full adult team. my point is where are those stars. y’all fanboys think europe waves a wand and fixes something when most of the time they are cherry picking the obvious names everyone was talking about at U17 worlds. they don’t make something of nothing. they wave a checkbook in front of the top prospects. if teams are signing your U17s then you have done a good development job. if not, if they play for the earthquakes and not much happens, you have it backwards.
you’re just engaged in your usual if i say black you have to say white stuff.
also, i don’t think you 2 are being honest how the timeline works here. as i explained, the 2010-2015 US youth issues didn’t manifest with the adults until 2015-2018. what will happen is this. turner has maybe one cycle after this, johnson is on his last. horvath is meh. we could use fresh competition now and in a few years GK panning out will be absolute necessity. ream is about done and the defense is just ok. adams can’t get healthy and the MF is generally just ok. in about 5 years weston, pulisic, adams, and wright are 30 and weah and sargent are pushing 30.
when that happens, near term for keeping and backs, longer term for attack, there are either same level replacements (or i wish, better) or not. what happened in the 2010s was the bradley holdovers got old, klinsi slapped a dual national patch on it, but the YNT/MLS products coming up were generally just solid pros and not pulisic level guys. such that guatemala and TnT could beat us away and we couldn’t beat CR or mexico anyplace.
this is a constant assembly line and even if you want to jump back and forth on whether this bunch is good or not, in 5 years as they age there needs to be a next set just as good or this starts slipping.
and the funny thing is every time i say, ok, let’s put some energy into campbell or whatnot, you freak. but if we aren’t growing or finding more like that, this is screwed in 5 years. you can try and act like i am crazy or not getting something, but you can’t have team success without individual stars emanating. or isn’t that your point with the whole world class diss? then perhaps acknowledge that this recent crop of 2 U20 cycles is further removed from it than usual…….be honest….
IV: 2023 U20s have Paredes, Pepi, Pukstas, Wiley, Wydner, Slonina, PAaronson, ZBooth, Luna, Neal. Reyna missed being eligible by 6 weeks, Scally by one day. 3 of those are already regulars with NT. Paredes is a regular in Bundesliga, if any of the others pan out they’re right on track.
2021 U20s Busio, Tessmann, TBooth, Reynolds, Johnny, Reynolds, Yow, Schulte, Balogun, M Tillman, Musah
2019 U20s: Dest, Weah, Richards, McKenzie, Sargent, BAaronson
Everyone would like to see a Landon Donovan or Christian Pulisic every cycle but that’s not what we’ve ever been able to do.
2017 U20s: Pulisic, Wes, Adams, DeLaTorre, Sargent playing up, Wright, Vazquez, Trusty, CCV
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If you did a list of 2017 a couple years ago you wouldn’t include Wright, Vazquez, or Trusty. So these lists are fluid. Likewise a few years ago you’d have Uly, Konrad and Soto on the 2019 list. See where these 16-19 year olds you’re bashing are when they’re 23-25.
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Landon scored in his US debut while playing in the German 5th division. He didn’t score again for over a year in a January camp preparing for his second year with San Jose he played 633 minutes in those 9 US appearances. He didn’t become a star for the USNT until he was 20 in 2002 scoring 6g in 20 appearances that year. Everyone knew it was going to happen at some point but he didn’t walk into the NT as a teen and dominate while playing in the lower divisions. I love Cole Campbell’s game, I switched to the Dortmund friendly over USWNT semi final, switched back when he subbed out for the extra time. If he played against Canada or New Zealand this fall, he could score. But then he could also go 600 mins without scoring because he’s a teenager not playing regularly against professional men. He got to spend last week training with Nuri Sahin, that did more for his chances to see first team time this year than playing Mexican teenagers or Moroccan 22 yr olds. Landon Donovan was beating out Chris Henderson and Jason Kreis for NT spot, Campbell is trying to beat out Tim Weah and Brendan Aaronson. Pulisic had to beat out Graham Zusi, Ethan Finley, and Jozy Zardes. There’s a reason CP and LD got early looks beyond their immense talent. Their comp at the time was also pretty weak.
Also none of those players were/are world class. Our “batting average on world class players” is as it’s always been 0. Pulisic, Donovan, and Dempsey the only ever in the conversation. You could argue Friedel in 2002 after WC then was on EPL best XI, but he won 1 league cup. McBride’s best ever year in EPL was 10g that’s not World Class. Beasley never had more than 6g and played for PSV, Rangers, and old school mid table ManCity. One of the reasons we aren’t going to win the WC anytime soon. Croatia had Modric, Morocco had Hakimi, but when you’re talking Argentina, France or Spain they have 3 or 4 WC players and 8 or 9 Pulisic level players. People called this group a “golden generation” not one would start for Spain or Argentina, and it’s debatable if any would even make a roster.
JR
Like a lot of people. IV keeps evaluating the USMNT player pool relative to itself historically. That’s fine from a journalistic standpoint but in terms of the current competitive atmosphere, that leads to a lot of unrealistic expectations. Golden Generation? Maybe compared to the previous USMNT generations, in a technical sense, but not compared to the rest of the World in 2024.
The problem with that is that the 2026 USMNT WC team is not going to be playing against the 2014 or 2010 USMNT WC teams in 2026.
We’re going to be playing teams like 2026 France, Argentina or any number of adult teams. With a lucky draw, you can sometimes get favorable opponents but we sooner or later you are going to have to meet and beat at least one of the adult teams.
For whatever reason, whether it was him or them or most likely, some combination, Gregg, over the years and years that he was there, did not get the most he could have gotten from the player pool. The new boss will find a player pool that has evolved and continues to evolve.
But watching Hayes come in and in a short time whip the USWNT into pretty reasonable shape tells you how important player management skills will be for whoever is the new boss.
Hayes had no international experience prior to the USWNT job so that is one less excuse for not hiring guys like Nancy, Viera, or Dolo.
V: Emma came in with 7 league titles, 5 FA cups, 2 league cups, a CL runner up, and as FIFA 2021 Manager of the Year. Unless Klopp has a change of heart or we get Tuchel we aren’t getting an equivalent to Emma on the men’s side.
V: c’mon, confession and honesty is good for the soul. do you really think anyone off that 2023 cowell team is a pimple on the pantheon of USMNT greats? exactly. spare me the ad hominems and just be honest.
my point, not difficult to grasp, is that the amount of bulk of talent we produce roughly correlates to how good the senior team is. this is a fairly duh statement. however one can make connections to the age group teams if one bothers.
for example, the U20s failed to qualify for worlds in 2011 and went out group round in 2013. the U23s failed to qualify in 2012 and 2016. and then, magically, the senior MNT team at the end of that pipeline didn’t qualify in 2017.
if you quit heckling for a second and pay any attention, that’s a particular group or 2 of pipeline kids coming up together and not doing much. specifically, hamid,, opara, shea, nagbe, sarkodie, adu, mixx, agudelo, corona, boyd, gyau, etc.
my point, really not difficult to get, is you want more 2019 U20 classes and fewer 2023 U20 classes. one was chock full of talent including guys like pulisic who had already been graduated up. the other it’s a question if anyone turns out. you string together 2-3 bad age group classes and that eventually shows. or did you not live during the 2010s? my theory is klinsi covered that hole up for about 4 years and then we all got to see how rotten development had gotten.
you can wave me off but whether we keep producing a bunch of pulisices or reynas, or instead produce indifferent nagbes and gonzos, is what decides what level this is going to be.
JR: i get bored with the fanboys and their forever arguments we have no one any good. you get the point i am trying to make. WHERE IS THE NEXT SET OF PULISIC AND REYNAS? to me 2017 happened because for about a full cycle pulisic was the only player that level we produced. whatever label you want to toss on him, my question is whether we are producing sufficient or even much of any players that level right now.
this is a well duh type question. why does the bunch for 2017/2019 look QUALITATIVELY BETTER than these last 2 youth cycles? and do you really believe that just because you can parse what world class means, the precise level of quality coming out of the youth machine every 2 years doesn’t matter?
IV: Cowell’s U20 group did better in the U20 WC than Donovan and Beasley without its best players (Pepi and PAaronson)
again with the dishonesty. surely you remember that c. 2000 a U20 team was mostly a NCAA all star team. in 1999 and 2001 there were 5 pros on each U20 team. most of the team was kids from UCLA or the like. vs. current teams where there isn’t a college kid to be found. if my college kids can get results almost to the level of your pros then maybe your development scheme isn’t that grand. or are you so busy spinning you can’t remember what the fundamental point is here? as in, is decentralized club development accomplishing much.
you’re also now trying to distract from the point of which era was getting the job done. 01 was gooch beasley davis donovan convey martino casey buddle. 99 was rimando, dolo, albright, boca, twellman, gibbs, howard. 17 was trusty EPB adams CCV sargent LDLT. 19 was dest mckenzie richards araujo weah.
there is just so much bs about this. 23 could barely put a shot on net. there are some ok chaos agents on the team but no real stars. and this 24 bunch, do you really think they are the level i just listed, or do you see them as more like, say, 2013, which U20 produced yedlin trapp o’neill, acosta, and steffen?
like i said, qualitatively different. i even prefer to 24 to 23 but it’s because 24’s defense could possibly actually stop someone — some of the backs might pan out — and because a couple guys could actually look good technically and hit balls on cage this group.
but you’re soccer people and you can’t see where this is weaker sauce? and you’ve not been around long enough to know good cycles from bad? or to connect bad cycles c. 2010-2015 with youth with adult results 2017?
this isn’t conspiracy theory stuff. this is when the astros had altuve on the major league team and correa and bregman and co. in the minors, it was on the way to becoming something. when the minors start to fizzle, we are in trouble.
“ all due respect but i feel like our batting average on the world class keller/mcbride/donovan/beasley/pulisic/reyna type players is falling off.” Your original point was how we did such a great job in the 90s but now we’re not doing that. Then now you’re saying it was just a bunch of college guys of course today’s teams are better. You complain about the lost generation years (the last years of Bradenton by the way). You praise 2019 (most came through MLS Academies or Euro academies). You seem to be defeating your own argument for residency.
Really hope all three continue to develop well this next year.