The U.S. men’s national team’s first of several camps this year is already well underway, and several players will be seeking to make their international debuts in the coming days.
Out of the 24 players that head coach Mauricio Pochettino called into the January camp, 10 of them have yet to make their senior debuts for the program. From Brian Gutierrez to Matt Freese, many of these players will seek a positive kickstart to their year, knowing their club schedules are right around the corner.
The January USMNT camp has constantly provided an early opportunity for players that could very well be part of the long-term plans of the program. While the scorelines against Venezuela and Costa Rica this month won’t be taken into account too much, the performance by the USMNT as a whole will certainly be evaluated.
Here is a closer look at the 10 USMNT players seeking their senior debuts:
Brian Gutierrez
For being 21 years old, Brian Gutierrez already has a lot of minutes under his belt.
Gutierrez is heading into his sixth MLS season with the Chicago Fire and will now have the chance to work with former USMNT head coach, Gregg Berhalter. The dual-national midfielder has scored 10 goals and added 20 assists in 120 MLS appearances, logging over 7,000 minutes to date in league play.
A former USYNT player, Gutierrez brings creativity and an eye for goal to the mix.
Matko Miljevic
Matko Miljevic’s club future remains unknown, but the Miami-born midfielder will have his first USMNT opportunity this month.
Miljevic, 23, has played most of his club career in Argentina and is eligible to represent them on the international level. An attacking midfielder, Miljevic most recently logged 22 appearances for Newell’s Old Boys in 2024.
Personal issues have gotten in the way of Miljevic’s development on the field, but he is a talented player and Pochettino will try and get him back on track.
Patrick Agyemang
24-year-old Patrick Agyemang has been one of the modern-day success stories to come through the collegiate ranks.
The Connecticut-born forward excelled at the University of Rhode Island before also featuring in USL League Two. Agyemang was drafted No. 12 overall by Charlotte FC in 2023 and has proceeded to score 21 goals in 55 combined appearances between Charlotte and MLS NEXT Pro affiliate, Crown Legacy FC.
Agyemang is a powerful forward who could bring something new to the USMNT attacking corps.
Indiana Vassilev
Indiana Vassilev began his career at English Premier League side Aston Villa, but after not breaking into the first team plans, has become a consistent player in MLS.
The 23-year-old forward remains with St. Louis CITY SC ahead of his third season with the club. Vassilev, a former USYNT player, has totaled 10 MLS goals in over 100 combined appearances between St. Louis and Inter Miami.
Vassilev can play a number of different roles, but I’d expect to see him out wide this month.
Drake Callender
Drake Callender has quickly become one of MLS better goalkeepers in the last three seasons.
Callender, 27, has totaled 144 appearances for Inter Miami from 2022-24, keeping 14 clean sheets and earning multiple USMNT call-ups. While Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez attract the bright lights in Fort Lauderdale, Callender has certainly played his part in the Herons recent success in multiple competitions.
He could very well fight for the USMNT’s No. 3 job in 2025 but will have to fight off competition from others.
Matt Freese
Another goalkeeper seeking his USMNT debut is 26-year-old Matt Freese.
Freese is coming off of his most productive club season yet, making 34 appearances for NYCFC. After coming through the Philadelphia Union pipeline, Freese mainly served as a backup to Andre Blake, but also saw some playing time in the Jamaican’s absence.
Standing at 6-feet-3, Freese is a big-bodied goalkeeper who has the ability to stand on his head when called upon.
Max Arfsten
Max Arfsten is an example of MLS NEXT Pro’s importance in the American game.
Arfsten, 23, originally made his mark with MLS NEXT Pro side The Town FC before eventually becoming a key player for the Columbus Crew. He scored five goals and added eight assists in 33 combined appearances last season and was a part of the Crew’s MLS Cup-winning squad in 2023.
Arfsten has mainly served as a wing back for Columbus, but could also slot in as a full back or extra midfielder if needed.
George Campbell
George Campbell looks to have found his new home with CF Montreal.
After originally beginning his MLS career with Atlanta United, the 23-year-old defender moved to Canada in 2023. He’s made 55 appearances for CF Montreal over the past two seasons, scoring one goal and adding four assists.
Campbell has gotten better each year of his club career and will now try to force his way into the USMNT centerback picture.
Emeka Eneli
Diego Luna and others might get the headlines in Salt Lake City, but Emeka Eneli has grown into an important player for Real Salt Lake.
The 25-year-old midfielder was named RSL’s Team MVP in 2024 after setting career-highs in appearances, goals, assists, minutes played and starts. A hardworking midfielder, Eneli has logged over 4,000 MLS minutes in his first two seasons in Utah.
Prior to his move to MLS, Eneli excelled in the Ivy League with Cornell, earning All-Ivy League First Team honors (2021) and Second Team All-American honors (2022).
Caden Clark
Caden Clark has bounced around a lot in his young career but will hope to play a large role in 2025.
The 21-year-old is on his fifth club since debuting for the New York Red Bulls in 2020. After stops at RB Leipzig, Vendsyssel, and Minnesota United, Clark is coming off nine appearances with CF Montreal in 2024.
He scored four goals in those nine appearances with CF Montreal, showing his goalscoring prowess as a midfielder. A former USMNT U-20 standout, Clark is one of several young midfielders that Pochettino will evaluate this month.
at keeper, i have generally advocated schulte but noticed he’s capped twice with two Ls. contrary to the discussion below, i kind of expect the obvious folks get the PT — either him or steffen. based on the results of their caps i think both have something to prove and should be accountable to the results we get.
given our usual methods, it’s possible only 1 keeper plays, which would be a waste of time. i think turner and schulte need competition. and i mean others get minutes. i would like to see 2-3 keepers get time. i think we pick winners from practice and not games with obvious implications. i think coaching staffs born in the US picking college-products had more sense about accepting game performance as “is what it is” and moving on. we seem to get stuck on reputation or practice or something.
in short, the players are tools to play well and win games. if that doesn’t happen in the games, play someone else.
i am kind of at a loss we seem to be avoiding the good teams on purpose. most NT scrape the best teams in the league for players, and if they have some guy in from another team they are either a proven star or one of the big youth prospects. they are not moneyballing their rosters with a bunch of midtable players whose basic numbers are average. ie the keepers we picked except schulte are all midtable to bottom half on allowing goals. we are trying too hard to be clever with the analytics.
while encouraging experiments i also question whether clark, miljevic, neal, and vassilev are what we were thinking of. at about that point i’d be calling european teams asking age groupers to be released.
i also don’t get repeatedly calling kochen off barca youth then not for this where he could actually play.
i get agyemang, white, ferreira, luna, arfsten, tolkin. i might even indulge gutierrez to keep the mexicans at bay. but the list kind of tails off like they got depressed with release issues and stopped trying.
Kochen played over the weekend for Barca II do you know they didn’t call him and were denied? Perhaps Barca II who have already missed Diego for four league matches didn’t want to lose their starter for 3 more for a camp that he will face domestic based Costa Ricans and Venezuelans. Especially since they will likely miss him again in March. The lower Spanish divisions play thru international windows and Barcelona II is in a relegation fight.
and calling the past-it gang of zimmerman and ream is pointless.
even miles i half want to say he’s gotten his chances and not done much since the injury.
the article mentions campbell and i’d like to see anyone fresh play but the likelihood as discussed with the keepers is the obvious ones consume most or all the PT. even when a part of the team sucks like the central defense we treat it like a 10 minute cameo is all we could try for a relative noob.
which is why it doesn’t get fixed.
Part of that of having players from mid table teams is MLS structures which are designed to promote parity. Also since most of the stars are foreign players in MLS you can’t just mine LAFC, Miami, and Columbus because there are hardly any Americans there. In say Germany teams like Dortmund and Bayern just buy off top prospects when they’re 15 or 16 on the cheap so the top prospects only come out of 1 or 2 places. Homegrown rules in the US prevents a lot of that.
my response is, 3-5 foreigner limit. to me the USMNT was better when the limit was lower, particularly at keeper. at 8+green cards you can almost start a team with no american born players at all. which is why you are parsing out how good some midtable goalkeeper is. about 1/2 or more of the top half of the MLS keepers are on some other NT. and the structure also squeezes out US keepers from starting.
to me the more americans the rules allow to play, the more lottery tickets the NT has. if the rules say 8 internationals then your options are down to half the league and some of them aren’t starting. you go down players lists and it’s like, nope-doesn’t start. nope–plays for jamaica.
to me i think we can have messi and suarez within a 5 man limit. if roster slots 6-8 have to be domestic that’s 90 more guys to develop and scout.
Mexico put in a foreign player limit in 7 or 8 years ago (forced guys like Arriola and Vazquez to MLS). How did that work out for El Tri? Has it improved their quality or depth? Protectionism just usually ends up limiting competition driving the quality of product down.
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MLS doesn’t have dynasty teams like Bundesliga or La Liga anyway, LAG won this year but has barely been in the top 10 the last few years. The Crew have had a decent run winnning in 2020, 2023, Leagues Cup 2024 but had bad years in ‘21, ‘22 and basically overhauled the entire roster. The closest we could come to would be tracing guys back to academies with Philly, FCD, and the two New Yorks leading the way.
on tolkin, is he about to skip camp for germany?
Nothing an official. The original I saw was just some guy that lists Red Bull sources in his bio but isn’t a reporter or anything so the validity might be questionable. No regular soccer media has talked about it from what I’ve seen.
Tom Bogert reported it, and it seems legit. Tolkin to Holstien Kiel for 2.5 million Euro, with a 20% sell on clause. It is a record fee for Kiel.
Tom put it out today hadn’t seen it yet from him.
And yes, Tolkin has left camp, for “personal reasons”.
Ferreira and Neal have also left camp, apparently due to some combination of injury and being with a new team.
Under the radar the US U20s are also in Florida this week. Greyson Dettoni is there, so he did have a chance to show the boss how ready he is in a joint training session. Of note is there are no Philadelphia Union players called into that U20 camp. As if the no release rumors are true. Noah Cobb also not there which would seem to be injury or release related given he played almost every minute of Concacaf U20 tournament.
back about 5 years ago it was caden and cade coming up, and a lot were betting on clark over cowell. clark got the big splashy move to RBL and then fizzled. his numbers are basically journeyman despite playing offense. if i was looking for an excuse, maybe they are looking at his late streak in the season when moved central. with the idea of running him at defenses at speed for passes. but he’s then listed as an F which hints at wing where he had the power outage the first 2/3 of the season.
if we want another AM after luna there’s sullivan we left off. we also surely have better wing players than this.
I think you’re reading why too much into where they are listed on the sheet. Poch doesn’t write in their positions that’s just somebody in the PR department. There’s always atleast one, wait he’s not a … in every roster release.
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Clark in his first 16 MLS matches had 7g 1a that’s pretty good. He then had an emergency appendectomy over his next 56 mls matches over 4 years he had 1g 3a, including a year of not playing much of anywhere. He re-found his form under Courtois in Montreal 4g 2a in final 7 matches. His biggest reason for being in camp, he was available. Cowell is not. The Sullivan brothers are rumored to not have been released as the club is in Spain for friendlies under their new manager. Whether that’s true no one is saying.
dude, the positional breakdowns are bizarre. 4-9-4-7. that doesn’t sound like a PR person decided that.
Which makes more sense, Poch doesn’t know where these guys play or the PR guy put them in the wrong place? Some of these positions have fluid definitions too. Is a WB in 3 CB defense a midfielder or defender? Some say one some say the other. Is the 10 an attacking midfielder or a second striker? Some would call them a forward some a midfielder? How central does wing have slide inside before they become a AM? It’s very subjective? Don’t stress about a list especially for a friendly, see where they are on the pitch.
guy has generally been deployed as a M this year. shows up as F. i tend to assume when someone is listed out of their normal position, that’s not a PR guy choice. someone told him to list him differently. PR guy would do the obvious. he is not listed in his obvious slot.
i get your argument if the PR guy does the ordinary thing and he ends up someplace else. that’s the coach’s choice and maybe he used the PR guy to play games with the other team.
some of his role with CFM seemed to be to play second line in a 3421. so i think he’s there to be some mix of a forward or a wing that also pinches in with the mids like musah was.
Montreal uses Nancy’s 3-4-2-1, so yes those “2” get listed as AM but Rossi and Cucho are forwards. Clark played in that underneath the striker role because the WBs are the width in the system.
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If you look up Arfsten he’s listed as LWB. I’m a PR guy back = defender. You look at Vassilev he’s listed as RW, W = F. Depending on which site you look at Clark can be listed as RW, LW, or AM so easy to put him in the forwards. The list is meaningless.
Clark is only 21, so he may not have reached his ceiling yet. Poch may figure that the last few months, when he was quite productive in Montreal, is a sign that he is improving and reaching his potential, and not just a fluke.
Anyway, this camp is about looking at who might contribute a few years down the road as much as it is about who can contribute right now. Given Clark’s age and recent production, his inclusion isn’t that surprising.
caden clark went pro early and is in about his 5th or 6th season and his 7th team, counting B sides. i tend to buy “give it time” more their first couple years in a pro environment. 5-6 years in and sent back to MLS with few european appearances i think you were simply not rated. and his “ok” league numbers here back that up. could i be wrong? maybe, but with his experience he’s an “old 21.”
side point but i tend to buy this age argument stuff better when either (a) dude was a scrawny skinny kid and suddenly fills out into an athletic adult – particularly keepers, CF, CB who have to hold their own physically with other adults — or (b) dude comes back with some new aspect that elevates his game. dempsey was a rare one who like started out as a showy wing dancer and became someone who could put balls in the corners of the net — he learned how to finish.
which is how you go from pick 8 in round 1 (behind adu, ngwenya, taylor, cochrane, and goodson) to one of the best domestics the league produced. and he started late because he did a few college years. so maybe he’s still sorting it out and flourishing from pro coaching in his early 20s.
do i see that the same with someone who went to RBL and denmark and was given something like 2 games in europe? nah. he’s been balling since his mid-teens. he is what he is. which is solid pro.
personally i’ve thought something was off since he trained with MN then signed with NY. he’s in a little too much of a hurry, didn’t stick, and now is a journeyman teams trade around. meh.
like i said, cade vs. caden has worked out the opposite of what many expected.
For me Schulte and Freese should start a game a piece.
Both garnering European interest.
I know people aren’t that excited about Matt Freese. NYCFC conceded a lot of goals but Freese was at the top of the league in goals prevented with 8.89, he also faced a xGot of 60.1 but only gave up 49. Frei had a goals prevented of 3.36 facing only 35 xGot with a goals allowed of 30. Both out performed what they should have but Freese’s defense gave almost 60 more shots and from better spots. Celentano actually has a negative goals prevented at -0.31. Schulte also did well giving up 32 facing 37.3 xGot with 5.55 goals prevented. Callender had 49 goals against facing 51.9 xGot. With Freese and Schultz’s numbers it’s easy to see why European clubs are interested.
I should say Freese was top American, Kahlina with Charlotte FC was first in goals prevented for the league.
oh dear god you have this all backwards. this is not some expansion team or wooden spoon squad. we are not operating on a budget or signing a backup to a deliberately cheap deal. we have access to the best defenders in the country. we should not be picking keepers as though the defense is worthy of an expansion team. we should not be in the value guessing business on otherwise mediocre statistical keepers. we are not looking to make xGot excuses for a miserable GAA. we are not their agents.
we want the guy who wins many games and titles, pitches tons of shutouts, and has a low GAA.
you seem to have found a stat that uncovers midtable goalkeepers with ok defenses who go out fairly early in the playoffs.
recipe for disaster.
Freese faced far more shots than most other keepers. The GAA is on his defense. Freese made more saves 135 than Frei faced 125. Freese and Frei faced almost identical shots outside the box 39 to 37 respectively. Freese faced 61 more shots inside his box. Of course your keeper is going to give up more goals if the defenders keep giving up shots inside the 18. Clearly you were one of those defenders that always pointed fingers at the goalkeeper.
if you think for 5 seconds about the group amassed, they are odd selections for GK. on GAA freese is 11, callender is 14, and steffen is 21. seanjohn who we love to pick is down there with them at 20. only schulte at #2 in the league looks like the type one typically picks for a NT keeper, good team, good defense, low GAA.
we are too clever by half. i am sure there is some cutesy analytics stat explaining that result but what it means is unlike a normal NT we seem to avoid the more obvious route of simply picking the keepers off the dominant teams that allow the fewest goals. we are picking mid-table teams’ keepers who do average work by many measures.
we then wonder why we can’t pitch a shutout. well, the defense is based on attacking ability, more so than marking, and then the keepers we came up with from mediocre teams based on a little too much analytics.
and yeah, i have seen college keepers in down years set the school record for saves. that’s actually not usually a good sign.
side point but we adore gaga slonina who from what i can tell so far seems to correlate to his teams being crap……fire, eupen, even barnsley was mediocre and low division while he was there. and he makes some good saves in isolation but over time tends to ship between 1.5-2 goals a game.
it’s strange because the offense, well that first choice team seems to be picked on basic numbers, goals and assists.
first off, at least before college, we didn’t give up many goals at all so there was no blame to pass. we went one select season unscored on.
second, in college the backline was most of the best players on the team and the keeper was all-conference. if we gave up goals it tended to be midfielder stuff.
i do think you’re going about this all wrong, trying to make speculative value excuses for midtable keepers while skipping past obvious people with GAA around 1 whose teams have won titles or are routinely up for them.
i think it’s a messed-in-the-head argument to be like, “but their defense is too good.” isn’t that the idea here? and to me callender in particular shows you can put dude out there behind the best points team in history and still be a statistically average keeper on a defense that ensures your loaded club doesn’t take the league title.
in short, your argument doesn’t follow. the keeper behind these field players has to execute. the ones who do tend to take trophies and have low GAA. by your silly argument we should avoid the best teams with the lowest GA because the keeper must be inflated somehow.
that is so silly it’s painful. would you ignore their strikers on that basis? no.
IV,
“we have access to the best defenders in the country.”
We do? Name the American defender who is currently better than the ones they have been calling in.
“we want the guy who wins many games and titles, pitches tons of shutouts, and has a low GAA.”
That’s nice, but at this time, that goalkeeper does not exist for the USMNT. You can’t squeeze blood out of a stone.
The USMNT goalkeeper pool is what it is. The USMNT is just going to have to play in a way that makes up for having average to less than average keepers.
“i think it’s a messed-in-the-head argument to be like, “but their defense is too good.” isn’t that the idea here? and to me callender in particular shows you can put dude out there behind the best points team in history and still be a statistically average keeper on a defense that ensures your loaded club doesn’t take the league title….in short, your argument doesn’t follow. the keeper behind these field players has to execute. the ones who do tend to take trophies and have low GAA.”
If you don’t execute usually you get dropped.
You are not much of a team person are you? A defense is part of a team and the best defense in history does not always take the league title if the rest of the team does not do it’s part.
” by your silly argument we should avoid the best teams with the lowest GA because the keeper must be inflated somehow.”
You need more than that stats.
The USMNT is not an amateur select team. Nothing wrong with being part of a good defense but the USMNT need the keeper who can make a subpar system excel. National team defenses are unlikely to be well drilled defenses like your amateur trophy winning select teams simply because as a general rule national teams don’t get a lot of practice and game time together. Which is a vital part of building solid team defense. The cliche that defense is an 11 man proposition is especially true for national teams.
Fans like to focus on shot stopping and distribution but a national team keeper does a lot more than that and needs to do everything well such as organizing all the set piece defenses and the defense in general (they are the only player with everything in front of them).
In other words they need to , overall, be solid and reliable and take command. Nothing is worse than a keeper who is uncertain.
Turner has his flaws but mostly he seems very much in command.