The U.S. men’s national team’s first January camp under Mauricio Pochettino saw plenty of players enjoy memorable moments in a pair of home victories.
Back-to-back wins over Venezuela and Costa Rica featured many debutants, first-time goalscorers, and the return of several veteran players in Pochettino’s squad. From Caden Clark’s impactful performances to Patrick Agyemang’s pair of goals to Jack McGlynn’s screamer of a goal, there was a lot for Pochettino and his staff to take in.
Here is a look at the USMNT players who boosted their stock the most in January’s window:
Caden Clark
Two appearances, one goal, one assist. Not a bad January window for 21-year-old Caden Clark.
Clark was lively in both of his outings with the USMNT this camp, logging 135 total minutes and etching his name onto the stat-sheet in both matches. His left-footed missile in Wednesday’s 3-0 result over Costa Rica was a glimpse of his long-term potential when given the opportunity to play.
Now as heads into CF Montreal camp, Clark will seek to carry this confidence over to club level.
Patrick Agyemang
Patrick Agyemang departed USMNT camp with only 80 minutes under his belt, but an important first two international goals as well.
The 24-year-old striker showed his eye for goal in both matches, starting against Venezuela before coming off the bench against Costa Rica. Agyemang’s strength and physicality should be something to monitor as his club season nears its beginning at Charlotte FC.
A strong first half of the season in MLS could certainly have Agyemang in the discussion as a bench option for this summer’s Gold Cup.
Matko Miljevic
Matko Miljevic’s USMNT debut started on a sour note, but the attacking midfielder improved as this camp went along.
Miljevic scored once and assisted once against Venezuela before logging 45 minutes off the bench against Costa Rica. The technical and creative abilities are there for Miljevic, who entered camp with a growing reputation following his club issues at CF Montreal and Newell’s Old Boys.
At 23-years-old, I imagine Miljevic will remain in the mix, especially if he excels at his next club stop.
Jack McGlynn
Plenty of excitement has surrounded midfielder Jack McGlynn and this camp proved just why.
McGlynn scored a screamer of a debut goal against Venezuela while also assisting in the 3-1 triumph too. The Philadelphia Union midfielder showed off his magical left foot on multiple occasions, logging 135 minutes in the pair of results.
McGlynn’s creative abilities and intelligence makes him a growing prospect in 2025 and beyond. Now he heads back to Philadelphia for his first season under a new head coach.
Emeka Eneli
Emeka Eneli’s engine and work rate could be beneficial to the USMNT long-term.
The 25-year-old played 115 total minutes in January’s pair of matches, earning an assist in the victory over Costa Rica. Known as the Real Salt Lake iron-man in 2024, Eneli was all over the field against The Ticos, winning six duels, completing three tackles, and completing the most passes (69).
With the USMNT seeking No. 6-8 depth, Eneli could be an option there.
Which players impressed you the most in January’s camp? Who do you think has the best chance of cracking the March roster? Do you imagine seeing a lot of these players during the CONCACAF Gold Cup this summer?
Share your thoughts below.
so now blaming Sahin for Gio not playing much? LOL
Gio is doing fine, learning to be a pro
Luna was spectacular. The question for me was will it translate, and his game did; just coming back on with the busted nose and immediately delivering; everyone talks about the assist, but right before that Steffen played a terrible ball that VERY importantly Luna won, saved Zach from potentially something bad, by simply hustling hard to the ball and then releasing on point. It was a great play
another one I liked not mentioned was Cremaschi
reyna just needs the heck out of dortmund. i think they developed him up well to be a star. give them that much. i don’t think they’re making much use of him or have any real progression plans. cut the kid loose for a fee.
the kid then needs to pick a smart next landing spot.
“the kid needs to pick a smart next landing spot”
with you all the way IV
beachbum,
You know who need Gio?
Someone needs to feed Haaland. Gio knows how to do that.
one thing about agyemang as a result of the 4 years in college, long climb from d3, is he’s 24, same age as ferreira, sargent, weah, richards, aaronson, dest, and older than reyna, tillman, musah, pepi, and balogun. he would be lighter on pro experience — maybe have some upside left — but have their same shelf life limit ~2030 or so.
Luna was credited with six chances created! In 45 minutes! Now imagine he’s got Pulisic and Weah making runs for him to play in. All with a broken nose with plugs shoved up.
like i said to the other guy, having started he seemed to be up to the speed of play. he seemed out of it off the bench game 1.
That first game was so disjointed with all the subs from both teams by the time Luna came on and up 3-0. McGlynn wasn’t nearly as good coming on late against CR either.
Additionally on the Total Soccer Show they said Luna had picked up a slight knock in training which why Miljevic started over the weekend. That likely slowed him a bit vs Venezuela as well.
That’s what I’ve been seeing out of Luna ever since he got into MLS, and the indifference to him has still been deafening at times. Me, I’ve been hopping up and down like an excited six-year-old and pointing while screaming: “Have you seen this guy?”, and getting a whole lot of yawns back. Still not sure why. maybe because he’s an MLS product, not a pedigreed early signee of Dortmund or Bayern or Barcelona or some other big-name club, and because he’s got an odd fireplug body type and with his tats and bad hair looks more like a rough South American street-baller than many folks’ ideas of an elite athlete. Maybe because he doesn’t pour forth gaudy stats and his real contributions often don’t get on a scoresheet. He doesn’t have the flashy dribbling moves or finishing skills of a Gio Reyna. Whatever, it’s absolutely that whole Moneyball observation: legitimate value is often overlooked for a variety of biased reasons that have nothing to do with actual future productivity.
Luna is, IMHO, pretty much Exhibit A of that, and at some point when he is starting as the 10 for Real Madrid or some such, people are maybe, finally, going to admit he’s the no-shit Real Deal. Maybe. But so many American soccer snobs have such an ingrained inferiority complex they’ll probably find a way to minimize even that.
Me, I looked at Luna and saw a generational guy, a truly rare talent that offers America something we have nowhere else in our pool. Luna’s ability to play on the turn, break lines and connect, either with a pinpoint pass – often one-touched and just as often no-looked – or just get on the ball and drive while bouncing off would-be tacklers – is impressive enough. His vision and spacial awareness are unreal; the guy plays like he’s using sonar instead of normal human vision and seems to somehow be able to track – and anticipate – the movement every guy on the field, even those there is no way he could have seen because he had his back to them his whole time. He can put that killer through ball in on a dime, and from often unexpected areas, and his passes always seem to arrive with just the perfect weight on them for the recipient to latch onto and do something with. But where he gets into truly rarified air is his ability to combine in tight areas and play in a shoebox, and he can make a hash of even an organized defensive line by wiggling through in a way nobody this side of Lionel Messi can.
Sure, Luna’s got his issues. He isn’t a natural finisher and doesn’t score as much as you’d like, especially for as much as he gets into the box. His range and workrate off the ball aren’t always the greatest, and he sometimes seems to peter out after 60 minutes or so because he isn’t the fittest player. But to my mind, those knocks are far outweighed by what he brings, and what he brings only gets more and more valuable the more he’s combining with other elite players…which he frankly is not doing at RSL. As you mentioned, put him with the likes of Weah or Pulisic…
I tried to start the “free Diego” movement a couple seasons ago when Pablo barely played him. Last year he finally was a first choice starter for RSL but played wide. He had a lot of freedom to come inside but they signed to true 10s last year when they had Luna. Luna tells everybody he’s most comfortable playing as a 10. Comes into camp and Poch plays him as a … #10. Hopefully a move this week or at least this summer.
quozzel, JR,
“But to my mind, those knocks are far outweighed by what he brings, and what he brings only gets more and more valuable the more he’s combining with other elite players…which he frankly is not doing at RSL.”
In other words , he is a limited player, a specialist. I agree with you guys that Diego is special but he’s a tough sell.
You’re saying, he needs equal or better players around him to succeed. But frankly, if I’m buying a #10 I want to buy one who make my guys better.
Sure Luna would do great playing for Manchester City but they already have guys like him who are not playing.
Teams that do use a #10 probably want a more known quantity than Diego because, to a large extent, committing to him means they are going to have to spend to build the offense around him if they don’t already have top flight talent.
In the meantime, can he be useful doing anything other than playing his preferred #10 role?
If RSL did not think enough of him to build the team around him (which is something a team like Nottingham Forest has done around Gibbs-White), then why should other teams take a chance on him? You guys are telling me that even RSL doesn’t believe in him enough to hand over the #10 to him completely. That’s a problem.
If I’m Bournemouth or Newcastle then I ask what’s up with RSL?
If he breaks into the USMNT regular rotation and does well in the 2026 WC then maybe his transfer options widen. Cupcake has probably already helped widen them.
Pochettino was the clear winner of this camp.
If you don’t have top flight opponents to test yourself against, then you have to test yourself against yourself. In other words, forget your opponent. For the sake of your own discipline and development you have to play to the very best that you can as long as you are out there.
Historically, the USMNT has often sunk to the level of the opposition if not below.
Cupcake after party games usually featured crap opposition teams. Venezuela and Costa Rica were disorganized pickup teams that played like crap. In the past, that chaos used to infect the USMNT as well.
That did not happen so much in these games.
Pochettino seems to have everyone on the roster listening to his message and trying to play accordingly. It’s not perfect but you could see that the USMNT were learning how to impose their will on this game. They were playing the way they wanted to, more or less.
How that translates to the A team facing Spain or France, we shall see but at least it looks like maybe they won’t be making hard work out off beating the likes of Grenada or St. Kitts and Nevis.
We can all can whine and moan about C, B or D teams but Pochettino wants these guys to play their best way regardless of who the other team is.
That they seem to be doing that is already a huge accomplishment regardless of anything else.
historically in up talented periods we have slammed teams in these games. i can go back and point you to guys with hat tricks in these kind of games, twellman, kljestan.
some of that is better talent matching up better in B games. some of that is GB’s system was utter crap and like dragging around an anvil. for about half a decade B team games would consist of desperate defending then hoping we could improvise a goal, often on a dead ball. we now have an actual concept that seems to work.
we did have some B games where we scored like 6 but we might also ship a few.
The USMNT plays a lot of really craps teams on a regular basis. Beating up on weaklings is normal for them. They have gotten, condescending, arrogant, overconfident and sloppy about it over the years.
I saw a lot of those games, if not most of them. Nearly unwatchable, often it was the blind leading the stupid.
Many of them should have ended up 10-0 if they truly reflected the gap in talent, money, etc.
Pros vs pub teams.
Guys like Sacha, Wondo, LD, they should have scored hat tricks on those teams just by showing up. Just about anyone with the appropriate license could have managed the USMNT to a win in a lot of those games.
We’re talking about watching my intramural team having many more ringers when playing your intramural team.
So yeah, you can “point you to guys with hat tricks in these kind of games, twellman, kljestan.”
But the USMNT playing disciplined, solid organized team ball as if there was a plan in place?
Mostly, no fucking way. Individuals can play well but it doesn’t mean the team did.
“up talented periods” ????? We have never been talented enough, either in the past or even today, to where our talent, alone, would make a difference in the World Cup. All you talk about is individuals, up or down.
I don’t care about the individual player per se. I care about whether the team, all of them, have some kind of idea of where this is all supposed to end up, how it is supposed to get there and what they have to do to be part of it.
The USMNT will not make any kind of half way decent run in the 2026 World Cup unless the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. The minimum, supposedly, is advance and , at the very least, win the first knockout game. Some expect us to make the semis, or even the final.
To do that Pochettino is going to have to have a good draw and perform the best USMNT coaching job since the last great coaching job, Bora getting them out of the group in 1994 and losing 1-0 to Bebeto and Brazil.
all due respect but in the 2000-2010 period they were more globally competitive than now. you can dismiss it as pub TnT teams, so to speak, but they could also beat spain, holland, germany, etc.
i think we had some talent on those teams, landon, beasley, mathis, o’brien, mcbride, pope, boca, keller, howard, etc. i don’t think it had the same european opportunities as now.
i think that is a separate issue from tactics. the 00-10 teams were not as good ball on the floor. but it had been thought out how they were going to compete with the best. strong defense and counter. and with a well drilled talented group, we did pretty well for being somewhat sloppy.
i think around 10-11 there was a lot of pouting at bradleyball being crude. i think there was a sales pitch that playing more like barca would fix it. this is ironic because we had just beat peak spain playing the old way.
i think we are a much more technical team now. but what seems to have slipped minds for a decade is soccer is a contest and we have slipped in terms of winning contests. we play prettier. we lose more.
i think there badly needed to be a sit down and think about tactics. our tactics have held this team back rather than helped it compete. in the older days the players might have been meh but the tactics were golden for as far as we could go.
i personally think the barca fetish is wrong minded. barca has only been successful when so loaded it can pass teams to death. most good european club teams, or world cup finalist type teams, tend to be well balanced, play stout defense, and then productive offense. i think the pendulum swung a little too far over to cute. i think intensity and defense needed to improve. and then i think we needed an offensive strategy that worked.
i think they seem improved under poch. i think they appear to have some ideas how to score goals that they can repeat with decent percentage odds of working, as opposed to whacking crosses in.
i am not yet convinced this is the basis for global domination. he will have to beat some good teams — the ones GB couldn’t — before i buy this is fixed. for now it suffices that it seems better thought out and more like it could work. but the ultimate decider on tactics is does it win you games. this isn’t holland, though, i didn’t know it had to be pretty or else. that needs to get out of the blood stream. even holland last time was willing to play a little bit of counter soccer and kickball. we seem to be one of the few national teams stuck back on 2009 spain tactics.
but, to be fair, holding it at midfield then playing behind teams with speed would fit the pool. just if the idea is possessing teams to death, i don’t think we’re that technical or it’s a way to win tough ones.
Vac, I agree that you can only pick from players that are available and you can only play the team that lines up against you, but what did you see that was drastically different than Gregg’s January games? In 2019 he beat Panama 3-0 and Costa Rica 2-0. In 2020 he beat CR 1-0. In 2023 he lost to Serbia 2-1 and tied Columbia 0-0. In 2024 he lost to Slovenia 1-0. The competition in 2023 and 2024 was probably a lot better than in 2019 and 2025, which were probably similar with very similar results. The January games are usually pretty boring. I missed the first half of Venezuala but 2nd half was pretty boring and I thought the whole game against CR was pretty boring and looked like a bunch of people that are out of season, not fit, and rusty like it has for as long as I can remember January camp games. Steffen made two big saves so CR could have easily had 2 goals. Sans Luna, all the best players were the veterans. To me, he was the only young player that made a case to even be considered for March. Don’t construe this message as me saying I think Gregg is a better coach than Poch because I don’t. I have said that I think Poch is a much better coach, just not sure what people were seeing that I didn’t see that makes them so excited about these games that I thought were mostly discouraging because no young players showed particularly well other than Luna against CR (but not against Venezuala).
“Vac, I agree that you can only pick from players that are available and you can only play the team that lines up against you, but
what did you see that was drastically different than Gregg’s January games?”
Comparatively short answer?
1. Great Intensity.
2. A manager in place with the experience and the ability to construct a team doing his job. And then get results with that team. That’s a process worth watching.
WC qualification is certain. Competition for the few spots that might be open will be fierce.
Pochettino is a great salesman and seems to have our foreign and domestic candidates convinced that he means it when he says he doesn’t care where you play. If you show him that you have something he can use then you’re in. Big Balls and his broken nose seem pretty passionate about the whole thing and I imagine so are the rest of those guys.
That said, we don’t really know what goes on in a locker room. As I recall Turner, Zimmerman, and Ferreira at least all got their USMNT debuts in a January game and they were all in Qatar. So there is that.
If Pochettino’s style of play bores you, they bore you. Unlike you and IV, I don’t pay much attention to the actual goals. If that was all I cared about I’d just watch the you tube highlights of the game featuring the goals. Why waste time watching the non-goal stuff?
I watch soccer for the build up and the attempts at scoring. I’ve seen many 1-0 games that were far more entertaining than some 3-2 or some 4-0 games. Sometimes, goal fests are all about players fucking up a lot. That’s boring. But hey that’s just me.
I can’t recall ever watching a Gregg team where I thought that they had a plan, either they couldn’t do what Gregg asked them to do or they never really bought into the Power Point.
To me, except for the four WC games in Qatar every single game that Gregg’s team played was a disorganized boring shit show except for the 2019 Gold Cup final. That game was infuriating. Gregg dropped his pants and pissed that game away. I wanted Gregg fired then and there.
In comparison, Pochettino has a plan, seems to have sold the player pool on it and he’s also showing that if you give him what he asks for he knows how to get a result.
Barring injury, or something weird, I don’t think any of these January guys make the 2026 team. Not one. But the entire player pool probably disagrees with me.
The domestics think they can make it and the Euros will feel the heat. And that means everyone in the pool will be going balls to the wall to make the final list and that can only benefit the team.
You and guys like IV root for this player or that player. I don’t care. I want the 26 who want it the most and show the best at that time.
That is the lens through which I view all the USMNT games now.
I’ve said before that, to prove his point and win over his guys, I expect him to win every single game between now and the start of the World Cup and , after Mexico, it seems like that is his intention.
We are not likely to meet anyone in those games who is better than us on paper so if the players do what he asks and play their best every game, they should run the table.
After the owners, the most important trust Mauricio has to earn is the player’s trust. And based on these games, he seems to have earned that.
Vac, I didn’t see great intensity other than Luna against CR; maybe it was just me that lacked intensity. Doh!!
Tele57,
Since you mentioned it, Luna’s passionate display was most likely not done in isolation.
Diego knows damn well that there is a long list of qualified applicants for a very few places on Pochettino’s WC roster. He knows he is what we call “on the bubble”.
Does he do this if RSL are playing some USL team in a preseason friendly which was what the Costa Rica game was?
Maybe, but I kind of doubt it.
Tele57,
The point is all those guys are on the bubble. And they know it.
i thought the winners of the weekend were steffen, eneli, mcglynn, and agyemang. keeper is up for grabs and steffen played well. (but then his issue’s been consistency). we need depth and maybe even a starter at 6 and eneli played like an actual stopper. while we have a fair amount of AM, mcglynn has the rocket shot. and agyemang was dangerous his whole time in, though he might need to be shoehorned to get in a roster.
a lot of the others, sorry, i didn’t think clark and miljevic were that good and any better than the A team guys who we already know.
if you think about AM/wing, we have weah weston mckennie. we also have reyna and aaronson. i don’t see miljevic and clark as that good. i see them as maybe better than LDLT or tillman. to be fair, that might get you on the way back end of the roster, if we ever select right.
like i said, keeper past turner is wilderness and it’s long been a debate who is behind adams, second string on down.
Aaronson is ripe to lose his spot. He peaked a couple years ago. I liked Milkevic. The A team is missing attitude, and while that could be a double edge sword it’s worth a shot. It’s clear Poch recognizes this and likes him and it won’t be a shock when he’s called again.
also, i see cole campbell as a better player than anything we had wide this week. so much of the wide play this week was either technical but not fast enough to get separation at the top levels (gutierrez) or hit and miss on quality (clark).
that being said, with the slow walk approach we use, i fully expect this bunch will be stacked in front of the U20 and U19 stars.
U20 stars? The ones that lost 3-0 to Nashville?
I do agree Cole Campbell is better than Vassilev, Gutierrez, and Clark. I did think Clark looked more comfortable last night playing a little more centrally, but needs to play a full season again and dominate in MLS to push the first team attacking players. I’m interested to see what happens with Campbell after Sahin’s firing. The interim guy is their U19 manager so he knows Cole very well. There is a question if BvB are determined to bring in a full time manager or if they will wait for the full replacement for this summer.
first, if you remember my comments re how the roster allocation looked, clark has interior productivity but wasn’t doing crap all season wide. i think someone who does well in league has something still to prove internationally. but i think someone who can’t even hack league at a spot should be ruling themselves out as USMNT there.
second, when i suggest positional cuteness it’s usually i remember how they used to play someplace else or their numbers shine from when they used to. or their skillset fits it. i don’t tend to advocate guys who nothing much happens when they play someplace. eg LDLT.
third, when they sent cole back to age groups he had 1G 1A in three 3.liga games, and had a goal on france for the U20s. kind of like reyna quietly has a couple league goals in 120′ of scattered time. people need to quit confusing rotting with playing badly. now, if you were no good whenever you have played — another story.
fourth, dortmund’s coach did such a great job he had a european runnerup down to midtable b.1. and got fired. maybe after lampard and CP we should have figured out make our own talent and form assessments, earn our own paychecks, and not defer to coaches who may be so good they get themselves fired soon after we take their treatment of our players as gospel.
i do think talent eval is improving — i think poch has a better eye and goes with performers better. but there is still a bit of a thing where we prefer a 23 year old journeyman over the next big thing U20. US, to me, goes in cycles on whether they take risks on pulisic/beasley/donovans or makes them serve an apprenticeship like weah did. right now this is a knockout round team so they are a little status quo-oriented. as the US often gets which explains why it usually stalls out right about this level. at the better NT they lose when we did, they are asking questions not throwing a parade and protecting so many roster guys.
No one picked Miljevic or Clark over Campbell. He wasn’t available, he’s been dressing every match. No, he hasn’t gotten minutes but he was one injury or surprise transfer move from being in the rotation. Dortmund wasn’t going to release a first team player for 20 days in the middle of the season.
——————-
As for trashing Sahin, he’s the guy that brought Campbell up quickly. At the beginning of the year Tullberg said the BvB U19s were supposed to have Cole this season put the first team had taken him away once Sahin saw him in training.
your excuse the rubber hits the road in march. i get he’s not available now. my point is full availability window who gets called.
i am telling you it’s probably gonna be the 23 year olds and not cole. you’re too focused on this time.
the question is do we get out of the european B team donut hole. i think someone could, defensibly, take a few guys from this team. but to me that should have an asterix of the european B types we didn’t see. they need to get their shot or you’re systematically favoring MLS B teamers just because of availability for exceptional experimental windows.
the asterix is what would campbell do if he got this same pair of games. i think he’d be as big a star as agyemang.
I know Ven and Costa didn’t bring their best. But this so called C team played with much more energy than are so called A team. It was great to see shots on goal. This team played with no fear. I hope these guys develop to a higher level and bring that energy with them in the future.
the evolution was egg them out to midfield then play agyemang in behind them. that’s an actual scoring plan with both talent and tactics going. poch simply has a better tactical widget and slightly better talent eye.
for comparison, white the second half first game playing back to goal reminded of the punchless GB B teams of old. playing in front of the opposing defense, and struggling to find the 9. he was better game 2 and making positive runs instead of showing backwards.
i say that because to me costa rica was decent for a half, the opponent about the same quality, and our B team was similarly pcked from MLS types. i simply thought we were better coached, better selected, and had functioning tactics. i also thought this coach had a clue how to select to those tactics. eg i think the plan was going to be both ferreira and agyemang playing the new style, i think white was going to be the 3rd string banger.
if this had been GB, thinking back to B team gold cups, we’d have been playing half court all night and hoping ferreira could manage something. i don’t know if we’d even try the balls we did to agyemang behind the backs. and we’d be leaning hard on a poorly chosen set of backs who would be lucky to hold.
I think Luna is a clear cut above Milijevic. Lina’s assist was pure magic, while Mili was falling down and the ball bounced off him into space. Luna fights for his team, Milijevic fights with his team. Unless he blows the doors off in Argentina this year count me as unimpressed.
maybe because he started, luna seemed more up to the speed of play game 2.
Patrick Agyemang is def going to Europe soon. I could see him doing well in Erderversie, Championship in England, or Bundesliga. Excellent game, glad we got two nice shutouts.
Steffen definitely a winner.
Clark definitely impressed. Reason why he was highly regarded a few years back.
Both Luna and Milijevic have bite and tenacity at the 10. I think Luna is a bit more talented. I could see Luna called in March.
Mcglynn has a special left foot. But does he provide more at CM than Mckennie, Adams, Musah, Cardoso, Busio, Tessman, Paxten? Right now I don’t think he does. But that could change if he moves to Europe and plays well.
Overall it was a successful January Camp.
Zack really needs to put together a solid season between the sticks this year
He was probably the worst keeper in MLS last year
The overseas move without much playing time killed something in him – I’d love to see him get it back
“Zack really needs to put together a solid season between the sticks this year”
How is Zack supposed to do that?
His MLS team wants him to play their style. The USMNT has him playing a different, more conservative style.
Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.
i think you want some bench players for specific tactical roles, eg, a banger target CF in case we need to hit balls in for a header chance late, a bench wing option who can hit precise crosses, some wide speed, and a guy who can hit dangerous shots and dead balls. to me mcglynn might be the last cubbyhole.
i do agree with your assessment of his overall run of play soccer. he was just ok. but to me one missing element for maybe a decade in the NT has been having guys in the pool and roster for specific reasons that might come up in a second half of a big game. everyone shouldn’t be chosen like they will play 90 the same tactics as the starters. soccer doesn’t always work out that way. sometimes you have to play from behind. sometimes you have to play different.
“one missing element for maybe a decade in the NT has been having guys in the pool and roster for specific reasons that might come up in a second half of a big game. ”
A decade? Ten years? Ten years ago was 2014.
We didn’t go in 2018.
In 2014:
1. JK had Brad Davis on the team for no particular reason except he had a McGlynn like left foot, which was the primary reason he was on the team.
2. Julian Green was there for one reason only. He was there for late offense.
3. DeAndre Yedlin came in in the second half twice and in the first half once primarily for a change of pace and his dynamism.
In 2022:
Specialists are often either very young with a special gift. Either that or veterans who may not be 90 minutes anymore but perhaps useful as a specialist. Gregg had Shaq Moore and , allegedly, no one else in the pool worthy of consideration.