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Report: Ricardo Pepi set for sideline spell with knee injury

The excitement of Ricardo Pepi’s UEFA Champions League goal vs. Liverpool has been followed up by the worries for his immediate future.

Pepi will reportedly miss ample time due to a knee injury suffered in Wednesday’s 3-2 UCL win over Liverpool, Dutch outlet ED reported Thursday. There is no timetable for Pepi’s return, but he is expected to miss the foreseeable future.

The U.S. men’s national team striker becomes the latest injured player in Peter Bosz’s squad, joining international teammates Sergino Dest and Malik Tillman on the sidelines.

Pepi, 22, has enjoyed a stellar season for the Eredivisie leaders, scoring 17 goals in 28 appearances across all competitions. Despite his goalscoring impact, Pepi has mainly featured off the bench.

However, his new injury will be a major blow for PSV and the USMNT going forward.

English Premier League club West Ham United expressed interest in acquiring Pepi on loan from PSV this month, however a move did not come to fruition.

PSV advanced to the UCL Playoffs on Wednesday and will learn its knockout stage foe on Friday.

The USMNT will face Panama in the CONCACAF Nations League Final Four this March.

Comments

  1. What in the actual F? So000oooo frustrating. Dike, Sargent, Wright,,, Balo…. now Pepi. Seems just when any of our strikers gets rolling…

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  2. for those keeping a scorecard that’s
    out – balogun and pepi
    nov camp – vazquez
    jan camp – white and agyemang
    jan camp dropout – ferreira
    just back — sargent
    nearing back – wright

    in which case my suggestion is pulisic or reyna slides to 9, wright if healthy, agyemang, and ferreira around as a swiss army option. the first 2 can ball, wright is a gamer if healthy, agyemang scored in january, and ferreira has fought panama to a draw by himself.

    in other words, if the roster looks ratty enough at a position, you don’t just keep going down the list to white, or call sargent and pretend he’s scored in our shirt since 2019, you move someone good and then call whoever left has scored at the slot, to be his backups. the idea that sargent is next man up — the club form analytics thing — is the sort of “ignore the team looks like crap and he never scores” sort of mentality that got GB fired. that is like the definition of “does not translate from club” and yet we will likely persist.

    it’s a production position and almost everything feeds to the 9. you cannot have a 9 you can’t find who doesn’t score internationally. cannot.

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    • to the extent people get other (sargent) ideas, wright had the world cup round of 16 goal, 2 goals in the semi of the last version of this tournament coming up, and has scored on panama.

      ferreira has scored bushels in concacaf including a knockout equalizer on tbis panama team and a friendly goal on mexico.

      josh sargent’s only goals in the region are on cuba 6 years ago. and what i remember is wes mckennie scoring a jillion backside goals on that same cuban team basically garbage-manning all the crosses the slowpoke sargent couldn’t get to.

      i would rather see mckennie strike than sargent up there.

      and then like i said, i would really start pulisic or reyna before i even work down this list. at a point a bare cupboard should result in moving around the real talent rather than just calling the 5th or 6th option and hoping.

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      • Not going to happen.

        Sargent is not 100%. So he may not get called up regardless of anything else.

        You want to build a team to prove you were right and everyone else was wrong.

        Pochettino is building a culture and a style. And to win a game, not win a pissing contest.

    • You cannot have a player who doesn’t play the 9 be a 9! No one who doesn’t regularly play the 9, doesn’t need to be there. It’s exhausting seeing players uncomfortable at positions that they’re not productive in and the continued calls by fans to see this. Musah or Vassilev as wingers?! Lleget , Ferreira, Reyna & Paxton Aaronson as 9s; Musah, Del La Torre, Busio, Tessman, Sands, Maloney, as a 6. Sargent, Wright, Pepi, as wingers?!! Yuck! Right footed Dest, Scally, who never uses their left foot, or Dejuan Jones (who has a serviceable left foot) at LB? No player, who doesn’t use their left foot, needs to be at RW or LB. This is a 1990s European tactic. We are in the mid 2020s now. Position less soccer is a lie, pushed on us by people who want to be soccer influencers. Pochettino is 3 man backline (Italian tactics) coach. 3-2-4-1, or 3-5-2 like every formation needs to be staffed properly. McKennie & Weah both played fullbacks midweek. These guys suck so bad at fullback. Movements, positioning and passing are all thrown off. Anyone that thinks McKennie is a good left back or Weah needs to be a RB, isn’t paying attention. Stubbornly, willfully ignoring what’s happening on the field, to dwell in a delusion of winning the comment section on their platform.

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    • No more Ferreira please, the guy is a joke and disrespectful. He should have just told them over the phone he can’t make it, vs wasting time coming to camp unfit.

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  3. I see Agyemang going g to Europe this summer if he keeps it up. Could see him doing well in Bundesliga, Championship, or Erderversie

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    • personally i’d stay til summer 2026. he’s productive both MLS and january camp. he’s looking at potential callups for the next 2 tournaments. i would not mess with a thing. i would not move now, for sure.

      if he does get called for the 2 tournaments and does well, that might be a time to go, but i still think you risk a “pepi.” that you are the flavor of the month now but you go to europe, pick the wrong destination, sit, and go from rising star to cut in a year based on “club form.”

      i would not be surprised if he moves soon because our pool often seems to favor money over NT-positioning, and to act a little bit scared. rather than trusting a plan, we tend to sprint off the next possible window “because anything could happen and i have to cash in.” and then the rush to get over and sign with the first pretty blonde winks at us becomes a rush to get off of that team to the 2nd and 3rd stops. so maybe don’t rush it.

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      • Let’s be honest Agyemang scored 10g in MLS last year and scored against the domestic sides of Venezuela and Costa Rica. He’s not getting a big money offer in Europe. That being said he only made 70,000 last season so if he has an offer in the Championship for 400,000 that’s a big difference. Especially if his family isn’t financially well off. We can be all romantic about making decisions to benefit the shield but Patrick has to look out for his family. Sargent has made over 5 million dollars in his time in Europe, Pepi is around 4.5 million (a bit more than the 160,000 he made in Dallas). Both would make far more in MLS today, but they are currently in Europe to push themselves.

      • JR,

        “Agyemang scored 10g in MLS last year and scored against the domestic sides of Venezuela and Costa Rica. He’s not getting a big money offer in Europe. ”

        Agyemang played about 65 minutes vs Venezuela. and 15 minutes vs CR. and scored a goal, the same basic goal, in both appearances. That’s an average of about 40 minutes / game. vs modest opposition in FRIENDLY circumstances.

        This is pretty lean and is not the stuff that gets you the stupid money transfer to Real Madrid. Or even Sunderland.

        Still it was a fine performance by Patrick, he could not have done much better and it needs to be put into context.
        Could he do that against Italy or Argentina?
        It would not surprise me if he did assuming he gets that kind of service ( a huge assumption ). Pochettino appears to be a very good motivator and it would not shock me in the least if vs for example, Brazil in a World Cup quarterfinal, Pochettino talked Patrick into doing exactly the same thing.

        International ball is very different from club ball. It is all about knockout tournaments and American sports fan well-schooled in knockout playoff games know all about tournaments.
        In the United States, there are many examples of teams winning playoff games and series that had no business doing so.

        The 16th seed, the UMBC Chocolate Lab Retrievers beating 1 seed University of Virginia in March Madness.

        For that game or that series, your team rose to the occasion and beat the better team who, probably, sank to your team’s level. And then your team was never seen or heard from again.
        WHY?
        Because a lot of tournament teams are short term constructs and don’t hold up for the long term, the way club teams, who are built for the long haul, do. The USMNT is on a 4 year cycle which means once the tournament is over the team will have to be rebuilt during the next 4 year cycle. The big Euros and the big South Americans are mostly 2 year cycle teams.
        Pochettino knows this.
        We all know this because there are several USMNT examples. Most notably, the 2002 WC team, and the 2009 Confederations Cup team. In American sports language those were upsets, one offs. IV talks about the USMNT being “ globally competitive”. That’s ridiculous.

        From day one, Pochettino has been prepping his 30-40 player pool with his “ no alternative team message” or “everyone has a chance to make the team message” These underdog messages will eventually be morphed into a “USMNT vs the world” narrative.
        Anyone with half a brain knows that our player pool should have no shot at being a serious contender in this WC.
        However, Pochettino also understands that all the good national teams are examples of the whole being greater than the sum of their parts.
        This player pool is very talented but mostly young and untested, meaning no one really knows how much “greater” it can be.
        If Agyemang can maintain his current form( not an easy thing to do) and his mentality ( also not easy to do) then it is possible he is already good enough for Pochettino to put on the World Cup roster. Going to Europe might allow him to sharpen his skills, maintain the ones he already has and maybe build some new ones. A soccer player is a dynamic entity. He either gets better or worse. He does not stay the same.
        But if it is a bad move, then all of those skills might backslide and his confidence, his best weapon, may leave.

        If you are one of these recency bias Cupcake boys who is now a flavor of the nano second, a transfer to Europe (or anywhere) needs to be one where you can maintain what got you cupcaked in the first place and, hopefully, add to it.
        That’s the pro sports reality.
        In real life where you need to pay your insurance and feed your family and capitalize on what may be a very,very short career, unless you are morally superior like IV, dramatically increasing your earning power is a very real factor.

        Kevin Paredes earned $108,000 per year while playing for D.C. United in 2020 and 2021. He now earns about $ 937,000 per year with Wolfsburg. I bet he would not bitch and moan about paying the subscription fee for SBI now. IV would call Kevin “scared” for “choosing the money.” And not trusting DC ‘s plan for him.

        Pochettino is right.
        As long as you stay as good as you were in that cupcake game and keep playing that well for the USMNT, you can play for him again.

        The question is can these Cupcake boys do that where they are? Can they produce on demand? Can they raise their game to higher level competition after Venezuela and CR are replaced by better teams?
        If they can then the USMNT has got a lot more depth than they used to. And Pepi’s injury is not a problem because we have Patrick, Ben and Caden waiting in the wings.

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