The U.S. men’s national team roster for the upcoming CONCACAF Gold Cup has been revealed.
Left back John Tolkin has replaced Sergino Dest on the 26-player roster, while Walker Zimmerman, Chris Brady, Paxten Aaronson, and Nate Harriel will all stay after previously being added as injury replacements.
Zack Steffen, Patrick Schulte, DeJuan Jones, Folarin Balogun, and Sean Zawadzki have all previously left the camp due to respective injuries.
“We are extremely excited to work with this group of players and compete for the championship,” Pochettino said. “Of course our priority is to win the tournament and to show the right mentality and approach, and we are confident these players will take advantage of the opportunity.”
Dest, who missed most of the 2024-25 season with PSV, was rested with hopes of preserving him long-term ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“We determined the best decision is for [Dest] to have an individualized training program for the summer so he can focus on being fully recovered and ready to perform next season,” Pochettino said.
Several USMNT players will be unavailable this summer including Weston McKennie, Tim Weah, and Gio Reyna due to Club World Cup involvement.
Pochettino also left off several USMNT stars including Christian Pulisic and Antonee Robinson.
The Americans will be seeking a strong tournament run after a dismal Nations League window last March saw them finish fourth in the Final Four.
The USMNT will face Trinidad & Tobago, Saudi Arabia, and Haiti in Gold Cup group stage play, but first will entertain Turkey and Switzerland in home friendly action.
I stopped reading all the exchanges after about 4 or 5. To quote Shakespeare, it’s much ado about nothing, or a tempest in a teapot. Pochettino signaled early on that he wasn’t going to treat the Gold Cup like it’s a meaningful tournament when he started lopping off so many starters. Thus, the roster is somewhere between a January camp game and a friendly to check out little used players. All this talk about who should be included or not, when they should have been included, etc., etc. is pretty meaningless. If you folks start arguing about who would or shouldn’t start, it just shows you have too much time on your hands and you need something more important to spend your time on. To use some current well worn phrases, it is what it is and just deal with it. To which I would add the results don’t really matter now.
Sorry teacher on summer break.
not true. it’s been a few weeks and the roster evolved. today’s lineup had a few regulars. plus musah pulled out for personal reasons. weah, pulisic, and balogun also dropped out. steffen and dest were cut at the end for injury issues.
this was supposed to look different than what the end result was. i wish it was a true experiment. it wasn’t. it was going to be the first team minus CWC guys. and then the floor caved in.
IV,
“i agree there are at this point a few fresh faces. though let’s be blunt, they tend to be in specific spots.”
Soccer is a game with 11 starters and , at this point , I think it is 5 subs.
International players can be quite versatile but regardless, any “fresh face” introduced into a soccer team is going to be in a specific spot (goal keeper, striker, left back, right back).
the way the NT used to be run, we called more people than we needed, and then cut some people after the friendlies based on performance. we are moaning about work ethic and performance then doing our roster cuts on personal leave and injuries.
we already knew who the most recent two dropped injured guys were (steffen and dest) before we even started.
we could have called out of season european experiments for a camp starting before the window. we could have played a game early in the window that began 6/2 to make the 6/4 roster deadline about performance. we should have “i need a break” or “i have a knock” ask-aways sorted before the call sheet comes out.
the management processes are goofy. the personnel choices are off. the tactics are a mess. we don’t play like we have any rapport. start fixing the mess.
this is very basic. do we really have to tell the team, don’t call the guy fresh off an ACL with no games in forever.
Dest returned to action March 8
# of mins played since March 8.
Dest 375 (4 starts)
Cowell 198 (2)
Kochen 180 (2) 0m since March
EPB 149 (2)
Koleosho 87 (1)
Reyna 84 (0)
Banks 12 (0)
Maloney 5 (0)
Campbell 0 (0)
Dettoni 0 (0)
Holmes 0 (0) just for old times sake
-“No games in forever” he’s played more the last 3 months than your roster suggestions.
you can quit acting like i am nuts. ESPN has a rank list of USMNT pool players by position. Kochen, Celentano, Fossey, Banks, Blackmon, Dietz, Maloney, Castaneda, Yow, and Campbell are all ranked where they play. i am not asking for random players or a U16 team to represent us. i am asking for players mostly who were included in the nations league provisional roster, or this provisional roster, or who are esteemed by not just me.
to be blunt, i think the ranking is a little status quo biased and silly, eg, it treats agyemang and white as equally talented.
but if the soccer press is seeing the same thing i am, it’s not my fever dream.
You were complaining that anyone could have seen Dest wasn’t ready to play because he hasn’t been playing. I merely listed guys that you advocated for that played far less then Serge down the stretch. Serge did actually play a decent amount since March.
JR
What is Julian Green doing?
V: he actually had a pretty good season. 7g 4a in 28 appearances, which is good numbers for deep lying midfield in a double pivot. Goal total benefited from 5 pks scored, 2g 4a for a #6 are still decent numbers from the run of play. 626 mins since March 8, when Dest returned.
IV,
“you can quit acting like i am nuts. ”
Then stop acting like it.
“i am asking for players mostly who were included in the nations league provisional roster, or this provisional roster, or who are esteemed by not just me.”
If they were include on those rosters then what are you complaining about? Why are you acting like you are nuts?
“to be blunt, i think the ranking is a little status quo biased and silly, eg, it treats agyemang and white as equally talented.”
?? You’re making shit up and you’re not paying attention.
Don’t be silly, It’s a ranking list.
Patrick is listed #3 and White is listed #5.
BY DEFINITION for ESPN Patrick is not equal to White.
He’s ranked HIGHER. In most parts of the world #3 is above #5
Patrick is two spots above Brian.
ESPN list:
Center forward
1. Folarin Balogun, AS Monaco
2. Ricardo Pepi, PSV Eindhoven
3. Patrick Agyemang, Charlotte FC
4. Haji Wright, Coventry City
5. Brian White, Vancouver Whitecaps
6. Damion Downs, FC Cologne
7. Josh Sargent, Norwich City
8. Brandon Vázquez, Austin FC
9. Jesús Ferreira, Seattle Sounders FC
10. Jordan Morris, Seattle Sounders FC
11. Jordan Pefok, Stade de Reims
12. Daryl Dike, West Bromwich Albion
13. Jeremy Ebobisse, LAFC
14. Samuel Adeniran, LASK Linz
15. Nicholas Gioacchini, Asteras Tripolis
“but if the soccer press is seeing the same thing i am, it’s not my fever dream.”
The soccer press is not seeing the same thing you are.
You are saying these guys are ignored when the reality is the majority of the people listed by ESPN are involved with the current USMNT campaign.
2007: Bradley named his 23 on May 25, final rosters announced May 30, friendly was June 2, GC first match June 7.
2011: May 21 rosters submitted, May 23 Roster announced, only friendly June 4, first GC match June 7.
If you get before 2007 it’s hard to find any stories about rosters, 2003 Confederations Cup ran before GC, 2005 WCQ was in June and then GC in July. 2013 was also WCQ in June, 23 man roster was named 9 days after WCQ, included 11 players from qualifying. Team gathered July 1, friendly July 5, first round July 9.
2015: JK had 22 man roster for friendlies against Netherlands and Germany, June 5,10, then everyone went home. June 23 he named his 23 man roster, for the camp that SBI reported would start “next week” approximately June 30. One friendly July 3, GC July 7.
– In a few of these they were able to change out players after group stage but nowhere between 2003-2015 could I find large camp rosters with cuts after the friendlies. That was done before,if I remember correctly, World Cups but I couldn’t find it with the Gold Cup.
look, you don’t get to just make crap up. through roughly GB we oversubscribed then had a roster cut for tournaments. we would have healthy cuts a lot of the time.
and with few exceptions — usually at a world cup like AJ in 2014 — we didn’t call hurt people on a fitness bet. it is not worth the “stuart holden” downside risk, and to be blunt, holden was betting on whether he even had a career left at that point.
last, your argument rests on the misleading factoid where for about a decade CONCACAF allowed roster swaps after group round. in that case, you experiment and limp through group then call jozy and bradley for knockouts.
your stats based malarkey is like trying to tell me i don’t remember the history right. yes, we used to call 28 and keep 25. i lived it.
just like we also used to routinely let a player like reyna or mcbride beg off.
GB was the one who shifted to calling just enough head count for the roster size limit, and i think it was roughly “landon” when we started loading up the star players with every cap we could — ignoring how the end of his career kind of fizzled out despite his general fitness freaky self.
you seem to like to argue for the sake of arguing. and beneath that i don’t think you’ve thought five seconds for whether it would be a good idea anyway, even if i am hallucinating the history, which i’m not — i’ve followed this closely since like the late 80s.
that a team who isn’t getting performance, has practice slackers, and wants more game work rate, might perhaps want to call too many so the coach can cut (for practical and symbolic purposes) those who don’t train or play how he wants. and that we are already giving these guys 8 games off right now, or struggling with injured players asking off, so why not juggle things differently for the whole year.
geez that would make too much sense, and only be how the shop used to be run. but things are going so well now, and i guess we have some european thing we need to imitate. we can talk about roster competition and work rate, then issue improvised rosters where the personal issues and injuries dictate the roster for us.
you want me to get particularly pointed, the laser focused rosters of late — calling just enough people, and only sometimes an injury replacement — suggests arrogantly undeserved confidence in their personnel choices. that he’s sure This Is The Group might be fine until we do NL and take 2 losses, or have 1 win all summer for copa. at that point maybe a rethink, hmmmm?
“your stats based malarkey is like trying to tell me i don’t remember the history right. yes, we used to call 28 and keep 25. i lived it.” I’m sorry that you are wrong, but I actually researched all that information. There were no tryout camps for Gold Cups under Bob, Bruce, or JK. I agree that we used to do that for World Cups although JK famously cut his roster before the friendlies in 2014 (the Landon incident). Maybe they did before 2003, but there were no archived internet stories that I could find. As an OG you no doubt remember that the GC used to be in the winter, and of course would have had all the MLS guys available for an extended camp, but since it moved to the summer it has not happened.
Just for everyone’s information it was only in 2013, 2015, 2017 that teams were allowed to add players after the group stage, without injury. But players that were added did not participate in pre-GC friendlies or in camp ahead of the group stage. I believe this is the first tournament that allows for 26 on the initial roster instead of the traditional 23.
JR,
“the way the NT used to be run, we called more people than we needed, and then cut some people after the friendlies based on performance. ”
What IV neglects to mention is in the good old days there were a lot fewer realistic options to call up for a given position. People look down their noses at Josh when Bob had to struggle to come up with Herc, Buddle and Findley to replace one Charlie Davies.
All this outrage over the roster for a Gold Cup that not that long ago was strongly rumored to be on it’s way out.
Pochettino could have saved us from IV going on this tear if only he had called in Campbell and Gio , IV’s two hills to die on. In IV”s mind this was Mauricio telling IV, piss off.
Isn’t it ironic that, FIFA World Club Cup aside , C & G had some injury concerns. Shouldn’t they stay with the club so that their regular doctors can keep a closer eye on them?
It’s pretty clear that Dest being called in was what in American football we call day to a day to day decision i.e., wait until the last minute to see how he is healing up.
Plus, PSV’s season is over so it isn’t like they were disrupting anything and it gives our medical people a chance to see that knee in person.
I’m looking forward to this potential 10 game run until the end of the year though I suspect IV will break the internet with his copy.
IV,
“your stats based malarkey is like trying to tell me i don’t remember the history right. yes, we used to call 28 and keep 25. i lived it.”
You have a history of not remembering history right.
And even when you do it’s your interpretation that is fucked up.
You “lived it”?
WTF does that mean?
You were on the staff?
You were a player that was called in?
You bet and lost money on the final composition of the game day roster?
Explain what is wrong with calling in 28, or even 40 and then keeping 25 or even less?
You can’t believe a supposedly healthy player can get to camp and get injured during practice?
It’s the end of the season. The players are normally supposed to be getting rest.
Instead they are in some strange camp doing stuff to their body, already worn out by the season and predisposed to injury, that results in them coming up hurt. This should surprise no one not even you.
If you cared to, you can see it happen a lot in these kind of national team camps for other countries.
“even if i am hallucinating the history, which i’m not — i’ve followed this closely since like the late 80s.”
Maybe you’re not hallucinating but you’re making stuff up to fit your narrative. What you write makes no sense. That’s cause it is mostly bullshit.
“that a team who isn’t getting performance, has practice slackers, and wants more game work rate, might perhaps want to call too many so the coach can cut (for practical and symbolic purposes) those who don’t train or play how he wants. and that we are already giving these guys 8 games off right now, or struggling with injured players asking off, so why not juggle things differently for the whole year.”
?? Name some practice slackers? Our managers did not have the luxury.
What a stupid idea. Sounds like your slackers would have to be guys low on the totem pole. In which case cutting them is no surprise and would have particular effect on the squad.
You want symbolic cuts? Cut Michael Bradley, Clint Dempsey and Tim Howard. Or cut Landon. That will get peoples attention. Cutting Jay Heaps , Jorge Villafana or Eric Lichaj just gets you a “what?”.
“we can talk about roster competition and work rate, then issue improvised rosters where the personal issues and injuries dictate the roster for us.”
So you don’t think personal issues or injuries matter?
V: i thought we had already proved and reproved benching reyna is pointless. you have to weigh the effort concerns against the upside. or are we gonna do more symbolic, self defeating crap like last world cup? and then throw the kid on second half of holland because get down to it, he actually is more dangerous if we’re about to go home?
however, in general, duh, a coach making broad comments about i want my team to work harder, should be handed a healthy willing roster where they can cut some people on performance and effort.
you couldn’t have read my posts too close. i was saying the other day this can’t just become about calling a bunch of arriola/wondo-esque effort guys. you have to have enough technical quality in the team we can make plays and finish goals.
amateur hour. calling players who don’t want to be there. calling rehab/injured players. way too many RB and too few LB. too many CF and not many wings.
a slapped together january-plus roster isn’t going to get you through the top handful of regional sides to avoid our last GC outcome. we will get past haiti. and then we’ll see about the rest of group (though advancement is liberal), and progressing in knockouts. y’all get it’s tnt we split games with in november, and saudi we tied with the first choice.
people mock my experiments but IMO this is a little too obviously insufficient to beat mexico or canada. you need to try some different stuff.
i like the forwards but you need someone to feed them. we had a similar discussion at previous GC when we had converted strikers playing wide, or were struggling to score, or were acting like mihailovic would be the setup man. it’s all a bit hopeful. the idea to these rosters is not to be hopeful. it’s, wow, that’s a good team.
Not to be diminishing in anyway, and with all due respect IV, you always seem to put a lot of words together in the comments, without really saying anything…….it’s overload bro, try and condense things for us that actually make sense
you want distilled? you talk to the veterans before you roster them for the summer, to see if they want to play or a rest. you leave off hurt players like dest and steffen. and if we normally play a certain formation, you call enough players to cover all the normal positions.
if you look at the roster, we called a ton of strikers, barely any wings. we called a ton of RB, barely any LB. so we don’t have all the positions covered, unless we’re playing some new formation.
the roster at this point feels very improvised and suboptimal, which is less defensible when it’s a summer tournament where you could have picked up the phone and resolved a lot of “do you want to bother playing this summer” or “is your injury rehabbed yet.”
IV,
You’re speculating again.
You talk like you’ve managed this team before and you have not.
In other words, like Ronniet says,”without saying anything”.
i am not speculating. there were more than a half dozen guys on the original roster who didn’t make it to the friendlies. stars generally.
i am not imagining things to believe that this was going to be an A-Lite team, and then beg-offs and injuries. and that they had not really planned for maximization when that fell through, and just improvised by calling january camp type guys. there were no risky guys in the replacements.
and then, as you just saw, we’re not very good.
What I think we’ll see
4-3-3
Luna-Agyemang-BA
————Tillman————
——-Tyler—Johnny—
Ream-Mark-Rich-Freeman
————Turner—————
What we could see?
3-4-1-2
——Wright-Agyemang——
————Tillman——————
Arfsten-Tyler-Johnny-Freeman
———Ream—-Mark—Richards
Or 3-4-2-1
————-Agyemang———-
———Luna——Tillman——
We will probably see some combo of this. We’ll probably be 3-2-5 in possession, then 4-4-2 in defense. Both Luna and Haji are used to dropping into wide midfield in defense.
Whatever lineup gets Malik and Luna on the field works for me.
I’d like to see Tolkin over Ream at LB, if we’re going with four in the back. If we’re going with three in the back, I’d give Tolkin a run at left wing back instead of Arfsten. Poch seems to like Arfsten, so that may not happen.
Ream at Left back cannot be an option for the World Cup, so I don’t see the point in using him there this summer. Let’s see what we have as possible backups to A. Robinson.
J99: By GC, I think we’ll see Tolkin, just don’t see him being up to speed in 2 days to start. He’s been off for almost three weeks.
Have no idea why you love Ream. The guy stinks every usmnt performance like a held in protein meat fart. Please don’t start him.
I don’t, notice I said “what I think we’ll see.
trusting ream to hold a left flank was disproven half a decade ago (2019ish). canada, swiss, etc. there’s a reason he had to reboot as a CB. not without a jetpack. you mock me then lay out pre-covid berhalter mistakes. while mocking any suggestion that poch’s weird backline call sheet is a mess — which is what is forcing your hand.
i personally would like to see us stop the 433 variations, it’s not working, but within the context of them, i agree on twin 6s, but how on earth is luna behind tillman as CAM? luna contributed to a pretty goal on canada, a good opponent. tillman has 17 caps without a goal or assist. people chuckle at my “club snob”/”club form” heckling, but the only explanation for your choice is one guy is at PSV and the other is at RSL. tillman’s club numbers have yet to translate, not unlike sargent. this should matter if we weren’t waist deep in constant club form hype — even when dozens of goalless caps should suggest the analytics aren’t paying off.
to me we keep obsessing about wing players, but not ones who cross well, and then understaff the key CAM slots with snob favorites who don’t play like 10s. this would be fine if we were a tough defense using MF to swarm the opponent, but we don’t usually dominate the MF and negate transitions.
Not my choices it’s what I think Poch will do. I think bringing in Tolkin to replace Dest and not bringing Scally or Fossey means we might not have to worry about Ream at LB in GC. The good thing about the two friendlies before the GC is Poch has some chance to try some people in different roles. But I don’t see Tolkin being up to speed for Türkiye.
to underline something, part of the basic conceptual problem with the US lineup is it’s all-star mentality and not like we thought about how player A will create with player B.
so, for example, are we crossing? which is what we actually often do. then put out there wings who create separation then drop a cross on a dime. and then a striker who can head a goal.
or, if the game is going to be more like pulisic — kind of take people on and create chaos — then put in a pulisic equivalent on the right, an actual 10 or two, and create in half court.
what we do is put in guys who like to dribble, then have them cross. and while playing that half court style the AMs are usually sloppy and unproductive, not true 10s, likely picked for defense even though we’re trying to win half court soccer. and then we put in strikers who are either technical or speedy for service that comes in cross form.
so the personnel doesn’t match the scheme. if we’re going to insist on all stars, create a scheme that fits them that isn’t based on crossing and half court. or if we’re half court, it needs to get a lot more precision. 10s who can thread a needle. wings who can hit a striker on a dime. or, as i’ve said, counter soccer and play some athletic box crashers and speedy forwards.
it’s a muddled mess based around euro/stats fanboying without regard to how they fit scheme or play together. which is why the results are worse than much sloppier but PURPOSE BUILT prior US teams.
IMO it’s drifted a little too much in the 2017 direction of a no-name MF with little offensive production who then is not good at stopping production. or that has no idea how to score other than feed dempsey. this is not a success recipe.
“Of course our priority is to win the tournament and to show the right mentality and approach, and we are confident these players will take advantage of the opportunity.”
I call bull dookie
After crapping the bed in the Nation’s League, US Soccer has made it really clear they could care less about the Confederation’s Championship. You can argue Nations League has replaced Gold Cup as more important but I will remind you that the Nations league was billed as a way to “make friendlies matter”. It’s failed to do that instead congesting the schedule with more CONCACAF and less friendlies that would challenge the squad. How is that the tournament that matters. The value in the Euros and Copa and yes even Gold Cup is it simulates the World Cup. It gives valuable experience for teams in an extended camp/tournament setting. For US Soccer to to do this – especially after the dismal showings in Copa and NL – sends the worst kind of message. They don’t care. They’ve now – failed at the Copa, failed at NL, sent home star players instead of playing them against our biggest rivals and made a mockery of our confederation’s championship.
As fans – what are we suppose to be excited about? This is a low point. I lived through not qualifying for Russia but I’m as disheartened at the state of things right now as I was then. Just send the whole to team back to their camps. They need to rest up for the World Cup next summer. Let them develop more at their clubs and rest so they are in tip top shape in case the entire first team gets hurt next summer.
I get your frustrations but when FIFA has taken Tim, Wes, Gio, and Cole Campbell. Surgery has taken Jedi. Throw in Pulisic has had a lingering hip issue and Musah with mental health/personal issues. Then you come to camp and Steffen and Balo are hurt, Schulte, Jones, and Zawadzki injured in matches before camp. I’m not sure there’s much point in risking Dest if you’re at all concerned on the strength of that knee. But I get it’s frustrating because Serge was one of our last guys on the roster that might actually cause stress to a defense.
atletico madrid works their tookuses off, but in a fundamentally sound tactical concept staffed with the best players money can buy. this quote, to me, reads like the mid-table/relegation coach who knows too well where he stacks, and is just calling for work rate. a good team picks the right people, plays a helpful system, and then supercharges the functioning unit and concepts with hard work. hard work itself doesn’t replace second rate player choices or this berhalter ball nonsense we are stuck stuck stuck on. when’s the last time we beat a good team or even consistently looked good?
the defenders of this are like it looked good for that panama game. you mean the friendly. you mean panama that beat us this march (and beat us last summer). it’s a one game mirage.
if they pick better and use smart tactics, then hard work makes it sing. if everything sucks then it’s just a weak coach telling his team to run hard for the first 30 minutes. classic lousy team tactics.
Well now, reading that was however many seconds of wasted time that I will never get back. What a pile of speculative horseshit.
The last time the USMNT beat a good team in a game that mattered was when they beat Ghana in the 2014 World Cup.
That 2014 was arguably the best USMNT team ever put together.
are you seriously saying it’s “speculative” to say that no amount of work rate fixes a poor underlying concept or incorrect selections? work rate — independent of a team concept — is how bad soccer teams think.
you want to win soccer games your tactical mousetrap needs to work. at which point if you run your butt off you’re executing a concept well, not just running for the sake of running.
the old US teams used to be hard working and stuck in but in service of a concept — counter soccer. other than trying to have adams win the ball i have no clue what our 11 people are supposed to be working harder for.
IV
“are you seriously saying it’s “speculative” to say that no amount of work rate fixes a poor underlying concept or incorrect selections? work rate — independent of a team concept — is how bad soccer teams think.’
Emphasis should be on the “horseshit” aspect rather than the “speculative” aspect. You have no idea how this USMNT team or any team “thinks” .
“you want to win soccer games your tactical mousetrap needs to work. at which point if you run your butt off you’re executing a concept well, not just running for the sake of running.”
No shit? Did you know that the Germans did NOT bomb Pearl Harbor and that Kim and Kelley Deal are twins? Why are you wasting people’s time with this horseshit that they figured out a long time ago?
“the old US teams used to be hard working and stuck in but in service of a concept — counter soccer. other than trying to have adams win the ball i have no clue what our 11 people are supposed to be working harder for.”
Counter soccer? That’s a concept? You got the “i have no clue” part right. You haven’t seen a lot of “the old US teams”. If you had you would have seen more than a few games where they ran around like chickens with their heads cut off.
You know why?
Because the USMNT is always building towards something. And that means they are going to have games where they look like crap. and where geniuses like you may not see the value. That doesn’t mean the value is not there.
What that all means is the best I have ever seen a given USMNT squad play as a unit is at “their” World Cup. For all the weeping and crying about the importance of “our regional championship”, the USMNT is a 4 year cycle team and the World Cup is when and where it all comes together.
In 2002, 2010, 2014 it was very positive.
In 2006, 2022 it was still positive but a little less so.
You love to bitch and moan for the sake of bitching and moaning. but tell you what you need to pay close attention to this next run of B team games. WHY?
Because our A team core, the pampered , tattooed millionaires y’all despise so much aren’t good enough on their own to get this done. If they are going to have a good World Cup they are going to need the help of the best of these B team scrubbenies. And this run of games could be where that strong base is formed.
“i have no idea?” i watch every game. i see what we “do.” if the game product is not what they meant to “try” that’s doubly erroneous and not my problem, given our recent win-loss record.
taking a step back, poch does not appear to have a new mousetrap unless jedi is healthy. and his new mousetrap looked good 1 game then we lost to the same team in nations league this march.
you’re selling optimism. we went winless at NL and finished 4th. we rarely looked competent while doing so. that’s what i think of your optimism. objective optimism needs to be built “on” something concrete. wins. or it looks good but just bad luck. we lost both and didn’t look pretty but have a luck issue.
i also don’t believe in vague optimism without some actual changes. i want to see fresh people. i want to see them play different. if the roster and tactics are as usual i think the result tends to be predictable. particularly with this “no upsets in years” team.
IV
“you’re selling optimism. ”
Like I said, heavy on the horseshit when it comes to your posts
I just wrote that ,barring one hell of coaching job by Pochettino, we’re probably going to get humiliated in the World Cup.
How does pessimism look to you?
Pulisic-Balo-Weah
————Reyna———-
Wes————Tyler—
Jedi—————-Dest
———-Steffen———-
Bench-Musah, Pepi, Sarge, Scally
That’s 13 players that would probably make most people’s 26 man rosters who are not available for one reason or another. This is an opportunity for Poch to prove he can actually coach. In November vs Jamaica, Poch adjusted his tactics from the first to second match which surprised and confused the Reggae Boyz. Can Poch make game to game adjustments during this tournament to make this B/C team successful.
What’s up with Tyler Adams? I hadn’t heard that he wasn’t available.
Just checked US Soccer, Tyler is still listed on the GC roster.
Oops I think that was supposed to be my Musah spot. Sorry I caused panic.
JR – No problem. Tyler’s been unavailable so much over the last two years that I start out assuming he’s hurt, and if he’s not that’s a nice surprise.
Unless Reyna moves somewhere and plays his butt off he won’t be in the WC.
JR,
What we’re seeing with the Gold Cup right now is a return to the natural order of things.
The Gold Cup, for a very long time, has been a B team thing for the USMNT and El Tri when it suited their purposes.
There were a variety of reasons given, ( bad timing re euro players fitness, the NL, lack of Confederation Cups carrot, etc..) and these reasons are organic and cannot easily be fixed.
And those who think only the USMNT does the chickenshit piss on our regional championship with B team thing, so does El Tri. That kind of evens things out
When various parties suggested that the A team would be rested, there was a huge wave of Alexi-esque indignation demanding that after the NL debacle a “statement” needed to be made.
The statement was made.
It says:
1. The World Cup is what matters. Risking the health and fitness of the likes of Pulisic, Dest, Jedi etc. jut to shut up Alexi and his ilk is a waste of time.
2. The NL is now the REAL regional championship. The Gold Cup may die in the not-too-distant future. Human soccer players can play only so many games in a certain time period.
3. The player pool is Gregg’s player pool so far. Those who praised him for the harmonious and loving atmosphere of his locker rooms have to now accept that that came with a chicken shit loser mentality.
IV wants to dump them all. I would be fine with that as long as IV is held directly responsible for the results of that “revolution”. Back in the real world Pochettino, even more than JK, has taken MLS very seriously, more than anyone. To be fair to JK, MLS is much better now. As far as I’m concerned the jury is out on exactly how this all shakes up the culture. We have the possibility of ten games between now and January of 2026 and they should be intriguing as hell. I want to see just how well Pochettino can coach.
Just imagine Gregg in this situation. Does he feature Sebastian?
To me it still looks like we get humiliated in the World Cup but honestly, I have always felt that way going into any World Cup.
Besides, it is early yet and you never know.
incorrect. i am not saying “dump” the team permanently. i said back when the man was hired a year ago, bring in some fresh faces to compete with them. they have had a year to tinker. do not take tactics for granted. do not take personnel for granted.
it is not my fault we wasted months on caretakers, then months on Berhalter 2, then a year of Poch trying to win with Berhalter’s people and his slight spin on the same tactics.
we got trounced in copa. we got trounced in NL. quit pretending this is fine, or conversely that we are risking much by trying new things. only a “winner” would be taking that risk. we should be questioning our choices. it is amusing to watch folks who think we suck then defending various elements of the status quo when you say we need changes.
if we don’t make changes we will be lucky to get out of our world cup group — stuck hoping for a friendly draw — and our ceiling will be 1 knockout round like last time.
IV,
“incorrect. i am not saying “dump” the team permanently. i said back when the man was hired a year ago, bring in some fresh faces to compete with them……………………..”
More horseshit and stating the obvious and wasting everyone’s time with “your” statements that you’ve stolen from everywhere else.
As if Luna and Patrick are not fresh faces.
I’ve been saying for along time now that this team is going to get fucked up in the World Cup. I thought that the day Pochettino took this shit sandwich of a job. At least that is how it looks now.
But it could be different when the rubber meets the road IV because that is how it goes when you build a team. Shit takes time to fester.
And if they do have a decent World cup Pochettino should get a medal.
“and our ceiling will be 1 knockout round like last time.”
Big fucking deal. Just like it was in 2010, 2014, 2022.
Except for 2002, that, or worse, is our ceiling.
you’re not being honest. at this point we’re about 9 or so deep on roster swaps for personal reasons or injuries. this was not the intended roster. at least part of my critique is that that starting point is CRAZY after our last two tournament results.
i agree there are at this point a few fresh faces. though let’s be blunt, they tend to be in specific spots. AM, wingback. the strikers are mostly regulars except downs. some of the attack are regulars. the CB and GK1 are regulars.
i should just be happy there will be some fresh faces but i think the ones they picked, give or take someone like luna, are fairly second rate. brady? LDLT? tillman? berhalter? sullivan? white?
sorry, this is not even a sharply picked B team. this is a glorified january camp plus the starting keeper and CBs and a striker or two. that will then try to beat canada, mexico, saudi, etc.
your basic failure is to grasp how one improves a struggling team’s results. one does so by recruiting new faces or trying the players who don’t see a bunch of time. if you take for granted 9 or 10 of the 11 then squeeze in 2 changes, expect most of the old 11’s results — unless the fresh face is amazing.
campbell is 19 which is actually older than richards, weah, reyna, pulisic, etc. all were for their first caps. we are back to being scared of our own shadow in terms of risktaking, even as the regulars don’t get the job done.
you do realize i can try something different this time, and the next time, and if only some of that works, i grab those elements, then go back to the old thing? the old thing doesn’t vaporize. it gets the night off. but with our results the worst regulars should be getting some nights off and some fresh competition.
and that would happen at any NT. i am not really remaking the wheel here or asking for crazy. if italy or france hit a rut you would see new people or a tactical tweak, not perseverating.
IV,
“i agree there are at this point a few fresh faces. though let’s be blunt, they tend to be in specific spots.”
Soccer is a game with 11 starters and , at this point , I think it is 5 subs.
International players can be quite versatile but regardless, any “fresh face” introduced into a soccer team is going to be in a specific spot (goal keeper, striker, left back, right back).
Well young Freeman about to get an extensive look.