U.S. men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino and the program’s fans will be holding their breaths.
Ricardo Pepi was substituted off in the first half of PSV’s 2-1 Eredivisie win over Excelsior on Saturday. The USMNT striker had two goals to his name in the early stages of the new league campaign, but now could face a spell on the sidelines.
Pepi scored twice for PSV back on September 13 in a 5-3 league win over NEC Nijmegen. The 22-year-old had jumped into the No. 1 striker spot this summer following Luuk De Jong’s move to FC Porto.
Despite mainly being a backup last season, Pepi scored 17 goals in all competitions, which was a career-best for the former MLS product.
However, a spell on the sidelines could hamper his chances for USMNT involvement this fall. The USMNT will have a pair of home friendlies in October against Ecuador and Australia respectively before also taking on Uruguay and Paraguay in November.
Pepi wasn’t the only American player for fans to worry about as Sergino Dest also missed the match through injury as well. Both Pepi and Dest will be major losses for PSV, if they are expected to miss ample time.
PSV manager Peter Bosz did not have an update on Pepi’s status and admitted further evaluations will be needed to diagnose his injury.
“I’m not going to take a risk at this stage with someone who has minor complaints. Further research will have to show what it looks like,” Bosz said in a club interview.
PSV will continue UEFA Champions League play this week at Bayer Leverkusen.
Diego Kochen has been recalled by Barcelona won’t be apart of the u20 team.
one dirty secret of the USMNT historically was they would make career choices for the last 1-2 years that favored playing time, including coming back to MLS or changing teams. some guys right now seem to finally be getting this and some don’t.
a second historical dirty little secret was US players would sometimes seem to phone it in for their club right before the odd window or tournament. maybe we are more motivated for club now based on improved prospects abroad. or because “club form” has become such a focus where you might be judged for not doing much or playing hard the last weekend.
we seem to get a lot of people hurt the last club weekend before important NT windows or tournaments. just saying.
also, and this is more about window energy levels and the overall situation for workload and injuries, but i am sure we did some serious conditioning work for qualifiers or tournaments. i don’t think they ran their legs off in practice for ordinary windows. one reason you might look unenergetic or a step slow or tired for a NT game historically was, say, it’s a pretournament friendly and everyone is tired. we have a history of lousy, tired pretournament friendlies that are either a fringe tryout game or a sendoff game after a harsh camp.
but i hear he runs his players in practice and we often look sluggish for the games.
that and we seem to break down a lot. do they really need to do a bunch of conditioning to play 60′ a couple times in friendlies, if the added running and games cause x% more incremental injuries or tired friendlies with weak results.
Looks like Agyemang is back in.
Hopefully this doesnt turn out to be a trend for Pepi.
agyemang just started playing again. you know what he offers. call balogun and wright, then downs or ferreira. to me the path off sargent is get maybe one more striker they trust where the reflex disappears.
to be real, i’d be fine if they called agyemang, but i want them to try some others where sargent isn’t one more injury away from being brought back yet again. for that to be true some more strikers need to see actual playing time beyond the usual 3-4.