Yep. US and major European current stadiums meet all standards for FIFA, with the notable exception of the US stadiums where owners did not have the foresight to fit in a regulation sized pitch easily.
With the increase in number of matches, I think this will be a huge money maker.
I guess your security costs must be a lot less than in Canada. That is the biggest cost for us.
Dest out of Copa America.
I think a Copa Final is a reasonable goal. Hoping BRZ and ARG meet in the other semi.
Huh, that won’t happen, according to Wiki, which has the Winner-A meeting runner-up-B, and vice versa, then the winner of those two matches playing each other in the semi. That’s not the way it should be. Winners and runners-up of the same Group should not meet until the Final.
I know it means some extra rest for one of the winners but the rest comes before that meeting.
The two matches above should be on opposite ends of the bracket. Minor fuck-up on their part.
I think they purposefully orchestrated it in hopes of a ARG-BRA final. Makes sense to me.
It is the only way to guarantee it, regardless of how either of them advance out of the Group.
And it is CONMEBOL who might not care about the USA team, who now might have to play both of them.
Another interesting article for paying subscribers:
Can anyone please make that available?
This is an age-old question, but maybe the answer is different now. Before reading, I’ll simply state that if we do not have a team whose players are good enough to play in top leagues in Europe, then the team won’t be good enough to compete for top trophies (Copa, WC). Sure, might be good enough to win CONCACAF events (Gold Cup, Nations League), or advance to WC Knock-out Rounds.
Now, in the past there was some bias against USA players in Europe having to repeatedly prove themselves. In most countries, there is a language issue. Some players might be good enough to play, but just cannot adapt.
Yes, players playing minutes for top teams bring that topness to their country teams, so I concede the article’s “indicator, not a determinant” stance (in the teaser free portion). Heck, one could develop a model based on club ranking and players’ minutes to determine Country team ranking.
Also, a player could be loaned or transferred down the English levels to the player’s level, and that would still be a better indicator of quality than going to the MLS. MLS merely provides nearness to home, family, etc., as well as long away trips. The MLS has the added feature of allowing teams exceptions to their caps, since the MLKS is in the business of making money for its owners, not necessarily determining a winner of a league. The league would be better off making sure every teams wins the league at least once, to keep owners and fans interested.
Since you asked me so nicely…
(with standard disclaimer on formatting, etc.)
It’s one of the age-old conundrums for U.S. men’s national team players: Is it better to start games in MLS, or to be with a club in Europe, even with little to no playing time?
The question reflects the constant balancing act a player must contend with throughout his career, one that elicits a steady stream of additional questions too. What stage is the player at in his career: young upstart or grizzled veteran? What’s his contract situation? How important is he to the national team? How important is the national team to him? How does he find the right environment, the right playing style, the right coach and the right club?
If an American player is stuck, the decision often ends up being: Does he move to another overseas club or come home to MLS? This question is especially pertinent given the situations facing several U.S. players.
Gio Reyna endured a difficult spell on loan at Nottingham Forest, one that saw him log just 235 minutes. He is set to return to Borussia Dortmund with a giant question mark hanging over his future. Goalkeeper Matt Turner struggled for playing time at the same club. Ricardo Pepi is in a slightly better situation, but he’s clearly ready to be more than just a late-game super-sub for PSV Eindhoven, even after helping them win a league title. Similar conundrums face other players in the USMNT pool.
Often there are no easy answers, but among the players and coaches ESPN talked to for this story, there seems to be a consensus: getting on the field anywhere is better than not playing. A player’s technical development, mental toughness and confidence can’t improve from the bench, they say.
A look at the stats, however, paints a different – and perhaps surprising – picture where playing time is better off viewed as an indicator of national team strength, and not a determinant. Depending on the player’s position, club playing time might not matter as much as one might think.
So, with Copa América starting soon after two warm-up games against Colombia (Saturday) and Brazil (June 12), let’s dig into answering this question: Is it OK for the U.S. team if Americans are not playing regularly in Europe, or should those players go where they can get minutes, even if it’s stateside in MLS?
DeAndre Yedlin’s career has taken him from MLS to the Premier League to Turkey and back again. He’s now at FC Cincinnati and for him, the status of a league is secondary to whether it offers playing time.
“It’s obviously great to get experience, especially if you’re a young player, to be able to train with some of the top teams,” Yedlin said. “But at the end of the day, we’re not trained to sit on the bench. We’re trained to play. So, personally for me, I think that anytime you can play it’s better than not playing.”
American Jesse Marsch is looking at the issue from a new perspective. He is now an international manager with Canada, after previously working as a club coach where he managed in the Premier League, the German Bundesliga and MLS. For him, there is a middle ground for which players should strive.
“As a national team coach, I always want players playing, but I also want people challenging themselves,” he told ESPN. “And sometimes that means you’re going to fail. Sometimes that means it’s going to be hard. But I think in the end that will teach you more than just the ability to be on the pitch.”
For former U.S. international goalkeeper Brad Friedel, the situation is more nuanced. There will always be an impulse for players to push themselves to the limit. There are increased financial benefits to be accrued when a player heads overseas, as well as the chance for national team success. But those benefits have their limits.
“If you’re good enough to play in Europe, Europe’s far better,” he said. “But if you’re sitting on the bench, you’re wasting your career away. MLS is behind [Europe], but if you’re playing in MLS, you will get better, just at a slower rate. You’ll get better quicker than if you’re sitting on the bench and just training in Europe. But if you’re starting in Europe, especially in one of the top leagues, you’ll get better far quicker than if you’re in MLS.”
So how long should a player give it a go in Europe? How long is too long to be sitting on the bench before returning to the U.S. in search of playing time?
Friedel believes that two years of riding the bench is the maximum before it becomes an imperative to leave. That comes close to describing what he endured when he was at Liverpool early in his career. The club had signed Dutch international Sander Westerveld prior to the 1990-2000 season for £4 million, then a record fee for a goalkeeper. Friedel had been given his chances prior to that, but after making just four appearances that season, it was made clear to him that he would be the No. 2.
“I didn’t want to leave [Liverpool] but I needed to go play,” he said. “I fought it out as long as I could, until I saw that point where I was going to actually be an incumbent number two. That was not me.”
For Friedel, returning to MLS – he had spent two seasons with the Columbus Crew – wasn’t really an option. The league was still in its infancy at that point. It’s a more viable option now, he says. But in this instance, he latched on with another English side, Blackburn Rovers, who had a manager (Graeme Souness) whom Friedel had worked with before at Galatasaray.
The move ultimately panned out for Friedel – he went on to become a Premier League staple, making over 500 appearances for the likes of Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur. A move back to MLS, had it been an option, however, would have put Friedel’s career on a much different path. After a player moves to MLS from Europe, he is far less likely to ever return to the upper echelons of European soccer – another factor players must consider.
Diving into the “Does club playing time matter for national team performance?” question can drive you bonkers.
Just watch: Does it matter? If you’re not playing for your club team, then you’ll be rusty for your national team. But does that mean that players are making themselves worse by playing for better teams where there’s more competition for playing time? Doesn’t the fact that these players got recruited by better teams simply mean that these players are… better?
But then… doesn’t the fact that these players aren’t playing – they aren’t chosen by the coaches who see them play every day in training – suggest that they’re actually not good enough to play for the team that recruited them? And they might actually be worse off because they’re both not as good as we thought and rusty? And the guy who never left for a bigger club is also not good enough to play for a bigger club, but is at least getting lots of game time for a smaller club and therefore in better condition to perform in whatever the upcoming international tournament is?
But… aren’t these teams constantly firing their coaches and don’t these coaches all have their own specific tactical preferences and don’t we know that lots of coaches sacrifice individual talent for talents that specifically match their systems?
I’ll stop it there, but it can go on and on and on.
The truth is that the best national teams in the world don’t really have to worry about this. If there’s an English or French or Brazilian winger who isn’t getting playing time for Real Madrid, then there’s going to be an English or French or Brazilian winger who is getting playing time for Arsenal. This is borne out in the numbers.
“Looking back at World Cup and European Championship final tournament squads since 2010, which includes 4,500 players, we can look at how many league minutes players had played the nine months prior to the tournament starting,” Aurel Namziu, senior data scientist with the consultancy Twenty First Group, told ESPN. “We tend to see that the average player played 1,764 minutes (about 20 league matches). Only 6% of players who got called up had played fewer than 500 league minutes.”
In other words, most players who aren’t playing at the club level simply don’t even get called up to the national team in the first place. That makes it tricky to actually measure whether there’s any crossover between club-and-country form. But the trend would at least suggest that managers certainly think so.
So, for the U.S. team at the Copa América, who’s coming in below the average mark? We’ll look at the outfield players from this past season and exclude all of the MLS players.
All of the defenders from the provisional Copa América roster have played at least 1,800 minutes. Among the midfielders: Tyler Adams (121 minutes for Bournemouth), Yunus Musah (1,478 minutes for AC Milan), Gio Reyna (515 combined minutes for Borussia Dortmund and Nottingham Forest) and Malik Tillman (1,639 minutes for PSV Eindhoven) all fall below the average participation and rate. And for the forwards: Brenden Aaronson (1,267 minutes for Union Berlin), Folarin Balogun (1,692 minutes for Monaco), Ricardo Pepi (484 minutes for PSV) and Timothy Weah (1,258 minutes for Juventus) all missed the mark.
There are three potential conclusions here: (1) it doesn’t matter if the players get on the field for their club, (2) these players are going to play worse in this summer’s Copa América than they have in the past or (3) this says something about the overall talent level of the USMNT pool but shouldn’t have much of an effect on how these same players play for the national team this summer when compared to how they played for the team in the past.
The most plausible seems to be the third option. Obviously, a lack of game time will affect some players more than others, but overall, it appears this just tells us that the U.S. team is filled with players who are good enough to earn minutes for teams in the Champions League and across Europe’s “Big Five” top leagues, but not many stars who can be relied upon week in and week out.
Twenty First Group has a player-rating model that looks at how many minutes a player plays, how good his team is and how much he contributes to defense and attack. So, it’s accounting for the quality of the teams the Americans are playing for but also how much they’re playing.
Per that system, the top 25 USMNT players comprise the 30th-best national team pool in the world. The U.S. is No. 1 in Concacaf and is the fifth best from all the teams in the Copa América field – behind Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia.
Fifth-best team in the field is right around where the bookmakers see the Americans for Copa América, too. That’s not, necessarily, specifically because Reyna and Balogun haven’t played a ton of minutes this season, but rather because of what their lack of minutes says about their overall effectiveness once they step out onto a soccer field.
Now, there is a position where playing time doesn’t seem to be as important. And luckily for the USMNT, it’s the role where the team is currently the weakest: goalkeeper.
Matt Turner played only 1,530 minutes for Nottingham Forest in the Premier League this past season before losing his starting job. Ethan Horvath didn’t play at all for Nottingham Forest this past season – before leaving midseason for Cardiff City in the Championship, where he played 1,440 minutes. Third stringer Sean Johnson, with 1,080 minutes for Toronto FC, has already closed in on both of them in playing time despite the current MLS season being only a couple of months old.
“Goalkeepers are an interesting case study and perhaps a position where this [playing-time] hypothesis is less true,” Namziu said. “In the data I looked at, 11% of all goalkeepers called up to final squads had played fewer than 500 league minutes. This was significantly higher than other positions, with attackers behind the second lowest at 6%. So, club minutes matter less for goalkeepers than any other position.”
This makes sense on a structural level. Every team in the “Big Five” leagues has multiple players at every position who get significant playing time, while most of them only have one goalkeeper. There aren’t many minutes to go around for goalkeepers.
At the same time, you’d think that goalkeeper would be the position most affected by rust.
Say you’re a midfielder who is getting only spot minutes for his club team. Once you get thrown out there for the USMNT, you might misplace a pass or two, not be as crisp in turning out of pressure, or whatever. But you at least have the opportunity to get enough touches to regain some of that form, while your mistakes just won’t be that important. For a goalkeeper, you’re only facing a couple of shots a game, so you’re not getting enough touches to get back into flow. And if you miss a ball or drop a cross because you’re rusty, it’s probably going to lead to a goal for the other team.
Still, there have been plenty of goalkeepers who performed well at an international tournament despite not playing much at the club level. In 2014, Argentina made it all the way to the final with a keeper, Sergio Romero, who barely had played for Monaco the season before. In 2018, Morocco and Nigeria’s keepers both played well despite not featuring much at all at the club level.
And in 2022, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Al-Owais stood on his head in their shock defeat of Argentina. He made five saves and conceded one goal, a penalty, from attempts with a post-shot expected goal value of 2.52. The larger the circle, the higher the expected-goals value of the attempt, and while purple are shots, orange would signify a goal:
Turner himself was fine in 2022 too, despite playing a whopping zero league minutes before the World Cup in Qatar. He conceded four goals from 3.44 post-shot xG. That’s right about average and comes out to just a goal per game.
However, he has been way worse than that at Forest, conceding 28 goals from 22.55 expected:
If there’s a problem for the U.S., then, it would seem less that Turner hasn’t played a minute of professional soccer since February and more that he was playing so poorly that Forest decided they would be better off if they stopped playing him.
When a player makes a decision about where to play, it will not only affect short-term stats, such as the minutes they get or how many goals they score. It will also have long-term effects on intangible factors, such as the player’s mentality and confidence.
Friedel recalls how the expectations in Europe are greater, the consequences for a bad performance, or even a bad practice, more severe, especially with promotion/relegation involved. That requires not only an immense amount of discipline, but a mental toughness to deal with the constant pressure.
“When I was at Blackburn, if we had lost to Burnley, for instance – which thankfully we didn’t when I was there – there would be a whole host of fans sitting around our cars like wanting to knock us out. Really. You have to go out with your security and that’s at a small club. Now, I’m not saying that that’s good behavior. I’m not saying that that’s the way it should be. I’m just saying that’s the way it is.”
Yedlin speaks in similar terms when it comes to the mental aspect. When he first joined Tottenham in 2014, he was a U.S. international coming off a relatively successful World Cup. But when the playing time didn’t come right away, his confidence plummeted. It took an even bigger hit when he was left off game-day rosters. He admits now that he was “quite immature” in dealing with such setbacks.
“I could feel it as a player,” he said about his lack of confidence. “Things just don’t come off like they usually do.”
It was during a loan move to Sunderland – and later with Newcastle – that Yedlin began actively working on the mental aspects of his game. He read self-help books, practiced meditation and researched the spirituality around Buddhism. He noticed that his performances suffered when he stopped doing the mental work, so it became part of his daily routine. Was it an unorthodox approach? Maybe. But it worked for Yedlin.
“The game is the game, but I think it’s so much more mental than physical,” he said. “For me, it was just learning that aspect of it. Then it started to help me as far as life goes, being a good father and husband.”
Marsch certainly knows the pressure players are under in Europe – he faced two relegation battles at the helm of Leeds United, one (2021-22) successful in keeping the team in the Premier League, and one (2022-23) that saw Leeds go down after he was let go. The players who aren’t getting onto the field for their European clubs are missing out on that high-stakes intensity, no matter how good the training environment is.
“There’s things you can establish at training, but there’s not the same level [as a game],” Marsch said. “The biggest difference between MLS and Europe is the pressure of big games and the pressure of promotion and relegation and the pressure of achieving Europa League or Champions League or whatever. I mean, these wind up being monumental moments in clubs’ and players’ and coaches’ careers that can really determine so many different things. And there’s a million variables that go into it. But you have to be on the pitch as a player, understanding that each game in every moment matters so much.”
As far as Friedel is concerned, the higher demands in Europe can lead to player growth quickly in the first few months following a move abroad, even if it isn’t immediately accompanied by playing time. But a high level of adaptation is required.
“Some technical aspects can be sharpened,” he said about when a player makes the move to Europe. “Details tactically, a player can improve. But the biggest thing is mentality.”
A move by an American from Europe back to MLS can be viewed as admission that they are done trying to play soccer at the highest level and are looking for a less competitive team environment. But Yedlin notes that transfers aren’t always purely soccer-driven decisions, especially when a player returns from Europe.
There are plenty of instances where personal circumstances drive moves back to the U.S. domestic league. Colorado Rapids midfielder Djordje Mihailovic, for instance, alluded to precisely that scenario when he returned to MLS prior to the start of this season.
But ultimately, like so many other aspects of the sport, the decision to stay or go is an intensely personal one.
“Nobody’s trying to make a decision that going to diminish their career or anything like that,” Yedlin said. “Everybody tries, I believe, to make the decision that they feel is best for that point in time.”
Thank you. reading now!
This is definitely still true for the USMNT in WC. It’s probably still true in Copa, but being roughly the 5th best team in that tourney they could possibly get lucky if some top teams get knocked out.
HEY! THAT’S MY SYSTEM!!!
A smart coach will know who is best players are, regardless of whether the are playing or not.
Sit Pulisic during his CHE years? Oh, there is a better player available?? No, there is not.
We are sitting in the stands trying to analyze players using only the info available.
Also, I don’t know how physical practices are at this level. I would hope that players not playing would work a little harder in practice to show they deserve to play, at least in the Domestic Cup matches.
Maybe the final five players on the roster, one might have to think about “has he been playing for his club?”
Maybe a player is playing because he’s on a shitty club in a shitty league. that makes him better than the other shitty players on his team, no more. Does that make him better than a guy transferred for tens of millions of dollars by a club intent on winning a top league’s trophy, a club that has done extensive player analysis before putting that much money up?
(Yeah, it’s CHE, and they have made some questionable decisions…)
My, my, USMNT runs into a sawmill.
COL has been pretty good as of late, not having lost a match, friendly or otherwise, in over two years.
Beat BRA in CONMEBOL qualifications, fer chrissakes.
After absolute embarrassment vs Colombia, this was a good game vs Brazil.
BRA are so fast with the ball. Blazing past our defenders.
Those announcers were awful.
PbP guy said the USA had won the last 18 or 19 matches against BRA, when it is the opposite.
Late in the match, Vini almost scored but he was clearly offside, color guy never mentioned it, said that was lucky for USA that Vini missed, as the replay showed him off by at least a yard, and then in the background the AR putting up the flag for offside.
Fox has the broadcast for the USA, so maybe it won’t be too bad, but not expecting it to be great.
The overturned yellow+ free kick was interesting. I think VAR was correct to suggest review as a foul there should be a red for DOGSO. I think they also got it right on now foul.
I haven’t seen a review for a suggested red cause an overturn of the foul itself before.
Yeah, the “But he got the ball” argument is invalid most of the time. This time, though, he did get ball, and the attacker tried to make a meal of it with the contact.
Not even sure if the result of the VAR Review was even allowed, though I am certainly for it. I do not keep up with the LOTG for VAR, since I do not referee matches with it.
And, looking through it just now, I do not see that a referee can reverse a foul call using VAR. Yes, he noticed the error while checking for DOGSO, but it wasn’t DOGSO, and that should have been the end of it.
I also thought Pulisic was on the line when he got fouled in the first half, though. We didn’t get adequate review angles, though maybe the VAR did and saw it clearly outside the box.
Also, were they playing on grass? That field normally has turf, and it is surprisingly not being used for the Copa; they’re using the smaller-capacity soccer stadium’s grass field instead.
Anyone got the inside story to copy/paste, please?
Seems to me an influx of new foreign-trained players is necessary. Cuz, we ain’t home-growing enough of them. we certainly have the athletes, but they are not being kept in the Soccer system.
(Standard disclaimer of quick editing, etc. Enjoy!)
Ryan O’Hanlon, ESPN.com writerJul 2, 2024, 10:45 AM ET
The USMNT has a golden generation of top players, like Gio Reyna, but it’s not nearly as good as it thinks. Bill Barrett/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF
It really seemed like they might do it.
The move started in their own half and lasted for nearly a full minute. It featured 13 passes of varying levels of intricacy, pushing the ball patiently forward, working it from left to right. An initial thrust toward goal was denied, possession cycled backward, but then just enough space appeared: A playmaker got on the ball on the half-turn between the defensive and midfield lines, slipped a through ball to the center forward, whose perfect first touch set up a cool finish past the keeper at the near post.
It’s everything we’ve wanted from the United States for years: a team-wide ability to create chances out of patient possession, someone with the vision to make the right passes around the penalty area, and a striker who would make the right runs and finish his chances. It couldn’t have come at a better time, either; it appeared the goal would push the Americans into the quarterfinals of the Copa América.
Unfortunately, the goal wasn’t actually scored by the Americans. For two or three minutes in the second half on Tuesday, Bolívia had evened up the score with Panama 1-1, while the U.S. was still scoreless with Uruguay. Gregg Berhalter & Co. were going through! Until a Uruguay goal off a set piece, followed by two more goals by Panama, and … disaster.
The U.S. came into the tournament with something like an 85% chance of advancing, and yet they just got dumped out of the Copa América in the group stages with a 1-0 loss.
But it’s not even that, really. Weird stuff can happen in international tournaments – even to the best teams. The bigger issue is the way they went out – not just losing in a must-win game at home, but only attempting eight shots and not creating a single chance of note. Uruguay is a good team, but it’s not France or Argentina.
Sure, there are plenty of questions about the coaching, but with two years to go until the World Cup and not another competitive game of real value before then, the USMNT’s golden generation seems like it might be stuck.
Let’s go back to, say, 2019 or early 2020. Simpler times for everyone, including the handful of young men who made up America’s elite soccer talent.
At the absolute top, you had Christian Pulisic. After three successful teenage seasons with Borussia Dortmund, he made the move that should frighten any international fan base: he signed with Chelsea for €64 million.
Rather than celebrating this massive fee paid to sign a 20-year-old American soccer player and what it might mean for the development of the sport in this country, or the financial well-being of the player, many fans worried about what this might mean for Pulisic’s playing time and therefore his performance with the U.S. At a notoriously chaotic club that has no problem spending €50 million or more on players at the same position in consecutive transfer windows, would Pulisic have the same starting-lineup safety he had at Dortmund?
While he struggled with injuries, Pulisic was lights-out when he was on the field in his first season in England. He ranked second on the team in non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes (0.68) and had a legitimate case as the best player in the Premier League during Project Restart, the final period of the season played behind closed doors after the campaign was paused because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With Pulisic doing this at age 20, it really seemed like the U.S. might finally have its first superstar.
In the shot chart below, orange represents goals, and the size of the circle depicts the expected-goal value of the attempt:
And then, suddenly, it seemed like the U.S. might have two. A season later, Giovanni Reyna made 23 starts for Dortmund in his age-17 season, scoring five goals and adding four assists. Minutes at a young age are the best predictor of future success and at the end of the 2020-21 season, his was among the top five for career minutes played in the “Big Five” leagues among players born in 2002 or later:
After a breakout campaign with Ajax Amsterdam in 2019-20, Sergiño Dest moved to Barcelona for €21m at the age of 19. Tyler Adams at 21 scored the winning goal in the 2020 Champions League quarterfinals for RB Leipzig and the following year played starter minutes for the team that finished in second place in the Bundesliga. Brenden Aaronson became a starter as a teenager for an FC Salzburg team that was consistently competitive in the Champions League. And in the so-called summer transfer window between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons, Weston McKennie moved to Juventus, which had signed Cristiano Ronaldo a year prior and was coming off its ninth straight Serie A title.
Throw in Chris Richards and Timothy Weah, academy products at Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain, respectively, and there was plenty to get excited about for a country that hadn’t even qualified for the previous World Cup.
Of those eight players, not a single one has hit on his best-case scenario.
Pulisic never started more games for Chelsea than he did in his first season. He continued to struggle with injuries, constant managerial changes at the club and his own poor form. It seems he has found his place at AC Milan after moving last summer, but being one of the better players on one of the better teams in Italy is some way away from the superstar it appeared he legitimately might become.
Pulisic’s 12 goals and eight assists this past season were well above his 8.0 expected goals and 4.8 expected assists – both of which are much better predictors of future performance. He’s also taking fewer touches inside the penalty area – and finding space inside the box used to be his one true world-class skill. Pulisic is a fantastic player and still easily the greatest American to ever play the game, but he’s a fringe top-100 player in the world, rather than someone pushing the top 20.
As for Reyna, well, you don’t need me to tell you, do you? OK, fine, here it is: He has played fewer minutes combined in the past four seasons than he did in 2020-21 alone. As a professional soccer player, he has barely played professional soccer.
Dest missed the Copa América with a torn ACL, and I think we saw how reliant this team actually is on his tight-space creativity to constantly move the ball upfield. He was one of the best players on one of the best PSV Eindhoven teams of all time this past season, but you’ll notice that he’s back in the Eredivisie, rather than still with Barcelona.
Adams appeared to have the potential to be a Champions League-level defensive midfielder – and I genuinely think he has reached that tier of performance at times, both for club and country – but he spent last season at a Leeds United team that was relegated from the Premier League. He’s at AFC Bournemouth now, and he has started one league game since March 2023.
McKennie continues to start for Juventus – aside from an ill-fated loan spell with Leeds in the second half of last season – and he is the closest to hitting his 99th-percentile outcome among any of these guys. But at Juve, he’s much more of an auxiliary or utility player: someone who makes runs off the ball and fills in space, rather than someone who is going to get on the ball a ton in the midfield. He helps the great players be great.
At the highest level, Aaronson, meanwhile, hasn’t shown the ability to produce much at all with the ball. He’s a fantastic presser … and that’s about it, which is a problem for an attacker. I still think about the image of him getting stoned in an open-space one-on-one by 32-year-old Daley Blind, as close to a traffic cone as there is among defenders at the highest level, during the Americans’ loss to Netherlands at the 2022 World Cup.
Weah and Richards have done well for themselves, the former getting minutes for Juventus and the latter starting for Crystal Palace. And others such as Yunus Musah, Johnny Cardoso, Joe Scally, Malik Tillman and Ricardo Pepi give the U.S. more depth than usual from players who are getting playing time at the highest levels of European soccer. But they’re depth players, not difference makers.
The only other potential difference makers we haven’t mentioned: Antonee Robinson, who came out of nowhere to become one of the best left-backs in the Premier League for Fulham. (He legitimately might have been starting for England at the Euros had he never committed to the USMNT.) But a defense-first full-back isn’t going to put the U.S. over the top in the same way that a star forward or midfielder might.
And then there’s Folarin Balogun, who went off injured against Uruguay on Monday and put up impressive shot and xG numbers in his first season with AS Monaco. But he’s still only 22 and hasn’t yet won a full-time job with his new club.
So the current state of the player pool is that it’s deeper than ever before – these are all still very successful professional soccer players – but also nowhere near as good as it could’ve been at the top. And the results bear that out.
Concacaf can’t really hang with this U.S. team anymore; the Americans’ depth is just too much. And at a major tournament, they can have some success if they have the right draw, the right opponents, or the right players in the right form. At the 2022 World Cup, they didn’t concede a goal from open play in the group stages, they drew with England and they played Netherlands closer than the score suggested.
| GP | W | D | L | GD | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 - Uruguay | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 8 | 9 |
| 2 - Panama | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 6 |
| 3 - United States | 3 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 |
| 4 - Bolivia | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 | -9 | 0 |
| 1, 2: Qualifies for quarterfinals |
But the Americans are still operating on tight margins. They don’t have enough elite players to put these matches beyond a doubt by really controlling the balance of chances. There were no dominant performances in Qatar; one more goal conceded, and they would’ve been out before the round of 16. Had one of their players, say, punched an opponent in the head 20 minutes into a match against Wales or Iran and been sent off, it seems unlikely that they would’ve been able to fade that and still get out of the group.
That’s the overarching story here, too. Weah’s stupid red card against Panama leads to a loss that almost definitely would not have happened without the red card. Without the red card, which really was just a singular event outside of any kind of tactics or game-flow, the U.S. finishes second in the group and probably goes out meekly to Colombia or Brazil in the quarterfinals.
Why do I say that? Well, the Americans just went out meekly to Uruguay in what was a de facto knockout match for them:
It’s not easy to chase a game against a top team, but this would’ve been a poor performance no matter the incentives of both sides. There were some nice moments of incisive possession and physical play in the first half, but it never led to anything dangerous. After the game, Pulisic and Robinson attributed the result to a lack of “quality” in the final third. They meant “quality” in the sense that no one capitalized on any dangerous possession in the final third. But the reality for the U.S. right now is that the potential quality we saw from this roster four or five years ago just hasn’t developed as expected.
Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of terrible national team managers out there. England is not struggling because of a lack of talent. Portugal did not nearly lose to Slovenia because its player pool isn’t good enough. The best you can say that Berhalter did this summer is, well, nothing. He didn’t make the team better, and he didn’t make it worse. He was just sort of there.
While there are legitimate questions over who the manager of this team should be at the 2026 World Cup, that’s still a secondary concern. The primary problem, the one that will have the biggest effect on how far the U.S. goes at the next World Cup, is: Can the golden generation find a way to get back on track in Europe? Or is this – what we saw on Monday, what we’ve seen for the past few years – just it?
Thank you.
A very good analysis of the players. They play in Europe but they are not superstars, many of which can be found on many nations’ teams.
But Uruguay is a pretty good team, better than USA.
