"It's going to be painful." Mauricio Pochettino isn't sugarcoating what happens when he trims 35 to 40 players down to 26 for the World Cup roster announcement on May 26 in New York. The players who don't make it won't even get a call.
Twenty-four players were used across the 5-2 loss to Belgium and 2-0 defeat to Portugal in the last two friendlies. Thirty-eight have featured across the last eight matches dating back to September. That's a wide net — and someone has to get cut out of it.
Who's in, who's sweating
Twelve players look like locks, health permitting: Matt Freese and Matt Turner in goal; Sergiño Dest at right back; Tim Ream and Chris Richards in central defense; Antonee Robinson at left back; Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Malik Tillman in midfield; Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah in attack; and Folarin Balogun up front.
Everyone else is fighting for the remaining 14 spots. That list includes roughly two dozen names:
- Goalkeepers: Chris Brady, Patrick Schulte, Jonathan Klinsmann
- Defenders: Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson, Auston Trusty, Max Arfsten, Alex Freeman, Joe Scally, John Tolkin
- Midfielders: Brenden Aaronson, Sebastian Berhalter, Johnny Cardoso, Diego Luna, Jack McGlynn, Aiden Morris, Gio Reyna, Cristian Roldan, Tanner Tessmann
- Forwards: Patrick Agyemang, Ricardo Pepi, Haji Wright, Alejandro Zendejas
Defender Auston Trusty has the right idea about how to handle the wait: "Hopefully that time with Celtic we're playing the Cup final. That's the only thing I'll be focusing on." Block it out. Play your club games. Hope the phone doesn't stay quiet.
Pulisic's slump and the reality check nobody wants
The results have sharpened the anxiety. No CONCACAF Gold Cup. Pro-visiting-team crowds in home matches. A late-year unbeaten run that briefly calmed nerves — then March arrived and Belgium and Portugal ripped that confidence apart again.
Pulisic hasn't scored in eight straight national team appearances, a career high in futility, and he's also gone without a goal in 12 matches for AC Milan since December 28. For a player whose confidence drives so much of what the US do in the final third, that's a concern you can't just hand-wave away. Clint Dempsey says he just needs one to go in. Maybe. But you're not backing Pulisic as a goalscorer right now at any price.
Pochettino was unusually direct about where his team actually stands: "Belgium and Portugal have in the top 100 players some players playing in that top 100. I think we don't have." That's a coach setting realistic expectations — or quietly preparing the country for a group-stage fight rather than a deep run. The US open against Australia on June 12, with three weeks of training together beforehand.
Portugal coach Roberto Martínez pushed back on reading too much into friendly results, noting that March internationals tell you almost nothing. He called the US "a very well-worked team." Generous, but not exactly a ringing endorsement of their ceiling.
McKennie put it plainly: "We need to figure out how to stay in the game if we don't finish chances we have early on." Getting caught up field on counters and leaving opponents unmarked at corners are the two tactical problems Pochettino specifically flagged. Those are correctable. Whether they get corrected in three weeks of pre-tournament camp is the actual question.
May 26. New York. Twenty-six names. And a lot of silence after that.
