With key USMNT stars Tim Weah and Christian Pulisic unavailable this summer, Pochettino has turned to Major League Soccer for help.
America’s oft-maligned domestic league is a surprising boon for Pochettino, with three of the top USMNT players of his tenure — winger Diego Luna and strikers Patrick Agyemang and Brian White —hailing from MLS. They made the cut with 12 other MLS players and a handful of up-and-coming American stars plying their trade around the globe.
Here are the key takeaways from Pochettino’s surprising roster:
The USMNT is still managing its way through an injury crisis
We knew Weston McKennie (Club World Cup), Yunus Musah (personal reasons), Josh Sargent (“footballing reasons”) and Christian Pulisic (got a bit tired) would miss the Gold Cup. But those high-profile absences were expected to be countered by high-profile additions, including the returns of Antonee Robinson, Sergiño Dest and Folarin Balogun from long-term injuries.
However, Robinson, Dest and Balogun, after appearing in Pochettino’s 60-man preliminary squad, failed to regain their fitness and will miss the Gold Cup.
These are big misses for the USMNT, and they cannot be backfilled with like-for-like replacements. Pochettino must experiment with younger, rawer talent in their absence.
MLS is running the USMNT’s midfield for a change
Seven of the nine midfielders Pochettino selected for the Gold Cup came up through MLS. Five of them — Vancouver’s Sebastian Berhalter, Philadelphia’s Quinn Sullivan, Houston’s Jack McGlynn, Salt Lake’s Diego Luna and San Diego’s Luca de la Torre — still play in the league.
That’s a wild switch-up from the way things were under former USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter. He called up plenty of MLS players, but he tended to leverage them in defense, not in the center of the park. Not one MLS player made Berhalter’s USMNT midfield during the 2024 Copa America. What a difference one year — and one coaching regime change — can make.
The Philadelphia Union’s academy is doing heavy lifting
Most MLS teams have built-out youth academies, but not all of those academies are created equal. The Philadelphia Union’s program stands head and shoulders above the rest, and this USMNT roster proves it.
A whopping seven players — Matt Freese, Nathan Harriel, Mark McKenzie, Quinn Sullivan, Jack McGlynn, Brenden Aaronson and Paxten Aaronson — came up through Philadelphia’s academy. The program, led by longtime Philadelphia scout Jon Scheer, generated more than 30 percent of the USMNT’s squad for the Gold Cup.
These seven USMNT players are just the tip of the iceberg for Philadelphia’s academy. Its most famous product, 15-year-old wunderkind Cavan Sullivan, is still too young to feature for the USMNT but not too young to sign an eye-popping contract with England’s Manchester City. We’ll see Sullivan crack these USMNT lineups in a few years.
The USMNT will play friendlies against Turkey (Saturday, June 7) and Switzerland (Tuesday, June 10) before kicking off its Gold Cup campaign on June 15 against Trinidad and Tobago in San Jose.
