In the eight years since the United States men’s national team last met with the portion of its fan base that remains dormant between World Cups, that had no reason at all to abandon its hibernation in the summer of 2018 when the USA missed out, there has been an extreme amount of abnormal activity involving the players in the program.
Sergino Dest started for FC Barcelona in the iconic Camp Nou stadium, then did the same for AC Milan at the equally sacred San Siro.
Brenden Aaronson left the Philadelphia Union to become one of the best players for RB Salzburg’s back-to-back champions in Austria’s top league, then turned that into a $34 million transfer to England’s Leeds United.
Weston McKennie became Cristiano Ronaldo’s teammate for Italian power Juventus.
Tyler Adams scored the winning goal for Germany’s RB Leipzig in the UEFA Champions League quarterfinals, and he later was acquired by Leeds United for $17.6 million.
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Ricardo Pepi, the most promising young American striker, was sold at age 18 for $20 million to a team in Germany’s Bundesliga. (OK, maybe we shouldn’t bring up that one).
And Christian Pulisic, now present in every television commercial that doesn’t feature Progressive pitch-person Flo, was an essential player for Chelsea in its run to the 2021 Champions League title. After helping the Blues to finish out their upset victory over Manchester City in the final, he carried the trophy around the field in a U.S. Soccer sweatshirt.
This is not how it used to be, not how it’s ever been for American soccer. These players are going places and accomplishing things that never had been done by USMNT players. And so as they get set for their opening game of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, Monday at 2 p.m. EST against Wales, it only seems natural to wonder: If all these players playing in amazing places, shouldn’t this be the best U.S. men’s team ever to appear at a World Cup?
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“In advance of the World Cup: Yes,” Alexi Lalas, lead studio analyst for Fox Sports coverage of the tournament, told The Sporting News in answer to the question.
“I would justify it by the overall sentiment relative to the places some of these players are playing, the age, how young and successful they already have been. And finally the depth: When [manager] Gregg Berhalter comes out with a roster for a U.S. men’s national team game, there is an incredible amount of debate and consternation within the American soccer community as to what he got right and what he didn’t, let alone when he actually comes out with a starting 11.
“That’s a good thing, because it means there are other options. There is a depth of quality and talent out there. So I am optimistic. I’m not even cautiously optimistic. I am very optimistic about this group given all of that.”
Does more Americans in Europe mean a better U.S. team?
When Adams appeared in the Champions League semis, he became only the second U.S. player to do that, following DaMarcus Beasley at PSV Eindhoven 16 years earlier. Pulisic (below) came along the following year and made it two in consecutive seasons.
Adams and Aaronson are starting and playing essential roles for Leeds United, one of the most exciting teams in the Premier League, though not always one of the most successful. Yunus Musah, who had multiple national team options and chose the U.S. after a successful recruitment by Berhalter, is an important player for Villarreal in Spain’s La Liga. Tim Weah has won a French Ligue 1 championship with Lille.
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"This team has grown in so many ways since this first transitional period happened,” Fox Sports analyst Maurice Edu told TSN. “The result in the Nations League final: They're the underdog and they beat Mexico. That gave this group confidence. They're already a confident group of individuals, but now as a team they felt like 'We can actually do this'. And then they got another result in Gold Cup.
“All that means nothing if you go to the World Cup and you don't perform. But I think they'll feel confident. A lot of these guys have played in big games for some of the big clubs they've played for. I think the other part is the growth of Gregg [Berhalter] as a manager. I think going from a club team to a national team is a completely different scenario and challenge [for him] ... How do you get the best of the players in a short period of time?
In his book, “What Happened to the USMNT”, author Steven Mandis uses the number of rostered players in England’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga, Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga and France’s Ligue 1 as a metric to indicate the level of talent and performance on each of the seven U.S. teams that qualified for the World Cup starting in 1990.
There were no players in top-5 leagues on the 1990 squad, only one in 1994 and five in 1998. Of the 26 players on this roster, 13 currently are competing for teams in top-5 leagues, and forward Josh Sargent spent all of last season in the Premier League before his club, Norwich City, was relegated to the second-tier Championship for 2022/23.
That’s the most top-5 league players the USMNT ever has fielded in the World Cup, ahead of 12 for the 2010 World Cup. Coach Gregg Berhalter could have increased the total of top-5 league players by inviting striker Jordan Pefok, who is playing this season in the Bundesliga for Union Berlin. But Pefok didn't make the final cut.
The guys Berhalter did choose earned 19,462 minutes in top 5 leagues last season, and that figure was diminished by injuries that limited Pulisic at Chelsea and Giovanni Reyna at Borussia Dortmund, among others, but still nearly equivalent to the total registered by the 2014 World Cup team. Reyna only was able to appear 439 minutes in 10 games for Dortmund last season. He’s close to surpassing that in roughly a third of this season.
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When Americans began breaking into the top European Leagues more regularly a couple of decades back, it often was at mid-table teams or those fighting relegation. One of the more memorable moments for USMNT fans came when Clint Dempsey scored to save Fulham from being relegated from the Premier League. He spent six years there and helped get the club as high as eighth in the league and once to the Europa League final. He spent one year at Tottenham, finishing fifth with Spurs.
The presence of Pulisic at Chelsea, McKennie at Juventus and Dest at Barcelona — he’s currently at Milan on a one-year loan — marked a significant change in that regard. These have been elite clubs for decades. The Americans' presence with these powers can be viewed as mitigated by recent struggles to gain extensive playing time, but they were not brought there lightly. Together, it cost $110 million to acquire them.
“I think there’s a lot to love. Never before have we had a group quite so young flood so many top European clubs,” John Strong, Fox’s primary World Cup play-by-play voice, told TSN. “As much as the red flags exist that it’s going to be the youngest team there, none of them have World Cup experience … and there also have been examples, including Alexi’s 1998 team, where we’ve gone to a World Cup and said, ‘Look at the collective individual talent!’ And it didn’t translate.
“What I would say is this particular group is maybe more battle tested than we’ve given them credit for.”
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In 2002, midfield maestro Claudio Reyna — Gio’s father — was playing in the Premier League for Sunderland, John O’Brien with Dutch power Ajax and forward Joe-Max Moore was a regular at Everton. But nearly half the team played in Major League Soccer.
By 2010, there were far fewer MLS players on the roster, only four, but five players were playing in less prominent European leagues and such players as Ricardo Clark at Eintracht Frankfurt and Oguchi Onyewu at AC Milan were playing little to not at all at their day jobs.
Those teams both performed at the World Cup, though, with the 2002 group becoming the first to play in the quarterfinal of the expanded tournament and the 2010 team winning their group over England.
“This U.S. team — there’s no comparison to any previous U.S. team in terms of the number of players playing for top European clubs and UEFA Champions League,” soccer journalist Grant Wahl of GrantWahl.com and the Futbol with Grant Wahl podcast told TSN. “And there’s depth for the U.S.
“There’s always caveats; these guys are young, so they haven’t experienced as much in their careers as previous U.S. teams. None of them are really stars on those Champions League teams. And I do think carrying the weight and pressure of being a star, the best guy on the team, that’s important to have experienced that. But I also think against any opponent they face at the World Cup, they will have no fear.”
The USMNT is ranked 16th in the world, somehow three spots behind the Mexico squad they’ve beaten three of the past four times they played, all in serious competition, including twice in regional tournament finals last in 2021.
MORE: Watch every World Cup match live with fuboTV (U.S.-only free trial)A full-strength U.S. squad defeated Mexico in the CONCACAF Nations League final in June 2021. A USMNT roster that included only six players now in Qatar defeated a stronger Mexico side (12 current World Cup players) in the Gold Cup final in August 2021. Against opponents who will appear in this World Cup, the Americans are 8W-4L-4D dating back to the start of 2021.
Another problem for the U.S., though, is the Mexico games represent too great a portion of their most challenging preparation. Because of the introduction of the Nations League in Europe, teams such as England, Germany, Spain and France aren’t as available for friendly competition, and because of COVID-19, travel wasn’t feasible for most of 2020 and some of 2021.
When the U.S. played their final World Cup prep games in June and September, they faced World Cup squads from Morocco, Uruguay, Japan and Saudi Arabia. The games proved to be plenty challenging, but facing a squad as accomplished as England in Group B — the English reached the semifinals of the 2018 World Cup and the final of Euro 2021 — figures to be a daunting step up in competition.
"Just because you're at these clubs doesn't guarantee you anything,” CBS sports analyst and former national team striker Charlie Davies told TSN. “If anything, these players learned throughout World Cup qualifying you can play against Honduras or El Salvador — and most of those players on those teams are playing in their domestic league — and you're getting a 0-0 draw. It's not easy. Nothing's given.
"I think it's exciting for us to look at these young players and say, 'Yeah, they play in Champions League' or 'they play for Juve and Chelsea and Dortmund' and this is a normal thing now. But at the same time you still have to prove yourself every day, and Christian Pulisic has learned that the hard way. At the top clubs you can be bought for $75 million, but you're still not playing.
“I think for this group, as they get older, they start to get that experience of figuring out how to maximize your potential and how to earn that success because it's not given even if you play at the biggest clubs."
Best USA World Cup team ever? Maybe not
For all the individual talent that has developed mostly through the U.S. youth national teams into the senior team, particularly with the abundance of attacking wingers and midfielders, there are significant gaps in this roster, including at several of the most important positions.
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“There is a lot of potential, so if you’re hedging your bets, you’re going to say, years from now, this was the best team,” ESPN lead soccer analyst Taylor Twellman told TSN. “However, if you take the question for what it is (Is this the best U.S. World Cup?), I don’t remember the last World Cup the U.S. didn’t know who their starting goalkeeper was. I don’t remember the last World Cup the U.S. went in and didn’t have a goalscorer. You know what I’m saying? So right away, I’m looking at it and saying: Oh, hold on here.
“I think there’s a ton of question marks, and I don’t know if it was the best team that you’d have that many questions.”
Whether it was Kasey Keller, Brad Friedel or Tim Howard, from the 1998 World Cup through 2014, the USMNT had goalkeepers performing at a high level at the highest level of professional soccer. Current keeper Matt Turner is with Arsenal in the Premier League, but he is a reserve and has played primarily in early round cup games.
The U.S. does not have a clearly identified striker; Jesus Ferreira, often viewed as the player Berhalter is most likely to use in that position, started only twice in 14 World Cup qualifying games and scored four of his seven international goals in a single CONCACAF Nations League game against overmatched Grenada. Josh Sargent and Haji Wright, the other forward contenders, have a combined three goals in 18 caps. Pepi who started for much of qualifying and has three senior national team goals, was not chosen for this team.
In 2006, Landon Donovan arrived in Germany having already scored 25 international goals. By 2010, Clint Dempsey had scored 18 goals and had been named the Bronze Ball winner at the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup, where the U.S. was runner-up. By 2014, Jozy Altidore had 22 goals for the U.S., one of them a brilliant strike in 2009 to help end Spain’s 35-match unbeaten streak.
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Twellman did not even cite the uncertainty in central defense on this 2022 team; Walker Zimmerman of Nashville SC has established himself at one position. But his preferred partner, Miles Robinson, was lost to an achilles injury. Chris Richards, the most likely replacement for him, also will miss this World Cup with an injury. The U.S. could go with Tim Ream, a 35-year-old vet performing well in the Premier League who was considered a tad slow for international soccer when he was younger. Or they could use Aaron Long, who was developing into what Zimmerman has become before a torn achilles impacted his progress in 2021.
“Yeah, in terms of Champions League you have more players,” Dempsey said of this team. “But if you're not one of the main players for the team you're on, you're just coming on for 15 or 20 minutes. Is it better, per se, to be like Tyler Adams or Brenden Aaronson who have played Champions League — not now — but they're playing week in and week out and they're playing consistently. And I'd argue that trumps just being in the Champions League and featuring in games.
“I think it's disrespectful to say that they're the best team when they're all 23 and younger. Yes, they have a lot of talent. Yes, they could be one of the more skillful teams. But you put our 2010, 2014 team — I think we stack up very well and do well for ourselves. Not to take anything away from them — and you're only going to be graded by what you do in the World Cup and that will be the true test — but I think that's a little disrespectful I think for people to feel that way."
Because of the failure to qualify in 2018, only one player on the roster has appeared in a World Cup, right-back DeAndre Yedlin. Had the U.S. managed a draw in Trinidad back in October 2017, it’s likely such players as Adams, Pulisic and McKennie would have made their debuts at Russia 2018.
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As it stands, this is the most inexperienced team on a world stage the U.S. has fielded since the 1990 squad qualified for the first time in 40 years. That had an impact in qualifying, when the team earned only a single victory on the road.
“It doesn’t matter if they’re realistic, the expectations are what they are,” Strong said. “Gregg Berhalter, from day one, from his first camp in January 2019, the first bold bullet point he put to the players, let alone to us, was: We’re going to change the way the world thinks about American soccer.
“Which, at the same time, can be taken as: We’re going to change the way sports fans in the U.S. think about the men’s national team in the aftermath of missing the [2018] World Cup. ... People have strong opinions in a negative sense of what happened before [in 2018], people have a hype and an expectation of what this group has done and some of the stars and some of the ways these kids have come into these big clubs. So it doesn’t really matter if the expectations are realistic. They need to be met.
“If you’re going to move the needle, if you’re going to change the way people think about this team at home and abroad, well, then, you have to perform at the World Cup.”
