The US men’s national team roster for the 2026 World Cup will be unveiled on Tuesday, and according to head coach Mauricio Pochettino, the team is suffering from a talent deficit.
“We are USA,” he said after a 2-0 loss to Portugal in March, which followed a 5-2 loss to Belgium three days earlier. “And we are competing against Belgium, Portugal. I think for sure Belgium and Portugal have in the top 100 players, few or some players playing in that top 100. I think we don’t have [that].”
Advertisement
Some could argue that there are a few US players that could crack that list, but it definitely doesn’t feature a critical mass, or any near the top of it. The Guardian spoke to several current as well as former coaches, academy directors and executives about why.
***
Catching up
We can start from a point of agreement: the pool is getting better.
“I think we’re getting close to being a league or a country that produces a top-50 player,” said Pablo Mastroeni, Real Salt Lake manager and former USMNT midfielder.
“I think there’s no question that every year there’s more and more good players. Are there more exceptional players? That’s what everybody’s looking for,” said former USMNT midfielder Tab Ramos, who served as U-20 national team head coach, an assistant on Jürgen Klinsmann’s USMNT staff and US Soccer youth technical director.
Advertisement
Related: Haaland’s Norway to Ronaldo’s swansong: Who are the most likely first-time World Cup winners?
“[The ’94 World Cup squad] was nice … but those players were nowhere near the top,” said San Jose Earthquakes academy director and the club’s former manager Luchi Gonzalez, who led the academy then first team of FC Dallas and served as an assistant on Gregg Berhalter’s USMNT staff. “And now we’ve got players in the top 200 maybe, or top 300, so we’ve made progress but it’s slow progress. We got to be realistic that it’s going to continue to be slow progress.”
The challenge, then, is how slow progress plays in a global scene where, unlike the US women’s national team, the American men are chasing the standard rather than setting it, aiming for a constantly moving target.
“It’s not a time trial, and to show improvement, you’ve got to be accelerating faster than other players around the world,” said Sunil Gulati, the former president of US Soccer.
Advertisement
“Certainly, in a lot of ways, we’ve made strides,” said former USMNT manager Bob Bradley. Bradley…
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at …