The U.S. bowed out of this summer’s World Cup with an uninspired loss to Belgium in the round of 16, the same place it has exited the three previous World Cups in which it has played. For U.S. Soccer’s much ballyhooed “golden generation,” it was a performance that hardly shone and a sign that whatever progress the federation has made over the past two decades hasn’t gone as far as hoped.
That leaves Mauricio Pochettino, coach of the national team, in a bit of a quandary heading into the new four-year World Cup cycle. Should he continue building on a foundation that has proven to be structurally weak? Or should he raze that foundation and start anew?
Turns out the answer to both those questions is yes. Because the 28-man roster Pochettino called up for the first training camp of the new cycle is a little bit of both, featuring 13 players from the World Cup squad and 12 others making their first appearance with the senior national team.
“After the World Cup, we start to change and to see and to analyze all the players,” Pochettino said. “Players that we want to see play, that we want to work with.”
A “fresh start,” he called it.
“It’s a completely different approach than in the past,” he said. “The World Cup is in four years. We need to work with different objectives and goals. After the World Cup, it’s always about new players arriving, new players start to play. I think it’s important to give the opportunity for them to show their quality and start to build their career for the next generation.”
So veterans such as Christian Pulisic, Folarin Balogun, Weston McKennie and Tim Weah are out and eight teenagers, including precocious 16-year-old attacker Cavan Sullivan of the Philadelphia Union are in.
Pulisic, who had a disappointing World Cup, McKennie and Balogun have had the start to their club seasons slowed by injuries. Pulisic got his first start and goal of the season for AC Milan on Sunday and McKennie went 86 minutes for Juventus while Weah, playing at right back, was red-carded out of Marseille’s loss to Paris Saint-Germain and Balogun made his first appearance of the season for Monaco, playing 14 minutes off the bench Friday.
Pochettino took over the U.S. team about 20 months before the start of the last World Cup and had to race to put a roster together. So while he gave senior international caps to 62 players during that span, he hardly probed the depths of the American talent pool.
With nearly four years to prepare for the next World Cup, he has time to cast a much wider net. As a result, the average age of the 28 players called into his first training camp of the new cycle is 22 years, 9 months, more than four years younger than that of the World Cup team.
“It’s an opportunity to bring new players; players we like, with potential,” said Pochettino, who signed a new four-year contract with U.S. Soccer last month.
It’s also an opportunity to audition players for the 2028 Olympics, an age-group tournament limited to players 23 and younger on the men’s side. So former LAFC manager Steve Cherundolo, now coach of the U-23 team, will be present during much of the camp, which opened Sunday at the U.S. training center outside Atlanta.
The lengthy 16-day session will feature friendlies against Peru and Chile in September and against Mexico and Canada during the first week of October.
If there is going to be a changing of the guard from the remnants of the tarnished golden generation to something new, that will begin with this camp and Sullivan could be the one who leads it — partly because he’s not likely to be overwhelmed by the situation.
Before he turned 10, Sullivan, the youngest of four brothers born into a soccer-playing family in Philadelphia, was winning international tournaments against teams with players years older. He followed his brother Quinn to the Union, making his MLS debut more than two months before his 15th birthday, becoming the youngest male to appear in a competitive game in a major professional sports league in the U.S. or Canada.
Sullivan, who will celebrate his 17th birthday during the training camp, has seven goals and 12 assists in 24 MLS matches this season, with six of those goals and five of those assists coming in the last month.
“He deserves all the praise that he’s getting,” Pochettino said of Sullivan, who will join Manchester City when he turns 18. “He still needs to improve and to evolve and to be more mature. He’s only 16. He’s a kid. He is special.
“The most important thing is that we need to have a clear idea how to — I don’t want to use the word help — but just be with him and try to provide the best platform for him to evolve every day.”
The highest-paid and highest-profile coach in U.S. Soccer history, Pochettino had more downs than ups in his first 18 months as he struggled to adapt to the American system and the players struggled to adapt to him. But both sides found themselves on the same page during the World Cup, where the U.S. set records for wins (three) and goals (11) before exiting in a 4-1 loss to Belgium.
“We already settled the principles,” Pochettino said. “They need to know what we expect from them and how we want to create that dynamic and the buildup in that next four years.”
Still, the young players being introduced to the senior program need to know what it means to play for the national team, which is why this fall’s roster includes veterans Antonee Robinson, Tyler Adams and Sergiño Dest, who have each played in two World Cups and have more than 200 caps combined.
“We need the players to show the good examples. To show how to behave,” Pochettino said. “Not only on the field, off the field. That is really important if we’re going to build that feeling of belong[ing] to this national team.
“It’s a good mix of experience and fresh energy. A new energy.”
Whether that will bring a new result in four years remains to be seen.
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
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