The USMNT's Summer Of Experimentation

Thanks to injuries and exhaustion, the USMNT is back where it was four years ago.

It's funny how things work for the USMNT, if you pay attention to enough cycles (which is an admittance of how old one is, so I'll write the rest of this while resisting the urge to dig a hole in the woods). Four years ago, a year out from the World Cup (plus a few months thanks to the delayed start in Qatar), then-manager Gregg Berhalter told his European-based players to take the summer off, and a MLS-laden squad would take on that summer's Gold Cup. That squad would then win the damn thing, beating a mostly full-strength Mexico in the final. Thanks to that performance, players like Miles Robinson, Walker Zimmerman, Matt Turner, and Kellyn Acosta became key parts to the full US squad for World Cup qualifying, for varying amount of times (had he not gotten hurt in the summer of 2022, Robinson would have certainly been starting in Qatar).

Now this summer. Thanks to FIFA trying to crowbar the Club World Cup into our lives and making certain USMNT players unavailable (we'll get to that later in the week), Christian Pulisic's exhaustion from being the only useful part of AC Milan, injuries to Sergino Dest and Antonee Robinson, USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino is now turning back to MLS for this summer's Gold Cup roster.

The vibes are certainly different than they were four years ago. That 2021 US team had some good juju, coming off a Nations League win, and everyone in that team was still fresh-faced. They were all young, and they were all turning over the program from the disaster of missing out on 2018 and coming out of the pandemic. This time, the Yanks completely biffed the Nations League in March, and fans have become accustomed and, in some cases, weary of the same faces they saw in 2021. Weston McKennie's attention span can be questionable, Tim Weah just isn't the threat he once looked, Tyler Adams can barely stay on the field, Gio Reyna is only a theory at this point, and it's unclear what Yunus Musah actually does.

But that doesn't mean this summer can't be as beneficial as that 2021 ended up being, and that's thanks to MLS being in a far different spot than it was then.

Saturday's friendly against Turkey is instructive, especially if we look at perhaps the best player in the game, Jack McGlynn. McGlynn is a trigger-happy attacking midfielder who likes to play with the ball and can be highly creative. While he came up through the Philadelphia Union system (which generates players at a ridiculous rate) he had become a player that didn't really fit into the Union's get-it-the-fuck-up there seven-seconds-or-less attacking system. McGlynn would like a little more time to create. He would just do better in a team that wants more of the ball.

Even just two years ago, to make that happen, the Union probably would have had to wait for a Belgian or Danish club or something of that ilk to come in and pay a small fee for McGlynn. A trade within MLS wouldn't really work. There wouldn't be TAM or GAM or whatever other -AM to make it worthwhile, and players on McGlynn's level in a straight-swap would be hard to identify. Now, thanks to in-league transfers being allowed, Houston could toss $3M at Philly and get McGlynn into a system where he fits much better and he will play a lot. That's better than heading to a second- or third-tier European side where he would be climbing uphill to even get into the team while dealing with the complications of moving to a new country.

The game's other standout from Saturday, Luca de la Torre, is on loan at San Diego this season from Celta Vigo. This wasn't a total mercy loan either, as de la Torre racked up 2,000 minutes for Celta in '23-'24, but saw San Diego as a viable option when he wasn't used as much this past season. He's now the anchor for the Western Conference's second-best team (it doesn't say much for MLS's quality when once again an expansion team is lighting up the West, but let's save that for another time).

The good thing for players like McGlynn, or de la Torre, or Diego Luna, or Malik Tillman (not MLS), is that they play in areas that have vacancies in the full squad. It wasn't all that long ago that the US's midfield would have been considered the hardest place to break into. But now, it's basically Adams (if he's healthy) and then nothing else is for sure. McKennie just can't be counted on to care, and what he does best is still up for debate. Musah has stagnated. Reyna has to prove that he actually exists.

Playing on the opposite flank of Pulisic can still be a competition as well, given that Weah has kind of played all over the field for Juventus and not all that regularly. Especially if Pochettino wants his fullbacks to maraud, an out-and-out winger like Weah might not make as much sense as someone who can tuck in like Luna or McGlynn. If Poch wants to play with more of a #10, well, Reyna abdicated that long ago and that spot is open to someone like Luna. It's just not what Pulisic does.

There's certainly a fair amount of panic that the full-strength US team is now out of competitions to play together before the World Cup, and all that's left is a handful of friendlies in the fall and spring before summer '26 arrives. It's really hard to know how much urgency players would have put on the Gold Cup, after they've all played in a World Cup and Copa America and are Champions League regulars. They certainly didn't give a fuck about the Nations League, and it's hard to argue that in the middle of the European season that they should have.

Using the Gold Cup to give lesser-used players and MLS players to ball out is a far better use, because the USMNT has generally lacked a middle and bottom. If Poch gets two or three players who can be effective subs come the World Cup, that's worth it by itself, instead of sending on Brenden Aaronson to run around a lot with no particular direction. He could get much more, as Berhalter did four years ago when using the tournament the same way.

He's got a better canvas for it, given the steps MLS has taken since 2021. McGlynn, Luna, Freeman are playing in a better league week-to-week than James Sands, Sam Vines, or Gianluca Busio were playing against in 2021. It's a summer more of experimentation than it might have been otherwise, but that doesn't mean it can't be beneficial.