USMNT depth chart & predicting Poch's March roster
It's last chance saloon for USMNT hopefuls with the final set of friendlies before the World Cup
A little over three years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2022 World Cup, I made a decision to pull back on my coverage of the US men’s national team. Looking back it's a little bit strange, right? USMNT stuff had always been a huge traffic driver on the site and MLS’s relationship to the national team felt more important than ever. The league was producing more and better players through the academy pipeline, more of them were jumping to big clubs abroad, and the whole thing looked like proof of concept.
This was the sort of healthy and competitive developmental ecosystem we'd all dreamed about when MLS launched back in 1996, and then when the academy initiative started a decade later. What better way to show the project was working than by pointing at the success of the national team, and the torrent of MLS-developed players pouring into it?
But the simple fact is that, folks, I was burned out. The thrill was gone.
By the start of 2023 I’d been writing about the USMNT for 15 years before I got the job with MLS, and then another dozen for the league site. And the writing was only part of it: there were podcasts and live shows and short clips, and of course on top of all that I’d spent countless hours arguing about the team on Twitter, and before that on BigSoccer, and before that on the old Soccer America Graffiti boards, and before that on a freaking email list.
It was too much. Somewhere along the way, my poster’s soul had withered and juuuuust about died.
It was also, in retrospect, a good time to step away and not have to be part of the discourse, because:
- The US had already qualified for the 2026 World Cup! Lower stakes. Less urgency.
- It sure looked like the same group was locked in for another run-through, which meant there’d be less to learn on a camp-by-camp basis.
- …that was the exact moment the Reynas* tossed a hand grenade that blew the whole damn thing up anyway.
(*) I’m not absolving Gregg here. I remain stunned he went to that event and aired internal locker room politics.
