USMNT depth charts for a friendly fans would care about

I made my Kickback Committee debut this week! For those of you unaware, Soccerwise has expanded/merged and is now part of a larger effort, called Kickback Soccer Media.

• Kickback Committee is a new pod1 hosted by Susannah Fuller (née Collins).

• There’s a newsletter you can sign up for HERE.

• First Touch is the community outreach arm of the org.

• Claudia Pagan is doing a Global Soccer Scroll on social.

• They are all over BlueSky and Insta.

Obviously I know and am friends with many of the people involved, and so I want you to support them. But also, I want you to support them because while everyone else seems to be building with an eye towards 2026, and monetizing around that, these folks are building for what comes next.

They are trying to make sure that US soccer as a whole is in a better place over the next four years than the past four. Give them a follow

Ok, here’s the link to the show (go to 13:20 for the relevant part re: this blog):

The bit is “Hear me out!” and the idea is that you propose something off-the-wall that you think would improve US and/or Canadian soccer. And my suggestion is that one of the upcoming friendlies for the USMNT should be replaced with an intrasquad scrimmage between the Europe-based players and the North American-based players.

That’s it. That’s the only way to get the toxicity – which we’re all sick of, and which I think is killing interest in the program – out of the air. I’d certainly be much more interested in that game than any of what’s actually on the schedule.

In the interest of completeness I made three-deeps (four in some spots) for both teams. Here’s the Euros:

Obviously there are some executive decisions in here in terms of who’s where both on the depth chart and on the field (I would always play Pulisic on the right wing).

This team is very strong in the heart of the midfield, but very week in goal, and not as good at CB as you’d think.

Here’s the North American group:

Again, some executive decisions here: Jackson Ragen is 100% a starter, and we finally get to see Cristian Roldan as a 6 for the USMNT. I really want to see Andrew Gutman on the overlap, and if we’re going to be a team that builds out of the back – be it under this coach or the next – it’s time to pay attention to Justin Haak.2

I still have Luca de la Torre as a starter. I’ve maybe made a mistake not having Luca Bombino on my 3-deep. I don’t love Paxten Aaronson3, but glad he’s going to get plenty of time at his best spot to prove me wrong. Max Arfsten is a winger, not a fullback (though he performed credibly in that spot at the Gold Cup after a rough start). I should maybe have Djordje or Luna starting at the 10 with the other at left wing and McGlynn coming off the bench.

I’d pay a lot of my own money to see this game. I think it’d be fun, and there’s not much about the USMNT that has been fun lately.

… I wrote a bit this week on teams that desperately need to make transfer deadline moves. At the time I said that Colorado needed a playmaker to replace Djordje, and while I knew they had one lined up, I didn’t know it’d be Paxten.4

It’s a good fit, in that Aaronson the Younger is a pressing maniac just like his brother, and that works in Chris Armas’ system. He’s also young, which means he has some unexplored upside, and was productive with 9g/6a for FC Utrecht on loan last year.

I am hesitant for the reason listed in the footnotes. But the theory here is good.

… The theory has also been good for Toronto, who’ve absolutely cooked this summer. Their moves have netted them Djordje and now Jose Cifuentes, a pair of proven, 26-year-olds to build around in midfield. They’ve also grabbed almost $1.5m of GAM, and have cleared the path to playing time for a cadre of young domestic players who are already producing (DeAndre Kerr, Malik Henry and Jules-Anthony Vilsant, to name three).

Now, this won’t mean a ton if they recruit over and marginalize those guys, as they’ve done in the past. But my hope is that they’ve looked around and seen how the sustainably good teams in the league – Seattle, Philly, RBNY, even Miami and LAFC to an extent – have optimized roster slots 9-25 via internal development and realized they can do that, too.

Thanks for reading ARMCHAIR ANALYST: TACTICS FREE ZONE! This post is public so feel free to share it.

With the quarterfinals in the books and the semis once again featuring four MLS teams, I have some thoughts about the Leagues Cup:

• The new format, in which every game to this point has been MLS v. Liga MX, was good.

• Virtually everyone took the competition seriously,5 which you’d expect given the prize money (substantial) and the CCL berths. It produced a lot of intense, dramatic soccer, and six of the eight quarterfinalists are among the very best teams in the region.

• Homefield advantage matters.

• Mid-season advantage matters more.

That last point… my theory for a long time has been that MLS and Liga MX clubs are basically equal, with the pronounced (though shrinking) Liga MX edge attributable to the fact that they’ve already got a month of league soccer under their belts when the CCL starts, while MLS teams start that tourney literally in the middle of pre-season.

With Leagues Cup it’s not exactly reversed – the Apertura was two weeks old before this tourney began – but it’s definitely the MLS teams who are in mid-season form and the Liga MX sides knocking off the rust.

And so, after three years 11 of the 12 total semifinalists have been from MLS. I’m sure the powers that be will put their heads together and think on what exactly that means for future editions.

And finally, RBNY are on Sunday Night Soccer this week, heading down to Deportivo Charlotte and once again in desperate need of three points. My preview of that game will be published on MLSsoccer Thursday sometime around noon. You can find it smack on the homepage, or in my column archive HERE.