With the benefit of hindsight, 2024 will be remembered as a year of needed transition for the U.S. men’s national team. This September provides the first chance to move on from the team’s failure at the Copa América.
Although the program has moved on from former head coach Gregg Berhalter, this reunion comes under interim leadership. Mikey Varas will oversee a squad of mainstays and fresh faces as U.S. Soccer works to finalize a contract with Mauricio Pochettino.
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This summer also saw several crucial United States internationals fail to improve their club situations before the transfer window closed. From players unable to secure upward moves to others still toiling in bench roles, it’s worth questioning the overall caliber of the pool’s top end. However, these four players (and others) have landed on Varas’ squad thanks to strong consistent play at the club level. Against Canada and New Zealand, they’ll hope to bolster their cases for greater inclusion in the months and years ahead.
Among the most frustrating situations in the recent transfer window, Matt Turner failed to find a move away from Nottingham Forest that would result in consistent starts. Instead, he’s gone from third or fourth on that club’s depth chart to backing up Dean Henderson at Crystal Palace. It’s a far from ideal scenario for the 30-year-old, who hasn’t been a regular starter since February and may again struggle to maintain form between international windows.
From a USMNT perspective, there haven’t been obvious and viable alternatives for the position since Turner was dropped last winter.
Columbus Crew’s Patrick Schulte could challenge Turner for starts based on form and potential alike. The 23-year-old parlayed a clutch turn during the Crew’s run to winning MLS Cup 2023 into a starting spot at this summer’s Olympics, backstopping the United States U-23s to a quarterfinal showing.
Schulte leads all MLS goalkeepers — not just domestic options — with a +33.7% goal prevention rate, far ahead of the league’s average this season of 6.7%. For comparison’s sake, that approaches Turner in 2019 (+38.3%) and 2020 (+35.6%), and is ahead of Turner’s rate of +15.7% when he won goalkeeper of the year in 2021.
Schulte is also used to playing out from the back under Wilfried Nancy, while his 46.1% completion rate when passing at least 35 yards ranks 5th this season. (Turner had a 42.2% rate with New England from 2019 through 2022.)
Many will focus on Diego Kochen’s presence on the roster, as the FC Barcelona II teenager makes his first senior international squad. Don’t overlook Schulte, though — he could pose a threat to Turner’s spot atop the depth chart between now and the 2026 World Cup.
While the USMNT pool has plenty of options at center back, few have cemented places in the first-choice squad. Tim Ream started all three games at the Copa América, but the veteran is a month shy of his 37th birthday and a succession plan is long overdue. Beyond Ream and Chris Richards, other alternatives have been unconvincing since the 2022 World Cup.
When Auston Trusty first moved from the Colorado Rapids to Arsenal, it elicited memes of staying within the Stan Kroenke family conglomerate. However, the move has done wonders for the 26-year-old. A loan spell at Birmingham City and a year with Sheffield United earned him a summer move to Celtic. Although he hasn’t yet debuted for the three-time reigning Premiership champion, he’ll slot in next to Cameron Carter-Vickers as the duo hopes to bolster their USMNT chances in tandem.
Although Sheffield United were relegated from the Premier League, Trusty logged 32 appearances and 2,573 minutes in the world’s stoutest circuit. Playing for a perennial title favorite should allow him to showcase his abilities under far less duress, especially the left-footed defender’s passing acumen that often shone brightly during his time in MLS.
It’s a congested position, but one lacking viable prospects — so much so that Olympic men’s coach Marko Mitrovic used two of his three over-23 slots on central defenders for the Paris Games. That doesn’t bode well for the program’s mid-to-long-term future, but it keeps the door open for Trusty, Carter-Vickers and others to keep making their case.
Marlon Fossey, right-back, Standard Liege
Long among the program’s deepest positions, the USMNT is concerningly thin at right-back. That much was laid bare this summer, as Sergiño Dest’s ACL tear left Berhalter with a scarcity of alternatives ahead of the Copa América. Joe Scally struggled mightily throughout the tournament but is still in line to top the depth chart until Dest returns. With DeAndre Yedlin and Shaq Moore rotated in and out over the past two years, Bryan Reynolds still playing at Westerlo and Reggie Cannon’s career in limbo amid a contract kerfuffle, the door is open for alternatives.
Enter Marlon Fossey, something of a post-hype sleeper, to borrow fantasy football parlance. A promising member of Fulham’s ranks from 2009 until 2022, the 25-year-old has spent the last two seasons enjoying regular starts with Standard de Liège. Fossey has logged 3,850 Pro League minutes for the Belgian club in just over two seasons and has played all 540 minutes of their campaign this season.
Marlon Fossey with the assist for Standard Liege 🤝🇺🇸
pic.twitter.com/wlDdErWA1d— 🇺🇸USMNTvsHaters (@USMNTvsHaters) August 4, 2024
The Los Angeles-born right back is a capable ball carrier, with his 2.72 progressive carries per 90 minutes ranking in the 80th percentile of all full-backs in FBref’s Men’s Next 14 Competitions. He has increased his crossing volume since moving to Belgium, sending in an average of 2.7 crosses per 90 minutes since the start of 2023-24. FBref assesses his most comparable full-back peer to be… Kristoffer Lund, who broke into the senior squad late in Berhalter’s tenure and is also part of this September’s roster.
It’s unclear how high to set expectations for Fossey, as he plays for a lower-half club in a competition beneath Europe’s highest standard. Still, his move into the senior national team has been long-awaited, and he has rounded out his game considerably over the past two years. With Dest expected to not return until 2025, Fossey could have a few chances to impress and stick around the USMNT.
Aidan Morris, center midfielder, Middlesbrough
Central midfield has been an area of strength for the program since the dawn of Berhalter’s tenure. However, that once-unimpeachable stature has looked increasingly unstable following the 2022 World Cup.
It’s far easier to say “MMA” than to keep all three of Weston McKennie, Yunus Musah and Tyler Adams on the field at once. In particular, Adams has struggled to stay fit since his final months with Leeds in 2023. Although Johnny Cardoso has become the team’s backup defensive midfielder, there’s still a scarcity of obvious alternatives in more advanced roles — especially as Malik Tillman and Gio Reyna look more at home when playing close to the forward line than in the heart of the park.
With Adams and McKennie unavailable for this camp, Varas will have the freedom to construct a midfield from scratch. Aidan Morris will likely see meaningful time, and it’s wholly deserved in his current form. Morris had a storied if brief tenure with the Columbus Crew, rising from the academy in time to start in their 2020 MLS Cup triumph before becoming a first-choice option in ensuing seasons. Morris again won MLS Cup in 2023, this time as a central cog in Nancy’s eye-catching juggernaut.
Morris made a $ 4 million move to Middlesbrough this summer, instantly working into Michael Carrick’s teamsheet for the new Championship campaign. He hasn’t struggled with the transition whatsoever, even as his distributive role in two similar possession-based systems has changed.
Morris continues to do a lot of the short-distance engine room distribution that made his partnership with Darlington Nagbe so remarkable in MLS. What he has yet to tap into since moving to England is his knack for slinging long diagonals toward the flank — a ball that Christian Pulisic and Tim Weah long for with the USMNT.
Morris is the only midfielder at this camp who wasn’t a regular under Berhalter, the first of a rising wave of options from the youth ranks. While his transfer ruled him out for the Olympics, that tournament reinforced that Tanner Tessmann and Gianluca Busio are ready for senior team looks. That doesn’t factor for many other options like Jack McGlynn, Benja Cremaschi, Cole Bassett or Daniel Edelman.
If Morris can impress in this camp and retain his form in England, he should have an inside track to stick around for a look under Pochettino.
(Top photos: John Dorton / Getty Images)
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