USMNT must completely rebuild the senior team after missing World Cup

After failing to qualify for the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the U.S. men’s national team have time to regroup and reevaluate the senior roster.

The dust has settled on the unbridled disaster that was the U.S. men’s national team’s 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign, and it was not a dream: the USMNT are not going to the World Cup for the first time since 1986, courtesy of a catastrophic loss in Trinidad and Tobago, a last-second Panama win over Costa Rica and a fluky Honduras win over Mexico. It was a perfect storm of unfortunate performances, dodgy goals and results fully befitting of the notoriously ridiculous CONCACAF region.

We know, of course, that a lot more went into the U.S. missing out on the World Cup than unlucky games or the cursed date of Oct. 10. There’s much to be said about the myriad structural failures of U.S. soccer — Neil Blackmon’s analysis is a good place to start — but here we’ll focus on the current state of a player pool that has to be revamped, almost certainly under the leadership of a new manager and completely new regime.

This current pool of players is talented and capable of competing with the world’s best, even if it lacks players in their prime. The task of the next manager, whoever it is, will be to decide how best to assemble the squad that will eventually start the (*sighs sadly*) 2022 cycle in 2019.

To do this, they’ll have to phase out both veterans whose times have passed and mid-20s players who were never really good enough, and then sift through the youth on the verge of international ability. That’s what we’re going to do today. Position-by-position, we look through the players who will be swept away and their replacements as the senior national team completely rebuilds.

Out with the old

We’ll start with a final, definitive run-through of the guys who probably should be phased out in the next few months or years. Note that while a lot of these guys would be starting in a first-choice U.S. XI today, or would have gone to Russia next year, this team isn’t playing any competitive games until 2022 qualifiers. Time to drain the swamp, if you will.

Goalkeepers: Tim Howard, Brad Guzan, Nick Rimando

The keeper’s list pretty much speaks for itself.

Defenders: DaMarcus Beasley, Geoff Cameron, Omar Gonzalez, Matt Besler, Tim Ream, Graham Zusi, Michael Orozco

This is entire crop is aging out of international capability, even if Geoff Cameron still starts for a Premier League team and DaMarcus Beasley will play forever. DeAndre Yedlin is the only member of the back four that started against Trinidad and Tobago who should feature in the team long-term, while 28-year-old Jorge Villafana could be useful for a couple more years. 

Midfielders: Alejandro Bedoya, Benny Feilhaber, Sacha Kljestan, Dax McCarty, Joe Corona, Gyasi Zardes, Chris Pontius

Bedoya and McCarty are a great players and one of them definitely should have started against Trinidad and Tobago, but the list of central midfielders coming through the pipeline is long, and they’ll combine for 70 years of age in 2022.

Feilhaber and Kljestan are also done, and Gold Cup/January camp guys like Corona, Zardes and Pontius should probably be overtaken unless one of them really shows off with their club. Michael Bradley will stick around because he’s a machine, but there may be a problem if he’s still a starter in 2022, when he’ll turn 34. 

Forwards: Clint Dempsey, Chris Wondolowski

Bring Deuce back so he can have a shot at Landon’s record and so he can have a nice home curtain call, but after that leave it to the others. And Jozy Altidore is a huge contributor to this team and by no means was in contention to be on this list. There’s no legitimate argument he doesn’t have more to offer this team. 

Next: The best under-20 player on every MLS team

In with the new

This is a vast list of potential new contributors, or at least contributors who haven’t been regular starters. The January Stars, if you will. Everyone from Kellyn Acosta to Sebastian Lletget to Tyler Adams is included. Some players who will still be around (Bobby Wood, Altidore, Bradley, Yedlin, Villafana, Christian Pulisic, Paul Arriola, Darlington Nagbe, John Brooks) aren’t included — not because they won’t be involved but because we already know who they are and what they offer. Also, no U-17 players, because hold your horses.

Goalkeepers: Ethan Horvath, Bill Hamid, Jesse Gonzalez, Sean Johnson, Zack Steffen

The current goalkeeping crop isn’t particularly impressive. It lacks a can’t-miss prospect and there’s been little opportunity to see most of these players in action. But this is a pretty talented MLS-heavy group, and Horvath seems to be settling in well with KAA Gent in Belgium.

Left-backs: Brandon Vincent, Danilo Acosta

News flash: nobody is confident in the American left-backs. Chicago’s Vincent is really good, though, and he looks a player who could eventually start for this team.

Don’t sleep on RSL’s Danilo Acosta, either.

Center-backs: Justen Glad, Erik Palmer-Brown, Cameron Carter-Vickers, Matt Miazga, Walker Zimmerman

The U.S. are good at developing center-backs. Glad and Palmer-Brown are top-tier, and Miazga and CCV are at least good enough to be signed by two of the best clubs in the world.

Right-backs: Matt Polster, Tyler Adams (?)

Polster, Vincent’s Fire counterpart, should be Yedlin’s backup for the foreseeable future. As for the uber-talented 18-year-old Adams, he’s a natural defensive midielder or No. 8 who’s playing as a shutdown right wing-back for the New York Red Bulls, so his future position is yet to be determined.

Central midfielders: Weston McKennie, Adams, Jonathan Gonzalez, Cristian Roldan, Kellyn Acosta, Marky Delgado, Sebastian Lletget, Wil Trapp, Jackson Yueill, Tommy Thompson

This is a crowded spot, clearly. McKennie starts often for Schalke in the Bundesliga, which puts him high on the priority list, but Gonzalez is playing well in Liga MX, and a diverse contingent of MLS talent, led by Acosta, is beginning to emerge. There’s much to be excited about here. 

Attackers: Jordan Morris, Haji Wright, Luca De La Torre, Brooks Lennon, Sebastian Saucedo, Jonathan Lewis, Juan Agudelo, Lynden Gooch

This all-encompassing category features mostly wingers with a big-name striker featuring prominently: Morris, who could also end being a winger. Hopefully more clear-cut prospects will emerge out of this group and in general, and maybe we’ll see U-17 standouts Josh Sargent, Andrew Carleton and Timothy Weah earn chances soon.

The U.S. will hopefully start scheduling as many friendlies as possible to get good glances at a lot of these players. This is something like the lineup I’d like to see if the U.S. were to play tomorrow: 

The truth of the matter is the U.S. aren’t going to play a competitive game until 2019, and have all sorts of time to look hard at who they have. That means they should be trying a lot of things and a lot of players, and making definitive decisions on who stays, who goes and who enters. Those decisions will shape the fate of the program for years to come.