Pre-match: 2026 World Cup Roster

You are correct he was still recovering form the hamstring injury suffered in the US October camp.

 

Dreaming of getting on the final World Cup roster for your nation, and being a host nation at that, to then get injured months ahead of the show. Maing!
Take it easy Patrick.

Chris Henderson was on Gansler's Italy1990 team, as a college kid no less. He was then left off Bora's roster for USA1994. I do not recall if that was due to Bora or Henderson having picked up a knock just prior to USA1994, just odd he got left off if not due to injury. I mean Mike Burns got on that team of Bora!
Also, imho the biggest injury loss heading into a World Cup was when Clint Mathis got clipped early on in league play just months before the 2006 World Cup and Arena did not select him. That 2006 roster just needed Mathis to be the spark the on the field players were not reflecting their 2002 success.
Like the others you correctly mentioned above, it appears each World Cup some potential final roster player gets an injury and misses the World Cup.

 

Eddie Johnson left off 2010 roster, despite playing and scoring goals in Greece.

Gregg Berhalter left of 2010 roster despite winning supporter's shield with LA Galaxy.

Michael Parkhurst, Clarence Goodson, Joe Corona, Maurice Edu, Terrence Boyd were all left off 2014 World Cup team.

 

EJ getting left off in 2014 given his production in WCQ was gut renching.

 

Conor Casey 2010 had 2 goals against Honduras in WCQ clincher, but left off.

 

Whoa! Good call brother! Conor Casey was not a Donovan or Dempsey but in international play he was a tough, hard nosed #9 yet with an obedient first touch and a nose for goal. However, Bob Bradley picked Robbie Findley over Conor Casey. Sheet!
Also, if anyone of us watching that game, Honduras away in WCQ there in the Fall of 2009, still when ESPN or Fox did not purchase the away game rights thus most soccer junkies could not have access to that match, my buddies and I, several of us are IT geeks, we hung a big bed sheet and a projector with a lap top, got some Iraqi feed and watched that match! Years later, all USMNT matches are available on some cable channel or local feed for free.
We used to have a thread on our boards, from decades back, it was titled When will soccer arrive in our nation, lots of great banter and locker room jokes populated! And here we are, soccer is so strong in U.S. sports talk.

 

I accept we'll never have a Cruyff, or a Van Persie, but I felt like a Wout Weghorst brace was well within Big Pat's abilities...

 

The schedule for this WC is going to allow time for players to get "match fit" during the group stage. Having a week between games may really help in that regards.

 

Absolutely, and worthy of noting in comparison to Qatar that had the shortest breaks inbetween matches I've ever seen (I believe because it was hosted during the winter break, and so FIFA basically truncated the tournament a bit, check my #'s on that, but I believe it was consistently 3 days between group stage matches, more typical is 4, and this time I think its 5 or 6).

 

Brian Bliss was on the '90 squad and was likely to make it in '94 but wrecked his knee just before the roster was announced.

 

Findley was brought with the "idea" that we could plug him in Charlie Davies' spot after Davies' injury and not change anything else tactically. He managed to replicate Davies' speed but unfortunately wasn't 10% of the soccer player

 

I think the best I have ever seen our national team was from June-October 2009, from the Egypt game in South Africa through the Honduras game when we qualified, the Conor Casey game. The Charlie Davies era.

 

Stood outside O’Brien’s Pub in Kearny Mesa with about 200 other people to watch US-Honduras. I remember one Honduran dude climbed a tree to see the tv.

 

I vividly remember watching that game on closed circuit in a Honduran restaurant here in Palm Beach County Florida.

The crowd was very nice to me(in my US jersey and hat), but I left quickly and quietly nevertheless…

 

Charlie Davies...what could have been . I'm a huge fan of his, hate his injury situation happened for him.

 

I believe that to this day Findley remains the only USMNT player to start a World Cup match (let alone 3) while playing in MLS despite never even, at a minimum, making an MLS All-Star roster around that time (or ever).

I believe Roy Wegerle in '98 is the only other MLS-based player who never made an All-Star roster, but he was at least playing in the Premier League for part of that cycle.

 

Wegerle was also beyond washed by the time he came to MLS, including at that WC

 

Bob had his system in place, and was trying to substitute Findley for Charlie Davis as they looked smilarly. That was a major failure as Findley couldn't play soccer at all.

 

It was our bad luck that Findley peaked club wise in the run up to that WC (15 goals in all comp in '09, he'd only come as close as half of that in any other season (8 one year including playoffs). So it's understandable, speedy dude coming off a career year age 24/25 that season, looked on the up, even moved to England after that (to NF down in the championship).

But yeah, he was basically just grabbing hot hands, herc had a career year around then too, so he grabbed the best goal scorers basically he could find and hoped for the best.

 

Findley played a role: he ran fast to open space for the attacking talent. That was the best Bob could hope for. There was no depth in that 2-striker system. Starting Rico Clark in the Rnd16 match against Ghana was the real failure.

 

Losing CD 9 was probably the saddest and strategically most horrible thing to happen to the USMNT pool.........ever. I think more than a few of us remember how potent that CD9 lineup would have been........it was incredibly exciting. Charlie had murderous speed and it could have made us real killers.

Younger me really dragged Bob for clinging to that, but I get why he did..........what we had was magical. He tried to replicate it. Its hard to fault him for that. Bringing Ching......which I guess in hindsight would have been the right call, would have fundamentally altered a posture we had adapted to since the confederations cup.

 

Davies's career-altering injury was such an unforced error. Ching was a nice MLS back-to-goal center forward. Nothing more. Even without Davies, the US took Ghana to overtime. Had Bob gone with Edu over Clark for the Ghana match, the US would likely have been through.

 

With all the recent talk about the front edge of the defense as well as Big Pat's injury, this article might explain some of Pepi's playing time for Poch. For the US, he did come in and force the second goal against Belgium with defense, but we also know Poch listens quite a bit to the club coaches:

https://www-espn-nl.translate.goog/...l=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp

 

But also you have a decently long pre camp with two friendlies also.