2026 World Cup (very) early roster predictions

Not sure why xbkhrghx keeps just posting random shit off twitter

 

I'm convinced that whether its Big Soccer or "random dude on twitter" there are people that like to have somebody nobody else does in a roster prediction. You're trying to show how "in touch" with the pool you are. "OH, I know this guy you don't!!" By the time you're proven incredibly wrong, everybody has forgotten your prediction anyway.

They're right about one thing. Some guy on this roster will seemingly come out of absolutely nowhere. A guy nobody is talking about right now. [If anybody is telling you that in early 2018 they predicted Matthew Turner would make the 2022 WC team, they're lying.] So they're just guessing on who that might be. It could be.........................Matthew Corcoran. There. I've done one too.

When it comes to goalkeepers we have huge turnover between U17s to even U20s,........much less to the senior USMNT. So it doesn't really matter that Diego Kochen is the starter for our U17s. How many combined U17 caps did Turner and Horvath have? Zero.

Actually, we can get this out of the way. The U17 national team is a horrible predictor of future national team involvement. U20 is a much better predictor (except for the elite stars like Pulisic that skip the U20 level altogether). 11 players from our 2019 U20 team have senior USMNT caps. Most of the rest are solid professionals like Alex Mendez, Chris Durkin, Edwin Cerrillo, etc. etc.

 

There's a typo here, its Radrigo Nori

 

Also Jedi will be mad to find out his doppelganger from France, Antonne

 

Given the French talent at well...every position, that's a dual nat recruitment we can win.

 

Member the early roster predictions for 2022 back in 2018?

----------------------------Gonzalez/Hamid/Steffen-------------------------------
Chandler/Yedlin-------Miazga/Trusty-----Brooks/CCV-----Antonee/Bello
-------------------McKennie/Carleton----------Adams/Parks--------------------
Saief/Taitague---------------Pulisic/Hyndman-------------------Weah/Akale
----------------------------------Wood/Agudelo-------------------------------------


Ah, happy days!

https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/2022-wc-roster-prediction.2082361/

 

Musah is a good player that may never be as good as Reyna is now.

 

Predicted roster from Herculez Gomez

.@USMNT 2026 World Cup way too early Roster #FutbolAmericas

Who’d I leave out that should be on? #USMNT @espnplus @SebiSalazarFUT pic.twitter.com/4SaG8e2cSB

— herculez gomez (@herculezg) December 28, 2022

 

Seems reasonable. Sure to be wrong.

That's basically the current pool.

There's always a ton of turnover in a pool over 4 years.
Look at the USMNT's turnover from the 2019 Nations League to the World Cup roster. Now add even more time to that.

Our U20 national team is kicking butt and taking names. Absolutely walked thru the U20 CONCACAF Championships. We just had a player who couldn't get into that U20 team accept a callup to Argentina for their CONMEBOL U20 Championships instead. That's the amount of talent in that group. So much so that they walked thru qualifying without Pepi, Paredes, Cowell, Gomez, and other eligible players. All of our youth teams are crushing it, actually. Watch our U17s at the upcoming U17 CONCACAF Championships. Thos are kids that'll be 20 for the 2026 World Cup.

I think somebody like Herc knows there's a kid who is currently 15-16 that will make that roster. its just sort of impossible to predict who that will be. Cruz Medina? Who the hell knows? I see rosters with people picking a guy like that, and I understand the thinking. They'll likely be wrong, but I understand the thinking. You gotta pick one. Recently in this thread people have picked Diego Kochen and Rodrigo Neri? Why? I guess because they have big clubs next to their names. Not because they've seen them against adult professionals and think they'll be great. Its just as likely to be Micah Burton of Austin than it is to be Rodrigo Neri.

The 2026 team won't be the current pool with one or two new faces.
Not because the current guys will decline. Its that the talent wave that started with Pulisic/Adams/McKennie will continue unabated. And those kids will be just as good OR BETTER than the existing group.

The one guy I see everybody picking that I'm not sure is actually that good........................is Jonathan Gomez. And I say that as a person who watched him a lot at the FCD academy. I see Tolkin week-in and week-out. I think he's better than Gomez. Right now at least. I don't know if either will make the 2026WC roster. But that's another "Euro team next to his name" selection over a domestic guy.

 

Very reasonable but probably too conservative.

Guys will emerge, get injured, fall off etc. But it’s hard to know which ones. Feels like his roster has very little in terms of speculative picks. Which is very reasonable, but some guys who we consider speculative now are definitely going to end up on the 2026 roster.

 

To make the page take longer to load and jump around more, and to increase everyone's level of frustration with it?

 

It's always interesting to see these predictions. At the moment, there's nothing that looks strange about it at all. Totally believable. But it's almost certainly going to prove to be 50% wrong.

 

im not sure why its so hard to accept that this will very likely be an outlier (following an outlier) in terms of roster turnover between cycles.

having missed a world cup we had exactly one player who was on a previous wc roster, and if you start the clock on this (past) cycle at berhalters hiring we only had a half dozen holdovers from the final final round of qualifying last time in the pool.

we started at as close to zero as you can. the 10-12 average (i have no clue what the number is) changes isnt applicable when we just changed 25 of 26. we arent starting from zero again.

johnson, ream, long and zim are likely age-related losses, but the rest will be the fringe guys. theres no reason to think our core 12-14 players are going to be replaced. then you can add in guys who just missed out (steffen, richards, m rob, pepi) who are likely to be very close again, if not definitely in.

let me put it this way- we arent going to have more than 3 guys under 20 on the next wc roster. this cycle, this roster was the result of 7, 8 years of teenagers. the next 3 and a 1/2 isnt going to replace them- theyre going to replace guys like yedlin and de la torre. and the longs and zimmermans are going to be replaced by mckenzies and epbs, not 3 youth cbs.

but jedi or wes? unless there are some serious injuries/issues (which, granted, can happen) theres no reason to think theyre going anywhere. we are gonna be real lucky to find one guy who can back up jedi, two guys are going to pass him? yall are just looking for things to say...

 

I’ll give it the percentage that Fulham remains a top half team in the PL over the next 4 years, and they can thank Tim Ream as the center piece of their defense to get them there.

In other words, I’d say to Ream, “sure, the door is still open to you. But I’m not going to make or break my defense around you. And other center backs are going to get their shot too.”

 

If Tim Ream is still getting caps in 2026, that would make him the oldest capped USMNT field player in history (narrowly beating out Fernando Clavijo and Preki who were both 38 when they were last capped -- in a very different era). I appreciate the attitude, but I can't see it happening.

 

Copa America '24 is a realistic goal for Ream.

 

These predictions are pointless.

Doesn't mean don't make them, we're fans.

But pointless in that there's gonna be 3-5 players who develop and come out of nowhere who make the team. And there's no way to account for those players yet as they're 17/18.

Then there's gonna be the cycling out of depth.

I'm not longer all that interested in the MLS vs Europe debate but here's my prediction.

There will be at least one current Euro academy player and one current MLS academy player, both under 18 years of age as of now, who are key pieces by 2026 for the NT.

 

Guys from Qatar I expect to be there:

1. Pulisic. No doubt, unless injured. He's our best player, and I bet he'll still be our best then. 100%

2. Weah. Strong growth curve, smart, fast. With 3.5 more years of experience, he's going to be very good. 90%

3. Musah. Another guy who is growing fast. 100%

4. Adams. DM is a position where the peak is only reached in the late 20s. Adams is only going to get better. 80%

5. Wright. I think he's the one who may come good. Not extraordinary, not even very good. Just good. 70%

6. Antonee. His problems can be solved with experience. 70%

7. Dest. But he may be there as a winger, or a proper wingback. Or even a wide forward. 60%

 

The population of potential UCL big league/team regular in their teens level players is very small. The subset of “more likely than nots” within that, much smaller. I think those dynamics play out in all population groups. Those differences are meaningful because the things that move a player from one group to another are meaningful. It doesn’t mean that a player from the lower level group can’t surpass a player from the higher level. Those players exchanging ultimate position does not mean that the original differences weren’t meaningful either.

On an absolute value level Pulisic produced more value for the team than Adams because he was an effective, productive attacker. If Adams had those same, valuable, rare skills he would be played higher up or would likely be succeeding for a team with more demands of their CM/DM. If he had them he would have been rated higher as a young player because they have to be acquired/present early on. However, Adams has done a better job of getting the most out of what he does have than Pulisic.

Remember, it’s upside AND probability. To circle back to what @butters59 asked: we have high upside youth/early pro guys but we don’t have high upside guys who have a high probability of coming good early. We have enough volume and hopefully enough of that volume in good spots that someone in that group likely will come good. It’s just hard to predict specifically who. Somewhat the same deal with high upside “late bloomers”. Because these players don’t have undeniable skill sets they have a greater need to find the right situation (like Adams with RBNY, RBL, and Leeds) and then do a good enough job of learning how to employ the talent they do have.

 

Am I still talking to the guy who gave Pulisic a C?

I think Pulisic probably created more value in the World Cup than Adams given the nature of the position, but I don't agree with the idea that he's on another level than Christian in terms of overall performance and value.

The point I was trying to make is that I don't think that the subset of prospects with a reasonable upside a Pulisic-Adams level for their position is defined by what you can see at 14 or 15. There are plenty of top players who were not this level of prospect at that age, whether within the American pool or the worldwide pool.

More definition occurs as players age, of course, and the players who develop after any point gets smaller and smaller, of course. But a player doesn't need to be a Pulisic-level prospect at 14/15 to reach Pulisic-levels. We have more than enough data to prove that false. And I'd argue it's more true for pretty much any position but winger/outside attacker, which tends to have a lot of skills young (i.e. one on one dribbling). Virgil van Dyke didn't become Virgil van Dyke until his mid-20s, for example.

I just think we get far too definitive about players far too young despite a good amount of evidence to the contrary in both directions (failing to meet expectations and wildly exceeding).

As for the 2026 roster, I do think most of the changes will come from 2003s and older, with only a few chances for younger roles. But that's also because I do expect some players to progress and take a strong step forward in their early 20s -- perhaps a Ledezma, a Taylor Booth, A Daryl Dike.

But, I mean, Benjamin Cremaschi just came out of nowhere at 17. I have no idea how good he is, but he's good enough to be considered by Argentina to play up a cycle. He'll be 21 in 2026.

 

I think McKennie has a VERY high ceiling. He’s maddeningly inconsistent and still has real holes, but yeah he’s got super-club talent. I don’t moderate my expectations for him.

Pulisic was MOTM @ the Bernabeu in that semi. It was the most significant club performance from an American in our soccer history. He’s not Ballon D’or level but the man’s a killer. The guys he jockeys with on that side for time aren’t shite players.

Adams is a one-trick pony and he’s not Casemiro. One can already be one of the greatest American mids ever and not a MC/PSG/BM/RM/Barca/CFC level player. Those rumors are BS. I could, perhaps, MAYBE foresee him as a bit player for United, but nothing higher than that.