The Multi-Eligible Player Recruitment Thread (2026 WC Cycle Edition)

He announced recently that he’s going to make an announcement on his international future soon. I posted it in the old thread a few weeks back.

 

Still weird timing if that's USA. Why now, what so exciting gonna happen in the next 15 months? We might have a coach that doesn't rate him. Why not 4 months ago?

 

Doesn't make sense to me either why now, but he said he's going to make an announcement soon. Why make an announcement that you'll keep the status quo? Doesn't make sense to do that.

 

Maybe he wants to talk to each of the coaches of the new cycle?

 

Perhaps Balogun just made up his mind, but only really makes sense if you are going to announce a switch.

 

BK Häcken left-back Kristoffer Lund on his dual citizenship:

"I would be proud to represent both nations. I was incredibly proud to be with Denmark U20, but I also don't want to rule anything out in relation to the American national team."#ForDanmark #USMNT pic.twitter.com/STle7hwDcS

— Danish Scout (@DanishScout_) December 11, 2022

 

The second point is a good one. Didn't think of that angle.

If the annual U17 WC comes to pass, it will have two big effects for the US program

- odd-birth-year players will be in the YNT spotlight at younger ages

- more dual nats around the world will be provisionally cap-tied at the U17 level https://t.co/Fa0LAZRjZa

— Jamie Hill (@_jameshill) December 16, 2022

 

Cremaschi in the Argentine U-20 WCQ pre-camp. Doesn’t mean he’s made the team yet, but there aren’t that many players who won’t make it from the pre-camp.

This is very bad news. If he makes this team and they aren’t stupid enough to give him 0 minutes, he’s pretty much gone, unless he doesn’t pan out. At that point, how valuable would he even be to the US program? Maybe only a fringe player, at best.

I don’t know what we really could’ve done better. Our WCQ campaign came too early for him to make it. He’s been a fast rising prospect the past year. He likely would make our U-20 WC team, but if Argentina views him as part of their team, they have the first opportunity to provisionally cap-tie him, and it’s hard to think we win this if both nations provide the same opportunity. The only other thing I could think of is inviting him to the USMNT camp in January, but is it worth it to do that for a player who has never played one first team game?

Hopefully he doesn’t make their U-20 WCQ roster.

 

Looks like we had him in the final week-long U20 camp. Right before the U20 WC qualifiers team was decided. He also helped our U19 win the Slovenia Nations Cup, bagging a brace in a victory over Croatia.

I guess he was just either too young or not good enough for our U20 to take a chance.

 

He wasn't seriously in the U-20 picture in the summer. It was a few months too early. I think he had a few USYNT call-ups early in 2022, but just not proven enough to make the qualifying team.

 

That tells me we either missed the boat on him, or our U20 team is very strong for a 17 y.o. to make it.

 

Our U20 team is very strong.

But that said, we did have 16 year olds (now 17) on it.

 

Not a big deal. He isn't critical for our YNTs, if he becomes good enough to play for our MNT, but not for Argentinian one he will switch, if he is good enough for Argentina our chances close to zero anyway. We should see this as a training opportunity for the kid.

 

What if we want him to play for us and also be good enough for Argentina?

We should want these players to get this interest from other countries, and then decide to play for us.

If we were able to provisionally cap-tie him first, very unlikely he’d eventually switch to Argentina.

 

The kid is only going to gives us look if he fails with the albi-celeste. And if he does, maybe he is not good enough for us either. I guess, we will be his sloppy seconds.

 

Probably true at this point.

In the end, we have to be able cap-tying players like this before bigger footballing nations take up interest, and then also be able to hold onto them with the provisional cap-tie as an advantage in our corner.

In this scenario, I don't know that much could've really been done. Seems like the timing was just very unfortunate. Then again, possible Argentina leaves him out for the qualifying tournament, and then we can take advantage of that.

 

This is another situation we have to be watching. Another player where if he appears at the qualifying tournament, he's probably gone. We likely can't offer what Guatemala can, in terms of a place on the U-17 WCQ team this year. Yes, he's only 14, but one of the better prospects in the USYNT player pool. In 3-4 years, it could certainly matter a lot which country he picked.

DeCarlo Guerra '08 got a Guatemalan passport and this will enable him to play in the next CONCACAF U17 Championship. He was previously in USA U15 and U16 camps.

— Lucas Aguirre (@luksarus) December 23, 2022

 

Like we can't hold on a player if Argentian NT wants him, Guatemala won't be able to keep the ones we want.
Dest was the only exception, but Netherlands not Argentina and Dest is a very special character.

 

This kid clearly doesn't have an agent yet if he goes. I get that all these kids get stars in their eyes from being asked to play up, but holy crap, Guatemala is terrible, their federation is awful, and the future market difference between being an American national team player and a Guatemalan is ... substantial.

I'm a big fan of people going with the national team that feels right, but going with Guatemala is like joining a bankrupt company that doesn't pay its bills.

 

Sometimes, the best thing that can happen for the USYNT set-up is for a dual nat to go into camp for a lesser-light YNT. The player can discover how disorganized or underfunded the fed might be. I know that Jamaica's WNT was requiring players to pay for their own travel to camp. Players might discover they don't fit in with the rest of the team or get treated like an outsider.

And, of course, the player might love it and stick with it.

 

That's true.

I think that can often be a challenge for a 14 year old to see and understand some of those things. Same with Haiti for Bryan Destin.

 

If Guatemala provisionally cap-tie a player, it’s going to be very hard for us to find an opportunity to cap-tie that player later on, unless the player decides eventually they simply don’t want to play for Guatemala.