USMNT Gold Cup Discussion

Point taken. On that end, my point is more that it is no surprise that high level competitors want to play high level competition as opposed to repetitive Gold Cup teams. Good catch.

 

I don't think most of those tournaments were a "pass" from the coaches.

IIRC clubs are only obliged to release players for one international tournament every summer and 2021 and 2023 had summer NL tournaments.

Not sure about 2017. I do not recall.

 

Adams, Johnny, Downs back in training

Great to see you back out on the pitch, boys. 👋 pic.twitter.com/KqWZHxcou2

— U.S. Soccer Men's National Team (@USMNT) June 17, 2025

 

The 2021 amd 2023 NL finals were held during a standard international break (for everyone). They were two games over a few days. They don't appear on the FIFA calendar as a "tournament" like Gold Cup, etc.

Clubs would have to let you go for that (as any regular window) and for your confederation tournaments under the rules.

If Berhalter and Callaghan wanted to demand players play in both in 2021 and 2023, they could have, but their quotes at the time were about the need for rest during offseason for Europe-based players.

FIFA calendar 2020-

https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/36218e9f486923d0/original/wt4ycd2y7awqfslrf8wi-pdf.pdf

 

2017 and 2021 were B team Gold Cups during WCQ and the A team does not typically play in those.

 

Understood. That's a coaches decision. And back in '17 you could make roster changes after the group round, so A teamers in MLS (Howard, Bradley, Altidore, Dempsey) came in for the knockouts, something you cannot do now.

My point was that Pulisic hasn't slogged through Gold Cup on a regular basis. He has done it once.

 

I tend to think 2017 was about the vets playing in the June Qualifiers, and the horror show Labor Day Weekendish qualifiers. and honestly, generally speaking we always sent weaker squads to the year before the WC Gold Cups that I can remember other than '02 which was same year. '05, '09, '13, '17, '21 etc. '3, '07, '11, '15, '19 were the big ones, '23 broke that streak, because of NL (was the reasoning anyway).

 

If someone is hired to coach Americans and then views Pulisic as "just another guy" because there are a lot of better non-American players, then that person is an idiot and is committing malpractice.

Also, there's no way that Poch actually views Pulisic as "just another guy," despite the fervent wishes of the more deranged sections of the fanbase who are spoiling for a fight with all our best players.

 

Its interesting that I have never seen Mexico bring a gold cup B team other than confederation cup years.

 

Puli is just another good palyer to him based on who he coached and played with.

 

That's mostly because their team is almost completely made up of players from Mexico. When have any MLS players ever taken off?

 

For anyone curious, Canada is +475 for this tournament. Seems like good value along with Panama at +1000 now (I think they were a bit of a better bet a few days ago before they kicked butt).

 

We can be fairly sure that the winner of this tournament will be one of three:
Mexico
USA
Canada

But I have been watching fairly closely and the current favorite for "Dirtiest team" is Guatemala. They have lost NOTHING in the dirty category since Carlos Ruiz (El Pescado) retired. They play dirty more to unbalance other teams than to directly win for the dirty play. And they are very good at it.
I hope against hope that the USA does not play them but, if we do, I hope the lineup is chosen more for temperament that for skill. The lowest skilled lineup we could field will beat Guatemala if we keep our tempers in check.

At least, if I read the boards correctly, if we meet them it will be in the semis or finals and I believe they are not gong that far. Dirty play will only get you so far.

 

Interesting lineup for Canada against Honduras

 

Our back line is something….
Nathan Saliba, who is soon off to Anderlecht, is having a good start to the game.

 

Part of that is probably the fact that they had their high water mark in terms of players in Europe a decade ago, I think it was probably what, 2011-2021, these days they have very very few dudes in Europe.

I think they had 3 or 4 in '23, now they have a lot more, I think 8 or so of their NL players for the NL Final this past March, but in terms of Big 5 Leagues it's just Edson, Jimenez, Vasquez and Santi, the other guys are in Greece, Russia, Denmark, Belgium and Saudi Arabia.

When you have 3 or 4 guys abroad like they had '21-'23 or thereabouts, you can call up virtually anyone, I think GC '21 and '23 they had only 2 or 3 guys that went back to Europe. This time, with 8 or 9 guys in Europe it could be different, but it wasn't, looks like 12 guys Europe based, 5 in big 5 leagues. Looks like everyone is playing in the Gold Cup, am I forgetting anyone? They definitely seem to have more ehmmm, buy in, otoh, I don't know how many of those guys are regulars beyond Edson and Jimenez. Even Santi, who I really liked, only played a touch over 2000 mins across all comps for Feyenoord and Milan.

Interesting, I started this post feeling like most of it could be explained away by the fact that they haven't had many people in Europe the last five years, and I'm ending it thinking, well, maybe they're afraid their fans would kill them if they didn't play in the shirt for off year Gold Cups?

Not exactly as intense as our 1/8th filled stadiums, and mean tweeters, but I'm sure their fans can still hope to reach our fan level of red a--ed fury in the future lol.

 

Wow, Honduras, seriously, wtf?!?!

Canada looks like the legit Canada of a few years ago, and at the Copa America. Good for them (and me as a half Canadian).

Makes that Canada +475 to win it all seem about 10x crazier than it still seemed a few hours ago.

 

Could be about 8-0 right now. Or even 8-1.........

 

Canada looks scary...

 

I am old enough to remember when it was Honduras beating Canada 6-0

*8-1

 

Nations league redirects money from the individual federations to the confederation which can then redistribute some of it to the smaller teams away from the larger “donor” nations and use the rest for their own ends.

We need UEFA to end their NL.

 

Their Euro based players too though.

They lost the 2021 NL and almost all of them went to GC iirc.

Same in 2023.

And yes they have fewer Euro based players but so what? Mexicos showed up to both and ours.

 

I gotta say, it's looking pretty ugly yet again for Concacrap's 3rd tier: the past few years its been a bit weird because Canada is so new to this level (basically since '19), but it really seems to have evolved into:

Tier 1:
US (Current form is ----, I will concede)

Tier 1B:
Mexico and Canada (I think Canada has generally been better)

Tier 2:
Costa Rica and Panama

Tier 3:
Jamaica, Honduras, T&T, whatever else.

But it's definitely hard to figure out at this point what of quality there is behind Canada, the US, Mexico and Panama. Costa Rica climbed out of the manure pile for a great run in '22, but have otherwise largely sucked. Not great . Feels like the confederation is raising the lower level boats around here and there like Cuba, and El Salvador and Curacao, and Guadalupe (until that last game), D.R., and maybe Suriname, but the traditional 3rd, 4th, and 5th best teams of the 1998-2018 era all look like ---- other than Panama who are a bit more of a nouveau riche side.

 

UEFA came up with the idea years ago and CONCACAF copied it.

 

How it was described to me is that FIFA has a rule that mandates that clubs release players for a confederation’s championship outside of the standard FIFA windows. However, because the NL semi and final was happening in the same post-season summer period FIFA ruled that players only needed to be released for one tournament. The Fed chose to designate the NL as that competition for the A team players.