Mauricio Pochettino has named a 28-man United States squad for a window containing four friendlies to be played across the country, and the selection amounts to a hard reset: 13 of the players called in could make their senior debuts in the coming weeks. The headline name is Cavan Sullivan, the 16-year-old Philadelphia Union midfielder who has been chosen for his first senior call-up and is poised to make his US debut.
Sullivan’s form made the call difficult to ignore. The Union academy product forced his way into interim coach Ryan Richter’s lineup after MLS’s World Cup break and has six goals and five assists in 1,368 league minutes this year. He is joined in the squad by two club teammates, defenders Neil Pierre and Frankie Westfield, with all three sharing a first senior camp together. Sullivan turns 17 on 28 September, two days after the USMNT’s opening friendly against Peru and on the eve of their second, against Chile. Should he see the field, he would become the fourth-youngest player to represent the United States, a record still held by Freddy Adu.
Pochettino was careful to temper expectations around the teenager. “He deserves all the praise,” the coach said on Thursday. “The important thing is … to be with him and to try to provide a solid pattern and support, because still he needs to show [what he can do], and needs to improve, and needs to evolve, and needs to be more mature. He’s only 16, he’s a kid, but I think the most important is that we have the opportunity now because he deserved to join us in the national team.”
Several members of this summer’s World Cup squad have been omitted to make room for the youth movement. Christian Pulisic misses out after a slow start to his season with Milan, where he has been a bench option for Ruben Amorim. Weston McKennie is absent as well, having missed most of Juventus’s young season with muscle fatigue, and Folarin Balogun also drops out, probably because of a lack of minutes following his failed transfer to Everton.
Pochettino framed the omissions as a deliberate break from the past. “I think we need to change the idea a little bit, everyone to say ‘no, that name need to be here because of the past performance. No, no. It’s a fresh start. It’s a new cycle,'” he said. “Of course, all [players] have the door open, but now it’s not what [they] did in the past … Yeah, but now it’s about today. Football is about today. Soccer is about today, and that is the way that we want to build that process in this cycle.”
Experience has not been discarded entirely. Nine selections arrive for this window with at least 30 senior caps: defenders Chris Richards, Miles Robinson, Antonee Robinson and Sergiño Dest; midfielders Tyler Adams, Yunus Musah, Malik Tillman and Gio Reyna; and striker Ricardo Pepi. Eight of those players were part of Pochettino’s 2026 World Cup squad, while Musah has been called up for the first time since before the 2025 Gold Cup. Other World Cup returnees include goalkeepers Matt Freese and Chris Brady, defender Alex Freeman, and Auston Trusty and Sebastian Berhalter.
Beyond Sullivan, Pochettino has picked out several more of the country’s most promising prospects. Zavier Gozo could debut after leaving boyhood club Real Salt Lake for Crystal Palace this summer, while 18-year-old Peyton Miller, a possible future left-back currently playing right wing in New England, is also on the squad. Two uncapped goalkeepers join Freese and Brady: 20-year-old Diego Kochen, a Barcelona product earning starts on loan at Lyngby in Denmark, and 25-year-old Brian Schwake, the backstop for runaway MLS favourites Nashville SC. A pair of Red Bull New York homegrowns are included too: Polish-American dual national striker Julian Hall, MLS’s top-scoring teenager with nine goals, and 17-year-old midfield anchor Adri Mehmeti, a regular in Michael Bradley’s lineups.
Other first-time selections come as a greater surprise, though few anticipated how wholesale Pochettino’s changes would be from this summer’s 26-man roster. Justin Ellis is a 19-year-old attacker who has thrived operating off new Orlando teammate Antoine Griezmann. Borussia Dortmund product Mathis Albert has often split billing with Sullivan for the claim as this US generation’s top prospect, but has still not become a regular with the German club’s reserve team. Brooklyn Raines, a 21-year-old midfielder for New England, could become the third US international to hail from Liberia; Doc Lawson became the first with his three USMNT caps in 1979, while Darlington Nagbe represented the US on 25 occasions.
The introduction of so many fresh faces is also being done with an eye towards the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Steve Cherundolo, who earned 87 caps with the US before winning MLS Cup as Los Angeles FC’s manager, will lead the U-23 team that summer. Olympic rules allow teams to field three players above the age limit, and a bevy of dependable young options affords the coach the chance to use those over-age picks to maximise the team’s potential rather than filling gaps, as Marko Mitrovic had to do at Paris 2024 by using two of his three over-age picks on centre-backs.
“It’s an agreed opportunity to bring in new players, players with potential, with the possibility to spend more time training, more time together,” Pochettino said. “When we were talking about extending [my] contract, the federation asked to help a little bit to build [the roster] to arrive to the 2028 Olympic Games, working very closely with Steve [Cherundolo], with the under-23s, with all the youth in the federation, to try to build that experience. To ask them to arrive to the Olympic game with the possibility to have that experience that can provide a gold medal. That is the objective of the federation. It is the objective of everyone, because [this] country loves the Olympic Games, and we know that is going to be really important for soccer: to be sure that we are going to present a very competitive team.”
The full squad:
Goalkeepers: Chris Brady (Chicago Fire), Matt Freese (New York City FC), Diego Kochen (Lyngby Boldklub), Brian Schwake (Nashville SC).
Defenders: George Campbell (West Bromwich Albion), Sergiño Dest (PSV Eindhoven), Alex Freeman (Villarreal), Peyton Miller (New England Revolution), Neil Pierre (Philadelphia Union), Chris Richards (Crystal Palace), Antonee Robinson (Fulham), Miles Robinson (FC Cincinnati), Auston Trusty (Celtic), Frankie Westfield (Philadelphia Union).
Midfielders: Tyler Adams (Bournemouth), Mathis Albert (Borussia Dortmund), Sebastian Berhalter (Middlesbrough), Zavier Gozo (Crystal Palace), Adri Mehmeti (Red Bull New York), Yunus Musah (Milan), Brooklyn Raines (New England Revolution), Gio Reyna (Strasbourg), Malik Tillman (Bayer Leverkusen).
Forwards: Cole Campbell (Elversberg), Justin Ellis (Orlando City), Julian Hall (Red Bull New York), Ricardo Pepi (PSV), Cavan Sullivan (Philadelphia Union).