ATLANTA — Now comes the wait, soccer's ultimate FOMO.
American players across the United States and Europe will count down the eight weeks until coach Mauricio Pochettino picks his 26 World Cup players.
Those bypassed won't get a phone call.
“It's going to be painful,” Pochettino said. “In that process, always you create links, no, emotional links, but it’s going to be difficult to pick 26 from 35, 40 players.”
Twenty-four players were used during the 5-2 loss to Belgium and 2-0 defeat to Portugal in the last two friendlies before Pochettino announces his roster on May 26 at an event in New York. A total of 38 players have appeared in the last eight matches dating to September.
Twelve players appear to be locks if healthy: goalkeepers Matt Freese and Matt Turner; right back Sergiño Dest; central defenders Tim Ream and Chris Richards; left back Antonee Robinson; midfielders Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie and Malik Tillman; attackers Christian Pulisic and Timothy Weah; and forward Folarin Balogun.
About two dozen others are possible: goalkeepers Chris Brady, Patrick Schulte and Jonathan Klinsmann; central defenders Mark McKenzie, Miles Robinson and Auston Trusty; outside backs Max Arfsten, Alex Freeman, Joe Scally and John Tolkin; midfielders Brenden Aaronson, Sebastian Berhalter, Johnny Cardoso, Diego Luna, Jack McGlynn, Aiden Morris, Gio Reyna, Cristian Roldan and Tanner Tessmann; and forwards Patrick Agyemang, Ricardo Pepi, Haji Wright and Alejandro Zendejas.
Players will be concentrating on their club careers and as May 26 approaches will try not to dwell on their World Cup chances.
“Hopefully that time when with Celtic we’re playing (the Scottish) Cup final. That’s the only thing I’ll be focusing on,” defender Trusty said.
Failure to win the CONCACAF Gold Cup and pro-visiting team crowds in the U.S. amped up anxiety among fans and the former-player pundit class throughout the summer, but ending the year with a five-game unbeaten streak boosted belief.
This month's losses sent skepticism soaring.
“I think we’re heading in the right direction. I think obviously it’s hard to say that we’re where we want to be with results like this, but I think that we take a lot of positives away from the games that we played," McKennie said. “We see that we can keep up. I think we just need to figure out how to be able to stay in the game if we don’t finish chances that we have early on.”
Pulisic hasn't scored in a career-high eight straight national team games and also is scoreless in 12 matches for AC Milan since Dec. 28.
“He just needs one to go in, get back on that wave,” U.S. career scoring co-leader Clint Dempsey said. “Everybody goes through a little bit of a slump.”
Pochettino cautioned that U.S. players are not as good as some American fans think they are, pointing to the latest results.
“We are USA and we are competing against Belgium, Portugal,” he said. "I think for sure Belgium and Portugal have in the top 100 players few or some players playing in that top 100. I think we don’t have.”
Portugal coach Roberto Martínez cautioned not to overanalyze the friendlies.
“I've been 10 years now in international football and what you learn is that you should never assess teams in March,” he said. “The mindset is the players are some of them to try to be in the squad, others just not to get injured because they got important games with the clubs. I think what I’ve seen with the United States is a very well-worked teams."
Pochettino pointed out his World Cup roster will have three weeks of training ahead of the Americans’ World Cup opener against Australia on June 12 and can work out issues such as getting caught up field by counters and leaving opponents unmarked on corner kicks.
“I am more positive now than before, because seeing the team compete, we are not far away," he said. "Is only details that we need to improve. When we match the opponent in the areas that we need to match, of course we are going to have the possibility to beat them.”
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