USMNT’s post-World Cup youth wave wins four straight without Christian Pulisic

The United States men’s national team completed the first international camp after the 2026 World Cup with four consecutive victories — 4-1 over Peru, 4-2 over Chile, 3-0 over Mexico and a 1-0 win over Canada — with Christian Pulisic absent from the squad, Leander Schaerlaeckens writes.

For decades U.S. men’s soccer has often been framed around a single, forthcoming star rather than a collective present, a pattern traced back in this piece to managerial choices and public expectations across generations. Bob Gansler’s decision to leave seasoned veterans at home for the 1990 World Cup in Italy is cited alongside his remark, “I was thinking not only for ’90, but I was thinking about the 90s.” Steve Sampson’s 1998 prediction to the Washington Post — “In 10 to 15 years, we’ll win the title, there’s no doubt about it,” and “When we Americans decide to do something, we’ll see it through.” — is used to illustrate that long-term optimism. The article recalls the youthful breakthroughs of Landon Donovan and DaMarcus Beasley in 2002, Clint Dempsey’s emergence after 2006 and Freddy Adu’s 16-year-old debut in 2006 as part of the same recurring narrative.

Christian Pulisic, who emerged as the leading figure in recent years, had been cast as the player expected to deliver at the 2026 World Cup, the supposed culmination of an eight-year rebuilding project. The piece revisits his intervention at Qatar 2022 — “throwing himself in front of a cross at the expense of a pelvic contusion but bundling the make-or-break winner into the Iranian goal” — and contrasts that with his home World Cup in 2026, described as a bust aside from a strong first half in the tournament opener and an overall U.S. campaign that “ended with a whimper.”

Mauricio Pochettino, in the first camp after the World Cup, introduced a substantial youth infusion, calling up 13 debutants and eight teenagers. That selection was followed by emphatic results: 4-1 and 4-2 wins over Peru and Chile, respectively, a 3-0 victory over Mexico described in the article as a “merciless” result, and a concluding 1-0 victory over Canada on Tuesday in a “scruffy, scrappy” match. The author notes this international window was unusually large, saying it encompassed more games than the USMNT’s run at several big tournaments.

Pulisic and Weston McKennie did not join the camp, remaining with their Italian clubs; Pulisic stayed at Milan “hoping to use the time off to get back in favor with their manager” and McKennie remained at Juventus “to heal up an injury.” Their absences, Schaerlaeckens reports, were not felt as acutely as might have been expected because many other players contributed across the fixtures.

A number of younger players are mentioned as potential successors to the role once assigned to a single figure: Cavan Sullivan, Julian Hall, Adri Mehmeti, Zavier Gozo, Justin Ellis and Mathis Albert. The article emphasises that none of those names carried the team alone during the window, and that the burden of producing results rotated among multiple contributors.

The principal takeaway presented is that the USMNT may be entering a period of reduced dependence on an individual “savior,” replaced by greater squad depth — “the kind of depth US fans used to envy in other, more developed soccer nations,” Schaerlaeckens writes. If, as he suggests, U.S. World Cup advertising in 2030 does not revolve around a single player, that would represent another step forward.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is the author of The Long Game: US Men’s Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts, which is out now, and he teaches at Marist University.