Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Sergiño Dest headline the USMNT’s strong core of U-23 players.
After losing 2-1 to Honduras on Sunday, U.S. Soccer’s under-23 men’s team failed to qualify for the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan (the women’s team qualified last year).
Unlike the women’s game, the men’s Olympic tournament is an under-23 competition (technically under-24 this time after the Olympics were postponed one year due COVID-19). Because the men’s competition is considered a youth tournament, FIFA does not require clubs to release their players for international duty (for qualifying or the tournament).
For that reason, many of the best U-23 players in the world don’t participate in the Olympics and many countries don’t take soccer seriously at the tournament. It’s not anything close to the World Cup.
Americans love the Olympics, though, and we gather together every four years to watch sports we otherwise don’t care about. Evan casual American sports fans would have tuned in if the USA’s U-23 soccer team reached the semifinal or final at the Olympics — it’s another chance to win gold!
The USMNT won’t get a chance to grow its popularity during the Olympics this summer after they failed to qualify, but they could still build a strong U-23 roster for the Concacaf Nations League in June or the Gold Cup in July.
U.S. Soccer won’t be limited to 18-player rosters this summer, but I capped it at that just to demonstrate the Olympic-eligible core the USMNT has (teams can also bring three overage players to the Olympics). This squad won’t play in Tokyo, but they represent a promising future for the national team.
