Both players have been battling injuries but said they are ready to face Wales on Monday
With two days to go until the World Cup kicks off, U.S. national team duo Sergiño Dest and Weston McKennie both declared themselves fit at a press conference on Saturday.
McKennie, meanwhile, suffered a muscle strain with Juventus in late October and hasn’t played since.
But both players, who figure to be a part of Gregg Berhalter’s starting lineup if healthy, said they are ready to go.
“Juventus and the national team, they were both working together to make sure that I’m 100 percent fit here,” McKennie said. “So I came in, did a couple days of just maintaining and keep it under control.”
McKennie said he took part in Wednesday’s scrimmage against Qatari side Al-Gharafa SC.
“We played the friendly the other day, and I felt good. I felt ready to go, and that’s where I’m at,” the midfielder added.
Dest added: “I’m feeling good. Of course, after the last game [for AC Milan], I had a little bit of fatigue. Right now, it’s going well. I’m ready to play.”
McKennie and Dest were two of four USMNT players who arrived in Qatar with questions over their fitness. With Matt Turner also having declared himself fit this week, only Luca de la Torre remains as a player whose injury status is still unknown.
Jesús Ferreira, Weston McKennie, and Gio Reyna are featured in the murals
Adidas has unveiled murals of three U.S. men’s national team stars ahead of the World Cup.
Jesús Ferreira and Weston McKennie, both products of the FC Dallas academy, have murals in Dallas, while New York City FC academy product Gio Reyna has a mural in Queens, located in his home state of New York.
McKennie’s mural is designed by graffiti artist JEKS ONE, and is located in the Bishops Art District at 938 W Davis Street. It features an American flag, an ode to his family’s military background.
Ferreira’s mural, also in Dallas at 3287 S Polk Street, is designed by Jeremy Biggers. It contains elements of the FC Dallas logo as well as the Colombian flag, representing the country where Ferreira was born.
The mural of Reyna is at 7302 Northern Blvd in Queens and is designed by Drew Merritt. The design contains lavender and ceibo floral illustrations, which are the national flowers of Portugal and Argentina, respectively, to represent his heritage.
Christian Pulisic is the USMNT’s most-followed account on Instagram, followed by Sergiño Dest.
The United States men’s national soccer team is set to take on the world in the 2022 FIFA World Cup beginning next week, and the USMNT’s young roster seems poised to quickly endear themselves to sports fans across America.
The USMNT has one of the youngest squads at the World Cup in Qatar and while the team includes some known stars like Christian Pulisic, most of the players are not household names even in their own country.
That should change after the World Cup, especially if the team makes it out of the group stage. Here’s a quick look at each player’s Instagram page and their follower counts, listed in order of the most-followed players.
By the end of the tournament, these Instagram follower numbers will likely be much higher, and many of the USA’s World Cup players should see their popularity in the U.S. increase significantly.
Some, like Miles Robinson, Sam Vines and Chris Richards, had already been ruled out for the tournament. Others are healthy enough to make the roster, but aren’t quite ready to play right away.
Here we take a look at four important U.S. men’s national team players who are still working their way back to fitness.
Some key USMNT players are fighting to get fit with three weeks until the World Cup. Nobody panic!
Three weeks ago, this very column celebrated the triumphant return to health of many key U.S. national team players who had been battling injuries.
We are very, very sorry.
It’s not time to panic yet because the injuries are all minor-ish, but some important USMNT players have gone down over the past week. The World Cup kicks off in three weeks, so even a minor problem right now could have an impact in Qatar.
A rough start to the 2022-23 season just got worse for Juventus.
Juve were eliminated from the Champions League on Tuesday, after a 4-3 loss at Benfica ended their last hopes of escaping from Group H. Weston McKennie’s late goal was not enough to spark a comeback that Juve needed to have any chance at the knockout round heading into the final round of group stage games.
The Italian powerhouse had to win, but fell behind on António Silva’s 17th minute goal, and even Moise Kean’s 21st minute equalizer only delayed the bad news. By the 50th minute, it was 4-1 in favor of Benfica after a penalty from João Mário and Rafa Silva’s brace.
Arek Milik’s 77th minute goal saved some face for Juventus, and two minutes later McKennie popped up amid a mad scramble to fire home after Samuel Iling-Junior’s cross was pushed into the goalmouth by Benfica goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos.
Two goals in less than three minutes was just what Juventus needed in the moment. It’s just that realistically, falling behind by three goals in a game you have to win is not a recipe for success. Benfica held on for the win, and now Juventus — in the latest chapter of a massively disappointing start to the season — will bow out of the Champions League at the first hurdle.
Believe it or not, things could even get worse. On three points, Juve have PSG coming to town in next week’s final matchday, while Maccabi Haifa (who also have three points) will host Benfica. While Juventus has a six-goal edge on goal difference, a loss to PSG would open the door to the further humiliation of not even getting a Europa League spot as a consolation prize.
This week, the sentiment is pretty much exactly the same.
Reyna’s injuries have limited his time on the field to fits and starts over the past year, but he is again trending in the right direction after scoring his first goal in 14 months this weekend.
With a month until the World Cup starts, the U.S. attacker once again is resembling something close to his best.
The Juventus midfielder found the net off a corner kick against Empoli
Whether Weston McKennie is having a good game or a bad game, he will always be a dangerous weapon in the air.
So it proved once again on Friday, as the Juventus midfielder scored his side’s second goal against Empoli off a corner kick.
With Juve up a goal 10 minutes into the second half, the USMNT midfielder muscled off his defender and rose well to power home a header from the top of the six-yard box.
McKennie has now scored 12 goals in his Juventus career, half of which have come off his head.
The USMNT will be hoping to see the 24-year-old’s scoring form translate to the international stage when they kick off their World Cup campaign in Qatar next month.
Could this be the start of another fightback at Chelsea for Christian Pulisic?
Ahead of Saturday’s game against Crystal Palace, Graham Potter acknowledged the relationship between Christian Pulisic and his predecessor Thomas Tuchel had at times been frosty.
“I can only comment on him in terms of how he’s been with me,” Chelsea manager Potter said of the USMNT star. “Really positive, he’s an intelligent guy, articulate, knows how to express himself.
“My conversation with him has been good and positive, I’m not going to judge anybody on what has happened in the past, I’m going to make my own mind up. Football hopefully decides.”
Pulisic has been out of favor before with Chelsea, and has always managed to fight his way back. His game-winning assist against Palace, then, could be the start of another fightback for the USMNT star. Or it could be a false dawn.
That assist did come from Pulisic’s favored left-wing position, rather than the wingback spot he’s played so often this season. If Potter at least gives Pulisic a chance at his best position, then the American star will back himself to prove his worth. Football hopefully decides.
The USMNT and Saudi Arabia sure did play a game of soccer
The U.S. men’s national team fanbase was hoping Tuesday’s friendly against Saudi Arabia would wash the taste of a dispiriting defeat to Japan out of their collective mouths.
We have three key takeaways to get into, but as you can probably guess if you watched the game or simply read the three paragraphs preceding this one, none of them is good news.
Opponents to USMNT center backs: Here, have the ball
Saudi Arabia plays a markedly different game from Japan: they attack in a 4-3-3 formation that becomes a 4-1-4-1 out of possession, maintaining a high defensive line without a corresponding high line of contention up front.
The object here is simple: let the other side’s defenders have the ball, stay compact from back to front, and leave teams few options other than to play perfect diagonal switches or balls into the space in behind. The10 Saudi field players, from the deepest defender to the highest attacker, were often only 30 or so yards apart, leaving no space to pass into the midfield and build that way.
Interestingly, this much different approach still left USMNT center backs Walker Zimmerman and Aaron Long (and eventually, in this game, Mark McKenzie) with the same problem they faced against Japan. They were on the ball, with an opponent who took all their simpler options off the table. The challenge, in both cases, was that the center backs had to play passes that solved a problem rather than simply finding a midfielder or fullback to do that.
While the turnovers weren’t as costly — Saudi Arabia has less athleticism than Japan, and were less forcing turnovers with tackles than they were intercepting errant passes at midfield — they were still a pretty regular factor in this game, and while the USMNT piled up possession, they were often completely muted when they tried to do anything with it.
Berhalter’s side has figured this problem out before. It’s not like teams in CONCACAF have never heard of “let the center backs have all of their possession” as a tactic before. Yes, Japan and Saudi Arabia would have also qualified out of the Octagonal, but there’s an issue with execution right now on the USMNT side.
For one, Zimmerman and (especially) Long seemed to struggle on some very straightforward passes that they have both probably completed literally thousands of times in professional games. Secondly, the USMNT seemed unable to shift the angles to open Saudi Arabia up, which means the problem extends to what movements are being offered by the other eight field players.
No Musah no party
Yunus Musah was in the stadium for this one, watching from the stands after making the trip down the Mediterranean coast to Murcia. Unfortunately for the USMNT, his stock ended up rising despite him being in street clothes, because for the second straight game, it became clear that the “MMA” midfield doesn’t function anywhere near its best without him.
Kellyn Acosta has had some fine moments with the USMNT, and his set piece taking ability actually makes him a pretty valuable member of the squad going into a tournament where prep time is low (side note: the USMNT wasn’t particularly threatening on dead balls in this window, but they probably didn’t want to show any of their designed plays off yet either).
However, he’s more suited for a game where the USMNT is going to be on the defensive, needing that extra ball-winning and positional sense more than other, more flashy traits. In a midfield with Tyler Adams and Weston McKennie, against a mid-block opponent who was always going to be a puzzle to solve, he was redundant.
Photo by JOSE JORDAN/AFP via Getty Images
The MMA midfield isn’t even a perfectly ideal balance of roles, as there’s no true playmaker and no true expert in terms of occupying spaces without the ball. Adams and McKennie make up for this latter issue with ferocious effort, but even when Musah — who thrives as a facilitator and ball-progressing midfielder rather than as a true No. 10 — is in, it’s a case of hoping the three can emphasize what their games do have to such an extent that what they lack isn’t a big deal.
When you take Musah out of the mix, that scenario doesn’t play out. The USMNT were sluggish in terms of their tempo, and so much of their time in possession saw Saudi Arabia keep their collective shape, herding possession back to the center backs or even to Turner. The USMNT wasn’t suited to play without their best player in terms of shifting an opposition shape in the middle third. Most teams will miss that player, but it feels like the U.S. learned today just how severe that absence is for them.
Berhalter more or less acknowledged this with his final pair of subs, with Brenden Aaronson coming into Acosta’s spot. Nothing much came of this spell, with the best USMNT chance largely coming down to the FC Dallas connection between Jesús Ferreira and Paul Arriola, but the moves alluded to what was missing in this one.
Right now, it’d be very smart for the USMNT to seriously look at making sure Aaronson has the reps to step in for Musah (or for that matter McKennie, as neither player has a spotless injury record). It could be that Musah, Adams, and McKennie are good to go for 270 minutes in eight days in a desert climate where temperatures are famously very hot, but you don’t want to walk into Group B with all your eggs in that particular basket.
Struggle for fullback balance
Musah wasn’t the only normal starter whose absence was keenly felt. Antonee Robinson may be back very soon for Fulham, but without their normal left back, the USMNT seemed to struggle with the balance between its two fullbacks.
Without Robinson, and after Sam Vines struggled to really make the same kind of impact that Robinson does against Japan, Berhalter moved that responsibility over to right back. Sergiño Dest, normally seen as an attack-first fullback, was asked to not push so high, and to dip inside to help change the angles in possession. DeAndre Yedlin had the job of providing that serious width on the other side.
The problem here is that the USMNT’s best attacking right back is, you know, Dest. He’d have thrived on the right with that kind of assignment, and ended up being the more dangerous attacking fullback despite having to pick and choose when he got forward.
Yedlin wasn’t poor, but he wasn’t influential either, and the USMNT system needs the player with this responsibility to be a constant factor. Particularly against a team playing a mid-block like this, this fullback role is a major factor in pulling the opposition out of their shape, and Saudi Arabia’s comfort without the ball starts with there being no true danger from Yedlin being higher up the field. The timing of his runs made him easy to defend, and he wasn’t getting much help from Acosta to open that space up either.
As with the midfield quandary, Berhalter addressed this with a sub. Joe Scally came in not long after Yedlin was caught by a bad tackle from Saud Abdulhamid that deserved a harsher punishment than the yellow card it got, and was pretty quickly more of a factor in the attacking third than Yedlin had been.
Perhaps that’s the benefit of the USMNT coaching staff having an hour-plus to analyze the game and tell Scally exactly what to look for, or perhaps it’s just a fresh player coming in against a tiring opponent.
Either way, the situation underlined how much the USMNT’s hopes hinge on unbalancing teams by using their fullbacks. It’s not good news that Robinson’s health is right up there with Musah’s, and Pulisic’s, and Reyna’s, but that’s where the USMNT is at right now.
We know they can hit a high enough level to be a serious threat to advance when everyone’s healthy, but is everyone going to be healthy in November? There are now 55 days for Berhalter to figure out how to make sure the answer to that question is positive.
