Unpopular opinion: the finals loss to Mexico is actually a GOOD thing. People, players, teams, they all grow following periods of adversity. I know people are throwing a fit about losing the Gold Cup, and blaming Pulisic and the other well-known players for not being in this tournament. Here are the facts:
The following ‘First team” players were all injured/recovering from injury or surgery:
1) Jedi Robinson
2) Sergino Dest
4) Folarin Bologun
The following players were with their club teams for the Club World Cup:
5) Weston McKennie
6) Timothy Weah
7) Gio Reyna
That’s the starting left and right backs, two of the top 4 central mids, the starting right winger, and the top two choices at striker.
Did Gio Reyna get screwed by Dortmund one more (last?) time, using him in Club World Cup promotional material, only for him to see the field for less than 10 minutes in one game during the entire tournament? Yes.
Did Tim Weah similarly get screwed by Juventus, who did not even include him on the roster for one or more games? Again, yes. But did these players have the choice to turn down being with their clubs? No, not really.
That’s 7 of the 9 players most ‘fans’ have a problem with. The other two are Pulisic and Yunus Musah. Obviously, most of the ire went to Pulisic, who, after discussing his situation with the USMNT coaching staff, decided to skip this tournament to fully heal lingering knocks. Anybody that’s watched him play regularly knows he carried a knock or two (ankle and hip flexor) for the last 2-3 months of the season.
He is one of the most fouled players, and his frame can’t sustain that beating. That’s partly why moving from the more physical English Premier League to the more technical Italian Serie A was good for him. We saw his two best seasons right there with AC Milan. And yet, clearly, he was carrying multiple nagging injuries. With another full season on the horizon, heading straight into next Summer’s World Cup, do we really want our star player to be playing hurt? Or, worse yet, suffer an unnecessary injury, like Jamal Musiala did this Summer?
And then there’s Yunus Musah. People used to say that you can’t spell ‘MUSAH’ without USA. He’s been part of the venerable MMA midfield — McKennie-Musah-Adams. But there’s absolutely no word that he blew off participation to the Gold Cup–in his case, like Pulsic, Robinson, Dest, and others, he needed a break to recover from nagging injuries.
Then there’s that second tier of World Cup-squad worthy players, such as Sargent, Joe Scally, Tanner Tessman, Gianluca Busio, and a host of others that did not get called in at all.
Johnny Cardoso and Haji Wright did get selected for the Gold Cup–but due to injuries, both Cardoso (ankle) and Wright (achilles), barely got on the pitch, if at all. And because of this year’s rules, the US was unable to replace them after the group stage, as in years past.
So that brings us to the team that DID show up, that DID play in this tournament. We saw Chris Richards grow in leadership exponentially. We saw Malik Tillman FINALLY have the types of games in a National Team shirt that have been routine for him at PSV (and that led to a big-money move to Bundesliga beasts, Bayer Leverkusen). We saw Diego Luna grow in confidence, grow from a player that controversially didn’t make the Olympic U-23 squad last year to a player with 3 goals and multiple assists in the Gold Cup.
Did it hurt to lose to (and, in some respects, get dominated by) Mexico? Yes? Is that a necessary part of growth? Very often, it absolutely is.
So I choose to see this tournament, these circumstances, in a different light. Poch gave some key players the opportunity to physically recover, allowed some young prospects to show what they have, gave a handful of ‘on-the-cusp’ players the spotlight, and said: “let’s see if they sink or swim.” Many were saying we would get ‘grouped’ in this tournament. Then they said Costa Rica or Canada would definitely knock us out of the competition. Yet they made it all the way to the final, and lost that final controversially (e.g. “Hand of God, part 2”).
I fully expect that most if not all of the players I mentioned above will start to get re-integrated into the team in the September window vs Japan and South Korea. I expect those games to be much more competitive than versus Turkey and Switzerland. And I expect this painful loss to be a blessing in disguise in the long-term.
