The roster is set. Fans of the United States men’s national team now know the 26 players that will defend home turf at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. this summer.<\/p>\n
Many of the familiar faces that led the 2022 squad \u2014 Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Tyler Adams and Matt Turner \u2014 are returning for their second World Cup, but there were a number of players called up for their first World Cup, and just as notable were the players that head coach Mauricio Pochettino didn’t call up.<\/p>\n
Here are my five takeaways from the United States’ World Cup roster reveal in New York on Tuesday:<\/p>\n
(Photo by John Dorton\/ISI Photos\/USSF\/Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n The obvious omissions are midfielder Tanner Tessmann and attacker Diego Luna, who both started lots of games under Pochettino last year. Aidan Morris, who\u00a0was in the lineup in three of the last two games for the U.S., was another notable player not selected. The midfielder had started in the Americans’ most recent outing, a 2-0 loss to Portugal in March.\u00a0<\/p>\n The obvious (and pleasant) surprise is Alex Zendejas, a left-footed attacker who can line up wide or centrally and who played his way onto the roster with consistently excellent performances for Mexican titan Club Am\u00e9rica over the last year-plus. Zendejas probably takes the place of Luna, who has been injured for MLS club Real Salt Lake.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Luna has still played more over the past few months than another surprise inclusion, attacking midfielder Gio Reyna, who managed just one goal in 19 appearances for his club Borussia M\u00f6nchengladbach \u2014 just four of them starts \u2014 in Germany’s Bundesliga during the just-completed 2025-26 season.\u00a0<\/p>\n (Photo by Robin Alam\/ISI Photos\/ISI Photos via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Pochettino went with just four central midfielders in Tyler Adams, Sebastian Berhalter, Weston McKennie and Cristian Roldan, leaving them worryingly thin in a key area of the pitch. Assuming McKennie occupies the more advanced role he mans with Juventus, the bulk of the defensive duties will fall to Adams, who has been beset by injuries since he captained the U.S. at the last World Cup in Qatar.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the risk that a physical player like Adams could be susceptible to a yellow card suspension in the knockout stage (two accumulated yellows would force a one-game suspension), forcing either Berhalter or Roldan into a starting job. Tessmann or Morris would\u2019ve provided cover in that case, but Pochettino chose to reinforce the wings and defense instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n (Photo by Shaun Clark\/ISI Photos\/ISI Photos via Getty Images)<\/span> <\/p>\n Whether it was Kasey Keller (1998), Brad Friedel (2002), Keller again (2006), Tim Howard (2010 and 2014), or Matt Turner (2022) \u2014 the USA’s top keeper at the always played his club ball overseas. Now, for the first time ever since Major League Soccer was founded in 1996, the starting keeper will be MLS-based.\u00a0<\/p>\n In fact, all three of this team’s goalkeepers will be MLS-based, another first in squad history. NYCFC’s Matt Freese is the expected No. 1 goalkeeper this summer, with Turner relegated to a bench role this time. It\u2019s been a fast ride for the Harvard graduate, who\u2019d never played an international match a year ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n The good news is Turner \u2014 who now plays for the New England Revolution \u2013 provides World Cup and Premier League experience as an understudy \u2014 something none of his backups had four years ago. Rounding out the keeper corps is the 22-year-old Chris Brady, a starter for the\u00a0Chicago Fire since he was a teenager who is expected to move to Europe after the tournament.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" POPULAR SEARCHES BROWSE BY The roster is set. Fans of the United States men’s national team now know the 26 players that will defend home turf at the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. this summer. Many of the familiar faces that led the 2022 squad \u2014 Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soccer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/play-live.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}