Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Culminating in the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, the state of the US Men’s National Team has been rapidly declining over the past decade. In order to make amends and qualify for the upcoming 2022 World Cup set to take place in Qatar, the squad was in need of a massive overhaul. The recent injection of young talent onto the world stage has made for a promising future for American men’s soccer.
On Thursday, Oct. 1, Sergino Dest became the most recent American soccer player to sign for one of Europe’s top clubs, as Barcelona completed a sizable 20 million euro deal to bring the young American to one of the most prestigious clubs in the world. He made his debut for the Spanish giants three days later. Dest, who is only 19-years-old, will leave the Netherlands and his former club Ajax to join forces with some of the world’s best soccer players, namely Lionel Messi. Dest will also join Konrad de la Fuenta, a 19-year-old Miami native who has been with Barcelona since the age of 12 and has recently made his professional debut for the club.
Dest’s big money move caps off a successful summer for U.S. Men’s soccer, as fellow American Weston McKennie joined Cristiano Ronaldo, Portuguese soccer legend and one of the best to ever grace the game, at perennial Italian champions, Juventus. While Dest and McKennie have joined two of the world’s biggest clubs, respectively sharing the field with Messi and Ronaldo, a slew of other young Americans have also found success at top clubs around Europe.
Having made his U.S. Men’s National Team debut at 17-years-old, Christian Pulisic has now played 32 matches for the national team, scoring 13 goals and contributing 8 assists. At only 22- years- old, Pulisic is now the captain of the national team. He has universally been hailed as the one to revive US Men’s soccer. Last summer, the Hershey, Pennsylvania native was bought by London based club Chelsea for $73 million, the largest sum ever paid for an American player, and burst onto the premier league scene with nine goals and four assists in just 26 appearances during the 2019/20 season. Following his breakout season in London, he was given the number 10 jersey which often signifies the best offensive player on a given team. Pulisic has led the revival of US men’s soccer and has justified his massive transfer fee.
The recent success of American players abroad has been strongly linked to Germany, as the Bundesliga––one of the world’s top men’s soccer leagues––has provided a platform for many young players to establish themselves. While Pulisic and McKennie both started their professional careers in the Bundesliga, 17-year-old Gio Reyna, the son of former U.S. soccer legend Claudio Reyna, found recent success in Germany with Pulisic’s former team, Borussia Dortmund, one of the best teams in the German Bundesliga over the last decade. Born in 2002, Reyna is likely younger than any enrolled student at Conn, and has begun to break into the starting lineup of Dortmund. On Saturday, October 3, Reyna marked his best performance to date, contributing 3 assists in Dortmund’s 4-0 against SC Freiburg.
Tyler Adams, Josh Sergeant, Timothy Chandler, John Brooks, and Chris Richards joined Reyna as the six Americans featured in the Bundesliga so far this season. The connection between U.S. Men’ssoccer and Germany started with the arrival of coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who coached the U.S. Men’snational team from 2011 to 2016. Klinsmann, a native of Germany, began to foster a relationship between the U.S. Soccer Federation and various German clubs in an attempt to provide his young American players with the opportunity to gain the experience of training with top European clubs in order to further their development, with the end goal of improving the overall quality of his squad. This link is also bolstered by the ease in which Americans can obtain work permits in Germany and from the lingering presence of American soldiers in Germany from the wars of the 20th century.
While qualifying matches for the 2022 World Cup began in June of 2019, the schedule has been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S., which plays qualifiers against other nations in North America, Central America and the Caribbean, will participate in an eight team round robin with other qualifying nations. The three nations which accumulate the most points from the qualifying matches will gain a berth in the World Cup, while the fourth place team will enter into an intercontinental playoff round.
The U.S. Women’s National team are the defending Women’s World Cup champions, having secured victory in 2019 at the tournament’s most recent edition in France, and have set the standard for what U.S. soccer can achieve. Their historic success includes four out of eight Women’s World Cup titles ever, as well as four Olympic Gold Medals. Conversely, the Men’s best World Cup run was in 1930, reaching the semifinals of the tournament’s first ever edition. They have since never progressed past the quarter finals, which they have only reached once. It would take quite the turnaround for the Men’s team to achieve similar success, but they have proved to be on the right path due to the early impact of their promising young players. •
