USMNT: All eyes on 2019 Gold Cup with Copa America exclusion

The USMNT, as well as Mexico, will not be participating in the Copa America, as they declined, which makes the 2019 Gold Cup everything.

After competing in the previous Copa America alongside Mexico, the USMNT has declined an invite to participate in the 2019 rendition of the South American Competition, as has our neighbors to the south.

The Copa America will boast a field of their ten participants as well as Qatar and Japan, as the organization cited the growing interest of football in Asia as a primary drive to make this decision and exclude the USMNT and Mexico. This makes sense of adding Japan, but the inclusion of Qatar, not to mention their World Cup host status, remains a massive question that no one seems to have a sufficient answer for.

For the USMNT (and Mexico), it’s not as big of a deal as it may seem on the surface. Given that the Gold Cup will also be running in the summer of 2019, the Copa America would likely have taken a back seat, as it would have ran either directly before or after, perhaps even overlapping with the CONCACAF competition.

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Which may have meant a USMNT “B-team” being sent to South America to compete, while the A-team stayed to compete for the Gold Cup.

Obviously the added competition would not have been a terrible thing, as missing out on the 2018 World Cup has left the USMNT in a severe state of anxiety. Hence the beauty in announcing such high-profile friendlies the following fall.

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But still, the major takeaway from missing the World Cup needed to be centered on the A-team, which, ideally, will be much younger and promising than ever before. Names like Weston McKennie and Christian Pulisic would be highlighting, with the Josh Sargent’s and Timothy Weah’s pulling up the more promising side of things.

Where the B-team would stand in this mix is a question that may have had some answers provided in the Copa America, but that’s a bit farther off than the USMNT can worry about right now, as they try to transition into a new era.

The declined invitation is also adding to speculation that the Centenario of 2016 could be back on for a revamp in 2020, as both CONCACAF and CONMEBOL found tremendous profit in the shared competition.

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Whatever the case, this makes the 2019 Gold Cup an even higher-priority than it already was, as it stands as the first serious competition for the USMNT to test their evolution in.