Dave Sarachan has answered the calls of the fans with his USMNT call-ups for the Bolivia friendly. Everyone is there that we could have wanted.
Missing out on the World Cup has given the USMNT an extended period of time with which to reassess what they are really all about. And clinging to the old guard of players that got them to relative relevancy is not it.
Instead, the new youth wave of American talent is dominating the international landscape, and don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s just because of MLS’s season-in-progress.
Dave Sarachan’s call-ups for the Bolivia friendly have, quite literally, everything that we want to see. If you think back to that first big match for this national team following their failure to qualify, it was the Portugal friendly where Weston McKennie became superhuman and scored his first goal, as well as just being a force all match.
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McKennie is just one of the many highlights to populate this USMNT roster to face Bolivia. Christian Pulisic is obviously there as well, but if you scan the 22-man roster, you’ll see that it’s mostly a case of bleeding a lot of young talents and getting more caps on the belts of some of the future of this nation’s interests.
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Most importantly, if you look at the forward positions, you see Josh Sargent, who has yet to make his first cap, and you have Andrija Novakovich, who has just one appearance. Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find two players with more buzz about them on the entire roster.
Sargent has been making progress in the Werder Bremen ranks and Novakovich was a stellar, stand-out performer in the Dutch second tier, taking his goal tally to 19 in this fantastic year with the club.
With just the two to choose from, we know that we will more than likely be seeing both of them, and that right there is enough to get excited about. Not to mention when you look behind them and see the likes of Timothy Weah – who just made his first appearance for PSG – ready to provide the creative duties.
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That Portugal friendly I mentioned was the first step towards bridging the gape between the past and the future, but these next few friendlies, starting with the one against Bolivia, are the ones that will show us more and more just what the USMNT has to bank on, not even in the future, but in the here and now.