Breaking down the latest USMNT roster for World Cup qualifying: Brooks out, Dest hurt, Pulisic lives, and Gianluca Busio has the best name in camp
Total Soccer Show: USMNT, Champions League, EPL, and more ...
TSS
4.8 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 4 November 2021
⏱️ 47 minutes
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Summary
Joe and Taylor took a look at the roster, sat in on Gregg Berhalter's press conference, and then recorded a deeeep dive look at the latest USMNT roster ahead of World Cup qualifying games against Mexico and Jamaica. Here's the roster, if you haven't seen it:
GOALKEEPERS (3): Sean Johnson, Zack Steffen, Matt Turner
DEFENDERS (9): Reggie Cannon, Mark McKenzie, Chris Richards, Antonee Robinson, Miles Robinson, Joe Scally, Sam Vines, DeAndre Yedlin, Walker Zimmerman
MIDFIELDERS (7): Kellyn Acosta, Tyler Adams, Gianluca Busio, Sebastian Lletget, Weston McKennie, Yunus Musah, Cristian Roldan
FORWARDS (6): Brenden Aaronson, Paul Arriola, Jesús Ferreira, Ricardo Pepi, Christian Pulisic, Tim Weah
We get into the notable absences (John Brooks, Sergino Dest, Luca de la Torre, to name a few), Berhalter's thoughts on how he constructed this roster, who is most likely to play where, ideal centerback pairings, depth at the Number 9 spot, and much more!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the Total Soccer Show. |
| 0:24.0 | My name is Taylor Rockwell. |
| 0:25.8 | And on today's episode, we're going to be doing some USA roster breakdown. |
| 0:30.5 | We have the latest roster for the USA's World Cup qualifiers against Mexico and Jamaica. |
| 0:35.2 | Lots to be discussed. |
| 0:36.3 | Lots of players in. |
| 0:37.2 | A few players not included, surprisingly. |
| 0:39.5 | Joe Lowry is with me to talk about this roster. Joe, what is the first thing you noticed |
| 0:45.1 | when you looked at the latest roster? Ah, the first thing I noticed. No John Brooks, Taylor. |
| 0:51.1 | That is the absolute first thing that popped into my mind. The goalkeeper group standard, we'll talk more about that later. But my eyes glazed over to the defender section. |
| 0:58.3 | And holy moly, that is a big surprise to me. Yes, it was to me as well. Greg Berhalter in his |
| 1:06.2 | roster press conference talked about that at length. I was asked about that several times. We'll be going over some of his comments in a little bit. We're going to talk about our thoughts after that. First, let's just run through the roster real quick, Joe. Give some quick thoughts as we see them. Goalkeeper position, there are three, not surprisingly. It is a 25 player roster, if you haven't seen it. Goalkeepers, Sean Johnson, |
| 1:28.2 | Zach Steffen, and Matt Turner. Makes sense, right? These are, I think, the three best, Ethan Horvath, maybe in that group as well, but three of the top end goalkeepers in this group. There's been some talk online, at least about Brad Guzan, potentially being the third goalkeeper if the U.S. does end up making it to the guitar in 2022, which I can kind of see, and I'm kind of here for. I'm pretty ambivalent about that in general. But for now and for these games, I think it's a battle between Stefan and Turner to start both of them and Sean Johnson's there as the number three in camp. Burrhalter was asked about that who the starter would be. We'll talk about that later on. |
| 2:01.4 | First, nine defenders. |
| 2:03.3 | Reggie Cannon, Mark McKinsey, Chris Richards, Anthony Robertson, Miles Robinson, Joe Scali, |
| 2:07.9 | Sam Vines, DeAndre Edlin, Walker Zimmerman. |
| 2:10.8 | The two obvious names missing from that would be John Brooks and Sergenio Dest. |
| 2:15.7 | Sergenio Dest missing due to injury. |
| 2:18.0 | Burrhalter emphasized that several times. |
| 2:20.9 | Brooks, though, a healthy scratch, Joe. |
| 2:23.3 | So bizarre to me. |
| 2:24.9 | Do we want to get into detail on Brooks now? |
... |
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