Of the 26 players called into the USMNT camp in September of 2022, just 18 went to Qatar two months later. Ream was among those who weren’t called in and went on to play a key role at the tournament. It was his first call-up in over a year.<\/p>\n
Chris Richards got injured just before that September camp and went on to miss the World Cup. Ricardo Pepi, who was a key figure throughout the qualifying run, was left off the squad after going cold to start the Bundesliga season. Malik Tillman and Johnny Cardoso, both in the USMNT camp again this time around, were rising stars at the time, but didn’t rise fast enough to make it to Qatar.<\/p>\n
Cristian Roldan was among those left off that September roster to play his way onto the November one. He knows very well what it means to fight for a spot, having only returned to the USMNT fold in the fall.<\/p>\n
“I expect competition in this camp,” Roldan said. “I expect competition in every camp, but, this one, especially leading up to a World Cup, with the things coach has said, nobody’s spot is guaranteed. So proving yourself every day is important.”<\/p>\n
There are lessons, too, to be taken from the games themselves. In that camp, the U.S. were thumped by Japan before drawing Saudi Arabia, which meant they entered the World Cup on something of a sour note. Ultimately, they bounced back, though, to emerge from their group with an unbeaten run against Wales, England, and Iran.<\/p>\n
Brenden Aaronson was among those to play in those two pre-World Cup friendlies. That experience, he says, was eye-opening, and it’s helping him with his approach this time around.<\/p>\n
“I think we had a lot of guys who were young,” he said. “It was our first World Cup together. You wanted to get on the team. That was in the back of our heads, but I think we’ve grown a ton.”<\/p>\n
This time around, the U.S. have two massive opponents lined up, which should provide massive tests for a group that has seen those tests ramp up over the last few months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Of the 26 players called into the USMNT camp in September of 2022, just 18 went to Qatar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[4365,7,1379,4830,335,2833,4831,4832,1849],"class_list":{"0":"post-8592","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-belgium","8":"tag-analysis","9":"tag-belgium","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-friendlies","12":"tag-portugal","13":"tag-usa","14":"tag-usa-vs-belgium","15":"tag-usa-vs-portugal","16":"tag-world-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/116297277355960514","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}