"Well, it's not like U.S. men's national team fans were happy for all of 2024. Remember, Timothy Weah punched a guy, and then the U.S. got knocked out of the group stages of the Copa America. But then U.S. Soccer decided to move on from head coach Gregg Berhalter, and fans were pleased. And then U.S. Soccer decided to hire Mauricio Pochettino, and fans were ecstatic."
"So, instead of trying to read through Pochettino's confusing messaging and even more confusing roster decisions, let's just take a look at the entire player pool. And to do that, we're bringing back the USMNT Player Performance Index for the 2025-26 season, where we rank every American based on their club performance, and then cut the list down to the top 50."
"Each edition of this ranking consists of three inputs: (1) Playing time, (2) team quality and (3) wisdom of crowdsourced salary data. However, we'll lean on different parts of that input at different stages of the season. The main purpose of our USMNT PPI is to look at which players are playing a lot, which players are playing for good teams, and then combine those two aspects."
U.S. men's national team momentum shifted after a turbulent 2024 that included Timothy Weah's incident and a Copa America group-stage exit, followed by Gregg Berhalter's departure and Mauricio Pochettino's hiring. Pochettino's roster choices have since produced confusion, with only a handful of players—Christian Pulisic, Chris Richards, Tyler Adams and Antonee Robinson—appearing as near-certainties for the next World Cup. Much of the roster remains in flux or appears experimental. The USMNT Player Performance Index returns for 2025-26 to rank every American by club performance, using playing time, team quality and crowdsourced salary data weighted differently across the season.
Read at ESPN.com
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