Another international window for the United States focuses on who’s not there as much as who made the trip to Philadelphia in advance of the Saturday, November 15, friendly against Paraguay at Subaru Park. While, at this point, the conversation should start to sound like more of the same, it’s the ongoing struggle to get as close to a first-choice USMNT lineup as possible that raises concerns ahead of the 2026 World Cup. With January camp no longer on the schedule, the March international window is now the last opportunity to see the closest to final version of the USA squad. Whether or not that happens is, again, a continuation of the same scenario.
This time around, the United States is without Tyler Adams, Weston McKennie, Christian Pulisic, Chris Richards, Antonee Robinson, Malik Tillman, and Tim Weah, all players likely to feature in most hypothetical first-choice starting elevens. Obviously, only one person’s list of starters actually matters, with USMNT coach Mauricio Pochettino once again focused on who he has in camp. As he said in the press release announcing the November roster, “this is another great opportunity for the players selected for this roster to prove they deserve to be on the final list for the World Cup.”
For the midfielders in camp, November is certainly an opportunity. Seb Berhalter is back, along with Gio Reyna, as part of a group that contains a lot of talent but would otherwise be trying to get past some of the regular names. In the attack, Ricardo Pepi returns as an established threat for PSV at the top of the Eredivisie. Alongside Folarin Balogun and Haji Wright, there’s a choice of proven target forwards.
Up first is a first-choice Paraguay squad with the same major contributors that saw it take the 6th and last automatic qualifying place in CONMEBOL. Before using that as a point of potential criticism of the strength of Paraguay over the qualifying run, 3rd through 6th in CONMEBOL finished with 28 points, all of them a point behind 2nd-place Ecuador. That would obviously include Brazil, who finished 5th. At most, with CONMEBOL using goal difference as the first tiebreaker, Paraguay’s +4 that left them at the bottom of the teams finishing on 28 points might underline some issues. Then again, they scored the same number of goals as 2nd-place Ecuador.
It’s a tough carve out of differences here, with Paraguay representing what the USMNT technical staff seems to have wanted from this window, a tough representative from CONMEBOL. They’ll have a second bite at that apple in the following game on November 18 in Tampa, facing another one of those teams that finished qualifying on 28 points.
Uruguay ended up 4th in CONMEBOL World Cup qualifying, tied on goal difference with 3rd-place Colombia at +10 and separated by the most goals scored tiebreaker. That’s fine for determining a table, but it tells us very little about Uruguay other than that they remain among CONMEBOL’s top teams. Uruguay doesn’t have Federico Valverde (injury) or Darwin Nunez, but there’s more than enough talent in this squad’s attack to cause problems for both Mexico and the United States in this window. Again, it’s what a technical staff should want given the opportunity against two of CONMEBOL’s World Cup qualifiers.
With Paraguay and Uruguay on the November schedule, that becomes the point of this window. Learn what you can from this level of opposition with only a few friendly dates left before the start of the World Cup. While what happens on December 5 at the World Cup draw will change the scope of all involved, right now, what is important is getting experience against the widest range of potential opponents as is possible. The USA’s schedule this fall has done that, setting whatever version of the squad is in camp up to show that they belong across a variety of opponents.
