USMNT's Next Wave: Sullivan and Gozo Leading the Charge
The next wave of the USMNT isn’t creeping in quietly. It’s banging on the door.
Sullivan, the teenager taking on grown men
Three goals in three games. At 16. Against professionals.
That’s why Sullivan has become the face of the next generation, the kid everyone in American soccer is suddenly talking about. He’s not padding numbers in youth tournaments. He’s doing it against grown men, and doing it with a swagger that has people wondering how long it’ll be before he’s wearing a U.S. crest.
Tim Howard has already made up his mind.
“In the next four years, there are going to be 115 players that play for the national team,” Howard said on the Unfiltered Podcast. “Who’s better than this kid? Who’s better than this kid that doesn’t deserve an opportunity? I’m not saying he plays every game, but he should be in the conversation to be playing every game.”
Howard then cut to the heart of the American reality.
“For all the naysayers out there, I’m not saying to gift this kid something he hasn’t earned on a silver platter. I’m saying we are not Brazil, Argentina, Holland, Spain, England, Germany. We don’t produce these players.”
Sullivan believes it, too. Not the hype, but the idea that he can help.
“Thinking about that Belgium game, I think I could come into that game on the right side and make a difference,” he told Alexi Lalas’ State of the Union podcast. “You have to believe in yourself. You have to think you can help your team win. Obviously it’s not my team yet, but I’m always dreaming and hoping for call-ups.”
He’s not alone.
Gozo’s fire and a near-miss
Zavier Gozo has already brushed the edge of the World Cup.
The then-Real Salt Lake winger made the USMNT’s preliminary list for the last tournament. That’s as close as you can get without boarding the plane. Mauricio Pochettino, though, decided it was too soon to bring an uncapped teenager to a World Cup.
Gozo didn’t sulk. He moved to Crystal Palace and sharpened the chip on his shoulder.
“I do think I deserved to be there. I’m going to be honest,” he told The Late Run. “But obviously it’s the coach’s choice. Maybe he didn’t think I was ready, or whatever it is, but it just put a fire under me to make the next World Cup and show why I should be there.”
Sullivan dreaming, Gozo burning. Two teenagers, same target: the USMNT.
The man who decides when they get there? Pochettino.
Pochettino’s test: not just talent
So how does Pochettino know when a kid is ready?
There’s no checklist, no magic number of minutes. It’s case by case, and it’s messy.
Workload is always the first concern with teenagers, but Pochettino waves that away.
“I know the mindset of the coaches,” he said. “Sometimes the coaches say, ‘Oh, I have a 17-year-old guy that plays in the MLS, but when the national team calls, we say no because they need to rest’. If you’re 17, and you need to rest? Yeah, we have a big problem.”
Physically, he trusts them. Mentally, that’s where his guard goes up.
The first thing he looks for is maturity, and that stretches far beyond a 90-minute performance. Talent is the entry fee. What matters is how a player lives with that talent.
Do they keep working? Are they obsessed with getting better? How do they treat the people around them?
“I think respect is the most important thing, and they need to be respectful,” Pochettino said. “And of course, we want players with talent. We want players who feel brave, feel confident, but not feel things they don't show. I think you are only entitled to talk a little bit out of order if you are Messi.
“If you win eight Ballon d'Ors, okay, you can talk with a certain arrogance, but even then, … if you are young and you start to talk that you can play here, you can play there, or you can play. I say, I don't believe that this is the right way to build your career in the best way, no. And that is why we need to be careful.”
That word — careful — runs through everything he says.
No one-size-fits-all revolution
Not every position opens the same door.
Some spots are clogged with depth. Others are screaming for new blood. Goalkeeper, for example, came up in his media availability: plenty of options, one starting shirt.
“I think we are going to give some [opportunities] to some new players, not only in that position, but in different positions,” he explained. “We’ll have the possibility to add a new player and to give them the possibility. I think for us now it’s about not only thinking about today, but also to think about the future and 2030.”
That’s the horizon: the 2030 World Cup.
But it’s not the only tournament on his board. The Olympics are almost here. A Gold Cup looms. A potential Copa America sits in the mix. All of it will demand coordination with Steve Cherundolo, who leads the U.S. U-23s.
The idea is clear: bleed a few youngsters into the senior side now so they’re hardened by the time they chase medals with the U-23s.
What it won’t be is a youth-only experiment. Pochettino still wants his veterans. He plans to lean on them.
Throwing kids into the deep end makes for good headlines. Building a national team requires something slower, more deliberate.
Lessons from burning it down
The scars from 2018 still mark every USMNT conversation.
After that failure, the program essentially started over. Veterans were pushed aside, and a young core took over. It worked. Those kids became the backbone of the national team.
But a question lingered in the background: what did they lose by cutting the cord so quickly? What lessons never got passed down?
That debate roared back around the 2025 Gold Cup, when Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah opted out for rest. Former players, some loudly, questioned their commitment. Underneath the criticism sat a deeper worry: had the program moved on from the old guard so fast that something essential — standards, culture, edge — slipped through the cracks?
Whatever the answer, Pochettino has no interest in another full reset.
There will be change. Some veterans will fade out. Just not all at once.
Continuity, with a new edge
“I'd say it's a continuation of the last two cycles I've been a part of, just because I just know that's how it works,” USMNT defender Chris Richards told GOAL. “It's not like you just completely sack off the team that was at the World Cup and move on from there.”
Richards lives in that in-between space now. He’s still young, but he’s no longer the kid. At Crystal Palace, he shares a dressing room with Gozo, who is chasing his first cap and living every day like the call could come tomorrow.
Seeing that hunger up close has given Richards a fresh lens on the process.
Pochettino sees players like Richards as vital. They bridge the gap — young enough to relate to the next wave, experienced enough to enforce standards.
“We cannot bring a whole squad of young players, no, because they need to have some guys with experience already competing,” Pochettino said. “Yes, we are going to do a mix. Our idea is we are going to do a mix between experienced players… I think experienced players and young players can fit together and start to work and see how the young kids start to manage the pressure to play in the first team in some really nice games.”
That’s the model: not a youth revolution, but a blend.
Every detail counts
Pochettino kept circling back to the same theme: he’s watching everything.
Not just the goals and assists. Not just the highlight clips that go viral.
“It's important not only to see them or watch the games, the performance, but also what they are talking about in the media, how they behave with the opponent, how they behave with their teammates,” he said. “I think it's so important. We want to be a very good team. We want to build something different and be competitive.”
He tracks how players speak to coaches. What time they arrive at training. How long they stay after. Who lingers to do extra work and who bolts for the parking lot.
Those habits, in his mind, reveal whether a player truly meets the standard he wants to set.
His message to every Sullivan, every Gozo, every teenager dreaming of a call-up: all of it matters. And he’s keeping score.
The hardest calls are coming
At club level, Pochettino could let time do some of the work. He saw players every day. He could test them, push them, wait for the right moment.
The national team doesn’t give him that luxury. Camps are short, windows are spaced out, and players can change dramatically between one gathering and the next.
He knows it. He accepts it.
The kid he sees in September might not be the same one who shows up in March. That’s why a player who looks a step away now could be a key starter six months down the line.
The next squad announcement arrives in a few weeks. Those names will shape more than just one international window. They will sketch the outline of the 2030 cycle.
Young players are hammering on the door. Veterans still believe they have more to give. Somewhere between those two forces, Pochettino has to find the balance — and decide when the future officially becomes the present.
“We need to create a group of players that are really being professional and competing in the way that we expect,” he said. “They all need to compete with the talented players and young players that we have ahead.”
The race is on. Who gets there first?
