Pochettino's USMNT vs Peru: The Race Between Sullivan's Hype and the No. 9 Drought

On a late June morning, I stood outside the fence of the training ground in Carson, California, notebook open in hand. The temperature was past 32 degrees, and the grass under the players' boots was so dry that every stride crackled. Mauricio Pochettino stood at the centre of the circle, arms folded, eyes fixed on a young name bent over retying his laces. Cavan Sullivan. The player who debuted in MLS at 14, and whose every movement was now being scrutinised under the California sun.

Behind Sullivan, another group stood apart. Folarin Balogun. Gio Reyna. Names long accustomed to pressure. Between them and Sullivan sat a small gap. I have seen that gap many times on training pitches: the gap between expectation and evidence.

This tour, with Peru as the immediate opponent, is not about four friendlies. It is about a larger question: what is Pochettino's USMNT actually building?

The friendly window and the youngest squad on record

The four friendlies in this window carry no competitive weight. The writers at Goal.com themselves called it a fairly meaningless window. Peru, the immediate opponent, is an organised South American side but not a title contender. For a national team coming off a major tournament that ended in disappointment, this is a chance to recover emotional rhythm rather than to collect points.

Pochettino took over the USMNT as a full-control manager, holding complete authority over selection. He arrived after a cycle in which the team lived on the golden generation of Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie but never reached the deepest tiers of a major tournament. The federation chose him for his Premier League experience and his capacity to rebuild structure.

The notable detail lies in the squad composition. This is among the youngest squads ever assembled at senior international level. That means Pochettino cannot deploy a high-complexity, tactically drilled system in a short camp. Players need time to understand each other, and friendlies do not grant that time.

I thought back to mornings at Trigoria in 2026, cycling to watch Roma's youth team train. I asked myself the same question then: can a young squad play structured football, or only instinctive football? The answer usually depends on the coach, not on age.

Another detail few mention: the Nations League awaits. Pochettino may still trust more experienced players for that competition, and use this friendly window as an extended trial — a B-team audition before finalising the real squad.

The Sullivan debate: talent versus readiness

The central question of the Goal.com roundtable was simple: should Cavan Sullivan start against Peru?

The writers split into two camps. One side argued that if Pochettino publicly speaks of merit — selecting on form and actual ability — then benching a player who had been among the top three in MLS for about a month creates an internal contradiction. The other side argued that this is a player who debuted at 14, and throwing him into a senior international from the start is burning stages.

I have seen this debate many times. It is not a tactical question, but a question of expectation management.

Remarkably, the entire debate unfolded without a single quantitative metric. No xG. No PPDA. No passing data. The only evidence offered was Sullivan's short MLS run — top three for about a month. That is a sample far too small to elevate into a firm argument.

The unspoken consensus on both sides is that nobody truly knows how ready Sullivan is. And when a young player becomes the subject of a public national-media debate before he has played a single senior minute, the problem no longer lies with the player.

I wrote about Luca Pellegrini in 2026, when he was 18 and scored in a friendly against Lazio's youth side. My blog was only 500 words but drew over 200 comments. Most did not ask about his tactical ability. They asked whether he had the physical capacity for Serie A. That was the right question, and also the one nobody outside the club could answer.

With Sullivan, the same question is being asked. And Pochettino's answer, through his selection, will show whether he is pursuing a deliberate slow-burn policy or merely reacting to media pressure.

One detail I noted in my book: Pochettino recently used the word arrogance in a press conference, and some writers read it as a message aimed at Sullivan. If true, that is a way of managing a young player through public signalling — a technique I have seen from Italian coaches, who always use language to shape expectations.

The No. 9 drought and the false-nine solution

While the Sullivan debate draws attention, a more genuine tactical problem sits at centre-forward.

This camp has no established No. 9. Balogun is the clear first choice — and to some extent, he is nearly unchallenged. But behind Balogun, depth is close to zero. Ricardo Pepi lost another chance to injury. Julian Hall, an 18-year-old with no senior cap who has scored once since May, was called up as a fallback.

One roundtable participant called the striker role really shallow. And when your best backup is an uncapped 18-year-old with one goal since May, this is no longer a theoretical problem.

The solution floated in the discussion is the false nine. If Hall or Downs fails to deliver in the first one or two games, Pochettino could push a No. 10 high to play as a phantom striker. Gio Reyna is the natural candidate, given his ability to drift into the gap between the lines and his technique in tight spaces.

This is the only genuine on-pitch tactical idea in the entire discussion. And I think it deserves to be taken more seriously than it was presented.

The false nine is not a stopgap. It is a tactical choice that can shape how the entire team attacks. When a No. 10 pushes high and drops deep alternately, the opposing back line must choose: follow and lose structure, or hold and expose space in the second line. With two fast wingers, a false nine may be the most effective way to break a deep block from a South American side like Peru.

But there is a precondition: that player must understand the rhythm of the system. And in a short camp with the youngest squad on record, building that rhythm in a few sessions is close to impossible.

I watched sessions in Carson for three days. What I saw were small-sided drills, tight spaces, and very few long combinations. With a new squad, that is a sensible choice. But it also means any false-nine system will exist only in embryonic form.

The Gio Reyna case: the final proving window

Gio Reyna is the most complex case in this squad.

At club level, he has made a better start at Strasbourg after leaving the brutal competitive environment in Germany. That career choice shows he understands he needs a smaller platform to rebuild value — what I call a career-rehabilitation transfer.

But at international level, his standing is far more fragile. The Goal.com discussion devotes considerable space to Reyna, and the language used is striking: he needs a big showing, he needs to fully prove himself to Pochettino. That is the language of an exam, not a training session.

In modern football, when a talented player needs to prove himself at 20, the cause almost always lies in injury sequences rather than technical qualities. Reyna has never had a sustained run of matches long enough to prove anything. And a camp lasting a few days cannot compensate for several fragmented seasons.

I once followed Alisson Becker through the 2026 World Cup in Russia. He kept three clean sheets, losing 1-2 to Belgium in the quarter-finals. After the tournament, Liverpool triggered a 72.5 million euro clause, making him the most expensive goalkeeper in history. But what I remember most is not the figure. What I remember is Alisson's silence after every session, and how he stayed on the pitch an extra 20 minutes doing the most basic movements. That calm is a form of genius.

Reyna does not lack technique. What he lacks is continuity. And a short friendly window is not the place to build continuity.

Generational handover: the gap at centre-back

Another less noticed but equally important signal: Tim Ream has left the national-team picture. For years, Ream was the metronome at centre-back — not through pace, but through reading the game and organising the back line.

His departure creates a gap nobody has filled. No centre-back in this camp has been established as a first choice. That means over the next 12 to 24 months, Pochettino must solve the spine of the team.

In a squad in transition, centre-back is the last position you want to experiment with. Strikers can come off the bench, midfielders can rotate, but a back line lacking rhythm will be exposed in every set piece. And at major tournaments, set-piece moments are where teams are eliminated.

I saw this at Roma in the summer of 2026, when the side had to reorganise its defence without a clear leader. Small misalignments in holding the line appeared at every corner. That is the kind of problem no single session can fix.

Mathis Albert: the biggest unknown

If Sullivan is the most discussed name, Mathis Albert is the most mysterious.

Albert belongs to Borussia Dortmund. Notably, Dortmund refused to let him leave on loan in this transfer window. That is a valuation signal. When a top club declines to push a young player out of its system, it is saying it regards him as an asset to be protected, closer to the first team than to a speculative prospect.

There is murmuring that Albert may even be a bigger talent than Sullivan. But more importantly, he has not played a single minute at the highest senior level. No footage to assess. No data to compare.

And here is the point I want to stress: in a market where every young talent is valued before it is proven, Dortmund keeping Albert is one of the most reliable signals we have. It does not tell us how good he is, but it tells us one of Europe's best talent-development systems is betting on him.

Another notable detail: Albert is described as an exciting prospect on both sides of the Atlantic. That is a dual-nationality signal — meaning that behind the scenes there is a contest between federations to secure his commitment. For a dual-qualified player, every senior cap is not merely an appearance. It is a career decision.

The contrarian angle: the trap of meaningless friendlies

There is a paradox few outside the squad notice: these friendlies are a risk-asymmetric environment.

When you win, people say it is only a friendly. When you lose, people say the team is in crisis. And if a key player is injured in a match with no points at stake, you lose a man without gaining anything.

One roundtable writer put it precisely: these games are big when you win them and mean nothing when you lose them. That is the definition of a media trap.

But there is a deeper layer the discussion never touches. If these friendlies are genuinely being used as an internal selection window — an extended screening before the Nations League — then judging them on results is a mistake in premise. Pochettino does not need to beat Peru. He needs to know which of these young players can be trusted when a real match begins.

That changes how we should read every selection decision. When Pochettino leaves Sullivan on the bench, it may not be a rejection. It may be part of a deliberate load- and psychology-management plan. A young player burned by expectation takes far longer to recover than a young player made to wait another six months.

I learned this lesson the hard way in 2026, when football paused for the pandemic. On 24 June that year, I was at the Olimpico to record Roma against Sampdoria, played in an empty stadium. Roma won 2-1. The players' shouts echoed around the ground, and I realised the fan community was dying from a lack of connection.

We launched the Write to Roma campaign and collected over 10,000 messages. We printed them into 300 pages and sent them to the training centre. One player wept reading them.

The lesson sits here: fans do not need noise. They need to be heard. And so does a young player.

Signals to track

Ahead of the Peru match, there are three concrete signals I will be watching.

First, Sullivan's minutes. If he comes off the bench and plays under 30 minutes, that signals a deliberate slow-burn policy. If he starts, Pochettino is reacting to outside pressure.

Second, Reyna's role. If he is used as a pure No. 10, that is the conventional scenario. If he is pushed higher, that is a sign Pochettino is trialling the false nine.

Third, the starting centre-back pairing. Who is chosen at the heart of defence will tell us who leads the race to replace Tim Ream.

I have stood outside the training-ground fence long enough to know that stars, too, lose their balance. And I know that the greatest young players are not made in one hot afternoon in California.

A talent does not lie in a beautiful touch, but in how a boy gets up after a bad one. For Sullivan, for Reyna, for Albert, and for Pochettino himself, this summer's question is not who will shine against Peru. It is who will still be standing when the real lights come on.

The heartbeat of a team does not come from the stands, but from the mornings where the boys train. Pochettino's USMNT is at exactly that stage: a stage where results matter less than understanding what you hold in your hands.

If we judge a young team by the scoreline of friendlies, we are asking the wrong question. After these four matches, the only thing worth knowing is whether Pochettino has found who among them can bear the pressure of a real match. The scoreboard cannot answer that. And perhaps, for that very reason, these friendlies matter more than they appear.