Remember the 2023-24 soccer season, when Bayer Leverkusen went undefeated in the Bundesliga, Manchester City won their fourth Premier League trophy in a row, Harry Kane scored approximately 300 goals and still didn't win a trophy and Borussia Dortmund made the Champions League final despite finishing fifth in their domestic league?
Me neither. Memorial Day is over, and that means the time has arrived for a summer of international soccer. For the U.S. men's national team, in particular, it means it's time for their last few truly competitive matches before they co-host the 2026 World Cup. Yes, they'll still have the Nations League, but they've already won it multiple times and the pressure in those matches can't equate to what they'd normally face in World Cup qualifying, or what they will face in June when the Copa America starts.
So, ahead of a summer that will also include the Olympics, we're taking stock of the depth of the American soccer program as a whole. We're going to sketch out the 15-deep depth charts for the eight major position groups: goalkeeper, right-back, left-back, center-back, defensive midfield, center midfield, winger and center forward.
The purpose of the exercise isn't necessarily to identify who exactly is the 14th-best American left-back, but to see what the USMNT's positions of strength and weakness are.
The USMNT's latest roster -- the last before the Copa America squad is announced -- is the guideline for the top players of each position. Beyond that, the methodology is a combination of past call-ups, comments from USMNT head coach Gregg Berhalter and current form to sketch out the rest of each position group. As such, consider the top of each group to be a much more confident projection, while at some positions there might be very little to separate, say, the ninth player and the 25th player.
OK, we've got a list of 120 Americans to get through, so let's sort the top 15 players in every position on the USMNT depth chart.