The U.S. men’s national team announced its final pre-Olympic training camp roster on Wednesday, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that key players like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie and Tyler Adams were not among those vying for a spot in the Paris Olympics.
There’s a logical reason for that.
While Olympic soccer on the women’s side is viewed as a major competition between senior national teams, the men’s Olympic soccer tournament is played between under-23 squads. Every team is allowed to call up three overage players — Pulisic, for example, is 25 — but the men’s program is taking a strategic approach with its roster selection ahead of the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
When the men’s U.S. under-23 team qualified for its first Olympics since 2008, there was some discussion among USMNT stars about competing in Paris. And it’s not uncommon to see teams use an overage spot on a star player as Brazil did with Neymar in 2016. But a similar situation with the U.S. team went out the window when the 2024 Copa America was moved stateside.
We saw just that on Wednesday.
Though this is not the final Olympic roster, it gives an idea of what direction Olympic head coach Marko Mitrović is going with his team selection. Walker Zimmerman — who has seen less USMNT call-ups since the World Cup — is the lone overage player on the training camp roster.
The United States Men’s Olympic June training camp roster has been released!
The U.S. will face Japan on June 11. pic.twitter.com/ecLZVppBWz
— USMNT Otaku (@USMNTOtaku) May 29, 2024
With the U.S. not having any World Cup qualifiers this cycle as 2026 co-hosts, Gregg Berhalter needed to take advantage of every opportunity to have his main core of players competing against other top national teams. So, given that the USMNT is participating in the Copa America, it makes far more sense to have those top U.S. players go up against A-teams from CONMEBOL (where you’ll find Argentina and Brazil) than to have them play against under-23 players in Paris.
Every USMNT game is seen as preparation for 2026, and U.S. Soccer is simply prioritizing the Copa America with the Olympics being a junior competition.
