One of my favorite things about the Scuffed Podcast is that it often gets my mind racing with ideas about the national team. As I was listening to the most recent Top 40 episode the idea of “tiering” the player pool occurred to me.

When I do fantasy football drafts looking at the players this way appeals to my eye. It’s not like this is going to be useful in the same manner, but it might be an interesting way to look at the players available to the team.

Tier 1 – The Stars

These guys are the players that would be starters on nearly any national team. They are performing well for clubs in one of the Top 5 leagues and are undroppable for Berhalter. (No particular order)

Christian Pulisic

Tyler Adams

Sergino Dest

Where’s Weston McKennie? – is the question I imagine many are yelling at your phones right now. He (or John Brooks or maaayyyybe Gio?) are the closest to joining the stars, but his utility role and lack of consistent performances prevents him from joining those three imo.

Tier 2 – Good Starters

Players that are playing well in a first team, professional environment. If you put these guys in a USMNT lineup you are confident that they will play well and not be an area the opponent would target. (This list is in order from best to worst as I see it right now btw)

Weston McKennie (nearly a star)

John Brooks (needs to stay healthy and get back in the starting lineup)

Duane Holmes (possibly upwardly mobile)

Zack Steffen (he’s a keeper)

Jozy Altidore (a healthy Altidore would really help the US)

Reggie Cannon (a good European move could push him up a tier)

Jordan Morris (Gregg’s system isn’t his best fit)

Tim Ream (the LCB version not the left back version)

the left back version) Aaron Long (passing limits his upside)

Matt Miazga (pretty good player – looks like he may have hit his ceiling though)

Fabian Johnson (I think he’d be a good fit at left or right back but tbh I don’t think we’ll see him with the NT again)

Sebastian Lletget (I’m not a huge fan, but he’s fine for now)

Jackson Yueill (not sure there’s a ton of potential here, not confident in that assessment though)

Michael Bradley (he may not be here anymore, almost put him in the “Meh” tier, but I’m not sure about that yet)

DeAndre Yedlin (begrudgingly)

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Tier 3 – I’m Coming for You

The young guys to the current starters after the Olympics

This is the exciting tier for me. When the Olympics are over the U23 players are no longer going to have separate camps or that team to aim for. They are going to be coming for a full national team spot and at least some of them are going to get it. Jordan Morris is a fine player, but would you bet on him keeping his spot if some of these guys below are the ones coming for it? (No real order to these names)

Gio Reyna (he might already be beyond this tier, but I’ll leave him here for now)

Tim Weah (those moments of magic at the U20 World Cup have me hopeful)

Uly Llanez (you watched the last friendly, right?)

Paxton Pomykal (please don’t turn into another injury prone dude)

Jesus Ferreira (I’m probably unreasonably excited to see Ferreira with the NT again)

Richie Ledezma (ready to break into PSV any weekend now)

Miles Robinson (Miles is the next evolution of Aaron Long)

Antonee Robinson (there’s some pretty good teams that see something in this guy)

Brenden Aaronson (not sure his ceiling is as high as some of these guys, but who knows how development is going to go)

Tier 3 1/2 – Wild Cards

This tier is made up of players I’m not really sure where to put. Like Timmy Chandler – on talent he’d probably be in tier 2, but does he give a crap and have an actual chance to be called in? No idea. What about Ventura Alvarado? He is the captain of a good team in Liga MX, but he hasn’t gotten a sniff under Berhalter.

Timmy Chandler

Ventura Alvarado

Josh Sargent (6 months ago I’d have him in tier two or three – not so sure now. Werder is a train wreck)

Jordan Siebatcheu (he gets minutes for the third best team in Ligue 1, but will he play for the US?)

Darlington Nagbe (good player, but apparently not interested in being involved with the national team)

Tier 4 – Lottery Tickets

Got the winner right here.

This portion of the pool consists of young guys that haven’t shown enough yet to – pushing for a spot with the full national team, but have the potential to in the near future. Ideally this should be a large section because lottery tickets are, by nature, low percentage.

I’m not going to list a million players and I’m sure I forgot some names, so if I missed your favorite prospect, my bad. I tried to keep the list to guys that have a chance of being a first team regular (I know there’s a couple that already are – cut me some slack) in the next season or two. (No particular order to this list)

Alex Mendez

Chris Gloster

Christian Cappis

Kobe Hernandez-Foster

Julian Araujo

Nicholas Gioacchini

Ricardo Pepi

Charlie Kelman

Gianluca Busio

Keaton Parks

Brandon Servania

Chris Richards

de la Fuente

Sam Vines

Chase Gasper

Sebastian Soto

Jose Gallegos

David Ochoa

Moses Nyeman

Mark McKenzie

Andrija Novakovich

Owen Otasowie

Indiana Vassilev

John Tolkin

Tier 5 – Meh

These are players you probably feel the USMNT should have moved beyond. They’re serviceable players in whatever league, but they aren’t great. If you were an opposing manager this is a guy you would look to take advantage of if you see him in a lineup. I’d honestly rather see a lottery ticket player on the roster in front of these guys unless the game is some sort of must win World Cup qualifier or something. (No order here again)

Paul Arriola

Alfredo Morales

Cristian Roldan

Gyasi Zardes

Tyler Boyd

Daniel Lovitz

CCV

Walker Zimmerman

Nick Lima

Corey Baird

Jonathan Lewis

So How Do Things Look?

By my estimation there are 18 players in the top two tiers. That seems okay. We aren’t going to be winning the World Cup anytime soon with that distribution, but it’s not bad. To really push on into the next echelon of national teams we need two or three more players from tiers 3 and 4 to push into the “Star” tier and a few more into the “Good Starter” tier.

Currently, when a player goes down with injury, the replacement is often a precipitous step down. If tiers 1 and 2 could expand to 30-35 players then the decrease from Player A to Player B wouldn’t be so drastic. As much as I’m hopeful that we qualify for the Olympics…I’m almost as eager to see the depth chart for the full team after. I think we’ll be feeling a lot better about the state of the team at that point. 6 more months…