World Cup<\/a>, there has been no official announcement of who that will be.<\/p>\nHis players still don\u2019t know, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cYour guess is as good as mine, honestly,\u201d said midfielder Tyler Adams, who captained the US at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. \u201cI [couldn\u2019t] care less. It\u2019s a privilege and an honor, anybody that gets to wear the armband. But what I represent, how I lead, I think anybody that plays with me knows that I\u2019m a leader, whether I\u2019m wearing the armband or not. It is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pochettino has rotated the captaincy throughout his 19-month tenure, handing the armband twice to Christian Pulisic and most recently to Chris Richards in the US team\u2019s friendly against Portugal in March. But 38-year-old Charlotte FC defender Tim Ream has served as captain most often \u2013 16 times out of Pochettino\u2019s 23 games in charge.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has the experience, he knows what it means to play in Europe and travel here [to play with the national team],\u201d said Pochettino. \u201cHe has the values and the humanity and character to have the capacity to help the team day to day. In a national team you don\u2019t need to do too much. You need to do the right things. Sometimes you need to say one word and sometimes you need to not talk, if you want to be a good leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Richards served as captain in March\u2019s friendly against Portugal. Photograph: Icon Sportswire\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Aside from Ream, relatively few players on the US\u2019s World Cup squad regularly serve as captain for their club team \u2013 and the few who do mostly play in MLS. Miles Robinson is often FC Cincinnati\u2019s captain when fit, while Cristian Roldan is practically synonymous with the leadership of the Seattle Sounders. A handful of others have worn the armband for their clubs, but more occasionally: Alejandro Zendejas at Club Am\u00e9rica, Auston Trusty at Celtic, Antonee Robinson at Fulham, Weston McKennie at Juventus and goalkeeper Matt Turner with the New England Revolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course it\u2019s important, who is captain,\u201d said former USMNT attacker Jozy Altidore, who captained the US during several World Cup qualifiers and friendlies. \u201cYou\u2019re first one out of the tunnel, it\u2019s very important especially in a home World Cup. But when I see this group I see a bunch of leaders. Maybe they didn\u2019t start that way but now they\u2019re most certainly leaders, in terms of how they\u2019ve played at their clubs, how they\u2019ve developed as young men \u2026 I think when you have a World Cup team, you\u2019d like to think the 26 guys you\u2019ve selected are all team leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n
For all of his success with the national team, Landon Donovan only captained the squad in roughly 10% of his appearances, thanks to his tenure largely overlapping with defender Carlos Bocanegra, the program\u2019s all-time leader in captaincies. Donovan captained the LA Galaxy for two different stretches and famously gave up the armband to David Beckham when he arrived in 2007, reclaiming it two years later. Donovan is a veteran of three World Cups.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn those tournaments, it didn\u2019t really matter who was wearing the armband,\u201d Donovan told the Guardian on Thursday. \u201cIt really didn\u2019t. Almost everyone on the field was wearing the armband for their club team. Whether it was Carlos, or Claudio [Reyna], or [Jeff] Agoos, it didn\u2019t really matter because there were at least six or seven or eight guys who wore the armband for their club team or who were leaders with their club team. The difference with this team is there actually aren\u2019t many of those players. If you just went through the roster and put together a potential lineup, [you have a few] but that\u2019s kind of it, right? I do think there\u2019s more importance this time in who the captain is. My guess would be that it\u2019s Tim Ream.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ream has shied away from specifically addressing the captaincy, calling himself just another \u201ccog in the machine\u201d in an interview during Fox\u2019s roster reveal earlier this week. Yet he has proved to be Pochettino\u2019s most consistent choice. Should he see action this summer, as he almost inevitably will, he will become the oldest player in the history of the USMNT to appear at a World Cup, narrowly beating 1994 World Cup veteran Fernando Clavijo by a matter of months.<\/p>\n
His standing within the group \u2013 Ream is widely liked and respected \u2013 is another reason he seems the safe money in terms of the captaincy. And there are other considerations as well. At World Cups, captains are usually the players called to accompany a team\u2019s manager to pregame press conferences that tend to draw the largest crowds. And on the field, this summer\u2019s tournament will be the first in which captains will be relied upon as the primary mode of communication with the referee. In both cases, keeping a cool head is key.<\/p>\n
Ream certainly has that. But Pochettino frequently proved full of surprises. It\u2019s entirely possible he throws the captaincy elsewhere, perhaps sensing a shift in energy.<\/p>\n
\u201cLeadership is not to score three goals or save three penalties,\u201d said Pochettino. \u201cIt\u2019s to make cohesion. It\u2019s to provide the tools to the group to find the dynamic, to be alive, to feel the energy, to create energy. At the moment, though, who leads the national team is who needs to lead in every single team or in every single club or national team.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is the coach,\u201d said Pochettino, laughing. \u201cSorry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you want to get US men\u2019s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino started, just use one word:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":672622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":["post-672621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=672621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/672622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=672621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=672621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=672621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}