May 31 (Reuters) \u2013 Chris Richards\u2019 hopes of playing for the United States in the World Cup on home soil hang in the balance because of an ankle \u200binjury, with coach Mauricio Pochettino leaving the defender \u200cout of the squad for a warm-up friendly against Senegal on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Richards tore two ligaments in his ankle while playing for Crystal Palace in a 2-2 Premier League draw with Brentford this month and did not \u200cfeature \u200bin the club\u2019s Conference League final \u2060victory this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided \u2060with Chris, with the medical and the performance staff, (for him) to not be part of the group that is going to be in North Carolina playing tomorrow against Senegal,\u201d \u200bPochettino told reporters on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he needs to keep doing his rehab, and I think it\u2019s much better \u2060to stay here and plan to \u2060train and reevaluate next week how he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cI \u200bwas asking from yesterday, (when Richards) arrived, to (assistant coach) Jesus 100 times: \u2018What \u200bdo you think, what information do we have?\u2019. The \u200canswer was, \u2018Wait, wait, wait, wait.\u2019 Yes, it\u2019s too early. We need to see. The next few days are going to be key.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pochettino added that defender Tim Ream, who has made \u206080 appearances for the United States, had been named captain of the side.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am so grateful that he is with us, because \u2060he\u2019s a great \u200ccaptain, not only on the field, we know \u2060that, maybe more important, off the field,\u201d \u200bPochettino added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI \u200cthink he has the experience, the capacity \u200bto be \u2060the leader that we want, the positive leader.\u201d<\/p>\n
The United States, who are co-hosting the World Cup with Mexico and Canada, open their Group D campaign against Paraguay on June 12 at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Aadi Nair in Bengaluru; Editing \u200bby William Mallard)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"May 31 (Reuters) \u2013 Chris Richards\u2019 hopes of playing for the United States in the World Cup on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-675647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675647","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=675647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}