MLS lays foundation for USMNT's next generation: "We have to keep going" | OneFootball

By Charles Boehm

Speaking to reporters after Tuesday’s 4-2 win over Chile in St. Louis, US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino sounded rather matter-of-fact when asked about the speed and smoothness with which a new cadre of youngsters has slotted into his side, the likes of Julian Hall, Justin Ellis and Cavan Sullivan making extensive contributions to the Yanks’ September victories.

“Sometimes, I feel that I believe more – more, more, much more – in the talent of the players here in the USA than people that talk in the [US] media," Pochettino mused. "Because I think it's so important to translate that you really trust. And then because we [have] expertise, that is why we are here, don't worry that we are going to make the best decision.

“It's so important that the people really trust in the process, trust in our decisions, but trust in the players and respect the players.”

Player of the Month: Cavan Sullivan | September 2026

New energy

Poch is all in on the kids, praising both their energy and quality as he leads the USMNT into the 2030 FIFA World Cup cycle. The question lingers, though: How did we reach this point so quickly, and entertainingly?

This youth movement coursing through the program has been powered by grand visions and big ideas, some dating back decades.

Take, for example, U.S. Soccer’s introduction of the Development Academy, a paradigm-shifting national competition launched in 2007 with the ambition of professionalizing elite youth soccer in the United States. Or MLS’s decision to carry that concept forward when the federation shuttered the DA as it faced financial pressures in the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, refashioning it into what’s now known as MLS NEXT, wherein many millions of dollars have been invested league-wide in elevated talent identification, coaching education, facilities and connections to MLS NEXT Pro.

Or consider the dream of Philadelphia Union minority owner Richie Graham, who spearheaded the launch of the Union’s holistic, carefully crafted youth academy in 2013.

“We believe that the U.S. is a future powerhouse in the sport of soccer,” Graham told MLSsoccer.com during the early stages of the project. “We have all these ingredients, and we'd like the Philadelphia Union to be a contributor to that process.”

The Philly Standard

A few years later, Graham confessed to The Athletic that he was “obsessed with the idea of seeing the United States men’s team win a World Cup,” adding that “it is the big vision that people can kind of wrap their arms around to say ‘You know, we’re actually working together towards that.’”

Today Philly’s system is the gold standard in MLS, and the largest single contributor to the USMNT player pool. Three Philly homegrowns – with 17-year-old wunderkind Cavan Sullivan the headliner – feature on the current USMNT squad, whose eight teenagers and three 20-year-olds have fans across the country eager for the program’s future. The USMNT's World Cup roster this summer, meanwhile, included four Union products, three of whom have fetched multiple millions of dollars in transfer fees across Europe, with much of those proceeds invested into extensive new infrastructure at the club’s facilities in Chester, Pennsylvania.

“Our mission is not only to win, but also to develop the American player,” Philly sporting director Jon Scheer told MLSsoccer.com, “and we've worked closely with the federation over the years.

“Miguel D'Agostino, one of Pochettino's assistants, actually came here to Philly to meet with me and [interim head coach] Ryan Richter, and we had a great conversation. It was very open about development. It was talking about not only the three players that ultimately ended up getting called up, but also other players within our first team, but also our club overall. And I would just say the open-mindedness of Miguel and the staff to come out here and spend time with us, I think it shows how powerful that collaboration can be.”

Adaptation process

Behind this generational shift is massive investment, but much of the progress has also come through a painstaking, day-by-day process of trial and error. Consider how Hall and Adri Mehmeti became daily starters for Red Bull New York under former USMNT captain Michael Bradley this season.

The homegrown duo have been highly rated prospects for some time. Yet Bradley didn’t exactly plan to write them into his starting XI when he stepped up to RBNY’s head coaching post from their MLS NEXT Pro side last winter.

“We knew that they were going to be real parts of the first team, training with the first team every day, not in and out,” Bradley explained to MLSsoccer.com in August. “Time would tell where they were, and ultimately, we were going to have to evaluate as we moved along where they were and when the right time was to give them more.”

It wasn’t until a preseason trip to Texas that RBNY’s coaching staff realized a lineup with three teenagers – Hall, Mehmeti and their fellow academy product Matthew Dos Santos – might just be their best XI as they counted down to their season opener at Orlando City.

“These guys, in different ways, started to really show that they needed to be pushed along,” recalled Bradley. “They're young, and it wasn't necessarily perfect – it never is for anybody, by the way.

"But we still looked on the field and said, ‘Yeah, we like that team. We like the way this group tries to play football. We like the way this team competes. We like the way this team takes our ideas and goes for it and isn't afraid, and steps up and tries to press and win the ball quickly.’”

Maximizing opportunity

It wasn’t just that the kids had been handed an opportunity. They seized their chance and advanced with it before their coaches’ eyes. That homegrown trio has since started 73 league matches between them this season. Hall is RBNY’s leading scorer with 10g/5a, earning a USMNT call from Mauricio Pochettino, alongside Mehmeti, for the Yanks' autumn camp. Hall has since scored in each of his first two senior international caps.

More and more coaches across MLS are applying a mindset like Bradley’s. US Under-20 men’s national team coach Gonzalo Segares has witnessed this process for several years, often talking with his young charges about their club situations when they gather for international camps.

As an in-depth Goal.com feature recently noted, 28 of MLS’s 30 clubs have fielded a teenager at some point this season, and only the French, Argentine and Brazilian leagues have seen more teens deployed than MLS.

“They have had to work really hard and earn their spot and earn their minutes. I know that for a fact,” the former Chicago Fire FC fullback recently told MLSsoccer.com.

“For young players that are coming up and they're getting a lot of minutes in the academy, and then when they get to a first team and they don't get as many minutes, it's an adaptation process, and it's a learning opportunity for them. Because now the minutes they have to earn are in a first-team environment, right? And they're playing vs. men that are fighting for contracts and for positions.

“They have to step, every day, on the field, and the only thing that they can control is the performance.”

Player of the Matchday 27: Peyton Miller

League-wide approach

RBNY and Philly stand at the forefront of the ‘play your kids’ ethos, though the mantra is spreading.

A few hours north on Interstate 95, the New England Revolution have built their current competitive model around emerging talents like USMNTers Peyton Miller and Brooklyn Raines, and hired former US U-20s and 2024 Olympic coach Marko Mitrović as head coach last November to advance it.

While cultured Spanish import Carles Gil remains their linchpin, the Revs’ current second-place perch in the MLS Eastern Conference standings reflects the value of the pivot toward youth. Mitrović notes that the league’s roster structures play a key role as well, with a salary budget and limited international roster slots incentivizing homegrown production, as well as the nurturing of other domestic players like Revs goalkeeper Matt Turner, the national team’s starter at the 2022 World Cup.

And when rising prospects reach the first team, they gain the chance to learn firsthand from veterans like Gil, which further prepares them for the international level and beyond.

“We have a very decent development system, but also we have space for those guys to play,” Mitrović told MLSsoccer.com this week, describing the vast evolution he’s seen in this space since he first landed in MLS a decade ago as an assistant to Veljko Paunović in Chicago.

“We just have to be patient, because we are still in the process, and to get where I believe everybody wants, [where] on one side, you have MLS as one of the legitimately best leagues in the world, and then also that USA is one of the best countries in the world in soccer. I strongly believe both are possible. We just have to be patient, and we have to keep going and doing the right things.”

Mitrović's stints with U.S. Soccer and New England have made him bullish, in no small part because other MLS clubs aren’t fully on the bandwagon yet.

“I believe in the future,” Mitrović said, “clubs that are in ‘sleep mode’ and maybe they don't see the benefit in this moment will wake up, and invest even more – all the resources that they have in developing young players. I believe these are just the first steps in having even more and more young, talented players, not just playing in MLS, but being part of the national team, and it's going to be more and more competitive.”

The USMNT’s generational shift will face a sterner test in the coming days against regional rivals Mexico and Canada.

Those challenges will be yet another opportunity for Pochettino's assessment to bear fruit, having hailed the MLS youngsters after the Yanks' recent 4-1 win over Peru.

"It is important to praise all the coaches that are in MLS working with these guys," said the Argentine manager, who named 13 MLS players to his 28-man roster.

"The way that the [young players] understood from day one what we expected from them was amazing. We were talking after the first and second training session, that every single concept that we put out, [the players] assimilated and applied at training."