USMNT HC Wants Players to 'Prioritize' Team as Christian Pulisic, More Skip Gold Cup

The United States will have a number of key players unavailable for the Gold Cup later in June, which lended some heft to a few of the comments made by USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino during a Tuesday appearance on Unfiltered Soccer with with Landon Donovan and Tim Howard.

"Today we have plenty of players playing outside of the USA. But the most important thing is the culture," he said [10:20 mark]. "I think we saw in you [two], to be desperate to come and [make the national team] the priority. ... That is our responsibility, that [the players] need to prioritize the national team. We were talking about Argentine players, about Brazilian players, or English players or Spanish players, they are desperate. Even Lionel Messi, Neymar, Kylian Mbappé for France. These guys are desperate to go to the national team. And for them, when they go, they don't [care] if it's a friendly game, an official game, a World Cup, it doesn't matter. Because the possibility to defend, one time more, your flag, your shirt, it's about feeling pride in doing that. And that is our responsibility to translate."

The United States will be without players like Christian Pulisic, Weston McKennie, Timothy Weah, Antonee Robinson, Yunus Musah, Folarin Balogun and Giovanni Reyna, among others, for the Gold Cup.

The reasons vary. Some are due to injury issues (Balogun). Some are due to participation in the Club World Cup (Juventus' McKennie and Weah; Dortmund's Reyna), which overlaps with the Gold Cup.

Pulisic and the U.S. Soccer Federation came to a joint decision to give him a rest this summer after a busy two years for club and country. Robinson is also being granted a period to rest, while Musah asked to skip the tournament for personal reasons.

So it's unclear if Poch's comments on Tuesday were directed at some of those Gold Cup absences or simply a bigger-picture trend that he's noticed. He did say in particular on Tuesday that Pulisic is "very dedicated" to the national team and that skipping the Gold Cup was in the best long-term interests of players like Pulisic and Robinson.