Gregg Berhalter has selected a 25-player roster for the US men’s national team’s international friendly against Trinidad & Tobago, US Soccer announced Sunday.
The USMNT will host the Soca Warriors Jan. 31 at 7 pm ET (FS1, UniMás, TUDN) at Exploria Stadium.
The group was selected from an initial list of 12 senior USMNT players and 26 U-23 players who began training on Jan. 9 at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. The team traveled to Orlando on Sunday afternoon. LAFC defender Tristan Blackmon suffered a concussion in training Saturday and was scheduled to return Los Angeles Sunday.
“These last two weeks have been an absolute pleasure. The hard work and determination demonstrated by the entire group confirms that the player pool is headed in the right direction,” Berhalter said in a statement. “As we transition to Orlando, we switch gears and focus on competing as we prepare to face Trinidad and Tobago.”
The roster is exclusively comprised of MLS players who span 15 different teams with Orlando City SC leading the way with four selections in Daryl Dike, Benji Michel, Chris Mueller and Andrés Perea, who became eligible after FIFA granted his one-time request to switch allegiance from Colombia to the United States earlier this month.
Sixteen players are age-eligible for the 2021 Concacaf Olympic Qualifying Championship to be played from March 18-30 in Guadalajara, Mexico. The average age of the roster, as of Jan. 31, will be 23 years, 302 days with an average of 10 caps.
Toronto FC forward Jozy Altidore (115 caps) is the most senior player, followed by D.C. United'sPaul Arriola (34), Colorado Rapids midfielder Kellyn Acosta (24), Seattle Sounders FC midfielder Cristian Roldan (19), New York Red Bulls center back Aaron Long (18) and LA Galaxy midfielder Sebastian Lletget (17), the lone USMNT player to appear in all four matches in 2020.
Meanwhile, all three of the squad’s goalkeepers — Matt Freese from the Philadelphia Union, San Jose Earthquakes’ JT Marcinkowski and Matt Turner from the New England Revolution — as well as Atlanta United’sGeorge Bello, Aaron Herrera from Real Salt Lake, Chicago Fire FC’sMauricio Pineda, the Orlando trio of Dike, Michel and Perea and Tanner Tessmann from FC Dallas could earn their first cap.
The match against T&T begins a busy and critical 2021 for the USMNT that includes the Concacaf Nations League Final Four, the Gold Cup and the start of 2022 World Cup Qualifying.
