Us position numbers soccer full#

He offers a different skill set and look from Wright and Dike, who are more traditional target strikers or Pepi, Ferreira, and Sargent, who drop deeper into the midfield to hold up play and launch wingers forward. Balogun can also take on defenders one-on-one and help trigger the press when out of possession. has added a forward who can stretch the field with his speed and movement. In Balogun, who is expected to be called up for next month’s CONCACAF Nations League Finals, the U.S. The official announcement on Tuesday provoked euphoria from all the expected sources and some not-so-obvious ones.īalogunnnnnnnnnnnn!!!!! #USMNT- Jon Stewart May 16, 2023 and it’s just something I’m really happy that I’ve decided to do.” There’s been a lot of build up, so I’ve obviously seen people saying that I should choose to represent the U.S. Before I knew it, I just saw loads of comments and people knew I was in America, and I just really felt the love from there. “I was there and I just posted a photo with my friends thinking that it was just a holiday picture. fans,” Balogun said on Tuesday in an interview with U.S.

Us position numbers soccer full#

“I think that’s when I really saw the full force of the U.S. head coach Anthony Hudson, only for internet sleuths to work out the striker’s whereabouts, compounding the speculation.

So Balogun went to Orlando for a quiet meeting with interim U.S. “We cannot go and give first-team call-ups to someone just because we don’t want them to go somewhere else,” Southgate declared. In March, Balogun declined an invitation to England’s under-21 camp because of a hamstring injury, while senior Three Lions manager Gareth Southgate said that Balogun would have to bide his time before making the top-level squad. Brandon Vazquez is still waiting for a real chance to translate his MLS goals to the national team. Josh Sargent often plays out of position for Norwich City and doesn’t score enough goals. FC Dallas’s Jesus Ferreira was first choice for a bit but withered at the World Cup. Haji Wright bounced between club teams before settling in Turkey, but mostly has offered uneven performances in a U.S. West Bromwich Albion’s Daryl Dike has struggled with injuries. Ricardo Pepi came on strong as a teenager, tearing up Major League Soccer and scoring in his first two USMNT games, and then went more than a year without a goal in his new leagues in Germany and Holland. As the depth chart has cemented in almost every other position on the field, the lone striker job remains up for grabs.īalogun is hardly the only young striker with promise and an American passport, but none of the others have staked a credible claim as the starter. The absence of a consistent goal scorer-a Clint Dempsey, if you will-represents a yawning gap in this purported golden generation. After all, the striker position has been a problem for the ascendant U.S. Because the American soccer community enjoys nothing quite so much as projecting its aspirations onto a single young player-ideally one who hasn’t even committed to the program yet.

Insiders and hardcore fans had him on their watch lists for some time, but as Balogun’s goal tally mounted this season, so did the hype. youth national teams-he was also eligible for Nigeria. He joined the Arsenal academy when he was 10 and spent his teenage years bouncing back and forth between the English and U.S. “Let’s make history.”īalogun was born in Brooklyn, but his Nigerian parents moved the family to London when he was 2 years old. “I’m coming home,” the video proclaims after flashing a U.S. “If you’re the United States, you have to go and get him.” It’s justified analysis for a player who has, on loan from Arsenal, broken out in the French Ligue 1 with a prolific 19 league goals in 34 matches this season. The clip repeats audio of some of the fevered speculation over which program would land the forward: “He’s the perfect guy to take this squad to the next level,” one commentator says. It arrived a few hours after news broke on Tuesday that FIFA had approved the coveted 21-year-old striker’s switch from the England men’s national team to the United States. Because it’s 2023, Folarin Balogun had his own hype video ready to go.