USMNT's Josh Sargent Out of Werder Bremen Squad Due to Imminent Transfer

It doesn't look like Josh Sargent will be spending the season in Germany's second division after all.

The 21-year-old U.S. men's national team striker has been omitted from Werder Bremen's squad for this weekend's DFB Pokal first-round match vs. Osnabruck "due to ongoing transfer negotiations," the 2. Bundesliga side said on Friday. Recent reports have linked Sargent to recently promoted Premier League side Norwich City.

“We are about to come to a transfer agreement for him with a foreign club,” Werder Bremen sporting director Frank Baumann said in a club statement. “Because of this, Josh told us that he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to play on Saturday. As a result, we let him go home from training.”

Sargent has spent the entirety of his professional career at Werder Bremen, dating back to 2018. He made his first-team debut in December of that year, scoring with his first touch in a match vs. Fortuna Dusseldorf. Symbolically, his last goals for the club appear to have been scored against the same opponent. With both now in Germany's second tier, Sargent scored a pair vs. Dusseldorf in last Saturday's 3–2 victory in league play.

Sargent scored 11 Bundesliga goals in three seasons with Werder Bremen and 13 in all competitions. Finding a spot where he'll play at high level is imperative considering the U.S.'s World Cup qualifying campaign begins in September. Sargent was part of the U.S. squad that beat Mexico to win the inaugural Concacaf Nations League title in June, starting and playing 68 minutes in the final. Sargent, a St. Louis-area native, has five goals and one assist in 16 caps for the senior national team.

Should Sargent wind up at Norwich City, he'd be joining a forward corps that includes veteran Finland star Teemu Puuki, whose 26 goals were third-most in England's second-tier Championship last season. He would join other U.S. internationals in the Premier League such as Christian Pulisic (Chelsea), Zack Steffen (Man City) and Owen Otasowie (Wolverhampton). Matt Miazga (Chelsea) and Cameron Carter-Vickers (Tottenham) are both currently on the books at Premier League clubs but have perpetually gone out on loan in the years since joining those clubs and are expected to again.