USMNT Stock Up, Stock Down: Dest Returns to Pitch, Cardoso Suffers Injury Setback

With less than three weeks until U.S. men’s national team manager Mauricio Pochettino makes his final World Cup decisions, several players in contention are likely asking: ‘Where did the time go? Have I done enough?’

The U.S. is set to announce its official 2026 FIFA World Cup roster on May 26 in New York City, the team’s first-ever live World Cup roster reveal. By then, Pochettino will have narrowed his pool down to the 26 most worthy players.

That squad will get to bond briefly in late tune-up friendlies against Senegal and Germany at the end of the month in Charlotte and Chicago, before traveling west to Los Angeles to open World Cup play in Group D against Paraguay on June 12.

Who Pochettino deems most worthy likely changes by the day, with each slate of club games shedding light on players, new and old.

Here’s our stock up, stock down analysis for the USMNT this week.

USMNT Stock Up

Sergiño Dest

After eight weeks on the sidelines, Sergiño Dest made his long-awaited return to the pitch, logging 30 minutes in the midfield in PSV Eindhoven’s 2–2 draw with Ajax Amsterdam.

The star fullback suffered a hamstring injury on March 7 in a Eredivisie match against AZ Alkmaar, assisted off the field in the second half while clutching his left hamstring in pain. Dest was determined to make a recovery in time to see out PSV’s dominant campaign in the Dutch top flight and regain fitness ahead of the World Cup this summer.

“The first couple weeks [of injury], I did two sessions a day [of recovery],” Dest said two weeks ago. “I said to myself, ‘Hey, I want to be there at the World Cup, so I have to do everything in my power to be able to come back ASAP.’”

The 25-year-old, despite being out of his normal starting right back position, impressed in the outing, commanding the right half of the field with his impressive accuracy and penetrating balls into the final third. It must have been a confidence-building match for Pochettino, as USMNT striker Ricardo Pepi also impressed, opening PSV’s scoring just 30 seconds after the whistle with a crashing header for his 17th of the season.

While Pepi will likely serve an off-the-bench role this summer, Dest could make a genuine bid for a starting spot. He was a key contributor for the USMNT at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, starting all four matches at right back, and if he can successfully regain full fitness, he could play a similar role.

Christian Pulisic

Christian Pulisic may not be scoring in real life, but he is on television, and perhaps that is just the visualization tactic the USMNT forward needs to get back to scoring ways.

The AC Milan star is on a 17-game goal-less drought—the longest of his career—dating back to last December at the club level and November 2024 for the national team. Nevertheless, FOX Sports, the official U.S. broadcaster for the World Cup this summer, chose him to be the hero in their new ad campaign.

The commercial portrays the USMNT competing in the 2026 World Cup final against Brazil. It opens with Pulisic stepping up to take a corner kick in the waning seconds of stoppage time, with the score knotted 2–2. Fans around the nation donning red, white and blue are shown glued to their televisions, waiting for the U.S.’s last-ditch attempt to score and earn global glory.

Pulisic then performs a miracle. His dramatic corner kick—taken in slow motion and igniting Elvis Presley’s inspirational ballad The Impossible Dream—curves into the side-netting, a rare goal known as an Olimpico, to win the World Cup and send American fans into a joyful frenzy of cheers and sobbing.

Although the campaign is meant to be hyperbolic—a way to promote the tournament this summer and remind fans that anything is possible, even a Cinderella run for the U.S.—it nonetheless chooses Pulisic to be the hero, perhaps reminding “Captain America” himself all he is capable of despite his recent downturn.

USMNT Stock Down

Johnny Cardoso

Johnny Cardoso was not only recently written off by two former USMNT legends, Tim Howard and Landon Donovan, perhaps negatively influencing his image in the eyes of Pochettino, but he also suffered a high-grade ankle sprain on Thursday in Atlético Madrid’s training, sidelining the midfielder indefinitely.

“He will undergo physiotherapy and rehabilitation sessions in the gym, and the progress of his recovery will determine his return to competition,” the club announced.

With just four games left in La Liga for Los Rojiblancos, the 24-year-old probably won’t feature again at the club level this season due to the severity of his sprain, and he may not be ready in time for the World Cup either, which kicks off in just five weeks.

This is a devastating blow for both the U.S. and Atlético, for whom he was integral in their deep run to the UEFA Champions League semifinals. He recently appeared in the second leg of the semifinals, logging over 30 minutes in the heartbreaking 1–0 loss to Arsenal on Tuesday, which eliminated them from the European competition 2–1 on aggregate.

Regardless of his recent presence on soccer’s grandest European stage—and now his injury, Howard and Donovan do not believe he deserves a spot on Pochettino’s final roster.

“I think the Johnny Cardoso thing is going to be a challenge for people,” Donovan posted to the Unfiltered Soccer podcast earlier this week. “They’re like, ‘Oh, he plays at Atlético Madrid.’ He’s just not done it for the national team. Last time he played [at the March camp], he played a half [against Belgium] and then he left camp [due to injury].

“I can see a scenario in which Pochettino brings him because he has 26 players, and clearly [Cardoso] has quality, but I don’t know. It goes back to the question I said before, ‘Is it your best 26 players or your best group of 26?’ And guys like [Sebastian] Berhalter and [Cristian] Roldan, I think just make the group better even if they don’t touch the field.”

Cardoso has 23 caps at the senior level since his debut in 2020, suffering multiple injury setbacks in that time span.

Patrick Schulte

Columbus Crew’s Patrick Schulte is in a late bid to prove to Pochettino that he deserves to be the third-string goalkeeper this summer over Chicago Fire’s Chris Brady and FC Cincinnati’s Roman Celentano, given New York City’s Matt Freese and New England Revolution’s Matt Turner are near locks at first and second string.

Schulte, however, did nothing to help his case over the weekend, looking out of sorts in the net on Saturday in Columbus’s 3–2 loss to Minnesota United. The Crew were leading 2–0 near the hour mark, before the Loons fired three-straight past Schulte in the span of 15 minutes. Although not entirely the 25-year-old’s fault, he looked out of position on more than one occasion, appearing reactive between the sticks as opposed to proactive.

Brady’s Chicago side also relinquished an early lead, falling to Celentano’s Cincinnati 3–2 after a penalty kick in the seventh minute of stoppage time; however, Brady’s conceded goals appeared more due to the impressive finesse of Evander and the opposing strikers, as opposed to technical deficiencies on his part.

READ THE LATEST USMNT NEWS, ANALYSIS AND INSIGHT FROM SI FC

Add us as a preferred source on Google