The U.S. men's national team has failed to go back-to-back-to-back-to-back in the Concacaf Nations League and, of the many lessons to take from it, the main one might be this: There's still not enough attacking talent around Christian Pulisic.
Pulisic alone isn't enough to consistently break down the kind of increasingly organized, talented, and deeper-sitting defenses the USMNT seems to be facing in some matches. With both of the team's starting fullbacks healthy -- Antonee Robinson bombing down the left, Sergiño Dest pulling the creative strings on the right -- there seems to be just space for the attack to click into a higher gear. The team has also often been able to get by with only one of those players on the field. And obviously, it didn't help that Monaco's Folarin Balogun, the team's presumptive starting center forward also was.
Still, it feels as if it shouldn't be this hard just because a couple of starters are out.
Even with some lineup rotation, the Americans attempted only five shots in a 2-1 loss against Canada in the third-place game. And in a 1-0 semifinal loss against Panama, their 12 shots totaled a meager 0.68 expected goals. Beyond some much-needed improvement on set pieces and some riskier tactical choices by coach Mauricio Pochettino, the main way for it to get easier would be for the other players to improve.
A prevailing sentiment among American fans is that the solution to the USMNT's biggest problem, then, is that the guys playing well at smaller clubs need to make the jump to elite clubs. And right now, two attackers in particular are sitting on a couple of career thresholds -- at an age when players often suddenly become significantly better, and at clubs where players at those ages tend to move to bigger leagues.
So, how might the likes of Josh Sargent and Ricardo Pepi project beyond the lower levels of the English Championship and the Dutch Eredivisie? Let's take a look.