It’s that time of year that only happens once every four years: when every little injury in any professional men’s soccer game has the potential to affect the World Cup.

We’re close enough to the tournament that a serious injury is no longer required to keep a player out. And even a two-month injury carries with it all kinds of worries: Will he be fully fit come June? Will he be in form in June?

A less nihilistic spin on the same idea: We’ve reached the point in the pre-World Cup season where everything that happens in the club game starts to feel connected to the international game.

If a star player falls out of favor: Will he be rusty at the World Cup? If a star player for one of the favorites starts playing poorly: Will he even make the World Cup roster? If an unheralded outsider goes on a hot streak: Can they afford to leave him off the plane? If multiple strikers from the same country score a couple of goals in the same weekend: Can they play together?

All that is true, too, for the U.S. men’s national team.

Gone are the days where the USMNT had a couple of European-based guys who were locks for the roster and then a mishmash of MLS talent. Now, there are Americans starting and starring in every major league and the Champions League, and there are MLSers with legitimate claims to roster spots because of the rising quality of the domestic league. There are lots of questions over who should start and who should make the roster, and there will be a bunch of talented, accomplished players who will be on the bench or who won’t be called up.

So, to get a general sense of how all the eligible Americans are doing, we’re rolling out the latest edition of the USMNT Player Performance Index.

– Ranked: The top 25 manager jobs in soccer, from best to worst
– The USMNT’s top U-21 prospects of 2026, ranked
– How USMNTers endure long MLS offseason to stay World Cup-ready

What is the USMNT PPI again?

We’ve explained how this works enough times already, so we’ll be brief. This ranking is determined by a formula of three inputs: talent, playing time, and team quality.

Talent comes from Transfermarkt’s estimated market value for every player, the best and more straight-forward measure available. Playing time is the percentage of available minutes each player has played for his team in their domestic league. And team quality comes from Opta’s power rankings, which rate every professional club team in the world and offer a uniform way of assessing the quality of every USMNT player’s club team.

The rankings work off a simple premise: If you’re playing a lot of minutes and your team has a high rating, then you’re likely contributing valuable performance to your team.

The only thing that changes across the season is how much we weigh each metric. The farther into the season we go, the less we need to lean on the Transfermarkt value, so for this edition, that takes up only 4% of the rating, while 18% goes to the percent of minutes played and 78% goes to the team rating.

Although MLS starts this weekend, we’re just using last season’s numbers for any MLS-based players. And I’ve also removed any player who hasn’t featured in at least 10% of the minutes for his non-MLS club and any MLS player who didn’t play in at least 60% of his team’s minutes last season.

Major names missing: Patrick Agyemang has been quite productive for Derby County, who are currently in the playoff places in the Championship, but he’s punished by an early-season injury and a low power rating for his team. Alejandro Zendejas, too, has played only about half the minutes for Club América, who are having a down year. Cameron Carter-Vickers has been injured for much of the season and Celtic, too, are having a down year. Josh Sargent hasn’t played for Norwich since early January, as he tries to move to MLS, on top of Norwich sitting 17th in England’s second-tier Championship. And then in MLS, the likes of Diego Luna and Matt Turner miss out because their teams stunk last season.

With that, here is the list we ended up with that ranks Americans by club form…

1. Chris Richards, center back, Crystal Palace

Consider this an argument for the strength of the Premier League.

Even with their recent struggles, Crystal Palace are still rated by Opta as the 22nd-best team in the world. And Richards, for his part, has been one of the club’s lone constants in a volatile season. He has played 84% of the minutes at center back, and Palace’s goal differential is nearly 0.7 goals better per 90 minutes when Richards has been on the field.

Richards’ development — from Bayern Munich youth prospect to Crystal Palace starter — is the reasonable best-case scenario for any American that moves to one of Europe’s superclubs as a teenager. Chances are they are not going to be good enough to play for Bayern Munich at the senior level, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get valuable development time and still become a starter somewhere else in Europe’s top leagues.

2. Tyler Adams, midfielder, AFC Bournemouth

I wrote this back in December:

“If I told you that Adams had played nearly 90% of the minutes for a good Premier League team so far this season, you probably would have one of two reactions: (1) Wow, that’s such good news for the World Cup! Or (2) Oh my god, no, he’s going to get hurt before the World Cup.”

I know I can be quite hard on neurotic USMNT fans who think the USMNT should be the most important thing in every American soccer player’s life, even though 90% of their time and their earnings comes from something other than playing for the USMNT. But if you watched Adams excel at Bournemouth and thought, “This is bad” rather than “This is good,” then you were kind of right: He got hurt immediately after the last USMNT PPI was published, and he hasn’t played since the beginning of December.

A quirk of these ratings is that he moved up despite not playing because of the new weighting we use as the season progresses. He, of course, will move down soon if he doesn’t get back on the field.

3. Weston McKennie, midfielder or forward (?), Juventus

Three years ago, Weston McKennie was in the middle of the worst season of his career — on loan at a soon-to-be-relegated Leeds United team that would fire multiple managers after he arrived at the club. Luciano Spalletti, meanwhile, was guiding a Victor Osimhen-powered Napoli team to one of the more surprising Serie A titles in recent memory.

Fast forward to today and, uh, here’s Spalletti: “McKennie is a perfect central striker. He fights, he’s strong in the air, and he can jump high. He plays to get results because he makes decisions. He would be a perfect striker.”

Spalletti replaced Igor Tudor as Juventus manager in October, and like every Juventus manager before him, he eventually fell in love with the American. With McKennie flourishing for a much-better-than-their-record Juve team, he should be back in the starting XI for the USMNT come this summer. I’m not sure USMNT manager Mauricio Pochettino will actually play him at striker, but this bears repeating: Weston McKennie just started a Champions League knockout match as the center forward for Juventus.

He hasn’t scored or assisted a goal since last year, and he’s still tied for the Serie A lead in non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes. He’s not No. 1 in this ranking mainly because he has only played about 40% of the league minutes so far this season.

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International soccer breaks your brain and causes you to say things like: Well, I guess he tore his ACL at the right time! Dest missed the Copa América and really hasn’t featured much under Pochettino, but two years has been enough time for Dest to get back up to speed and reintegrate himself as one of the best players on the best team in the Netherlands.

6. Malik Tillman, attacking midfielder, Bayer Leverkusen

He hasn’t set the world on fire in Germany, but it speaks well of Tillman that his new club fired its manager (Erik ten Hag) after his first couple games with his new team and yet he has continued to be a first-choice player under new manager, Kasper Hjulmand.

There was a world where Tillman moved to the Bundesliga and just couldn’t hack it, but that does not appear to be the case. Establishing yourself as a reliable starter for one of the better teams in Germany is a pretty good place to be as you get ready to head into your peak years.

7. Tanner Tessmann, midfielder, Olympique Lyonnais

What are midfielders supposed to do? First and foremost: pass the ball and win the ball. Per the grades from Gradient Sports, Tessmann has done those things at an above-average level for the third-place team in Ligue 1.

Given that he’s just entering his prime and that Ligue 1 midfielders tend to translate really well to the Premier League and he’s, well, a big dude, might a major-money move to England be in his future?

8. Johnny Cardoso, midfielder, Atlético Madrid

Hey! He’s playing again! And he has been holding his own, too:

I don’t think we’ll see Cardoso break into the USMNT XI any time soon — the Americans are just too deep in midfield right now, especially if the back three chops off one of the midfield spots from the 4-3-3 — but this should at least put him back into the mix for a spot on the final roster.

He sustained a broken forearm in January — right after he had seemingly established himself as a starter at PSV, finally.

I’d still be quite skeptical over the rumored potential move to Fulham — but only from a Fulham perspective. High-scoring Eredivisie forwards fail in bigger leagues all the time, and most of Pepi’s scoring has come against tired legs, off the bench.

But from a Pepi perspective? He should absolutely move to Fulham, challenge himself and get paid lots of money. The career of a pro soccer player is way too short.

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10. Brenden Aaronson, attacking midfielder, Leeds United

Last time around, Aaronson didn’t look like a Premier League player. He ran around a lot, pressed hard and contributed little else. But back with Leeds for his second shot at England’s top flight, he has nearly matched his total expected goals+assists tally from 2022-23, and there are still 13 games left to play.

Another perfectly timed fullback injury, I guess! After getting hurt at the end of last season, he’s back in Fulham’s lineup.

There are some questions about how he might fit into the USMNT’s new back-three system, but if he’s healthy and finishes the season strong, I’d imagine Pochettino will find a way to get him onto the field.

12. Timothy Weah, winger, Olympique Marseille

13. Yunus Musah, midfielder, Atalanta

14. Alex Freeman, fullback, Villarreal

He made off-the-bench appearances in his past two matches with Villarreal. They’re having a fantastic season (in Spain, at least), so it might be tough to crack the starting lineup, but let’s just take a step back for a second: Alex Freeman hadn’t started an MLS game at this time last year, and now he’s getting minutes for the third-place team in Spain despite only joining the club a couple of weeks ago.

We’re on year four of him scoring fewer goals than his expected-goals totals. That’s worse than it seems, too, as xG is aggregated across all positions, so we’d expect the average forward to score slightly more goals than their xG suggests. He’s only at 0.43 non-penalty goals+assists per 90 minutes in Ligue 1, but maybe ask PSG what they think about his finishing skills?

If we look at all competitions, Balogun’s numbers are pretty much where they were last season: 0.5 goals+assists per 90 minutes. Despite what Spalletti thinks of McKennie, there’s no other American center forward who’s capable of producing at that level across Europe’s Big Five leagues and the Champions League.

Just go back and look at his off-ball movement in those two goals against PSG. No disrespect to Brian McBride, but the USMNT has never had a player like this.

16. Mark McKenzie, center back, Toulouse

There’s no great way to integrate MLS players into these rankings, and I do think that MLS teams are, on average, rated too highly by Opta’s model. For example, LAFC are rated as roughly equivalent to Serie A’s Fiorentina, even though Transfermarkt puts Fiorentina’s squad value at €247.45 million and LAFC’s at €68.2 million.

At the same time, the opaque-but-sort-of-salary-capped financial structure of MLS doesn’t work quite like the rest of the soccer world does, where most of the talent gets funneled up into the richest and best teams in each league. The assumption that the best players are mostly playing on the best teams doesn’t quite hold.

That said, LAFC were really good last season, and Delgado played a ton of minutes for them. He’s probably a fringe starter for the USMNT if this were 2014.

18. Aidan Morris, midfielder, Middlesbrough

19. Cristian Roldan, midfielder, Seattle Sounders

If there’s one MLS player who we can be confident would scale up to better competition, it’s Roldan. He was fantastic for the Sounders at the Club World Cup, and he has been great for the USMNT during the past few windows.

22. Haji Wright, forward, Coventry City

Coventry are in first place in the Championship, and Haji Wright has the most goals in the Championship. He likely won’t push for a starting spot with the USMNT, but while center forward was a black hole at the last World Cup, it shouldn’t be that way this summer.

24. Jesús Ferreira, forward, Seattle Sounders

25. Tristan Blackmon, center back, Vancouver Whitecaps

26. Paul Rothrock, attacking midfielder, Seattle Sounders

When I do a Google search for Paul Rothrock’s page on the site FBref, the first result is said page.

The second? It’s a tailored search for the following: “Player Comparison: Paul Rothrock vs. Lamine Yamal vs. Lionel Messi vs. Cristiano Ronaldo vs. Viktor Gyökeres vs. Florian Wirtz.” Good job, Sounders fans.

27. Tate Johnson, fullback, Vancouver Whitecaps

28. Emmanuel Sabbi, winger, Vancouver Whitecaps

29. Justin Haak, center back, LA Galaxy

30. Jackson Ragen, center back, Seattle Sounders

31. Joe Scally, right back, Borussia Mönchengladbach

He’s being penalized by the fact that Gladbach stink this season. They’re currently three points off the Bundesliga’s bottom three.

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Joseph Scally finds the back of the net for Borussia Monchengladbach

Joseph Scally finds the back of the net for Borussia Monchengladbach

32. Matt Freese, goalkeeper, New York City FC

33. Max Arfsten, wingback, Columbus Crew

34. Luca Bombino, fullback, San Diego FC

35. Sean Zawadzki, center back or midfielder, Columbus Crew

36. Roman Celentano, goalkeeper, FC Cincinnati

37. Noahkai Banks, center back, Augsburg

He should be way higher, but Opta’s skew that rates MLS teams too generously pushes him down the list. Banks has basically been a Bundesliga-average center back — his passing, carrying and challenge grades from Gradient all fall right around league average.

That might not sound or look that exciting — until you realize that he turned 19 in December and most center backs don’t actually reach their primes until they’re 25 or 26.

On top of that, wouldn’t a league-average Bundesliga center back be pretty useful to the USMNT this summer?

38. Patrick Schulte, goalkeeper, Columbus Crew

40. Matko Miljevic, midfielder, Racing Club

42. Miles Robinson, center back, FC Cincinnati

44. Nathan Harriel, fullback, Philadelphia Union

45. Giovanni Reyna, attacking midfielder, Borussia Mönchengladbach

The good: He has started more matches than in any Bundesliga season since 2022-23.

The bad: He has only started four matches, and Gladbach, as mentioned earlier, aren’t exactly Manchester City.

Reyna has zero goals and zero assists, and Gradient’s more holistic overview of his performance isn’t that much better:

You just can’t be an average attacking midfielder who also doesn’t defend. Can he be something more than that for the USMNT?

46. CJ dos Santos, goalkeeper, San Diego FC

He plays pretty much every minute of every game for the first-place team in Serie B. Although he’s tiny, Gradient’s “athleticism” metric — which controls for player size, sub minutes and position to spit out a 0-100 rating for a player’s combined endurance, explosiveness and speed — puts Busio in the 93rd percentile among midfielders in Italy‘s top two divisions.

The USMNT’s midfield is probably too crowded for him to make the World Cup roster, but he’s putting together a really nice season.

49. Indiana Vassilev, midfielder, Philadelphia Union

50. James Sands, midfielder, St. Pauli