There were a lot of familiar names, and a lot of somewhat unfamiliar ones, and the fact that USA coach Gregg Berhalter is obviously not bringing his first team to this tournament kind of makes the whole thing more fun.
Despite how prolific he was, Akinola was never precisely a centerpiece of those US teams, and actually fell out of then-US U-20 head coach Tab Ramos’s plans ahead of the 2019 U-20 World Cup.
His prolific goalscoring as a winger in the youth ranks wasn’t translating, and he lacked the playmaking nous to bring anything else to the table out wide.
Akinola, who’s roughly the same age as Daryl Dike, Josh Sargent and Jonathan David , burst onto the scene last year as a pure, channel-running No.
Then … he accepted a Canada call-up.
So while the path is crowded at the moment, I would wager that there’s more playing time to be won over the course of the next decade for Canada than there is for the US.
He might already be! Akinola scored at a higher rate in MLS than Dike did last year, remember, and it’s not like Sargent is a sure thing.
But from a “where is there going to be more playing time available?” perspective, I really do understand Canada as a better landing spot for him.
Rubin, like Akinola, was a one-time star of the US youth national team programs. Unlike Akinola, he didn’t have his breakout season at the age of 20, and unlike Akinola, he nonetheless remained in the USMNT plans.
The productivity just wasn’t there, and given the rise of the likes of Dike, Sargent, Pefok and others, it seemed a good bet that Rubin would file a one-time switch to play for Guatemala.
Rubin has been brilliant for Real Salt Lake, finally living up to his potential as a fox-in-the-box center forward who also does the dirty work defensively and links play a bit.
I still think it’s a longshot that Rubin becomes a core piece of this US team, and if he 1) makes the Gold Cup roster, and 2) plays, he won’t be able to file a one-time switch anymore.
But this is probably his best shot to push his way into the mix for a World Cup.
Rubin is really, really good at finding soft spots in the defense and popping up in the right spots in the box.
Any assessment of when he’d be ready to help the US at any age group, however, came with caveats about where he was in the citizenship process.
I wrote yesterday how disappointed I am that there was no U-20 World Cup this year, and obviously that disappointment is compounded by the US failing to qualify for the Olympics.