USMNT’s Countdown: Midfield Crisis and Key Player Concerns

For the first time in a long time, there was a reason to smile about Gio Reyna.

He slipped in from the left for Borussia Mönchengladbach at the weekend and finally broke his club drought, sweeping home in stoppage time of a 3-1 defeat. On the scoreboard, it was a consolation. For Reyna, it felt like oxygen. His first club goal in nearly 18 months, a reminder that the touch and vision that once lit up USMNT nights have not disappeared, only gone quiet.

That’s been the story of his season. Since starring for the U.S. in November, Reyna has drifted on the club stage, reduced to scraps of minutes and cameos that never quite let him breathe. Even in March, when the U.S. faced elite opposition in friendlies, he was used sparingly, introduced late rather than trusted to dictate.

And yet his name never leaves the conversation.

Reyna changes games. He always has in a U.S. shirt. The numbers and the trophies tell the story: when he’s involved, the USMNT tends to look sharper, braver, more inventive in the final third. He’s the player who can tilt a tight knockout tie with a single moment.

But right now, he’s not the spine of this team. He’s the luxury piece. The flourish on top of a structure that has to function without him if needed. If he catches fire, the U.S. ceiling rises. If he doesn’t, there are other options in his pocket of the pitch, players who bring rhythm and reliability even if they lack his stardust.

One of them is Malik Tillman. Or at least, he should be.

Tillman stalls as Leverkusen look elsewhere

On pure talent, there’s little debate about Tillman. He glides between lines, sees passes others don’t, and has shown repeatedly that he can hurt teams when he’s trusted.

The problem? Right now, Bayer Leverkusen aren’t trusting him much at all.

Since the March international window, Tillman has appeared in seven matches. Across those seven, he’s played just 77 minutes. Only twice did he even crack the 10-minute mark. When Leverkusen look for support behind their striker, they’ve turned instead to Nathan Tella and the emerging Ibrahim Maza, leaving Tillman watching the decisive moments from the bench.

The timing could hardly be worse. Tillman was firmly in the mix to start for the USMNT this summer and remains in that conversation, but his case would be far stronger with recent goals and assists to point to. His last strike came on April 4, a quick-fire contribution in a two-minute cameo against Wolfsburg that nudged him to six goals in 1,615 minutes this season.

That return is respectable. The trend is not. A creative midfielder short of club rhythm is a headache for a national team that wants to press high, play fast and trust its No. 10s to last the distance.

There is at least one reassuring note: Weston McKennie’s form.

The Juventus midfielder has rediscovered his edge and, if Tillman’s minutes remain scarce, McKennie can slide into that more advanced role alongside Christian Pulisic. It’s not the original plan, but it’s a viable one.

Pulisic’s drought shadows the build-up

Then there’s Pulisic himself. The face of this generation. The player who, fair or not, carries more expectation than anyone else in the squad.

He has spoken about it already. He knows he hasn’t scored in 2026. He admits it’s frustrating. He insists he isn’t panicking. For him, the calculation is simple: what matters most is what happens in the biggest games this summer, not what the stat line in Milan looks like in May.

That logic makes sense. But it doesn’t erase the reality.

When a World Cup looms, you want your stars humming, not searching. And no one can argue that Pulisic has been at his sharpest so far this year. His movement is still clever, his work rate still high, yet the final punch has gone missing too often.

The U.S. will still lean on him. He may not be the sole deciding factor in how far this team goes, but he remains one of its primary weapons and one of its loudest voices. They need his goals, yes, but just as much they need his personality — the aggression, the willingness to take responsibility in tense moments, the tone-setting runs that drag the rest with him.

There is time for him to find his groove. But with every week he goes scoreless, the noise around him grows a little louder. It shouldn’t drown out the bigger picture, but it’s there, humming in the background.

Center-back picture: one certainty, a lot of questions

If the forward line is a concern, the center of defense is something closer to an open wound.

Chris Richards looks nailed on. He has the blend of composure and athleticism modern international football demands, and his place feels secure.

After that, the questions come fast.

Tim Ream brings a wealth of experience and a calm presence in possession. But how much is too much at this stage of his career, especially after a recent injury that still lingers in conversations even if it has cleared in medical reports?

Mark McKenzie is thriving in Ligue 1, playing with confidence and authority. The issue is whether he can cut out the occasional lapse that has crept into his USMNT performances — the kind of split-second error that gets punished ruthlessly at a World Cup.

Auston Trusty has finally found his feet in Europe with Celtic, imposing himself physically and reading the game well. Yet with just six caps, he remains untested in the kind of high-stakes, high-pressure environment that awaits this summer.

Miles Robinson sits in the same file: proven at his best, but will his form and sharpness be where they need to be when the squad gathers?

There’s even a wildcard question: could someone like Noahkai Banks arrive late, seize the moment and offer an unexpected solution?

Normally, by this stage of a cycle, a national team knows its center-back pairing, or at least its hierarchy. Right now, the U.S. does not. It feels less like a settled unit and more like an open audition, with form in the final weeks of the club season threatening to trump reputation.

Midfield crisis: Cardoso out, Tessmann limping, Adams isolated

If there’s one area that truly keeps the staff awake, it’s the midfield.

There was a strong, logical case that either Johnny Cardoso or Tanner Tessmann could start this summer alongside Tyler Adams. That debate is now half over — and not in a way the U.S. wanted.

Cardoso’s season hit a brutal twist. Fresh off a Champions League semifinal, Atlético Madrid announced he had sprained his ankle. The timeline was always going to be tight. It snapped altogether on Monday when Atleti confirmed he would need surgery, ruling him out of the tournament.

A starter candidate gone in one sentence of medical news.

Tessmann’s situation is less severe but still unsettling. Lyon described his issue as a muscle strain, the kind that sidelines a player for a spell but doesn’t derail an entire summer. He is expected to be fit in time for the World Cup. Even before the injury, though, his place in Lyon’s XI had started to wobble, his minutes fluctuating as the season wore on.

Those two setbacks land on an already delicate balance. The U.S. must identify a partner for Adams, someone who can both protect space and progress the ball, and the two most convincing options from this season’s European form now come with caveats — one absent, one short of consistent club rhythm.

Every serious team is built from the middle. That’s where control lives, where tempo gets set, where tournaments are won or lost long before the final whistle. At this moment, the USMNT is staring at the possibility of walking into the summer with a midfield that looks thin, patched together, and one injury away from a full-blown crisis.

As the clock ticks toward squad selection, that is the sharpest worry of all. Not the form of Reyna, not the drought of Pulisic, not even the uncertainty at center back — but the question of who, exactly, will stand next to Tyler Adams when the anthem ends and the World Cup finally begins.